Columnists

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I’m fixated on keeping privately run Children’s Hospital Oakland (CHO) from eating me and my neighborhood alive. Soon there’ll be nothing left of me but a small oil slick in front of my 100-year-old house. That should make it easier for the bulldozers to roll down Dover Street. At least there’ll be no me to run over. -more-

It’s always dangerous to read too much into trends in popular culture. Nonetheless, there seems to be a strong relationship between the five movies nominated for best picture of 2007 and polls showing 67 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the wrong direction. -more-

Never mind that it’s caught me unarmed and ill-prepared, as usual; I love this sample of early spring we’re getting. We didn’t have it quite the same way last year, I guess. As happened, I was ‘way out of town and in another climate for most of last February on a most urgent and unfortunate errand, so I’m only guessing. -more-

One of the more interesting phenomena to emerge from the U.S. debacle in Iraq is the demise of the unipolar world that rose from the ashes of the Cold War. A short decade ago the U.S. was the most powerful political, economic and military force on the planet. Today its army is straining under the weight of an unpopular occupation, its economy is careening toward recession, and the only “allies” it can absolutely depend on in the United Nations are Israel, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. -more-

We have come to an odd turn in Oakland’s Police and Crime and Politics novel, as if a master storyteller—Arthur Conan Doyle or Scott Turow, perhaps—has suddenly introduced an unexpected twist that makes the reader have to throw out many earlier assumptions, and even go back and revisit some of the first few chapters to see exactly how this spot was reached. We are in the middle of the story, now, so it is difficult to sort out all the narrative threads. I will do my best and if I err, forgive me, as this is being done as things are still developing, and new information is coming forth. -more-

O’Donnell’s Fairfax Nursery is an old favorite of mine, though I pass it maybe 20 times for every time I go in to visit. It’s right on one of our two usual routes to Point Reyes, though over the last five years or so it’s the route we take coming back and they’re often closed by that hour. Besides, on the way out we’re generally in a big fat hurry to go see some birds; on the way back, we’re tired and grouchy and unfit for civilized company. -more-