In a wide-ranging interview Friday, school board member John Selawsky looks back on his first eight months on the job and shares some thoughts on current school topics, including budget difficulties, the new superintendent, reforms at the high school, and some notable program successes. 

For John Selawsky, who became the newest member of the Board of Education in December, working with kids has been a life-long passion. 

The son of a lawyer father and high school teacher mother, Selawsky, 49, was born in Brooklyn and raised in Northern New Jersey, where his parents moved when he was 6. 

While studying urban education at the University of Massachusetts in the 1970s, Selawsky spent his summers volunteering at an East Harlem community center summer camp, counseling and tutoring youth from a vibrant if low-income neighborhood. 

After a desperately cold winter in Vermont convinced him to seek warmer climes, Selawsky moved to San Francisco in 1981. He worked as a sixth grade teacher there until high city rents and the dream of a perfect home (with hardwood floors and a working fireplace) persuaded him and wife, Pam Webster, to hop across the Bay to Berkeley. They’ve lived on Blake Street, a few blocks from the Berkeley Alternative High School, ever since. 

Within in a few years of his arrival in Berkeley, Selawsky was back working with youth. He has volunteered four hours every week at the downtown Berkeley YMCA over the last 10 years. 

Both Selawsky and Webster became increasingly involved in local progressive politics. Webster sits on the board of the Berkeley Ecology Center and is currently serving on the city’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission. Selawsky is an active member of Berkeley Citizens’ Action and the Green Party, which threw its support behind his campaign for the school board in November. 

Selawsky’s involvement in school issues dates to the early ’90s, when his son Peter entered the Berkeley public school system at Oxford Elementary School. 

A published poet and freelance copy editor by trade, Selawsky said he had enough flexibility in his schedule to volunteer regularly at the school, whether it was to support classroom activities, found and lead a student gardening club, or help oversee a significant building project – remodeling the school’s library and classrooms. 

“That was a very exciting project, because Oxford is a much improved site because of that,” Selawsky said. 

Motivated by the belief that “if you improve the education for all kids, your own kid’s education will improve as well,” Selawsky deepened his involvement in school issues. With the encouragement of members of the Oxford school community, he joined one of the Berkeley school district’s most influential committees: the Berkeley Public Schools Excellence Project (BSEP) Planning and Oversight Committee. 

The BSEP parcel tax has raised millions of dollars each year since the late ’80s to reduce class size in Berkeley and contribute to school enrichment programs. The Planning and Oversight Committee oversees the annual BSEP budget. 

“I was snagged right away,” Selawsky said of his first several BSEP committee meetings. “They were really interesting meetings, and they still are. The level of discourse always amazes me – talking about the real issues that are important to our kids.” 

By the time Selawsky ran for the school board last year, he had established a name for himself in the city as someone who was deeply knowledgeable about school issues and committed to representing the Berkeley flatlands’ community he had called home for 13 years, said school board President Terry Doran. 

Being on the school board, said Selawsky, is “one of the most challenging and exciting things I’ve ever done in my life.” 

Selawsky cited the hiring of both Interim Superintendent Stephen Goldstone and, later, the new permanent superintendent, Michele Lawrence, as two of the most significant accomplishments of the school board during his tenure. 

“Getting the right superintendent is so important,” he said. “They really do set the tone for the whole district.” 

With the help of these two leaders, the school board has made enormous strides in identifying critical organizational problems that impede progress within the district on a whole host of issues, Selawsky said.  

With the first day of the new school year just weeks away, the district still has an unclear picture of its budget, Selawsky said – a fact that makes him nervous. 

“To be fiscally responsible:  

my No. 1 charge,” he said. Uncertainty about he district’s finances “makes us really fiscally conservative and really uncomfortable with going out and implementing a new program.” 

But Selawsky said reorganization of the district’s business office, begun under Goldstone and expanded now by Superintendent Lawrence, had the potential to clear up much of the confusion and get the district operating more smoothly by the end of the year. 

Selawsky said he was also impressed by how quickly Lawrence identified a need to improve communication in the district, between teacher, parents, students, school board members, committee members, community members and more. 

Too often in the past the Berkeley school district has operated like the “Russian Economy,” Selawsky said, with people frustrated by the slow-moving bureaucracy using back doors to get the programs they want funded and implemented. 

“What we have is an organization where someone goes out and plants a redwood tree right about where the tulips are growing,” said Selawsky. “There’s no communication. No one knows what’s been planted.” 

In the short term, Selawsky said the most important issue facing the school board this fall will be fulfilling the Western Association of Schools and Colleges committee’s list of improvements that must occur at the high school if the school is to maintain its accreditation. 

The school board must take more of a leadership role in setting clear and consistent expectations for the high school staff, so they in turn can create and implement policies for dealing with discipline, truancy, and the achievement gap, Selawsky said. 

In the long term, Selawsky said he believes the district needs to focus more of its resources on bolstering its middle school programs. The achievement gap which causes so much trouble at the high school begins long before the students ever get to the high school campus, he said. 

“Sixth, seventh and eighth grades are critical, because that’s where we start losing kids,” Selawsky said. He said one solution could be creating smaller classes for students during those critical years, and enhancing arts, music and other enrichment programs that contribute to making students more engaged in school.

Saturday, Aug. 11

Sixth Annual Reggae Worldbeat Festival  

Noon - 5 p.m.  

People’s Park  

Telegraph & Haste St.  

Featuring: Obeyjah & The Saints with the Village Culture Drummers, Dancehall King; Major P., Wawa Sylvestre and The Oneness Kingdom Band and many more.  

Free 

Religion and Public Life in Pacific and Asian North America 

8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business  

The conference goes through Aug. 11, and will focus on the relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life. 849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Sunday, Aug. 12

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn front and rear derailleur adjustments from one of REI’s bike technicians. Tools provided. Bring a bike. Free.  

527-4140 

Buddhist Architecture In the West 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Mark Henderson on “Building a Buddhist Temple.” Free. 

843-6812 

Steel Drums and Sand Castles 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Kirk Rademaker teaches sand sculpting while Richmond Bloco entertains with steel drum music. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Opus Q Auditions 

7 - 9 p.m. 

The University Lutheran Chapel 

2425 College Ave. 

Opus Q - The East Bay Men’s Chorale is preparing for its first full season. Gay men and their allies are invited to audition.  

664-0260 www.opus-q.com 

Monday, Aug. 13

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women age 20 - 70. No appointment is needed. No remuneration.  

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

Section 8 Resident Council Meeting 

5:30 - 8:30 p.m. 

East Bay Community Law Center 

3122 Shattuck Ave. 

Section 8 recipients and concerned citizens can tell the Resident Council their concerns about the program.  

Free Seminar on Ayurveda 

1 - 2 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

The basic principles of Ayurveda for maintaining health and balance.  

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Tuesday, Aug. 14

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Free Early Music Group 

10 - 11:30 a.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Small group sings madrigals and other voice harmony every Tuesday.  

655-8863 

Free Computer Class for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck (at Berryman) 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women ages 20 - 70. No appointment is needed; no remuneration. 

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

The Candy Cottage 

1:30 p.m. & 2:30 p.m. 

Hall of Health 

2230 Shattuck Ave. (Lower Level) 

“The Candy Cottage” is a short comedy written and performed by the Hall of Health staff, for children ages 3 to 12. The play provides information about eating healthy, the food pyramid, and what vitamins and minerals do for your body. The Hall of Health is a hands-on community health-education museum and science center sponsored by Children’s Hospital of Oakland. Free. For more information call: 549-1564. 

Wednesday, Aug. 15

Space Weather 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Explore the Space Weather exhibit, talk to NASA researchers, look for sun spots, make a sundial, cast sun prints. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

Berkeley Communicator Toastmasters Club 

7:15 a.m. 

Vault Cafe 

3250 Adeline 

Learn to speak with confidence. Ongoing first and third Wednesdays each month. 

527-2337 

Support Group for Family/Friends Caring for Older Adults 

4 - 5:30 p.m. - 3rd Wednesday of each month 

Alta Bates Medical Center  

Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

3rd floor, Room 3369B (elevator - B) 

The group will focus on the needs of the older adult with serious medical problems, psychiatric illnesses, substance abuse, and their caregivers. Free. 802-1725 

Dramatic Presentation based on Life Stories 

1 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

A presentation based on the life stories of senior citizens who were interviewed at the Center by students of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.. 644-6107 or www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Editor, 

When my daughter Ashley and I sat in front of the Berkeley Bowl last March selling Girl Scout cookies, the most frequesntly asked question, aside from “Do you still have Thin Mints?” was, “Do Girl Scouts discriminate against gays?” 

We were proud to answer, “Girl Scouts just want to help, support and nurture girls in ANY way that they need it. Girl Scouts do not discriminate. They are truly there just to help girls.”  

And it’s true. The national Girl Scout organization’s motto is “Where Girls Grow Strong.” They have really helped my daughter in about a hundred different ways. They are a great organization. The Boy Scouts should take note. 

PS: Ashley sold 1,247 boxes of cookies, won a $350 gift certificate and a trip to Sacramento Water World where she saved a child from drowning, helped a concussion victim find paramedic help and returned a lost toddler to his mother. Her troop, 3982, is hoping to go to Sakai next year and sold 9,465 boxes to raise money in case they are chosen to go.  

PPS: You can buy cookies from her next year too! There are going to be two new flavors. 

Jane Stillwater 

Berkeley

Reefer Madness, a 1936 anti-marijuana film that became a cult classic in the 1970s, has been adapted for the stage by the Elements of Theatre Company. 

The low-budget anti-drug film, directed by Louis Gassier and written by Arthur Hoer, vividly portrayed the effects of the drug: uncontrollable laughter, wild parties, madness, violence and death. The film was produced under the guise of a tool to educate parents and communities on teen activities. 

By the 1970s the overwrought acting and dialogue made the film a cult comedy classic. 

The Elements of Theatre Company, a new Berkeley performance group committed to revisiting old theater, film and radio pieces in new ways, premiered its one-act adaptation at the La Pena Cultural Center last week. 

To set the mood for the show, the audience was invited to buy raffle tickets for ‘the wicked water pipe’ used on stage and was advised to smoke their ‘wacky tobaccy’ outside after the show. 

The energetic eight-member ensemble, each playing a number of roles, tried a variety of acting styles from slapstick to operetta to shock and amuse the audience. 

All the familiar characters were there and faithful to the original dialogue. Tisha Sloan, as narrator, opened the show by introducing the audience to the dangers of the drug craze. Her mocking presentation of the dated dialogue and Amy Konwerski’s imaginative costume, a stylized version of 1930s science fiction films, held great promise for the show. 

But the style and manner of presentation changed continuously throughout the 70-minute production distracting from any statement the company was trying to make. 

At one point the cast lined up facing the audience to deliver a conversation. Not looking at each other and deadpan, their delivery accentuated the ridiculousness of the dialogue. This worked well, was used once, then dropped. 

Later, in one of the party scenes, the cast gradually worked its way into song then moved to a parody of opera in another attempt to mock the script. 

But as the action became more melodramatic and operatic the style switched to vaudeville. 

The cast romped and played, mugged, willfully dropped in and out of character, and demonstrated a versatility and willingness to try anything. 

The sound, designed by Badger Kong, backed them up. It added dimension to the action on stage with frantic music, cheering crowds and the echo of gunshots. 

The two young innocents, Bill and Mary, played by Coby Fisher and Tisha Sloan, misconnected in the Romeo and Juliet scene. Using the two levels of the stage to add distance to the exchange, the actors camped the comic view of a film that took itself seriously, and created cartoon characters. 

The challenge of successfully taking on a cult classic fell short of the goals of the company: to change the way people view themselves and their world. 

Overall, the production needed more focus and a firmer hand from director Zachary Preston. 

This was the first time this group of actors worked together and given the short three-week rehearsal time, it looked like the company and the audience had fun.

924 Gilman St. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Aug. 11: Toys That Kill, Scared of Chakra, Soophie Nun Squad, Debris; Aug. 12: 5 p.m. Citizen Fish, J-Church, Eleventeen; Aug. 17: Blood Brothers, True North, The Cost, Red Light Sting, Betray The Species; Aug. 18: Dr. Know, The Sick, Society of Friends, Manchurian Candidates, Shut the F*ck Up; $5. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Anna’s Place Aug. 11 and every Saturday night 10:30 p.m. - midnight, Ducksan Distones. The following play at 8 p.m. – Aug. 8: “The Renegade Sidemen;” Aug. 7: open mic.1801 University Ave. 849-2662.  

AshkenazAug. 11: 9:30 p.m. Afro-Muzika, featuring Nene Tchakou and Shimita El Diego. 9 p.m. dance lesson with Comfort Mensah. $11; Aug. 12: 9 p.m. Benefit for the Berkeley High School Ki-Swahili Club featuring: Dyin 2 Live, Rebels, Little Larry Koont, Nico Love, DJ Boo. $10; Aug. 14: 9 p.m. Tom Rigney & Flambeau. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Patti Whitehurst. $8; Aug. 15: 9 p.m. Jerri Jheto. $10. Aug. 16: 10 p.m. - 2 a.m. Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave. $5; Aug. 17: 9:30 p.m. Near East Far West. $12; Aug. 18: 9:30 p.m. Zydeco Flames. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Cheryl McBride. $11. Aug. 19: 8 p.m. Open Stage w/ Koko De La Isla, Ernesto Hernandaz, Jeff Hawkins. $8; Aug. 21: 9 p.m. Slavonkian Traveling Band. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Joyce Clyde. $10. 1317 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054 www.ashkenaz.com  

Eli’s Mile High Club Doors open at 8 p.m. Aug. 11: Jimmy Mamou; Aug. 18: Craig Horton /CD Release; Aug. 25: Carlos Zialcita; Every Friday, 10 p.m. - 2 a.m., Funky Fridays Conscious Dance Party with KPFA DJs Splif Skankin and Funky Man. $10; 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 655-6661 

Freight and Salvage Coffee House All music at 8 p.m. Aug. 11: Al Stewart. $16.50 - $19.50. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jupiter Aug. 11: J Dogs, funk-soul; Aug. 14: Chris Shot Group, folk-rock and soul combo; Aug. 15: Lithium House, electro/drum & bass styles with live jazz; Aug. 16: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 17: The Mind Club, Old school funk grooves with sonic swirls of acid jazz; Aug. 18: Blue & Tan, Bassist Vicki Grossi brings in the crew for elctro-acid-jazz funk stylings; All music starts at 8:00 p.m. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK. 843-7625  

La Note/Jazzschool Aug. 12: 4:30 p.m. The Freedom Project, 5:30 Eli Sundelson Trio; Aug. 19: 4:30 p.m. Hazel Carter, 5:30 p.m. Bryan Girard & Friends, 6:30 p.m. T3 (Kirk Tamura Trio); Free. 2377 Shattuck Ave. 845-5373  

La Peña Cultural Center Aug. 11: 9:30 p.m. Fito Reynoso’s Ritmo y Armonia. $10, $13 for dance class starting at 8:15; Aug. 12: 5, 7:30 p.m. “Say Yo Business” Linda Tillery & The Cultural Heritage Choir. $18 in advance, $20 at the door; Aug. 17: 8:30 p.m. Music and dance performance by Jaranón y Bochinche, $12; Aug. 18: 8:30 p.m. Mission (roots hip hop), $8; Aug. 19: 3:30 p.m. Domingo de Rumba; Aug. 24: 8:30 p.m. Professor Terry’s Circus Band Extraordinary, $16; Aug. 25: 9:30 p.m., Edgardo Cambon’s Candela, $10, 8:15 p.m. Salsa dance class w/ Diego Vásquez, $13; In the Cafe, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568 

Shattuck Down Low Lounge Every Tuesday: 9:30 p.m., Posh Tuesdays with DJ’s Yamu, Delon, Add1, and Tequila Willie. Shattuck at Allston. www.thebeatdownsound.com  

Yoshi’s Through Aug. 12: Steve Turre Quintet, trombone and conch shell master in small group setting. Wednesday and Thursday, $18; Friday and Saturday, $22; Sunday matinee, $5 kids, $10 adults with one child, $18 general; Sunday, $22. Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 238-9200 www.yoshis.com 

Third Annual Berkeley World Music Festival Aug. 26: noon - 6 p.m. Block party and carnival, Grupo Ilu Fun Fun, Petit La Croix, Samba Ngo, O-Maya, Fito Reinoso y Su Ritmo y Armonia. Durant Ave. between Telegraph and Bowditch. 

ACME Observatory Aug. 19: 8 p.m. Solo performance by Jason Kahn, Brown Bunny Ensemble. $9.99 suggested donation. TUVA Space, 3192 Adeline @ MLK Jr. Way. 649-8744 http://sfSound.org/acme.html 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts Aug. 11, 12, 5 p.m. Campers from Stage Door Conservatory’s “On Broadway” program for grades 5-9 will perform Fiddler on the Roof, Jr. $12 adults, $8 kids. 2640 College Ave. 845-8542 ext. 302 

“The Great Sebastians” Through Aug. 11: Friday and Saturday evenings 8 p.m. Presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. A tale about a mind-reading act touring behind the Iron Curtain. A communist general believes the act and “invites” the Sebastians to his villa where the humor and excitement follows. $10. Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck (at Berryman). For reservations call 528-5620 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through Aug. 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. Special dawn performance on Aug. 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

“Loot” Through Aug. 25, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Special Performance Aug. 20, 8 p.m. General Admission: $15, Students / Seniors: $10 La Val’s 1834 Euclid Avenue 655-0813 

“Reefer Madness” Aug. 22, 23: 9 p.m. A new one-act theatre piece adapted from a 1936 government-funded film opens a critical eye to the control of our society. Performed by The Elemental Theatre Group La Pena Cultural Center 3105 Shattuck Avenue. Wednesdays are “pay what you can,” Thursdays $5 - $10. Contact Zachary Rouse or Tisha Sloan for more info at 655-4150 

“Romeo & Juliet” Aug. 11 - Sep 2, Tuesdays – Thursdays. Bruns Memorial Amphitheater. Shakespeare’s classic about a young couple that meets, falls in love and dies in just five days. Adults: $22 - $41 youth (under 16): $12 - $41. 

“Barnum” Through Aug. 12. The story of legendary circusmaster P.T. Barnum, with plenty of musical theater and circus acrobatics. Splash Circus’ aspiring young circus artists will perform an hour before each show. $15 to $27. Friday through Sunday, 8 p.m. Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland. 531-9597 www.woodminster.com 

“Roommates” Aug. 12: Max Apple’s true story of his immigrant grandfather who moved in with him when he was in college (in the 60’s). Peer led discussion following movie. $2 Suggested donation. Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 1414 Walnut Street 848-0237

A Berkeley hockey player has been selected as one of 10 kids across the country to receive scholarships to attend summer camps in Canada next week. 

Tom Sedaka, a goaltender for the Berkeley Bulldogs, was due to leave Saturday morning for Penticton, British Columbia for the Okanagan one-week goalie camp. 

Sedaka, 16, has played for the Bulldogs, based at Berkeley Iceland, since 1997. He is the only goaltender among the group selected by the National Hockey League’s Diversity Task Force for the camps, and is the only one attending Okanagan. Eight others are headed to Toronto for the Huron camp, while one is going to Mt. Vernon, N.Y., for the Turcotte camp. 

“It’s a very special opportunity for these kids,” said Melissa Fitzgerald, who runs the hockey program at Berkeley Iceland. “This is enormous, because it actually offers the kids a chance to get some really good training, and also to experience going to Canada and being in a boarding situation.” 

Sedaka will be training with some of the best goalies of his age in the country at Okanagan, which his coaches hope will make him a better player. 

“Tom needs training to go from current plateau to wherever he wants to get,” said Cyril Allen, one of the head coaches at Iceland. “Not having done it before, it will be a lot of hard work. But it’s a chance to see where he stands in the game.” 

The Diversity Task Force is charged with exposing hockey to kids who might not otherwise have a chance to experience the game. They run several programs for younger kids, but this is the first year they offered scholarships to high-school aged players. 

Fitzgerald was the one who nominated Sedaka for a scholarship, along with two other Bulldog players. She was pleasantly surprised when two of her players were chosen. William Clark of Alameda will train at the Huron camp. 

“The camp that Tom is going to is an outstanding goalie school. When I saw it on the list, I though it would be a great opportunity for us to have someone go to that particular camp,” she said. “We’re hoping Tom will come back looking even better than he does now.” 

Sedaka didn’t even know Fitzgerald had nominated him, and the scholarship came as a complete surprise to him. 

“The people from the NHL just called me out of the blue,” he said. “But it’s pretty cool that I get to go to this camp.” 

Sedaka will be playing with goalies who have been playing hockey their entire lives, but he only hit the ice four years ago when his family moved to Berkeley. At their previous home in southern California, he played roller hockey. 

“Tom was born to be a goalie,” said his mother, Sue. “He got a lesson at the local skate land and won an award for slap-shooting, but he wanted to be a goalie anyway. When we got up here and there was an ice rink right around the corner, that was it for him.” 

Sedaka, who will be a junior at Berkeley High this fall, also works at Iceland, helping younger players find equipment and on the ice. That committment to the program is part of the reason Fitzgerald decided to nominate him for a scholarship. 

“I looked at three things: kids who I thought had good talent at the sport and could benefit from training in different environment; kids who showed a committment to the sport and the program; and financially it would enable them to do something they might not normally have the opportunity to do,” she said. 

Allen said the camp would be a good chance for the player to decide if hockey is something he wants to pursue in college, given the hard work neccesary to play at a higher level against players who have played their entire lives. 

“When you want to develop quickly and raise your level of play, these types of intensive, short camps are definilty a stepping stone to more competitive play. I’d almost say they’re a prerequisite,” Allen said. 

“He has it in him, but whether he wants to do it is up to Tom. I don’t know if that’s his goal, but we want to give him the opportunity. I’m glad he was able to have this opportunity, and I’m glad he decided it was something he wanted to do.” 

Sedaka said he would like to play in college, but he’s not sure if that’s a realistic goal for someone who has only been playing the game for a few years. 

“It’d be nice to play in college,” he said. “I’d like to dedicate myself to hockey a little bit more.”

The Zoning Adjustments Board heard what one commissioner called the “initial skirmish” on the Alta Bates proposal to expand its Emergency Department by 3,500 square feet Thursday night. 

The Emergency Department expansion is one of five components included in the hospital’s proposed Master Plan. Hospital officials said the only plan being considered is the Emergency Department expansion and that the hospital was required to submit the entire Master Plan as the result of a 1997 court settlement. 

The settlement also required the hospital to complete a Draft Environmental Impact Report on all of the projects in the Master Plan, which was released in late July. The DEIR was prepared by EIP Associates of San Francisco.  

The ZAB heard public comments on the merits of a larger and better designed Emergency Department and neighbors presented the board with a list of questions about the Master Plan they thought weren’t addressed in the DEIR.  

The ZAB voted to continue the public hearing on the DEIR to a meeting scheduled for Sept. 13, when the ZAB is expected to either approve the DEIR or send it back to EIP Associates with a request for additional analysis. 

Members of the Inter-neighborhood Hospital Review Committee, which includes representatives from three neighborhood groups, say they want to support the expansion of the Emergency Department, but are worried the larger Master Plan does not effectively mitigate all of the environmental impacts.  

IHRC member Debbie LeVeen said her neighborhood group, the Bateman Neighborhood Association, wants to examine the 400-page DEIR thoroughly to make sure all the impacts are clearly identified, analyzed and mitigated before the ZAB approves the document, which will govern the Master Plan. 

“The EIR will set perimeters for future hospital development,” she said, “We want to make sure the limits on the plan’s impact are appropriately set on issues like parking, traffic congestion and noise.” 

Hospital officials say the only project in the Master Plan they are concerned with is the Emergency Department expansion. They said the current Emergency Department is too small, inefficient and poorly designed. They plan to increase the size of the department from 8,800 square feet to 12,300 square feet and add another entrance so paramedics, bringing in the critically sick and injured, would have a different entrance from patients arriving on foot.  

“The way it is now, the entrance creates an inefficient and dangerous bottleneck,” said Deborah Pitts, hospital public affairs manager. “Right now there’s one door for people coming in on a gurney and for folks coming in on foot and it doesn’t make sense.” 

Hospital spokesperson Carolyn Kemp said the Emergency Department was built in 1968 and designed to accommodate 12,000 people a year. Kemp said the department now handles 45,000 patients a year. 

She added the current design requires patients to give personal information to a triage nurse in close proximity to a guard station and waiting area. 

“The privacy and dignity that patients deserve is not afforded with the current design,” Kemp said.  

Other features the hospital would like to include in the new design are an appropriate grieving area, larger patient examination rooms and a driveway for the exclusive use of ambulances. 

In 1997 the city sued Alta Bates to get the hospital to halt what Councilmember Kriss Worthington called an “illegal” renovation. Responding to constituent complaints of noise and debris, Worthington took a tour of the hospital and discovered major remodeling work that the hospital had neglected to obtain city permits for. 

Berkeley sued Alta Bates and the hospital was ordered to pay the city $85,000, Worthington said. It was also directed to submit environmental impact reports for any future projects to expand or remodel the hospital. 

Zoning Adjustments Board Member David Blake said on Friday that the hospital is proposing a significant expansion and the concern about increased traffic and parking problems might be an appropriate one.  

“Thursday was only the initial skirmish,” Blake said. “The hospital will have to demonstrate to the neighborhood that a larger Emergency Department won’t mean increased traffic,” 

LaVeen said that even though IHRC wants to support the expansion they are concerned about a recently completed report, by Fehr and Peers. Transportation Consultants, that monitored the Emergency Room from June 1997 to April 2001. The report showed a 76 percent increase in emergency room activity, according to LaVeen. 

Blake asked hospital officials to provide the ZAB with a report analyzing the reasons for the increased use of the Emergency Department. 

Kemp said the expanded department will not increase the number of patients but would rather allow the hospital to better serve the current patient load. 

Alta Bates Charge Nurse Dolores Darling-Riordan told the ZAB that the expansion is not meant to entice more emergency patients to the hospital.  

“I honestly don’t believe that this is a case of ‘build it and they will come,’” she said. “The project will just allow the patients privacy, convenience and comfort. That’s what it’s all about.”  

The EIR can be reviewed at the libraries or purchased from the Planning Department for $30.

Editor, 

Unless the Senate acts to stop the oil companies, the last five percent of Alaska’s north slope “not” open for oil drilling will be destroyed. How did the people of this country let such an environmental disaster come so close to happening? If we are complacent, it could. 

Thomas Krassowski 

Los Gatos

Cal junior quarterback Kyle Boller has been listed a one of 30 candidates on the preseason watch list for the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award, which is given annually to the nation’s top quarterback.  

Boller enters his third year as a starter for the Bears this fall. After two years, he ranks 12th on Cal’s career list with 3,424 passing yards. Last season, he completed 163-of-349 passes for 2,121 yards and 15 touchdowns, ranking sixth in the Pac-10 with an average of 192.8 yards per game.  

The O’Brien committee, which is comprised of sportswriters and commentators from around the country, will select eight semifinalists the first week of November. The winner will be announced Dec. 6 during ESPN’s Home Depot College Football Awards Show.  

The O’Brien Award is named in honor of the late Davey O’Brien, an All-American and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback at TCU who led the Horned Frogs to the 1938 national championship.

Touchscreens may replace punch cards  

As the Alameda County Board of Supervisors gets ready to vote on the purchase and financing of a countywide electronic voting system, the City Clerk’s Office will host a demonstration Sunday of the modern touchscreen machines that may soon replace punch card ballots.  

At the event, representatives of the Alameda County Registrar of Voters and of the equipment manufacturer, Global Election Systems, will answer questions from the public and receive feedback from the community. 

The demonstration, which will take place in the lobby of City Hall, 2180 Milvia St., 2-5 p.m. Sunday, was organized on the request of members of the disabled community. Although it would serve all voters, city officials and manufacturers say that the new electronic voting system would particularly benefit people with disabilities who often have to rely on an assistant or use absentee ballots to vote. 

About 3,000 people throughout the county had the opportunity to use similar electronic equipment during the early voting period last November, but reportedly few of them were disabled individuals.  

“We had some people with disabilities using this equipment last year,” said City Clerk Sherry Kelly. “But there are people who are not quite sure that they had the opportunity to test it, so the vendor is working with the county and offered to do a demonstration.” 

Scott Lupkin, a quadriplegic who supports the implementation of touchscreen voting equipment, explained why disabled people want to give their input before the Board of Supervisors votes on the issue next Tuesday. 

“There are ways computers are configured that are harder to use by disabled people,” said Lupkin. “The more disabled people say what the issues are, then the better (the county and the manufacturer) are going to understand what the needs are for properly configuring them.” 

The touchscreen voting equipment to be shown on Sunday is an improved version of the machines used in November. Installation is easier, the screens are more adaptable to people in wheelchairs, and the audio is improved. 

It presents different advantages over the punch card method, according to Deborah Seiler, director of customer relations at Global Election Systems. Such equipment, she said, allows the user to chose a language, prevents users from over-voting, and alerts them with a warning if they have not voted on all the possible selections. The machine, she added, has an adjustable screen angle so that people in wheelchairs can see it. It is highly responsive to the touch and makes it therefore easier for people with limited dexterity to use it. Finally, it has an audio feature designed specifically for visually impaired individuals, who can use a headset and a keypad to select their option. 

Like Lupkin and others in Berkeley, Karen Rose, a blind person and member of the Commission on Disability, is very supportive of a large-scale implementation of electronic voting. Thanks to that kind of system, she said, she could vote independently for the first time in her life last November. 

“Electronic voting gives blind people for the first time the same constitutional right as other people,” she said. “They would print ballots in Spanish and Chinese but not in English Braille so we were always asked to take someone with us to vote for us.” 

If the Board of Supervisors authorizes the county’s Registrar of Voters and the General Services Agency to negotiate a contract and financing plan with Global Election Systems, Tuesday, the county could have replaced its equipment by the primary gubernatorial elections in March 2002.  

So far there is no strong opposition. The City Council recently passed a recommendation asking the Board of Supervisors to approve the $12.1 million funding needed and committed to contribute with $20, 000 to $30, 000 per election. 

Rodney Brooks, Deputy Chief of staff to supervisor Keith Carson said he expected the funding to be approved.

Editor: 

I’m in favor of higher densities in Downtown Berkeley, more housing and density on transit corridors, and greater height limits than have generally been the case in high-density areas. But even I was a bit taken aback by the enormous bulk of the Gaia Building on Allston Way as it took shape behind a concealing screen for many months throughout the spring and early summer. It seemed completely out of scale and wrong for the setting. 

Now that the wraps are off and the Gaia Building is nearly finished, I understand what its designers and builders had in mind. In my view, it has immediately become one of the best buildings anywhere in Berkeley. It has a combination of gracefulness, color, and decorative novelty that no other downtown building can match. The tiles add interesting hues and patterns to what would otherwise be a bland exterior. The roof gardens are a delightful and visually surprising touch. The windows are elegant. The entire structure has a classical aura that blends well with some of the better buildings nearby such as the Shattuck Hotel. Congratulations to everyone who had a hand in this beautiful structure. 

The real problem now is some of the other buildings downtown. Let’s face it. The Gaia Building is a true asset for Berkeley. It helps to define downtown; it provides a distinctive sense of place. In contrast, some of the character-deficient low-rise structures nearby should be bulldozed – or shipped out to Walnut Creek where they belong. 

Hank Resnik 

Berkeley 

Ocean View’s first industries were the Pioneer Starch and Grist Mill, founded in 1855 by John Everding and A. Rammelsburg, and a lumber yard, founded in 1856 by Zimri Brewer Heywood and Captain James Jacobs. Jacobs and Heywood constructed the wharf in 1866. The wharf was located between Bristol (now Hearst) and Delaware streets. Freight was stored and shipped from the wharf and it also became a landing for a passenger steamer making four trips daily between Ocean View and San Francisco.  

After the University of California opened in 1873, a ferry service between Berkeley and San Francisco was established on a different pier owned by the Standard Soap Company. This pier was located at the foot of University Avenue. A horse-drawn streetcar service on University Avenue connected downtown with the new Berkeley ferry. This ferry had a short existence, however, and ceased operation in 1878. The Berkeley ferry service could not compete with the transcontinental railroad (which built a station at Third and Delaware streets in 1878 ) and with the branch railroad line on Shattuck Avenue established in 1876.These were faster routes to San Francisco by way of the Oakland ferry.  

Susan Cerny writes this series in conjunction with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association 

Editor: 

Parm’ me folks, but the list of “Automatic Terminations” provided in the current City of Berkeley Commissioner’s Manual (pp. 13-14) doesn’t tally with Karen Craig’s sins as reported in the Planet’s Aug. 10 article, “Appointee removed from disabled commission.”  

Members of the new library building’s accessibility committee, on which she has been working, seemingly were not contacted for your “coverage.” Craig was recruited to the Commission on Disability. She has served successfully and congenially as vice chair, chair, and currently as outreach subcommittee chair.  

Many of the Commission’s and her achievements in behalf of disabled persons also enhance others’ lives, e.g. lobbying to get the STUFF off sidewalks and getting City policies enforced. She has negotiated with banks for double panel doors (now required on City buildings). She’s been working with restaurants on Braille menus. AC Transit has felt her influence, etc. What’s wrong with Karen? She’s a strong senior woman!  

Helen Rippier Wheeler 

Berkeley 

SAN FRANCISCO – The federal government has approved $4.25 million in grants to be used in the renovation of California parks and recreational facilities, including some in Berkeley. 

The National Parks Service will provide funding to 16 California cities, seven of them in the San Francisco Bay area. 

About $2 million in grants will go toward the beautification of city parks in Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, Daly City, Richmond, Seaside and Vallejo. 

Before receiving the grants, the cities must submit final applications to the National Parks Service within 120 days. 

The grants are part of the Urban Park and Recreation Recovery Grants program established in 1978. The purpose of the program is to provide grants and technical assistance to economically distressed urban communities. 

To be eligible for a grant a community has to show a strong commitment to rehabilitating local parks and recreational facilities.

SAN FRANCISCO – The president of the air traffic controllers’ union at San Francisco International Airport admitted in an affidavit that he was the so-called “Robust Robber,” suspected of robbing up to nine banks, his attorney said Friday. 

“He’s blown it,” said his attorney Randy Pollock. 

Rick Lee Davis, 43, of San Francisco, who earned about $120,000, allegedly told detectives he robbed banks to fly his children to and from Hawaii to visit him and to pay child support. 

Davis was charged Tuesday with one bank robbery stemming from his arrest in Concord on Aug. 3. A federal judge set bail at $150,000 Friday. 

Pollock said Davis was depressed and remorseful for the circumstances that have landed him behind bars. 

“He’s lost his job. He’s lost his career,” she said. “He’ll never work for the federal government again. 

“This is not a happy time in his life,” she added. 

Pollock anticipated Davis would be released to a halfway house in San Francisco late Friday where Magistrate Judge Wayne Brazil ordered him to remain as his case goes through federal court. 

Davis appeared before Brazil in a red jail jumpsuit, his graying hair cut close and his demeanor reserved. The nickname “Robust Robber” came from the thief’s stocky build. Davis is heavyset and 5-foot-7. 

Davis was arrested after an off-duty Concord police officer noticed him handing a note to a teller at a Bank of America branch, raising suspicions because other bank robberies had been pulled off using the same method in recent months. 

After receiving the note “the teller’s eyes go wide and the teller just started shoveling money across the counter,” said Concord police detective Mike Finney. Davis was arrested as he exited the bank with $3,199. 

Although Davis’ attorney said the arrest would end her client’s career, Federal Aviation Administration western region spokesman Jerry Snyder confirmed that Davis still has his job. 

Brazil ordered two relatives and an acquaintance of Davis provide three signatures as part of the $150,000 bond requirement to guarantee Davis’ appearance in court for Aug. 21. 

“All these people are sticking their necks out for you, so it’s really important that you abide by the rules,” Brazil told Davis. 

Davis has been an employee of the FAA since 1986. He worked in Hawaii before moving to San Francisco, where he represents the tower’s 50 FAA employees with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. 

Last week, Davis spoke to about 300 people at the College of San Mateo during a hearing on SFO’s hotly debated plans to expand its runways by filling in a portion of San Francisco Bay. 

The FBI alleges Davis has robbed nine banks since Oct. 17, 2000, with the first eight in Fremont, Newark and Union City. About $60,000 was stolen from the banks in total. 

Davis could face 180 years in prison if convicted.

SAN JOSE – A 24-year-old man pleaded innocent Friday to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect charges brought against him after he left his infant son for three hours in a hot car, where the baby died. 

Brian Gilbert, 24, could face up to six years in prison if convicted in the death of his 5-month-old son, Kyle. He told police he simply forgot the boy was in the car while he was visiting relatives in San Jose on July 24. 

The temperature was in the 80s, but it was much hotter in the car with the windows up. 

Police said the relatives apparently believed Kyle was with his mother at the time, and never asked about the boy. Gilbert spent the afternoon watching cartoon videos with his brother-in-law before coming out of the house and finding Kyle dead in the car, investigators said. 

Gilbert remains free on $50,000 bail.

LOS ANGELES – In an attempt to unify its different ethnic communities, Asian-American groups unveiled a statewide redistricting plan that they hope will give them more political clout. 

The plan released Thursday is an unprecedented move for California’s many Asian ethnicities, which are increasingly joining forces to make their voices heard. They will have to compete for attention with Latino organizations that drew their own map, but both groups say their proposals are similar. 

At press conferences in Los Angeles and Oakland, members of the coalition of Asian Pacific Americans for Fair Redistricting said Asian-Americans have lost political power because Assembly boundaries drawn a decade ago split their communities into two and sometimes three pieces. 

“Because we are divided, finding legislative support and building community unity is difficult,” said Diane Poon, executive director of the Chinatown Service Center, representing a Los Angeles community that is split into two Assembly districts. 

The coalition’s proposal would bring together divided ethnic communities including Chinatown, Koreatown and Pilipinotown in Los Angeles and Orange County’s Little Saigon and Koreatown. In other areas, including Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco, the proposal would organize several Assembly districts around ethnic areas with common needs and concerns. 

Kwoh said the coalition prepared its map with months of cooperation with Latino, black, gay and lesbian and other groups, as well as legislative officials. 

The plan increases the number of districts with at least 30 percent Asian, Latino or black populations. It also would increase the number of “safe” Assembly districts — ones in which one major party has at least a 10 percent advantage over the other — from 42 to 46 for Democrats and from 13 to 14 for Republicans. 

The Asian population in California rose nearly 54 percent over the last decade, to nearly 4.4 million. But although they made up about 13 percent of the state in the 2000 Census, Asians hold only 3 percent — four of 120 — of the state’s legislative seats. 

Communities united by common interests “should not be divided, should not be fractured, and their votes should not be diluted,” said Stewart Kwoh, president and executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. 

“If we don’t say anything, they will definitely divide our communities again, because they don’t even know where are communities of interest are most of the time,” Kwoh said. 

Two Hispanic advocacy groups — the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the William C. Velasquez Institute — released their own map last month, but Asian and Latino activists said the two plans have much in common. 

“Logistically it’s very difficult to do, because you have to work with so many different groups,” said Zachary Gonzalez, redistricting coordinator for the Velasquez Institute. “But as far as minority communities concerned, we’re all working toward the goal of fair and equal representation.” 

Thursday’s proposal reflects the growing power Asian-American groups are wielding in California politics, said Karin Mac Donald, director of the Statewide Database at the University of California, Berkeley, which collects and analyzes data used in redistricting. 

As rising numbers of Asian-Americans put more money and effort into political efforts, they could see “a little bit of the squeaky wheel syndrome,” Mac Donald said. “They didn’t have the funding or organization to do that before.” 

In working with the coalition, officials in Sacramento “have said they’re amazed by the level of participation in the Asian-American community,” Kwoh said. “Now the crucial question is whether they’ll listen.” 

The coalition will submit its proposal to the Legislature by Wednesday.

Justices block support removal on man in semiconscious state 

SAN FRANCISCO – The right to die does not extend to people who are unable to communicate or care for themselves, but are conscious and in a twilight state, the state Supreme Court has ruled. 

In a closely watched case, the court ruled Thursday 6-0 that a family is not free to end life support for an incapacitated loved one simply because he had said he would not want to live like a vegetable. 

Robert Wendland, severely injured in a 1993 auto accident, died last month from pneumonia at age 49, but the justices ruled on the case anyway to clarify unsettled law. 

In 1995, Rose Wendland directed doctors to pull her husband’s feeding tubes, saying she thought she was carrying out his wishes because he had twice commented about not wanting to live as a vegetable. 

But the woman’s request was blocked and has been embroiled in the courts ever since, reigniting debate over when loved ones can make such directives when no will or other written document verifies those wishes. 

“These two conversations (between the Wendlands) do not establish by clear and convincing evidence that the conservatee would desire to have his life-sustaining treatment terminated under the circumstances in which he now finds himself,” Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote. 

The court cautioned, however, that it was not setting a broad standard when conservators could pull the plug on incapacitated loved ones. Instead, its decision affects only a narrow class of persons: those technically conscious who have not left formal written directions for health care. 

Doctors said Robert Wendland had some ability to think and to sometimes move in his hospital bed, but had no ability to communicate whether he wanted to live or die. 

Robert Wendland’s mother, Florence Wendland, had fought her daughter-in-law’s effort to remove life support. She claimed her son was not a vegetable and therefore the feeding tubes should not be pulled because those were not his wishes. 

“I didn’t want to see him starve to death. What would you do if it was your son, if somebody wanted to do that to your loved one?” Florence Wendland said. 

Rose Wendland said Thursday she only wanted to follow her husband’s desires. 

“His pain would be even greater with the decision that was made,” she said. “It was Robert’s wishes to never be in the state that he was in.” 

A group of 43 medical ethicists had urged the court to abide by the wife’s wishes. 

“The court has told us that, if you want to have a say in your end-of-life decision-making, you better put it in an advance, written directive,” said Jon B. Eisenberg, an attorney for the ethicists. “The problem here is: I don’t know how you do that in a manner that covers all of the possibilities.”

TOM: The column we wrote a few weeks back about the need to test older drivers for competence generated hundreds of letters. Surprisingly to us, most of them supported our position – although some did not. 

RAY: And a few of those were unprintable! 

TOM: But we'll share some of the letters we CAN print over the next couple of weeks. Here are the first few: 

Dear Tom and Ray: 

My daughter was killed by an older driver. Thank you for taking a stand on this issue. Tyler, who was 5 at the time, was killed by an older driver going the wrong way on the freeway. The older driver, who was 79 and driving a large car, escaped with minor injuries. That experience motivated me to ask the 1998 Minnesota Legislature to enact stricter guidelines for the licensing of older drivers through more frequent testing. The bill passed the House transportation committee; however, the chair of that committee refused to pass it on to the floor for a vote. She cited the added expense of testing older drivers as the reason for “killing” the bill. The real reason was just as you stated: Older drivers are a “third-rail issue,” and any politician who touches it will be toast. I suggest that you are wasting your breath by appealing to politicians to address this issue and, instead, should be appealing to families. To maintain the right to drive in Minnesota, all that is needed is the ability to pass an eye exam. 

Until more stringent testing is required, we as “family” must responsibly police ourselves. So my daughter’s death can have meaning, and to protect yourself and those you love, take an honest look at those close to you and help them to determine whether they are competent to safely operate a motor vehicle. Remember, the loss of one’s right to drive is nothing compared with the senseless loss of human life. In addition, I have a Web site devoted to this issue. I believe it is compelling and might be of use to you when responding to all of the angry mail you are about to receive. It is sites.netscape.net/markhuffington/homepage. Again, thank you for addressing the older-driver issue. — Mark Huffington 

RAY: You’re probably right about starting with people rather than with politicians, Mark. What was the famous line attributed to a politician? “There go my people. I am their leader. I must follow them!” 

••• 

Dear Tom and Ray: 

Driving is a privilege, not a right, and society should expect a minimum level of performance – and regularly test for it. My mother-in-law got her license in a drug store in the 1930s and has NEVER had a test. People say they have the right to drive. If we want to talk rights, I should have the right to go on the highway (or the sidewalk) without constant fear of being smashed by some 75-year-old widow who needs a booster seat to see the hood emblem on her Packard. Part of that problem comes from children who don't have the capability of dealing with the hard issues of aging. And if they can't, then our driver-licensing system had better, because in my mind, if that parent causes a preventable accident, injury or fatality, then everyone in the loop is an accomplice. Nah, you didn't touch a sensitive chord in this household – you stomped on it. Send me a petition. I’ll sign! Best regards. — Dennis 

TOM: Talking to a parent about giving up the keys is incredibly difficult. That's why we advocate driving tests for older people, which will catch problems with the parents of those who can't or won't have that tough conversation. We’ll have more letters about these issues in the coming weeks.

Small steps are the key to having a water garden in your yard 

POUND RIDGE – It’s a jump from Claude Monet’s lily pond in Giverny to a tub in your back yard, but in water gardening you’re wise to start meekly. 

Go at it in small steps if you’re entranced by water lilies and lotuses and dream of a miniature Giverny of your own. In time you may graduate to larger and beautifully designed creations. There’s much help out there from a thriving industry that has sprung up to meet the often quite complex needs of the water gardener. 

With no more hardware than a plastic tub, a pot, a faucet and a hose, I grew nice water lilies. That’s not to say I made no false steps. 

The first mistake was to order a lily too large for my container. As it grew, it looked grotesque, but to make matters worse, I had neglected to think of protection. I live in deer country and my lily had scarcely bloomed than I got up one morning to find the tub overturned and the plant mangled. 

Feeling foolish, I moved the tub inside the electrified wire fence of my vegetable garden. Then I bought hardy dwarf lilies from a nursery that specializes in water gardens. In due time, safe from predators, these bloomed in nice proportion to the size of the container and, however humbly, I glowed. 

But in the process, I also learned that you don’t just drop a water lily plant inside a tub of water and expect it to bloom. Actually, you need to plant the lily in a plastic pot of soil and position the pot in the tub. You keep the soil firm against the action of the water by spreading a layer of pebbles on top of the soil. At the start, and from time to time afterwards, you energize the maturing process by inserting special fertilizer tablets into the soil. 

Several lilies will bloom over a season and, if properly winterized, the plant will produce again the next year. 

A tub is not limited to lilies. Dwarf lotuses and other aquatic plants will grow there and it can also sport a goldfish or two. But beware of cats. They don’t mind getting wet to snatch a fish. 

Tiny electric pumps are available to create the image and sound of running water and help keep the surface clear of green scum that may form. One attraction of tubs is that they can be moved to various sites around your property. Some people like them on a corner of a deck or patio. Water lilies have been developed that will bloom in some shade, and not, as in the past, needing at least six hours of sunlight. 

Look under gardening in the Yellow Pages or go to the Web for providers of plants and materials. I visited a large nursery and saw wooden barrels, terra cotta and plastic tubs of various sizes and colors on display and also larger, pre-formed pools that would serve as the next step up in water gardening. A lovely stone-bordered water garden was also there to show what you might some day achieve if you did everything right. The nursery sold pumps, filters for cleaning the water, automatic refill valves, pool de-icers, lighting and many other gadgets and enhancements. 

Beyond the tub stage, to create a small, ornamental pond, you first have to dig a hole and take out all the rocks, roots and other abrasives. You can shape the hole to accommodate a pre-formed pool or design it to your own taste. In the latter case, you would need to install a flexible liner in the hole. A so-called fish grade EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) is recommended. Liners last 20 years. 

Fill the shell slowly with water, add finishing touches of terra cotta bricks, field stones or cobblestones along the rim and you’re ready to place lilies, lotuses, iris and grasses inside the pool.

SAN FRANCISCO – Stock in companies doing all types of stem cell research fell Friday as investors puzzled over the boundaries drawn by President Bush. 

In the short term, there’s a fear that Bush’s decision to limit federal funding to research involving existing stem cell lines – preventing the destruction of more human embryos in the name of science – may inhibit U.S. researchers. 

But an infusion of federal tax dollars also could encourage more scientists to join the field, and eventually, new scientific breakthroughs may force the government to reconsider its opposition to destroying more human embryos — and even cloning, executives of stem cell companies said. 

The company losing the most from Bush’s decision is Advanced Cell Technology, which wants to develop stem cells by cloning human embryos using the same technique that created Dolly the sheep. The president explicitly rejected this approach, which the House has voted to criminalize. That bill awaits Senate action. 

“I strongly oppose human cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts or creating life for our convenience,” Bush said. 

Michael West, CEO of Advanced Cell, a privately held company based in Worcester, Mass., sought to put a positive spin on Bush’s broadside against his work, which remains legal for now. 

He said federal funding involving existing stem cell lines should spur more research, and eventually lead scientists to embrace so-called therapeutic cloning for purely medical and not reproductive uses. 

“I’m thrilled, actually ... millions of lives are going to be saved,” West said Thursday night. “This is the birthday of regenerative medicine.” 

Embryonic cell lines, each deriving from a single embryo, have the ability to divide into an infinite number of biological blank slates. From there, after genetic manipulation they could evolve into differentiated cells and repair ailing hearts, livers, brains and other tissue. 

The one company that stands to benefit most from Bush’s decision is Menlo Park-based Geron Corp., which claims exclusive commercial rights to all the human embryonic stem cells for which the administration has authorized federal funding. 

Geron also claims it owns the sole license for the process used to obtain the stem cells, which are drawn from four-day-old embryos donated by fertility clinics. 

“We expect our stem cell lines to be the gold standard,” Geron CEO Thomas Okarma said Friday in a conference call. 

Despite its apparently strong legal position, Geron’s stock fell 99 cents to close at $13.95 in heavy trading Friday, giving up some of its sharp gains Thursday, when it rose $2.04 to $14.94. Companies working with adult stem cells – which do not derive from embryos and are considered to hold less medical promise – also were down sharply: StemCells Inc. plunged 25 percent, and Aastrom Biosciences Inc. fell 19 percent. 

The market reaction notwithstanding, Geron’s lawyers have put the company in an enviable position to capitalize on research involving existing stem cell lines. 

Geron provided most of the funding that enabled University of Wisconsin researcher James Thomson to first isolate human embryonic stem cells. In return, the company received exclusive commercial rights to the university’s stem cell patent. 

Okarma said Geron has been “very open” with the scientific community and can only benefit by sharing its research with others. But some other scientists say Geron’s demands are so onerous that they’ve been forced to look for stem cell sources overseas. 

Researchers wanting stem cells for purely academic purposes can buy them from the university for $5,000 an order. But anyone wanting to profit from this science must pay for a license, or material transfer agreement, from Geron. And Geron demands commercial rights from its licensees. 

Isivitch said U.S. researchers have obtained stem cells from his clinic. 

U.S. researchers also may look for supplies from stem cell lines maintained in Sweden, India, Singapore and Australia, where BresaGen Ltd., in Adelaide, has developed four stem cell lines. BresaGen also opened a U.S. laboratory in Athens, Ga. seven months ago. 

BresaGen Chief Scientific Officer Allan Robins said his company has been waiting to examine the impact of Bush’s decision before filling any of the dozens of requests from U.S. researchers for its stem cells. 

“Obviously, Geron is another consideration,” Robins said. “Geron does have some strong rights and we are going to have to deal with that.” 

Still, BresaGen shares trading on the Australian stock exchange closed up 13.3 percent on Friday. 

Geron hasn’t tried to enforce its stem cell rights yet, but chief financial officer David Greenwood said they’re prepared to if necessary. “U.S. patent laws govern here and U.S. (researchers) will be subject to that,” he warned Friday. 

The Bush administration also is exploring the impact of Geron’s patent position. 

“We still have some very important proprietary information to work through,” Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said Friday. 

West, who founded Geron in 1991 and left in 1998 to buy Advanced Cell, said he once thought Geron “had locked up the embryonic stem cell market.” Now, he thinks there “are ways to get around Geron’s patent.”

LOS ANGELES – A judge rejected a record $3 billion damage award against tobacco giant Philip Morris as excessive, offering a dying smoker $100 million instead. 

Thursday’s ruling by Superior Court Judge Charles W. McCoy Jr. left both sides unhappy and the tobacco giant promising an appeal. 

McCoy denounced Philip Morris’ actions as “reprehensible in every sense of the word, both legal and moral.” 

The firm “refused to accept even a scintilla of responsibility for the harm it has done.” the judge wrote in a 27-page ruling. 

But the punitive damages a jury granted to Richard Boeken in June were far above the usual ratio, he ruled. 

In fact, it was the largest award in an individual lawsuit against a tobacco company. 

Boeken was given until Aug. 24 to agree in writing to accept $100 million or the judge said he will grant Philip Morris a retrial on the punitive damages. The judge upheld an additional $5.54 million in compensatory damages for Boeken’s medical expenses and lost earnings. 

Boeken’s attorney, Michael J. Piuze, said “we are grateful for having been afforded a fair trial” but disagreed with the judge’s decision to reduce punitive damages. 

“Philip Morris was fined one week’s earnings,” he said. “This is the same as a $1,000 fine against a $50,000-a-year wage earner. Philip Morris truly was not punished enough. The punishment did not fit the crime. 

“I think it would have been more productive for society to let the verdict stand,” he added. 

Philip Morris said the entire case would be appealed. 

“This case became an exercise in punishing an unpopular industry,” William S. Ohlemeyer, company vice president and associate general counsel, said in a statement. 

“Our appeal will request a complete reversal and retrial on multiple grounds, not the least of which was the passion and prejudice the jury displayed in reaching its verdict.” 

“It’s simply not believable that anyone living in America for the past 40 years could testify under oath that they were unaware of the risks of smoking.” 

Boeken, 56, of Topanga, has lung cancer that has spread to his brain. The lifelong smoker claimed in his lawsuit that he was the victim of a tobacco industry campaign that portrayed smoking as “cool” but concealed its dangers. 

A jury found the company guilty of negligence, misrepresentation, fraud and selling a defective product. 

McCoy strongly supported the jury’s motivation for the punitive award but found the sum “legally excessive.” The ratio of the punitive damages to compensatory damages was 540-1. The $100 million figure — four times what Philip Morris lawyers had recommended — would reduce the ratio to 18-1. 

McCoy also reprimanded Philip Morris for going to “extraordinary lengths to hide its own scientific information” about the health risks of smoking. 

“The record fully supports findings that Philip Morris knew by the late 1950s and early 1960s that the nicotine in cigarettes is highly addictive, that substances in cigarette tar cause lung cancer, and that no substantial medical or scientific doubt existed on these crucial facts,” the judge ruled. 

It was the second California case in which a judge reduced a damage award against Philip Morris. A $51.5 million award made to lung cancer victim Patricia Henley in 1999 by a San Francisco jury was later reduced to $26.5 million. The case is under appeal. 

Last year, another San Francisco jury awarded Leslie Whiteley $21.7 million in damages against Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Whiteley, who had lung cancer, has since died. That case also remains on appeal. 

In seeking a retrial of the Boeken case, the company argued that it will likely face similar cases and could not pay $3 billion to every plaintiff. 

Philip Morris also argued that the judge erred in refusing to allow the company to present evidence of Boeken’s past criminal convictions in order to challenge the credibility of his claims. 

In the 1970s Boeken was convicted of a felony involving stolen property and another one for possession of a small amount of heroin. 

In 1993, he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of aiding and abetting wire fraud involving a telephone boiler room operation that sold oil and gas properties from 1986 to 1988 in Wyoming. Boeken testified for the government in the prosecution of his former boss, pleaded guilty to the felony and was ordered to pay a fine and $50,000 restitution. 

McCoy ruled during the trial that Boeken’s criminal record was irrelevant to the tobacco lawsuit and could prejudice the jury. 

Boeken said he took up cigarettes at 13 and smoked at least two packs of Marlboros daily for more than 40 years.  

His attorney said Boeken was actaully able to kick heroin and alcohol, but renewed his smoking habit after trying to quit several times. 

Boeken was diagnosed in 1999 with lung cancer, which spread to his lymph nodes, back and brain. Boeken quit smoking for eight months after being diagnosed but later resumed smoking Marlboros.

SACRAMENTO – State energy officials and more than 580 retailers will team up next week to promote state-sponsored rebates for Californians buying Energy Star appliances. 

“Energy Efficient Appliance Week” starts Saturday, but $50 million in rebates will be available for as long as the fund lasts, state officials said Friday. 

Rebates on Energy Star refrigerators, dishwashers, room air conditioners and clothes washers and dryers will range from $50 to $200. 

Consumers will save even more by trimming their energy use, said Kathleen Hogan of the Energy Star division within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Energy Star appliances are certified by the EPA to use at least 10 percent less energy than other appliances, saving resources and money, she said. 

For example, a replacing a 10-year-old clothes washer with an energy-efficient one can cut a family’s annual electricity bill by $90, said Hogan.

Confusion has reigned since the mayor decided to cancel a City Hall visit with a group of visiting Japanese Boy Scouts, said Councilmember Kriss Worthington at a press conference called to clarify the issue on City Hall steps Thursday.  

Worthington said his objections stemmed not simply from opposition to Mayor Shirley Dean’s meeting with the Japanese troop’s local hosts, who are U.S. Boy Scouts and therefore part of an organization that discriminates against homosexuals.  

The objections were above all to the mayor’s meeting with them without making a public statement of her opposition to the national group’s homophobia. 

Worthington said he wanted to make it clear that he has no objections to a meeting with the Japanese scouts, who have no policy of discrimination, or to meeting with the Girl Scouts, who have a policy opposing discrimination. 

“Our message must be simple and clear. We are opposed to the Boy Scouts of America when it is discriminating against gay kids,” said Worthington, who is openly gay. 

The councilmember brought local gay and lesbian leaders to the press conference, as well as scouts and their parents, who have opposed the national group’s policy of disallowing gay scouts and gay scout leaders. 

Berkeley Cub Scout dad Lincoln Cushing spoke to the gathering about his experience walking with the Cub Scout Pack 30 in last year’s Solano Stroll, with the same banner he held during much of the press conference: “Berkeley Scout Parents say no to homophobia.”  

“People applauded (at the Stroll),” he said, then focused on the question at hand: “The enemy is the national policy, not the visiting scouts.” 

Recent Berkeley High graduate Ryan Georgi, an Eagle Scout, spoke as well. “Some of us are working from inside the organization to bring change,” he said. “I represent all the boys who are caught in the middle of this issue.” 

Mayor Shirley Dean, who was not in attendance at the press conference, blasted Worthington earlier in the day for holding the event which, she said, was geared to garnering votes for his upcoming state Assembly race. “I think it’s disgusting,” the mayor said. “(Holding the press conference) was needless.” 

Dean explained that she moved the meeting with the scouts away from City Hall, in order to protect them from the “mess” – that is, Worthington’s wish to “educate” them – and accused Worthington of damaging relations with Sakai, Berkeley’s sister of more than 30 years. 

Addressing the issue of the Boy Scout’s homophobia, Dean said: “I have plans for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. We’re going to sit down together and dialogue to further the cause of getting rid of the policy.” 

Worthington also said he hopes for a positive result from the publicity over moving the meeting. He called on the local Diablo Silverado Boy Scout Council to stand up to the national Boy Scouts, as the Piedmont Boy Scout Council has done. “Let us make this occasion today a healing moment to display that the Berkeley area stands united in opposing the national Boy Scouts of America’s discrimination against gay kids.”

Friday, Aug. 10

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave.  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Meeting Fridays through Aug. 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

548-8283 x534 

Even Stronger Women 

1:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Free weekly cultural discussion class. This week: Tales of Murasaki.  

549-1879 

Religion and Public  

Life in Pacific and  

Asian North America 

8:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business 

The conference goes through Aug. 11, and will focus on the relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life. 849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Yiddish Conversation Group 

1 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Saturday, Aug. 11

Sixth annual Reggae Worldbeat Festival  

Noon - 5 p.m.  

People’s Park  

Telegraph & Haste St.  

Featuring: Obeyjah & The Saints with the Village Culture Drummers, Dancehall King; Major P., Wawa Sylvestre and The Oneness Kingdom Band and many more.  

Free 

Religion and Public 

Life in Pacific and  

Asian North America 

8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business  

The conference goes through Aug. 11, and will focus on the relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life. 849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Sunday, Aug. 12

Hands-On Bicycle  

Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn front and rear derailleur adjustments from one of REI’s bike technicians. Tools provided. Bring a bike. Free.  

527-4140 

Buddhist Architecture In the West 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Mark Henderson on “Building a Buddhist Temple.” Free. 

843-6812 

Steel Drums and Sand Castles 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Kirk Rademaker teaches sand sculpting while Richmond Bloco entertains with steel drum music. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Opus Q Auditions 

7 - 9 p.m. 

The University Lutheran Chapel 

2425 College Ave. 

Opus Q - The East Bay Men’s Chorale is preparing for its first full season. Gay men and their allies are invited to audition.  

664-0260 www.opus-q.com 

Monday, Aug. 13

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women age 20 - 70. No appointment is needed. No remuneration.  

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

Section 8 Resident  

Council Meeting 

5:30 - 8:30 p.m. 

East Bay Community Law Center 

3122 Shattuck Ave. 

Section 8 recipients and concerned citizens can tell the Resident Council their concerns about the program.  

Free Seminar on Ayurveda 

1 - 2 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

The basic principles of Ayurveda for maintaining health and balance.  

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Tuesday, Aug. 14

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Free Early Music Group 

10 - 11:30 a.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Small group sings madrigals and other voice harmony every Tuesday. 655-8863 

Free Computer Class  

for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck (at Berryman) 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women ages 20 - 70. No appointment is needed; no remuneration. 

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

— compiled by Guy Poole 

The Candy Cottage 

1:30 p.m. & 2:30 p.m. 

Hall of Health 

2230 Shattuck Ave. (Lower Level) 

“The Candy Cottage” is a short comedy written and performed by the Hall of Health staff, for children ages 3 to 12. The play provides information about eating healthy, the food pyramid, and what vitamins and minerals do for your body. The Hall of Health is a hands-on community health-education museum and science center sponsored by Children’s Hospital of Oakland. Free. For more information call: 549-1564. 

SAN FRANCISCO – As the information and communications technology revolution rolls along, we have become accustomed to people talking to their computers, asking for information on electronic data bases, having conversations with robot voices on the telephone. Speech-recognition systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and a plethora of new smart gadgets for homes, offices, even cars, are coming on the market. And more are on the way. Despite the current hard times in the high-tech industries, billions are being invested in the development of future speech-recognition devices – many of which most of us could probably do 

without, and some of which will really make the operation of many kinds of machines easier and more efficient. 

And while we get used to people talking to their computers, other new technologies are moving in the direction of making it easier for people to talk to one another – even when they don't speak the same language. 

This is a line of technological development that obviously has great social implications as well as profit potential, and people have been working at it for some time. Various software programs for translating written text into other languages have been on the market for years, although most of them – as disappointed owners have discovered – leave a lot to be desired. 

Translating the spoken word is an even steeper challenge. As anybody knows who has ever read a literal transcript of a conversation, people rarely speak in clear and complete sentences. They repeat phrases, skip over things, change direction, throw words in the general direction of a meaning and hope the listener will understand. And the listener – if he or she speaks the same language with approximately the same accent, and is paying attention – usually does. But it's asking a bit much of a machine, even a smart one, to turn a spoken language into clear sentences and translate that smoothly into another language. The best way devised so far to get simultaneous translation is to hire a human being who is fluent in both languages – and even that is far from perfect. 

But serious research into simultaneous electronic translation has been underway for a decade or so, under the leadership of an international network of universities and private laboratories – the Consortium for Speech Translation Advanced Research (C-STAR). With member organizations in the United States, Europe and Asia, C-STAR is dedicated to developing a technology that will enable linguistically challenged tourists to travel with “wearable translators” that could ask questions and get answers from the natives, or make it possible for an international group 

to hold an electronic meeting in several different languages – sort of a multilingual conference call. 

The first translating machines could handle only carefully-worded statements within a limited vocabulary and subject area. But the technology is improving steadily, to the point that the current prototype systems can handle spontaneous speech in vocabularies of 100,000 words, translating into a number of different languages. Not long ago the Consortium put on a demonstration video conference linking six countries, in which participants not only heard their statements successfully translated into other languages, but were also able to watch computer-animated projections of the faces of speakers in other countries, lips moving in synchronization with the translated language. 

Impressive progress, but the technology still has a long way to go, and is hardly likely ever to be able to translate rapid colloquial speech without difficulty. 

Nevertheless, even a moderately reliable speech-translation system would have a multitude of uses beyond those envisioned so far by the consortium researchers – for example, although the wearable translators are an obvious plus for tourists, future-minded law enforcement agencies are already talking about how useful they might be to peace officers in multicultural communities. And the technology also suggests the science-fictionish but inspiring notion that people might someday be able to hold global town meetings on a grand scale, connected as never before. 

Pacific News Service commentator Walter Truett Anderson, (waltt@well.com) is the author of the forthcoming book, All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization.

Even a brief resume of Joyce Jenkins reads like a who’s who of poetry for the West Coast. Name the place, she’s been there. Name the activity, she’s done that. The award, she’s been granted it.  

But the activity of which she is most proud, to which she has devoted more than two decades of her life, an activity she has defined and one which in a sense defines her, is Poetry Flash. 

Poetry Flash, a comprehensive literary calendar and poetry review for the west, embodies Jenkins’ vision of art in service to the community. In this instance, a community of poets and lovers of poetry.  

“The calendar is an essential part of the Flash,” she told me in a recent conversation. Her vision is that the calendar will serve the entire literary community. Anyone with a literary event, reading, lecture or slam can receive public notice. The calendar would be a place for everyone in the literary community to be connected. 

And the poetry review section? “I wanted reviews of the highest quality possible.” There would be discussions of poets and poetry, ideas and trends, a communications forum where poetry could be explained, argued, celebrated. Poetry is the lens through which the other arts would be viewed. 

Minimalists, language poets, formalists, no point of view would be forbidden.. All are given equal voice.  

None favored, none excluded. This open door neutrality is a policy Jenkins and Associate Editor Richard Silberg have striven to maintain at the Flash. 

Jenkins came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1978, looking for something she had not found enough of in her native Wayne, Michigan, her years at Wayne State University, or Grand Valley State University’s Thomas Jefferson College, an experimental school that reached its Golden Age, she says, during the ’70s. 

Poetry came to Jenkins early, literally. “My high school English and dramatics teacher gave me two poetry books. ‘I think these belong to you,’ she said.” The poets were Anne Sexton and Gregory Corso. At Wayne State she was an art student. “It was at Thomas Jefferson College I learned how to be a poet.” 

Thomas Jefferson College, set in clusters on the UC Santa Cruz model, encouraged students to open their minds to the world around them, its politics, its sociology.  

Jenkins thrived in this atmosphere. This rough and tumble world of hard work, clash of ideas (“I learned to hustle” she said), prepared her for the life she would find at Berkeley. ‘It succeeded so well they abolished it,” she added wryly. 

“When I came out here in 1975 I was ready, eager to get going.” And “get going,” she did. She landed at Cody’s Books, working there as bookkeeper (“by hand”) and poetry section buyer. She took every opportunity she could to be involved with poets and poetry. 

Within a few years, she had been twice the director of the San Francisco International Poetry Festival, Palace of Fine Arts, a voting and nominating member of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, co-coordinator (with Richard Silberg) of Poetry Flash @ Cody’s Series, and editor-in-chief and Publisher of Poetry Flash. 

Recognition for her continued unswerving service came in a 1994 American Book Award for editor, and the National Poetry Association’s 1995 Award for Distinguished Service to Poets & Poetry. 

She is proud of acquiring no nonprofit status in 1988 for the Flash, after a long convoluted struggle with the IRS. “They were concerned that the ads in the calendar might compete unfairly with commercial newspapers.”  

What about the poet she learned how to be at Thomas Jefferson, I asked? Joyce Jenkins the poet, published Portal, a Pennywhistle Chapbook (Santa Fe, 1993). 

Portal reveals a sensitive, keenly observant, complex artist. One who can go deep, or soar. Of many moods. From “The future is a white tiled/ hall, no color….We are all blind.” (Anthem, p9), to “The griefman has gone.” (The New Start, p32) She reflects, “We think we learn and mature--/but this is only an illusion,/ maya, veil dropped/ across our senses.”(Portal, p28) The poet of Portal has seen the dark and bright sides of this life, has lived in them, as this work testifies. 

Will she publish more? “I have other poems. When I’ve had time to process the transition of the last five years, maybe then. I like what I do. I take great pleasure in the success of something I’ve planned, a workshop, a panel, a festival. It makes me happy when it works.”  

What would you most like to do now, I asked, as we closed our conversation. “I would like to make a community poetry center, that could be a new home for the Flash “  

924 Gilman St. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Aug. 10: 90 Day Men, Assembly of God, Strong Intention, Under a Dying Sun; Aug. 11: Toys That Kill, Scared of Chakra, Soophie Nun Squad, Debris; Aug. 12: 5 p.m. Citizen Fish, J-Church, Eleventeen; Aug. 17: Blood Brothers, True North, The Cost, Red Light Sting, Betray The Species; Aug. 18: Dr. Know, The Sick, Society of Friends, Manchurian Candidates, Shut the F*ck Up; $5. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Anna’s Place Aug. 11 and every Saturday night 10:30 p.m. - midnight, Ducksan Distones. The following play at 8 p.m. – Aug. 8: “The Renegade Sidemen;” Aug. 7: open mic.1801 University Ave. 849-2662.  

Ashkenaz Aug. 10: 9:30 p.m. O-Maya. $10; Aug. 11: 9:30 p.m. Afro-Muzika, featuring Nene Tchakou and Shimita El Diego. 9 p.m. dance lesson with Comfort Mensah. $11; Aug. 12: 9 p.m. Benefit for the Berkeley High School Ki-Swahili Club featuring: Dyin 2 Live, Rebels, Little Larry Koont, Nico Love, DJ Boo. $10; Aug. 14: 9 p.m. Tom Rigney & Flambeau. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Patti Whitehurst. $8; Aug. 15: 9 p.m. Jerri Jheto. $10. Aug. 16: 10 p.m. - 2 a.m. Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave. $5; Aug. 17: 9:30 p.m. Near East Far West. $12; Aug. 18: 9:30 p.m. Zydeco Flames. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Cheryl McBride. $11. Aug. 19: 8 p.m. Open Stage w/ Koko De La Isla, Ernesto Hernandaz, Jeff Hawkins. $8; Aug. 21: 9 p.m. Slavonkian Traveling Band. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Joyce Clyde. $10. 1317 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054 www.ashkenaz.com  

Eli’s Mile High Club Doors open at 8 p.m. Aug. 11: Jimmy Mamou; Aug. 18: Craig Horton /CD Release; Aug. 25: Carlos Zialcita; Every Friday, 10 p.m. - 2 a.m., Funky Fridays Conscious Dance Party with KPFA DJs Splif Skankin and Funky Man. $10; 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 655-6661 

Freight and Salvage Coffee House All music at 8 p.m. Aug. 10: Jody Stecher, Kate Brislin; Aug. 11: Al Stewart. $16.50 - $19.50. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jupiter Aug. 10: Steven Emerson, singer/songwriter mixes cool jazz and sweat soul; Aug. 11: J Dogs, funk-soul; Aug. 14: Chris Shot Group, folk-rock and soul combo; Aug. 15: Lithium House, electro/drum & bass styles with live jazz; Aug. 16: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 17: The Mind Club, Old school funk grooves with sonic swirls of acid jazz; Aug. 18: Blue & Tan, Bassist Vicki Grossi brings in the crew for elctro-acid-jazz funk stylings; All music starts at 8:00 p.m. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK. 843-7625  

La Note/Jazzschool Aug. 12: 4:30 p.m. The Freedom Project, 5:30 Eli Sundelson Trio; Aug. 19: 4:30 p.m. Hazel Carter, 5:30 p.m. Bryan Girard & Friends, 6:30 p.m. T3 (Kirk Tamura Trio); Free. 2377 Shattuck Ave. 845-5373  

La Peña Cultural Center Aug. 10: 8:30 p.m. Ire $8; Aug. 11: 9:30 p.m. Fito Reynoso’s Ritmo y Armonia. $10, $13 for dance class starting at 8:15; Aug. 12: 5, 7:30 p.m. “Say Yo Business” Linda Tillery & The Cultural Heritage Choir. $18 in advance, $20 at the door; Aug. 17: 8:30 p.m. Music and dance performance by Jaranón y Bochinche, $12; Aug. 18: 8:30 p.m. Mission (roots hip hop), $8; Aug. 19: 3:30 p.m. Domingo de Rumba; Aug. 24: 8:30 p.m. Professor Terry’s Circus Band Extraordinary, $16; Aug. 25: 9:30 p.m., Edgardo Cambon’s Candela, $10, 8:15 p.m. Salsa dance class w/ Diego Vásquez, $13; In the Cafe, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568 

Shattuck Down Low Lounge Every Tuesday: 9:30 p.m., Posh Tuesdays with DJ’s Yamu, Delon, Add1, and Tequila Willie. Shattuck at Allston. www.thebeatdownsound.com  

Yoshi’s Through Aug. 12: Steve Turre Quintet, trombone and conch shell master in small group setting. Wednesday and Thursday, $18; Friday and Saturday, $22; Sunday matinee, $5 kids, $10 adults with one child, $18 general; Sunday, $22. Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 238-9200 www.yoshis.com 

3rd annual Berkeley World Music Festival Aug. 26: noon - 6 p.m. Block party and carnival, Grupo Ilu Fun Fun, Petit La Croix, Samba Ngo, O-Maya, Fito Reinoso y Su Ritmo y Armonia. Durant Ave. between Telegraph and Bowditch. 

ACME Observatory Aug. 19: 8 p.m. Solo performance by Jason Kahn, Brown Bunny Ensemble. $9.99 suggested donation. TUVA Space, 3192 Adeline @ MLK Jr. Way. 649-8744 http://sfSound.org/acme.html 

Ali Akbar College of Music Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m., A concert of Indian classical music. Rita Sahai, vocals; Rachel Untersher, violin; Madhukar Malayanur, tabla; $20 general; $15 students. St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., (415) 454-6264 or www.aacm.org 

Theater 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m. & Aug. 11, 12, 5 p.m. Campers from Stage Door Conservatory’s “On Broadway” program for grades 5-9 will perform Fiddler on the Roof, Jr. $12 adults, $8 kids. 2640 College Ave. 845-8542 ext. 302 

“The Great Sebastians” Through Aug. 11: Friday and Saturday evenings 8 p.m. Presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. A tale about a mind-reading act touring behind the Iron Curtain. A communist general believes the act and “invites” the Sebastians to his villa where the humor and excitement follows. $10. Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck (at Berryman). For reservations call 528-5620 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through Aug. 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. Special dawn performance on Aug. 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

“Loot” Through Aug. 25, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Special Performance Aug. 20, 8 p.m. General Admission: $15, Students / Seniors: $10 La Val’s 1834 Euclid Avenue 655-0813 

“Reefer Madness” Aug. 22, 23: 9 p.m. A new one-act theatre piece adapted from a 1936 government-funded film opens a critical eye to the control of our society. Performed by The Elemental Theatre Group La Pena Cultural Center 3105 Shattuck Avenue. Wednesdays are “pay what you can,” Thursdays $5 - $10. Contact Zachary Rouse or Tisha Sloan for more info at 655-4150 

“Romeo & Juliet” Aug. 11 - Sep 2, Tuesdays – Thursdays. Bruns Memorial Amphitheater. Shakespeare’s classic about a young couple that meets, falls in love and dies in just five days. Adults: $22 - $41 youth (under 16): $12 - $41. 

“Barnum” Through Aug. 12. The story of legendary circusmaster P.T. Barnum, with plenty of musical theater and circus acrobatics. Splash Circus’ aspiring young circus artists will perform an hour before each show. $15 to $27. Friday through Sunday, 8 p.m. Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland. 531-9597 www.woodminster.com 

Films 

“Roommates” Aug. 12: Max Apple’s true story of his immigrant grandfather who moved in with him when he was in college (in the 60’s). Peer led discussion following movie. $2 Suggested donation. Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 1414 Walnut Street 848-0237 

Pacific Film Archive Aug. 10: 7 p.m. Alone on the Pacific, 9:05 p.m. Her Brother; Aug. 11: 7 p.m. While the City Sleeps, 9 p.m. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt; Aug. 12: 3 p.m. Charlotte’s Web, 5:30 p.m. Tokyo Olympiad; Aug. 14: 7:30 p.m. Odds and Ends; Aug. 15: 7:30 p.m. Angel, Angel, Down We Go; Aug. 16: 7:30 p.m. Rancho Notorious; Aug. 17: 7 p.m. Bonchi, 9:05 p.m. Money Talks; Aug. 18: 7 p.m. Ministry of Fear, 8:45 p.m. House by the River; Aug. 19: 3 p.m. National Velvet, 5:30 p.m. I Am Two, 7:15 I Am a Cat; Aug. 21: 7:30 p.m. The Direct Cinema Tradition; Aug. 22: 7:30 p.m. The Werewolf of Washington; Aug. 23: 7:30 p.m. Contempt; Aug. 24: 7 p.m. The Heart, 9:20 p.m. The Outcast; Aug. 25: 7 p.m. Moonfleet, 8:45 p.m. The Blue Gardenia; Aug. 26: 3 p.m. Duck Soup, 5:30 p.m. The Wanderers, 7:25 p.m. Dora-Heita; Aug. 28: 7:30 p.m. Doodling; Aug. 29: (free screenings) 7:30 p.m. The Horror of Party Beach, 9:15 p.m. The Crater Lake Monster; Aug. 31: 7 p.m. The Makioka Sisters, 9:35 p.m. A Woman’s Testament; Gen. Adm.. $7, The New PFA Theatre 2575 Bancroft Way 642-1412 

“Lumumba” Aug. 10: at Shattuck Cinemas. Biography of the slain African political figure Patrice Lumumba. In French with English subtitles. 

Exhibits 

“BACA National Juried Exhibition: Works on Paper” Through Aug. 31: Wed. - Sun. Noon - 5 p.m. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

“Debbie Moore’s Autobiographical Paintings” Through Sep. 30 at Good Vibrations. Portraits of the artist’s sensual explorations spanning 25 years and reflecting changing ways of intimacy and body play. 2504 San Pablo Avenue 848-1985 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 – 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.  

“A Fine Line” Through Aug. 24, Tuesday - Friday, noon - 5 p.m. or by appointment. An exhibition works by Kala Fellowship winners for the years 2000 and 2001. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Avenue 549-2977 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through Aug. 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Road 649-2541 

“MFA Survey Exhibition 2001” Third annual exhibition of works of recent graduates from Bay Area master of Fine Art programs. This year featuring artists working in three-dimentional media. Through Aug. 18 Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth Street 527-1214 

“Musee des Hommages” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” Through Aug. 18: Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“The Political Art of: Diego Marcial Rios” Aug. 14 - Sept. 20, Addison Street Window Gallery, 2018 Addison St. hdrios@msn.com 

“Sistahs: Ethnofraphic Ceramics” through Aug. 22, Reception July 29 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. Womens Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Avenue 548-9286 ext. 307 

“Squared Triangle” Aug.13 through Oct. 5. noon - 6 p.m. Reception for the artists, Aug. 18: 4 - 7 p.m. A minimal art exhibit featuring three Bay Area artists working in different mediums while achieving the same elegant simplicity. The Crucible, 1036 Ashby Ave. 843-5511 www.thecrucible.com 

“Ten Years Here” Exhibit celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Turn of the Century Fine Arts. Through Sept. 14, Sat & Sun 1-5 p.m. Reception Aug. 4 2:00 - 7:00 p.m. 2510 San Pablo Avenue 849-0950 

Readings 

Boadecia’s Books Aug. 11: Trina Robbins discusses her latest work “Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitude”; Aug. 17: Lynne Murray reads from her latest Josephine Fuller mystery “At Large”; Aug. 18: “Hell on Heels” tour with Daphne Gottlieb and Thea Hillman; Aug. 24: Andrea Gabbard discusses “Girl in the Curl: A Century of Women’s Surfing”; Aug. 25: Ann Bannon reads from her lesbian pulp classic “Beebo Brinker.” All events start at 7:30 p.m. and are free. 398 Colusa Avenue 559-9184 www.bookpride.com 

Black Oak Books Aug. 15: Molly Giles reads from her debut novel “Iron Shoes”; Aug. 16: Mandy Aftel and her new book, “Essence and Alchemy: A Book of Perfume”; Aug. 19: “Wildest Alaska: Journeys of Great Peril in Lituya Bay” by Philip L. Fradkin; Aug. 21: June Jordan’s memoir “Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood”; Aug. 22: Ruth Daigon’s “Payday at the Triangle”; Aug. 23: Phil Cousineau’s “Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Modern Times”; Aug. 27: Catherine Brady, Jean Herlund, Frances Payne Adler, and Marianne Villanueva and others to celebrate CALYX Book’s 25th Anniversary, “Cracking the Earth”; Aug. 28: Kent Nerburn reads from “Road Angels: Searching for Home on America’s Coast of Dreams”; Aug. 29: Sylvia Brownrigg reads from her new novel, “Pages For You”; All shows at 7:30 p.m. free of charge. 1491 Shattuck Avenue 486-0698 

Café de la Paz Poetry Nitro performance showcase with open mike. Aug. 13:Shailja Patel; Aug. 20: Avotcja; 6:30 p.m. signup, 7 - 9 p.m. reading. 1600 Shattuck Ave. 843-0662 

Cody’s Books - Poetry Flash Aug. 15: Poet’s Dinner Contest Anthology Reading, David AlpAug.h, Martha Bosworth, Tim Nuveen, Charlene Villella, read from their new anthology, Remembering, 25 years of first and grand prize-winning poems at the annual Poets Dinner Contest; Aug. 22: Trane Devore and Shauna Hannibal; All are a $2 donation. Readings at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 2454 Telegraph Ave. 845-0837 

Coffee Mill Poetry Series Aug. 21: Featured Readers: Victoria Joyce and Therese Bamberger; Both 7-9 p.m. Free. 3363 Grand Ave., Oakland for info. (510)465-3935 or (510)526-5985, or Email: ksdgk@earthlink.net 

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Fridays 9:30 - 11:45 a.m. or by appointment. Call ahead to make reservations. Free. University of California, Berkeley. 486-4387 

Golden Gate Live Steamers Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. 486-0623  

Museums 

Habitot Children’s Museum “Back to the Farm” An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more. “Recycling Center” Lets the kids crank the conveyor belt to sort cans, plastic bottles and newspaper bundles into dumpster bins. $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. (closed Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day) Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 647-1111 or www.habitot.org  

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur 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 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. 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 will close its exhibition galleries for renovation on October 1. It will reopen in early 2002. On View until Oct. 1 : “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture.” “Sites Along the Nile: Rescuing Ancient Egypt.” “The Art of Research: Nelson Graburn and the Aesthetics of Inuit Sculpture.” “Tzintzuntzan, Mexico: Photographs by George Foster.” $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. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648 or www.qal.berkeley.edu/~hearst/ 

Lawrence Hall of Science “Science in Toyland,” through Sept. 9. Exhibit uses toys to demonstrate scientific principles and to help develop children's thinking processes. Susan Cerny’s collection of over 200 tops from around the world. “Space Weather,” through Sept. 2. Learn about solar cycles, space weather, the cause of the Aurorae and recent discoveries made by leading astronomers. This interactive exhibit lets visitors access near real-time data from the Sun and space, view interactive videos and find out about a variety of solar activities. “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. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 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. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. “How Big Is the Universe?” Aug. 1 through Aug. 24. Learn how to determine the distance of celestial objects, one of the purposes of the Hubble Space Telescope. Daily, 2:15 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, 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu 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, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu  

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall. 

Send arts events two weeks in advance to Calendar@berkeleydailyplanet.net, 2076 University, Berkeley 94704 or fax to 841-5694. 

Listening to Cal head coach Tom Holmoe assess his chances of surviving another year at the helm of the football program on Thursday, some listeners couldn’t help but feel they’d heard this speech before. 

“The reality is that if we don’t win, then I’m not going to be here (next season),” Holmoe said Thursday at the Bay Area college football press conference.  

Now compare that to Holmoe’s comments at last year’s event: 

“This season is my last chance to prove myself here,” he said last August. “We have to win this year.” 

Well, a 3-8 record probably wasn’t what Holmoe had in mind for the 2000 season, but that’s just what he got. But unlike last year, Holmoe no longer has former Cal Athletic Director John Kasser in his corner; replacement AD Steve Gladstone isn’t likely to give Holmoe a contract extension without a winning season in 2001. 

Holmoe deflected questions about his future on Thursday, instead focusing on his players and what he sees as the best squad in his five years with Cal. 

“It’s not about me by any stretch of the imagination. It’s about our program, about the guys that we’ve brought in and how much better they can be this year,” he said. “This is a big year, however you want to define big, but this is a good year, personnel-wise, to be heading into.” 

Holmoe said the strength of this year’s team should be its depth. The Bears don’t have any big stars on the magnitude of defensive end Andre Carter, who was the No. 7 pick in the NFL draft, but for the first time should have experienced backups at nearly every position. 

One position that may not, however, is tailback. The Bears had three seniors-to-be at that position in spring practice, but at least one is gone for certain, with another in doubt. While starter Joe Igber, last year’s leading rusher, is certain to return, classmate Saleem Muhammed decided to transfer to Portland State when it became apparent he would be third on the depth chart. That left Joe Echema as the experienced backup to Igber, who is expected to carry the load. But Echema slipped up in the classroom, failing to meet the NCAA minimum limit on units for the year and was ruled ineligible. The team is appealing, and will find out Echema’s status next week. If the NCAA denies the appeal, Igber will be the only tailback on the roster with any college experience. Backup duties would likely fall to true freshmen Will Scott and Terrell Williams. 

Igber, who rushed for 901 yards last year, is undersized at 5-foot-8 and 200 pounds, and was platooned with Echema and Muhammed last year to keep all three fresh. But new offensive coordinator Al Borges has made it clear that he wants Igber to get the lion’s share of the carries no matter who his backup is. The question whether Igber can stand up to a full season of pounding is a valid one, and Holmoe knows he needs a dependable backup. 

“I think the first guy (Igber) is terrific,” he said. “But we have to determine the depth, and we’ll have to see how that goes. That’s what camp is all about.” 

The Bears head up to Turlock on Saturday to begin two weeks of training camp at Cal State Stanislaus with questions at several positions. On offense, both receiver slots and the tight end position are wide open, with a multitude of candidates for each spot. The defense is even more wide open – just four full-time starters from last season return to their positions. But as Holmoe indicated, the problem isn’t how to fill the defense out; it’s how to choose among several qualified candidates. 

The graduation of Carter and defensive tackle Jacob Waasdorp opened two spots on the defensive line. There are seven candidates for playing time on the line, with no clear favorites. Scott Fujita is the only linebacker guaranteed a starting slot, and four veterans will battle for the two inside positions. 

The cornerback positions are the most intruiging. Juniors Jemeel Powell and LaShaun Ward both had spectacular moments last year as part-time starters, but the return of sophomore Atari Callen, who missed last year with academic issues, has clouded the issue. Also vying for a spot is sophomore James Bethea, who came on strong at the end of last season when Ward went down with an internal injury after starring in a win over UCLA. 

“A guy like Andre you’re not going to replace, a guy like Jacob you’re not going to replace. But we have great depth this year,” Fujita said. “On the defensive line, we’ve got four guys at each spot who can help us on the field. We can get a good rotation in and keep guys fresh. And the secondary is so much more seasoned now, it’s going to be outstanding.”

It’s not very often these days our fair city makes even the local section of The Chron. 

But when it makes A-1, it’s a real anomaly. Now, I read the paper from across the Bay daily – and we’re lucky to have a decent regional fishwrap in our midst - or maybe it’s mist.  

But I’ve got to say that the only time a Berkeley story makes A-1 is a “there-they-go-again, quirky Berkeley” story. 

That’s what happened with the Boy Scout pieces.  

When the Daily Planet saw a Girl Scout press release which included a visit of the Japanese and local Boy Scouts with the mayor, last week, we made a few calls. As a reporter for another paper, I’d covered the long debate over the Sea Scouts’ free berth at the Marina several years ago. At the time, the council, including the mayor, voted to take the freebie away from the scouts to protest the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy. I realized that, given the city’s deep commitment to opposing the BS policy, this was a story.  

When the Planet asked Councilmember Kriss Worthington for a comment on the upcoming meeting, we unintentionally informed him of it, setting off a chain of events which resulted, the same day, in the mayor’s moving her meeting off the city site. We wrote the story about Worthington’s objections to the mayor’s meeting on city property with a group that discriminates, and his wish to have an opportunity to educate them about the U.S. Boy Scout’s homophobia. And we wrote about the mayor’s decision to shield the children from controversy and move the meeting to a private undisclosed location. 

About a week later, a Chron reporter, who delves into Berkeley happenings about once a month or so, picked the story up and his editors, in their wisdom, and decided it was enough of a Quirky-Berkeley story to move on A-1 – two days running! 

Of course, AP picked it up and every other near & far media outlet that relishes a good Quirky-Berkeley story. 

The story is newsworthy, fitting neatly into the context of a very serious nation-wide controversy around the Boy Scouts’ homophobia. The story is also part of ongoing tensions between Mayor Shirley Dean and Councilmember Kriss Worthington. Both city leaders oppose the Boy Scout policy. Dean says she wants to sit down with local scouts to find a means of protesting the policy. Worthington demands Dean not meet with the scouts on city property and calls a rally on the question. 

All this is news, but A-1 Quirky-Berkeley councilmember’s-an-”idiot” story? I don’t think so. 

Jim Sharp, community activist concerned with UC Berkeley’s remodeling project on the north-east side of campus, forwarded the Daily Planet this letter to Ed Denton, the University’s vice chancellor in charge of capital projects, from the Berkeley city manager. 

Thank you for your letter of July 31, 2001 about the NEQSS Draft EIR. I appreciate the generous offer to extend the comment period through August 15, 2001. This would allow the City staff and interested community members some additional time to prepare comments to the document and the campus’ proposed plans. 

I would, however, appreciate it if the campus were to offer an even longer extension on the comment period for the NEQSS Draft EIR. As you must know, the projects proposed in the Draft EIR will have a substantial impact on the campus and its immediate environs.  

The City Council, community members and the city staff are deeply concerned that even with the extension you proposed there will not be enough time to develop the thorough and in-depth analysis/response deemed necessary by community stakeholders. 

A longer extension would push back the date when the Final EIR for the NEQSS projects went to the Regents for approval. Should that happen, then the future Regents’ meeting with the NEQSS Final EIR approval would likely not be held in the Bay Area (with easier access for community members).  

I would prefer, of course, to have the Final EIR meeting convened where our community can directly comment to the Regents. I believe, however, that a longer comment period for the Draft EIR is more important than convenient access to that future meeting. 

Therefore, I again request that the campus extend the Draft EIR comment period for a full 60 days to October 1, 2001.  

An extended timeline is essential so that full community input can be garnered on the wide variety of project impacts outlined in my letter of July 26 to Chancellor Berdahl.  

These impacts are significant enough to warrant an extended comment period to the NEQSS Draft EIR. 

Weldon Rucker 

City Manager

Now that the 2000 Census has been released, Berkeley has begun the process of reshaping the city’s eight districts, which could shift the balance of power on the City Council.  

According to the 2000 Census, Berkeley has a population of 102,743 people, an increase of 19 people since 1990. But there were population shifts within the city throwing off the balance that each district must maintain as required by the City Charter.  

The City Clerk is accepting redistricting proposals from anyone who wishes to submit one until Aug. 15. According to City Clerk Sherry Kelly, each submission will be presented to the City Council for review.  

“Anyone who is interested is submitting a plan is welcome to,” she said. “Even if they just want to submit a footprint, the department will include demographic analysis so each proposal has an equal presentation.” 

Districts should have 12,850 residents each, and are required to have redrawn boundaries by the end of December.  

What’s possibly at stake is the political future of at least two councilmembers who may be affected by redrawn lines. Two adjacent districts in the southeast corner of the city, districts 7 and 8, showed a collective drop of nearly 3,000 residents. Two others, District 1 and District 2 showed no population change at all and the remaining four districts showed modest increases of 1 to 8 percent.  

In addition, a May 23 report by the city manager, suggests that the 2000 Census seriously undercounted the residents in districts 7 and 8, which are largely populated by students. The undercount could result in a cut in the dollar amounts of population-based federal grants, which fund a a variety of city services. The city lost an initial federal court case challenging the undercount and the case is currently being appealed, according to Deputy City Attorney Prasanna Rasiah. 

District 8, which is represented by Councilmember Polly Armstrong, needs to be redrawn to accommodate another 1,600 residents. District 7, represented by Kriss Worthington, needs to expand by 1,300 residents. 

District 8, considered to be a moderate politically, is tucked away in the southeast corner of the city. In order to increase its population, the most apparent solution – the City Charter mandates the districts not be drastically changed – is to move its western boundary line several blocks west into District 7, which is considered progressive politically.  

The result could be that Armstrong, who won handily in 1998 with 58 percent of the vote, could become more vulnerable to a progressive candidate in the November 2002 election. 

Armstrong said that her district already includes large numbers of students and renters and that she is not too concerned about the redrawing of district lines. 

“ I have really liked serving my district for the last seven years and I’m going to run a tough campaign and hope the voters in my district agree with my evaluation of what the job is,” she said. 

If Armstrong loses her council seat to a progressive the power balance on the council, which is now five progressive to four moderates, could swing further to the left, according to Rent Stabilization Board member Paul Hogarth. 

Hogarth is working with some UC Berkeley students to present a redistricting plan that would attempt to put as many students, many of whom live in districts 7 and 8, into one district. 

In addition, depending on how the district lines are drawn, progressive Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who lives near eastern border of the District 7 borderline, could wake up one morning in moderate District 8.  

Worthington also did not seem concerned about the redistricting and said he thought it would be interesting to have citywide participation in the process. 

“I think anyone who is interested in submitting new districts based on student population or racial population or whatever community, should do so,” he said.  

Worthington is running for the California Assembly, but if his bid fails, he could be scrambling for reelection against incumbent Armstrong.  

The City Council will hold a public hearings on Sept. 12 and another on Sept. 25, after which the council is expected to make a decision on new district lines. 

For more information about submitting a redistricting plan, go to Berkeley’s website at www.ci.berkeley.ca.ussp or call the City Clerk’s Office at 981-6900. 

After years serving on the Commission on Disability, Karen Craig, one of Berkeley’s most vocal advocates for the disabled community was informed through a letter from Councilmember Linda Maio on Wednesday, that she had been removed from her position. 

Maio who appointed Craig in 1997, chose Robert Allamand, a member of the disabled community involved in the Personal Assistant Crisis Team, to replace Craig. PACT is a collection of organizations trying to address the shortage of attendants for disabled individuals in Berkeley. 

Berkeley rules make commissioner’s initial appointments valid until Nov. 30 of the following year. After that period of time, they can be replaced, reappointed or stay at the will of the official who appointed them. According to Maio’s office, Craig was serving at the will of Maio, who had therefore complete freedom to replace her at any time.  

Maio is currently on vacation and was not available for comment Thursday. But councilmember Dona Spring, who recommended Craig’s replacement on the commission, said that Maio’s decision was the consequence of Craig’s tendency to obstruct the City Council’s policies. She particularly blamed Craig for her opposition to the city’s decision last year to renew its contract with Easy Does It, an organization providing emergency services to the disabled community. 

“She has wanted to micromanage emergency services even after the council had made a decision that is different,” said Spring. “Craig has been most obstinate and at times rude to city staff and members of the board of directors of Easy Does It. That doesn’t reflect well on disability issues and has created an unresolvable conflict.” 

Leslie Gordon, interim director of EDI, confirmed that the organization had difficulties interacting with Craig in the past, but wouldn’t comment on their nature. However, in a July 14 e-mail sent to Maio, Jesse Townley, the former director of EDI, characterized Craig as “uniformly hostile, rude and unwilling to consider viewpoints divergent from her own,” and petitioned for her replacement. 

Craig, confirmed that the only reason for her replacement mentioned in the letter was the disagreement over EDI. However, she doesn’t believe that it is Maio’s true motivation. “They’re using EDI as the reason and I don’t believe that that is the reason at all,” she said Thursday afternoon. “This is a done deal. I think it’s much more that I stood up at the State of the People address and talked about the fact that we’re not No. 1 on disability stuff anymore.” Craig also said that since January she had met on different occasions with members of EDI and had established a good relationship with them.  

Most of the Commission on Disability appointees said they regretted Maio’s action. Many of them said they had sent letters asking Maio to reconsider her decision. They praised Craig for her dedication, her outspokenness, and her ability to reach out to the community. 

“Karen is an absolutely fabulous activist and advocate for all kinds of disabilities,” said commissioner Emily Wilcox. “Her work has been extraordinarily valuable in the city.” Wilcox suggested that the EDI issue was not a valid reason to replace Craig. “The commission’s work and the projects that Karen works on are so much bigger than EDI,” she said. “EDI is important, but we are not the commission on EDI.” 

Commissioner Charles Betcher also deplored Craig’s removal. “It’s a great loss to the disabled community,” he said . “Karen is very forthright and fearless in her expressions and perhaps some people don’t like her honesty, perhaps it’s not political enough for them.” 

An official with the Berkeley Toxics Management Division said a west Berkeley building posted with “quarantine” signs Thursday poses no health threat to people living and working nearby. 

Nabil Al-Hadithy of the city’s toxics office said the quarantine pertains to hazardous waste materials on the building site, 2334 Fourth St., rather than the building itself. 

“The materials have been covered and stabilized,” he said. 

Formerly Jetco Motors, a business that exported used engines, the building is a charred skeleton today.  

It was destroyed in May 2000 when one of the worst fires in the city’s history ripped through the neighboring Andros Technology building and spread into Jetco Motors.  

Signs posted on the Jetco building say hazardous waste materials must not be removed from the site without the permission of the toxics office or a court. 

Al-Hadithy declined to comment on what kinds of hazardous materials are at issue, saying only that the city had been notified of the materials’ presence by the District Attorney’s office.  

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Michael O’Conner said the information leading to the quarantine surfaced in a criminal investigation. 

“Even when conducting a criminal investigation you have to keep public safety in mind,” O’Conner said.  

But he declined to elaborate, siting an ongoing investigation. 

Jetco Motors officials could not be reached for comment late Thursday. 

Berkeley Assistant Fire Chief David Orth said the firefighters who battled the fire – 75 in all – were aware at the time that the Jetco Motors site had hazardous hydrocarbon chemicals in the numerous car engines that were stored there. 

“The building basically had racks and racks of engines that had been pulled from wrecked cars,” Orth said.  

The engines had oil, transmission fluids and other motor chemicals still inside, he added.

LOS ANGELES — Insurance companies will be required to provide basic medical coverage for cancer patients undergoing experimental treatments under a bill Gov. Gray Davis signed into law Thursday. 

Under the law, which Davis touted as the toughest in the nation, insurance providers must cover the costs of drugs, doctor visits, lab tests, hospitalizations and other routine services received by cancer patients involved in clinical trials. 

“It’s a historical agreement for the cutting edge of cancer treatment,” said Davis, who was joined by cancer survivors and officials outside a University of California, Los Angeles, medical lab where he signed the bill.  

“It gives cancer patients literally a new lease on life.” 

He said he hoped the new law, sponsored by Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, will encourage more cancer patients to enroll in clinical trials and therefore spur medical research that will lead to more advanced treatment of the disease. 

Until now, Davis said, insurance payouts for cancer patients undergoing experimental treatments have been a hit-or-miss prospect, as insurance providers struggled to define exactly which medical procedures were considered “routine” and eligible for coverage. 

“All they need for coverage (now) is for their physician to determine that the trial will have a beneficial effect on the patient,” Davis said. 

Expanding coverage will mean a “modest cost” for California’s managed care industry, or about less than 1 percent of the state’s annual premium of about $25 billion, said Walter Zelman, president of the California Association of Health Plans, a health insurance trade association. 

The new law will add about 3,390 Californians to clinical studies that would not have participated before, according to the American Cancer Society. 

Only 3 percent of adult cancer patients in the nation are currently enrolled in clinical trials, and clinical trial legislation in other states place restrictions on the type of procedure or test eligible for coverage, Davis said. 

“No other state in America even comes close,” he said of California’s new law. 

Davis and Zelman agreed that the bill was built on consensus between the state and health insurance industry. 

“It was not achieved by legislators and the governor pounding on a table then saying, ‘Do it my way,”’ Zelman said. “Instead, it was achieved by legislators and the governor pounding on the table, getting us together to make this work.” 

Davis vetoed a similar bill last year, which only required coverage for prostate cancer patients over half of the clinical trial. 

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court clarified Thursday when family members may pull the plug on their loved ones in a closely watched right-to-die case. 

The court, in a highly anticipated ruling, said a Stockton woman could not end life support for her incapacitated husband simply because he told her twice before an auto accident that he would not want to live like a vegetable. The justices, ruling 6-0, noted that the husband was not hospitalized in a vegetative state but instead was conscious, albeit seesawing in a twilight state that provided him no means to care for himself. 

“These two conversations do not establish by clear and convincing evidence that the conservatee would desire to have his life-sustaining treatment terminated under the circumstances in which he now finds himself,” Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote. The court cautioned, however, that it was not setting a broad standard when conservator’s could pull the plug on conservatees. Instead, its decision affects “only a narrow class of persons: conscious conservatees who have not left formal directions for health care and whose conservators propose to withhold life-sustaining treatment for the purpose of causing their conservatees’ deaths.” 

The case began in 1995, when Rose Wendland thought she was carrying out her husband’s wishes when she directed doctors to pull his feeding tubes, two years after an auto accident left him in a near-vegetative state. But the woman’s wishes were blocked and have been embroiled in the courts ever since, reigniting national debate over when loved ones can make such directives when no will or other written document verifies those wishes. An estimated 15 percent of U.S. adults have drafted such wills or designated such powers to others.

LOS ANGELES — A judge ruled Thursday that a $3 billion punitive damages verdict against tobacco giant Philip Morris was excessive but he will only grant a retrial of the punitive issue if the cancer-stricken plaintiff won’t accept $100 million instead. 

Superior Court Judge Charles W. McCoy ruled on a motion by the company which argued, among various reasons, that the punitive award was excessive and that it will likely face similar cases and could not pay $3 billion to every plaintiff. 

In June a jury awarded Richard Boeken, 56, the multibillion-dollar punitive award in addition to $5.5 million in compensatory damages. It was the largest award in an individual lawsuit against a tobacco company. Boeken, a lifelong smoker whose lung cancer has spread, claimed in his lawsuit that he was the victim of a tobacco industry campaign that portrayed smoking as “cool” but concealed its dangers. Boeken would have to file a written consent to the reduction by Aug. 24 or Philip Morris will be granted a retrial “solely on the issue of punitive damages,” the judge wrote. 

Boeken’s attorney, Michael J. Piuze, said “we are grateful for having been afforded a fair trial” but indicated Boeken wouldn’t accept the reduced judgment. 

“Philip Morris was fined one week’s earnings. This is the same as a $1,000 fine against a $50,000-a-year wage earner. Philip Morris truly was not punished enough. The punishment did not fit the crime,” he said. 

William S. Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris’s vice president and associate general counsel, said the company will appeal. 

“This case became an exercise in punishing an unpopular industry,” he said. “Our appeal will request a complete reversal and retrial on multiple grounds, not the least of which was the passion and prejudice the jury displayed in reaching its verdict.” 

“It’s simply not believable that anyone living in America for the past 40 years could testify under oath that they were unaware of the risks of smoking.” 

In a 27-page ruling, McCoy strongly supported the jury’s motivation even though he found the $3 billion sum “legally excessive because it produced an excessive punitive-to-compensatory ratio.” 

“The jury plainly, and with substantial evidentiary support, found Philip Morris’ conduct reprehensible,” the judge wrote. “The record fully supports findings that Philip Morris knew by the late 1950s and early 1960s that the nicotine in cigarettes is highly addictive, that substances in cigarette tar cause lung cancer, and that no substantial medical or scientific doubt existed on these crucial facts.” 

He said the court’s independent judgment was that a $100 million punitive award was “reasonable.” 

Tom Harrison, publisher of Lawyers Weekly USA, said he expected the damages to be reduced but was still surprised by the $100 million sum. 

“It’s staggering,” he said. “It’s far, far, far more than any other punitive award that has been upheld on appeal in California. Philip Morris will obviously appeal ... and try to get the punitive damages reduced any further.” 

Harrison said that the decision hurts the tobacco company in the court of public opinion and it also makes it harder to fight. 

“When you have a judge say this conduct is worth $100 million in punitive damages it is harder to minimize,” he said. “It’s easy to criticize a runaway jury it’s harder to criticize ’runaway’ judge.” 

McCoy, the trial judge, also denied a Philip Morris motion that asked for a new trial on grounds that he erred in refusing to allow the company to present evidence of Boeken’s past criminal convictions in order to challenge the credibility of his claim that he believed smoking was safe. 

In the 1970s Boeken was convicted of a felony involving stolen property and another one for possession of a small amount of heroin. 

In 1993, he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of aiding and abetting wire fraud involving a telephone boiler room operation that sold oil and gas properties from 1986 to 1988 in Wyoming. Boeken testified for the government in the prosecution of his former boss, pleaded guilty to the felony and was ordered to pay a fine and $50,000 restitution. 

McCoy ruled during the trial that Boeken’s criminal record was irrelevant to the tobacco lawsuit and could prejudice the jury. 

Boeken said he took up cigarettes at age 13 and smoked at least two packs of Marlboros daily for more than 40 years. His attorney said Boeken was able to kick heroin and alcohol, but renewed his smoking habit after trying to quit several times. 

Boeken was diagnosed in 1999 with lung cancer, which spread to his lymph nodes, back and brain. Boeken quit smoking for eight months after being diagnosed but later resumed smoking Marlboros. 

SAN FRANCISCO — California power managers say 65 million customers in 11 Western states and parts of Canada and Mexico were at risk of blackouts last week when several power suppliers failed to deliver electricity to the region as promised. 

Gregg Fishman, a spokesman for the California Independent System Operator, said during last Thursday’s incident, the balance was so close that the unexpected loss of a single power plant could have triggered the region’s worst outage in five years. 

Unlike natural gas, which can be stored, electricity must be used as it is produced, creating a delicate balance of supply and demand. The ISO schedules deliveries of electricity from generators and power marketers to utilities. Outages happen when those megawatts arrive late or in lesser quantities than expected. 

Fishman said such stability threats to the power grid have occurred with alarming frequency. 

“We have seen a number of generators not responding appropriately to our orders to dispatch and in this case we did not get the power that was scheduled through our grid,” Fishman said. 

However, another organization concerned with how electricity is transported said last week’s missed deliveries were not dire enough to cause blackouts, though an official acknowledged they were a concern. “It’s very important that all of the participants in the operation of the electric system abide by the reliability requirements,” said Bob Dintelman, assistant executive director of the Western Systems Coordinating Council in Salt Lake City. 

On Wednesday, the ISO warned generators to deliver power on time, and asked federal regulators to investigate last week’s incident. In a report, the ISO points to two recent examples, but does not name the offenders. 

In one case, a generator scheduled more power than it was capable of delivering and fell more than 1,600 megawatts short. 

A megawatt is enough to power roughly 750 homes. Separately, a generator did not follow ISO orders to deliver power needed to stabilize the system. 

“They have discussed that issue with us,” said Tamara Young, a spokeswoman with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. She was not sure when or how the FERC would act. 

The possibility of rolling blackouts increasingly has spread from California to the entire West as federal price controls designed to steer power toward California have taken effect. 

Jan Smutney-Jones, head of the Independent Energy Producers Association, an industry trade group, said confusion over FERC pricing rules which peg the price of power to a variety of factors may have led to the missed deliveries. 

“I think it’s important that FERC pick up the issue rapidly so we don’t face similar problems in the future,” Smutney-Jones said. “I think it’s very clear that system reliability is something everybody highly values and I don’t think anybody out there is trying to deliberately cause problems.” 

Fishman said on the last two days of May, some power companies charged more than the price limit suggested by FERC, but failed to justify their prices as required. The ISO has asked federal regulators to investigate, and hopes FERC will rescind questionable high prices and instead charge the sellers the set price for that day. 

An initial ISO review of power sales records showed 5,319 electricity transactions that exceeded the price limits by a total of $1.4 million on May 30 and 31. 

The last major failure on the Western grid was on July 2, 1996, when a tree growing too close to a high-voltage line in Idaho sparked outages across the region that affected 2 million customers. 

——— 

On the Net: 

http://www.caiso.com 

http://www.iepa.com 

http://www.ferc.gov 

Atop their slender stems, tawny daylilies wave cheery greetings from the roadsides. There are also garden varieties of these pretty plants. 

Some gardeners plant daylilies for food as well as beauty. Daylily is like a supermarket in one plant, with small, edible tubers below ground and an edible flower shoot and flowers above ground. In Asia, the flowers are eaten in all stages, from before they open until after they have wilted. In all these stages they also are dried for winter storage. 

As far as plants go, edible or ornamental, the daylily is unsurpassed for being easy to grow. Daylilies live for years and spread through underground roots, even when neglected. You can transplant daylilies any time of the year. Just give the plant well-drained soil in full sun or dappled shade. Insects or diseases rarely threaten daylilies. 

The beauty of naturalized daylilies, and their abundance, have not kept some gardeners from attempting to improve them further. The plant has been grown in Europe since the 16th century, but breeding began about a hundred years ago, when the first hybrid, “Apricot,” was introduced. 

Since then, thousands of new varieties of daylilies have been introduced – no easy task because innate sterility limits the set of viable seeds. Even among viable seeds, few grow into gardenworthy plants. Of 15,000 seedlings grown by A. B. Stout, working at the New York Botanical Garden and the premier daylily breeder of the early 20th century, only 14 seedlings were worth propagating for their flowers. 

Some typed of daylilies grow less than a foot high, others grow to five feet. And take your pick of colors, from creamy white to yellow, pink, orange or dusky red. 

You can also choose how much money you want to spend. Some of the common varieties are inexpensive, but newly introduced hybrids often fetch more than a hundred dollars per plant. Not bad for a near-weed! Incidentally, no less than a half-dozen books have been devoted exclusively to the daylily, among them “Daylilies, The Perfect Perennial,” by Lewis and Nancy Hill. 

Lee Reich is a features writer for The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Consumers, worried about layoffs and shrinking stock portfolios, continued their love affair with discounters in July, but the shift toward lower-priced stores left other top merchants with disappointing sales. 

As retailers reported sales figures Thursday, it was clear that value-oriented stores were the primary beneficiaries of a sales surge in recent weeks that some analysts attributed to the first wave of tax rebate spending and aggressive pricing. 

Kmart Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. Inc., both of which reported sales that beat Wall Street expectations, are showing signs of a solid turnaround. 

However, department stores, particularly Saks Inc. and Neiman Marcus, and apparel chains including Gap Inc. and The Limited Inc. suffered again, languishing amid piles of discounted summer apparel. 

Retailers catering to teens also had mixed results, leaving analysts uncertain about the back-to-school season. Teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, which reported a 14 percent drop in sales from stores open at least a year, saw its stock plummet 17 percent, or $6.14, to $30 on the New York Stock Exchange, after it issued a cautious outlook for the remainder of the year. 

“Unquestionably, the retail environment remains very difficult,” said Mike Jeffries, chairman and chief executive officer of Abercrombie & Fitch. 

Another economic report Thursday fed worries about a softening labor market that could continue to hurt consumer spending. After a three-week decline, new claims for state unemployment insurance rose last week, suggesting employers are letting more workers go. 

“The employment picture is pegged to the economy. Consequently, there will still be caution,” said Michael P. Niemira, vice president of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd. “The overall tone is that the climate is difficult and challenging.” But, he added “there are signs of hope,” and pointed to the sales improvement in the latter part of July. 

“Given the timing of the tax rebates and the sales pickup, one assumes that there is a direct relationship,” Niemira said. “The question is, how much will retailers be affected?” 

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has offered to cash rebate checks in its stores, and said that so far, consumers immediately spent about 25 percent of the money in Wal-Marts and 80 percent at Sam’s Clubs, depending on where they cashed their checks. 

The discounter said it had a 6 percent sales increase at stores open at least a year. These sales, known as same-store sales, are considered the best indicator of a retailer’s health. 

Saks, hurt by weakening demand for luxury products, reported same-store sales fell 4.8 percent, more than expected. The company, which operates Saks Fifth Avenue and department stores including Proffitt’s and Parisian, also said it expects second-quarter losses to be at least double what Wall Street expected. 

But AnnTaylor Stores Corp., although it reported a 17.4 percent drop in same-store sales, had some good news. The retailer said it expects second-quarter earnings to be a penny more than analyst projections. 

A pleasant surprise also came from Dillard’s Inc., which reported a 7 percent gain in same-store sales, beating expectations. 

July, with its big clearance sales, is one of the least important months in the retail calendar. But while August is more indicative of the back-to-school season, July usually offers a glimpse of where business is heading. The economy’s weakness is making it hard for analysts to make projections. 

“There is a lot of confusion about when all of this will end,” Niemira said. 

Many analysts are questioning retailers’ fall merchandising strategy: huge inventories of denim to boost sales. 

“There’s too much denim around, and while it will make some waves, it is likely to disappoint,” said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard Retail Trend Report, published in Montclair, N.J. 

Analysts are carefully watching how Gap, which reported a 12 percent drop in same-store sales, will fare for back to school with its heavy stock of denim clothes. 

WASHINGTON — After a three-week decline, new claims for state unemployment insurance rose last week, suggesting that some workers were having trouble holding onto their jobs in the sagging economy. 

The number of workers filing new applications for jobless benefits increased by a seasonally adjusted 33,000 to 385,000 for the work week ending Aug. 4, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That pushed claims to their highest level since mid-July. 

Claims had fallen sharply in the prior three weeks, offering hope that the rash of layoffs seen in recent months might be moderating a bit. 

This time of year the claims figures usually bounce around a lot as automobile plants temporarily shut down to retool for new models and then later call workers back, economists say. That volatility can make seasonal adjustments difficult, analysts say. 

Given that, economists tend to focus on another number as a barometer of the labor market’s health — the more stable four-week moving average of jobless claims. 

The moving average, which smoothes out week-to-week fluctuations, fell last week to 380,000, the lowest level since the end of March, a sign that layoffs could be easing. The four-week moving average has been down for three weeks in a row. 

In an effort to avert the first recession in the United States in 11 years, the Federal Reserve has cut short-term interest rates six times this year, totaling 2.75 percentage points. Many analysts believe the Fed will cut rates again at its next meeting Aug. 21. 

The yearlong economic slowdown has been hard on companies struggling with slumping demand. To cope, they have scaled back production and capital investment and laid off workers. In July, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.5 percent as businesses cut fewer workers than the month before. 

For the work week ending July 28, 13 states and territories reported an increase in jobless claims, while 39 reported a decrease. The state data lag a week behind the national figures and are not seasonally adjusted. 

On the Net: 

Jobless claims report: http://www.ows.doleta.gov/news 

/news.asp

NEW YORK — The world’s two largest Internet service providers, AOL Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, came out on the bottom of a customer satisfaction survey. 

The survey released Thursday of 1,640 dial-up modem users gave high marks to AT&T WorldNet, BellSouth Corp. and EarthLink Inc. for overall satisfaction. Consumer Reports magazine conducted the survey. 

MSN got the survey’s lowest overall rating, due to dissatisfaction with e-mail, technical support and reliability of its dial-up connections, said David Heim, the Yonkers, N.Y.-based magazine’s managing editor. 

“If you’re paying $20 for a busy signal it’s not going to make you a happy camper,” Heim said. 

Respondents also identified AOL as unreliable in terms of quick and sustained dial-up access, said Heim. 

“What seemed to matter most was being able to get on line in a hurry and stay online without being kicked off,” he said. 

Sixty percent of AOL users answering the survey reported an interruption in their connection during the previous month, the worst rating among all ISPs examined, Heim said. 

Users of AOL-owned CompuServe rated it next-worst for dropped connections, Heim said. 

Conversely, just 33 percent of AT&T WorldNet and EarthLink services reported similar disconnections, he said. 

AT&T WorldNet was the top choice for connection speed and reliability and offered the best array of low-cost plans. 

Users also gave AT&T’s e-mail service highest ratings. 

Technical support assessments also favored the higher-rated providers and panned AOL, CompuServe and MSN, said Heim. 

“We’re not painting AOL out to be a horrible company,” said Heim. “They still kept a majority of the respondents satisfied. AT&T just did a much better job overall.” 

MSN product manager Mark Wain said Microsoft continues to upgrade its service to keep pace with growth in its user base. 

“We’re building out as fast as we can,” Wain said. “It’s an ongoing process for us.” 

AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein declined to comment on the specifics of the survey. “Our members have never been more satisfied,” he said noting that the magazine gave AOL high marks in ease of use and other areas. 

The survey users reported choosing AOL — the world’s largest Internet service provider, with 30 million users — primarily to communicate with friends and access its user-friendly Web browser. AOL was also chosen for strong parental controls, the magazine reported. 

The magazine’s September issue will carry a full report of the survey, which asked about overall satisfaction, connection availability, speed and interruptions, support, e-mail and downloads. 

——— 

On the Net: 

Consumer Reports magazine: http://www.consumerreports.org 

While last year’s study by the city’s Health Department uncovered shocking statistics on the disparities between the longevity and health of hill-dwelling whites compared to flatlands’ minorities, one Berkeley program has found what could be the key to turning those numbers around. 

The answer’s not in a complex biotechnical discovery. Rather, it’s old as mothers themselves – breast milk. 

Breast-fed babies benefit from the anti-bodies their moms pass on to them, said Dr. Vicki Alexander, who heads the Health Department’s Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Division. In an interview at Cedar-Rose Park, where a group of breast-feeding moms and public health staff gathered Tuesday, Alexander said breast-fed babies are healthier, not only in their infancy, but throughout life. “There is less asthma, fewer ear infections,” she said. 

“And they are more content,” chimed in Ido Weiss, standing nearby. Weiss is a mother of four, including 4-month old Noa, whom she is breast-feeding. 

The Tuesday picnic was sponsored by the city’s WIC program. Women, Infants and Children is a U.S. Department of Agriculture project that offers low-income pregnant and nursing mothers and their young children food vouchers as well as health education programs. 

Berkeley WIC has a unique project, funded last year by The California Endowment. Under the guidance of Ellen Sirbu, 35-year city employee, who has been at the helm of the WIC program since it came to Berkeley 26 years ago, a peer-counseling program has been put in place, pairing trained coaches, most of them former WIC recipients, with new moms. Over one year, counselors see more than 2,000 women, supporting them in person and by phone. Many are seen soon after giving birth at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. 

Many are educated even before they deliver their babies. 

Yvonne Dugue, expecting her first baby in the middle of next month, came to the picnic directly from one of WIC’s classes for expectant mothers. The class was especially important to Dugue, who said she wasn’t breast-fed herself and did not grow up around breast-feeding moms. At the class breast-feeding techniques were discussed, as well as some of the difficulties the new mothers would expect to encounter. Best of all, “There’s a lot of support,” Dugue said, 

Socorro Rodriguez stopped breast-feeding two-year-old Zaida just last month. Through interpreter Estela Aranda, Rodriguez talked about the breast infection she suffered during the first weeks of nursing. “I called WIC and someone came out (to help),” she said, her toddler in her arms. Another WIC mom said her coach even came over on a Sunday to help her overcome a problem. 

WIC lends its coaches’ experience and support and also equipment, such as breast pumps for working moms. Coaches are matched to new moms according to specific needs such as language, culture, number of children or whether the mom will be returning to work while breast-feeding. 

Even women who come from homes where breast-feeding was commonplace say they welcome the coaching and attention they get from their counselors. “It’s nice to have somebody interested,” said Ido Weiss, who is from Israel, where she said breast-feeding in public is well-accepted, except in the most traditional religious communities. 

Where to breast feed can be a delicate question. Paula Bryant, a peer counselor, former WIC mom and nursing mother, said the program encourages mothers to use a sling in which the baby can be carried and discretely breast-fed. She touts the El Cerrito Target Store, which she says has a comfortable private space for nursing moms. 

Bryant, who gave birth to her first child five years ago when she was 16, said she particularly likes working with young moms. “I needed all the help I could get,” she said of her adolescent motherhood. When they understand the benefits breast-feeding has for babies, young mothers will nurse their children, she says. 

Bryant, who is African American, said she has found reluctance in the black community to breast-feed. 

Perinatal Services Coordinator Margaret Thomas, also an African American, says that in the black community the notion of bottles and formula may be linked, in people’s minds, to affluent life-styles and that people may equate breast-feeding to poverty. “There’s not a lot of support for breast-feeding (in the African American community),” she said. 

Thomas added that “for the MTV crowd, breasts are seen as sexual objects.” 

Alexander says, with support for nursing mothers, there is definitely hope. Before the intensive peer counseling program began, some 15 percent of African American mothers in the WIC program nursed their new-borns. After one year of the program, the statistics improved to 24 percent. She expects the numbers will continue to grow. 

Mother-to-be Yvonne Dugue sums up the challenge: “It’s a real natural experience that takes effort and work.” 

Lorenzo Alexander is used to being the big dog on the block. He dominated the gridiron for four years at St. Mary’s High in Berkeley, using his massive 287-pound frame to push around smaller opponents. But after his first two practices for the Cal football team this week, he admitted that size isn’t the biggest factor in his mission to start for the Bears this season. 

“The biggest adjustment I have to make is the speed of the other players,” Alexander said Wednesday after the second and last newcomers practice on Witter Field. “Everyone’s going to be as big as me, so I have to be quicker.” 

But after a full day of drills with fellow linemen Josh Gustaveson and Tom Canada (both junior college transfers), it was apparent Alexander is the quickest of Cal’s new linemen. 

“His first step is outstanding, and puts him at the top of the heap among our new guys,” defensive line coach Bill Dutton said. “He’s fast and athletic, maybe more than I’ve seen in the past few years out here.” 

With the defensive line unsettled after the loss of senior stalwarts Andre Carter and Jacob Waasdorp, Alexander could indeed find himself a starter before Pac-10 play starts on Sept. 22. But despite the freshman’s obvious physical talent, Dutton is quick to say that Alexander will have to prove himself at the Bears’ camp in Turlock for the next two weeks. 

Dutton, who is in his fourth year with the Cal program, said Alexander compares favorably with Carter at a similar stage in his career. Dutton pointed out that Carter was a sophomore when Dutton first coached him, which means Alexander could potentially progress even further than Carter, who was the No. 7 pick in the 2001 NFL Draft. But Alexander is likely to play defensive tackle for the Bears, while Carter played defensive end. Carter was also known for being one of the best-conditioned athletes on the Cal team, as well being a player who never let up for a single play. 

“(Alexander) has to pass the gut check, prove that he has the heart and determination to play at his highest level all the time,” Dutton said. “If you come back and ask in two weeks when we get back, then I’ll really know if he’s ready to have an impact.” 

The Bears’ most highly-ranked recruit, Alexander is unsure whether he should be looking forward to Turlock. The heat is usually oppressive, and he will be practicing in pads for the first time at the college level. He knows it will be make-or-break time for him to earn playing time in his first year. 

“I’ve heard a lot of bad stuff about Turlock from the older players,” he said. “But I know I have to play my best if I want to be on the field this year, and it’s a good opportunity to show the coaches what I can do. I’m learning new techniques every day out here, and I want to use them as much as I can.”

Thursday, Aug. 9,/h3> 

 

Berkeley stands against Boy Scout Discrimination 

5 p.m. 

City Hall 

2180 Milvia St. 

Demonstration opposing the Boy Scouts’ policy of discriminating against homosexuals. 

521-9441 

 

Ancient Native Sites  

of the East Bay 

7:30 p.m. 

Room 160 Kroeber Hall, University of California Campus 

Sean Dexter, archaeologist, will discuss the recent Data Recovery Program at the Emeryville Shellmound/South Bayfront site. Jakki Kehl, a Mutsun Ohlone, will discuss protecting cultural resources by developing partnerships and encouraging good stewardship of the land. $10 

841-2242 

 

Community Health Commission 

6:45 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis St. (@ Ashby) 

Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for Alta Bates expansion. 

644-6109 

 

Salsa Dance Classes 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 

1414 Walnut St. 

Classes every Thursday with live percussionists, light refreshments, DJ playing Latin music. $10 or $15 for two. 

237-9874 

 

Sea Kayaking 

7 p.m. 

REI 

1338 San Pablo Avenue 

Learn about the best sea kayaking spots in Northern California from Roger Schumann and Jan Shriner. Free. 527-4140 

 

Free Computer Class for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call for a reservation. 

644-6109 

 

Kensington 55+ Activity Center 

9 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Social Hall of Arlington Community Church 

52 Arlington Ave. 

Conversation, computer instruction, massage therapy, German conversation group, meditation and relaxation techniques, art and more. Neighborhood disaster preparedness program: 11 a.m. 

526-9146 

 

Religion and Public Life 

in Pacific and  

Asian North America 

5:30 p.m. reception, 7 p.m. panel discussion 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business 

The relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life.  

849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

 

---

Friday, Aug. 10

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave.  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Meeting Fridays through Aug. 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

548-8283 x534 

Even Stronger Women 

1:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Free weekly cultural discussion class. This week: Tales of Murasaki. 549-1879 

Religion and Public Life in Pacific and  

Asian North America 

8:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business 

The conference goes through Aug. 11, and will focus on the relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life. 849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Yiddish Conversation Group 

1 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Saturday, Aug. 11

Sixth Annual Reggae Worldbeat Festival  

Noon - 5 p.m.  

People’s Park  

Telegraph & Haste St.  

Featuring: Obeyjah & The Saints with the Village Culture Drummers, Dancehall King; Major P., Wawa Sylvestre and The Oneness Kingdom Band and many more.  

Free 

Religion and Public Life  

in Pacific and  

Asian North America 

8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business  

The conference goes through Aug. 11, and will focus on the relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life. 849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Sunday, Aug. 12

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn front and rear derailleur adjustments from one of REI’s bike technicians. Tools provided. Bring a bike. Free.  

527-4140 

Buddhist Architecture In the West 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Mark Henderson on “Building a Buddhist Temple.” Free. 843-6812 

Steel Drums and Sand Castles 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Kirk Rademaker teaches sand sculpting while Richmond Bloco entertains with steel drum music. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 654-6346 

Opus Q Auditions 

7 - 9 p.m. 

The University Lutheran Chapel 

2425 College Ave. 

Opus Q - The East Bay Men’s Chorale is preparing for its first full season. Gay men and their allies are invited to audition.  

664-0260 www.opus-q.com 

Monday, Aug. 13

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women age 20 - 70. No appointment is needed. No remuneration.  

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

Section 8 Resident Council Meeting 

5:30 - 8:30 p.m. 

East Bay Community Law Center 

3122 Shattuck Ave. 

Section 8 recipients and concerned citizens can tell the Resident Council their concerns about the program.  

Free Seminar on Ayurveda 

1 - 2 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

The basic principles of Ayurveda for maintaining health and balance.  

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Tuesday, Aug. 14

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share slides and learn what other photographers are doing.  

Monthly field trips. 

525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Free Early Music Group 

10 - 11:30 a.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Small group sings madrigals and other voice harmony every Tuesday.  

655-8863 

Free Computer Class for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 644-6109 

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck (at Berryman) 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women ages 20 - 70. No appointment is needed; no remuneration. 

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

Free market has rules 

Editor: 

If I may be indulged another response, I feel compelled to correct a misconception about free markets as expressed by Robert Clear (Aug.. 6) when he stated that an “unregulated market has no way of dealing with externalities.” An externality is an uncompensated effect of an activity such as pollution.In a truly free market, there are property rights to all resources, so when a polluter invades other people’s property, including their bodies, with such poison, he gets sued for trespass and damages. This payment eliminates the externality and creates incentives to minimize the pollution. Contrary to critics, a pure market does not mean “anything goes” but rather has ethical rules prohibiting and penalizing harm to others. 

Fred Foldvary 

Berkeley 

Citizens’ group okayed projects council approved 

Editor: 

I’m amused by the Planning Department’s choice of the redevelopment projects to describe successful projects which are being overlooked. Most of these projects were approved by the Council in 1994 and the live/work project at 1631 5th St. was approved in May of 1987. The Project Area Committee and the residents of West Berkeley have been working tirelessly for years to get these projects underway but much of their time is spent trying to scale back much needed repairs to make up for constantly rising construction costs and a budget which is whittled away by administrative and (Planning Department) staff costs which average $500,000 a year.  

Redevelopment is a state program funded by money which is diverted from the county. Redevelopment is not a city program and it’s just as well.  

There aren’t too many city projects which would be allowed to run up over $3 million in staff costs over 6 years without ever putting a shovel into the dirt.  

Rhiannon 

Berkeley 

Remember the surplus? 

Editor: 

Last November, the Democrats asked voters, “what part of ‘Peace and Prosperity’ do you want to change”? 

Remember the revenue surplus? It was supposed to pay for social security, health care, and reduce the national debt. Now, we see that Bush’s tax refund for the rich must be paid for by additional borrowing that increases the debt. Consumers are paying extortionary prices for energy to Bush’s backers, while our environmental health is being deregulated. 

Other nations look aghast at us, as the Bush government breaks international treaties that have kept the peace for 30 years, and disclaims new treaties designed to prevent the catastrophe of global warming. 

Last November, a half-million-strong majority answered, “neither,” but Bush stole the election anyway, and is sledgehammering away at both peace and prosperity. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

Mayor probably tried to save scout situation 

Editor:  

Although I don’t know all the facts in the furor over the Japanese Boy Scout incident, because of Berkeley’s unique relationship with the media, a minor, local matter can easily be expanded into an international crisis.  

My instincts tell me that our mayor, Shirley Dean, tried to make the best out of a potentially embarrassing situation created by the ever mischievous councilmember, Kris Worthington. Give credit to our mayor who tried to make a positive spin and save face for Berkeley’s liberal image.  

As for Worthington, I would like to see him banished from Berkeley, preferably confined to Al Capone’s former cell on Alcatraz island. Exile after all was the punishment the Greeks in ancient Athens imposed on politicians who abused their public office.  

Dennis Kuby  

Berkeley  

UA Homes problems can be solved  

Editor: 

It would be a mistake to read Jon Mays’ article “After years of promise, UA Home slips” and walk away with the notion that housing for the homeless is not secure or is unsupervised and riddled with illegal activity.  

Many of the formerly homeless individuals who reside at UA Homes and similar buildings have mental health and other health problems, and permanent housing with supportive services ended what in many cases was years of homelessness. The Corporation for Supportive Housing has worked with Resources for Community Development (which owns UA Homes) and other Alameda County supportive housing providers for the past nine years in an effort to increase the number of high quality supportive housing units for the homeless. 

Is illegal drug activity appropriate at UA Homes? No. Should such activity be stopped? Yes. But just as illegal drug activity should not be tolerated, we should also not tolerate inadequately funding supportive housing such as UA Homes that try to improve the health and increase the self-sufficiency of formerly homeless individuals. In order to provide quality supportive housing, UA Homes must have sufficient funding to provide the necessary health and human services, community/resident activities and vocational/employment services to chronically homeless individuals.  

While Mr. Mays’ article repeatedly hints that decreased funding is one of the underlying problems, it is never explicitly stated. Adequate and predictable funding has not been available to continue vital social services and resident activities, ensure appropriate property management and support organizations like RCD that are willing to take the risks necessary to create and own this kind of housing.  

Providing supportive housing to formerly homeless individuals will cost more than what is currently allocated for this purpose in Alameda County.  

But the cost of providing supportive housing is far less expensive than the hospitals and jails that house the homeless when they are not in supportive housing. I was heartened by the quotes indicating that Mayor Shirley Dean is still interested in maintaining on-site services for UA Home residents. The Mayor, along with many others, recognizes that the long-term solution to chronic homelessness is housing with support services. Communities throughout California and across the nation deliver excellent supportive housing with adequate government support. We can do better in Alameda County. 

Like most supportive housing sites, UA Homes has a “good neighbor policy” to make sure that it works with community residents and others to develop and operate quality housing sites. I strongly believe that by working with its surrounding community, with the support of Alameda County and the City of Berkeley, and with the involvement of its tenants, UA Homes will be able to address the community’s concerns, enhance its provision of quality supportive housing and have a positive impact on the neighborhood.  

Tangerine M. Brigham 

Program Director, Corporation for Supportive Housing 

Oakland 

Subject:  

midsummer games 

Date:  

Wed, 08 Aug 2001 15:58:34 -0700 

From:  

J M Sharp  

To:  

More on our local Wimbleton, Judith. Here's another serve from the CM into the University's court. J 

________________ 

August 3, 2001 

Edward J Denton, AIA 

Vice Chancellor -- Capital Projects 

University of California, Berkeley 

644 Barrows Hall 

Berkeley, CA 94720 

Dear Ed: 

Thank you for your letter of July 31, 2001 about the NEQSS Draft EIR. I appreciate the generous offer to 

extend the comment period through August 15, 2001. This would allow the City staff and interested 

community members some additional time to prepare comments to the document and the campus' proposed 

plans. 

I would, however, appreciate it if the campus were to offer an even longer extension on the comment period 

for the NEQSS Draft EIR. As you must know, the projects proposed in the Draft EIR will have a 

substantial impact on the campus and its immediate environs. The City Council, community members and 

the City staff are deeply concerned that even with the extension you proposed there will not be enough time 

to develop the thorough and in-depth analysis/response deemed necessary by community stakeholders. 

A longer extension would push back the date when the Final EIR for the NEQSS projects went to the 

Regents for approval. Should that happen, then the future Regents' meeting with the NEQSS Final EIR 

approval would likely not be held in the Bay Area (with easier access for community members). I would 

prefer, of course, to have the Final EIR meeting convened where our community can directly comment to the 

Regents. I believe, however, that a longer comment period for the Draft EIR is more important than 

convenient access to that future meeting. 

Therefore, I again request that the campus extend the Draft EIR comment period for a full 60 days to 

October 1, 2001. An extended timeline is essential so that full community input can be garnered on the 

wide variety of project impacts outlined in my letter of July 26 to Chancellor Berdahl. These impacts are 

significant enough to warrant an extended comment period to the NEQSS Draft EIR. 

Sincerely, 

Weldon Rucker 

City Manager 

cc: Mayor and Members, City Council 

Chancellor Robert Berdahl, UCB 

Wendy Cosin, Acting Planning Director 

Tom Lollini, Planning Director, UCB  

Tax refund 

Dear Daily Planet,  

We sent half the refund to the Alameda County Community Food Bank and the  

second half to the Children’s Hospital Foundation.  

Marian Wolfe  

Berkeley  

843-4193  

MUSIC 

924 Gilman St. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Aug. 10: 90 Day Men, Assembly of God, Strong Intention, Under a Dying Sun; Aug. 11: Toys That Kill, Scared of Chakra, Soophie Nun Squad, Debris; Aug. 12: 5 p.m. Citizen Fish, J-Church, Eleventeen; Aug. 17: Blood Brothers, True North, The Cost, Red Light Sting, Betray The Species; Aug. 18: Dr. Know, The Sick, Society of Friends, Manchurian Candidates, Shut the F*ck Up; $5. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Anna’s Place Aug. 11 and every Saturday night 10:30 p.m. - midnight, Ducksan Distones. The following play at 8 p.m. – Aug. 8: “The Renegade Sidemen;” Aug. 7: open mic.1801 University Ave. 849-2662.  

Ashkenaz Aug. 9: 10 p.m. - 2 a.m. Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave. $5; Aug. 10: 9:30 p.m. O-Maya. $10; Aug. 11: 9:30 p.m. Afro-Muzika, featuring Nene Tchakou and Shimita El Diego. 9 p.m. dance lesson with Comfort Mensah. $11; Aug. 12: 9 p.m. Benefit for the Berkeley High School Ki-Swahili Club featuring: Dyin 2 Live, Rebels, Little Larry Koont, Nico Love, DJ Boo. $10; Aug. 14: 9 p.m. Tom Rigney & Flambeau. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Patti Whitehurst. $8; Aug. 15: 9 p.m. Jerri Jheto. $10. 1317 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054 www.ashkenaz.com  

Eli’s Mile High Club Doors open at 8 p.m. Aug. 11: Jimmy Mamou; Aug. 18: Craig Horton /CD Release; Aug. 25: Carlos Zialcita; Every Friday, 10 p.m. - 2 a.m., Funky Fridays Conscious Dance Party with KPFA DJs Splif Skankin and Funky Man. $10; 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 655-6661 

Freight and Salvage Coffee House All music at 8 p.m. Aug. 9: John Renbourn; Aug. 10: Jody Stecher, Kate Brislin; Aug. 11: Al Stewart. $16.50 - $19.50. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jupiter Aug. 9: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 10: Steven Emerson, singer/songwriter mixes cool jazz and sweat soul; Aug. 11: J Dogs, funk-soul; Aug. 14: Chris Shot Group, folk-rock and soul combo; Aug. 15: Lithium House, electro/drum & bass styles with live jazz; Aug. 16: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 17: The Mind Club, Old school funk grooves with sonic swirls of acid jazz; Aug. 18: Blue & Tan, Bassist Vicki Grossi brings in the crew for elctro-acid-jazz funk stylings; All music starts at 8:00 p.m. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK. 843-7625  

La Note/Jazzschool Aug. 12: 4:30 p.m. The Freedom Project, 5:30 Eli Sundelson Trio; Aug. 19: 4:30 p.m. Hazel Carter, 5:30 p.m. Bryan Girard & Friends, 6:30 p.m. T3 (Kirk Tamura Trio); Free. 2377 Shattuck Ave. 845-5373  

La Peña Cultural Center Aug. 10: 8:30 p.m. Ire $8; Aug. 11: 9:30 p.m. Fito Reynoso’s Ritmo y Armonia. $10, $13 for dance class starting at 8:15; Aug. 12: 5, 7:30 p.m. “Say Yo Business” Linda Tillery & The Cultural Heritage Choir. $18 in advance, $20 at the door; Aug. 17: 8:30 p.m. Music and dance performance by Jaranón y Bochinche, $12; Aug. 18: 8:30 p.m. Mission (roots hip hop), $8; Aug. 19: 3:30 p.m. Domingo de Rumba; Aug. 24: 8:30 p.m. Professor Terry’s Circus Band Extraordinary, $16; Aug. 25: 9:30 p.m., Edgardo Cambon’s Candela, $10, 8:15 p.m. Salsa dance class w/ Diego Vásquez, $13; In the Cafe, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568 

Shattuck Down Low Lounge Every Tuesday: 9:30 p.m., Posh Tuesdays with DJ’s Yamu, Delon, Add1, and Tequila Willie. Shattuck at Allston. www.thebeatdownsound.com  

Yoshi’s Through Aug. 12: Steve Turre Quintet, trombone and conch shell master in small group setting. Wednesday and Thursday, $18; Friday and Saturday, $22; Sunday matinee, $5 kids, $10 adults with one child, $18 general; Sunday, $22. Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 238-9200 www.yoshis.com 

3rd annual Berkeley World Music Festival Aug. 26: noon - 6 p.m. Block party and carnival, Grupo Ilu Fun Fun, Petit La Croix, Samba Ngo, O-Maya, Fito Reinoso y Su Ritmo y Armonia. Durant Ave. between Telegraph and Bowditch. 

ACME Observatory Aug. 19: 8 p.m. Solo performance by Jason Kahn, Brown Bunny Ensemble. $9.99 suggested donation. TUVA Space, 3192 Adeline @ MLK Jr. Way. 649-8744 http://sfSound.org/acme.html 

Ali Akbar College of Music Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m., A concert of Indian classical music. Rita Sahai, vocals; Rachel Untersher, violin; Madhukar Malayanur, tabla; $20 general; $15 students. St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., (415) 454-6264 or www.aacm.org 

Radisson Hotel Berkeley Marina Aug. 9: “Gratefully Yours” by pianist Jim Hudak, record release party. Free. Reception begins 6:30 p.m. 200 Marina Blvd. 925-673-7293 www.jhudak.com 

THEATER 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m. & Aug. 11, 12, 5 p.m. Campers from Stage Door Conservatory’s “On Broadway” program for grades 5-9 will perform Fiddler on the Roof, Jr. $12 adults, $8 kids. 2640 College Ave. 845-8542 ext. 302 

“The Great Sebastians” Through Aug. 11: Friday and Saturday evenings 8 p.m. plus Thursday, Aug. 9, presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. A tale about a mind-reading act touring behind the Iron Curtain. A communist general believes the act and “invites” the Sebastians to his villa where the humor and excitement follows. $10. Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck (at Berryman). For reservations call 528-5620 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through Aug. 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. Special dawn performance on Aug.ust 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

“Loot” Through Aug. 25, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Special Performance Aug. 20, 8:00 p.m. General Admission: $15, Students / Seniors: $10 La Val’s 1834 Euclid Avenue 655-0813 

“Reefer Madness” Aug. 9, Aug. 22, 23: 9 p.m. A new one-act theatre piece adapted from a 1936 government-funded film opens a critical eye to the control of our society. Performed by The Elemental Theatre Group La Pena Cultural Center 3105 Shattuck Avenue. Wednesdays are “pay what you can,” Thursdays $5 - $10. Contact Zachary Rouse or Tisha Sloan for more info at 655-4150 

“Romeo & Juliet” Aug. 11 - Sep 2, Tuesdays - Thursdays. Bruns Memorial Amphitheater. Shakespeare’s classic about a young couple that meets, falls in love and dies in just five days. Adults: $22 - $41 youth (under 16): $12 - $41. 

“Barnum” Through Aug. 12. The story of legendary circusmaster P.T. Barnum, with plenty of musical theater and circus acrobatics. Splash Circus’ aspiring young circus artists will perform an hour before each show. $15 to $27. Friday through Sunday, 8 p.m. Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland. 531-9597 www.woodminster.com 

FILMS 

“Roommates” Aug. 12: Max Apple’s true story of his immigrant grandfather who moved in with him when he was in college (in the 60’s). Peer led discussion following movie. $2 Suggested donation. Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 1414 Walnut Street 848-0237 

Pacific Film Archive Aug. 9: 7:30 p.m. The Return of Frank James; Aug. 10: 7 p.m. Alone on the Pacific, 9:05 p.m. Her Brother; Aug. 11: 7 p.m. While the City Sleeps, 9 p.m. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt; Aug. 12: 3 p.m. Charlotte’s Web, 5:30 p.m. Tokyo Olympiad; Aug. 14: 7:30 p.m. Odds and Ends; Aug. 15: 7:30 p.m. Angel, Angel, Down We Go; Aug. 16: 7:30 p.m. Rancho Notorious; Aug. 17: 7 p.m. Bonchi, 9:05 p.m. Money Talks; Aug. 18: 7 p.m. Ministry of Fear, 8:45 p.m. House by the River; Aug. 19: 3 p.m. National Velvet, 5:30 p.m. I Am Two, 7:15 I Am a Cat; Aug. 21: 7:30 p.m. The Direct Cinema Tradition; Aug. 22: 7:30 p.m. The Werewolf of Washington; Aug. 23: 7:30 p.m. Contempt; Aug. 24: 7 p.m. The Heart, 9:20 p.m. The Outcast; Aug. 25: 7 p.m. Moonfleet, 8:45 p.m. The Blue Gardenia; Aug. 26: 3 p.m. Duck Soup, 5:30 p.m. The Wanderers, 7:25 p.m. Dora-Heita; Aug. 28: 7:30 p.m. Doodling; Aug. 29: (free screenings) 7:30 p.m. The Horror of Party Beach, 9:15 p.m. The Crater Lake Monster; Aug. 31: 7 p.m. The Makioka Sisters, 9:35 p.m. A Woman’s Testament; Gen. Adm.. $7, The New PFA Theatre 2575 Bancroft Way 642-1412 

“Lumumba” Aug. 10: at Shattuck Cinemas. Biography of the slain African political figure Patrice Lumumba. In French with English subtitles. 

EXHIBITS 

“BACA National Juried Exhibition: Works on Paper” Through Aug. 31: Wed. - Sun. Noon - 5 p.m. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

“Debbie Moore’s Autobiographical Paintings” Through Sep 30 at Good Vibrations. Portraits of the artist’s sensual explorations spanning 25 years and reflecting changing ways of intimacy and body play. 2504 San Pablo Avenue 848-1985 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 – 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.  

“A Fine Line” Through Aug. 24, Tuesday - Friday, noon - 5 p.m. or by appointment. An exhibition works by Kala Fellowship winners for the years 2000 and 2001. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Avenue 549-2977 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through Aug. 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Road 649-2541 

“MFA Survey Exhibition 2001” Third annual exhibition of works of recent graduates from Bay Area master of Fine Art programs. This year featuring artists working in three-dimentional media. Through Aug. 18 Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth Street 527-1214 

“Musee des Hommages” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” Through Aug. 18: Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“The Political Art of: Diego Marcial Rios” Aug. 14 - Sept. 20, Addison Street Window Gallery, 2018 Addison St. hdrios@msn.com 

“Sistahs: Ethnofraphic Ceramics” through Aug. 22, Reception July 29 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. Womens Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Avenue 548-9286 ext. 307 

“Squared Triangle” Aug.13 through Oct. 5. noon - 6 p.m. Reception for the artists, Aug. 18: 4 - 7 p.m. A minimal art exhibit featuring three Bay Area artists working in different mediums while achieving the same elegant simplicity. The Crucible, 1036 Ashby Ave. 843-5511 www.thecrucible.com 

“Ten Years Here” Exhibit celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Turn of the Century Fine Arts. Through Sept. 14, Sat & Sun 1-5 p.m. Reception Aug. 4 2:00 - 7:00 p.m. 2510 San Pablo Avenue 849-0950 

Readings 

Boadecia’s Books Aug. 11: Trina Robbins discusses her latest work “Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitude”; Aug. 17: Lynne Murray reads from her latest Josephine Fuller mystery “At Large”; Aug. 18: “Hell on Heels” tour with Daphne Gottlieb and Thea Hillman; Aug. 24: Andrea Gabbard discusses “Girl in the Curl: A Century of Women’s Surfing”; Aug. 25: Ann Bannon reads from her lesbian pulp classic “Beebo Brinker.” All events start at 7:30 p.m. and are free. 398 Colusa Avenue 559-9184 www.bookpride.com 

Black Oak Books Aug. 9: Robert Clark reads from his new novel “Love Among the Ruins”; Aug. 15: Molly Giles reads from her debut novel “Iron Shoes”; Aug. 16: Mandy Aftel and her new book, “Essence and Alchemy: A Book of Perfume”; Aug. 19: “Wildest Alaska: Journeys of Great Peril in Lituya Bay” by Philip L. Fradkin; Aug. 21: June Jordan’s memoir “Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood”; Aug. 22: Ruth Daigon’s “Payday at the Triangle”; Aug. 23: Phil Cousineau’s “Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Modern Times”; Aug. 27: Catherine Brady, Jean Herlund, Frances Payne Adler, and Marianne Villanueva and others to celebrate CALYX Book’s 25th Anniversary, “Cracking the Earth”; Aug. 28: Kent Nerburn reads from “Road Angels: Searching for Home on America’s Coast of Dreams”; Aug. 29: Sylvia Brownrigg reads from her new novel, “Pages For You”; All shows at 7:30 p.m. free of charge. 1491 Shattuck Avenue 486-0698 

Café de la Paz Poetry Nitro performance showcase with open mike. Aug. 13:Shailja Patel; Aug. 20: Avotcja; 6:30 p.m. signup, 7 - 9 p.m. reading. 1600 Shattuck Ave. 843-0662 

Cody’s Books - Poetry Flash Aug. 15: Poet’s Dinner Contest Anthology Reading, David AlpAug.h, Martha Bosworth, Tim Nuveen, Charlene Villella, read from their new anthology, Remembering, 25 years of first and grand prize-winning poems at the annual Poets Dinner Contest; Aug. 22: Trane Devore and Shauna Hannibal; All are a $2 donation. Readings at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 2454 Telegraph Ave. 845-0837 

Coffee Mill Poetry Series Aug. 21: Featured Readers: Victoria Joyce and Therese Bamberger; Both 7-9 p.m. Free. 3363 Grand Ave., Oakland for info. (510)465-3935 or (510)526-5985, or Email: ksdgk@earthlink.net 

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Fridays 9:30 - 11:45 a.m. or by appointment. Call ahead to make reservations. Free. University of California, Berkeley. 486-4387 

Golden Gate Live Steamers Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. 486-0623  

Museums 

Habitot Children’s Museum “Back to the Farm” An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more. “Recycling Center” Lets the kids crank the conveyor belt to sort cans, plastic bottles and newspaper bundles into dumpster bins. $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. (closed Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day) Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 647-1111 or www.habitot.org  

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur 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 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. 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 will close its exhibition galleries for renovation on October 1. It will reopen in early 2002. On View until October 1, 2001: “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture.” “Sites Along the Nile: Rescuing Ancient Egypt.” “The Art of Research: Nelson Graburn and the Aesthetics of Inuit Sculpture.” “Tzintzuntzan, Mexico: Photographs by George Foster.” $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. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648 or www.qal.berkeley.edu/~hearst/ 

Lawrence Hall of Science “Science in Toyland,” through Sept. 9. Exhibit uses toys to demonstrate scientific principles and to help develop children's thinking processes. Susan Cerny’s collection of over 200 tops from around the world. “Space Weather,” through Sept. 2. Learn about solar cycles, space weather, the cause of the Aurorae and recent discoveries made by leading astronomers. This interactive exhibit lets visitors access near real-time data from the Sun and space, view interactive videos and find out about a variety of solar activities. “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. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 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. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. “How Big Is the Universe?” Aug. 1 through Aug. 24. Learn how to determine the distance of celestial objects, one of the purposes of the Hubble Space Telescope. Daily, 2:15 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, 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu 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, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu  

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall. 

Send arts events two weeks in advance to Calendar@berkeleydailyplanet.net, 2076 University, Berkeley 94704 or fax to 841-5694. 

In an effort to ease the adjustment into high school for 60 at-risk students, an “all-star” cast of Berkeley High teachers have spent this week showing the students around campus and sharing strategies for survival.  

In four 50-minute periods each morning, they’ve worked to strengthen the students’ reading, writing and math skills – and to expose them to the pleasures of artistic expression. 

It’s all part of a summer “bridge” program that school administrators hope will give students the tools and connections they need to avoid being overwhelmed at Berkeley High. 

“We want to eliminate the fear factor of that first day or that first week at Berkeley High or any high school,” said Berkeley High Principal Frank Lynch. 

For students who struggle academically in Berkeley middle schools, the increased academic rigor of Berkeley High School can come as a quite a shock. 

Students who may have never written a full-page essay before are suddenly confronted with the need to write half-a-dozen essays each semester. Students who never completely mastered multiplication and division find themselves grappling with algebraic equations. 

Last year, nearly 200 Berkeley High freshman were failing two or more classes by the end of their first semester. 

Wyn Skeels, a Berkeley High history teacher who has spent the week touring the students around the 17-acre campus and going over the courses they’ll need to graduate, said the summer bridge program is an effort to transform disadvantaged students into advantaged ones. 

The students are learning everything they need to know about tutoring services, mentoring programs, the student health center and more, Steels said: “Things that they would normally only find out about when they really need it, or after they need it.” 

At the health clinic, for example, staff “can’t even give (a student) a Tylenol” until they have taken a form home to get it signed by their parents, Steels said. And yet many students first visit to the center comes when they are already sick.  

After a tour of the center this week, the bridge program students took the appropriate forms home for signatures. 

In writing class, students worked in small groups with volunteer writing tutors from the Writer’s Room program. After reading a Maya Angelou essay meditating on how a person’s choice of clothing can reflect his or her identity, the tutors brainstormed ideas with the students, telling them again and again to “write that down.”  

Students who had begun the class looking wary and noncommittal seemed amazed to learn how quickly a casual conversation could segue into paragraphs of written observations. 

“They’re learning to write the basic essay structure that they’ll use throughout school,” said Writer’s Room tutor Wendy Breuer. “Hopefully they’ll go home and write another draft.” 

In art class, Berkeley High painting and drawing teacher Sally Wolfer sees the bridge program as an opportunity to awaken students to the school’s wide array of art classes – elective courses that students who don’t think of themselves as artists might not have considered otherwise. 

“What’s kind of cool is you open up kids to their own potential,” Wolfer said. “I want to turn them on and give them a passion about art and having a creative voice.” 

Since bridge program students failed some classes as eighth graders, they’ve already been through six weeks of remedial summer school before going into the bridge program. So it’s key, said Wolfer and others, not to overburden them with work this week. Rather, the teachers aim to give the students positive experiences that they hope will build some enthusiasm for their first days of school. 

“As much as you want to give them the academic support, we’re trying to do it creatively,” Wolfer said. 

In between classes, the students have 20 minute snack breaks to hang out in the Berkeley High courtyard and socialize. On Thursday there will be a full-fledged barbecue.  

One key role of the summer program, said program coordinator Meg Matan, an English teacher at Berkeley High, is to allow the kids to build relationships with teachers, safety officers and other high school staff – people they can turn to for support during the regular year.  

Berkeley High Parent Liaison Irma Parker dropped in on an art class Wednesday to explain to students that she was there to answer any questions their parents might have once school begins. She warned the students that high school is a different world than middle school: a place where choosing the wrong friends could have serious implications for the rest of their lives. She reminded them that a new truancy policy at the school will be in effect this fall, so that anything the students might have heard about how easy it is to skip class at Berkeley High no longer applies. 

“Everybody is going to be looking for you guys.,” Parker said. “You won’t be able to have some of the freedom that the other kids had.” 

But above all, Parker emphasized to the students that she was ready and willing to be “their mother away from home” should they ever need someone to talk to. 

“Believe me, I will help you guys get whatever you need.” 

While many of the students in the room continued to listen to their Walkman radios while Parker spoke, her words carried what must have been a welcome message to some. Summer bridge program students have yet to overcome all their fears about the transition to high school. 

“I was a genius in middle school,” said a recent Willard Middle School graduate who gave her name as Chasady D. She said she was somewhat intimidated by the harder work load of high school. During the regular school year, “You don’t get that much help (at Berkeley High), like we’re used to from Middle school,” she said. 

Berkeley High history, economics and government teacher Thomasine Wilson gave students a basic reading assessment test Wednesday, as part of a new effort to identify students’ specific deficits early and connect them with appropriate intervention. She, like the other summer bridge teachers, was impressed with their energy and warmth. 

“It’s so hard to look at them and think of them as ‘at risk’ kids, because they’re so verbal and they have such plans for themselves,” Wilson said. “There’s a kind of empowerment that they need to have. The more they know, the more they feel that they have some control over the institution, instead of the institution just sort of wanging them about.” 

The summer bridge program is all about empowerment. What remains to be seen, according to Wolfer, is whether it will be enough. 

“The sad thing is, you start to nurture a small group of kids, and then you turn them loose in a school of 3,400 kids. It’s not smart. Imagine the progress we could make with these kids (if they remained in a small group).” 

California junior forward Laura Schott was picked as a second team preseason All-American by College-Soccer.com.  

This honor comes on the heels of Schott helping lead the United States last week to its third-consecutive Nordic Cup title. The Wilsonville, Ore., product scored a goal and three assist at the most elite competition in the world for Under-21 women.  

Schott earned first team All-America honors from the NSCAA and Soccer Buzz for the 2001 collegiate soccer season after leading the Pac-10 with both 47 points and 23 goals.

To access the Multi-Agency Service Center near downtown, clients walk down a narrow passage next to the Veterans Memorial Building on Center Street until it opens up onto a cloistered, courtyard garden. 

It’s Wednesday morning and about 15 people are in the Solid Ground Courtyard having casual conversations in the mid-morning sun among brightly colored marigolds, daisies and pink cushions. 

Down a flight of stairs from the courtyard, the daytime center is in full swing. Jazz comes from a speaker system, the fresh scent of body lotion is in the air and five MASC staff members are busy providing myriad services to the 90 or so homeless that drop into the center each day since it first opened in 1995. 

Berkeley’s homeless can access a host of services including basic conveniences like showers, voice mail and free bus passes to more intensive services like medical attention, mental health referrals and crisis intervention. 

Some clients, like Reggie Davis, a vendor on Telegraph Avenue, have been coming to the center for years. Others, like 22-year-old Jessica Daniel who just arrived in the area from out of state, go to the center two or three times a week to shower and get cleaned up. 

MASC Coordinator Robert Long jokes with clients as he walks along a row of offices near the respite area, where clients read magazines while waiting to take showers. Long is casually dressed and with his dark sunglasses and ponytail, he is hard to separate from the 30 or so clients in the center. He clearly enjoys talking with the clients and his good-natured cheerfulness appears to lighten the overall mood of the center. 

A few moments later, in a small office off the main room, Long puts his sunglasses on a table and becomes intently serious as he talks about the importance of the services MASC offers and the frustration of not having the resources to offer more.  

“We see this as an entrance point to the system for the homeless and we can’t really deal with addictions, which is one of the causes of homelessness,” Long said. 

During the last round of Community Service Block Grants, which are federal and state grants distributed by the City Council, the Homeless Commission recommended a $30,000 cut in MASC’s grant. According to Jane Micallef, the commission’s secretary, it was because of the center’s failure to hire an addiction counselor. 

“$30,000 had been awarded to the MASC for the previous two years,” Micallef said. “The money was supposed to go the hiring of a counselor who was never hired and the commission recommended that funding not be awarded again.” 

boona cheema, the Executive Director of Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency, the umbrella organization that oversees MASC and 26 other homeless programs in Alameda County, said the city is saying that to try to justify taking the money from the program. 

cheema said, that in fact, there was a staff person being groomed for the addiction counseling position, but he was also managing a full load of clients and couldn’t focus on establishing the new program. She said once the staff person was prepared to focus on the program he was offered another job with better pay and benefits. 

cheema said the cutback has left MASC understaffed and with an inadequate budget. 

“I have never worked with a group as committed as the staff at the MASC,” she said. “They put in long hours and don’t have time to take a break or chill out a little bit and they are responsible for so many people.” 

MASC is budgeted at $388,000 for fiscal year 2001-02 and cheema said the center is expected to see a shortfall of $50,000. She added that she has already laid off five staff members from other BOSS programs because of unanticipated overhead expenses. 

“This was a very bad time to cut those funds because we were really hurt by high energy costs this year,” she said. “I’ll have to raise that money one way or another.” 

Because of the ongoing shortage of funds for addiction counseling, Long said he has instituted a controversial method of drug and alcohol treatment known as harm reduction.  

The theory is that there a large percentage of addicts who won’t seek any treatment that involves total abstinence and if they instead follow reduction techniques they can reduce harm to themselves and family. 

“We simply try to point out the benefits to quality of life by not drinking or using so much,” he said. 

Long said the hope is that clients will eventually subscribe to abstinence programs. He said the harm reduction techniques have been successful and that they have saved the lives of at least two MASC clients. 

Some addiction specialists disagree with the theory and claim harm reduction simply enables and prolongs addictive behavior. Dr. Davida Coady, Director of Options for Recovery, which is also located in the Veterans Memorial Building, said harm reduction is a dangerous approach. 

“My experience is that it just doesn’t work for people who have severe or moderate addictions,” she said. “We have people come in here on the brink of death and many of them have been trying harm reduction techniques.” 

Long said many of the addicts that come to MASC have been homeless for years and have few prospects for finding housing or work. He said the level of despair and hopelessness they experience is not conducive to dealing with addiction. 

“I can’t go out there and say ‘all right we’re going to an AA meeting and you’re going to continue to live on the street and continue to be homeless and never drink again,’” he said. “My bottom line is abstinence but how do you do that? How do you get them there?”

Few would imagine as they pass Claire Burch’s quiet wooden house in south Berkeley, that they are walking by historical archives. 

Inside the house, hundreds of video tapes carefully labeled fill the shelves of all the rooms and hallways. In the office, more tapes, catalogs of the database, a computer, and television monitors, occupy most of the space. 

For 20 years, Claire Burch a visual artist and writer who moved from New York City to Berkeley in 1978, has taken her High 8 video camera with her wherever she goes. Almost every day, she hits the roads of Berkeley filming the life of the city’s homeless, runaways, and people on the fringe. 

Today her collection of videos is what she calls “a sociological archive of life stories of street survivors.” It comprises about 3,000 hours of edited and unedited film, which documents the history of People’s Park from 1980 on with a specific focus on the arts. 

“When we came here, I got involved in filming People’s Park because I began to know many of the people,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out why some very talented people in this country were on the street not doing anything with their work and living in ways that made it hard for them to do it.” 

What Burch does is social work: she documents the challenges street artists face and simultaneously helps them find venues for their work. Art and Education Media, the nonprofit organization she founded in 1989, not only produces and distributes documentaries about street people, it also offers social services referrals and artistic training to runaways, parolees, addicts and people with mental illness. 

“I find that as the camera follows them, I begin to love some of them and I want a better and happier life for many of them,” said Burch as she explained her motivation. “When the camera follows people almost daily, you begin to see the whys of their life, the camera begins to be more forgiving.” 

But today Burch worries about her collection. At night, she says, she has a recurrent nightmare. In her dream all her tapes are on sale at the Ashby flee market and teenagers record music videos on them. 

“It’s scary,” said Burch. “If I could have digital copies and store them in some safe place I would just feel that it’s not all going to disappear.” 

With the exception of a few video films that are available at UC Berkeley Moffitt Library and at the Berkeley Public Library, all the footage Burch accumulated in the past two decades is stored in her house. A fire or any other catastrophe, she fears, could to destroy unique documents. 

That is why she is currently working with five volunteers to raise the funds that are necessary to hire staff, upgrade the organization’s equipment, and digitize the archives. 

“We’re in the process of putting together a very strong database and we’re seeking funding,” said Elaine Marie Lawton, an artist and photographer volunteering at Art and Education Media. As she gets older, Lawton added, Burch wants to solidify the organization to make sure the archives will live beyond her.  

“We are trying to preserve the organization as itself and not have it depend too much on her.” 

For additional information or to make donations to the Art and Education Media, visit the following Web Site: http://www.claireburch.com 

SANTA MONICA — More than ever last year, beachgoers around the country found their plans dampened by warnings to keep away from the water. 

The number of beach closings and advisories nationwide nearly doubled last year, from 6,160 in 1999 to at least 11,270, according to a report released Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

The environmental group, which has conducted annual beach surveys for the last 11 years, said improved monitoring is revealing just how seriously people have been fouling the beaches they love. 

“It’s been there all along – we’re just finding it,” said Heather Hoecherl, NRDC project attorney. 

The numbers rose largely because many states are monitoring beaches more closely, and because rain sent more polluted runoff in some coastal areas in 2000, according to the NRDC, which conducted its own survey and used U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data in the report. 

The group wants the Bush administration to implement new federal water quality standards, announced just before President Clinton left office, which are aimed at cleaning up coastal pollution and reducing urban and agricultural runoff polluting about 21,000 lakes, ponds, streams and rivers across the country. 

Eighty-five percent of the closures and advisories stemmed from bacteria counts that exceeded federal swimmer safety standards. Studies have shown swimming in bacteria-contaminated water makes people more likely to suffer from cold-like symptoms, ear infections and gastrointestinal problems. 

More than a third of the closures and advisories were associated with sewage or storm runoff tainted by oil, pet waste, fertilizer and other contaminants. The cause for more than half of the problems was unknown, but polluted runoff probably was connected to many of them, NRDC attorney David Beckman said. 

Most of advisories and closures took place in California, and close to half of the Golden State’s warnings came from just two counties: San Diego and Los Angeles. 

There were no warning signs along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier where Gail Futterman’s kids were playing, but the possibly of sickness still made her a little nervous. 

“I considered not letting my daughter swim; she has a cut,” said Futterman, of Indio. “I decided to put peroxide on her foot when we get her home. It’d be cruel to keep her out.” 

California and other states are taking steps to keep polluted water out of the ocean. The NRDC released its report outside a Santa Monica facility that treats the small but hazardous trickle of dry-season urban runoff that would otherwise drain to the ocean. 

Agencies in Southern California and other areas also are making developers use building techniques that limit the amount of polluted water that rushes down storm drains. 

San Diego has increased the number of employees monitoring storm drain pollution from three to more than 20, but needs to do much more, said Donna Frye, an environmental activist who was elected to the City Council in June. 

Frye has urged the city to speed up repair work on sewers, which are responsible for much of San Diego’s beach pollution. 

“It will not be cheap, but there are some sewer pipes that haven’t been cleaned in 15 or 20 years,” Frye said. 

The NRDC survey singled out two states, Louisiana and Oregon, as “beach bums” for failing to regularly monitor their coastlines. 

Louisiana officials contend they’d need more beaches to be bums. Only about 10 miles of the state’s 1,500 miles of coastline are swimming beaches; the rest is mostly marsh. 

Greg Pettit, manager of water quality for Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality, said the state is working with the EPA to develop an ocean monitoring system. The state has focused more attention on its rivers and streams, which are more popular recreation sites. 

Pettit added, “There are other risks of swimming in Oregon’s oceans such as currents and coldness that pose far greater risks than bacteria.” 

Rachel Schmid, a surfer from Cannon Beach, Ore., said Oregon is cleaner than other places she’s surfed — including California, Hawaii and Costa Rica. 

“There are times when it can get pretty polluted and it causes surfers to get sinus infections,” Schmid said. But she added, “Compared to Southern California the Oregon coast is very nice.” 

Beach cleanliness also is relative to Eugene Varshavsky, a native of Latvia who let the surf splash his ankles as he walked on Santa Monica Beach. 

“It’s pretty clean here,” said Varshavsky, who moved to Los Angeles two years ago. Along the yellow sands of Latvia’s beaches, “Sometimes it’s not possible to swim in because there’s too much pollution.” 

——— 

On the Net: 

NRDC: http://www.nrdc.org 

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/OST/beaches 

The popular economic hope, shared by Washington, Wall Street, manufacturers, retailers and many academics, is that the consumer will pull the rest of the economy to higher ground. 

And so, two little news items of recent days assume significance: 

First, economic productivity, or the efficiency of output, rose sharply in the April-June quarter. Then, for the first time in more than three years, the monthly use of consumer credit shrank rather than rose. 

At first glance, both seem positive. Rising productivity means higher living standards. And saving something for the future, rather than borrowing and spending, is viewed as necessary to finance economic growth. 

But in the current situation, the reverse may be true. 

Productivity rose largely because industry managed to maintain output with fewer workers.  

Earlier in the economic expansion, rising productivity allowed industry to profit while paying more workers more money. 

And, while a shrinkage of consumer credit would have been welcome three years ago when the savings rate plunged below zero (though the numbers have since been revised to show it remained positive), it now rouses fears that the consumer will drag down rather than pull up the economy. 

If that becomes the case, the economy must look elsewhere for leadership. To business perhaps. But businesses, having overestimated the size of their markets, have already revealed their unwillingness to lead. 

Business leaders already have shown they’re unwilling to embark on capital spending and expansion plans without assurance the market for their goods will be there. And the market is the end user, the consumer. 

Conceivably, the consumers’ lost jobs and lost stock market wealth could also dilute whatever stock market recovery develops. 

Economist Peter Hooper of Deutsche Bank comments that in the late 1960s, mid-1970s, and mid-1980s, sizeable reductions in wealth, mainly from stock market losses, preceded big increases in savings. 

Increased savings, while desirable at other times in economic history, are not part of the expansion menu being described today by forecasters. Spending is. But Hooper suggests instead that savings might rise. 

His reasoning is bolstered by experience in prior years, when rising unemployment spurred precautionary savings, a factor that was all but absent during the days of rising stock prices and assured incomes. 

The test of how consumers will behave – spend or save – may come with the tax rebate checks now being received, and which will suddenly boost household disposable income. Will they spend or save the money? 

In the past, says Hooper, tax changes initially have been largely absorbed in saving. In 1975 and 1985, the savings rate jumped when taxes were cut. And they dropped in 1969 and 1987 when taxes were raised. 

For such reasons, he looks for only “an anemic (economic) pickup in growth by historical standards.” 

But, of course, the decision lies not with corporate chiefs, who are waiting to see, or academics or economic forecasters, but with the consumer. 

He and she will let us know their decision over the next couple of months. 

John Cunniff is a business analyst for The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Alan Greenspan’s investment portfolio shows that in years when the stock market is in a funk, safety can beat exuberance, whether rational or not. 

The chairman of the Federal Reserve, who sent stock markets around the world plunging in 1996 when he expressed concerns about “irrational exuberance,” avoided the huge losses inflicted on many stock investors last year. 

Greenspan’s portfolio, almost totally invested in safe Treasury securities, may have actually posted a sizable gain, based on his financial disclosure form, which was released Tuesday by the Fed. 

The disclosure form requires only a listing of assets in ranges of worth, not the actual value. 

Greenspan’s assets begin in the less than $1,000 category and top out with one asset valued at between $1 million and $5 million. 

If Greenspan’s assets are valued at the maximum level, they totaled $9.6 million at the end of 2000, up from a maximum of $7 million at the end of 1999. 

Even at the low end of the valuations on the disclosure form, Greenspan’s statement showed that he managed to pretty much hold his own, with investments valued at $3.1 million at the end of the year, compared with a low-end valuation of $3.4 million in 1999.  

By contrast, the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index plunged by a record 39.3 percent last year while the Dow Jones industrial average fell 6.2 percent, the first loss for the Dow in a decade.  

Greenspan’s investments are concentrated in Treasury securities, considered the world’s safest investment since the U.S. government has never failed to pay investors who hold its bills, notes and bonds. 

These holdings allow Greenspan to avoid conflicts of interest which could arise because some companies fared better than others on the basis of his interest-rate decisions. 

Greenspan, in a December 1996 speech, posed the question of when investors could know that they were in the grip of “irrational exuberance” that was causing them to bid up stock prices to unjustified levels. 

Although markets around the world initially plunged on the comments, investors quickly shrugged off Greenspan’s worries and pushed stock prices ever higher until early last year when the technology bubble burst as the Fed pushed interest rates higher to cool off the overheated economy. 

While Greenspan does not own stocks, his wife, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, does, according to the disclosure form, which requires a listing of a spouse’s assets. 

Mitchell owns stock in General Electric Corp., the parent company of NBC, Estee Lauder, Clorox, H.J. Heinz, Kimberly Clark, McDonalds Corp. and Rubbermaid among others. Her biggest single holding, listed in the category of $250,001 to $500,000, was in Abbott Laboratories. 

The disclosure form also shows that Mitchell earned $72,500 for giving five speeches last year to groups ranging from Sweet Briar College and the Towson University Alumni to the Jewish Community Center of Richmond. 

Berkeley school administrators have hatched a plan they say will put an end to the class scheduling nightmares that too often taint the first few weeks of school at Berkeley High. 

Last year, these weeks were characterized by hundreds of students waiting in long lines to see their guidance counselors to get their schedules changed.  

Many of the students had legitimate complaints – they found gaps in their schedules, or inappropriate classes, such as freshman English scheduled for a sophomore.  

But other students simply took advantage of the fact that a change of heart about the elective they picked the previous spring could be a legitimate excuse to skip the first two weeks of school. 

“It became almost like a game,” said Berkeley High Principal Frank Lynch. “You could ride this puppy for two weeks easily.” 

Under the new plan, Berkeley High  

counselors will come back to school a week early this year and thoroughly review student schedules, correcting all the obvious errors before the students get on campus. Then, if students find they are still unhappy with their schedules, instead of lining up outside a counselor’s office for hours on end, they will be asked to make an appointment.  

More urgent cases, such as someone who is missing a required class, will be seen first. Until students have met with counselors, they will be expected to attend all the classes on their schedule, whatever they are. 

Lynch said the new plan will significantly reduce the hours guidance counselors must spend dealing with scheduling issues. There is roughly one counselor for every 500 students in the school. Many have complained in the past that these staff members, ostensibly there to prevent struggling students from “falling through the cracks,” are often too overwhelmed with administrative work to attend to other problems. 

In another effort to free up Berkeley High staff to do what they have been hired to do, the Berkeley Unified School District’s central office staff has taken over the task of processing new student enrollment at the school. 

Students who don’t show up to enroll until after school has begun (Lynch estimated that 100 students or more could fall into this category) will be sent directly to the district’s Parent Access Office, at 1835 Allston Way, instead of being asked to wait in a long line to see a Berkeley High administrative assistant. Last year the task fell to the principal’s administrative assistant, who was thus unavailable to support Lynch for much of his first month on the job. 

The access office not only has more personnel to throw at the job, but is located near the Special Education Office and the Student Services Offices, both of which must sometimes play a role in the registration process. Families who are new to Berkeley, or whose children have attended private school through the eighth grade, will thus be able to register for Berkeley High with one relatively swift and painless visit, said Parent Access Office Coordinator Francisco Martinez. 

“It’s much more effective. It’s much more streamlined,” Martinez said.  

Board of Education President Terry Doran, a long time teacher at Berkeley High, said he was “hopeful” the new plans, taken together, would prevent students from missing critical class time in the opening days of school. In an effort to accommodate students’ desires, the system has spun a little bit out of control over the years, he said. 

“There were legitimate reasons for (students to ask for) changes, but the system has to decide at some point which ones do you honor and for what reasons,” Doran said. “No student should have a gap in their schedule, period. We have to have that from day one.” 

Wednesday, Aug. 8 

A Day at the Beach 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Build sand castles with sand sculptor Kirk Rademaker. Museum admission $3 - $7  

642-5132 

Thursday, Aug. 9 

Ancient Native Sites of the East Bay 

7:30 p.m. 

Room 160 Kroeber Hall, University of California Campus 

Sean Dexter, archaeologist, will discuss the recent Data Recovery Program at the Emeryville Shellmound/South Bayfront site. Jakki Kehl, a Mutsun Ohlone, will discuss protecting cultural resources by developing partnerships and encouraging good stewardship of the land. $10  

841-2242 

Salsa Dance Classes 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 

1414 Walnut St. 

Classes every Thursday with live percussionists, light refreshments, DJ playing Latin music. $10 or $15 for two. 

237-9874 

Sea Kayaking 

7 p.m. 

REI 

1338 San Pablo Avenue 

Learn about the best sea kayaking spots in Northern California from Roger Schumann and Jan Shriner. Free. 

527-4140 

Free Computer Class for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Kensington 55+  

Activity Center 

9 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Social Hall of Arlington Community Church 

52 Arlington Ave. 

Conversation, computer instruction, massage therapy, German conversation group, meditation and relaxation techniques, art and more. Neighborhood disaster preparedness program: 11 a.m. 

526-9146 

Religion and Public Life in 

Pacific and Asian  

North America 

5:30 p.m. reception, 7 p.m. panel discussion 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business 

The relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life.  

849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Friday, Aug. 10  

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave.  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Meeting Fridays through Aug. 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

548-8283 x534 

Even Stronger Women 

1:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Free weekly cultural discussion class. This week: Tales of Murasaki. 

549-1879 

Religion and Public 

Life in Pacific and  

Asian North America 

8:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business 

The conference goes through Aug. 11, and will focus on the relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life. 849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Yiddish Conversation Group 

1 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Saturday, Aug. 11 

Sixth Annual Reggae Worldbeat Festival  

Noon - 5 p.m.  

People’s Park  

Telegraph & Haste St.  

Featuring: Obeyjah & The Saints with the Village Culture Drummers, Dancehall King; Major P., Wawa Sylvestre and The Oneness Kingdom Band and many more.  

Religion and Public Life in Pacific and Asian  

North America 

8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Cheit Hall, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business  

The conference goes through Aug. 11, and will focus on the relationship between the religious practices of Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans and public life. 849-8244 www.pana.psr.edu. 

Sunday, Aug. 12 

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn front and rear derailleur adjustments from one of REI’s bike technicians. Tools provided. Bring a bike. Free. 527-4140 

Buddhist Architecture In the West 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Mark Henderson on “Building a Buddhist Temple.” Free. 

843-6812 

Steel Drums and Sand Castles 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Kirk Rademaker teaches sand sculpting while Richmond Bloco entertains with steel drum music. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Opus Q Auditions 

7 - 9 p.m. 

The University Lutheran Chapel 

2425 College Ave. 

Opus Q - The East Bay Men’s Chorale is preparing for its first full season. Gay men and their allies are invited to audition.  

664-0260 www.opus-q.com 

Monday, Aug. 13 

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women age 20 - 70. No appointment is needed. No remuneration.  

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

Section 8 Resident  

Council Meeting 

5:30 - 8:30 p.m. 

East Bay Community Law Center 

3122 Shattuck Ave. 

Section 8 recipients and concerned citizens can tell the Resident Council their concerns about the program.  

Free Seminar on Ayurveda 

1 - 2 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

The basic principles of Ayurveda for maintaining health and balance. 644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Tuesday, Aug. 14 

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Free Early Music Group 

10 - 11:30 a.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Small group sings madrigals and other voice harmony every Tuesday. 655-8863 

Free Computer Class for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 644-6109 

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck (at Berryman) 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women ages 20 - 70. No appointment is needed; no remuneration. 

525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

The Candy Cottage 

1:30 p.m. & 2:30 p.m. 

Hall of Health 

2230 Shattuck Ave. (Lower Level) 

“The Candy Cottage” is a short comedy written and performed by the Hall of Health staff, for children ages 3 to 12. The play provides information about eating healthy, the food pyramid, and what vitamins and minerals do for your body. The Hall of Health is a hands-on community health-education museum and science center sponsored by Children’s Hospital of Oakland. Free. For more information call: 549-1564. 

Wednesday, Aug. 15 

Space Weather 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Explore the Space Weather exhibit, talk to NASA researchers, look for sun spots, make a sundial, cast sun prints. Museum admission $3 - $7. 642-5132 

Berkeley Communicator  

Toastmasters Club 

7:15 a.m. 

Vault Cafe 

3250 Adeline 

Learn to speak with confidence. Ongoing first and third Wednesdays each month. 527-2337 

Support Group for Family/Friends  

Caring for Older Adults 

4 - 5:30 p.m. - 3rd Wednesday of each month 

Alta Bates Medical Center  

Herrick Campus 2001 Dwight 

3rd floor, Room 3369B  

Free. 802-1725 

$40,000 to find dirt near tracks 

Editor: 

From the same people who brought you the Skate Park environmental mess, now comes the Harrison Park “air study.” Most people involved in such studies generally wait until all the results are in and analyzed before making comments to the press. But not the city of Berkeley's Nabil Al-Hadithy. As long as this “study” has turned into yet another political and administrative fiasco on the part of the city of Berkeley, let's have at it.  

First, The city's hazardous materials supervisor is commenting on test results from the first month of a 12-month study produced by “equipment (some of which) was not working correctly.” Couldn't city staff at least have waited until the equipment was working properly before they started commenting on the research? 

Second “According to an Aug. 2 staff report the Toxics Management Division (had an) expectation of higher numbers because the field is located near a section of Interstate 80 that was recently widened, which resulted in a 20 percent increase in traffic during heavy commute times… (with) another 18 percent coming by 2005.” But the equipment showed that “the worse times of the day…are between 10 a.m. and noon.” If the staff theory was correct why aren't we seeing higher numbers from 6 – 9 a.m. and 4 – 7 p.m.? So much for the Toxic Management Division’s theories. Do you think there could be a connection between the number of dust particles registered and the location of the monitor? 

“Al-Hadithy said the monitoring equipment was placed in an area (so) it would show the “worst case scenario.” Because the air monitoring equipment for this new study is in a different location than the old study, it now becomes virtually impossible, certainly at this early stage in the study, to make any statement that the air is getting worse or the air is getting better.  

The monitoring equipment for this new study is located as close as physically possible to the railroad tracks where trains, with 60 freight cars or ten passenger cars, blow dust and debris from Oakland to Sacramento. How shocking that the monitor registered dirt and dust! (Did we need to spend $40,000 to find this out?) If this wasn't bad enough, the equipment was also placed next to a long strip of dirt and a dusty parking lot. Unfortunately, this isn't a “worst case scenario” its more like a “no case scenario” because NOBODY who uses the park is spending their time leaning against the fence so they can suck in the blowing dust from the trains and the parking lot. The city could have chosen to locate the monitor in the Harrison House Homeless Shelter compound so they could measure the impact on the people who are actually living there. They chose not to. Or they could have located the monitor between the shelter and the fields giving a much better indication of the general air quality on the playing fields and Harrison House. They chose not to. 

All of us in the sports community want our children to play on safe fields.  

Experientially, there are more asthma attacks at King Field (due to particulate matter picked up from the dirt track) than at fields located in the area of Harrison Park. Almost a year ago we made a formal request for the city to conduct a comparison air study at King Field. They chose not to.  

City staff set up the study to provide daily reporting on the web. This has created a political tabloid out of a research effort by issuing bits a pieces of information about a very complicated issue. Why couldn’t city staff have waited until all the data was collected and analyzed before they issued ANY information? If the true purpose of this study was a concern over the safety of children, why isn’t city staff looking at King field which the sports community has identified as more problematic than Harrison Park? 

Instead we open up a newspaper and find city employees commenting on preliminary study data and a commissioner from the Community Environmental Advisory Commission already accusing the city of hiding information. The end product of this approach will be that a $40,000 research study will turn into a $150,000 political hack job at taxpayer expense. This on top of the $400,000 it probably cost the taxpayers in expenses and staff time from the skate park debacle.  

I hate to find myself agreeing with (Commissioner) L.A. Wood but if the quality of the city's “environmental management” is illustrated by the “missed” toxics at the skate park and the now political “air study” then its time the city manager and Berkeley City Council take a long hard look at the work that is being done in the Toxics Mismanagement Department. 

Doug Fielding 

Association of Sports Field Users 

Mediation worked for Beth El  

Editor,  

The controversy over Congregation Beth El’s new building will soon be history. On July 24, the supporters and opponents of this project forged a compromise that will allow the congregation to build, while dealing with the concerns of neighbors. The City Council voted unanimously to support this agreement.  

There are still some details to be worked out, but mediation leaders for both sides agree that the outlook for resolving these remaining issues is very positive. We all expect the council to be able to take the final vote on this issue on Sept. 11, after its recess.  

How did what many people are calling a “miracle” happen? How was an agreement reached despite a very contentious process? The answer is that, in the mediation, we focused on the real goal: to find a solution that would give all parties what they wanted most: for Beth El, a new facility to replace its outgrown one just a few blocks away; for neighbors of the site, assurances that building size, traffic and parking issues were addressed and that Codornices Creek might some day be opened.  

Remarkably, all of those needs are met in the agreement. And, even more importantly, we are achieving the one goal we all agreed on from the beginning: to find a way for Beth El and its neighbors to live together peacefully. That is clearly the real victory in the agreement.  

This outcome is due to the good will of everyone involved and to the skill of the mediator Peter Bluhon.  

I want to offer my personal thanks and the thanks of Congregation Beth El to the mediation teams, to Mr. Bluhon, to the City Council and City staff, and to all the hundreds of other people who participated in this lively Berkeley-style democratic process.  

Harry Pollack 

for Congregation Beth El  

How’s Bush doing? 

Editor: 

Six months ago, I made up a handy acronym to remind me what I thought I would not like about the Bush administration. TEAR - Tax Cut, Environment, Abortion, Religion. Here’s the TEAR score today: 

The Tax Cut was enacted, and still looks to me like national fiscal irresponsibility to reward Bush’s bankrollers. But even Senator Feinstein voted for it. Environment – Kyoto, Arsenic, Wildlife Range (need I say more?) 

Abortion – Bush hasn’t done as much damage as I expected, possibly due to political vulnerability on other issues. Senator Boxer is sponsoring a bill to reverse Bush’s “gag rule,” which denies federal funding to organizations which use their own funds to counsel women about reproductive choices, lobby for reproductive rights or provide abortions. 

Religion – If I were one of the religious right folks, I’d feel poorly rewarded by the Bush administration. All that happened was the support for “faith based” public service groups. Stuff like school prayer and expunging evolution from the schoolbooks may have been put on hold due to present political vulnerabilities. But before long, I expect all Bush’s TEAR policies to be fully operational. Unfortunately for the country, let alone the world, we have 3 1/2 more years of Bush to go. 

Steve Geller 

Berkeley 

924 Gilman St. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Aug. 10: 90 Day Men, Assembly of God, Strong Intention, Under a Dying Sun; Aug. 11: Toys That Kill, Scared of Chakra, Soophie Nun Squad, Debris; Aug. 12: 5 p.m. Citizen Fish, J-Church, Eleventeen; Aug. 17: Blood Brothers, True North, The Cost, Red Light Sting, Betray The Species; Aug. 18: Dr. Know, The Sick, Society of Friends, Manchurian Candidates, Shut the Fuck Up; $5. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Anna’s Place Aug. 11 and every Saturday night 10:30 p.m. - midnight, Ducksan Distones. The following play at 8 p.m. – Aug. 8: “The Renegade Sidemen;” Aug. 7: open mic.1801 University Ave. 849-2662.  

Ashkenaz Aug. 8: 9 p.m. Brenda Boykin and Home Cookin’ (West Coast swing and blues), 8pm dance lesson. $8; Aug. 9: 10 p.m. - 2 a.m. Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave. $5; Aug. 10: 9:30 p.m. O-Maya. $10; Aug. 11: 9:30 p.m. Afro-Muzika, featuring Nene Tchakou and Shimita El Diego. 9pm dance lesson with Comfort Mensah. $11; Aug. 12: 9 p.m. Benefit for the Berkeley High School Ki-Swahili Club featuring: Dyin 2 Live, Rebels, Little Larry Koont, Nico Love, DJ Boo. $10; Aug. 14: 9 p.m. Tom Rigney & Flambeau. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Patti Whitehurst. $8; Aug. 15: 9 p.m. Jerri Jheto. $10. Aug. 16: 10 p.m. - 2 a.m. Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave. $5; Aug. 17: 9:30 p.m. Near East Far West. $12; Aug. 18: 9:30 p.m. Zydeco Flames. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Cheryl McBride. $11. Aug. 19: 8 p.m. Open Stage w/ Koko De La Isla, Ernesto Hernandaz, Jeff Hawkins. $8; Aug. 21: 9 p.m. Slavonkian Travelling Band. 8 p.m. dance lesson w/ Joyce Clyde. $10. 1317 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054 www.ashkenaz.com  

Eli’s Mile High Club Doors open at 8 p.m. Aug. 11: Jimmy Mamou; Aug. 18: Craig Horton /CD Release; Aug. 25: Carlos Zialcita; Every Friday, 10 p.m. - 2 a.m., Funky Fridays Conscious Dance Party with KPFA DJs Splif Skankin and Funky Man. $10; 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 655-6661 

Freight and Salvage Coffee House All music at 8 p.m. Aug 8: San Francisco Klezmer Experience; Aug 9: John Renbourn; Aug 10: Jody Stecher, Kate Brislin; Aug 11: Al Stewart. $16.50 - $19.50. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jupiter Aug. 8: Broun Fellini’s, jazz/funk/hiphop grooves; Aug. 9: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 10: Steven Emerson, singer/songwriter mixes cool jazz and sweat soul; Aug. 11: J Dogs, funk-soul; Aug. 14: Chris Shot Group, folk-rock and soul combo; Aug. 15: Lithium House, electro/drum & bass styles with live jazz; Aug. 16: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 17: The Mind Club, Old school funk grooves with sonic swirls of acid jazz; Aug. 18: Blue & Tan, Bassist Vicki Grossi brings in the crew for elctro-acid-jazz funk stylings; All music starts at 8:00 p.m. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK. 843-7625  

La Peña Cultural Center Aug 10: 8:30 p.m. Ire $8; Aug 11: 9:30 p.m. Fito Reynoso’s Ritmo y Armonia. $10, $13 for dance class starting at 8:15; Aug 12: 5, 7:30 p.m. “Say Yo Business” Linda Tillery & The Cultural Heritage Chior. $18 in advance, $20 at the door. In the Cafe, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568 

La Note/Jazzschool Aug 12: 4:30 p.m. The Freedom Project, 5:30 Eli Sundelson Trio. 2377 Shattuck Ave. 845-5373 

Shattuck Down Low Lounge Every Tuesday: 9:30 p.m., Posh Tuesdays with DJ’s Yamu, Delon, Add1, and Tequila Willie. Shattuck at Allston. www.thebeatdownsound.com  

Yoshi’s Aug. 8 through Aug. 12: Steve Turre Quintet, trombone and conch shell master in small group setting. Wednesday and Thursday, $18; Friday and Saturday, $22; Sunday matinee, $5 kids, $10 adults with one child, $18 general; Sunday, $22. Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 238-9200 www.yoshis.com 

3rd annual Berkeley World Music Festival Aug. 26: noon - 6 p.m. Block party and carnival, Grupo Ilu Fun Fun, Petit La Croix, Samba Ngo, O-Maya, Fito Reinoso y Su Ritmo y Armonia. Durant Ave. between Telegraph and Bowditch. 

Ali Akbar College of Music Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m., A concert of Indian classical music. Rita Sahai, vocals; Rachel Untersher, violin; Madhukar Malayanur, tabla; $20 general; $15 students. St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., (415) 454-6264 or www.aacm.org 

Radisson Hotel Berkeley Marina Aug. 9: “Gratefully Yours” by pianist Jim Hudak, record release party. Free. Reception begins 6:30 p.m. 200 Marina Blvd. 925-673-7293 www.jhudak.com 

Theater 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m. & Aug. 11, 12, 5 p.m. Campers from Stage Door Conservatory’s “On Broadway” program for grades 5-9 will perform Fiddler on the Roof, Jr. $12 adults, $8 kids. 2640 College Ave. 845-8542 ext. 302 

“The Great Sebastians” Through Aug. 11: Friday and Saturday evenings 8 p.m. plus Thursday, Aug. 9, presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. A tale about a mind-reading act touring behind the Iron Curtain. A communist general believes the act and “invites” the Sebastians to his villa where the humor and excitement follows. $10. Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck (at Berryman). For reservations call 528-5620 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through Aug. 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. Special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

“Loot” Through Aug 25, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Special Performance Aug 20, 8:00 p.m. General Admission: $15, Students / Seniors: $10 La Val’s 1834 Euclid Avenue 655-0813 

“Reefer Madness” Aug. 8, 9, Aug. 22, 23: 9 p.m. A new one-act theatre piece adapted from a 1936 government-funded film opens a critical eye to the control of our society. Performed by The Elemental Theatre Group La Pena Cultural Center 3105 Shattuck Avenue. Wednesdays are “pay what you can,” Thursdays $5 - $10. Contact Zachary Rouse or Tisha Sloan for more info at 655-4150 

“Romeo & Juliet” Aug 11 - Sep 2, Tuesdays - Thursdays. Bruns Memorial Amphitheater. Shakespeare’s classic about a young couple that meets, falls in love and dies in just five days. Adults: $22 - $41 youth (under 16): $12 - $41. 

“Barnum” Through Aug. 12. The story of legendary circusmaster P.T. Barnum, with plenty of musical theater and circus acrobatics. Splash Circus’ aspiring young circus artists will perform an hour before each show. $15 to $27. Friday through Sunday, 8 p.m. Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland. 531-9597 www.woodminster.com 

Films 

Pacific Film Archive Aug 8: 7:30 p.m. Confessions of an Opium Eater; Aug 9: 7:30 p.m. The Return of Frank James; Aug 10: 7 p.m. Alone on the Pacific, 9:05 p.m. Her Brother; Aug 11: 7 p.m. While the City Sleeps, 9 p.m. Beyong a Reasonable Doubt; Aug 12: 3 p.m. Charlotte’s Web, 5:30 p.m. Tokyo Olympiad. New PFA Theatre 2575 Bancroft Way 642-1412 

“Lumumba” Aug. 10: at Shattuck Cinemas. Biogrophy of the slain African political figure Patrice Lumumba. In French with English subtitles. 

“Roommates” Aug. 12: Max Apple’s true story of his immigrant grandfather who moved in with him when he was in college (in the 60’s). Peer led discussion following movie. $2 Suggested donation. Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 1414 Walnut Street 848-0237 

Exhibits 

“BACA National Juried Exhibition: Works on Paper” Through August 31: Wed. - Sun. Noon - 5 p.m. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

“Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings” Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Road 849-2541 

“Debbie Moore’s Autobiographical Paintings” Through Sep 30 at Good Vibrations. Portraits of the artist’s sensual explorations spanning 25 years and reflecting changing ways of intimacy and body play. 2504 San Pablo Avenue 848-1985 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 – 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.  

“A Fine Line” Through August 24, Tuesday - Friday, noon - 5 p.m. or by appointment. An exhibition works by Kala Fellowship winners for the years 2000 and 2001. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Avenue 549-2977 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through Aug. 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Road 649-2541 

“MFA Survey Exhibition 2001” Third annual exhibition of works of recent graduates from Bay Area master of Fine Art programs. This year featuring artists working in three-dimentional media. Through Aug 18 Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth Street 527-1214 

“Musee des Hommages” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” Through Aug. 18: Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“Sistahs: Ethnofraphic Ceramics” through Aug. 22, Reception July 29 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. Womens Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Avenue 548-9286 ext. 307 

“Ten Years Here” Exhibit celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Turn of the Century Fine Arts. Through Sept. 14, Sat & Sun 1-5 p.m. Reception Aug 4 2:00 - 7:00 p.m. 2510 San Pablo Avenue 849-0950 

Readings 

Boadecia’s Books Aug 11: Trina Robbins discusses her latest work “Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitute”. All events start at 7:30 p.m. and are free. 398 Colusa Avenue 559-9184 

Black Oak Books Aug 8: William Turner discusses his new memoir “Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails”; Aug 9: Robert Clark reads from his new novel “Love Among the Ruins”; Aug 15: Molly Giles reads from her debut novel “Iron Shoes”. All shows at 7:30 p.m. free of charge. 1491 Shattuck Avenue 486-0698 

Cody’s Books Aug 8: Jane Mead, Mark Turpin. $2 donation. Readings at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 2454 Telegraph Ave. 845-0837 

Coffee Mill Poetry Series August 21: Featured Readers: Victoria Joyce and Therese Bamberger; Both 7-9 p.m. Free. 3363 Grand Ave., Oakland for info. (510)465-3935 or (510)526-5985, or Email: ksdgk@earthlink.net 

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Fridays 9:30 - 11:45 a.m. or by appointment. Call ahead to make reservations. Free. University of California, Berkeley. 486-4387 

Golden Gate Live Steamers Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. 486-0623  

Museums 

Habitot Children’s Museum “Back to the Farm” An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more. “Recycling Center” Lets the kids crank the conveyor belt to sort cans, plastic bottles and newspaper bundles into dumpster bins. $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. (closed Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day) Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 647-1111 or www.habitot.org  

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur 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 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. 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 will close its exhibition galleries for renovation on October 1. It will reopen in early 2002. On View until October 1, 2001: “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture.” “Sites Along the Nile: Rescuing Ancient Egypt.” “The Art of Research: Nelson Graburn and the Aesthetics of Inuit Sculpture.” “Tzintzuntzan, Mexico: Photographs by George Foster.” $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. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648 or www.qal.berkeley.edu/~hearst/ 

Lawrence Hall of Science “Science in Toyland,” through Sept. 9. Exhibit uses toys to demonstrate scientific principles and to help develop children's thinking processes. Susan Cerny’s collection of over 200 tops from around the world. “Space Weather,” through Sept. 2. Learn about solar cycles, space weather, the cause of the Aurorae and recent discoveries made by leading astronomers. This interactive exhibit lets visitors access near real-time data from the Sun and space, view interactive videos and find out about a variety of solar activities. “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. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 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. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. “How Big Is the Universe?” Aug. 1 through Aug. 24. Learn how to determine the distance of celestial objects, one of the purposes of the Hubble Space Telescope. Daily, 2:15 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, 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu 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, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu  

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall. 

Send arts events two weeks in advance to Calendar@berkeleydailyplanet.net, 2076 University, Berkeley 94704 or fax to 841-5694. 

After years of rancor, organizers of the Berkeley Free Folk Festival and members of the Commission on Disability are finally working together to make the annual event more accessible to disabled individuals. 

At a special meeting at the North Berkeley Senior Center on July 26, about 20 people discussed ways to improve the organization of the festival by increasing public access and intensifying the outreach efforts to the disabled community. 

“The meeting that we had was the first time in many years that everybody sat down together to talk about the problems,” said Karen Craig, chairperson of the Disability and Outreach Committee.  

“It was positive because there were many people giving ideas to the folk festival on how to handle events where people with disabilities are going to be.” 

The problem of accessibility at the festival has been an ongoing issue. First organized at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 1606 Bonita Ave., the festival was moved to Ashkenaz, on San Pablo Avenue near Gilman Street, last year.  

The club had just spent $11, 000 to bring the building into conformity with the American With Disabilities Act and appeared to be much more accessible than the church. But problems persisted. Peni Hall, a disabled Berkeley resident who attended the festival last November said that because of the popularity of the event, she had serious problems moving around inside the club. 

“It was obvious that they had done some work, but there were still a lot of problems,” she said. “The main performance room, when there were not too many people, was fine. But when the crowd got there it became gridlock.” Hall particularly recalls being stuck for 15 minutes in a narrow hallway crowded with a couch, musical instruments and a baby carriage.  

Like many disabled people in Berkeley, she thinks that because the city sponsors the festival, it should make sure that everyone can attend. 

Experiences like Hall’s, Craig said, are the reason why it is critical to continue working with the festival organizers and city officials.  

Making the event fully accessible, she said, is not only the organizer’s responsibility. 

“It’s up to us too,” she said. “It’s a matter of educating the public and the people who put on events on how to do it.” 

This year as part of the festival, activities will take place at the Freight and Salvage Coffee House, at 1111 Addison St., considered more accessible than Ashkenaz.  

But Craig and others,  

including Councilmember Kriss Worthington, wish the festival were completely relocated to a larger and fully accessible venue. John Selawsky, a school board member, is currently looking into the possibility of moving the festival to one of the Berkeley schools.  

Other people, however, believe it is unlikely to happen by November. 

“It would be very hard to make a lot of changes aside from making arrangements with the spaces which they are already committed to for this year,” said Alan Senauke, a musician who attended the meeting. “I imagine they are going to be looking at other venues in the future.” 

Suzie Thompson, festival director, was not available for comment Tuesday. 

Meanwhile, organizers promised at the meeting to take significant measures to increase Ashkenaz’s accessibility. 

“We heard very clearly what some of the members of the Commission on Disability were saying about the problems in a place such as Ashkenaz, which has some physical limitations,” said Ashkenaz General Manager Allan Katz. “We will get together with members of the disabled community to know how to deal with a large crowd.” 

Ashkenaz plans, for instance, to have personnel to assist disabled individuals and monitor the traffic inside the club during the performances. It will also designate reserved seating for people with disabilities and have interpreters for deaf people.  

While Berkeley has won awards for its efforts to prepare for seismic upgrading and disaster preparation, city officials caution that there’s still a long way to go before it is ready for a major quake on the Hayward Fault. 

Arrietta Chakos, chief of staff to the city manager, said Berkeley leads the state in home retrofitting and has supported a variety of bonds to make schools and public buildings safer.  

“We’ve taken a lot of initiative without assistance from state and federal programs,” Chakos said. “We’ve made our schools safer and have contributed to safety in the private sector.” 

Chakos said a multi-departmental task force is currently being formed to continue disaster preparation programs. 

The Bay Area’s seismic consciousness was abruptly raised nearly 12 years ago on Oct. 17, 1989 when the 7.1 Loma Prieta Earthquake, centered near Santa Cruz on the San Andreas Fault, shook the earth for 15 seconds. 

The quake killed 62 people and injured another 3,000. Damage included the collapse of the Cypress Freeway, the closure of 10 bridges and the destruction or damage of nearly 20,000 homes.  

“Loma Prieta was centered 90 miles away,” said Community Emergency Response Training coordinator, Dory Ehrlich. “In Berkeley a few chimneys toppled. If a major earthquake hits the Hayward Fault, which runs right under the UC Berkeley campus, we can expect a lot more damage than that.” 

In fact, a report prepared by the city’s Disaster Council in May estimated that if a 7.0 earthquake struck the Hayward Fault, 25 percent of Berkeley homes could be rendered uninhabitable leaving as many as 20,000 people homeless.” 

The report concluded that Berkeley was not anywhere near ready for the aftermath of a major earthquake.  

However, while there’s work to be done, Berkeley was recognized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as being a model for community preparedness in 1999. In 2000 Berkeley was named Seismic Community of the Year by the State Seismic Safety Commission. The city also was recently awarded a $300,000 grant from Project Impact, a federal program that promotes disaster preparation. 

Chakos said one reason for the awards is that 40 percent of single family homes in Berkeley have been seismically retrofitted, a higher percentage than any other city in the state. The high rate is attributed to the city’s transfer tax rebate policy. 

The way it works is a portion of the transfer tax from a home sale is put into an escrow account at the time of sale. That money can then be used by the homeowner for retrofitting projects on the property.  

“Because of the high cost of real estate in Berkeley, people really want to protect their homes,” Mayor Shirley Dean said. “The media has given them the message about the value of retrofitting and we have given them the means with the transfer tax.” 

In addition to upgrading homes, Chakos said Berkeley voters have approved every seismic or fire bond measure that has been on the ballot since 1992. Some of the bond measures include Measure A and Measure AA, which raised a total of $272 million to retrofit school buildings in the Berkeley Unified School District and Measure S, which raised $49 million to retrofit the Civic Center and Main Library. 

“I think it was that kind of public spirit that caught the attention of the FEMA,” Chakos said.  

City Disaster Commissioner Russell Kilday-Hicks said Berkeley has come a long way in preparing for a quake but there’s still much to be done. He said that despite the millions put into the school buildings there are still preparedness issues lingering.  

“The major thing is the schools,” Hicks said. “The commission didn’t feel comfortable with Berkeley parents sending their kids off to school and thinking they were safe.” 

The City Council approved a recommendation by the Disaster Commission in early May to install 20-foot long metal containers on each school campus. The containers will be filled with emergency supplies such as food, water and first-aid kits. According to Kilday-Hicks the containers have not yet been installed. 

Chakos said the city is in the process of organizing the Disaster Resistant Berkeley program, which will combine several city departments to form a comprehensive approach to disaster readiness. The DRB team, which is budgeted at $660,000 for the next two fiscal years, will include representatives from the fire, housing and planning departments among others.  

“The group will make a presentation to council hopefully by October during Earthquake and Fire Safety Month,” Chakos said. 

Other steps the city has taken to prepare for a natural disaster is the formation of the Community Emergency Response Training program, which offers free readiness classes to anyone who lives or works in Berkeley.  

The classes cover seven areas of earthquake preparedness such as first aid, fire suppression and light search and rescue. Ehrlich said there will be a new series of subjects starting in September. 

“What we want to do is get as many people as possible to get themselves prepared to take care of themselves,” Ehrlich said. “And the citizens of Berkeley feel very strongly about taking care of themselves and their neighbors.” 

Summer 2001 Class Schedule for Emergency Response Training 

Earthquake Retrofitting: Sept. 8, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.  

Basic Personal Preparedness: Sept. 15, 9 – 11 a.m. 

Disaster Mental Health: Sept. 22, 9 a.m. - noon 

Disaster First Aid: Sept. 29, 9 a.m. – noon  

For more information, call 981-5605 

They call themselves “shellmounders.”  

The name exudes a kind of earthiness – and rightfully so – though a shellmound isn’t quite the pile of sharp, crackling shoreline one might imagine. 

“A shellmound is an accumulation, over thousands of years, of the debris and artifacts of a community,” said west Berkeley resident Stephanie Manning, one of the organizers and moderators of a series of lectures at UC Berkeley called “Ancient Native Sites of the East Bay.” The series began last week and will continue over the next two Thursdays at Kroeber Hall on the campus.  

While there are various shellmounds that have been unearthed in the East Bay, the Emeryville shellmound may be the largest in California, Manning said.  

At least, it may have been the largest, before Emeryville buried it beneath a strip mall, Manning said. 

The lecture series delves into the archeological, scientific and spiritual significance of formations such as shellmounds. The information will not only help participants take stock of what remains, but look at what can be done to preserve these remnants, Manning said. 

There are reasons why the Bay Area shellmounds accumulated where they did.  

Before concrete, the Bay shore was a lot marshier, Manning said. The local Native Americans lived on top of the shellmounds, and this solid surface raised them above the high-tide level.  

But there’s an even more important reason why the shellmounds grew: in winter the grounds of the Bay Area are resistant to digging and the shellmound was the most practical way for Native Americans to live near the dead they had buried, Manning said. They did this to maintain their ties – both spiritual and physical – to their ancestry. 

The Native Americans built their communities, quite literally, on top of the contributions of the past, Manning said. They did so out of respect and spiritual need and to maintain a concrete sense of where they came from. 

Being a shellmounder, then, doesn’t involve anything like a membership card or a secret handshake. It demonstrates a concern for recovering fragments of the North American past.  

Around here shellmounders are often natives of California, if not California Native Americans. They’re often archeologists and earth scientists, by profession or just by hobby. But none of these criteria are essential; the name really indicates something very simple.  

“They’re a group of people who are interested in trying to save what’s left of the shellmounds,” Manning said. “There’s very little left.” 

Sandra Sher – author of “The Native American Legacy of Emeryville” and one of the people who spoke Thursday – is one of them.  

“I’m still astounded,” Sher said, “that the city of Emeryville chose to neither preserve nor do a full-scale excavation of what remains of the Emeryville shellmound underground. Here was one of the most significant shellmounds in the Bay Area, and yet, when put up against the prospect of yet another retail center, the retail center won out.”  

Emeryville officials did allow archeologists to study the shellmound briefly before they covered it up. These archeologists arrived at some conclusions that will be discussed at the lecture Thursday evening, Manning said.  

But while Thursday’s lecture may offer a chance to preserve what is left, last week’s talk walked briefly through the ruins that will not be preserved.  

Sher related to the crowd a strange concession Emeryville made two years ago: a memorial to the shellmound before it had actually been covered. 

“I feel that planning a memorial just before killing off the patient is reprehensible,” Sher said.  

“To me this was one of those narrow windows of opportunity to learn more about the earliest people who lived here.”

SAN FRANCISCO — A California researcher has created a tomato that can grow and thrive with salty water, a breakthrough he said could lead to the cultivation of now-barren fields around the world. 

University of California, Davis Professor Eduardo Blumwald’s tomato plants can grow using water containing 50 times more salt than normal. His findings are published in this month’s issue of the peer review journal Nature Biotechnology. 

The resulting tomato contains three times as much salt than a traditionally grown tomato, but it can’t be tasted, Blumwald said. 

He believes his invention can be used by farmers toiling on bad soil and on a variety of crops. Fields doused in large amounts of irrigated water over long periods of time develop high levels of salinity, which stunts crop growth. 

Blumwald envisions tomatoes growing in the deserts of the Middle East and on now-fallow lands in India. But for now, the scientist’s tomatoes, with a salt-fighting gene from a plant related to cabbage fused with a tomato plant, is being rejected by many California farmers. 

In Five Points, the heart of tomato-growing country, growers are refusing to grow genetically modified crops for the simple reason that they aren’t selling in supermarkets. Until they do, California’s largest farmers won’t touch Blumwald’s tomatoes or any other biotechnology-created crop. 

“Biotech is taboo,” said Tom Braner, business manager of Five Points-based grower Tanimura & Antle, which grows 240,000 acres of tomatoes. “Everybody wants organic. Nobody wants genetically modified food.” 

Blumwald’s creation isn’t playing well on small organic farms like the ones found around Santa Cruz either. 

“It’s a Band-Aid,” said Mark Lipson, co-owner of Molino Creek Farm, which grows organic tomatoes on six acres. Lipson said the “real problem” is over-irrigation of crop land by large corporations. Developing salt-resistant tomatoes isn’t going to improve the deteriorating conditions of the world’s farm lands, Lipson said. 

Lipson and other organic farming proponents are also concerned that pollen from biotech crops will contaminate their plants. They also fear hard-to-kill super weeds will sprout from genetically modified pollen. 

Other genetically modified food opponents, such as Peter Meechan, chief executive of Newman’s Own Organic food company, contend that not enough research has been done to ensure the food is safe to eat. 

“We need to see more testing,” he said. 

All of which frustrates Blumwald. 

He complains that salinity levels continue to rise while traditional methods of selective breeding of crops has resulted in little relief over the last 100 years. Furthermore, he argues that he’s merely “crossbreeding” plants like farmers have done for centuries. 

“I’m not doing anything different than farmers did a thousand years ago,” he said. “Nothing bad is going to happen. This is a solution, not a problem.” 

Blumwald said he has developed hundreds of the salt-resistant plants, now being kept in a University of Toronto greenhouse where Blumwald did most of his research. He joined the Davis faculty last year where he hopes to grow his plants in a salt-damaged field if he can secure funding. 

U.S. farmers in arid areas such as California’s Central Valley, where most of the country’s tomatoes are grown, use irrigated water – as opposed to rainfall – to grow crops. As irrigated water flows from its source in rivers and streams, minerals  

are picked up and deposited in  

farmers’ fields. 

Fields using irrigated water can become too salty and unfarmable. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that crop production has fallen by 25 percent on irrigated land in the United States because of rising salinity levels. 

Blumwald said his plants will help repair salt-damaged soil. They actually remove salt, retaining most of it in their leaves. 

Salt blocks plants from absorbing enough water. Blumwald and his colleagues engineered the plants to produce proteins that hide the salt in vacuoles, large storage areas in cells that don’t interfere with the plants’ growth. Most of the soil’s salt ends up in the tomato plants’ leaves. 

California fields, which haven’t been farmed as long as the rest of the country’s, aren’t having significant salinity problems yet. 

But Blumwald said that in the next 30 years, California farmers will have to deal with salty fields as they continue to rely on irrigation. 

“There’s going to be trouble,” Blumwald said. 

On the Net: 

http://www.ucdavis.edu 

http://www.ofrf.org 

http://www.ctga.org

The parent company of California’s largest utility told federal regulators Tuesday that its corporate structure is legal and that it should not be subject to a review requested by the state Attorney General Bill Lockyer. 

San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Corp. called the issues raised in a petition Lockyer filed in July with the Securities and Exchange Commission “entirely baseless.” 

Lockyer said the SEC should scrutinize the transfer of billions of dollars the utility made to the parent company before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection April 6. 

Lockyer says that the SEC, under the Public Utility Holding Company Act, should examine the impact of the transfer of money from the utility to the parent company had on PG&E’s bankruptcy filing. 

Under the holding company act, the SEC can review stock and security transactions, inter-affiliate loans and issuance of securities by holding companies and utilities.  

The SEC has not reviewed the holdings of PG&E Corp. because the corporation says it is an intrastate entity. 

Lockyer says PG&E Corp. has assets worth $13 billion outside California, making it an interstate corporation and eligible for SEC review. 

In his petition, Lockyer said $4 billion flowed from the utility to the parent company between 1997 and 1999. 

“PG&E Corp. ... now asserts those billions of dollars are unavailable to PG&E Co., which is in bankruptcy,” Lockyer said in  

the petition. 

PG&E Corp. spokesman Brian Hertzog said the utility is the only utility business the corporation operates exclusively in California. 

Lockyer “is just misinterpreting or mischaracterizing what the exemption is under PUHCA,” Hertzog said. “We are exempt from it.” 

“Basically we’re glad that they agree with us on one point — that there should be a hearing on this issue,” said Sandra Michioku, Lockyer’s spokeswoman. 

On the Net: 

http://www.pgecorp.com 

http://www.pge.com 

http://caag.state.ca.gov

Nearly a million gays and lesbians identified themselves as same-sex couples in the latest census, which for the first time gives an authoritative record of homosexuals in America. 

Advocates hope politicians will note that gay and lesbian couples are a part of nearly every county in every state, and thus pay more attention to their calls for domestic partner rights and benefits such as marriage, health care and inheritance rights. 

But the nation’s total gay population is much larger, since the 2000 census provided an opportunity for single gays and lesbians to identify their sexual orientation, and didn’t count couples living separately. That has some homosexuals fearing a resulting backlash. 

“Why would politicians waste an hour on this if there are only 6,500 (male) couples in San Francisco, the queer capital of the world?” said Peter Altman, 42, who’s been with his partner 11 years. 

Census officials say the numbers are more accurate than those gathered in 1990, when the bureau assumed that all people who checked “spouse” or “married” to someone of the same sex had made a mistake. Such people were categorized either as heterosexual couples, or other relationships such as roommates or relatives. Still, the 2000 numbers cannot be used to estimate the nation’s entire gay population, said Martin O’Connell, chief of the fertility and family statistics branch of the U.S. Census Bureau. 

“It’s hard to get a complete picture by only describing the living relationships of people living together,” O’Connell said. 

To date, the Census Bureau has reported that 479,107 same-sex couples identified themselves as sharing a household in 42 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. This number will rise when data from all 50 states is released. The missing states are New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Arkansas. 

According to the latest batch of census statistics released Wednesday, California and Vermont lead the nation with the highest percentage of gay and lesbian couples, while San Francisco has nearly twice as many same-sex partners as any other county. There are 92,138 same-sex couples in California, 8,902 of which are in San Francisco. In Vermont, 1,933 same-sex couples responded to the census. Gay and lesbian couples make up nearly 1 percent of total households reported in both California and Vermont. 

“We’re not talking about some sort of intangible concept of a gay family,” said David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian advocacy group in Washington D.C. “We’re talking about real people who live in a real assemblyperson’s district.” 

Some gays who responded to the census felt that the chance to be counted was worth overcoming fears about disclosing their sexual orientation to the government.  

“It’s very easy to get paranoid and think that the FBI is making up a list and some day when the ‘far-rights’ ascend to power, they’re going to have the list,” Altman said. What’s the alternative – not to have it on the census and then be invisible? We’re damned if we do or damned if we don’t.” 

The 1990 census counted 121,346 same-sex couples. These were people who checked “domestic partner” with someone of the same gender. 

But O’Connell warns against comparing those numbers because of the way the forms were edited a decade ago. For example, two men identifying themselves as married could have been switched in 1990 to male and female and counted as a heterosexual couple, or listed as relatives or roommates instead of domestic partners. 

The 2000 data did not reassign partners. Instead, it put everyone into the domestic partner category, and then classified the couples as homosexual or heterosexual. 

There are 3,850,524 heterosexual unmarried couples nationwide, with 591,378, or 5.1 percent, in California. Alaska ranks first with 6.9 percent and Vermont is second with 6.7 percent. 

The same-sex numbers, while most likely undercounted, still show a lot about where the country’s gay and lesbian sex couples live and who they are, said Gary Gates, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank. 

The data shows there are more lesbian couples living in rural areas, while gay male couples tend to be in urban areas. California, Nevada, Florida and New York rank at the top for male couples, while Vermont, New Mexico, Oregon and Massachusetts have the most lesbian couples, in that order. 

“Part of that might have to do with more of us having children than the guys. They still haven’t caught up with us there,” said Bobbi Cote-Whitacre, 53, of Grand Isle, Vt., who has been with her partner 34 years. “We tend to look for places that are safer or more of a rural country spot.” 

———— 

On the Net: 

http://www.census.gov/ 

http://www.urban.org/ 

LOS ANGELES — The story of Hispanic migration to California has largely been one of Mexican immigration. But new census figures show that trend is less predominant in San Francisco, where people of Mexican origin do not hold a majority among Hispanics. 

San Francisco is also home to higher percentages of Central and South Americans than the state as a whole, the figures show. 

Of the state’s 11 million Hispanics, 77 percent are of Mexican origin, 5.2 percent are of Central American origin and 1.5 percent are of South American origin, according to new figures released Wednesday from the April 2000 census. 

Fourteen percent were classified as “other Hispanic,” a figure interpreted by some demographers as possible evidence of weakening cultural identity because respondents did not identify their country of ancestry. 

Among San Francisco’s 109,504 Hispanics, though, only 45 percent are of Mexican origin. It’s the only one of California’s 58 counties where that figures stands at less than 50 percent. Central Americans account for 21 percent of the county’s Hispanic population, and South Americans for 5 percent. 

Demographers say that could be partly because San Francisco declared itself a City of Refuge for Salvadorans driven to migrate because of civil war during the 1980s.  

Also, more Central and South Americans likely arrive in California by plane, so that the proximity of Los Angeles to the border is not as key as it is to Mexicans. 

And once immigrants establish a network, wherever it may be, it draws more immigrants from their country of origin, demographers say. 

Ana Gomez, a native of Argentina who moved to San Francisco eight months ago, said she did so for one reason: “Because my children are here.” It’s an oft-heard response. 

“Not only is it common for groups of people from specific countries to settle next to each other, but even in certain cases we’ll find people from certain towns living in the same area,” said Hans Johnson, a demographer at San Francisco’s Public Policy Institute of California.  

“It’s not uncommon in Los Angeles for soccer teams to be formed based on a town from Mexico, and playing a town 50 miles away in a soccer game in Los Angeles.” 

It is difficult to compare the Hispanic-population data released Wednesday with that collected in 1990. In 1990, unlike in 2000, respondents who were not of Mexican, Cuban or Puerto Rican origin weren’t allowed to write in their ancestry, but rather were directed to the “other Hispanic” category. 

A shift that size is negligible in such a large data set, according to demographers. 

Many demographers were puzzled by the 1,554,575 “other Hispanics” identified by the 2000 Census. Some respondents apparently checked the “other Hispanic” box without writing their country of origin in the space provided. That suggested to some that the question was confusingly presented, but to others that Hispanics increasingly are leaving behind individual ancestral identities. 

Gov. Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 of 1994 helped create a group identity for many Hispanics, said Pastor, whose father is a native of Cuba. 

“I would say that prior to Wilson my father would have said he was Cuban, and after Wilson he became a Latino. And I think that happened to a lot of people,” Pastor said. “I think there’s an emergence of a Latino identity that’s more pan-ethnic.” 

——— 

Staff writer Paul Chavez in Los Angeles contributed to this report. 

——— 

On the Net: 

http://www.census.gov 

http://www.ppic.org 

http://www.ucsc.edu/general—info/cjtc.pdf 

SAN JOSE — Cisco Systems Inc. earned a relatively paltry $7 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, meeting Wall Street’s expectations, as the networking giant continued to struggle with the global economic downturn. 

During a conference call to discuss the results, Cisco executives declined to offer specific long-term earnings guidance but added the industry has not yet turned around despite some signs of improvements in its U.S. businesses. 

“While we would like to say the bottom has been reached in our industry, we don’t think we are there yet,” said John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive. “We are becoming cautiously optimistic that it may be achieved in the next one or two quarters in the U.S.” 

For the three months ended July 28, Cisco broke even on a per-share basis, a whopping 99 percent below the $796 million, or 11 cents per share, in the same period last year. 

Excluding items and goodwill, the company earned $163 million, or 2 cents per share, compared with $1.2 billion, or 16 cents per share, in the same period last year. 

Analysts were expecting a profit of 2 cents per share, according to a survey by Thomson Financial/First Call. 

Revenue for the fourth quarter was $4.30 billion, a 25 percent decrease from the $5.72 billion in the same period last year but on par with analysts’ expectations. 

Analysts were seeking guidance for any sign that Cisco in particular – and the telecommunications industry in general – might be bottoming out from its monthslong slide. 

“We don’t see any turnaround. We’re not at a bottom, and it’s going to take a couple quarters,” said Paul Sagawa, a Bernstein analyst. “From that perspective, we think Cisco’s guidance was right on.” 

Revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2002 is expected to range from flat to down 5 percent compared with the fourth quarter, said Larry Carter, Cisco’s chief financial officer. The company offered no guidance for the new fiscal year. 

“We are seeing some signs of the U.S. stabilizing, but we are cautious about the overall economics and think Europe and Asia Pacific may get worse before they get better,” Chambers said. 

But Chambers remained optimistic about the long-term prospects for the networking industry. He said most of the chief executives of companies that buy Cisco equipment are still cautious but committed to the productivity improvements from networking. 

“As the economy ticks backs up, our view is that these CEOs will loosen the purse strings,” he said. 

Once the world’s most valuable company, Cisco fell hard as the demand for networking equipment has fallen sharply during the economic downturn. Customers from dot-coms to multinational voice and data carriers responded to the weak economy by postponing or outright canceling plans to buy more routers, switches and other networking equipment. 

To cope with the slowdown, Cisco has cut 8,500 workers and taken billions of dollars in inventory write-offs. Meanwhile, Cisco’s shares have fallen more than 75 percent since peaking at $82 in March 2000. 

Cisco, which acquired 71 companies between 1993 and December, recently started making purchases after a seven-month dry spell. Last month, Cisco announced plans to buy two small firms. 

“They were just trying to digest what they had, figure out what fit and what didn’t,” said Ray Hirsch, a senior analyst at American Express. “The fact that that’s starting to move forward suggests a little more confidence.” 

For its fiscal year, Cisco lost $1.01 billion, or 14 cents per share, compared with earnings of $2.67 billion, or 36 cents per share in the previous period. Revenue was $22.29 billion, an 18 percent increase over the $18.93 billion reported a year ago. 

Before the earnings news, shares of Cisco closed down 28 cents to $19.26 in trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. In after-hours trading, shares fell to $18.92. 

——— 

On the Net: 

http://www.cisco.com 

WASHINGTON — Worker productivity, a key measure of living standards, had its best showing in a year in the second quarter. 

But revisions to Labor Department records for the past five years revealed growth wasn’t as dazzling as previously thought, rekindling the debate over whether the country had entered into a golden era of productivity in the late 1990s. 

Worker productivity – the amount of output per hour of work – rose at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the April-June quarter, the department reported Tuesday. A revision turned a negative first-quarter figure into a tiny 0.1 percent growth rate. 

One reason productivity grew so much in the second quarter is that businesses, trying to cope with the slumping economy, sharply cut workers’ hours. Workers’ hours fell at a 2.4 percent rate, the largest decline in hours since the first quarter of 1991, while output edged up at a 0.1 percent rate, thus producing the rise in productivity. 

The bigger-than-expected quarterly advance in productivity was the largest increase since a 6.3 percent growth rate registered in the second quarter of last year. 

Gains in productivity are the key to rising living standards because they allow wages to increase without triggering inflation that would eat up those wage gains.  

If productivity falters, however, pressures for higher wages could forces companies to raise prices, thus worsening inflation. 

The rise in productivity helped to moderate labor costs. Unit labor costs, a gauge of inflation pressures, rose at a 2.1 percent rate in the second quarter, down from a 5.0 percent rate in the first quarter. 

The annual revisions, meanwhile, showed that from 1996 through 2000, productivity growth averaged 2.5 percent, compared with the 2.8 percent average originally reported. Annual revisions are based on better data. 

That reignited the debate among some economists over whether the healthy productivity gains seen after 1995 represent a “new economy,” meaning a lasting, structural change, driven in large part by businesses making massive investments in high-tech equipment.  

Conversely, they question whether the gains were simply the fruit of economic boom times where companies pushed workers more to meet rapidly rising demand. 

For 1973 through 1995, productivity averaged lackluster gains of just above 1 percent per year. But since 1995, increases have more than doubled. 

“The revisions put a dent in the new era thesis,” said David Orr, chief economist at First Union. 

Dean Baker, an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank, agreed. “The ‘new economy’ story becomes somewhat more tenuous. Clearly, productivity is looking better than it did in the mid 1970s to 1995, but we are not back to the rates of the productivity boom in the 1960s.” 

But Merrill Lynch’s chief economist, Bruce Steinberg, had a different view. “The rising productivity trends of the late 1990s remain very much in place,” he said. “Those who argue that the revised data deny the productivity miracle are just being silly.” 

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress last month that he remains bullish about the long-term prospects of productivity growth, even though businesses, responding to the yearlong economic slowdown, have pared back investment in computers and other productivity-enhancing equipment. 

“There is still, in my judgment, ample evidence that we are experiencing only a pause in the investment in a broad set of innovations that has elevated the underlying growth in productivity to a rate significantly above that of the two decades preceding 1995,” Greenspan said. “By all evidence we are not yet dealing with maturing technologies that, after having sparkled for a half decade, are now in the process of fizzling out.” 

The biggest annual revision was for 2000, which showed productivity grew by 3.0 percent, rather than 4.3 percent. The lower estimate in part reflected a recent downward revision by the government for output, as measured by the gross domestic product, from 5 percent to 4.1 percent for 2000. 

On the Net: 

Productivity report: http://www.bls.gov/ 

City officials say they are quietly leading the way to improved air quality by using three all-electric vehicles. The city’s first was a red Solectria Force leased in September 1999. It now has 7,389 unpolluted miles and is driven every day. 

“It’s our goal and objective to use 100 percent completely alternative fuel vehicles.” said Bill Ivie, the city’s equipment superintendent. 

Berkeley purchased a three-year lease for $15,670 with an option to buy in September, 1999, said Patrick Keilch, deputy director of public works.  

This was subsidized by a $4,000 grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. With the help of two more grants, the city leased two, all-electric, Ford Ranger trucks last year 

The red Solectria Force is a converted 1999 Geo Metro four door sedan. 

“The car is so quiet nobody can hear you coming, not pedestrians or bicyclists,” said Ivie.“You have to be a defensive driver. It’s like being a bicyclist looking for bicyclists, you just have to watch for them.”

The planning director, named July 24 by the City Council, will be stepping into a department often characterized by controversy. 

“I think it will be a great opportunity (for new director Carol Barrett) to reconstruct, rebuild and reshape a department that has to deal with a vast number of issues and problems such as land use, property inspections and interpretation of zoning regulations,” said City Manager Weldon Rucker. 

The department, with an $8.5 million budget for fiscal year 2001-02, has 70 full-time employees and consists of five divisions. 

The Office of the Director oversees the permit center and the redevelopment agency. Advance Planning manages future planning for transportation, housing and capital improvements. Current Planning, perhaps the most controversial division, reconciles applications for development with zoning regulations and neighborhood concerns.  

The Building and Safety Division inspects projects under construction, existing buildings and capital improvements for safety violations. The Toxics Management Division manages the disposal and storage of toxic materials and strives to prevent pollution by residents, businesses and city agencies. 

The department has been headed by Acting Director Wendy Cosin for 18 months. Liz Epstein, the former director, took a yearlong maternity leave, then decided not to return, leaving Cosin in charge until the city could find a permanent director.  

Barrett is currently the assistant director of the Planning and Zoning Department in Austin, Texas. One planning official described the new director as a “seasoned professional” with a reputation for being highly ethical. Barrett recently completed a book entitled “Everyday Ethics for Practicing Planners.” 

The perception of Barrett as highly principled might be helpful to the image of the Current Planning Division, recently drawn into a series controversial development proposals.  

Three projects, the Beth El proposal for a synagogue at 1301 Oxford St., a four-story, mixed-use building at 2700 San Pablo Ave. and a five-story mixed-use building at University Avenue and Acton Street were all approved by the Zoning Adjustments Board or the City Council despite strong neighborhood opposition.  

The approvals caused several residents and at least one councilmember to speculate that the Current Planning Division has been inappropriately influenced by developers. 

“I think there’s been a lot of inconsistency in how the zoning ordinance and area plans have been applied to particular developments,” said Councilmember Dona Spring. “The reports that planning staff have been giving us might as well be written by the developer.” 

Spring argued that whenever a certain aspect of a development proposal requires a discretionary interpretation of the zoning ordinance, planning staff will favor the developer. 

Juliet LaMont, a member of the Live Oak Codornices Creek Neighborhood Association, which opposed the proposed Beth El project, said her experience with the planning department wasn’t a pleasant one.  

“The reports we received were generally late and had big problems with misinformation, inaccuracies and bias,” Lamont said. “When we went to hearings staff misstated dates and the law itself. I don’t know if it’s incompetence, sheer bias or a combination of both.” 

Acting Deputy Director Vivian Kahn said there have been many changes in communities due to home additions and other remodeling projects. In addition she said many Berkeley homeowners have everything they own tied up in real estate and they are very nervous about new projects affecting the value of their property. 

Both Cosin and Kahn deny that the department has ever been an advocate for developers. 

“We don’t see ourselves as advocates for developers, we see ourselves as analysts of the zoning ordinance,” Kahn said. 

Mayor Shirley Dean said there has been confusion among members of the public because of inconstancies between the zoning regulations and the various neighborhood plans. She said that one of the primary concerns about the city’s proposed General Plan, which has been an ongoing project since 1987, is that it is consistent with the zoning ordinance and state building codes. The General Plan was approved by the Planning Commission in June and is expected to be considered by the City Council in September. 

Dean said some neighbors might believe the Current Planning Division staff is writing reports that favor developers but sometimes when a development decision doesn’t favor the neighbors they can unnecessarily blame the quality of the information.  

Howie Muir, of Neighbors for Responsible Development, which opposed the 2700 San Pablo Ave. project, said he also had concerns about Current Planning Division information.  

“There’s problems with getting staff reports in a timely manner,” he said. “Sometimes they’re available only three or four days before a decision is going to be made.” 

Cosin said the staff reports are complex documents, often filled with technical information. She said it would be very difficult to get them out sooner with so many projects going on simultaneously. 

Developer Patrick Kennedy, who has had several projects approved in Berkeley in recent years, including 2700 San Pablo Ave. and the Acton Apartments at University Avenue and Acton Street, said the Current Planning Division has been doing a good job of neutrally interpreting the zoning ordinance. 

“My experience with the planning department is that they don’t play favorites with anyone,” he said. “In fact it seems as though they bend over backwards to do accurate work because everything they do is second guessed by the neighborhood groups.” 

Cosin said it’s unfortunate that the department is mostly known as being in the middle of development controversies. She said the other things the department does often get overlooked such as the seven redevelopment projects that were approved by the City Council on June 19. Those projects include the development of a transit plaza at Berkeley’s train stop, the paving of Second Street and the development of three live/work spaces at 1631 Fifth St. 

“It’s really a shame,” Cosin said, “most people don’t know all the things we do.” 

Tuesday, Aug. 7

Intelligent Conversation  

7 - 9 p.m.  

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 

A discussion group open to all, regardless of age, religion, viewpoint, etc. This time the discussion will center on sex and drugs: Free will? Must laws be obeyed? Informally led by Robert Berend, who founded similar groups in L.A., Menlo Park, and Prague. Bring light snacks/drinks to share. Free  

527-5332 

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

2 - 7 p.m. 

Derby Street at MLK Jr. Way 

548-3333 

Free Early Music Group 

10 - 11:30 a.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK) 

Small group sings madrigals and other voice harmony every Tuesday morning. Call Ann, 655-8863 

Free Computer Class for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Strawberry Creek Daylighting 

Strategy Workshop 

6:30 - 7:30 p.m. 

Corporation Yard Green Room 

1326 Allston Way 

A workshop to develop an effective strategy for promoting the daylighting of Strawberry Creek downtown. Learn about current daylighting concepts and develop a working plan for the next year and beyond. Facilitated by Louis Hexter of MIG. Call Janet Byron to RSVP at 848-4008 or bjanet@earthlink.net 

Wednesday, Aug. 8

A Day at the Beach 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Build sand castles with sand sculptor Kirk Rademaker. Museum admission $3 - $7. 642-5132 

Thursday, Aug. 9

Ancient Native Sites of the East Bay 

7:30 p.m. 

Room 160 Kroeber Hall, University of California Campus 

Sean Dexter, archaeologist, will discuss the recent Data Recovery Program at the Emeryville Shellmound/South Bayfront site. Jakki Kehl, a Mutsun Ohlone, will discuss protecting cultural resources by developing partnerships and encouraging good stewardship of the land. $10 

841-2242 

Salsa Dance Classes 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 

1414 Walnut St. 

Classes every Thursday with live percussionists, light refreshments, DJ playing Latin music. $10 or $15 for two. 237-9874 

Sea Kayaking 

7 p.m. 

REI 

1338 San Pablo Avenue 

Learn about the best sea kayaking spots in Northern California from Roger Schumann and Jan Shriner. Free. 527-4140 

Free Computer Class  

for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 644-6109 

Kensington 55+ Activity  

Center 

9 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Social Hall of Arlington Community Church 

52 Arlington Ave. 

Conversation, Apple II computer instruction, massage therapy, German conversation group, meditation and relaxation techniques, watercolor art class, tea and coffee. Special 11 a.m. program: F526-9146 or 547-1969. 

Friday, Aug. 10

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through Aug. 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Even Stronger Women 

1:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

Free weekly cultural discussion class. This week: Tales of Murasaki. 549-1879 

Yiddish Conversation Group 

1 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave.  

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

Saturday, Aug. 11

Sixth Annual Reggae Worldbeat Festival  

Noon - 5 p.m.  

People’s Park  

Telegraph & Haste St. (behind Amoeba)  

Featuring: Obeyjah & The Saints with the Village Culture Drummers, Dancehall King; Major P., Wawa Sylvestre and The Oneness Kingdom Band and many more. Free, but donations encouraged.  

Free Classical Music Concert 

8 p.m. 

Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley Campus 

UC Berkeley Summer Symphony, Gene Chang, Henry Shin, Directors.  

Debussy, Stravinsky, Brahms. Free admission.  

For more information: 665-5631 

Sunday, Aug. 12

Live Oak Concerts 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Art Center 

1275 Walnut St. 

Composition vs. Improvisation, Music/Structures by Tom Swafford. $10 644-6893 

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn front and rear derailleur adjustments from one of REI’s bike technicians. Tools provided. All you need to bring is your bike. Free. 527-4140 

Buddhist Architecture In the West 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Mark Henderson on “Building a Buddhist Temple.” Free. 843-6812 

Steel Drums and Sand Castles 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Kirk Rademaker teaches sand sculpting while Richmond Bloco entertains with steel drum music. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Opus Q Auditions 

7 - 9 p.m. 

The University Lutheran Chapel 

2425 College Ave. 

Opus Q - The East Bay Men’s Chorale is preparing for its first full season. Gay men and their allies are invited to audition for the world’s newest GALA ensemble. For more information: www.opus-q.com or 664-0260. 

Monday, Aug. 13

Auditions for Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” 

7 p.m. 

Live Oak Theatre 

1301 Shattuck (at Berryman) 

Held by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, there are parts for five men and three women 20 - 70. Director Mikel Clifford asks that auditioners present a two-minute piece or read from a script. No appointment is needed, and there is no pay. 525-1620 www.actorsensembleofberkeley.com. 

Section 8 Resident Council  

Meeting 

5:30 - 8:30 p.m. 

East Bay Community Law Center 

3122 Shattuck Ave. 

All Section 8 recipients and concerned citizens should come tell the Resident Council all of their concerns about the program.  

Free Seminar on Ayurveda 

1 - 2 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

The basic principles of Ayurveda for maintaining health and balance.  

644-6107 www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/hhs/commsvc/seniors.htm 

LOS ANGELES – Hugo Alexander and Marcos Montero stand at the corner of Fletcher Drive and Atwater Avenue beneath the old, peeling neon sign for Ray’s Liquor. The intersection is a popular gathering place for day laborers; half a block away is a busy U-Haul outlet. Whenever a work truck rolls by, the men whistle and wave their hands, hoping to join a crew with a construction, painting or landscaping job. 

At least on the surface, Alexander and Montero make a curious pair. Montero is from the Merced district in Mexico City, and he speaks a highly urbanized and rapid Spanish. Alexander hails from Zacatecoluca, a city in central El Salvador; his speech has the tones and rhythms of a man from the provinces. Montero likes rock ‘n’ roll, Alexander, cumbia and merengue. Alexander eats pupusas; Montero, tacos. Montero says he crossed illegally into the U.S. because, as a house painter in Mexico, he couldn’t envision the slightest social mobility for himself and his family. Alexander says that after civil war, Hurricane Mitch and the devastating earthquakes earlier this year, he had no choice but to try his luck in the north. 

On this cool, gray summer morning, Alexander and Montero have yet to secure the day’s employment, but they aren’t worried about their prospects, even though it’s already past 10 a.m. 

“Sooner or later, we’ll be picked up,” says Montero, 30, a short and stocky man with eyes hidden behind huge Ray Bans. “There’s always somebody that needs us.” 

One reason Montero and Alexander can get along without the slightest sense of competition or of rivalry due to national origin is that both men have found there are enough jobs to go around. And in the end, the similarity of their circumstances today unites them despite their different backgrounds. Which is why I find some of the ideas floated by the Bush administration as it grasps for a new amnesty (or “regularization” as Bush prefers) so unsettling. 

Initially, Bush and his Mexican counterpart Vicente Fox spoke of a regularization deal exclusively for Mexican migrants, which would have set Alexander and Montero on opposite sides of a huge divide. Almost immediately, however, Central Americans, Caribbeans and even some South Americans (like the Columbian enclave of New York City), clamored that they are at least as deserving as their Mexican brethren. Mexicans, too, bristled at the notion. 

“We’re all in the same situation,” Montero says, snacking on hard-boiled egg and a Coke. “How can you distinguish between me and my brother here?” 

“I’m not waving my country’s flag, and my comrade isn’t either,” chimes in Alexander. “There’s no flags here.” 

Such sentiments have deep historical roots in Latin America. Simon Bolivar, the great Venezuelan independence leader, inspired legions with his vision of a hemisphere united in struggle against colonialism. Tirelessly scouring a vast region of the continent for support, he eventually defeated the forces of the Spanish Crown and founded the Republic of Gran Colombia (a federation of present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador). That’s not to say, of course, that national boundaries don’t matter. Bolivar’s dream was ultimately shattered by the factionalism that ensued after independence, but to this day, every child schooled in Latin America is taught the basics about “El Libertador.” 

There is a contradiction in the Latin soul, a split as ancient as colonialism itself. Existing regional differences were exploited by Spain and other powers in the age-old “divide and conquer” scheme. And to this day, national rivalries play themselves out, sometimes innocuously (during qualifying matches for soccer’s World Cup), and sometimes quite viciously (Central Americans en route to the United States complain of brutal treatment while passing through in Mexico). 

But equally powerful are Bolivar’s ideals of commonality-distinct peoples with the same enemy can only win if united. Francisco Morazan attempted to unite the nations of Central America in the mid-19th century; Jose Marti rhapsodized in a similar vein from Cuba at the dawn of the 20th. Mexican-Central American tensions notwithstanding, the Mexican government actively sponsored revolutionary movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980s, and hosted peace talks that led to a settlement of Salvador’s bloody conflict in 1992. 

I have roots in both Mexico and Central America. My father grew up In Los Angeles of Mexican parents, and my mother emigrated from her native El Salvador to the U.S. as a young adult. My Mexican grandparents lived in Silver Lake and I was quite close to them growing up – they were my connection to Old Mexico. My mother also sought to retain her ties with her family, and I spent several summers in El Salvador as a kid. Weaned on tacos and pupusas, as it were. 

In my family, I found it impossible to root for the Salvadoran or Mexican soccer teams during the World Cup qualifying matches. I grew up with the intuitive knowledge that borders are political lines of convenience-lines that one crosses if history makes it necessary to do so. 

Which brings us back to Hugo Alexander and Marcos Montero on the corner of Fletcher and Atwater. Both men vigorously argue in favor of an amnesty inclusive of all Latin Americans like them: people pushed out of their impoverished lands and pulled in by the American labor economy. Mexicans, Central Americans and Caribbeans arrived in the U.S. under different circumstances, but the majority of them share space in the service sector: by and large, the jobs with the worst pay and conditions. Living in legal limbo-as undocumented Mexicans or as Central Americans stuck in “temporary status” – they have little recourse to better those conditions. 

Just as Mexicans and Central Americans joined together in 1994 to march, by the tens of thousands, against Proposition 187, so today are they united in arguing for an amnesty that recognizes their commonality. It is an economic argument that translates, for migrants, into a moral imperative: if even one group is left out, all are symbolically denied. 

Much of the national Latino leadership is lining up against a Mexican-only “regularization.” It’s at times like these when we realize how much more we have in common than what separates us. 

Pacific News Service Associate Editor Ruben Martinez, whose own roots are Mexican and El Salvadoran, talked to new arrivals on the streets of Los Angeles. Martinez’ new book, Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail, will be published this fall.

924 Gilman St. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Aug 10: 90 Day Men, Assembly of God, Strong Intention, Under a Dying Sun; Aug 11: Toys That Kill, Scared of Chakra, Soophie Nun Squad, Debris; Aug 12: 5 p.m. Citizen Fish, J-Church, Eleventeen. $5. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Anna’s Place Aug. 11 and every Saturday night 10:30 p.m. - midnight, Ducksan Distones. The following play at 8 p.m. – Aug. 8: “The Renegade Sidemen;” Aug. 7: open mic.1801 University Ave. 849-2662.  

Eli’s Mile High Club Doors open at 8 p.m. Every Friday, 10 p.m. - 2 a.m., Funky Fridays Conscious Dance Party with KPFA DJs Split Shankin and Funky Man. $10; 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 655-6661 

Freight and Salvage Coffee House All music at 8 p.m. Aug 6: Frank Yamma; Aug 8: San Francisco Klezmer Experience; Aug 9: John Renbourn; Aug 10: Jody Stecher, Kate Brislin; Aug 11: Al Stewart. $16.50 - $19.50. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jupiter Aug. 7: Joshi Marshal Project, jazz, soul and hiphop; Aug. 8: Broun Fellini’s, jazz/funk/hiphop grooves; Aug. 9: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 10: Steven Emerson, singer/songwriter mixes cool jazz and sweat soul; Aug. 11: J Dogs, funk-soul; Aug. 14: Chris Shot Group, folk-rock and soul combo; Aug. 15: Lithium House, electro/drum & bass styles with live jazz; Aug. 16: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 17: The Mind Club, Old school funk grooves with sonic swirls of acid jazz; Aug. 18: Blue & Tan, Bassist Vicki Grossi brings in the crew for elctro-acid-jazz funk stylings; All music starts at 8:00 p.m. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK. 843-7625  

La Peña Cultural Center Aug 10: 8:30 p.m. Ire $8; Aug 11: 9:30 p.m. Fito Reynoso’s Ritmo y Armonia. $10, $13 for dance class starting at 8:15; Aug 12: 5, 7:30 p.m. “Say Yo Business” Linda Tillery & The Cultural Heritage Chior. $18 in advance, $20 at the door. In the Cafe, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568 

La Note/Jazzschool Aug 12: 4:30 p.m. The Freedom Project, 5:30 Eli Sundelson Trio. 2377 Shattuck Ave. 845-5373 

Shattuck Down Low Lounge Every Tuesday: 9:30 p.m., Posh Tuesdays with DJ’s Yamu, Delon, Add1, and Tequila Willie. Shattuck at Allston. www.thebeatdownsound.com  

Ali Akbar College of Music Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m. A concert of Indian classical music. Rita Sahai, vocals; Rachel Untersher, violin; Madhukar Malayanur, tabla; $20 general; $15 students. St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., (415) 454-6264 or www.aacm.org 

Yoshi’s Aug. 7. Claudia Acuna $14; Aug. 8 through Aug. 12: Steve Turre Quintet, trombone and conch shell master in small group setting. Wednesday and Thursday, $18; Friday and Saturday, $22; Sunday matinee, $5 kids, $10 adults with one child, $18 general; Sunday, $22. Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 238-9200 or 762-2277 www.yoshis.com 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m. & Aug. 11, 12, 5 p.m. Campers from Stage Door Conservatory’s “On Broadway” program for grades 5-9 will perform Fiddler on the Roof, Jr. $12 adults, $8 kids. 2640 College Ave. 845-8542 ext. 302 

“The Great Sebastians” Through Aug. 11: Friday and Saturday evenings 8 p.m. plus Thursday, Aug. 9, presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. A tale about a mind-reading act touring behind the Iron Curtain. A communist general believes the act and “invites” the Sebastians to his villa where the humor and excitement follows. $10. Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck (at Berryman). For reservations call 528-5620 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through Aug. 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. Special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

“Loot” Through Aug 25, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Special Performance Aug 20, 8:00 p.m. General Admission: $15, Students / Seniors: $10 La Val’s 1834 Euclid Avenue 655-0813 

“Reefer Madness” Aug. 8, 9, Aug. 22, 23: 9 p.m. A new one-act theatre piece adapted from a 1936 government-funded film opens a critical eye to the control of our society. Performed by The Elemental Theatre Group La Pena Cultural Center 3105 Shattuck Avenue. Wednesdays are “pay what you can,” Thursdays $5 - $10. Contact Zachary Rouse or Tisha Sloan for more info at 655-4150 

“Romeo & Juliet” Aug 11 - Sep 2, Tuesdays - Thursdays. Bruns Memorial Amphitheater. Shakespeare’s classic about a young couple that meets, falls in love and dies in just five days. Adults: $22 - $41 youth (under 16): $12 - $41. 

“Barnum” Through Aug. 12. The story of legendary circusmaster P.T. Barnum, with plenty of musical theater and circus acrobatics. Splash Circus’ aspiring young circus artists will perform an hour before each show. $15 to $27. Friday through Sunday, 8 p.m. Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland. 531-9597 www.woodminster.com 

Films 

Pacific Film Archive Aug 7: 7:30 p.m. Figures of Motion; Aug 8: 7:30 p.m. Confessions of an Opium Eater; Aug 9: 7:30 p.m. The Return of Frank James; Aug 10: 7 p.m. Alone on the Pacific, 9:05 p.m. Her Brother; Aug 11: 7 p.m. While the City Sleeps, 9 p.m. Beyong a Reasonable Doubt; Aug 12: 3 p.m. Charlotte’s Web, 5:30 p.m. Tokyo Olympiad. New PFA Theatre 2575 Bancroft Way 642-1412 

“Lumumba” Aug. 10 at Shattuck Cinemas. Biogrophy of the slain African political figure Patrice Lumumba. In French with English subtitles. 

“Roommates” Aug. 12. Max Apple’s true story of his immigrany grandfather who moved in with him when he was in college (in the 60’s). Peer led discussion following movie. $2 Suggested donation. Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 1414 Walnut Street 848-0237 

Exhibits 

“BACA National Juried Exhibition: Works on Paper” Through August 31: Wed. - Sun. Noon - 5 p.m. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

“Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings” Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Road 849-2541 

“Debbie Moore’s Autobiographical Paintings” Through Sep 30 at Good Vibrations. Portraits of the artist’s sensual explorations spanning 25 years and reflecting changing ways of intimacy and body play. 2504 San Pablo Avenue 848-1985 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 – 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.  

“A Fine Line” Through August 24, Tuesday - Friday, noon - 5 p.m. or by appointment. An exhibition works by Kala Fellowship winners for the years 2000 and 2001. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Avenue 549-2977 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through August 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Road 649-2541 

“MFA Survey Exhibition 2001” Third annual exhibition of works of recent graduates from Bay Area master of Fine Art programs. This year featuring artists working in three-dimentional media. Through Aug 18 Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth Street 527-1214 

“Musee des Hommages” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” Through Aug. 18: Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“Sistahs: Ethnofraphic Ceramics” through Aug. 22, Reception July 29 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. Womens Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Avenue 548-9286 ext. 307 

“Ten Years Here” Exhibit celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Turn of the Century Fine Arts. Aug. 4 - Sept. 14, Sat & Sun 1-5 p.m. Reception Aug 4 2:00 - 7:00 p.m. 2510 San Pablo Avenue 849-0950 

Readings 

Boadecia’s Books Aug 11: Trina Robbins discusses her latest work “Eternally Bad: Goddesses with Attitute”. All events start at 7:30 p.m. and are free. 398 Colusa Avenue 559-9184 

Black Oak Books Aug 8: William Turner discusses his new memoir “Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails”; Aug 9: Robert Clark reads from his new novel “Love Among the Ruins”; Aug 15: Molly Giles reads from her debut novel “Iron Shoes”. All shows at 7:30 p.m. free of charge. 1491 Shattuck Avenue 486-0698 

Cody’s Books Aug 8: Jane Mead, Mark Turpin. $2 donation. Readings at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 2454 Telegraph Ave. 845-0837 

Coffee Mill Poetry Series Aug. 7: Featured readers JC and Bert Glick. 7-9 p.m.; August 21: Featured Readers: Victoria Joyce and Therese Bamberger; Both 7-9 p.m. Free. 3363 Grand Ave., Oakland for info. (510)465-3935 or (510)526-5985, or Email: ksdgk@earthlink.net 

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Fridays 9:30 - 11:45 a.m. or by appointment. Call ahead to make reservations. Free. University of California, Berkeley. 486-4387 

Golden Gate Live Steamers Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. 486-0623  

Museums 

Habitot Children’s Museum “Back to the Farm” An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more. “Recycling Center” Lets the kids crank the conveyor belt to sort cans, plastic bottles and newspaper bundles into dumpster bins. $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. (closed Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day) Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 647-1111 or www.habitot.org  

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur 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 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. 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 will close its exhibition galleries for renovation on October 1. It will reopen in early 2002. On View until October 1, 2001: “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture.” “Sites Along the Nile: Rescuing Ancient Egypt.” “The Art of Research: Nelson Graburn and the Aesthetics of Inuit Sculpture.” “Tzintzuntzan, Mexico: Photographs by George Foster.”  

$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. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648 or www.qal.berkeley.edu/~hearst/ 

Lawrence Hall of Science “Science in Toyland,” through Sept. 9. Exhibit uses toys to demonstrate scientific principles and to help develop children's thinking processes. Susan Cerny’s collection of over 200 tops from around the world. “Space Weather,” through Sept. 2. Learn about solar cycles, space weather, the cause of the Aurorae and recent discoveries made by leading astronomers. This interactive exhibit lets visitors access near real-time data from the Sun and space, view interactive videos and find out about a variety of solar activities. “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. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 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. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. “How Big Is the Universe?” Aug. 1 through Aug. 24. Learn how to determine the distance of celestial objects, one of the purposes of the Hubble Space Telescope. Daily, 2:15 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, 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu 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, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu  

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall. 

Send arts events two weeks in advance to Calendar@berkeleydailyplanet.net, 2076 University, Berkeley 94704 or fax to 841-5694. 

To send a message of peace and perseverance to parents, peers and the community, 17 Berkeley High students set out on a 600 mile, 14-day cycling trip from downtown Berkeley to San Diego County’s Santana High School Monday. 

Santana High was the scene of a school shooting in March that left two dead and 13 wounded. 

Most of the Berkeley students are from low-income families and didn’t own bicycles until two months ago. Drawn from the East Bay Asian Youth Center’s after-school tutoring program at Berkeley High, many have never been away from home for two weeks.  

Some have yet to travel outside of the Bay Area. 

But early Monday morning they stood decked out in professional cycling gear in Civic Center Park as parents and community leaders paid tribute to their vision and courage in undertaking this grueling trip. 

“I think I could probably pedal up to the BART station and back and that would be about it,” quipped Berkeley High Principal Frank Lynch. 

The students have spent the  

last two months training on stationary bikes and – on the weekends – pedaling police-donated bicycles up and down the Berkeley Hills. Monday, on the first leg of their trip, after taking BART across the Bay, the students would attempt a 25-mile climb along Highway 1, from San Francisco up to Half Moon Bay State Park. 

The students will camp out in California state parks each night of their trip, using tents, sleeping bags and a mobile kitchen contributed by the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Halfway through the trip they have a day off to visit the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. 

Still, before their departure Monday, students and their parents said they were a little nervous about the trip, where the students would sometimes be expected to travel up to 60 miles in one day.  

“I wouldn’t even undertake this trip in a shaky car let alone a bicycle,” said parent Gwendolyn Edmond, whose son Aramon Bartholomeau would be one of those to lead the pack as the students rolled out of Civic Center Park and onto Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. “To me it’s so awesome. I can’t even imagine it.” 

Ramundo Ramirez, parent of student cyclist Guadalupe Ramirez, said he plans to join up with his daughter for a day next weekend – halfway through the trip – just to make sure she’s doing okay.  

Talking with Board of Education President Terry Doran, who would bike part of the way with the students Monday, recent Berkeley High graduate Maria Herrera laughed nervously as she told about feeling a little bit fatigued from all the weeks of training, before the journey had even begun. 

“I was already feeling it coming up here,” she said. “I was like, I should’ve stretched or something.” 

But when it came time for her to step up to the podium Monday, in front of a television camera, Herrera was all business. 

“This is a very important trip for all of us,” she said. “We’re all going through some barrier that we have to get through. And this trip is really going to prove to us our capabilities.” 

Herrera’s mother, Lucia Herrera, said she had some doubts whether her daughter could make an arduous trip at first, but has since been impressed by her growing determination. 

“Now, I believe she’s going to make it,” Herrera said.  

“This is a great experience, because if you can make this you can make so many things in life,” she added. 

Parents and students alike Monday said they hoped this brave effort by students of color – African American, Latino and Asian American – would go a long way to undermine negative stereotypes about minority youth. 

Asked what message she hoped the trip would send, Beatrice DeBerry-Barrigher, legal guardian of one of the riders, said: “Do not accuse all ethnic children.  

“If one ethnic child does something bad, every child of color is stigmatized, which is unfair,” DeBerry-Barrigher said. “These children come from good homes. Some are being raised by grandparents and aunts, and with God’s help, we’re trying to mold our future leaders.” 

When they reach Santana High, the Berkeley group will join with members of the Santee, Calif., community both to celebrate their achievement and to condemn outbursts of youth violence across the nation. 

“There is peace out in the world, (but) you have to look for it,” said Guadalupe Ramirez, moments after she bid an emotional farewell to her family Monday. “You have to find it.” 

Through fundraising and outreach, the students have raised $10,000 of the $17,000 cost of the trip. Donations are still needed and can be addressed to Berkeley Boosters/PAL, “Pedaling for Peace,” P.O. Box 17, Berkeley, Calif. 94701. 

Tonight, there are some Berkeley residents who will be alone, locked inside shuttered houses, unaware of who their neighbors are and unable to get or give help in case of a disaster. 

But people in the area of Ajax Place in the north Berkeley hills and on Dohr Street in southwest Berkeley are not among them. 

Most of these people – and some 40 other neighborhoods, organized into Neighborhood Watch Groups – are trained in disaster preparedness and know whom to call if they see criminal activity. And they know each other. 

Tonight they’ll be having barbecues and potlucks, celebrating and strengthening their neighborhoods – it’s the National Night Out.  

In most cities, the Night Out is a time for people to own their streets, unintimidated by a criminal element. In Berkeley, crime’s only one of the targets. The other is getting neighbors prepared to help one another in case of fire or an earthquake. 

Trudy Washburn’s Neighborhood Watch Group around Ajax Place is potentially some 80 families strong. The group’s been together for more than six years, and it’s organized. It has identified all the residents in the area, pinpointing children, pets and disabled people. Detailed maps even show where the shut-off valve to the gas is located on every house. 

Tonight the group will hear from a representative of Disaster Preparedness Services and the fire department. Police will be there to talk one-on-one with individuals, said Washburn, who expects Councilmember Betty Olds to be present as well. One of the high points will be meeting families who have recently moved into the area. 

Over on the 2700-2800 blocks of Dohr Street in southwest Berkeley, Rusty Scalf is getting ready for tonight. He’ll be firing up a barbecue, picking up a sheet cake and collecting door prizes. 

It’s about “neighborhood cohesiveness, bonding,” he said. “So neighbors know each other.” 

The neighborhood looks out for crime – one neighbor saw another’s garage being burglarized and immediately called police, Scalf said. But it’s just as much about caring. “We know who has medical problems.” And when one neighbor recently lost a loved one, the neighborhood got together to offer condolences. 

“We try to combat (anonymity),” he said. 

Just down the block, on the 3000 block of Dohr, and including nearby blocks of Prince and Stanton, another Neighborhood Watch Group will be gathering. “We’re trying to revitalize our neighborhood association,” said Chuck Robinson, a member of the group, which potentially includes some 80 households. 

Robinson said the crime rate in his area has been significantly reduced over the past few years. “While we still have to watch out for burglaries,” Robinson said, the group’s looking more at earthquake preparedness “and the safety and security of our seniors.” 

To find a watch group in your neighborhood, call 981-CITY and ask for the Neighborhood Liaison for your area. Or contact the Police Department Community Services Bureau at 981-5808.

Deregulation. Price caps. Energy fuel shortages. And pundits pointing fingers in all directions.  

Most Californians now realize that the fastest way out of the immediate energy crisis (because the crisis the world experienced in the 1970s never really went away) is for each of us to conserve energy.  

Energy-efficient products, from light bulbs to weatherstripping is making a difference in the amount of energy consumed, but there is a hidden phantom stealing watts at your expense that you aren’t even aware of. 

It’s called “phantom power” – power you don’t necessarily know that your home or business is using. According to the researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Americans spend nearly $1 billion dollars each year to run their TVs and VCRs when these products are switched off.  

Switched off? Most televisions, stereos, VCRs and other appliances that work with a remote never really turn off when your hit the “off” button – they remain in a standby mode. That’s why they are able to turn back on again with the remote. See LBNL’s webpage, http://EETD.LBL.gov/Leaking/Reducing.html for more information. If there is a glowing LED (light-emitting diode) on your TV or stereo or other appliance after you switch it off, it is still drawing power, making your meter turn.  

As a result, there is a slow drain of electricity from each of these appliances, and it doesn’t stop there. 

Take a look around your home at what you have plugged in right now. Electric toothbrush that’s recharging? Cellphone recharging? Coffeemaker, microwave, stove, dishwasher, all with built-in clocks? While each appliance may only draw five to twenty watts, the cumulative effect of these appliances can cost $5 – $12 a month at current electricity rates. That means you could be just tossing away nearly $144 dollars of your money every year.  

The quickest way to take control of your immediate electricity use is to plug the larger appliances such as the TV and VCR into a power strip with a kill switch, and turn them off using the switch, rather than just the remote.  

Using the switch on the power strip severs the power to the appliance, and prevents the slow trickle of wasted energy. Power strips can be purchased for under $5 each; most homes have one or two of them lying around anyway. 

The next best thing you can do is to de-gadetize your home – put away the seldom-used appliances with the built-in clocks. Consider NOT using the electric can opener, popcorn maker, rice cooker, sandwich maker, and all those other gadgets that perform functions that you can do manually or using a conventional appliance.  

As major appliances need replacing, look for the most energy-efficient products available. The EnergyStar logo (www.energystar.gov) will indicate that the product has passed a government efficiency test. Generally these products don’t cost much more than the less-efficient ones, and will result in lifetime savings.  

Companies are developing high-efficiency transistors and other technologies to help reduce these phantom power losses. Some very new products offer standby power supply technology that use only 1/4 and 1/2 watt standby power. (See http://EETD.LBL.gov/Leaking/ for more information.) Reducing your phantom power losses will mean more of your money stays in your wallet. 

Alice LaPierre is an energy analyst for the city’s Energy Office. Her column appears as a public service the first and third Tuesday of the month.

LOS ANGELES — Philip Morris attorneys urged a judge Monday to slash a $3 billion punitive damage award to a cancer-stricken smoker and to grant a retrial. 

The arguments formed a two-pronged attack by the tobacco giant on a June 6 decision by a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury that awarded Richard Boeken, 56, compensatory damages of $5.5 million and $3 billion in punitive damages. 

The verdict was the largest in an individual lawsuit against a tobacco company. 

Boeken, a smoker for 40 years, has lung cancer. The former oil and securities dealer claimed in his lawsuit against Philip Morris that he was the victim of a tobacco industry campaign that portrayed smoking as “cool,” but concealed its dangers. 

Philip Morris’ attorneys urged Judge Charles W. McCoy, who presided over the trial, to grant a motion to reduce the punitive damages to no more than $25 million. 

“The award of $3 billion in an individual case ... raises profound issues in our system of justice,” Kenneth Starr, attorney for Philip Morris, told the judge. “No published opinion (in California) sanctions an award of more than $25 million.” 

Starr also argued that because the tobacco industry expects to be facing many similar decisions in the future, a smaller award is justified since the company could not afford to pay $3 billion to every plaintiff. 

Boeken’s attorney, Michael Piuze, argued that the severity of what the tobacco company did justified the high punitive award. 

“Philip Morris traded health for wealth for 50 years, lied about it, and got caught,” he said. 

Philip Morris’ lawyers also argued for a new trial, primarily because McCoy refused to allow the company to present evidence of Boeken’s past criminal convictions, information the jury might have used to decide his credibility. 

Attorney Maurice Leiter argued that there was no evidence of a direct or indirect link between past statements from Philip Morris and Boeken’s belief that smoking was safe. Because of this, Leiter said, jurors had to take Boeken’s word that he got that idea from Philip Morris. 

“The plaintiff’s credibility was a key part of our defense,” Leiter said. 

Boeken had two felony convictions during the 1970s — one involving stolen property and one for possession of a small amount of heroin. In 1993, he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of aiding and abetting wire fraud. The case involved a telephone boiler room operation that sold oil and gas properties from 1986 to 1988 in Wyoming. 

Prosecutors said the business took in about $2.1 million from more than 180 investors. Boeken testified for the government in the prosecution of his former boss, pleaded guilty to the felony and was ordered to pay a fine and $50,000 in restitution. 

Piuze pointed out that the court ruled three times during the trial that Boeken’s criminal record was irrelevant to the case and could prejudice the jury. 

Piuze conceded that there was no direct evidence linking Philip Morris’ statements and Boeken’s beliefs, but said the circumstantial evidence was proof enough. 

“Is it a coincidence that Mr. Boeken ends up believing exactly what they’re putting out?” he said. 

The judge said he would reach a decision by the close of business Thursday. 

SAN FRANCISCO — California appears to be a land of haves and have-nots, with above-average median household incomes but more children living in poverty. 

The figures released Monday also show that California has a higher percentage of families on public assistance. 

The information was gathered as part of a separate national sampling of 700,000 households. Called the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, it reached residents in 32 of the state’s 58 counties. 

The median household income in California was $46,499, about 12 percent higher than the national average of $41,343. And 20 percent of children lived in poverty, compared with 17 percent nationwide. 

The government considers a family of four poor if it makes about $17,000 or less annually. 

Across the state, 14 percent of people were poor compared to 13 percent nationally, 11 percent of families were poor compared to 10 percent nationally and 19 percent of families received public assistance compared to 17 percent nationally. 

California is a state of “enormous extremes,” said Dara Schur, a lawyer with the nonprofit Western Center on Law and Poverty, which provides legal assistance. 

“We have very wealthy communities on one hand and then people living in poverty on the other,” Schur said. “If we don’t find a way to make it liveable for people of all economic sectors, it’s going to be disastrous for people at all levels.” 

Schur cited national and state tax policies which she said reward the wealthy, and California lags behind other states in providing housing subsidies and assistance to the poor. 

Ted Gibson, a state Finance Department economist, says another contributor to the income gap is immigration; an estimated 25.9 of California’s population is foreign-born, higher than any other state. 

“I think you have to look at the fact that we have a higher percentage of immigrants than any state in the union,” Gibson said. “And initially, when immigrants first arrive they tend to have lower incomes.” 

Rent is often the biggest expense for the poor in California. About 21 percent of renters here pay at least half their income for housing, heat and water. Only in New York and Florida do more tenants pay that much. 

August Alimorong, 24, knows how hard it is to get ahead in California. The Filipino immigrant said he brings home $972 a month working at a San Francisco sandwich shop. He shares an apartment with several friends and cooks rice at home to save money to send home to his family. 

“I use the bus now, but I’m hoping to save so someday I can own a car,” Alimorong said. 

“The people I represent everyday – I don’t see how they even afford food,” said Jonathan Milder, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County. 

Milder’s clients include an immigrant family of three in Lompoc whose landlord increased rent 50 percent from $500 to $750 in one month. The father makes $2,000 a month at a garage. Tenants in their building were told to pay up or get out, in violation of a new state law requiring two months’ notice for rent hikes of more than 10 percent. 

Miller is trying to buy the families more time. 

“They end up cutting corners where they can,” he said. “They don’t have car insurance or medical coverage and they aren’t going out to dinner like me and you. They have to get assistance for their children’s lunches at school.” 

Children may suffer most from the gap between rich and poor, said Amy Dominguez-Arms, vice president of Children NOW in Oakland. 

“Poverty affects the likelihood they’ll grow up healthy, be able to succeed, do well in school and live in safe housing,” she said. 

In California’s schools, 26 percent of children qualified to receive free or reduced price school meals in the last year, compared with only 22.8 percent nationwide. 

The survey also showed a gender gap among California workers, with males having a median income of $29,886 in 2000 – about 46 percent higher than the $20,527 median income for women. 

However, the salary gap wouldn’t be this extreme if the Census had surveyed similar occupations among men and women, said Deborah Reed, an economist with the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based think tank. 

Women also often work fewer hours than men, and tend to work in lower paying occupations, she said. 

“Once we adjust for the hours worked and the occupations, it would be much more equal,” she said. 

Among the elderly, poverty was not as rampant. Only 9 percent of those 65 and older lived below the poverty line, compared to 11 percent nationally. 

But Gibson said California seniors may appear to be faring well because the state has a relatively small elderly population. That’s because elderly people can sell their homes for a high return in California and use the cash to retire in more affordable states. 

——— 

On the Internet: 

http://www.census.gov 

http://www.childrennow.org 

Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara Co. — http://www.fsacares.org 

CA Dept. of Finance — http://www.dof.ca.gov/ 

http://www.wclp.org 

http://www.ppic.org 

NEW YORK — The phrasing varies but the message is the same: The big dreams of a stock market comeback as momentous as its collapse are faded and jaded now. Forget them. Get real. 

The message may be the recognition of reality by that dwindling bunch of financial analysts who had been holding out hope.  

One by one they’ve conceded defeat, reluctantly, because to do so means “we were wrong.” 

The Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates in January, and the dreamers saw a recovery in the first quarter. The second quarter brought more reports of earnings losses. And the third quarter seems likely to as well. 

You might for a while be able to deny earnings as the basis for stock prices – why, prices of stocks soared on no earnings at all in 1999 – but you can’t do so forever. And with third-quarter earnings likely to be weak, forever is closing in on the dreamers. 

In fact, one view developing now has corporate chiefs becoming more interested this year in cleaning house than showing big profits.  

More concerned with lowering inventories, closing plants and reducing work forces. 

Ed Yardeni, chief investment strategist of Deutsche Bank, goes so far as to express the belief some chiefs “are also cutting their operating earnings as much as possible so their comparisons will improve next year.” 

Gerald Perritt, a realist and editor of The Mutual Fund Letter, says “one by one the optimists are throwing in the towel,” finally recognizing that the sharp rebound they forecast in January may not come by December. 

In fact, Perritt reminds investors, “many of America’s industrial giants are telling Wall Street that they don’t see a turnaround in the earnings skid anytime this year.” 

Moreover, a smattering of technology and telecommunications companies are suggesting to analysts that they aren’t even sure their industries, still in retreat, are going to come roaring back next year. 

Perritt’s advice is to bite the bullet, sell stocks that are built on a dream and use the proceeds to invest in funds that are packed with so-called value stocks.  

“Value is back in vogue.” 

Anthony Maramarco of “The Babson Staff Letter,” agrees.  

In fact, he observes, the resurgence in the value sector began more than a year ago, just as the tech-wreck began, scattering investors like a nest of ants. 

Value investing at the time didn’t offer the dreamy possibilities of technology stocks.  

But it offered a haven in companies with slow but real growth, low volatility, positive cash flow and maybe even dividends. 

Maramarco isn’t against growth-style investing, as opposed to value investing, but he does observe that each waxes and wanes, requiring diversification and regular rebalancing to best suit the times. 

And these could be the times again when terms such as “earnings” and “cash flow” aren’t viewed as old-fashioned, “old economy” terms, but logical, realistic investment expectations. As opposed to dreamy hopes. 

John Cunniff is a business analyst for The Associated Press

Austin’s assistant planning director, Carol Barrett, will take the reins of Berkeley’s Department of Planning and Development in the fall. The appointment was approved by the City Council at its July 24 meeting. 

“Carol Barrett is a seasoned professional who is extremely well regarded by her peers from all over the country,” said Acting Deputy Director Vivian Kahn. “Berkeley is very fortunate to get somebody of her caliber. She really knows her stuff.” 

Berkeley’s planning department has 70 full-time employees and is budgeted at $8.5 million for fiscal year 2001-02. The department is responsible for managing the city’s current and future development, while ensuring environmental safety, harmonious neighborhood development, aesthetics and functionality. 

Planning’s Division of Current Planning is often put in the difficult position of having to reconcile community needs and desires with state codes and local zoning laws. That job can be tough in Berkeley, according to planning officials, because there’s a high level of sophistication among residents and a tradition of civic participation. 

“People are passionate about their neighborhoods and developers are often passionate about their projects,” said Acting Director of Planning and Development Wendy Cosin. “People feel that way everywhere but in Berkeley it’s a little more.” 

The planning department’s subdivisions include Toxics Management, Current Planning, Advance Planning, and Building and Safety. The various divisions oversee a multitude of functions related to development projects such as issuing permits, inspecting projects at various stages of construction and planning and managing the city’s storage and disposal of toxic waste. 

Barrett has been working as a city planner since 1974. She has been with the planning department in Austin, Texas, for 10 years. Currently she is the assistant director of the Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department.  

Originally from Miami, Fla., Barrett received a masters degree in city planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is well respected among her peers and was among the first class of College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a organization created in 1999 to honor the lifetime achievements of city planners. 

She recently completed a book entitled “Everyday Ethics for Practicing Planners,” which she said will be available by the end of the year. 

She and her husband Gary, have been married for 25 years. They have two sons, Craig, a junior at the University of Texas in Austin, and Andrew, a sophomore at UC Berkeley. 

Barrett will be taking over from Cosin, who was appointed to the post 18 months ago when then director, Liz Epstein took a four-month maternity leave. Epstein chose not to come back, which left Cosin at the helm while the city searched for a new director. Cosin will return to her previous position of deputy director when Barrett starts Sept. 10.  

Berkeley’s Department of Planning and Development has been in the center of several land-use and development controversies in recent months including the proposed Beth El synagogue, school and social hall at 1301 Oxford St., the mixed-use, four-story development at 2700 San Pablo and the mixed-use, four-story development at University Avenue and Acton Street. 

Despite strong opposition from neighborhood groups, all of those projects were approved by either the Zoning Adjustments Board, overseen by the planning department, or the City Council The approval of the proposed projects has caused some neighborhood groups to suggest the planning department has become an advocate agency for developers by shepherding their proposals through the city’s planning process. (The proposal for 2700 San Pablo Ave. was withdrawn by the developer and will be reviewed a second time by ZAB, once a new environmental study has been completed.) 

In a telephone interview Friday, Barrett said communities that are experiencing development can often feel that city planners are being unduly influenced by developers. She said that it’s the job of the city planner to be candid with people and respectful of all points of view. But she said ultimately decision makers should rely on a framework of planning regulations and state codes. 

“Sometimes people are very familiar with community sentiment and their intense hope as a citizen is that if they can eloquently express their feelings and convey the shared value with their community they will be able to influence development projects,” she said. “But that is not always possible and out of frustration, people in the community sometimes feel that you’re in the developer’s pocket.” 

Barrett, whose father died when she was 3 years old, said she was raised by her mother, a church secretary, who instilled in her a strong sense of community service. She first became interested in city planning during a semester at American University in Washington, D.C. while an undergraduate at Stetson University. 

“I was able to get some hands-on experience working at the city, state and federal levels,” she said. “I became aware of how much thinking goes into what makes a city work. I was very attracted to the planning profession because it requires a lot of technical skills, but invites the community to participate.” 

Barrett said she is most proud of the neighborhood planning work she’s done in Austin. The city had not adopted a neighborhood plan since 1979 and she was assigned the job of working with neighbors, business and community services to put together comprehensive plans for six neighborhoods. 

Barrett, who is known in the Austin press as the “Governess of Neighborhood Planning,” said three of the plans have been adopted into the city’s zoning ordinance and the other three await council action. 

Berkeley will offer a different set of challenges. Austin experienced a growth spurt in the last 10 years. According to the U.S. Census 2000, the city of 650,000 people grew by nearly 200,000 over the last decade. Austin’s planing department has had to manage new growth into open spaces.  

Berkeley, with a population of about 100,000, on the other hand, saw a population increase of only 136 people in the last 10 years. There is very little room for development and the planning department mostly manages remodeling and in-fill projects.  

Barrett said she will spend her first days in Berkeley getting acquainted with the city’s culture. “My role is to be a good listener and reflective of the kind of comments that folks are going to be making,” she said.  

Barrett, who is regarded as a planner with a strong set of ethics, offered a shorthand version of one of her guiding principles.  

“I’ve often thought of what I would want written on my headstone,” she said. “ I would want it to read: ‘She tried to do the right thing’ and the right thing is to seek to expand choice and opportunity for all persons.” 

Monday, Aug. 6

Intensive Production Urban  

Gardening Training 

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 

Santa Fe Bar & Grill 

1310 University Ave. 

Growing Gourmet: A free urban gardening training & potluck lunch.  

Learn ways to intensively and organically grow produce for your own use or for an urban market garden. A hands-on training in the garden located behind the restaurant and potluck lunch at 1 p.m. Katherine Webb 

841-1110. 

Osteoporosis: How to put  

Bone Loss on Hold 

9 a.m. - 10 a.m. 

Summit Campus 

Cafeteria Annexes B & C 

350 Hawthorne Ave. in Oakland 

A free lecture by Dr. Elliot Schwartz, co-director of the Foundation for Osteoporosis Research and Education. Learn how to create a program that will help minimize bone loss.  

Ellen Carroll: 869-6737. 

Tuesday, Aug. 7

Intelligent Conversation  

7 - 9 p.m.  

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 

A discussion group open to all, regardless of age, religion, viewpoint, etc. This time the discussion will center on sex and drugs: Free will? Must laws be obeyed? Informally led by Robert Berend, who founded similar groups in L.A., Menlo Park, and Prague.Free  

527-5332 

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

2 - 7 p.m. 

Derby Street at MLK Jr. Way 

548-3333 

Free Early Music Group 

10 - 11:30 a.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK) 

Small group sings madrigals and other voice harmony every Tuesday morning. Call Ann, 655-8863 

Free Computer Class for  

Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Strawberry Creek Daylighting 

Strategy Workshop 

6:30 - 7:30 p.m. 

Corporation Yard Green Room 

1326 Allston Way 

A workshop to develop an effective strategy for promoting the daylighting of Strawberry Creek downtown. Learn about current daylighting concepts and develop a working plan for the next year and beyond. Facilitated by Louis Hexter of MIG. Call Janet Byron to RSVP at 848-4008 or bjanet@earthlink.net 

Wednesday, Aug. 8

A Day at the Beach 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Build sand castles with sand sculptor Kirk Rademaker. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

Thursday, Aug. 9

Ancient Native Sites of the East Bay 

7:30 p.m. 

Room 160 Kroeber Hall, University of California Campus 

Sean Dexter, archaeologist, will discuss the recent Data Recovery Program at the Emeryville Shellmound/South Bayfront site. Jakki Kehl, a Mutsun Ohlone, will discuss protecting cultural resources by developing partnerships and encouraging good stewardship of the land. $10 

841-2242 

Salsa Dance Classes 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 

1414 Walnut St. 

Classes every Thursday with live percussionists, light refreshments, DJ playing Latin music. $10 or $15 for two. 

237-9874 

Sea Kayaking 

7 p.m. 

REI 

1338 San Pablo Avenue 

Learn about the best sea kayaking spots in Northern California from Roger Schumann and Jan Shriner. Free. 

527-4140 

Free Computer Class for Seniors 

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. and 1 - 3 p.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, call ahead for a reservation. 

644-6109 

Kensington 55+ Activity Center 

9 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

Social Hall of Arlington Community Church 

52 Arlington Ave. 

Conversation, Apple II computer instruction, massage therapy, German conversation group, meditation and relaxation techniques, watercolor art class, tea and coffee. Special 11 a.m. program: Safety, Pat Caftel presents Neighborhood Disaster Preparedness. For more information call 526-9146 or 547-1969. 

Friday, Aug. 10

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through Aug. 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Saturday, Aug. 11

Sixth Annual Reggae Worldbeat Festival  

Noon - 5 p.m.  

People’s Park  

Telegraph & Haste St. (behind Amoeba)  

Featuring: Obeyjah & The Saints with the Village Culture Drummers, Dancehall King; Major P., Wawa Sylvestre and The Oneness Kingdom Band and many more. Free, but donations encouraged.  

Free Classical Music Concert 

8 p.m. 

Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley Campus 

UC Berkeley Summer Symphony, Gene Chang, Henry Shin, Directors.  

Debussy, Stravinsky, Brahms. Free admission.  

For more information: 665-5631 

Sunday, Aug. 12

Live Oak Concerts 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Art Center 

1275 Walnut St. 

Composition vs. Improvisation, Music/Structures by Tom Swafford.  

$10 644-6893 

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn front and rear derailleur adjustments from one of REI’s bike technicians. Tools provided. Free.  

527-4140 

Buddhist Architecture In the West 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Mark Henderson on “Building a Buddhist Temple.” Free. 

843-6812 

Steel Drums and Sand Castles 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Kirk Rademaker teaches sand sculpting while Richmond Bloco entertains with steel drum music. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132

Never an excuse for crimes like those of Reddy  

Editor: 

It’s touchy at best, but we have to look at ourselves and see how our well-intentioned policies have created damages to our communities.  

We’ve tried to see crime by people who, in our society, have long been abused because of their color in a different light, taking into account their oppression.  

Berkeley has gone so overboard in this direction as to come up with the kind of problem we’re seeing when looking at the Lakireddy situation.  

Their crime is being reviewed as though their excuses have some merit. 

Their excuses are subtended by Berkeley’s traditional concern with their community’s calling us racist.  

They are also using the customs/culture argument although in roundabout language. ‘...it is our custom/culture...’ to rape/abuse girls/women/poor people/people who are back in the villages providing us our support so we can keep abusing them all. 

These (alleged and convicted) rapists need to be set away from our troubled society for the rest of their lives.  

We need to be protected against this kind of monstrosity. It’s bad enough we grow it locally, on our own, without it having to appear that since it’s done elsewhere, there’s any rationale for it, or that its perpetrators can be reformed.  

The people who have done these terrible acts have been here long enough to perceive that their actions, while occurring around here,too, are no way acceptable, and were not only criminal but brutal, sexist and ageist as well. 

If we’d clean up in one place, we might begin to render justice further in our community. These arguments for these intolerable actors are vomitous - I get literally ill seeing us protect that behavior in any way, any where. 

Norma J F Harrison 

Berkeley  

No such thing as a pure economic system 

Editor, 

My chemistry professor paraphrased the law of entropy as “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” The Planet has been receiving many letters, of which Mr. Foldvary’s (8/2/01) is the latest, that suggest that economics is not subject to this type of constraint, and that you can actually get a whole free market, and not just lunch. 

The two ideas are similar in that both describe asymtotic limits that are not attainable in the real world. Educated people no longer attempt to build perpetual motion machines because they represent a “free lunch”. Unfortunately, Republicans and Libertarians are still trying to remove regulatory controls on the market in pursuit of their goal of the mythical “free market”. Unfortunately, because the free market limit is an inherently unstable limit. Yes, one can have stupid regulations, but an unregulated market will rapidly become an extremely unfree market. 

An unregulated market is prey to the development of oligopolies and oligopolic control (California energy prices, anyone?). An unregulated market has no way of dealing with externalities, and is inefficient and inequitable in its use of natural resources (the “tragedy of the commons”). An unregulated market optimizes for the moment, and cannot easily take costs now to defer more serious costs later (global warming, anyone?). An unregulated market has no ethics; it was not okay for the British to stand aside and let the Irish starve during the potato famine. 

On the other side of ideological fence, Syrek (8/1/01) claims that the market is a racket because of interest, dividends and rents. Capital is a resource and has a market. Syrek’s criticism is valid when rates are usurious or the initial outlay is unearned, but this is a problem that could be controlled by market regulations and estate and progressively structured income taxes (Senator Feinstein take note please!). 

Economic systems are not simple. Slavish devotion to extreme ideologies such as the free market or pure communism can force people into serving the economy, instead of the reverse. Humane and efficient solutions are more likely to arise in a regulated market economy. 

Robert Clear 

Berkeley 

Don’t forget loses at Nagasaki 

Editor: 

Your article (page 1, Aug 4-5 issue) rightly calls attention to the horrible loss of civilian life at Hiroshima August 5, 1945. But equally unthinkable is the similar terror attack that struck Nagasaki some five days later. One bomb, though not at a civilian target, seemed possibly justifiable to me at the time (I was then 16). But why the second bomb? In the recent Truman biography by gifted historian David McCulloch, the justification for the second bomb is, for many readers, convincingly presented – and there is no question that Truman and his advisors were humane men – but surely Nagasaki should not be forgotten even if the justification will forever be debated. 

Bob Somers 

Berkeley 

Take vehicle pollution into account 

Editor 

Concern about the air pollution near the I-80 freeway should take into account the tire dust and benzene in the air. Tire dust (rubber & latex) is an extremely small particulate, too fine for most filters. Depending upon the amount actually lost from each tire, if one pound is lost each year it would be approximately 8000 tons total in the Bay Area. 

The Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto has found that children who live near a roadway with 20,000 or more vehicles per day have an 8 or 9 times higher chance of getting leukemia. 

Occupants of vehicles in congested traffic are often breathing the exhaust from the other vehicles, particularly at toll plazas on foggy days with still air. The tolls on the Bay Bridge should have been collected eastbound where the 16 lanes of toll collection could handle all the bridge traffic with no backup and the afternoon breezes dispersed the pollution for vehicle occupants and toll takers. 

Charles L. Smith 

Berkeley 

From:  

Steve Geller  

To:  

opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.net 

Six months ago, I made up a handy acronym to remind me what I thought I 

would not like about the Bush administration. TEAR - Tax Cut, 

Environment, Abortion, Religion. Here’s the TEAR score today: 

The Tax Cut was enacted, and still looks to me like national fiscal 

irresponsibility to reward Bush’s bankrollers. But even Senator Feinstein 

voted for it. 

Environment -- Kyoto, Arsenic, Wildlife Range (need I say more?) 

Abortion -- Bush hasn’t done as much damage as I expected, possibly due 

to political vulnerability on other issues. Senator Boxer is sponsoring 

a bill to reverse Bush’s "gag rule", which denies federal funding to 

organizations which use their own funds to counsel women about 

reproductive choices, lobby for reproductive rights or provide 

abortions. 

Religion -- If I were one of the religious right folks, I’d feel poorly 

rewarded by the Bush administration. All that happened was the support 

for "faith based" public service groups. Stuff like school prayer 

and expunging evolution from the schoolbooks may have been put on hold 

due to present political vulnerabilities. 

But before long, I expect all Bush’s TEAR policies to be fully operational. 

Unfortunately for the country, let alone the world, we have 3 1/2 more 

years of Bush to go. 

Steve Geller 

2540 College #311 

Berkeley 94704 

Subject:  

Nagasaki 

Date:  

Sat, 4 Aug 2001 22:37:52 EDT 

From:  

Rsomers2@aol.com 

To:  

opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.net 

History might be written by its victors, but a new film about an African political hero suggests revolution is remembered for its martyrs. 

“Lumumba,” opening in Berkeley on Friday, is a story told by a corpse. The film opens on a remote African plain where two men armed with machetes and kerosene are putting the pieces of the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo into an oil drum for incineration. The voice-over is from the assassinated Patrice Lumumba (played by Eriq Ebounay) inviting us to hear the story of a revolutionary who never realized his vision. 

Lumumba was elected to office in 1960 at the turbulent moment Congo became independent of Belgium’s colonial rule. Left adrift with few political resources, the Congolese government rapidly declined into nearly complete collapse. Lumumba – incorruptible, visionary, and proud – was deposed from office after two and one-half months by a military coup. Six months after elected he was dead. 

“His legacy was the sacrifice of his life, and the few big ideas he was defending,” said the film’s writer/director Raoul Peck, during his stay in San Francisco in June. “And most of all he said ‘no’ to corruption. He could not be bought.” 

Congo’s rich natural resources were sought after by the international community, and because of its fragile government the country was vulnerable to external pressure. The film portrays Lumumba’s mission to overcome internal divisions and establish a pan-African coalition, and his country’s desperate needs in the wake of independence.  

Raoul Peck was born Haitian and raised in Congo under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, just after the assassination of Lumumba. His relationship with the legacy of Lumumba is personal, political, and cinematic. In 1991 he created a documentary called “Lumumba – Death of a Prophet” in which he explored his early memories of childhood in the wake of the murder of a national hero. 

He was later approached by Swiss producers to create a film about a European traveling to “some African country” where, like Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” he confronts his personal demons. 

“I was not interested in that because I was interested in my own stories and my own history. But I could propose something else,” Peck recalled. “It’s best to speak about something you know, and I knew Congo.” 

After writing several unsatisfying drafts of scripts about the Congo, Peck realized he could look directly into the heart of late 20th century Congo – and, by extension, Africa – by telling the story of Lumumba. He says “Lumumba” is not merely based on the true story of the man, but it is the true story. 

As even the most perfunctory student of media representation knows, claiming a film is not just an interpretation of history but history itself is insupportable and a bit arrogant. But Peck did his homework and found the documented facts were dramatic enough to reproduce without doctoring them with fiction. 

“This is a rare example. I didn’t have to invent secondary characters. All the names you hear are real people. A lot of the small events in the film I did not invent. To the last details, and dialogues, I did not invent.” 

Peck went so far as to consult archival photos and filmstrips on the shooting set to make sure his re-enactments were accurate down to the extras and props. Much of the film, however, was shot in Mozambique and Zimbabwe for logistical reasons. 

When shooting a scene of a rag-tag troop of dissenting soldiers storming Lumumba’s cabinet meeting with guns raised, Peck was able to draw on eyewitness accounts.  

He was also able to use his position as a moviemaker to evoke the desperate fear in the crazed eyes of the soldiers on the edge of losing control. 

“Imagine his own fear having to play a Prime Minister even though he knew his experience was very short,” Peck said of Lumumba. “He had maybe two or three years’ military experience. It’s difficult to imagine, but it was incredible.” 

The story of Lumumba perhaps didn’t need invention to be good storytelling, but Peck did allow himself license as director to create cinematic moments that communicate something above their historical accuracy. 

Standing on a remote airstrip, Lumumba and President Joseph Kasavubu (played by Maka Kotto) pause their conference about the unstable future of their government to look at the beauty of the expansive savannah. The scene articulates a note of awe in view of the landscape and a taste of disappointment that this country they love and fight for might never be free. 

Peck says he made this film for a wide audience in an attempt to popularize the legacy of Lumumba but his attention to detail is for the people who know Africa already. “I wanted, if a Congolese watches this film, that he feel at home. I didn’t want to cheat on that; which happens a lot in movies… I wanted to make a film the Congolese people would be proud to see.” 

“Lumumba” runs Aug. 10-17 at the Shattuck Cinema, 2230 Shattuck Ave.

924 Gilman St. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Aug 10: 90 Day Men, Assembly of God, Strong Intention, Under a Dying Sun; Aug 11: Toys That Kill, Scared of Chakra, Soophie Nun Squad, Debris; Aug 12: 5 p.m. Citizen Fish, J-Church, Eleventeen. $5. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Anna’s Place Aug. 11 and every Saturday night 10:30 p.m. - midnight, Ducksan Distones. The following play at 8 p.m. – Aug. 8: “The Renegade Sidemen;” Aug. 7: open mic.1801 University Ave. 849-2662.  

Eli’s Mile High Club Doors open at 8 p.m. Every Friday, 10 p.m. - 2 a.m., Funky Fridays Conscious Dance Party with KPFA DJs Split Shankin and Funky Man. $10; 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 655-6661 

Freight and Salvage Coffee House All music at 8 p.m. Aug 6: Frank Yamma; Aug 8: San Francisco Klezmer Experience; Aug 9: John Renbourn; Aug 10: Jody Stecher, Kate Brislin; Aug 11: Al Stewart. $16.50 - $19.50. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jupiter Aug. 7: Joshi Marshal Project, jazz, soul and hiphop; Aug. 8: Broun Fellini’s, jazz/funk/hiphop grooves; Aug. 9: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 10: Steven Emerson, singer/songwriter mixes cool jazz and sweat soul; Aug. 11: J Dogs, funk-soul; Aug. 14: Chris Shot Group, folk-rock and soul combo; Aug. 15: Lithium House, electro/drum & bass styles with live jazz; Aug. 16: Beatdown with DJ’s Delon, Yamu and Add1; Aug. 17: The Mind Club, Old school funk grooves with sonic swirls of acid jazz; All music starts at 8:00 p.m. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK. 843-7625  

La Peña Cultural Center Aug 10: 8:30 p.m. Ire $8; Aug 11: 9:30 p.m. Fito Reynoso’s Ritmo y Armonia. $10, $13 for dance class starting at 8:15; Aug 12: 5, 7:30 p.m. “Say Yo Business” Linda Tillery & The Cultural Heritage Chior. $18 in advance, $20 at the door. In the Cafe, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568 

La Note/Jazzschool Aug 12: 4:30 p.m. The Freedom Project, 5:30 Eli Sundelson Trio. 2377 Shattuck Ave. 845-5373 

Shattuck Down Low Lounge Every Tuesday: 9:30 p.m., Posh Tuesdays with DJ’s Yamu, Delon, Add1, and Tequila Willie. Shattuck at Allston. www.thebeatdownsound.com  

Downtown Restaurant and Bar August 6: 7 p.m. Jesse Colin Young of the sixties hit group, The Youngbloods, will be performing at a No Nukes evening, sponsored by Greenpeace. The evening commemorates the 56th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The proceeds go to Tri-Valley CAREs and Citizen Alert. Tickets are $100. 2102 Shattuck Ave. 800-728-6223 

Ali Akbar College of Music Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m. A concert of Indian classical music. Rita Sahai, vocals; Rachel Untersher, violin; Madhukar Malayanur, tabla; $20 general; $15 students. St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., (415) 454-6264 or www.aacm.org 

Yoshi’s Aug. 7. Claudia Acuna $14; Aug. 8 through Aug. 12: Steve Turre Quintet, trombone and conch shell master in small group setting. Wednesday and Thursday, $18; Friday and Saturday, $22; Sunday matinee, $5 kids, $10 adults with one child, $18 general; Sunday, $22. Unless otherwise noted, music at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 238-9200 or 762-2277 www.yoshis.com 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts Aug. 10: 7:30 p.m. & Aug. 11, 12, 5 p.m. Campers from Stage Door Conservatory’s “On Broadway” program for grades 5-9 will perform Fiddler on the Roof, Jr. $12 adults, $8 kids. 2640 College Ave. 845-8542 ext. 302 

“The Great Sebastians” Through Aug. 11: Friday and Saturday evenings 8 p.m. plus Thursday, Aug. 9, presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. A tale about a mind-reading act touring behind the Iron Curtain. A communist general believes the act and “invites” the Sebastians to his villa where the humor and excitement follows. $10. Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck (at Berryman). For reservations call 528-5620 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through Aug. 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. Special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

“Loot” A Shotgun Players’ production. Through Aug 25, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Special Performance Aug 20, 8:00 p.m. General Admission: $15, Students / Seniors: $10 La Val’s 1834 Euclid Avenue 655-0813 

“Reefer Madness” Aug. 8, 9, Aug. 22, 23: 9 p.m. A new one-act theatre piece adapted from a 1936 government-funded film opens a critical eye to the control of our society. Performed by The Elemental Theatre Group La Pena Cultural Center 3105 Shattuck Avenue. Wednesdays are “pay what you can,” Thursdays $5 - $10. Contact Zachary Rouse or Tisha Sloan for more info at 655-4150 

“Romeo & Juliet” Aug 11 - Sep 2, Tuesdays - Thursdays. Bruns Memorial Amphitheater. Shakespeare’s classic about a young couple that meets, falls in love and dies in just five days. Adults: $22 - $41 youth (under 16): $12 - $41. 

“Barnum” Through Aug. 12. The story of legendary circusmaster P.T. Barnum, with plenty of musical theater and circus acrobatics. Splash Circus’ aspiring young circus artists will perform an hour before each show. $15 to $27. Friday through Sunday, 8 p.m. Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland. 531-9597 www.woodminster.com

Echema waiting for NCAA ruling 

Cal tailback Joe Echema is waiting to hear from the NCAA on whether he will be eligible for the upcoming football season. 

Although Echema’s grade point average is sufficient for eligibility, he failed to meet the NCAA’s requirement for units passed in a one-year period. Echema fell one unit short in 2000, but Cal has requested that the NCAA give Echema a waiver. 

If Echema is forced to sit out the 2001 season he will take his redshirt year, which is something the Cal coaching staff had considered for him anyway during spring practice, since the Bears were supposed to have three senior tailbacks – starter Joe Igber, Echema and Saleem Muhammed – which would have given them superior depth. But Muhammed decided to tranfer earlier this year, and Echema’s absence would leave head coach Tom Holmoe’s squad without an experienced backup for Igber.  

Incoming freshmen Terrell Williams and Will Scott, both from Hoover High (San Diego), are the only other tailbacks on the roster. Senior Marcus Fields was a tailback in his first two years at Cal, but is expected to fill a utility role, seeing time at fullback, H-back and wide reciever. 

Cal recruit fails to qualify 

Mike Wells, who was supposed to bolster the Bears’ linebacking corps this season, failed to acheive a qualifying score on his college entrance exams and won’t be attending Cal. Wells, a 6-foot-3, 215-pound PrepStar All-American from Sahuaro High (Tucson) has decided to attend another college, accoring to Cal sources. 

BHS star Davis to attend San Jose State 

Former Berkeley High basketball star Ryan Davis will walk on to the team at San Jose State for the 2001-2002 season, according to Berkeley High head coach Mike Gragnani. 

“They really like Ryan down there, and he can fit in well with their team,” Gragnani said. “He’s got a good chance at earning a scholarship down the line.” 

Davis was the Yellowjackets’ leading scorer as a senior last season after transferring to the school from Lincoln High (San Francisco). Davis also played at Berkeley High during his freshman year. 

Berkeley High football schedule announced 

The Berkeley High football team will open its regular season schedule on Sept. 7 with a game at Foothill High in Pleasanton. The Yellowjackets will also face James Logan (Union City) and Dos Palos in non-league play before kicking off the ACCAL season with an away matchup with El Cerrito on Sept. 28. 

Berkeley will also travel to De Anza on Oct. 5 before hosting Alameda a week later. They have a bye on Oct. 19, which head coach Matt Bissell said he is currently trying to fill. The ’Jackets homecoming game is on Oct. 26 against Encinal, and the regular season wraps up with an away game against Richmond on Nov. 2 and a home game against Pinole Valley on Nov. 8. 

Schott helps U-21 team to Nordic Cup title 

GJOVIK, Norway - The U.S. Under-21 Women’s National Team put together a masterful performance in the championship game of the Nordic Cup Tuesday, scoring three goals in the first 16 minutes in a 6-1 destruction of Sweden to win its third consecutive title at the most elite competition in the world for U-21 women. Cal forward Laura Schott tallied two assists in the game and finished her first Nordic Cup tournament with a goal and three assists.  

Forward Anne Morrell, making her first start of the tournament, scored three goals, all off far post headers, while midfielder Aleisha Cramer registered two goals and two assists.  

Morrell, and forwards Danielle Borgman and Schott stepped up big for the Americans in the most lopsided Nordic Cup championship game in history. It was also the greatest margin of victory in the 16 matches of this year’s tournament.  

“In absence of (Abby) Wambach and (Katie Barnes), two of our regular starters, Anne Morrell, Laura Schott and converted defender Danielle Borgman gave us terrific performances in their starts up front,” U.S. coach Jerry Smith said.

“There’s only two things that money can’t buy,” Texas songwriter Guy Clark sang in 1983. “That’s true love and home grown tomatoes.” 

But growing tomatoes is not an easy task. That’s what customers at Berkeley Farmers’ Market learned Saturday at the annual tomato tasting. 

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the public could taste samples of the 16 varieties of tomatoes – of all colors and shapes – that the market’s farmers sell on a regular basis. This year the tasting also included a cooking demonstration and a talk on organic tomato-growing. 

“It’s for people to get a sense of the huge variety of (tomatoes),” said Kirk Lumpkin, the farmers’ market special events coordinator, as he explained what the purpose of the tasting was. “I’m sure that there are still a lot of people, because what you get in the supermarket tends to be so limited in choice, who don’t know there are hundreds, maybe thousands of kinds of tomatoes.” 

Supermarket tomatoes lack flavor for a very simple reason, explained Paul Underhill, an organic farmer from Terra Firma Farm in the Central Valley.  

They are bred for shipping and not for taste. They are still green when harvested and are treated with ethylene gas to ripen. They are also hybridized to have a thicker skin and a shape that withstands the wear and tear of industrial processing. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has three standards for grades of tomatoes for shipping: green, mature and vine ripe. 

“All those tomatoes before they get to the supermarket are gassed to turn red,” he said. “They never develop any sugar; they never develop any flavor.” 

But the tomatoes that customers could sample Saturday are grown in a different way. First of all, they are harvested when they are ripe. And unlike agrabusinesses’ tomatoes, which are grown on bush plants, organic farms grow tomatoes like a vine on trellises or support stakes. This agricultural method, Underhill said, prevents tomatoes from cracking on the ground when ripening or from getting moldy if the soil is moist. It also keeps the tomatoes in the shade of the plants, protecting them from direct sun. 

Producing tasty tomatoes, however, also requires a nutritive soil, including calcium,  

and the right quantity of water, Underhill said. 

“Tomatoes need a certain amount of water but they don’t like to get too much,” said Underhill. “If you over-water them, they can split. If they don’t have enough water they can’t get the calcium out of the ground and they tend to develop large brown spots.” 

Those who want to grow tomatoes in their garden, Underhill concluded, should plant cherry tomatoes, which don’t need very good soil, don’t easily get burned by the sun, and are more likely to resist the Bay Area’s level of humidity. 

Earlier in the morning, Laurel K. Miller from the Sustainable Kitchen, a Berkeley cooking school, demonstrated how to prepare tomato-based soup and a fresh salad called “Panzanella.” 

Different varieties of tomatoes have different uses, she explained. 

“If you’re making a sauce, a Panzanella or a soup, it’s okay to have mushier or riper tomatoes,” she said. “But if you need something a little bit more firm like for a salad and you want the integrity of the shape of the tomato, you want to avoid that.” 

Another tip: meatier tomatoes make better sauces. Heirloom tomatoes, for instance, are particularly good for raw dishes, but too watery to be successfully cooked. 

“They have a lot of water content,” Miller said. “They tend to evaporate away and you really loose the complexities and the flavors.” 

The diversity of its colors and shapes, on the other hand, makes them perfect for salads. 

To those who have trouble choosing a variety, Miller recommends Early Girl, which is an all-purpose tomato. 

*** 

There will be another tomato tasting Tuesday, from 2 - 7 p.m. at the Farmers’ Market on Derby St. at MLK, Jr. Way. 

With a new school year fast approaching, the oft-asked question of what to do about Berkeley High is back in the spotlight.  

While the search for answers is complicated by the absence of money, new programs are being launched and, if the new superintendent has her way, existing resources will be better coordinated. 

Due to a critical budget shortfall in the Berkeley Unified School District, the high school will begin the new year with roughly four fewer teachers. The on-campus suspension program, a mainstay of the school’s discipline system for years, has been cut. The popular Rebound program for failing freshman is out of money and will not be available to ninth graders who arrive at Berkeley High School unprepared. 

There will be other new programs to help these students, however. Eighth graders at risk of failing when they start Berkeley High at the end of this month have been enrolled in a special, one-week “summer bridge” program intended to bolster both their confidence and their study skills. 

The director of the popular Writer’s Room program, which pairs Berkeley High students with volunteer writing tutors in one-on-one sessions, hopes to make tutors available to every freshman who needs one this year.  

Regular Berkeley High teachers are being trained for the first time in how to teach reading to the more than 100 students who enter the school each year with skills well below grade level – including some who have difficulty reading at all. 

The whole freshman curriculum has been reorganized to make it easier for teachers to work as a team, identifying “at risk” students from the get go and working together to keep them from falling through the cracks.  

Finally, other tutoring and mentoring programs at the school are said to be picking up steam, including one program that would have Berkeley High seniors serve as mentors to freshman, showing them how to survive in an overwhelming and often dysfunctional system. 

Some say, however, that If the year just ended is any indication, the high school is likely to remain an overwhelming and dysfunctional place for many students despite these efforts. Board of Education Vice President Shirley Issel that’s partly because the school’s infrastructure is so strained that even services, programs and strategies implemented with the best of intentions often go awry. 

“The infrastructure is too dysfunctional to accomplish anybody’s goals, and it’s affecting all the students. They’re all on their own. The school can’t really attend to their individual needs.” 

But the problems are bigger than the school, argue many, including Berkeley High School Principal Frank Lynch and Rebound teacher Katrina Scott-George. 

Research has labored to make this point over and over again in recent years. Depending on which study one reads, scholars have found compelling ways to argue that how well students do in school depends on economic factors, family structure, parent education levels, hours of television watched or not watched, participation in extracurricular activities, access to computers, class size, adherence to standards, freedom from standards, teacher quality, teacher training, teacher attitudes about race, society’s attitudes about race, and much, much more. 

Clearly, a school system can only begin to address a few of these factors. All the players, from parents to preachers to politicians, have to work together. 

And that, contends the new superintendent of schools, Michele Lawrence, is why Berkeley has an opportunity to make more progress than many schools districts. The resources are here, she said in an interview last week. There are district advisory committees to deal with everything from construction to budgeting, each of them staffed by highly skilled community volunteers. There are organized and expert parent groups in the African American community, the Hispanic community, the special education parents community and more. There are two independent foundations doing fundraising and organizing for Berkeley High. Finally, there is the Berkeley Alliance, which promises, among other things, to leverage the resources of the city and UC Berkeley to help improve Berkeley public schools. 

The missing piece, said Lawrence, is an overarching plan to unite these groups in a common crusade; to avoid miscommunication, duplication of effort, and working at cross purposes. 

Lawrence said her job will be to “work with all the groups to line up systems and processes” so Berkeley can focus its remarkable array of resources on the single greatest challenge faced by the high school: the academic achievement gap. 

Rather than having the high school administrators working to address the gap in one way, the Parents of Children of African Descent strongly advocating another way, and the school board considering the problem from yet another angle, the groups need to be on the same page, Lawrence said.  

“If an organization responds emotionally to coming up with solutions to problems without thinking through logistically how to implement them, then you end up being disappointed in the results, because you can’t deliver on your promises,” she said.

Sunday, the day before the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, some 65 anti-nuclear activists gathered in the afternoon on the west lawn of the UC Berkeley Campus to remember the death and destruction the bomb caused and to vow that it will never happen again.  

Dan Marlin, pictured above, holds a banner with Fusako De Angelis, calling on the university to end its management of the Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories where nuclear weapons are researched and designed. Left, Bill Olin holds a sign calling for an end to the nuclear arms race. Anti-nuclear activist Pat Waters is seated. 

Marlin addressed the crowd, reading a description of the bombing by Hiroshima survivor Yamaika Michiko, 15 years old when the bomb dropped as she was on her way to work. Machiko had 37 operations in the days and years after bombing. Councilmember Kriss Worthington also spoke, blasting the Bush administration for moving forward with the proposed National Missile Defense system, a violation, he said, of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, of which the United States is a signatory.

Boy dies after freak motorcycle accident 

SAN ARDO – An 11-year-old San Ardo boy was killed after driving a motorcycle through a cord strung across a road, the Monterey County coroner’s office says. 

Uri Cervantes was riding a 1993 Yamaha motorcycle on a dirt farm road Saturday when he drove into a 4-foot-high nylon cord that was being used as a gate. 

Authorities had received complains by neighbors of the woman that she was allowing neighborhood children to ride her motorcycle without any supervision, said Sgt. David Norum of the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department. 

Police are investigating whether negligence was involved in the accident, Norum said. 

Man linked to missing woman gives DNA sample 

LOS GATOS – Los Gatos police have taken a DNA sample from a man who was seen leaving a Campbell-area bar with a woman who’s been missing for a week. 

Police searched the man’s car and home looking for clues regarding the disappearance of Jeanine Harms. 

Police would not say what items were seized. They also have not released the man’s name. 

Forty-two-year-old Harms was last seen leaving the Rock Bottom Brewery with the man. He says she appeared fine when he left her duplex about 1 a.m. 

Los Gatos Police Sgt. Kerry Harris says Harms may have been the victim of foul play based on evidence found in her home. 

Bankrupt wine company to sell 80,000 bottles 

NAPA – Connoisseurs, collectors and anyone else who enjoys sipping wines will get a chance next month to take home whatever taste tickles their palates 

Former online Napa wine retailer Wine.com is expected to auction off more than 80,000 cases of wine left after the retailer filed for bankruptcy in May. 

The auction is expected to draw collectors and professional buyers from casinos to cruise ships. About $1 million in rare wines will be auctioned by Realm Connect. 

Auction organizers say the event will be the largest ever of its kind, but state alcohol regulators are checking to make sure the sale complies with licensing laws.

LOS ANGELES – Buoyed by generous government subsidies and plummeting costs, solar power is enjoying a rare day in the sun. 

In places like sun-kissed California, the energy source that once languished on the economic fringe is now carving out a booming niche among consumers hamstrung by high electricity prices and the threat of blackouts. 

“As the energy problems in the United States increase, it slides more into the mainstream,” said John Thornton, a principal engineer in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. 

The situation has sent a jolt through sales of solar power equipment. 

Domestic shipments of photovoltaic cells increased 74 percent during the two-year period ending in 2000, according to the federal Department of Energy. That’s enough equipment to generate at least 75 megawatts of power at peak usage times. One megawatt can power 750 average homes. 

The DOE projects that total could reach 3,200 megawatts by 2020. 

Meanwhile, the price of those cells continues to fall; they now cost just 20 percent of what they did 25 years ago. Rooftop systems that can meet half a home’s electricity needs for more than 20 years now cost as little as $10,000 with rebates and tax credits available from the federal and state governments. 

“You’re talking a five- to six-year payback range in California, compared to 20 a few years ago,” said David R. Lillington, president of Sylmar-based solar cell manufacturer Spectrolab Inc. 

Dan Kammen, a professor in the energy and resources group at the University of California, Berkeley, said it’s the first time that solar power systems can be justified economically. “Before it was just a good idea environmentally,” he said. 

Photovoltaic cells produce electricity when struck by sunlight, and a portion of that energy is absorbed by a semiconducting material such as silicon. That knocks loose electrons, sending them coursing through the material. The current can then be drawn off as a source of power. 

Photovoltaic output peaks when demand for electricity and the wholesale price of power both spike – typically on hot, sunny days. 

But even today, three decades after those cells were first made available on a commercial basis, photovoltaic systems still produce less electricity at a greater cost than all other significant means of generation. 

Solar power contributes just 0.02 percent of the total amount of electricity fed into the nation’s grid. And even at its cheapest, it costs 20 cents per kilowatt-hour to generate, or roughly four times as much as electricity produced from fossil or nuclear fuels on average. That makes large-scale plants unfeasible, experts said. 

“From an electric utility standpoint, it’s developing, it’s being used, but the technology costs have to come down more for it to be more usable,” said Jayne Brady, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Edison Electric Institute, which represents shareholder-owned utilities. 

Still, for individual homeowners like Karina Garbesi, an assistant professor of geography and environmental studies at California State University, Hayward, the rooftop panels can be an attractive alternative. The system atop her Bay Area home regularly produces excess electricity that she can sell to her utility. 

“My meter runs backward during the day,” Garbesi said. 

In housing developments being built in places like San Diego and Sacramento, solar panels are now standard in some new homes, their cost factored into the sale price. 

“We’re seeing more use of photovoltaics in new construction,” said Joe Wiehagen, an engineer with the research center of the National Association of Home Builders in Maryland. “It can be a bit less expensive in a new home and you don’t have to worry about working it into your mortgage because it’s already there.” 

Subsidies also make the capital costs of the systems less prohibitive. 

At the Los Angeles headquarters of Neutrogena Corp., officials recently installed a 200-kilowatt system that should cut the amount of power the firm buys by 20 percent, said Senaka Nanayakkara, the cosmetics company’s director of facilities. 

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ponied up $1 million of the system’s $1.4 million price tag, as part of its program to add the equivalent of 100,000 residential rooftop solar systems by 2010. 

Similar subsidy programs should continue to drive down prices and prevent the solar power industry from foundering as it did in the 1980s, when fossil fuel prices fell and interest in emerging alternative energy sources waned. 

“We could still screw it up. Yank price supports and you could drive industries out,” Garbesi said.

SACRAMENTO – Julia “Butterfly” Hill spent nearly two years living in a California redwood to save it from a logger’s chain saw. 

Now, she’s back to earth with other logging opponents, fighting in the courts, state Legislature and at the ballot box as part of a growing movement against clearcutting and harvesting of California’s few remaining old growth forests. 

The revived activism, they said, is needed to respond to a well-funded timber industry with friends in the White House and governor’s office. 

Unable to match the industry financially, logging opponents are tapping a coalition of environmental groups and mainstream churches to gather the 419,260 signatures needed for a November 2002 ballot measure that would ban cutting virgin timber on nonfederal land and outlaw harvesting trees alive before California became a state in 1850. 

Reports filed at July’s end show the timber industry spent more than $348,000 on lobbyists and gave more than $155,000 to state officeholders, including $17,000 to Gov. Gray Davis the first half of this year. 

Opponents point to the recent budget negotiations that ended with a sales tax break for logging equipment as an example of the clout wielded by the well-connected industry. 

“We can’t play that game. We don’t have the deep pockets,” said former North Coast Rep. Dan Hamburg, an activist and the 1998 Green Party nominee for governor. 

Elsewhere, the anti-logging movement has been energized. The California Democratic Party’s resolutions committee condemned clearcutting in July.  

The Citizens’ Campaign for Old Growth Preservation and the Sierra Club independently cite surveys they say show public support for such a ban, and accuse Davis of breaking his 1998 pledge to ensure “all old-growth trees are spared from the lumberjack’s ax.” 

That’s unfair, said state Resources Agency Assistant Secretary Maria Rea. Davis “has done a lot of things to protect what little old growth there is.” 

Davis also created conservation easement and Forest Legacy programs, Rea said, is also negotiating with the industry to protect other old-growth forests. 

Industry officials said California already has the nation’s most stringent forestry rules, despite the higher demand for lumber created by development. There’s been a lot of progress made on environmental issues, but that rarely gets noticed, they said. 

“What we get for that is more lawsuits and more protesters hanging out in trees and locking themselves to fences,” said Pacific Lumber Co. government relations director Jim Branham. 

Some lawmakers think the California Board of Forestry has delayed action on salmon habitat and timberland protections, said Sen. Byron Sher of Stanford and Assemblyman Fred Keeley of Boulder Creek, Davis’ fellow Democrats. 

That’s why the Legislature voted to withhold half the board’s budget unless it extends temporary rules set to expire at year’s end. Davis vetoed the plan. 

Democratic Senate leaders put off confirming Davis’ three January board appointees until at least September, when they may face sharp questioning. 

Environmental groups and some lawmakers say Davis stacked the nine-member board in the industry’s favor, while Davis spokesman Roger Salazar said the governor’s appointees provide a “balanced, fair perspective” which he would not detail. 

A Senate-approved bill by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, would restrict the governor’s authority by setting new qualifications for his appointees. Industry representatives said that automatically gives environmentalists three seats on the board. 

Sher also has a bill opposed by industry that would let counties ask the board to block Department of Forestry approval of any timber plan calling for removing at least 70 percent of a stand of trees. 

That puts the Legislature in an “eyeball-to-eyeball” fight with Davis, said Sierra Club organizer Warren Alford. 

Outside the Legislature, activists have launched protests in Humboldt, Santa Cruz and Nevada counties against logging plans by Pacific Lumber, Redwood Empire and Sierra Pacific Industries. 

“Every other system is failing,” Hill said during a recent Capitol rally 19 months after her 738-day redwood sit-in. “That’s the only time you see people taking to that final line, being willing to risk their lives and their freedom for what they believe in.” 

In court, environmental groups are also finding some success. 

They won a court order and U.S. Forest Service administrative decision temporarily halting the logging of fire-killed trees in a former roadless area of Northern California’s Six Rivers National Forest. 

Separately, a federal judge is threatening to block the thinning of trees in three Northern California national forests as part of a fire prevention program, unless the Forest Service shows it won’t hurt the environment. 

A third suit argues that runoff of sediment and herbicides from Pacific Lumber Co. logging sites amounts to water pollution barred by the federal Clean Water Act. 

Branham called the pollution suit “ridiculous,” another attempt to shut down the company’s logging. In recent years the company began leaving more trees alongside streams, avoiding landslide areas, and increasing its use of helicopters instead of tractors to remove logs, he said, but “enough is never enough.” 

Sierra Pacific, said director of forest policy Tom Nelson, recognizes logging is under assault and has “done a lot over and above” what’s required. Most residents appreciate the company’s efforts, he said, but the critics “are people who want you not to cut trees any more.” 

The company said it will sell 30,000 to 50,000 acres of marginal timberland to a conservation group for permanent preservation. 

It also said it will voluntarily leave more trees on 70 percent of Sierra timberlands it had planned to clear-cut. The Anderson-based company calls its new practice “visual retention,” designed to soften the visual impact of clear cuts in tourist-heavy areas. 

That’s “clearcutting by another name,” Alford said. 

Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center and Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch sued the company last week in Calaveras County court, alleging the state’s current forest practices law and regulations fail to properly take into account clearcutting’s “cumulative impact” on wildlife and waterways.

Pudge, Izzy, Echo and Paris are ready for their close-ups. The feisty, furry rabbits are the pride and joy of the new Berkeley 4-H Club’s four charter members. Accompanied by their human handlers, on Thursday, the rabbits were getting ready to strut their stuff at the Monterey County fair today and the San Mateo County Fair on Saturday.  

Brandon Williams, 11, Meg Veitch, 10, Julia Larson, 10, and Joshua Dietel, 8, joined 4-H after participating in the rabbit club launched last school year by Betsy Sako, a farm and garden and science teacher at Le Conte Elementary School. The students met once a week after school to learn how to care for the growing group of rabbits housed in cages in the school’s garden. 

4-H, which stands for Hands, Heart, Head and Health, has its roots in agriculture, but sponsors a variety of youth development programs all across the country. 

In June, all four students experienced their first 4-H rabbit show at the Alameda County Fair. Meg Veitch tied for first in the first-year showmanship competition and ultimately took home the third place ribbon. “She put Berkeley on the map,” said Sako proudly. 

The students gathered at Le Conte School on Thursday to show off their rabbit-handling skills and help Sako prepare for their trips. They were dressed in the requisite 4-H uniform – all white clothing with green belts, ties and felt hats decorated with the 4-H four leaf clover. 

The students demonstrated how successful rabbits are not only beautiful, but healthy as well. The judges must see that the rabbits are neither too fat nor too thin, and that they are free from illness. 

Paris, a four-month Himalayan rabbit with white fur and brown ears and legs, has been dining on a fortified diet of oatmeal and rabbit pellets to get him into shape for this week’s county fairs. Unlike beauty contestants, Paris needs a little more meat on his bones to impress the judges. 

Joshua Dutiel, the proud owner of Paris, demonstrated how to tell if a rabbit is carrying too much or too little weight. He ran his hand down his back, feeling for the spinal cord. “You want to feel it, but not too much,” he instructed. 

Duchess, the oldest rabbit in the bunch, has developed that dreaded middle-aged spread, but Sako and the kids have her on a diet to get her back to a healthy weight. She won’t be shown this weekend, but Julia Larson, 10, used the rabbit to demonstrate her showmanship skills. She checked for ear mites, cuts, and other imperfections, but when she tried to check the rabbit’s teeth, Duchess pulled away. “She’s too ticklish in the teeth,” Larson said.  

“Make sure you pull her whiskers out of the way,” instructed Sako. “There, the second time is the charm,” Sako told her as the rabbit relaxed and bared her teeth. 

Showmanship ends with questions designed to test the kids’ knowledge about rabbit care. They vied for the chance to play judge for one another, asking questions such as “Why do you check their paws?” and “What causes snuffles?” 

“They’re really hard on each other,” said Sako, noting that they ask tougher questions than the real judges. “But once they are at the fair, they are all in it together, cheering one another on.” 

Fun with furry animals is obviously the big draw for these students. They cradled their small bundles gently and tried to keep up with the rabbits as they hopped around the garden on leashes. They also proudly displayed their ease with the other animals on the school farm – goats, chickens and ducks. Veitch and Larson emerged from the hen house with a brown egg, fresh and warm from Athena, a red and black hen. 

Mixed in with all the fun, Sako hopes the students will learn lasting lessons. Most important, caring for the animals teaches them responsibility and empathy for others, she said. It also helps kids overcome shyness, said Sako, who has noticed many students emerge from their shells as they care for the animals. Veitch and Larson are even starting their own “rabbit tree,” or breeding line. They plan to buy three Mini-Rex rabbits, known for their beautiful, soft fur, and begin their own business. 

Although the club originated at Le Conte School, all Berkeley children are welcome to join. All members must own their own rabbits. “It’s a real commitment,” said Sako. “We’re looking for kids who love rabbits and are willing to make a commitment to them.” 

Contact Betsy Sako at 644-6290 for more information. 

Fifteen teens from Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “School of Theatre” interviewed elders at the North Berkeley Senior Center last week to find inspiration for monologues that they will write over the next week and perform at the senior center Aug. 15. 

The students, who have been in classes since July 23 are studying theatre arts with sessions on acting, design, directing, playwriting and voice. 

The interview process was the brainchild of Creative Director Laurie Lathom. 

“I thought it was important for the students to do some kind of community service,” said Lathom. “They get an opportunity to tell stories that generally wouldn’t be told and to interact with some of the older people in the community.” 

Many of the students in the program have participated in over a dozen plays, but most said that interviewing someone to create a character was a new experience for them. 

“It was fun getting to learn about someone who has obviously had a lot of life experience,” said 15-year-old Matt Goldman from University High School in San Francisco.  

“We were talking to them with the intention to know them really well so we could understand all about them and write a character based on them.  

“When you have that inspiration it makes you want to lead a really good interview.” 

The students, mostly in groups of two or three, each with a page of questions that they came up with during an earlier class, sat down with one or two of the elders from the center who volunteered to be interviewed. 

“What is your happiest memory?” one student rang in. 

“What is your greatest achievement?” asked another. 

“What’s one piece of advice you would give to young people today?” another student inquired. For over an hour the students asked questions and listened intently as their partners answered.  

Sometimes the answers were simply a sentence, but most of the time the interviewees cheerfully broke into long tales about their lives. 

“It was different from other interviewing that I’ve done because they talked a whole lot,” said 14-year-old Alex Hersler, who has taken a journalism class at Piedmont High School.  

“He told me stories about going to France during World War II and taking pictures of bridges that were bombed.  

“He also edited John Steinbeck, which I thought was pretty cool. He was very proud of that.” 

There were ten seniors who volunteered to be interviewed and they were all thrilled to be visited by the teens. 

“This is the first time I’ve seen any teens in here doing anything like this,” said Hariet Karan, one of the people interviewed.  

“I think it’s great that they all came here to talk to us. They all seemed really interested in what we had to say.” 

Immediately after completing the interviews the students took out notepads and jotted down everything they could remember about their subjects, as they were not allowed to take notes during the interview. 

“It was hard for me to come back and write about it because the people I interviewed didn’t really say much,” said 15-year-old Sharena McGowan from Mission High School in San Francisco.  

“I did find a way to get it on paper, but it was hard because I didn’t really remember everything they were saying.” 

Each of the students is now using some of the information from their notes along with some of their own creativity to form a character and a monologue that they will perform later at the senior center.  

“I think they’re going to appreciate it because they liked talking to us a lot,” said Goldman, “so they’re probably going to enjoy it. We’re going to get a lot out of it too, so it will be a good experience for everyone.” 

This is the first year of BRT’s School of Theatre.  

The program is a four-week intensive that covers a broad range of theater arts. The program is open to students between the ages of 10 and 17. 

There will be an open house to showcase the students’ work on Aug. 18 from noon to 3 p.m. at the BRT, 2025 Addison St.

SAN FRANCISCO — While San Francisco International Airport struggles to overcome environmental objections to a runway expansion plan, other Bay Area airports are picking up the slack by handling more flights and more passengers. 

With its four parallel runways and frequent fog, SFO has long been one of the nation’s most delay-plagued airports. Its $2.4 billion expansion, which included a new international terminal and additional parking, was finished last year, but has not eliminated the problem. 

Now, city officials are proposing a controversial runway expansion plan that includes filling and paving over part of the bay. 

“At SFO, 30 planes land every hour,” said Michael McCarron, SFO’s assistant deputy director. “The runway plan would allow us to double that number.” 

The plan calls for reconfiguring the runways to increase the current 750-foot separation and allow two planes to land simultaneously in bad weather. Federal law requires a 4,300-foot separation in such conditions. 

The plan has encountered heavy opposition from environmental groups who say an expansion could ruin the bay. As a result of the controversy, it could take years before the runways are built and made functional, McCarron said. 

Meanwhile, overall traffic at SFO was down 7 percent for the first five months of the year compared with a year ago, a situation blamed on the weak economy and the airport’s well-publicized shortcomings. 

Southwest Airlines, known for its on-time record, pulled out of San Francisco entirely in March, shifting most of its routes to Oakland and some to San Jose. 

One million fewer people flew into or out of SFO through May, compared with the first five months of last year. 

But the lower numbers don’t bother SFO officials who predict passenger traffic will grow in the coming decade, especially in international travel. 

“We still get 60 percent of all domestic flights and 90 percent of all international flights in the area,” McCarron said. 

The Oakland and San Jose airports, however, have seen their numbers of passengers increase by about 14 percent so far this year. 

And both airports have expansion plans in the works. 

San Jose International Airport put a 10-year expansion plan in motion last year and the City of Oakland on Wednesday approved a $1.4 billion plan, which will add 12 gates and a two-tiered terminal access road. 

The airport handles 25 more flights a day than last year and desperately needs the additions, according to airport spokeswoman Cyndy Johnson. 

About two million additional passengers are expected to go through the Oakland airport’s gates this year, she said. 

LOS ANGELES — The flood of artificial light that washes the stars from the sky has left one in five human beings unable to see the Milky Way at night, according to a new study of the global effects of light pollution. 

The study is the first to document the extent to which humans have wrapped the inhabited world in a luminous fog, shutting out much of the heavens – including the very galaxy we call home – from view. 

Once the sun goes down and the lights come on, as many as one in four people around the globe basks in a perpetual twilight, under skies brighter than on nights when the moon is full. 

“The thing that struck me is there are large numbers of people who really have lost the panorama of the night sky – that’s no longer available to them because there is so much of this sky brightness,” said Chris Elvidge, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration physical scientist and one of the study’s three co-authors. 

The study matched global population density information with Department of Defense satellite images, captured over 28 nights in 1996 and 1997, of the upward flux of light scattered from artificial sources around the globe. 

The Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites were designed to observe clouds illuminated by moonlight. On moonless nights, however, they also pick out the distinct pinpricks, blobs and smears of light cast off by the world’s cities and towns. 

Light pollution has long been recognized as a problem in the United States, Europe and Japan. Elvidge said the broader look shows that no country in the world is untouched. About two-thirds of the global population lives under skies polluted by artificial light. 

“That’s not surprising, it’s just very frustrating,” said Elizabeth Alvarez, associate director of the International Dark-Sky Association, a Tucson, Ariz., group that works to keep the night sky dark. 

Far from the city lights at night, about 2,000 stars are typically visible. In major cities, that number shrinks to a few dozen at most. 

“For a large percentage of people ... they’re no longer able to see what their ancestors saw on a nice, clear night,” said Elvidge, who works in NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colo. While astronomers can retreat to remote mountain tops to stargaze, most city dwellers do not have that luxury, said John Mosley, an astronomer at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. The impact is incalculable, he said. 

“The sky has always been a source of mystery and wonder. To lose that connection with something that is so much older and bigger than we are is a tremendous loss,” Mosley said. 

Elvidge said future studies by the team would chart the growth rate of artificial sky brightness over time. 

Alvarez said any potential increase could be stemmed with increased education. Already six states have passed laws that focus on limiting outdoor lighting levels, she said. 

“We’re working hard to make people realize it’s not something you have to give up,” Alvarez said. 

——— 

On the Net: The Night Sky in the World 

http://www.inquinamentoluminoso.it/dmsp/index.html 

International Dark-Sky Association 

http://www.darksky.org/ 

SAN FRANCISCO — Victims and their families cannot sue weapons manufacturers for damages when criminals use their products illegally, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday in a closely watched case testing gunmaker liability. 

The high court’s decision – whether a gun manufacturer can be sued on allegations it partly was responsible for a criminal shooting – stems from a 1993 massacre of eight in a San Francisco law office skyscraper. 

In one of the court’s most visible rulings this year, the justices kept in step with other courts and insulated gunmakers from such liability. Every state high court and federal appellate court in the nation to consider such suits against gun manufacturers has ruled that makers of legal, non-defective guns cannot be sued for their criminal misuse. 

The court ruled 5-1 that the Legislature’s rules regarding product liability do not allow for such suits against gun manufacturers. 

“In reaching this conclusion, we are not insensitive to the terrible tragedy that occurred on July 1, 1993,” Justice Ming W. Chin wrote. “The Legislature has set California’s public policy regarding gun manufacturers liability under these circumstances. Given that public policy, plaintiffs may not proceed with their negligence claim.” 

Monday’s decision was an important victory for weapons manufacturers and Miami-based Navegar Inc., the maker of the weapon used in the skyscraper massacre. The justices overturned a California lower court decision allowing victims to sue a gun manufacturer for the criminal acts of someone else. 

Surviving victims of the skyscraper rampage claimed that Navegar was liable for damages because it marketed the TEC-DC9 to appeal to criminals, and that Navegar should have foreseen that it would be used in a massacre. 

Their case, originally thrown out by a trial judge, was resurrected two years ago when California’s 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that the survivors were entitled to a trial on their claims that the gunmaker marketed the TEC-DC9 to criminals. 

The court said there was evidence that the TEC-DC9 has no legitimate civilian use and the company’s ads, including one that touted the gun as fingerprint-resistant, suggested criminals were among its intended customers. 

The California appellate court said Navegar “had substantial reason to foresee that many of those to whom it made the TEC-DC9 available would criminally misuse it to kill and injure others.” 

In a lone dissent Monday, Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar agreed with the appellate court decision, arguing that the victims’ case should proceed to trial on grounds that Navegar was negligent in marketing the fast-firing weapon to the general public. She said Navegar should have restricted its sale to firing ranges, police and military users. 

She added that, had a conventional handgun been used, there may have been fewer deaths. Werdegar also said her colleagues misconstrued California’s product liability laws, which she said allows such suits against gunmakers. 

Until the law is amended to contradict the majority’s thinking, she said, “gunmakers ... will apparently enjoy absolute immunity from the consequences of their negligent marketing decisions.” 

Monday’s decision could insulate gunmakers in suit by Los Angeles, San Francisco and 10 other California cities and counties, claiming faulty design, manufacture and distribution of firearms. At least 16 similar suits have been filed by local governments elsewhere. 

In the Navegar case, Gian Luigi Ferri, a mentally disturbed man with a grudge against lawyers, entered the 101 California St. skyscraper and opened fire in a law office with two TEC-DC9s and a revolver. He killed eight people and wounded six before killing himself. 

Stephen Sposato, whose wife, Jody, was killed while giving a deposition in the building, was outraged with the decision and said he would work to change the law. 

“They shouldn’t be selling things like this. There is no upside for society with a product like that,” he said. “I’m a gunowner and a lifelong Republican. But this has got nothing to do with that.” 

John Findley, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, said no state legislature has adopted a law for such lawsuits and was pleased the court did not enact “judge-made legislation.” 

And such legislation could be a tough sell in Sacramento. 

Gov. Gray Davis, in signing legislation last month making it a crime to leave a loaded weapon in reach of a juvenile, said he did so as an “exception to the general view that additional gun control legislation is not needed until law enforcement has an opportunity to advise us as to the effect of legislation recently signed into law.” 

Ernest Getto, a lawyer for Navegar, said there was no evidence of any connection between the manufacturer’s legal activities and Ferri’s criminal conduct. 

“The California Supreme Court’s decisions are normally considered trend setting,” he said. “This decision adds to the body of law that has been growing on this topic.” 

Dennis Henigan, legal director for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, who argued the case on behalf of Ferri’s victims, said Navegar should be sued. 

“I don’t think the Legislature meant to protect irresponsible gunmakers,” Henigan said. “We want the Legislature to correct this injustice.” 

Found in Ferri’s suburban Los Angeles apartment were copies of Soldier of Fortune and similar magazines, in which Navegar commonly advertised the TEC-DC9. 

The TEC-DC9, a high-capacity pistol easily converted to fully automatic fire, was one of the guns used by two students to kill 12 fellow students and a teacher in Littleton, Colo. 

The case is Merrill vs. Navegar, S083466. 

SAN FRANCISCO – Oracle Corp. built an $11 billion dollar a year business selling and installing software on computers, but CEO Larry Ellison thinks those days are ending. Five years from now, Ellison believes Oracle will generate most of its revenue renting its products in a world wired to the Internet. 

Under this scenario, businesses and eventually consumers will go online to log on to a Web site and pay a monthly fee for access to a wide variety of applications, instead of buying a disk and installing the software on a single computer’s hard drive. 

The transition is a no-brainer in Ellison’s mind because businesses will save money hiring consultants to handle the tedious process of installing software on in-house computers and their employees will have the flexibility to access applications from just about anywhere, using laptops and handheld devices. 

Meanwhile, Redwood Shores-based Oracle will build a more reliable revenue stream akin to a cash-rich cable TV company that collects subscriptions from a captive audience month after month. 

“I believe all software companies will transform themselves into online service companies. We have no choice,” Ellison said earlier this summer. 

Even longtime Ellison nemesis, Microsoft Corp., is heading down the same path as Oracle. As part of a new Internet initiative unveiled last year, the Redmond, Wash.-based company is introducing a new service called “HailStorm,” which will enable businesses and consumers to rent a variety of online applications for a monthly fee. 

Despite the resolve of the world’s two biggest software companies, online software rentals seem like a pipe dream to many industry executives and analysts. 

“Large companies are never going to trust someone else to run their software. If you believe technology is your most precious asset, you are not going to let go of it,” said PeopleSoft Inc. CEO Craig Conway. “Every year, it seems like there is some major paradigm shift predicted for the industry. Sometimes they actually happen, but most of the time they don’t.” 

Ellison certainly missed the mark with one of his most heralded predictions of sweeping technological change. In the mid-1990s, Ellison made worldwide headlines by unveiling a network company that would draw upon online resources and make Microsoft’s Windows-based operating system obsolete. Ellison’s vision hasn’t panned out yet and most analysts believe he is shooting too high again with his ambitious predictions for online software services. 

“It’s going to be a very gradual evolution, if it occurs at all,” said industry analyst Charles Phillips of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in New York. “People like to have control over their own technology. They like to build it themselves. They want to be able to see it in a room.” 

Security concerns and worries about system outages also might discourage online software subscriptions. 

Software companies like Oracle and Microsoft are pushing to build online subscription businesses because they are beginning to recognize the growth limitations of their traditional sales approach, Phillips said.  

Both companies say they are reaching such a saturation point with their software that they realize there is only so much more money they can make from one-time fees for new products and upgrades. 

A breed of companies known as “application service providers” have been struggling terribly in their efforts to rent software online. The most prominent pure ASPs include Annapolis, Md.-based USinternetworking Inc. and San Mateo-based Corio Inc., which have lost $408 million and $186 million, respectively since their inceptions in 1998 while attracting fewer than 500 customers combined. 

Reflecting their grim outlook, the stocks of both companies are stuck under $1 per share. USinternetworking went public in April 1999 at $21 per share while Corio made its stock market debut in July 2000 at $14 per share. 

Despite the early troubles of pioneering ASPs, the research firm International Data Corp. sees a bright future for the concept. In a recent report, IDC predicted total ASP revenues will swell from $986 million last year to $24 billion in 2005. 

Proponents of online software rentals say the ASPs have flopped because they are leasing applications made by outsiders, such as PeopleSoft, SAP and Siebel Systems. 

“The only companies that will be successful in delivering online services will be the software companies themselves,” Ellison predicts. “Everyone else that tries to deliver online services will fail.” 

Marc Benioff, one of Ellison’s former lieutenants at Oracle, says his San Francisco-based start-up is proof that online software subscriptions are the wave of the future. Since going online in March 2000, Salesforce.com has signed up 50,000 employees at 2,800 companies that pay $65 per monthly subscriber. 

“We are going great guns,” Benioff said. “The Internet has matured to the point that it is more than capable of handling this kind of model.”