East Bay Home and Gardens

Wild Neighbors:

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday April 22, 2008
An Alameda whipsnake, looking alert.
Last week’s column gave an overview of expansion plans by the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, including two huge new buildings in Strawberry Canyon: the Computation Research and Theoretical Facility (CRT) and the Helios Facility. A group called Save Strawberry Canyon is fighting the expansion for a whole litany of reasons: earthquake and fire risks; impacts on air and water quality and greenhouse gas emissions; damage to a significant cultural landscape; procedural flaws in the lab’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP); and, not least, endangered species issues. -more-

East Bay, Then and Now: Marshall-Lindblom House Was the ‘Prettiest Home in Berkeley’

By Daniella Thompson
Friday April 18, 2008
Mr. and Mrs. Linblom posing in front of their house in a 1901 model Locomobile steam car.
John Albert Marshall (1868-1924), commonly known as J.A., was a small and hot-tempered man. In 1906 he had two brushes with the law—one as a recalcitrant witness for the defense, threatening to thrash a much larger prosecuting attorney, the other when he was convicted of battery after pummeling John Koch, owner of a delicatessen at 2520 Bancroft Way. -more-

Garden Variety: Sating an Ancient Hunger

By Ron Sullivan
Friday April 18, 2008
So I was licking nectar off the base of an orchid blossom the other night ... See?That’s why people keep pets, in which category I place houseplants. Most of us don’t live the wildlands any more, which of course is why they’re still “wildlands,” and there’s all this unpredictable, unrepeatable, unmediated experience we don’t get to have every minute of every day. -more-

About the House: When Flue Gases Condense Inside Your Furnace

By Matt Cantor
Friday April 18, 2008
Fuzzy Flue Fortells of Furnace Failures?
As you go for that morning jog ( You are jogging every morning, right? Immediately after that low-fat, lemon, poppy-seed, caramel muffin and the soy latte) you probably note amidst the quiet and still of the neighborhood that there are little puffs of smoke that come from the tops of every house and business. -more-