SAN FRANCISCO — The Hearst Corp. and the union representing press operators at the San Francisco Examiner have agreed to settle their dispute through arbitration, the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday. 

The San Francisco Web Pressmen and Prepress Workers’ Union Local 4 contends that Hearst should have required the new owners of the San Francisco Examiner to honor the union’s contract when it transferred the paper to the Fang family in August. 

The Fangs are scheduled to begin publishing the new Examiner Nov. 22. The family has said it will use its own nonunion presses or contract with other printers. The union tried to block the Examiner deal with a federal lawsuit filed in San Francisco. It soon dropped its request for an injunction, asking for arbitration instead. 

The Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle have also had difficulty lately getting their papers to customers. 

About 40 of the papers’ 2,000 carriers refused to deliver the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle and Monday’s papers in an effort to win higher pay. As a result of the walkout, on both days 13,000 subscribers received their papers late, said Stephen Johnson, vice president of circulation for both papers. 

Throughout the week, the papers have hired about 23 replacement workers, Johnson said.  

Even so, on Thursday about 4,000 subscribers were still receiving their papers late, he said. 

The carriers are independent contractors and are not employees of either paper. Less than 10 have returned to their routes, Johnson said. 

The Independent Delivery Carrier Association is asking for a 30 percent pay hike and a reduction in the weight of the newspapers, according to its picket-line literature. 

The joint paper’s Sunday circulation was 579,000, according to a September 1999 audit by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. 

San Francisco nonprofit organizations are not alone in their quest for reasonable rents and adequate space to run their programs – and creative arts such as dance, music and theater are not the only ones in danger of extinction as a result of the booming economy and subsequent rent hikes and evictions. 

Here in Berkeley an important social service nonprofit program will be in jeopardy if it doesn’t find a new space soon.  

“The market is so volatile right now that as soon as we find a place it’s either gone or we’re outbid, sometimes by as much as $300,000,” said Ronald Fick, executive director of the Association for Retarded Citizens. 

ARC, which has been operating out of their 6,000-square-foot facility for almost 32 years, helps adults with severe developmental disabilities learn basic life skills such as how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and how wash their hands and faces.  

The facility has become like a second home to about 42 mentally and physically disabled adults ranging in age from 22 to 59, many of who have been enrolled in the program for more than 15 years. 

The building, located at 1007 University Ave., was donated to ARC to help aid the mentally retarded in 1969 by The Mobilized Women of Berkeley. 

The ARC organization sold the building to adjacent Amsterdam Art for $800,000 in October 1999. Fick cited major electrical and plumbing problems, poor access and lack of adequate parking as reasons for the sale. 

“The building is old and it just isn’t meeting our current needs,” Fick said. 

Mark Rhoades, current planning manager for the city, said ARC and many other nonprofit organizations in the area are going to be hard pressed to find space in the current market. 

“Everybody is looking for space now and it’s coming at a premium. It’s not only scarce but it’s financially prohibitive, especially for nonprofits. Vacancy rates in the East Bay are at historic and unhealthy lows and people with marginal income will continue to get squeezed out.” 

The fact that the ARC program is state funded and licensed and, as such, must meet a certain criteria won’t make it any easier. The new facility must be able to accommodate six toilets and six sinks and have 4,000 to 6,000 square feet of space on one floor. In addition Fink said they need eight parking spaces and several offices. 

“We’re exploring all possible options. We’re willing to pay upward of $800,000 for a new space and we’re working with several Realtors,” Fick said. 

Rene Minneboo, owner of Amsterdam Art, has given Fick and the ARC program until March 2000 to find a new facility and said that if they don’t, he will be faced with “a real moral dilemma.” 

He said if they can’t find a space it will be a huge problem for him because he is in the midst of expanding his business as well as launching a Web site. 

“The future of my business depends on getting into that space but alternatives like eviction . . . I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror let alone face the community. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come down to that.” 

Friday, Oct. 20

“The Ballot Issues” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club 

2315 Durant Ave.  

Fran Packard of the League of Women Voters speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m.  

Luncheon: $11 

Call 848-3533 

Human Nature 

8:30 p.m. 

New College Cultural Center 

766 Valencia 

San Francisco 

The X-plicit Players present this idyllic nude ritual. Watch or participate: Be led blindfolded through body tunnels, into body streams while sensing psychic/body qualities through touch. Also presented on Oct. 21.  

$12 admission 

Call 415-848-1985 

Broken Spirits - Addressing Abuse 

8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church 

2201 73rd Ave. 

Oakland 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Health Ministry program presents a free workshop on the impact of domestic violence on our community.  

Call for info, 869-6763 

Opera: Don Carlos, Part 1,  

1 p.m. 

Old and New Poetry with Bob Randolph, 1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 21

A Day on Mt. Tam 

9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. 

Come play and hike in San Francisco’s beloved playground. This outing is part of a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance. 

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

AHIMSA Eight annual  

Conference 

9 a.m. - 5 p.m.  

International House, Great Hall 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

The AHIMSA is a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to encourage dialogues and public forums which bridge spiritual, scientific and social issues. This years conference is titled “Violence! Scientific and Spiritual Perspectives.”  

Admission is free 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market  

Fall Fruit Tastings 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Center St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Taste a whole farmers’ market’s bounty of fall fruit varieties. 

Free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 2 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. The second of three classes. The last is scheduled for Oct. 28 during the same timeslot. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 22

Run for Peace 

United Nations Association 

10K run and 5K run/walk 

9 a.m. Berkeley Marina 

$20 849-1752 

A Taste of the Greenbelt 

1 - 4 p.m. 

Presidio’s Golden Gate Club 

Greenbelt Alliance brings the farm to the city in this celebration of the Bay Area’s agricultural and culinary bounty. Featured are samples from over 40 local restaurants, farmers, wineries, microbreweries. Also featured are live music and local artwork. $45 per person 

1-800-543-GREEN, www.greenbelt.org 

An Evening with Alice Walker 

7:30 p.m.  

King Middle School  

1781 Rose St. (at Grant) 

free parking 

Join internationally loved novelist, poet and essayist Alice Walker in celebrating her new book of autobiographical stories, “The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart.” Benefits Berkeley EcoHouse and KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM.  

Tickets: $10 advance, $13 door 

Tickets available at independent bookstores 

More info: 848-6767 x609 

From Bahia to Berkeley 

11 a.m.  

Capoeira Arts Cafe 

2026 Addison St. 

A benefit brunch and auction with food, music, dance and culture to bring Brazilian folkloric dance group Nicinha Raizes from Bahia, Brazil to the Bay Area. The group will tour in January 2001.  

428-0698 

— compiled by  

Chason Wainwright 

Take a Trip to the Oakland Ballet 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organized by the Senior Center to see “Glass Slippers.”  

Tickets: $6 each 

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

A Buddhist Pilgramage in India 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

June Rosenberg brings to life, through slides and lecture, her pilgrimages in India. Free. 

Call 843-6812 

University Avenue Indian Business Community 

10 a.m. - Noon 

Kirpal & Neelum Khanna, owners of the Bazaar of India, tell about the steps they took from spice and food retailing to today’s Bazaar, and the nuances and features of the Indian business community on University Avenue. One is a series of walking tours sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society. 

$10 per person 

Call 848-0181 for reservations 

Monday, Oct. 23

“Guess the Weight of the Pumpkin,”  

through Oct. 28. Guess the correct weight of the pumpkin and bring it home in time for Halloween. 

Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. (510) 524-3043. 

Berkeley Chinese Community Church Turns 100 

6 p.m. 

Nov. 4 

Silver Dragon Restaurant 

835 Webster St. 

Oakland 

Reservations: $30 per person 

More info: 548-5295 

Public Schools Parent Information Night 

7 - 9 p.m.  

Epworth United Methodist Church 

1953 Hopkins St. 

Parents, principals and other administrative staff from 11 elementary schools will speak about their schools. Sponsored by Neighborhood Parents Network.  

Admission: free to members, $5 non-members 

527-6667 

Parks & Recreation Board Meeting 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Solid Waste Management Commission 

7 p.m. 

Solid Waste Management Center 

1201 Second St. 

The Changes Happening with HMOs 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 24

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

2 p.m. - 7 p.m.  

Derby St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Come taste a bounty of fall fruit varieties for free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Blood Pressure 

Alice Meyers 

9:30- 11 :30 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Thursday, Oct. 25

International Jewish Video Competition Winners 

7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Film Archive 

2575 Bancroft Way 

Screening of the four winners in the Museum’s seventh annual competition.  

Call 549-6950 

Low vision support group 

1:15 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Civic Arts Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Halloween Puppet Show with Hazel Jazel 

3:30 p.m.  

San Pablo Library, 1555 International Marketplace, San Pablo. (510) 374-3998. 

Free. 

Disaster Council 

7 p.m. 

Emergency Operations Center 

997 Cedar 

Energy Commission 

5:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

Mental Health Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

Mental Health Clinic 

2640 MLK Jr. Way 

Planning Commission 

7 p.m.  

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Police Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Thursday, Oct. 26

“A Contemporary Food Fight: GM Foods in the market place” 

7:30 - 9 p.m.  

International House, Homeroom 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

A discussion with Dr. Peggy Lemaux, professor of Plant and Microbiology at UC Berkeley, and Dr. Petra Frey from Switzerland, of the scientific basis for biotechnology, it’s risks and benefits. 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

From Morgan to Modern 

Julia Morgan and Hearst Castle:Designing and American Country House 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10 or $35 for series that continues through November. 

841-2242 

East Bay Science & Arts Middle School 

Noon  

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Middle school students perform dances of folk, swing, and Cuban rueda styles. Free.  

Contact Carrie Ridgeway, 549-2230 

Proposition Brown Bag 

Noon - 1:30 p.m.  

Institute of Governmental Studies 

109 Moses Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Hear presentations about and discuss the eight propositions on the California ballot.  

Call 642-4608 

Tai Chi 

2 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Friday, Oct. 27

“Transporation: What’s in Store?” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club  

2315 Durant Ave.  

Larry Dahms, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Council speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon is served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. 

Luncheon: $11 

More info and reservations: 848-3533 

Conversational Yiddish 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107  

Saturday, Oct. 28

California Shakespears Festival’s annual costume and garage sale  

9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Featuring one-of-a-kind costumes, props, and set pieces from previous productions. Free. 701 Heinz Ave., Berkeley. (510) 548-3422 ext. 120. 

Community Workshop to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Berkeley High School  

9 a.m. - noon 

Florence Schwimley Little Theater at Berkeley High School 

Students, parents, teachers, business owners, neighbors, and others are invited to a discussion on that will help set the course for future school improvements and provide the basis for accreditation review. 

Iris Starr, AICP, 540-1252 

tinstarr@earthlink.net 

“Halloween Mask Making” 

Tilden Regional Park 

2 p.m. 

Come learn the origins of Halloween and make a plaster-gauze mask. Registration required. $4. Take Canon Drive off Grizzly Peak Boulevard, Berkeley. (510) 525-2233. 

Pedaling the Green City 

11 a.m. -3:30 p.m.  

Take a leisurely bike ride along the future San Francisco Bay Trail. One in a series of free outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations  

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Halloween for the little guys with (not so) scary stories, music, and more.  

Call 649-3943  

“The 3rd annual Habitot Halloween” 

Habitot Children’s Museum  

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  

A not-too-spooky Halloween event for young children with entertainment, parades, games, magic and songs. Come in  

costume. Registration strongly suggested. $4 general; $6 for the first child age 7 and under; $3 for each additional child age 7 and under. Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 

647-1111 

“Not Very Scary Halloween Celebration” 

10:30 a.m. at La Pena  

Betsy Rose performs songs and activities to celebrate the harvest season and the ancestral spirits. Children are invited to come in costume. $4 general; $3 children. 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2572. 

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 3 

11 a.m. to 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. This is the final class in the series. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 29

“Almost Halloween Hike,”  

Tilden Regional Park 

10 a.m.  

Explore the nature of Halloween folklore on the trails.  

“Wake the Dead: A Music Concert”  

Celebrate the Celtic “Day of the Dead” (Halloween) with folksong artists Paul Kotapish and Danny Carnahan.  

2 to 4 p.m.  

(510) 525-2233. 

“Gateway to Knowledge” 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

Barr Rosenberg describes how to master new knowledge and take the power to shape our lives in wise and compassionate ways.  

843-6812 

An Evening with The Professor 

5 - 9:30 p.m. 

Mambo Mambo 

1803 Webster St.  

Oakland 

Berkeley resident Geoffrey A. Hirsch, better known as the Tie Guy from the “How Berkeley Can You Be” parade got his start in comedy in 1996. A professor in real life, Hirsch tell the story of how he became a funny guy.  

$5 for show only, $10 for show and dinner 

Call Geoffrey Hirsch at 845-5631 to reserve tickets 

Monday, Oct. 30

Fun with Oragami 

10 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

“BYOP: Pumpkin Carving By Porch and Hearth,” 

Tilden Regional Park 

4 to 7 p.m. “Bring your own pepo” 

Take Canon Drive off Grizzly Peak  

Boulevard, Berkeley. (510) 525-2233. 

Tuesday, Oct. 31

Sing-A-Long 

11 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Wednesday, Nov. 1

Kathak Dancing with Pandit Chitresh Das 

7:30 p.m. 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts 

2640 College Ave.  

The Graduate Theological Union presents a free lecture-demonstration with Pandit Chitresh Das, a master of India’s Kathak dance form. This event is free. 

Call 649-2440 for additional info 

Mountain Adventure Seminar 

In-store, registration required 

6 p.m.-9 p.m. 

Learn about equip,emt. fundamental climbing techiques and safety procedures. 

$100 REI members, $110 for non members 

To register (209) 753-6556 

Thursday, Nov. 2

PASTForward Panel Discussion 

2 p.m. 

UC Berkeley Art Museum 

Bancroft Way (below College) 

In conjunction with the White Oak Dance Project’s performances, a panel discussion with Judson era dance choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay. Free. 

From Morgan to Modern 

“Saddling the Site: The Environmental Designs of Wurster, Church and Others” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Friday, Nov. 3

Taize Worship Service 

7:30-8:30 p.m. 

An hour of quiet reflection and song. First Friday of the month. 

Loper Chapel on Dana Street between Durant and Channing Way. 

848-3696 

“Want to Transform your Dreams Into Reality?” 

Lecture by Leonard Orr, world known for creating the Rebirthing and Conscious Breathwork Movement. 

7:30 p.m., 

The Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. 

$25, 843-6514 

Saturday, Nov. 4

Breathtaking Barnabe Peak 

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Hike through Samuel P. Taylor State Park’s lush forests and climb to the heights of Barnabe Peak, overlooking Point Reyes. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Dublin Library’s resident storyteller and featured teller at the 1998 National Storytelling Festival tell kids aged 3 to 7 her favorite tales.  

Call 649-3943  

Sunday, Nov. 5

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m.  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl.  

Buddhist teacher Sylvia Gretchen on “Beyond Therapy and Into the Heart of Buddhist Psychology.” Free. 

Call 843-6812  

Monday, Nov. 6

Airports vs. the Bay 

7 p.m. 

Albany Community Center 

1249 Marin St.  

Albany 

David Lewis, Executive Director of “Save the Bay” will speak on the airports’ plans to expand into the SF Bay and other challenges to Bay restoration.  

Contact: Friends of Five Creeks, 848-9358 

Thursday, Nov. 9

The Life and Art of Chiura Obata 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Public Library 

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

A slide show and lecture presented by Obata’s granddaughter, Kimi Kodani Hill, celebrating Obata’s book, “Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment,” and the retrospective exhibit of Obata’s work to appear this Fall at SFs De Young Museum. 

For details call 644-6850  

From Morgan to Modern 

“Bay Area Modern” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

ESL Teacher Job Fair 

7 - 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Adult School 

1222 University Ave., Room 7  

ESL program representatives from adult schools in Alameda and Contra Costa counties will provide information about desired qualifications, current job openings, credentialing requirements, and more.  

Call Kay Wade, 644-6130 

“Feeding the Moon: A Nutritive Approach to Feminine Fertility” 

Lern how fertility is affected by the environment and how it can be enhanced by healthy lifestyle choices 

7:30 to 9 p.m. 

The Ecology Center 

2530 San Pable Ave.  

558-1324, free 

Saturday, Nov. 11

Moonlight on Mt. Diablo 

1 - 10:30 p.m.  

Hike up the Devil’s Mountain by daylight, catch a glorious sunset and hike back by the light of the moon. One in a series of free outing organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Sunday, Nov. 12

Views, Vines and Veggies 

9:15 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.  

Climb Bald Mountain in Sugarloaf State Park and peer down upon the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Then please your palate at the Landmark Winery and visit Oak Hill organic vegetable and flower farm. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

“Time Across Cultures” 

2 - 4 p.m. 

St. Clements Church 

2837 Claremont Ave.  

The annual Roselyn Yellin Memorial lecture with a slide-illustrated panel discussion. Also a tour of the “Telling Time” exhibit at the Judah L. Magnes Museum followed by a reception at the museum, 4 - 5 p.m.  

More info: 549-6950 

Buddhism & Compassion 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Psychiatrist and teacher Bobby Jones on “Healing through Compassion.” Free.  

843-6812 

Monday, Nov. 13

An Evening with Barbara Kingsolver 

7:30 p.m. 

King Middle School 

1781 Rose St. 

Barbara Kingsolver’s works include “Animal Dreams,” “High Tide in Tucson,” “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Prodigal Summer” 

free parking $10 in advance, $13 at the door 

Benefits KPFA and Urban Ecology. 

848-6767 

Tuesday, Nov. 14

Take a Trip to the Steinbeck Museum and 

Mission San Juan Bautista 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organzied by the Senior Center.  

$40 with lunch, $25 without  

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

Thursday, Nov. 16

Reminiscing in Swingtime 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Library  

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

George Yoshida, author and jazz drummer, presents a multi-media program recounting the big band experience in the Japanese American internment camps. The presentation will be capped with a set of live jazz by the George Yoshida Quartet. 

Call for more info: 644-6850 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Saturday, Nov. 18

S.F. Stairs and Peaks 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Begin the day with a visit to the farmer’s market, then meander up the stairways and streets of Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower. Then up Russian Hill, descending to Fisherman’s Wharf for a ride back on the new historic streetcar line. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 

Berkeley Free Folk Festival 

11 a.m. - 1 a.m.  

Ashkenaz  

1317 San Pablo Ave. 

Fourteen hours of free concerts, workshops, jam sessions and to top it off a Saturday night dance. The fifth annual Folk Festival will feature Shay & Michael Black, Spectre Double Negative & the Equal Positive, Larry Hanks, Wake the Dead and many others. Sponsored by Charles Schwab and the City of Berkeley.  

More info or to volunteer: 525-5099 

Sunday, Nov. 19

Mt. Madonna & Wine  

10 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Hike through evergreen forests and visit the remains of a 19th century estate, then finish the day with a visit to Kruse Winery. One of many free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: (415) 255-3233 for reservations 

“Drawing Marathon”  

Merritt College’s Art Building 

Live models, group poses.  

$12 for half a day, $20 for a full day, senior and student discounts available. No cameras or turpentine. 

523-9763 

Tuesday, Nov. 21 

Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Noon - 2 p.m.  

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium 

Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

Call D.L. Malinousky, 601-0550 

Saturday, Dec. 2  

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Storyteller Kellmar draws from her African-American roots with stories that touch the heart and the funnybone. For childen aged 3-7. 

Call 649-3943  

Thursday, Dec. 7 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Thursday, Dec. 21

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

ONGOING EVENTS

Sundays 

Green Party Consensus Building Meeting 

6 p.m. 

2022 Blake St. 

This is part of an ongoing series of discussions for the Green Party of Alameda County, leading up to endorsements on measures and candidates on the November ballot. This week’s focus will be the countywide new Measure B transportation sales tax. The meeting is open to all, regardless of party affiliation. 

415-789-8418 

Mondays 

Baby Bounce and Toddler Time 

10:30 a.m. 

Oct. 16 - Dec. 11 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

For children ages 6 to 36 months. Get those babies off to a good start with songs, rhymes, lap bounces, and very simple books. 

649-3943  

Tuesdays 

Easy Tilden Trails 

9:30 a.m. 

Tilden Regional Park, in the parking lot that dead ends at the Little Farm 

Join a few seniors, the Tuesday Tilden Walkers, for a stroll around Jewel Lake and the Little Farm Area. Enjoy the beauty of the wildflowers, turtles, and warblers, and waterfowl. 

215-7672; members.home.com/teachme99/tilden/index.html 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

2-7 p.m. 

Derby Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 

548-3333 

Berkeley Camera Club 

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda 

Share your slides and prints with other photographers. Critiques by qualified judges. Monthly field trips. 

531-8664 

Computer literacy course 

6-8 p.m. 

James Kenney Recreation Center, 1720 Eighth St. 

This free course will cover topics such as running Windows, File Management, connecting to and surfing the web, using Email, creating Web pages, JavaScript and a simple overview of programming. The course is oriented for adults. 

644-8511 

Wednesdays  

10:30 a.m. 

Preschool Song and Story Time 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Music and stories for ages 3-5.  

649-3943 

Thursdays 

The Disability Mural 

4-7 p.m. through September 

Integrated Arts 

933 Parker 

Drop-in Mural Studios will be held for community gatherings and tile-making sessions. This mural will be installed at Ed Roberts campus. 

841-1466 

Fridays 

Ralph Nader for President 

7 p.m.  

Video showings to continue until November. Campaign donations are requested. Admission is free.  

Contact Jack for directions at 524-1784. 

Saturdays 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

10 a.m.-3 p.m. 

Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 

548-3333 

Poets Juan Sequeira and Wanna Thibideux Wright 

2nd and 4th Sunday 

Rhyme and Reason Open Mike Series 

2:30 p.m. 

UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Ave. 

The public and students are invited. Sign-ups for the open mike begin at 2 p.m. 

234-0727;642-5168 

Tuesday and Thursday 

Free computer class for seniors 

9:30-11:30 a.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. 

This free course offers basic instruction in keyboarding, Microsoft Word, Windows 95, Excel and Internet access. Space is limited; the class is offered Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Compiled by Chason Wainwright 

Friday, Oct. 20

“The Ballot Issues” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club 

2315 Durant Ave.  

Fran Packard of the League of Women Voters speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m.  

Luncheon: $11 

Call 848-3533 

Human Nature 

8:30 p.m. 

New College Cultural Center 

766 Valencia 

San Francisco 

The X-plicit Players present this idyllic nude ritual. Watch or participate: Be led blindfolded through body tunnels, into body streams while sensing psychic/body qualities through touch. Also presented on Oct. 21.  

$12 admission 

Call 415-848-1985 

Broken Spirits - Addressing Abuse 

8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church 

2201 73rd Ave. 

Oakland 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Health Ministry program presents a free workshop on the impact of domestic violence on our community.  

Call for info, 869-6763 

Opera: Don Carlos, Part 1,  

1 p.m. 

Old and New Poetry with Bob Randolph, 1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 21

A Day on Mt. Tam 

9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. 

Come play and hike in San Francisco’s beloved playground. This outing is part of a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance. 

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

AHIMSA Eight annual  

Conference 

9 a.m. - 5 p.m.  

International House, Great Hall 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

The AHIMSA is a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to encourage dialogues and public forums which bridge spiritual, scientific and social issues. This years conference is titled “Violence! Scientific and Spiritual Perspectives.”  

Admission is free 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market  

Fall Fruit Tastings 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Center St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Taste a whole farmers’ market’s bounty of fall fruit varieties. 

Free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 2 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. The second of three classes. The last is scheduled for Oct. 28 during the same timeslot. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 22

Run for Peace 

United Nations Association 

10K run and 5K run/walk 

9 a.m. Berkeley Marina 

$20 849-1752 

A Taste of the Greenbelt 

1 - 4 p.m. 

Presidio’s Golden Gate Club 

Greenbelt Alliance brings the farm to the city in this celebration of the Bay Area’s agricultural and culinary bounty. Featured are samples from over 40 local restaurants, farmers, wineries, microbreweries. Also featured are live music and local artwork. $45 per person 

1-800-543-GREEN, www.greenbelt.org 

An Evening with Alice Walker 

7:30 p.m.  

King Middle School  

1781 Rose St. (at Grant) 

free parking 

Join internationally loved novelist, poet and essayist Alice Walker in celebrating her new book of autobiographical stories, “The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart.” Benefits Berkeley EcoHouse and KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM.  

Tickets: $10 advance, $13 door 

Tickets available at independent bookstores 

More info: 848-6767 x609 

From Bahia to Berkeley 

11 a.m.  

Capoeira Arts Cafe 

2026 Addison St. 

A benefit brunch and auction with food, music, dance and culture to bring Brazilian folkloric dance group Nicinha Raizes from Bahia, Brazil to the Bay Area. The group will tour in January 2001.  

428-0698 

— compiled by  

Chason Wainwright 

Take a Trip to the Oakland Ballet 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organized by the Senior Center to see “Glass Slippers.”  

Tickets: $6 each 

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

A Buddhist Pilgramage in India 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

June Rosenberg brings to life, through slides and lecture, her pilgrimages in India. Free. 

Call 843-6812 

University Avenue Indian Business Community 

10 a.m. - Noon 

Kirpal & Neelum Khanna, owners of the Bazaar of India, tell about the steps they took from spice and food retailing to today’s Bazaar, and the nuances and features of the Indian business community on University Avenue. One is a series of walking tours sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society. 

$10 per person 

Call 848-0181 for reservations 

Monday, Oct. 23

“Guess the Weight of the Pumpkin,”  

through Oct. 28. Guess the correct weight of the pumpkin and bring it home in time for Halloween. 

Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. (510) 524-3043. 

Berkeley Chinese Community Church Turns 100 

6 p.m. 

Nov. 4 

Silver Dragon Restaurant 

835 Webster St. 

Oakland 

Reservations: $30 per person 

More info: 548-5295 

Public Schools Parent Information Night 

7 - 9 p.m.  

Epworth United Methodist Church 

1953 Hopkins St. 

Parents, principals and other administrative staff from 11 elementary schools will speak about their schools. Sponsored by Neighborhood Parents Network.  

Admission: free to members, $5 non-members 

527-6667 

Parks & Recreation Board Meeting 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Solid Waste Management Commission 

7 p.m. 

Solid Waste Management Center 

1201 Second St. 

The Changes Happening with HMOs 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 24

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

2 p.m. - 7 p.m.  

Derby St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Come taste a bounty of fall fruit varieties for free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Blood Pressure 

Alice Meyers 

9:30- 11 :30 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Thursday, Oct. 25

International Jewish Video Competition Winners 

7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Film Archive 

2575 Bancroft Way 

Screening of the four winners in the Museum’s seventh annual competition.  

Call 549-6950 

Low vision support group 

1:15 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Civic Arts Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Halloween Puppet Show with Hazel Jazel 

3:30 p.m.  

San Pablo Library, 1555 International Marketplace, San Pablo. (510) 374-3998. 

Free. 

Disaster Council 

7 p.m. 

Emergency Operations Center 

997 Cedar 

Energy Commission 

5:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

Mental Health Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

Mental Health Clinic 

2640 MLK Jr. Way 

Planning Commission 

7 p.m.  

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Police Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Thursday, Oct. 26

“A Contemporary Food Fight: GM Foods in the market place” 

7:30 - 9 p.m.  

International House, Homeroom 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

A discussion with Dr. Peggy Lemaux, professor of Plant and Microbiology at UC Berkeley, and Dr. Petra Frey from Switzerland, of the scientific basis for biotechnology, it’s risks and benefits. 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

From Morgan to Modern 

Julia Morgan and Hearst Castle:Designing and American Country House 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10 or $35 for series that continues through November. 

841-2242 

East Bay Science & Arts Middle School 

Noon  

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Middle school students perform dances of folk, swing, and Cuban rueda styles. Free.  

Contact Carrie Ridgeway, 549-2230 

Proposition Brown Bag 

Noon - 1:30 p.m.  

Institute of Governmental Studies 

109 Moses Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Hear presentations about and discuss the eight propositions on the California ballot.  

Call 642-4608 

Tai Chi 

2 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Friday, Oct. 27

“Transporation: What’s in Store?” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club  

2315 Durant Ave.  

Larry Dahms, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Council speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon is served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. 

Luncheon: $11 

More info and reservations: 848-3533 

Conversational Yiddish 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107  

Saturday, Oct. 28

California Shakespears Festival’s annual costume and garage sale  

9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Featuring one-of-a-kind costumes, props, and set pieces from previous productions. Free. 701 Heinz Ave., Berkeley. (510) 548-3422 ext. 120. 

Community Workshop to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Berkeley High School  

9 a.m. - noon 

Florence Schwimley Little Theater at Berkeley High School 

Students, parents, teachers, business owners, neighbors, and others are invited to a discussion on that will help set the course for future school improvements and provide the basis for accreditation review. 

Iris Starr, AICP, 540-1252 

tinstarr@earthlink.net 

“Halloween Mask Making” 

Tilden Regional Park 

2 p.m. 

Come learn the origins of Halloween and make a plaster-gauze mask. Registration required. $4. Take Canon Drive off Grizzly Peak Boulevard, Berkeley. (510) 525-2233. 

Pedaling the Green City 

11 a.m. -3:30 p.m.  

Take a leisurely bike ride along the future San Francisco Bay Trail. One in a series of free outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations  

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Halloween for the little guys with (not so) scary stories, music, and more.  

Call 649-3943  

“The 3rd annual Habitot Halloween” 

Habitot Children’s Museum  

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  

A not-too-spooky Halloween event for young children with entertainment, parades, games, magic and songs. Come in  

costume. Registration strongly suggested. $4 general; $6 for the first child age 7 and under; $3 for each additional child age 7 and under. Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 

647-1111 

“Not Very Scary Halloween Celebration” 

10:30 a.m. at La Pena  

Betsy Rose performs songs and activities to celebrate the harvest season and the ancestral spirits. Children are invited to come in costume. $4 general; $3 children. 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2572. 

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 3 

11 a.m. to 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. This is the final class in the series. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 29

“Almost Halloween Hike,”  

Tilden Regional Park 

10 a.m.  

Explore the nature of Halloween folklore on the trails.  

“Wake the Dead: A Music Concert”  

Celebrate the Celtic “Day of the Dead” (Halloween) with folksong artists Paul Kotapish and Danny Carnahan.  

2 to 4 p.m.  

(510) 525-2233. 

“Gateway to Knowledge” 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

Barr Rosenberg describes how to master new knowledge and take the power to shape our lives in wise and compassionate ways.  

843-6812 

An Evening with The Professor 

5 - 9:30 p.m. 

Mambo Mambo 

1803 Webster St.  

Oakland 

Berkeley resident Geoffrey A. Hirsch, better known as the Tie Guy from the “How Berkeley Can You Be” parade got his start in comedy in 1996. A professor in real life, Hirsch tell the story of how he became a funny guy.  

$5 for show only, $10 for show and dinner 

Call Geoffrey Hirsch at 845-5631 to reserve tickets 

Monday, Oct. 30

Fun with Oragami 

10 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

“BYOP: Pumpkin Carving By Porch and Hearth,” 

Tilden Regional Park 

4 to 7 p.m. “Bring your own pepo” 

Take Canon Drive off Grizzly Peak  

Boulevard, Berkeley. (510) 525-2233. 

Tuesday, Oct. 31

Sing-A-Long 

11 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Wednesday, Nov. 1

Kathak Dancing with Pandit Chitresh Das 

7:30 p.m. 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts 

2640 College Ave.  

The Graduate Theological Union presents a free lecture-demonstration with Pandit Chitresh Das, a master of India’s Kathak dance form. This event is free. 

Call 649-2440 for additional info 

Mountain Adventure Seminar 

In-store, registration required 

6 p.m.-9 p.m. 

Learn about equip,emt. fundamental climbing techiques and safety procedures. 

$100 REI members, $110 for non members 

To register (209) 753-6556 

Thursday, Nov. 2

PASTForward Panel Discussion 

2 p.m. 

UC Berkeley Art Museum 

Bancroft Way (below College) 

In conjunction with the White Oak Dance Project’s performances, a panel discussion with Judson era dance choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay. Free. 

From Morgan to Modern 

“Saddling the Site: The Environmental Designs of Wurster, Church and Others” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Friday, Nov. 3

Taize Worship Service 

7:30-8:30 p.m. 

An hour of quiet reflection and song. First Friday of the month. 

Loper Chapel on Dana Street between Durant and Channing Way. 

848-3696 

“Want to Transform your Dreams Into Reality?” 

Lecture by Leonard Orr, world known for creating the Rebirthing and Conscious Breathwork Movement. 

7:30 p.m., 

The Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. 

$25, 843-6514 

Saturday, Nov. 4

Breathtaking Barnabe Peak 

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Hike through Samuel P. Taylor State Park’s lush forests and climb to the heights of Barnabe Peak, overlooking Point Reyes. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Dublin Library’s resident storyteller and featured teller at the 1998 National Storytelling Festival tell kids aged 3 to 7 her favorite tales.  

Call 649-3943  

Sunday, Nov. 5

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m.  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl.  

Buddhist teacher Sylvia Gretchen on “Beyond Therapy and Into the Heart of Buddhist Psychology.” Free. 

Call 843-6812  

Monday, Nov. 6

Airports vs. the Bay 

7 p.m. 

Albany Community Center 

1249 Marin St.  

Albany 

David Lewis, Executive Director of “Save the Bay” will speak on the airports’ plans to expand into the SF Bay and other challenges to Bay restoration.  

Contact: Friends of Five Creeks, 848-9358 

Thursday, Nov. 9

The Life and Art of Chiura Obata 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Public Library 

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

A slide show and lecture presented by Obata’s granddaughter, Kimi Kodani Hill, celebrating Obata’s book, “Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment,” and the retrospective exhibit of Obata’s work to appear this Fall at SFs De Young Museum. 

For details call 644-6850  

From Morgan to Modern 

“Bay Area Modern” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

ESL Teacher Job Fair 

7 - 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Adult School 

1222 University Ave., Room 7  

ESL program representatives from adult schools in Alameda and Contra Costa counties will provide information about desired qualifications, current job openings, credentialing requirements, and more.  

Call Kay Wade, 644-6130 

“Feeding the Moon: A Nutritive Approach to Feminine Fertility” 

Lern how fertility is affected by the environment and how it can be enhanced by healthy lifestyle choices 

7:30 to 9 p.m. 

The Ecology Center 

2530 San Pable Ave.  

558-1324, free 

Saturday, Nov. 11

Moonlight on Mt. Diablo 

1 - 10:30 p.m.  

Hike up the Devil’s Mountain by daylight, catch a glorious sunset and hike back by the light of the moon. One in a series of free outing organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Sunday, Nov. 12

Views, Vines and Veggies 

9:15 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.  

Climb Bald Mountain in Sugarloaf State Park and peer down upon the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Then please your palate at the Landmark Winery and visit Oak Hill organic vegetable and flower farm. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

“Time Across Cultures” 

2 - 4 p.m. 

St. Clements Church 

2837 Claremont Ave.  

The annual Roselyn Yellin Memorial lecture with a slide-illustrated panel discussion. Also a tour of the “Telling Time” exhibit at the Judah L. Magnes Museum followed by a reception at the museum, 4 - 5 p.m.  

More info: 549-6950 

Buddhism & Compassion 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Psychiatrist and teacher Bobby Jones on “Healing through Compassion.” Free.  

843-6812 

Monday, Nov. 13

An Evening with Barbara Kingsolver 

7:30 p.m. 

King Middle School 

1781 Rose St. 

Barbara Kingsolver’s works include “Animal Dreams,” “High Tide in Tucson,” “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Prodigal Summer” 

free parking $10 in advance, $13 at the door 

Benefits KPFA and Urban Ecology. 

848-6767 

Tuesday, Nov. 14

Take a Trip to the Steinbeck Museum and 

Mission San Juan Bautista 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organzied by the Senior Center.  

$40 with lunch, $25 without  

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

Thursday, Nov. 16

Reminiscing in Swingtime 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Library  

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

George Yoshida, author and jazz drummer, presents a multi-media program recounting the big band experience in the Japanese American internment camps. The presentation will be capped with a set of live jazz by the George Yoshida Quartet. 

Call for more info: 644-6850 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Saturday, Nov. 18

S.F. Stairs and Peaks 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Begin the day with a visit to the farmer’s market, then meander up the stairways and streets of Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower. Then up Russian Hill, descending to Fisherman’s Wharf for a ride back on the new historic streetcar line. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 

Berkeley Free Folk Festival 

11 a.m. - 1 a.m.  

Ashkenaz  

1317 San Pablo Ave. 

Fourteen hours of free concerts, workshops, jam sessions and to top it off a Saturday night dance. The fifth annual Folk Festival will feature Shay & Michael Black, Spectre Double Negative & the Equal Positive, Larry Hanks, Wake the Dead and many others. Sponsored by Charles Schwab and the City of Berkeley.  

More info or to volunteer: 525-5099 

Sunday, Nov. 19

Mt. Madonna & Wine  

10 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Hike through evergreen forests and visit the remains of a 19th century estate, then finish the day with a visit to Kruse Winery. One of many free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: (415) 255-3233 for reservations 

“Drawing Marathon”  

Merritt College’s Art Building 

Live models, group poses.  

$12 for half a day, $20 for a full day, senior and student discounts available. No cameras or turpentine. 

523-9763 

Tuesday, Nov. 21 

Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Noon - 2 p.m.  

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium 

Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

Call D.L. Malinousky, 601-0550 

Saturday, Dec. 2  

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Storyteller Kellmar draws from her African-American roots with stories that touch the heart and the funnybone. For childen aged 3-7. 

Call 649-3943  

Thursday, Dec. 7 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Thursday, Dec. 21

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

ONGOING EVENTS

Sundays 

Green Party Consensus Building Meeting 

6 p.m. 

2022 Blake St. 

This is part of an ongoing series of discussions for the Green Party of Alameda County, leading up to endorsements on measures and candidates on the November ballot. This week’s focus will be the countywide new Measure B transportation sales tax. The meeting is open to all, regardless of party affiliation. 

415-789-8418 

Mondays 

Baby Bounce and Toddler Time 

10:30 a.m. 

Oct. 16 - Dec. 11 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

For children ages 6 to 36 months. Get those babies off to a good start with songs, rhymes, lap bounces, and very simple books. 

649-3943  

Tuesdays 

Easy Tilden Trails 

9:30 a.m. 

Tilden Regional Park, in the parking lot that dead ends at the Little Farm 

Join a few seniors, the Tuesday Tilden Walkers, for a stroll around Jewel Lake and the Little Farm Area. Enjoy the beauty of the wildflowers, turtles, and warblers, and waterfowl. 

215-7672; members.home.com/teachme99/tilden/index.html 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

2-7 p.m. 

Derby Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 

548-3333 

Berkeley Camera Club 

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda 

Share your slides and prints with other photographers. Critiques by qualified judges. Monthly field trips. 

531-8664 

Computer literacy course 

6-8 p.m. 

James Kenney Recreation Center, 1720 Eighth St. 

This free course will cover topics such as running Windows, File Management, connecting to and surfing the web, using Email, creating Web pages, JavaScript and a simple overview of programming. The course is oriented for adults. 

644-8511 

Wednesdays  

10:30 a.m. 

Preschool Song and Story Time 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Music and stories for ages 3-5.  

649-3943 

Thursdays 

The Disability Mural 

4-7 p.m. through September 

Integrated Arts 

933 Parker 

Drop-in Mural Studios will be held for community gatherings and tile-making sessions. This mural will be installed at Ed Roberts campus. 

841-1466 

Fridays 

Ralph Nader for President 

7 p.m.  

Video showings to continue until November. Campaign donations are requested. Admission is free.  

Contact Jack for directions at 524-1784. 

Saturdays 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

10 a.m.-3 p.m. 

Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 

548-3333 

Poets Juan Sequeira and Wanna Thibideux Wright 

2nd and 4th Sunday 

Rhyme and Reason Open Mike Series 

2:30 p.m. 

UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Ave. 

The public and students are invited. Sign-ups for the open mike begin at 2 p.m. 

234-0727;642-5168 

Tuesday and Thursday 

Free computer class for seniors 

9:30-11:30 a.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. 

This free course offers basic instruction in keyboarding, Microsoft Word, Windows 95, Excel and Internet access. Space is limited; the class is offered Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Compiled by Chason Wainwright 

Using several bench players throughout the match, the Berkeley High girls’ volleyball team dominated the De Anza Dons Thursday, winning 15-2, 15-2, 15-4. 

Berkeley coach Justin Caraway rotated his reserves with his starters constantly in all three games of the away match, using a match he expected to win easily to try different combinations of players. 

“We thought we’d have a pretty easy time of it today,” he said after the match. “We needed to see what we could do with different people on the floor.” 

That need is immediate, as the team will play in the Moreau Tournament this weekend and will be missing several players who will be taking the SAT. In addition, star middle blocker Desiree Young has been out of action for the past two games. With Young unavailable, the ’Jackets have been spreading the ball around more, and outside hitters Hannah Lawler, Lizzi Akana and Caitlin Everett have been playing well, a trend that continued against De Anza. 

The ’Jackets (11-6, 7-0 ACCAL) got off to a fast start against the outmanned Dons, jumping out to a 10-0 lead in the first game before the home team knew what hit them. De Anza’s only point of the game was on a mishit by Berkeley outside hitter Hannah Lawler, and the Dons struggled to even return most of the Berkeley serves. When they did get the ball back over the net, it was hammered right back at them by Akana and Everett, who each had four kills in the game. 

Starting setter Danielle Larue returned after missing the match against Encinal last week, and she looked shaky on several plays. But she gave enough good service to her hitters to give her team a big advantage in kills. 

The second game started much the same as the first, with Berkeley tallying seven points before the Dons were able to get on the scoreboard. Again, it was an unforced error by a Berkeley player that gave De Anza their first point, this time by middle blocker Lena Stahlschmidt. But after scoring two points, the Dons wouldn’t score again in the game, as kills by Lawler and Akana combined with solid serving by senior Helene Skau and junior Ferron Salniker to run off another seven-point run by the ’Jackets to put the game away. 

The final game of the match was the most competitive, although the final score didn’t show much difference. The Dons were able to force many changes in service possession, and their blockers even managed to stop Lawler and Akana several times. But Berkeley’s power was too much to overcome, and Everett ran off seven straight service points on the way to a truly dominating victory.

Bulbouts: a dangerous idea in the name of safety 

Editor: 

The City of Berkeley is considering some traffic plans – presumably to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians.  

In spite of these good intentions, some very dangerous ideas have surfaced. The new traffic “bulbouts” at some intersections, which force cars and cyclists into the same space at an intersection, are notorious examples. 

Another poor idea is the proposed traffic “circle” at California and Channing.  

It’s not a true traffic circle, like the Marin Circle, but, instead, a round barrier in the middle of a right-angled intersection. 

California St. presently has Class II bicycle lanes. It is one of the few streets in Berkeley where there is sufficient space for a cyclist to ride a safe distance from the parked cars and for moving cars to still pass unimpeded. 

The proposed “circle” extends across both car lanes and into both bike lanes. It forces two lanes of traffic – one for cars and one for bikes – not one lane in the middle of an intersection, the place where most bicycle collisions occur. It defeats the very purpose of a Class II bike lane – adequate space for bikes and cars. 

I encourage cyclists and motorists to view this intersection and the temporary markers that designate the new “circle” and observe how it squeezes cars and bikes into a narrow space. Then let your councilmember know what you think of this idea. The Transportation Committee meeting was to hear it yesterday.  

There are many excellent ways to encourage and facilitate safe cycling.  

Palo Alto has a Bicycle Boulevard with mid-block “filters,” barriers which allow only bicycles and emergency vehicles through.  

Stop signs are turned so that this becomes a through street for cyclists. Almost no street parking is lost to the filters. Berkeley should adopt this safe, proven approach instead of these other dangerous ideas. 

Ric Oberlink 

Berkeley 

Transit first, and not parking should be city’s priority 

The Daily Planet received this letter addressed to Mayor Dean and Councilmembers: 

It has come to my attention that at Tuesday’s Council meeting the issue of parking for city and school employees came up.  

I was astonished to see Mayor Dean quoted in Tuesday’s Daily Planet urging the council to recognize that “parking for city employees is our priority.” Thank you Kriss for encouraging the City to prioritize encouraging public transportation and alternative modes of transportation.  

If the city doesn’t even work to promote alternative means of transportation among city staff-- how can the city expect Berkeley residents to begin to think about driving less? What city employee will be encouraged to take the bus if a “Class-pass-type” pass ever materializes for Berkeley residents if they know they have a free parking spot at work waiting for them?  

I feel this matter at hand has huge implications for the livability of our City. What direction do we want to move in in Berkeley?  

Back to the 1950s, where we accommodated the car at the expense of everything else, or into the next century where we work together to create viable, safe transportation alternatives to the automobile?  

At the recent Transportation, Housing, and the Environment Election Forum, which the Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley Coalition co-sponsored – each candidate’s answer to the question “What is the worst thing you do in your daily life for the environment?” was the same: “I drive my car.” The candidates seemed to be seriously apologetic, but also conveyed the message that it was a innocent enough vice, because after all everyone else is driving everywhere too.  

The city has been right on in supporting eco-friendly businesses like Pedal Express to reduce reliance on the automobile.  

I hope that Berkeley will extend this common sense to the matter at hand.  

It would be great if the city did a pilot program on “Parking Cash-Out for Employees.” Each month, employees would be given a check from the city which equals the amount the city incurs providing their usual parking spaces. Then the employees have the option of using the money to pay for parking, or for using the money to buy a bus pass, or for pocketing the money and deciding to walk or bike instead.  

Parking Cash-Out opportunities get the message across that parking is not free, and let employees make informed decisions about how they want to get to work.  

In addition, the city could implement a “Guaranteed Ride Home” program which involves contracting with a local taxi service to ensure employees can catch a taxi if necessary.  

The Daily Planet article also has Mayor Dean stating that no city has ever achieved a 100 percent transit policy. I don’t think that is what Kriss Worthington was proposing. There is a lot of middle ground between providing free parking for all city employees and insisting that 100 percent of employees will take transit to work.  

As far Mayor Dean’s concerns for women employees who “will have to walk many blocks in the dark” – I was also a little perplexed. Most city employees work near downtown Berkeley, correct? Downtown Berkeley is pretty darn safe to walk through (except for the speeding deadly cars), in my opinion – and one never has to walk too many blocks to get to the bus stop or BART station.  

I personally feel much more in danger walking in a parking garage at night than I do on the street or riding my bike.  

I support the Maio/Spring/Worthington alternative to wait for the release of the Trafic Demand Management Study on Tuesday’s council agenda. 

I encourage any other citizens who share my feelings to attend next Tuesday’s Council meeting.  

Sarah Syed  

Berkeley 

Safe Routes to School Project Director  

Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley Coalition  

Measure Y could cost owners $4,500 to go home again 

Editor: 

Thank you for covering Berkeley’s District 2 candidates (Oct. 16). 

In the past few months our organization has reached out to City Councilmembers to seek common ground, mend fences and attempt a dialogue that could lead to a solution to Berkeley’s housing crisis. 

We contacted Councilmember Margaret Breland, the District 2 incumbent, currently being challenged by moderate Betty Hicks. At the meeting with Ms. Breland, I first raised my concern about the results of rent control on Berkeley’s housing stock.  

Ms. Breland commented: “I thought rent control was over.” I was shocked to hear this from a member of the City Council, given that they were soon to decide the fate of what became to be known as Measure Y, a draconian modification of Berkeley’s eviction ordinance. 

Here we have a city council person who is totally unaware of the current status of a law she is about to amend. As expected, Ms. Breland aligned herself with the BCA and cast one of the decisive votes placing Measure Y on the November ballot.  

Measure Y should deeply concern all Berkeley voters. It is billed as a device to protect elderly and disabled tenants from being driven out of their homes. the Measure paradoxically contains a loophole exempting owners from this portion of the measure if they own three or fewer units. Clearly these would be the most desirable properties as risk for owner occupancy.  

Measure Y gives no eviction protection to elderly and disabled tenants living in buildings of fewer than four units. 

However, this provision was no concession to small property owners. It was not part of the original text considered by the council. 

Measure Y covers all owner occupancy evictions, not just those in rent controlled buildings.  

What if you went on vacation, a sabbatical, or took a temporary job out of the area, rented your home to a young able bodied person who refused to leave when you returned? Under Measure Y you could be liable for paying the tenant a $4,500 relocation fee; and if you lost the owner move-in eviction action on a technicality, you would be compelled by Measure Y to pay the tenant’s attorney’ fees as well. 

You would not be awarded anything if you prevailed, however. 

Measure Y’s prohibitions, penalties, and legal traps to thwart owners to move into their own properties are not targeted at big landlords.  

They affect middle income folks - many of them tenants themselves - who cannot afford the price of a single family home; people like teachers, policemen and firemen who must settle for purchasing a small rental, occupy a unit and have the rents from the other apartments help out with the mortgage.  

Measure Y is specifically designed to prevent middle income renters from becoming homeowners in today’s overheated economy. 

Berkeley does not need laws that further deplete its housing stock and put people in the streets; it must strive to find inclusive solutions to its housing problems that involve the entire community.  

It also needs leaders that are well versed with the issues and are creative enough to chart a course for Berkeley that works, rather than emulating San Francisco’s failed housing policies. 

Robert Cabrera 

President 

Berkeley Property Owners Association 

(CHECK LAST LETTER) 

Subject:  

letter to the editor 

Date:  

Thu, 19 Oct 2000 10:21:59 -0700 

From:  

“Steve Finacom”  

To:  

opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.net 

Dear Editor: 

I was disappointed to read that Berkeley police officers attending a City 

Council meeting criticised Carrie Sprague for her efforts to enforce 

residential permit parking in the MAGNA neighborhood next to City Hall. 

I’ve always had the impression that one of the unspoken rules of American 

law enforcement is to avoid publicly attacking citizens by name (convicted 

felons an exception). Confidence in the police depends on both 

presumption and evidence that they will act impartially. When individual 

police officers publicly criticize even one citizen who has broken no laws, 

that faith is undermined. It’s worse when that citizen is actually trying 

to get the City to enforce one of its own laws. 

I’m also personally sympathetic to the frustrations of the MAGNA residents 

like Sprague, since my own Berkeley neighborhood is similarly sandwiched 

between large traffic-attracting facilities--in our case, a public school, 

and a hospital--which attract endless numbers of staff and visitors who 

“must” drive, and who circle the adjoining residential streets looking for 

parking. 

That said, it’s probably a good thing that the City Council is hearing 

complaints about parking from public employees because it brings home the 

reality facing all public agencies in Berkeley. The Council is quick to 

criticize the University and other big local employers for traffic and 

parking impacts, but if statistics were to be calculated on who drives to 

work and who doesn’t, City employees--and perhaps even a majority of City 

Councilmembers--may be among the least “transit friendly” groups of 

commuters in Berkeley. 

I saw this attitude first hand while working on a committee helping to plan 

future renovations to Civic Center Park. From the point of view of almost 

all of the citizen participants, removal of the little City Council / City 

staff parking lot just behind City Hall was an unquestionable benefit for 

the community. Land would be added to the park, and the park and City Hall 

would be reconnected. If the parking “needed” to be replaced, it could be 

done in the City-owned garage half a block up the street. But time and 

again some City staff kept raising the issue of carving out a new parking 

lot from another part of the green space--parking that would have been 

reserved for free for Councilmembers and senior City employees. 

In this area the City could learn something from the University, which has 

consistently pursued policies to reduce single-driver commuting. You 

almost literally have to win a Nobel Prize to get a free parking space on 

campus (in contrast, I’ve been told that many City employees have free 

parking guaranteed by their union contracts). Nearly two decades ago the 

University pioneered the Berkeley TRiP program which promotes and provides 

transit alternatives. Parking spaces are set aside for carpools and van 

pools. Recently, the University and students negotiated with AC Transit to 

arrange the “Class Pass” which allows students to ride the bus without 

paying fare, in exchange for a surcharge on their registration fees. 

Thousands of students now regularly use that option. 

Even with transit options, however, there will still remain an issue of 

public employees who have to drive because they have odd schedules or live 

in distant places not well served by public transit or have physical 

disabilities. That’s a legitimate need. One way to address it would be 

through the development of affordable housing in Berkeley for those who 

work in public agencies. 

The City could take the lead in this area. In downtown Berkeley the City 

owns two large tracts of land--the surface parking lots at Oxford and 

Allston, and on Berkeley Way between Shattuck and Milvia. Instead of 

emphasizing the income that it could earn by leasing those sites to private 

developers to build for-profit housing above parking, perhaps the City 

should look at ways to develop the housing components on those sites as 

affordable apartments and limited-equity condominiums that would rent or 

sell to public employees like police officers and firefighters and public 

school teachers who can’t currently afford to live close to their 

workplaces. (This could be similar to UC’s University Terrace faculty and 

staff condominiums which are, ironically, located just a few blocks west of 

City Hall). 

This is not a new concept. Many public agencies in the Bay Area are going 

in this direction. Every month I read of another school district or 

municipality looking at ways to develop this sort of housing. Why not 

Berkeley? There are even non-profit developers, such as BRIDGE Housing, 

that specialize in affordable housing for the middle to lower income 

workforce in the Bay Area. Groups like those could be invited to Berkeley 

to help structure a program. 

How about it, City Council? Will you consider “acting locally” with the 

resources you have on hand--City owned development sites Downtown--to 

directly address affordable housing issues for those who police Berkeley’s 

streets, teach its children, maintain its parks, and staff its government 

offices? 

Sincerely, 

Steven Finacom 

2308 Russell Street 

Berkeley, California, 94705 

(510) 845-3203

Bulbouts: a dangerous idea in the name of safety 

Editor: 

The City of Berkeley is considering some traffic plans – presumably to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians.  

In spite of these good intentions, some very dangerous ideas have surfaced. The new traffic “bulbouts” at some intersections, which force cars and cyclists into the same space at an intersection, are notorious examples. 

Another poor idea is the proposed traffic “circle” at California and Channing.  

It’s not a true traffic circle, like the Marin Circle, but, instead, a round barrier in the middle of a right-angled intersection. 

California St. presently has Class II bicycle lanes. It is one of the few streets in Berkeley where there is sufficient space for a cyclist to ride a safe distance from the parked cars and for moving cars to still pass unimpeded. 

The proposed “circle” extends across both car lanes and into both bike lanes. It forces two lanes of traffic – one for cars and one for bikes – not one lane in the middle of an intersection, the place where most bicycle collisions occur. It defeats the very purpose of a Class II bike lane – adequate space for bikes and cars. 

I encourage cyclists and motorists to view this intersection and the temporary markers that designate the new “circle” and observe how it squeezes cars and bikes into a narrow space. Then let your councilmember know what you think of this idea. The Transportation Committee meeting was to hear it yesterday.  

There are many excellent ways to encourage and facilitate safe cycling.  

Palo Alto has a Bicycle Boulevard with mid-block “filters,” barriers which allow only bicycles and emergency vehicles through.  

Stop signs are turned so that this becomes a through street for cyclists. Almost no street parking is lost to the filters. Berkeley should adopt this safe, proven approach instead of these other dangerous ideas. 

Ric Oberlink 

Berkeley 

Transit first, and not parking should be city’s priority 

The Daily Planet received this letter addressed to Mayor Dean and Councilmembers: 

It has come to my attention that at Tuesday’s Council meeting the issue of parking for city and school employees came up.  

I was astonished to see Mayor Dean quoted in Tuesday’s Daily Planet urging the council to recognize that “parking for city employees is our priority.” Thank you Kriss for encouraging the City to prioritize encouraging public transportation and alternative modes of transportation.  

If the city doesn’t even work to promote alternative means of transportation among city staff-- how can the city expect Berkeley residents to begin to think about driving less? What city employee will be encouraged to take the bus if a “Class-pass-type” pass ever materializes for Berkeley residents if they know they have a free parking spot at work waiting for them?  

I feel this matter at hand has huge implications for the livability of our City. What direction do we want to move in in Berkeley?  

Back to the 1950s, where we accommodated the car at the expense of everything else, or into the next century where we work together to create viable, safe transportation alternatives to the automobile?  

At the recent Transportation, Housing, and the Environment Election Forum, which the Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley Coalition co-sponsored – each candidate’s answer to the question “What is the worst thing you do in your daily life for the environment?” was the same: “I drive my car.” The candidates seemed to be seriously apologetic, but also conveyed the message that it was a innocent enough vice, because after all everyone else is driving everywhere too.  

The city has been right on in supporting eco-friendly businesses like Pedal Express to reduce reliance on the automobile.  

I hope that Berkeley will extend this common sense to the matter at hand.  

It would be great if the city did a pilot program on “Parking Cash-Out for Employees.” Each month, employees would be given a check from the city which equals the amount the city incurs providing their usual parking spaces. Then the employees have the option of using the money to pay for parking, or for using the money to buy a bus pass, or for pocketing the money and deciding to walk or bike instead.  

Parking Cash-Out opportunities get the message across that parking is not free, and let employees make informed decisions about how they want to get to work.  

In addition, the city could implement a “Guaranteed Ride Home” program which involves contracting with a local taxi service to ensure employees can catch a taxi if necessary.  

The Daily Planet article also has Mayor Dean stating that no city has ever achieved a 100 percent transit policy. I don’t think that is what Kriss Worthington was proposing. There is a lot of middle ground between providing free parking for all city employees and insisting that 100 percent of employees will take transit to work.  

As far Mayor Dean’s concerns for women employees who “will have to walk many blocks in the dark” – I was also a little perplexed. Most city employees work near downtown Berkeley, correct? Downtown Berkeley is pretty darn safe to walk through (except for the speeding deadly cars), in my opinion – and one never has to walk too many blocks to get to the bus stop or BART station.  

I personally feel much more in danger walking in a parking garage at night than I do on the street or riding my bike.  

I support the Maio/Spring/Worthington alternative to wait for the release of the Trafic Demand Management Study on Tuesday’s council agenda. 

I encourage any other citizens who share my feelings to attend next Tuesday’s Council meeting.  

Sarah Syed  

Berkeley 

Safe Routes to School Project Director  

Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley Coalition  

Measure Y could cost owners $4,500 to go home again 

Editor: 

Thank you for covering Berkeley’s District 2 candidates (Oct. 16). 

In the past few months our organization has reached out to City Councilmembers to seek common ground, mend fences and attempt a dialogue that could lead to a solution to Berkeley’s housing crisis. 

We contacted Councilmember Margaret Breland, the District 2 incumbent, currently being challenged by moderate Betty Hicks. At the meeting with Ms. Breland, I first raised my concern about the results of rent control on Berkeley’s housing stock.  

Ms. Breland commented: “I thought rent control was over.” I was shocked to hear this from a member of the City Council, given that they were soon to decide the fate of what became to be known as Measure Y, a draconian modification of Berkeley’s eviction ordinance. 

Here we have a city council person who is totally unaware of the current status of a law she is about to amend. As expected, Ms. Breland aligned herself with the BCA and cast one of the decisive votes placing Measure Y on the November ballot.  

Measure Y should deeply concern all Berkeley voters. It is billed as a device to protect elderly and disabled tenants from being driven out of their homes. the Measure paradoxically contains a loophole exempting owners from this portion of the measure if they own three or fewer units. Clearly these would be the most desirable properties as risk for owner occupancy.  

Measure Y gives no eviction protection to elderly and disabled tenants living in buildings of fewer than four units. 

However, this provision was no concession to small property owners. It was not part of the original text considered by the council. 

Measure Y covers all owner occupancy evictions, not just those in rent controlled buildings.  

What if you went on vacation, a sabbatical, or took a temporary job out of the area, rented your home to a young able bodied person who refused to leave when you returned? Under Measure Y you could be liable for paying the tenant a $4,500 relocation fee; and if you lost the owner move-in eviction action on a technicality, you would be compelled by Measure Y to pay the tenant’s attorney’ fees as well. 

You would not be awarded anything if you prevailed, however. 

Measure Y’s prohibitions, penalties, and legal traps to thwart owners to move into their own properties are not targeted at big landlords.  

They affect middle income folks - many of them tenants themselves - who cannot afford the price of a single family home; people like teachers, policemen and firemen who must settle for purchasing a small rental, occupy a unit and have the rents from the other apartments help out with the mortgage.  

Measure Y is specifically designed to prevent middle income renters from becoming homeowners in today’s overheated economy. 

Berkeley does not need laws that further deplete its housing stock and put people in the streets; it must strive to find inclusive solutions to its housing problems that involve the entire community.  

It also needs leaders that are well versed with the issues and are creative enough to chart a course for Berkeley that works, rather than emulating San Francisco’s failed housing policies. 

Robert Cabrera 

President 

Berkeley Property Owners Association 

(CHECK LAST LETTER) 

Subject:  

letter to the editor 

Date:  

Thu, 19 Oct 2000 10:21:59 -0700 

From:  

“Steve Finacom”  

To:  

opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.net 

Dear Editor: 

I was disappointed to read that Berkeley police officers attending a City 

Council meeting criticised Carrie Sprague for her efforts to enforce 

residential permit parking in the MAGNA neighborhood next to City Hall. 

I’ve always had the impression that one of the unspoken rules of American 

law enforcement is to avoid publicly attacking citizens by name (convicted 

felons an exception). Confidence in the police depends on both 

presumption and evidence that they will act impartially. When individual 

police officers publicly criticize even one citizen who has broken no laws, 

that faith is undermined. It’s worse when that citizen is actually trying 

to get the City to enforce one of its own laws. 

I’m also personally sympathetic to the frustrations of the MAGNA residents 

like Sprague, since my own Berkeley neighborhood is similarly sandwiched 

between large traffic-attracting facilities--in our case, a public school, 

and a hospital--which attract endless numbers of staff and visitors who 

“must” drive, and who circle the adjoining residential streets looking for 

parking. 

That said, it’s probably a good thing that the City Council is hearing 

complaints about parking from public employees because it brings home the 

reality facing all public agencies in Berkeley. The Council is quick to 

criticize the University and other big local employers for traffic and 

parking impacts, but if statistics were to be calculated on who drives to 

work and who doesn’t, City employees--and perhaps even a majority of City 

Councilmembers--may be among the least “transit friendly” groups of 

commuters in Berkeley. 

I saw this attitude first hand while working on a committee helping to plan 

future renovations to Civic Center Park. From the point of view of almost 

all of the citizen participants, removal of the little City Council / City 

staff parking lot just behind City Hall was an unquestionable benefit for 

the community. Land would be added to the park, and the park and City Hall 

would be reconnected. If the parking “needed” to be replaced, it could be 

done in the City-owned garage half a block up the street. But time and 

again some City staff kept raising the issue of carving out a new parking 

lot from another part of the green space--parking that would have been 

reserved for free for Councilmembers and senior City employees. 

In this area the City could learn something from the University, which has 

consistently pursued policies to reduce single-driver commuting. You 

almost literally have to win a Nobel Prize to get a free parking space on 

campus (in contrast, I’ve been told that many City employees have free 

parking guaranteed by their union contracts). Nearly two decades ago the 

University pioneered the Berkeley TRiP program which promotes and provides 

transit alternatives. Parking spaces are set aside for carpools and van 

pools. Recently, the University and students negotiated with AC Transit to 

arrange the “Class Pass” which allows students to ride the bus without 

paying fare, in exchange for a surcharge on their registration fees. 

Thousands of students now regularly use that option. 

Even with transit options, however, there will still remain an issue of 

public employees who have to drive because they have odd schedules or live 

in distant places not well served by public transit or have physical 

disabilities. That’s a legitimate need. One way to address it would be 

through the development of affordable housing in Berkeley for those who 

work in public agencies. 

The City could take the lead in this area. In downtown Berkeley the City 

owns two large tracts of land--the surface parking lots at Oxford and 

Allston, and on Berkeley Way between Shattuck and Milvia. Instead of 

emphasizing the income that it could earn by leasing those sites to private 

developers to build for-profit housing above parking, perhaps the City 

should look at ways to develop the housing components on those sites as 

affordable apartments and limited-equity condominiums that would rent or 

sell to public employees like police officers and firefighters and public 

school teachers who can’t currently afford to live close to their 

workplaces. (This could be similar to UC’s University Terrace faculty and 

staff condominiums which are, ironically, located just a few blocks west of 

City Hall). 

This is not a new concept. Many public agencies in the Bay Area are going 

in this direction. Every month I read of another school district or 

municipality looking at ways to develop this sort of housing. Why not 

Berkeley? There are even non-profit developers, such as BRIDGE Housing, 

that specialize in affordable housing for the middle to lower income 

workforce in the Bay Area. Groups like those could be invited to Berkeley 

to help structure a program. 

How about it, City Council? Will you consider “acting locally” with the 

resources you have on hand--City owned development sites Downtown--to 

directly address affordable housing issues for those who police Berkeley’s 

streets, teach its children, maintain its parks, and staff its government 

offices? 

Sincerely, 

Steven Finacom 

2308 Russell Street 

Berkeley, California, 94705 

(510) 845-3203

Ebony Museum of Arts 

The museum specializes in the art and history of Africa.  

Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.  

30 Jack London Village, Suite 209. (510) 763-0745. 

Habitot Children’s Museum 

Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 

“Back to the Farm.”  

Ongoing 

An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels like an earthworm, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more.  

Cost: $4 adults; $6 children age 7 and under; $3 for each additional child age 7 and under.  

Monday and Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Tuesday and Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.  

647-1111 or www.habitot.org 

Judah L. Magnes Museum 

2911 Russell St.  

549-6950 

Free 

Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. 

“Telling Time: To Everything There Is A Season” 

Through May 2002.  

An exhibit structured around the seasons of the year and the seasons of life with objects ranging from the sacred and the secular, to the provocative and the whimsical. “Second Annual Richard Nagler Competition for Excellence i Jewish Photography” 

Nov. 5 - Feb. 2001. 

Featuring the work of Claudia Nierman, Jason Francisco, Fleming Lunsford, and others.  

UC Berkeley Art Museum 

2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley 

Wednesday – Sunday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Open Thursdays til 9 p.m.  

“Hans Hoffmann”  

Through Jan. 16, 2001: Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks.  

The Asian Galleries  

“Art of the Sung: Court and Monastery,” open-ended.  

A display of early Chinese works from the permanent collection.  

“Chinese Ceramics and Bronzes: The First 3,000 Years,” open-ended. 

“Works on Extended Loan from Warren King,” open-ended. 

“Three Towers of Han,” open-ended. 

$6 general; $4 seniors and students age 12 to 18; free children age 12 and under; free Thursday, 11 a.m. to noon and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

642-0808. 

UC Berkeley Museum of  

Paleontology 

Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley 

“Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing.  

A 20-foot tall, 40-foot long replica of the fearsome dinosaur. The replica is made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. 

“Pteranodon”  

A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22 to 23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. 

California Fossils Exhibit, ongoing. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

642-1821. 

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst  

Museum of Anthropology 

Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College  

Avenue, Berkeley 

“Modern Treasures from Ancient Iran,” through Oct. 29.  

This exhibit explores nomadic and town life in ancient and modern Iran as illustrated in bronze and pottery vessels, and textiles.  

“Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended.  

This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history, including the role of Phoebe Apperson Hearst as the museum’s patron, as well as the relationship of anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie to the museum. 

“Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. 

This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. 

$2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

643-7648 

Mills College Art Museum 

5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland 

“The 100 Languages of Children,” through October.  

An exhibit of art by children from Reggio Emilia, Italy. At Carnegie Building Bender Room. 

Free. Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. 

430-2164 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

“Math Rules!” Ongoing. A math exhibit of hands-on problem-solving stations, each with a different mathematical challenge. 

“Within the Human Brain” Ongoing. Visitors test their cranial nerves, play skeeball, master mazes, match musical tones and construct stories inside a simulated “rat cage” of learning  

experiments. 

“In the Dark,”through Jan. 15, 2001. Plunge into darkness and see amazing creatures that inhabit worlds without light.  

“Saturday Night Stargazing” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza.  

“Grossology,” LHS Family Halloween Party, Oct. 28, 6:30 - 9 p.m. Featuring the creation of “gross” stuff with household products and ChemMystery, a hands-on crime lab for kids.  

$12 for adults; $10 for kids 12 and under.  

Call 643-5134 for tickets  

Open daily, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

$7 for adults; $5 for children 5-18; $3 for children 3-4 

642-5132 

Holt Planetarium  

Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. 

“Moons of the Solar System,” through Dec. 10. Take a tour of the fascinating worlds that orbit Earth and other planets out to the edge of the Solar System.  

“Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18;  

$3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Centennial Drive, University of California,  

Berkeley. (510) 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu 

The Oakland Museum of  

California 

1000 Oak St., Oakland 

“Secret World of the Forbidden City” Through Jan. 24, 2001. A rare glimpse of over 350 objects which illustrate the opulence and heritage of the Chinese Imperial Court Under the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 - 1911. For this exhibit: $13 general, $10 seniors and $5 for students with ID.  

For museum: $6 general; $4 seniors and students; free children age 5 and under; second Sundays are free to all. Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.; first Friday of the month, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

(888) OAK-MUSE or www.museumca.org. 

TRAX Gallery 

1306 3rd. St., Berkeley 

Mary Law “Altered Ceramic Pots”  

through Oct. 21 

For more information or to sign up for the workshop call 526-0279 or e-mail to cone5@aol.com 

Music 

Downtown Berkeley Association 

Lunchtime Concert Series 

Every Thursday through October 

noon - 1p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

1 hour free parking available in Center Street Garage 

Oct. 26: East Bay Science & Arts Middle School will perform folk, swing and Cuban rueda dances 

Ashkenaz 

1317 San Pablo 

Oct. 27, 9 p.m., Sam Mangwana (Congolese rumba, world) 

Call TicketWeb, 594-1400 or Ashkenaz, Tuesday through Sunday during showtimes, 525-5054 

Oct. 31, 9 p.m. A Reggae Halloween Party with Ras Kidus and guests, An evening of soca, calypso and reggae music featuring Haf Breed, Jah Flyy, Pode Vill Crew and DJ Jah Bonz. $9 

924 Gilman St. 

All shows begin at 8 p.m. unless noted 

$5; $2 for a year membership 

525-9926 

Oct. 27: Elliot, The Jazz June, Lovelight SHine, Killing Independent 

Oct. 28: Haloween show includes From Ashes Arise, Born Dead Icons, Time in Malta, $5.  

Freight & Salvage Coffee House 

1111 Addison St. 

All music begins at 8 p.m. (doors open at 7:30 p.m.) 

Oct 20: The Campbell Brothers with Katie Jackson (guitar gospel music) 

Oct. 21:Dick Gaughan and Brian McNeill (Scotish traditional) 

Tickets for most shows $15 - $20 

Oct. 22: Bob Brozman and Takashi Hirayasu (slide guitar teams with Okinawan Lute master) 

Call 762-BASS or 601-TWEB for advance tickets 

For additional info call Ashkenaz showline, 548-1761 

Cal Performances 

Oct. 21, 8 p.m.: Hamza El Din (world music), $16 - $28.  

Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley (Bancroft at Telegraph) 

Oct. 29, 3 p.m.: Ian Bostridge, Tenor, performs music of Schubert and Hugo Wolf, $28 - $48.  

Nov. 5, 3 p.m.: Julia Fischer, Violinist, performs music of Tartini, Beethoven and Cesar Franck, $28 - $48.  

Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley (Bancroft at College) 

For tickets and info for these events call 642-9988 

Yoshi’s 

Oct. 23, An Evening with pianist Jon Jang to benefit the Asian Women’s Shelter of San Francisco. Call 415-751-7110 for tickets and additional information.  

Oct. 31, 8 p.m. Halloween Salsa Dance Party, With Jesus Diaz y su QBA. The dance floor will be open. $14 

Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. (510) 238-9200 or (510) 762-BASS. 

The Jazzschool/La Note 

2377 Shattuck Ave. 

Oct. 29, 4:30 p.m., Mimi Fox Trio 

$12; $10 students/seniors; $6 for Jazzschool students and children under 13 

Reservations: (510) 845-5373. 

Live Oak Concert Series 

Berkeley Art Center 

1275 Walnut St. 

Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m., Donna Lerew, violin, Skye Atman, piano perform Mozart, Shubert, Korngold and others.  

Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m., The Horizon Wind Quintet 

$10; $8 for members; $9 for students and seniors; Children under 12 admitted free 

Eli’s Mile High Club 

3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland 

(510) 655-6661 

Doors open at 8 p.m. 

Beginning Oct. 26, Funk & Soul with DJs Styles, Kendread and special guests. Ongoing Thursdays.  

Oct. 28. Halloween party featuring Takezo. Doors at 8 p.m.  

Films 

University of California,  

Berkeley Art Museum 

Pacific Film Archive 

2575 Bancroft Way 

642-1412 

“Neo-Eiga: New Japanese Cinema” 

Oct. 21, 7 p.m. : “Don’t Look Back (1999), directed by Akihiko Shiota, US premiere; 8:45 p.m. : “Sasayaki” (1999), directed by Akihiko Shiota (who will appear in person at the screening), US premiere. 

Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m. : Judah L. Magnes Museum Presents: 

International Jewish Video Awards Screening featuring “Shylock” by Pierre Lasry, “Brooklyn Trilogy” by Madeline Schwartzman, “Village of Idiots” by Eugene Fedorenko and Rose Newlove, and Arnie Lipsey’s “Almonds and Wine.”  

$7 for one film; $8.50 for double bills. UC Berkeley students are $4/$5.50. Seniors and children are $4.50/6.00  

Theater 

The Gate Theater of Dublin Present 

“Waiting for Godot” 

by Samuel Beckett 

Zellerbach Playhouse 

UC Berkeley 

Directed by Walter Asthmus 

Oct 20 & 21, 2 p.m.; Oct. 22, 3 p.m. 

Post-performance discussions Oct. 20 & 22 

$34 - $48 

Call 642-9988 for tickets  

“The Green Bird”  

by Carlo Gozzi 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre 

2025 Addison St. 

Adapted by Theatre de la Jeune Lune and directed by Dominique Serrand.  

“The Green Bird” runs through Oct. 27. For tickets contact the box office at 845-4700 

“The Philanderer”  

by George Bernard Shaw 

Berkeley City Club 

2315 Durant Ave. 

Performed by the Aurora Theatre company, “The Philanderer” takes on the challenging and often humorous exploration of gender roles and the separations that exist between the sexes. 

Tickets for preview showings are sold at $26. Showtimes run Wednesday through Saturday through October 15 at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees show at 2 p.m., plus selected Sunday evenings at 7 p.m. Admission for regular performances is $30. Student discounts are available. For tickets and information call 843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org. 

Impact Theatre Presents: 

“Impact Briefs 4: Impact Smackdown!” 

Oct. 20 - Nov. 18 

Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.  

$10, Students $5 

Call 464-4468 for tickets & reservations 

La Val’s Subterraniean  

1834 Euclid 

“Fanny at Chez Panisse” 

Julie Morgan Theatre 

2640 College Ave., Berkeley 

Musical based on the book with opening proceeds going to the Verde Partnership Garden in Richmond. 

Through Oct. 29 

Runs Wednesday - Sunday, 7 p.m.  

$26 - 34  

1-888-FANNY06 

“Moonlight”  

by Harold Pinter 

A Last Planet Theatre production 

Potrero Hill Playhouse 

953 De Haro 

San Francisco 

Pinter’s most recent play features a man named Andy who is dying and his wife, Bel, who can’t get their two sons to pay them a visit. A story of infidelity, sibling rivalry, marital combat and moonlight and memory.  

Runs Thursday - Saturday, through Oct. 28. All shows at 8:30 p.m. No show Oct. 26.  

$20 opening night, $10-15 regular run, $5 preview 

More info and tickets: 845-2687 

Berkeley Rep School of Theatre 

“Sundiata” 

Martin Luther King, Jr. High School 

1781 Rost St.  

The world of premiere of Edward Mast’s tale of Djata, a handicapped boy who discovers he is the lost son of the murdered king of the Mali Empire. As the empire’s last hope, he is called upon to reclaim his heritage as the Lion King.  

Nov, 4, Noon 

Free to the public, but reservations are encouraged. 

Call 647-2972  

“Dinner With Friends” 

by Donald Margulies 

Nov. 10 through Jan 5, 2001 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre 

2025 Addison St.  

845-4700, www.berkeleyrep.org 

Dance 

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company  

“You Walk?” 

Oct. 27-28, 8 p.m. 

$20 - $42 

“Past Forward”  

White Oak Dance Project Present:  

Nov. 1 - 4, 8 p.m.  

Mikhail Baryshnikov and company celebrating the influence of post-modern choreographers.  

$36 - $60  

Zellerbach Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Call for tickets, 642-9988 or try TicketWeb.com 

Exhibits 

Berkeley Art Center 

“Ethnic Notions: Black Images in the White Mind,''  

Through Nov. 12. An exhibit by Janette Faulkner exploring racial stereotypes in commercial imagery. Free. Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Live Oak Park, 1275 Walnut St., Berkeley. (510) 644-6893 

California College of Arts and Crafts  

Free. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Oliver Art Center, 5212 Broadway, Oakland. 594-3712 

Kala Gallery 

Kala Art Institute 1999 Fellowship Awards Exhibition Part II through Oct. 31. Features work by Margaret Kessler, Barbara Milman, Michele Muennig, and David Politzer.  

Tuesday through Friday, Noon - 5 p.m. or by appointment. 1060 Heinz Ave. Call 549-2977. 

Berkeley Historical Society  

“Berkeley’s Ethnic Heritage.” An overview of the rich cultural diversity of the city and the contribution of individuals and minority groups to it’s history and development.  

Thursday through Saturday, 1 – 4 p.m. Admission free.  

1931 Center St.  

Call 848-0181 

Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery 

Paintings by Timothy Buckwalter, Hilary Harkness, and Jerry W. King, Through Oct. 28. 

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.  

942 Clay St., Oakland. Call 625-1830 for more info. 

Pro Arts Gallery 

Early Bird Holiday Art Fest. Oct. 25 - Nov. 11. Shop early for unique gifts made by local artists. Free opening reception, Oct. 28, 1 - 4 p.m. featuring live music and artist demonstrations.  

Gallery hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.  

461 Ninth St., Oakland. Call 763-9425  

Ames Gallery 

“Left Coast Legends: California Masters of Visionary, Self-taught, and Outsider Art,” featuring the work of Dwight Mackintosh, Alex Maldonado, A.G. Rizzoli, Jon Serl, and Barry Simons, Through Dec. 2.  

2661 Cedar St., Call for more info: 845-4949 

Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery 

Alan Leon: Hebrew Calligraphy and Illuminations, Nov. 1 - Dec. 15. Opening reception, Nov. 4, 1 - 3 p.m.  

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Thursday, 1 - 7 p.m.; Saturday, Noon - 4 p.m. and by appointment.  

3023 Shattuck Ave., Call 548-9286 x307 for more info 

The Oakland Museum of California 

“La Flor y la Calavera: Altars and Offerings for the Days of the  

Dead,” through Nov. 26.  

The 7th annual exhibit in observance of Dias de los Muertos featuring ofrendas, altars and artworks created by artists, community groups and students in observance of Mexico’ s Day of the Dead. $6 general; $4 seniors and students; free children age 5 and under; second Sundays are free to all. Tuesday through Thursday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.; first Friday of the month, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 1000 Oak St., Oakland.  

(888) OAK-MUSE or www.museumca.org 

Readings 

Rhyme and Reason Poetry Series 

Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive 

2621 Durant Ave. 

2nd and 4th Sundays of each month. 

Includes featured readers and open mike poetry. Free 

2 p.m. sign-up. Program runs from 2:30 - 4 p.m. 

Oct. 29: Fernando Brito, Lara Dale 

234-0727 

Holloway Poetry Reading Series 

8p.m., Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall 

For more information call 653-2439 

Nov. 1: John Yau and Garrett Caples, books include “Forbidden Entries” and “My Symptoms” 

Nov. 7: Marie Howe and Brian Glaser, “The Good Thief” and “What the Living Do” 

Cody’s Books 

2454 Telegraph Ave., 845-7852  

& 1730 Fourth St., 559-9500 

Telegraph events (all begin at 7:30 p.m): 

Oct. 21, 3 p.m., Dale Hope discusses “The Aloha Shirt-Spirit of the Islands.” 

Oct. 23, Paisley Rekdal reads from “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In.” 

Oct. 24, Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair discuss “Al Gore: A User’s Manual.” 

Fourth St. events: 

Lunch Poems: A Noontime Poetry Reading Series 

Morrison Room, Doe Library 

UC Berkeley 

12:10 - 12:50 p.m.  

Call 642-0137 

Under the direction of Professor Robert Hass, this is a series of events on the first Thursday of each month. Free.  

Nov. 2: Goh Poh Seng  

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National  

Laboratory 

Scientists and engineers guide visitors through the research areas of the laboratory, demonstrating emerging technology and discussing the research’s current and potential applications. A Berkeley lab tour usually lasts two hours and includes visits to several research areas. Popular tour sites include the Advanced Light Source, The National Center for Electron Microscopy, the 88-Inch Cyclotron, The Advanced Lighting Laboratory, and The Human Genome Laboratory. Reservations required at least two weeks in advance of tour. 

Free. University of California, Berkeley. 

486-4387 

Berkeley City Club Tours 

Guided tours through Berkeley’s City Club, a landmark building designed by architect Julia Morgan, designer of Hearst Castle. 

$2. The fourth Sunday of every month except December, between noon to 4 p.m.  

2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. 

848-7800 

Golden Gate Live Steamers 

Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size, run along a half mile of track in Tilden Regional Park. The small trains are owned and maintained by a non-profit group of railroad buffs who offer rides.  

Free. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park, Berkeley.  

486-0623  

Oakland Historic walking tours 

Runs through October.  

The tours cover downtown Oakland and its historic waterfront. All tours begin promptly at 10 a.m. and last between an hour and an hour and a half.  

Free. Call for reservations. Oakland. (510) 238-3234. 

University of California at Berkeley Botanical Garden 

The gardens have displays of exotic and native plants. 

Botanical Garden Tours, Saturday and Sunday, 1:30 p.m. Meet at the Tour Orientation Center for a free docent tour. $3 general; $2 seniors; $1 children; free on Thursday. Daily, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Botanical Garden, Centennial Drive, behind Memorial Stadium, a mile below the Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley. (510) 643-2755 or www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden/ 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tours 

Oct. 22 - University Avenue Indian Business Community led by Kirpal & Neelum Khanna 

Nov. 5 - What’s Happening Downtown? led by Debbie Badhia 

More info call 848-0181 

Early one morning in May, Leo Stegman, an AmeriCorps volunteer, was resting on a bench in Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Park. He was waiting for a nearby agency that serves low income and homeless people to open up so that he could distribute fliers about a job training program. 

Stegman never made it to the office. Minutes before it opened, he was arrested by Berkeley police.  

An officer “came up to me and he said ‘No sleeping in the park,’” said Stegman. “He asked me my name and I said, ‘For what? Am I being detained or arrested?’ He said ‘I want to know.’” 

But Stegman knew his rights. “Since I’m a paralegal and I have some understanding of the law, I said ‘I don’t have anything to say to you, we have nothing to talk about,’” Stegman said. The officer continued to question Stegman, insisting that he tell him his name. Then he arrested Stegman for resisting, delaying or obstructing a police officer in the official performance of his duty. 

Stegman, who is black, thinks he was a victim of racial profiling. “You catch a lot of African-American men being stopped under very tenuous circumstances,” he said. “If you fail the attitude test, the incident escalates.” Stegman calls his case of injustice merely an “inconvenience.” He said that many incidents with police quickly turn from verbal harassment to physical assault. 

Berkeley police did not return calls for comment. 

This Sunday, Stegman will join thousands of people at a protest against police abuse. The march and rally will take place in San Francisco’s Mission district. For the fifth year in a row, October 22 is the national day of protest “to stop police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of a generation.” 

Trac Brennan, of the October 22 Coalition, said the day has become a rallying point for addressing injustice in law enforcement. “It’s a powerful day of expression of people’s outrage,” she said. “We want to see change.” Brennan sees police brutality as a unifying issue. “This is one of the many types of injustice in the country, but it’s one that can bring together people of different political persuasions,” she said. “Anyone who stands up against any type of repression is going to encounter police brutality sooner or later.” 

Though the number of people killed by Berkeley police is relatively low, lawyers, activists and victims of police abuse maintain that Berkeley police engage in excessive force and racial profiling.  

John Burris is an Oakland lawyer who represents victims of police abuse. He has handled many cases against the Berkeley Police Department. Burris said that people of color are overwhelmingly targeted by police. “It’s always been a feeling in the African-American community that police have treated them in a discriminatory fashion,” he said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t get a call from someone who’s been brutalized by police. The problem is widespread wherever there are officers policing African-American or Hispanic communities.” 

Danielle Storer, of Berkeley CopWatch, said that communities need to make police accountable for their actions. “It’s really a vital issue for security and democracy,” she said. “Police (should be) controlled by elected officials and not by themselves.” 

Barbara Attard, an officer at the Berkeley Police Review Commission – a city agency that investigates complaints of police abuse – said that Berkeley’s police department is less abusive than those in other Bay Area cities such as Oakland and San Francisco. 

“The fact that there was just one officer-involved shooting in nine years is significant. The numbers (in Berkeley) are low, even for general use of force,” she said. 

Attard said the Berkeley Police Review Commission receives about 50 complaints a year for its 200 officers, while San Francisco averages about 1,000 complaints a year and has about 2,000 officers.  

Attard also said that the number of cases that go to the Berkeley Police Review Commission is only half of the total number of complaints filed with the internal affairs office. In 1999 Berkeley’s internal affairs office received 117 complaints of police abuse.  

Formed in 1973, Berkeley’s Police Review Commission is the oldest civilian oversight committee in the United States. Attard said that most of the cases the commission receives now are complaints of racial profiling. Attard calls the Berkeley review process “very important.”  

She said, “This is the one place where anyone from the public can observe, the one place where complainants can question the officer involved.” 

Brennan of the Oct. 22 Coalition said the resident review boards are not an effective way to curb police abuse. “My experience is that they serve as a rubber stamp for police brutality,” she said. “It channels anger but fundamentally won’t change anything because they don’t have hiring and firing power.” 

Storer said review boards need to be well funded.  

“When the police department budget increases, so should the civilian review board’s. If they’re getting more cops, we should get more investigators,” she said. 

Storer also maintains that each person in a community can help curb police violence. “Everyone should stop and watch when they see the police. If everyone is involved and everyone is a witness, that will be a deterrent to police abuse,” she said. 

Burris said the only way to combat police abuse is to create a system of discipline. “Officers need to be held accountable for their misconduct and be effectively and efficiently punished,” he said. 

INFO BOX: 

· Sunday October 22nd: National Day of Protest 

· Events in San Francisco: 

· 11 am protest at 24th and Mission 

· noon march 

· 1-5 pm rally at Dolores Park, with speeches by 

victims of police brutality and family members of 

those who have been killed by police. Also, theatrical 

and musical performances. 

· Wear black.  

· More information: 415-864-5153 or 510-464-4563 

After 20 years packaging chocolates at See’s Candies Ltd. in South San Francisco, Maria Teresa Rubio wants a pension she can live on and a guarantee that she won’t have to work more than 40 hours a week.  

She and four other factory workers passed out leaflets at the Berkeley’s See’s store on Shattuck Avenue for the second day Thursday. Workers at See’s South San Francisco and Burlingame factories have been on strike since Sept. 21.  

“We’re all together,” said Rubio, who came to picket on her day off from a part-time job she began Monday.  

The See’s company says candy is being made and distributed as usual. “We do not foresee any problems in providing product to our customers either now or in the upcoming holiday season,” See’s wrote in a press release. A small staff of replacement workers is working in the factories. 

Gretel Duong, manager at the Berkeley See’s store for 14 years, said she doesn’t have her usual stock. “We’re not getting everything we usually get.”  

She said she doesn’t have enough boxed chocolates.  

“And the candy is not coming from South City. It’s coming from L.A.,” she said.  

Duong also said only about 280 customers entered the store on Wednesday, a 20 percent decrease from the usual 350 customers. The picket was only half the day, so many of the customers – and those picking up free samples – did not cross the picket line. 

Other outlets, such as the wholesale store in San Leandro, have lost even more customers, Duong said.  

The strike is See’s first in 79 years of operation. The company’s contract with Local 125 workers expired last July. Negotiations between See’s officials and Local 125 broke down soon thereafter.  

Federal mediator Ruth Carpenter has been appointed to help find a resolution, but no negotiations are currently underway. 

See’s President Charles N. Huggins did not return repeated phone calls from a reporter. Nor did See’s Human Resources Director Donna Arevalo. 

According to the company’s statement workers are well-paid, noting they are eligible to receive $12.47 an hour after 800 hours of work. But Randy Roark, a spokesman for Local 125, said many See’s employees work only at holiday rush times, so it could take years to build up 800 hours. 

The statement from See’s said a four-day, 10-hour-a-day work week will help it to operate “most efficiently.” But workers want guarantees that they will not be forced to work longer than 40 hours a week under the 10-hour-a-day plan, Roark said. 

Over the summer See’s increased senior workers’ wages 50 cents, to $15 an hour. Starting salaries went up 75 cents, to $6.50 an hour. But Rubio and the other women protesting said no one can support a family on $6.50 an hour. “It’s not enough,” Rubio said. 

Workers are not accorded senior status until they clock 1,000 hours in a 12-month period. “I have a friend who’s worked there 10 or 12 years and doesn’t have medical insurance,” Rubio said.  

The South San Francisco factory is See’s main plant, producing 60 percent of all See’s candy. It employs 300 permanent workers a year, with another 300 seasonal hires. Women, mostly Asian American and Latina, form 80 percent of the Bay Area factory workers. 

After a month on strike, Rubio worries about how she will continue to pay rent and support her four children. “I need my job,” said Rubio. 

Some 1,000 high school students from 38 cities in Northern California today attended a youth empowerment forum, making their voices heard on the issues of the day. 

Hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union at the University of California at Berkeley, the forum gave students – most of whom are below voting age – a chance to speak out on Proposition 38, the school voucher initiative, and the upcoming presidential election.  

Shayna Galender, event coordinator and first-year student at Oakland’s Mills College, said the teens were united in their opposition to the ballot initiative that would give parents $4,000 state vouchers to send their children to private schools. 

“The youth voice is in consensus against the proposition, which would tear students out of public schools,” Galender said. 

“Many spoke today about not wanting kids to be turned into dollar signs.” 

The participants called on the government to provide more funding for public schools, instead of making them compete with private institutions, some of which have discriminatory application processes, Galender said. 

Although teens are often characterized as apathetic when it comes to voting, those who participated today are everything but, Galender asserted. However, she added that many are wary of the two-party system and looking for alternatives.  

“They are disillusioned,” Galender said, “but not apathetic.” 

This is the 10th year that the ACLU has held the event, which last year focused on voter-approved Proposition 21, which lets prosecutors decide whether to charge juveniles as adults.  

The day-long event has workshops, performances and presentations aimed at informing the participants about their rights. 

Also discussed today were the role of gay clubs in schools, and the targeting of certain groups of students by school officials after the Columbine school slayings. One workshop taught participants about their rights in confrontations with police.

SACRAMENTO — Then-Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush abused his discretion and may have broken the law in his handling of several settlements with insurers, a state audit released Thursday says. 

Quackenbush reached dozens of settlements with insurance companies accused of wrongdoing rather than fining them, and may have broken the law by agreeing to keep some of the settlement terms confidential, the Bureau of State Audits report says. 

“These practices misled the public,” the auditors said. “The department prevented policyholders and consumers from obtaining critical informatnt Insurance Commissioner Harry Low said Thursday that the state will cover the attorney bills Quackenbush accumulated during civil investigations of his activities by the attorney general and Legislature. 

Low said Quackenbush would have to tap his own pocketbook to cover any legal fees if he is charged with a crime. 

“The department will not provide any present or former employee with a criminal defense,” Low said. 

So far, the Insurance Department has received just over $300,000 in bills from attorneys for Quackenbush and other department officials stemming from the civil probes, department spokesman Scott Edelen said. 

He said department officials couldn’t guess how much the ultimate total would be, but he said the civil investigations “seem to have mostly concluded.” 

The Legislature’s inquiries focused on his decision to let a half-dozen insurers accused of mishandling claims filed after the 1994 Northridge earthquake escape up to $3 billion in potential penalties by giving about $12 million to a fund he created. 

Quackenbush was accused of using about $6 million of that on ads featuring him and on other spending that benefited him politically, rather than on the earthquake research and consumer aid the fund was supposed to finance. 

The Bureau of State Audits said it looked at 96 agreements that Quackenbush reached with insurers between Jan. 1, 1996 and May 31, 2000 to settle alleged violations of the insurance code. 

Some of the early settlements included fines, cease-and-desist orders and “outreach payments” from insurers to nonprofit organizations. 

Starting in 1997, the department “began a trend of negotiating away its enforcement powers on particular cases,” the report said. 

It also increased the use of outreach payments and reduced the use of fines. 

In 1997, outreach payments amounted to 60 of the total of fines and outreach payments. By 1999, they made up 87 percent, the auditors said. 

A 1997 memo from two department attorneys indicates the increased use of outreach payments was a “deliberate attempt to circumvent the state’s fiscal controls,” the audit said. 

The attorneys concluded that state law requires legislative approval for the department to spend money derived from reimbursements and fines. 

To get around that requirement, the attorneys recommended that the settlements involve direct payments from the insurers to the nonprofits. 

The attorney general’s office issued an opinion in July that said the commissioner could include payments to a nonprofit organization as part of a settlement but the money has to be used in a way that’s related to the violation. 

Quackenbush, who moved to Hawaii, has said he is innocent of any wrongdoing. 

State lawmakers dropped their investigations after Quackenbush announced his resignation. State and federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into the matter. No charges have been filed. 

Other findings by state auditors include: 

— Quackenbush allowed insurers to draft some settlements. 

— Keeping some provisions of settlements secret prevented insurance regulators in other states from finding out about unfair practices or code violations committed by the companies. 

— Allowing insurers to make payments directly to nonprofits prevents the departments from determining if the correct amounts are paid. 

The report recommends several changes in department operations, including a requirement that companies that commit serious violations be fined and issued a cease-and-desist order. 

Auditors also said the department should take other steps to improve its enforcement actions, including setting up an integrated tracking system and promptly assigning and resolving open cases. 

Low said he would implement the recommendations. 

He also said that he would abide by an earlier decision by acting Commissioner Clark Kelso, who served between Quackenbush’s resignation and Gov. Gray Davis’ appointment of Low, not to pay Quackenbush’s expenses from the Fair Political Practices Commission’s inquiry into the timing of insurer contributions to Quackenbush’s campaign. 

——— 

On the Net: 

Read the audit at http://www.bsa.ca.gov/bsa/index.html 

When it’s time for some interior decorating in your period home, think paint. Not only is interior painting an easy way to make a room look clean and fresh, it’s relatively inexpensive too.  

Thanks to the many fine companies that offer historical paint lines, old-house owners won’t sacrifice authenticity when making this choice. 

Of course, like everything else, paint and the way it’s made has changed over the years – for the better. Some paint companies base their historical paint lines on documentary research.  

Usually this includes old color cards, product information and books. Some go a step further and base a historical paint color on physical research conducted on existing period buildings.  

Layer after layer of old paint is carefully removed until the original coating is found.  

Samples are taken of this original coating and through laboratory analysis a reproduction color, based on its pigment, is duplicated in a modern paint. 

You must remember, though, that our tastes today aren’t necessarily the same as those of our ancestors.  

With this in mind, some companies have modified period colors to appeal to the modern eye. Unfortunately, many suppliers don’t tell you when they’ve done this, so if you’re striving for a museum-like reproduction in your home, you’ll have to study the color cards carefully. If not, these slight adaptations shouldn’t matter. 

Paint has changed through the ages. Prior to 1700, whitewash was a popular interior paint used in the Colonies.  

An inexpensive and easily available mixture of slaked lime and water, it resembled liquid plaster. (You can still find whitewash paints in some historical lines.)  

Easy to use, whitewash was a way to make things look clean and neat. One problem with whitewash, though, was its impermanence.  

It didn’t last long and washed off easily with water. 

Another early paint that goes back to the founding of this country is milk paint. Often preferred for interior work because it didn’t have an unpleasant odor – like the also available oil-based paints – milk, as its name implies, was used as the water and binder. 

No matter what type of paint you’re talking about, if it was made before the onset of the commercial paint industry (around 1860-1870), it was hand-mixed. So you didn’t see the uniform consistency that we take for granted today – it had a different texture and was a bit streaky. 

The coloring agents or pigments used in early paints were largely earth-based. For example, some reds came from iron oxide, yellows from ocher, black from lamp black, and blues from cobalt. Because of this you never got the same color twice. 

So a painter had to prepare a big enough batch of paint to complete the job on hand to ensure uniformity of color. Many old-house restorers long for the rather uneven look of old, milk-painted walls.

LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of airliners headed to or from the Southwest were grounded Thursday because of repeated failures of air traffic control radar, leaving airports gridlocked and thousands of passengers stranded or delayed. 

“I’ve got a grandma dying in New Mexico and I can’t get there,” said a frustrated Davis Hill of Boise, Idaho, as he waited for a connecting flight at Los Angeles International Airport. 

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jerry Snyder said a “national ground stop” was ordered after the computer in southern California handling air traffic control radar failed for a second time.  

The order meant airliners bound for the Southwest were stopped from taking off at their originating point. 

A backup system took over and there were no safety problems for aircraft in the air, Snyder said. Controllers at the Los Angeles Center, where the failure occurred, guide flights over a 100,000-square-mile area from Nevada and Utah out to sea 250 miles. 

The radar failure was the result of a computer software upgrade Wednesday night. 

“When the systems were being brought back up on line, it failed. It’s not accepting the software,” Snyder said. “It’s worked for 17 other systems but it’s not working in this one.” 

There were tense moments for FAA controllers. At one point, there was no more room on the ground at Los Angeles International Airport and flights from Australia, for instance, were sent to Las Vegas. 

“It’s been pretty crazy,” said Garth Koleszar, local vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. “Every flight in and out of our sector was affected.” 

Asked if there were any safety concerns, he said: “Any time you use a system that isn’t the best that we have, I feel there is a degradation.” 

The backup system doesn’t have the automatic feature that passes off planes from one regional controller to another, and requires a controller to manually type the flight information and pass along information by telephone. 

The first main computer outage lasted from 6:50 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., and led to what was called a Tier 1 ground stop, meaning Southern California-bound aircraft west of the Mississippi couldn’t take off. 

The computer went down again at 9 a.m. and a Tier 2 ground stop was ordered, halting planes on the ground nationwide. 

The computer was restored again at 11:15 a.m. using the old software program, and the FAA ordered the Tier 2 ground stop lifted incrementally throughout the day to meter the flow of aircraft. 

The radar system at the FAA’s Los Angeles Center, 60 miles north of downtown in the Mojave Desert community of Palmdale. 

“This was a standard upgrade. It was new software. Something is corrupting the system,” Snyder said, adding, “There was nothing wrong with the old software.” 

Southwest Airlines canceled 70 flights, airline spokesman Melanie Jones said from Dallas. Other flights experienced delays of up to four hours. 

San Francisco International Airport spokesman Ron Wilson said about 20 flights were grounded there during the first outage. 

United Airlines canceled at least 32 flights into and out of San Francisco.

SACRAMENTO — Federal and state environmental officials announced a settlement that could generate more than $800 million in new cleanup money for the Iron Mountain Mine Superfund site near Redding, home to what scientists say is the world’s worst water. 

The settlement with Aventis CropSciences USA Inc. – formerly known as Rhone Poulenc Inc. – will ensure that 95 percent of the highly acidic water coming from the defunct copper mine will be treated before it reaches the top of the Sacramento River system, said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials. 

The site is one of the nation’s most toxic Superfund sites. It is also home of the world’s most acidic water, according to scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey. 

“As recently as five years ago, this site dumped the equivalent of 150 tanker cars full of toxic metals into the Sacramento River each day during winter storms,” said Felicia Marcus, regional EPA administrator in San Francisco. 

Aventis, which is based in Stasbourg, France, has agreed to pay $160 million now for an insurance policy that will pay up to $300 million in cleanup costs over the next 30 years if it is needed, plus a final $514 million payment in 2030. 

In addition, the company has agreed to drop efforts to recover $150 million it already has spent on cleanup since 1989, said Tom Bloomfield, an EPA attorney. 

“When you add in the past costs they won’t seek to recover, the settlement approaches $1 billion,” Bloomfield said. It is the largest settlement in the EPA region that includes Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada, he said. 

With the agreement, the company is released from future liability, Bloomfield said. 

The Iron Mountain Mine, located about three hours north of Sacramento in an unpopulated area, was an active copper mine for more than 100 years and contains miles of tunnels, said Bloomfield. 

“If you took all the buildings south of Market Street in San Francisco, they would fit within the area that was mined out below Iron Mountain,” he said. “It was a big operation.” 

Those tunnels expose iron sulfate in the pyrite deposit below the mountain, which reacts with oxygen in the air and water to form sulfuric acid, scientists say. 

The neon green water that flows out of the mine’s portals has a pH level of 0.5 – the most acidic water found on the planet. Scientists say the closest previous measurements were found in volcanic lakes, but those were created naturally, while the mine’s water is the result of mining. 

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts discovered earlier this year that the mine is also host to a microbe that thrives in the highly acidic conditions. 

Scientists say the microbe speeds up the dissolution of iron in the water, compounding the pollution problems.

GLENDALE — Many of the men dressed in suits and hunched over backgammon boards at the Victory senior center were not registered to vote a month ago. Neither were the women chatting in Armenian. Most are now. 

As swing voters in a congressional race pivotal to which party will control the next Congress, Armenians in the Los Angeles suburbs of Glendale, Burbank and Pasadena are emerging as a key political force. They are being courted aggressively by candidates — with Armenian-language ads, speeches in Armenian and appearances on Armenian cable channels — and signed up to vote in record numbers. 

“We’re taking this election very seriously,” said Agavni Baroyan, 75. “It’s a very important campaign and I think it’s very important to raise my voice.” 

Republican Rep. James E. Rogan, who became a national figure as a House manager of President Clinton’s impeachment trial, and his challenger, state Sen. Adam B. Schiff, are running the most expensive House race in history, with a combined $9.5 million raised so far. 

That means vigorously pursuing members of the area’s Armenian community, at 75,000 the largest outside Armenia itself and 8 percent of the registered voters in California’s 27th House district. 

“Democrats are for Schiff solid, Republicans are for Rogan solid, so you’re looking for niche votes,” said Jim Hayes, president of Political Data, a Burbank firm that sells voter information to candidates.  

“The Armenian community is pivotal because it doesn’t appear to have any allegiances.” 

Rogan made what many viewed as a grab for those votes recently, working with House leaders to schedule a floor vote on a resolution that would recognize as genocide the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923. 

Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were slaughtered as part of the Ottoman Empire’s campaign to force them out of eastern Turkey. The Turkish government says the death count is inflated and the people were killed as the Ottoman Empire tried to quell civil unrest. 

The Ottoman Empire became Turkey in 1923. Armenia, which borders Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran, was one of the 15 independent republics that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

The measure is of supreme importance to Armenians. It also has angered the government of Turkey, a key U.S. ally in NATO, and is vehemently opposed by the Clinton administration. 

So much so that President Clinton wrote Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., on Thursday urging him “in the strongest terms” not to bring the issue up to a vote.  

Otherwise, he said, there could be “far-reaching negative consequences for the United States” and its interests abroad. 

A Rogan campaign spokesman denied the timing of the effort was political. But both campaigns are going to lengths to reach out to Armenians.

HELENA, Mont. — A golden eagle that was kept in a small cage for 41 years, and frequently beaten, has died of a lung ailment it apparently developed during captivity. 

Henry Thomas, a falconer from Washington state, rescued the bird from its Montana captor in September and named it Star. He said the female eagle had appeared to be improving as recently as Sunday, but it was psychologically as well as physically damaged and showed little will to live. 

Thomas said the bird contracted what he thought was a cold during the 18-hour trip with him to his facility near Arlington, Wash., but it turned out to be a more serious ailment known as Asperigillosis, a mold-like infection of the lungs.  

The eagle died Tuesday night. 

“Star had become infected in the unclean cage of her prior owner, where the mold lay dormant in her lungs until stress from the interstate move activated the disease,” Thomas said. 

A medical exam just before the bird’s death revealed lung disease, brain damage, an eye injury and a poorly healed broken wing. 

Thomas said the bird’s captor took it from its nest as a fledgling in 1959.  

It was kept for 41 years in a small cage and frequently taunted and beaten. It probably acquired its fatal lung infection from unsanitary conditions of the cage, Thomas said. 

Thomas has declined to name the man who kept the bird, saying only that he lived north of Helena and that his widow gave up the eagle after her husband’s death. 

FWS agent Rick Branzel of Missoula, Mont., said golden eagles acquired after Oct. 24, 1962, are protected under the federal Eagle Protection Act. Star, captured in 1959, was not covered by the law. 

Tempers flared Tuesday night when 20 off-duty Berkeley police officers attended the City Council meeting to complain about what they said is woeful lack of parking for police department employees. 

They were responding to an item the mayor had placed on the agenda recommending that the city explore creating new parking for city employees. 

The officers, all members of the Berkeley Police Association, the department’s union, wore blue baseball caps with BPA emblazoned on the front.  

At each City Council meeting 10 members of the public are chosen by lottery to address the council for three minutes. Three BPA members were chosen. 

One officer called the city’s transit-first policy a “Polly Anna” viewpoint, then singled out an individual who lives near the police station, who has frequently complains about police employees illegally parking near her home. 

“You need to tell Carrie Sprague to take her clipboard and go home,” Randy Files, president of the BPA said during his address to the council. 

BPA members said Sprague is known to write down the license numbers of cars violating Residential Parking Permit laws near her home. Many of the cars belong to on-duty police officers. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said that for a police officer to single out a resident is inappropriate behavior. “It’s not good when the BPA muscles other people with intimidation just to get approval for something that will have serious long-term impact on the community and the environment,” he said. 

The officers said they sometimes have to walk six to eight blocks to get to work because of residential parking permit laws. The situation, they said, is especially dangerous for female employees walking to their cars after late-night shifts. 

“You give us hypocritical thanks and then you slap us in the face,” Files said, referring to the council’s praise of the police department’s handling of the looting that occurred on Telegraph Avenue early Sunday morning. 

The mayor, concerned about greater parking pressure when city employees move back into the newly retrofitted City Hall in late January, has recommended the City Council regard the matter as a priority and she wants the city manager to move expeditiously to solve the problem by determining how many new spaces would be reasonable and then trying to find them among existing parking spaces. 

Worthington said the city should take long-term impacts into consideration when deciding what to do on this issue. He said there’s a Transportation Demand Study due in several weeks and the city should wait to review it before overreacting.  

“This needs to be looked at in the whole context,” he said. “There are several dozen spaces that may solve the problem, for example the 40 spaces that Patrick Kennedy’s construction crew are using temporarily.” 

The BPA made their position on additional parking very clear at the meeting. Officer Andrew Greenwood demanded the board take immediate and decisive action about what he called an “absurd” situation. He went on to say the problem is being created by a small group of residents. “We are being pitted against a very small vocal group, maybe five people.” 

Files addressed the Council last. “You have to stop this Polly Anna viewpoint that your going to eliminate cars,” he said. “If you bury your head in the sand somebody’s going to get hurt and it will be on you.” 

Dean said the city has never had a policy of eliminating cars because there will always be a need for some people to drive.  

After Files addressed the council the BPA members left the chambers en masse. A heated verbal exchange in the hallway ensued between Sprague and several of the officers.  

After the heated argument, the BPA members, apparently taking a page from Berkeley demonstrators, marched down the stairs, chanting: “What do we want? Parking!” 

Sprague said she was shocked by the officers’ behavior. She said there’s an ongoing problem with parking in her neighborhood and it’s very difficult to get the police to enforce the existing Residential Parking Permit laws. She said parking is tough for everybody. “I come home late at night sometimes and I have to walk over a block and without a gun. (The police) have guns.” 

The mayor’s recommendation to explore building parking for city employees was removed from Tuesday’s consent calendar and will be discussed at next week’s meeting. In the meantime the City Manager’s Office is putting together a report that will attempt to determine what would be a reasonable solution to the parking problem for all city employees.  

Grace McGuire, assistant to the city manager, said there is no money in the budget for the construction of new parking facilities such as a garage and any new parking for city employees would mean taking parking from some other users. “The most likely spaces will be taken from public parking such as one of the three city-owned garages on Berkeley Way and Center and Oxford streets,” she said. 

Worthington argued that a number of organizations, including the Sierra Club, Urban Ecology and the Bicycle Friendly Berkeley Coalition opposed adding parking structures downtown. He added that he found the BPA’s chanting outside the council chambers amusing. “Usually it’s the liberals who use those tactics,” he said.

Safety problems not fixed nine years after hills fire  

The ninth anniversary of the most destructive urban/wildland forest fire in the 20th century will occur on October 20th. Just nine years ago, in 1991, the fire took 25 lives and more than 3,000 homes were lost.  

Yet, despite all the excellent measures taken by the cities of Berkeley and Oakland as well as by the East Bay Regional Parks, the potential for a similar disaster to occur is extremely high. 

Vegetation management in the Berkeley Hills is not under control. We need more fire inspections.  

In response to the 1991 Firestorm, the cities of Berkeley and Oakland set up Fire Assessment Districts, however, both have expired.  

Oakland tried to establish another, but the voters said “no”, and because of Proposition 218, Berkeley didn’t try to renew it.  

Under the Assessment District concept, much was accomplished.  

In Berkeley “green dumpsters” and “chippers” were made available to dispose of fuels which had been removed from around homes of residents living in the “High Hazard Area.” In addition, inspectors were made available by the Fire Department to inspect more than 8,000 properties.  

As long as the inspectors were available, there was effective compliance with common-sense fire prevention rules.  

However, with the loss of the inspectors, financed by the Assessment District funds, the only properties which are currently inspected are adjacent to the Buffer Zone (the fire-safety boundary between the wildland fuels and residential areas). Fire Department Inspectors are able to visit only about 1,000 homes.  

This of course, leaves about 7,000 properties uninspected except after a complaint is filed with the department. Thus, most of the 7,000 properties have not been inspected for about 3 years, and compliance is inadequate.  

Unfortunately, the fuels situation is probably much worse in the Berkeley Hills than it was in 1923 when 584 structures were destroyed within a 2-hour period on September 17th.  

Sad to say, most Berkeleyans do not view vegetation as fuels. But, ALL vegetation will burn under dry East Wind conditions which occurred in October 1991, December 1980, September 1970, and September 1923.  

Will another similar disaster strike Berkeley in the near future? The answer is YES, unless EVERY resident in the Berkeley Hills performs ALL the fuel hazard reduction which is necessary to protect his home and his neighbors from destructive fire.  

It is deplorable that compliance can’t be assured unless the property is inspected on a regular basis. Inspections can’t be assured unless “professional” Inspectors are made available through the Berkeley Fire Department.  

These inspectors, needed for the 7,000 uninspected properties, are not currently available.  

This means that additional funds are urgently needed to employ, train, and provide support for at least three full-time inspectors.  

Another weak link in the management system which protects Berkeley and Oakland residents from destructive urban/wildland fire exists in Claremont Canyon, the highly flammable boundary between the two cities.  

It is common knowledge among fire experts that it would be virtually impossible to make a stand in the canyon under dry East Wind condition.  

This places residents of both cities in jeopardy.  

Because of politics and environmental concerns, major fuel management activities in Claremont Canyon have been suspended until further notice – or until the next wildfire.  

We need more Fire Inspectors and vegetation inspections in the Berkeley/Oakland hills to prevent another major disaster such as the one which killed 25 people and destroyed more than 3,000 in 1991. We need them NOW!  

Juliann Beckendorf is vice chairperson of the Berkeley Fire Safety Commission and Carl Wilson is a member of the Berkeley Fire Safety Commission

Thursday, Oct. 19

The Promise and Perils  

of Transgenic Crops 

7:30 - 9 p.m.  

International House, Homeroom 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

A discussion with Dr. Peggy Lemaux, professor of Plant and Microbiology at UC Berkeley, of the scientific basis for biotechnology, it’s risks and benefits. 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

Candlelight Vigil For  

the Uninsured 

6 p.m.  

Steps of Sproul Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Join the American Medical Student Association, Berkeley Pre-Medical Chapter in a vigil for those without health insurance. Speakers from various medical organizations will discuss ways to improve our health care system.  

Call Chris Hamerski, 845-1607 

Berkeley Metaphysic  

Toastmasters Club 

6:15 - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Rafael Mariquez Free  

Solo Concert 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Public Library, South Branch 

1901 Russell St. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This Chilean folksinger and guitarist presents his original settings of selections by Latin American poets. 

Contact: 644-6860; TDD 548-1240 

Vocal Sauce 

Noon 

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Shattuck Ave. at Center St. 

The JazzSchool’s vocal jazz ensemble perform award-winning arrangements by Greg Murai.  

Contact Carrie Ridgeway, 549-2230 

CLGS Lavendar Lunch 

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. 

1798 Scenic Ave. 

Kyle Miura, Pacific School of Religion alumnus and Director of the GTUs Pacific and Asian-American Center for Theology and Strategies speaks on being “Queer and Asian.”  

Call 849-8239 

Performance Poetica 

7:30 p.m. 

ATA Gallery 

992 Valencia St. 

San Francisco 

Video and verse by Illinois Arts Council/Hemingway Festival poet and filmmaker Rose Virgo, with special guest Judy Irwin.  

$3  

Movie: “Intermezzo” 

with Leslie Howard 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

“Pain - Ways to Make It Easier” 

1 - 2:30 p.m. 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center 

Ashby Campus, Dining Rooms A & B 

3001 Colby 

Maggie van Staveren, LCSW, CHT and Christine Bartlett, PT, CHT will demonstrate ways to let go of pain due to arthritis, injury and illness. RSVP requested. 

Call 869-6737  

Design Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Transportation Commission 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Fair Campaign  

Practices Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

644-6380 

Friday, Oct. 20

“The Ballot Issues” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club 

2315 Durant Ave.  

Fran Packard of the League of Women Voters speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m.  

Luncheon: $11 

Call 848-3533 

Human Nature 

8:30 p.m. 

New College Cultural Center 

766 Valencia 

San Francisco 

The X-plicit Players present this idyllic nude ritual. Watch or participate: Be led blindfolded through body tunnels, into body streams while sensing psychic/body qualities through touch. Also presented on Oct. 21.  

$12 admission 

Call 415-848-1985 

Broken Spirits - Addressing Abuse 

8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church 

2201 73rd Ave. 

Oakland 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Health Ministry program presents a free workshop on the impact of domestic violence on our community.  

Call for info, 869-6763 

Opera: Don Carlos, Part 1, 1 p.m. 

Old and New Poetry with Bob Randolph, 1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 21

A Day on Mt. Tam 

9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. 

Come play and hike in San Francisco’s beloved playground. This outing is part of a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance. 

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

AHIMSA Eight  

annual Conference 

9 a.m. - 5 p.m.  

International House, Great Hall 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

The AHIMSA is a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to encourage dialogues and public forums which bridge spiritual, scientific and social issues. This years conference is titled “Violence! Scientific and Spiritual Perspectives.”  

Admission is free 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Center St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Taste a whole farmers’ market’s bounty of fall fruit varieties. 

Free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 2 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more.  

The second of three classes. 

The last is scheduled for Oct. 28 during the same timeslot. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 548-2220 x223 

— compiled by  

Chason Wainwright 

Sunday, Oct. 22

Run for Peace 

United Nations Association 

10K run and 5K run/walk 

9 a.m. Berkeley Marina 

$20 849-1752 

A Taste of the Greenbelt 

1 - 4 p.m. 

Presidio’s Golden Gate Club 

Greenbelt Alliance brings the farm to the city in this celebration of the Bay Area’s agricultural and culinary bounty. Featured are samples from over 40 local restaurants, farmers, wineries, microbreweries. Also featured are live music and local artwork. The event benefits Greenbelt Alliance’s ongoing efforts to protect Bay Area farmlands and open space.  

$45 per person 

1-800-543-GREEN, www.greenbelt.org 

An Evening with Alice Walker 

7:30 p.m.  

King Middle School  

1781 Rose St. (at Grant) 

free parking 

Join internationally loved novelist, poet and essayist Alice Walker in celebrating her new book of autobiographical stories, “The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart.” Benefits Berkeley EcoHouse and KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM.  

Tickets: $10 advance, $13 door 

Tickets available at independent bookstores 

More info: 848-6767 x609 

From Bahia to Berkeley 

11 a.m.  

Capoeira Arts Cafe 

2026 Addison St. 

A benefit brunch and auction with food, music, dance and culture to bring Brazilian folkloric dance group Nicinha Raizes from Bahia, Brazil to the Bay Area. The group will tour in January 2001.  

428-0698 

Take a Trip to the Oakland Ballet 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organized by the Senior Center to see “Glass Slippers.”  

Tickets: $6 each 

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

A Buddhist Pilgramage in India 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

June Rosenberg brings to life, through slides and lecture, her pilgrimages in India. Free. 

Call 843-6812 

University Avenue Indian Business Community 

10 a.m. - Noon 

Kirpal & Neelum Khanna, owners of the Bazaar of India, tell about the steps they took from spice and food retailing to today’s Bazaar, and the nuances and features of the Indian business community on University Avenue. One is a series of walking tours sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society. 

$10 per person 

Call 848-0181 for reservations 

Monday, Oct. 23

Berkeley Chinese Community Church Turns 100 

6 p.m. 

Nov. 4 

Silver Dragon Restaurant 

835 Webster St. 

Oakland 

Reservations: $30 per person 

More info: 548-5295 

Public Schools Parent Information Night 

7 - 9 p.m.  

Epworth United Methodist Church 

1953 Hopkins St. 

Parents, principals and other administrative staff from 11 elementary schools will speak about their schools. Sponsored by Neighborhood Parents Network.  

Admission: free to members, $5 non-members 

527-6667 

Parks & Recreation Board Meeting 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Solid Waste Management Commission 

7 p.m. 

Solid Waste Management Center 

1201 Second St. 

The Changes Happening with HMOs 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 24

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

2 p.m. - 7 p.m.  

Derby St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Come taste a bounty of fall fruit varieties for free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Blood Pressure 

Alice Meyers 

9:30- 11 :30 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Thursday, Oct. 25

International Jewish Video Competition Winners 

7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Film Archive 

2575 Bancroft Way 

Screening of the four winners in the Museum’s seventh annual competition.  

Call 549-6950 

Low vision support group 

1:15 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Civic Arts Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Disaster Council 

7 p.m. 

Emergency Operations Center 

997 Cedar 

Energy Commission 

5:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

Mental Health Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

Mental Health Clinic 

2640 MLK Jr. Way 

Planning Commission 

7 p.m.  

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Police Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Thursday, Oct. 26

From Morgan to Modern 

Julia Morgan and Hearst Castle:Designing and American Country House 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10 or $35 for series that continues through November. 

841-2242 

East Bay Science & Arts Middle School 

Noon  

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Middle school students perform dances of folk, swing, and Cuban rueda styles. Free.  

Contact Carrie Ridgeway, 549-2230 

Proposition Brown Bag 

Noon - 1:30 p.m.  

Institute of Governmental Studies 

109 Moses Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Hear presentations about and discuss the eight propositions on the California ballot.  

Call 642-4608 

Tai Chi 

2 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Friday, Oct. 27

“Transporation: What’s in Store?” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club  

2315 Durant Ave.  

Larry Dahms, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Council speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon is served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. 

Luncheon: $11 

More info and reservations: 848-3533 

Conversational Yiddish 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 28

Pedaling the Green City 

11 a.m. -3:30 p.m.  

Take a leisurely bike ride along the future San Francisco Bay Trail. One in a series of free outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations  

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Halloween for the little guys with (not so) scary stories, music, and more.  

Call 649-3943  

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 3 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. This is the final class in the series. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 29

“Gateway to Knowledge” 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

Barr Rosenberg describes how to master new knowledge and take the power to shape our lives in wise and compassionate ways.  

843-6812 

An Evening with The Professor 

5 - 9:30 p.m. 

Mambo Mambo 

1803 Webster St.  

Oakland 

Berkeley resident Geoffrey A. Hirsch, better known as the Tie Guy from the “How Berkeley Can You Be” parade got his start in comedy in 1996. A professor in real life, Hirsch tell the story of how he became a funny guy.  

$5 for show only, $10 for show and dinner 

Call Geoffrey Hirsch at 845-5631 to reserve tickets 

Monday, Oct. 30

Fun with Oragami 

10 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 31

Sing-A-Long 

11 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Wednesday, Nov. 1

Kathak Dancing with Pandit Chitresh Das 

7:30 p.m. 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts 

2640 College Ave.  

The Graduate Theological Union presents a free lecture-demonstration with Pandit Chitresh Das, a master of India’s Kathak dance form. This event is free. 

Call 649-2440 for additional info 

Mountain Adventure Seminar 

In-store, registration required 

6 p.m.-9 p.m. 

Learn about equip,emt. fundamental climbing techiques and safety procedures. 

$100 REI members, $110 for non members 

To register (209) 753-6556 

Thursday, Nov. 2

PASTForward Panel Discussion 

2 p.m. 

UC Berkeley Art Museum 

Bancroft Way (below College) 

In conjunction with the White Oak Dance Project’s performances, a panel discussion with Judson era dance choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay. Free. 

From Morgan to Modern 

“Saddling the Site: The Environmental Designs of Wurster, Church and Others” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Friday, Nov. 3

Taize Worship Service 

7:30-8:30 p.m. 

An hour of quiet reflection and song. First Friday of the month. 

Loper Chapel on Dana Street between Durant and Channing Way. 

848-3696 

“Want to Transform your Dreams Into Reality?” 

Lecture by Leonard Orr, world known for creating the Rebirthing and Conscious Breathwork Movement. 

7:30 p.m., 

The Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. 

$25, 843-6514 

Saturday, Nov. 4

Breathtaking Barnabe Peak 

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Hike through Samuel P. Taylor State Park’s lush forests and climb to the heights of Barnabe Peak, overlooking Point Reyes. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Dublin Library’s resident storyteller and featured teller at the 1998 National Storytelling Festival tell kids aged 3 to 7 her favorite tales.  

Call 649-3943  

Sunday, Nov. 5

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m.  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl.  

Buddhist teacher Sylvia Gretchen on “Beyond Therapy and Into the Heart of Buddhist Psychology.” Free. 

Call 843-6812  

Monday, Nov. 6

Airports vs. the Bay 

7 p.m. 

Albany Community Center 

1249 Marin St.  

Albany 

David Lewis, Executive Director of “Save the Bay” will speak on the airports’ plans to expand into the SF Bay and other challenges to Bay restoration.  

Contact: Friends of Five Creeks, 848-9358 

Thursday, Nov. 9

The Life and Art of Chiura Obata 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Public Library 

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

A slide show and lecture presented by Obata’s granddaughter, Kimi Kodani Hill, celebrating Obata’s book, “Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment,” and the retrospective exhibit of Obata’s work to appear this Fall at SFs De Young Museum. 

For details call 644-6850  

From Morgan to Modern 

“Bay Area Modern” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

ESL Teacher Job Fair 

7 - 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Adult School 

1222 University Ave., Room 7  

ESL program representatives from adult schools in Alameda and Contra Costa counties will provide information about desired qualifications, current job openings, credentialing requirements, and more.  

Call Kay Wade, 644-6130 

“Feeding the Moon: A Nutritive Approach to Feminine Fertility” 

Lern how fertility is affected by the environment and how it can be enhanced by healthy lifestyle choices 

7:30 to 9 p.m. 

The Ecology Center 

2530 San Pable Ave.  

558-1324, free 

Saturday, Nov. 11

Moonlight on Mt. Diablo 

1 - 10:30 p.m.  

Hike up the Devil’s Mountain by daylight, catch a glorious sunset and hike back by the light of the moon. One in a series of free outing organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Sunday, Nov. 12

Views, Vines and Veggies 

9:15 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.  

Climb Bald Mountain in Sugarloaf State Park and peer down upon the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Then please your palate at the Landmark Winery and visit Oak Hill organic vegetable and flower farm. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Compiled by Chason Wainwright 

Sandwiching two lackluster efforts around a stellar second game, the St. Mary’s girls’ volleyball team lost to the visiting Albany Cougars, 15-8, 16-14, 15-6, on Wednesday afternoon. 

Led by the monster spikes of Alison West, the Cougars dominated the first game of play. St. Mary’s never really got going, and several unforced errors led to a 15-8 Albany win. 

But the second game was a real barn-burner. After falling behind 7-2, the Panthers came back to win the next four points as Ronice Sweet put together two blocks and a kill to get her team back within striking distance. Several kills by West and Rachael Loomen put the Cougars back up at 13-7, but once again the Panthers showed resiliency. 

St. Mary’s rolled off seven straight points as outside hitters Kristina Shapona and Jazmin Pratt hit winner after winner over and through the Albany blockers. The streak was finished by Kamaya Warren’s well-placed dink, and the Panthers had a chance to win the second game and make it a real contest. 

“We’ve had trouble putting teams away,” Albany coach Natalie Cabezud said after the match. “We want to play every point like it’s the last one.” 

But several mishits by St. Mary’s players put the game back in Albany’s hands, and West took control once again. After a kill to win a side out, she hit a spike down the line to give her team the game, 16-14, and take the spirit from St. Mary’s. 

The final game of the match was tied at 5-5 when the Cougars began pulling away. Two consecutive aces by Loomen started a long run of Albany points. The Panthers gave it a last gasp effort at 11-6, forcing eight side-outs in a row, but the power play of West and the tactical strikes by her teammates overwhelmed St. Mary’s, and the Cougars scored four straight to put the match away.

After listening to 35 people speak in favor of landmarking the West Berkeley Shellmound, the City Council unanimously voted to grant the site historic landmark status at Tuesday night’s council meeting.  

The shellmound is believed to be a repository of ancient Native American artifacts and human remains.  

“This is great,” said Stephanie Manning who wrote the 75-page application for the city’s Landmarks Commission to review. She said that radio carbon dating of material found on the site show that there was human habitation there in 3700 B.C.  

“That means that there were Native Americans living at the site at the mouth of Strawberry Creek before the Egyptians built the first pyramid,” she said.  

“It was a community where people lived, raised their children, fished, hunted and buried their dead.” 

The newly approved historic landmark covers the area bound by Interstate 880, to Fourth Street between University and Hearst avenues.  

The three-block area has a number of owners including Frank Spenger, Richard and Charlene DeVecchi, White West Properties, Cal-Trans and the City of Berkeley. 

The DeVecchis had appealed the Landmarks Commission’s designation of the area as a historic landmark to the City Council. 

The designation means that any development on the site that requires a permit will have to be reviewed by the Landmarks Commission. However, if the commission denies the permit application, the applicants can appeal to the City Council, which could reverse the commission’s decision.  

Landmarks Commission board member Lesley Emmington-Jones said that Manning deserves most of the credit for the site’s designation. “She has led the way on this and has really sustained all of us throughout the process,” Emmington-Jones said. “She is really kind of a living treasure herself.” 

Manning, who lives around the corner from the site, said when she heard Spenger’s was closing and that the site might be developed she remembered an archeology student telling her 20 years before that there was a Shellmound underneath the Spenger’s parking lot. 

She enlisted the help of Archeology Mapping Specialist Christopher Dore who was able to pinpoint the site. Once the location was established Manning realized she could write the application. 

Manning said the project was a labor of love and that some of the most exciting moments were when the site was being drilled by the Spengers in an attempt to verify the existence of a Native American Shellmound. The site was drilled in 29 locations and evidence of the Shellmound was found in six of the locations.  

“It was exciting to watch the purplish colored shells fall from the threads of the drills,” she said. 

Manning, chairperson of education for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, describes herself as a lifelong preservationist and has been promoting historical education about the Shellmound through the existing third grade program called “Know Your Town,” in which students study aspects of their town’s history. Manning said the designation might make it easier to secure educational grants to establish the Shellmound as a integral part of the state’s historical education system.

In a game usually filled with trash-talking and boisterous personalities, Nnamdi Asomugha stands out. Not for his woofing or his antics, because he doesn’t do much of that. Asomugha is known for his quiet leadership, big hits and dependable play from his safety position for the Cal football team. 

After an outstanding game against UCLA last Saturday, in which he returned an interception for a touchdown, made seven tackles and deflected a Bruin pass in the end zone to save the game for the Bears, Asomugha was named the Bronko Nagurski National Defensive Player of the Week by the Football Writers Association of America. In addition, he was named the Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Week by the conference office. 

Asomugha’s outstanding game not only earned him accolades, but helped the struggling Bears break a four-game losing streak and get back some pride that was lost along the way. 

“He played a very good game, returned an interception for a touchdown, had a bunch of tackles and good hits, and he made a saving play in the end zone,” said Cal head coach Tom Holmoe. “He provided great defensive leadership.” 

Asomugha is one of six Cal players with Nigerian heritage, a group that includes cornerback Chidi Iwuoma and tailback Joe Echema, who is Asomugha’s cousin. The group is known for being a quiet bunch, at least around the general public. 

“Nnamdi’s quiet unless he’s with people he knows,” said Bears tight end Brian Surgener. “He’ll be in the locker room, dancing and joking with us like everyone else.” 

Holmoe said the Nigerian players are different from his other players. 

“I think the Nigerian kids have an emotional side to them, but they also have a very quiet, reflective side,” Holmoe said. “I know that they learn a lot from their parents about who they are and who they should be.” 

Asomugha’s parents raised him in Los Angeles, where he attended three different high schools. His mother, Lilian, is a pharmacist who runs her own company, and education was her first priority for her children. 

“I was raised with academics being number one from day one,” Asomugha said. “Sports weren’t really important, just something to keep us active. Being from L.A., it was something to keep us away from all the bad things going on.” 

But despite the emphasis on school, Nnamdi and his older brother, Chijioke, who plays football for Stanford, shone on the football field. Nnamdi was one of the nation’s most highly-recruited players in 1999, with several teams wanting him to play wide receiver and others wanting him as a defensive back. He says he knew he wanted to play defense in college, and only visited the schools that wanted him as a safety. 

“To me, football is all about defense,” he says. “The defense really intiates the contact, which is what I like. I like hitting people.” 

Asomugha chose Cal over such football powers as Michigan, UCLA and Notre Dame. And it’s no coincidence that all of his visits were to schools with good academic reputations. 

“My mom had separate piles of recruiting letters, one for good academic schools. It was pretty obvious which pile she wanted me to pick from,” he says. 

It didn’t hurt Cal that Chijioke, also a defensive back, was already enrolled at rival Stanford. 

“We didn’t want to go to the same school, we wanted to play against each other,” Asomugha says. “There’s always some trash talk between us on the phone.” 

A sophomore, Asomugha graduated from Norbonne High School with a 3.7 GPA and plans to major in business at Cal. 

Asomugha played mostly on special teams his freshman year, learning the intricacies of the safety position in practice, before breaking his ankle against USC and sitting out the remainder of the season. 

“He was an offensive player, and it’s a tough transition to go from being an athlete in high school to a full-time defensive player,” Holmoe said. “At first he was a little slow, but he came on pretty strong and showed the potential to be a really good player when he got hurt. It was a pretty bad injury.” 

Asomugha spent the rest of the season and most of spring practice rehabilitating his ankle, and he came into this season as a favorite to win the safety spot. But he was still favoring the ankle during fall practice, and ended up sharing time for the first two games. But he has come on to lead the team in tackles with 47 and quietly become a leader in the secondary. 

“UCLA was his best game of the year, not necessarily in stats but in effort and heart,” Holmoe said. “He’s set a standard for himself. That’s the ballpark where he’s got to be every game.”

Religious protesters waved banners and sang songs outside the Berkeley Marina Radisson Hotel at a candlelight vigil Tuesday night. East Bay labor activists and members of religious groups organized the event to show support for the hotel workers’ new union. The union chapter, recognized in June, is now negotiating its first contract. 

“This is a religious issue,” said Susan Starr, a Unitarian minister from Oakland. She said churches haven’t led the fight for civil rights in decades. “The church needs to be in the world, in the real world on the side of justice.” 

More than 100 people gathered at dusk in the gravel lot across from the hotel. After dark, they marched along the path beside the Bay, behind the Radisson and sang “We Shall Overcome” just outside the windows of the hotel-restaurant.  

Later, five church leaders met with Radisson General Manager Brij Misra inside the hotel, just to let hotel management know the churches were still involved, said union organizer Nicole Lee. The alliance of about 40 churches has honored a union-led boycott of the hotel. 

The union entered its third round of negotiations with hotel management Tuesday afternoon. Misra said the negotiations were cordial, but would not comment on any offers made. Union representative Stephanie Ruby said the two parties were “far, far apart.”  

“They have a long way to go,” Ruby said. “They basically brought an offer to the table that kept things the way they are.” 

While not commenting on the progress of negotiations, Misra said the hotel would follow the city’s mandate to pay its workers a “living wage.” 

“We follow the law,” he said. “Whatever the law comes to be, we’ll abide by it.” 

The Radisson leases its location between Cesar Chavez and Shorebird parks from the city. The City Council decided last month to require all businesses operating on city land at the Marina to pay a living wage, joining other businesses who rent property from the city or contract with the city. After a year of deliberations, the city determined that a living wage is $9.75 per hour, plus $1.63 per hour for health benefits. That comes to about $20,000 per year before taxes, and $260 per month for health care. 

“I think it’s pretty obvious you can’t survive on that in this area,” said Ruby. But she said the workers can use the Living Wage Ordinance as a bargaining tool.  

“It puts them in a good position,” Ruby said. “It sends a strong message to the Radisson that the city of Berkeley wants the employees to get a decent wage and health care.”  

Even so, Starr said the fight is long from over. She said the union’s next battle is enforcing the contract once it’s signed. “But every time I go to one of their meetings, I remember that the people united won’t be defeated,” she said.  

Starr said she feels compelled as a religious leader to be involved in the fight. “Their cause is righteous,” she said. “It’s all about dignity.” But she said the workers are the ones who impress her. “These people know about sacrifice. They know about commitment and loyalty. It’s really very inspiring.” 

Cal head coach Tom Holmoe announced Wednesday that Marcus Fields would not play the remainder of the season due to a shoulder injury and has elected to apply for medical redshirt status and return for the 2001 campaign.  

Fields was Cal’s starting H-Back at the beginning of the season and contributed three catches for 24 yards plus one run for four yards in the Utah opener, before suffering a shoulder fracture in that game. He has been undergoing rehabilitative work during the past several weeks, but the shoulder is not recovered enough for him to return in full health to date. Holmoe said earlier this week that if Fields could not play against Washington this weekend, the running back would redshirt the season. 

Fields said he was both disappointed in not being able to play this year and excited about the opportunities next fall. “It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to try and rush back if the shoulder isn’t quite ready,” said Fields. “However, I’m really looking forward to being a part of this offense next year. I think we’re beginning to show what we can do on offense and we’re only going to get better next year. I’m excited to be able to return and be a part of that.”  

Fields, who started at tailback in 1997 and ‘98, said he will probably postpone a potential graduation this coming spring or summer until the fall semester. He is majoring in American Studies with an emphasis on Education.  

Holmoe indicated he was pleased to have Fields back in the fold for next year. “It’s hard for me to look that far ahead, because we’re right in the middle of our season, but his skills and leadership will be a big factor for our team next season,” he said. “Marcus wanted to finish up his Cal career the right way and this will give him that opportunity.”

Alleging that Citibank is “the world’s most destructive bank,” members of the Rainforest Action Network led a protest outside the bank’s Shattuck Avenue branch Tuesday. 

Carrying props that included a papier-mâché pig with the words “Spank the Bank” written on it, some 30 protesters urged passers-by to boycott the bank. 

Similar demonstrations were being held simultaneously in San Francisco and 50 other cities across the country. Protesters challenged the bank’s practice of lending money to businesses, such as logging companies, which they claim hurts the environment. 

A Citibank spokesperson did not return calls for comment. However, the website of the bank’s parent company, Citigroup, shows that the financial institution has an Environmental Affairs Unit. According to the website, the company has an Environmental Policy Review Committee, which evaluates environmental and human rights issues that may affect its business, and then takes appropriate action. 

“Citigroup believes that working to conserve and enhance the environment is good business practice,” the website said. 

Ilyse Hogue, a member of Rainforest Action, said Citibank is funding “environmentally and socially destructive” projects all over the world. “From South Africa to south Bronx, they’re driving people out of their homes and destroying the life support systems that we depend upon,” she said. 

Hogue said that Citibank should be held accountable for what its borrowers do with the bank’s money.  

“Citibank is providing the money that goes to these logging companies that go into the rainforest,” said Hogue. “Without this capital, these companies would not be able to go in and destroy the forests that we need so desperately. And not only are they funding it, but they’re profiting from it.” 

Some 25 protesters in San Francisco marched at noon through the city’s financial district and urged a boycott among the lunch crowd. Office workers watched with amusement as the group performed a mock funeral for the planet Earth.  

Citibank employees watched through glass windows as the group, wearing green dollar bill masks, stopped in front of the branches on Battery and Sacramento streets. 

SAN FRANCISCO — In a move that may lead to an expansion of vehicle seizure laws around the state, the California Supreme Court declined Wednesday to review a ruling that local governments can seize the vehicles of people suspected of dealing drugs or soliciting prostitutes from a car. 

The high court upheld a 1997 Oakland ordinance allowing such seizures even if the suspect is not convicted or is acquitted. The law applies even if the owner wasn’t in the car and did not know of or support the crime. 

Following Wednesday’s closely watched ruling, comparable seizure laws are expected to be adopted by cities and counties across the state.  

Sacramento, for one, already has a similar law. San Francisco lawmakers shelved the idea last month after concluding it was unconstitutional. 

Without comment, a majority of the high court’s justices declined to review the American Civil Liberties Union’s challenge of the Oakland law. The ACLU claimed among other things that similar laws would proliferate with cities viewing them as money making ventures. 

Only justices Stanley Mosk and Joyce L. Kennard voted to review the case. 

The city has seized about 300 cars under the law and keeps the profits from their sale. 

After a state appeals court ruling in July upheld the so-called “nuisance abatement” law, nearly a dozen California cities contacted Oakland to learn how they could enact their own similar seizure law, said Oakland Deputy City Attorney Pelayo Llamas. 

“The impetus for the City Council was really complaints from certain communities which were essentially drive-thru sex-and-drug bazaars,” Llamas said. “People were sick of having lines of cars in their streets with this activity going on.” 

Oakland’s ordinance is harsher than state and federal forfeiture laws.  

The Legislature allows for the forfeiture of a vehicle used in drug sales and prostitution, but forbids seizures if the owner was not aware of the crime or if  

the car was a family’s only mode of transportation 

The state law applies only when large quantities of drugs are involved. Oakland’s ordinance allows seizures when a person is caught selling any amount of drugs.  

Congress this year added a so-called “innocent owner” provision protecting owners of vehicles used in crimes without their knowledge. Oakland seizes vehicles even when owners don’t know about the crime. 

“It’s an extraordinarily harsh statute,” said Nina Wilder, a lawyer for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, which had urged the justices to nullify the ordinance. “There is something un-American about this that hey can take your car without you doing anything wrong.” 

Last year, Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a bill that sought to stop the seizures. The bill, AB662 by Assemblyman Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles, would have barred forfeitures in cases not involving criminal convictions. 

The ACLU challenged the case on behalf of Oakland resident Sam Horton, who sued as a taxpayer. His vehicle was not involved in any criminal wrongdoing. Horton was unable to challenge the ordinance on constitutional grounds because his rights were not affected. 

Instead, the suit centered on the claim that Oakland was not free to enact the ordinance because it conflicted with the California Legislature’s laws on vehicle seizures. 

The case is Horton vs. City of Oakland, S091145. 

TRACY — About 1,600 workers at a massive warehouse supplying Safeway supermarkets in three states went on strike Wednesday and blocked trucks from entering. Warehouse officials responded by bringing in replacement workers. 

Violence ensued, with seven people injured mostly as a result of rocks and bottles being thrown at vehicles carrying replacement workers. Some of the injured had glass in their eyes after a windshield was broken. 

Workers are demanding higher wages and safer conditions at the facility, which serves 245 Safeway stores in northern California, Nevada and Hawaii. They walked out after talks between union leaders and management broke down. 

“We’d rather lose our jobs than continue to work under these conditions,” said Antonio Camacho, who has worked for two years loading pallets with groceries. “My back is hurting so bad that I’m having trouble meeting my production standards.” Martin Street, president of Summit Logistics that runs the giant warehouse for Safeway, said the company would bring in up to 1,650 replacement warehouse workers and drivers – and vowed there would be no disruption to deliveries. 

“I’m hugely disappointed. Each time we felt we got close to a deal, it’s been thrown back in our faces,” Street said. “We will continue to operate the site (with replacement workers) for as long as it takes. At the end of the day, we will be delivering to the stores.” 

Mike Padilla, a spokesman for the San Joaquin County sheriff’s department, said several people were injured when a rock or brick was thrown through the windshield of a vehicle carrying replacement workers into the warehouse. 

A security guard who was videotaping pickets also was injured when he got into a scuffle with a striking worker. And Padilla said a cement truck driver who was going past the warehouse was injured when he was pulled out of his truck by strikers. 

Padilla said no arrests had been made. 

The strike began after an hour of talks between leaders of Teamsters Local 439 and Summit officials. Workers immediately walked off their jobs and drove outside the complex, where several hundred set up a picket line. Trucks trying to get in to the warehouse were turned away at the gate by pickets as sheriff’s deputies and state highway patrolmen stood nearby. 

Earlier in the day, about 300 workers – some carrying picket signs and others rallying around a huge American flag – blocked trucks from leaving the warehouse and tried to prevent union leaders from getting inside.  

The workers kicked and pounded on a pickup truck carrying Ed Speckman, the union’s chief negotiator, as it headed toward the warehouse. Speckman and other union officials finally got through to the warehouse. 

In addition to picketing at the warehouse in Tracy, about 65 miles east of San Francisco, union members plan to distribute leaflets in front of as many as 42 Safeway stores – primarily in the San Francisco Bay area – urging consumers to boycott the chain. 

The contract between the union and Summit expired Sept. 27. Members of Local 439 voted overwhelmingly Saturday to reject a final proposal from Summit. 

Unsafe working conditions and low wages are the chief complaints of the union, which represents warehouse workers and truck drivers. Workers also want a say in establishing production standards. 

Street rejected claims the warehouse is unsafe, saying Summit has reduced the accident rate significantly in the three years it has owned the facility. 

“That’s why I find it so appalling that they keep mentioning safety, but they won’t be specific abut what the safety issues are,” Street said. 

The union also is upset by the company’s insistence that its 500 drivers be paid per delivery and not an hourly rate. 

Workers voted Oct. 3 to reject an offer from Summit that would have given them a 4.8 percent pay raise every year for the next five years, a 10 cent-an-hour hike in pension benefits and a guarantee that health insurance costs stay level for five years. 

Street said the company rejected two counteroffers from the union during the eight weeks of negotiations, including its latest for a 20 percent across-the-board wage increase. 

Street said the union also wanted production standards that would drive overall labor costs up by about 20 percent, costing the company $60 million in the first year alone. 

Under the current contract, Teamsters drivers make $18 an hour, and warehouse workers earn $11 to $13 an hour. 

ST. LOUIS — Al Gore and George W. Bush traded parting debate shots, the vice president calling the governor an ally of big business, the Republican nominee retorting that Gore stands for more federal spending and Washington power. 

With that, the contestants in a White House race rated dead even headed into the final dash to the Nov. 7 election, urging their supporters to the polls and trying to win over uncommitted voters like those chosen to question them Tuesday night in the closing debate. 

“This is going to be a close election. Nobody should take anything for granted,” Bush told supporters at an airport rally in Eau Claire, Wis., urging them to spread the word about differences between himself and Gore emphasized by the debate. 

Bush mocked Gore’s assertion that as president, he wouldn’t increase the size of the federal government. “Now there’s a man who’s prone to exaggeration,” Bush said. 

He was taking a positive message to the TV airwaves, with a new ad featuring a black teacher talking about education and another starring his Hispanic nephew. The Democrats, meanwhile, planned ads suggesting Bush’s proposals would bankrupt Social Security, a point Gore hammered in the debate. 

“He was not able to answer the question,” Gore told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He was campaigning later in Des Moines, Iowa. 

Each man praised his own performance. “I was able to speak plainly,” Bush said, while Gore stepped on his own message by “attacking somebody all the time.” 

Gore compared his three debate showings to Goldilocks: “The first was too hot, the second was too cool. The third one was just right,” he said in the ABC interview aired Wednesday. 

Two instant network polls of debate watchers rated the final match about even. A third called it narrowly for Gore. 

To demonstrate confidence in Gore’s performance, campaign officials said Wednesday they were asking the Commission on Presidential Debates for permission to rebroadcast the entire 90-minute forum in small cable markets in battleground states. Debate rules prohibit candidates from using excerpts in campaign commercials. 

“If it’s feasible ... we’d love to do it,” said Gore strategist Carter Eskew. 

After the debate, Bush warned that an energy crisis and economic recession might be looming and said his tax-cut plan would serve “as an insurance policy against an economic slowdown.” 

“The biggest threat to economic growth is a huge federal government,” Bush told NBC’s “Today” in an interview aired Wednesday. 

Gore planned to concentrate in the final weeks on promoting himself as the steward of a strong economy, giving an economic address Thursday in New York before starting a “Big Choice: Prosperity for all” tour, stopping daily at homes or work places. He will travel by bus and boat. 

Bush and Gore both canceled their post-debate rallies out of respect for the memory of Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, killed Monday in an airplane crash as he campaigned for the Senate. 

Gore and wife Tipper hugged Jean Carnahan on the steps of the governor’s mansion Wednesday before meeting inside with the widow, her children and grandchildren for about 45 minutes. The Carnahans’ son Roger also died in the crash. 

The debate began with a moment of silence for Carnahan, followed by 90 minutes of hard argument, the candidates striding the red carpeted stage to face their questioners and at times, to confront each other. 

“Here we go again,” Gore said after Bush had pledged to reduce the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly. “If you want someone who will spin a lot of words ... and then end up supporting legislation that is supported by the big drug companies, this is your man.” 

For his part, Bush said Gore wanted federal spending programs “three times bigger than what President Clinton proposed. ... This is a big spender.” 

The questions, selected by moderator Jim Lehrer, came from among 100 uncommitted voters who submitted them in writing. 

And they triggered the sharpest exchanges of the debate season — on affirmative action, and the question of racial quotas in hiring, for example. “If affirmative action means quotas, I’m against it,” Bush said. 

“With all due respect, governor, that’s a red herring,” Gore replied. “Affirmative action isn’t quotas. ... They’re against the American way.” And on Social Security. Gore said Bush has promised $1 trillion out of the Social Security trust fund to cover the initial cost of his plan to use part of the system’s taxes for individual retirement accounts. He said Bush has promised “the same trillion dollars” to protect the benefits of current recipients. 

“Which one of those promises will you keep and which will you break, Governor?” Gore asked. 

Bush said Gore was attacking with “an old high school debating trick” and said the trillion dollars would come out of budget surpluses. 

Gore and the Democrats weren’t accepting that. The Democratic National Committee said it will purchase $2 million in TV ads to run in 10 swing states, raising the same question Gore did. “Which promise is he going to break?” 

Bush’s new ad in 10 states features Houston teacher Phyllis Hunter, who has worked with Bush on state reading programs and praised the governor in a film aired at the Republican National Convention. She calls Bush a leader in education. 

The Bush campaign is also bringing back a Spanish-language ad featuring Bush’s nephew, George P. Bush, the son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his Mexican-American wife, to air in New Mexico and three Florida markets: Miami, Orlando and Tampa. 

The Berkeley Unified School District’s Board of Education is responsible for the education of more than 10,000 students in 13 elementary schools, three middle schools, a high school and alternative high school as well as an adult school. 

Berkeley High School alone is host to over 3,200 students. 

Scorched by fires, a counselling problem and a grade-changing scandal, the high school is in the process of picking up the pieces and starting over with a new principal – the third in five years. 

Five candidates for two open School Board director seats hope to bring calm to the high school and lead the district in bridging the long standing achievement gap between African American and Latino students and their Asian and Caucasian counterparts. 

Two candidates on the ballot – Irma Parker and Murray Powers – declined to be interviewed or didn’t respond to the invitation. 

Joaquin Rivera 

In this politically fickle town, where elected officials don’t agree on much, School Board President Joaquin Rivera points out that they come together on one thing – that he ought to be re-elected. 

Endorsed by all of the current school directors, the mayor, five city councilmembers and a list of parents, community leaders and former PTA presidents, Rivera is the only school board incumbent on the ballot. 

A chemistry professor at Skyline College in San Bruno, he points to a long record of accomplishments, including the implementation of the District’s Early Literacy Plan, of which he is especially proud.Implemented in September, district officials said they hope the plan will make every child a reader by the third grade, by starting such classroom activities as reading aloud, guided reading, independent and interactive writing and reading and writing assessments. 

“I can’t stress enough how important reading is,” Rivera said. 

The Early Literacy Plan is a first step in closing the achievement gap, Rivera said if elected, he’ll expand the plan with the goal of ensuring that every student who has been in the district for three or more years will perform at grade level or better in reading and writing. 

“Studies show that minority kids are strong in math and science, but weak in reading,” he says. “That’s what’s slowing them down.” 

Rivera said that he would like to set up a writing center at Berkeley High, where community people – trained professionals such as UC Berkeley professors and skilled writers, can help students with assignments. 

“Once we have that piece in place, we can look at a math center and science center,” he said. 

Rivera also said that it’s critical to stabilize the volatile high school, and make sure the basics work. 

“The bells, the schedules. Just the basic things that make a school work effectively,” he said. 

One of the things Rivera says is sorely missing from the high school is a sense of community. He says putting a stop to the revolving door for the principal position is imperative.  

“The principal needs to listen to the community, and Frank (Lynch) has been doing a great job,” he said. “It sounds simple, but it’s really not. We all have to support him and succeed in really looking at reform.” 

Rivera added that he worked to get a federal grant to explore small learning communities at the daunting high school of 3,200 students. 

In his campaign literature, he writes that he will work to restructure Berkeley High to “provide a more personal environment so all students can succeed.” 

He also says that he’s spoken with state and area representatives and legislators to work to get more funding in special education, for which, he says the federal government is “not paying its full share.” 

One of the things that Rivera will work for is an expansion of after-school programs, something that he says that the current school board has worked to accomplish. 

“We need to work on continuing and improving the early intervention programs, the after-school programs, and summer school,” he said. “But we need more of these.” 

Rivera also said that he would try to implement a targeted plan to recruit minority teachers. 

“It’s a problem everywhere,” he said of the lack of minority teachers. “One of the things I want to see is a targeted recruiting plan to go where minority candidates are to actually recruit them.” Kids need to see people like themselves, he said, noting that the district has not targeted plan to recruit teachers of color. 

He also plans to continue building the district’s accountability system, but says that they have been doing a good job with past measures. 

“Throughout the (expenditure process of Measure A) there has been a community advisory committee watching over (expenditures),” he said. “Any decision the board makes is public.” 

He said that as more money became available in the budget, the district worked to expand library and music programs, but said that he would like to do more. 

“We have to get back to the basics, but we need money to do these things,” he said. “If (Measure AA and Measure BB) don’t pass we’ll have to go after more money. We’ll have to find a new source of funding, get some savings, and really look at what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, and look at ways to reorganize.” 

Rivera said that he worked to improve teacher salaries and bring them up to the 55th percentile of the national average. 

“Right now we have the next two years covered in a contract,” he said. “Our teachers will be at the 55th percentile, but we want to improve this. We need to be able to provide high salaries to get the best teachers. It’s my goal not to stop at the 55th percentile.” 

Sherri Morton  

Sherri Morton says that one of the major reasons she decided to run for a seat on the School Board was to bridge the achievement gap. 

The senior business consultant and mother of three says she personifies another kind of bridge – she believes she can span the gap in parental involvement in the Berkeley Unified School District, especially in the African-American community. 

“I want there to be representation of the African-American community on the board,” she said.  

Currently there are no black board members.  

“I feel like I can speak to the community as a whole, and African Americans specifically,” she said. “I want to see more African-American parental involvement and more diversity in parental involvement.” 

Besides, she says, her children asked her to run. 

“My children were noticing that their classmates were falling behind,” she said. “They came home and asked me to help.” 

And after a meeting with some other parents, she said her daughter demanded that she throw her hat in the ring.  

Morton has served as vice president of the Cragmont Elementary School PTA and participated on the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program and with the Retentions Forums. 

She has the endorsement of the Berkeley Democratic Club, Mayor Shirley Dean, two city councilmembers, two current school board directors and a long list of past PTA presidents. 

Next year she’ll have a child in high school, middle school and elementary school, “so I’m really, really concerned,” she said. 

In her campaign literature, Morton writes that the achievement gap is “systemic and permeates all educational levels. The problem is individual, the fault belonging to each of us. The problem is historic. While no single factor is adequate to explain the disparity. One thing is certain, it’s time for a change.” 

She said that, if elected, she would take steps to close the achievement gap, including diversity training for teachers, something that she says has taken place at Cragmont. Also, she would like to start tutoring and mentoring for teachers as well as students. 

“And an increase in teacher salaries, period,” she said forcefully. “I’m glad to see that the district did something and it’s a good first step.” 

She said she thinks there are funds to raise salaries. “Someone should take a look at the budget and make it more user friendly so we can get a better grasp on what we’re dealing with.” 

She further argued that the state should give the district more money, as long as teachers are held accountable for test scores.  

By raising teacher salaries, she says, the district can attract more teachers of color. Also, it ought to do more focused recruiting of minority teachers by holding job fairs in locations where minority teachers live. 

She also called for more district accountability, and said that there should be more community involvement in the budget process, so that “we know what every penny is going to.” 

She went on to say that she would like to see mentorships for teachers that are new or relatively new. 

“If they had mentors within the school system, we could probably have greater participation from them and a sense of loyalty and longevity.” 

At Berkeley High School, Morton said that a collaboration among parents, students, the district, the school and the city is necessary to find a “common ground.” 

Morton’s suggests a broader literacy program than the one currently employed by the district. 

“They’re doing a great job with the literacy plan, but we can continue to search to find a plan that helps all children,” she said. “The literacy plan catches the bottom percentage of students that are doing poorest, and there’s a segment of students above the that aren’t doing poorly, but aren’t doing that well. We need to reach those students as well.” 

She also said she would like to expand the art and music programs in the district. 

Morton said that during a series of meetings she had with several parents in South Berkeley, she found that the district’s retention policy is in need of tweaking. 

“If a child hasn’t learned anything in nine months, what are we going to teach them in a month and a half of summer school?” she said. “Is there a plan set up for the children, or are you just going to fail them? If you retain them and you don’t train them you still have the same problem.”  

“I don’t think children should be retained,” she said. “I think there should be a (safety) net in place so that we know and start to address the issue before we have to retain them.” 

John Selawsky 

John Selawsky is a strong supporter of public education.  

That is one of the first things one learns from reading the green flyer telling people why they should vote for him for School Board. 

“Vote No on Proposition 38,” says the flyer in large type. Proposition 38 is the school voucher proposal on the November ballot that asks voters if the state should give a $4,000 voucher to each  

student who attends a non-public school. 

Selawsky says he fears this proposition, or another that might appear down the road if this one is defeated, will someday get public support. And that would sap public schools funds and lead to the privatization of schools, he said.  

“I think it’s the really big issue that no one knows how to address because it’s at (both) the state and federal level,” he said. “But we all have to start talking about it and getting community, county and statewide support.” 

Selawsky says one way to fight against vouchers is to better the public schools. One of his major goals is to make sure more state and federal funds comes to Berkeley schools. 

“We’re always shifting funds around to meet the immediate crisis or the immediate need,” he said. “There’s no overriding goal. What I really want to emphasize is working with our community and working with our elected officials to get more state and federal funds. If we don’t, we’re doing a real disservice to public education.” 

Selawsky, a Green party candidate, has been endorsed by the five progressive city councilmembers, Alameda County Superintendent of Schools Sheila Jordan, U.S. Senate Green Party candidate Medea Benjamin, and a host of others. 

Selawsky has served on both the Oxford Elementary School and Willard Middle School site committees and the district-wide planning and oversight committee of the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project. He is currently the co-chair of the BSEP planning and oversight committee reviewing the allocation of more than $8.5 million in funds. 

Selawsky says that the two middle schools in the district with only six periods needs to jump to the seven period day, which Longfellow already has.  

“My own son had to choose between a foreign language and music, and at that age, I think, it is an unfair choice,” he said. “I’d also like to make sure all our kids in middle schools have access to band or orchestra.” 

Selawsky said that he supports strong academic programs and will work for academic achievement at all schools, particularly the high school.  

“The high school is a big issue and the achievement gap is a big part of the issue,” he said. 

He went on to say that the rapid principal turnover “doesn’t make a educationally conducive atmosphere.” 

“We really need to get some support from downtown and the board for the principal,” he said. “It’s probably the most difficult job in the district.” 

Success at Berkeley High has to be a collaborative effort, he said. 

“We have to help get a team atmosphere together, and the board and administration need to support them,” he said. “(Former Principal Theresa Sanders) was asking for little things like clocks and she never got them. I think it’s a systemic thing, it’s a business thing. Maintenance is often underfunded, and that’s part of the problem.” 

Selawsky said that teachers’ salaries should be raised, and that the current salaries – at the 55th percentile of the national average – is nowhere near what teachers in Berkeley should receive. He adds that another part of the historical turnover for teachers in the district is the cost of living. 

“We need to hire good teachers, and teachers of color, and we should look into housing for public employees and teachers,” he said. “The (university) owns a massive amount of properties, the district owns properties and the city owns properties, we need to do something to ensure that teachers can live in Berkeley. Teachers can’t afford to live here. Turnover rate at the high school has been traditionally high because of this.” 

He also said that the district should brace itself for an increase of students in the next few years and even begin to look into the possibility of a second campus. 

Selawsky is also passionate about improving the libraries and music and arts curricula. He said that he would like to implement a kindergarten through fifth-grade music program. 

“Many librarians are on the campuses for only part of the day, I think we need to keep them open all day and well after school,” he said. The libraries should be a resource for kids after school, and a community resource. The libraries should be a literacy center and a technology center for all our schools.” 

Selawsky applauds the efforts of the current school board for its work to bridge the achievement gap, and says that he would work to strengthen the Early Literacy Plan. 

He added that he would work for more district accountability. 

“The administration has to be more accountable to the community,” he said. “Certainly at a bare minimum, I’d like to see the budget worked so that people can understand it, and they can use it.” 

Research on health and schools, a wake-up call 

Editor’s view 

Some books have the power to reveal, to shock, then actually become the catalysts for change.  

Two such tomes released this year shine a glaring spotlight on scars and malignancies in our city that we don’t like to talk about.  

Now, we can no longer hide behind the awe of the Campanile, the history of the Free Speech Movement, the brilliance of our Nobel Laureates. We can no longer say, we didn’t know. 

Both works show intense research and, ultimately, a love of our city and can serve as a jumping-off place for those who refuse to turn a blind eye to the facts. 

One of the books is Meredith Maran's 299-page “Class Dismissed: A Year in the Life of an American High School, a Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation,” just released from St. Martin’s Press, which describes a year in the lives of three high school seniors and tells how their school, Berkeley High, sometimes helps and supports them, yet oftentimes abandons them. 

The second tome is the 169-page “City of Berkeley: Health Status Report 1999,” authored by Health Officer Dr. Poki Namkung and Epidemiologist Dr. Jose Ducos.  

The report describes how African Americans living in our flatlands have some of the worst health outcomes in the nation. 

Why pair these two carefully-researched works? One is a fast read, where the author skillfully weaves the lives of her three subjects into the historical and social context of Berkeley high. The book has catapulted to the seventh-place spot on The Chronicle’s nonfiction best-selling list.  

The other work, filled with charts and graphs, is less poetic. Its summary, read by a few reporters and broadcast in 10-second sound bites, gathers dust on the Health Department’s shelves – with some notable exception. There are city officials and resident volunteers using the work as a basis for designing new health programs. This one will never make a best-seller list. 

Berkeley High’s onerous tracking system – left over from the days when blacks could not live above Grove Street, now Martin Luther King Jr. Way; left over from the not-so-long ago days when there were no teachers of color in the Berkeley schools; left over, yes, from the long-gone days of slavery – is exposed in Maran’s book. 

Autumn Morris is one of the seniors Maran follows for a year. The teen’s Caucasian alcoholic father abandoned the family when she was 10 years old, and her African-American mother works too many jobs to oversee her daughter's schooling or life. By the grace of her amazing inner fortitude, friends who hold her up emotionally and the church which sustains her spiritually, Autumn has fought her way into advanced placement classes, where students of African-American, Native -American and Latino heritage are few. 

Most the students in her AP classes are privileged white kids from the hills who will end up at Harvard, Yale or Princeton, the kids who take college courses at UC Berkeley in their senior year, the kids born with a silver peace sign. 

That’s the divide. The crevice. The chasm that is our city’s shame. It begins in the womb and extends to death. 

“Six years after the New York Times pronounced Berkeley High ‘the most integrated high school in America,’ Berkeley High continues to bequeath two separate and distinctly unequal fates to its 3,200 students,” Maran writes. 

Meanwhile, the Health Status report reveals: 

• Comprising just 19 percent of Berkeley's population, African Americans represent over 31 percent of the total AIDS cases. “This growing disparity is recognized as being a direct result of lack of access to the new modalities of treatment and care and the changing mode of exposure to HIV.” 

• In 1998, 96 percent of White and Hispanic women received early prenatal care compared to 83 percent of African-American women. 

• Between 1993 and 1995, Berkeley ranked the third highest in the nation in the proportion of African American low-birth weight births. 

• In 1997 the mortality rate for African-American women was twice that of Caucasian women. 

• The risk of dying of breast cancer is higher for African-American women than it is for all other races/ethnicities combined. 

Maran’s language is more lofty than that used in the Health Status Report as she describes the first day of school: 

“By 8 a.m. the Berkeley sky is cornflower blue, its air summer-warm, its commuters entangled in the morning transbay rush to the towers of San Francisco. Today’s a big day in Berkeley: the first day of school. All over town the schoolchildren – six-year-olds with Lunchables in their Pokemon lunchboxes and sixteen-year-olds with Master P in their Discmans; children chattering in Spanish or Tagalog or Farsi and children who don’t talk at all; sons of janitors and daughters of judges; kids who will surprise no one by going to Harvard and kids who will surprise no one by going to Juvenile Hall – are tying their shoelaces, shrugging into their backpacks, setting off to see their old friends, to meet their new teachers, to start their new school year.” 

Through the eyes and hearts of the three teens she follows, Maran says what many of the African American parents in Berkeley's flatlands, and their parents before them, already know: there are, in reality, two high schools under one roof in Berkeley: “a good public school for rich white kids and a ‘bad’ school for poor kids of color.’” 

Can we ask teachers, principals or superintendents of schools to fix the problem? 

Maran quotes an article in Berkeley High’s student newspaper, the Jacket: “‘The problems that our school faces surrounding race will probably be around as long as Berkeley High remains a microcosm of America.’” 

If that’s true, does that mean that we in Berkeley should tune out till the revolution or second coming repairs the inequities which have plagued this nation from the time we wrested it from the Native Americans? 

Dedicated teachers are reaching for answers. Maran points to several mini-schools set up within the huge impersonal high school where teachers, often working more than 12 hours each day, lend their support to struggling students. 

At the same time, the city’s health department is addressing head on the needs of the city’s most disenfranchised people, making sure youngsters get inoculations when they enter kindergarten, offering much-touted health services at the high school, credited with drastically reducing the number of teenage pregnancies. 

Teams of citizens and health professionals meet regularly to find new ways to support pregnant mothers and to offer better health-care services to the city’s African-American population. Their work is informed by the Health Status Report. 

Still, school needs and health needs, the need for secure housing and regular employment that pays the bills, the need to be free from harassment from the police, disbelief by the medical system, lack of understanding from teachers are addressed by separate committees as if the problems exist in isolation. 

As Maran writes in the “afterward,” stomping out small fires at Berkeley High is absolutely necessary – the tracking, the inequities, the bad pay teachers get. If these things are not changed, the whole school will burn. 

But Maran’s solutions are just that – crushing individual embers, while the fire still smolders. The only way we in Berkeley can attack the overwhelming problems head on – all of us: city government, schools, newspapers, religious institutions – need to take up the challenge. 

We have addressed the problems piecemeal, attacking teen pregnancy here, funding homeless shelters there, spending city funds on needle exchanges and HIV testing, after school programs and day care needs.  

The schools committees are not meeting at the churches with the citizens addressing health care needs. Those advocating affordable housing are not talking to teachers of homeless kids.  

When the fire erupts, all of us from the flats to the hills may be caught. The problem is ours to ignore or face head on. 

Wednesday, Oct. 18

Traffic Calming Workshop 

7 - 10 p.m. 

St. Clements Church 

2837 Clement Blvd.  

Help to achieve reasonable traffic speeds and volume on streets.  

“Women and Trafficking: Domestic & Global Concerns” 

6 - 9:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

The Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women invites the public to this forum which will include an expert panel discussion, and a movie on Women and trafficking. Free. 

Call 644-6107 for more info.  

Human Welfare & Community Action Meeting 

7 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis 

Commission on Labor Board Meeting 

6 p.m. 

1950 Addison St., Suite 105 

Commission on Aging Board Meeting 

1:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Board of Education 

7:30 p.m. 

Old City Hall 

2134 MLK Jr. Way 

Citizen’s Humane Commission 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

Thursday, Oct. 19

The Promise and Perils of Transgenic Crops 

7:30 - 9 p.m.  

International House, Homeroom 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

A discussion with Dr. Peggy Lemaux, professor of Plant and Microbiology at UC Berkeley, of the scientific basis for biotechnology, it’s risks and benefits. 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

Candlelight Vigil For the Uninsured 

6 p.m.  

Steps of Sproul Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Join the American Medical Student Association, Berkeley Pre-Medical Chapter in a vigil for those without health insurance. Speakers from various medical organizations will discuss ways to improve our health care system.  

Call Chris Hamerski, 845-1607 

Berkeley Metaphysic  

Toastmasters Club 

6:15 - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Rafael Mariquez Free Solo Concert 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Public Library, South Branch 

1901 Russell St. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This Chilean folksinger and guitarist presents his original settings of selections by Latin American poets. 

Contact: 644-6860; TDD 548-1240 

Vocal Sauce 

Noon 

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Shattuck Ave. at Center St. 

The JazzSchool’s vocal jazz ensemble perform award-winning arrangements by Greg Murai.  

Contact Carrie Ridgeway, 549-2230 

CLGS Lavendar Lunch 

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. 

1798 Scenic Ave. 

Kyle Miura, Pacific School of Religion alumnus and Director of the GTUs Pacific and Asian-American Center for Theology and Strategies speaks on being “Queer and Asian.” 849-8239 

Performance Poetica 

7:30 p.m. 

ATA Gallery 

992 Valencia St. 

San Francisco 

Video and verse by Illinois Arts Council/Hemingway Festival poet and filmmaker Rose Virgo, with special guest Judy Irwin. $3  

Movie: “Intermezzo” 

with Leslie Howard 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Pain - Ways to Make It Easier 

1 - 2:30 p.m. 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center 

Ashby Campus, Dining Rooms A & B 

3001 Colby 

Maggie van Staveren, LCSW, CHT and Christine Bartlett, PT, CHT will demonstrate ways to let go of pain due to arthritis, injury and illness. RSVP requested. 

Call 869-6737  

Design Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

\Transportation Commission 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Fair Campaign Practices  

Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 1901 Hearst St. 644-6380 

Friday, Oct. 20 

“The Ballot Issues” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club 

2315 Durant Ave.  

Fran Packard of the League of Women Voters speaks at 12:30 p.m. 

Luncheon served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m.  

Luncheon: $11 

Call 848-3533 

Broken Spirits - Addressing Abuse 

8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church 

2201 73rd Ave. 

Oakland 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Health Ministry program presents a free workshop on the impact of domestic violence on our community, 869-6763 

Opera: Don Carlos, Part 1,  

1 p.m. 

Old and New Poetry with Bob Randolph, 1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 21

A Day on Mt. Tam 

9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. 

Come play and hike in San Francisco’s beloved playground. This outing is part of a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance. 

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

AHIMSA Eight annual Conference 

9 a.m. - 5 p.m.  

International House, Great Hall 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

The AHIMSA is a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to encourage dialogues and public forums which bridge spiritual, scientific and social issues. This years conference is titled “Violence! Scientific and Spiritual Perspectives.”  

Admission is free 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

— compiled by  

Chason Wainwright 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Center St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Taste a whole farmers’ market’s bounty of fall fruit varieties. 

Free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 2 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. The second of three classes. The last is scheduled for Oct. 28 during the same timeslot. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 22

Run for Peace 

United Nations Association 

10K run and 5K run/walk 

9 a.m. Berkeley Marina 

$20 849-1752 

A Taste of the Greenbelt 

1 - 4 p.m. 

Presidio’s Golden Gate Club 

Greenbelt Alliance brings the farm to the city in this celebration of the Bay Area’s agricultural and culinary bounty. Featured are samples from over 40 local restaurants, farmers, wineries, microbreweries. Also featured are live music and local artwork. The event benefits Greenbelt Alliance’s ongoing efforts to protect Bay Area farmlands and open space.  

$45 per person 

1-800-543-GREEN, www.greenbelt.org 

An Evening with Alice Walker 

7:30 p.m.  

King Middle School  

1781 Rose St. (at Grant) 

free parking 

Join internationally loved novelist, poet and essayist Alice Walker in celebrating her new book of autobiographical stories, “The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart.” Benefits Berkeley EcoHouse and KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM.  

Tickets: $10 advance, $13 door 

Tickets available at independent bookstores 

More info: 848-6767 x609 

From Bahia to Berkeley 

11 a.m.  

Capoeira Arts Cafe 

2026 Addison St. 

A benefit brunch and auction with food, music, dance and culture to bring Brazilian folkloric dance group Nicinha Raizes from Bahia, Brazil to the Bay Area. The group will tour in January 2001.  

428-0698 

Take a Trip to the Oakland Ballet 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organized by the Senior Center to see “Glass Slippers.”  

Tickets: $6 each 

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

A Buddhist Pilgramage in India 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

June Rosenberg brings to life, through slides and lecture, her pilgrimages in India. Free. 

Call 843-6812 

University Avenue Indian Business Community 

10 a.m. - Noon 

Kirpal & Neelum Khanna, owners of the Bazaar of India, tell about the steps they took from spice and food retailing to today’s Bazaar, and the nuances and features of the Indian business community on University Avenue. One is a series of walking tours sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society. 

$10 per person 

Call 848-0181 for reservations 

Monday, Oct. 23

Berkeley Chinese Community Church Turns 100 

6 p.m. 

Nov. 4 

Silver Dragon Restaurant 

835 Webster St. 

Oakland 

Reservations: $30 per person 

More info: 548-5295 

Public Schools Parent Information Night 

7 - 9 p.m.  

Epworth United Methodist Church 

1953 Hopkins St. 

Parents, principals and other administrative staff from 11 elementary schools will speak about their schools. Sponsored by Neighborhood Parents Network.  

Admission: free to members, $5 non-members 

527-6667 

Parks & Recreation Board Meeting 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Solid Waste Management Commission 

7 p.m. 

Solid Waste Management Center 

1201 Second St. 

The Changes Happening with HMOs 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 24

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

2 p.m. - 7 p.m.  

Derby St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Come taste a bounty of fall fruit varieties for free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Blood Pressure 

Alice Meyers 

9:30- 11 :30 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Thursday, Oct. 25

International Jewish Video Competition Winners 

7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Film Archive 

2575 Bancroft Way 

Screening of the four winners in the Museum’s seventh annual competition.  

Call 549-6950 

Low vision support group 

1:15 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Civic Arts Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Disaster Council 

7 p.m. 

Emergency Operations Center 

997 Cedar 

Energy Commission 

5:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

Mental Health Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

Mental Health Clinic 

2640 MLK Jr. Way 

Planning Commission 

7 p.m.  

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Police Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Thursday, Oct. 26

From Morgan to Modern 

Julia Morgan and Hearst Castle:Designing and American Country House 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10 or $35 for series that continues through November. 

841-2242 

East Bay Science & Arts Middle School 

Noon  

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Middle school students perform dances of folk, swing, and Cuban rueda styles. Free.  

Contact Carrie Ridgeway, 549-2230 

Proposition Brown Bag 

Noon - 1:30 p.m.  

Institute of Governmental Studies 

109 Moses Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Hear presentations about and discuss the eight propositions on the California ballot.  

Call 642-4608 

Tai Chi 

2 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Friday, Oct. 27

“Transporation: What’s in Store?” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club  

2315 Durant Ave.  

Larry Dahms, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Council speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon is served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. 

Luncheon: $11 

More info and reservations: 848-3533 

Conversational Yiddish 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 28

Pedaling the Green City 

11 a.m. -3:30 p.m.  

Take a leisurely bike ride along the future San Francisco Bay Trail. One in a series of free outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations  

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Halloween for the little guys with (not so) scary stories, music, and more.  

Call 649-3943  

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 3 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. This is the final class in the series. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 29

“Gateway to Knowledge” 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

Barr Rosenberg describes how to master new knowledge and take the power to shape our lives in wise and compassionate ways.  

843-6812 

An Evening with The Professor 

5 - 9:30 p.m. 

Mambo Mambo 

1803 Webster St.  

Oakland 

Berkeley resident Geoffrey A. Hirsch, better known as the Tie Guy from the “How Berkeley Can You Be” parade got his start in comedy in 1996. A professor in real life, Hirsch tell the story of how he became a funny guy.  

$5 for show only, $10 for show and dinner 

Call Geoffrey Hirsch at 845-5631 to reserve tickets 

Monday, Oct. 30

Fun with Oragami 

10 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 31

Sing-A-Long 

11 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Wednesday, Nov. 1

Kathak Dancing with Pandit Chitresh Das 

7:30 p.m. 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts 

2640 College Ave.  

The Graduate Theological Union presents a free lecture-demonstration with Pandit Chitresh Das, a master of India’s Kathak dance form. This event is free. 

Call 649-2440 for additional info 

Mountain Adventure Seminar 

In-store, registration required 

6 p.m.-9 p.m. 

Learn about equip,emt. fundamental climbing techiques and safety procedures. 

$100 REI members, $110 for non members 

To register (209) 753-6556 

Thursday, Nov. 2

PASTForward Panel Discussion 

2 p.m. 

UC Berkeley Art Museum 

Bancroft Way (below College) 

In conjunction with the White Oak Dance Project’s performances, a panel discussion with Judson era dance choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay. Free. 

From Morgan to Modern 

“Saddling the Site: The Environmental Designs of Wurster, Church and Others” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Friday, Nov. 3

Taize Worship Service 

7:30-8:30 p.m. 

An hour of quiet reflection and song. First Friday of the month. 

Loper Chapel on Dana Street between Durant and Channing Way. 

848-3696 

“Want to Transform your Dreams Into Reality?” 

Lecture by Leonard Orr, world known for creating the Rebirthing and Conscious Breathwork Movement. 

7:30 p.m., 

The Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. 

$25, 843-6514 

Saturday, Nov. 4

Breathtaking Barnabe Peak 

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Hike through Samuel P. Taylor State Park’s lush forests and climb to the heights of Barnabe Peak, overlooking Point Reyes. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Dublin Library’s resident storyteller and featured teller at the 1998 National Storytelling Festival tell kids aged 3 to 7 her favorite tales.  

Call 649-3943  

Sunday, Nov. 5

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m.  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl.  

Buddhist teacher Sylvia Gretchen on “Beyond Therapy and Into the Heart of Buddhist Psychology.” Free. 

Call 843-6812  

Monday, Nov. 6

Airports vs. the Bay 

7 p.m. 

Albany Community Center 

1249 Marin St.  

Albany 

David Lewis, Executive Director of “Save the Bay” will speak on the airports’ plans to expand into the SF Bay and other challenges to Bay restoration.  

Contact: Friends of Five Creeks, 848-9358 

Thursday, Nov. 9

The Life and Art of Chiura Obata 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Public Library 

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

A slide show and lecture presented by Obata’s granddaughter, Kimi Kodani Hill, celebrating Obata’s book, “Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment,” and the retrospective exhibit of Obata’s work to appear this Fall at SFs De Young Museum. 

For details call 644-6850  

From Morgan to Modern 

“Bay Area Modern” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

ESL Teacher Job Fair 

7 - 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Adult School 

1222 University Ave., Room 7  

ESL program representatives from adult schools in Alameda and Contra Costa counties will provide information about desired qualifications, current job openings, credentialing requirements, and more.  

Call Kay Wade, 644-6130 

“Feeding the Moon: A Nutritive Approach to Feminine Fertility” 

Lern how fertility is affected by the environment and how it can be enhanced by healthy lifestyle choices 

7:30 to 9 p.m. 

The Ecology Center 

2530 San Pable Ave.  

558-1324, free 

Saturday, Nov. 11

Moonlight on Mt. Diablo 

1 - 10:30 p.m.  

Hike up the Devil’s Mountain by daylight, catch a glorious sunset and hike back by the light of the moon. One in a series of free outing organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Sunday, Nov. 12

Views, Vines and Veggies 

9:15 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.  

Climb Bald Mountain in Sugarloaf State Park and peer down upon the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Then please your palate at the Landmark Winery and visit Oak Hill organic vegetable and flower farm. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

“Time Across Cultures” 

2 - 4 p.m. 

St. Clements Church 

2837 Claremont Ave.  

The annual Roselyn Yellin Memorial lecture with a slide-illustrated panel discussion. Also a tour of the “Telling Time” exhibit at the Judah L. Magnes Museum followed by a reception at the museum, 4 - 5 p.m.  

More info: 549-6950 

Buddhism & Compassion 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Psychiatrist and teacher Bobby Jones on “Healing through Compassion.” Free.  

843-6812 

Monday, Nov. 13

An Evening with Barbara Kingsolver 

7:30 p.m. 

King Middle School 

1781 Rose St. 

Barbara Kingsolver’s works include “Animal Dreams,” “High Tide in Tucson,” “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Prodigal Summer” 

free parking $10 in advance, $13 at the door 

Benefits KPFA and Urban Ecology. 

848-6767 

Tuesday, Nov. 14

Take a Trip to the Steinbeck Museum and 

Mission San Juan Bautista 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organzied by the Senior Center.  

$40 with lunch, $25 without  

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

Thursday, Nov. 16

Reminiscing in Swingtime 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Library  

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

George Yoshida, author and jazz drummer, presents a multi-media program recounting the big band experience in the Japanese American internment camps. The presentation will be capped with a set of live jazz by the George Yoshida Quartet. 

Call for more info: 644-6850 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Saturday, Nov. 18

S.F. Stairs and Peaks 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Begin the day with a visit to the farmer’s market, then meander up the stairways and streets of Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower. Then up Russian Hill, descending to Fisherman’s Wharf for a ride back on the new historic streetcar line. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 

Berkeley Free Folk Festival 

11 a.m. - 1 a.m.  

Ashkenaz  

1317 San Pablo Ave. 

Fourteen hours of free concerts, workshops, jam sessions and to top it off a Saturday night dance. The fifth annual Folk Festival will feature Shay & Michael Black, Spectre Double Negative & the Equal Positive, Larry Hanks, Wake the Dead and many others. Sponsored by Charles Schwab and the City of Berkeley.  

More info or to volunteer: 525-5099 

Sunday, Nov. 19

Mt. Madonna & Wine  

10 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Hike through evergreen forests and visit the remains of a 19th century estate, then finish the day with a visit to Kruse Winery. One of many free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: (415) 255-3233 for reservations 

“Drawing Marathon”  

Merritt College’s Art Building 

Live models, group poses.  

$12 for half a day, $20 for a full day, senior and student discounts available. No cameras or turpentine. 

523-9763 

Tuesday, Nov. 21

Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Noon - 2 p.m.  

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium 

Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

Call D.L. Malinousky, 601-0550 

Compiled by Chason Wainwright 

The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that it has formed a legal team to represent the alleged victims of Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali Reddy. 

The legal team was formed by and includes the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, based in San Francisco and New York, as well as Oakland immigration attorney Nancy Hormachea and San Francisco law firm Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Rubin and Demain. 

The victims and others who have been contacted by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services as a result of the investigation into Reddy and his son Vijay Kumar Lakireddy will not be available for interviews, according to an ACLU spokesman. 

Reddy was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department in February on nine counts including transportation of minors for illegal sexual activity.  

He came to the attention of investigators in November 1999 when a minor girl was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in an apartment owned by Reddy in Berkeley. 

Reddy is currently free on $10 million bail. His son is free on $500,000 bail. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Oct. 24.

About 1,200 workers at a massive warehouse that supplies Safeway stores in three western states said they will walk off the job Wednesday to protest working conditions and truckdriver salaries. 

The workers planned to stop work about 11 a.m. and begin their strike, Teamsters Local 439 spokesman Danny Beagle said Tuesday. 

In addition to picketing at the warehouse in Tracy, union members also plan to distribute leaflets in front of as many as 42 Safeway stores, primarily in the San Francisco Bay area, urging consumers to boycott the chain. 

The contract between the union and Summit Logistics, which runs the giant warehouse for Safeway Corp., expired Sept. 27. Members of Local 439 voted overwhelmingly Saturday to reject a final proposal from Summit. 

The warehouse, located about 65 miles east of San Francisco, serves 245 Safeway stores in northern California, Nevada and Hawaii. 

Unsafe working conditions and low wages are the chief complaints of the union, which represents 1,000 warehouse workers and 500 truck drivers. Workers also want a say in establishing production standards. 

The union is also upset by the company’s insistence that its 500 drivers be paid per delivery and not an hourly rate. 

Workers voted on Oct. 3 to reject an offer from Summit which would have given them: an across the board 4 percent pay hike over the next five years. 

, a 10 cent-an-hour hike in pension benefits and a guarantee that health insurance costs stay level for five years. 

Summit president Martin Street said the company rejected two counteroffers from the union during the eight weeks of negotiations, including its latest for a 20 percent across-the-board wage increase. 

Street said the union also wanted production standards that would drive overall labor costs up by about 20 percent, costing the company $60 million in the first year alone. 

If a strike is called, the company says it will begin using the 1,400 replacement warehouse workers and 250 drivers it has put up in local hotels.

The California State Automobile Association reports gas prices are slightly down in Northern California from the record highs of September, but relief is not evenly distributed in the Bay area. 

An association spokeswoman said today that a monthly survey found the average price for a gallon of gas in Northern California this month is $1.95, down 3 cents from last month's record high but still 46 cents higher than last October.  

It is also higher than the statewide average of $1.85 and the national average of $1.55. 

In the Bay Area, the East Bay experienced the greatest reduction in prices, with drops of 1 cent in Fremont, to $1.94, 2 cents in Oakland to $1.98, 3 cents in Concord to $1.91 and 4 cents in Pleasanton to $1.98. 

San Francisco residents saw a 1 cent reduction to $2.06. In the South Bay, however, San Jose's prices actually went up a penny to $2.06, and San Mateo held steady at $2.04. 

San Rafael’s prices went down 2 cents to $1.98, but farther north in Santa Rosa, prices remained unchanged at $1.92. 

The spokeswoman said prices were expected to remain at or near their current levels due to unrest in the Middle East and high crude oil prices.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Greek captain of the troubled Neptune Dorado oil tanker was released from prison on $500,000 bail Tuesday and will stay in the care of the Greek Orthodox Diocese until an Oct. 30 arraignment. 

At that time, Kiriakos Diaoglou, 54, will plead not guilty to charges he misled Coast Guard officers inspecting the ship, said his lawyer, Douglas Schwartz. 

The tanker’s operator – Pelembros Shipping Ltd. of Greece – posted a letter of credit for Diaoglou, according to assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Jacobs. 

The Neptune Dorado limped into San Francisco Bay last month and was cited for more than 30 environmental and safety violations.  

The Coast Guard found oil vapors in the ship’s ballast tanks, which, if ignited, could have caused the ship to explode. 

Diaoglou allegedly ordered his crew to falsify entries in the ship’s log to conceal the dangerous conditions.  

The tanker was allowed to unload its 370,000-barrel haul of Australian crude oil at the Tosco refinery in Rodeo.

SACRAMENTO — The Mexican government and California Department of Corrections are starting a first-in-the-nation program to teach basic reading and writing skills to Mexican inmates. 

Mexico hopes to expand the program statewide and to other states with large numbers of Mexican inmates, most likely Texas and Illinois, said Jose Campillo Garcia, Mexican consul general for Northern California. 

Nearly 19,000 Mexican nationals are imprisoned in California. All but 1,500 face likely deportation proceedings upon their release. 

Many are poorly educated laborers who may never have learned to read and write in Spanish, let alone English, Campillo Garcia said. 

“They barely know how to sign their name, and some can’t even do that,” said Lilia Valesquez, a San Diego attorney who specializes in immigration law. 

Without those skills, it’s difficult to take part in educational and vocational programs that can cut sentences in half for those convicted of nonviolent crimes. Those convicted of violent crimes can reduce their sentences 15 percent. 

More important than that, without skills they have less chance of improving their lot after their release, Campillo Garcia said. 

“One way or another, they are going to reintegrate into society,” he said. “The best thing to do is get them educated and have valuable citizens in either country.” 

California prisons offer English-as-a-second-language programs as well as literacy programs in English. However, it is often more difficult to teach English to someone who can’t read or write in their native language and has no grasp of grammer or sentence structure, said Raul Romero, who oversees the Correction Department’s education programs. 

The prison program is similar to the “each one teach one” Laubach Literacy method widely used in the United States. 

Volunteer inmate tutors will be trained to use self-teaching Spanish-language books and workbooks that the National Institute of Education for Adults has employed in literacy programs throughout Mexico for more than 20 years. The program is so widespread it is advertised on milk cartons. 

Program coordinators have been trained in seven of California’s 33 prisons, including Folsom, Ione, Jamestown, Sacramento, Stockton, Susanville and Tracy. 

The consulate’s staff is helping line up participants. At High Desert State Prison in Susanville, for instance, three inmates had signed up before Mexican officials convinced another 35 to apply. 

At that rate, Campillo Garcia estimates 250 to 300 inmates will participate. 

They will be tested next month to determine their skill level, then given books ranging in difficulty from the “See Spot Run” level to basic texts on mathematics, history and social science. 

The Mexican government is covering the cost of materials, training and testing. 

Though the program is aimed at Mexican citizens, other Spanish-speaking inmates can participate. All told, more than 29,000 of California’s 162,500 inmates hail from other countries. 

Though the prisons have bilingual translators, inmates without basic communications skills are far more vulnerable, said immigration lawyer Valesquez. 

“You have the fear factor of not knowing what the hell is going on,” she said. “The chances are your rights may be violated, and you may not have access to an outside attorney.” 

They have difficulty understanding orders, communicating with other inmates, explaining an illness or understanding their treatment, added Campillo Garcia. 

Valesquez, a legal consultant to the Mexican government, thinks consulate and prison officials will have to work hard to make the program a success. 

“People need to be convinced they should take advantage of it,” she said. “If you’re convinced that you’re a farmworker and you’re going to die a farmworker, you’re going to think, ’Why bother?”’ 

Corrections’ Romero said offering the materials in Spanish seems a good first step, judging from inmates’ initial reaction. 

“To them it’s like being home again,” Romero said. “It all relates them back to their native tongue — they really appreciate it.” 

——— 

On the Net: 

Learn more about the Mexican literacy program (in Spanish) at www.ainternacinea.sep.gob.mx 

For more on the California Department of Corrections see http://www.cdc.state.ca.us/ 

TWENTYNINE PALMS — A couple under arrest for the alleged torture and abuse of their two sons had a third child who died about 10 years ago and is believed to be buried on their property, authorities said. 

On Tuesday, investigators found what they believe is the boy’s grave, and a forensics team was to arrive at the home Wednesday to continue investigating. 

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Cpl. Steve Spear said publicity about the case in the rural desert community of Wonder Valley, east of Twentynine Palms, prompted calls from area residents asking about the family’s third boy. 

“My question was, ‘What third boy?”’ Spear said. 

John Davis, 51, and Carrie Davis, 41, told investigators that the boy was sickly and died when he was about 6, said Spear, of the department’s Joshua Tree station. 

Deputies came to the house Saturday morning after a 17-year-old boy called 911 to say he and his 12-year-old brother were chained up in their bedroom.  

Shortly after that call, the boy’s aunt, Faye Potts, 46, called authorities to say the cry for help was a hoax. 

But deputies found the boys dirty, malnourished, underdeveloped and with chain marks on their wrists. Dog chains were attached to the posts of their beds, authorities said. 

Investigators said that in a house surrounded with signs reading “God’s Country,” “Spirit of God,” and “Jesus,” the boys were fed only bread and rice and had been allowed to speak only by reading out of the Bible. Spear said investigators are still looking into whether the family was affiliated with any church or religious group. 

The parents and Potts are being held for investigation of torture, child abuse, false imprisonment and other charges.

VISALIA — About 30 protesters hoisted signs and chanted slogans in a successful bid to temporarily stop crews from cutting down hundreds of mature oak trees along a bucolic central California irrigation canal. 

The group blockaded a construction site and prevented crews from unloading their equipment. 

“You’re talking about little old gray-haired ladies and the most conservative, law-abiding farmers,” said Richard Garcia, a local Sierra Club member who helped organize last week’s nonviolent protest. “We’re not a bunch of radicals out here, but we stood up for our rights.” 

It was the latest skirmish in a 2-year-old battle over the Tulare Irrigation District’s attempt to line a 10-mile stretch of an earthen canal with cement. The project, which would destroy more than 200 mature oak trees, is intended to prevent Millerton Lake water worth about $400,000 a year from seeping into the ground on its way to fields in the southern part of Tulare County. 

It’s a battle environmentalists and farmers groups are watching closely, because its outcome could have long-lasting impacts on water rights claims all over the state. 

Landowners along the canal, joined by the Sierra Club, argue that if water is prevented from seeping into the ground and recharging the underground aquifer, the area’s water table ultimately will drop by at least 12 feet and possibly by as much as 40 feet. 

The water loss will destroy most vegetation along the canal, spoiling its tranquil river-like character, and will force farmers who live along its banks to find other sources of water for their orchards and fields, the project’s opponents say. 

The landowners who live along the waterway, many of them farmers, and the farmers who live in the irrigation district downstream all claim they have a right to the water that flows through the canal from the southern Sierra Nevada foothills. 

“This canal was constructed back in the 1870s and all of the water that comes from the canal the district has a right to,” TID manager Gerald Hill said. The farmers in the district pay for that water and the landowners along the canal’s banks don’t, Hill said. 

To assert its rights, the district sued Thomas Mitts and his wife, who draw water directly out of the ditch to irrigate some walnut trees on their property. Mitts has also spearheaded an effort by landowners to stop the irrigation district from pouring cement into the canal, fighting the district’s ultimately successful environmental review processes at every stage. 

“It is a natural, historic waterway and there’s a natural spring that flows through the area. Plus, I have a contractual right to the water that they themselves signed off on back in 1892,” Mitts said. Hill argues those contract rights lapsed from earlier disuse. 

The Mitts’ claim, and that of 22 other landowners along the canal who filed a separate lawsuit against the district, rests on two main points. First, they allege the district has not completed eminent domain proceedings and so has no legal right to build its canal on other people’s property, where they have been operating with easements for up to 120 years. Second, they argue the canal is actually a series of creeks and sloughs connected by stretches of ditch, and so the people who live along its banks have a right to the water. 

A day after last week’s protest, a Tulare County judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the district from lining the canal for now. The Mitts case is expected to go to trial sometime next January, and a trial date for the other landowners’ suit has yet to be announced. 

“We’ve got all the permits ... we’ve passed environmental muster. What is out there now is just the adjacent neighbor issue,” Hill said. 

Still, environmentalists warn that if the canal water is prevented from seeping into the local aquifer, the area’s natural beauty will be lost. 

“We feel this is a precedent-setting move,” said the Sierra Club’s Garcia. “If they are allowed to proceed with this cement-lining project, it’s possible other irrigation districts might do it, too. We fear that they will proceed to cement them all until every drop of water goes down to Tulare.” 

LOS ANGELES — An ocean pollution trial a decade in the making began Tuesday with prosecutors calling for more than $47 million to compensate for what they called the world’s biggest pile of DDT, in the Santa Monica Bay. 

Both sides had boxes and books of evidence stacked high in the standing-room-only courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real, who ruled earlier this month that the now-banned pesticide had harmed bald eagles and peregrine falcons on the Channel Islands. 

Questions to be answered in the trial include how much Montrose Corp. and five related companies are to blame for that pollution – which took place from 1947 to 1971 – and how much the companies should pay to make up for it. The trial stems from a lawsuit filed in 1990. 

Montrose’s DDT manufacturing facility in Torrance released hundreds of pounds of the pesticide a day into the sewer system and ultimately the Palos Verdes Shelf of the Santa Monica Bay, Layn Phillips, an attorney representing the state of California, said in opening statements. 

The pesticide, which was widely used in the United States until it was banned about 30 years ago, is linked to cancer and reproductive problems in humans and continues to contaminate fish and kill bald eagle chicks. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency named the contaminated area a Superfund site in 1996, and is experimenting with a dredging operation in which tons of silt from Long Beach Harbor is being poured into the waters off the Palos Verdes Peninsula to cover the DDT deposit. 

Defense lawyers acknowledge the dumping of DDT into the ocean, but argue those actions have not significantly harmed marine life, fishing or the public health. 

The injuries “don’t lead to any damages in the real world,” attorney Harvey J. Wolkoff said. The DDT on the Palos Verdes Shelf is about 200 feet deep, and the white croakers that most commonly swim such depths are not common food for either other marine life or humans, he said. 

He cited a 1990 state Department of Fish and Game study that found only four or five local fishermen caught white croakers, and the amount they caught – about 20,000 pounds – was worth only about $10,000. 

But a 1997 study by the environmental group Heal the Bay found that white croaker was being sold in Asian markets throughout greater Los Angeles, and about 85 percent of it exceeded the EPA’s recommended criteria for fish contamination. 

Wolkoff also said prosecutors are exaggerating the effect DDT has had on bald eagle and peregrine falcon populations in the Channel Islands. He said he would show the current numbers over all eight islands are the same as their pre-DDT populations, although the numbers in the southernmost islands are down. 

Wolkoff argued that other sources of DDT pollution such as agricultural runoff and Navy practice bombings in some of the Channel Islands cause more damage than that released by Montrose. “Montrose’s DDT is buried, and it keeps getting more buried every year,” he said, adding that the chemical has been biodegrading. 

Wolkoff said Montrose’s production of DDT was “not only entirely lawful, but welcome” by the federal government — its biggest purchaser of the pesticide. 

But Phillips said the contamination violated both state law and the facility’s city permit. 

Companies named in the suit are countersuing the state alleging its policies are to blame for the release of the DDT. 

Phillips said the logic behind the countersuit amounts to “Yes, I polluted, but you, the government, failed to stop me,” and would send environmental rules to “regulatory cuckoo-land.” 

Prosecutors had said they would seek as much as $170 million from the companies to help cover past and future costs of contamination, but that figure dropped last month, when Real ruled that the government could not sue for future cleanup costs. That ruling is under appeal. 

In addition, both sides announced Tuesday they were close to reaching a partial settlement for what environmental officials have spent studying the Montrose plant site, but not the offshore contamination. That settlement was expected to be finalized this week. 

U.S. Department of Justice attorney Steven O’Rourke said it will take an estimated $47 million to cover the cost of federal enforcement, assessment of the offshore pollution problem and the future restoration of Channel Islands peregrine falcon and bald eagle populations. 

The government also wants Montrose to pay to restore fish populations harmed by DDT and make up for lost natural resources in the area since the pollution began in 1947. But O’Rourke said an earlier ruling prevented him from specifying a dollar amount for those two items. 

LOS ANGELES — A monthlong transit strike ended Tuesday with both sides overwhelmingly agreeing to accept a new three-year contract that would restore bus and commuter rail service to 450,000 riders dependent on public transportation. 

The pact, which provides raises totaling more than 9 percent over the next three years to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 4,300 bus drivers and subway operators, was approved unanimously by the MTA’s board of directors. It was approved by 92 percent of the more than 1,350 union members casting ballots Tuesday night. 

“We won. We fought a good fight. Make no mistake about it, we won,” the United Transportation Union’s general chairman, James Williams, told members at a raucous rally Tuesday night at which he exhorted them to accept the contract. 

Of those who cast ballots, 1,258 voted in favor and 92 against. 

Union members were given 72 hours to return to work but both sides said they expected buses to be running again Wednesday. Subways should be in operation by Thursday, MTA officials said. 

“There’s no winners here – 30 days strike is tough on everyone and we absolutely agree that everyone who is a rider and employee suffered,” said county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, chairwoman of the MTA board. 

Riders, largely the working poor, and drivers who battled the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to maintain middle-class incomes were eager to get back on the buses and trains, but the bitterness, anger and anxiety of the 32-day strike remained. 

“I’m happy but I’m furious with the MTA board,” Salvadoran immigrant Moises Canisales, 36, said in Spanish. “I didn’t lose my job but I lost working hours.” 

The MTA’s board planned to let commuters ride free for five days. 

“We think we owe them something,” Burke said. “They have been terribly inconvenienced. There are some people that probably lost their jobs.” 

On Broadway, long-suffering merchants eagerly awaited the end of the strike. Out on the sidewalks, a litany of transit routes on the bus stops - 2, 3, 4, 30, 31, 40, 42, 45, 68, 302, 304, 345, – was evidence of how much the street depends on the MTA. 

“We’ve lost a lot of customers and a lot of money,” said Marcos Cortez, who sells herbal products at Natural Sunshine. “It needs to end tomorrow.” 

Negotiators for both sides reached a tentative agreement Tuesday morning after marathon bargaining assisted by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who joined the talks Friday to help break a stalemate. 

“We had just about given up after all night long, then we were awakened this morning by some angel that blessed us out of somewhere with a fresh start, a fresh idea and we shared it with the MTA leadership,” Jackson said. 

Before the vote, bus driver Roselyn Trone, 49, of Fontana went to the Mission Street MTA depot to find out about the agreement and wore her uniform to show her readiness to work. 

“It’s been very, very hard for me,” said Trone. “I’m just buying my home. They (lenders) don’t care what’s going on, they just want the mortgage. It’s taken 36 years to buy the home. I was fearful.” 

MTA drivers and rail operators walked out Sept. 16, supported by mechanics, clerks and unionized supervisors. The MTA took a firm position that operating costs far exceeded those of neighboring transit systems and blamed outdated work rules. 

The walkout sent the nearly half-million daily riders scrambling for alternatives – anybody they knew with a car; entrepreneurs illegally cruising bus stops and offering rides for cash; bicycles, if they could afforde one; or just setting out on foot. 

The MTA fielded some buses on “lifeline” routes but most of its 2,275 buses and all of its 59 miles of light rail and subway were idled. 

Other municipal bus lines bolstered service, including the Los Angeles city DASH buses to help out, but the core of public transit for Los Angeles County was sidelined. 

The latest Los Angeles transit strikes had lasted nine days in 1994 and five days in 1982. But the recent past proved to be no precedent and suddenly the current strike was the third-longest in the city’s history, behind 68- and 36-day walkouts in the 1970s. 

“I’m fed up with the strike. I need the bus to come back. I cannot do anything,” said Magdalena Iglesias, 31, who tried to use DASH buses to get to English classes at a downtown adult school. 

Iglesias said she paid people as much as $12 a trip to take her son to his school. 

“They’ve made us suffer for a month. A lot of people I know have lost their jobs,” she said in Spanish.

Some 1,200 revelers from an overcrowded fraternity party on campus spilled onto Telegraph Avenue early Sunday morning, some of them smashing windows, looting shops and robbing pedestrians, police said.  

Four people were arrested for possession of stolen property, all of whom are juveniles. One of the arrested teens was from San Pablo, while the three others were from Oakland, said Lt. Russell Lopes of the Berkeley Police. 

A well-advertised post-game party hosted by the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity at the university’s Pauley Ballroom was shut down by UC Berkeley Police after an estimated 600 people poured inside, leaving hundreds more outside in wait, Lopes said. 

When someone inside the ballroom pulled the fire alarm, the partygoers stormed outside and flooded Sproul Plaza. 

“There was an estimated 1,200 people outside the ballroom at about 12:30 p.m.,” Lopes said. “Fights broke out and people were forced on the sidewalks.” 

Captain Bill Cooper of the UC Berkeley Police said that the fraternity members throwing the party were trying to keep things calm, and were attempting to only let in those who were students or invited guests. 

“They were equally surprised,” he said. “There was a large group that arrived for the party that they hadn’t anticipated, and we hadn’t anticipated.” 

No one answered the phone at the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity house on Monday. 

Cooper said that the UC police assigned one sergeant, two officers and two community service officers to the party. 

“There was a normal amount of planning, and we anticipated a normal event,” he said. 

Cooper said that a patrol of about 12 UC police officers were held over after their regular shifts and arrived at the scene. 

“We were going to slowly let them disperse,” he said. 

Lopes said that about 9 p.m., two Berkeley police bicycle officers noticed a large crowd gathering and alerted the duty officers. About midnight, he said, a patrol commander and a sergeant happened upon the plaza filled with people and began to observe the scene.  

“And it just went to hell in front of them,” he said. 

Someone fired a gun and panicked the crowd, which then ran in various directions, he said.  

Lopes said when the crowd hit Telegraph Avenue, chaos ensued. People were jumping on top of cars, and robbing people in their cars, windows of businesses were bashed out and a looting spree erupted, he said. 

Around two dozen city officers, along with the 17 UC police officers, finally stopped the crowd from moving down Telegraph beyond Durant Avenue. 

“We just tried to keep them in one area,” Lopes said. 

Both Lopes and Cooper said that it all happened very quickly. 

Lopes said that if they would have assembled all of the officers on duty at Sproul when the bicycle police noticed the growing mass, “it probably wouldn’t have made any difference.” 

Lopes explained that on a given Saturday night, there are only about 18 or 20 police on duty in the entire city. 

He said that having five members of the UC force do security for the party was “really inadequate.” 

“But they could have had a dozen people down there and it wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said. 

Both Lopes and Cooper said that the individuals that did the damage were most likely not Berkeley students, or for that matter, were not even from Berkeley. 

“These are the people that come into Berkeley and start trouble,” Lopes said. 

He added that the party was well publicized as a “Cal vs. UCLA after-party,” and that UC police did not inform Berkeley police that the event was happening. The only way the city police knew about the party was by seeing the people in the plaza. 

Lopes said he believed that gang members may have been involved. Most the looters got away, he said, adding that one man was stopped by the Oakland Police at 61st Street and Shattuck Ave. in Oakland with an armload of loot from the Athlete’s Foot. 

He said that the Oakland police weren’t able to take him to jail, nor were the Berkeley police able to come get him, so he wasn’t arrested, but the merchandise was confiscated. 

Lopes said because of the small number of officers available, there were few arrests. 

“We just told them to drop the merchandise, and they did,” he said. 

The four who were arrested were “stupid enough to come back and try to get stuff that they stashed,” he said. 

Tuesday, Oct. 17

Is the west Berkeley  

Shellmound a landmark? 

7 p.m.  

City Council Chambers 

2134 MLK Jr. Way, 2nd floor 

Continued and final public hearing on the appeals against landmark designation of the West Berkeley Shellmound. The City Council may possibly make it’s decision at this meeting. 

Brunch in the Succah 

10 a.m. 

Congregation Beth Israel 

1630 Bancroft Way 

Rabbi Yocheved Heiligman on Succot, Beyond the Obvious 

Co-sponsored by Berkeley Hadassah, and The Women's Group of Congregation Beth Israel 

527-1207 or e-mail teachme88@yahoo.com. 

Landscape Archeology and Space-Age Technologies in Epirus, Greece 

8 p.m.  

370 Dwinelle Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Professor of Archeology, Art History and Classics Dr. James Wiseman presents a slide-illustrated lecture. 

Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Noon - 2 p.m.  

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium 

Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

Andrea Albanese, PT presents “Aquatic Therapy for Fibromyalgia” and a rap session.  

Call D.L. Malinousky, 601-0550 

Mario Savio Memorial Lecture 

7:30 p.m. 

Pauley Ballroom 

UC Berkeley 

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild will speak on the theme “Forwards and Backwards - Women, globalization, and the new class structure.” Free. 

Call Heather Cameron, 642-9437 

Help Out Some Orangutans 

7 p.m.  

Cafe Milanos 

2522 Bancroft Way 

Come help plan a day of action against Citibank, who allegedly plunders the environment for profit. Join the Rainforest Action Group and Ecopledge in protest.  

Crime and Criminal Justice 

Free discussion and social group 

7-9 p.m.  

Berkeley Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut Ave. 

527-5332 

Is the Sky Falling? 

7 p.m.  

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. 

Tim Holt, author of “On Higher Ground” will present an array of post-ecotopian choices, one of which is domed cities. What does the future hold for California?  

Call 548-2220 x 233  

Holiday Crime Prevention 

A talk with Berkeley Police Department 

11:50 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Wednesday, Oct. 18

Traffic Calming Workshop 

7 - 10 p.m. 

St. Clements Church 

2837 Clement Blvd.  

Help to achieve reasonable traffic speeds and volume on local streets.  

“Women and Trafficking: Domestic & Global Concerns” 

6 - 9:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

The Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women invites the public to this forum which will include an expert panel discussion, and a movie on Women and trafficking. Free. 

Call 644-6107 for more info.  

Human Welfare  

& Community Action Meeting 

7 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis 

Commission on Labor Board Meeting 

6 p.m. 

1950 Addison St., Suite 105 

Commission on Aging Board Meeting 

1:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Board of Education 

7:30 p.m. 

Old City Hall, 2134 MLK Jr. Way 

Citizen’s Humane Commission 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

Thursday, Oct. 19

The Promise and Perils  

of Transgenic Crops 

7:30 - 9 p.m.  

International House, Homeroom 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

A discussion with Dr. Peggy Lemaux, professor of Plant and Microbiology at UC Berkeley, of the scientific basis for biotechnology, it’s risks and benefits. 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

Candlelight Vigil For  

the Uninsured 

6 p.m.  

Steps of Sproul Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Join the American Medical Student Association, Speakers from various medical organizations will discuss ways to improve our health care system.  

Call Chris Hamerski, 845-1607 

Berkeley Metaphysic  

Toastmasters Club 

6:15 - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Rafael Mariquez Free  

Solo Concert 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Public Library, South Branch 

1901 Russell St. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This Chilean folksinger and guitarist presents his original settings of selections by Latin American poets. 

Contact: 644-6860; TDD 548-1240 

Vocal Sauce 

Noon 

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Shattuck Ave. at Center St. 

The JazzSchool’s vocal jazz ensemble perform award-winning arrangements by Greg Murai.  

549-2230 

CLGS Lavendar Lunch 

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. 

1798 Scenic Ave. 

Kyle Miura, Pacific School of Religion alumnus and Director of the GTUs Pacific and Asian-American Center for Theology and Strategies speaks on being “Queer and Asian.”  

Call 849-8239 

Performance Poetica 

7:30 p.m. 

ATA Gallery 

992 Valencia St. 

San Francisco 

Video and verse by Illinois Arts Council/Hemingway Festival poet and filmmaker Rose Virgo, with special guest Judy Irwin. $3  

Movie: “Intermezzo” 

with Leslie Howard 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Pain - Ways to Make It Easier 

1 - 2:30 p.m. 

Alta Bates Summit Medical  

Center, Ashby Campus,  

Dining Rooms A & B 

3001 Colby 

Maggie van Staveren, LCSW, CHT and Christine Bartlett, PT, CHT will demonstrate ways to let go of pain due to arthritis, injury and illness. RSVP requested. 

Call 869-6737  

Design Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Transportation Commission 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

644-6380 

Friday, Oct. 20

“The Ballot Issues” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club 

2315 Durant Ave.  

Fran Packard of the League of Women Voters speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Luncheon: $11 Call 848-3533 

Human Nature 

8:30 p.m. 

New College Cultural Center 

766 Valencia 

San Francisco 

The X-plicit Players present this idyllic nude ritual. Watch or participate: Be led blindfolded through body tunnels, into body streams while sensing psychic/body qualities through touch. Also presented on Oct. 21. $12 admission 

Call 415-848-1985 

— compiled by  

Chason Wainwright 

Broken Spirits - Addressing Abuse 

8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church 

2201 73rd Ave. 

Oakland 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Health Ministry program presents a free workshop on the impact of domestic violence on our community.  

Call for info, 869-6763 

Opera: Don Carlos, Part 1, 1 p.m. 

Old and New Poetry with Bob Randolph, 1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 21

A Day on Mt. Tam 

9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. 

Come play and hike in San Francisco’s beloved playground. This outing is part of a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance. 

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

AHIMSA Eight annual Conference 

9 a.m. - 5 p.m.  

International House, Great Hall 

UC Berkeley 

2299 Piedmont Ave.  

The AHIMSA is a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to encourage dialogues and public forums which bridge spiritual, scientific and social issues. This years conference is titled “Violence! Scientific and Spiritual Perspectives.”  

Admission is free 

Contact Maribel Guillermo, 642-9460 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Center St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Taste a whole farmers’ market’s bounty of fall fruit varieties. 

Free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 2 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. The second of three classes. The last is scheduled for Oct. 28 during the same timeslot. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 22

Run for Peace 

United Nations Association 

10K run and 5K run/walk 

9 a.m. Berkeley Marina 

$20 849-1752 

A Taste of the Greenbelt 

1 - 4 p.m. 

Presidio’s Golden Gate Club 

Greenbelt Alliance brings the farm to the city in this celebration of the Bay Area’s agricultural and culinary bounty. Featured are samples from over 40 local restaurants, farmers, wineries, microbreweries. Also featured are live music and local artwork. The event benefits Greenbelt Alliance’s ongoing efforts to protect Bay Area farmlands and open space.  

$45 per person 

1-800-543-GREEN, www.greenbelt.org 

An Evening with Alice Walker 

7:30 p.m.  

King Middle School  

1781 Rose St. (at Grant) 

free parking 

Join internationally loved novelist, poet and essayist Alice Walker in celebrating her new book of autobiographical stories, “The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart.” Benefits Berkeley EcoHouse and KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM.  

Tickets: $10 advance, $13 door 

Tickets available at independent bookstores 

More info: 848-6767 x609 

From Bahia to Berkeley 

11 a.m.  

Capoeira Arts Cafe 

2026 Addison St. 

A benefit brunch and auction with food, music, dance and culture to bring Brazilian folkloric dance group Nicinha Raizes from Bahia, Brazil to the Bay Area. The group will tour in January 2001.  

428-0698 

Take a Trip to the Oakland Ballet 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organized by the Senior Center to see “Glass Slippers.”  

Tickets: $6 each 

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

A Buddhist Pilgramage in India 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

June Rosenberg brings to life, through slides and lecture, her pilgrimages in India. Free. 

Call 843-6812 

University Avenue Indian Business Community 

10 a.m. - Noon 

Kirpal & Neelum Khanna, owners of the Bazaar of India, tell about the steps they took from spice and food retailing to today’s Bazaar, and the nuances and features of the Indian business community on University Avenue. One is a series of walking tours sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society. 

$10 per person 

Call 848-0181 for reservations 

Monday, Oct. 23

Berkeley Chinese Community Church Turns 100 

6 p.m. 

Nov. 4 

Silver Dragon Restaurant 

835 Webster St. 

Oakland 

Reservations: $30 per person 

More info: 548-5295 

Public Schools Parent Information Night 

7 - 9 p.m.  

Epworth United Methodist Church 

1953 Hopkins St. 

Parents, principals and other administrative staff from 11 elementary schools will speak about their schools. Sponsored by Neighborhood Parents Network.  

Admission: free to members, $5 non-members 

527-6667 

Parks & Recreation Board Meeting 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Solid Waste Management Commission 

7 p.m. 

Solid Waste Management Center 

1201 Second St. 

The Changes Happening with HMOs 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 24

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Fall Fruit Tastings 

2 p.m. - 7 p.m.  

Derby St. at MLK Jr. Way 

Come taste a bounty of fall fruit varieties for free. 

Info: 548-3333 

Blood Pressure 

Alice Meyers 

9:30- 11 :30 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Thursday, Oct. 25

International Jewish Video Competition Winners 

7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Film Archive 

2575 Bancroft Way 

Screening of the four winners in the Museum’s seventh annual competition.  

Call 549-6950 

Low vision support group 

1:15 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Civic Arts Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Disaster Council 

7 p.m. 

Emergency Operations Center 

997 Cedar 

Energy Commission 

5:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

Mental Health Commission 

6:30 p.m. 

Mental Health Clinic 

2640 MLK Jr. Way 

Planning Commission 

7 p.m.  

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Police Review Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St.  

Thursday, Oct. 26

From Morgan to Modern 

Julia Morgan and Hearst Castle:Designing and American Country House 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10 or $35 for series that continues through November. 

841-2242 

East Bay Science & Arts Middle School 

Noon  

BART Plaza, Downtown 

Middle school students perform dances of folk, swing, and Cuban rueda styles. Free.  

Contact Carrie Ridgeway, 549-2230 

Proposition Brown Bag 

Noon - 1:30 p.m.  

Institute of Governmental Studies 

109 Moses Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Hear presentations about and discuss the eight propositions on the California ballot.  

Call 642-4608 

Tai Chi 

2 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Friday, Oct. 27

“Transporation: What’s in Store?” 

11:45 a.m. 

Berkeley City Club  

2315 Durant Ave.  

Larry Dahms, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Council speaks at 12:30 p.m. Luncheon is served at 11:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. 

Luncheon: $11 

More info and reservations: 848-3533 

Conversational Yiddish 

1 p.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst 

644-6107 

Saturday, Oct. 28

Pedaling the Green City 

11 a.m. -3:30 p.m.  

Take a leisurely bike ride along the future San Francisco Bay Trail. One in a series of free outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations  

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Halloween for the little guys with (not so) scary stories, music, and more.  

Call 649-3943  

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 3 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. This is the final class in the series. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Sunday, Oct. 29

“Gateway to Knowledge” 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl. 

Barr Rosenberg describes how to master new knowledge and take the power to shape our lives in wise and compassionate ways.  

843-6812 

An Evening with The Professor 

5 - 9:30 p.m. 

Mambo Mambo 

1803 Webster St.  

Oakland 

Berkeley resident Geoffrey A. Hirsch, better known as the Tie Guy from the “How Berkeley Can You Be” parade got his start in comedy in 1996. A professor in real life, Hirsch tell the story of how he became a funny guy.  

$5 for show only, $10 for show and dinner 

Call Geoffrey Hirsch at 845-5631 to reserve tickets 

Monday, Oct. 30

Fun with Oragami 

10 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Tuesday, Oct. 31

Sing-A-Long 

11 a.m. 

Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst St. 

644-6107 

Wednesday, Nov. 1

Kathak Dancing with Pandit Chitresh Das 

7:30 p.m. 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts 

2640 College Ave.  

The Graduate Theological Union presents a free lecture-demonstration with Pandit Chitresh Das, a master of India’s Kathak dance form. This event is free. 

Call 649-2440 for additional info 

Thursday, Nov. 2

PASTForward Panel Discussion 

2 p.m. 

UC Berkeley Art Museum 

Bancroft Way (below College) 

In conjunction with the White Oak Dance Project’s performances, a panel discussion with Judson era dance choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Deborah Hay. Free. 

From Morgan to Modern 

“Saddling the Site: The Environmental Designs of Wurster, Church and Others” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Friday, Nov. 3

Taize Worship Service 

7:30-8:30 p.m. 

An hour of quiet reflection and song. First Friday of the month. 

Loper Chapel on Dana Street between Durant and Channing Way. 

848-3696 

Saturday, Nov. 4

Breathtaking Barnabe Peak 

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Hike through Samuel P. Taylor State Park’s lush forests and climb to the heights of Barnabe Peak, overlooking Point Reyes. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Wild About Books? 

10:30 a.m. 

Berkeley Central Library 

2121 Allston Way 

Dublin Library’s resident storyteller and featured teller at the 1998 National Storytelling Festival tell kids aged 3 to 7 her favorite tales.  

Call 649-3943  

Sunday, Nov. 5

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m.  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Pl.  

Buddhist teacher Sylvia Gretchen on “Beyond Therapy and Into the Heart of Buddhist Psychology.” Free. 

Call 843-6812  

Monday, Nov. 6

Airports vs. the Bay 

7 p.m. 

Albany Community Center 

1249 Marin St.  

Albany 

David Lewis, Executive Director of “Save the Bay” will speak on the airports’ plans to expand into the SF Bay and other challenges to Bay restoration.  

Contact: Friends of Five Creeks, 848-9358 

Thursday, Nov. 9

The Life and Art of Chiura Obata 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Public Library 

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

A slide show and lecture presented by Obata’s granddaughter, Kimi Kodani Hill, celebrating Obata’s book, “Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment,” and the retrospective exhibit of Obata’s work to appear this Fall at SFs De Young Museum. 

For details call 644-6850  

From Morgan to Modern 

“Bay Area Modern” 

7:30 p.m. 

The Hillside Club 

2286 Cedar St. 

$10. 841-2242 

ESL Teacher Job Fair 

7 - 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Adult School 

1222 University Ave., Room 7  

ESL program representatives from adult schools in Alameda and Contra Costa counties will provide information about desired qualifications, current job openings, credentialing requirements, and more.  

Call Kay Wade, 644-6130 

Saturday, Nov. 11

Moonlight on Mt. Diablo 

1 - 10:30 p.m.  

Hike up the Devil’s Mountain by daylight, catch a glorious sunset and hike back by the light of the moon. One in a series of free outing organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

Sunday, Nov. 12

Views, Vines and Veggies 

9:15 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.  

Climb Bald Mountain in Sugarloaf State Park and peer down upon the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Then please your palate at the Landmark Winery and visit Oak Hill organic vegetable and flower farm. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 for reservations 

“Time Across Cultures” 

2 - 4 p.m. 

St. Clements Church 

2837 Claremont Ave.  

The annual Roselyn Yellin Memorial lecture with a slide-illustrated panel discussion. Also a tour of the “Telling Time” exhibit at the Judah L. Magnes Museum followed by a reception at the museum, 4 - 5 p.m.  

More info: 549-6950 

Buddhism & Compassion 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Psychiatrist and teacher Bobby Jones on “Healing through Compassion.” Free.  

843-6812 

Monday, Nov. 13

An Evening with Barbara Kingsolver 

7:30 p.m. 

King Middle School 

1781 Rose St. 

Barbara Kingsolver’s works include “Animal Dreams,” “High Tide in Tucson,” “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Prodigal Summer” 

free parking $10 in advance, $13 at the door 

Benefits KPFA and Urban Ecology. 

848-6767 

Tuesday, Nov. 14

Take a Trip to the Steinbeck Museum and 

Mission San Juan Bautista 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

This is an outing organzied by the Senior Center.  

$40 with lunch, $25 without  

Call Maggie or Suzanne, 644-6107 

Thursday, Nov. 16

Reminiscing in Swingtime 

7:30 p.m.  

North Berkeley Library  

1170 Alameda (at Hopkins) 

George Yoshida, author and jazz drummer, presents a multi-media program recounting the big band experience in the Japanese American internment camps. The presentation will be capped with a set of live jazz by the George Yoshida Quartet. 

Call for more info: 644-6850 

Berkeley Metaphysic Toastmasters Club 

6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysic come together at Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters. Meets first and third Thursdays each month. 

Call 869-2547 or 643-7645 

Saturday, Nov. 18

S.F. Stairs and Peaks 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m.  

Begin the day with a visit to the farmer’s market, then meander up the stairways and streets of Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower. Then up Russian Hill, descending to Fisherman’s Wharf for a ride back on the new historic streetcar line. One in a series of free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: 415-255-3233 

Berkeley Free Folk Festival 

11 a.m. - 1 a.m.  

Ashkenaz  

1317 San Pablo Ave. 

Fourteen hours of free concerts, workshops, jam sessions and to top it off a Saturday night dance. The fifth annual Folk Festival will feature Shay & Michael Black, Spectre Double Negative & the Equal Positive, Larry Hanks, Wake the Dead and many others. Sponsored by Charles Schwab and the City of Berkeley.  

More info or to volunteer: 525-5099 

Sunday, Nov. 19

Mt. Madonna & Wine  

10 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Hike through evergreen forests and visit the remains of a 19th century estate, then finish the day with a visit to Kruse Winery. One of many free fall outings organized by Greenbelt Alliance.  

Call: (415) 255-3233 for reservations 

Tuesday, Nov. 21

Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Noon - 2 p.m.  

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium 

Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

Call D.L. Malinousky, 601-0550 

Compiled by Chason Wainwright 

Need to speak to Palestineans right of return 

Editor: 

Doesn't Franz Schurmann (Opinion, 10/6/00) know that the Afghan Taliban resembles Pol Pot's Khimer Rouge with every passing attrocity?  

The Taliban regime is denounced by organizations and institutions as diverse as the Muslim Women's League, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, Time Magazine, AP, and Physicians for Human Rights for, amongst other reasons: egregious and violent oppression of women; the lack an independent press; trafficking and promotion of the opium/heroin trade (75% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan); and the August, 1998 massacre of 8,000 Hazara in the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif? 

Doesn't he know that one reason for the outrage by secular and religious Palestinians and Arabs at Ariel Sharon's presence at the Dome of the Rock - holy ground for Christians, Jews and Muslims - is that Sharon was the Israeli Defense Minister during Israel's 1982 occupation of southern-Lebanon and he was responsible for permitting Lebanese right-wing Phalangist execution units to enter two of the camps, Sabra and Shatila, where they murdered between 2-3,000 unarmed civilians? 

Can we have an article by someone with a grasp of the real issues, e.g., the Palestinian's right of return; the role of the Muslim Hamas in the “peace process;” why the people in the U.S. acquiesce in our government sending $5.5 billion per year in financial aid from the U.S. to Israel, which allows Israel to deny Palestinians their democratic rights while supporting illegal Zionist settlements and military murders of unarmed civilians?; and the failure of Israel to honor U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (to move the boundaries of Israel back to the pre-1967 demarcation lines)? 

Robin M. Donald 

Berkeley 

More B-TV fans 

Both my husband and I are now avid fans of your paper, the Daily Planet. Imagine our delight when you took community information one step further and added the Channel 25 schedule to your paper - you guys are great! 

Lessly Wikle, 

Berkeley 

We cannot go back where we came from 

Editor: 

The latest crisis in the Mideast brings into clear focus a fundamental paradox in the Zionist worldview: 

Zionist religious ideology speaks of Israel as “the Promised Land”--promised to them by God(!)--thousands of years ago! (A claim of “divine rule”!)  

As an African American concerned for the human rights of all people, I offer an alternative to this worldview. 

Martin Luther King often spoke of “the Dream” of “the Promised Land” for African Americans, as Zionists respectively do for themselves.  

But, King did not speak of African Americans going back to West Africa, our “Motherland,” after almost half a millennium, to find “our land” and dispossess continuously indigenous Africans of theirs.  

He never talked about seizing someone else's land at all! “The Motherland” we were taken from 400 to 500 years ago is, of course, just not for us the same motherland that exists at all anymore: we can not point to “our house,” or “our property”– not even “our village.” 

When King spoke of “the Promised Land,” after all this historical time, he, of course, meant for us to create a country – a land – and a society of human rights, dignity, social justice, equality for all, and a love for all humanity.  

He meant for all of us Americans – and all of us indeed--to create “the Promised Land” starting in our hearts. 

King’s vision of “The Promised Land” was not chauvinistically nationalistic, not long-desired-for real estate, but ultimately a concept of humanity – a place in the heart! This is the idea that modern-day Zionists miss. This is the idea that Zionists could have taken from their tragedies and holocaust, as King took from ours.  

This lack of consciousness is the flaw in “the Dream” of modern-day Zionism’s “Promised Land”: it takes and subjugates the land of others – it is Israeli apartheid. 

The worldview of Zionist ideology arises, I believe, from a particular psychological phenomenon. I believe that Zionists are experiencing, on the level of the Israeli national psyche a well-known victim's psychological identification reaction.  

In this phenomenon, some of those who were once victims of long-term severe abuse and brutality (as European Jews were under Nazism and European anti-Semitism) often go on to abuse and brutalize others.  

This is in the false belief that no one else, in the victim's mind, has ever really suffered what the victims have suffered – a self-priority and a monopoly on “real” pain, and a failure to validate another’s.  

Such victims (here Zionists) think that they could never become brutalizers or oppressors themselves, and that no one else can ever really be brutalized or oppressed by them--no matter what is done at their hands or in their name. 

Thus, in short by this belief, Palestinians can never be victims of Zionists, and Zionists can never be oppressors of Palestinians.  

This represents “a double tragedy”: as Albert Einstein said, “It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists do to Palestinians some of what Nazis did to Jews.” 

Joseph Anderson 

Berkeley 

Confidence in Proper Oversight for Measures AA and BB  

Editor:  

A recent letter to the Planet raised questions regarding oversight of school bond and school parcel tax funds in Berkeley.  

Berkeley voters approved a school bond measure in 1992 to address the most critical facility needs of the district. The final years of the 10 year program financed by that bond will yield two of the largest projects, seismic retrofitting of King Middle School and new buildings along Milvia Street at Berkeley High School. These projects have been planned for several years and are now into bids. To finance these projects the funds from the 1992 Measure are all committed. The District's Facilities Construction Plan details the use of 1992 Bond funds. Find a copy on the Schools Districts web site (http://www.berkeley.k12.ca.us/ click on "departments" and then "facilities").  

Measure AA, the Berkeley Schools Bond Measure of 2000, continues the District’s construction program by addressing the pressures on our facilitates from increased enrollment, expansion due to reduced class size programs, escalating construction costs in the Bay Area, and the need to address critical technology, nutrition and safety issues. Measure BB, the Berkeley Schools Facilities Safety and Maintenance act of 2000, will provide restricted funds to properly maintain and extend the life of our buildings.  

The details of Measure AA and BB have been worked out by experienced staff with the direction of superintendent and administration. These plans are subject to oversight by citizen advisory committees. Funds are audited by an outside independent CPA firm annually. Besides these layers of review, expenditures and plans must be approved by the School Board. There is no delegation of this ultimate responsibility. We elect the School Board and they are accountable to us. All Board and Committee meetings are open to the public with public comment at every step of the process!  

If you doubt the need for Measures AA and BB or the adequacy of oversight, examine the list of supporters of the Measures. You will find groups and individuals who have really studied the District's cost structure and facilities needs, including the PTA Council, Berkeley Public Education Foundation, current and former School Board members, Construction and Maintenance Advisory committee leaders, BSEP Planning and Oversight and site committee leaders, Board Budget advisory committee members, business people, realtors, university educators, parents, teachers, staff and principals.  

We can’t expect our children to embrace the importance of education, or our excellent teachers to really believe that we support them, if we send them to cramped, maintenance-starved schools. Goal One for our schools is to promote maximum achievement for every student. But a crucial supporting goal is to provide a positive environment for students and staff. Measure AA and BB allows us to do just that!  

Nancy Riddle, CPA  

Inquisitive activist parent  

Volunteer Treasurer for Measures AA and BB  

Ebony Museum of Arts 

The museum specializes in the art and history of Africa.  

Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.  

30 Jack London Village, Suite 209. (510) 763-0745. 

Habitot Children’s Museum 

Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 

“Back to the Farm.”  

Ongoing 

An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels like an earthworm, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more.  

Cost: $4 adults; $6 children age 7 and under; $3 for each additional child age 7 and under.  

Monday and Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Tuesday and Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.  

647-1111 or www.habitot.org 

Judah L. Magnes Museum 

2911 Russell St.  

549-6950 

Free 

Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. 

“Telling Time: To Everything There Is A Season” 

Through May 2002.  

An exhibit structured around the seasons of the year and the seasons of life with objects ranging from the sacred and the secular, to the provocative and the whimsical. Highlights include treasures from Jewish ceremonial and folk art, rare books and manuscripts, contemporary and traditional fine art, video, photography and cultural kitsch. The exhibition will expand Nov 5, 2000, to encompass all four seasons and a collection of rare treasures from Jewish, Tibetan, Mexican-American, and other cultures. 

“Second Annual Richard Nagler Competition for Excellence i Jewish Photography” 

Nov. 5 - Feb. 2001. 

Featuring the work of Claudia Nierman, Jason Francisco, Fleming Lunsford, and others.  

UC Berkeley Art Museum 

2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley 

Wednesday - Sunday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Open Thursdays til 9 p.m.  

“Hans Hoffmann”  

An exhibit of paintings by Hoffmann which emphasizes two experimental methods the artist employed: the introduction of slabs or rectangles of highly saturated colors and the use of large areas of black paint juxtaposed with intense oranges, greens and yellows. 

Through Jan. 16, 2001: Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks.  

The Asian Galleries  

“Art of the Sung: Court and Monastery ,” open-ended.  

A display of early Chinese works from the permanent collection.  

“Chinese Ceramics and Bronzes: The First 3,000 Years,” open-ended. 

“Works on Extended Loan from Warren King,” open-ended. 

“Three Towers of Han,” open-ended. 

$6 general; $4 seniors and students age 12 to 18; free children age 12 and under; free Thursday, 11 a.m. to noon and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

642-0808. 

UC Berkeley Museum of  

Paleontology 

Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley 

“Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing.  

A 20-foot tall, 40-foot long replica of the fearsome dinosaur. The replica is made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. 

“Pteranodon”  

A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22 to 23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. 

California Fossils Exhibit, ongoing. An exhibit of some of the fossils which have been excavated in California. 

Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

642-1821. 

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst  

Museum of Anthropology 

Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College  

Avenue, Berkeley 

“Modern Treasures from Ancient Iran,” through Oct. 29.  

This exhibit explores nomadic and town life in ancient and modern Iran as illustrated in bronze and pottery vessels, and textiles.  

“Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended.  

This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history, including the role of Phoebe Apperson Hearst as the museum’s patron, as well as the relationship of anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie to the museum. 

“Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. 

This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. 

$2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

643-7648 

Mills College Art Museum 

5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland 

“The 100 Languages of Children,” through October.  

An exhibit of art by children from Reggio Emilia, Italy. At Carnegie Building Bender Room. 

Free. Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. 

430-2164 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

“Math Rules!” Ongoing. A math exhibit of hands-on problem-solving stations, each with a different mathematical challenge. 

“Within the Human Brain” Ongoing. Visitors test their cranial nerves, play skeeball, master mazes, match musical tones and construct stories inside a simulated “rat cage” of learning  

experiments. 

“In the Dark,”through Jan. 15, 2001. Plunge into darkness and see amazing creatures that inhabit worlds without light.  

“Saturday Night Stargazing” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza.  

“Grossology,” LHSs Family Halloween Party, Oct. 28, 6:30 - 9 p.m. Featuring the creation of “gross” stuff with household products and ChemMystery, a hands-on crime lab for kids.  

$12 for adults; $10 for kids 12 and under.  

Call 643-5134 for tickets  

Open daily, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

$7 for adults; $5 for children 5-18; $3 for children 3-4 

642-5132 

Holt Planetarium  

Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. 

“Moons of the Solar System,” through Dec. 10. Take a tour of the fascinating worlds that orbit Earth and other planets out to the edge of the Solar System.  

“Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18;  

$3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Centennial Drive, University of California,  

Berkeley. (510) 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu 

The Oakland Museum of  

California 

1000 Oak St., Oakland 

“Secret World of the Forbidden City” Through Jan. 24, 2001. A rare glimpse of over 350 objects which illustrate the opulence and heritage of the Chinese Imperial Court Under the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 - 1911. For this exhibit: $13 general, $10 seniors and $5 for students with ID.  

For museum: $6 general; $4 seniors and students; free children age 5 and under; second Sundays are free to all. Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.; first Friday of the month, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

(888) OAK-MUSE or www.museumca.org. 

TRAX Gallery 

1306 3rd. St., Berkeley 

Mary Law “Altered Ceramic Pots”  

through Oct. 21 

For more information or to sign up for the workshop call 526-0279 or e-mail to cone5@aol.com 

Downtown Berkeley Association 

Lunchtime Concert Series 

Every Thursday through October 

noon - 1p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

1 hour free parking available in Center Street Garage 

Oct. 19: Jazzschool’s vocal jazz ensemble Vocal Sauce 

Oct. 26: East Bay Science & Arts Middle School will perform folk, swing and Cuban rueda dances 

Ashkenaz 

1317 San Pablo 

Oct. 27, 9 p.m., Sam Mangwana (Congolese rumba, world) 

Call TicketWeb, 594-1400 or Ashkenaz, Tuesday through Sunday during showtimes, 525-5054 

924 Gilman St. 

Oct. 20: The Jocks, The Fleshies (this show $3) 

All shows begin at 8 p.m. unless noted 

$5; $2 for a year membership 

525-9926 

Oct. 27: Elliot, The Jazz June, Lovelight SHine, Killing Independent 

Oct. 28: From Ashes Arise, Born Dead Icons, Time in Malta 

Albatross Pub 

1822 San Pablo Ave.  

843-2473 

Freight & Salvage Coffee House 

1111 Addison St. 

All music begins at 8 p.m. (doors open at 7:30 p.m.) 

Oct. 18: Tom Rush  

Oct. 19: Hot Club of Cowtown (Texas swing & Parisian jazz) 

Oct 20: The Campbell Brothers with Katie Jackson (guitar gospel music) 

Oct. 21:Dick Gaughan and Brian McNeill (Scotish traditional) 

Tickets for most shows $15 - $20 

Oct. 22: Bob Brozman and Takashi Hirayasu (slide guitar teams with Okinawan Lute master) 

Call 762-BASS or 601-TWEB for advance tickets 

For additional info call Ashkenaz showline, 548-1761 

Cal Performances 

Oct. 21, 8 p.m.: Hamza El Din (world music), $16 - $28.  

Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley (Bancroft at Telegraph) 

Oct. 29, 3 p.m.: Ian Bostridge, Tenor, performs music of Schubert and Hugo Wolf, $28 - $48.  

Nov. 5, 3 p.m.: Julia Fischer, Violinist, performs music of Tartini, Beethoven and Cesar Franck, $28 - $48.  

Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley (Bancroft at College) 

For tickets and info for these events call 642-9988 

Yoshi’s 

Oct. 23, An Evening with pianist Jon Jang to benefit the Asian Women’s Shelter of San Francisco. Call 415-751-7110 for tickets and additional information.  

Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. (510) 238-9200 or (510) 762-BASS. 

The Jazzschool/La Note 

2377 Shattuck Ave. 

Oct. 29, 4:30 p.m., Mimi Fox Trio 

$12; $10 students/seniors; $6 for Jazzschool students and children under 13 

Reservations: (510) 845-5373. 

Live Oak Concert Series 

Berkeley Art Center 

1275 Walnut St. 

Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m., Donna Lerew, violin, Skye Atman, piano perform Mozart, Shubert, Korngold and others.  

Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m., The Horizon Wind Quintet 

$10; $8 for members; $9 for students and seniors; Children under 12 admitted free 

Eli’s Mile High Club 

3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland 

(510) 655-6661 

Doors open at 8 p.m. 

Beginning Oct. 26, Funk & Soul with DJs Styles, Kendread and special guests. Ongoing Thursdays.  

Films 

University of California,  

Berkeley Art Museum 

Pacific Film Archive 

2575 Bancroft Way 

642-1412 

“Neo-Eiga: New Japanese Cinema” 

Oct. 21, 7 p.m. : “Don’t Look Back (1999), directed by Akihiko Shiota, US premiere; 8:45 p.m. : “Sasayaki” (1999), directed by Akihiko Shiota (who will appear in person at the screening), US premiere. 

Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m. : Judah L. Magnes Museum Presents: 

International Jewish Video Awards Screening featuring “Shylock” by Pierre Lasry, “Brooklyn Trilogy” by Madeline Schwartzman, “Village of Idiots” by Eugene Fedorenko and Rose Newlove, and Arnie Lipsey’s “Almonds and Wine.”  

$7 for one film; $8.50 for double bills. UC Berkeley students are $4/$5.50. Seniors and children are $4.50/6.00  

Theater 

The Gate Theater of Dublin Present 

“Waiting for Godot” 

by Samuel Beckett 

Zellerbach Playhouse 

UC Berkeley 

Directed by Walter Asthmus 

Oct. 18 - 21, 8 p.m.; Oct.19 & 21, 2 p.m.; Oct. 22, 3 p.m. 

Post-performance discussions Oct. 20 & 22 

$34 - $48 

Call 642-9988 for tickets  

“The Green Bird”  

by Carlo Gozzi 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre 

2025 Addison St. 

Adapted by Theatre de la Jeune Lune and directed by Dominique Serrand.  

“The Green Bird” runs through Oct. 27. For tickets contact the box office at 845-4700 

“The Philanderer”  

by George Bernard Shaw 

Berkeley City Club 

2315 Durant Ave. 

Performed by the Aurora Theatre company, “The Philanderer” takes on the challenging and often humorous exploration of gender roles and the separations that exist between the sexes. 

Tickets for preview showings are sold at $26. Showtimes run Wednesday through Saturday through October 15 at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees show at 2 p.m., plus selected Sunday evenings at 7 p.m. Admission for regular performances is $30. Student discounts are available. For tickets and information call 843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org. 

Impact Theatre Presents: 

“Impact Briefs 4: Impact Smackdown!” 

Oct. 20 - Nov. 18 

Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.  

$10, Students $5 

Call 464-4468 for tickets & reservations 

La Val’s Subterraniean  

1834 Euclid 

“Fanny at Chez Panisse” 

Julie Morgan Theatre 

2640 College Ave., Berkeley 

Musical based on the book with opening proceeds going to the Verde Partnership Garden in Richmond. 

Through Oct. 29 

Runs Wednesday - Sunday, 7 p.m.  

$26 - 34  

1-888-FANNY06 

“Moonlight”  

by Harold Pinter 

A Last Planet Theatre production 

Potrero Hill Playhouse 

953 De Haro 

San Francisco 

Pinter’s most recent play features a man named Andy who is dying and his wife, Bel, who can’t get their two sons to pay them a visit. A story of infidelity, sibling rivalry, marital combat and moonlight and memory.  

Runs Thursday - Saturday, through Oct. 28. All shows at 8:30 p.m. No show Oct. 26.  

$20 opening night, $10-15 regular run, $5 preview 

More info and tickets: 845-2687 

Berkeley Rep School of Theatre 

“Sundiata” 

Martin Luther King, Jr. High School 

1781 Rost St.  

The world of premiere of Edward Mast’s tale of Djata, a handicapped boy who discovers he is the lost son of the murdered king of the Mali Empire. As the empire’s last hope, he is called upon to reclaim his heritage as the Lion King.  

Nov, 4, Noon 

Free to the public, but reservations are encouraged. 

Call 647-2972  

“Dinner With Friends” 

by Donald Margulies 

Nov. 10 through Jan 5, 2001 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre 

2025 Addison St.  

845-4700, www.berkeleyrep.org 

Dance 

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company  

“You Walk?” 

Oct. 27-28, 8 p.m. 

$20 - $42 

“Past Forward”  

White Oak Dance Project Present:  

Nov. 1 - 4, 8 p.m.  

Mikhail Baryshnikov and company celebrating the influence of post-modern choreographers.  

$36 - $60  

Zellerbach Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Call for tickets, 642-9988 or try TicketWeb.com 

Exhibits 

Berkeley Art Center 

“Ethnic Notions: Black Images in the White Mind,''  

Through Nov. 12. An exhibit by Janette Faulkner exploring racial stereotypes in commercial imagery. Free. Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Live Oak Park, 1275 Walnut St., Berkeley. (510) 644-6893 

California College of Arts and Crafts  

Free. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Oliver Art Center, 5212 Broadway, Oakland. 594-3712 

Kala Gallery 

Kala Art Institute 1999 Fellowship Awards Exhibition Part II through Oct. 31. Features work by Margaret Kessler, Barbara Milman, Michele Muennig, and David Politzer.  

Tuesday through Friday, Noon - 5 p.m. or by appointment. 1060 Heinz Ave. Call 549-2977. 

Berkeley Historical Society  

“Berkeley’s Ethnic Heritage.” An overview of the rich cultural diversity of the city and the contribution of individuals and minority groups to it’s history and development.  

Thursday through Saturday, 1 – 4 p.m. Admission free.  

1931 Center St.  

Call 848-0181 

Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery 

Paintings by Timothy Buckwalter, Hilary Harkness, and Jerry W. King, Through Oct. 28. 

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.  

942 Clay St., Oakland. Call 625-1830 for more info. 

Pro Arts Gallery 

Early Bird Holiday Art Fest. Oct. 25 - Nov. 11. Shop early for unique gifts made by local artists. Free opening reception, Oct. 28, 1 - 4 p.m. featuring live music and artist demonstrations.  

Gallery hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.  

461 Ninth St., Oakland. Call 763-9425  

Ames Gallery 

“Left Coast Legends: California Masters of Visionary, Self-taught, and Outsider Art,” featuring the work of Dwight Mackintosh, Alex Maldonado, A.G. Rizzoli, Jon Serl, and Barry Simons, Through Dec. 2.  

2661 Cedar St., Call for more info: 845-4949 

Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery 

Alan Leon: Hebrew Calligraphy and Illuminations, Nov. 1 - Dec. 15. Opening reception, Nov. 4, 1 - 3 p.m.  

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Thursday, 1 - 7 p.m.; Saturday, Noon - 4 p.m. and by appointment.  

3023 Shattuck Ave., Call 548-9286 x307 for more info 

Readings 

Rhyme and Reason Poetry Series 

Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive 

2621 Durant Ave. 

2nd and 4th Sundays of each month. 

Includes featured readers and open mike poetry. Free 

2 p.m. sign-up. Program runs from 2:30 - 4 p.m. 

Oct. 29: Fernando Brito, Lara Dale 

234-0727 

Holloway Poetry Reading Series 

8p.m., Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall 

For more information call 653-2439 

Nov. 1: John Yau and Garrett Caples, books include “Forbidden Entries” and “My Symptoms” 

Nov. 7: Marie Howe and Brian Glaser, “The Good Thief” and “What the Living Do” 

Cody’s Books 

2454 Telegraph Ave., 845-7852  

& 1730 Fourth St., 559-9500 

Telegraph events (all begin at 7:30 p.m): 

Oct. 17, Peter Menzel & Faith D’Aluisio discuss “Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species.” 

Oct. 18, “The New Young American Poets” anthology with Sam Witt, Da Powell, Rick Noguchi, and Rick Barot 

Oct. 19, Meredith Maran discusses “Class Dismissed: A Year in the Life of an American High School, a Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation.” 

Oct. 21, 3 p.m., Dale Hope discusses “The Aloha Shirt-Spirit of the Islands.” 

Oct. 23, Paisley Rekdal reads from “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In.” 

Oct. 24, Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair discuss “Al Gore: A User’s Manual.” 

Fourth St. events: 

Lunch Poems: A Noontime Poetry Reading Series 

Morrison Room, Doe Library 

UC Berkeley 

12:10 - 12:50 p.m.  

Call 642-0137 

Under the direction of Professor Robert Hass, this is a series of events on the first Thursday of each month. Free.  

Nov. 2: Goh Poh Seng  

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National  

Laboratory 

Scientists and engineers guide visitors through the research areas of the laboratory, demonstrating emerging technology and discussing the research’s current and potential applications. A Berkeley lab tour usually lasts two hours and includes visits to several research areas. Popular tour sites include the Advanced Light Source, The National Center for Electron Microscopy, the 88-Inch Cyclotron, The Advanced Lighting Laboratory, and The Human Genome Laboratory. Reservations required at least two weeks in advance of tour. 

Free. University of California, Berkeley. 

486-4387 

Berkeley City Club Tours 

Guided tours through Berkeley’s City Club, a landmark building designed by architect Julia Morgan, designer of Hearst Castle. 

$2. The fourth Sunday of every month except December, between noon to 4 p.m.  

2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. 

848-7800 

Golden Gate Live Steamers 

Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size, run along a half mile of track in Tilden Regional Park. The small trains are owned and maintained by a non-profit group of railroad buffs who offer rides.  

Free. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park, Berkeley.  

486-0623  

Oakland Historic walking tours 

Runs through October.  

The tours cover downtown Oakland and its historic waterfront. All tours begin promptly at 10 a.m. and last between an hour and an hour and a half.  

Free. Call for reservations. Oakland. (510) 238-3234. 

University of California at Berkeley Botanical Garden 

The gardens have displays of exotic and native plants. 

Botanical Garden Tours, Saturday and Sunday, 1:30 p.m. Meet at the Tour Orientation Center for a free docent tour. $3 general; $2 seniors; $1 children; free on Thursday. Daily, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Botanical Garden, Centennial Drive, behind Memorial Stadium, a mile below the Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley. (510) 643-2755 or www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden/ 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tours 

Oct. 22 - University Avenue Indian Business Community led by Kirpal & Neelum Khanna 

Nov. 5 - What’s Happening Downtown? led by Debbie Badhia 

More info call 848-0181 

Devon Whalen and the employees of Mr. Rags clothing store were still sweeping up glass and putting things back on the shelves of their trashed store Monday morning. It was around 10 a.m., more than a day after a mob Berkeley police estimates as 1,200 people ran rampant down Telegraph Avenue, breaking out windows and looting at least seven stores. 

“This was just ignorant and stupid,” said Whalen, manager of the store. “But it will catch up with them someday.” 

Mr. Rags was one of seven stores in the area that was vandalized and looted about 12:30 a.m. Sunday when a mob of partygoers poured onto Telegraph Avenue between Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue, after UC Berkeley Police shut down a fraternity party at the university’s Pauley Ballroom. 

The store’s front window was smashed and some of its merchandise was stolen. Revelers took scooters from their showcases and rode down the thoroughfare continuing the mayhem, Whalen said. Roland Peterson, executive director of the Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District, said that he spoke with the owners and managers of the damaged stores. Mr. Rags estimated damages upwards of $20,000, he said. 

“The Gap was hit the worst,” Peterson said, noting that representatives estimated that there was a bill of $25,000 to replace the windows, and another $25,000 in merchandise loss. 

Peterson said that the other five stores had not fully assessed their damages at this point. 

“They just hit the stores that interested them,” said Jim Sugarman, manager of Tower Records on Durant Street. “Of course a record store would be hit, with the moronic mob mentality.” 

Xavier Sanchez, the manager of Athlete’s Foot on Telegraph Avenue was inside with another employee preparing for a 6 a.m. inventory when the mob arrived. 

“As they were beginning to bang on the glass, I got behind the counter and immediately called 911,” he said. “And as I was relaying the message to the dispatcher, they busted the glass and ran inside.” 

Sanchez said that he and the other employee stood behind the fixtures while around 100 people rushed inside and looted the store over a 15 minute time span. 

“We couldn’t do anything, we just let them have at it,” he said. 

Sanchez said that they went ahead with the inventory, and that they are still tabulating their losses. 

“We’re appalled at what happened,” said Kathy Berger, President of the Telegraph Area Association. “We don’t know at this time who the responsible entities are.” 

Berger said that the TAA is having a meeting with the merchant representatives and officers from the Berkeley Police and the UC Police this afternoon to try to look for ways to prevent something like this from ever happening again. 

Sugarman said that Tower Records was lucky. 

“It certainly could have been worse,” he said. 

After looters broke out the eastern window of the store, they ransacked the rap and DVD section. 

“If you looked at the other aisles, they weren’t even touched,” he said. “They took what they wanted.” 

He said that the alarm company notified him of the melee, and while he was on his way to the store, they called him back and notified him that police were recommending that no one should come down to the area, he said. 

“(The police) had mostly everyone off the street by 1:40 a.m.,” he said. “It didn’t look like they got past Durant.” 

Sugarman said that Police did a good job of quelling the mayhem, but some say that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. 

“There weren’t enough police here,” said Twan, an employee of Rasputin Records on Telegraph. “I see more police here during a regular day than what were down here that evening.” 

Twan said that the store was closed when the riot began and wasn’t vandalized, but said that he noticed that there weren’t many police in the area when the store closed at 11 p.m. 

“The police shouldn’t have gone home until everyone was out of here and safe,” he said. “They knew that there were people coming from all over (for the fraternity party), it wasn’t like it was just a Berkeley thing.” 

Peterson said the stores that were damaged were The Gap, Mr. Rags, The Athlete’s Foot, Tower Records, C’est Cafe, the Campus Textbook Exchange and Ned’s Books.

A discussion on providing parking for city and school employees will likely spark some controversy at tonight’s City Council meeting.  

One city official said a decision on the question could affect city policy for years to come. 

In anticipation of the return of city employees to the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Building at 2180 Milvia St. at the end of January, Mayor Shirley Dean has recommended the council recognize “parking for city employees is our priority,” and wants the city manager to move expeditiously to resolve the problem. 

District 7 Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who rides his bike to work, argued that the mayor is taking a single-minded approach to the issue. “This is a one-note song and what we need is a symphony to address the complexity of the transportation problem,” he said. 

He said the city commissioned a Transportation Demand Study last year that will make recommendations about car commuting and alternate modes of transportation. The study is due in four to eight weeks. 

“We have a study due and to preempt the results by declaring the creation of parking places a priority is a mistake,” Worthington said. “Our priority should be to encourage public transit and alternate modes of transportation.” 

The mayor said the Transportation Demand Study will not address the issues she has raised in her recommendation and that she knows of no city anywhere that has achieved a 100 percent transit policy. 

There are no specifics in the mayor's recommendation, but she wants the city manager to meet with city unions to determine a reasonable number of parking spaces for each agency including school district employees and police and fire department personnel. 

The police department has made a request for at least 30 more spaces in addition to those already designated for department employees. The mayor said she supports a transit-first policy but the city will never be able to eliminate the need for some parking. “I am particularly concerned about women employees during the winter months who will have to walk many blocks in the dark,” she said. 

Tonight may be the last chance for the public to address the council about the designation of the West Berkeley Shellmound as a historic landmark. The city manager has recommended public hearings be closed and the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation be affirmed. The designation of the property was appealed by Richard and Charlene De Vecchi, who own property under which the shellmound is said to be situated. 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated the boundaries of the historic site as between University and Hearst avenues, and Fourth Street and Interstate 880. The De Vecchis say there is no evidence that the site was a Native American habitat and burial ground and is not worthy of landmark status. 

Among the other agenda items is the approval of plans to renovate the half-acre Berkeley Way Mini-Park in the 1200 block of Berkeley Way. The city approved $184,000 for renovations last year. The improvements, which will be carried out by Playgrounds Unlimited of Sunnyvale, will include two playing areas, one for tots and another for 5 to 12- year-olds. There will also be new fences, drinking fountain and pathways. 

Berkeley adopted an initiative in 1997 to remove and replace all hazardous play equipment. 

Calvin Fong, of the Berkeley Way, Acton Chestnut and Hearst Neighborhood Group, and also aide to Councilmember Margaret Breland, said the park will be nearly brand new. “I’m happy, the neighbors are happy and the kids certainly will be happy.” 

The initiative has been successful so far, said Lisa Caronna, director of the Parks and Waterfront Department. “We are renovating two to four parks a year,” she said 

Other parks recently renovated are the Prince Street and Ohlone parks. 

Other issues on the agenda include: 

• A request from District 8 Councilmember Polly Armstrong for the city manager to  

draft a letter congratulating Washington Mutual for canceling its ATM fees nationwide. According to Armstrong, the Berkeley City Council considered a resolution calling for the rollback of ATM fees two years ago. The city attorney, however, recommended against its final passage. It would have been unenforceable, Armstrong said. 

“I felt the policy would of been pandering,” Armstrong said. “And I think Washington Mutual should be congratulated and Wells Fargo and Bank of America should take notice.” 

• Public Works Director Rene Cardinaux has recommended the City Council approve 

a $318,309 plan to install a new fee collection system in the Sather Gate Garage at 2450 Durant Ave. Patrons and merchants have been displeased with the current pay system since it was installed in 1995. 

• Dean has requested the city clerk draft a letter to Gov. Gray Davis requesting he immediately implement an Executive Order completely banning the use of the additive MTBE in gasoline. The recommendation claims that since Davis issued an Executive Order banning MTBE use by 2002, refineries have increased use of the oxygenate by 14 percent. The controversial oxygenate helps gas burn cleaner but is also known to contaminate reservoirs and ground water. 

Tonight's meeting will be held in the City Council Chambers at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way at 7 p.m. The meeting will also be broadcast on KPFB Radio, 83.9 and Cable B-TV (Channel 25). 

Growing up Protestant, Dorothy Eng had no idea Islam existed. And had she not attended a talk offered by The American Institute of Islamic History and Culture on Sunday, she would have been equally oblivious of the practicing Muslims living around her. 

“There was always a mystery about Islam that was never brought to the surface,” said Eng after Sunday’s program, the beginning of a year-long series: “Keys to the Human Heart, The Spiritual Journey Towards the One,” created to celebrate and share Muslim culture. “It is the first time I have seen who actually practices this faith here in our country.” 

Before converting to Islam, the veiled members of the discussion panel may have been as unfamiliar with the religion as Eng herself. How they embarked on their “spiritual journey” and lived through it was the topic of the Sunday talk at St. John’s Presbyterian Church on College Avenue. 

“I spent a lot of time taking this piece from this religion this piece from that religion and trying to be in touch God that way,” said Iman Hoffman, addressing an audience mainly composed of other converts. “Eventually I came to realize that I needed organized religion and so I set out to find religions.”  

After spending 24 hours locked in a room with the Bible, the Buddhist Scriptures and the Koran, Hoffman came out with the Koran under her arm. 

Sara Kim was not as determined to adopt a new faith, but found Islam through a friend. Although at first reluctant to wear a veil or stop drinking, she ended up changing her lifestyle and her life.  

“I had a lot of things that I was struggling with and every time I’d ask (Muslim scholars), the answer came back to me and it just made sense. It got to a point where I couldn’t deny it anymore, so I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to please God,” said the four-year Muslim. 

Aside from an outlet for their spiritual needs, the speakers said they found true equality between men and women through their adopted religion. 

“In real Islam, which is not always practiced in the world, men and women are equal, stand before God regardless, each as an individual,” said Hoffman, her black veil strongly contrasting with her pale skin. 

“The modest dress we adopt it’s very powerful and it works. You just don’t find transgressions against women in Islam when people are practicing it well,” added Kim. 

To non-Muslim women in the audience their statements came as a surprise. “You just associate it with being very hard on women,” said Jill Peterfeso, a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.  

Changing that view is the purpose of the series of talks, said Maimoona Ahmed, its coordinator. “Those stereotypes are just propaganda to keep women away from Islam. Who would want to be stuck in the corner of a room or in a closet?”  

The year-long series of programs is divided into a number of cycles, each with its own topic. The current series is called “The Feminine Side of Islam,” but the gatherings are not only about women or for women. People who attended the talk Sunday observed Muslims in prayer, listened to Islamic music and ate baklavas and dates. 

“It’s to celebrate the way people are and have been, to learn, to share and to have fun”, said Nazeer Ahmed, the institute’s president.  

All sessions begin at 3 p.m. and are held at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Oct. 22 the topic will be: “Blessings and Challenges of our African-American Sisters,” Oct. 29, “It’s a big World out there and Muslim Women are Involved,” and Nov. 5, “Women Warriors, Women Thinkers and Women Awiliya.” For more information, call 925-672-2623.  

More than 50 years after being removed from their industrial jobs and told to “go back to their kitchens,” women from as far away as Oklahoma returned Saturday to a hero’s welcome in Richmond for the dedication of a war memorial built in their honor. 

Military planes flew overhead and hundreds of people cheered as the city dedicated its new Rosie the Riveter Memorial to the women who contributed to the country’s World War II efforts on the home front. 

“We could not have won the war without them,” said Richmond Mayor Rosemary Corbin. “And we’ve waited too long to thank them.” 

More than 100 “Rosies” – former riveters, welders and other shipyard workers during the war – walked through the memorial, which evoked the shape of the Liberty Ships that they helped to build.  

Some held on to walkers and others sat in wheelchairs as they stopped to look at black and white photographs of women wearing coveralls and brandishing welding torches. 

Others walked through the 441-foot timeline – the same length as a Liberty Ship – and read historical highlights and other women’s accounts. 

“I am so proud,” said Mary Head, a former welder who wore her old hard hat to the dedication. “I feel very blessed to be part of this memorial.” 

Marian Sousa, who worked as a draftsman, noted with pride how her story was on the memorial’s panels. The account related how Sousa had inspected ships and drew up their blueprints. 

“It was a time when people were patriotic,” said Sousa. “We wanted to serve the country in any way we could.” 

Ludie Mitchell, a Richmond resident and former welder, said she never realized the impact of her work at the shipyards – until now. 

“You didn’t think about it then. It was hard and I didn’t even know it,” she said. “I got up early in the morning and I didn’t even care.” 

Mitchell said that what really brought the message home to her was when she and former day care center worker Ruth Powers went to Washington, D.C., last August to testify at a Congressional hearing. Memorial project staffers were hoping that the women’s stories would convince Congress to pass the bill authorizing the creation of a World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. 

And they did, said Rep. George Miller, D-Richmond, the bill’s sponsor. 

“I carried the bill,” said Miller. “But these two women made it happen.” 

Mitchell had apparently brought along her welder’s card, which she still carries with her everywhere she goes. 

Miller said that when Mitchell whipped out her welder’s card and showed it to everyone in the hall, “They just all melted, they were history.” 

The $550,000 memorial stands on the site of a former Kaiser shipyard. It includes two structures that outline the shapes of a ship’s hull and smokestack. The structures are lined with women’s stories and photographs that came from the women’s own picture albums. 

The timeline and some women’s accounts were sandblasted into a stone walkway, leading up to the edge of the San Pablo Bay. A lookout point was built just above the water to symbolize the bow of a ship. 

Susan Schwartzenberg, one of the memorial’s designers, said she was awed by the sight of the Rosies walking through the memorial, which she had conceptualized after listening to hundreds of women’s stories. 

“It was pretty incredible, I have to say,” said Schwartzenberg. “I heard their names (announced), and I wanted to meet them because their words are on the sidewalk, but I can’t get to them quick enough.” 

Former councilwoman Donna Powers said the memorial was Richmond’s humble attempt to recognize the efforts of women who have been very modest about their accomplishments during the war. 

Mitchell said she was just happy that the memorial had made her remember what it was like to live and work in Richmond during the war. 

“I thought I’d just safely tucked those memories away,” said Mitchell. “It was in my past, I walked right through it, and got to the other side, and that was it, all gone. But now, I’m so glad they stirred all that up and made me remember.” 

OAKLAND — Accused murderer Stuart Alexander reloaded his handguns, walked over to three wounded meat inspectors lying on the floor of his San Leandro sausage factory and shot each in the head. 

That grisly scene is revealed in grainy surveillance tapes shown for the first time Monday as part of an agreement among prosecutors, the public defender representing Alexander and media organizations that viewed the tapes. 

Alexander, 39, who turned on two videotape cameras moments before the shooting spree began, faces state and federal murder charges in the June 21 killings. The Alameda County district attorney’s office has said it will seek the death penalty. 

Alexander’s lawyer said his client “snapped.” 

“This was someone who got pushed over the edge and did terrible things,” said public defender Michael Ogul. 

On the soundless tapes, Alexander is seen grabbing three handguns in his office, loading them, then closing the window blinds. The next scene, from a surveillance camera high above the retail section of the factory, shows the inspectors falling after being shot. 

The black and white tapes show Alexander coming into the room, shooting at prone U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors Thomas Quadros, 52, and Jeannie Hillery, 56, and state inspector Bill Shaline, 57. Alexander runs outside to chase another state inspector, Earl Willis, who escaped unharmed. 

Hillery is lifting her head and moving her right arm, and Quadros appears to be moving, as Alexander re-enters the room. The factory owner reloads, then moves over to each of the inspectors and shoots them several times. 

Alexander, who is seen pacing his office before grabbing the handguns, appears calm during the shootings. 

Shaline was shot six times. Hillery was shot four times. Quadros was shot three times. All died in the factory. 

Ogul said the fact that Alexander shot each victim again and again shows his state of mind. 

“He’s got so much anger here that even though he’s killed them, he’s still shooting,” he said. 

In addition to the tapes, other grand jury exhibits including autopsy photos, copies of e-mails from Alexander and photographs of the inspectors taken by Alexander shortly before the shootings began were released by prosecutors. 

Prosecutors also showed reporters a copy of an e-mail that Alexander wrote Jan. 29 to a friend named Andy: 

“The USDA meat inspectors came in the Linguisa factory on Jan. 3 giving my employees a bad time, so this time was it. I’m taking legal action against these government slimeballs. ... These clowns try to tell The Sausage King how to make linguisa their way. I don’t think so. ... They messed with the wrong guy this time, baby. I almost took out my machine gun and blasted those four losers, but I keep my cool as always.” 

The material was shown to reporters, but as part of an agreement with prosecutors and defense attorneys was not allowed to be duplicated or broadcast. 

Ogul said the fact that Alexander documented the inspectors’ visit proves the killings were not premeditated. 

“It shows that three human beings were killed and it shows who did it, but it doesn’t show much of anything about whether these shootings were provoked, or whether they occurred in the heat of passion. It shows that these shootings happened, not why they happened,” Ogul said. 

The inspectors had come to the Santos Linguisa Factory to cite Alexander for operating without a permit. Alexander called local police for help in removing what he called “trespassers” from his property, then turned on the surveillance cameras and asked his visitors to leave. 

The inspectors are seen on the tape standing around in the retail portion of the factory before being shot. 

“If this is the supposed harassment, they’re not doing anything,” assistant district attorney Colton Carmine said. 

In another e-mail to a friend written just after midnight the day before the shootings, Alexander speaks of his plans to spend June 21 picketing at city hall. 

“He believed they were harassing him,” Ogul said. “He was planning to go to city hall to protest. He was trying to document their harassment.” 

SACRAMENTO — A Web site offering to sell 15,000 votes for president to the highest bidder is being investigated for possible voter fraud, Secretary of State Bill Jones said Monday. 

His announcement prompted the Austrian owners of the site, http://www.voteauction.com, to promise they would never reveal the identity of either their bidders or voters. 

More than 1,800 of the votes up for sale are from Californians, the most of any state. The going price Monday afternoon was $19.61 per vote on the site, which boasts it is “bringing capitalism and democracy closer together.” 

“This is a felony punishable by upward of three years in prison (for the voter). This is no different from standing outside a polling place and selling your vote for $1,” said Jones. 

Controlling the activities of international investors could be difficult for the state, but it could try to prosecute its own voters. Jones wouldn’t say Monday how the state planned to identify participants. 

Even people who sign up as a joke are essentially agreeing to commit vote fraud, Jones added. 

The site was designed by James Baumgartner, an Overland Park, Kans., native who is a graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. He sold the site in August to a group of Austrian investors for an undisclosed sum. 

Hans Bernhard, a project investor, said he will take the site off the Internet before revealing the identity of voters. 

“We have to protect our voters. They are really critical,” he said in a telephone interview from Vienna, Austria, adding that the only letter he has received that threatened legal action was from Jones. 

“I know American institutions, especially legal and government institutions, threaten massively and that’s how they solve things, they make people afraid. We aren’t afraid because there is no clear indication that something serious can come out of this,” Bernhard said. 

Project investors are using the November election as a pilot program to determine how the scheme can become profitable and ensure the voters get paid for participation, he said. 

They plan to expand the site to all countries’ elections, he said. 

The Web site allows voters to sign up by filling out their name, address, age, nationality, and household income. Corporations and individuals can bid for an entire block of votes from one state by providing similar information. 

The minimum bid is $100 and goes up in $50 increments. Bids above $10,000 must go up by $500. 

The site was registered by Domain Bank Inc. under a contract that mandates all applicable laws must be followed, including U.S. election laws. 

Domain Bank attorney Scott Hemphill said Monday that his company notified the Austrian owners that it has received Jones’ complaint and asked the owners to either stop auctioning votes or refute the allegations of vote fraud. The deadline is Nov. 14. 

If Bernhard and other owners of the site do not respond to the letter, Domain Bank could stop its Internet access, Hemphill said. 

Domain Bank’s Nov. 14 deadline is after Election Day, after the damage could be done, Jones said. 

Election officials in Illinois, Michigan and New York have also objected to the site. 

The Internet address has already been frozen so the investors cannot sell the site. But there is nothing Domain Bank can do to keep the investors from moving the site to another address, Hemphill said. 

Jones said he issued the warning to state voters because the site could remain working until after the election on Nov. 7. 

He said he did not think announcing details of the investigation would contribute to the traffic on the site. 

However, the Web site states that since the Illinois investigation started, hits from Illinois voters have doubled. 

——— 

On the Net: The site is http://www.voteauction.com 

The Secretary of State’s Web site: http://www.ss.ca.gov 

Julia Query always dreamed of fighting the good fight for freedom, justice and equality, she says at the start of her movie “Live Nude Girls UNITE!” She never expected to realize that dream by organizing fellow strippers into a union. 

In 1997 Query led peep show workers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady to form the country’s only unionized strip club, and she documented the fight in “Live Nude Girls UNITE!,” playing through Thursday at the UC Theatre. In the background of the union fight, Query also struggles for the approval of her mother, a prostitute rights advocate who still is upset by her daughter’s work. 

“As soon as we unionized, Jay Leno was making jokes about us. We started to feel protective of our story,” said Query Saturday night at the movie’s Berkeley premiere. The strippers at the Lusty Lady formed a union after management refused to take action against customers using one-way mirrors to secretly videotape the shows-rumored to sell on the Internet. The club’s managers suggested “coyly coaxing” customers into good behavior. 

But the women were also fed up with a system that granted them work shifts according to their skin and hair color and breast size.  

Only white women were scheduled for the most lucrative shifts. Vacation and sick time were not allowed. If a dancer missed work, she had to find a replacement with skin as light as hers or lighter, and with the same size or bigger breasts. 

The strippers formed the Exotic Dancers Union, a chapter of the Service Employees International Union, Local 790.  

They picketed the Lusty Lady, calling, “Bad girls like good contracts!” and “Two, four, six, eight-don’t go here to masturbate!” 

The club hired labor lawyers, and the women drew from their own ranks to form research and negotiating teams. After months, the parties reached a deal. The club removed one-way mirrors and the classification systems, kept the union and allowed sick days.  

Each year since, the dancers have voted in more favorable contracts, said Query, who still works at the club while in graduate school to become a therapist.  

Query, now 32, said the union contract kept her from being fired. 

“I love working in a peep show because I never worked with so many women with college degrees, mostly in women’s studies and philosophy,” says Query onstage in one scene showing her other career in a stand-up comedy club. “It’s like they figured out what to do with patriarchy – take its money.” 

The film touches on the dispute among feminists over whether sex work is demeaning or empowering.  

One scene shows a pile of feminist theory books stacking up.  

Cartoons show a woman walking down a catwalk and taking off her bra, alternating with a woman burning her bra over a fire. 

Query’s talks with her mother echo the feminist debate. Early in the movie, the mother, Dr. Joyce Wallace, is shown describing her AIDS prevention work with New York prostitutes to Barbara Walters.  

But when Wallace visits San Francisco, Query clears her apartment of all sex paraphernalia, and balks at introducing her to friends called Cayenne, Cinnamon and Octopussy. 

Query finally reveals her profession at a conference on prostitution where mother and daughter are speaking on separate panels.  

Wallace says that she never wanted her child to be ashamed of her body. “I think you overdid it,” she said.

The big event in Bay Area theater this month is the first visit ever to California by Ireland's famous Gate Theater. 

The Gate will perform two plays by Samuel Beckett, Ireland’s Nobel Prize-winning playwright, novelist and poet, for five days only, October 18-22, on the UC Berkeley campus. 

Tickets for one of the plays – “Krapp’s Last Tape” – are already sold out. Tickets are still available for the second play, “Waiting for Godot.” 

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) in many ways is the most influential playwright of the 20th century. 

The 1953 Paris premiere of his “Waiting for Godot” changed the meanings, sensibilities and structures of modern drama. It had the same magnitude of impact on drama that Picasso had on painting. 

A key creator of the theater of the absurd, Beckett’s stripped down minimalist, existential style influenced many playwrights who followed him, including Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard. 

Beckett’s plays ask the big questions: “Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Who am I?” Many of his characters are people facing death. 

Though bleak, the plays are also funny. Against all of their negative experience, Beckett’s characters hope to survive. Beckett himself lived with depression all his life. 

In 1988, two years before Beckett died, Dublin's Gate Theater staged “Waiting for Godot” at the playwright's personal request. The success of that production led to an agreement to produce all 19 of Beckett’s plays at the Gate in a 1991 Beckett Festival. 

That festival then played successfully in New York in 1996 and London in 1999. What Berkeleyans have a chance to see this week is a piece of that festival-two of Beckett’s most famous works. 

“Waiting for Godot,” a quintessential drama of the 20th century and Beckett’s most famous work, is a play about two men who wait for someone who never arrives. 

The current Gate production reunites the original 1991 Dublin company. The cast features Barry McGovern (Vladimir), whose film credits include “Billy Bathgate,” “Braveheart,” and “The General.” 

The role of Estragon is played by Johnny Murphy, best known to American audiences as “The Lips” in Alan Parker’s film “The Commitments.” 

In “Krapp's Last Tape,” an aging man tries unsuccessfully to confront his past on the occasion of his 69th birthday, listening to tape recordings he made earlier in his life. Memory, fantasy and present-day experience interweave, and eventually become indistinguishable in his mind. 

Performing the role of Krapp is celebrated Irish film and stage actor David Kelly, who created the role for its Irish premiere in 1959. In 1998, Kelly achieved international fame for his hilarious starring role in the movie “Waking Ned Devine.” 

Tickets for “Krapp's Last Tape,” unfortunately, are sold out, although the producers say there is some possibility of last minute cancellations. Tickets are still available for selected “Waiting for Godot” performances, Oct. 18 through Oct. 22., Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley campus, Bancroft Way (at Dana), Berkeley. Call (510) 642-9988 or e-mail tickets@calperfs.berkeley.edu.

SACRAMENTO — State health officials are considering new standards to clean up sites contaminated with radioactive materials, despite critics’ claims people living near sites could be exposed to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation. 

The only public hearing on the proposed rule changes was held Monday in Sacramento. 

The Department of Health Services says they are adopting federal standards set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that protect public safety when radioactive sites are released for other uses. 

State health officials have jurisdiction over nuclear regulations within the state and set the standards for cleaning up sites that are contaminated with radioactive material. 

The state is adopting NRC guidelines because California is among 32 states that have agreed to revise their standards so they are consistent with the federal agency’s. 

Daniel Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Santa Cruz-based public policy organization, said the new limits would let sites be declared clean even though they could be declared federal Superfund sites. 

Department spokeswoman Lea Brooks said contaminated land won’t be released for other uses until the theoretical risk has been lowered to one case of fatal cancer in a population of 50,000 people. 

Hirsch said he used federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission guidelines to arrive at much greater risk levels and noted the standards would allow exemptions to those levels. 

“These proposed regulations would permit risk levels of one-in-50 chance of fatal cancer at the most relaxed level,” he said. 

While the exemptions are included in the federal guidelines that health officials are considering, it is unlikely they would ever be granted, Brooks said. 

“And if they were granted, the site would be highly restricted to the public,” she said. “It would be so unusual, there would definitely be public participation and notification.” 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has expressed concerned that the cleanup standard is less than what is required for Superfund sites that have chemical contamination, said Larry Bowerman, chief of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act corrective action office with the EPA. 

“Radioactive cleanups should be done using the same approach as chemical cleanups,” Bowerman said in a phone interview Friday. “We prefer a one-in-a-million risk, but in some cases we’ll go to one-in-10,000 risk.” 

Also speaking at the public comment session were representatives from Grandmothers for Peace, Women’s Energy Matters and a radiation safety officer from Rocketdyne Power and Propulsion’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory. 

The state will respond in writing to the comments. They could take effect by October 2001. 

The Rocketdyne site is undergoing cleanup after decades of use as a reactor site, causing chemical and radioactive contamination. 

Radiation safety officer James Barnes said the Santa Susana site wouldn’t be affected by the rule change because the company has agreed to a limit that is stricter than the proposed standards. 

He did request that the state Department of Health Services, Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Environmental Protection Agency concur on the regulations, risk level assessments and other requirements that affect radiation cleanups to avoid confusion. 

“There needs to be a standardized process that everyone is using,” he said. “It’s very difficult for us to move forward in a process when we answer to several different agencies.” 

LOS ANGELES — The nation’s high school students lie a lot, cheat a lot, and many show up for class drunk, according to preliminary results of a nationwide teen character study released Monday. 

Seven in 10 students surveyed admitted cheating on a test at least once in the past year, and nearly half said they had done so more than once, according to the nonprofit Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics. 

“This data reveals a hole in the moral ozone,” said Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Marina Del Rey-based organization. 

On the other hand, the results were not significantly worse than on the last test in 1998 – the first time that has happened since the group began testing in 1992. 

“The good news appears that it’s peaked,” Josephson said. “The bad news is that it’s horribly high.” 

The “Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth” found that 92 percent of the 8,600 students surveyed lied to their parents in the past year. Seventy-eight percent said they had lied to a teacher, and more than one in four said they would lie to get a job. 

Nearly one in six students said they had shown up for class drunk at least once in the past year. Sixty-eight percent admitted they hit someone because they were angry. 

Nearly half said they could get a gun if they wanted to. 

Josephson said the results amounted to the formula for a “toxic cocktail.” 

“Kids who think it’s okay to hit someone when they’re angry,” he said, “who may be drunk at school when they do it and who can also get their hands on a gun.” 

Josephson stopped short of assigning blame to a particular group, but he said parents, teachers and coaches need to pay special attention because they have the most significant interactions with youngsters. 

“I’m not saying there aren’t some out there doing their best,” he said. “But if all three were doing their best, we wouldn’t have this problem.” 

The survey, conducted this year, involved students in grades nine through 12 in both public and private schools. Participating schools handed out surveys with 57 questions that students could submit anonymously. 

STUDY RESULTS 

Cheating 

71 percent of the participants admitted to cheating on a test at least once in the past year; 45 percent said they did so two or more times. 

Lying 

92 percent have lied to their parents in the past year; 79 percent said they did so two or more times. 

78 percent lied to a teacher; 58 percent lied two or more times. 

More than one in four students admitted they would lie to get a job. 

Drinking 

Nearly one in six said they have been drunk at school; 9 percent admitted to showing up for class drunk more than once in the past year. 

Violence 

68 percent said they have hit someone because they were angry in the past 12 months; 46 percent said they did it on at least two separate occasions. 

47 percent said they could get a gun if they wanted to.

STANTON— Kate Schmidt won friends by telling people she played softball in the 1992 Olympics before losing her leg to a doctor’s mistake. 

The 32-year-old Stanton woman’s right leg was amputated last year after 16 operations failed to correct a botched, 1995 elective surgery. 

Kathryn L. Schmidt, who goes by Kate, won endorsements from an Orange County company, who supplied her with more than $35,000 in high-tech prosthetics to back her bid to compete in the Sydney Olympic Games. 

Schmidt impressed everyone when she reported that on her very first try, she threw a javelin more than 200 feet, closing in on the U.S. record of 227 feet, 5 inches, set in 1977 by another athlete, also named Kate Schmidt. Now friends, doctors and sponsors are searching for answers upon learning the disabled Kate Schmidt was living a lie. 

Schmidt’s story began to unravel when friends and admirers tuned in to the Olympics to watch her compete, and were perplexed to learn no one named Kate Schmidt was competing on the U.S. team. She had an explanation. She stayed home with an injury, she said, working for CBS-TV and designing sets for the boy band ’N Sync. 

Not according to the network. “Never heard of her,” CBS graphic director Tom Burzinski told the Orange County Register for Sunday editions. 

Schmidt told nearly everyone she met that she played for the 1992 U.S. Olympic softball team in Barcelona. Her supporters learned later softball was not an Olympic event until 1996. It was not even a demonstration sport in 1992. 

Her claim she played semipro softball on two Orange County teams was untrue. Her story about playing four years of varsity high school softball came into question when a search of yearbooks revealed that no Kate Schmidt had participated in any school athletic program. “I don’t think I’ve misled people. ... I never told anybody to write a thing,” Schmidt told the Register. 

“Everybody has forgotten that I lost a leg. Everybody is into, ‘Did you say this? Did you do that?”’ 

“The behavior is called pseudologia fantastica,” said psychiatrist Charles V. Ford, author of Lies!Lies!Lies!: The Psychology of Deceit.” 

“These people are sensitive to audiences, so I’m not at all surprised that their wild stories incorporate the Olympics and whatever people are talking about at the time.”

SACRAMENTO — More California bar patrons like the state’s nearly 3-year-old ban on smoking in bars than did when the prohibition was imposed, according to a new poll. 

The number of bargoers who approve of the law that prohibits smoking in bars rose from 59 percent in 1998, just after the law took effect, to 73 percent last summer, according to the poll. 

The $50,000 survey was conducted for the state Department of Health Services by the Field Research Corp., which also did the March 1998 poll. 

“Despite repeated attempts by the tobacco industry and its allies to overturn this measure, the vast majority of California bar patrons agree that they want their bars to be smoke-free,” department Director Diana Bonta said Monday. 

Among the bar patrons who smoke, the new poll found a decline in those who admitted they smoked inside a bar. Only 14 percent said they broke the law, compared with 25 percent in 1998. 

The poll also found that 91 percent of the patrons surveyed said they either go to bars more often since 1998 or have not changed their bar-related behavior because of the law. In 1998, 85 percent gave the same answers. 

The National Smokers Alliance, an organization of smokers based in Alexandria, Va., and a critic of the no-smoking law, had not seen the new survey Monday and did not have immediate comment, said spokeswoman Sheila Bumgardner. A total of 1,000 Californians ages 21 and older who said they had been in a bar at least once in the past year were interviewed for the poll. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent. The Field Research Corp. is related to the San Francisco-based organization that conducts the Field Poll on political topics. 

On the Net: The department is at http://www.dhs.ca.gov 

The National Smokers Alliance is at http://www.smokersalliance.org

Toot Sweets bakery at 1277 Gilman St. was robbed twice by the same person Oct. 11 and 12, according to Berkeley police. 

Lt. Russell Lopes said that a black male, about 5 feet 10 inches, weighing about 200 pounds., wearing a dark hat, a dark coat, black sunglasses and baggy blue jeans, entered the store Wednesday around 10 a.m. and handed the cashier a note demanding money. 

Lopes said that the man simulated a gun by holding a stick under his coat. 

The cashier handed him an undisclosed amount of money and the man escaped. 

The very next day, the same man entered the store around 11 a.m. and handed the cashier a note demanding money. This time he did not simulate a gun. 

Lopes said that the cashier again gave the man an undisclosed amount of money and the man, once again, escaped. 

Lopes said that there are no suspects at this time.

Home to San Pablo Park, one of the city’s most-used recreation areas, the newly remodeled Longfellow Middle School, the new Over-60 Health Center-senior housing project, and the city’s community-built playground at Aquatic Park, District 2 also comprises the heavily-trafficked San Pablo Avenue, a state highway, with 11 developable parcels, an often thriving prostitution trade at San Pablo and Heinz avenues and the site of the city’s third homicide of the year on Haskell Street. Median home values and income are among the lowest in the city.  

The area is bordered roughly by University Avenue on the north, Emeryville and Oakland on the south, Sacramento Street on the east and the freeway on the west. Incumbent Councilmember Margaret Breland is facing four challengers. Candidate Jon Crowder declined to be interviewed for this story. 

Margaret Breland 

The door to Margaret Breland’s west Berkeley home is always open, and fifty years of west Berkeley history has walked through it. Sitting in her living-room with stacks of campaign literature piled on coffee tables, Breland talks about Berkeley politics, her battle with breast cancer and why she’s running for what would be her second term of office. 

“I feel that I’ve done a great deal, and I want to finish the projects I’ve started,” she said. 

No. 1 on her list is the fight to bridge the health disparity between African-Americans who live in the flatlands and Caucasians who live in the hills. 

A retired nurse, Breland points to the $200,000 she along with her council allies got into the budget to begin to address the disparities. The money will serve as matching funds for additional health funding. 

Small business development is also on Breland’s priority list. 

Breland lobbied for $240,000 a few years ago for facade grants for 47 San Pablo Avenue businesses. 

“I wanted to bring west Berkeley up to par, especially along San Pablo Avenue, to look like the rest of Berkeley, because, to me, it felt like west of San Pablo was like leaving the day for night.” 

She said she works hard to support those business owners with community interests at heart. At the same time, she wants to reduce the number of liquor stores in her community. 

And she said she has constantly pushed back attempts by Fourth Street businesses to move University Avenue into her district. 

“To me, Fourth Street was never meant for west Berkeley. Fourth Street is geared for Walnut Creek or downtown Berkeley. It’s not meant for this part of the city. The only reason it’s here is because the land is cheaper, and they could get away with doing more things. And so now they’re here and trying to sprawl into our district. Several times I’ve had to say something about them not bringing Fourth Street across University,” Breland said. 

“Most of the people who shop on Fourth Street are not from around here, so why come to an area where you aren’t going to serve or benefit the people who live here? It’s just not for us,” she said. 

Breland’s campaign finance reports reflects no funds from Fourth Street businesses, while Betty Hicks’ statement shows she has received at least $1,500 from various Fourth Street businesses and developers. 

Traffic along San Pablo Avenue is another of Breland’s concerns. As a member of the a Congestion Management Agency subcommittee on San Pablo Avenue, Breland has worked to improve bus service. 

Building user-friendly bus shelters is one of her accomplishments. “We’re building nice, shelter style bus stops, where people can sit out of the rain and catch their buses,” she said. 

And faster buses are in the works. Currently, there are only local buses which stop at nearly every block. Operating on a “trip” system, the new express buses will skip stops It will operates on a “trip” system. “If an express bus is stuck, say at Ashby Avenue, and needs to be at University in five minutes, the driver can push a button to trip the stop lights. It goes all the way to Hercules,” Breland said. “The program’s been approved and is about ready to go.”Another of Breland’s priorities is youth. She raised $500,000 for youth services, which includes funds that will go towards the creation of a youth facility for south and west Berkeley. 

She’s also fought for funds for affordable housing as a way to fight gentrification in her district. And she sees the passage of Measure Y, owner move-in eviction controls for disabled and elderly people, as part her housing strategy. “This will allow the existing community to remain in their homes,” she said. 

“There’s so much gentrification going on, it’s hard to believe,” she said. 

The wave of money coming into the district bids up the housing prices as well as the available sites along San Pablo Avenue. Breland said it is important to have neighborhood-serving businesses come into those sites. She has held community meetings on the question. 

“ Really, what came from those meetings was a concern that the commercial district serves the residents, and not the other way around.” 

One of the big questions is the district revolves around developer Patrick Kennedy’s proposed development at 2700 San Pablo Ave. Since as council member, Breland may be asked to vote on the project, she said she’s not permitted to talk about it.  

Breland’s recent campaign finance statement shows that Kennedy and his wife have each contributed $250 to Breland’s campaign and none to candidate Betty Hicks who is lobbying for a three-story development, rather than the proposed four or five-story building. 

What has she learned over her first four years on the council? 

“Candidates come to the election promising major changes, big plans, but it’s the daily work that matters the most. You get 12-15 complaints everyday, and taking care of that, that’s a day’s work. To get those other things done, Section 8 funding, programs for urban development, that takes political allies and know how. I have that track record,” Breland said. 

Others agree. Breland is endorsed by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, Assemblymember Dion Aroner, D-Berkeley, and city councilmembers Maudelle Shirek, Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington.  

Breland has spent about $8,000 so far on her campaign, and said says she hopes to raise about $20,000. 

Betty Hicks 

District 2 candidate Betty Hicks said she is often mistaken for incumbent Margaret Breland. 

“It’s not just because we’re both politically-active African-American women,” she said. “It’s because people don’t know what our councilmember looks like.”  

If elected to the District 2 seat, the retired postmaster of Orinda promises to be fully accessible and highly visible at community events. 

“I would be accessible and meet with block groups to assist in solving their problems.” she writes in her campaign literature. 

Endorsed by Mayor Shirley Dean, the Berkeley Police and Fire departments as well as the Berkeley Democratic Club, Hicks hopes to raise a warchest of $30,000 in campaign funds. A recent campaign finance filing showed Hicks had raised $13,400 through Oct. 2, with about $1,500 coming from Fourth Street business owners and developers.  

Breland voted to spend Fourth Street-area redevelopment funds on the nearby bicycle bridge, joining progressives on the council in opposing the subsidy of a parking garage. Hicks, on the other hand, said she thinks there are sufficient redevelopment funds to spend on the bike bridge and to help the merchants with a parking structure. 

The candidate is quick to note that she would not be beholden to the mayor when it comes to her vote on the council. 

“I would oppose Dean when it was right to do so,” she said. “I would represent District 2, and that would require me to work independently for the needs of our district, no matter what it takes.” 

A case in point, Hicks said, is the retail and housing development Patrick Kennedy is proposing at 2700 San Pablo Ave. Dean has a history as a strong supporter of Kennedy’s often-controversial projects. Hicks, on the other hand, questions the four-to-five story housing and retail project proposed at the Carlton Street and San Pablo Avenue site. She said the development should be no higher than three stories. 

“We need well-designed, appropriately-scaled ground floor retail and mixed-income housing along San Pablo Avenue,” she said. 

A better community process for development is imperative, she said. “There should be mailings sent to every home to notify people, not just some sign tacked up on the telephone pole announcing community meetings.”  

The community needs to be involved in the future of San Pablo Avenue, Hicks said. “There are developers lined up to get at those 11 (available) spots along San Pablo.” 

Hicks stresses “revitalization” over “redevelopment.”  

Redevelopment is a formal designation of a blighted area. Taxes on improved property within the area are collected, with certain exceptions, for the benefit to the area – they no longer go to the general fund, for example, or to the county. The promise of future tax revenue generally allows cities to borrow funds to revitalize the area in question. The designation as a Redevelopment Area usually carries with it the right of eminent domain. 

“We need to protect the neighborhood and small businesses by opposing designation as Redevelopment Areas with its threat of eminent domain,” Hicks said. “The city would actually get more out of revitalization. Redevelopment would mean owners would be required to pay back (loan funds.) And with eminent domain, people never get their value.” 

As for Measure Y, “I’m not for it,” Hicks said. “I know we still have housing available, but it’s been taken off the market. Rent control is the reason. We don’t need more restrictions on property owners. It’ll actually make them less likely to rent to the elderly or disabled.” 

Further, she said. “We need to re-write the rent control laws to encourage more home owners to put their property back on the market.” 

Though she said that there isn’t a real problem with crime in her neighborhood, Hicks does feel that it would be helpful to have better monitoring of San Pablo Park. “We need to send a strong, clear message that drug dealing in our parks and on our streets will not be tolerated,” she said. “We also need to make window bars available to the people that need them.” 

Hicks addressed the changes she sees in District 2. In the last 15 years, she said her side of the street has changed from an all African-American block to a row of homes with only two residences occupied by African-American families. 

It hasn’t been a problem though, she said.  

“As long as you go and introduce yourself, people get to know who you are and what you represent. Then they make real judgments not based on race. You realize that these aren’t the wealthiest people in the world either. They couldn’t afford to live in the hills either.” 

Still, there should be a program of low-rate city loans for first time homebuyers to help keep people in Berkeley. “They just don’t have the down payments for a home,” she said. 

Currently the treasurer of the San Pablo Neighborhood Council, Hicks is looking forward to becoming a councilmember. “I will be there, people will know me, and what I stand for. I will return phone calls and answer letters and ensure that appointees to boards and commissions come from our district. That’s what District 2 needs.” 

Carol Hughes-Willoughby 

She calls herself a miracle. Others call her Mama Carol. Carol Hughes-Willoughby wants you to call her Councilmember. 

“Ten years they’ve been calling me Mama Carol. Even senior citizens call me Mama Carol,” said the 44-year-old mother of two. “I have taken on the commitment and determination to be like a mother eagle over her nest, over my community.” 

Currently vice-chair of the city’s Human Welfare and Community Action Commission, Hughes-Willoughby “looks out for children and the poor,” by recommending funding for various nonprofit groups to the City Council. 

The candidate says she is running for the district seat because she feels that her west Berkeley community has not been properly represented. “Many of the merchants that I’ve talked to never have known what our representative looks like. I think a strong representative would come on out and be a part of the community.” 

A life-long resident of District 2, she has seen her neighborhood undergo fundamental changes over the past decades. 

“When I was growing up, I remember being able to play ball in the middle of the street, front doors open on every neighbor’s home, every neighbor if they saw a child they thought was being unruly or disobedient, they could correct that child. These days if you open your mouth to correct that child, you don’t know if you’re going to get shot,” she said. 

She points to the success of Acton Street, whose residents, she said, formed a block committee and transformed an allegedly criminally “active” spot into a quiet residential neighborhood. Such community building is the key to successfully making the neighborhood streets safe again, she said. 

“People don’t know how to approach people anymore. If that means we have to go block by block and have community meetings and have everybody meet everybody, that solves a big problem. If you don’t know (your neighbor), you’re really not going to tell Johnny to get out of that tree because he’s going to fall.” 

Noting that she has developed youth programs in west Oakland, Hughes-Willoughby said part of rebuilding west Berkeley means establishing programs to teach youth “social skills and marketable job skills.” 

Hughes-Willoughby also wants to bring older members of the community into elementary and middle schools to mentor youth. “Many of these kids don’t have parents at home, their parents are working, and so no one really keeps an eye out on them. These older members of our communities, they have a lot of knowledge and time, and linking them with some kids would really get them involved in the community again.” 

“My main focus is definitely bringing back the unity and respect that west Berkeley once had. I feel that the community is closing its eyes to the devastation going on in our community right now.” She knows about this devastation first hand. Clean and sober for the last 14 years, Mama Carol lost her husband and a child to the streets. 

“Since then my life has been about uplift,” she said. As councilmember she would establish a center in the district that would be a place for people coming out of prison to get marketable skills and find work. “No one is willing to take a risk or give them opportunity for advancement,” she said. 

Hughes-Willoughby said the community needs to know what is planned for the area. She said she only heard about plans for 2700 San Pablo Ave. in casual conversation. “The 2700 plan was not brought to the community in the right manner,” she said. 

Hughes-Willoughby envisions an accessible community shopping center on San Pablo Avenue, complete with a grocery store “to ensure nutritious food for a healthier community.”  

On changes in the neighborhood, the candidate noted that a nearby two-bedroom house recently sold for $395,000 and is being used to house students. The long-term effects of the housing crisis are just beginning to be felt, the candidate said. 

“I feel that we need to be careful because the minority populations are being forced out of our city because they can’t afford to live here. That is definitely what has happened to the African American community. They can’t even afford the houses.” 

She would fight for Section 8 housing. “The government must give up more money for housing here. There needs to be a strong voice for that,” she said. 

And she supports Measure Y, a proposal to protect the elderly and disabled from being evicted by landlords who want to move their own families into the rented units. 

Asked if she sees herself as a role model for her community, she said, “I am a miracle. God gave me a second chance to make a difference, and that’s what I’m going to do, right here right now.” 

Mama Carol can be heard most Sundays at the New Life Community Church in west Oakland, where she is a pastor. 

Gina Sasso 

Gina Sasso advocates for tenants, working people, seniors, the disabled and the poor. A member of the Peace and Freedom Party, which commits itself to “socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism and racial equality,” Sasso would work independent of the progressive or moderate factions on the Berkeley city council if elected. 

“I’m against the war on drugs and gentrification,” she said. “Those are my main issues.”  

She describes the problems of District 2 as a confluence of blight and wealth, few educational and job opportunities, and an overall feeling that no one is being encouraged  

to stay as wealthier people come to Berkeley. 

“In the midst of prosperity, poverty grows in west Berkeley,” she writes in her campaign literature. 

At an interview at the Daily Planet offices, she expanded on this idea. 

“Landlords feel that they can just push us out of our neighborhoods. The people of District 2 are tired, feeling very oppressed, depressed and have gone to alcohol. We need to take care of our people,” she said.  

She said she would work to increase affordable housing, institute a 35-hour work week with a living wage, and secure more Section 8 funding for residents in her area.  

“There are plenty of empty lots in Berkeley, abandoned buildings, that can be acquired by eminent domain to create low rent housing,” she said. 

Her sympathy for the plight of the homeless, the jobless, the addicted and the once jailed, comes from her own experience being homeless for a few months earlier this year. 

“I learned a lot from that, and want to make sure that the people I know are well taken care of. Instead of spending more money to create a police state, or a police city, in this case, we need more funding to take care of the addicts. They’re not dogs, they’re people, and if they have a problem with drugs, then we need rehabilitation programs for them. Now there’s nothing to give them jobs, no apprentice programs,” Sasso said. 

Sasso said she benefited from such a training program when Jimmy Carter was president. “It wasn’t the best program in the world, it had a lot of problems, but it was something,” she said. “It gave me chance.” 

On the other hand, she looks at the ’90s as a decade of war on communities of color and poor people that is still going on, and going on right here in Berkeley.  

“Every five or ten minutes right now, there’s a police car driving down San Pablo Avenue. Non-violet drug offenders are constantly being put in jail, to the point where we have over two million people in prisons now. Locking them up is not the solution,” she said. 

“The War on Drugs,” she writes in her campaign literature, “is a war on working class and minority communities. Drug abuse should be treated as a medical and psychological issue rather than a criminal matter.” 

Sasso supports Proposition 36, which requires drug treatment programs and probation for most non-violent drug offenses. She also supports Measure Y, designed to protect the disabled and people over 60 years of age from being removed from their rental units by owners claiming that they need the space for their own family members. To combat the gentrification, Sasso proposes to curb rent hikes, and “support legislative action in support of tenants.” 

She is opposed to Proposition 38, which would mandate the use of vouchers in California’s education system. 

Also known as Ramblin’ Rose, a DJ on 104.1, Berkeley Liberation Radio, she coordinates schedules for over 70 DJ’s at the radio station, and can be heard Sundays 12:30-2:30 p.m. and Thursdays 6:30-8 a.m. 

Monday, Oct. 16

Private Elementary School  

Parent Information Panel 

7 - 9:30 p.m. 

Epworth United Methodist Church 

1953 Hopkins St.  

A panel of parents from six area private schools discuss the admission process and their experiences. Sponsored by the Neighborhood Parents Network 

Free to members, $5 non-members 

Call 527-6667 

Learn to Birdwatch 

Oct. 16, 18, 23 & 25 

9:30 a.m. - Noon 

UC Botanical Gardens 

200 Centennial Drive 

$50 for members; $65 for non-members. 643-2755 

Council Candidates Forum: The Future of Downtown  

Berkeley 

6 p.m., Hotel Shattuck Plaza  

2086 Allston Way 

The League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville will moderate a candidates forum. 843-8824 

Tuesday, Oct. 17

Is the West Berkeley  

Shellmound a landmark? 

7 p.m.  

City Council Chambers 

2134 MLK Jr. Way, 2nd floor 

Continued and final public hearing on the appeals against landmark designation of the West Berkeley Shellmound.  

The City Council may possibly make it’s decision at this meeting. 

Brunch in the Succah 

10 a.m. 

Congregation Beth Israel 

1630 Bancroft Way 

Rabbi Yocheved Heiligman on Succot, Beyond the Obvious 

Co-sponsored by Berkeley Hadassah, and The Women's Group of Congregation Beth Israel 

527-1207 or e-mail teachme88@yahoo.com. 

Landscape Archeology and Space-Age Technologies in Epirus, Greece 

8 p.m.  

370 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley 

Professor of Archeology, Art History and Classics Dr. James Wiseman presents a slide-illustrated lecture. 

Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Noon - 2 p.m.  

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium 

Herrick Campus, 2001 Dwight Way 

Andrea Albanese, PT presents “Aquatic Therapy for Fibromyalgia” and a rap session.  

Call D.L. Malinousky, 601-0550 

Mario Savio Memorial Lecture 

7:30 p.m. 

Pauley Ballroom 

UC Berkeley 

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild will speak on the theme “Forwards and Backwards - Women, globalization, and the new class structure.” Free. 

Call Heather Cameron, 642-9437 

Help Out Some Orangutans 

7 p.m.  

Cafe Milanos 

2522 Bancroft Way 

Come help plan a day of action against Citibank, who allegedly plunders the environment for profit. Join the Rainforest Action Group and Ecopledge in protest.  

Is the Sky Falling? 

7 p.m.  

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. 

Tim Holt, author of “On Higher Ground” will present an array of post-ecotopian choices, one of which is domed cities.  

548-2220 x 233  

Wednesday, Oct. 18

Traffic Calming Workshop 

7 - 10 p.m. 

St. Clements Church 

2837 Clement Blvd.  

Help to achieve reasonable traffic speeds and volume on local streets.  

“Women and Trafficking: Domestic & Global Concerns” 

6 - 9:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

Forum will include an expert panel discussion, and a movie on Women and trafficking. Free.  

644-6107  

— compiled by  

Chason Wainwright 

Does zoning dept. listen? 

Editor: 

We have made several related zoning complaints in the past year which are very serious and which have not been responded to. The first one, filed in September of 1999, involves the conversion of over 35,000 square feet of manufacturing space in the MU/LI zone from manufacturing to retail with only a Zoning Permit. In 1997, the Planning Commission allowed the rezoning of one building on Fourth Street to allow Cody’s bookstore to move in. Their decision was made contingent upon maintaining 41,000 square feet of manufacturing in that building.  

The ZAB allowed Cody’s Use Permit subject to the same condition. Both of those decisions along with their contingencies were later upheld by Council resolutions. Since that time, the remaining manufacturing space formerly occupied by Sweet Potatoes has been entirely converted to retail use and is now an antique store. We have had no response to several official zoning complaints and numerous visits to the zoning desk regarding this illegal use. 

More recently we have filed a zoning complaint regarding the property at 1608 4th St. which seems to be slated for retail use also. During the Design Review process for this property, the developer proposed a sign which read “Discovery Channel Store.” Design Review told them to remove the word “Store” from the sign. In looking through the current Use Permit file, we noticed that the sign had been resubmitted by the developer in August and it once again contains the word “Store”. This sign was accepted by Planning and was even allowed to be enlarged in September without going back to Design Review. The remainder of the space at 1608 4th is now being advertised by the real estate agent in charge of leasing as being “Located in 4th Street retail district.” 

We are quite concerned with the continued conversion of manufacturing space in the MU/LI zone and are appalled that it is being replaced by retail.  

This is a major contributor to the lack of parking and can not be mitigated with more conversions. These property owners, developers, future tenants and the Planning and Economic Development Departments should be told that retail is not allowed in the MU/LI zone. 

Rhiannon 

Berkeley 

PD violated First Amendment 

Editor: 

As the free speech violations in Berkeley and throughout the country remain a critical issue, I would like to describe my recent experience. This is not on the level of outrageousness as the Secret Service reportedly blockading presidential candidate Ralph Nader from even attending the second corporatist “debate” (despite his holding a ticket!), but it is certainly at least as serious as candidates in Berkeley reporting selective removal of signs by city personnel.  

A moment of background. September was the first Car-Free Month, a month to honor and appreciate those who live (or would like to live) without motorcars. September was chosen because it is so full of meaningful days and events. Amongst those are the parades, wherein the streets are for a few short hours full festivity.  

I and friends built a float for those parades consisting of three hand-made bicycle carts, each carrying a banner with such controversial messages as, “Respect Pedestrians”, “Appreciate Bicycles” and “Celebrate (Car-Free) Living.” Given all the work that went into creating this, I decided to keep some of the banners on display for the last few days of Car-Free Month. 

Within a few hours of parking my bicycle (including two of the carts with banners) alongside the UC campus – safely out of the way of pedestrians, right alongside the red-zone curb at Bancroft and Bowditch – I received an emergency phone call from a citizen that the police were towing my trailers. 

I sprinted to the location and was shocked at the scene. The police and workers had torn down and ripped apart the hand-made banners. They had taken a cutting torch to melt apart my U-lock, and had taken the torch to the hand-made trailer hitch, destroying it as well. Note that the hitch has a simple release mechanism to detach the cart, no need to destroy it. 

This uniformed mob had further broken the main supports of the larger trailer, all in all many hundreds of dollars of damage. 

I asked why. The police falsely claimed that the bicycle was blocking the sidewalk. And how many times have we called in a motorcar blocking the sidewalk and received no response? They certainly never take a cutting torch to the car, break off the doors, rip out the ignition and scrape off the bumper stickers.  

Worse, it is part of an ongoing campaign of harassment. Supposedly a merchant first complained, which emphasizes the counter-cultural class war being conducted by police at the behest of private interests.  

Jason Meggs 

Berkeley 

ROBIN M. DONALD, 1403 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94702 

510/845-2535 Robmdonald@aol.com 

October 11, 2000 

Judith Scheer, Editor 

Berkeley Daily Planet 

VIA E-MAIL 

Doesn't Franz Schurmann (Opinion, 10/6/00) know that the Afghan Taliban resembles Pol Pot's Khimer Rouge with every passing atrocity? The Taliban regime is denounced by organizations and institutions as diverse as the Muslim Women's League, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, Time Magazine, AP, and Physicians for Human Rights for, amongst other reasons: egregious and violent oppression of women; the lack an independent press; trafficking and promotion of the opium/heroin trade (75% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan); and the August, 1998 massacre of 8,000 Hazara in the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif? 

Doesn't he know that one reason for the outrage by secular and religious Palestinians and Arabs at Ariel Sharon's presence at the Dome of the Rock - holy ground for Christians, Jews and Muslims - is that Sharon was the Israeli Defense Minister during Israel's 1982 occupation of southern-Lebanon and he was responsible for permitting Lebanese right-wing Phalangist execution units to enter two of the camps, Sabra and Shatila, where they murdered between 2-3,000 unarmed civilians? 

Can we have an article by someone with a grasp of the real issues, e.g., the Palestinian's right of return; the role of the Muslim Hamas in the "peace process"; why the people in the U.S. acquiesce in our government sending $5.5 billion per year in financial aid from the U.S. to Israel, which allows Israel to deny Palestinians their democratic rights while supporting illegal Zionist settlements and military murders of unarmed civilians?; and the failure of Israel to honor U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (to move the boundaries of Israel back to the pre-1967 demarcation lines)? 

Sincerely, 

Robin M. Donald 

Subject:  

BTV fan-mail 

Date:  

Sat, 14 Oct 2000 18:11:38 -0700 

From:  

Arnold Lee  

Organization:  

Berkeley Daily Planet 

To:  

Judith Scherr  

Subject:  

Feedback 

Date:  

Sat, 14 Oct 2000 08:07:46 -0000 

From:  

"Lessly Wikle"  

To:  

,  

Greetings - 

Both my husband and I are now avid fans of your paper, the Daily Planet. Imagine our delight when you took community information one step further and added the Channel 25 

schedule to your paper - you guys are great! 

Lessly Wikle 

Fans storm field following 46-38 homecoming win 

When Jameel Powell came back to earth with the football clutched to his chest, he was immediately smothered by his teammates in celebration of his game-ending interception. 

“It was starting to hurt with everyone jumping on me and beating on me,” Powell said after everyone rolled off of him. “But it was a good pain.” 

Powell had just wrestled the ball away from UCLA wideout Brian Poli-Dixon in the end zone, giving the Bears (2-4, 1-2 Pac-10) a 46-38 victory in the third overtime of the game. 

The pressure lifted off of Powell when the pile dispersed was nothing compared to the pressure the Bears were under as a team Saturday. A four-game losing streak and five straight games against ranked opponents had a lot of Cal fans thinking a 1-10 record was not only possible, but looking pretty darn probable. But by playing it’s best game of the year against its toughest opponent so far, the team pulled the biggest upset of the Pac-10 season. 

Quarterback Kyle Boller threw for 252 yards and three touchdowns, including two long scores to tailback Joe Igber, and the Cal defense finally came up with the big play they’ve been looking for all year when safety Nnamdi Asomugha picked off a Cory Paus pass and ran it 31 yards to the end zone to give the Bears a 21-7 lead in the second quarter. 

Cal head coach Tom Holmoe said he knew early on that his team was on its toes Saturday. 

“They came out in warmups a little different,” Holmoe said. “They had a great feel for the game. They were kind of electric.” 

That electricity flowed through Igber early in the first quarter, when he took an innocent-looking screen pass and weaved his way through the UCLA defense for a 23-yard touchdown and a 7-0 Cal lead. And when the Bears got the ball on the UCLA 36 the next period, Igber gave the crowd another jolt when he took a play-action pass from Boller and glided into the end zone on the first and only play of the drive, restoring the Cal lead at 14-7. 

“Coach (Steve) Hagen put some new routes for the tailbacks. I thought UCLA would be tough on the ground, so we had to get our yards another way,” Igber said. “Everybody else did exactly what they needed to do, and Kyle got me the ball.” 

When tailback Joe Echema dove into the end zone to cap off an 11-play, 70-yard drive that made the score 28-14 with 4:48 left in the third quarter, the Bears looked to be cruising to a landmark victory. But soon after that, the Bears began to look like the group that had lost four games in a row, turning the ball over and giving up just enough points to lose. 

With 10 minutes left in the game, tight end Keala Keanaaina dove to catch a pass from Boller. But Keanaaina bobbled the ball, then managed to kick it right into the hands of prone UCLA linebacker Marques Anderson, giving the visitors the ball on the Cal 39. Five plays later, Paus found tailback Akil Harris unattended in the left flat, and Harris rumbled 20 yards for the score. 

On the ensuing drive, Echema coughed up the ball on a handoff from Boller right into the waiting arms of UCLA’s Tony White. When Paus hit wideout Freddie Mitchell with a 35-yard pass right down the middle to tie the score, the crowd of more than 50,000 in Memorial Stadium had every right to be pessimistic about the Bears finishing skills. 

“When they caught up and tied it up, I know a lot of people were thinking  

‘uh-oh, here we go again,’” Holmoe said. “They’ve won all their games coming from behind. I knew that. When they came back and tied it up, it didn’t bode very well for for us.” 

But unlike the previous four games, the Bears didn’t fold in the face of adversity. They stopped the bleeding to force overtime with the score tied at 28, and Boller stepped up to lead the offense to three straight scores. 

The Bruins chose to play defense first in the first overtime, and Boller made them pay. On the second play of the drive, he found wide receiver Derek Swafford on a post pattern for a 22-yard touchdown. 

Swafford, who has battled injuries most of this season, had dropped a similar pass earlier in the game. Instead of beating himself up about his miscue, Swafford leaned on his teammates’ support and got back into the game. 

“Everyone was right there picking me up,” Swafford said. “The guys on the team were telling me they'd come right back to me. That really helped me out.” 

UCLA looked shaky during their possession, needing to convert two fourth downs before Paus sneaked over from the 1 to tie the game again. The teams traded field goals in the second overtime. 

Going into the third overtime, the Bears looked to score quickly as Boller lofted a pass to the end zone for Swafford. Bruins cornerback Ricky Manning, Jr., beaten on the play, dragged Swafford down before the receiver could catch the ball, resulting in a pass-interference penalty that took the ball down to the three-yard line. Igber scored on a cutback run to put the Bears ahead on the next play. 

After the second overtime, NCAA rules state that teams must go for a two-point conversion following a touchdown. Cal was caught unprepared on a two-point conversion situation earlier this season against Illinois, but not this time. Boller hit freshman wideout Geoff McArthur on a quick slant to set the final score, leaving it up to the defense to stop the Bruins. 

Powell did just that by making his second interception of the day, which he credited to Asomugha. 

“Namdi really gave me the pick by taking the inside away, and I just ran for the ball and caught it. I was trying to keep my leverage,” Powell said. 

Asomugha called the play with Powell’s coverage skills in mind. 

“Jameel has proven that he can win the one-on-one battle all year,” he said. 

As the fans poured onto the field in celebration, Boller found himself lifted onto someone’s shoulders and carried around the field. The quarterback, who is from the Los Angeles area, dreamed of playing for UCLA but was turned off when the school offered a scholarship to another quarterback before him. 

“It was just crazy. I never imagined we’d have fans running all over the field. It's undescribable,” he said.

By John Geluardi 

Special to the Daily Planet 

Berkeley celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day with the colorful vestments, music and dancing of native cultures that thrived on the West Coast for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.  

Hundreds of people came to Martin Luther King Jr. Park Saturday to enjoy the official holiday and sunshine at the Ninth annual Powwow and Indian Market. 

The celebration, co-sponsored by the city, the Indigenous Peoples Committee and the Turtle Island Project, was a day-long event featuring Northern and Southern Native American drumming and dancers wearing vibrant garments and headgear adorned with feathers and strung bone and shell beads.  

UC Berkeley student Lawrence Killsback of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe said the event achieves a number of positive goals for the community besides cultural exchange.  

“There are Indians throughout the community going to school and working but we don’t always recognize each other and powwows give us a chance to meet, organize and celebrate.” 

The Berkeley City Council unanimously passed a declaration in 1991 making the weekend nearest Oct. 12 Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The first celebration was held in 1992 on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Americas, which Native Americans say was the beginning of centuries of cultural erosion caused by genocide and enslavement.  

This year’s celebration was dedicated to the release of Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier. Speakers said it is widely believed that Peltier, now imprisoned for 24 years, was falsely convicted of killing two FBI agents in 1975 and called for President Clinton to grant Peltier Executive Clemency. 

The dancing was held in a circle approximately 100 feet in diameter. Many spectators sat on blankets or on the grass along the edge of the circle eating Indian tacos and fry bread while watching the succession of dances. During certain portions of the Powwow, the master of ceremonies, Lorenza Baca, encouraged all spectators to join the dancing. 

Peppered among announcements of the dance events, expositions of recent Native American achievements and gentle reminders to spectators who parked illegally, Baca amused the crowd with occasional jokes. 

“Did you know I was in Los Angeles recently to audition for a TV series?” he said artfully over the public address system. “That’s right, it’s called ‘Touched by an Anglo.’” 

The dance gear drew much attention and Baca constantly reminded spectators to be respectful and ask the dancers’ permission before taking photographs.  

Headman Dancer Gilbert Blacksmith said each dancer makes his or her own dancing regalia, which is an expression of individuality. Blacksmith, 44, said there are three native dance styles, traditional, grass dance and fancy dance. He has been dancing for 40 years and said he is now the oldest fancy dancer in the nation. 

Blacksmith teaches fancy dancing every Thursday to all interested at the Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland. 

Spectators Sarah McPherson and her two daughters Anne, 7, and Meg, 5, danced each time the inner circle was opened to spectators. “This is just a great event,” McPherson said. “I brought the girls for the cultural experience but I never thought they’d have this much fun.” 

Other celebrants strolled along the outer circle of vendor booths selling arts and crafts such as Native American jewelry, dream catchers and musical instruments. Vincent and Jodi Castanon have been making and selling traditional soap stone crafts for 29 years. “We go to as many as 35 powwows a year between March and November,” Vincent said. “And when we’re not traveling we teach soap stone carving.” 

Soap stone is found throughout the United States and was used by Indigenous tribes for 2000 years to make pipes, beads, carvings and talcum powder. 

There were several information booths among the crafts vendors including the Green Party, The Native American Health Center and activists promoting the preservation of the West Berkeley Shellmound, the site of a ancient Native American community and burial site at the mouth of Strawberry Creek.  

The Native American Aids Project distributed condoms and pamphlets describing the organization’s services. NAAP Program Director Joan Benoît said the HIV infection rate among Native Americans increased 700 percent between 1990 and 1999. “We’re here to make sure the people stay safe.”

Schott, Sabo score as Cal wins third in a row over Cardinal 

Stanford women’s soccer has been the bully of the Pac-10 playground for many years, as they have the fourth-best winning percentage in the history of women’s college soccer to go with numerous conference championships. But the bully is now being taken to school by their neighbors to the north. 

No. 9 Cal beat Stanford for the third straight time Sunday by being more aggressive in the air and going straight at the Cardinal defense. The final 2-0 score didn’t do justice to the Bears’ effort, as they were constantly on the attack and had an apparent goal called back on a questionable offsides call. 

The matchup, played in front of a Edwards Stadium record crowd of 1,582, was the first time the Bears have gone into a match against Stanford ranked higher than their opponents, as the Cardinal (8-4-1, 1-2 Pac-10) had fallen to No. 14. 

The Bears (12-1-1, 2-1) came out swinging, as forward Kyla Sabo got a breakaway chance in the first minute only to see Stanford goalie Carly Smolak turn the shot around her post with one hand. But Cal kept up the pressure, and forward Laura Schott came through with a goal in the 21st minute off of a feed from midfielder Brittany Kirk. Schott’s initial shot was parried by Smolak, but the Bears’ leading scorer controlled the rebound and put it away for her 18th goal of the season, most in the Pac-10. 

“We knew we wanted to come out and get on top of them,” Schott said. 

Following the goal, Cal fell back on the defensive for the rest of the half, looking to keep their one-goal cushion. But head coach Kevin Boyd wasn’t happy with the defensive style, and he told his team so at halftime. 

We struggle with our confidence some times against teams we know are good,” Boyd said after the game. “I told them, ‘Hey, you’re number nine in the country, you’ve been in the top 10 for four weeks straight. What else do you need to know you’re good?’ And they came out and played great in the second half.” 

With their confidence high, the Bears came out for the second half like sharks with blood in the water. Sabo and Schott drove for the goal repeatedly, and several of their shots went just wide of the target. 

Sabo, who dominated the right side of the field for most of the game, popped a pass over the Stanford defense in the 67th minute, and Schott hit the ball into the top of the net for an apparent 2-0 lead. But the referee waved the goal off, saying Schott was offsides on the play. 

Sabo then decided to take matters into her own hands five minutes later, taking the ball 30 yards from the Stanford goal, she eluded three defenders before rocketing a shot past the diving Smolak to give Cal a real two-goal lead. 

“We’ve been talking about the fact that I pass a lot, and I need to be more dangerous in the box myself, so that’s what I was trying to work on today,” Sabo said. “I just saw the corner open and shot for it.” 

Happy with the scoreline, the Bears then put their minds to keeping Zabala’s team-record 24th shutout intact, and they did just that. The Cardinal got only nine shots off in the game, almost all of them from long range, as defenders Tami Pivnik and Amy White keyed the lockdown on the vaunted Stanford strikers. 

“Amy White probably had her best game of the season,” Boyd said. “Our backline was a rock today, nothing got by them.” 

Zabala agreed with her coach. 

“I don’t think people realize how awesome our defenders have been doing. They haven’t been giving away any decent shots all year,” she said. “I think today they really showed a lot of skill and maturity.” 

With the Bears coming into the game as the favorite, the senior players saw this as a chance to really establish the program as one of the conference’s best. 

“This is exactly what I wanted when I came to Cal,” Pivnik said. “I came into a losing program, and we looked at where Stanford was and said ‘That’s where we want to be.’ And now we’re there.”

The landscape of south Berkeley is set to get its long-awaited makeover, if the City Council approves a set of plans and specifications designed to make the Adeline-Ashby-Alcatraz corridor a bicycle and pedestrian-oriented commercial street. 

Crosswalk improvements, north and south bike lanes, pedestrian lighting, new trees, bus shelters and public art are just some of the plans for the five block stretch on Adeline Street from Ashby Avenue to Alcatraz Avenue. 

Improvements along the stretch are slated to begin soon and to be completed by April of next year, if the council gives its approval, Public Works Director Rene Cardinaux said.  

Funding comes from a $1 million grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and $190,000 from the city’s General Fund. The city originally pitched a $2 million project, but received half, according to Bill Lambert, manager of the Office of Economic Development.  

Cardinaux and Lambert said the streetscape improvements are a step toward reaching a major goal of the 1991 South Berkeley Area Plan, which is to link the isolated Ashby BART station with the rest of the community. 

In the grant proposal to the MTC, Lambert wrote that “Business owners note that customers are discouraged from walking from one store to the next due to the traffic volume and width of the streets.” 

The 175 foot stretch across Adeline is a “forbidding street to cross for cyclists and pedestrians, especially the elderly, children and the disabled,” Lambert wrote. 

The six lanes of traffic along the stretch carry 35,000 cars a day in and out of Berkeley at an average speed of 34 miles per hour.  

The mammoth BART station itself has also acted as a physical barrier between downtown and south Berkeley, the proposal said. 

“The entrances to the BART station are below grade, making station access difficult and isolating the AC Transit stops on the upper level,” the proposal continues. “The physical discontinuity the BART station creates on Adeline, plus the width of the street and the volume of traffic, cuts the Adeline-Alcatraz district off from regional shoppers in the northern segment of Adeline, and forces its merchants to depend on a local customer base with very little disposable income.” 

Lambert says that the improvements will not only enhance pedestrian amenities, but increase the flow of customers to and from the BART station, thus improving business. 

South Berkeley is certainly looking up, Lambert said. With the improvements, combined with the Ed Roberts campus – a proposed $30 million office complex to house agencies which support people with disabilities – in the BART station parking lot, a new drug store and the thriving Berkeley Bowl, the Adeline corridor will “live up to its potential,” he said. 

The area is already home to a number of important community facilities, such as the Black Repertory Theater, several churches, a post office and the offices of the Berkeley Housing Authority. 

The plans include the installation of 150 pedestrian lights, 55 new tree grates, new landscaping that includes 30 new trees, new bus shelters, information kiosks and 40 new banners that are hoped to bring a sense of community identity. 

Lambert also said that the Civic Arts Commission will be adding a public art piece to the overall streetscape. 

“It all ties in together very nicely,” he said. 

Led by three goals apiece from Brian Brown and Adam Wright, and 12 blocks by goalie Brandon Brooks, No. 1 ranked UCLA defeated No. 4 Cal, 11-5, in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation match Saturday afternoon at Spieker Aquatics Complex.  

The Bears fell to 6-5 overall and 2-2 in the MPSF, while the Bruins improved to 9-2 and 5-0 in MPSF play.  

UCLA pretty much dominated from the beginning of the match, jumping out to a 3-1 lead after the first period on goals by Brown, Dave Parker and Andrew Bailey. Senior two-meter man Jerry Smith gave Cal its first period goal with 2:39 left.  

The Bears scored the first goal in the second period to get within 4-2 on another shot by Smith, this time from an assist by Joe Kaiser. However, UCLA went on to outscore Cal 4-1 the rest of the second period, including goalie Brooks blocking a four-meter penalty shot attempt by Smith. 

Both teams scored two goals in the third period, but the Bruins sealed the match in the fourth quarter on goals by Wright and Olympian Sean Kern.

BERKELEY — Berkeley police had their hands full after a mob of about 500 people broke store windows and looted several businesses on a busy street near the University of California, Berkeley. 

The break-ins occurred Saturday night after several people were refused admission to a party near the university. 

The dejected partiers made their way down Telegraph Avenue breaking windows and stealing from at least eight stores including an athletic goods shop, a record store and a Gap clothing store. Police arrested four juveniles for looting, while hundreds of others ran off into the night. 

The Downtown Berkeley Association dropped its sponsorship of Monday night’s candidates forum, after protests from several City Council hopefuls who called foul, claiming that an organization that gets city funding should not be sponsoring an election forum.  

Caleb Dardick, Interim Executive Director of the DBA, said that the forum, slated for Monday, 6-8 p.m. at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza, will instead be hosted by the League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville. 

District 6 incumbent Betty Olds said she understood the concerns. Because the DBA receives city money, it could be perceived that the incumbents would have the advantage, Olds said. 

“We’re the ones that have given them the money,” she said. “If I were a challenger, I would feel that way, too.” 

Olds said, however, that she was surprised that the DBA didn’t realize that holding the forum would cause questions to be raised. 

But District 2 incumbent Margaret Breland said that at first she wasn’t planning on attending the forum. DBA endorsements are a done deal, she said, and her campaign would better spend its time by “knocking on doors” than attending a forum where she would not be endorsed. 

Breland said that the mayor and the others of the moderate council bloc hold the key to downtown. 

However, since she learned that the League of Women Voters is moderating the event, she has changed her mind and decided to participate. 

District 5 challenger Carrie Olson said that she plans to attend, as well. Olson, however, said she isn’t sure that the League of Women Voters is an unbiased organization either. 

“The League has taken a stance on land-use issues,” she said. “I don’t feel like they should take a stance on issues (and moderate the forum).” 

Olson said that the questions will still be the same, but the moderator will be different. 

“It’s (the DBA’s) forum, they have the right to ask their own questions,” she said. “Everyone has their own interests in these issues.” 

Olson said that she hadn’t raised the issue about the DBA receiving money from the city, but took the same stance as Breland. 

“If I were doing this to look for their endorsement, it would be different,” she said. “I take it as a foregone conclusion that they already have their candidates.” 

Olson joked that she’s still learning the ropes in campaigning for City Council. 

District 2 challenger Betty Hicks, whom Breland said the DBA will endorse, said that she plans to “be as forthright as I can.” 

“When you go to all these forums, all you can do is just state what you’re about.” 

Dardick said that it’s more important to the DBA to make the candidates comfortable than to be the sponsor. 

“When we heard that council candidates were critical of this, we immediately decided to withdraw sponsorship,” he said. “In Berkeley, sometimes it pays not to fight.” 

Saturday, Oct. 14

Indigenous Peoples Day  

Powwow & Indian Market 

10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Grand Entry 1 p.m.  

Enjoy Native American foods, arts & crafts, drumming, singing and many types of native dancing. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley, this event is free.  

Civic Center Park 

Allston Way at MLK Jr. Way 

Info: 615-0603 

Fall Festival at School of the  

Madeleine 

11 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

1225 Milvia at Berryman, Berkeley 

Raffle, Games, Food, Silent Auction 

Prizes, Haunted House, Fun 

Traffic Calming Workshop 

1 - 4 p.m.  

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Help to achieve reasonable traffic speeds and volume on local streets.  

Free Spay and Neuter  

Vouchers 

2 - 4 p.m.  

Berkeley Animal Shelter 

2013 Second St. 

The City of Berkeley, along with Spay Neuter Your Pet (SNYP) is kicking off a City-funded program to reduce the number of animals euthanized. They are offering free spay and neuter vouchers to all Berkeley residents.  

Run Your Own Landscape Business: Part 1 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. (at Blake) 

Local horticultural consultant and UC Master Gardener Jessie West will teach you how to plant, prune, control weeds, and more. The first of three classes. The others are scheduled for Oct. 21 & 28 in the same timeslot. 

$15 general; $10 for members; $5 materials fee 

Call 548-2220 x223 

Indian Rock Parks Clean-Up 

8 a.m. - Noon 

Indian Rock Park 

Come help local resident Sharon Tamm clean up Indian Rock, Mortar Rock, Grotto Rock and their surrounding areas. Gloves will be provided. Bring a scraping tool and compete for the “Most Gum” award. Prizes have been provided by the Class 5 and IronWorks climbing clubs along with the Any Mountain Outlet store.  

To volunteer call Sharon Tamm, 524-1415 

Learn to Birdwatch 

Oct. 16, 18, 23 & 25 

9:30 a.m. - Noon 

UC Botanical Gardens 

200 Centennial Drive 

$50 for members; $65 for non-members 

Call for info or to enroll: 643-2755 

An Evening with The  

Professor 

5 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. 

Mambo Mambo 

1803 Webster St.  

Oakland 

Berkeley resident Geoffrey A. Hirsch, better known as the Tie Guy from the “How Berkeley Can You Be” parade got his start in comedy in 1996. A professor in real life, Hirsch tell the story of how he became a funny guy.  

$5 for show only, $10 for show and dinner 

Call Geoffrey Hirsch at 845-5631 to reserve tickets 

Sunday, Oct. 15

A Taste of the Greenbelt 

1 - 4 p.m. 

Los Gatos Opera House 

Celebrate the Bay Area’s agricultural and culinary bounty. This benefit features a variety of musical groups, local artists and samples from over 40 local restaurants, farmers, wineries and microbreweries. Proceeds benefit Greenbelt Alliance’s ongoing efforts to protect Bay Area farmlands and open space.  

$45 per person; $80 for this event and the Oct. 22 event in SF 

1-800-543-GREEN, www.greenbelt.org 

Musicians for Medical  

Marijuana Benefit 

8 p.m. 

Ashkenaz 

1317 San Pablo (at Gilman) 

The fourth benefit concert with The Cannabis Healers featuring Barney Doyle of the Mickey Hart Band and Terry Haggerty of Sons of Champlin. Also performing will be Country Joe McDonald and Buzzy Linhart and friends. All proceeds go to support public education efforts, medical cannabis research, and financial assistance for patients and their caregivers facing legal challengers.  

Tickets: $15 minimum donation, under 12 free 

Call the Ashkenaz box office, 525-5054 or go to gdt.stoo.com or ticketweb.com 

A Muslim Approach to Life 

3 p.m. 

St. Johns Presbyterian Church 

2727 College Ave.  

A presentation on the Muslim spiritual life and culture which will focus on women’s lives and the uniqueness of women’s spiritual journeys. This is the first of four Sunday programs that will focus on this theme.  

Call 527-4496 

Time, Space, and Knowledge  

Vision 

6 p.m.  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Ken McKeon , teacher writer and TSK practitioner since 1980 speaks on “Time, Space, and Knowledge, Right from the Start.” Free. 

Call 843-6812 

1923 North Berkeley Fire Walking Tour 

10 a.m. - Noon 

Phil Gale leads this tour of the Sept. 18, 1923 fire site, identifying various changes wrought in buildings and landscape. The tour includes the Mayback chimney, around which a new home was constructed. Pre-paid reservations are required.  

$10 

Call for reservations, 848-0181 

Compiled by Chason Wrainwright

Correcting the record on Measure BB 

Editor: 

After reading John Cecil’s letter in your Oct. 10th edition, I had to write to correct at least part of his letter regarding Measures AA and BB on the November ballot. The fact that I’m commenting on Measure BB should not lead anyone to think Mr. Cecil is accurate in his rather extraordinary arithmetic concerning Measure AA. But because I have served as the Chair of the BSEP Planning & Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Maintenance for some years as well as currently serving as Chair of the District’s Facilities & Maintenance Advisory Committee which recommended the parcel tax that is now Measure BB, I can correct Mr. Cecil’s misunderstandings regarding the maintenance parcel tax. 

I was very active in the campaign to renew BSEP in 1994 when the measure was revised to put most of the money into the classroom to help compensate for the ongoing shortfalls in State funding.  

We reduced maintenance monies in BSEP because the community wanted to preserve core educational programs, not because we thought we were over funding maintenance.  

It was another one of those terrible choices everyone involved with the schools had to make. We’ve now reached the point where we must adequately fund maintenance, both for the health, safety and educational needs of our students and to preserve the enormous capital investment Berkeley has made in its schools.  

Because the demands on the General Fund of the District are so severe and because everyone supported the essential raises given teachers this year, there was no other place to get the money to properly fund maintenance than through a parcel tax.  

The Maintenance Advisory Committee, which also produced a reorganization plan for the department, worked long and hard before recommending the parcel tax to the Board in April.  

Unlike other jurisdictions, Berkeley does not use a one-rate-for-all, across-the-board figure for a parcel tax. This is precisely to protect low-income homeowners and seniors.  

There is an exemption for such taxpayers, while businesses pay a slightly higher rate and the rest of us fall into the middle.  

So rich dot-commerce families won’t replace anyone because of Measure BB. 

I would encourage those readers confused by Mr. Cecil’s colorful descriptions of the facts and figures concerned in Measures AA and BB to check out the web site of the Berkeley Citizens for Safe & Sound Schools, the campaign committee for the measures, at bcsss.com, or write me, c/o of BUSD, 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Berkeley 94704. Measures AA & BB are too important to be tossed aside based on such erroneous information. 

Stephanie Allan 

Co-Chair  

Berkeley Citizens for Safe & Sound Schools  

UC Berkeley builds Nobel laureates, but can’t build bike paths  

Dear Friends, 

As a fellow UC alum, I sympathize with James L. Fairley’s desire to banish distractions like noisy skateboards, noisy cell phones, and high rents from the University’s contemplative environment (letters, Oct. 12). But regarding his troubles with campus bicyclists, I have a better idea:  

Bike lanes. 

If the Berkeley community really wants to reduce its vehicle traffic, UC’s 50,000+ students, faculty, and employees are the key: These folks need incentives to commute to campus without a car. And for many UC students and staffers, a bicycle is an ideal way to get to campus. Unfortunately, as soon as cyclists arrive, they’re treated like second-class citizens. 

Bicycles are completely banned from much of UC’s central campus during business hours. The campus has only one formal bike path – a peripheral and incomplete north-south path, whose southern entrance has been blocked by construction for months.  

There are a couple of informal cross-campus bike paths, but these are equally peripheral – and roundabout, and subject to conflicts with motor vehicles and pedestrians. One informal north-south path is itself blocked by construction near Wurster and Evans Halls. 

No wonder poor Mr. Fairley has bikes cutting him off on footpaths: they’re given no clear place to go. The humble bicycle is 110-year-old technology, but UC Berkeley – home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of Nobel laureates – still hasn’t figured out how to accommodate it. 

Other universities have discovered that pedestrians’ and cyclists’ needs can be mutually met by striping bike paths. A university to our south provides defined bike paths, and attracts so many bike commuters that visiting its campus feels like stepping into film footage from Beijing. (I won’t mention this parvenu institution’s name, but its initials are “Stanford.”) 

Come on, Cal: Let’s get with the 19th Century. UC should stripe a 24-hour north-south bike path that starts at Bancroft Way, runs up the side (or center) of Sproul Plaza, continues between Doe and Moffitt Libraries, then up past Earth Sciences and the Queen of the Sciences (Journalism, my old school) out to Euclid Ave. 

A second 24-hour path should run eastward from Cross-Campus Drive past Life Sciences, between Doe and Wheeler, and around the Campanile to reconnect with Cross-Campus Drive out to Gayley Way. 

To ensure pedestrians’ convenience, both paths should have frequent pedestrian crossings, with clear signage directing cyclists to yield.  

The UC police officers who currently waste their time chasing cyclists off their bikes entirely, should instead just make sure that bike riders obey these signs.  

Finally, if either path is ever blocked by construction, it should be carefully rerouted so that it remains continuous. 

There is room for both of the paths I’m proposing: at most, the east-west path might require repositioning a couple of parking spaces. And these paths would allow UC students and staff to bike directly to the campus’ most-visited buildings. Providing that option would take a measurable number of cars off Berkeley’s streets – making it easier for all of our city’s pedestrian’s to Go Bearably. 

Michael Katz 

Berkeley 

Member, Bay Area Responsible Cyclists 

Asseyons 

Editor:  

It is interesting to note the excuses given by various individuals in the City’s Planning Department for their delay in approving the French Cafe’s application for sidewalk seating. It would appear a game of “tit for tat” was being played because of Cafe owner’s prior delays in filing for the permit. 

First, Giselle Sorenson was quoted that the approval would be further delayed if citizens called to inquire as to the status of the application’s approval. Clearly this implied a deliberate slowdown. Second, all department representatives used overwork and understaffing as a reason for delay. Now Wendy Cosin says that it has always been the policy of the Department to allow the sidewalk seating pending an application’s approval.  

If that is truly the case, the Department has been in violation of its own policy since August 24th, the date the application was filed.  

Why didn’t they then notify the Police Department and their legal department that the seating from August 24th forward should be allowed and was not to be cited?  

Why is it that only after the glare of publicity resulting from our sit-out on October 3rd was this policy publicly stated and the directive given on October 5th to allow such seating? 

In all of this it has been the public that for 7-1/2 weeks was the innocent victim of both the owner’s foolish intransigence in abiding by the law and the Planning Department’s equally foolish failure to abide by its own policies. 

Al Wasserman 

Berkeley  

Cyberspace already here in city politics 

Editor: 

Just to let the readers of the Daily Planet know that cyberpolitics is alive in Berkeley beyond the panel discussion at the City Club Tuesday night. The Measure R campaign for the Berkeley High School Warm Pool 

Renovation has a website, Measure-R.org. The visitors will find what renovations the Measure will pay for, testimonials from adult swimmers and parents of young swimmers, a picture tour of the pool facility, and the campaign committee’s e-mail address.  

Perhaps the Planet can run an article on the many websites for the measures and candidates on November’s Berkeley ballot. 

Mark Hendrix 

Co-chair & treasurer 

Warm Pool Campaign Committee 

Committee for Measure R. 

Berkeley 

Cross your bike safely 

Editor: 

In light of the recent brouhaha about pedestrian crosswalk safety, I’d like to raise the issue of bicyclist crosswalk safety.  

Bicyclists, please do not ride in crosswalks! Turning drivers scan crosswalks in their path for slow-moving pedestrians. 

As a bicyclist, you’re travelling 3-5 times faster than a pedestrian, and can easily ride into the path of a turning vehicle.  

Please ride through the intersection in the normal traffic lane, or walk your bicycle in the crosswalk. 

Ronnen Levinson 

Berkeley 

The Cal women’s volleyball team defeated William & Mary Friday in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the RSF Fieldhouse, 16-14, 13-15, 15-11 and 15-7. 

Judging by the number of people that showed up at 8 p.m., ready for the homecoming rally scheduled to follow the match, Cal fans didn’t think the non-conference affair against a .500 Tribe team would last as long as it did. 

Slow starts in each of the match’s four games caused the Bears (9-7) to play catch-up most of the night. 

The Bears dropped the first six points of the opening game and were trailing 10-3 when sophomore outside hitter Leah Young’s kill gave Cal a side-out. The Bears went on to win 13 of the next 17 points on their way to victory. 

"We came out kind of slow," said Cal outside hitter Reena Pardiwala, who tallied 12 kills and eight digs on the night. "It might have been because it wasn’t a Pac-10 match." 

That’s no excuse for Cal coach Rich Feller. Following the Bears’ loss in the second game, he scolded his team for their sloppy play.  

"I don’t even want to tell you what I told them at halftime," Feller said after the match."I was disappointed about the emotional letdown because it wasn’t a Pac-10 match. We didn’t have to let that happen." 

Still, the second game was Cal’s strongest opening of the night. They rattled off six straight points before William & Mary (9-8) recovered and scored eight of the next nine. The game was tied four times before the Tribe finally won on a Bear error. 

But Cal starting quickly is the exception rather than the rule. Even in Pac-10 matches this year, Cal has had a tendency to start sluggishly. In their Oct. 10 contest against Stanford, the Bears trailed 3-12, 1-5, and 0-4 in Game 3 as the Cardinal swept Cal in three straight games. 

Senior outside hitter Alicia Perry once again led the Bears with 20 kills on 43 attempts while committing just three errors against William & Mary. She also contributed 20 digs, bringing her to within nine of being only the fourth Cal player ever to record more than 1,000 kills and 1,000 digs. She leads the Bears in both categories this season. 

"We went into the locker room (after the second game) and decided we had to work harder," Perry said. "We take every match serious, but we had to come out with a different attitude." 

After setting her career high for kills last week against Washington, Cal’s Gabrielle Abernathy struggled throughout much of the match against the Tribe. Pounding out 13 kills, the freshman outside hitter also drove an equal number of balls either into the net or off the court. In Cal’s second-game loss, Abernathy spiked the ball into the top of the net four times and sent another one long on the Tribe’s game point. 

Cal recovered in the next two games with strong efforts by Pardiwala, Perry, Young and a revived Abernathy.  

"A bright spot was that we had some consistency," Feller said. "We got what we expected from Alicia and held together until the others started playing." 

For what the Bears lack in opening strength, they make up for in a killer instinct for closing out games. In the third game, Cal scored the game’s last four points, and followed that by rallying from a 1-4 deficit to win 14 of the final 17 points in the final game. 

The Bears head south next week to face USC (Oct. 19) and UCLA (Oct. 20). Both teams defeated Cal earlier in the season. The team returns home on Oct. 27 for a match against Arizona.

An Aztec dancer celebrates Indigenous People’s Day last year at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, at Martin Luther King Jr. and Allston ways. Today is Berkeley’s Ninth Annual celebration of native peoples in Martin Luther King Jr. Park, a holiday which replaced Columbus Day in the city in 1991. Organizers invite the entire community to the event. Bring a lawn chair or blanket to sit on, they say. “Do not sit in the inner circle or the areas reserved for dancers. No alcohol is allowed. Please join in when you are invited...Ask permission before taking pictures.” This year the celebration honors Leonard Peltier, indigenous rights activist, incarcerated for 24 years.

It’s a lesson as old as humanity itself: it’s not how you start something, but whether you finish it. The Berkeley High Yellowjackets (2-4, 2-0) started the first four games of the regular season with tough losses in non-conference play. But a 26-19 victory over the Encinal Jets (2-4, 1-1) Friday night gave the Yellowjackets a 2-0 record in conference play that might turn some heads within their very own ACCAL league. 

“When we want to play, we can step up,” noted Ramone Reed, senior running back and linebacker for the Yellowjackets. Reed certainly came to play, rushing for 112 yards on 18 carries and scoring two touchdowns on the ground and one on a punt return. Reed spearheaded a Berkeley rushing attack that racked up 183 rushing yards. 

The Encinal Jets took to the air as quarterback Jimmy Olsen hoisted 27 pass attempts en route to 187 yards and a touchdown. Olsen completed passes to five different receivers, as running back Tyree Jackson snared a team-high six receptions for 54 yards.  

Berkeley, on the other hand, saw fortune drop right in their lap as Encinal went three and out on their first possession and was forced to punt from deep within their own territory. A botched snap led to a deflection, which was reeled in by the aforementioned Reed at the Jet 20 yard line. Reed did the rest, zooming in for a score. 

Leading by seven in the second quarter, Berkeley’s defense rose to the occasion like it has all season. Senior defensive back Wuagwa Nnamel stripped Jet wide receiver Ray Thomas of the football with just over 11 minutes remaining in the second quarter. Two plays later, Reed, who admits he is “more focused on offense right now,” transformed a sweep into six more points with a 26-yard touchdown run, and the Yellowjackets went into halftime with a 13-0 lead. 

Encinal’s defense sparked their first score when Iknika Thomas scooped up a fumble by Berkeley quarterback Nitoto Muhammed for a 38-yard touchdown. After forcing a Yellowjacket punt, the Jets called another of their patented screen passes to wideout Nick Lory, who weaved his way across the field for a 45-yard touchdown score to tie the game at 13-13 with 40 seconds left in the third quarter. 

Then came the key drive of the game, as Berkeley’s Germey Baird bruised his way to the Yellowjacket 45 on the ensuing kickoff return. Muhammed then called wide receiver Chavallier Patterson’s number on a streak pattern down the right sideline pass good for 40 yards. Reed’s subsequent 12-yard touchdown run with 11:49 left in the game gave the Yellowjackets a 20-13 lead.  

The Jets appeared to be ready for takeoff when a 14-yard touchdown rush by Jackson pulled Encinal within one point with the extra point attempt to follow. But the Jets decided to go for two and failed, and Berkeley’s final score – a one-yard QB sneak by Muhammed with 2:41 left in the game – sealed the deal for the ’Jackets. 

Berkeley returns home on Friday to host the Richmond Oilers.

A San Francisco police officer charged with assaulting his girlfriend in her West Berkeley apartment and binding her hands with a nylon strap appeared in Berkeley Superior Court Friday to face charges of misdemeanor battery and false imprisonment. 

Judge Jennie Rhine postponed a hearing on a restraining order in the case over objections by the alleged victim’s attorney until after the criminal trial against the officer, which she set for January 16. The preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 12 at 9 a.m. 

Rhine ruled that a temporary restraining order against defendant James McKeever, a 52-year-old San Francisco motorcycle officer, will remain in effect until February. The victim in the case also appeared in court yesterday. The Daily Planet is honoring her wish not to be named. 

“We wanted to get (the restraining order) over with so it’s not being prolonged,” said Carmia Caesar, a staff attorney with the Family Violence Law Center in Oakland. “This is the second time it’s been delayed,” she said. 

McKeever, a 26-year veteran of the San Francisco police force, was arrested in the early morning hours of Aug. 7 after officers arrived at an apartment on Seventh Street in West Berkeley and found the victim with a broken tooth and her hands bound behind her back. The 36-year-old woman told police that McKeever hit her in the face and pinned her on the ground before tying her hands together. 

But according to a police report, McKeever claimed the woman started the altercation by slapping and kicking him and that he had merely tried to shield himself from her blows. McKeever is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 240 pounds. The woman is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds. 

The pair told police they have had an on-and-off relationship for five years. The woman, who had not been publically named until Friday’s court date, has lived in Berkeley for five years. She told the Daily Planet she is active in community affairs, having served on city task forces and boards. McKeever is married and lives in San Francisco’s Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood with his four-year-old daughter and 13-year-old stepdaughter. 

Michael Cardoza, a San Francisco lawyer representing McKeever, said yesterday that there was no basis for the charges. 

“The history of the alleged victim in this case is absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “There will be two sides to this story and it will come out at trial that this victim is not everything she’s portrayed to be,” he said. 

Since his arrest in the Berkeley incident, meanwhile, McKeever was allegedly involved in a separate attack at the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport.  

According to a report by airport authorities, McKeever struck his 13-year-old step daughter twice in the face while waiting to board a Delta Air Lines flight to San Francisco on Aug. 24. 

McKeever was held overnight in the Tarrant County jail and released the next day on $500 bond. He has been charged with felony assault on a child and is scheduled to appear for preliminary hearing in Ft. Worth on Oct. 27. Carole Kerr, McKeever’s attorney in the Texas case, did not return a call seeking comment by press time. 

But Cardoza said the Texas incident had also been overplayed. 

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “He barely touched her. There are no marks, there are no visible signs of anything. And the girl says ‘he never hit me,’ so I mean it’s absolutely horse crap,” he said. 

According to Cardoza, McKeever gently disciplined the teenager for acting up and the only witness was too far away to see what really happened. 

“What I find really strange is here you have some really good parents and people are saying it’s against the law to discipline your children corporally, and its not against the law,” he said. “You can use reasonable force, and certainly he barely touched his daughter, just tapped her on the mouth.” 

The Texas incident only came to light locally after the girl told her biological father, Keith Washington, about the event some weeks afterward in San Francisco. 

“She called me out of the clear blue sky and asked me to meet her at the school,” Washington told the Daily Planet in a telephone interview Wednesday. “She started crying,” he said. “She told me her and her sister got into some little disagreement and he (McKeever) blamed her and struck her.” 

Washington is a former maintenance worker with the San Francisco Housing Authority and is currently on disability. He has no custody or visitation rights but says he is close with the child, a ninth grader in San Francisco. 

Washington says he called Dallas/Ft. Worth authorities, who faxed him a copy of the police report. 

McKeever was suspended from the San Francisco police force on Sept. 1 and ordered to surrender his badge, police identification card and handgun. But one week later he was reassigned to a desk job. According to a police department spokesman, however, McKeever’s weapon has not been returned and he has no contact with the public. 

At Friday’s court hearing the alleged victim in the Berkeley incident hoped to have a three-year restraining order entered against McKeever. But Judge Rhine ruled that McKeever’s Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself would be infringed if he was forced to participate in a restraining order hearing before the criminal trial. 

McKeever, wearing a black suede jacket and a taciturn expression, sat in the rear of the courtroom with his wife. He declined to answer questions on the advice of his attorney. 

The alleged victim, meanwhile, huddled in the hallway after the hearing with her attorney, an advocate from a local battered women’s group, and assistant district attorney Ursula Dixon. 

Articulate and effusive, the woman was eager to talk about the case in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Planet, but also said she is ambivalent about McKeever’s arrest. She said that McKeever co-signed on a loan that allowed her to purchase her home and in 1998 gave her $10,000 cash toward the purchase of a new Honda Civic automobile. She says she is also the beneficiary of a life insurance policy taken out on McKeever. 

“That’s what makes it hard because I couldn’t have done it without him,” she said. “I know that this person has feelings for me.” 

She said McKeever had never been violent before. “I thought I knew this person, but I guess I didn’t,” she said. “I really thought this man was going to kill me.” 

But attorney Michael Cardoza, who specializes in representing police officers charged with crimes, sees McKeever’s prosecution differently. 

“We are now in a society where this is the crime du jour,” he said. “You have every woman’s rights group jumping into this now and they blindly believe whatever a woman tells them,” he said. 

“What’s wrong that I see, especially here in Alameda County, is they’re federally granted and they have certain stat(istics)s they have to keep up, and if they don’t keep them up they lose their federal money, so we’ve got to prosecute everybody. So any woman can come through the door and say, ‘well he did this.’” 

Cardoza says the fact that McKeever is a policeman only intensified feelings in the case. 

“That’s the button to push for everybody, where everybody gets even tougher,” he said. “They’re actually tougher on police officers and anybody in that type of authoritarian capacity,” he said. “So this is absolutely insane what’s going on here,” he said, “It’s really sad.” 

In what has been a disappointing season for the Cal football team, the upcoming five-game stretch leading up to the Big Game against Stanford could be even uglier. 

Of the five teams the Bears will face, four are nationally-ranked squads, the lone exception being USC, which dropped out of the polls just last week. After this Saturday’s home game against No. 15 UCLA, Cal hits the road to face No. 10 Washington and the Trojans, return home against No. 20 Oregon State, then head back out to take on No. 12 Oregon. In a good year for the Pac-10, the Bears face one of the toughest stretches in college football in the upcoming weeks. 

First up is the Bruins, who are coming off of a bye week. Head coach Bob Toledo has several players who needed the extra week to heal, including cornerback Marques Anderson and fullback Matt Stanley, who will both play as much as they can Saturday. Cornerback Jason Bell, defensive tackle Ken Kocher and safety Jason Stephens will also return to the lineup in more limited roles. 

The Bears, on the other hand, go into the game having suffered key injuries each of the last two weeks. Left tackle Langston Hughes was lost for the season with an ankle injury two weeks ago, and center Marvin Philip, a true freshman who was himself filling in for the injured Brandon Ludwig, suffered a knee injury last Saturday against Arizona State and will be out for at least four weeks. 

The offensive line will get a boost from the returns of Ludwig and guard David Hays, although neither is at 100 percent. Both saw limited action against Arizona State, and Cal head coach Tom Holmoe seemed optimistic about Ludwig’s return to the starting lineup. That should allow senior Reed Diehl to return to his starting center position, although Diehl has been bothered by nerve palsy in his left hip for the past four weeks. 

The shuffling on the line hasn’t affected the Cal running game, as Joe Igber rushed for 182 yards on just 15 carries last week. But Kyle Boller has struggled since the season opener against Utah, and it’s no coincidence that the Bears haven’t won since that game. Unless Boller and his receivers can hook up for some first downs, it will be another long day for a Cal offense that has produced just 30 points in the last three games. 

Andre Carter and the rest of the Cal defense will have to be on their toes against the Bruins, as Toledo loves trick plays. He has the horses to pull them off this year, with multi-talented wideouts Freddie Mitchell and Brian Poli-Dixon both able to throw the ball as well as catch it. Mitchell has thrown for three touchdowns in his UCLA career. Poli-Dixon is still recovering from an early-season hamstring pull, but at 6-5 is still a big threat against Cal’s secondary. 

Holmoe said the Bears have spent a lot of time this week preparing for UCLA’s playbook. 

“You have to prepare well for it, because they’ve done it a lot, and their coaches like trick plays,” Holmoe said. 

Toledo had good things to say about the Cal defense, which was torched for 420 passing yards by Arizona State. 

“They’re very hard to move the football on, especially with Andre Carter and Jacob Waasdorp up front,” he said. “And it seems like (Cal punter) Nick Harris buries us inside the five every time we get the ball.”

RICHMOND – Phyllis Gould rarely thinks of the years she spent welding troop ship deck houses together in the shipyards of San Francisco Bay. Fifty-five years have passed since then, decades of marriage, divorce, child rearing and the myriad distractions of home life. 

But a whiff of the hot, wiry breath of metal melting and, suddenly, it’s all right there – the grimy, frightening, exciting days of waging war with a blowtorch. 

“It just zaps me back. I can see and hear everything,” she says. 

On Saturday, Gould and millions of other World War II women workers will be honored with the dedication of a Rosie the Riveter memorial in Richmond, the shorefront city that launched many of the ships that kept American sailors afloat. 

The memorial, at 441 feet the same length as the Liberty Ships the women helped build, includes a walk with a timeline of facts and memories from women workers. 

Congress has approved establishing the site, now a city park honoring women’s war work, as a national historic park. The legislation awaits President Clinton’s approval. 

“We never expected to be recognized,” says Gould’s sister, Marian Sousa, a World War II draftsman. “Everybody worked. They did what they could.” 

Gould was the first in the family to find war work. When her husband and his friends announced one Sunday they were going to learn welding to get jobs building ships, “I piped up, ‘Me, too!”’ 

She studied from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., but failed her first few job interviews in 1942 — running into the brick wall of a boilermaker’s union man who flatly told her, “No women and no blacks.” 

The third time she was turned down, “I started crying. And as I walked back to the room, there was a man sitting at the desk and he said, ’What’s wrong?’ and I told him and he said, ’Go back up there,’ and I did and I got a job.” 

In the end there were half a dozen women hired, much to the consternation of shipyard bosses — who hired a woman chaperone. 

“At first I think they were just kind of watching us with amusement,” she says. 

Gould was put to work tacking, putting a short weld on pieces of metal to hold them in place for the final work. She called on her embroidery skills to get the welds placed just so, working her way up to $1.20 an hour — “Oh boy, yeah, it was money.” 

The work was hot and dirty, but Gould had her little vanities. Behind her heavy mask her lips were lipsticked; her hair was tied up in a kerchief, but she made sure her bandanna matched the color of the shirt collar poking out from beneath her sweats. 

Gould did run into problems with one co-worker, a would-be “ladies man” who made the mistake of shining a flashlight on her, blinding her — “I had warned all of the guys on the crew, don’t ever do it because I’m going to swing on the next one that does.” 

She swung, knocking the supervisor’s shiny hard hat off his head. He lunged back, cramming her welding mask below her ears. 

For a while she got the worst assignments, welding in dark, cramped corners on the inside of the ship. 

“One night, he came sidling up to me and he said, ’Well, are you tired of it yet.’ I said, ’You know I’ll do it for the rest of the war if (the alternative) means honeying up to the likes of you.”’ 

After that, “I went back to my good work.” 

Sousa had a quieter time. 

She went to work in 1943 as a draftsman after a crash course at the University of California, Berkeley. She was too young, 17, but got the job after her mother — a war worker herself — lied for her. 

By that time, women war workers were commonplace, filling the jobs the sailors, soldiers and airmen had left behind. At the height of the war, women made up approximately 27 percent of the 100,000-strong work force at Richmond’s Kaiser shipyards. 

Part of Sousa’s work was correcting blueprints to match design revisions. 

“I remember just endless, endless papers of erasing two bunks and making them three bunks,” she says. 

But it was exciting work, and well-paid at $32 a week. 

The senior draftsmen “never looked down on us. They were really great. In fact, I was expecting my daughter and those men gave me a surprise baby shower.” 

Sousa quit when she was too pregnant to make the high first step of the old-style buses. Gould quit when the war ended. Neither ever went back to work outside the home, or felt the urge. 

“I never expected it to go on and I was quite happy to stay at home. Sometimes it’s hard for younger people to understand that point of view because now I think most girls expect to work, but we didn’t,” says Gould. 

Mostly, Gould doesn’t think about her years on the homefront lines. 

But then something will tug at her memory. 

“Sometimes I smell that smell,” she says, her voice trailing off. “It just puts me back there.”

SAN FRANCISCO – One of the nation’s top fish conservation groups wants the California golden trout declared an endangered species, fearing the state fish will be rendered extinct by an alarming rate of hybridization in its two native Sierra Nevada watersheds. 

Trout Unlimited, the leading coldwater conservation organization in North America, believes the population of pure golden trout is so at risk that it skipped a routine step of seeking “threatened” protective status. Instead, it will angle for the endangered list, the highest designation, when it files a petition Monday with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Steve Trafton, the group’s policy director, cited scientific statistics that show only 4 percent of the native range is not threatened by hybridization as proof that “this is a very serious problem and we need to give these fish the highest degree of protection we can.” 

“There’s no doubt there’s a serious risk of extinction,” he added during an interview Friday from the group’s California chapter in Albany. 

Roland Knapp, biologist with the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab, said stream mileage is the simplest way to measure the golden trout decline. About the turn of the 19th century, before the Euro-American settlement, the native population encompassed about 450 miles of stream habitat. Now, that number is down to about 60 to 70 miles, he said. 

Declared California’s state fish in 1947, golden trout are extremely popular with fishermen around the world and are known for their fight and brilliant coloring. Deep gold scales become a striking mix of red and orange along the belly. Blue spots run down their sides and, like most trout, they are speckled with black. 

“They are very rare, they fight very hard and they’re extraordinarily beautiful,” Trafton said. 

The golden trout’s ancestry dates to the days of the troglodytes, with fossils showing they may have evolved directly from rainbow trout lines. At some point, natural barriers isolated schools in two high-altitude Sierra habitats; the upper South Fork Kern River and adjacent Golden Trout Creek. 

While native species are limited by their environments and grow to about 10 inches, hybrids transplanted to larger lakes have reached much greater sizes. The world record catch was 11 pounds, from a lake in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming in 1948. 

Trafton emphasized that the endangered designation would not affect the golden trout fished outside of the two native ranges. 

“If this listing goes through, one of the fears is that recreational angling will be shut down,” he said. “There’s a possibility that could happen on these two specific creeks, but as far as the golden trout people love to fish for, they are not going to be protected by the act.” 

The U.S. Forest Service and California Department of Fish and Game, the agencies that manage fisheries, have already begun taking steps to protect the golden trout. Measures include the creation of the 300,000 acre Golden Trout Wilderness in 1978 and a series of man-made barriers to prevent hybridization. 

But Trout Unlimited, which has 450 chapters and 100,000 members nationwide, says the management plan isn’t effective enough. The group believes there are more fecund ways of rescuing a population it says has been hemmed in by non-natives moving upstream and into south fork and downstream from High Sierra lakes. 

“The preservation effort is a step in the right direction,” Trafton said. “But it’s not adequate to preclude the fish being listed.” 

The Wildlife Service could not be reached Friday. The agency will have 90 days to respond to the petition.

Ukiah water prez accused of two decades of theft 

UKIAH – Mendocino County authorities are investigating allegations that the president of a Ukiah water agency has been illegally diverting water to his ranch for more than two decades. 

Lee Howard, president of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, said this week that he has a written, 21-year-old agreement with neighboring Parducci Wine Cellars that allows him to tap into the winery’s water supply, which comes from the Millview County Water District. 

The existence of the pipeline came to light Wednesday. Authorities were ready to use a backhoe to unearth it when Howard arrived and acknowledged it existed. He said it has been used infrequently in recent years. 

Howard said Thursday that he is the victim of a political vendetta waged by longtime opponents in local water issues. 

Four Oakland cops come under FBI scrutiny 

OAKLAND – The FBI has joined in an investigation of four Oakland police officers accused of brutality, falsifying evidence and other wrongdoing. 

The four officers, who called themselves the “Rough Riders,” are already the subjects of criminal investigations by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and the police department. 

The officers, Francisco Vazquez, Jude Siapno, Clarence Mabanag and Matt Hornung, have been on paid administrative leave since a rookie officer made the allegations in July. 

Police Chief Richard Word has recommended the officers be fired, and their supervising officer, Sgt. Jerry Hayter, be demoted. 

Yacht dealer, appraiser indicted for fraud 

SAN FRANCISCO – A yacht salesman and a boat appraiser have been indicted by a federal grand jury for a tax-fraud scam that overvalued boats given to a charitable foundation in Vallejo. 

Broker Gregory Jampolsky and marine surveyor Stanley Wild face eight counts of aiding in the preparation of false income tax returns and one count of conspiracy. The indictment was handed down Thursday. 

The pair is accused of working together to give boats donated to the California Maritime Academy Foundation a higher value than their actual worth. The boats sold for less than what they were appraised for. 

The scheme resulted in major tax savings for the owners of the donated boats and commissions for Jampolsky and Wild, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

SAN FRANCISCO – In a break with mainstream pro-Israel organizations, more than 100 Jews called on Israel to accept some responsibility for violence in the West Bank at a gathering outside the Israeli consulate here Friday afternoon. 

Meanwhile, in Orange County, pro-Palestinian demonstrators called for an end to the killing of children by Israeli forces. 

Organizers of the San Francisco protest said that while they feel pressure not to criticize Israel during such a sensitive time, they could not stand silent. 

So, for more than an hour Friday afternoon, they stated their case with speeches and chants, including “Hey ho, hey ho, the occupation has got to go.” 

“We condemned the violence on both sides, but there has been a disproportionate use of force by the Israeli military,” said Rebecca Stein, a speaker and organizer of the just-formed Coalition of Jews for Justice in Israel and Palestine. “Many Jews have been concerned about standing up in protest. We’re encouraging Jews to have courage and to act out of a sense of moral obligation.” 

The coalition includes several progressive Jewish groups in the San Francisco Bay area, Stein said. 

One such group is A Jewish Voice for Peace. Representative Lincoln Shlensky said he joined the “ad hoc” coalition within the last week in reaction to the unconditional support many U.S.-based Jewish organizations have lent the Israeli government. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has blamed Palestinians for the violence. 

“These organizations are really not speaking for many Jews in this area,” Shlensky said. “There’s no reason to reflexively support Israel for every wrong policy.” 

Support for Israel was the last thing on the minds of more than 100 people gathered in front of the federal courthouse in Orange County at a rally sponsored by the Palestinian American Womens Association of Southern California. 

Standing before the crowd, 11-year-old Dina Abdo held up a plastic baby doll covered in red ink — a baby bleeding, she said. 

“Hey Barak, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide,” she led a group chant. 

Mona Abdallah, 15, of Anaheim, carried a placard that read “Free Palestine” on one side and “Rocks don’t equal rockets” on the other. 

Although the demonstration was peaceful, security at the federal courthouse was tightened. Metal barricades and police tape cordoned off the building and Santa Ana police officers were posted around the perimeter. 

——— 

Associated Press Writer Chelsea J. Carter contributed to this report.

SANTA CRUZ – The city council in this seaside community has given preliminary approval to the most generous living-wage ordinance in the nation, a minimum wage of $11 an hour with health benefits – or $12 an hour without benefits. 

The Santa Cruz ordinance covers full-time workers employed either by the city or by a for-profit company that has a contract with the city. Businesses facing hardships or unusual circumstances will be able to appeal for an exemption. 

About 60 municipalities in the United States have passed living-wage ordinances. Minneapolis requires its large contractors to pay employees at least $8.25 an hour. Baltimore requires contractors to pay employees at least $6.50 an hour. 

“This is just fantastic,” said David Werlin, a member of the Santa Cruz Living-wage coalition, which helped draft the ordinance. “This is the highest nominal living wage of any ordinance in the United States.” 

Although the minimum is generous compared with other living wages, it should not have that great an impact in a city where wages have skyrocketed because of the growth of the Silicon Valley that provides most of the jobs for Santa Cruz residents. 

Only two current Santa Cruz city employees, both of whom make $9.74 an hour to set up the Louden Nelson Community Center, make less than the newly mandated minimum living wage. 

Patty Haymond, a city analyst, said the city is not sure how many contract employees would be affected, but she said she had not heard of any opposition from for-profit employers. None protested at Tuesday’s city council meeting. 

Council members said approving the living-wage ordinance was a good first step in helping city employees afford to live in Santa Cruz, where housing prices are extraordinarily high. 

The Housing Opportunity Index released six weeks ago by the National Association of Home Builders placed Santa Cruz as the second least-affordable community in the nation, behind only San Francisco. 

“The economics of living in Santa Cruz is a struggle,” said council member Michael Hernandez. “We really need to strive to have greater benefits for our workers.” 

The council unanimously gave preliminary approval Tuesday to the minimum living wage, which would go into effect Thanksgiving Day if the council gives formal approval when the measure returns Oct. 24 for a second reading.

FULLERTON – Erin Brockovich, the law clerk who brought about a record settlement against Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is among the winners of this year’s Beacon Awards presented by the California First Amendment Coalition. 

Other individual recipients include the whistleblower whose allegations about unethical conduct led to the ouster of state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush and a newspaper publisher who went to jail rather than reveal a confidential source. 

The Bakersfield Californian and San Franciscans for Sunshine won the two organizational awards for their pursuit of open government. 

“These people and organizations are truly shining lights who have helped illuminate the darkness of government secrecy as well as threats to free speech and a free press,” said CFAC Executive Director Kent Pollock. “We have all benefitted from their efforts.” 

The awards will be formally presented this weekend at the coalition’s fifth annual First Amendment Assembly at California State University, Fullerton. 

Brockovich won for Exemplary Use of Public Records in the Interests of Justice, cited for how she used water agency files to document injuries to residents in the small California desert town of Hinkley. Her crusade brought about a lawsuit that forced PG&E to pay a record $333 million settlement and was chronicled in the hit movie named after her. 

“Brockovich’s effort is a shining example of how public records can be used by a citizen to right a serious public wrong,” the CFAC said. 

Cynthia Ossias, who risked her career by leaking key insider information from the Insurance Department to the Legislature, won for Exemplary Integrity in Public Service. Quackenbush ended up resigning amid an investigation into his conduct. 

Other individual winners: 

—Tim Crews of the bi-weekly Sacremento Valley Mirror, Exemplary Integrity in Print Journalism. Crews went to jail for five days rather than reveal the names of two sources. 

—CBS producer Lowell Bergman, Exemplary Integrity in Broadcast Journalism. He persuaded a former executive of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. to disclose during a ”60 Minutes” interview that company executives knew of the addictive effects of cigarette smoking. 

—Jean Askham, president of the League of Women Voters of Orange County, Lifetime Achievement, for her career of voluntary effort for open, inclusive and effective democracy.

SHELDON – Scientists released about 100 flea-sized wasps Thursday in Sacramento County, hoping the Australian insects will seek their natural food source: a bug killing eucalyptus trees. 

The parasitoid wasp release is the eleventh in California, where the redgum lerp psyllid has infested at least 40 counties, said Don Dahlsten, a University of California, Berkeley, entomology professor. 

Trees in the Central Valley and along the coast are the most affected. 

Researchers say it is too early to tell if their plan is working; only one wasp has been reclaimed after a release. 

UC officials in Sacramento County said they had received about 130 requests for the wasp from homeowners whose eucalyptus trees serve as fences, wind guards and landscaping. 

The tree-saving program has its share of critics, who contend the eucalyptus tree is a nonnative plant that should not be saved, especially not at the risk of introducing another nonnative species to protect it. 

The long-term consequences of introducing the wasp are unclear, said Jacob Sigg, president of the California Native Plant Society. 

“In principal most people agree it’s OK to import exotic organisms to control an exotic weed,” Sigg said. “When we go beyond that and there is a predator of a predator of an exotic plant” that needs to be debated. 

Several organizations have pushed for the tree’s eradication. Dahlsten said he frequently gets angry letters from people opposed to the introduction of new species. 

“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” he said, holding a test tube with the tiny, non-stinging wasps inside. “I’ve been called irresponsible and have gotten hate mail but if we don’t chose this solution, these tree owners will spend thousands on chemical pesticides that won’t work in the end but will ruin our water, our soil.” 

Dahlsten collected the wasps from Australia, where native eucalyptus trees have thrived despite the redgum lerp psyllid because the psyllids are threatened by the wasps. 

The psyllids feast on eucalyptus trees by sucking sugary sap from the tree leaves, robbing the tree’s roots of needed nutrients, said Chuck Ingels, a UC farm adviser in Sacramento County. 

White sacks on the tree leaves conceal immature psyllids growing to maturity. 

The wasps live and plant their eggs in the psyllids. Breeding the wasps has been difficult because they only live six weeks and need the psyllids to reproduce. 

“We are 99.9 percent sure this is not going to affect other insects in the area, because it has been tested on similar insects,” Ingels said. 

In what sounds like something out of “Jurassic Park,” bacteria that lived before the dinosaurs and survived Earth’s biggest mass extinction have been reawakened after a 250-million-year sleep in a salt crystal, scientists say. 

The bacteria’s age easily beats longevity records set by other organisms revived from apparent suspended animation – not to mention Hollywood’s “Jurassic Park” dinosaurs, cloned from prehistoric DNA encased in amber. 

”‘Jurassic Park’ was neat, but this beats it hands down,” said Paul Renne, a geologist at the University of California at Berkeley. “The idea of having a living glimpse of what life looked like 250 million years ago is pretty spectacular.” 

If the discovery by researchers holds true, the bacteria could open a window onto a prehistoric world that was both dying and being reborn. It would also show the tenacity of life in the toughest conditions. 

Its genetic makeup also could help biologists calibrate the evolutionary clock for the bacterium and its present-day relatives, said Russell Vreeland, a study author and biologist at Pennsylvania’s West Chester University. 

DNA tests indicate the prehistoric germ is related to present-day Bacillus, a type of bacteria found in soil, water and dust. 

“We all feel reasonably comfortable that this particular organism isn’t going to attack anything,” Vreeland said. 

The organism was found in a tiny, fluid-filled bubble inside a salt crystal 1,850 feet underground, about 30 miles east of Carlsbad, N.M. 

At the end of the Paleozoic Era, the area was a vast and barren salt lake. The world was then experiencing its greatest loss of life ever. Up 95 percent of all marine species became extinct. The first known dinosaurs date to about 230 million years ago. 

“The end of the Paleozoic was such a curious time and we don’t really know what happened,” said Renne, who was not involved in the research. “This offers the possibility that we may be able to interrogate some of the organisms that were around.” 

The findings were published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. 

The researchers are confident that the germ has been locked away in the crystal all these years. Fossils and radiation tests show that the formation where the sample was found is 250 million years old, they said. 

Still, there is the possibility the bacteria somehow seeped into the salt more recently in small drops of water, said Chris McKay, a biologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. 

“Unlike amber or rocks or permafrost, salt is not an impermeable material,” he said. 

The scientists pulled about 220 pounds of rock salt from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an underground nuclear waste dump. Fifty-six crystals that showed no signs of contamination were sampled for the presence of bacteria. 

One crystal the size of a large postage stamp contained the organism. Two other strains of bacteria were found and are being studied. 

The researchers believe the bacteria survived as a spore and metabolized very little or not at all over the years. 

Spores are well-known for their longevity. They have been found in a 118-year-old can of meat, and yeast has been cultured from a 166-year-old bottle of porter ale, R. John Parkes of England’s University of Bristol said in a Nature commentary. 

In 1995, researchers at California Polytechnic State University reported reviving Bacillus bacteria spores from the gut of a bee stuck in amber. The bee was estimated to be 25 million to 30 million years old. 

Since 1960, researchers have reported finding organisms up to 650 million years old in salt, but the findings were met with skepticism because of contamination fears. 

In any case, the latest study shows that life can exist inside a salt crystal.

SACRAMENTO — Opponents in the fight over the school voucher initiative on California’s Nov. 7 ballot accused each other Tuesday of using deceptive ads. 

Backers of the measure, Proposition 38, asked the Federal Communications Commission to order the anti-voucher campaign to stop running an ad backers say is “factually incorrect and misleading.” 

Anti-voucher forces said the ad is no longer running, and they produced Hispanic leaders to complain that a pro-voucher Spanish ad is “fraudulent and misleading.” 

Meanwhile, senior groups that oppose Proposition 38 criticize a pro-38 mailer that suggests that if seniors don’t vote for vouchers, they could be mugged by someone who drops out of a bad public school. 

Proposition 38, the most expensive measure on the Nov. 7 ballot with contributions that already have exceeded $46 million, would give parents $4,000 vouchers to send their children to private schools. 

It is backed by Redwood City venture capitalist Tim Draper, who says parents should be able to remove their children from bad public schools. 

Opponents include Gov. Gray Davis and the entire education establishment. They say public schools are starting to improve and vouchers would derail that progress. 

Opponents also say the measure would spend $3 billion for vouchers for children who are currently in private schools. 

The FCC complaint filed by the pro-38 campaign claims that a TV ad that anti-38 forces ran for a while in July and resumed running again last month is “false and deceptive.” 

Political campaigns frequently file such complaints with the FCC, which says stations must not transmit “false or deceptive signals or communications.” However, it is unlikely that the FCC will issue any ruling before the election. 

The ad says that schools receiving voucher funds have “no accountability on how they spend it or even what they teach.” 

The pro-38 campaign says such private schools are actually required by current law to teach English, math, social science, science, fine arts, health and physical education in grades one through six, plus foreign languages, applied arts, vocational education and driver education in junior and senior high schools. 

“The anti-voucher campaign is willing to spread lies and distortions across the airwaves in their attempt to stop parents of poor children from rescuing their kids trapped in failed schools,” said pro-38 spokesman Chris Bertelli. 

An anti-38 spokesman disagreed and also said the ad is no longer being run, because of new ads, not the FCC complaint. 

“The Draper campaign loses when voters hear about Proposition 38’s lack of accountability, so naturally they’re doing everything they can to stop the ad,” said anti-38 spokesman Jon Lenzner. 

The anti-38 campaign, meanwhile, has sent its own complaint letter to Spanish-language stations about a pro-38 ad in Spanish. A number of Hispanic leaders planned a news conference Wednesday in Los Angeles to echo the complaint. 

The ad says that parents would be given the $4,000. In fact, note the opponents, the check would have the parent’s name on it, but would be sent to the private school by the state. 

As for the mailer, four groups representing seniors called it a misleading scare tactic. 

“We just object to the fact that they’re trying to scare older voters,” said Pat Luby, legislative representative for the American Association of Retired Persons. 

He criticized the mailer’s attempt to imply that approval of Proposition 38 would stop dropouts from committing crimes and that rejection of the proposition will put seniors at risk. 

“It’s more than a stretch; it’s an Olympic stretch,” he said. 

The mailer shows a steely eyed youth, identified as a dropout, and a frightened woman being carjacked and says the dropout “could be your worst nightmare.” 

Bertelli defended the mailer, saying crime figures come from U.S. Department of Justice data and studies show that dropouts are more likely to commit crimes. 

The other groups that criticized the mailer are the Older Women’s League, Gray Panthers and Congress of California Seniors. 

——— 

On the Net: Read the initiative at http://www.ss.ca.gov 

The two sides: http://www.SchoolVouchers2000.com 

http://www.NoVouchers2000.com

Oct. 17 

7:30-9 p.m. 

Malcolm X School at Ashby Avenue and King Street 

Berkeley School Board Candidates Forum, Co-sponsored with PTA District Council 

Oct. 21  

1-3 p.m. 

People for Pepples campaign 

meet the candidate 

Berkeley Rose Garden entrance 528-2970 

Oct. 19 

7-8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Community Media, B-TV Berkeley City Council Candidates’ forum for Detracts 2 and 6. 

The Bicycle Friendly Berkeley candidates’ forum on housing, transportation and the environment will be rebroadcast on TV-25: 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23; 8 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 24; 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29; 1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 1; 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4.  

Oct. 24 

7:30-9 p.m. 

King School Library, 1871 Rose St. 

Berkeley School Board Candidates forum, co-sponsored with King Middle School PTA. 

Oct. 26 

7-8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Community Media, TV-25 

Candidates forum for City Council Districts 3 and 5. 

Oct. 30 

7:30-8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Community Media, TV-25 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board candidates’ forum. 

Endorsements 

Councilmember Betty Olds, running for the District 6 seat, announced that she has obtained the endorsements of the following organizations: the Sierra Club, the Berkeley Democratic Club, the Berkeley Police Association, the Berkeley Firefighter’s Association, SEIU 535 

*** 

The Berkeley Firefighters and Police Associations announced the endorsements of the following candidates for City Council: District 2 – Betty Hicks; District 3 – Marcella Crump-Williams; District 5 – Miriam Hawley; District 6 – Betty Olds. 

A statement from the two associations said they believe that these candidates will do the best job of improving public safety, supporting binding arbitration, and maintaining public safety budgets.  

Moreover, the organizations took the opportunity to state the following:  

“Firefighters and police officers need a City Council that will support an alternative transportation mode for persons with non-urgent psychiatric illnesses instead of using life-saving paramedic units.  

“We also want a City Council to support a wage and benefits package to attract diverse and experienced applicant pools for police officers and firefighters; and to require Police Review Commissioners to attend a Civilian Police Academy.”