Columnists

After five months, President Barack Obama’s managerial style has become obvious. He’s focused on his top priorities and he is collaborative and pragmatic; his operating instructions are “never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This summer, Obama’s leadership will put to the test as he struggles to get Congress to pass comprehensive healthcare legislation. -more-

We seem to be running on parallel tracks on this ongoing discussion of the East Bay’s nagging street violence, like the words from the Longfellow poem: “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness. So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.” -more-

Another Solstice gone by, another year’s peak passed, another year older, another long half-year of diminishing light. Or, to be jollier about it: the sweet downswing of the seasons, the ripening of all that winter and spring promised. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two articles on the Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen. -more-

I have a major pet peeve (well, many major pet peeves, actually) with the building codes. They say far too little about places where people, particularly little people, can fall, and the area in which my knickers get most fully twisted concerns the accessibility of windows. -more-