Berkeley Police officers escorted Alison Weir, founder of If Americans Knew, into her organization’s South Berkeley office Monday afternoon, three days after a voicemail threat warning her to stay away from her office at 2 p.m. Monday or risk losing her life. -more-
It seems unlikely that UC’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies bribed the Nobel Prize Committee to choose Oct. 3 to announce they had awarded the world’s most high falutin’ literary prize to South African author J.M. Coetzee. But there must have been at least some dancing in the hallowed academic corridors when the word came over the news. It happened last Friday, the same day that Assistant Professor Peter Glazer’s beautifully staged adaptation of Coetzee’s novel “Foe” opened at Zellerbach Playhouse. -more-
Berkeley is one of the older cities in the Bay Area and the majority of Berkeley’s approximately 40,000 buildings are more than 60 years old. The city’s built environment gives it a physical quality not found in the newer California communities where the majority of the state’s population lives. With the exception of areas just south of the University Campus, Berkeley escaped the massive urban clearances that other older cities experienced. -more-
UC Berkeley graduate student instructors Friday staged a walkout to protest university bargaining practices they blame for a contract impasse. -more-
In memory of Fred Lupke -more-
The West Nile Virus is heading for Northern California and will probably reach Alameda and Contra Costa counties within the next two years, according to an infectious disease expert with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). -more-
In 1891, Charles Keeler and Bernard Maybeck met on the 5 p.m. commuter ferry from San Francisco to Berkeley. Keeler was 20 and worked at the California Academy of Sciences. Maybeck was 29 and employed at the architectural firm of A. Page Brown. Four years later Maybeck designed Keeler’s home--the first house on Highland Place, in the Daley’s Scenic Park tract just north of the university campus. -more-
Some nights a blue light shines in South Berkeley. If you’re in the know, when the light is glowing, you’re in for an enchanting evening at one of Berkeley’s newest hot spots for the underground arts scene, the Jazz House. -more-
Having to put Jesse Jackson on hold so I could take a call from Al Gore. -more-
NEW DELHI, India—With Indian tech workers no longer wanted in the United States, the buzz here is all about teachers. -more-
Sometime in the next three weeks, Berkeley renters and landlords will learn how much next year’s rents will increase, after the city’s rent board negotiates its way through a legal and political minefield to pick a number almost certain to make someone unhappy. -more-
After watching the PBS special on Mark Twain, I became obsessed with the idea of moving close to the Mississippi River. Maybe if I could spend time along its muddy waters the muse I had lost would return and I’d be able to churn out one marvelous, witty paragraph after another, just like Samuel L. Clemons. -more-
When the Oakland Tribune and other ANG Newspapers withdrew their endorsement of Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor over the weekend, citing recent sexual harassment allegations against the actor, the news brought cheer to a group of East Bay female politicians who had pressed the paper to make the retraction. -more-
Still mourning the loss of beloved friend Fred Lupke, Berkeley wheelchair advocates have started gearing up for a fight to make Berkeley streets and sidewalks safer. -more-
Indian Rock—for strangers to North Berkeley—is an ancient volcanic outcropping in a small city park just above Marin Circle. Though modest in height on the access road side, its flattish top affords splendid panoramic views over a picturesque wooded neighborhood to the Golden Gate, the “City by the Bay,” Angel Island, and Mt. Tamalpais. The Peninsula Hills stretch away to the far left, the grand terrain of Marin to the far right. -more-
The Saga of the Kent Nagano Berkeley Banners has taken on something of the quality of a 19th century German symphony, with enough tension and plot twists to keep the audience abuzz through the intermission, sincerely convinced it’s getting its money’s worth. -more-
The 7th Annual Arab Film Festival winds up its Bay Area run in Berkeley Sunday, with screenings and a closing night party at UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Auditorium Film. -more-
The conservative legal foundation sponsoring a lawsuit challenging race-based desegregation in Berkeley public schools is now taking aim at the UC Berkeley student government. -more-
The union representing the 10,000 teaching assistants, readers and tutors of the University of California system announced late Thursday that they would stage a one-day walkout Friday to protest what they called unfair labor practices at the school. -more-
When Lucie Buchbinder brought the Bread Project to town last April, she joined the ranks of food visionaries who’ve made Berkeley famous for culinary innovation infused with a passion for justice. -more-
The aptly named Killer Tomatoes, a Bay Area advocacy/watchgroup, will take to the streets Friday to protest the appearance of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman at the City Club in Berkeley, where UC Berkeley’s Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy will honor her as the 2003 Alumnus of the year. -more-
Crews from the University of California were scheduled to cut down a grove of nearly 12 acres of eucalyptus trees at the head of Claremont Canyon Friday in a move campus officials said is designed to prevent wildfires in the hills. -more-
The Chief Financial Officer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was placed on administrative leave last week after a routine audit uncovered faulty bookkeeping practices. -more-
The National Labor Relations Board announced it will hold a January hearing to determine if Berkeley-based non-profit Building Opportunities for Self-sufficiency (BOSS) violated labor laws when it imposed higher health care costs on their unionized work force. -more-
A wing of the Franklin Preschool, which burned in a suspected arson last month, will need to be demolished, said Lew Jones, director of facilities for the Berkeley Unified School District. -more-
NEW ORLEANS—All my friends are so pleased these days that the state of California is out-circusing Louisiana. “Louisiana politics ain’t so bad,” they say. “Look at Arnold.” That’s when I remind them of just what a sideshow our traditional political circus can be. Or a veritable zoo, even. -more-
As someone who organized Chinese Americans to protest the treatment of Wen Ho Lee—the Los Alamos scientist accused of spying and who was later exonerated—I already see parallel patterns emerging in the arrest of Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim U.S. Army chaplain at Guantanamo Naval Base. -more-
California Democrats woke up to a nasty shock this week—the (possibly growing) possibility that Arnold Schwarzenegger could actually become the next governor of this state. In one of the most Democratic-leaning states in the nation, how could this happen? Credit California Republicans with some pretty good generalship. But also note a series of rolling Democratic Party mistakes, compounding exponentially, each one rising upon the last until it seems that only a last minute miracle can save the election. -more-
Back in 1853, just half a decade after the Gold Rush overran Spanish/Mexican California, American settlers came to the western shore of the future Berkeley and established the little settlement of Ocean View on the fringe of Jose Domingo Peralta’s land grant ranchero. -more-
Friday, Oct. 3: Ocean View anniversary event #1. 7 p.m. at Finn Hall on Tenth Street, north of Hearst. Dr. Kent Lightfoot, anthropologist, and publisher and author Malcolm Margolin, speaking about the natural character and native American life and culture of the area that became Berkeley. $10 at door, $45 for the series. -more-
Mayor Tom Bates’ Advisory Task Force On City Revenue has recommended that the mayor should support a $250 per year parcel tax increase referendum to be placed on the March 2004 ballot in order to make up for falling city revenues—the same type of bond measure called for in a recent survey of Berkeley voters. -more-
Sorry. It will certainly look like bad taste to some if the Daily Planet allows itself a bit of a gloat over the results of the city’s likely voter survey. But we can’t resist saying, humbly but loudly if that’s possible, We Told You So. What was the first task force appointed by Mayor Bates? The one on the permitting process. And what comes in dead last on the list of voter concerns? The permitting process. And second to last: new housing, also a part of the task force’s charge. So why have almost eight months, uncounted hours of paid city staff time (and unpaid but still valuable volunteer time) been spent on (and we really hate to sound like a broken record) fixing what’s not broke? -more-
