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