Carl Nolte

This coming Thursday is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when thousands of troops landed on the French beaches in Normandy, a turning point of World War II. The invasion was supported by a huge armada of ships — perhaps the largest ever assembled. There were mighty battleships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers, troopships, cargo vessels. The invasion was “the most complex and daring military operation in the history of modern warfare,” historian Carlo D’Este wrote. Aside from…

Mia Monroe, who spent much of her life in the most famous redwood forest in the world, is stepping away from the job she loves. Monroe retired earlier this month after 45 years as a National Park Service ranger, most of it in Muir Woods National Monument. For years, she has been the public face of Muir Woods, the gentle force behind dozens of national park projects including overcrowding and restorations of salmon habitat. She has helped build physical bridges over creeks and administrative brid…

Thomas Avenue is an obscure street that runs through the Bayview neighborhood past Third Street, past small houses, through an industrial neighborhood to dead end at Griffith Street where there is a city facility surrounded by a high fence. It’s a neglected out of the way corner of San Francisco. But here, just around the corner, is a small gem: Yosemite Slough, a 1,000-foot-long arm of San Francisco Bay that’s both beautiful and dangerous. It’s a backwater with a trashy past, a promising future…

It used to be the single public service that San Franciscans loved to hate. Herb Caen, the legendary columnist from years ago, called it “the Muniserable Railway.” But now, San Francisco’s Municipal Railway — Muni for short — seems to have turned some kind of corner. You could make the case that Muni is better than it has been in years. The buses and rail cars are cleaner, there is less graffiti, there are fewer accidents, and service is more reliable. Even the critics admit things have improve…

The 49ers play the Detroit Lions on Sunday afternoon, and the television experts expect 40 million people to watch, a record. And as usual for these football broadcasts, they’ll show aerial shots of the home team’s home turf. It won’t be Santa Clara where the 49ers are based. TV doesn’t care about Santa Clara. They will show San Francisco — all the usual stuff, too: the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars, the crooked street, the Bay Bridge. They won’t show the street tents or the Tenderloin, the…

I was on the hunt for a Christmas present over the holidays, something warm for a chilly winter. To my surprise, my search for something new led me to one of the oldest parts of San Francisco. I found what I wanted at Fjallraven, a Swedish-themed outdoors store on Jackson Street in the heart of Jackson Square, a small district — only 14 acres — tucked between the Financial District and North Beach. Jackson Square is the oldest remaining piece of American San Francisco. The oldest parts of the ci…

It’s no secret that the past few years have been tough on San Francisco institutions — everything from the downtown shopping district to Anchor Steam Beer. But one venerable outfit has not only survived the changes that have rocked the city, it has prospered. The South End Rowing Club, a group of swimmers, small boat rowers and handball players, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. Together with the somewhat newer Dolphin Club next door, the South End has experienced a boom in swimmin…

Well, by now we have survived the annual assault on thrift and prudence that happens just after Thanksgiving. We lived through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. We were pleased to still have anything left to spend by Gratitude Wednesday. The madness comes back every year: shopping season. The pressure is on. Television is full of holiday commercials: new cars wrapped in red ribbon, beautiful coats, jewels, even gifts for dogs. And it’s only just begun, as…

This is a requiem for Dave Mitchell, a small-town newspaper editor who won the biggest prize in journalism. Mitchell died in his sleep in the early hours of Oct. 26 in the cabin overlooking the West Marin countryside he shared with his wife, Lynn. He was 79 and had been fighting a losing battle with illness for some time. “A bout of Parkinson’s disease has substantially crippled me,’’ he wrote in June in a farewell post on his blog, Sparsely Sage and Timely, which was the name of his column in t…

Sunday is a big day for the best small yacht club anywhere. It’s the 125th anniversary of the San Francisco Model Yacht Club, which sails and races close to a hundred of the smallest boats around. The yacht club is marking the day with ceremonies, races and a regatta to celebrate what is believed to be the oldest such boating organization in the world. It starts at 1 p.m. on the shores of Spreckels Lake at 36th Avenue and Fulton Street in Golden Gate Park. It’s a big deal in the world of small b…