Columnists

In December, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our phone calls, by means of National Security Agency computer systems, without a court order. Although the exact nature of the surveillance is highly classified, it appears that the White House has gone on a massive “fishing trip”—one that invades the privacy of thousands of ordinary Americans. This article considers the pragmatics of Administration eavesdropping—why we should care about it. -more-

As expected—or feared, depending on your point of view—Pennsylvania Congressmember John Murtha is rapidly becoming one of the Democratic Party’s de facto spokespersons on defense policy. That may be a good thing for centrist Democrats who don’t want to get beat by our Republican friends with the “soft on defense” stick in another election. But where does it leave progressives? -more-

Thornhill Nursery is a bit out of the way, not so much in distance from Berkeley, but tucked away on Thornhill Drive in the Oakland Hills. It’s most easily accessible from the freeway, if you don’t mind a little daring on- and off-ramp dodge’em game. Take the Thornhill Drive exit, drive on past the entrance to the Foothill business district and through a tiny patch of school and mini-mall on Thornhill. Keep it slow—you ought to anyway; the sidewalks are narrow and foot traffic can be a tad chaotic and full of rompity schoolkids. The nursery’s not hard to see once you get to its block, and the parking area, though small, is handy on the right. -more-

It has often occurred to me how primitive our houses are for a people who can look to the edges of the universe and plumb the living paths of bozons and muons. They’re not exactly mud huts but they are so simple that you’d think we were still fighting wars with guns and killing each other with bombs. Oh wait. Sorry. Anyway, if you look at the way in which our houses are built, you might think that we’d missed the U-boat altogether. -more-

It is 1963. Americans across the South—white activists, black ministers and plenty of ordinary folks—are rising up against segregation, against the hypocrisy of separate but equal. They are sitting-in at lunch counters, fighting for the right to vote, the right to earn equal wages, the right to live in decent homes and send their children to good schools. -more-

Last week I went out to the Legion of Honor to see the show “After the Ruins, 1906 and 2006: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.” The exhibit pairs archival pictures of a devastated San Francisco with shots of today’s city taken from the same viewpoints. As I contemplated the stunning contrasts between the ruined townscape and the reconstructed one, I began to think about the different ways we perceive radical urban change. -more-

Michele booked some friends and me into an all-inclusive Jamaican resort—one of those places where you can kill yourself doing activities, drink yourself to death, or eat until you can’t move. I chose the former, though I did some of the latter as well. -more-

I’ve spent lots of time, breath, and column inches here and elsewhere in the past telling people how not to kill their trees. Don’t top trees; don’t hack away most of their limbs; don’t leave stubs; don’t hire inept bozos who do any of the above. Don’t plant them in the wrong place, or too deeply. Don’t irrigate native live oaks. Don’t let the base of the trunk get smothered in soil or mulch. -more-