-
Dec 9, 2024 | 
timesofsandiego.com | Thomas Larson
When it comes to musical humor, one thing’s for sure: To be funny in sound is not like a joke in language whose weird setup (a priest, a lawyer, and a jackass walk into a bar) is upended by a punchline and a bellylaugh. Instead, amusing music follows its own rules.
-
Nov 21, 2024 | 
theadanews.com | Thomas Larson
The Stonewall Public Schools Board recently approved enhancements to the district’s wellness policy – positively impacting the health of more than 400 students in the Pontotoc County school district. The new policy includes ensuring breakfast is available for students, promoting physical activity in classrooms and supporting lifelong physical activity through PE curriculum.
-
Nov 20, 2024 | 
sandiegoreader.com | Thomas Larson
Life guardsAt the top of the Grandview stairway sits a bench, dedicated to the memory of the three women who died under the weight of a 50-ton blockfall in 2019. In a late-July meetup, Dr. Pat Davis, one of the survivors who has fought hard to avenge their deaths, posed in front of the bench for my camera. Behind him is a chain-link fence walling off the condo colony of Seabluffe, many of its units seasonally occupied.
-
Nov 15, 2024 | 
theadanews.com | Thomas Larson
OKLAHOMA CITY — November, Oklahomans have a chance to take a significant step toward a tobacco-free life during the Great American Smokeout on Thursday, Nov. 21, an annual event organized by the American Cancer Society encouraging people nationwide to quit tobacco. Through the Oklahoma Tobacco Helpline, the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust offers free resources and support.
-
Nov 13, 2024 | 
sandiegoreader.com | Thomas Larson
The cliff collapseOn August 2, 2019, at around 1 pm, Dr. J. Patrick Davis, his wife, Julie Davis, Julie’s sister, Elizabeth Charles Cox, and Pat and Julie’s daughter, Annie Davis Clave — all three of them mothers — accompanied by Pat and Julie’s adult daughter, Elizabeth McCullagh, a dozen wave-tagging kids and several neighbor moms, 20 in all, descended a four-sectioned, rickety stairway to picnic on Grandview Beach at the north end of Encinitas.
-
Oct 9, 2024 | 
timesofsandiego.com | Thomas Larson
After four years of waiting, the Copley Symphony Hall has been remade to enhance the San Diego Symphony sound, its musicians, and their audience response as the Jacobs Music Center. Vacated by COVID and judged acoustically repairable, the venue placed its uneven tone and barnlike feel in the hands of musically-minded engineers.
-
Aug 1, 2024 | 
timesofsandiego.com | Thomas Larson
As a journalist and critic, I revise my work constantly whether in longform articles, personal essays, or a quickie on Twitter where I worry over the post a while, wince a bit, and send it. Of my crafted prose, I’ll draft a piece a dozen times, recast dozens of paragraphs, recalibrate and move dozens more sentences while phrases and words by the hundreds get cut, altered, rethought, and, if necessary, brought back from their burial ground. “All the writing matters,” the novelist Frank Conroy said.
-
May 8, 2024 | 
sandiegoreader.com | Thomas Larson
Puzzling1. No California politician gets more blame for the denigration of the migrant than Peter Barton Wilson, now 91, last century’s Mr. San Diego.Now, in a political year that has been inflamed by another crisis at the border, Wilson’s name — and legacy — is newsworthy again. Was the the man an architect of anti-Latino prejudice or a champion of state sovereignty?
-
Apr 15, 2024 | 
brickmag.com | Eleanor Wachtel |Thomas Larson
A version of this conversation was broadcast on Writers & Company on CBC Radio One in 2021, produced by Sandra Rabinovitch. I remember when Sigrid Nunez’s eighth title, The Friend, came out and three very different people— friends—told me how great it was, that I had to read it, and that I didn’t have to be a “dog person” to enjoy it. It took me a bit of time to get to it, but I’m happy to report it’s all true.
-
Mar 5, 2024 | 
timesofsandiego.com | Thomas Larson
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how public spaces (trolleys, airports, music venues) no longer feel public, but temporarily accommodate people (us) who isolate and seem wholly removed from even looking at others — a club whose members are linked via their disconnection. Weird, I know. As if bus riders and plane passengers are hiding some secret (drug runners or deadbeat dads) or else feel guilty for a cultural misstep they’ll soon be canceled for.
