Columnists

“We deeply regret” are words that almost always end with something terrible. They were uttered by German Defense Minister Franz Joseph Jung in the wake of a Sept. 4 air strike that left upwards of 100 Afghans dead. He followed it with a boilerplate that invariably makes such apologies suspect: “We had reliable intelligence that our soldiers were in danger.” -more-

Though I was in the Bay Area in October of 1989, I missed Loma Prieta. The shaking part of it, that is. -more-

Lots of rain already! Good news vis-à-vis fire season, maybe bad news for our oaks. Sudden Oak Death (SOD) watchers worry that if this is an El Niño winter with lots of rain, the disease already devastating some of our keystone oak species will spread farther and faster. -more-

Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin (1828-1909) was one of California’s most storied individuals. Crossing the plains by wagon train in 1853, Baldwin quickly made his name as a shrewd entrepreneur. By his early 40s, he had become a fabled Comstock millionaire. In the mid-1870s, he opened San Francisco’s legendary Baldwin Hotel and Theatre on the corner of Market and Powell Streets, current site of the Flood Building. -more-