Columnists

The Landmark Theatre Act 1 & 2 on Center Street is shutting down and I can’t say that I feel bad about it. Act 1 is inaccessible to wheelchair users due to stairs. Act 2 can be accessed by using a small lift located in the lobby. But the lift doesn’t always work. My husband and I were once refunded our money after getting trapped inside it, unable to go up or down. -more-

There sure are some funny-looking trees in this town. Some of them are the results of whimsical pruning—there’s a big cedar in my general neighborhood, a traffic accident in waiting because I can’t be the only person who reflexively eases up on the gas p edal to stare when passing it. -more-

U.S. Secretary Of State Condoleeza Rice’s recent visit to Jakarta was the concluding act in the Bush administration’s five-year drive to whitewash the Indonesian military’s sordid past, green light Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua, and forge another l ink in Washington’s plan to ring China with U.S. military bases and allies. -more-

My grandfather Ellis was a dreamer, a visionary who always had more ideas and plans carried around in his pockets than he had room in his life to complete. The house he and my grandmother once had off of Seminary Avenue in East Oakland was full of his projects—gardens and sheds and walkways—in various stages of completion and uncompletion. Once, he decided he wanted to add an upstairs bedroom to the house and immediately began to build it, starting with an outside staircase. The staircase was completed and then my grandfather got distracted by other things, so that for the longest it hung there on the side of the house by itself, a stairway to noplace. -more-

The following is an excerpt from Richard Schwartz’s Earthquake Exodus, 1906: Berkeley Responds to the San Francisco Refugees. The Daily Planet will run two more excerpts in the coming weeks. -more-