Subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, The Cal Connection.
Erica Villanueva has been inducted as a fellow into the American College of Coverage Counsel, which represents the interests of insurers and policyholders in disputes arising out of insurance policies. Class Secretary: Stephanie Huang, wonstern@yahoo.com
Wanting something better for themselves and their kids than the high-sugar boba tea options currently on the market, Olivia Chen and Pauline Ang ’01 started Twrl Milk Tea, a plant-based, nitro-infused milk tea with only 45 to 50 calories. Since launching during the pandemic, Twrl has been available through online stores like Amazon, and is […]
Dr. Steve LeVine has been an emergency physician at Kaiser Oakland since 1989. A UC Berkeley graduate, he completed his medical education at UC San Francisco. As he recalls, he started his career at the dawn of the AIDS crisis and is now nearing the end of his career amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Asked what […]
In the last few months, Amy Qin’s reporting attire has included gloves, masks, and sometimes a hazmat suit. Stationed in China, the New York Times reporter has been on the frontlines, reporting on the coronavirus epidemic and its impact on the people of Wuhan and other Chinese cities. Thirty-one-year-old Qin (pronounced Shin), has been based […]
Strolling down the magnificently-tiled corridor of the Berkeley City Club you may spot a sign posted in front of a pair of heavy, wooden doors admonishing you to not disturb the theater rehearsal on the other side. Perhaps you’ll spot an actor on their way in, or hear their muffled lines as you pass. The […]
When Richard Livingston Jr. got a call from a relative in January 2015 telling him that his 20-year-old son Richard Dejion Livingston III, known as Rickey, had been murdered, he raced to the county morgue to confirm it for himself. He hadn’t heard anything from law enforcement, and he refused to believe it until he got […]
Listen to the news and you may fear a plague or a zombie outbreak. A cruise ship off Japan’s coast has been quarantined with nearly 3,700 passengers. Its American passengers were just evacuated, including 14 infected with the virus. In Wuhan, China, the very doctor who tried, unsuccessfully, to warn people about the disease, is […]
This is the second installment in our series, Greetings from California, in which writers file dispatches exploring untrodden, unappreciated, or just unusual corners of the Golden State. (In the first, “Greetings from Willow Creek,” former California editor Krissy Eliot checked in from Bigfoot country.) Almost five hours after leaving San Francisco and an hour or […]
This is the third installment in our series, Greetings from California, in which intrepid writers file dispatches exploring the untrodden, unappreciated, or just unusual corners of the Golden State. Last year, frequent contributor Glen Martin faced the ghosts of his past when he returned to his hometown of Atascadero, California. (Check out previous letters including […]
With covers featuring buxom women in tight, revealing clothes, Aya de León’s Justice Hustlers series may seem like beach reads. But, if so, they’re beach reads with a serious agenda: social justice, trafficking, and radical wealth distribution. The author, who is of Puerto Rican descent and has a background in spoken-word and hip-hop theater, writes […]
Recently, I was in a Lyft in Los Angeles discussing the British dystopian television show, Black Mirror, with my driver. I told him about the episode in which every person you interact with can rate you: coworkers, friends, baristas all have the power to determine your social capital. “Oh!” the driver interrupted, “they already have […]
In May of last year, Laurence Du Sault and Katey Rusch stood hunched over a single desk in a records room in a courthouse in Lancaster, California, carefully parsing and then photocopying court files they had pulled on numerous police officers convicted of crimes. No chairs and no breaks, they had already overstayed the window […]
On July 17, Instagram announced the unthinkable: the company was exploring the idea of hiding the number of “likes” from its photo-sharing platform. According to the company, the new design would encourage “followers to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get,” ostensibly shifting the emphasis away from the […]
Once upon a time, Berkeley wasn’t Berkeley at all—but the sacred, uncolonized land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. This week, as families around the country gather to cook and consume great feasts, share stories and bicker over politics, we decided to return to California’s native roots and ask two local Ohlone people about their Thanksgiving […]
This fall, two UC Berkeley juniors Jenny Zhou and Belle Lau, have taken on the challenge of educating their peers in a semester-long class in ‘Adulting’—i.e. the mundane but necessary duties of adulthood like filing taxes and managing a budget. “We thought of things that we struggled with,” said Lau. “And then thought ‘well this […]
In a New York Times essay titled “When Science Fiction Comes True,” author and Berkeley English professor Namwali Serpell describes stories as “one of our oldest technologies.” Stories, Serpell explains, allow us to experience the beautiful and the terrible “and then close the book, or the laptop, unscathed.” They can also give us what Serpell […]
Here’s a scene worth picturing on Veterans Day: It’s 1951. McCarthyism has reached a fever pitch, and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), already keeping watch on Orson Welles, has trained its sights on one of Welles’ close friends. His name is Robert Meltzer—a UC Berkeley graduate-turned-Hollywood-screenwriter who, through biting send-ups of the status quo, […]
I didn’t need a typewriter. I’ve never had an editor request hard copy. These days a typewriter is just a decorative toy and using one an affectation, like Civil War reenactment or home-curing bacon. But when I found a 1940s era manual Remington Rand on Oxford Street in one of those free piles that spring […]
