101 Reasons to Consider This Author Either a Flake or a Genius
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Peter Duchon walks the city streets, questioning.
His question is (disarmingly, deceivingly, devilishly) simple: What one thing are we NOT doing to save the planet that we should be doing?
Lots of the answers are the usual ones about not loving each other enough or recycling enough trash or stopping pollution or pounding swords into plowshares.
But then there are the other ones.
The X-ray technician who said the answer to saving the planet is the eradication of fleas. The woman who said the world would be a far better place if everyone who stole a shopping cart would return it.
The person from Vista who told Duchon to consult “the Great Spirit Wakan Tonka.” Or the person who said to review the works of the late holy man Osho Rajneesch.
Duchon wants to publish a book: “101 Things We’re NOT Doing . . . “
“I’ve told people I’m looking for 10,000 answers,” he says. “That’s a lot to sift through, but I welcome the challenge. I’ve always had this idea about talking to people and trying to find out what’s on their minds.”
He’s 28 and went to college in Oklahoma and New Mexico and landed in Oceanside this spring. He worked for a while as a deliveryman for a catering firm.
He calls himself a “consensus manager” and “creative consultant” and has been handing out flyers in downtown San Diego asking his question.
He makes a living doing technical writing (his wife works at an auto parts store). He’s used to people thinking he’s out of kilter because of his “101 Things” project.
“It’s huge, it’s cosmic, it’s weird,” he says. “A lot of people say I’m either a genius or a flake, but I think I’m leaning toward the former but who knows? Maybe it’ll end up being a comic strip.”
He solicits answers through POD/NINE (Professional Organizational Design/No Imagination No Environment), P.O. Box 935, Oceanside.
Duchon wants his book (when, and if, it’s published) to make people forget the “Whole Earth Catalogue.”
“What was it Dennis Hopper said? ‘The 1990s are going to make the ‘60s look like the ‘50s.’ And I’m going to be at the forefront of it all.”
Whining Wouldn’t Sell
It says here.
* Rocky DeLaurentis, owner/operator of a ship balancing firm in National City, is out with his (self-published) account of Navy Seabees during World War II: “Laughing & Griping With the 97th Seabees.”
He had considered calling it “Bitching All the Way” but decided to tone it down.
* San Diego cop Isaac (Nick) Nichols may be getting help in his war to rid the city of illegally placed signs.
The City Council on Tuesday considers a proposal to slap scofflaws with the full cost of removing their signs.
* Brae Canlen, former reporter for the San Diego Reader, has won second-prize in the Writers’ Digest contest (from 15,000 entries).
Her story, “You Be the Dog,” will be published in the November edition. It’s a chapter from her as-yet unfinished novel about religion and politics in an Italian-Irish family in Philadelphia.
* Political types say the Bruce Herschensohn-Barbara Boxer race for U.S. Senate is the most clear-cut conservative vs. liberal race of the year.
Boxer started with a big lead but the Herschensohn camp thinks it’s closing, especially in Southern California: A new poll shows Boxer with only a 41-39 lead in San Diego County.
* As a cost-cutting move, Councilman Ron Roberts has proposed that the cop assigned to guard council members at City Hall be reassigned to street duties:
“The mayor and City Council should have no greater protection than any other member of the public.”
He also wants council members to turn in the pagers that the Police Department uses to alert them of breaking crime stories.
* I know a San Diego cop who has a button, “We’re the Biggest Street Gang in America. We’re the Police.”
A Communication Gap
Paul Bloom, crime reporter for KNSD (Channel 39), tells us about the cop and the tourists.
A couple from Virginia gets mugged recently in San Diego and Police Detective Frank Christensen is asking them for the facts.
“Was the mugger a transient?” he asks.
“Why, no,” drawls the wife, “I don’t believe he had an accent at all.”
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