Arts & Events

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3 -more-

‘A NEW LIFE, A NEW HOME’ -more-

Guitarist Ross Hammond, doubling on banjo and lap steel guitar, will lead a quartet dubbed “No DQ,” featuring Philip Greenlief (saxophone), Gino Robair (percussion) and J.P. Carter (trumpet) for tonight’s Free Jazz Friday, The Jazz House’s biweekly event, 8 p. m. at the Performance Space at 1510 8th St. (a block from West Oakland BART). Admission is $5-15, sliding scale. -more-

Well before nuclear physics, Nobel Prizes, Free Speech, championship athletics, or alternative fuels research, the University of California was known for academic work in fields such as agriculture, mining … and astronomy. -more-

The Kitchen -more-

Change is inevitable; it’s always reassuring when a change in a good business is in the spirit of the original, an enhancement rather than a trip to the oubliette—for example, when an owner retired and sells the place to people who are familiar with it and like its style already. A breath of fresh air is much better than a tornado where there’s something worth preserving. Oh, Toto! -more-

Ouch! That Quake Hurts! -more-

We’re at war with Germany again, and this time they’re winning. No, it’s not a shooting war but since shooting wars always start with economic pretexts, it’s not a far stretch to talk about shooting wars in conjunction with this war and since it involves energy, it’s easy to point to our differing approaches to the war in Iraq as one example of how they’re winning, both morally and physically. -more-

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3 -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 31 -more-

The Telegraph 3 p.m. Project, a collection of scores of photographs by Robert Eliason with matching poems by Owen Hill captioning text that chronicles in an upbeat fashion streetlife on the avenue, will be on exhibit at the Gaia Building, 2120 Allston Way (near Shattuck) through Jan. 31. -more-

“Not fair, roaring without telling,” Decca would warn as I read—and roared—over some bit from her latest book or letter. I was nursing a sherry in her Oakland kitchen, and reading hugely funny and provocative items from some of the experiences we’d shared during the ‘40s and ‘50s. -more-

Are you interested in little old white lady, self-supporting, spinster-librarians? Do you assume much doesn’t go on in their lives beyond the spectacles and reading all those books? Well, meet “Miss Breed.” She took chances, risked her career and income by taking an activist stance during World War II. -more-

About the time of year the robins wind down and the naked ladies begin to bloom, we start seeing the garden spiders. They’re orbweavers, probably Araneus diadematus, and at this stage they’re just little orange-and-black specks with legs. Between now and Halloween they’ll get a lot bigger, and plumper. -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 31 -more-