Being the Change, Firefly Dreams, California's Fallen Soldiers, Vista Strawberry Festival, Poe Ballantine
Events May 24-30, 2018
2:30 p.m., May 23
Eleanor Widmer
Eleanor Widmer reviewed restaurants for the Reader from 1974 through 2000.
She wrote occasional feature stories, the most notable of which was "Slow Fall from Foxhill" (an interview with Michael Copley). Widmer was hitchhiking on Mt. Soledad and was picked up by Michael, James Copley's son from a previous marriage, who was suing Helen Copley, the current owner of the San Diego Union.
She also wrote a notable story about John Vietor, founder of San Diego Magazine: "Mr. Jello Will See You Now."
After Widmer died in 2005, fellow Reader writer Jeannette DeWyze wrote a cover story about Widmer titled The Late Long-time Queen of Cafe Critics.
Widmer's novel about an immigrant family, Up from Orchard Street
Articles by Eleanor Widmer
Blubbo's World
Reader writers and other friends remember Steve Esmedina.
Esmo’s phone manner was so hugger-mugger that I could be sitting four feet away and could not make out a single word. For all I could tell, he might have been laying fifty on a pony.
Student Steve
He stood in the back of my class and followed me around UCSD campus.
During the early ’70s, the war in Vietnam created upheaval at universities across the country. ucsd, where I taught, was no exception. Dissenters organized rallies in Revelle Plaza, committees of students met with deans to ...
The Man Who Loved to Dress Women
He consigned my clothes to the flames.
“Never put a rat on your back.” I was five years old, hurtling through the subway station in New York, on the way to the garment district with my father when he gave me my ...
My Adult Card
I read my first novel at the age of seven, after which the printed word became my obsession. In the ghetto where we lived, the public library was endowed by Andrew Carnegie; to get to ...
A.K.A. Nightingale
To sing oneself to sleep in Yiddish
I don’t know whether insomnia is programmed in the DNA, but my grandmother, my father, and I all had sleeping problems. From earliest childhood, say by the age of five, I would wake in the ...
The story I wanted to write... but didn't
Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.
After the Bucket
Frederick's, Solana Beach
Late the other afternoon, I was walking my dog down what should have been a deserted street when I saw a pickup truck filled with teen-agers advancing. The road was officially closed because of damage ...
1979: Year in Review
Rape of the Earth Medal of Dishonor The year's most infamous award goes to the voters of San Diego, a majority of whom agreed to exchange 39 acres of prime canyonland in Balboa Park for ...
Encounters With Carl Rogers
The patriarch of the Me Generation feels just fine
Everyone in the room was divorced or separated, except for one woman who explained how and why she and her husband didn't communicate. The man on the floor said he liked her and felt good about her.
