“Here is the church, here is the steeple; Open the doors and see all the people!” While walking to my neighborhood BART station yesterday, I passed a church. I’d walked by it before, for months actually, without its church-ness being all that obvious. It sits on its own artificial hill, squatting over its parking lot. The building itself is a marvel of non-traditional architecture, with three parallel roof segments, and a front wall entirely of glass, revealing a spider’s web of steel support beams inside. It reminds me of those collapsible plastic spheres you see in toy stores these days. …

“The people have spoken. Now, we just have to figure out what they said.” May I take advantage of the noise surrounding our presidential election to bring up something that seems to me to be nearly as important as determining the winner. Amid the clamor for re-counts and re-votes, the dismay over confusing ballots and close races, and while protesters wave signs, “Abolish the Electoral College,” no one has mentioned the appalling failure of our U.S. history and government classes. If my public high school experience is in any way indicative of high school experiences for most of the country’s …

“Good heavens! Is that your voter pamphlet?!?” It’s 4:00 on a Saturday afternoon. I’ve been reading voter pamphlets and sample ballots since before 10:00. And I’m not done yet. Nearly 30 propositions is way more than I want to handle in one sitting. I like the principles that went into making America a democracy. Governments, I believe, are supposed to work for the people, and I like the idea that the citizens of a community have opportunities to express how they want government to work. But frankly, this election has started to feel a just a little ridiculous. (And I’m …

“You know, secretly I hope the power stays off.” I’m sure it was an innocent mistake. Whenever I’ve driven a large truck (moving truck size), I’ve been a nervous wreck. The truck is so very huge, and I’m so very unsure of where its edges are, where the edge of the road is, where the other cars might suddenly appear from. Perhaps this driver was a novice; perhaps he was an expert. Perhaps he was sloppy, perhaps it was a true accident. Either way, when he drove away, something snagged, then caught. There was a loud, dull thud, a sound …

“If they stole my parking lot for some show, I’ll have to go out there and kick someone’s ass… “ The parking lot outside my window is empty of cars, surrounded by a chain-link fence and crawling with men in hard hats. They are raising a large canvas overhead, a feat requiring poles, guy ropes, and perhaps the tractor that keeps driving in tight circles underneath the partially erect tent. The plywood wall that will encircle the lot soon enough is going up in stages. A worker was painting the public side yesterday, careless of her brush in the breeze, …