Simone Butler's Blog

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has been busy since he took office earlier this year. He’s been advocating for fare-free buses, universal childcare, rent freezes, city-run grocery stores, higher taxes on the wealthy and justice for workers.…

Yvette Marie Stevens was born on March 23, 1953 on Chicago’s rough-and-tumble South Side. The eldest of five children, by the age of 11 this spirited youngster and her sister had already formed their own band.…

Balboa Park, sometimes called the “Jewel of San Diego,” has been a public delight since its official debut at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. When visiting crowds arrived, expecting a dusty border town, they were greeted instead by a lush, tropical oasis.…

My Virgo mother was unfailingly kind and helpful, putting others’ needs ahead of her own. Everyone loved her. Especially the folks at San Diego High, where she worked as principal’s secretary for many years.…

My high school friends joke that one of us had the boobs, another had the butt, and I had the belly. Countless sit-ups, diets and colon cleanses never succeeded in flattening that part of me, as my father enjoyed pointing out.…

Rachid Lazraq has been the proprietor of Rich Collection Italia in Shoreditch, East London, for over 30 years. The shop, which sells vintage Italian shoes, had a loyal following before online shopping and an aging clientele began to slow foot traffic.…

In a recent Facebook post, renowned healer, writer and teacher Denise Linn shared a message from nature that profoundly changed her outlook on life. It involved a tiny killdeer bird who’d laid four eggs next to Linn’s gravel driveway on the dry, desert landscape.…

Years ago, when Kim D’Eramo was sick with an auto-immune disorder, she felt a lot of fear every time her back or neck went into spasm or fatigue overwhelmed her. As this perceptive osteopathic doctor writes in her mind-bending book Be Your Own Healer: An Intuitive Doctor’s Guide to Activating Your Innate Abilities Through Mind-Body Medicine, “I made what was happening wrong.…

In 2001, when Julia Roberts received the Oscar for her gutsy portrayal of the title character in Erin Brockovich, few of us were surprised. She was a knockout in the role of a scrappy young woman who used her smarts and sex appeal to uncover info that took down a power company over poisoned water.…

Ken Allen was a Bornean orangutan who lived at the San Diego Zoo from the 1970s through the 1990s. Ken’s enclosure had been designed to be escape-proof: high walls, smooth surfaces, no obvious handholds.…