Columnists

The Public Eye: The View from One Bus Driver’s Seat

By Zelda Bronstein
Thursday September 04, 2008
Anthony Rodgers has been an AC Transit bus driver for 18 years. I met Rodgers a few weeks ago when I boarded his westbound No. 18 bus in downtown Berkeley. -more-

Undercurrents: Police Sweeps Give Impression of City Under Siege

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday September 04, 2008
In some ways, East Oakland this weekend appeared to be a city under siege, and I am not talking about the continued rash of shootings, which is another issue altogether. I’m talking about one of the attempts by the Oakland Police Department to quell the violence. -more-

Wild Neighbors: Wine, Songbirds, and Leftover Salmon

By Joe Eaton
Thursday September 04, 2008
Roughly 60 years ago, the pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote a short piece called “Odyssey,” collected in his Sand County Almanac. The odyssey in question is that of a nitrogen atom. Leopold imagined its travels from a starting point in a limestone ledge through a multiplicity of prairie food webs, and finally to the sea. -more-

East Bay: Then and Now—Zimri Brewer Heywood: Separating Fact From Myth

By Daniella Thompson
Thursday September 04, 2008
1808 Fifth St., an elegant Italianate Victorian built in 1878 for Zimri Heywood’s son Charles.
As Planet Berkeley hurtles away from its past, the figures who dominated its early days, having accumulated a comet-like tail of stories and quasi-histories, take on the burnish of legend. Enshrined in books and articles, these stories have been repeated long enough to be taken for fact. -more-

About the House: Walking on a Roof

By Matt Cantor
Thursday September 04, 2008
Now, straight off, I want to say that climbing ladders and walking on roofs is not for everyone. In fact, it’s not for me. I have to do it for my job and, frankly, I hate it. Well, not all the time, but there are days when I dread it and I’ll tell you some stories of occasions that either validated my dread or exacerbated it. -more-