Arts & Events

FRIDAY, FEB. 10 -more-

Nick is a dot-commer pushing 30, an Italo-American from New Jersey, but really pretty white bread. He is the good grandson, however; long after his parents and sister have fled the immigrant family hearth he leaves the city every week to spend Sunday dinn er with all four grandparents. -more-

Thornhill Nursery is a bit out of the way, not so much in distance from Berkeley, but tucked away on Thornhill Drive in the Oakland Hills. It’s most easily accessible from the freeway, if you don’t mind a little daring on- and off-ramp dodge’em game. Take the Thornhill Drive exit, drive on past the entrance to the Foothill business district and through a tiny patch of school and mini-mall on Thornhill. Keep it slow—you ought to anyway; the sidewalks are narrow and foot traffic can be a tad chaotic and full of rompity schoolkids. The nursery’s not hard to see once you get to its block, and the parking area, though small, is handy on the right. -more-

It has often occurred to me how primitive our houses are for a people who can look to the edges of the universe and plumb the living paths of bozons and muons. They’re not exactly mud huts but they are so simple that you’d think we were still fighting wars with guns and killing each other with bombs. Oh wait. Sorry. Anyway, if you look at the way in which our houses are built, you might think that we’d missed the U-boat altogether. -more-

FRIDAY, FEB. 10 -more-

TUESDAY, FEB. 7 -more-

The sparsely decorated set, designed by John Iacovelli at The Aurora, says something of the fin-de-siecle Norway in which Henrik Ibsen wrote The Master Builder—simple, functional wood furniture with little adornment. In the parlor, a nosegay of deep red carnations seems almost startling. -more-

Although there are many indicators of prestige among modern educational institutions—from Nobel prizes to faculty ratings to research dollars and private donations—university libraries remain one of the enduring benchmarks of excellence in higher education. -more-

I’ve spent lots of time, breath, and column inches here and elsewhere in the past telling people how not to kill their trees. Don’t top trees; don’t hack away most of their limbs; don’t leave stubs; don’t hire inept bozos who do any of the above. Don’t plant them in the wrong place, or too deeply. Don’t irrigate native live oaks. Don’t let the base of the trunk get smothered in soil or mulch. -more-

TUESDAY, FEB. 7 -more-