Columnists

Oh to have been a fly on the wall during the recent meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan., Nov. 1. -more-

Once, it is said, a basketball fan came up to Oakland native and Boston Celtic star Bill Russell and asked him what it was like to guard Wilt Chamberlain. Russell, so the story goes, gave the fan one of his famous quizzical looks, thought about it for a moment, and then asked back, “What’s your frame of reference?” -more-

I was hoping to pass along a wholehearted endorsement of one of my favorites in the odd category of “stores where I pretty much can’t afford anything but it’s all nice to look at”—I think of such a place as a museum if the staff is welcoming enough. -more-

I’m learning the guitar at the advanced age of 49 (don’t laugh, it feels old to me) and it’s mighty slow going. My friend and teacher, Scott, plays like the Almighty and it’s unimaginable to me that I’ll ever be able to play well enough to be heard in public. It seems an awfully steep slope between the novice and the expert, filled with layers of past experience and the gradual honing of our senses and practices. Further, there seem to be inherent advantages that some have over others. Gifts, we might call them, and it’s damn sure that the gift of guitar isn’t in me. Oh well, I’m having a good time and it’s an excuse to belt out a song. -more-

My previous column about the birds Joseph Grinnell observed on the UC Berkeley campus drew a response from Allison Shultz, a recent graduate who is now the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology’s Centennial Coordinator (more about that below.) Shultz said that for her senior thesis, she replicated surveys done on campus by Margaret Wythe between 1913 and 1927, and by Charles Sibley and Thomas Rodgers in 1938-39. Her results reveal significant changes among those data points. “I saw that the number of species didn’t change much over the years—it actually went up a little—but the community composition changed,” she explains. -more-