Columnists

My neighbors and I put together a website (www.livableoakland. com) about our fight against Measure A, which will appear on the Feb. 5 ballot. In it we posted information about our neighborhood, sometimes known as Lower Temescal, or Baja Rockridge, or just plain North Oakland. -more-

I don’t usually find myself in agreement—even partial agreement—with NovoMetro columnist V Smoothe, but she raises some points in her Jan. 16 post “Mayor’s Cop Promise Impossible To Keep” that ought to be considered. -more-

The settlement of the residential blocks south of the UC campus began, naturally, on the streets closest to the university and progressed southward. In 1903, the area now known as the Willard neighborhood, comprising the Hillegass and Berry-Bangs tracts and bounded, clockwise, by Dwight Way, College, Ashby, and Telegraph Avenues, was most densely built along Benvenue and Hillegass Avenues north of Derby Street. -more-

When you crawl around under houses every day, you see some odd things. It’s part archaeology, a little zoology and, of course, all that construction stuff. It doesn’t take too long doing this to realize that you’re not always alone down under the house (or up in the attic). There are little neighbors that like to share the space. They’re not trying to get inside your house, per se. It’s just that they want a safe warm space and you happen to be right there. Termites use the same logic. They don’t know that they’re eating a house. What’s a house to a termite. They’re just eating some fallen trees that happen be in their path. -more-

Woodland gardening takes on a new aspect when one is practicing it here in coastal northern California. There are considerations one must take with regard to natural resources and scarcity—as much a product of time as of place, as everything living here gets more squeezed by human overpopulation, including us humans who are doing the overpopulating. -more-

As we sail into the murky political waters of 2008, it’s useful for liberals (progressives) to remember our core beliefs. Two elemental American narratives illuminate these values: the triumphant individual and the benevolent community. -more-

Lately I’ve been channeling my old friend Mrs. Scott. She’s the neighbor who came to our rescue after Ralph had his bicycling accident 13 years ago. The day Ralph came home from the hospital, she marched through our back door and took over. She cooked and cleaned and introduced us to others in the neighborhood. She went with us to doctors’ appointments, watched over the people I hired to help with Ralph’s care, became my right (and left) arm, my best friend, my guardian angel. -more-

I don’t know how old you have to be to think of Sunset magazine and early 1960s swimming-poolside dioramas whenever you see a Cordyline australis in its other vocation, as a plain old yard or streetside tree. It’s a classic, though, to complete the post-TK look that starts with a turquoise pool, maybe kidney-shaped, and a Weber kettle. Some of us get whiffs of vinyl, chlorine, and firestarter fluid from our subconscious every time. -more-