Columnists

This year I watch the 78th Academy Awards from the ninth floor, east wing of Oakland’s Kaiser Permanente Hospital. I sit in an ergonomically incorrect chair and crane my neck upward toward a small TV hanging from the ceiling. -more-

We get just enough sun in between the rains to keep us hoping, this time of year; just enough life showing in the trees and plants, wild and tame, to make us believe that there’s more to the world than cold and mud. The plums have blossomed and are starting to get down to summer’s business, unfurling their leaves to catch the sun of longer days. The buckeyes—just look at the bunch in the center strip on Sacramento south of University!—are spreading translucent green hands out to the plenty flowing from the sky. The sun itself, as the world turns our side to face it straight-on, begins to touch us with palpable energy. -more-

When two U.S. Marine helicopters recently went down off Djibouti, a tiny slice of desert at the entrance to the Red Sea, they exposed a low-profile program that has poured money and troops into a broad swath of northern Africa from the Indian to the Atlantic oceans, which encompasses some nine nations in the region. -more-

Extremis malis extrema remedia—from the Latin: literally “extreme remedies for extreme ills,” or the more familiar “desperate times call for desperate measures.” -more-

Who’s ready to try something new? Want to track wildlife, plant heirloom potatoes, cast your line in that perfect loop, team up with your favorite llama or discover the culture of the Tuibun Ohlone? Sound compelling? Read on. -more-

Rounding the bend from La Loma Avenue onto Le Conte Avenue on Berkeley’s Northside, the eye can’t miss a large brown-shingle structure in mid-block. Crowned by cascades of steep overlapping gables, this quintessentially Arts & Crafts building sports a curious appendage on its southeast corner: an octagonal turret with a domed roof previously covered with mosaics but now bare. -more-

Writing this column is going to be harder than usual. It’s no fun. I like talking about how people screw things up and sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s just exasperating but what I have to talk about today is genuinely tragic. Please bear with me because it’s extremely important. -more-

Some of us like plants from all over the world in out gardens. Some of us like native Californians. (Some of us, like me, mix them.) Some of us take that native thing to apparent extremes, and people like that have the perfect place in Berkeley: Native Here Nursery. -more-