When Gretel Ehrlich called to say that she was in Berkeley and wanted to stop by for a visit, it felt selfish to keep one of America’s most provocative, original, and iconoclastic writers all to ourselves. We got in touch with a few friends, Osher Lifelong Learning gave us a comfortable room, and a couple of days after we got Gretel’s initial call we had assembled about thirty people for a brown-bag lunch. In a world numbed and half-alive from effects of comfort and convenience, Gretel stands out like an Old Testament prophet, who has left the soft life of the city to seek truth and the life of the…