Newsmakers

Dec. 10

On the left

In a Nov. 27 CBS 5 Eyewitness News “Good Question” segment, political science Professor Robert Smith answers the question: “What is the origin of ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ for liberal and conservative?” Smith responded, “It’s a convenient shorthand,” noting that the terms have their root in the French revolution. “After the revolution, the king seated his supporters on his right and his opponents on his left. In Parliamentary democracies, they follow that tradition of seating the liberals or the socialists on the left and the conservatives on the right.”

Casting a line

Professor of Creative Writing Toni Mirosevich was profiled in a Nov. 21 edition of the Pacifica Tribune. Mirosevich discussed her recently published non-fiction collection Pink Harvest: Tales of Happenstance, her upbringing in a Croatian-American fishing family, and how writing and fishing are similar.

"The sea holds great possibilities for the imagination, it always does. My father taught us that life with the sea is a gambling life, certainly for a fisherman, the gamble of the big catch or empty net. I think the 'gamble' has a lot to do with writing. When you sit down to the page you gamble that you are going to hit something or hit nothing. It's casting the line every time."