WHEN MY FAMILY MOVED TO BENICIA IN 2003, we spent our first week in the Best Western on East Second Street. During our stay we met several workers visiting from refineries in Texas to assist with projects at local refineries. During breakfast, I mentioned to one of them that we had bought a house in […]
Jerome Page: The triumph of human ingenuity
TIME TO TAKE A CLOSE LOOK AT OUR STARTLING SUCCESS in solving our energy problems with oil — good old American Bakken crude along with a hefty swash of that Canadian tar sands crude. Canada being a very friendly neighbor, this seems a great deal on both sides of the border. And thanks to a […]
Francesca Biller: For happier children, be happy first
ON SWEET AND ENDLESS SUMMER AFTERNOONS, my father, who is an artist, used to carry large canvases into our hot and sandy living room by the sea. Stumbling over childhood board games and forgotten toys, he magically turned our living space into a larger-than-life art studio while my siblings and I watched in wonder. And […]
Matt Talbot: Living on the edge
A GOOD FRIEND, WHO IS MY AGE, was over at my place a few years ago and we were listening to a recording of some folk group from my early youth: “Today while the blossom still clings to the vine/I’ll eat your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine …” I kind of like that era of […]
Notes and Random Thoughts from 30,000 Feet: Big Brother, Big Cheese and more
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” — Thomas Sowell IN HIS 1996 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, Bill Clinton declared that the “era of Big Government is over.” First let’s recognize that ’96 was an election year, and with his base secure Clinton […]
Jerome Page: On human kindness and our love of nature
FIRST, A CLARIFICATION. Just as it is Carolyn Plath’s assigned role in The Benicia Herald to lighten your day, to bring a smile to your morning, it is clearly mine to bring thunder, lightning and a downpour of whatever pain I can inflict in a handful of paragraphs. Today, once again, I take my cues […]
Matt Talbot: A better world
I HAVEN’T WRITTEN MUCH IN THIS SPACE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, partly because I don’t think I have an intuitive grasp of the scope and nature of the problem, and partly because fellow Herald columnist Jerome Page has done such yeoman’s work explaining and advocating on that issue that I haven’t felt the need to add […]
Jerome Page: The humanitarian drives of fossil fuel folks
RECENTLY, I WAS BROUGHT UP SHORT by a comment following one of my columns. Not one of the usual lot from my critics! The column was on global warming and the comment was from someone who didn’t disagree with me but felt it time for me to move on and away from this issue. This […]
Jerome Page: Crude by rail, part one
FOR THOSE WHO ATTENDED OR VIEWED BY TELEVISION THE RECENT PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING about the crude-by-rail project being proposed by Valero, it was — or should have been — a revelation. What is most appalling about this proposal is not only its obvious dangerous potential, but the lengths being taken by Valero to cloak the […]
One year ago: Sudden fiery death in Quebec
I CAN’T HELP THINKING OF THEM, the 47 lives suddenly snuffed a year ago, on July 6, 2013, by a runaway oil train that incinerated the downtown of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada and fostered a firestorm of outrage, fear and controversy across this continent about the haste, greed and disregard that deliver oil trains into our […]