For the past 15 years, longtime Berkeley resident Brenda Prager has made community art her public persona, both as a Berkeley arts commissioner and as curator of the Addison Street Windows Gallery. 

Four weeks ago this vibrant and vital artist and arts supporter was diagnosed with terminal, end-stage cancer. The Bay Area’s arts community will host “A Tribute to Brenda Prager & 15th Anniversary of the Addison Street Windows Party and Art Sale” on Sunday afternoon as a small token of its affection and appreciation for Prager’s dedicated years of service. 

“We started on this about 10 days ago,” said fellow arts commissioner Bonnie Hughes. “Brenda and I talked about it; actually it was her idea. Through the wonders of e-mail the word got out very quickly. Artwork is coming in not just from people who’ve shown in the windows but from people who know Brenda from all over the world. It’s really wonderful because it gives people a chance to do something. When one of your friends is dying you feel pretty useless. And here’s something you can do to make it a little easier.” 

“I came here in ‘73,” Prager said. “I moved from Cazadero to Berkeley to open one of the first vegetarian restaurants, Ma Goodness on Shattuck and Emerson. It became omnivore when the menu changed.” 

While she was still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, Prager joined the Berkeley Civic Arts Commission in 1988. Within a few months she created the Addison Street Window Gallery. 

“The City Council sent a letter requesting the arts commission do something with these windows [on the city of Berkeley’s Addison Street Parking Garage] because the Rep was building their first building at that time,” Prager recalled. “For about three months, at every meeting, they’d bring this up: ‘Does anyone want to take over this project?’ No one wanted to do it, so after the third month I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’” 

“Brenda is one of the most wonderful assets of the arts community,” said arts commission secretary Mary Ann Merker. “In the five years I’ve worked for the city of Berkeley, Brenda has just been a tremendous help and asset in all of the ways we have worked to help the arts community.” 

Albany artist Eve Donovan agreed, “She has really given a lot to this community over the years in ways that even she doesn’t know. It’s all about public art, it’s all about public access and she’s been doing all of this, for a lot of people, in a very invisible way. I think that it’s really important that an event like this is happening, to let her know that people really do appreciate what she’s been doing. Who wouldn’t want to know how much they meant to people before they left? It takes courage for everybody, but it’s important.” 

“Brenda not only did the Windows, as an arts commissioner she established policies that have benefited and continue to benefit artists and ordinary people,” said Robbin Henderson, executive director of Berkeley Arts Center. “She’s given opportunities to artists no one else might give them, even persons who might not consider themselves artists. It’s hard to understand how this could happen to such a vibrant, vital person, such a dynamic person.” 

In addition to her work for the public, Prager won national recognition for her photographic images of disabled persons expressing their sexuality. Her civic work kept her from promoting her personal art. 

“She’s been kind of isolated for the last few years because she’s been doing these embroidery photographs,” said Karen Youst, Prager’s daughter. “She hasn’t really shown them yet. She’s been spending years doing these photographs, so I don’t think she’s realized how many people she’s touched, how many friends she had.” 

The Berkeley Art Center is currently negotiating to exhibit a career retrospective of Prager’s hand-worked photographs in September.  

“She’s a really, really good artist that never spent the effort promoting herself,” said Henderson. “She was always focusing the attention on to others.” 

“She’s an extremely community-oriented person. She’s a person of the people,” said Elizabeth Sher, an artist and teacher at California College of Arts and Crafts. “She had her own artwork and she had shows separate from this curating position. She invented this position; she wanted to use a space that people would see when they walked by in a very public place. Now this is the art corridor, but in a way she made it the art corridor. She was there from the beginning.” 

Prager has asked local artist Carol Brighton to pick up the reins as curator of the Addison Street Windows.  

“Brenda put the Windows on pretty firm footing. She brought it to this point,” said Brighton. “It will be very difficult to fill her shoes but it’s important to keep it going.” 

Prager plans to attend Sunday’s show and party. 

“I’m not looking backward on my life, not one minute,” she said. “I don’t have yesterday, I only have tomorrow. Yesterday is gone, I only have what’s now.” 

A Tribute to Brenda Prager & 15th Anniversary of the Addison Street Windows Party and Art Sale at 2324 Shattuck Avenue, Sunday, July 27th, from 2 to 5 p.m. 

TUESDAY, JULY 22 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave.845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Lawyers in the Library, at 6 p.m. in the West Branch, University above San Pablo, 981-6270.  

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23 

Botanical Garden Twilight Tours: A Walk in California with horticulturist Nathan Smith at 5:30 p.m. Free for members, $5 for non-members. UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Registration required. 643-2755. www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden  

Berkeley Food Policy Council meets at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. The Berkeley Food Policy Council (BFPC) works to increase community food access and help build a healthy regional food system. Everyone is welcome. For information call Penny Leff, 548-3333.  

California Power: The Big Picture and How We Fit In, with Nettie Hoge, Executive Director, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the Ber- 

keley Gray Panthers. 548-9696. graypanthersberk@aol.com 

South Berkeley Mural Project Community members are coming together to create a neighborhood mural on the side of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Ashby Ave. and MLK Jr. Way at 7 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios, 1923 Ashby Ave. 644-2204.  

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Cost is $9. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-5143. 527-5332. 

THURSDAY, JULY 24 

Organic Farmers’ Market from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Ele- 

phant Pharmacy parking lot, 1607 Shattuck Ave., at Cedar. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

“Science in the ‘Hood’” Rich Bolecek will speak about a community based, educational after-school program designed to decrease violence, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2151 Vine St.  

FRIDAY, JULY 25 

Mayan Calendar New Year Celebration from noon to 9 p.m. at the MLK, Jr. Civic Center Park. Sponsored by the New Times Peace Movement. 763-6069. www.tortuga.com 

Interviews in the Canyons Film interviews with civilian Zapatista leaders at 7:30 p.m. at the Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. 841-4824. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibber- 

keley@yahoo.com, 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, JULY 26 

18th Annual Berkeley Kite Festival, at Cesar E. Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fest@HighlineKites.com 

“The Palestinian Crisis: Another Nakba in the Making,” with Anne Gwynne, special correspondent for KPFA’s Flashpoints and volunteer with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, joined by Hatem Bazian of UC Berkeley, and KPFA’s “Flashpoints” host Dennis Bernstein, at 7 p.m. at 155 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley. Donations welcome. For more information call 465-4092. www.flashpoints.net 

Berkeley Youth Alternatives Parent Group is sponsoring a bus trip to River Rock Casino as a fundraiser for fieldtrips and activities for Berkeley youth in the BYA program. The bus will leave BYA located at 1255 Allston Way at 7:45 a.m. and return by 4 p.m. The cost of tickets is $20 per person and you will receive $15 cash back. For additonal information please call 845-0155.  

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Basic Personal Preparedness, for anyone who lives or works in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St., between 8th and 9th Sts. Register on-line at www.ci.ber- 

keley.ca.us/fire/oes or by calling 981-5506. 

SUNDAY, JULY 27 

18th Annual Berkeley Kite Festival, at Cesar E. Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fest@HighlineKites.com 

Global Environmental Issues and Solutions with David Seaborg at 10:30 a.m. at the Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. 841-4824. 

“Iraqi Freedom from Debt Act,” a discussion with Marie Clark, national coordinator for Jubilee USA Network, on current legislation before Congress to cancel the international debts of Iraq, at 5 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. at Cedar. 528-0105. 

Permaculture Workshop Series Ongoing workshops at the Berkeley Eco-House, 1305 Hopkins St. 465-9439. 

Art Installations in the Peralta Community Garden Tour of the garden’s art work from 2 to 5 p.m. Karl Linn will speak on the concept of the garden. Also tour the Ohlone Greenway mural, EcoHouse and the Karl Linn Community Garden. Wheelchair accessible. Peralta Community Garden, Hopkins and Peralta. kirklumpkin@mac.com 

ReGENERATION - A New Alternative to School Community Learning Service will hold information sessions for this independent study program for learners age 12-17, at 3 p.m. at Cafe Eclectica, 1309 Solano Ave., Albany. For more information call 524-0245. www.communitylearningservices.org 

“Cultivating the Perfection of Generosity” with Lama Palzang and Pema Gellek at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Argentine Tango Lessons with Oscar Mandagaran. Beginners at 11 a.m., intermediate at 2 p.m. Benefit Milonga and class at 8 p.m. Claremont Hotel, 41 Tunnel Rd. 655-3585. 

MONDAY, JULY 28 

Berkeley CopWatch meets at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING  

Vista Community College Program for Adult Education (PACE) Enrollment through Sept. 6. PACE is a college alternative for adults with job and family responsibilities. For information call 981-2864 or 981-2800 or email Marilyn Clausen at mclausen@peralta.cc.ca.us  

Community Food Drive Make a cash or food donation to the Safeway/ABC7 Summer Food Drive, benefiting the Alameda County Community Food Bank and its 300 member agencies. The food drive will help thousands of local low-income children who lose access to school meal programs during summer vacation. Now through August 9, put nutritious, nonperishable food donations in the red food collection barrels in all Alameda County Safeway stores or make a cash donation at Safeway check-out stands. For more information or to sign up to host a barrel, call 834-3663, ext. 318 or visit www.accfb.org  

Summer Fun Camps for Children and Teens, from age five and up, are offered at Berkeley recreation centers and include arts and crafts, swimming and tennis lessons, yoga, organized sports and games, and field trips. Program runs through August 22, Mon. - Fri., 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The fee, including lunch and snack, is $77 per week for Berkeley residents. Applications available at the Camps Office, 2016 Center St. 981-5150. 

Echo Lake Youth Camp for ages 6 - 12 at Echo Lake, near South Lake Tahoe. One week sessions are offered through August 22. Cost is $235 per session. For registration information please visit the Camps Office at 2016 Center St., or call 981-5150. 

Marine Biology Classes for ages 5 to 7, Tues. July 29 through Fri. Aug. 1 from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Shorebird Nature Center, 160 University Ave, at the Berkeley Marina. Adults must accompany 5 year olds. Cost is $45 for four days. To register call 644-8623. www.cityofberkeley.info/marina 

Free Energy Conservation Retrofits for Berkeley Residents CA Youth Energy Services is a nonprofit sponsored by the City of Berkeley that trains and employs high school students to provide conservation retrofits. Work includes weatherstripping, cleaning refrigerator coils, replacing faucet aerators and showerheads with low-flow devices, installing earthquake preparedness measures, and a comprehensive audit. Available to home owners and renters. Call for an appointment, 428-2357. 

The Bay Area Shakespeare Camp for children 7-13 years of age covering casting, staging, costuming, and performing, in a series of five, 2-week sessions ending August 22. Sponsored by the Bay Area Shakespeare Camp and the Oakland East Bay Shakespeare Festival, in cooperation with the City of Berkeley Parks Recreation & Waterfront Dept. Camp will be held at John Hinkel Park, Southampton Pl. at Arlington Ave. The cost is $340 per session. Scholarships are available for eligible participants. Call 981-5150 for scholarship details. To register for the camp, or for more information, please call 415-422-2222, or 800-978-PLAY. 

National HIV Testing Month The City of Berkeley offers free HIV testing. Drop in Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and Wednesdays 6 to 8:30 p.m., during July, at 830 University Ave. at 6th St. For other days and times call the HIV Testing Information Line at 981-5380.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wednesday, June 25, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Phil Kamlarz, 981-7006. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/budget 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wed- 

nesday, July 23, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. Carol Lopes, 981-5514. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/energy 

Mental Health Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 6:30 p.m., at 2640 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Harvey Turek, 981-5213. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/mentalhealth  

Planning Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/ 

commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Barbara Attard, 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/policereview 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thursday, July 24, at 7 p.m., at 1900 Sixth St. Iris Starr, 981-7520. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/westberkeley  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thursday, July 24, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning   

Solid Waste Management Commission meets Monday July 28, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. Becky Dowdakin, 981-6357.

What is it about epithets that ticks people off? When a Planet correspondent called a city employee a “duplicitous insect” in these pages, we received a couple of tsk-tsk letters from other readers, including at least one who has been known to have even more colorful words in her spoken vocabulary. Now Fremont’s admittedly colorful Congressman Pete Stark, a hearty 72-year-old, has created an uproar in a congressional committee by calling a Republican colleague “a little fruitcake.” Mind you, this was after said colleague had told Stark to “shut up,” a phrase which was considered very rude when we were growing up. An acquaintance who comes from Congressman Innis’ district in Colorado reports that he has always been, shall we say, an eccentric fellow himself. Stark’s “fruitcake” allusion is probably derived from the expression “nutty as a fruitcake,” and could be therefore taken to be merely descriptive, except perhaps the “little” part, since Innis is twice the size of Stark. 

It appears that creative language is what seems unfair to some listeners. If the city employee in question had been characterized as “not exactly candid,” presumably no one would have objected. If Pete Stark had told his fellow congressman that he was crazy if he expected Stark to shut up, possibly the police wouldn’t have been called. Or at least that’s what the Republicans on the committee have been saying. They claim they were genuinely afraid that Stark might be running amok. 

Just to prevent this kind of confrontation, children used to be told that “sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” Recent discussions of outlawing “hate speech” have brought forward examples of speech which might do as much damage as actual blows, but that’s a tricky call. The old van which is used by the Berkeley Oakland Support Services Urban Gardens project was towed not too long ago, on the anonymous complaint of someone who reported it as an abandoned vehicle. When BOSS employees tried to find out how something like this could happen, they were told that the city couldn’t release the police report because it was a “hate crime.” Why a hate crime? Because a vandal had scrawled the words “whitey will pay” on the side of the van several days before it was towed. A police spokesperson said that the mere presence of those words made the matter a hate crime. Some might say they are simply a statement of fact, or perhaps even an offer of reparations. In any event, they’re no excuse for keeping BOSS personnel from finding out what happened to their truck. 

There’s a proposal making the rounds to add new rules to the city of Berkeley Commissioners’ Handbook specifying how the commissioners may or may not talk to one another. Even more restrictive rules are proposed  

to control how citizens address commissioners. Presumably the police will not be called to enforce these rules, but the way things are going in this country, you can’t be too sure. 

All of the other Democrats on Stark’s congressional committee were out of the room at the time of the fracas, caucusing in an anteroom to decide what to do about a particularly high-handed Republican power play. They contend that the Republicans actually called the Capitol police to break up their caucus, and the fruitcake story was just a cover-up. If that’s true, it’s more serious. Nancy Pelosi made a statement deploring the use of police power to intervene in the processes of the U.S. congress, and she has a point. 

It’s just one more step in the direction of turning the whole country into Texas. Molly Ivins has kept us posted on the shenanigans of the Texas Legislature over the years, but we thought it couldn’t happen anywhere else. Creeping Texafication now seems to be a real threat in Washington. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Planet.

TUESDAY, JULY 22 

FILM 

Sarunas Bartas: “The House” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Summer Poetry, with Sherilyn Connelly from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Mediterranean Café, 2475 Telegraph Ave. Free, open mic, poetry, prose, short fiction, amateur and advanced artists welcome. 549-1128. 

Jeff Tamarkin describes “Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cajun Coyotes performs traditional Cajun music at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Patti Whitehurst at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23 

FILM 

Excess of Evil: “Simon of the Desert” and “The Lash of the Penitentes” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Eddy Joe Cotton describes his life riding the trains across the country in “Hobo: A Young Man’s Thoughts on Trains and Tramping Across America,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Café Poetry and Open Mic hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Donation requested. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Open Mic Poetry with Kathryn Waddell, Kevin Johnson, Deborah Day, Charles E. Patterson, and Steven Kopel at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Candles in the Dark: Poetry and Preaching in Wartime Reading and discussion with Dr. David Randolph, Kirk Lumpkin and David Madgalene from 10 a.m. to noon at Pacific School of Religion, Lower Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. Free and open to the public. For information davidjrandolph@aol.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chris Chandler and Anne Feeney, a collage of folk, poetry and politics, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee  

House. Cost is $15.50 in ad- 

vance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Balkan Cabaret performs traditional dance music from the cafés of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jules Broussard and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Wits End, Riddled with Guilt, Jynx, And Ever perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Tele- 

graph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 24 

FILM 

Restoration Pleasures: “La Maison du Mystère” Episodes 8-10 at 7:30 p.m., with Joel Adlen on piano, at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Macromatrix” Curator’s talk with Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson at 12:15 p.m. at The Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Olympia Dukakis presents her autobiography “Ask Me Again Tomorrow” at 12:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Repertory Theater, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Co-sponsored by Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Barbara Gates describes “Al- 

ready Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Harlyn Aizley discusses her memoir, “Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Rupert Isaacson discusses his new book “The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert,” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533.  

www.easygoing.com 

Haven Logan discusses the  

emotional blocks to physical health in her new book, “Choos- 

ing to be Well,” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert Downtown with Upside Down and Backwards, harmonica and guitar, at the Berkeley BART Station. Seating available. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Association. 549-2230. 

Negritude 2: Bahia Bacheche, music and dance from the African Diaspora, at 8 p.m. at the Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. 597-9806. 

Belshazzar’s Feast performs for a Ceilidh dance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Beam, Liz Pisco and The Welcome Matt perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mike Greensill, jazz pianist, performs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Eileen Hazel, Helen Chaya, Jamie Isman, acoustic folk at 8 p.m. at the Tea House, 1923 Ashby Ave. $10 suggested donation, with no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.folkdiva.com  

Keni el Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

FRIDAY, JULY 25 

CHILDREN 

Stage Door Conservatory's “Kids OnStage” presents “Spy for a Day,” a free mini-musical by Betty Tracy Huff, at 7:30 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 527-5939. StageDoorCamp@aol.com 

Dragon Tales at 10:30 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

FILM 

Restoration Pleasures: “The Man on the Eiffel Tower” at 7 p.m. and “The Barefoot Contessa” at 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dan Simmons reads from his new work of science fiction, “Ilium,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Midsummer Mozart Festival with featured guest Jon Nakamatsu playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major, K. 595, George Cleve conducting, at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$48. 415-292-9624. www.midsummermozart.org  

Moodswing Orchestra performs ballroom style East Coast swing and lindy hop at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenez. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Celebrate Peruvian Independence Day with De Rompe y Raja at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Smelly Kelly’s Plain High Drifters, Loretta Lynch and Dave Gleason’s Wasted Days perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Eddie Gale performs legendary jazz in a benefit for The Jazz House at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Suggested donation $15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Eddie Marshall Quartet performs at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $10-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Danny Caron and Friends at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

The Blueshouse, Australian women’s trio, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in ad- 

vance, $16.50 at the door.  

548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

What Happens Next, Cut the Shit, Artimus Pile, the Rites, Funeral Shock at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Frontline, Balance, and Omen perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 26 

CHILDREN 

Dance Jammies, a multi-generational event presented by Orches, a non-profit dance/art organization from 6 to 9:30 p.m. at 2525 8th St. Reservations advised. 832-3835. orches@earthlink.net 

FILM 

Local Zine Short Movie Night at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. Free, donations accepted. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

Restoration Pleasures: “The Night of the Hunter” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

SF Jewish Film Festival, Wheeler Auditorium, UC Cam- 

pus. Call for films and times. 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Angela Davis, veteran activist and professor at UC Santa Cruz, will discuss her new book, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2502 Harrison St. Tickets are $10 at independent bookstores or by calling 415-255-7296 ext. 200. $12 at the door. For more information call 415-575-5550. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Live Oak Concert, Matthew Owens, ‘cello, performs original works, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Cost is $10, BACA members $8, students and seniors $9. Children under 12 free. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

African Drum Workshop with Wade Peterson. Beginners from 10 to 11:30 a.m., experienced from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15-$25, and advanced registration is encouraged. 533-5111.  

West African Highlife Band performs Ghanaian and West African dance music at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Naked Barbies and The Pete Best Experience perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Aphrodesia, Chocolate Jesus, and Pacific Vibrations perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Altura Brothers perform at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Eddie Gale performs legendary jazz in a benefit for the Jazz House at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Suggested donation $15. 649-8744. www.thejazz- 

house.org 

Riders of the Purple Sage, classic cowboy harmonies, at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Junius Courtney Big Band, a tribute to Junius, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12 in advance, $14 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Scott Amendola at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

The Clarendon Hills, Latterman, Speakeasy, Weak Leads perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 27 

A Tribute to Barbara Prager, and 15th Anniversary of the Addison Street Windows, party and art sale from 2 to 5 p.m. at 2324 Shattuck Ave. between Bancroft and Durant. For more information call 548-8332.  

CHILDREN 

Caribbean Kids’ Show with Asheba from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5 for adults, $3 for children. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PoetryFlash at Cody’s with Avotcja and Kathryn Waddell Takara at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Where Art Meets Garden: Creating Here, a discussion of art installations in the garden, with Karl Linn, from 2 to 5 p.m in the Peralta Community Gar- 

den on Peralta St., between Hopkins and Gilman. 231-5912. 

Zine Reading at 7:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. All events are free. Vegan dinner available for $3-$5. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

FILM 

Restoration Pleasures: “The Awful Truth” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

SF Jewish Film Festival, Wheeler Auditorium, UC Cam- 

pus. Call for films and times. 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Live Oak Concert, Marvin Sanders, flute, Lena Lubotsky, piano, perform works by Haydn, Griffes and Porkofiev, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Cost is $10, BACA members $8, Students and seniors $9. Children under 12 free. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Terry Robb and Phil Kellogg, blues-based acoustic guitarists, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Clairdee sings a tribute to Nat “King” Cole at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

“Red Riot Revue, A People’s USO Show,” an evening of music, spoken word and comedy to celebrate the movement for peace. Featuring spoken word by Shalija Patel, music by Folk This! and Pickin‚ Trix, and a musical tribute to Paul Robeson, featuring members of Allegro Non Troppo Opera company. At 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$15 sliding scale. For information call 415-431-8485. 

Blue Monday and Mental perform at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Beat Bash Benefit, performances in tap, salsa, tango, jazz, Afro-Cuban, Belly, and Break at 5 p.m. at The Beat, 2580 Ninth St., at Dwight. Donation $15. 548-5348. 

MONDAY, JULY 28 

FILM 

SF Jewish Film Festival, Wheeler Auditorium, UC Cam- 

pus. Call for films and times. 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bruce Moody describes his experiences begging by the roadside in “Will Work for Food or $,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody's Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com 

Kristin von Kreisler reads from her new book, “For Bea: The Story of the Beagle Who Changed my Life,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express theme night: ex’s, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Northern California Songwriter’s Open Mic, professionally judged original song competition, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

AT THE THEATER 

Aurora Theater Company, “Thérèse Raquin,” by Emile Zola, directed by Tom Ross. A sinister tale set among the  

lower classes in nineteenth- 

century Parisian society. Runs through July 27, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $32 and $34. 843-4822.  

www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Opera, “Faust,” by Gounod, Jonathan Khuner music director, Ann Woodhead, stage director. July 25, and 26 at 8 p.m., July 27 at 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $38 adults, $33 seniors, $16 children, $10 students and are available from 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

California Shakespeare Festival runs through October 22. Performances this year will be Julius Caesar, Arms and the Man, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing. Please call for dates and times. The Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org  

Central Works Theater Ensemble, “The Wyrd Sisters” directed by Jan Zvaifler. Through July 27, Thurs. - Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 5 p.m. No performance July 24. At the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $8-$20 sliding scale. For reservations call 558-1381.

In a surprise move, the Berkeley Bowl grocery store has temporarily withdrawn plans to build a new store and warehouse in West Berkeley, raising questions about whether the politics of a union battle at the store are affecting efforts to expand. 

Berkeley Bowl, known for its fresh produce and long lines, was scheduled to go before the city’s Planning Commission Wednesday night to pitch the new project. But last week the grocer’s Berkeley-based architect, Kava Massih, sent a three-sentence letter to the city’s Planning Department stating that “the owners have decided not to pursue the project in [the originally proposed] form.” 

The withdrawal comes amid a two-month-old union drive that has pitted workers, calling for better pay and benefits, against management, which has argued that organized labor could spoil the “family” atmosphere at the store. The grocer, in the midst of the battle, has consulted with Jackson Lewis, a law firm specializing in “union avoidance,” according to the firm’s Web site. 

The fight has damaged the reputation of the grocer in a pro-union town and raised questions about whether local leaders will approve a new grocery store as long as management opposes the union. 

“There might be some resistance from the city if the Bowl is perceived as an employer that doesn’t treat its employees well,” said Planning Commissioner Rob Wrenn. “I’m disappointed that the Bowl feels they have to hire an anti-union consultant and can’t make a decision without outside interference.” 

But Chuck McNally, a chief union organizer, said he does not oppose plans for the new supermarket. A new grocery store could mean quality food for an underserved neighborhood, more jobs for Berkeley residents and more union members, he said. 

Several prominent Berkeley liberals have also come out in favor of the project—including Mayor Tom Bates, City Councilmember Margaret Breland, whose district includes the proposed site at the corner of Ninth and Heinz streets, and progressive stalwart Kriss Worthington, who also sits on City Council. 

“It’s an important community service that West Berkeley urgently needs,” said Councilmember Worthington. “I don’t see any contradiction in strongly supporting the Berkeley Bowl for financial success and expansion and simultaneously supporting the workers’ right to have a union.” 

Berkeley Bowl general manager Dan Kataoka declined to speak at any length about the decision to withdraw the grocery store and warehouse project but said the union issue “may be a factor.” 

Store manager Larry Evans also said political concerns may have played a role. 

“That very possibly could be a factor,” he said. “It’s a very political town.” 

The store’s original proposal called for a grocery store of 44,000 to 45,000 square feet, according to the city’s planning department, far exceeding the current limit of 20,000 square feet. Berkeley Bowl was scheduled to go before the Planning Commission Wednesday night to ask for a rezoning that would allow the larger store. Kataoka said Berkeley Bowl may now scale back plans and propose a grocery store that falls within the existing zoning code. 

The mayor discouraged any downsizing of the project. 

“I think that would be too bad,” said Bates, who argues that the city should not weigh the union issue in making zoning decisions on the new project. “I think we need a full-size market there.” 

Workers have called for a “card check” method of unionization, which would allow a neutral third party to simply verify that a majority of the grocery store’s 250 employees had signed union authorization cards, electing to join the Oakland-based United Food & Commercial Workers Butchers’ Union, Local 120. 

But Evans said management would exercise its right to demand a secret ballot election. The process, administered by the National Labor Relations Board, can take years and Bates has asked both sides to agree to a speedier secret ballot election outside the auspices of the NLRB. 

Kevin Meyer, a cashier active in the union drive, said a quick election would help prevent burnout among union organizers and would give Jackson Lewis, the grocer’s law firm, less time to develop an anti-union strategy. 

“The more time they have to do that, the more effective their campaign might be,” he said. 

Evans said Berkeley Bowl has consulted Jackson Lewis—which has 20 offices across the nation, including one in San Francisco—only because the grocer had used the firm in the past to defend against a sexual harassment suit and for other unrelated issues. 

“[The owners] had no idea they had this horrendous reputation for being a union-busting company,” he said. 

Robert Lazo, an attorney with the San Francisco firm of Employment Lawyers’ Group, which represents workers in job disputes, said Jackson Lewis is “one of the most pre-eminent law firms to represent management in these campaigns.” 

“The Berkeley Bowl did hire the big guns,” he said. 

But Lazo, who has locked horns with Jackson Lewis on a number of occasions, said he had respect for the firm. 

“They’re pretty decent guys and they are quite effective,” he said.  

Bates, who has met with both sides in an effort to resolve the conflict, said the Yasudas appear close to dropping Jackson Lewis and hiring a less controversial lawyer. 

FISCAL LEADERS NEEDED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kudos to Barbara Gilbert for identifying another area of fiscal mismanagement in our city (“Salary Hikes for City Staff Must Wait for Better Times,” July 18 edition). It is sad, indeed, to see city staff recommending service cuts and tax increases even as they enjoy their own generous perks. Two examples are illustrative: 

  Just two weeks ago, City Council agreed to spend more than a quarter of a million dollars for YMCA fitness club memberships for 513 city employees.  The total amount is paid regardless of how many employees actually use the facilities, and the city didn’t even bother negotiating a discount from the standard public rates. The lucky city employees who will be swimming in the YMCA pool just might be the same ones who are recommending that we close our public pools to save money. 

  On the tax front, the City Council just agreed to create a new tax to hire additional housing inspectors for the city (so much for the alleged hiring freeze). Our Housing Department expects the new employees to perform between 290 and 410 inspections each per year—or just one-quarter of the 1,550 inspections completed by each inspector working for the cities of Richmond, Concord, San Jose and Mountain View. 

  Oakland’s leadership recently made it clear that city jobs would be included in across-the-board budget cuts. In response, the union agreed to give back some generous pay raises, secured when the city was flush, in order to avoid layoffs. Where is Berkeley’s fiscal leadership? Why aren’t similar efforts made in our city? Are we really better off spending more money on bureaucracy? 

  There are many answers, but one in particular is worth highlighting. As long as Berkeley voters—especially those paying Berkeley’s sky-high property taxes and fees—fail to object, the city will continue its profligate ways. 

Michael Wilson 

• 

DOING RIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I doubt that Barbara Gilbert would have written her high-minded piece (July 18-21 edition) suggesting that city workers give up our five-year negotiated contract if she were a city employee. 

Our most recent contract (not 6 to 7 percent raise annually as Ms. Gilbert says) makes up for losses we had taken in the past such as the one around 1980, when many library employees voluntarily reduced our hours to avoid layoffs, and in the year when all city employees sacrificed a raise entirely in exchange for an earlier retirement aimed at those whose jobs were unusually demanding physically. Just as our gains will compound yearly, those past losses have compounded negatively. Now, some of us who would have had to work till we dropped can at least see a time when we can think of retiring. 

Yes, we will receive retirement pensions, but Ms. Gilbert’s statement that our health benefits extend after retirement does not give an accurate picture. The benefits extend for those, if they qualify, who retire before medicare age; but after age 65 we will be given a tiny dollar amount to put toward the cost of a choice of two senior HMOs. Yes, our pay and benefits are better than that of many people and not nearly as good as many others’. 

We would be fine and noble if we did the “right thing” but we’ve already done it and continue to do it every day in our hard work. 

Barbara Sargent 

• 

JUVENILE BEHAVIOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Two of your recent stories (July 15-17 edition) deserve short comments. The page-one story “Bates Suggests Ordinance To Curtail Newspaper Theft” elicits my comment: Mr. Mayor, shut up, grow up or resign or seek counseling. We know that you are a juvenile thief, so why do you have to keep reminding us? What exactly is your problem?  

The second article that interested me was the story entitled “Berkeley Radio Pirates Broadcast Despite FCC Intervention, Threats.” Why are these people still fighting a battle that has already been won? There is free speech galore available on the Internet. Just get a computer, a phone line, a modem and hire an ISP and create your own Internet Radio Station. You can broadcast whatever you want, from obscure music to political rants, 24 hours a day and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can’t and won’t say boo.  

But I guess that tilting at broken windmills is a hard-fought Berkeley tradition. How much “diversity” do we need anyway? We already have KPFA-FM and KALX-FM, plenty for me, thank you. Maybe these guys could also try growing up a little, along with the esteemed mayor.  

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

• 

WORKERS’ COMP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Workers’ Compensation is not “like welfare,” as Berkeley Public Works Director Rene Cardineaux is quoted as saying in your front-page workers’ compensation article in the July 11 weekend edition. 

The implication couldn’t be more wrong or more offensive. Compensation to injured workers is not a gift to employees. By law, employers cannot be sued for on-the-job injuries. In return, the legislative scheme requires employers to pay for treatment of workplace injuries and to compensate permanently disabled workers for their “lost value in the marketplace.” Permanent disability awards are small, especially in California, where permanent death on the job costs the employer a whopping $50,000. Several years ago an excellent series of articles in the Sacramento Bee debunked tiresome propaganda that fraud 

is rampant in the workers’ compensation system. In fact, employers’ and insurance carriers’ claims of widespread fraud are themselves fraudulent.  

On a more positive note, the city’s “new” focus on preventing injury and the use of injured workers for “modified [light] duty” that is compatible with their medical restrictions is an idea whose time has come. However, it is not new. Five years ago a coalition of the city’s seven labor unions urged the city, with the City Council’s support, to overhaul its workers’ compensation system, and to change its focus to prevention of injury. I was the author of the unions’ 

recommendations. In labor/management meetings that followed, union representatives urged the city to bring workers who are able to perform modified duty back to work, and the city seemed to accept that as a priority.  

It simply is not true that workers want to be injured (as City Manager Weldon Rucker seemed to say in the article) or to stay off work as long as 

possible. The truth is that the city has a hard-to-change management “culture” of not wanting to be bothered with bringing employees back to work on modified duty. “I can only have them sweep the corporation yard for so many hours,” you quoted Mr. Cardineaux as saying.  

It’s obvious to me that city management is trying to dump all responsibility for its workers’ compensation costs on city employees and their unions. With all due respect, it just ain’t so. 

Claudia Morrow 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Jogging on the fire trail in Stawberry Canyon, I often hear UC’s hyenas 

whooping. I wonder if you or readers could clarify for me two areas: How aggressive are these beasts? And what oversight is there? I am sure there is a lot, because Berkeley tries to be so careful about environmental hazards. 

Of course we have lions, bears and tigers in the Oakland hills, but that’s a zoo, and I assume (perhaps naively) there is plenty of thought given to safety there. 

I have read two articles in recent years about hyenas, and both were 

highly interesting and alarming. I know the university is studying them because of there sexual endocrinology, which is bizarre, but an article in The New Yorker described them as quite dangerous and predatory, not simply harmless old scavengers like locals describe them who walk the fire trail. 

I heard a rumor that someone at the local facility had a finger bitten off last year (true or untrue?), and I knew a graduate student who visited the place and someone told him about one of the hyenas biting a hose right off the spigot. 

Richard L. Russell, M. D. 

Friday will likely be business as usual, said J.P. LaRussa, general manager at Zachary’s Chicago Pizza. 

If history is any guide, that means the weekend crowds will be overflowing, the staff will be almost impossibly busy and the restaurant’s legendary pizza, which has won just about every “Best of” award in the Bay Area, will be bubbling. 

But it will be a special day for Zachary’s—exactly 20 years after the husband-and-wife team of Zach Zachowski and Barbara Gabel opened a small pizza place in the Rockridge section of Oakland, just over the Berkeley line. 

“Maybe we’ll jump up and down every once in a while,” said LaRussa, with a chuckle. 

Zachowski and Gabel, who moved to the East Bay from Chicago 20 years ago, say they’ve had a great time in the pizza business. 

“It’s been a hell of a ride and a lot of fun,” said Zachowski, 53. 

But now the couple is ready to retire—and they’re doing it a little differently than the typical business owners. Rather than sell the business to an individual owner, Zachowski and Gabel are turning over the company—which includes both the Rockridge restaurant and a Solano Avenue location in Berkeley—to their 110 employees. 

The owners, who offer higher-than-average pay and benefits for restaurant staff and pride themselves on a family-like atmosphere, said they want to protect what they’ve built. 

“It’s very doubtful we’d find someone who would maintain the culture we have here,” said Gabel. “It wouldn’t feel right to sell it to someone who might take it into the ground.” 

The employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is open to anyone who works at least 1,000 hours per year, which amounts to about 20 hours per week. Employees will receive company stock equal to 25 percent of their salaries—with the program fully vesting in seven years. 

That means employees who make $40,000 annually will get $10,000 per year in stock. Employees will keep accumulating stock until ownership is fully transferred to the workers—a process that is expected to take several years. Workers will get the stock on top of their regular pay, health insurance and a retirement plans. 

“It seems like it’s going to be a really good deal,” said Nathan Morse, who describes himself as a server, host and seater at the restaurant. 

Morse, who has worked at Zachary’s for three and a half years, said he loves his job. 

“Coming to work is like having fun—it’s like hanging out with your friends,” said Morse. “Now I’m definitely not leaving.” 

LaRussa, who has worked for Zachary’s since it opened, said he anticipates some growing pains as Zachowski and Gabel ease their way out of the business over the course of the next few years. But he said over the last two decades the owners have gradually shifted control of the company to a team of 14 managers, preparing the group to take over. 

“We’ve gone from a company that is run day to day, every minute detail, by the owners 20 years ago and today it’s run by the managers,” said LaRussa. “I think that will help the ESOP process.” 

Zachowski said staffers have told him they are nervous about failing once they take over the business. But he said he’s confident that the restaurant will be around for years to come. 

“We have a lot of faith in our crew,” he said. 

One thing the employees will have going for them is a track record of success. Gabel said the business did well from the start, prompting rapid expansion of the Oakland restaurant and a decision to open the Berkeley Zachary’s in September 1984, just a year after the couple set up shop in Rockridge. 

Gabel said the couple kept it simple from the start, focusing on the restaurant’s signature stuffed pizza and a thin crust version. 

“A lot of restaurants try to do too many things,” she said. “We just wanted to focus on one thing.” 

Gabel said the owners plan to retain a small stake in the company and remain active in the transition for as long as it takes. 

“They’re not getting rid of us yet,” she said, with a laugh. “It’s very important to us that this company stay strong.” 

Thinley Wangchuk, a Tibetan immigrant who has worked at Zachary’s for 11 years, serving as a manager for the last three, said the owners have built a company worth preserving. 

“They not only are for the business, they care for all the employees,” he said. “They treat us like family.”  

Are you like me? Or at least, like I was 18 months ago? I could name all nine of the Supreme Court justices and anticipate how each would vote on many issues. But our own nine City Council members? I could only have named my own and one or two others, and didn’t pay much attention to happenings at City Hall. I was aware that life had become less pleasant in Berkeley over the years, but I attributed it to wider social problems and not to decisions by city government. I was aware that UC Berkeley was becoming ever less warm and fuzzy, but wasn’t overly analytical about its growing impact on my quality of life. Oh yes, I always voted the “right” (meaning left) way—even licked stamps for some issues—but never investigated most of the actions of those I voted for. After all, I was busy with my own priorities, just like you. And then suddenly, one dark day… 

I found that one of my neighbors, the American Baptist Seminary of the West (ABSW), along with the Berkeley Planning Department, had a whopper of a plan for my block, the 2500 block of Benvenue Avenue, a struggling residential street on the front line of institutional creep. What was it? A 65-feet-tall, 40,000-square-foot monster building, loaded with offices and classrooms but rather short on parking.  

Boy, was I ever surprised! And unprepared, big time! What was this “Planning Department,” who were they and why on earth were they trying to ruin my neighborhood? Were they insane? Didn’t they know how difficult life already is on Southside? Why couldn’t I talk to my city councilmember or the mayor about this impending disaster? What is zoning? What are these five “use permits”? What is the “Zoning Adjustments Board” and what do they do? What are the DRC, the LPC, the PSA? What is the California Environmental Quality Act, and later, why doesn’t the city obey it? Why doesn’t the city attorney protect the citizens of Berkeley? Why does the city staff treat me like an enemy, when I pay their salaries with my tax dollars? My naiveté was boundless. But no more. 

Others in my neighborhood were more experienced and already in action, and we quickly accumulated a phalanx of advisers. But meanwhile, even more questions arose: For example, since the ABSW rents out most of its campus to UC Extension, why did the planning staff want to facilitate UC encroachment south of Dwight Way, in direct contradiction to neighborhood preservation and the city’s own upcoming Southside Plan? And then we discovered that the ABSW’s UC rentals are actually illegal, and that they had been caught renting to UC 20 years ago and even promised to stop. But mysteriously, this information was considered irrelevant by both the planning staff and the Zoning Adjustments Board, and inconvenient by the city attorney. Luckily, the City Council has taken a more reasonable view of the matter, but it took an army of neighbors the better part of a year to convince some city decision makers of what is obvious to anyone else after a 20-minute conversation: that this project is absurd and wrong. That we couldn’t have this conversation with the City Council is, of course, part of the problem. 

Are we alone? No, neighborhoods all over town are astonished by the bad ideas foisted on them by the Planning Department. Are we all “opposed to development” or “afraid of change”—easy accusations that are almost universally untrue? No, we just want projects that suit and enhance our neighborhood environments. Most Berkeleyans want sensitive and creative infill, not ham-handed monstrosities guaranteed to make life worse for a citizenry already living with a density that makes most Americans cringe—and then run off to the suburbs. 

Something is very, very wrong when a project as bad as the ABSW’s is vigorously promoted by the city, and when citizens must work thousands of hours to save their neighborhood environments. How did we get here? Progressives and Moderates point fingers, and have a backlog of grievances against each other. But I say, point at least one finger at me—and at you, if you are like me—because I was so preoccupied with national and global events that I ignored what was happening in my own back yard. But the advantage of my local apathy is that I carry no personal or political grudges against anyone in either party, and I will work with everyone to create a more livable urban environment.  

Why do I tell you this? Because state, regional, and city mandates are right now rearranging our city, and this is the critical moment for citizen participation. Berkeley will be redesigned, either with your input or without it. Accommodating more people need not destroy the Berkeley we love, nor will destroying Berkeley save the planet. If the Planning Department and city attorney’s office will not protect Berkeley’s livability, we may have to make fundamental structural changes in city government to remove power from the staff and return it to ourselves and the City Council, and to ensure the accountability of our elected officials. But take it from me: Get involved now. After all, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.” 

Sharon Hudson is a longtime Berkeley resident, a member of the Benvenue Neighbors Association, a renter and an artist.

With the appearance of a 50-foot-tall flying cat and a 100-foot-long octopus, plus a world record attempt on this weekend’s schedule, the Berkeley Kite Festival promises that for two days, it will “fill the Bay Area skies with more than just summer fog.” 

The 18th annual festival, which will be held Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Cesar E. Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina, is put on in conjunction with the West Coast Kite Championships. The production is one of the largest of its kind in North America and is a popular local activity every summer. 

“Most people think of kites as children’s toys,” festival chair Tom McAlister said. “But many of these are actually flying pieces of art. They’re sophisticated kites for adults.” 

Although much of the weekend will be devoted to exhibitions, the competition among serious kite enthusiasts will be fierce. Festival organizers will sponsor contests for both kite making and kite flying, with participants competing for the grand prize in divisions ranging from individual precision to pairs ballet, team trains and hot tricks. 

One of the main events will be an attempt at a new world record for the longest dual-line kite train. Mix McGraw, who currently holds the record with 219 stacked Hyperkites, will shoot for 260 kites in his first attempt to break his own record. 

Though McGraw’s kites look much like the traditional notion of the high-flying toys, many artists and veteran kite-makers will challenge convention with their new takes on the classic design. Some creations, including a group of kites coming to Berkeley from New Zealand, look more like floats one might see in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But if it flies, McAlister said, it is indeed a kite. 

“Some of them don’t really move around in the sky that much once they’re up there,” he said. “Those are some of the artistic kites that people really like to see, like the giant octopus or the cat.” 

Other festival favorites will include giant windsocks, which spin in the wind, and the Chinese-style creations, including huge dragon kites. All of the kites are extremely colorful, a major attraction for spectators. 

“My favorite are the spinning rainbow ones,” said Julie Martin, who has attended the kite festival for the last six years. “If it’s a clear day they look really beautiful in the sky.” 

Another crowd favorite is kite choreography, which uses several small kites to perform a dance routine in the sky. Though most routines are performed in pairs or teams, Ray Bethell, 75, plans to perform his “One-Man Show,” just as he has for the last several years at the festival. 

Bethell creates intricate dance routines for his kites and performs them by himself. 

“They’re amazing,” McAlister said. “It looks exactly like beautiful dancers are performing it.” 

The kite festival will also feature kite-flying lessons, a sales tent for different kite manufacturers, free kite making for kids and live musical performances. 

“It’s more than just a couple kites floating 10 feet off the ground,” McAlister said. “It’s really quite an event.”

The following letter was addressed to Jeff Philliber, environmental planning coordinator, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: 

Within the last seven months—and with shock and awe—we’ve watched how the lab rapidly secured UC Regent approval for a six-story nanotechnology facility (aka “Molecular Foundry”) in Strawberry Canyon with an absolute minimum of environmental disclosure and public scrutiny.  

Now it’s like déjà vu all over again. At least this time we’ve had a notice of preparation and initial study (NOP/IS) to study and a public scoping meeting (June 30) and site tour (July 7) to attend.  

Yet we still can’t believe that LBNL’s project stewards are truly serious about transforming this latest pair of mega-proposals into reality. After all, the lab still describes itself as a world-class institution, doesn’t it? 

We have no reason to doubt the assertion that many of the lab’s 4,200 employees are cramped for space. Nor do we doubt that many are frustrated by the lack of parking near their job sites. But are these inconveniences sufficient to justify excavating 26,000 cubic yards of material from a steep slope to build an office tower (Building 49) and to dump the residuals into a nearby Strawberry Creek tributary to create a 95-plus-space (G-4) parking lot?  

To us, the underlying rationale for Building 49—that the lab fails to meet federal space allocation requirements—appears bogus. Does LBNL face any penalties if lab space doesn’t match up with the figures recommended by the General Services Administration (GSA)? How much would the lab’s existing space/employee figures be altered by transferring 240 existing employees into the proposed Building 49? How many more such buildings would be required to meet GSA specifications under current conditions? 

The NOP/IS promises that the EIR will examine alternative on-site or off-site locations for this “decompression” office space. If only that were so. In our experience with UC-sponsored CEQA exercises, the alternative “straw men” are routinely flattened by the “preferred alternative”—the one selected before a notice of preparation and initial study are ever drafted.  

Moreover, we wonder how far the lab’s preferred alternative would fly without the “unique” risk-bearing contribution of the consortium of private companies who plan to finance, design, construct, own and manage Building 49.  

As unconscionable as we find the proposal to transform a riparian corridor into a parking lot, we are equally appalled by the precedent emerging here. Will public university land increasingly become the domain of private developers via clever lease-back arrangements?  

Above all, we are struck by the incredible waste of human resources that this whole process represents. Grown (and presumably well-paid) men and women in 21st-century Berkeley are spending inordinate amounts of their time and energy to advance a pair of projects which are at odds with clear thinking and good watershed management.  

It is as if the university is determined to return to the bad old days of the last century when Memorial Stadium blasted its way into the mouth of Strawberry Canyon. Have the intervening 80 years taught UC nothing about the importance of site stewardship? 

Our hope is that public reaction to this NOP/IS stimulates sufficient introspection within UC and LBNL that an EIR won’t be necessary and that the projects as proposed will be withdrawn quietly.  

It’s not impossible. After all, we recall that the NOP/IS for an EIR on LBNL’s long-range development plan (2002) was issued in October 2000. More than 1,000 days later, we have yet to see a follow-on document.  

Daniella Thompson, James M. Sharp

Embraced by politicians on the left and right, hydrogen-fueled cars may not be the best answer to the nation’s pollution problems, according to a new study by a UC Berkeley researcher. 

In a paper that appeared in the July 18 edition of the journal Science, Alex Farrell, assistant professor of energy and resources at UC Berkeley, and David Keith, associate professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, argue there are simpler, cheaper ways to reduce harmful emissions from vehicles. 

“Hydrogen cars are a poor short-term strategy, and it’s not even clear that they are a good idea in the long term,” said Farrell. “Because the prospects for hydrogen cars are so uncertain, we need to think carefully before we invest this money and all this public effort in one area.” 

President Bush has proposed a five-year, $1.7 billion research effort to develop hydrogen-powered fuel cells in an attempt to curb pollution and reduce the nation’s dependency on foreign oil. Several Democratic candidates for president have also proposed major research efforts. 

But Farrell said current methods of producing hydrogen from oil and coal produce substantial carbon dioxide. That leaves wind and solar power, which are in small supply, and nuclear power, which produces dangerous waste, as the only remaining means of producing hydrogen, he said. 

Farrell said it would also cost $5,000 per vehicle to create a new infrastructure for hydrogen distribution. 

The scientists found that improving current cars and strengthening environmental rules would be 100 times cheaper. 

“You could get a significant reduction in petroleum consumption pretty inexpensively by raising the fuel economy standard or raising fuel prices, or both, which is probably the cheapest strategy,” Farrell said. 

Farrell said hydrogen-powered vehicles may be politically popular because they don’t challenge drivers to change their habits. In addition, he said, the push for new research doesn’t place new requirements on automakers—it simply provides a subsidy for developing better cars. 

—David Scharfenberg

Juveniles detained in brazen North Berkeley robberies 

Police arrested four juveniles Sunday who may be responsible for a wave of brazen mid-day robberies in North Berkeley over the last three weeks, said Berkeley Police Department Sgt. Steve Odom. 

“We think we might have the people responsible for all of them,” he said. 

A group of three to four juveniles allegedly walked into unlocked homes at least 10 times in recent weeks, Odom said, snatching purses and other valuables when they could, and if spotted upon entry, offering to wash residents’ cars. 

Odom said one suspect has typically entered a home, with the others waiting on the street as lookouts. 

Police received a call at 8:26 Sunday night from a man on the 1400 block of Gilman Street reporting that he had seen a suspect reaching for a purse just inside his front door. 

“The suspect pulled his hand away from the purse and said, ‘Um, would you like your car washed?’” Odom said. 

Police responded quickly and arrested four juveniles—two 12-year-olds, a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old—nearby on the 1600 block of Stannage Avenue. Police released the suspects, all of them Berkeley residents, to their parents’ custody pending further investigation. 

Gunless hold-up? 

A man claiming to have a gun held up a woman on the 1900 block of Sixth Street Thursday night, said Berkeley Police Department Sgt. Steve Odom. 

The suspect, described as a 40- to 45-year-old man, stepped from behind a fence at about 7:56 p.m. and approached the woman, walking home with two young children. 

“I guess you don’t want to be my friend,” he said, according to police. 

“I just want to go home and make dinner,” she replied. 

“I bet you don’t think I have a gun,” he said. 

“I just want to go home and make dinner,” she repeated. 

“Give me your money or I’ll show you my gun,” he said again. 

The woman was frightened, Odom said, and gave him $45. Police have made no arrests in the case. 

If our city ever adopted an official civic rodent, there would be only one possible choice. No, not who you’re thinking about; I’m referring to the Berkeley kangaroo rat, Dipodomys heermanni berkeleyensis. 

As far as I know, this is the only creature that has Berkeley embedded in its scientific name. It was discovered here about a month before the end of World War I, on a grassy hilltop at the head of Dwight Way, and christened in 1919 by Joseph Grinnell, for decades the doyen of bird and mammal studies at the university. 

We don’t know all that much about the rat’s natural history. Grinnell considered it a new species, but later taxonomists demoted it to the status of a subspecies of the Heermann’s kangaroo rat, which has a wide distribution in central California, from the Sierra to the coast. 

Subspecies is one of those slippery categories that a lot of biologists would like to junk altogether. A subspecies is a population that appears physically distinct from other populations but can still, given the opportunity, interbreed with them. It may, like a full species, be entitled to the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Many of the poster creatures of endangerment, like the infamous northern spotted owl, are subspecies. 

Heermann, incidentally, was Adolphus L. Heermann, a colorful 19th-century frontier physician-naturalist who made it to California at the peak of the Gold Rush, but was more interested in wildlife than wealth. In addition to the kangaroo rat, he’s the namesake of the Heermann’s gull that follows the pelicans up from the Sea of Cortez in summer. 

Kangaroo rats in general are engaging little creatures, with powerful hindlegs for hopping and a long tail ending in a tufted tip. “Rat” is a misnomer; they’re more closely related to squirrels and gophers than to conventional rats. Most of the 22 species are adapted to arid regions and never need to drink, obtaining all the water they need from the plants they eat. The Heermann’s species, though, living north of the deserts, requires free water. Typically, a Heermann’s kangaroo rat spends most of its life underground, either digging its own elaborate tunnel complex or moving into an old ground squirrel burrow. It surfaces after dark for brief foraging bouts, harvesting seeds and green vegetation. 

Not one of your more conspicuous animals, in short. And I have to admit that I had never even heard of the Berkeley kangaroo rat until this spring, when the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued its draft recovery plan for the chaparral and scrub ecosystems of the East Bay. Rather than focusing on a single endangered species, the plan covers a natural community that’s home to several at-risk plants and animals. The plan’s marquee species is the Alameda whipsnake, a handsome black-and-yellow serpent that’s confined to a few disjunct patches of habitat. But it also encompasses four plants—the pallid manzanita, Contra Costa manzanita, Mount Diablo bird’s-beak, and Mount Diablo buckwheat—and the rat. 

All well and good, except that the rodent appears to be extinct. None have been reliably reported since 1940, when a specimen was collected near the Calaveras Reservoir. (That was also the last year anyone saw the Mount Diablo buckwheat). A recovery plan for the Berkeley kangaroo rat seems, on the face of it, about as useful as a recovery plan for the California grizzly. 

But I wouldn’t be too quick to judge this as another instance of federal foolishness. It’s much easier to misplace a kangaroo rat than a bear. A small, subterranean, nocturnal species can easily go unnoticed. Other secretive mammals have turned up after long absences: the black-footed ferret, for one, which had been given up for lost when a farm dog in Meteetse, Wyo., brought home one of a colony of survivors. 

And there have been intriguing rumors of rats in the last few decades: a report of an apparent kangaroo rat trapped near Mount Diablo in the 1980s, another killed by a Blackhawk resident’s cat. Biologist Gary Beeman, who has been searching for the creature for more than 10 years, believes there may still be a few out there. Beeman has wanted posters up in strategic places; I recently saw one in the visitors’ center at Mount Diablo State Park. 

Being still officially extinct, the Berkeley kangaroo rat is not on the endangered species list and doesn’t merit critical habitat designation. But it makes sense for the federal guardians of the whipsnake and the manzanitas to keep an eye out for the rat, just in case. Or for other evidence of its existence, like suspicious droppings. Someone at the Smithsonian Institution has developed a technique for analyzing mammal scat for genetic markers that, according to the authors of the recovery plan, could be applied to the kangaroo rat. 

I wouldn’t count on the rats still being where Grinnell first found them: there’s been too much development in the Berkeley Hills, too many prowling cats. If you do happen to encounter a long-tailed creature hopping through the chaparral, though, Gary Beeman would like to know about it. You can reach him at (925)284-2602. 

The president and his party have cooked up the ultimate recipe for keeping political power. A nation in a constant state of anxiety—over the threat of terrorism, or a potential war—is a nation off balance. And that insecurity is the perfect cover to divert public attention from the country’s serious domestic problems and the administration’s political agenda.  

The “Bush doctrine” opens the door to a series of pre-emptive wars against “evil” regimes, ostensibly to protect the United States and bring security, stability, safety and democracy to the citizens of Damascus, Tehran and Pyongyang—as the president claims to be doing in Baghdad and Kabul. Meanwhile, the administration shows little or no concern for the security, stability and safety of the citizens of Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland or thousands of other cities and small towns across America, who are facing enormous economic and social difficulties.  

Just like in the “The Wizard of Oz,” when we finally get to see who is operating the smoke-puffing machine, we find a consummate pitchman. In Bush’s case, the man behind the screen is a flag-waving, lapel-pin wearing, anti-terrorist fear monger who labels his opponents anti-patriotic. He has done a clever job of manipulating the mass media, but in reality his smooth imagery and charming personality are subtly undermining America’s values. While he composes hymns to individualism, Sunday piety, trickle-down economics and family values, he is trying to gut every program providing for social, economic and environmental justice. America’s families need less pious rhetoric, and more policies geared toward a healthy economy, secure jobs, decent health care, affordable housing, quality public education, renewable energy and a sustainable environment. Bush seems unable—or unwilling—to grasp that the government has an important leadership role in this. In fact, the only policy that Bush seems energized by is one of tax giveaways for the rich and for corporate America.  

At present, there is an air of suspended belief over the radical changes of the past two years. That is because the layoffs, shutdowns, cutbacks and reduced paychecks have been obscured by the events of Sept. 11 and the nation’s subsequent focus on terrorist alerts and the Iraq war. But those changes are taking a huge toll. Bush’s economic policy, which in turn determines social policy, is much like the iceberg waiting in the path of a steaming Titanic.  

Bush does not seem to understand that, while it is not a sin to be born to privilege, it is a sin to spend your life defending it. John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that. They knew the narrowness privilege can breed. This administration, despite its early pledges to provide a policy of “compassionate conservatism,” has in fact adopted policies that amount to a war against the poor and the middle class. The tax and budget cuts were not made in order to jumpstart the economy or balance the budget; they were simply massive cash transfers. Social programs are being slashed to pay for tax giveaways for the wealthy and new defense contracts for arms makers who just happen to be big campaign contributors. Moreover, this was accomplished in a policy vacuum. The administration has not provided the American people with a strategic vision as to how this excessive and bloated arms build-up fits into our larger defense, anti-terrorist, or foreign policy. Is it in the national interest to relegate our most precious assets—our human and natural resources—to the junk pile while we increase the pace of an arms race where overkill has long been achieved? Do we really need to spend $9 billion on a missile defense system that doesn’t work?  

Thomas Jefferson warned us that we could be free or ignorant, but not both. We have not taken that warning to heart. We have not had a serious national debate about the Bush administration’s policies because the mass media have treated politics—as well as economic and social policy—as entertainment: a combination of hype and palliative. The political and economic life of the country has been reduced to little more that a struggle for partisan power, the results not unlike the score of a football game: Bush Wins Again or Senate Dems Beaten. There seems to be no sense of higher good, no question of national purpose, no hope for critical judgment. Hype has impoverished our political debate, undermining the very idea that public discourse can be educational and edifying—or that national public policy can grow out of reflective discussion and shared political values. We have sought simplistic answers to complex problems without even beginning to comprehend our loss. 

Which brings us to the difficult and complex issue of the inter-relationship between America’s economic and social policy, and how these policies are shaped by politics in Washington. A fundamental assumption underlies the administration’s domestic approach—an assumption so ill-conceived that it seriously jeopardizes any prospects for solving our nation’s pressing domestic needs. It is the illusion that economic policy can be separated from social policy.  

This is impossible, and the consequences of believing it are grave. By separating economic theory from social policy, and by pursuing the former at the expense of the latter, the administration has adopted a strategy of brinkmanship that could lead to social disaster. The drastic cuts being made in basic social and human service programs will exact painful and immediate social and human costs, and they will also appear as direct financial costs—in terms of illiteracy, incarceration and ill-health, among others—at future times in different ledgers.  

The administration’s contention that renewed economic growth as a consequence of tax cuts for the rich will eventually “trickle down” to the poor flies in the face of everything we know about poverty today. The best research indicates the opposite. Growth in the private economy has had a declining role in reducing poverty, and virtually all of the reduction in poverty since the mid-1960s has been brought about by the expansion of national social insurance and income-transfer programs of the kind now under attack by the Bush administration.  

In addition to the massive tax cuts, the administration proposes to privatize or turn over to the states vast portions of the nation’s social, education, housing and health programs—a move that amounts to reneging on our social and moral commitments as a nation. The real issue is not public versus private or federal versus state; rather, it is the diminution or avoidance of any national standards of responsibility and accountability. Worse than that, Mr. Bush seems to be denying that this responsibility even exists. Successful and effective national programs are being replaced with an inequitable, inconsistent patchwork of systems run by states—a patchwork that is restrictively financed, more bureaucratic, less accountable and subject to intense local, political and fiscal pressures. Instead of the more efficient government that Bush promises, we will have 50 bureaucratic and anachronistic messes: government by provisional catastrophe. The question becomes whether basic human services will be provided at all.  

For true conservatives, the ideological implications behind Bush’s economic policies must be disturbing, in that they depart from the genuine conservative philosophies that have played such an important role in American history. Historically, conservatives have not promised lower taxes or economic privatism. Traditionally, conservative leaders have focused on the underlying problems of the human community—issues of leadership, of equality of opportunity, of continuity and order, of the obligations of the strong to the weak, and of the safeguards needed to keep the privileged from abusing their power.  

By contrast, the Bush administration encourages us to revert to our basest inclinations: Look out for number one; write off those who can’t make it as shiftless, a drag on the economy. Our moral decline deepens as we condone the sheer political power of special and self-serving private economic interests—wealthy campaign contributors and corporate powers—over the legitimate moral authority that represents our nation’s best public interests. Rather than opportunity, equality, justice and vitality, the Bush prescription for economic stimulus amounts to inequality, economic cronyism and acquiescence. People programs are out and tax avoidance schemes are in. Human needs are made subordinated to political and technical arrogance.  

Recently, I took the opportunity to reread Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and the Federalist Papers, and recalled that our founding fathers were well aware that politics and economics were interrelated faces of power, each necessitating its own checks and balances. What impressed me most, though, was their mature leadership, one that was based on a genuine commitment to the struggle for social, political, and environmental justice as well as economic opportunity. A commitment to this sense of public interest is just as important today.  

Only those people have a future, and only those people can be called humane and historic, who have an intuitive sense of what is significant in both their national and public institutions, and who value them. It is this conviction and the continuing belief in the common-sense vision of the American promise that demand that we begin a serious national dialogue over our country’s economic and social policies. The Bush administration’s radical and dangerous changes have occurred without any serious national debate. Mr. Bush seems to think that his electoral “mandate,” as suspect as it was, has changed our government from a representative democracy to economic royalism.  

The Bush economic policies—and the overtly antisocial political priorities driving them—are not based on a commitment to any high principles such as freedom, liberty, equality, justice or opportunity, although such pieties are mouthed at the swivel of a camera. The administration’s policies instead are based on the very narrow personal prejudices and biases of a group of men who have been motivated by the acquisition of money and power. Bush and Cheney have constructed a hypothesis to fit a simple notion: “The plutocracy is good to me, so I’ll be good to the plutocracy.”  

For the past two years I have listened carefully to the president, his chief advisers, and the neo-conservative right. All of it has reminded me of a passage in “The Heart of Darkness.” Joseph Conrad put it this way:  

“Their talk was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight ... in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world.”  

Conrad’s words capture the radical frenzy in Washington; they reflect the mood and the moral nullity of the reactionary enterprise that seeks to tear apart the public good. The Bush administration just doesn’t get it. No country can sustain itself, much less grow, on a fare of smooth one-liners, rerun ideas, hot-house theories, paranoia and official policy pronouncements borrowed from Orwell’s 1984; where recession is recovery, war is peace and a social policy based on aggressive hostility is compassion.  

In the early 1970s, several unknown artists left their mark in the waters under and around the Bay Bridge. On wooden posts that jutted above the waterline, they mounted a series of wooden boats, trains and other statues. Though the “water art” frequently fell in high winds, or was swept away by large waves, it was often replaced within a few days. 

The space proved ideal: free, with an unlimited audience. “If you found an empty post, you could pretty much do what you wanted on top of it,” one Bay Bridge artist said. “Nobody knew who the other people were, but we were sort of working together anyway—if someone built a blue train, you might create a matching red one. It looked like we were all in on it together.” 

“They looked very pretty out there, rising in the air above the water,” longtime Berkeley resident Ann Corrigan recalled. “You always thought they would get knocked down, but when they did they always came back.” 

The statuary inspired Albany artist Tyler Hoare to add his own pieces to the bay, just off the Berkeley Marina. “I was coming home from an exhibit in Richmond where maybe 200 people had seen my stuff,” Hoare said. “I figured if I put it by the freeway in the water it would catch everybody’s attention and make some people smile.” 

In 1975 Hoare built a green airplane of lumber and canvas as his first addition to the water gallery. The 14-foot-long, six-foot-high plane—a representation of the Sopwith Camel from the Peanuts comic strip—became a popular attraction for residents. Eventually, Hoare added a representation of Snoopy’s Red Baron, so that the two statues appeared to be fighting each other from their different posts. (“I loved it,” said Oakland resident Charles Montgomery, who was about 10 years old when Hoare created his originals. “I would beg my parents to go down to the water so we could see Snoopy versus the Red Baron.”) 

Unsure whose approval he needed to mount the statues, Hoare wrote his own letters of permission, ostensibly from the mayor of Berkeley, the state governor and other area officials. Though no one tried to stop them, Hoare said he and his team were nervous: “The guy we left on shore with the fake letters was sweating bullets,” he said.  

Within a few years, the Berkeley Marina project became a collaborative effort, similar to that at the Bay Bridge, when someone added a doghouse to the Snoopy display. Hoare never found out who did it, but said the person stopped creating new versions when, in 2000, Hoare stopped posting new Red Barons and Sopwith Camels. 

That year, Berkeley resident Joshua Polston used the vacant posts for a new art project. Children from the Berkeley Marina Adventure playground created smaller representations of Snoopy and the airplane as a one-time display. Though the statues fell within a few weeks, Polston said they were a fun project for kids and a fitting memorial to Hoare’s work. 

“For that short time people could remember what it used to look like,” Polston said. “It brought back the nostalgia.” 

Today, most of the posts that held statues near the bridge and in the Berkeley Marina are gone, as is most of the art. Last week, however, the now gray-haired Hoare motored out to an empty post, just off of the Emeryville Shoreline, and amid the pitchings of his boat and the gusts of the wind, mounted a dozen new abstracts. 

But the statuary doesn’t satisfy everyone who remembers the past: “There is still a bit of art left in the water,” said the Bay Bridge artist. “But the glory days are gone—it was a different era, I suppose.”

Berkeley may not be the Garden of Eden. But for anyone who loves flowers, exotic trees and whiling the hours away with a shovel and a gardening hose, it doesn’t get much better.  

Backyard gardens—ornate and simple—are aplenty, and Berkeley’s remarkable network of lush, family-owned nurseries have played no small part in building a garden paradise in these parts. 

“Some of the best retail nurseries [in the country] are in the East Bay,” said Anthony Garza, supervisor of horticulture and grounds at the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley. 

Berkeley, which claims about 100,000 residents, plays host to no fewer than seven nurseries, not including wholesale outfits. Owners say the concentration of flowers, fauna and expertise attracts green thumbs not only from Berkeley, but from all over the Bay Area and beyond. 

“We get a lot of people from the Peninsula,” said Aerin Moore, owner of Magic Gardens Nursery on Heinz Avenue. “We even get people from Sacramento.” 

Paul Doty, president of Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, said locals bring out-of-town guests on Berkeley nursery tours. “It’s kind of like Auto Row,” he said, with a laugh. 

Garza said a Mediterranean-style climate has created ideal growing conditions and helped support the plethora of local nurseries. 

“It never gets extremely hot and it never gets extremely cold,” he said. “The Bay Area is really a mecca for horticulture.” 

But Garza, whose botanical garden is well known for its large sales of rare plants in April and September, said there’s a cultural factor at work as well. “In Berkeley proper, there’s definitely been a move toward more natural and naturalistic lifestyles,” he said. “People try to get closer to nature even in this relatively built-up urban area.” 

Doty’s family has owned the Horticultural Nursery since 1922, when his grandfather George Budgen opened the McGee Avenue business. His father, Ken Doty, was a nurseryman from Oregon who met Budgen’s daughter, Connie, on a sales trip and married her in 1954. 

“She was the boss’ daughter and they just met,” said the younger Doty. 

The family’s long-term ownership of the nursery is not unusual in Berkeley. The Lasagna family has owned the Westbrae Nursery on Gilman Street in North Berkeley since 1911 and the Davis family has owned the East Bay Nursery on San Pablo Avenue in West Berkeley for more than 60 years.  

Remarkably enough, they all seem to be friends. 

“I think all the nurseries here in the East Bay work together,” said Doty. “We’re pretty much good friends.” 

Gerald Acree, a manager at Westbrae, said the long-term friendship spawned a plant-buying cooperative 50 years ago among the three old-time shops that still survives today. 

Still, every outfit tries to differentiate itself. Magic Gardens offers classes, East Bay Nursery specializes in trees and Westbrae carries a large selection of garden arts, from waterfalls to wind sculptures. And, within their specialties, all the nurseries look for something a little out of the ordinary. 

“Berkeley ... appreciates more of the unusual, less of the mass-produced—whether it’s the window on your home or the craftsmanship on your door,” said Rob Davis, general manager at East Bay Nursery. 

A stroll through the East Bay Nursery’s rows and rows of trees and plants turns up everything from a pyramidal limber pine to a leatherleaf sedge, a bronze-brown perennial grass. 

Davis said he hasn’t noticed any drastic changes in buying habits this year. But he said local gardeners have snatched up several new varieties of heuchra, a fern-like perennial with white and pink flowers and all sorts of leaves—from chocolate speckled to lime green with white speckles. 

“It’s appropriate for Berkeley,” he said. “It’s kind of a whimsical flower—a wand-like flower.” 

Just around the corner, at Yabusaki’s Dwight Way Nursery, co-owner Kenneth Yabusaki specializes in bonsai trees ranging from 6 inches to 15 feet. He said customers building Japanese gardens travel from all over the Bay Area to buy supplies from his store. 

The Yabusakis have only been in business for 19 years—neophytes by local standards. But their nursery may be able to claim the deepest Berkeley roots of all the local garden shops. 

A slightly tattered city map hanging on the nursery’s office wall, dated 1891, has a small inset in the lower left-hand corner highlighting the “Dwight Way Nursery.”  

“I believe we have more nurseries in Berkeley than any other city,” said Yabusaki. “Everyone in this town really likes to garden.”

City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to offer emergency financial assistance to eight local child care programs that face delays in state funding as a result of the budget stalemate in Sacramento. 

The vote drew cheers from about 60 parents and children who showed up to urge the move, chanting in Spanish and English and waving signs that read “Children First—Pass a Responsible Budget” and “Thank you city of Berkeley.” 

“I would not be able to go to work if I did not have a place for my children to go,” said Rosa Equihua, a Berkeley dental assistant who has two children in a pair of programs operated by the Bay Area Hispanic Institute for Advancement (BAHIA). 

“Without Centro Vida, I don’t know what would happen to us,” added Berkeley resident Yolanda Leon, whose daughter attends one of BAHIA’s programs. 

With no budget in place, the state withheld about $400 million in quarterly child care payments this month for roughly 400,000 low-income children across California, according to Michael Jett, director of the child development division in the state’s Department of Education. The delay will affect 288 Berkeley children, according to calculations by Mayor Tom Bates’ staff.  

Jett said some child care centers around the state have already announced closures and others could soon follow suit. 

“The centers are going to run out of money at some point,” he said. “It’s going to get desperate.” 

But Berkeley officials said the emergency city funding should help to shield the local programs, if they choose to take advantage of the offer. BAHIA Executive Director Beatriz Leyva-Cutler said she will seek financial assistance and Bates’ senior aide Julie Sinai said Ephesian Children’s Center in South Berkeley is likely to seek city help as well. 

Two other agencies reached by the Daily Planet said they will not seek city assistance in the short-term, but may request it later. 

Sinai, who has a child in a BAHIA day care program, learned about the state funding problem last week. A July 10 letter from Leyva-Cutler told parents the nonprofit would cut off services to state-subsidized, low-income children Aug. 1 if the organization could not secure a new line of credit, win an emergency loan or refinance one of its buildings in time. Eighty-three of the 135 children in two BAHIA-operated programs are low-income and qualify for state assistance. 

“We greatly regret having to take this action,” Leyva-Cutler’s letter read. “Never in our 28 years of services have we communicated such a drastic and dramatic action to families.” 

Bates responded with an emergency measure on the City Council agenda Tuesday instructing City Manager Weldon Rucker to offer either an advance on annual city grants or an emergency loan to the eight local child care programs serving Berkeley children. 

“I was just flabbergasted when I heard they actually were going to close,” said Bates. “I just tried to think outside the box.” 

Leyva-Cutler, who said BAHIA faces a delayed quarterly payment from the state of $151,000, noted that the emergency city assistance will allow BAHIA to keep its doors open in the short-term. But ultimately, she said, the state legislature must pass a budget. 

“We’re hopeful that the legislature will listen to this...and do something about passing that budget,” she said. 

Six of the eight child care programs that will qualify for city assistance — from a BAHIA’s day care and after school programs, which serve a largely Hispanic population, to Ala Costa Center, which serves the developmentally disabled — provide direct child care services.  

Two of the programs, the Oakland-based Bananas and the Berkeley-based Berkeley Albany Licensed Day Care Operators Association, provide low-income families with child care vouchers. 

Eric Peterson, program manager at Bananas, said the organization provides vouchers for about 65 Berkeley children. At least 30 of those children will be affected by the delay in state funding, he said.  

Peterson said he knew of no local child care centers that planned to reject Bananas vouchers in the near term. But when the checks stop arriving in mid-August, he said, they could have a change of heart. 

“It’s a distinct possibility,” he said. 

Peterson said Bananas, which receives about $1 million per month in state funding, does not plan to ask the city for a loan because the dollar amount involved is too high. But he did not entirely rule out a request for city help. 

Bates said he has concerns about making direct loans. Nonprofits that receive them, he said, may not be able to repay the loans in tough economic times. The mayor suggested he was more comfortable providing advances on the roughly $550,000 in city grants Berkeley is scheduled to dole out this year to at least six of the eight child care programs that serve the city’s low-income children. 

Holly Gold, executive director of Ala Costa Center, which serves 60 children, said her program should be able to make it through August without requesting an advance on the city’s $32,839 grant to the center. If the budget stalemate lingers into the fall, she said, Ala Costa may ask for help from the city. 

Gold said she has been disappointed with the state legislature’s inability to pass a final budget. The city’s action, which came out of the blue, she said, provides a stark contrast with what has happened in Sacramento. 

“I’m just so impressed that the mayor took the initiative to do this,” she said. “I just think that’s great.”

FRIDAY, JULY 18 

Cirque Noir Benefit for ACCI Gallery, a silent and live auction from 6 to 10 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $20 per person, $30 per couple. Reservations suggested, 843-2527. 

“So How’d You Become an Activist?” with Tony Serra and Mary Ann Tenuto at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Donation $5. Wheel- 

chair accessible. 415-927-1645. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph.  

wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

Bastille Day Waltz Ball, lessons at 7 p.m., dancing with the Baguette Quartette at 9 p.m. at the International House, 2299 Piedmont. Cost is $20 at the door. 650-326-6265. www.fridaynightwaltz.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 19 

Berkeley Bay Trail Grand Opening Ceremony, at 11 a.m. at the southwest corner  

of University Ave. and West Frontage Rd., at the base of the pedestrian overpass. For information call Lisa Caronna, director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront at 981-6700. 

YMCA Day 100th anniversary of the Berkeley/Albany YMCA. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with entertainment and health scre- 

ening at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at MLK, Jr. Way. 548-3333.  

Free Gardening Class on Blooming Perennials and Shrubs, with Aerin Moore, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-1992. www.magicgardens.com 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Earthquake Retrofitting, for anyone who lives or works in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to noon at 812 Page St. Register on-line at www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes or by calling 981-5506. 

Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine Open House with Dr. Andrew Karozos at 1:30 p.m. Open house begins at 10 a.m. at 2550 Shattuck Ave. Registration required. 666-8248.  

“Supressed Histories, Priestesses,” a slideshow by Max Dashu at 7:30 p.m. at Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby St. Cost is $10-$15. Wheelchair accessible. 654-9298. 

SUNDAY, JULY 20 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk, facilitated by Singer/ 

Songwriter/Activist Margie Adam, 2 p.m., North Berkeley Senior Center. Join Margie and a growing number of people who have found that walking the labyrinth, individually and in community, offers a powerful way to ground and focus healing and peace and justice work in the world. Free. Wheelchair accessible. Sponsored by the East Bay Labyrinth Project. 526-7377. 

Summer Sunday at the Peralta Community Garden Café, live music, poetry and refreshments, from 2 to 5 p.m. Since the Community Garden Café will be operated as a non-commercial grassroots effort it is dependent on volunteers and donations for performers and refreshments. Suggestions for programs and performers are welcome. Please contact Karl Linn at 841-3757. 

Lee Nichol on “Thought, Symbol, and Space” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

Top of the Bay Family Day, Sand Sculpting Forget the beach, head for the hills to create the sand castle of your dreams, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Professional sand sculptor Kirk Rademaker hosts this hands-on outdoor workshop. For all ages. Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. 643-5961. www. 

lawrencehallofscience.org/news/  

Eckhart Tolle Talks on Video Free gatherings, at 7:30 p.m. to hear the words of the author of “The Power of Now” at the Feldenkrais Ctr., 830 Bancroft Way. 547-2024. EdShorelin@aol.com 

MONDAY, JULY 21 

Berkeley Partners for Parks meets at 7:30 p.m. at the Corporation Yard’s meeting room, 1326 Allston Way. www.bpfp.org 

Berkeley CopWatch meets at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JULY 22 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Lawyers in the Library, at 6 p.m. in the West Branch, University above San Pablo, 981-6270.  

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23 

Botanical Garden Twilight Tours: A Walk in California with horticulturist Nathan Smith at 5:30 p.m. Free for members, $5 for non-members. UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Registration required. 643-2755. www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden  

Berkeley Food Policy Council meets at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. The Berkeley Food Policy Council (BFPC) is a coalition of residents, non-profit agencies, community groups, school district and city agencies to increase community food access and help build a healthy regional food system. Everyone is welcome. For information call Penny Leff, 548-3333.  

California Power: The Big Picture and How We Fit In, with Nettie Hoge, Executive Director, The Utility Reform Network, (TURN), at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the Ber- 

keley Gray Panthers. 548-9696. graypanthersberk@aol.com 

South Berkeley Mural Project Community members are coming together to create a neighborhood mural on the side of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Ashby Ave. and MLK Jr. Way at 7 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios, 1923 Ashby Ave. 644-2204.  

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Cost is $9. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-5143. 527-5332. 

THURSDAY, JULY 24 

Organic Farmers’ Market from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Ele- 

phant Pharmacy parking lot, 1607 Shattuck Ave., at Cedar. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

“Science in the ‘Hood’” Rich Bolecek will speak about a community based, educational after-school program designed to decrease violence, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2151 Vine St. Rich Bolecek started and is the coordinator of this program which allows at-risk youth to develop positive skills in a tinkerer’s workshop with hands-on science, woodworking, art and other activities, using non-violent conflict resolution techniques.  

ONGOING  

Vista Community College Program for Adult Education (PACE) Enrollment through Sept. 6. PACE is a college alternative for adults with job and family responsibilities. For information call 981-2864 or 981-2800 or email Marilyn Clausen at mclausen@peralta.cc.ca.us  

Summer Fun Camps for Children and Teens, from age five and up, are offered at Berkeley recreation centers and include arts and crafts, swimming and tennis lessons, yoga, organized sports and games, and field trips. Program runs through August 22, Mon. - Fri., 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The fee, including lunch and snack, is $77 per week for Berkeley residents. Applications available at the Camps Office, 2016 Center St. 981-5150. 

Echo Lake Youth Camp for ages 6 - 12 at Echo Lake, near South Lake Tahoe. One week sessions are offered through August 22. Cost is $235 per session. For registration information please visit the Camps Office at 2016 Center St., or call 981-5150. 

Free Energy Conservation Retrofits for Berkeley Residents CA Youth Energy Services is a nonprofit sponsored by the City of Berkeley that trains and employs high school students to provide conservation retrofits. Work includes weatherstripping, replacing lightbulbs with CFLs, cleaning refrigerator coils, replacing faucet aerators and showerheads with low-flow devices, installing earthquake preparedness measures, and a comprehensive audit. Available to home owners and renters. Call for an appointment, 428-2357. 

The Bay Area Shakespeare Camp for children 7-13 years of age covering casting, staging, costuming, and performing, in a series of five, 2-week sessions ending August 22. Sponsored by the Bay Area Shakespeare Camp and the Oakland East Bay Shakespeare Festival, in cooperation with the City of Berkeley Parks Recreation & Waterfront Dept. Camp will be held at John Hinkel Park, Southampton Pl. at Arlington Ave. The cost is $340 per session. Scholarships are available for eligible participants in Berkeley Recreation Programs. Call 981-5150 for scholarship details. To register for the camp, or for more information, please call 415-422-2222, or 800-978-PLAY. 

National HIV Testing Month The City of Berkeley offers free HIV testing. Drop in Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and Wednesdays 6 to 8:30 p.m., during July, at 830 University Ave. at 6th St. For other days and times call the HIV Testing Information Line at 981-5380.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wednesday, July 23, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. Carol Lopes, 981-5514. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy/default.htm  

Mental Health Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 6:30 p.m., at 2640 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Harvey Turek, 981-5213. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/mentalhealth  

Planning Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wednesday, July 23, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Barbara Attard, 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thursday, July 24, at 7 p.m., at 1900 Sixth St. Iris Starr, 981-7520. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/westberkeley  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thursday, July 24, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning  

Before Berkeley became a fully built city and empty lots were plentiful, moving buildings from one place to another was common. Although houses were moved off University Avenue to nearby residential areas when University Avenue changed to a more commercial thoroughfare, a few residential buildings have survived this transformation. 

The recently demolished Doyle House, 1892, was one of these. Another residential building which has survived, although not in as good or even habitable condition as the Doyle House had been, is the Elizabeth M. Kenney-Meinheit Cottage. Despite its small size and humble condition, the cottage has interesting and significant historic connections. 

The Kenney-Meinheit Cottage was originally located at 2214 Addison St., east of Shattuck Avenue and next to Berkeley’s first volunteer fire department. The cottage was built in 1887 for Elizabeth M. Kenney, who operated a stationery store in the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot at Center and Shattuck. She and members of her family, including a nephew, James Kenney, who would become Berkeley’s first fire chief, lived in the cottage until 1898 when it was sold to Ludwig Meinheit.  

In 1906 Meinheit moved the cottage from the downtown to what was then a more quiet neighborhood on University Avenue. The Meinheit family, whose son William became a firefighter under James Kenney, owned the cottage until the early 1960s.  

Sometime in the early 1970s the former Kelly Moore Paint Company building was constructed in front of the cottage and the cottage, at the rear of the lot, was adapted as a separate storage structure and essentially treated as a shed.  

When a demolition permit application was reviewed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2001, Jill Korte, a member of the commission, determined that the seemingly unimportant storage shed was a rare example of an early prefabricated building system designed and manufactured by William H. Wrigley in Ocean View (now West Berkeley).  

Wrigley’s method of prefabricated construction was patented on Dec. 13, 1881, as a “Portable House.” Drawings and written explanation describe the modular system of upright posts grooved to hold vertical wall boards (panels). This created a double wall system that could be assembled off site. The Kenney-Meinheit House has no nails and is entirely built of redwood.  

Of the five known “Portable Houses” constructed in Berkeley only the Kenney-Meinheit Cottage still stands. However, a shipment of Wrigley’s “Portable Houses” were sent to Australia, so there may be some still standing there. 

Sometime in the next few weeks the Kenney Cottage will be moved again. Instead of being demolished, this example of perhaps the earliest prefabricated house in the country will be temporarily relocated (thanks to Director of Public Works René Cardineaux) to 1275 University Ave. on a small piece of city-owned land.  

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

The Feb. 20 press release just about said it all in the headline: “Mayor Tom Bates Launches Task Force to Fix Berkeley’s Broken Development Process.” But just to make sure we got the point, the subhead referred to “Berkeley’s dysfunctional process for approving building permits.” And then, in the body of the press release, “Developers, neighborhood preservationists, and city staff all agree that our permitting process is broken.” Anyone who still didn’t get it was invited to click over to a fact sheet, which told them that “it is generally agreed that the permitting process in the city of Berkeley is cumbersome, unclear, lengthy and often unfair to all those involved.” 

Yes indeed. It’s pretty clear that in February the mayor and his advisers thought that enough permits weren’t being granted and enough buildings weren’t being built in Berkeley. There’s only one problem with that analysis: it was data-free. Despite all the rhetoric, no real evidence was offered to support the conclusion that anything was broken. And obviously, the movers and shakers had never heard the old business saw “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” 

We have some facts now. The Planet commissioned Rob Wrenn to collect and analyze the city’s own data about how much development has been happening in Berkeley, and it is clear that a lot of development has been moving very quickly indeed through the pipeline. His study showed that developers usually get all or most of the special exceptions to the city’s standards which they demand. Close to 1,000 small apartments have been built recently or will be built soon. Only two big projects have been turned down, and one of the two is still in the works. 

Meanwhile, back at City Hall, the mayor’s Task Force on Permitting and Development has been slogging away at the task of fixing what’s not broken. The February press release said that “the task force has been directed to report back with specific recommendations … no later than four months from the date of its first meeting.” June 27 has come and gone, but the task force has barely started their discussion of large-scale development. The last meeting, on July 11, devoted just under an hour to the topic, but that’s about it. A great proportion of the nine previous sessions covered pressing matters like views, hot tubs and fences, which are more interesting to residents of single-family houses in the hills than to flatland neighbors immediately impacted by the buildings which some call BUBs, or Big Ugly Boxes. Citizens who have actually experienced the effects of BUBs on their blocks were not appointed to the task force, which is dominated by developers, builders, real estate agents, planners and politicians. 

One big problem jumps out of the statistics in the Wrenn report. The mix is all wrong. The BUBs contain too many expensive, tiny units appropriate only for well-off students and other young singles, and almost no housing for family groups. Only four units have more than two bedrooms. Even the “disabled” units in many cases are poorly designed, too cramped for someone who has both a large wheelchair and a sleep-over attendant. And we’re not building nearly enough affordable units of any size, if we want to maintain the diversity that has made Berkeley an interesting place to live. 

Meanwhile, demand for “market rate” apartments has been dropping. A study by RealFacts, a real estate market researcher, as reported in Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle, says that rents in Alameda County have dropped by 4.8 percent. Some BUBs have big for-rent banners. It looks like we’ve built too much of the wrong thing too fast. 

Mayor Bates made a cameo appearance at the July 11 meeting. His contribution was that he thinks the city needs to develop a method for selling more units as condominiums. That’s the bailout for landlords when there’s a glut of over-built market rate rentals, for sure, but cracker-box condos don’t work for families. And condominiums are a notoriously poor investment for buyers. 

The Aug. 1 meeting is the last chance for the task force to try to grapple with the real problems of Berkeley’s development. People who care about the future of Berkeley should try to be there to tell the task force in person what’s really wrong, and how it should actually be fixed. (That’s Friday, Aug. 1, sixth floor of City Hall, 8:30 a.m.) 

During August the task force chair, Realtor Laurie Capitelli, will be drafting a report for review by the group in September. Citizens will still be able to comment in writing. The pages of the Planet are open for your letters and commentary. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Planet.

FRIDAY, JULY 18 

CHILDREN 

Farm Friends Storytime at 10:30 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

FILM 

“Down by Law” with Tom Waits in a noir comedy, directed by Jim Jarmusch, at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. Free. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Restoration Pleasures: “La Maison du Mystère” Episodes 1-3 at 7:30 p.m., with Joel Adlen on piano, at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash at Cody’s with Alicia Suskin Ostriker and Jenny Factor at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Early Music Concert with period instruments. Works by J.S. Bach including Cantata BWV 210, “O, holder Tag, erwünsche Zeit,” performed by the Corde- 

lia Ensemble directed by Trevor Stephenson. Isabelle Metwalli, soprano and Trevor Stephenson, harpsicord. At 8 p.m. at Zion Lutheran Church, 5201 Park Blvd., Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 547-7974. 

Earl Zero, Soul Majestic and Prince Rastan present a night of classic Roots Reggae at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Quijerema, new Latin Ameri- 

cana music at 8 p.m., at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Norton Buffalo, harmonica and acoustic trio, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mark Hummel and the Blues Survivors perfrom Chicago style blues at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $10-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Adrian’s Music Salon, with the Alexis Harte Band and special guest Katherine Chase, perform folk and pop at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Suggested donation $6-$10 sliding scale. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

Majority Rule, Del Cielo, Dear Diary I Seem to be Dead, Promise, and Takaru perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gil- 

man St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5, $1 if wearing prom clothes! 525-9926. 

Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans and Amelia perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Michael Bluestein Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Double Felix, BRAY, and Human Z perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886.  

www.blakesontelegraph.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 19 

CHILDREN 

Kids on the Block Puppet Show, promoting acceptance and understanding of physical and cultural differences at 2 p.m. at the Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave., lower level. Sug- 

gested donation $3. Children under 3 free. 549-1564. 

Folktales and Crafts at 11 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

FILM 

Restoration Pleasures: “La Maison du Mystère” Episodes 4-7 at 7:30 p.m., with Joel Adlen on piano, at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Arts Center Poetry Ensemble presents a Poetry Reading featuring James Schevill with Luis Garcia and Richard Denner. Reception and refreshments at 6:30 p.m., readings at 7 p.m., at the Berkeley Art Center. 644-6893. 

Poetry Flash at Cody’s with Joseph Di Prisco and Brian Young at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

African Drum Workshop with Wade Peterson. Beginners from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., experienced from 12:30 to 2 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15-$25, and advanced registration is encouraged. 533-5111.  

Elvis Costello and the Imposters at 8 p.m. at the Greek Theatre. 642-0212. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu  

Emeryville Taiko and Zan- 

Zylum Jazz Group at 8 p.m. at the Emeryville Taiko Dojo, 1601A 63rd St. Cost is $10. 655-6392. 

José Roberto Hernández presents Fiesta y Color de Latinoamérica at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

City Folk, contemporary folk trio, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Rube Waddell and Go Van Gogh perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Jolie Holland, Sean Hayes, and Sam Edson, perform American country folk at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Suggested donation is $6 to $10 sliding scale. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

Coto and Friends perform jazz and Afro-Cuban music at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Tickets are $10-$12. 845-5373.  

www.jazzschool.com 

Faraway Brothers, P-Funk Allstars, Dr. Masseuse, and The Spindles perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0866. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Native Elements, Warsaw Poland Brothers and Shrinkage at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Spencer Day at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Born/Dead, Conga Fury, Chainsaw, Voetsek, Case of Emergency, Doppelganger perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 20 

FILM 

“Animal Crackers,” filmed and produced by Berkeley artist Kamala Appel, explores the factual and fantasy lives of Bay Area wildlife. Premieres at 3 p.m. at the Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $5 at the door. For more information go to www.picturepubpizza.com 

Restoration Pleasures: “Sunrise” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour of “Paul Kos: Everything Matters” at 2 p.m. at The Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

Zadie Smith introduces her new novel, “The Autograph Man,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com 

Robert A. Rosenstone reads from “King of Odessa: A Novel of Isaac Babel,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cafe Belle: Open Stage Bellydance, featuring dancers from several Bay Area companies and schools, at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. Fundraiser for Women’s Refuge of Berkeley for survivors of domestic violence. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Sally Light, lyric soprano, in a benefit concert for the Morde- 

chai Vanunu Campaign, at 3 p.m. at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall, corner of Cedar and Bonita. $10-$20 donation requested. 548-3048. 

Dan Joseph and John Ingle Duo, plus Christopher Williams, perform as part of the ACME Contemporary Composer’s Series at 8:15 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations accepted. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

Echo, Realistic perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Three Guitars, with Steve Erquiaga, Mimi Fox and Brian Pardo perform at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Faruk and Ali Sinan Erdemesel with Husmu Tusuz, Turkish Sufi and Gypsy music at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-176.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, JULY 21 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Cynthia Lee, Professor of Law at George Washington University, will discuss “Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

James Gleick discusses his bio- 

graphy, “Isaac Newton,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Great Books Group meets at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Poetry Express, featuring Nathan from Berkeley Poetry Slam, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Beolach, traditional Cape Breton music at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-176.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Shaman Trance Dance with DJ Amar and Isis Rising at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

TUESDAY, JULY 22 

FILM 

Sarunas Bartas: “The House” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Summer Poetry, with Sherilyn Connelly from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Mediterranean Café, 2475 Telegraph Ave. Free, open mic, poetry, prose, short fiction, amateur and advanced artists welcome. 549-1128. 

Jeff Tamarkin describes “Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cajun Coyotes performs traditional Cajun music at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Patti Whitehurst at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23 

FILM 

Excess of Evil: “Simon of the Desert” and “The Lash of the Penitentes” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Eddy Joe Cotton describes his life riding the trains across the country in “Hobo: A Young Man’s Thoughts on Trains and Tramping Across America,” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Café Poetry and Open Mic hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Donation requested. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Open Mic Poetry with Kathryn Waddell, Kevin Johnson, Deborah Day, Charles E. Patterson, and Steven Kopel at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Candles in the Dark: Poetry and Preaching in Wartime Reading and discussion with Dr. David Randolph, Kirk Lumpkin and David Madgalene from 10 am to noon at Pacific School of Religion, Lower Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. Free and open to the public. For information davidjrandolph@aol.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chris Chandler and Anne Feeney, a collage of folk, poetry and politics, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee  

House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Balkan Cabaret performs traditional dance music from the cafés of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jules Broussard and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Wits End, Riddled with Guilt, Jynx, And Ever perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Tele- 

graph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 24 

FILM 

Restoration Pleasures: “La Maison du Mystère” Episodes 8-10 at 7:30 p.m., with Joel Adlen on piano, at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Macromatrix” Curator’s talk with Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson at 12:15 p.m. at The Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Olympia Dukakis presents her autobiography “Ask Me Again Tomorrow”at 12:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Repertory Theater, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Co-sponsored by Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Barbara Gates describes “Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Harlyn Aizley discusses her memoir, “Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Rupert Isaacson discusses his new book “The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert,” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533.  

www.easygoing.com 

Haven Logan discusses the emotional blocks to physical health in her new book, “Cho- 

osing to be Well,” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert Downtown with Upside Down and Backwards, harmonica and guitar, at the Berkeley BART Station. Seating available. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Association. 549-2230. 

Negritude 2: Bahia Bacheche, an evening of music and dance from the African Diaspora, at 8 p.m. at the Black Repertory  

Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. 597-9806. 

Belshazzar’s Feast performs for a Ceilidh dance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Beam, Liz Pisco and The Welcome Matt perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mike Greensill, jazz pianist, performs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Eileen Hazel, Helen Chaya, Jamie Isman, acoustic folk at 8 p.m. at the Tea House, 1923 Ashby Ave. $10 suggested donation, with no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.folkdiva.com  

Keni el Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

AT THE THEATER 

Aurora Theater Company, “Thérèse Raquin,” by Emile Zola, directed by Tom Ross. A sinister tale set among the  

lower classes in nineteenth- 

century Parisian society. Runs through July 27, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $32 and $34. 843-4822.  

www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Opera, “Faust,” by Gounod, Jonathan Khuner music director, Ann Woodhead, stage director. July 18, 19, 25, and 26 at 8 p.m., July 20 and 27 at 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $38 adults, $33 seniors, $16 children, $10 students and are available from 925-798-1300. 

www.juliamorgan.org 

California Shakespeare Festival runs through October 22. Performances this year will be Julius Caesar, Arms and the Man, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing. Please call for dates and times. The Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org  

Central Works Theater Ensemble, “The Wyrd Sisters” directed by Jan Zvaifler. Through July 27, Thurs. - Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 5 p.m. No performance July 24. At the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $8-$20 sliding scale. For reservations call 558-1381. 

foolsFury, “Attempts on her Life,” by Martin Crimp, directed by Ben Yalom, July 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. at LaVal’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid at Hearst. Tickets are $20 general, $15 students, seniors. 1-866-GOT-FURY. www.foolsfury.org 

Woman’s Will Shakespeare Company, “The Rover,” a restoration comedy by Aphra Behn. July 19 and 20 in Live Oak Park. All performances are at 1 p.m. and are free. 420-0813. www.womanswill.org 

When Hugo Brenni helped create La Peña Café in 1973, he intended it to be a small, local restaurant and performance space. Thirty years later, the retiring Brenni leaves behind a cultural center that has become a Bay Area landmark. 

La Peña, which means gathering place in Spanish, began as an idea to create a multicultural performing arts space that would allow artists and visitors to come together to exchange ideas and share in one another’s heritage. Brenni played a key part in the planning process, then took on the role of head chef once La Peña opened in its current Shattuck Avenue location, specializing in food from his native Chile. 

Brenni explained that the tradition of holding peñas began in Chile and Latin America, where villagers built temporary huts to create a community space to celebrate holidays. As larger cities grew up around what were once small villages, people retained the peñas to hold on to their traditional identity. The music and poetry that came out of such peñas mixed people’s cultural background with the new social dynamics of the big cities. But Brenni said that finding an available building in the East Bay that would meet the group’s needs was not as easy as organizers had hoped. 

“We had looked at three or four places that we couldn’t afford,” he recalled. “We were holding a benefit at the Starry Plough, and when we came out that night I saw the ‘For Rent’ sign on the space next door. The rent was cheap, so we began renting it and then bought it later.” 

Since La Peña moved into that empty space in 1975, it has become a popular cultural center where visitors can hear traditional Latin-America performers, many of whom infuse their work with commentaries on modern-day social and political situations. 

“What I think is that you can’t run a business without politics,” Brenni said. “Everything—the performances, the management, the restaurant must be tied in to politics. You can’t isolate a business from the world outside.” 

As such, La Peña has always been known as a politically charged hotspot of conversation and political messages. Photographs and paintings of radical leaders line the walls, and the brightly colored mural on the facade of the cultural center features a representation of Victor Jara, a Chilean musician who was murdered by the army serving under the dictator Augusto Pinochet. 

Like many of the artists who regularly perform at La Peña do through their work, Brenni expresses his heritage through his food. 

“I love to cook,” he said. “I love to serve people the food that they eat when they are listening to music or poetry.” 

Fittingly, Brenni did the cooking for his own farewell party, which was held Tuesday night at La Peña. Community members crowded into the space to present tributes to the driving force behind the center’s landmark status, and the newly created La Peña Community Hall of Fame inducted Brenni as its first member. Brenni said he’s much more comfortable in the kitchen, behind the scenes, than he is as the subject of so many accolades. 

“It is not about the rewards,” he said. “I have learned so much from the people I have been around. That’s the biggest loss for me, is all the people that have taught me what I know.” 

Now that he’s retired, Brenni is preparing to move back to Chile with his wife, Wanda. He sold his house on Wednesday, and will leave the United States in late August. 

But although he is retiring, Brenni’s future plans do not include a slower lifestyle. He will spend the first several months building his own house, then will look to get involved in the community much as he has done in Berkeley. Brenni and his best friend own a piece of land, on which they are considering building a cultural center similar to La Peña. 

“But no restaurants,” Brenni laughed. “No business. I’m going to have fun.” 

Meanwhile, La Peña will continue on without the man who created it, bringing in a new generation of staff members to further the center’s goal of combining people’s cultural heritage with modern social situations and ideals.  

“We need new people,” he said. “I’ve gotten old. They’re going to make it even better.” 

EAST TIMOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Two points in the front page story “Journalist Held in Indonesia” (July 11-14 edition) bear correcting. Paul Kilduff referred to “East Timor’s recent successful battle for independence.” That point of view is a familiar one in our time, when people take armed conflict for granted. However, in the case of East Timor, the people on that remote eastern tip of the Indonesian archipelago did not have to battle for their independence. In 1975, they had been granted independent status by the United Nations, in a decision agreed to by all the member states of the UN.  

Unfortunately, Indonesia moved in and incorporated East Timor as part of Indonesia. That status, another all too familiar instance of Might Makes Right, continued until 1999, when a free and fair election was held and the people of East Timor voted for independence. All that occurred without violence.  

Immediately after the vote, however, the Indonesian military slaughtered and forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands of East Timorese and destroyed virtually every building in the capital city of Dili. So even then there was no battle for independence. The UN successfully administered all aspects of reconstruction in East Timor for more than two years and assisted in setting up trials for the criminal acts of the Indonesian military. 

The second point is that the Free Aceh Movement is GAM, not GAB. 

Rita Maran, Ph.D. 

Lecturer, UC Berkeley 

President, United Nations Association—USA East Bay 

• 

ON THE BALLOT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If the recall ballot gives us little choice other than Davis, Simon, Schwarzenegger or Issa, then I’m writing in “NOTA”—None Of The Above. If NOTA wins, then a new election must be held with different candidates. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

SAVE STRAWBERRY CANYON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Please fight to save Strawberry Canyon from the planned overuse of this magnificent canyon by the university and LBNL. As longtime residents of Berkeley, we have many times gone for walks in the Berkeley Hills and enjoyed the riparian atmosphere of that whole region. It would be a shame to see it lost. Also, the destruction of habitat for the abundant wildlife in the creek area would be unforgivable.  

Please do whatever you can to save this beautiful resource.  

Stephanie Manning 

• 

STOP MEDI-CAL CUTS 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

As a family member who has a loved one in a nursing home, I feel the proposed 15 percent Medi-cal cuts will not only hurt nursing homes, but will also affect family stability on a daily basis, families who are already dealing with the emotional aspect of having their loved ones in a home. This cut will not only affect Medi-cal recepients, but also non-Medi-cal patients.  

Please spread the word and contact your district assemblymen. This issue is vital and will be devastating to the most in need in our society.  

You may even suggest to those representatives in Sacramento who support the 15 percent budget cuts to visit a nursing facility for eight hours, to observe the 24-hour staff working to meet the needs of loved ones and then to face the true reality of life on the other side.  

JohannaTurley  

Family Council Chairperson  

Berkeley Pines Care Center  

• 

CULTURAL CENTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My response to the writer who said that the Bolshoi Ballet, the New York City Ballet, and Yo Yo Ma would not have appeared in Bloomington, Ind.: I hate to burst your bubble, but they have indeed appeared in Bloomington. This year’s Bloomington schedule includes the Twyla Tharp Dance troupe and other performances too numerous to mention, including opera and jazz productions at Indiana University’s world-class School of Music.  

I agree, however, with Editor O’Malley’s point—that touring and university productions do not a great cultural center make. 

Carol Polsgrove 

Bloomington, Ind. 

• 

RESPECT CREEK ORDINANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The following letter was addressed to Jeff Philliber, environmental planning coordinator, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: 

We are writing to express our strong opposition to the proposed project that will result in the filling of a portion of Cafeteria Creek, a tributary of Strawberry Creek. Filling of creeks to minimize construction costs and building parking lots in creeks are completely unacceptable in the year 2003. The city of Berkeley has a creek protection ordinance that is intended to protect the creeks in the city of Berkeley. Even if not bound legally by the ordinance, we expect that the University of California would want to be a respectful “resident” of the city by complying with the letter and spirit of the creek ordinance. We are dismayed that the university would even conceive of such a project.  

We strongly encourage Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to select an alternative that does not involve the destruction of a hillside and a creek. Other sites/existing buildings within LBNL, on the UC Berkeley campus, or in the city of Berkeley may be more easily used (and will be less environmentally destructive) for the additional office space identified as needed by LBNL. Your proposal does not present any more compelling rationale for the proposed project than cost and convenience. Such arguments are no longer an adequate basis for the destruction of natural habitat areas. The need to dispose of 26,000 cubic yards of hillside in the cheapest, easiest way is no longer adequate rationale for filling wetlands.  

Please rethink your proposal and abandon the preferred alternative. Your proposal is not the least environmentally damaging alternative and flies in the face of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). We hope you will rethink this project and choose an environmentally acceptable alternative.  

Strawberry Creek Affinity Group 

Fran Berges, Jane Eiseley, Nina Falk, Jane Kelly, Tom Kelly, Christopher Kroll, Bob Marsh, Patti Marsh, Fran Rachel, Eric Roberts, Carol Thornton, Christine Walter 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There are four letters that describe Howard Dean’s conduct during the great moral challenges of our generation: A.W.O.L.  

He was born to privilege and received the fine education and other advantages that family wealth brings. Yet he absented himself from the great struggles for peace and justice that engaged the real leaders of our time. 

Howard Dean was nowhere to be found when others were putting themselves on the line to end the war in Vietnam, dismantle the apparatus of racial bigotry and fight the encroachment of corporate power and corruption. 

Dean has spent his life in a conventional, comfortable niche that required neither courage nor sacrifice. Now he advertises himself as a person of unusual vision and rectitude. The substance of his past and present actions suggests otherwise. 

As Vermont’s governor, he collaborated with Republicans to loosen environmental regulations and tighten social expenditures, turning his back on Greens and progressive Democrats. He pressured state monitoring agencies to rush approval of massive developments. One of his last acts in office was to reduce Vermont’s education budget. 

His fiscal austerity short-changes the public sector. It is a favorite of Wall Street bankers, but a bane to everyone else—workers, consumers, seniors, students, those protected by police, health and fire departments—whose well-being depends upon adequate public spending. He continues to preach this balanced budget dogma in the current recession, when deficit spending by the federal government is needed to lift the economy from its slump. 

He opposes cuts in military expenditures despite posturing as the peace candidate. He does not distinguish funding for counter-terrorism (a relatively inexpensive item) from bloated spending on weapons systems. 

He refuses to take on health insurance companies, even though their greed increases the cost and threatens the quality and integrity of American medical care. In drafting his health care proposal, he rejected the fairness, simplicity and efficiency of  

the Canadian single-payer model. His plan keeps intact the power of private insurers, and requires moderate-income participants to pay high premiums and deductibles. 

He favors erosion of the most important federal benefits for the elderly. He has stated his willingness to limit Medicare spending and raise the age at which workers become entitled to Social Security. 

He supported NAFTA, which undermines labor, safety and environmental standards throughout North America. He currently proposes tepid reforms to somewhat moderate the misery from global corporate dominance. 

He shies away from demanding that America’s wealthiest 1 or 2 percent give up a greater portion of their wealth to properly fund programs and institutions that could make possible a more secure and decent life for us all. 

Howard Dean does not deserve to be hailed as the best hope of American progressives for one simple reason: he is no progressive. He is an astute political operator. But his opportunism should be recognized and treated with appropriate mistrust. 

Randy Silverman

Mo Kashmiri, a third-year student at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, may not be returning to school next month. 

Kashmiri said the 25 percent student fee hikes approved by the UC Board of Regents Thursday, which will hike his tuition by over $3,000, could force him to drop out of school for a semester and work. 

“I think it’s bullshit that students and families need to be in this situation,” Kashmiri said. 

“These cuts couldn’t be coming at a worse time,” he said. “With the economy going down, my father has been unemployed for two years.” 

UC students are not alone in their financial woes. Trustees of the California State University system, facing heavy state cuts like their UC counterparts, voted 11-2 Wednesday to increase fees by 30 percent next year. 

The UC Board of Regents Finance Committee voted 5-4 Wednesday morning to recommend a 25 percent fee hike and the full board approved the jump Thursday on a 13-3 vote. 

The Regents, in a lengthy debate on the matter Wednesday morning, acknowledged the pain the increase will cause. But most said the jump was unavoidable, with the governor proposing $300 million in cuts to the university and the legislature weighing additional reductions of $80 to $400 million. 

“We are facing a crisis situation and that we cannot deny,” said Regent Sherry Lansing. “I don’t know of any alternative.” 

Proponents argued that the university could not maintain its quality without a significant fee hike. But not all the Regents agreed. 

“What good is the quality if we’re closing people out?” asked Regent Ward Connerly. 

A parade of students echoed Connerly in the public testimony session, warning that fee hikes will force some students out of school and compel others to spend more time at part-time jobs. 

The 25 percent jump will raise fees by $960 for resident undergraduates, bringing mandatory system-wide fees to $4,794. Each of UC’s nine campuses charges additional miscellaneous fees, which bring the total average fees to $5,247 system-wide.  

Graduate students face average fees of $6,346 and law students will get bills for $15,966. 

The increase comes on top of a mid-year fee hike passed in December — bringing the total increase over the course of two years to almost 40 percent. 

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who serves on the Board of Regents, scolded the body for considering the jump. 

“No other group in the state of California is facing a 40 percent increase in fees,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.”  

Students could face an even steeper increase in the coming weeks. The Board of Regents gave the UC administration the authority to hike fees an additional 5 percent if the state budget picture worsens, as expected. 

UC’s Vice President for Budget Larry Hershman warned that the budget picture will only get worse in the next two years and predicted further jumps in student fees. 

“This isn’t the end of budget cutting,” he said. 

But university administrators are considering more than just fee hikes. Two weeks ago, UC President Richard Atkinson floated the prospect of caps on student enrollment beginning with the 2004-2005 school year. On Wednesday, university officials raised the prospect of a surcharge on wealthy families. The university would become the first in the nation to charge high-income families more for an education if it adopts the policy. 

Financial aid will cover the fee hikes approved Thursday for students from families making $60,000 or less per year. Hershman said about 40 percent of families in the middle-income range — making $60,000 to $90,000 annually — will get grants to cover half the fee increase. 

Student Regent Matt Murray, who attends UC Berkeley, spoke out against the Regents’ decision to embrace fee hikes. But ultimately, he blamed the state legislature for considering deep cuts rather than raising taxes. 

“We’ll have to drop out of school so that the richest of the rich can buy another Mercedes-Benz,” he said.

Let me state at the outset that I am a strong supporter of the comprehensive employment benefit packages espoused by labor unions, progressive employers and proponents of the Western European style welfare state. 

These comprehensive employment packages consist of almost total job security, generous defined-benefit pension plans, regular CPI adjustments, employer-paid health insurance that extends beyond retirement, liberal disability and workplace injury policies, liberal leave policies for pregnancy, sick relative care, and the like, domestic partner benefits and many other job-related perks. 

City of Berkeley employees, while they will never get really rich on the job, enjoy all or most of these benefits—decent salaries, tremendous job security, peace of mind in their old age and fair working conditions. 

Around the world and in our own nation, employment situations like this are becoming rare. The famed welfare states of Sweden, Germany and France are failing because of economic downturns and demographic realities. There are simply not enough taxpayers and monies to support the generous benefit levels. In the United States, only about one in five workers has a defined benefit retirement plan, and fewer still have job security. 

Even with the program cuts, bureaucratic belt-tightening and fee and assessment increases that balanced the city’s 2003-2004 budget, the city still faces a $7.5 million deficit in fiscal year 2005-2006, $10.11 million in 2006-2007, $11.67 million in the next year, and $13.74 million in 2007-2008. 

Most (maybe 80 percent) of Berkeley’s projected budget deficits are attributable to salary/benefit increases negotiated last year by a generous council and community that was not fully aware of the looming economic crisis. These increases amount to about 6 to 7 percent annually, and compound over time. The logic of a CPI type-increase is to keep up with inflation. However, when there is deflation and economic recession, many of these increases make no sense.  

Unfortunately, city leaders have already embarked on plans to raise property-based taxes and assessments to address a goodly portion of this deficit. Berkeley’s property-based taxes, special assessments and fees are already the highest among neighboring jurisdictions—more than 10 percent higher than Oakland, more than 36 percent higher than Hayward and more than 41 percent higher than Emeryville.  

These are preliminary figures from a chart being prepared by the city manager, and it looks to me that the final figures will show that Berkeley is even more heavily assessed on a relative basis. 

I believe that our city leaders—city manager, City Council and union leaders—need to do the right thing and defer the generous but now inappropriate annual and compounding salary/benefit increase of around 6 percent. Such increases are right in good times, but wrong, wrong, wrong in a time of deflation and serious economic hardship faced by so many in our community. If these increases were deferred until better times, and a few other minor belt-tightening measures were undertaken, we could wipe out a goodly portion of our city deficit and avoid tax increases on an already overburdened and under-benefited taxpaying population.  

We would not have to fire one single person or decrease anyone’s salary or job security. We could save most of the worthy social programs of which our city is justly proud. This is the right thing and we should do the right thing! 

Barbara Gilbert, a longtime Berkeley resident and former mayoral aide, is a frequent contributor to the Planet.

The historic Kenney Cottage will remain at 1725 University Ave. for at least a few more days. 

The cottage, which was designated a Structure of Merit by the Landmarks Preservation Commission last year, was originally scheduled to move five blocks down University Avenue on Sunday to make way for an affordable housing complex. But a permit application process that has taken longer than expected has postponed the relocation until the proper paperwork is in place. 

“The city will obviously grant [the permit] because they granted temporary space for the cottage,” said BAHA corporate secretary Daniella Thompson. “It’s just another bit of red tape that we have to go through.” 

When Affordable Housing Associates, Inc. (AHA) bought the former site of the Kelly Moore Paint store at 1725 University Ave. in 2000, they inherited the Kenney-Meinheit Cottage, a prefabricated panel house believed to be the oldest example of that type of construction in the United States. The cottage moved from Addison Street to the University Avenue site in 1906, where it sat behind a larger commercial building. 

Area historical activists rediscovered the cottage when AHA applied for a demolition permit to begin construction on the site, and the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) filed an application to earn the cottage landmark status. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the cottage—but not the site—as a historical landmark, meaning that AHA would be allowed to relocate but not demolish the house. 

“We had two options,” said AHA senior project manager Kevin Zwick, who is in charge of the proposed 27-unit affordable housing complex at 1725 University Ave. “We could dismantle, document and put the thing in storage or put it on a new site. We elected to move it to a temporary site until a more permanent site could be found.” 

Earlier this year, BAHA signed a contract with the city of Berkeley to become the temporary conservator of the Kenney Cottage and to assume responsibility for finding an interim location. BAHA found a suitable spot about five blocks west of the current site, at 1275 University Ave., and AHA took charge of securing approval for the move as well as providing necessary funding. Zwick said that AHA has paid about $30,000 to study the portability of the cottage, extensively document the construction and history and physically move the house from the old site to the temporary location. BAHA is currently working on finding a permanent spot for the cottage. 

Zwick said that AHA had hoped to receive the necessary permits to move the Kenney Cottage by July 20, but that soliciting necessary signatures had taken longer than anticipated. BAHA scheduled the relocation ceremony for Sunday and sent postcards to about 100 members inviting them to view the move and participate in the subsequent party at the new lot. On Tuesday, BAHA alerted members and area residents that the relocation had been postponed until further notice. Zwick said that AHA hoped to have all necessary paperwork on file with the city within a week or so. 

“The city of Berkeley has said that they are going to expedite the process as soon as a contractor can turn in the application,” he said. “It’s a long process that will probably end up taking a few more days.” 

Zwick said that AHA is interested in moving the cottage as soon as possible so the development company can begin construction on the housing development by September, calling the cottage relocation process “a major factor in the delay of the project.” AHA hopes to have the complex built by next year in order to house senior citizens and disadvantaged families. 

“It’s exciting that we can build this much-needed housing complex while preserving a historic landmark,” Zwick said. “This has been going on for about three years, and it’s very close to becoming a reality.”

I’ve often thought that the easiest way of checking out the state of the American left is to go see the latest production of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Last Saturday I caught the Troupe’s new show, “Veronique of the Mounties,” at Cedar-Rose Park. What this summer’s offering suggests, I’m sorry to say, is that these days the left and Mime Troupe alike are just going through the motions. 

To be sure, the Mime Troupe just going through the motions still affords considerable pleasure. Veronique serves up many of the company’s reliable crowd-pleasers: fine acting, cunning sight gags, eye-popping costumes, well-crafted songs and sets as wacky they are versatile. Most important, Veronique administers an ample dose of the Troupe’s signature razor-edged wit: a stream of zingy one-liners kept the crowd laughing. 

I laughed a lot, too, but by the end of the play I was too distressed to smile. For the Mime Troupe I cherish does far more than amuse; it also probes its audience’s most deeply held assumptions. Abandoning the smug pieties of standard issue agit-prop, it challenges us with riveting political theater peopled by complex characters who embody profound contradictions. 

Take the Willie Brown figure in the Troupe’s 1999 play, “City for Sale.” It would have been easy to portray Brown as a jerk pure and simple. Instead he, or more precisely, his female surrogate, is a (momentarily) rueful sell-out who confesses that “I wanted to be the people’s mayor, but then the party began.” Likewise, that same play’s representative yuppie comes across not merely as a self-absorbed agent of gentrifying consumerism, but also as a decent but naive young woman who’s never considered the full implications of her desire to own a loft in the Mission. 

Not that the Mime Troupe indulges in cop-out, post-modernist ambiguity. It’s clear that for all their complexities, some of the individuals in its imagined worlds are on the side of the angels, and others, such as Willie Brown, aren’t. What makes the Mime Troupe at its best worth our attention is that those characters who are on the side of the angels get the same treatment as those who’re not. In “City for Sale,” one of the most sympathetic figures, an aging hippy musician threatened with displacement by a heartless young developer, turns out to be that developer’s deadbeat dad. 

Not one of the characters in “Veronique of the Mounties” exhibits depth or interest comparable to “City for Sale’s” memorable creations. Here everyone is either a saint (the brave and selfless heroine, her intrepid and resourceful librarian-cum-bartender sidekick, the hapless Vietnam vet) or a sinner (Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice, authoritarian Homeland Security Forces, craven representatives of the media and Bible-thumping, gun-toting Christian fundamentalists). 

Veronique opens as the United States is “liberating” Canada in “Operation Frozen Freedom.” Fascism has come out of the closet: anyone who questions the Bush administration’s policies is sent off to “the camps.” Assigned to a secret mission in the United States, Canadian Mounty Veronique, we are told, has only one weakness: a hatred of America so visceral it repeatedly causes her to blow her cover. But since her animosity is directed at qualities the Mime Troupe’s audience also likely deplores—American militarism, consumerism, imperialism and other too-familiar iniquities—it doesn’t really count as a fault. A protagonist who simply mirrors her viewers’ proclivities is incapable of instructing them. For a company that specializes in didactic theater, that’s a problem. 

For a company like the Mime Troupe, which specializes in didactic political theater, Veronique has another problem: a dearth of real politics. The cast of characters includes only one activist, and she’s operating underground. Even more troubling, what ultimately saves the day is magic. I don’t want to give away too much; suffice to say that a tale in which the survival of freedom and democracy depends on a talisman is a tale born of political despair. It’s also a tale that cannot openly acknowledge the bleakness of its vision. If despair is where the Mime Troupe is at, then it ought to say so. Better a terrifying vision that might shake us into serious political action than a sentimental whitewash of impending disaster. 

Mime Troupe productions famously evolve over time. Let’s hope that Veronique morphs into a play that, in the spirit of the Troupe’s brilliant best, invites its most loyal fans to confront their own foibles and re-think their unconsidered pieties. At this moment, when we’re facing real, impending disasters, political and otherwise, we need a left that can face the music and, better yet, come up with some new and surprising tunes. 

Zelda Bronstein is a Berkeley writer whose work has appeared in Dissent, Film Quarterly and other publications. 

Pedestrians and bikers along the San Francisco Bay Trail in Emeryville will now be able to see an addition to the waterfront landscape: a dozen statues on posts three feet in the air. 

On Thursday afternoon, passersby along Interstate 80 in Emeryville could see Albany artist Tyler Hoare on a ladder propped up in a small boat, climbing to the top of posts that formerly held a wooden dock. Though the dock has been demolished and replaced, the posts remain, leaving Hoare platforms on which to place his newest series of statues. 

“[The posts] are perfect because they’re elevated and people can see them really nicely,” he said. 

The new works of art are all abstract sculptures of people in colors ranging from white to black to rainbow striped. The faces of the people look out on to the water, welcoming boaters returning to the East Bay. 

High winds made the task of mounting the statues a bit more difficult Thursday because of the relatively large waves that they created. But Hoare succeeded in climbing up his ladder to the top of each post, mounting a brightly colored creation on top of each and nailing it down with a hammer attached to his belt. 

“These winds are too strong,” he yelled back to the dock at one point, shortly before he made it to the top of the second-to-last pillar. 

Hoare is the same artist responsible for the Snoopy and Red Baron statues that stood in the Berkeley Marina from 1975 until 2000. Many residents and motorists grew to love the statues, which eventually came down because of high winds and were not replaced because of permitting issues. 

“I’ve seen the Snoopy statues, and so this is a fun little memory of them,” said Sam Chen, who took a break from jogging along the Bay Trail to watch Hoare mounting the sculptures. “I wish we had something like it still in Berkeley.”

The Berkeley-Albany YMCA will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a YMCA Day in the Park Saturday. 

The free event, which will take place at Martin Luther King Jr. Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, includes music, food, a magic show and a blood drive by the American Red Cross. 

“The best way to recognize 100 years of programs, services and activities is with the community itself,” said Larry Bush, president and CEO for the Berkeley-Albany YMCA. 

The event will begin with a 7:30 a.m. yoga class, followed by an 8:45 a.m. Tai Chi course. The main festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Sponsors include KTVU, Channel 2, Wells Fargo Bank, Berkeley developer Panoramic Interests and Concord-based janitorial services company ConCar Industries.  

—David Scharfenberg

At 1 p.m. on July 14, Bill Keller stood before the top editors and managers of The New York Times in an 11th-floor dining room at the paper’s West 43rd Street headquarters. He was there, according to sources at the meeting, to offer an unvarnished version of the introduction he had given to staffers in the third-floor newsroom two hours earlier, when he was crowned the new executive editor of The New York Times. 

Like a latter-day Mikhail Gorbachev, charged with bringing reform and openness to the dark corridors of the Kremlin, Mr. Keller told them there would be no personal recriminations as a result of the previous scandal-rocked months at the paper under former executive editor Howell Raines, who was asked to resign when mounting trouble at the paper in the wake of the Jayson Blair affair threatened to swallow the paper’s leadership whole. He would not, he told his new subjects as they ate their lunches, “divide the paper into Friends of Howell and Friends of Bill.” 

He specifically rejected published reports that assistant managing editor Andrew Rosenthal was headed for career exile as punishment for being an ally of Mr. Raines and former managing editor Gerald Boyd during their tenure. He also rejected rumors about the existence of a list of “Howell hires” whose careers were now in dire straits. 

Looking at the group, according to sources present at the lunch, Mr. Keller said that he knew there were people in the room who had done “extraordinary work under extraordinary duress,” adding: “I admire people who can lead under duress.” 

In an interview, Mr. Keller declined to comment on his remarks. But, in a phrase, he articulated a connection to his staff that Mr. Raines could never accomplish. 

Of course, the newsroom was fresh from a slap in the face by its former boss—and some recriminations are different from others. 

In an interview on the Charlie Rose show three days before, Mr. Raines delivered a staunch, prideful defense of his tenure at The Times, in which he patted himself on the back for introducing a “performance culture” to a lackadaisical staff, only to be undermined in the schism created by those who clung to a parochial, New York–based Times folk culture. 

To many in the angered newsroom, the interview served as a moment of closure, a parting middle finger that summed up everything that had gone wrong within the paper since September 2001, and a reminder of why Mr. Raines could no longer be at the helm. Self-righteous, distant, admittedly arrogant and unapologetic for all of that, Mr. Raines had much to lose when the paper started to really fall apart—and a lot less to lose now. For Mr. Keller, there was an opportunity to draw the contrast brightly. 

“If—oh, hypothetically—somebody goes on television and trashes your staff, you stick up for them,” he said, speaking from his office on July 15, the same day The Times provided its own page 1 burial of its former leader in an article about the appointment. 

Though Mr. Keller said he didn’t “want to start off my new job with an argument with one of my predecessors,” he allowed that watching Mr. Raines’ interview had “dredged a lot” of the feelings about the former executive editor’s tenure to the surface. 

“The collateral damage, intentional or accidental, in all of the things that were said, were these people,” Mr. Keller said, gesturing metaphorically to his new staff. “You know, the notion that the people who knocked themselves out covering an endless scandal, an impeachment in Washington, an election, the Florida recount, a couple of Balkan wars that I remember—the notion that these people were in the least bit complacent or lethargic was insulting to a lot of first-class professionals.” 

And yet other, more recent stories hadn’t gone so well. Stories written by Jayson Blair, for instance, about the investigation into the Washington-area sniper attacks last fall; stories about military mothers waiting in vain for word on their missing sons. Stories by the celebrated Rick Bragg about oystermen in Apalachicola, Fla. Even a story by radio reporter Lynnette Holloway, which resulted that same day in a lengthy corrective article, about a music-industry executive and his efforts to stay on top of his business as an independent. 

Having, as he noted in his introductory remarks to the third-floor newsroom, developed a “perverse affection” for the phrase “no comment” over the past couple of months—roughly the time it became clear that he was a leading candidate to take the helm at the paper—Mr. Keller was now ready to speak out on the Blair affair and the toll it took on The Times. 

While saying he was waiting for the Siegal committee’s recommendations on how to prevent the Blair episode’s reoccurrence, Mr. Keller deemed Mr. Blair an aberration. He said that the case did, however, point up the basic vulnerability of the newspaper business, which places an implicit trust in reporters and their work. 

“Even after you’ve vetted somebody’s résumé, talked to their references, watched them during a trial period, looked over their accuracy records and so on,” Mr. Keller said, “it can still be not enough. You can do a lot of things to monitor somebody’s performance, but you basically trust them to do their job. We’re not going to start assigning minders to reporters or bug their phones. We’re not going to enact the Patriot Act at The New York Times. That would just be horrible! Who would want to work at a place like that?” 

Mr. Keller went on to call the actions of Mr. Bragg—Mr. Raines’ beloved star reporter, whose excessive use of stringers and subsequent claim that the practice was typical made him a pariah on 43rd Street—”outrageous.” 

“He didn’t just take something that everyone else does and push it a little further,” Mr. Keller said. “If anybody really had a sense of what he did, he would’ve been out of here in a heartbeat. The notion that these guys are somehow symptoms of how The Times did its work is ludicrous. So you don’t want to strip all the trust from the newsroom just because of a couple of rogues.” 

Watching Mr. Raines at a distance for nearly two years, Mr. Keller said, “confirmed my general sense that a centralized system that might work very well running an organization of 50 people doesn’t work that well when you have an organization of 1,200. And when you try and do that, you not only make people feel alienated and frustrated, you also cut yourself off from what really matters: the ideas that bubble up from below.” 

This was also his answer to the scandals that unseated Mr. Raines. The problem, to Mr. Keller, was not in the culture of The Times, but in the leadership of that culture. In short, these were aberrations—but there’s still “stuff” to do, some of which Mr. Keller began after he received a fairly undramatic congratulation from Mr. Sulzberger. 

“What kind of stuff? For starters, making my way around,” Mr. Keller said, adding that he was talking to “a lot of people whose judgment I respect” about “trying to do damage assessment, first of all. How wounded does the place seem now, after several weeks of Joe Lelyveld’s convalescence? Were there particular areas that will need particular attention? And started talking to people about putting together the rest of the hierarchy.” 

It was perhaps Mr. Raines’ behavior toward his staff after the Blair affair, not before, that made all this clear. Coming out of the now-legendary town-hall meeting on May 14, Mr. Keller remembered thinking that Mr. Raines would survive the crisis, because he was “a smart guy with extraordinary political instincts, and it was pretty clear the publisher at that point wanted to give him a chance. 

“What I underestimated at that point,” Mr. Keller continued, “was that quality that Maureen Dowd refers to as the Lord of the Flies quality, where on top of all the legitimate grievances, a lot of extraneous baggage and frustrations exploded up. It was clear that people at the paper were not going to let it go. There was a small part of me that thought of it as poetic justice. But there was a much bigger part that thought it was excruciating to watch, because I’m devoted to this place and a lot of these people. And I don’t know if you can really have friends when you’re the executive editor, but a lot of these people have been my friends until now. And it hurt to watch them.” 

Now, he must lead them. Even more, Mr. Keller has put himself in the uneasy political position of being a fixer, whose new regime brings with it both the great promise and the weighty expectations of something measurably better than what came before. He also enters an environment with an emboldened, more powerful staff, whose refusal to accept the apologies of Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd, to put away the blame for Mr. Blair, helped topple their previous governor. Mr. Keller has promised a kindler, gentler Times. 

Indeed, the brutality of that organization as a place to work had been felt by many long before Mr. Raines took over. But somewhere in the Blair saga, it boiled over. Mr. Raines told Mr. Rose that he didn’t understand Times staffers complaining that they were being pushed too hard: “Because I can’t imagine anyone coming to work at The New York Times, accepting a job, unless they wanted to be measured against the highest expectations of the profession. Why join the New York Yankees if you don’t want to play on the field where Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle played?” Finding the extent of the damage computes to another question: Can The Times be led? 

“I don’t think you should read what happened over the past few months as that people at this newspaper want it to be a democracy or run by plebiscite, or that they don’t want to be led,” Mr. Keller said. “They want to be led. Partly it’s a matter of how you lead people—how, over time, you trust their judgment—and a matter of respect, mutual respect ... And partly—and I don’t want to overemphasize the humanitarian aspects of the job, but letting people have a life and see their families and being attentive to their problems. 

“I’ve watched people here have kids in the hospital and come to work day after day and pour their hearts into the paper, when most people would have found this impossible to do,” Mr. Keller said. “When people give you that much, you have to give them something back. Yeah, you give them bylines and you give them the thrill of covering big stories. But you also have to give them a little. When you’re not in the middle of covering a terrorist attack in New York City, you have to give them an occasional weekend; once in a while, some time to go home early to watch their kids in the school play. That’s important. The place takes a toll on you.” 

It’s a toll Mr. Keller has felt himself. Business editor Glenn Kramon doesn’t question Mr. Keller’s ability to re-emerge from regime-change pundit and magazine writer to editor because he had, in his previous incarnation as Joe Lelyveld’s managing editor, worked with many of the same people before for a number of years. Simply put, Mr. Kramon said, “he knows the newsroom much better than Howell did.” 

Metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman called Mr. Keller “really smart” and a good listener, adding: “He’s personally secure. He himself doesn’t need to be the center of attention.” 

And yet, by his own admission, Mr. Keller has some catching up to do. In the coming days, Mr. Keller said, he will travel to the Washington bureau, the always-discontented Times outpost that turned into a platform for anti-Howellian rage during Mr. Raines’ tenure. It was also the site of one of the decisive battles in the war for the soul of The New York Times when, on June 3, an angry meeting with Mr. Sulzberger took place that was widely believed to be the turning point. Two days later, Messrs. Raines and Boyd resigned. 

“I think a lot of people there felt roughed up during the Blair and Bragg thing,” Mr. Keller said. “But even before that, they felt alienated and angry a lot of the time. They managed to keep putting out a pretty damn good report,” he said, but they were doing it under strain. 

“Tensions always exist, because there’s a tug of war for control between Washington and New York. They were probably accentuated over the past two years, because you had three people in New York [Messrs. Raines, Boyd and Rosenthal], all of whom had Washington DNA and strong views of what was going on in Washington. I’ve spent time in Washington, too, briefly working in The Times’ bureau and on reporting work over the past two years. But I’m going to be much humbler in second-guessing the people we’ve entrusted to run the bureau.” 

Besides working on the psychological scaffolding of The Times, there are practical matters that Mr. Keller will have to address. He said he’s still trying to figure out the shape of the masthead: if there will be one managing editor or two, or if the second in command will even be called the managing editor. There’s also the reshaping of the International Herald Tribune, whose size and scope and allotted resources will have to be determined using both the business and the journalistic judgments of the institution. 

And there’s The Times itself. Mr. Keller doesn’t seem content to “add his ideas into the blend” that had been determined when Mr. Sulzberger brought on Mr. Raines as executive editor. 

He differs with Mr. Raines, for instance, on the matter of how you go about making The Times a national and international newspaper without compromising its identity. He dismissed the notion that The Times was a paper faced with either beating the New York Daily News on the Bloomberg administration’s latest machinations or reaching the 41-year-old mother of two in Houston, calling it a “false choice.” 

“New York isn’t just a locality we cover,” Mr. Keller explained. “It’s the financial and cultural capital of the country. It’s the source of enormous vitality and energy for the paper. I really don’t mean to diss any other paper, but I always thought one of the things missing from USA Today is any sense it’s anchored in a place. You get little nuggets from all the states and all over, and USA Today does some things very well and it’s a much-copied business model. So my point is to not trash USA Today. But when you pick up the national edition of the New York Times in California, it feels like a national paper. But it also feels like it’s anchored somewhere, in some place that matters. That’s true of The Washington Post, which is much less of a national paper and has decided not to be. It’s anchored in the political capital of the country, and that means there are certain kinds of stories that you want to know what The Post’s take is, partly because they have roots.” 

Mr. Keller’s own roots are not in the executive suites of The New York Times. 

“I spent the first 25 years of my career never wanting to be an editor,” he said, remembering the first editorial post he took, from Mr. Lelyveld, as foreign editor in 1995. “It’s one thing to face the theoretical question of not wanting to be an editor. It’s another asking if you want to be the foreign editor of The New York Times. That letter came from Joe—and he knew the most vulnerable moment to hit me. I had just finished the two most important stories I ever expected to have: the end of communism and the end of apartheid. There were other stories I certainly wanted to cover, but there wasn’t anything quite likely to live up to those. So the offer was intriguing. 

“If you can’t go cover the fall of communism again,” Mr. Keller added, as if unconscious of a simple narrative that might have carried him from those reporting glory days to his present position, “you might as well try something new.” 

This next story may have a familiar ring. 

Shridar Pappu covers the media for The New York Observer. 

“Get your feet off the coffee table,” my mother often hollered at my brothers and me back in our home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. “You don’t live in a barn, do you?” 

Well no, but now I do, at least temporarily. This month I’m an artist in residence at the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center in Montauk, N.Y. It’s a long name for a large white barn set in the middle of the forest at the eastern tip of Long Island. The center is funded by the Edward Albee Foundation, and Flanagan was a friend of Albee’s who passed away.  

Thirty-five years ago the famous playwright bought and converted this former stable and kennel to five bedrooms, two studios, kitchen, bathrooms, dining and common rooms, providing working space for 20 artists and writers each summer. I’m here with a sculptor who makes immense, whimsical statues out of large sheets of sponge and acrylic paint, a painter whose canvases are gray and knobby, an amusing Irish playwright and a short story writer. We share meals and ideas. We go to the beach together.  

Montauk is a busy place in the summer, full of tourists and celebrities. Yesterday Edward Albee came by the barn and I shook his hand. He asked me if I was having a good time and I said yes. After that I could think of nothing else to say. We stared at each other for a moment and then Edward went about his business. I wished for a new life in which I was urbane, well read and articulate. Maybe by the time he comes for another visit I’ll have something more interesting to mumble than just hello. 

Last week I stood in line at White’s Drugstore on the main street of Montauk and peered over the head of the very short man in front of me. When he turned around I tried not to stare. It was Paul Simon. I wanted to shout: “Do you remember me? I chased you down a long, dark alley in Philadelphia in 1968. I was the chubby girl in the purple mini mini mini skirt who cornered you at the end of the alley and demanded your autograph.” 

But I demurred. After all, I’m accustomed to hanging out with rock stars. Thirty-three years ago I shared a space in a Santa Cruz commune with a member of Captain Beefheart’s band. At least he said he was a band member. I never actually saw him perform in concert, and I never found his photograph on an album cover. 

Instead of re-introducing myself to Mr. Simon, I paid for my purchases, went outside to the boiling hot parking lot and proceeded to put anti-fungal cream on my lips instead of sunblock. Celebrities don’t affect me at all. I don’t usually even notice them. And the anti-fungal cream lip application probably helps keep them away.  

Oakland resident Susan Parker is ignoring important and non-important people equally while spending the month in Montauk, N.Y., as the guest of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. For information on this program visit www.pipeline.com/~jtnyc/albeefdtn.html.

The UC Board of Regents voted Thursday to ban romantic or sexual relationships between professors and the students they oversee or can reasonably expect to supervise in the future. 

The new policy supersedes a patchwork of policies at six of the nine UC campuses, including a UC Berkeley measure that simply called on professors to disqualify themselves from overseeing students with whom they are in a sexual relationship. 

“A universitywide policy ensures that there will be a clear and consistent standard or behavior expected on every campus,” said UC Academic Senate Chair Gayle Binion, who helped draft the policy change and is a non-voting member of the Board of Regents. 

Critics, including 60 UC Berkeley professors who signed a letter opposing the wording of the measure before it passed, have argued that the new policy will “criminalize” a host of healthy, responsible relationships—including many between young professors and older students. 

But supporters say the policy is necessary to ensure professors do not take advantage of students. 

“The very integrity of the university’s educational mission is dependent on the accountability of a faculty member as a mentor, educator and evaluator,” Binion said. 

The new policy comes eight months after UC Berkeley law school Dean John Dwyer resigned after a student filed a sexual harassment suit against him. But UC officials contend that the new policy is unrelated, noting that Regent Judith Hopkinson brought up the issue at a meeting in November 2001 and again last fall. 

The new policy imposes a range of six possible penalties for a faculty member who engages in an unauthorized relationship, ranging from a letter of censure to dismissal from the university. 

The Academic Senate, which represents the faculty, approved the new policy May 28, leaving it to the Board of Regents for final approval Thursday. 

In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap—and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately. 

For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary—including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day. 

Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones. 

Then there’s military tax relief—or the lack thereof. As Bush and Republican leaders in Congress preach the mantra of tax cuts, they can’t seem to find time to make progress on minor tax provisions that would be a boon to military homeowners, reservists who travel long distances for training and parents deployed to combat zones, among others. 

Incredibly, one of those tax provisions—easing residency rules for service members to qualify for capital-gains exemptions when selling a home—has been a homeless orphan in the corridors of power for more than five years now. 

The chintz even extends to basic pay. While Bush’s proposed 2004 defense budget would continue higher targeted raises for some ranks, he also proposed capping raises for E-1s at 2 percent and for E-2s and O-1s at 3.2 percent, well below the average raise of 4.1 percent. 

The Senate version of the defense bill rejects that idea, and would provide minimum 3.7 percent raises for all and higher targeted hikes for some. But the House version of the bill goes along with Bush, making this an issue still to be hashed out in upcoming negotiations. 

All of which brings us to the latest indignity—Bush’s $9.2 billion military construction request for 2004, which was set a full $1.5 billion below this year’s budget on the expectation that Congress, as has become tradition in recent years, would add funding as it drafted the construction appropriations bill. 

But Bush’s tax cuts have left little elbow room in the 2004 federal budget that is taking shape, and the squeeze is on across the board. 

The result: Not only has the House Appropriations military construction panel accepted Bush’s proposed $1.5 billion cut, it voted to reduce construction spending by an additional $41 million next year. 

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, took a stab at restoring $1 billion of the $1.5 billion cut in Bush’s construction budget. He proposed to cover that cost by trimming recent tax cuts for the roughly 200,000 Americans who earn more than $1 million a year. Instead of a tax break of $88,300, they would receive $83,500. 

The Republican majority on the construction appropriations panel quickly shot Obey down. And so the outlook for making progress next year in tackling the huge backlog of work that needs to be done on crumbling military housing and other facilities is bleak at best. 

Taken piecemeal, all these corner-cutting moves might be viewed as mere flesh wounds. But even flesh wounds are fatal if you suffer enough of them. It adds up to a troubling pattern that eventually will hurt morale—especially if the current breakneck operations tempo also rolls on unchecked and the tense situations in Iraq and Afghanistan do not ease. 

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, who notes that the House passed a resolution in March pledging “unequivocal support” to service members and their families, puts it this way: “American military men and women don’t deserve to be saluted with our words and insulted by our actions.” 

Translation: Money talks—and we all know what walks. 

Army Times is part of the Military Times Media group, consisting of Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times. The Military Times Media Group newsweeklies seek to provide information of interest to military personnel and their families. 

Dissemble: “To disguise or conceal one’s real nature, motives or feelings behind a false appearance.”  

George Bush, the Appointed President, is beginning to sound like the teenage boy arising from the back seat of his Friday night borrowed automobile. Asked to confirm the words spoken only a few hot moments ago, pre coitus bellum, he appears genuinely befuddled. “But I was horny then!” he seems to want to blurt out. 

“How can you hold me to what I said? I can’t even remember what I said!” How unfair. And so, once more, we enter the Dissemblation Nation, at the gallop. 

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” Mr. Bush told us during last January’s address on the state of the nation. Uranium, he did not need to add, is a key component in the construction of nuclear weapons.  

One definition of the verb “to learn” in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is “to become informed of.” And therefore, technically, little Mr. Bush did not utter an untruth. That the British were “informed” that Hussein sought uranium in Africa appears to be entirely correct. That Hussein actually sought such uranium is, of course, another matter. 

On such inspired cleverness at words, the balance of the world hangs. 

The attempt to disassemble the administration’s dissemblings begins to border on a Marx sketch (the brothers, not the economist). Groucho, as President Firefly of Freedonia in “Duck Soup,” opens a meeting of the Cabinet by announcing he will take up old business. “I wish to discuss the tariff,” announces a minister. “That’s new business,” says President Firefly. “No old business? Very well, then. We’ll take up new business.” The minister leaps up to reassert his wish to discuss the tariff. “Too late,” Firefly replies. “That’s old business already. Sit down.”  

President Bush tells us we must go to war in Iraq because Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, is developing a nuclear weapons program and is in league with the terrorists who bombed our country. He cannot provide details or verification of such claims—including releasing one or two mass destruction weapons sites to the UN inspectors—because to do so would compromise U.S. national security and endanger the pending war effort. Comes the war, we must stop raising questions about the reasons for the war, because to do so jeopardizes the lives of our boys and girls in battle. Now that the war is over, the administration wonders aloud why we are still talking about the rationale for the war because, after all, the war is over, and is therefore old business. “As far as the president’s concerned, he’s moved on,” says presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer. “I think the bottom has been gotten to.” Probably, but perhaps not the bottom to which Mr. Fleischer refers. 

But unlike so many of my liberal and progressive friends, I do not stand shocked at presidential lying. By this point in our nation’s history we should be accustomed to presidential deceit, going back, at least, to that often-quoted phrase: “I have not had sexual relations with that woman.” (No, not that woman ... the woman in question here being Ms. Hemmings and the president, Mr. Jefferson.) 

Neither am I upset, particularly, that the presidential deception helped drive us into war. Being honest, had I supported the war, I might not have minded so much how it came about.  

“Where are those Republicans who demanded Bill Clinton’s impeachment because he lied?” writes Daily Planet reader Bruce Joffe. “His [Clinton’s] lies were about a personal indiscretion that hurt no one but his own family. Bush’s lies have caused the deaths of over 6,000 people, with American lives still being lost every day, and no exit strategy in sight.” Understandable sentiment, true.  

The same, however, might have been said ... probably was said ... about Lincoln and the Civil War, which once cost some 23,000 wounded and dead, federal and confederate, in a single day astride a Maryland creek. The Confederate states seceded because of what they believed to be Lincoln’s position on slavery and black citizenship. And yet, to this day, 140 years after his death, we are still not certain of Lincoln’s position on slavery and black citizenship. Lincoln prosecuted the Civil War from beginning to end in deliberate obfuscation of his goals on one of the war’s most central points. I, for one, do not begrudge the end result.  

No, what disturbs me most, I think, is that having fooled us, the Bush administration now takes us for fools.  

“No one can accurately tell you that [the assertion that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons] was wrong,” Mr. Fleischer says. “The president said that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. That still may be absolute fact.” 

My country, right unless someone can accurately tell us we are wrong. Now that’s a slogan to die for.  

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor is an Oakland resident.

The following is an anonymous letter from a resident of Senegal originally posted on the SunMt.org Web site: 

More than 1,500 persons have been arrested and put in jail between Thursday and Monday. Hopefully they will be released now that the Big Man is gone. 

The US Army’s planes flying day and night over Dakar. The noise they make is so loud that one hardly sleeps at night. 

About 700 security people from the U.S. for Bush’s security in Senegal, with their dogs, and their cars. Senegalese security forces were not allowed to come near the U.S. president. All trees in places where Bush will pass have been cut. Some of them have more than 100 years. 

All roads going downtown (where hospitals, businesses, schools are located) were closed from Monday night to Tuesday at 3 p.m. This means that we could not go to our offices or schools. Sick people were also obliged to stay at home. 

National exams for high schools that started on Monday are postponed until Wednesday. 

Bush’s visit to the Goree Island is another story. As you may know Goree is a small island facing Dakar where from the 15th to the 19th century, the African slaves to be shipped to America were parked in special houses called slave houses. One of these houses has become a museum to remind humanity about this dark period and has been visited by kings, queens, presidents. Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and before them, Nelson Mandela, the Pope and many other distinguished guests or ordinary tourists visited it without bothering the islanders. But for “security reasons” this time, the local population was chased out of their houses from 5 to 12 a.m. They were forced by the American security to leave their houses and leave everything open, including their wardrobes to be searched by special dogs brought from the U.S. 

The ferry that links the island to Dakar was stopped and offices and businesses closed for the day. 

According to an economist who was interviewed by a private radio, Senegal that is a very poor country has lost huge amount of money in this visit, because workers have been prevented from walking out of their homes. 

In addition to us being prevented to go out, other humiliating things happened. Bush did not want to be with Senegalese or use our things. He brought his own armchairs, and of course his own cars, and meals and drinks. He came with his own journalists and ours were forbidden inside the airport and in places he was visiting. 

Our president was not allowed to make a speech. Only Bush spoke when he was in Goree. He spoke about slavery. It seems that he needs the vote of the African-American to be elected in the next elections, and wanted to please them. That’s why he visited Goree. 

Several protest marches against American politics have been organized yesterday and even when Bush was here, but we think he does not care. 

We have the feeling that everything has been done to convince us that we are nothing, and that America can behave the way it wants, everywhere, even in our country. 

Believe me friends, it is a terrible feeling. But according to a Ugandan friend of mine, I should not complain because in Uganda, one of the countries he is going to visit, Bush does not intend to go out of the airport. He will receive the Ugandan President in the airport lounge. 

Nevertheless, I think I am lucky, because I have such wonderful American friends. But there are now thousands of Senegalese who believe that for all Americans the world is their territory.

With SARS fears dwindling worldwide, UC Berkeley has lifted the last of its summer school travel restrictions on students from the southeast Asian nations affected by the disease. 

The university came under fire in early May after announcing that it would ban students from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. On May 10, the campus partially lifted its ban, allowing about 80 students to attend the academic courses offered through the Berkeley Summer Sessions program. 

Students still faced a ban on attending English as a second language courses, slated to start in July. Normally, about 500 students from SARS-affected countries take the English classes, most of them signing up just before the session begins. On May 17, the university announced it was prepared to admit the 124 students who had pre-registered for the courses. 

This week, after U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted its last SARS travel alert, which pinpointed Taiwan, UC Berkeley announced that it would admit all summer school students. 

“The risk for the students has gone down dramatically since we started,” said Tomas Aragon, director of the UC Berkeley Center for Infectious Disease Preparedness and a member of the university’s SARS task force.

Kamala Appel hopes to educate people about animal life. Her medium? A “documentary” that showcases a rapping elephant seal, an aspiring Olympian otter and a lemur dating game. 

Appel, an Oakland resident and graduate of Berkeley High School, recently completed her first feature film, “Animal Crackers.” The movie blends fact with fantasy to create educational entertainment that features two of her favorite parts of life: animals and the Bay Area. The movie premieres Sunday at the Parkway Speakeasy Theater in Oakland. 

Appel filmed “Animal Crackers” at museums and wildlife preserves around the Bay Area, including Coyote Point Museum in San Mateo and the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. She used footage of the animals in their habitats, then added animated clips to highlight particular ideas about each species. In one section, a group of lemurs holds a dating game to find mates for the alpha female and prevent their own extinction, a threat Appel said is very real. 

“It’s about protecting species and helping them survive,” she said. 

For her first full-length film, Appel took the unusual step of completing all the filming before writing a script. She spent hours watching the animals in their daily lives, then wrote lines for the movie based on her interpretations of the creatures’ characters to provide a story that was “true to the animals.” 

She also used a 50-person human cast in the film, which, she said, presented its own set of challenges. 

“There were lots of people who wanted to be involved, which was inspiring,” Appel said. “There were just a lot of people to keep track of since I was doing most of the filming and producing by myself.” 

But the best part of making the movie, Appel said, was the interaction with wild animals. “I got to go into restricted areas to watch them,” she said. “I’ve always been fascinated with animals, so it was a thrill for me to be this close.” 

Appel has been in and around the moviemaking business for many years. After graduating from Yale with a degree in American studies and a concentration in film studies, she headed off to film school at the University of Southern California, where she earned her master’s degree. She remained in Los Angeles and worked at several large production companies before deciding to go out on her own. 

“I did a lot of the business side of film to get a better sense of it overall,” Appel said. “But there was a reason I left Hollywood; I can do things on my own that I wouldn’t have been able to do there.” 

To that end, Appel has formed an independent company, Kea Productions, to release local filmmakers’ work. Appel also operates NuReel.com, which provides financial resources and mentors to people looking to break in to the film industry. One highlight of NuReel is its annual CineSurvivor contest, which draws film submissions in every genre, one of which wins the grand prize each year. 

Now that her project is complete, Appel will present “Animal Crackers” to large agencies in hopes of gaining more recognition for the film. She plans to use connections from film school to help her advance the project, and would like to continue filming Animal Crackers-type stories in the future. 

“I would love to see this become something regular,” Appel said. “I could go to different areas and focus on their own local wildlife. I think it’s got a lot to offer.” 

In the future, Appel aims to continue making movies full-time. “It’s a bit tricky because a lot of times to get higher salaries you might have to sign onto a project you wouldn’t do for free,” she said. “I would do projects that I might not do without the money, but I wouldn’t do anything I would be ashamed of no matter what the salary is like.” 

Animal Crackers premieres at 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 20, at the Parkway 

Speakeasy Theater at 1834 Park Blvd. in Oakland. Tickets are $5 at the 

door. For more information about the screening visit www.picturepubpizza.com or call (510) 814-2400. 

The officer leans over the window. “Sir. Can I see your driver’s license?” 

A normal enough, though irritating, scenario for most of us. But from within the cab of the vehicle emanates an unbearable heaviness—the driver is Mexican, he doesn’t speak English. What begins as a routine traffic stop shifts to a search for immigration papers and, for many, a one-way ticket to the other side of the US-Mexico border. 

I know this because one Friday night last January my friends Alfredo and Miguel were picked up for driving an unregistered car outside the Supersave discount food store in Española, New Mexico. They were placed for the weekend in what was then called Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) hold at the Santa Fe county jail, and on Monday, before they could even contact the local immigration-rights group, each was given a hearing that lasted less than two minutes, and they were bused to the border. 

When government agents escorted them over the Santa Fe Street Bridge to Ciudad Juarez, the time was 10:00 p.m., the temperature, 36 degrees. Having just left a mid-winter warm spell in the north, they were wearing only thin nylon shells for coats. Having just wired most of their week’s earnings home to their families in Sinaloa and Chihuahua and spent the rest on groceries, they arrived in Juarez with zero dólares. 

Deportation is the predictable result of any arrest for violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. According to the 2000 Census, the United States is home to between 6 and 9 million undocumented people, and while Mexicans represent between 39 and 55 percent of this population, 90 percent of those arrested for illegal entry are Mexican nationals. 

Migration from south of the border has flowed in a steady stream for as long as there has been a wealthier nation to the north, but numbers increased dramatically in 1994 after the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Touted for its potential to raise the standard of living of Mexicans by providing an explosion of new industrial jobs, NAFTA has actually had the opposite effect. 

Work in the corporate maquilas—factories that popped up to take advantage of lax labor and environmental regulations—typically pays US $1.20 an hour. According to a study by the Center for Reflection, Education and Action in Hartford, Conn., to support a family of four with such salaries would require five workers. 

Also, as US tariff-free, corporate-grown agricultural products like corn and wheat poured into Mexico, over 1 million campesino families were driven off their lands from the competition. Since NAFTA’s January 2003 phasing-out of protective tariffs on coffee, 600 farms collapse each day. The World Bank describes Mexico as “one of the most inequitable economies in Latin America;” the average urban dweller subsists on $1.90 a day; in the countryside $1.30. 

As a result, every year since 1994—by boat, underground pipeline, or desert trek—increasing numbers of Mexicans have been risking life and limb to enter the United States to find work. As Miguel puts it, he came north because back home people ‘cannot even afford to buy toilet paper.” At this point, the third largest source of national income, just behind tourism and the illicit drug trade, is money sent home by migrants. 

And for those migrants who are undocumented, deportation is a daily threat. Miguel has been sent back eight times, Alfredo more than 20. His most spectacular deportation was an INS-sponsored airplane ride from Sierra Vista, Ariz., 229 miles to El Paso, Tex., and then—as if Juarez, across the border from El Paso, were not far enough from Sierra Vista—607 miles farther south to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Upon arriving at the airport, Alfredo called his employer-patron in Phoenix and, using money he wired, hopped a bus to Agua Prieta where he began the journey north all over again. 

The lesson? The urge to save loved ones from starvation is irrepressible. The meaning of the word machismo comes into stark focus. Rather than the modern emphasis on insecurity-laced male bravado, the term originally meant the act of taking care of one’s family, and with their do-or-die dedication, Alfredo and Miguel present perfect examples of this quality. “For every barrier that’s set up,”Alfredo says, “there’s a way around it.” 

Case in point: When he and Miguel found themselves mounting the bridge to Juarez, they were already plotting their return. They hitched a ride west to Agua Prieta, where Alfredo has family. It was the weekend of February 1: not a good time to cross. President Bush had just aimed his “weeks-not-months” ultimatum at Iraq. North Korea was hauling its stockpile of nuclear fuel rods out of storage, and eight European countries had signed on to go to war alongside the US. To boot, rumor had it that the Bush administration was considering closing the border completely. No one in, no one out—except for roundups and mass deportations, like in the 1930s. Border patrol officers were nervous and on edge. 

The way around this new edginess was to trek up through the Arizona desert via an extremely treacherous route near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and—along with 38 fellow hopefuls, mostly small farmers from the states of Chiapas and Michoacan, as well as from Guatemala and El Salvador—this they accomplished. 

In today’s environment of heightened fear of terrorists, though, the Bush administration is attempting to make the trip even more difficult. In June 2003, the Department of Homeland Security’s reconstituted INS, the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement (BICE), beefed up the “sealed-border” strategy that had been implemented, curiously, since NAFTA’s initiation. 

Beginning in 1993, massive budgetary increases laid the ground for the new effort. The INS bank account swelled from $1.5 billion in 1993 to $4.2 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in 2003, and the number of agents inflated from 980 in 1994 to 2,264 in 1998 to more than 9500 this year. Programs like Operation Gatekeeper (1994), Operation Safeguard (1995), and Operation Rio Grande (2001) turned the region into what Jennifer Allen of Southwest Alliance to Resist Militarization calls a “war zone” with “solid steel walls, stadium-style lighting that dots the landscape, 30-foot tall surveillance towers, underground surveillance towers, underground surveillance equipment, and armed military troops.” 

The new BICE initiative, Operation Triple Strike (OTS), adds another 200 agents beyond the extra 385 already hired in 2003, making the border army the second largest federal law enforcement agency in the US, with more agents than the FBI. OTS also increases surveillance with the addition of two new helicopters to Arizona’s fleet of nine. In keeping with the current lunge to dismantle civil liberties, OTS legalizes anti-immigrant raids in the interior—in neighborhoods, bus depots, and work sites—and sanctions racial profiling of passengers at airports. 

Under the guise of preventing the injustices of human smuggling and saving migrants’ lives, the strategy of sealing the border and slashing civil liberties, in effect, ups the ante on the possibility of deportation—and pushes determined machos and machas alike to more lethal crossing routes and into the hands of more repressive smuggling rings. 

The good news is that to salve the immense human suffering that has erupted since the implementation of NAFTA, Arizona human rights workers and faith-based groups have begun to provide water tanks in the desert and offer shelter, telephone access and roving medical assistance. 

Grassroots organizing to challenge the politics of US policy at the border is also mounting. Speaking to the 2001 United Nations Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, activists from the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) in Oakland, Calif., demanded that the US abide by the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which it is a signator. NNIRR also called for the right of displaced persons, asylum seekers, trafficked people and migrants to move freely across international borders. Perhaps most dramatically, the organization pushed the boundaries of the accepted, “individual-choice” conception of “migrant” by highlighting “the interconnections between globalization, displacement and migration.” 

Meanwhile, on July 8 Alfredo and Miguel’s friend from Sinaloa, Eduardo, made his final telephone call to us in Española. He was in Nogales, Sonora, about to launch north. In hopes of passing below the hypervigilent radar of the border patrol, Eduardo was planning to walk for three nights and two days through the treacherous Arizona desert in temperatures upwards of 110 degrees. 

As a near-full moon rose into the night sky of July 12, Alfredo and Miguel took off to pick him up in Phoenix. They chose the northern route, hoping to skirt detection by avoiding Albuquerque and Interstate 40, making their way instead through the less-patroled Navajo Nation. They were driving a 1986 Cutlass Supreme— with an outdated license plate. 

Chellis Glendinning is a psychologist and writer. Her latest book is “Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy.” 

This summer, nine-year-old Sara Lopez hopes to perfect her foul shot, hit a home run and learn to swim the backstroke. Through UC Berkeley’s Blue Bears program, Lopez will become that three-sport athlete for two weeks alongside hundreds of other kids her age. 

The Blue Bears, designed for children aged 9 to 11, is one of a dozen youth camps sponsored by Golden Bear Youth and Outdoor Programs, which operates from the Golden Bear Recreational Facility. The camps offer children aged 5 to 18 the chance to work with skilled counselors on sports ranging from soccer to rugby, lacrosse and tae kwon do. 

Many parents of the program’s younger participants—separated into groups called Explorers (aged 5 to 6) and Blue Cubs (aged 7 to 8)—say the camps at Strawberry Canyon are a good summer daycare option because they allow the 

children to run and play. 

“I’m a single mom, and I work all day, but I didn’t want my daughter to be inside at a daycare center during the summer,” said Sara’s mom, Esperanza Veracruz. “Here she has fun.” 

From a list of sports, Blue Bears campers choose six activities to work on during their two-week session. Older campers focus on fewer skills and spend more time on each, allowing them to practice for extracurricular teams during the school year. 

“I want to play lacrosse when I get to high school,” said Matt Kiplin, a 13-year-old Blue Grizzly. “When I’m at camp I get to practice with lots of good people, and they make me better so I’ll make the team.” 

The Golden Bear instructors are mostly college students, and many play a varsity sport at UC Berkeley or other colleges. 

“It’s cool to learn sports from people who play them in college,” Kiplin said. “They really know what they’re doing and they’re young so they’re fun to work with.” 

The counselor positions at the summer camps are among the most popular summer jobs for older area teenagers. High school students can begin work as a counselor-in-training after their freshman year, then become a full counselor as a college student. 

“It’s fun to teach kids how to play better,” said Liam Reilly, a sophomore midfielder on the Carleton College soccer team. “They really want to learn the skills, and they make the day a lot of fun even though it’s tiring. It’s much better than working in a store inside somewhere.” 

UC Berkeley will host six sessions each of the Explorers, Blue Cubs, Blue Bears and Blue Grizzlies camps by the end of the summer, each of which will attract children from around the Bay Area. Registration for the later camps is still open, but each of the two June sessions attracted more than 100 campers. 

One of the newer Golden Bear program offerings is the Skateboard Elite Team and one-day skateboard clinics, which are camps for children ages 8 to 16. Participants work at the Golden Bear Recreational Facility’s skateboard park with skilled instructors—many of whom have competed at national level skateboarding events.

The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley. 

On Thursday, June 5th, our concert series opens with Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut performing some of the best in R & B, with a splash of jazz and a solid helping of the blues. Soulful Strut appears regularly at many Bay Area nightspots such Enricos Sidewalk Café and Restaurant. 

On Thursday, July 31st, our concert series closes with SoVoSó, a highly visual and imaginative a capella ensemble that sings a compelling mix of jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, world, pop, and improvisational music. The ensemble is made up of former members of Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra, and McFerrin says, “SoVoSó is tight, soulful, and a whole lotta fun.” 

This event is easily accessible by transit and there is one hour free parking daily from 9 am to 5 pm in Center Street Garage. Seating will be available. 

For a complete schedule of entertainers for the Downtown Berkeley Summer Noon Concerts 2003 visit the Downtown Berkeley Association website at www.downtownberkeley.org 

Public Hearing Set  

For 3045 Shattuck 

A lengthy battle over a Shattuck Avenue house that has been jacked up two stories to allow a pair of new floors below may come to a resolution Thursday night in a public hearing before the Zoning Adjustments Board. 

Neighbors say the 3045 Shattuck Ave. project, which would include both housing and commercial uses, is out of character with the area. They have also taken developer Christina Sun to task for providing “incomplete information” on a building permit application—an error that led the city’s Planning Department to halt construction on the project weeks ago. 

The board will decide whether Sun violated the zoning code by placing false information on the application. If the board rules against Sun, it could declare the project a public nuisance and order the developer to start from scratch with a full public hearing on the matter. 

The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

—David Scharfenberg 

Media Scholarships 

For Latino Students 

Bay Area Latino students interested in journalism will now have the chance to make their aspirations a reality in this year’s La Raza Media Education Fund scholarship contest. 

The La Raza Fund will award $1,000 and $2,000 scholarships to Latino students who demonstrate financial need, potential for success, scholastic achievement, community involvement and commitment to increasing Latino access to the media. The fund will also offer a variety of paid internships 

that will allow qualified students to work with media professionals. 

The La Raza Media Scholarship Committee was formed in 1975 to increase the number of Latinos in broadcast and print media. In 1996, the committee became the La Raza Media Educational Fund, a donor-advised, nonprofit philanthropic organization based in San Francisco. 

Interested students can download an application from www.hccac.com/laraza or call (510) 881-0757. Deadline for applications is August 22. 

—Megan Greenwell 

Girls’ Basketball  

Succeeds in Nationals 

The East Bay Xplosion, a 14-year-old girls’ basketball team, took third place in the national finals last week in Clarksville, Tenn. 

The team is made up of girls from around the East Bay, including four from St. Mary’s College High School in Berkeley. They won four of their six warm-up tournaments prior to the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) National Championships in Tennessee, with both defeats coming against older teams. The Xplosion ranked 13th nationally in their division going into the championships. They beat all but two of a field of 85 teams to finish third in the country on Friday night. Xplosion beat the fourth-ranked Connecticut Shamrocks 70-63 on Friday to earn a trip to the tournament’s Final Four. 

In that evening’s game, Xplosion was beaten by Georgia Magic, 81-60, which earned them the third place award. Georgia Magic went on to win the competition. 

“Georgia was a great team,” said parent Bradley Johnson. “We’re thrilled with this result.” 

With this year’s third place win, Xplosion coach Sean Dulan is showing the beginning of a dynasty for the East Bay team. Last year, the 14-year-olds won the AAU Championships, and many of those players are now stars at high schools around the area. 

A younger group of Xplosion players, the 12-and-unders, finished their season last week with a seventh-place award at the AAU Championships. 

—Megan Greenwell 

Berkeley Canines  

Set World Record 

The Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society now boasts the world’s greatest number of well-trained dogs—or at least, the best coordinated group of canines. 

Earlier this month, at the annual Bay to Barkers dog walk and festival at the Berkeley Marina, 87 dogs managed to stay in a down position for two full minutes, earning the event the designation of the World’s Largest Simultaneous Dog Down-Stay, smashing the previous record of 76 dogs held by the Waltham Center for Pet Nutrition in Great Britain. 

The record attempt, which required participants to sit or lie on the ground for two minutes, was the brainchild of Humane Society training manager Nancy Frensly, who organized much of the Bay to Barkers event.  

After trying a smaller down-stay at a previous year’s Bay to Barkers, Frensly decided to aim for 100 dogs this year. She fielded a group of 103 dogs to attempt the feat. Out of that group, 87 dogs made it. 

“One dog failing did not make the effort fail,” Frensly said. “They count the number of dogs who stay. It was amazing that with the huge number of distractions the dogs were so well-trained that they would stay in position.” 

Frensly plans to submit the results of the event to the Guinness Book of World Records for certification, a process that requires witness affidavits, photographs and the presence of a licensed veterinarian. Assuming Guinness deems the process legal, the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society will go into the record books—until someone manages to get an 88th dog to stay in a down position. 

“This may become a yearly thing,” Frensly said with a laugh. “In a few years we may be going for 1,000 dogs.”  

—Megan Greenwell 

Meeting Held On 

Community Policing 

More than 100 residents turned out Thursday night for the first of four town meetings on community policing, Odom said. 

After an apparent border feud erupted last month between drug dealers in North Oakland and South Berkeley, some neighbors criticized police for what they deemed inadequate community policing. 

Odom said the department has remained committed to community policing in recent years, but has seen large turnover in the department and in the neighborhood.  

“We have younger officers, we have new people in the community,” he said. “So some are starting from ground zero.” 

The “town hall” meetings, he said, are part of an effort to re-energize community policing. 

The department has not yet finalized dates, times and locations for the next three forums, but Odom said the next session will probably take place in West Berkeley or North Berkeley. 

—David Scharfenberg

Watermelon Heist 

A tall, thin, mysterious watermelon thief struck Andronico’s Market on Solano Avenue early Wednesday morning, according to police. 

Berkeley Police Officer Mary Kusmiss said a witness called authorities at 3:35 a.m. to report that a man had taken a watermelon from a bin on the south side of the 1850 Solano Ave. store shortly before a “suspicious” van left the area. 

An Andronico’s employee also reported seeing a man, about 18 years old, with at least two watermelons, getting into the van. In the end, police determined that a total of three watermelons had been swiped at a value of $15. 

“These are very large items to take off with,” said Kusmiss. “It’s not very common.” 

Kusmiss said witnesses saw only one man and there is no evidence, at present, that a second person was driving the van. Police had no suspects in the case as of Wednesday afternoon. 

Eat and Run 

A Domino’s Pizza deliveryman arrived at a house on the 1600 block of 63rd Street Tuesday night at 10:45 to deliver two pizzas at a value of $36 and found a woman sitting on the steps, according to police. 

The woman, described as about 20 years old, 5 feet 2 inches and 200 pounds, met the deliveryman on the sidewalk and said she had ordered the pizzas, police said. The deliveryman gave the pies to the woman, who said she had to go inside to get money. 

But the woman turned and ran west on 63rd Street, before going south on California Street and disappearing. 

“An area check conducted by two assisting officers did not turn up a woman or any pizza boxes,” Kusmiss said. 

Stolen plate and drugs 

A patrol officer grew suspicious when he saw a gray Ford van traveling east on Parker Street with no front license plate early Tuesday morning, police said. 

The officer ran the plate on the back of the van and learned that Emeryville police had reported the plate stolen. The officer stopped the driver, 31-year-old Berkeley resident Leonard Hutton, at the corner of Parker Street and Warring Street. 

Hutton gave the officer his license and said he had just traded his computer for the van, Kusmiss said. 

The officer ran the license plate and found that Hutton’s license was suspended and he had two warrants out for his arrest — one for possession of the drug crystal methamphetamine and one for possession or drug paraphernalia. 

A search of the van turned up more crystal methamphetamine and a glass pipe for smoking the drug. Police determined the van was not stolen. 

Hutton was arrested and his dog, a pit bull, was placed in a local animal shelter. Kusmiss said that Hutton, if he gets jail time, will be able to pick up his dog upon release.