Donald H. Harrison

By Donald H. Harrison EL CAJON, California — Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius at the Stagehouse Theatre at Grossmont College wins this reviewer’s stamp of approval notwithstanding some reservations over a few technical issues and the use of far more “f-bombs” than really are necessary. The play will intrigue any philatelist as it revolves around the discovery

Coming Home by Laurence Brown; ISBN: 978-1477591819; 431 pages plus appendices, retail price unlisted By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — This is Australian novelist Laurence Brown’s second novel.  Previously he published Sicarri, a set of stories dealing with zealots and thugs who ruled through intimidation.   Coming Home is broader in scope, tracing a family

By Bruce Kesler ENCINITAS, California — San Diego Jewish World‘s Editor/ Publisher Don Harrison is proud (or else must go on a diet, which Don’s supporters know he is incapable of) of his wife Nancy’s mandelbread, but ensured a favorable verdict by using his family – under the eye of Nancy – to taste Papa Ben’s Kitchen

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–This article is about a new line of mandelbread, but as background let me share with you some sage advice I heard while covering an effort  by San Diego State University, the local Hansen Institute for World Peace and Israel’s Peres Peace Center to broker an arrangement between Palestinian

The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro, Algonquin Books, 2012, 360 pages, ISBN 978-1-61620-132-6, $23.95. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO –This work of fiction is a compelling story in which the events of three time periods are laced through a single narrative, then tied up together in a literary bow.   Novelist Shapiro sustains interest, remarkably

  By Donald H. Harrison SANTA ANA — Wounded Army National Guard Sgt. Ivan Garcia received a Purple Heart on Saturday, Sept. 8.  The day before, Garcia’s civilian colleagues at Waxie Sanitary Supply in Santa Ana gathered to express their heartfelt relief that he had managed to come home to them alive from Afghanistan. Waxie’s

Story by Donald H. Harrison; photos by Herb Targum SAN DIEGO — It was a catered first anniversary party for the San Diego chapter of Stand With Us but for most of the evening, Wednesday, Sept. 5,  the mood of the estimated 500 guests was far from celebratory as the substitute main speaker, Wall Street

-Second in a series- By Donald H. Harrison ENCINITAS, California — Gardeners sometimes will debate whether certain “companion plants” will help each other.  For example, will planting onions really ward off insect pests that feast on bean plants?  However, at the San Diego Botanic Garden here,  there is general agreement that a genuinely symbiotic relationship

    Story and photos by Donald H. Harrison ENCINITAS, California — The Treehouse at the San Diego Botanic Garden here might have been called “The Leichtag Family Foundation’s Treehouse” but Rabbi Lenore Bohm says that wouldn’t have been in keeping with Toni Leichtag’s lack of  pretentiousness. Instead, Bohm suggested, and fellow members of the

Thirty Six by Kristopher White (art: George Zapata, color: Micki Zurcher); Fossil Creek Productions, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9853612-0-4; 132 pages, $18.99. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — With current movies often focusing on Super Heroes, each seemingly more glamorous and powerful that the next, Kristopher White has reached into Jewish tradition and legend to present

    By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– It is hard to know whether Cole Thorpe, 11, will ever play professional baseball, or be one of the world’s greatest baseball fans like Andy Strasberg was and is, but there was one thing  for certain on Tuesday evening, August 28, as the youngster choked up on

  Old Lives and New: Soviet Immigrants in Israel and America by Edith Rogovin Frankel, Hamilton Books, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7618-5784-6, pp 207. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — I am going to have to unlearn old reading habits.  Someone — was it a parent, or a teacher? — told me when I was a