MONTCLARION: March 16, 2012
It was the biggest memorial I’ve ever seen for an average guy. A thousand people turned out last week to remember Brad Shaw, a hills scout leader and dad who died doing what he loved — fishing.
Corpus Christi Church was packed, and so was the gym, where the Mass was telecast to an overflow crowd. When it was finished, an army of loved ones served sandwiches and drinks and kept the food coming for another three hours. Nobody wanted to leave. Continue reading
Doug Perry, of Alameda, stands in front of an amphibious vehicle where he works for Ride the Ducks, a company that takes tourists on a tour on the streets and in the waters in San Francisco, Calif., on Friday, Feb. 24, 2012. (Ray Chavez/Staff)
ALAMEDA JOURNAL: March 8, 2012
You think you’ve got a tough commute? Try driving a boatload of people around San Francisco — then ending up in the Bay.
Alamedan Doug Perry works for Ride the Ducks, the company that takes tourists on those curious white boats on wheels. They’re actually updated versions of World War 2 amphibious vehicles that motor down city streets and then take to the water like — you guessed it — ducks.
Driving one is harder than it looks. Continue reading
MONTCLARION: March 8, 2012
It was 1988 when my husband and I moved to Montclair. We were so smitten with the Village — with it’s little storybook library and fire station, western-themed park and baseball field.
We came here for the same reasons you did — the shopping, the nature, the small-town feel just minutes from the city. A lot has changed in 24 years, not the least of which is the shopping district. We’re seeing more banks and realtors and fewer Mom-and-Pop shops. Reader David Cloutier says it’s been a concern in his circle of friends for some time. Continue reading
HILLS NEWSPAPERS: March 3, 2012
Travel takes on a different purpose for those of us approaching our “golden years.” We size up a destination with retirement in mind, asking ourselves what it would be like to live somewhere other than here.
In the last several years, I’ve known neighbors who’ve moved to Nashville, Tenn., Pittsburgh and even Mexico. There is life beyond the Bay Area.
On a recent trip to the Midwest, I met Jeremy Popelka and Stephanie Trenchard, two glass sculptors who left Rockridge in 1998 to raise their family in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. — population 9,000. Continue reading
MONTCLARION: March 2, 2012
Sadness has settled over the Catholic community in the Oakland hills. Two Corpus Christi church parishioners died last week — one in a tragic shore-fishing accident and one at the hands of an intruder.
Joe Robertson was our darkroom manager at the Hills Newspapers for more than 40 years. He was a quiet older man who dutifully did his job up until his retirement in the late 1990s. His family and neighbors on Thackeray Drive are stunned that someone would have taken his life. It leaves us unsettled and wondering what kind of monsters live in our midst. Continue reading
MONTCLARION: February 23, 2012
Who puts in three decades at one job anymore? Most folks are lucky to eke out five years before their position is outsourced or downsized. But Katie Murphy has been the principal at Piedmont’s Corpus Christi School for 31 years. Continue reading
OAKLAND TRIBUNE: February 24, 2012
What prompts a man to walk across the United States six times? Moreover, why would he wrap up his 12-year journey in Montclair?
When Steve Fugate, 65, enters the Montclair Village Saturday, he will have walked more than 30,000 miles with a singular theme: to love life. It’s an amazing mantra for a man who has had more than his share of tragedy. Continue reading
SAINT MARY’S MAGAZINE: February 12, 2012
With a deep luminous core and a bright cherry/ plum nose, the 2007 Brother Timothy Cabernet Sauvignon is ready to debut. “It’s the vintage of the decade,” said celebrated winemaker Dave Guffy of the Hess Collection, who handcrafts a cabernet annually to benefit the Lasallian Education Fund. Continue reading
SAINT MARY’S MAGAZINE: February 19, 2012
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Mention wildlife and college in the same breath and it conjures up visions of the 1970s movie Animal House. But in a setting as serene as the Moraga Valley, the wildlife most talked about at Saint Mary’s College is the four-legged or feathered kind. Consider the words of ornithologist Brother John James O’Neill, who noted 100 avian species on campus in 1981: “It is my hope that this list will give guidance to Integral Biology students and pleasure to visiting birdwatchers. May it also serve as a reminder of the beauty that surrounds us if we only take the time to look, and wonder.” Continue reading
HILLS NEWSPAPERS: February 17, 2012
My husband left his pillow in the hotel room again. And he says I’m losing it.
What is it about traveling that makes us forgetful? I’ve left cold creams and pajamas, glasses and even contact lenses in hotel rooms across this great planet. But a pillow? Who even travels with a personal pillow?
It turns out a lot of people do.
“We mail pillows to people quite often,” says the desk clerk at the Best Western Treehouse Inn in Mt. Shasta. And they send them for free, something surprising in this age of hidden hotel charges. Continue reading
