Columnists

The Public Eye: Faith and Politics

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday July 10, 2007

How important is it that presidential candidates tell us whether or not they are Christians? For many Berkeley residents it’s not important at all; most of us feel that religious belief is a personal matter: what matters most is that candidates adhere to high ethical standards and honor the U.S. Constitution. But for many Americans, identifying as a Christian is shorthand for being on the “right” side. As a result, candidates for president are forced to talk about their Christian faith. -more-


Green Neighbors: What’s in a Name? History and Big Trees

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday July 10, 2007

It isn’t always easy to keep a giant sequoia / Big Tree / Sequoiadendron giganteum thriving down here near sea level. (It isn’t always easy even to talk about the species without someone’s caviling about whatever common name is current.) I’ve known at least two that were cut down locally, and one that just doesn’t look happy. There’s a nice row of them along the main road through Tilden Park, though, just past the regional Parks Botanic Garden, for easy viewing as you pass. You can get up close and personal with the species in the Bot Garden too, and reassure yourself about identification—they’re labeled—and compare them with coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. -more-


Column: Dispatches From The Edge: Australia and the Pacific Wall

By Conn Hallinan
Friday July 06, 2007

Some 230 miles north of Perth, at Geraldton on Australia’s west coast, the Bush administration is building a base. When completed, it will control two geostationary satellites that feed intelligence to U.S. military forces in Asia and the Middle East. -more-


Column: Undercurrents: Putting Band-Aids on Oakland’s Crime Problem

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday July 06, 2007

Modern-day African-Americans owe an enormous debt to the American labor movement, which helped provided funding, leadership training, and leadership itself for the African-American Freedom cause during key periods of the civil rights era. -more-


Open Home in Focus: Berkeley Architect Dakin’s Work on View at 2828 Hillegass

By Steven Finacom
Friday July 06, 2007

THE four-bedroom home at 2828 Hillegass Ave., built in 1909 in what is now Berkeley’s Willard neighborhood, is one of the notable residential works of Clarence Casebolt Dakin a little-remembered, but very intriguing, Berkeley architect. -more-


Garden Variety: The Conscience of a Conservator

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 06, 2007

Who would have known that something as simple and harmless as buying plants for our gardens would turn out to be such a fraught moral choice? Knowledge and scruples can drive you nuts. -more-


About the House: The Amazing Simpson Universal Foundation Plate

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 06, 2007

Now, this has happened to everybody at some point. You think of this cool thing that would make something work better and then one day, you’re walking (or in my case crawling) along and lo and behold, there it is! Well I have to admit that when I saw the one that Simpson company (of our own beloved San Leandro) had come up with, I realized that the one in my mind wasn’t as good. Nevertheless, It’s still amazing when something institutional, large-scale and corporate turns out to be clever and just the right size and price. -more-