San Diego, CA
San Diego librarians’ work now involves battling censorship
A handful of people lined up outside Rancho Penasquitos Library on a chilly morning last week, like eager shoppers on Black Friday.
“Morning, how are you?” asked Adrianne Peterson, the library’s branch manager, greeting patrons with matched enthusiasm. “Wow, everybody is showing up today.”
Peterson is a 30-year veteran of libraries. She studied art as an undergraduate at San Diego State University, but switched to library information science for graduate school at the University of Illinois after some self-discovery.
“I learned about myself as I got older, that what’s meaningful to me is to help people,” Peterson said. “Being a librarian is a way that I could help every person every day, from the littlest kid to seniors and everybody in between.”
She has built a career on helping people. She said libraries offer much more than books — early literacy programs, resume building, and helping people earn their high school diplomas. At a time of fraying social bonds and epidemic loneliness, she noted libraries are one of the last shared spaces open to everyone.
“You don’t have to pay to come to the library,” Peterson said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, rich or poor, educated, whatever your religious beliefs are, we don’t judge. We don’t tell you what to read.”
So she was shocked last June when she got a ransom note of sorts from two Rancho Penasquitos women objecting to a Pride Month display.
“I received an email saying that, ‘We protest this type of material being on display, and we’ve checked out the materials, and we will not return them until you remove the display,’” Peterson recalled.
She said the women did eventually return the books, but not before media coverage triggered a backlash to the attempted censorship.
“My phone rang off the hook,” Peterson said. “People sent books. I had Amazon packages piled up on my desk, and they asked, ‘Can we make a donation? Can I go buy some books at Barnes & Noble and drop them off to replenish your display?’ And on and on.”
Peterson said she drew two lessons from the incident. Support for libraries and inclusivity is far greater than for censorship. But at the same time, San Diego is not immune to a trend in recent years of people trying to control what others read, despite a long history of public libraries.
Benjamin Franklin built America’s first library in Philadelphia in 1731. More than a century later, industrialist Andrew Carnegie funded 1,700 new libraries, dubbing them “Palaces for the People.” These democratic cornerstones are now increasingly under attack amid the nation’s current divide.
The American Library Association reports there were 695 challenges to more than 1,900 books in the United States during the first eight months of last year in places like Virginia, Tennessee and Iowa. That’s a 20% increase over the same period in 2022, which was a record-breaking year.
The San Diego Public Library branches have received five official book challenges in the last five years: two in 2021, one in 2022, two in 2023. Patrons also air their grievances through online comments, like this one blaming the library for society’s ills:
“The library is a den of inappropriate material for minor children and adults as well! The filth, hate and psychological disease you promote is disgusting! You each should be ashamed of supporting and promoting filth and garbage to our citizens! Yet you wonder why our society is so immoral and mentally deranged now….”
Most of the challenges are to books on race and LGBTQ+ topics, said Robyn Gage-Norquist, who leads the San Diego city library system’s reconsideration committee, which reviews book complaints.
“It’s the two issues that we just can’t get away from in our country,” she said. “We want to categorize people and try to look for something that’s different about them and make that a challenge when it really shouldn’t be.”
She believes fear is driving censorship advocates.
“What’s happening is that people are now being frightened,” Gage-Norquist said. “They’re told to be scared of these books and that we’re taking them out to protect you.”
Jennifer Jenkins, San Diego Public Library system’s deputy director of customer experience, contends that libraries are under attack also because they are one of the last institutions that are publicly funded. She said dictating what libraries offer the public is part of a larger agenda to foster ignorance, because an uninformed population is more malleable.
“The concept of libraries is radical,” Jenkins said. “To have that democratic approach to providing information so that you have an informed citizenry, an informed constituency, is threatening because knowledge is power.”
Jenkins said she’s ready for the fight to preserve the ideals underpinning libraries.
Back in Rancho Penasquitos, librarian Peterson is equally resolute.
“Most people are tolerant and encouraging of others and we should all learn how to be a team and find our similarities rather than our differences,” she said. “And I hope the library can help people do that.”
She said patrons help too by pushing for more inclusiveness. She said most of the complaints she receives aren’t about trying to remove books, but from people who believe the library’s collection isn’t diverse enough.
San Diego, CA
San Diego health officials monitor hantavirus situation as cruise ship passengers return to U.S.
SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — American passengers from a cruise ship hit with a hantavirus outbreak are back in the United States.
San Diego County health officials say they are monitoring the situation and there is no need for panic.
“The risk to Californians is really low and especially here in San Diego. Since the year 2000, we’ve only had 4 cases of hantavirus and the majority of those were in travel related cases so not even acquired here locally,” Ankita Kadakia, deputy public health officer for the County of San Diego, said.
According to the CDC, hantavirus is spread through contact with infected rodents.
“The virus can be in their saliva, feces or droppings,” Kadakia said.
San Diego County does see cases of rodents infected with hantavirus, but the strain seen locally is not the same strain connected to the cruise ship outbreak.
“The vast majority of strains of hantavirus are mouse or animal to human transmission. Not human to human transmission. So the Andes strain, which is found in Argentina, there is evidence that there is human to human transmission,” Dr. Ahmed Salem, a pulmonologist at Sharp Memorial Hospital, said.
Salem treated hantavirus during the 2012 Yosemite National Park outbreak.
“One of the ways you die from hantavirus is you get a collapse of your cardiac system and your pulmonary system and you have to go on something called ECMO. It’s one of the most aggressive forms of life support that you can do. So I do remember that case, and unfortunately, that person passed away,” Salem said.
There is currently no cure or vaccine for hantavirus. Health officials stress that for those who were not on the cruise ship, the risk of contracting the virus remains low.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
Here’s some instant reaction from the Padres’ wild 3-2 victory
It seemed like the same tired story.
Instead, it was the same thriller.
The Padres pushed their offensive lethargy as long as possible without paying for it Sunday, tying the game with two outs in the ninth inning on Nick Castellanos’ two-run homer and then celebrating after Manny Machado’s sacrifice fly in the 10th inning gave them a 3-2 victory over the Cardinals.
“Getting it done,” Machado said.
That’s it. That is all they are doing.
And at what is essentially the quarter mark of the season, the Padres are 24-16 and tied with the Dodgers atop the National League West.
The shocking component of their having the major leagues’ fifth-best record is that the Padres rank in the bottom three among MLB’s 30 teams in batting average and OPS.
They split with the Cardinals despite having 14 hits, their fewest in a four-game series in franchise history. Their 61 hits over their past 10 games are the fewest in a stretch that long since 2019, and they are 5-5 in those games.
“It sucks; we need to hit; Machado said. “I mean, you know, look, it’s obvious. We’re not hitting. It’s obvious, but we’re getting things done, man.”
Sunday was the Padres’ 12th victory this season in which the decisive run was scored in the seventh inning or later. That is exactly half their victories.
It was their fourth walk-off victory, their second in extra innings. It was the seventh time that a run scored in their final offensive half-inning decided a victory.
So it is no small thing to proffer that Sunday was possibly their most dramatic triumph. Because it was possibly their most unlikely one.
Not only were they a strike away from defeat, but they began the ninth inning having gotten two hits all day.
The Cardinals took a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning on their first two hits off Walker Buehler — a single by Alec Burleson and a home run by Jordan Walker with two outs. Buehler pitched six innings, allowing just one more hit before Ron Marinaccio worked two scoreless innings.
But the Padres were unable to make anything of their seven at-bats with runners in scoring position over the first eight innings. They had walked five times but had just Jackson Merrill’s third-inning single and Xander Bogaerts’ fourth-inning double to that point.
“Really good teams find ways to win games when they’re not doing their best,” Gavin Sheets said. “… We’re not clicking on all cylinders by any means. And I don’t think any of us would say that he’s on a roll right now, but we’re getting hits in a timely fashion and it’s someone different every night.”
Almost.
The Padres have game-winning RBIs from 10 different players. They have go-ahead RBIs from 13 of the 14 position players who have been on their roster this season. Sunday was Castellanos’s third game-tying RBI.
His home run, on the ninth pitch of his at-bat against Cardinals closer Riley O’Brien, was something of a clinic by a veteran hitter who is in his first season as a role player.
Castellenos, who entered the game as a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning and remained in right field, came to the plate with Bogaerts at first base with two outs.
Bogaerts’ single leading off the inning had been followed by two strikeouts, and Castellanos fell behind 0-2 before working the count full and then sending a 99 mph sinker on the inner edge of the plate almost to the ribbon scoreboard fronting the second level of seats beyond left field.
“The first pitch started, and I was probably looking to do what I did,” he said. “And then I ended up getting 0-2 and chasing. After that, just took a deep breath and tried to shorten up as much as possible and just compete. Just find a way on base. And then found myself in a full account and was able to get the job done.”
It was the first home run allowed by O’Brien this season.
With closer Mason Miller not available after throwing 29 pitches over 1⅓ innings on Saturday, Jeremiah Estrada got the first two outs of the 10th. With runners on first and second, Adrian Morejón entered the game and got an inning-ending pop out on his first pitch.
Gordon Graceffo was on the mound for the Cardinals, and Ramón Laureano was the Padres’ automatic runner in the 10th. The Cardinals intentionally walked Merrill at the start before Fernando Tatis Jr. whittled a 1-2 count into a walk to load the bases.
The game was over one pitch later, when Machado sent a fastball to right-center field and Laureano slid across the plate well in front of right fielder Jordan Walker’s throw.
It was a somewhat subdued but still enthusiastic celebration along the first-base line, as teammates bounced around Machado.
“It’s hard to win a game like that,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “Their pitchers pitched great, and they’re bringing in one of the best closers in the game. And we just stuck with it. It just speaks to how those guys believe in themselves and how they believe in what we’ve got going on as a team.”
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