Columnists

Column: Undercurrents: Time to Revise Those Judgments of Dellums

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday March 07, 2008
Two of the problems with some of the early scathing criticisms of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums—specifically the charge that he was a “do nothing” mayor—were that they were highly premature, at the very least, and failed to take into account Mr. Dellums' particular operating style. -more-

East Bay Then and Now: Telegraph and Durant: From Ritzy Enclave to Commercial Hub

By Daniella Thompson
Friday March 07, 2008
Hotel Carlton was built in 1906-07 on the site previously occupied by the Knowles mansion.
Teeming with pizza, bagel, and t-shirt outlets, surrounded by ethnic-food courts and cheap retail arcades, the intersection of Telegraph and Durant Avenues is inconceivable as an exclusive residential enclave reserved for millionaires' mansions set amidst spacious gardens and fronted by orderly rows of palm trees. -more-

About the House: Why My Floors Are Sloped

By Matt Cantor
Friday March 07, 2008
I live in a slide zone. As I understand it, the land my house is bobbing about on is a colloid of tumbled rock and Cuisinarted soil, the remains of an avalanche, hundreds of years now past. Since this material isn’t “consolidated” or compressed by time into a hard cake, it tends to amble downhill as gravity would have it. (I’m turning 50 and, as my friend Joann would say, my local gravity is also increasing so I know how the house feels). -more-

Garden Variety: Surviving Oaks Still Shade Alden Lane Nursery

By Ron Sullivan
Friday March 07, 2008
Whimsical sculpture at Alden Lane Nursery.
I’ve liked Alden Lane Nursery ‘way out in Livermore since I first set foot in it over ten years ago. The big valley oaks that shade parts of the place won my splintery old heart immediately, and I saw evidence of real community involvement along with the more concrete stuff: primo nursery stock, interesting ornaments, good tools, less-toxic pest controls. -more-

Column: The Public Eye: The Great Debate of 2008

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday March 04, 2008
So far there have been many surprises in the contest for the 2008 presidential nomination. Six months ago, it appeared the probable candidates would be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton; now it seems they will be John McCain and Barack Obama. Last year it appeared the leading issue would be the war in Iraq; now it’s likely the great debate will be about the economy. -more-

Green Neighbors: Pretty Good Tree with a Pretty Dumb Name

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday March 04, 2008
Casaurina in Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Park, by Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland.
Trust the Aussies (“…from the Land Down Under/Where the women something and the men something-else-that-rhymes with ‘under’—maybe ‘blunder’?—but definitely not whatever the women do”) to get all weird about gender issues in the unlikeliest places. They’re blessed with several species of casuarina, a useful and engagingly weird clade of trees, and what do they call them? “She-oak.” And what do they mean by that? Why, “like oak but inferior.” -more-