50 Years Ago
Editor and publisher Steve McNamara of the Pacific Sun learned a lesson about a party-giving Friday night: don’t give up before the last guest has gone home. At a bon voyage open-house he called it quits at midnight, was getting into his cleanup clothes at 11 a.m. the next morning when two Novato policemen walked into his room. They said a neighbor had noticed broken windows in the house, and, fearing something amiss, had called police. When the officers and McNamara checked out the house they found windows broken, $60 missing, and three bags of pot sitting on the kitchen table. A search of the house turned up nothing else besides party debris. McNamara was arrested on suspicion of marijuana possession. The case has been continued pending investigation by the district attorney.
—Newsgram, 12/17/69
40 Years Ago
HONOLULU – The island nations of the Pacific, usually associated in our minds with rolling surf and white sand beaches, are now being swept by increasing waves of anti-nuclear protests. Although relatively unnoticed compared to the massive civil disobedience campaigns in the U.S. and Western Europe, actions aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear power and nuclear weapons have spread across this vast ocean area. The latest storms of controversy surround a plan announced earlier this year by the Carter administration to establish an international facility for storing nuclear wastes somewhere in the Pacific Basin, with Midway, Wake and Palmyra Islands mentioned as possible locations.
The proposal has sparked overwhelmingly hostile responses. The twelve-nation inter-government South Pacific Forum has demanded that the U.S. drop its plans, and Hawaii’s Congressional delegation is pressing for legislation requiring Congressional action before any such scheme could proceed. Hawaii Senator Spark Matsunaga, a Democrat, attacked the Carter administration for its “apparent insensitivity to the concern of the people of the U.S. territories and possessions, as well as the entire Pacific community.”
—Ian Lind, 12/14/79
30 Years Ago
When “Roseanne” made its TV debut last year, I became an instant fan of Roseanne Barr. Here was this fat, loud, vulgar woman telling it like it was, and making us laugh. She and her beefy co-star John Goodman did more to inspire the sex lives of the average couple than the entire “sexual revolution” did. Unfortunately, whatever demons drives Barr to succeed also help bring her down. Her show wavers wildly between bathroom humor and teddy-bear coziness.
—Stephanie von Buchau 12/15/89
20 Years Ago
Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and the Red Baron will visit us for the last time on January 3. Charles Schulz of Sonoma, battling an onset of cancer at age 77, has decided to pull the plug on Peanuts. During its 49-year run the strip has appeared in more than 2,800 newspapers in 75 countries. It has won all of cartooning’s finest honors and been turned into a hugely successful TV special, a stage play and zillions of bed sheets.
—Steve McNamara, 12/15/99
