For Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman, University Avenue represents more than an unfulfilled vision.  

“I think that this becomes a symbol—things are not getting done right in Berkeley,” Poschman said. “And it’s brought up now because things have gone wrong.” 

Aside from some completed landscaping projects, the University Avenue Strategic Plan has languished since the Berkeley City Council adopted it in 1996. 

Instead of offering pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and businesses that merge harmoniously into the surrounding neighborhoods, University Avenue continues to be dominated by cars and dotted with empty storefronts. Instead of building developments that complement the community, the city has had to accept intrusive structures like Acton Court, Poschman said. 

Acton Court “is the poster child for what the avenue can become under current zoning,” he said. “The University Avenue Strategic plan was supposed to prevent that kind of gargantuan mess.”  

City staffers blame a slumping economy and in-house turnover, while many residents blame the city’s interpretation of a state affordable housing law that allows developers to avoid height limits, parking mandates and other design features. 

But residents and many city officials—including Councilmember Linda Maio and Mayor Tom Bates—agree that rezoning the two-mile stretch is imperative. 

Now, with proposals on the table for at least two five-story building developments in the University Avenue Corridor, the strategic plan is starting to get attention again. 

Poschman acknowledged that there’s often a time lag on city projects like the University Avenue Strategic Plan. He said he believes the Planning Department has its own agenda for the corridor—which runs west from Oxford Street to Interstate 80 and is bounded by Delaware Street to the north and Allston Way to the south—and elsewhere. 

“There’s a philosophical and ideological debate behind this. There’s a battle going on,” Poschman said. “In terms of the basic bottom line, the most powerful force in Berkeley is the staff. There are about 1,600 of them, and some of them are great. But under the city manager system and a council which is sometimes quite divided, there is a lot of autonomy [for the staff].” 

The central conflict is between the Planning Department’s belief in Smart Growth and neighbors’ opposition to denser housing, Poschman said. He says intentional inactivity is a corollary of the lack of coordination.  

“I found in the past, when the University Avenue plan goes counter to growth orientation, there’s no incentive on the part of staff to cause things for less growth,” he said. “It’s a committed agenda. I think it’s an autonomous agenda.”  

He referred to a Smart Growth award the city won for Acton Court, the kind of project some on the City Council say they don’t ever want to happen again.  

Interim Berkeley Planning Director Dan Marks, who has held his position for five months, said that perceptions notwithstanding, the department doesn’t chart its own course. 

“We are servants of the community,” he said. “Our job is to provide Council with information and choices.” 

He pointed out projects like Acton Court were ultimately decided by City Council, and he said the state housing density bonus mandate—a one-size-fits-all law—makes his department’s job more difficult. 

“We feel very constrained by the law,” he said. However, “we need to implement the strategic plan.” 

One proposed site is Tune-Up Masters, an auto maintenance and repair shop at 1698 University Ave. Developers are working on two designs—one four stories, the other five—after being asked to come up with new plans by the Design Review Committee in August, said project planner Aaron Sage.  

“This project is significant because it’s one in a series,” said Robin Kibby, a University Avenue corridor resident. “It is more dense than Acton Court, and the next project will be more dense than this one. The rules that are being broken in our area can be broken in the rest of Berkeley, despite more stringent zoning.” 

To examine this and other issues, City Council requested a plan update report this past summer. Various departments are now preparing and submitting their portions of the report to Tom Myers, the city’s acting manager of the Office of Economic Development, who will compile the final report. 

The mayor’s Task Force on Permitting and Development is supposed to release its findings shortly, and Poschman expects to see the matter on the Planning Commission agenda in December. 

“We need it codified and we need it now,” Maio said. “The managers understand it—this time we’re not taking ‘Wait’ for an answer.” 

Louise Francis, 46, lives on Berkeley Way, two lots from Tune-Up Masters. Francis agrees with Maio and Bates that one immediate concern is enforcing building standards that haven’t been applied since the plan was adopted. But she wants more than enforced standards. 

“My main desire, what I believe the city needs to do, is to have a vision broader than just housing, so we will not have groups divided on the Avenue,” she said. “The Planning Department contends there’s a disconnect between the strategic plan and reality.” 

In Francis’ opinion, the quest for denser housing drives the planning department—and that’s not what’s best for the neighborhood, she said. Part of the problem is interpretation of state law that requires cities to have enough affordable housing, she said. To do this, the state requires the city to make exceptions to zoning regulations—including height restrictions—Francis said. 

Planning Commissioner Rob Wrenn said there’s a potential conflict between the state requirements and the original plan were it to be implemented—specifically with the decreasing density between the high concentration “nodes” which the plan mandates. But Maio says it’s now time for the city to finally move forward on the plan. 

“It takes a champion and a persistent champion, and certain amounts of energy from merchants, and we have that now,” Maio said.

TUESDAY, DEC. 2 

Downtown Development Planning Commission Subcommittee on the proposed UC Hotel/Conference Center meets from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Sitka Spruce Room, 2120 Milvia St. 981-7484. 

Writer’s Room needs volunteers to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. Volunteer trainings will take place from 7 to 9:30 p.m. tonight, and also on Dec. 9. please call Terry, 849-4134 or email Bloomburgh@sbcglobal.net to sign up.  

Holiday Plant Sale from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-8155. www.mip.berkeley. 

edu/garden  

The Science Behind Genetically Engineered Plants A lecture with Dr. Andrew Gutierrez, Professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, Graduate Theological Union, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2560. www.gtu.edu/studentgroups/trees 

Sustainable Development in Cuba Slide show and discussion based on ECOTECTURE Editor Philip S. Wenz’s trip to Cuba, at 7 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Donation $10, no one turned away for lack of funds. Benefits the Building Education Center and Global Exchange Cuba Program. 525-7610.  

Dine Out for AIDS Advocacy at Unicorn Pan Asian Cuisine, 2533 Telegraph Ave. from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Benefits HealthGAP and ACT UP East Bay. Wheelchair accessible. Reservations are suggested. 841-4339. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke Seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Jackie Hetman will show slides of Northern Sweden and Lapland at 11 a.m. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 3 

Zapatistas Turn 20, a benefit celebration for the Chiapas Support Committee, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10 in advance, $12 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Memorial for Jerry Sager, KPFA development guru, at 4 p.m. at the inland end of the Berkeley Pier, by the sundial at the foot of University Avenue. We will bring back memories of the mid-1970s and Berkeley’s “progressive media” folks.  

Meet Up for Howard Dean at three Berkeley locations: Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave.; Raleigh’s (Generation Dean youth meeting), 2438 Telegraph Ave.; Sweet Basil Thai Restaurant, 1736 Solano Ave. Free. Wheelchair accessible. 843-8724. 

Dick Penniman’s Avalanche Safety, slide lecture and video presentation on the fundamentals: avalanche phenomena, meteorology, snowpack formation, route selection, stability evaluation and rescue techniques, at 6 p.m. at at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $20. 527-4140. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 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 848-0237.  

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in to file complaints, assistance available. 548-0425. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Hide-A-Way Café, 6430 Telegraph Ave. For information call Fred Garvey, 925-682-1111, ext. 164. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 4 

“In Conversation with Political Authors: In Search of Weapons of Mass Deception” Panelists include Ishmael Reed, Iris Chang, Daniel Ellsberg and Dori Maynard, moderated by Normon Solomon. At 6 p.m. at Twist Restaurant, 495 10th St. Oakland. Tickets are $35, dinner and panel, $10 panel only, available from 525-3948. www.penoakland.org 

Read the Night Sky! Beginners guide to finding planets and constellations using an astrological calendar, at 7:30 p.m. at Ancient Ways, 4075 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. Cost is $5-10. 658-9178.  

Snowcamping, an introduction at 7 pm, at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Berkeley Venture Crew 24 Open House We are an inclusive Scout group for high schoolers-college boys and girls. Come see our scuba diving, backpacking or camping pictures, at 7:30 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 525-6058. 

9/11 Truth Alliance Forum at 7 p.m. at The Fellowship of Humanity, 390 27th St., Oakland. 925-798-3698. 

UC Botanical Garden Docent Training at 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee and registration required. Call 643-1924 to sign up! 

Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM holds public meetings for all interested people first and third Thursdays, 7 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 595-0190. 

St. John's Prime Timers Tap Dancing class meets on Thursday mornings at 9:15 a.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church at 2717 Garber St. Class is free and open to anyone over 50. 527-0167. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 5 

“The Streets are Watching” a film by Jacob Crawford on police accountability through the eyes of three communities: Denver, Cincinnati and Berkeley. At 8 p.m. at Transparent Theater, 1901 Ashby Ave. at MLK Jr. Way. $5-20 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. A benefit for Berkeley Copwatch. For information contact 548-0425. 

“Follow the Star …” an exhibit of over 250 Crèches from 70 countries, from 5 to 8 p.m. at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church 2837 Claremont Blvd. Suggested donation $15, this is a fund-raiser to bring the church lighting up to code. Appetizers and beverages will be served. 843-2678. 

“Already Home in West Berkeley,” with author Barbara Gates, a moving memoir that explores the connections between local history, the environment, the body, and the spirit. At 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. Wheelchair accessible. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

Berkeley Youth Alternatives, Blue and Gold Basketball Tournament, 11 years and under Division, Dec. 5-7, at the BYA Gym, 1255 Allston Way. Team fee is $75, individual fee $15. For information call 845-9066. 

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. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 6 

Celebrate December with Chiquy Boom, South American clown extraordinaire, at 11 a.m. at the Library West Branch, 1125 University Ave. Free. Piñata and snacks follow performance. 981-6270. 

Artists with Heart, art show benefit from noon to 6 p.m. at 2033 and 2041 Center St. More than 50 artists and community members are donating their work to benefit the individuals and families served by BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency). 649-1930. 

“Follow the Star …” an exhibit of over 250 crèches from 70 countries, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, 2837 Claremont Blvd. Suggested donation $3-$5, this is a fund-raiser to bring the church lighting up to code. 843-2678. 

Breakfast with Santa from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Claremont Resort and Spa. Tickets are $30 for adults, $25 for children 3 and older, and $5 for children 2 years and under. Benefits Junior League of Oakland-East Bay community projects. To order tickets call 925-284-3740 or visit the Junior League website at www.jloeb.org 

Holiday Plant Sale and Wreath Making at 10:30 a.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.Berkeley.edu  

Holiday Crafts Fair, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at MLK, Jr. Way. 548-3333.  

Native Plant Restoration At Wildcat Creek, from 1 to 4 p.m. We will be installing creek-side plants from Native Here Nursery and the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Call for directions. 558-8139.  

Fall Permaculture: Introduction to Permaculture Design Take some time during the rainy season to design your backyard, school or community garden. This workshop will cover ecological landscape design basics and will be held indoors at the Ecology Center from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. We’ll include a slideshow to illustrate design concepts. Bring paper, pencils, and ideas for working out a sketch for your garden and photographs if possible. The series is taught by Christopher Shein of Wildheart Gardens, an edible, native, medicinal and other useful plant permaculture nursery. Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. Cost is $10 EC members, $15 others, no one turned away. 548-2220, ext. 233. erc@ecologycenter.org  

The First Flush: Canoe Outing with Save The Bay in Oakland What are the first of the winter rains carrying into our Bay? Join Save The Bay on a canoe paddle in the Oakland Estuary and learn about the impacts of the “first flush” of polluted runoff from our streets, parks, gardens and homes into the Bay. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., $30 for Save The Bay members, $40 for non-members. To register or for more information call 452-9261. www.savesfbay.org.  

Holiday Plant Sale and Wreath Making from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. http://botan 

icalgarden.Berkeley.edu  

Winter Pruning and Maintenance, with Garth Jacober at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Sunset Walk in the Emeryville Marina, sponsored by the Solo Sierrans. Meet at 3:30 p.m. on the west side of Chevy’s Restaurant at the Public Shore sign for an hour’s walk through the Emeryville Marina with views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Rain cancels. For more information, call Vera 234-8949. 

“Defending the Rights of the People in the Age of Ashcroft,” featuring Clark Kissinger, a member of the National Council of Refuse & Resist! At 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. 704-5293. 

Pet Adoptions, sponsored by Home at Last, from noon to 5 p.m., Hearst and 4th St. 548-9223. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. The class is taught by Rosie Linsky, who at age 72, has practiced yoga for over 40 years. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800. 

Flu Shots fromSutter VNA & Hospice Flu Prevention and Wellness Program. Flu vaccinations are $20 and pneumonia vaccinations are $25, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Pharmaca Integrative 1744 Solano Ave. 

“Your Money or Your Life! Why Not Both?” Led by Dody Donnelly, Ph.D. and Hank “Waablez” Adams, From 9:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Unitarian Church, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Bring a bag of lunch, beverage provided. Suggested donation $30. Sponsored by the UU Center for Spiritual Development. Register with Joan Swift 724-6862. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 7 

Holiday Festival: Arts and Crafts Show and Sale Paintings, photography, crafts and greeting cards on view and on sale, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Free admission. Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Road, Kensington. 525-0302. 

Chanukah Bazaar Food, gifts, and silent auction, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 2301 Vine St.  

Artists with Heart, art show benefit from noon to 6 p.m. at 2033 and 2041 Center St. More than 50 artists and community members are donating their work to benefit the individuals and families served by BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency). 649-1930. 

Pottery Show and Benefit for Bay Area Community Resources from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 871 Indian Rock Ave.  

“Follow the Star …” an exhibit of over 250 Crèches from 70 countries, from noon to 3 p.m. at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church 2837 Claremont Blvd. Suggested donation $3-$5, this is a fund-raiser to bring the church lighting up to code. 843-2678. 

Bike Afrika Bring a bike in good working condition or requiring minor parts/repairs and we'll donate it to AIDS doctors in Africa. Free food, music, fun, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Smokey Joe’s Restaurant, corner of Cedar and Shattuck. For more information email brooxbuffy@yahoo.com. 472-3983. 

Women for Peace Anniversary Luncheon with Minoo Moallem, Ph.D., Department of Women’s Studies, SF State, at 12:30 p.m. at Venezia Restaurant, 1799 University Ave. Cost is $37, and reservations required. 849-3020. 

Decorate the Lorax Way You can help conserve nature’s tallest plants by re-using and recycling their products. “Speak for the trees” while you make holiday wrapping paper, gift tags and decorations from recycycled products, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233.  

Plant Families Meet and learn to recognize common plant families, with naturalist and gardener Terri Compost. Meet at 1 p.m. in the West End Community Garden of People’s Park. Heavy rain cancels. 658-9178.  

Solar Electricity for Your Home Now you can produce your own electricity and “sell” the excess back to PG&E, running your meter backwards! Plus you can receive thousands of rebate dollars from the State at the same time. Learn how to size, specify and design your own solar electrical generator. A short field trip to a functioning house/system in Berkeley and current catalog of available equipment are also included. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. 525-7610.  

“Intelligence & Empire” with Marshall Windmiller, retired professor of International Relations at San Francisco State Univ. at 7 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. Preceeded by vegetarian dinner at 6 p.m. Donation for dinner and program $15 and up, no one turned away for lack of funds. Please RSVP to 548-4141. 

Eckhart Tolle Talks on Video Free gathering 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.  

ONGOING 

Holiday Food Drive Help the Alameda County Community Food Bank help people in need. Offer to run a food drive, or donate healthy nonperishable food at Safeway stores, Berkeley Bowl and Bay Street Emeryville. For more information call 834-3663. www.accfb.org 

City of Berkeley Commissioners Sought If you are interested in serving on a commission, applications can be downloaded from www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/general.htm#applications or contact the City Clerk, 981-6900.  

The Online Civilian Conservation Corps Museum is seeking the stories about the CCCs, CCC Enrollees, Staff, or Technical Advisors for publication to this online historical resource. If you would like to participate please send your stories, with name company number and location if known, to CCC Collection, PO Box 5, Woodbury NJ 08096 or email to JFJmuseum@aol.com 

Free Smoke Detectors for City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Admin. Office located at 2100 MLK, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS  

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Dec. 3, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruby Primus, 981-5106. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/women 

Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., Dec. 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. David Orth, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/firesafety 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5410. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/housing 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Dec. 4, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Fri., Dec. 5, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/environmentaladvisory 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon., Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/landmarks 

PLAYING PERCENTAGES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

That demented little coterie who have nothing better to do on Tuesday nights than to follow City Council meetings got a rare dose of comic relief at a recent public hearing when one councilmember tried to snooker his colleagues with some statistical legerdemain. The subject was the narrow difference in effective radio transmission between the controversial Public Safety Building communications tower and a proposed alternative. Tests had revealed the two differed by three percent (one misfired six percent of the time, the other nine percent). With a straight face, this councilmember told his colleagues the three percent difference was actually a 50 percent gap (three being 50 percent of six, right?). A local poet calls his bluff with the following: 

“Wozzlebrain Deceives Himself With Statistics,” 

For the Berkeley City Council,  

with condolences. 

Behold ex-scientist Wozzlebrain on Monday. With a weekend’s rest behind him he’s using all but six percent of his brain cells. Behold ex-scientist Wozzlebrain on Tuesday. After a Berkeley City Council meeting he’s slipped by three percent. Now nine percent of his brain cells go languishing unused.  

“My God,” growls Wozzlebrain, “in just one day I’m down a full 50 percent!”  

“Buck up!” says the poet. “You’re down just three percent. The gap between six and nine is just three percent out of your total hundred. And three percent, all poets know, is statistically insignificant. Relax. You’re not actually down at all! If you stay away from City Council meetings there may be hope you’ll learn to think again!”  

To date the advice has not been accepted. On the contrary: Last Tuesday this same facetious fellow read a parody of a sophomore research paper purporting to offer a hilariously protracted tangle of statistics as an argument against instant run-off voting. Again with a straight face. You don’t suppose he’s serious about these things? 

Rob Browning 

• 

ANIMAL SHELTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We support Jill’s Posener view of the Berkeley Animal Shelter. It can’t be in an out-of-the-way place. It has to be where the human community is, so people will have a daily dose of dog or cat, because it is so soothing. It must be where volunteers want to walk dogs without fear. It should be a place where potential adopters can easily get to the Berkeley Shelter to adopt dogs and/or cats. The Berkeley Animal Cares Services will be in the building for maybe 50 years, so you have to design it well and place it excellently. We support the Sixth and Gilman site! 

Cindi and Howard Goldberg 

• 

NEIGHBORHOOD EYESORE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As we look out the front window of our home there are piles of trash and debris and an ancient, dilapidated mobile home with squatters living in it. There are no electricity, running water, or sewage hook-ups to the mobile home. The squatters have been living in this mobile home and in a second vehicle, an equally tattered RV, since May. 

The property, located in the 2800 block of San Pablo Avenue, has been our neighborhood’s eyesore for four years. It has been the site of an arson fire, a haven for prostitution, and the location of numerous altercations over bad business dealings. The lot historically has been classified as a used car lot; however the use permits have expired long ago, there are no other existing permits, and property taxes are in arrears. The owner of the property lives out of town.  

Long before the squatters moved in, we had been trying to gain the City of Berkeley’s interest in the property’s numerous and ongoing problems. In June of 2003 the new City agency “Code Enforcement” finally took an interest. A hearing was later scheduled Oct. 5 before the Zoning Adjustments Board. During that meeting the board unanimously designated the property a “nuisance,” and clearly stated that abatement should be the course of action. The board expressed their admiration for our neighborhoods’ willingness to tackle this difficult problem. It has now been over eight weeks since that meeting, and still, there has been no action taken by the city.  

The San Pablo Park Neighborhood has been working for over two years with the city agencies to remedy this intolerable situation. It has required two appearances before the Zoning Adjustments Board, hours of neighborhood organizing, countless phone calls and letters, and coordination of the city’s agencies for the entire time. While it has been our experience that all the agencies—Department of Health, Code Enforcement, Neighborhood Services and the ZAB— have been sympathetic and kind, our problem is still across the street and out patience has worn thin. 

No citizen should be required to work so hard to fix a problem that should be addressed by the agencies who exist to protect the health, safety and the well being of all neighborhoods. 

Nancy Ellis  

Patricia Kaspar  

• 

DOWNTOWN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Geller’s development vision of downtown Berkeley is mostly appropriate and quite achievable (Letters, Daily Planet, Nov. 25-27). We can cut downtown traffic significantly. Very dense cities in Europe do it and these city governments also manage to efficiently implement planned pedestrian/public-transportation-only urban centers in cramped and much more heavily regulated circumstances. We need not reinvent the wheel. The public will need to be continuously educated and involved in every step of the process, online and in person, through opinionated open-door planning sessions. In Ithaca, NY— a much smaller city with absolutely greater downtown appeal than Berkeley— there is a wonderful pedestrian mall that functions as it was designed to and has blossomed over the years since its creation into a diverse and profitable business open space and has year-round heavily attended community functions. We very much need to provide a large number of urban periphery municipal parking spaces under a cohesive, practical and well-funded transportation plan with free shuttles to both BART and local busing options. If the $60,000 a year incredibly necessary YEAH! Youth Homeless Shelter can coordinate shuttle services, certainly funds for comfortable free shuttles to and from periphery parking can happen for commuters and visitors arriving via auto from out of town. 

On the related Berkeley building heights issue, I believe we need less-than-10-story structures with periphery and local above-ground parking. I have to agree with Tom Brown (Letters, Daily Planet, Nov. 28-Dec. 1) that underground parking is not environment friendly or cost effective. I think the sunlight issue is easily addressed by use of Japanese Sunflower fiber-optic or similar technology that pipes sunlight san UV’s wherever it is needed. Plants love this UV-less light. By all means daylight the full length of Strawberry Creek. What the heck is it doing underground anyway? It’s not like we’re changing the course of the Yangtze here! I don’t think that Berkeley currently has much of a downtown. It’s not now charming, pastoral or particularly interesting. Berkeley downtown is loud and dirty. We can bellweather a progressive planning trend in mid-sized US metros. The resources are there. I agree with Tom Bates that even the local progressive media often emphasize the wrong issues. We really need to have more taxation for necessary services since the fed and state are going republocrat nuts with selfish, heartless and unrealistic slash and burn economic tactics. I don’t believe in raising property taxes on the ever struggling US middle and lower classes or poorer small business. However, taxation must increase on the individual and corporate rich. One way to achieve proportionate and appropriate taxation on the wealthy is to provide a non-negotiable higher taxation gradient for more valuable personal and corporate property transfers. A similar tactic to that which Matt Gonzalez correctly proposes for SFO. The wealthy’s unequal wealth is usually due to under-compensation of the poor. The rich are obligated as community members to balance the scales wherever they live or do business officially. Raising revenues need be neither painful nor unjust. For every problem, it has been my experience, there is a multiplicity of satisfying and exemplary solutions. 

Frank Snapp  

Mortgaging the Earth is the name of John Halle’s new work for two sopranos and chamber ensemble, being presented tonight [Tuesday Dec. 2] in a program by Composers Inc. The text is a doozy, an internal memo from Lawrence Summers (then chief economic advisor to the World Bank, now president of Harvard). “Just between you and me,” Summers wrote,” shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the Less Developed Countries? I can think of three reasons.” Those reasons, and the music they inspired, comprise the piece.  

Halle is a homeboy who’s done good. Once a UC Berkeley undergrad in composition, he’s now teaching at Yale. Composers on the rest of this program are Alejandro Escuer, Arthur Krieger, Kevin Beavers, Paul Barsom, with Berkeley Opera’s own Jonathan Khuner conducting. The performance is tonight at 8 p.m. in the Green Room of the Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Real darn soon, in other words, so stick this paper in your pocket and get on the train. Composers, Inc. is an illustrious Bay Area enterprise, teaming up first-rate composers with equally stellar performers. 

If you subscribe to the theory that scrappy arts venues are a precursor to big-time gentrification, downtown Oakland may be ready for its oft-rumored, oft-postponed real estate boom. The logic is that when deserted storefronts give way to theaters and rehearsal space, optimistic developers cannot be far behind. What then happens to the artists we will cover at another time. 

Out in front of the speculative curve, not only do we have the Oakland Box Theater at 20th and Telegraph (previously cited in this column), and the Oakland Metro at the base of Broadway. Now there’s Café Van Kleef at 1621 Telegraph, a classy bistro with live music, art on the walls, and espresso at the bar. Mayor Jerry Brown may be seen from time to time, wafting in from his new digs up the street where Sears once was. Meanwhile, any direction you go, developers are throwing money at buildings that have been vacant for years. 

At the South end of the strip, courtesy of the Oakland Metro (201 Broadway; tel: 763-1146), you have a chance to see Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts, running Dec. 5-14. Stein left Oakland for Paris while still in her teen years, and in 1926 teamed up with another American expat, composer Virgil Thomson. Eight years later, their opera Four Saints became a sensation, an infamous cultural event in its time, and the longest-running opera in Broadway history to date.  

There seems to be some sort of low-level Stein revival underway. The San Francisco Opera put up Mother Of Us All earlier in the season, and the Metro (also known as Oakland Opera Theater) did Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters last year. Lori Zook, executive director of O.O.T., has been struck by the strange, canny craftsmanship of Stein’s text and lyrics. She recalled to me her disorientation at early rehearsals, then the pleasure of hearing correspondences emerge between lines, phrases, themes. Stein can be seen (though credit is rarely given her) as a forerunner of John Ashbery, James Tate, James Merrill—those contemporary poets who “Tell it slant,” as Virginia Woolf used to say. As for the folks at the Oakland Metro, god bless ‘em for conjuring this peculiar and wonderful show, in this case with a live 11-piece orchestra and digitally projected scenery. Give them your money. 

Still in Oakland (we’ll get to Berkeley in a minute), Arthur Blythe is at Yoshi’s with his quartet on Monday, Dec. 15. It’s nice that Yoshi’s is continuing to work with Jazz In Flight on their Monday night series; this writer hopes they will reconsider their jitters when it comes to booking local artists at the venue. There are some powerfully good jazz musicians around here without many places to play. 

While we’re talking jazz, can we get straight, if possible, what is going on with these Berkeley High kids? Is it something they’re putting in the water? The players are so good they’re scary, and they keep coming up with the goods year after year. Charles Hamilton, head of the program, certainly deserves credit, but let’s give the kids their due. A list of shining stars from recent years would include Peter Apfelbaum, Will Bernard, Dave Ellis, Rodney Franklin, Kito Gamble, Benny Green, David Murray, Lenny Pickett, Josh Redman, Michael Wolff, and Hitomi Oba. The next scheduled concert for the Berkeley High Jazz Band and Combos is not here in Berkeley, but will be the CSUS Winter Jazz Festival in Sacramento on Saturday, Dec. 13. For information, cal (916)691-7170.  

Lastly but not leastly, Larry Ochs, Fred Frith, and Miya Masaoka will be at the Free Gallery, 2575 Bancroft Way between College and Telegraph in Berkeley at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday Dec. 4. As we’re all soon to be awash in Messiahs and Requiems, this is as musically provocative a combination as you’re likely to find for the duration of the holidays. And I believe in supporting any venue I’ve never heard of just on principle.  

Remember, go in peace. And if you can’t go in peace, just go.

TUESDAY, DEC. 2 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” with Pacific Mozart Ensemble at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $22-$24. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: “Superior Elegy” and “Sneak Preview” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why” with editor Larry Habegger, tales of trouble on the road at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave at Rose. 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Chamber Performances, Wolford-Rosenblum, saxophone/piano duo at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 525-5211. www. 

berkeleychamberperform.org  

Edessa, Brass Menagerie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 3  

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” see listing for Dec. 2. 

FILM 

Standby: No Technical Difficulties: Program 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

June Jordan’s Poetry for the People annual exibition of student poets at 7 p.m. in the Lipman Room, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-2743. 

“Images of Mary in Art: The Black Madonna” with China Galland, Director of the Images of Divinity project at the Graduate Theological Union, at 7:30 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. 848-1755. 

Loic Wacquant introduces “Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer” at 5:30 p.m. University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

University Chorus Noon Concert at International House, at the corner of Bancroft and Piedmont Aves. 642-4864. 

Pris, Go Ahead perform Indy Rock and Rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $4.  

848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Nicole and the Soul Sisters at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Vince Wallace Jazz Machine at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 4 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” See listing for Dec. 2. 

FILM 

“Effaced” and “Jenin, Jenin” at 7 p.m. at 340 Stephens Hall. Sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 642-8208. 

“Voices From the Edge” and “The Favela Goes to the World Social Forum” and discussion with Brazilian filmmakers Daniela Broitman and Fernando Salis, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Woman of Tokyo” at 5:30 p.m. “Walk Cheerfully” at 7 p.m. and “I Flunked, But...” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems at 12:10 p.m. in the Morrison Library in Doe Library, UC Campus, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Hass. After hosting Lunch Poems for eight years, Professor Hass has finally been prevailed upon to read his own poems. 642-0137.  

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 12:15 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“The Call to Hawaii: A Wellness Vacation Guidebook” with Betsy and Laura Crites, co-authors, at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave at Rose. 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Concert for Dignity and clothing drive to benefit Operation Dignity at 7:30 p.m. at iMusicast, 5429 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. www.operationdignity. 

org/benefitconcert.htm  

“Maybe Monday” performs an improvisational response to Helen Mirra’s MATRIX exhibition at 6 p.m. in Gallery 1, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Daniel Mille at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Keni El Lebrijano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Wendy DeRosa and guests at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15.644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Good for Cows and Karla Kihlstedt perform modern jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Ellis Paul and Vance Gilbert, New England singer-songwriters, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Touch of Soul at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

George Pederson and His Pretty Good Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Bizar Bazaar at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 5 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Rachel Rudy, at 8 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater. Tickets are $10, $5 with student i.d. 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” see listing for Dec. 2. 

“Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard, performed by Maybeck High School, at 7 p.m. at Oakland Box Theater, 1928 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. Tickets are adults $15 in advance, $18 at the door, students $7 in advance, $10 at door. 841-8489.  

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, at 8 p.m., at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, at 2nd St. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available from www.oaklandopera.org 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “An Inn at Tokyo” at 7:30 p.m. and “The Only Son” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joe Sacco introduces his graphic novel, “The Fixer,” about war correspondents at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Bach Society, “Christmas Vespers” by Francisco Guerrero, at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$25. 415-262-0272 or tickets@calbach.org 

Sweet Honey in the Rock, female a cappella group, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4698. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley City Ballet, “The Nutcracker,” at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus. Tickets are $25. 642-9988 www.berkeleycityballet.org 

Moodswing Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Simon Stinger, Castles in Spain, Hazerfan at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

JP Orbit at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Jucifer, Bottles and Skulls, Race Bannon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

“A Context for Peace” an evening of new work from Bay Area musicians, authors and poets at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Crater performs modern jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Collective Amnesia at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Peter Case, roots music original, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sterling Dervish at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Grand Unified Theory, Forget the Jonses, The Apples, The Silence, Static Thought at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 6 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Derique the High Tech Clown at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Barbara Bordnick, “Searchings: Secret Landscapes of Flowers” opne at the Pacific Center for Photographic Arts, with a lecture at 5 p.m. and reception at 6:30 p.m. 4221 Hollis St. at Park Ave., Emeryville. 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” See listing for Dec. 2. 

“Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard, performed by Maybeck High School. See listing for Dec. 5.  

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” at 8 p.m. See listing for Dec. 5. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “What Did the Lady Forget?” at 3 and 7 p.m. and “The Brothers and Sisters of Toda” at 4:35 and 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Terry Wolverton reads from “Embers: A Novel in Poems” at 7:30 p.m. at Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 559-9184. www.bookpride.com 

Yu Hua reads from his new book, “Chronicle of a Blood Merchant,” set during the early years of China’s Cultural Revolution, at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

California Writers’ Club hosts Joyce Jenkins, editor of “Poetry Flash” at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at the South Branch Berkeley Public Library, 1901 Russell St. 527-9905. 

Tanya Holland introduces her new cookbook, “New Soul Cooking” at 3 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 2 and 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4698. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley City Ballet, “The Nutcracker,” at 1 and 5 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus. Tickets are $25. 642-9988 www.berkeleycityballet.org 

“Looking Through the Eyes of Love” Fund raising event presented by Connecting Through Dance, featuring visually impaired partner dancers, as well as Bay Area professionals at 7 p.m. at Lake Merritt Dance Center, 200 Grand Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $20.00 in advance, $25.00 at the door. 501-4713. www.connectingthroughdance.org 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra perform Handel’s “Messiah” at 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 964-0665. www.bcco.org 

“A Musical Night in Africa” with Kotoja, West African Highlife Band, New Life Band of Tanzania, Babá Okulolo and the Nigerian Brothers, at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $16 in advance, $18 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Blues Holiday Concert with Rev. Rabia, Bay Area blues- 

woman, at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library’s Reading Room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6100. 

Yuko Maruyama, jazz pianist, in a benefit for Chez Panisse Foundation, at 1 p.m. at Yoshi's at Jack London Square, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$25. 843-3811.  

Jamie Davis sings music of the masters with an emphasis on romance at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

“Isis: The Great Goddess” a multimedia event of music, spoken word and video at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

John Gorka, folk troubador, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sterling Highway, The Zachary Tree, Hazel at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Original Intentions at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Brian Melvin at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Yaphet Kotto, Erase Eratta, the Yellow Press, Burmese, Bottled O.G. at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Adrian’s Music Salon featuring Lavender Grace and Teja Gerken, singer-songwriters at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

7th Direction and Pocket at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

SUNDAY, DEC. 7 

CHILDREN 

Gayle Schmidt and the Toodala Ramblers, bluegrass and old time music for children at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” See listing for Dec. 6. 

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” at 2 and 7 p.m. See listing for Dec. 5.  

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “That Night’s Wife” at 5:30 p.m. and “Dragnet Girl” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“To Be or Not To Be,” 1942 classic with Jack Benny at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. $2. 848-0237. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 2 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Poetry Flash with Clayton Eshelman at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cantare Chorale and Chamber Ensemble, “O Holy Night,” 115 voices accompanied by winds, brass and organ at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, corner of 27th and Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $5-$25. 925-798-1300. 

Handel’s “Messiah” Sing at 2:30 p.m., First Church of Christ, Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way. Conducted by William Ludtke with organist Lynn Finegan and soloists. Donations benefit Building Restoration Fund. fccsb@mindspring.com 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra perform Handel’s “Messiah” at 4 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 964-0665. www.bcco.org 

Mimosas and Music, a recital of 17th century German, Italian and French music at 11 a.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. $15 donation. 848-1228. www.giorgigallery.com 

“Winter Songs with Kitka,” women’s vocal ensemble performs seasonal music from Eastern Europe at 7 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 444-0323. www.kitka.org  

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4698. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley City Ballet, “The Nutcracker,” at 1 and 5 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus. Tickets are $25. 642-9988 www.berkeleycityballet.org 

Rose Street Art Meets Rose Street Music with a concert by Irina Rivkin and Maria Quiles at 6 p.m. at Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington. Suggested donation $5-$10. 559-9184. www.bookpride.com 

Flamenco Open Stage at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Cottars, youthful Celtic roots, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Eid-Ul-Fitr, Islamic Cultural Celebration, marking the end of Ramadan with music, poems and stories, at 3 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

San Francisco Saxophone Quartet performs works of Mozart, Brubeck and others at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

ACME Observatory Contemporary Performance Series Fluxus Concert featuring Bibiana Padillo Maltos at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $0-$20. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Total Fury, Harto, Deadfall, Cross the Line at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Sol Rebelz and Occupied Thought perform Hip Hop at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Berkeley voters will get to weigh in on a proposed tax hike this March after all. On the same evening Council withdrew a proposed parcel tax hike, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to place a half-penny tax increase on the March ballot to bail out cash-strapped public medical facilities. 

The tax—which needs two-thirds approval from county voters—would raise the sales tax to 8.75 percent, catapulting Alameda County past San Francisco for the highest sales tax rates in state. 

County officials estimate the tax would generate $90 million annually, with 75 percent earmarked for the Alameda County Medical Center—whose budget deficit has exploded to $86 million from $45.7 million in June. 

The medical center provides care to the county’s indigent and uninsured and includes Oakland’s Highland Hospital—which serves the majority of Berkeley trauma and emergency patients and is the lone specialized medical care option for Berkeley’s estimated 9,000-11,000 uninsured residents. 

“This is a life-saving measure,” said Alameda County Director of Health Care Services Dave Kears. “We can’t sustain the system for long without some sort of government subsidy.” 

The medical center—which also includes Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro, John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro and three outpatient clinics—has seen its $353 million budget busted by funding cuts, expense increases and swelling ranks of the uninsured they are mandated to serve. 

“It’s important to understand these problems aren’t a case of bad management,” Kears said. “Most of this has been beyond anyone’s control.” 

Last year, 63,500 of the center’s 125,000 patients were uninsured. Coupled with increased expenses for employee benefits and drugs and reductions in government aid—including a $7 million cut from a federal program aiding public hospitals—the center has struggled to balance its books, said spokesperson Rachel Kagen. 

Two rounds of cutbacks earlier this year totaling $23.5 million resulted in 150 layoffs, closure of two outpatient clinics, increased patient co-payments as well as a call to deny non-emergency care to indigents. 

Kagen said implementing the policy denying non-emergency care has proven difficult because many doctors and staffers refuse to turn away patients. 

Next week the center will present county supervisors plans for $53 million in further cuts, including elimination of another 176 positions, ending all specialty care at outpatient clinics, and closing a cardiac ward and obstetrician services at Highland, a psychiatric ward at John George, and a nursing home at Fairmont. 

If the supervisors accept the plan, the center must still cut another $33 million to eliminate its deficit. Even with the sales tax revenues, Kagen said, he probably couldn’t salvage services already on the chopping block, though the funds could help sustain Highland’s emergency room and trauma center. 

The proposed tax hike—called the Essential Health Care Services Tax—would give center facilities autonomy in distributing the money and would not replace money the county already provides for indigent care. 

County supervisors have feuded with the center’s county-appointed board of trustees this year over the budget deficit. 

In July, after the supervisors reduced the authority of former CEO Kenneth Cohen—who they blamed for failing to implement cuts when revenues first started evaporating and then proposing cuts far too drastic—five center trustees voted to fire Cohen and then quit in protest, citing frustration with the supervisors. 

Supervisor Keith Carson said he hoped an independent financial audit due out next week will uncover possible savings to preserve services slated for the chopping block. 

“We’ve never had a line-by-line review of expenditures and revenues,” Carson said, adding that the estimated $86 million deficit could be lower if state reimbursements have not been received. 

To boost revenue, the center is seeking to improve services to attract insured patients, but two of the more profitable departments, cardiac and obstetrics, are slated for cuts. 

In light of the firestorm in Berkeley over a proposed parcel tax, Carson said the board would campaign hard for the tax measure and start a mobilization drive to get supporters to the polls. 

Voters have given mixed signals in recent years on their willingness to shoulder high sales taxes, passing a half-cent increase two years ago to pay for transportation improvements after rejecting it the year before. 

If the measure is passed, county supervisors promise to seek public input on which health programs to fund with the remaining 25 percent of the funds. 

Kears said a county Detox center—long sought by Berkeley homeless advocates— would likely be a top priority. 

Lifelong Medical, Berkeley’s care provider for uninsured residents, could also receive increased funds from the tax measure. Executive Director Marty Lynch said with fewer insured residents and less public money to pay for them, Lifelong has had to turn back 20-30 patients per week at its four clinics. 

Berkeley Director of Public Health Poki Namkung said city-run health centers across the state face similar problems, noting that if Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposed 10 percent reduction in Medi-Cal reimbursements passes, the city’s three clinics stand to lose about $75,000—30 percent of its budget.  

The Alameda County Taxpayers Association endorsed the tax hike after learning it will sunset in 2019.

The recent downing of U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Iraq is yet another example of how the aid supplied by the CIA to Islamist terrorists in the 1980s has contributed to the escalation and spread of terrorism everywhere in the world.  

At least two of the U.S. Black Hawk helicopters that crashed in Iraq recently were brought down by the same sophisticated technique—by taking out the ship's vulnerable tail rotor with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). As right-wing columnists and web sites have been quick to point out, this is exactly the technique that brought down three Black Hawks in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. Three weeks after this devastating attack, the United States pulled out of Somalia, an event Osama bin Laden has cited as proof that America can be defeated.  

But no one to date has pointed out what Mark Bowden, author of the best account of that battle, Black Hawk Down, reported: that the Somalis on the ground had been trained by Arabs who had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. As Bowden wrote, it was these Arabs who taught that the best way to bring down a helicopter with an RPG was to shoot for the tail rotor (which keeps the helicopter from spinning by countering torque from its main rotor).  

We now know that the Arab trainers of the Somalis were members of al Qaeda.  

In his book on al Qaeda, Holy War, Peter Bergen said of the Mogadishu battle: “A U.S. official told me that the skills involved in shooting down those helicopters were not skills that the Somalis could have learned on their own.” In other words, the training that the United States supplied to Islamists in the Afghan War in the 1980s, when the emphasis was on bringing down Soviet helicopters, is still coming back to haunt the United States today. That training, according to author George Crile, author of Charlie Wilson's War, about the CIA's arming of Islamists during the Afghan War, even included “urban terror, with instruction in car bombings, bicycle bombings, camel bombings, and assassination.” 

One trainer of the Somalis, Egyptian-born Ali Mohamed, was also a veteran of U.S. Special Forces and the CIA. While allegedly still on the U.S. payroll, Mohamed had been recruiting and training Arabs for the U.S.-supported Afghan War, at the al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. This served as the main American recruiting center for the network that after the war became known as al Qaeda.  

In 1993, the year of Mogadishu, Mohamed was picked up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada in the company of an al Qaeda terrorist. Almost certainly he would have been arrested; but Mohamed insisted that the RCMP put in a phone call to his FBI handler. The call quickly secured his release.  

The Toronto daily Globe and Mail later concluded that Mohamed "was working with U.S. counter-terrorist agents, playing a double or triple game, when he was questioned in 1993." Mohamed, who was implicated along with al-Kifah veterans in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was arrested again after the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Escaping trial by a negotiated plea, he was in a U.S. prison as late as 2001. His service to al Qaeda is clear and admitted; it is not clear that he has done anything to benefit the United States.  

It is now over 10 years since the first U.S. Black Hawks were downed by hits on the tail rotor with RPGs. U.S. pilots have developed countermeasures, by quickly cutting off their engines to avoid a fatal spin. But in March 2002 the same technique was used again effectively by al Qaeda and Taliban remnants in Afghanistan. In Operation Anaconda of that month, RPGs, by hitting the tail rotors, incapacitated several U.S. Air Force Apache helicopters.  

It is of course easy in retrospect to challenge the wisdom of having imparted such skills to jihad-waging Islamists. These were extremists who, even at the time, made it clear they despised the West almost as much as they did the Soviet Union. But what remains is the dangerous system whereby small numbers of policy-makers, acting at the very highest levels of secrecy, are able to make ill-considered decisions that will have long-term, tragic effects worldwide.  

Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat and professor of English at UC Berkeley. His most recent book is Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).

The Chairperson of Berkeley’s Commission On Disabilities joyfully hailed Berkeley City Council’s recent decision to authorize five wheelchair-accessible taxis in the city, even though the number was halved from the originally requested 10. 

“We’ve been working on this a long time,” said a smiling and excited Emily Wilcox shortly after Council voted on first reading last week to amend the city’s taxi ordinance to include the new disability-friendly vehicles. 

“We would have liked the whole 120 cabs in Berkeley to be wheelchair-accessible, of course, but this is a start. We’ll use this program to iron out the problems in the system. I’m just glad it’s done.”  

The Commission on Disability first requested permits for wheelchair-accessible taxis in Berkeley in 1999 and was later joined in the effort by the Commission on Aging.  

Mayor Tom Bates called the pilot project “just a toe in the water. If it’s successful, then we can expand it to provide a lot more services for our people.” 

Permitted taxis will be vans equipped with retractable ramps—which will also be available for taxi riders in the city who don’t use wheelchairs. 

People using wheelchairs that can’t be folded can’t use taxis currently operating out of Berkeley and must either use AC Transit buses equipped with motorized lifts or schedule transportation with East Bay Paratransit services, a joint consortium of AC Transit and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. 

However, several Berkeley citizens using the service, including Councilmember Dona Spring, said East Bay Paratransit rides must be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance. “And it’s not reliable even with a reservation,” Spring told Council, stating that her experience has been that “one out of five times, the East Bay Paratransit van doesn’t show up.” 

Council’s decided for the wheelchair taxis after emotional testimony from Disability Commissioner Marissa Shaw, who cited the recent automobile accident death of Berkeley activist Fred Lupke as a reason to approve the project. 

Lupke was struck by a car while riding his motorized wheelchair in the street along Ashby Avenue, trying to maneuver around an uneven stretch of sidewalk. Shaw, who also uses a wheelchair, said that “there have been many other members of [the disabled] community who have been killed or injured in accidents. If the taxi option had been available, their lives could have been saved. This is not only an issue of money. It is an issue of safety, as well.” 

Once the new ordinance receives final approval from City Council, city staff believes they’ll have little trouble getting cab companies to apply. Asked by Councilmember Betty Olds if “companies are clamoring for this,” A. Robin Orden, a city senior management analyst, told Council that staff “recently held a meeting with local companies, and some of them showed interest. A number already have wheelchair-accessible vehicles that are permitted in other Bay Area cities.”  

Disability Commission Chairperson Wilcox said that Daly City and Watsonville currently have wheelchair-accessible taxis.

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The road leading to full inclusion of gay civil marriage in California state law has been marked with detours to the land of “domestic partnership.” Like the recent Massachusetts groundbreaking decision, it is now time for Californians to travel a more direct route to this destination by directly challenging the constitutionality of restrictive state marriage laws.  

In April 2001, 11 gay and lesbian couples in Massachusetts applied for a marriage license. All were denied, and thus began their adventure working to legalize gay marriage.  

On Nov. 19, 2003, they and thousands of their gay and lesbian neighbors arrived at their destination: The state Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying because, in the words of the chief justice, to exclude gays from marriage “is incompatible with the constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law.”  

Similar to Massachusetts, the California State Constitution opens with the following statement: “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”  

Gay marriage is legally consistent with this basic civil tenet, because it recognizes that adult citizens have the autonomy to be able to enter into legal relationships of their choice without state interference or moral obstruction. 

In California, the legal relationship between committed gays and lesbians has been relinquished to the creation of a dazzlingly unequal system that in very few ways parallels marriage: domestic partnership.  

In 1999, California created a state Domestic Partner Registry, required hospitals to extend visitation to domestic partners, and allowed state workers to receive health benefits for their partners. Two years later, in the aftermath of the Knight initiative that passed defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, another law was enacted that allowed twelve new domestic partner rights. Most recently, in what the media erroneously called the “Virtual Gay Marriage Act,” approximately a dozen new rights were bestowed by the Legislature, such as community property ownership protections and bereavement leave for state employees. California cities have embraced this legal definition of domestic partnership by creating similar municipal laws. 

These 27 state domestic partnership rights pale in comparison to the more than 1,000 state and federal rights granted legally married couples. Even the nomenclature “domestic partnership” clearly shows separate legal status from marriage, and highlights the second-class position of committed gay relationships in the eyes of the law. 

Until 1948, it was illegal in the United States for a white person to marry a person of color. The landmark case that originated in Los Angeles when Andrea Perez, who was white, filed a marriage certificate with Sylvester Davis, who was black, changed racist and exclusionary marriage laws, finding them unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court. In this ruling, justices concurred that marriage is a fundamental right of all citizens, and moreover that “Legislation infringing such rights must be based upon more than prejudice and must be free from oppressive discrimination to comply with the constitutional requirements of due process and equal protection of the laws.”  

The road has been paved, both in Massachusetts and California, for gay marriage to be legally recognized. 

Now, it takes brave souls to travel this difficult but rewarding path, like the 11 in Massachusetts or the two back in 1948, to judicially challenge restrictive marriage laws in California. 

Mary Ager 

Domestic partner and Berkeley resident

Berkeley City Council crafted a possible solution to the lingering Public Safety Building antennae tower controversy Tuesday night, holding off threatened legal action by downtown area residents. 

On a motion from Councilmember Dona Spring, Council voted 6-2-1 (Worthington and Wozniak voting no, Shirek abstaining) to investigate putting up a single 160-foot pole to replace the current 160-foot multi-antennae tower. The compromise was passed after councilmembers were assured that the replacement pole would only be studied, with no commitment from Council to do anything more until the city’s present budget crisis is over. Council also required that nothing would be spent for outside consultants on the upcoming study without Council’s specific say-so. 

The study will be undertaken jointly by the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board, Design Review Committee, and Landmarks Preservation Commission. 

“I think that the commissions can evaluate what would have been appropriate for that site like they would have done in the beginning had it gone through the correct process,” said Councilmember Linda Maio. “[Our current fiscal crisis] shouldn’t stop us from doing the right thing when we’re able to do it.” 

The tower was built atop the Public Safety Building on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in 1999 to replace two existing 130-foot antennae. Neighbors immediately dubbed the tower a “monstrosity,” saying it was out of character with the historic downtown neighborhood, never properly noticed to the public in the project’s Environmental Impact Review, and never subjected to the city’s commission evaluation process. They had earlier asked that the tower be torn down and replaced with the original 130-foot pair. 

City public safety officials countered that the larger tower eliminates some of the city’s so-called “communications dead spots” along the edge of the hills and in some West Berkeley neighborhoods where police with hand-held communications devices could not exchange messages with police headquarters under the two-antennae system. 

Some councilmembers had argued that even if the larger tower was improperly erected, the present lean economic times made it impossible for the city to correct the problem by tearing down a “perfectly good communications tower.” 

A report on the ongoing controversy, which has gone through several studies and hearings, filled nearly 400 pages in last Tuesday’s Council packet. 

If the 160-foot monopole antennae proves to have the same communications coverage as the existing 160-foot antennae tower, it would allay the concerns of city public safety officials about cutting back on communications efficiency.  

Speaking for downtown residents, many of whom signed petitions and filed appeals against the tower during the past four years, Berkeley schoolteacher Zoe Kalkanis earlier told City Council that neighbors of the Public Service Building didn’t want to cause the city any financial problems. “We simply want to work with the city in developing the most effective public safety system possible while respecting the character of our residential neighborhood and without defacing our historic civic center,” she said. 

Calling the present tower an “oil derrick,” Kalkanis urged Councilmembers to “submit alternatives to the present tower to the standard review process.” If not, she added, “our attorney informs us we have clear grounds for legal action. It’s not the route we want to pursue. But if the city forecloses other relief, it is the course we’ll be forced to take.”

Now that my first semester of graduate school at San Francisco State is winding down, it’s time to reflect on what I’ve accomplished and learned. Until Sept. 1, I hadn’t been back on a college campus in 32 years. It turns out that I had a lot of catching up to do. 

The first shock was registration. Instead of standing in line in a big gymnasium, I stood in line in cyberspace and got none of my first or second choices in classes. Finally, after weeks of visiting the Graduate Creative Writing office and asking permission from professors half my age if I could get into one of their workshops, I settled into three courses: Beginning Novel, Advanced Short Stories, and the Business of Writing. I had already started a novel so I wasn’t too worried about fulfilling the requirements of that class. 

But the trauma of having it ripped apart by my fellow students was something I wasn’t prepared for. Over and over my classmates told me that my protagonist was a witch, a bitch and worse. They disliked her so much they didn’t want to read further. Their criticism stung on a very personal level. I needed to learn how to write fiction. 

In short story class I learned to compose in the third person. I felt that I had made a giant step forward in my efforts to craft a fictional tale. But when I started reading my classmates’ short stories I realized that there was more to this class than just changing “I” to “Priscilla.” I had to study up on pop culture. I hadn’t a clue what song lyrics or bands my classmates were referring to, what movie scenes they were emulating, what authors they were copying, what drugs their characters were taking. I needed to know about Goth clubs, massage parlors, obscure British rock bands, new slang terms. I needed to read Less Than Zero or I was never going to make it in the class. 

When one of the students handed in a story about a young woman going to college in the 70s I breathed a sigh of relief. Now here was a narrative I’d be able to critique with knowledge and fairness. But he got so many facts wrong about clothes, hair styles, cars, drinking habits and music, I spent my entire critique correcting his historical errors, not his actual writing. It was disconcerting and sobering to learn that he considered me, the perky co-ed sitting beside him, a representative of an ancient and extinct culture. 

When I told a friend I was getting an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State, she looked at me quizzically. “What’s wrong?” I asked. 

Her reply was measured. “Oh nothing,” she said. “It’s just that I was under the impression that questioning one’s gender and sexuality were a prerequisite to the curriculum. Is there anything you want to tell me?”  

“No,” I said. “I’m not questioning my sexuality, but I am wondering about my sanity. I need new jeans and underwear. I’m supposed to wear low cut Levis that expose the top of my thong when I bend forward a fraction of an inch. I need platform shoes and multiple tattoos. It might help if I were to get my nose pierced and dyed my hair blue. Instead of a book bag, I need a large backpack or a suitcase with wheels.”  

“Suzy,” she said. “You don’t need any of those things, but your sanity? Well, that’s something you should have questioned a long time ago.” 

Now I’m busy trying to figure out what classes I’ll take next semester. I’ve studied the MFA curriculum as well as the undergraduate creative writing offerings and the nursing school’s courses in geriatric studies. Just for kicks I did a search to see what the history department was offering. What I found surprised me. There are no courses dedicated to the history of the 60s and 70s. I’m making an appointment with the chairman of the history department today and offering my expertise. These are classes I don’t need to take—these are courses I can teach.

Cyclist Foils Would-be Bandits 

Police arrested two juveniles Saturday after the failed robbery of a bike rider. The victim was riding her bike along the 1800 block of Channing Way at 10:08 p.m. when a youth on a bike chased her down and yanked on her purse, police said. 

The woman clung to her purse, causing her to fall to the pavement where a second youth tried to pull it away. The cyclist held tight, and when she started yelling the two youths and a companion fled the scene. 

Minutes later, police stopped four youths at the intersection of Dwight Way and California Street, and the cyclist made positive identifications of two, who were charged with attempted robbery and released to their parents. 

Restaurant Robbed 

Two men robbed the Popeye’s Restaurant on the 1700 block of San Pablo Avenue Saturday night. Police said one robber wielded a gun, jumped the counter and demanded money from an employee, who handed over the cash from a safe before the bandits fled out the back door. 

Dominos Delivers, Even When Robbed 

A Dominos Pizza delivery man was robbed at gunpoint while walking back to his car after fulfilling an order Saturday evening on the 1500 block of Prince Street. When the thief brandished a pistol and demanded money, the victim complied—then completed his other deliveries before calling police.

Planners Ponder UC Hotel  

Berkeley residents and planning commissioners will get their first crack Tuesday afternoon to quiz UC Berkeley officials about the proposed university hotel and convention center slated for downtown Berkeley. 

UC Senior Planner Kevin Hufferd will make a presentation and field questions about the development that calls for demolishing the Bank of America at the corner of Center Street and Shattuck Avenue to make way for an estimated 200-room hotel with a 15,000-square-foot conference center and 5,000-square-foot bank above one level of underground parking. 

The inaugural meeting of the Planning Commission subcommittee on the new development is set for 2-4 p.m. in the Sitka Spruce Room at 2120 Milvia St. 

—Matthew Artz 

CCC Memories Sought 

The online Civilian Conservation Corps Museum, created to provide information on the New Deal program, wants submissions to their online database. With hundreds of bios, stories and references already online, the museum is looking to augment an already outstanding collection. 

Started as a hobby by John Justin, and dedicated to his father, James, a CCCer, the site is seeking stories about CCC camps, enrollees, staff and technical advisors. 

According to Justin, the site functions as a primary source database. With several hundred biographies already listed it has also become an important resource for CCC veterans interested in tracking down old workmates or reliving a part of their history. 

Stories, along with a name, company number and location should be sent to CCC Collection, P.O. Box 5, Woodbury, NJ 08096 or by e-mail to JFJmuseum@aol.com. 

—Jakob Schiller 

Interns Sought 

California Assembly Majority Leader Wilma Chan is looking for winter student interns to serve in her Oakland office. Positions are available in media relations, community outreach, education and policy. Volunteers work 10 hours a week and should have good writing and word processing skills. 

The deadline for applications in Dec. 15. For information call internship manager Garrett Dempsey at 286-1670 or e-mail your resume and any questions to garrett.dempsey@asm.ca.gov.

In the article “Amy Goodman Praises Berkeley 3 at Savio Awards,” (Daily Planet, Nov. 25-27), featured lecturer Goodman was incorrectly reported to be the recipient of the Mario Savio Free Speech Award. 

The article “Newest Shelter Helps The Young Homeless” (Daily Planet, Nov. 28-Dec.1) incorrectly reported that the Army Base shelter in West Oakland has a reserved area for families.

It’s that time of year again—Fall, when there’s visible evidence on the streets of a major divide in viewpoints between Berkeley residents. I’m talking about the possibly irreconcilable differences between Berkeley’s Greens and Reds. 

These aren’t political differences, however. In this context, Green and Red are not political ideologies but, rather, the colors of street trees at this time of year. 

You see, Berkeley has a vocal contingent of residents who believe that “Fall color” is a necessary element of the autumn season and should be constantly increased. They’re the Reds. 

On the other hand, there are those who believe that Berkeley’s natural color this time of year is, and should primarily remain, green. 

Let me declare my allegiance right off. In terms of the Fall color question I’m generally a Green, with a tinge of Red. 

I came to this viewpoint gradually after multiple conversations along these lines. 

Me: “Berkeley should have more street trees.” 

Red: “Yes, I agree. But they must be trees that provide Fall color.” 

Me: “And why is that, exactly?” 

Red: “Because in the Fall you need Fall color.” 

Me: “Why?” 

Red: “Because.” 

In these exchanges that often come to resemble kindergarten conversations, I’ve come to this conclusion about the motivation of Berkeley’s Reds: They have an idealized view of Fall as it’s experienced in the American Northeast and they want it here, too. 

It’s no surprise. Berkeley has lots of expatriate New Yorkers and New Englanders, and while some of them have adjusted to the more salubrious Bay Area climate, others pine (or should I say, maple?) for visible reminders of home. 

It’s funny, though, but I don’t hear similar arguments being offered for the importation of other memorable reminders of Northeastern weather—slush and snow, ice storms, humid summers, or swarms of biting flies and midges, for instance. No, it’s just Fall color some people want. 

I don’t mind some Fall color, but too much of it is wrong for Berkeley. 

Real Fall color often requires sharply dropping temperatures and frosts. Berkeley just doesn’t have those on a reliably regular basis. And the trees often show it.  

Take the gloriously named Scarlet Oak, for instance. It sounds red, doesn’t it? Really red. Wouldn’t you be tempted to buy one just because of the name? In reality, in most places I’ve seen it planted in Berkeley, it’s not at all red in the Fall. It’s more like dead. As December approaches the leaves turn a lovely fawn brown and mournfully hang on the tree until some mid-winter storm finally shakes them off. 

I have no doubt that Scarlet Oaks blaze vivid red or purple in sharper climates, but here they can be a profound disappointment as far as Fall color is concerned. As are elms, sycamores, and other trees of their ilk, with leaves that turn, at best, a feeble blotchy yellow or tan as Fall approaches.  

Another reason why too much Fall color is undesirable in Berkeley has to do with the essential fact that Fall color means leaves are dropped. Beyond the clogged gutters and endless raking that result, the trees are barren during the winter. And that’s a disappointment hereabouts in late January or February when we’ve had a few months of chilly, wet, weather and it’s important to see some green, instead of just gray branches mournfully dripping rain.  

You may have already noticed that on some of Berkeley’s major commercial streets, including Shattuck Avenue, replacing evergreen street trees with deciduous species has been the trend in recent years. Take a look later this winter, and consider whether trees that are green all year might not have made more sense. 

That’s the way nature made Berkeley. Two of Berkeley’s keystone native tree species—live oaks and bay laurels—are green year round. Of the larger trees that once flourished in Berkeley’s natural landscape only buckeyes entirely drop their leaves, and that usually happens in the dry late summer, well before conventional autumn weather arrives.  

And remember that the Berkeley Hills themselves, come Fall, turn green. Autumn in the Bay Area is when the rains return bringing the quickening and reinvigoration of much of the landscape, not the beginning of annual dormancy. 

Another problem with too much emphasis on Fall color is that it reduces the opportunity for one of the benefits Berkeley’s climate offers that the Northeast can’t—winter flowering trees. A fair number of evergreen trees thrive in Berkeley and bloom in the late winter or early spring, which can come as early as February in some years. Eucalyptus, acacia and melalucas are all good examples.  

In contrast, there’s no major “Fall color” tree commonly planted in Berkeley that also bursts forth with blossoms right when we most need them, in the first three or four months of the year. 

This is not to say I’m against some Fall color on Berkeley’s streets and in her front yards. Liquid ambers and gingkos are, from my perspective, welcome stalwarts of Berkeley’s color scene, reliably providing brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows at this time of year. Some smaller trees such as Japanese maples also provide beautiful color. 

These are great on some streets and as accents, but they and their gaudy cousins shouldn’t be everywhere. Berkeley’s not Boston. Color me winter green. Most of the time, at least.  

“Let your hair down, roll your sleeves up and let’s praise the Lord,” Rev. Allen L. Williams told his congregation at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church. Williams had a special reason to rejoice. Last Sunday, he and churchgoers celebrated St. Paul’s 70th anniversary in Berkeley.  

“It’s wonderful to have history when you can look back and see what God has done,” Williams said to the Sunday morning worshipers. 

The African American Episcopal Church has 7,000 congregations in more than 30 nations, according to the AME Church website, but only one site in Berkeley—St. Paul. It’s a distinction that is a source of pride to many of its members.  

Today St. Paul has almost 1,000 members who gather to worship in its $1.5 million sanctuary. But 70 years ago St. Paul was a very different place. Called the Berkeley Mission, the church began with just five members in a modest building at the corner of Grove and Russell streets.  

By 1935 the church boasted more than 70 members and the following year moved into a larger building at 1630 Fairview St. In 1937, the church received official incorporation from the African Methodist Episcopal church and became St. Paul.  

In 1953, St. Paul moved to its current location at 2024 Ashby Ave. and in 1995 a wing was added to the church to accommodate a growing congregation and multiple community outreach programs. 

Many of St. Paul’s members, like Sarah Robinson, have been a part of the church for decades. Robinson has been a member for 29 years. She said that while St. Paul has seen different pastors and different members, different locations and different music over the years, no matter how St. Paul changes, she’s not going anywhere.  

“I am dedicated to this church,” Robinson said. “This is my church.” 

Doris Tabor, 85, echoed Robinson’s sentiment. Tabor has been a member of St. Paul since 1943, and is known around the church as “Granma Tabor.” In her Ward Street home in Berkeley, Tabor has boxes of old pictures and yellowed programs from services that date back as far as the 1960s.  

Tabor said she has never once thought about leaving St. Paul. “It has been a haven,” she said, adding that St. Paul gives people a chance to worship God through self-expression. 

At St. Paul, self-expression often means singing and dancing. On the church’s 70th anniversary, St. Paul members worshiped God throughout the Sunday service with music and movement. 

“This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it,” the choir sang as churchgoers stood to their feet and clapped their hands. Dancers moved through the aisles dressed in black leotards and long skirts with their waists wrapped in Afro-centric fabric. 

But St. Paul members are quick to make it known that their church is not just about singing, dancing and preaching on Sunday mornings. Doris Floyd, Tabor’s daughter and a lifelong member of St. Paul, said they are proud of their church mostly because of what it has meant to the Berkeley community. 

“We can’t just do our work within our walls,” said Floyd, who works as the church’s public-relations officer. “Patting ourselves on the back about what we did in the church just won’t do it.” 

In a proclamation of recognition that Berkeley gave to the church on Sunday, city officials praised St. Paul for feeding 5,000 people each year through its Tuesday Community Feeding Program, a service that gives free meals to the hungry and homeless in Berkeley.  

“Part of the AME creed is to feed the hungry,” Floyd said. 

According to the official website for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the AME church was started in the late 1700s. The first congregation, Bethel, was started in Philadelphia and led by a former slave, pastor Richard Allen, from Delaware. Allen and others began organizing the church after officials at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church didn’t allow blacks to participate in services.  

The AME Church has about two million members today. Some of the AME Church’s missions include “feeding the hungry,” “clothing the naked” and “housing the homeless.” 

Floyd said St. Paul is also committed to helping youth in the community. For example, in the late 1980s, after some members noticed that some black students in Berkeley city schools were not performing well on standardized tests, St. Paul developed a Saturday school program that offered free tutoring to students in various subjects, including mathematics and language.  

“Our kids were slipping through the cracks,” Floyd said. The program continued through the 1990s until the church began to develop other education programs like the Academic Center for Excellence. This program, which St. Paul runs through a partnership with the University of California Office of the President, aims to prepare high school students for college, Floyd said. 

“Our youth are our most precious commodity,” Floyd said. 

Floyd said St. Paul is even taking on issues that have traditionally been considered taboo in the church. St. Paul has a Teen Pregnancy Prevention/Teen Parenting program that works on preventing teen pregnancy by teaching abstinence through health education and programs that seek to build self-esteem. The program also offers help for teen parents.  

“The church is not there to condemn people for whatever choices they make,” Floyd said. “But we are here to be an education center.” 

St. Paul also has an HIV/AIDS Awareness program and hosts a Narcotics Anonymous group that meets every Saturday, Floyd said.  

“In St. Paul there has always been a willing spirit to help,” Floyd said. She added, however, that St. Paul’s commitment to outreach is one that has evolved over time.  

“We’ve moved more toward meeting the needs of the community,” she said. And to meet those needs, Floyd said, St. Paul has had to become more contemporary in various areas—even down to the type of music played during Sunday morning services. Floyd said services at St. Paul have traditionally been more quiet and subdued. But now, St. Paul has a music ministry that has musicians who play everything from the flute and saxophone to drums and bass. 

Granma Tabor said sometimes she wishes the choir would sing more traditional hymns like the ones she grew up singing. “But everybody wants to move,” she said of the church’s younger generation of members, who want more upbeat music. “I have to remind myself not to be jealous just because I can’t move,” she said laughing. 

Tabor said she doesn’t really mind the changes, because she knows they’re necessary to keep the church alive.  

One change that Tabor is excited about is St. Paul’s newly appointed pastor. Tabor got up extra early on the morning of Nov. 16, the day Williams gave his first sermon as St. Paul’s pastor. 

“My body felt like it was a cushion and my aches felt they was pins,” she said. “But I just wanted to be there when Reverend Williams came back for his first service.” 

Becoming pastor of St. Paul was a sort of homecoming for Williams, who attended the church when he was a young boy while his father, E.P. Williams, served as pastor in the early 1960s. 

Tabor said she’s delighted to see Williams follow in his father’s footsteps and feels that with his return, great and new things are going to happen in the church.  

Last week Williams was busy visiting the sick, preparing for the church’s annual revival and anniversary celebration and planning a trip back to Kansas City to complete his move from that city to Berkeley. Yet he still managed to kick off St. Paul’s new radio ministry. The Abundant Light Radio Ministry will broadcast on KYDA 1190 AM on Saturdays from 10:30 to 11 a.m.  

Williams said he hopes listeners will be inspired by the Saturday broadcast and motivated to visit St. Paul the following morning.  

Floyd said this is just one example of how Williams plans to increase St. Paul’s community outreach. She said he also plans to develop a program to help find permanent housing for the homeless individuals that the church serves.  

On Sunday, Williams asked his congregation to pray for him and his family and be patient as he gets settled in his new role. He said he might do some things differently from former pastors such as the order of service. Williams and his congregation seemed to stumble through parts of the service, unsure if the collection of tithes and offering was to come before church announcements or not.  

“Will you bear with me?” Williams asked. “Yes,” the congregations answered in unison.  

“I promise it won’t be uncomfortable for long,” Williams said and then urged the crowd to be excited about what the future holds.  

“I believe,” Williams said to Sunday’s crowd “that the best is yet to come.”

FRIDAY, NOV. 28 

Thanksgiving Holiday - City Offices are Closed 

Bay Area Women in Black will hold a silent walking vigil to supposrt the new Palestine-Israel Geneva Peace Initiative and to protest US occupation of Iraq. Assemble at 11:50 a.m. at the Bank of America across from the Powell Street BART. Please wear black. Everyone welcome. bayareawomeninblack@earthlink.net 

Bead Artistry: An Exploration of Creativity Nov 28 to 30. Off-loom beading art objects including jewelry sale by featured artists. Berkeley Art Center. 644-6893 www.berkeleyartcenter.org  

Oakland Glass Artists Holiday Exhibit and Sale, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 2680 Union St. Oakland. Also on Sat. and Sun. 832-8380.  

Holiday Kwanzaa and Christmas Gift Show to encourage patronage of black businesses at the Oakland Marriott Convention Center, 550-10th Street, Oakland, Fri. - Sun. 1 to 8 p.m. Admission $5, children free. 

SATURDAY, NOV. 29 

Women of Color Arts and Crafts Fair, featuring paintings, clay sculptures, textiles, jewelry, quilts, decorative functional furniture and wearable art. From 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios every weekend through Dec. 21. 100 professional artists and craftspeople at studio buildings in Berkeley open their doors to the public. Crafts include blown glass, functional and decorative ceramics, ornaments, Menorahs, clocks, lamps and lighting, painted and custom furniture, garden art, bird houses, egg dioramas, floor cloths, clothing, textiles, jewelry, sculpture, photography, paintings, original prints, and other works on paper. All work is handcrafted, many pieces are one-of-a-kind. A self-guided tour presents opportunities to meet the artists and see working craft studios. For a map of participating studios call 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Soapmaking Do you know where soap comes from? Learn how to make all natural soap from olive, coconut, and palm oils. For ages 12 and older, registration required. From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost $10, $12 for non-residents. 525-2233. 

Strawberry Creek Work Party We'll be planting and putting down erosion control material on the creek bank. We also have a small shady spot that needs the ivy removed and the soil prepared for a small native garden that we'll plant in December. Meet at the Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison at 10 a.m. Please bring sturdy shoes and water, and gloves, if you have them. Everything else will be supplied.  

Shamanic Journeying Meditation, from noon to 1:30 p.m. Free. For information and directions call 525-1272. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 30 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios For a map of participating studios call 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

She Made Holiday Arts Bazaar, with a silent auction to benefit the Women’s Daytime Drop-in Center, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Pro Arts Gallery, 461 Ninth St. Oakland. www.she-made.com 

Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters 10th Anniversary, with food refreshments, music and more. From 4 to 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Walk Around Middle Pond” with Aquatic Park EGRET’s rangers to see habitat restoration work. Meet at 10 a.m. at the Cabin on the eastern shore of Middle Pond at the northern terminus of Shellmound Street. 549-0818. egret@lmi.net 

Prisoner Visitation and Support, an introduction to the interfaith independent visitation program at 12:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2152 Vine St. at the corner of Walnut. For more information call Arden Pierce at 650-494-1631. 

“The Witness,” a one-woman play which follows the journey of a young woman onto the streets, followed by a discussion of Faithful Fools Ministry, at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donations suggested to benefit Fools Street Ministry. 528-5403. 

“Pills Profits and Protest: Voices of Global AIDS Activists” a documentary, followed by discussion at 3 p.m. at Parkway Theater, 1834 Park St. A World AIDS Day benefit for Health GAP, ACT UP East bay and Action=Life Film Collective. Donation $8. For information call 841-4339. www.pillsprofitsprotest.org 

Tibetan Buddhism, Abbe Blum on “Personal Transitions as New Beginnings” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, DEC. 1 

ACCI Gallery, Holiday Arts and Crafts Show Gallery hours are Mon. - Thurs. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527.  

www.accigallery.com 

Tea at Four Enjoy some of the best teas from the other side of the Pacific Rim and learn their cultural and natural history. Then take a walk to see wintering birds and dormant ladybeetles, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for residents, $7 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. 

“Rally for Africa's Right to Health” at the Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay Street, from noon to 1:00 p.m. Demand that President Bush and Congress allocate the $15 billion for AIDS services in Africa that the president promised in his January 2003 State of the Union Address. The event will feature speakers, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and the display of 300 pairs of shoes to symbolize the Africans who will die of AIDS-related causes in the hour that the rally takes place. For more information, call 527-4099. 

Report Back From Occupied Palestine with John Ross at 7 p.m. at Fellowship Hall, Cedar and Bonita. Sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Berkeley Biodiesel Cooperative Orientation at 7:30 p.m. Call for location 594-4000, ext. 777. berkeleybiodiesel@ 

yahoo.com 

TUESDAY, DEC. 2 

Writer’s Room needs volunteers to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. Volunteer trainings will take place from 7 to 9:30 p.m. tonight, and also on Dec. 9. please call Terry, 849-4134 or email Bloomburgh@sbcglobal.net to sign up.  

Holiday Plant Sale from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-8155. www.mip.berkeley. 

edu/garden  

The Science Behind Genetically Engineered Plants A lecture with Dr. Andrew Gutierrez, Professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, Graduate Theological Union, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2560. www.gtu.edu/studentgroups/trees 

Sustainable Development in Cuba Slide show and discussion based on ECOTECTURE Editor Philip S. Wenz’s trip to Cuba, at 7 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Donation $10, no one turned away for lack of funds. Benefits the Building Education Center and Global Exchange Cuba Program. 525-7610.  

Dine Out for AIDS Advocacy at Unicorn Pan Asian Cuisine, 2533 Telegraph Ave. from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Benefits HealthGAP and ACT UP East Bay. Wheelchair accessible. Reservations are suggested. 841-4339. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke Seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Jackie Hetman will show slides of Northern Sweden and Lapland at 11 a.m. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 3 

Zapatistas Turn 20, a benefit celebration for the Chiapas Support Committee, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10 in advance, $12 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Meet Up for Howard Dean at three Berkeley locations: Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave.; Raleigh’s (Generation Dean youth meeting), 2438 Telegraph Ave.; Sweet Basil Thai Restaurant, 1736 Solano Ave. Free. Wheelchair accessible. 843-8724. 

Dick Penniman’s Avalanche Safety, slide lecture and video presentation on the fundamentals: avalanche phenomena, meteorology, snowpack formation, route selection, stability evaluation and rescue techniques, at 6 p.m. at at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $20. 527-4140. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 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 848-0237.  

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in to file complaints, assistance available. 548-0425. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Hide-A-Way Café, 6430 Telegraph Ave. For information call Fred Garvey, 925-682-1111, ext. 164. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 4 

“In Conversation with Political Authors: In Search of Weapons of Mass Deception” Panelists include Ishmael Reed, Iris Chang, Daniel Ellsberg and Dori Maynard, moderated by Normon Solomon. At 6 p.m. at Twist Restaurant, 495 10th St. Oakland. Tickets are $35, dinner and panel, $10 panel only, available from 525-3948. www.penoakland.org 

Read the Night Sky! Beginners guide to finding planets and constellations using an astrological calendar, at 7:30 p.m. at Ancient Ways, 4075 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. Cost is $5-10. 658-9178.  

Snowcamping, an introduction at 7 pm, at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Berkeley Venture Crew 24 Open House We are an inclusive Scout group for high schoolers-college boys and girls. Come see our scuba diving, backpacking or camping pictures, at 7:30 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 525-6058. 

9/11 Truth Alliance Forum at 7 p.m. at The Fellowship of Humanity, 390 27th St., Oakland. 925-798-3698. 

UC Botanical Garden Docent Training at 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee and registration required. Call 643-1924 to sign up! 

Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM holds public meetings for all interested people first and third Thursdays, 7 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 595-0190. 

St. John's Prime Timers Tap Dancing class meets on Thursday mornings at 9:15 a.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church at 2717 Garber St. Class is free and open to anyone over 50. 527-0167. 

ONGOING 

We Give Thanks Month, Berkeley restaurants, Bar-Ristorante Raphael, Cold Stone Creamery, Downtown, La Note, Semi-Freddi’s, Skates, and Spengers will donate a portion of their proceeds to Berkeley Food and Housing Project during the month of November. 

Holiday Food Drive Help the Alameda County Community Food Bank help people in need. Offer to run a food drive, or donate healthy nonperishable food at Safeway stores, Berkeley Bowl and Bay Street Emeryville. For more information call 834-3663. www.accfb.org 

City of Berkeley Commissioners Sought If you are interested in serving on a commission, applications can be downloaded from www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/general.htm#applications or contact the City Clerk, 981-6900.  

The Online Civilian Conservation Corps Museum is seeking the stories about the CCCs, CCC Enrollees, Staff, or Technical Advisors for publication to this online historical resource. If you would like to participate please send your stories, with name company number and location if known, to CCC Collection, PO Box 5, Woodbury NJ 08096 or email to JFJmuseum@aol.com 

Personnel Commissioner Sought for Alameda County School Board Responsibilities include administration of the Merit System. Meetings once a month. Applications must be received by Nov. 28. For details please contact Alameda County Office of Education, 670-7703. 

Free Smoke Detectors for City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Admin. Office located at 2100 MLK, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Deborah Chernin, 981-6715. ww.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/parksandrecreation 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/peaceandjustice 

Youth Commission meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 6:30 p.m., at 1730 Oregon St. Philip Harper-Cotton, 981-6670. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/youth 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/zoning   

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Dec. 3, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruby Primus, 981-5106. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/women 

Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., Dec. 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. David Orth, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/firesafety 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5410. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/housing 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Dec. 4, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks

FRIDAY, NOV. 28 

CHILDREN 

Splash Circus, “In the Magical Forest” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

THEATER 

Wilde Irish Productions, “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett, opens at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $25, with champagne reception. Runs through Dec. 21. 644-9940. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Tokyo Story” at 3:30, 6:40, and 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The People with Lz Phoenix, Sol Americano and Dr. Masseuse at 9 p.m. at Ashkenez. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Grown and Tremolo perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com  

Jamie Davis at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Diana Darby and Sonya Hunter at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Broun Fellinis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Reilly and Maloney, contemporary folk duo at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50 in advance, $19.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

S.T.F.U., The Lewd, Words That Burn, Crop Knox, Eskapo at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

3rd Rail, Fellatia, Jynx at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Sterling Dervish at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 29 

CHILDREN  

Dan Zanes & Friends perform roots music for the entire family at 2 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $15-$20 and are available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu  

Splash Circus, “In the Magical Forest” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Late Spring”at 2 and 7 p.m. and “An Autumn Afternoon” at 4:10 and 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

A Cornucopia Concert for Thanksgiving, 17th century music, performed on period instruments by Tekla Cunningham and Anthony Martin, baroque violins, and Jonathan Shane Davis, harpsichord, at 8 p.m. at MusicSources, 1000 The Alameda, at Marin. Tickets are $10-$15. 528-1685. 

Chamber Music Sundaes, San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends perform Beethoven Trio, Debussy and Beethoven Cello Sonatas, Vaughan Williams Quintet at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $7-$18 at the door. 415-584-5946. 

Early Music with Healing Muses Eileen Hadidian, recorder and flute, Maureen Brennan, celtic harp, Natalie Cox, renaissance and celtic harp, with Dan Reiter, cello, at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Cost is $15-$18. 524-5661. 

Carl McDonald with Blazing Fire Band, the Caribbean Groovers Steel Band, with special guests Mr. Major-P and Razor Blade at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Moore Brothers and Golden Shoulders at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Geoff Muldaur with Fritz Richmond and Tony Marcus, American roots, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freight-andsalvage.org 

“Jah Music for the People” at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Frank Johnson at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Embrace the End, Animosity, 30 Years War, Killing the Dream at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Corner Pocket at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

KGB, Solemite, Limbeck at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SUNDAY, NOV. 30 

CHILDREN 

Dan Zanes & Friends at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. See listing for Nov. 29. 

Princess Moxie, puppetry and storytelling from 3 to 4 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Adults $4, children $3, children under 1, free. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Splash Circus, “In the Magical Forest” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Tokyo Story”at 2 p.m. and “I Was Born, But ...” at 5:30 p.m. and “Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?” at 7:25 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 2 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

A Cornucopia Concert for Thanksgiving, See listing for Nov. 29. 

Palenque, traditonal Cuban Son dance music at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Bobs, a cappella, with special guest Bob Malone, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50 in advance, $19.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Small Brown Bike, The Orange Band, Scissorhands at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Soundwave Studios Acoustic Showcase at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $3. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, DEC. 1 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Bay Area Blues: Blues Musicians on Site” a digital photography display at Berkeley Public Library opens today and runs through the month of December. 981-6100. 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” in collaboration with Pacific Mozart Ensemble at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $22-$24. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Last Word Poetry Series presents Garrett Murphy and Marianne Robinson from 7 to 9 p.m. at Pegasus Bookstore, 2349 Shattuck Ave.  

Poetry Express, featuring Diana Quartermaine, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Steve Gannon Band and Mz. Dee at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $4. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

TUESDAY, DEC. 2 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” See listing for Dec. 1. 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: “Superior Elegy” and “Sneak Preview” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why” with editor Larry Habegger, tales of trouble on the road at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave at Rose. 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Chamber Performances, Wolford-Rosenblum, saxophone/piano duo at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 525-5211. www. 

berkeleychamberperform.org  

“Edessa and Brass Menagerie” at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson with Joe Kaloyanides Graziosi at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 3  

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” See listing for Dec. 1. 

FILM 

Standby: No Technical Difficulties: Program 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

June Jordan’s Poetry for the People annual exibition of student poets at 7 p.m. in the Lipman Room, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-2743. 

“Images of Mary in Art: The Black Madonna” with China Galland, director of the Images of Divinity project at the Center for Arts, Education and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, at 7:30 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. 848-1755. 

Loic Wacquant introduces “Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer” at 5:30 p.m. University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Noon Concert with the University Chorus at International House, at the corner of Bancroft and Piedmont Aves. Admission is free. 642-4864. 

Community Drumming Circle from 7 to 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5-$7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Pris, Go Ahead perform Indy Rock and Rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $4.  

848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Nicole and the Soul Sisters at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Vince Wallace Jazz Machine at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 4 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” See listing for Dec. 1. 

FILM 

“Effaced” and “Jenin, Jenin” at 7 p.m. at 340 Stephens Hall. Sponsored by Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 642-8208. 

“Voices From the Edge” and “The Favela Goes to the World Social Forum” and discussion with Brazilian filmmakers Daniela Broitman and Fernando Salis, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Woman of Tokyo” at 5:30 p.m. “Walk Cheerfully” at 7 p.m. and “I flunked, But...” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems at 12:10 p.m. in the Morrison Library in Doe Library, UC Campus, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Hass. After hosting Lunch Poems for eight years, Professor Hass has finally been prevailed upon to read his own poems. Admission is free. 642-0137.  

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 12:15 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“The Call to Hawaii: A Wellness Vacation Guidebook” with Betsy and Laura Crites, co-authors, at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave at Rose. 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Concert for Dignity and clothing drive to benefit Operation Dignity and their homeless services at 7:30 p.m. at iMusicast, 5429 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. www.operationdignity. 

org/benefitconcert.htm  

“Maybe Monday” improvisational response to Helen Mirra’s MATRIX exhibition at 6 p.m. in Gallery 1, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Daniel Mille at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Wendy DeRosa and guests at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Good for Cows and Karla Kihlstedt perform modern jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Ellis Paul and Vance Gilbert, New England singer-songwriters, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Touch of Soul at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

George Pederson and His Pretty Good Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Bizar Bazaar at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 5 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Rachel Rudy, at 8 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater. Tickets are $10, $5 with student i.d. 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” See listing for Dec. 1. 

“Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard, performed by Maybeck High School, at 7 p.m. at Oakland Box Theater, 1928 Telegraph Ave. between 19th and 20th Sts. Tickets are adults $15 in advance, $18 at the door, students $7 in advance, $10 at door. 841-8489.  

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, at 2nd St. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available from www.oaklandopera.org 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “An Inn at Tokyo” at 7:30 p.m. and “The Only Son” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joe Sacco introduces his graphic novel, “The Fixer,” about war correspondents at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Bach Society, “Christmas Vespers” by Francisco Guerrero, at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$25, and are available from 415-262-0272 or tickets@calbach.org 

Sweet Honey in the Rock, female a cappella group, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 848-5698. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley City Ballet, “The Nutcracker,” at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus. Tickets are $25. 642-9988 www.berkeleycityballet.org 

Moodswing Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Simon Stinger, Castles in Spain, Hazerfan at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

JP Orbit at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Jucifer, Bottles and Skulls, Race Bannon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

“A Context for Peace” new work from Bay Area musicians, authors and poets at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Crater, modern jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Collective Amnesia at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Peter Case, roots music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sterling Dervish at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Grand Unified Theory, Forget the Jonses, The Apples, The Silence, Static Thought 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. 

Savant Guard at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Berkeley is home to many unique small businesses started by people from all over the world who came to California, liked what they found, and stayed. We’re an international city, and many of our retail stores mirror the countries their owners came from. 

Jutta’s Flowers, on Claremont Avenue next to the Star Grocery, is a perfect example of how the process works. Jutta Singh first came to Delano, California, as a high school exchange student from Berlin. She was thrilled by the wide open spaces there, quite different from Europe, and resolved to come back sometime and make her home here. 

Back in Berlin, she got the dream job of showing international visitors her city’s many cultural attractions, but she never forgot California. When she returned for a high school reunion, she met the man who became her husband and eventually became a Californian herself. The flower shop she started will celebrate its twentieth anniversary on Dec. 9. 

Especially in the pre-Christmas season, the store reminds people who’ve been to Germany of that country’s elegant florists, which carry not only cut flowers but plants, pots, and many small entertaining decorative objects. Jutta dedicates a whole room to her extensive holiday offerings, including the wonderful blown glass animals on her Christmas tree, from which part of the proceeds go to the National Wildlife Federation. 

From Germany, there’s a full orchestra of tiny angels playing musical instruments of all kinds, reflecting Jutta’s passion for classical music.  

She and her associate Todd Itokazu construct extraordinary bouquets for presentation to soloists who appear with the Berkeley Symphony. Maestro Kent Nagano frequently programs unusual compositions by modern composers, often world premieres. If Jutta’s not familiar with the composer’s work, she reads up on it and listens to it, so that the bouquet can symbolize what the piece expresses. For example, a bouquet for a piece about Bluebeard featured twisting branches and flowers representing dangling locks and chains. For an organ soloist, she built an organ out of plant “horse tails” with a flower called Buddha’s fingers reaching inside. Jutta emphasizes that her artistic floral tributes are based on deep emotional appreciation of the music. “Unless I feel it, I can’t connect with it,” she says.  

Jutta’s Flowers. 3078 Claremont Avenue. 547-2293.

It’s happened more than once, but I’m still not used to it: looking down from my dining room window as a Cooper’s hawk flies up the driveway. The driveway seems to be a transit corridor, part of the bird’s (or birds’) hunting territory. The effect—a feathered projectile hurtling past the kitchen window—would be even more startling from ground level. 

We think of hawks as creatures of the wild, but some have adapted handily to city life. Urban areas can serve as breeding or wintering grounds for them. 

I first discovered the local pair of Coopers nesting in a venerable elm a few blocks away. I was concerned for them when the elm succumbed to disease and was taken down, but the hawks relocated to a sweetgum around the corner. I’ve also had a plausible report of a pair nesting south of the UC campus, and others may be around. Their nests are easy to spot in winter, until the trees leaf out and give the hawks some privacy while they incubate their eggs and rear their young. But you can still watch the traffic in and out of the nest tree, and listen to the adults’ nasal “Kek kek kek” calls. 

Cooper’s hawks are the midsize model of the trio of North American accipiters, about crow-sized; smaller than the northern goshawk, larger than the oddly-named sharp-shinned hawk. The Cooper in question was a 19th century naturalist, co-founder of the New York Lyceum of Natural History. To traditionalist falconers, these three species would be true hawks (as opposed to falcons, buzzards, harriers). They’re specialist bird hunters, built for close pursuit of mobile targets in woods and thickets: long-tailed, short-winged avian fighter planes. 

Splendid birds that they are, I’ll admit to some ambivalence about having Cooper’s hawks in the neighborhood. Since they prey on other birds, I’d wondered if I was in fact provisioning a hawk-feeder when I put out seed for the songbirds in my yard. Coopers can handle sizable prey like pheasants, crows, teal, even smaller raptors. But wouldn’t they also take advantage of the smorgasbord of finches and sparrows attracted to bird feeders? 

A recent study by biologists Timothy Roth III and Steven Lima, published in The Condor (the journal of the Cooper Ornithological Society, a group named for the son of the hawk’s namesake) suggests the story is more complicated than that. Roth and Lima set out to document what kind of prey Cooper’s hawks hunted in an urban setting, and how they went about it. Their study area was Terre Haute, Indiana, which, dissimilar as it may be to Berkeley in most respects, does sustain its own population of wintering hawks. 

Roth and Lima live-trapped 13 Cooper’s hawks during two successive seasons and rigged them with radio transmitters. The devices had position-sensitive mercury switches that signaled whether a hawk was perched in its normal upright posture, waiting for something to happen, or in a horizontal pose as it plucked and ate whatever it had killed. The researchers shadowed the hawks daily until early spring and reported that the birds “were unperturbed by the presence of humans in vehicles or other urban disturbances.” 

The hawks turned out to have two main hunting modes. Sometimes they waited in ambush until a smaller bird got within close striking range. But they also used what Roth and Lima called “contour-hugging attacks,” flying a few feet above the ground and using buildings, fences, and vegetation to cover their approach to stationary prey, with a final burst of speed as they came in for the kill. It sounds like this is what’s going on with the hawks that use my driveway. 

The birds in the study often lost visual contact with their targets during these broken-field runs, but seemed to know where they were headed. And the chase was not always triggered by sight of the quarry: Four hawks staged surprise attacks on empty feeders, which must have been productive in the past. It appears the hawks were using fairly sophisticated mental maps to maneuver through their territories. 

As for what they were after, the Terre Haute Cooper’s hawks concentrated on starlings, mourning doves, and feral pigeons. These three species constituted 95 percent of the hawks’ targets. Although ubiquitous, house sparrows tended to be ignored. Sex has some effect on prey size, though. As in many raptors, female Coopers are larger than males. The one male in the study did go after the occasional sparrow, but seemed to prefer bigger game. Roth and Lima suggest that the small fry were just not worth the effort it would have taken to catch them. 

That’s the Cooper’s, though. Its smaller cousin, the sharpshin, takes proportionally smaller prey, and is a definite threat to sparrow-sized birds. But Coopers seem to exclude sharpshins from their hunting territories; only a few sharpies were observed in the Terre Haute study, most at the periphery of the Coopers’ turf. This seems prudent on the smaller hawks’ part. Coopers, remember, will prey on other raptors. To a big female Cooper’s, a small male sharpshin would look a lot like lunch. 

So if you’re within the cruising range of one of Berkeley’s resident Cooper’s hawks, you should be able to keep stocking your feeders without too much guilt about turning your backyard finches into hawk bait. In an indirect way, the small birds may actually benefit from the predators’ presence.

UC Berkeley’s planned downtown hotel and convention center is part of a growing trend for UC campuses that lure cities with the promise of big tax revenues. But in at least one case, university ownership delivered exactly the opposite. 

The trend itself is clear. In Davis, a similar development is in the planning stages, while in San Diego a new hotel and convention center will open next year and in Santa Cruz the university assumed control of a Holiday Inn two years ago. 

The projects arise from the desire of the universities to profit from their steady streams of visitors and the demand for conference space and the hunger for cities to snare room tax money from university land usually exempt from local tax rolls. 

A downtown Berkeley hotel offers the city’s cash-starved government the chance for lucrative 12 percent transient occupancy tax revenues, which Mayor Tom Bates estimates could run as high as $1 million annually. The city also stands to collect possessory interest taxes—a poorer sister to the property taxes that the university, as a state entity, doesn’t have to pay.  

According to the university’s own projections of an average room price of $130 and a 65 percent occupancy rate in 2006, the hotel would generate roughly $730,080 in hotel taxes its first year of operation. 

Other UC developments offer cities the same revenue streams, but the money doesn’t necessarily materialize. 

Santa Cruz offers the worst case scenario, where UCSC signed a long-term lease on a Holiday Inn Hotel. But instead of renting rooms to visiting parents or alums, the university turned most of it into student housing. Since the students live there for more than 30 consecutive days, they aren’t considered transients and the city doesn’t collect the taxes they received from guests during the building’s Holiday Inn-carnation. 

“We’ve certainly lost about $200,000 in revenue,” said Santa Cruz Finance Director David Culver, adding that the hotel brought in as much as $500,000 in taxes for the city in 2000 at the tail end of the economic boom. 

After prolonged negotiations, UCSC eventually paid the city $75,000 to mitigate the lost revenues, he added. 

But Davis City Manager Jim Antonen complimented UC for addressing his city’s concerns. Since the planned hotel will be just outside city limits on county land, the university agreed to downsize the project to lessen the potential loss to Davis’ hotel tax revenues. Davis and Yolo County officials are currently negotiating a split of hotel tax revenue from the project. 

UC Berkeley Senior Planner and Project Manager Kevin Hufferd said the Santa Cruz scenario wouldn’t happen in Berkeley. “We want this to serve the short-term visiting needs of scholars and family members,” he said. 

The Berkeley development would replace the Bank of America branch at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street with a 200-room hotel/convention center, including 15,000 square feet of conference space, a 5,000-square-foot bank and underground parking. The estimated $200 million project would be financed in conjunction with a private developer and could be completed as soon as 2007. 

Additionally, in the second phase of the project, UC would pay to move the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley Art Museum and Phoebe Hearst Anthropology Museum to UC-owned buildings just east of the hotel development.  

While a precedent has been set for cities to collect occupancy tax revenue from university-owned hotels, property taxes usually remain out of reach. 

Weldon Smith, a supervisor in the Alameda County Assessors Office, said the downtown hotel would be exempt from property taxes, but as a moneymaking venture, the complex would have to pay a less cumbersome possesory interest tax that taxes the owner on investment income, and not a fixed rate based on the value of the property. 

The longer the lease and the more valuable the property improvements, the closer the possesory tax would approach the standard property tax, Smith said. 

Some state universities have opted to voluntarily place their hotels on the tax rolls. Jim Purdum, general manager of Pennsylvania State University-owned Penn Stater, a hotel and conference center in State College, Penn., said the university had agreed to pay full taxes to “mitigate the burden for the city.” 

Culver said Santa Cruz won a ruling from the Santa Cruz County Assessor to keep the former Holiday Inn hotel on the tax rolls despite the UCSC takeover. 

Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said through a spokesperson that her office was reviewing both hotel tax and property tax law to determine the city’s legal rights. 

Meanwhile Hufferd insisted that the hotel would not offer special deals to university groups that could diminish the city’s hotel tax revenue. “This will be a hopefully affordable market rate hotel,” he said.

“The first time you sleep on the streets you become obnoxiously ill within two weeks. It happens to everyone,” said Marz, one of the many young transients who consistently line Telegraph Avenue. 

Marz, who has been on the Berkeley streets for six months, had his sick spell and says he’s now developed immunities. Nonetheless, he says, it’s become increasingly difficult to survive as the temperature drops and the rain starts. 

It might not sound like much, but this year Marz has an escape—at least for part of the year—at a new shelter called YEAH!, which stands for Youth Emergency Assistance Hostel. Now in it’s second year, YEAH! is a new shelter established specifically to house people ages 18-25 who need overnight shelter during the winter months. 

Funded in part by the City of Berkeley and staffed by a crew of over 75 volunteers, the shelter opens Dec. 1 at the Lutheran Church of the Cross, 1744 University Ave. Services include overnight shelter from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., along with snacks, breakfast, and physical and mental health programs. There are two separate facilities, one for single women and children, the other co-ed. 

YEAH! Executive Director Sharon Hawkins Leyden, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, says the shelter fills a need for many of Berkeley’s homeless youth who have refused to stay at other shelters around the area, which they say are overrun by other groups. 

“[The other shelters] are usually a little too rowdy and smelly and insane,” said Marz. “They’re just a little nuts.” 

Youths complain that the other shelters are often filled with the mentally disabled and the drugged-out. 

“Around here, a lot of times the older homeless people, not to stereotype them, are on some very hard-core drugs,” said Sean, who has been on the streets of Berkeley for seven months. “It’s hard to deal with them.” 

YEAH! also provides another perk certain to attract younger people in need. The shelter will allow animals, usually forbidden at the other shelters. 

“We know that the youth are really attached to their animals,” said Leyden. “We didn’t want them to be a barrier.” 

Leyden said last year’s shelter was so successful that they were able to re-open this year with even more support, though with an estimated budget of $60,000 they’re still short $25,000. If they get all their funding, she said, they’ll be open seven days a week through March. 

In the meantime, thanks to a number of large grants, including a $15,000 contribution from the City of Berkeley, they’ll operate at full scale until more money comes in—at least through most of the coldest months. Operating at full capacity, each bed costs $13 a night, much less than other emergency programs. 

Last year’s program prompted the Berkeley chief of police to write a letter thanking the shelter for their help in eliminating one of the city’s largest and most residual problems. And several Telegraph Avenue vendors told Leyden they’d noticed a decline in the numbers of transients on the street. 

Leyden says the center also functions as an intermediary to help their clients get back on their feet during one of the hardest parts of the year. Because they don’t have to worry about finding shelter each night, they can spend their days looking for jobs and other programs to help them find more permanent housing—and for young homeless parents to send their children to school. 

Marz says he’ll head to the shelter once it opens. In the meantime, he says, he’s been sleeping behind buildings and doing his best to stay healthy. 

Joining him at YEAH! may be Jen and Jose, who have been sleeping in their car. Both say they’ve caught pneumonia sleeping on the streets and welcomed a chance to stay at the shelter, especially because they can bring their pooch. 

Jane Micallef, a Community Services Specialist with the City of Berkeley, said there will be other emergency options for those who can’t stay at YEAH!  

Options include the shelter at the old Army Base in West Oakland, which has 50 beds reserved for people from Berkeley. Micallef said the city pays for BART tickets to the West Oakland station and provides a shuttle from there to the shelter. Open since Nov. 10, the facility provides both a general occupancy area and a reserved area for families or people with disabilities. The facility is co-sponsored by the City of Berkeley, City of Oakland and Alameda County. 

The city also provides a motel voucher program for families in need. Budgeted at $45,000, the program provides between five and six families with a room every night at a cost of about $60 per room. 

Micallef says the additional programs are useful for emergency use, but are only a partial fix for the city’s long-running homelessness problem. 

Other programs, including the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, continue to run year-round food and housing projects and conduct emergency services, such as coat and blanket drives. 

People interested in volunteering or making tax deductible donations to YEAH! Can contact Sharon Hawkins Leyden at 848-1424. For more information on other emergency and existing shelters services, contact Jane Micallef with the City of Berkeley.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on the University Avenue strategic plan.  

When Berkeley merchants and residents sat down with city officials to hash out a vision for University Avenue eight years ago, it was supposed to be a break with history. 

Known for being strong on planning but weak on action, the City of Berkeley wanted to create a strategic plan it could actually implement. The city was willing to pay the price—the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent as consultants, residents, merchants and property owners met with city staff over the next two years. 

What they envisioned was a place where people could safely stroll sidewalks and shop in attractive, prosperous stores. Buildings weren’t more than two or three stories tall except in highly concentrated “nodes” where a four-story maximum of retail and affordable housing existed.  

Though many thought the final product was a good thing, since City Council adopted the University Avenue Strategic Plan in November 1996, implementation has dragged, residents and city officials agree. And what has been built—Acton Court, for example—is not what the city had in mind, said Councilmember Linda Maio. 

All it takes is a trip down the avenue to see that many buildings still need a makeover. Traffic whizzes by empty storefronts on a thoroughfare that’s still heavily car-oriented, still relatively anonymous. 

As Maio and others point out, state housing law allowing greater density to bolster financially viable affordable housing development has hamstrung the city’s plans. But the central failure, others say, is Berkeley’s inability to rezone.  

And running beneath all of it, say some residents and Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman, is an ongoing debate about housing in Berkeley. On one side is the city’s Planning Department, supporting dense “Smart Growth” intended to preserve open space on the urban fringe. On the other side are residents who want housing that maintains neighborhood character. 

Despite a recent request by the City Council for a progress report due in January and a commentary in the Berkeley Daily Planet in which Maio and Mayor Tom Bates called for zoning regulation changes to implement the University Avenue Plan, residents are frustrated by what they call a lack of leadership. They’re also concerned about what they consider oversized buildings dominating the corridor, which runs west from Oxford Street to Interstate 80 and is bounded by Delaware Street to the north and Allston Way to the south.  

“All the lip service is there, but there isn’t a lot of follow-through right now,” said Robin Kibby, 30, who has lived in the University Avenue corridor for seven years. “One picture is being painted, but the buildings we’re getting are completely different.” 

The reason, said Dave Fogarty, who oversees the University Avenue corridor for the city’s Office of Economic Development, is simple: “The city did not implement the plan.” 

“There are two sides to this. One side is the failure to do what could have been done. The other side is approving a plan that had so many complicated, expensive implementation measures that it was never possible to implement it anyway,” Fogarty said. “But because it sounded good on paper, the city went ahead with it.” 

For merchant Jay Ifshin, whose Ifshin Violins music store has been a University Avenue fixture for over two decades, the city’s failure to implement the plan is more than a source of frustration. He said he is tired of the city treating the corridor as a dumping ground for what more vocal neighborhoods don’t want.  

“No one wants low-income housing in their neighborhood, so it gets dumped on University Avenue,” he said.  

What’s left for the corridor, he said, are buildings that are “junky and funky” or far beyond the scope and size of the neighborhood—and lack of parking keeps strong, anchor away. “If the mayor and councilmembers have to write to the newspaper [about getting the plan implemented,] what are we supposed to do?” asked Ifshin. “They’re saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we should implement this thing.’ Well, do it already. They’ve spent eight years dinking around with the thing.” 

Thomas Myers, acting manager of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development, said much has already been done on University Avenue. The city has rebuilt the median strips along the avenue and is now completing the landscaping. Crime reduction was a major focus of the strategic plan, and conditions improved starting in the late 1990s—though that have resulted more from the overall state of the economy than any city efforts, he said. 

One of the plan’s six goals is to implement crime tracking along the University Avenue corridor. But the police department still hasn’t answered the question planners asked of it: What does crime along the corridor look like and how does it compare to previous years? 

The police are starting to work on their share of the report to City Council, said Berkeley Police Sgt. Steve Odom. The department has already completed some crime analysis along the corridor, but the report now in the works will scrutinize the corridor as a whole. 

Although residents want more small community-oriented business, Myers said, it’s difficult to attract them because of inflated lease rates and property values. Moreover, matching grants for capital improvements have dried up the past couple of years, following the recession.  

“There have been dramatic changes in the community and the economy since [the plan was adopted,]” Myers said. “Funding amounts have changed since then. I think what the city can afford to put in they have been able to put in.” 

When the plan was adopted in 1996, the Planning Commission created a subcommittee to supervise implementation—but when the commission membership changed, the plan fell by the wayside, Fogarty said. Planning for South Berkeley, West Berkeley and the city’s General Plan emerged as more pressing concerns, said Planning Commissioner Rob Wrenn, the former chair of the commission. 

Maio and other city officials said that the plan has taken so long to implement because of staff turnover and the plan’s magnitude.  

“What happened [with the strategic plan] happens often in Berkeley,” said Deputy Planning Director Wendy Cosin. “There’s so much enthusiasm on working on new plans, [but] we don’t have enough staff to work on new plans and do implementation of new plans. It’s a matter of determining priorities.” 

Part Two, Friday: Housing density — who says what’s best for Berkeley 

When Henry Poole met Dennis Kucinich last May, politics fused with passion and technological savvy. What emerged from the meeting was an electronic presidential campaign, run in part from a room in a house that was once Berkeley’s best-known radical commune. 

“We’ve created the basic technological infrastructure for a national campaign, an online fund-raising system, e-mail, and the software for e-mail campaigns,” Poole says. 

Among his creations are Kucinich’s campaign website, www.denniskucinich.us, his electronic bulletin board, us.denniskucinich.us, and a WIKI—a site each user can edit, alter, or otherwise contribute to—www.civicactions.org. 

While the city on the Bay is a long way in time and space from the Oklahoma plains where Poole was born 40 years ago, politics was in his blood from the start. 

“My mother teaches philosophy and religion at University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma,” he explains, a liberal arts college 40 miles south of Oklahoma City. 

“Back in the 60s, Oklahoma was going through some of the same political upheaval that was happening everywhere else in the country, so the conservatives decided to get rid of the hippies by sending them to the liberal arts college there,” he explains with a warm smile. 

“The political environment changed and they fired all the professors, so a bunch of them—including my mother—organized a legal battle and fought to get their jobs back.” 

While political activism came from his mother, an understanding of the intrusive nature of the system came from his father, a private investigator. “That woke me up about the lack of privacy we all have,” he says. 

In Oklahoma—a state never known as a vibrant hub of culture—the bright youth with the unconventional parents sought solace in technology. 

“I was interested in software and abstractions, so I got into programming at 14 as an escape form small town thinking. I got very comfortable with the machine.” 

It wasn’t long before he blended his outsider’s passion for connection with his technological gifts. 

“I’m really working on trying to open up communications and create an infrastructure for building up decentralized communities,” he explains. “That takes various forms. With technology you can bring light and connections to people who think they’re alone, so that once they’re together they realize they can have power.” 

Arriving in Berkeley five years ago, he found a grand old house on Ashby Avenue that only later he discovered had once been home to the city’s notorious Red Family commune—the hotbed of revolution presided over by Chicago 7 radical and later Democratic state legislator Tom Hayden. 

Poole’s revolutionary impulses follow a gentler course. Now 40, he’s a longtime member and current boardmember of the Free Software Foundation. “It’s a huge group of people working around the country on free software, which is a very important issue,” he says, quiet enthusiasm evident in his voice. 

“Technology controls so much of our lives, and it’s not healthy to have it all controlled by a few powerful corporations.” 

It was Catherine Fitts, a professional collaborator and fellow activist, who introduced Poole to Herman Gear, Kucinich’s campaign architect. 

“Through our e-mail discussion, I learned that Kucinich was going to be in San Francisco in May, so we went to his town hall meeting on the 24th and I heard him speak. I liked what I heard, but I had a question, so I went up afterwards and asked him. We started talking and we got along really well. Then he asked if I could help him with his web campaign. I started working with Steve Cobble, his campaign strategist who’d had the same role for Nader.” 

The weblog was up and running within two weeks, and the Wiki followed soon afterwards. 

“It’s really been an amazing thing to see the response.” 

Poole cites the supporter who, after he used the web to announce a cross-country walk in support of the candidate, was soon joined by four others, who are now going door-to-door in New York recruiting votes for their candidate. 

The electronic campaigner isn’t discouraged by media portrayals of Cleveland congressman as an outsider with little chance of winning the Democratic nomination. 

“The media’s corrupt. From my personal experiences, when people see this man, they experience a sense of hope that wasn’t there before. They become very supportive, unshakable. 

“Besides, we don’t need that much time. Look at the Governator. Arnold Schwarzenegger took over sixth largest economy in the world in a campaign that lasted just six weeks. 

“Yeah, Dennis is a long shot, but I’m willing to take a long shot. I don’t think the planet will sustain itself if we don’t make a radical change. We need someone we can trust, who doesn’t put corporate interests above human rights. I have two young kids, and I’d hate to see us lose half our planet before they’re in their twenties. As it is, both parties put corporate interests above human rights. 

“All my friends who are progressive voters tell me they are more aligned with Dennis than Howard Dean, but they say they’re putting their energy into Dean because they think he’s electable. In this country, so many people are voting against someone.” 

Poole says the Democrats won’t be able to pick a candidate until the convention, and “there’s a lot going to happen between now and then. He’s the only candidate with an exit strategy for the war, the only one with a real grasp of what’s happening to the environment. Those things might begin to resonate in the next few months, and people could decide they want their civil rights back, that they’re not willing to give them up to become the aggressors of the planet.” 

Whatever happens in the election, Poole’s not about to give up. Another project he’s working on with Catherine Fitts—a former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration—is whereisthemoney.org. 

Based on a 2000 audit of the Defense Department that revealed the Pentagon has a billion dollars a year in unaccounted transaction, the site shows how that money could be used to fund education, children’s healthcare and other programs. 

Poole’s particularly fascinated with Wikis (the word’s an Hawaiian term meaning “quickie”), the increasingly popular user-built website, of which the best known is Wikipedia.com, an encyclopedia written entirely by website visitors. 

“You’d think people would go online and trash the sites, but they don’t. It’s really amazing. And hopeful.” 

So the house once famous for psychedelics and revolutionary politics is hosting another revolution, more sober and less inflammatory perhaps, but no less challenging for all that.

UC Berkeley student instructors plan to strike the week of Dec. 1, just before final exams—potentially leaving students without last-minute instruction or final grades. 

United Auto Workers Local 2865, which represents approximately 13,000 University of California student teachers, graders and tutors (ASEs), most of them graduate students, called for the system-wide strike Monday, claiming the administration has bargained in bad faith. 

Three university unions—the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), the California Nurses Association (CNA) and the University Professional and Technical Employees, (UPTE-CWA)—have called for sympathy strikes, creating still more logistical problems for the university. 

UC Berkeley spokeswoman Carol Hyman said administrators were working on contingency plans, but refused to speculate on potential impacts. 

In October, student instructors staged a hastily planned walkout, catching other university unions and many of its own members off guard and away from picket lines.  

“We’ll be better organized for sure,” said UAW Local spokesperson Rajan Mehta, adding that strikers planned to place a picket line outside the Tang Health Center so “nurses will have something not to cross.” 

ASEs have been without a contract since Oct. 1 and negotiations conducted by a state mediator broke down two weeks ago over university demands that the union pledge not to engage in future sympathy strikes. No talks are scheduled before the end of the semester. 

Mehta said the strike would last through finals, though ASEs would return to work for the spring semester in January even without a new deal. 

Striking at the end of the semester poses extra pains for students. Mehta said striking instructors would refrain from offering review sessions and proctoring and wouldn’t grade final exams. 

Asked about the timing of the strike, Mehta blamed the university and said the interests of the union’s members had to come first. “We realize students will be hurt by this, but the university has continued to break the law and put this on themselves.” 

Just how many ASEs plan to honor picket lines remains unclear. Typically, humanities students who receive less independent funding than science students are more likely to strike. Mehta insisted that more than half of UC Berkeley’s 2,200 ASEs honored picket lines in October—though the university estimated that number at fewer than 50 percent. 

To prepare for the planned strike, UC Berkeley Provost Paul Gray asked professors to hold review sessions that striking GSIs would have conducted and to collect course grade information before the work stoppage begins. 

Professors were also informed that in the case of a strike they would have greater latitude to alter the format of a test. If they are unable to assign grades by the semester’s end, professors may give students either a mark of ‘In Progress (IP) or an option to accept a pass/fail grade, according to an e-mail from Chair of the Committee on Courses of Instruction John Bishop posted on the UC Berkeley website. 

For classes taught by a striking graduate student instructor, the department chair will determine the type of grade given. Grades must be submitted by three days after the test, or Jan. 5 for professors with more than 50 students in a class. 

Of the three unions pledging sympathy strikes, CUE, the university’s largest union representing approximately 2,800 UC Berkeley clerical workers, appears most likely to exacerbate logistical difficulties stemming from the planned student instructor strike. 

“A lot of our folks have roles scheduling finals and finding rooms for finals, so there could be a lot problems for the university,” said CUE President Claudia Horning. 

UAW Local 2865, like other UC unions, has accused the university of negotiating in bad faith, maintaining that UC sends negotiators to the bargaining table who don’t have authority to reach a deal, a claim the university rejects. 

The UAW has filed numerous unfair labor practice charges against the university, which they insist gives them the right to strike despite neither side declaring an impasse. The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) will ultimately settle the charges.  

ASE’s receive a minimum of $14,200 for a nine-month work year as well as health benefits and student fee waivers for those listed as working 25 percent of their time on instruction—among the better packages in public education according to UC Spokesperson Paul Schwartz. 

Neither side would discuss contract details, but Mehta said that the sticking point remained a university demand that that the UAW agrees to a stipulation barring them from participating in sympathy strikes.  

The university holds that current labor contract language prohibits such actions, but the issue remains a legal gray area, so the school has demanded that other unions follow the example of university lecturers who earlier this year agreed to contract language baring sympathy strikes. 

Student instructors also walked out before finals in 1992. Published accounts of the ensuing six-week strike reported that strikers divided over whether or not to give students grades, with many acquiescing to the university’s urgings and others giving out marks of “In Progress”.  

UC Berkeley undergraduate students seemed miffed at the timing of the strike. 

“We rely a lot on graduate students to learn the material,” said UC Berkeley Senior Megan Thornton. “That could actually affect how some students perform on their final.”

Berkeley City Council quietly put the lid on the coffin of the parcel tax Tuesday night, voting 5-2 to keep it off the March 2004 ballot. 

But while that decision was no surprise—coming, as it did, a day after Mayor Tom Bates announced plans to withdraw support for his own proposal—Bates unexpectedly took the opportunity to accuse the Berkeley Firefighters Local of reneging on an earlier indication that they were supporting the parcel tax. 

In the meantime, City Manager Phil Kamlarz announced that he would present preliminary plans to close Berkeley’s budget deficit at Council’s Dec. 16 meeting. 

Council passed a broad budget crisis recovery strategy proposal co-sponsored by Bates and councilmembers Gordon Wozniak, Linda Maio, and Miriam Hawley that calls for such belt-tightening measures as a “hard hiring freeze” for city employees and a moratorium on all new city expenditures. 

Council also directed City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque to investigate whether Berkeley should join in a lawsuit against Gov. Schwarzenegger for lowering the state Vehicle License Fee (VLF). Money collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles from the VLF has been distributed to California cities and counties, all of which expect to take a huge financial hit from the governor’s action. 

Bates said that both San Diego and Santa Clara counties have announced lawsuits against the State of California for the governor’s actions, while the California League of Cities is also considering similar action. 

At the same meeting, Council voted to place all of the electoral change measures on the March 2004 ballot, including adding filing fees and/or signature requirements to run for office in Berkeley, lowering the percentage needed for a candidate to win, lengthening the time between elections and runoffs, and authorizing Council to adopt Instant Runoff Voting in the city once it becomes legally and economically feasible. 

Councilmember Hawley made a last-minute—and somewhat half-hearted—effort to save the March parcel tax measure, arguing that City Council “has an obligation to the people of this community to let them vote on their options. If we don’t put it on the ballot, we are going to have to cut a lot of services, and there will be no community voice in that.” 

The proposed parcel tax would have made up for something less than half of what has been estimated to be a $15 million to $20 million city budget deficit within five years. Budget cuts will now have to take care of the entire deficit. 

Taking aim at community statements against the proposed tax, many of which were expressed at City Council’s one and only public hearing on the measure last week, Hawley said, “you can’t really gauge the support or lack of support for a measure by the people who come to a single public hearing.” 

Only Councilmember Maude Shirek supported Hawley’s efforts to keep the parcel tax on the March ballot, while Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington, abstained. Councilmembers Wozniak and Maio expressed concern that the tax measure couldn’t pass without a major campaign effort, and neither one said they could imagine how such a campaign could now be generated, given the depth of community opposition. 

“A good campaign needs volunteers who are pretty passionate about the topic,” Maio said. “I don’t see them lining up.” 

Councilmember Betty Olds agreed, calling it “foolish” to put the parcel tax measure on the ballot. “Mim [Hawley] is an optimist,” she said. “I wish I could share her enthusiasm. But if a mule is kicked in the head enough, he suddenly wises up. Frankly, all those folks that Mim says are for it, I haven’t encountered them. To put it on the voters and to spend all that money...If anybody read the Daily Planet today, that’s the kind of publicity we’re going to have all through the campaign. And it’s quite effective, frankly.” 

But it was the mayor who was most disinclined to keep the parcel tax alive. 

“When our firefighters turned around and said ‘We don’t support it,’ I mean, come on,” Bates said, exasperated. “All the people in the opposition have to do is say, ‘Look, even the people you’re going to fund are not for it.’ The logic says we we’re blown out of the water.” The parcel tax would have been earmarked entirely for fire services in Berkeley. 

Bates also questioned both the timing of the firefighters’ decision to oppose the tax, as well as the union local’s contention that they had not been formally informed by city officials that the tax would be set aside for the fire department. 

“Staff met with the firefighters a month ago,” the mayor said, “described what was going on, explained to them what was going on. They’re in favor of it. And suddenly, at the last minute, they pull the rug out from under us.” 

Bates also said that the firefighters opposed the tax “for reasons that are not totally clear to me.” 

A day after the mayor said he was unwilling to consider renewing the parcel tax sometime down the road after March of next year, he left the door open again. “Elections are like trains,” he said. “There’ll be another one before we know it. He could not do so, however, without using the opportunity to take a swipe at critics of the tax measure. 

“We’re going to have to prove to those people who stood up here before the Council and said ‘You tighten your belts. You do the job and we’ll support you in any kind of a tax measure,’” he said. “So we’re going to do that, and we’ll call them on it. If they’re really for real and not just demagogues, and are really interested in seeing the benefit of the city, they’ll see that we’ve really tightened the belt and they’ll help us with this problem.”

An aide to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates says that a proposal to funnel all city commission reports through the City Council Agenda Committee is not as far-reaching as rumor appears to have it, and probably won’t be put into place “if it’s going to be controversial.” 

Last week, the Daily Planet received queries about possible plans by the Agenda Committee to review all commission reports before they land on City Council’s agenda. Currently, commission reports are automatically placed directly on the Council agenda after being examined by the city manager’s office for fiscal impact and the manager’s recommendation. 

The Agenda Committee, originally known as the Rules Committee, manages the agenda for Berkeley City Council. Created by Mayor Bates as part of his program to modify Council rules and policies after his election last November, the committee triggered some initial controversy on City Council. 

Membership consists of the mayor and two councilmembers he appointed, Linda Maio and Miriam Hawley. 

Reports from Berkeley’s 23 citizen commissions can be controversial themselves. Earlier this year, after Council deeply split over a resolution from the Peace and Justice Commission to investigate the Middle East death of American peace worker Rachel Corrie, both Bates and Hawley expressed concern about such “non-Berkeley” issues coming before the Council. 

But Bates aide Cisco De Vries says that while a commission report proposal was discussed during the Nov. 10 Agenda Committee meeting, they didn’t intend to censor the commissions. 

“There has been some discussion about having commission stuff come through the Agenda Committee,” De Vries said, “but in a pretty limited way.” Noting that the discussions occurred during a six-month review of the Agenda Committee, De Vries said one proposal would give the Agenda Committee the ability to move an individual commission report from the Consent Calendar—which is passed with no individual discussion—to the Action Calendar, where questions or debate occur. 

De Vries added that the Agenda Committee may want to look at either speeding up placement of commission reports on the Council agenda, or delaying it “by no more than one week” for the purpose of coordination with other action being taken by Council. 

Council and Agenda Committee member Linda Maio agreed. 

“What was discussed last week was the possibility of the Agenda Committee being able to hold a report over for a week if it looks as if there’s a commission report that was incomplete and questions needed to be answered,” Maio said. She called that “really, a rare occurrence. I don’t think anyone [on the Agenda Committee] has any plans—I certainly don’t—to hold any reports back from the Council. The Agenda Committee hasn’t held anything back. What it’s done is given us a little bit of time to get questions answered about agenda items beforehand, so we don’t have to ask them during the night of the Council meeting. I don’t see [the Agenda Committee]—and I don’t know of anyone else who sees it—as being obstructionist.” 

Maio said she didn’t see any reason why the Agenda Committee would hold over a commission report for more than a week. 

“But I’m just one out of three people [on the committee],” she added. “I don’t know what is going to be discussed [at the next committee meeting].” 

At least one commission member was not mollified. Told about the Agenda Committee proposal regarding commission reports, Planning Commission Chairperson Zelda Bronstein said that “before any such proposal is taken to City Council for discussion, any changes in procedures in how commission reports come before Council ought to be first presented to the commissions themselves. To my knowledge, the commissions have not yet been given the opportunity to discuss this proposal.” 

Bronstein declined further comment. 

The commission report proposal and other suggested changes to Agenda Committee procedures are scheduled to be discussed by the Agenda Committee again Dec. 1. 

The Agenda Committee meets at 2:30 p.m. on the sixth floor of City Hall. An information report for the Agenda Committee proposed changes is scheduled to be presented to City Council at Council’s Dec. 9 meeting. Council itself must make the final decision on any proposed changes.

So we’ve had another drunk-driving-police-chase-“sideshow” automobile injury accident out in East Oakland. How many, now? One loses count. 

The bare facts, as far as they can be pieced together from newspaper accounts, is that 52-year-old Oakland janitor Juan Martinez was critically injured last Saturday night when the car in which he was driving on 98th Avenue in Brookfield Village was struck by a car driven by 27-year-old Randolph Brown. Injury accidents happen all the time in cities, with little notice. This one rated an article in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune—as well as a column in the Berkeley Daily Planet—because of the incidents preceding. 

In both the Chronicle and the Tribune stories, the California Highway Patrol have been cruising the Oakland streets of late to help Oakland police crackdown on “sideshow” activities. East Oakland—International Boulevard, especially—has been something of a police state of late, with CHP cars cruising up and down the nighttime streets. Come out here on the weekend, and you can see them pulling drivers from the Fruitvale District to the San Leandro border. 

We’d been told that the CHP had been called in by Oakland officials to help out with Oakland’s soaring murder rate, but maybe that’s what they’re doing, on the sly. Stop a thousand cars in East Oakland, after all, and the odds are you’ve got to come up with at least one that contains a driver (or a passenger) who might consider shooting somebody, somewhere, sometime in their life. 

Anyway, the Chronicle and the Tribune agree that CHP officers spotted Brown spinning donuts in his Mustang at 73rd and Bancroft. Both papers implied that there was a “sideshow” going on, though never saying so explicitly, and the Chronicle article also included a helpful explanation of “sideshow” activity for readers west of the Bay not familiar with the practice: They occur (according to the Chronicle) “when drivers rev their engines and wage spinning contests to the delight of crowds that can number in the hundreds.” 

Was there a “spinning contest” going on at 73rd and Bancroft on Saturday night? Were there hundreds of people out in a crowd, there, watching? Or was Mr. Brown simply out there spinning a donut on his own (which East Oaklanders have been doing for a couple of decades, by the way, most often unrelated to what people define as sideshows)? On this point, both newspapers are silent. 

In any event, both newspapers agree that when he saw the Highway Patrol officers, Mr. Brown sped away. The CHP “briefly gave chase (according to the Chronicle) but CHP supervisors quickly called off the pursuit because it was too dangerous on city streets.” 

Officers saw Mr. Brown’s Mustang again at 87th and International “but again Brown took off at speeds exceeding 70 mph (according to the Chronicle, again) and the pursuit was dropped (again according to CHP officials). Just two minutes later, officers (Which officers? The same ones who originally saw Mr. Brown at 73rd and Bancroft? One is left to speculate…) encountered the accident scene on 98th Avenue near Interstate 880, authorities said.” The Tribune gives the last moments before the crash a slightly different take, saying that the CHP officers “canceled the pursuit at 98th Avenue and San Leandro Street.” For those of you unfamiliar with Brookfield Village, that is within easy walking distance—almost within sight, in fact, though it’s around a bit of a curve—of the accident scene at Denslowe and 98th. 

In any event, Mr. Brown was arrested by officers at the accident, and charged with felony drunk driving. 

This has become a ghastly familiar story out here in this end of Oakland. We have three distinct problems that often get interrelated—by the police, the public, and the press. One is drinking and driving. One is high-speed police auto chases. One is the spinning of donuts in an automobile in the middle of an intersection. 

The dangers of drinking and driving need not be explained to the average American adult. Despite our best efforts, we have not gotten it in to the heads of many of our friends and neighbors that the two are a deadly mixture. How many die from drunk driving accidents in a year? Look it up yourself. It’s an enormous problem. 

High-speed, injury-accident police auto chases are a growing concern in this country. Several police chases resulting in horrific traffic deaths recently shocked the City of Los Angeles, which is not easily shocked. In response, the L.A. City Council instituted a temporary ban on police chases for minor traffic violations.  

And then we have the Oakland practice of spinning donuts in a car in the middle of an intersection. Noisy and annoying, yes. Maybe a little dangerous, too. But according to Oakland Police Chief Richard Word—a man not given to public falsehoods—the spinning of donuts has not directly caused a single death in this city. The only deaths have occurred after drivers have raced away from police rolling up on the events. And which one of these three problems, do you think, does the City of Oakland consider so dangerous that upon it must be instituted a continuing crackdown? Donuts, of course. 

Priorities. Priorities.

The officer slipped out of his black-and-white police cruiser and strode up to a South Berkeley home. In his mouth, a caramel, sour apple lollipop, in his hands a 10-pound oven-stuffer turkey. 

Needless to say, the woman of the house was happy to see him. “This is a blessing for me,” Ruby Evans said. “It’s hard to have a nice holiday when you can’t afford a turkey.” 

On Tuesday, Berkeley Police, for the nineteenth consecutive year, put the service back into “To Protect and Serve,” handing out 250 Thanksgiving dinners to families in need throughout Berkeley—all earned by the blood, sweat and quadriceps of 11 officers on bikes. 

“This is the best day of the year,” said Lt. Bruce Agnew, who, along with Sgt. Alec Boga, founded the annual BPD Turkey Ride in 1994—a three-day, 216-mile September journey to South Lake Tahoe that raises money to feed Berkeley families on Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

It’s a long way from the winding mountain roads of the Sierras to the Public Safety building, where by 7 a.m. Tuesday about 60 volunteers including city workers, Berkeley Boosters, and high school students formed a half-block long assembly line, stuffing boxes with yams, onions, bread, canned food, stuffing and marshmallows to compliment the main course. 

The meals were enough to feed eight, with the fixings paid for by the $8,000 raised by the 11 bike riders from the Berkeley and UC Berkeley police departments and the turkeys donated by Safeway.  

Berkeley beat officers nominate the recipients, who are reviewed by the department’s Special Enforcement Unit to ensure that everyone is deserving. 

Going door-to-door can sometimes give police more than just a sense of satisfaction. 

Capt. Bobby Miller who has ridden on 16 of the 19 rides recalled one house several years ago where he found three young children “totally neglected,” while their mother “partied with her new boyfriend.”  

He sent Child Protective Services to remove the children for a few weeks, and came back around to check up after they returned. “I felt fortunate to know that the Turkey Ride had made life better for three small children,” he said. 

Tuesday’s scene was especially gratifying for the cyclists who got off to a tough start on this year’s ride. Before they made it to Martinez, retired Lt. Tom Grant tumbled from his bike, opening a gash on his leg that needed stitches. Later that day, a Ford Probe sideswiped Lt. Agnew, knocking off the car’s sideview mirror and bruising his hip.  

Officers must use vacation time to cover the ride, and they pay the $125 expenses out of their own pockets, but it’s all worth it when they get to hand out the meals. 

“It’s nice to drive up in a police car and give something to somebody,” Agnew said. “It’s not something we get to usually do.” 

And it’s much appreciated. “That they go through the trouble to do all that work and drive the turkey here, that’s a beautiful thing,” Evans said.

EXCITING POTENTIAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The hotel and convention center proposed by UC and the mayor of Berkeley holds exciting potential for downtown Berkeley. I read both the article (“Mayor, University Set Downtown Hotel Plan,” Daily Planet, Nov. 21-24”) and the letter by Steve Geller with interest.  

Kriss Worthington was quoted as saying it could be a wonderful contribution or a horrendous nightmare. If, as suggested in the article, the transformation includes museums, and, as mentioned by Dona Spring, daylighting of Strawberry Creek, it could be phenomenal. If parking is foregone, in favor of demonstrating how well public transit can serve such a center, it could be a bold, world-class vision and model.  

The site’s yard-stick proximity to the downtown BART station, and frequent service by AC Transit make it is easy to see how a relationship between local transit, the hotel and it’s visitors would be readily established. Bus passes and BART tickets could be dispensed right at the center, along with a kiosk of clear transit information, resources and popular Bay Area destinations. Visitors could be educated and inspired by their Berkeley experience when they return home. 

The image of a “babbling brook,” mentioned by Steve Geller in his letter, on the hotel grounds, and Center Street restaurants being creek side is an oasis-like mirage in this metropolitan area. And it wouldn’t be a phony Las Vegas-like water “feature.” It would be a natural feature long covered by a busy street. This would truly be a retreat. The opportunity is too good to pass up. The university and the future developer could be recognized as visionaries world-wide, if it was designed with green principles built in; not just in the building materials, but how the hotel and convention center is operated. 

Now, when I juxtapose that image with a “traditional” or “conventional” hotel and convention center with underground parking, I lose hope, get discouraged and want to stay away. Far away. If a parking lot is built with no thought or encouragement given toward transit, it will be another car-culture frenzy. The thought of the increase in car volume resulting from this potential underground parking lot is unbearable. As it is, I bicycle, BART or walk downtown. How anyone could plan to build such a huge structure downtown Berkeley in the image of the car-dominant paradigm is beyond me. Thinking must be done outside the box for this one, or the downtown environment will be destroyed by car culture. 

Here’s another perspective: One underground parking space costs $40,000! How many parking spaces will be needed? Besides the $40k per space, what cost would there be to the environment from pollutants? To the health of pedestrians? To the dining pleasure of the cafe patrons across the street? What would underground parking do to the creek? What would the creek do to underground parking?  

Imagine if that money were spent to educate and promote available transit to travelers. Imagine if that money were invested to improve transit and to daylight the creek! What if the money were invested in a local shuttle? What if all downtown travelers benefited from this diversion of parking money, so that transit improved for everyone, and downtown automobile congestion decreased overall as a result of this project?  

I know details are yet to be worked out, but I hope that in Berkeley, we can work together to create a vision to be emulated elsewhere; a cutting-edge environment for hotel and convention-goers. Building parking spaces is the no-brainer, default position. This new project can help solve the traffic congestion problems downtown, not add to them. The challenge would be to create a model vision, a pedestrian oasis and retreat for business travelers, tourists and the rest of us.  

Marcy Greenhut, President 

Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation  

• 

MISPLACED BLAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading that Mayor Tom Bates blames editorials and letters to the editor for the flame-out of the deceptive parcel tax (“Mayor Kills Parcel Tax Vote After Firefighters’ Rejection,” Daily Planet, Nov. 25-27). Meanwhile, up on Telegraph Avenue, everybody’s spare-changing for fire safety. 

Carol Denney 

• 

ROLLING BACK THE CLOCK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was stunned at Tuesday night’s Berkeley City Council meeting when Councilman Gordon Wosniak, in a 12-minute attack against IRV, suggested that had IRV been in effect when Abraham Lincoln ran against Stephen Douglas, Douglas would have won. 

What he failed to mention was that women and blacks were not allowed to vote. Is this councilman suggesting we roll back to the days when only white male landowners have the right to vote? 

David Heller 

• 

GIVING IT AWAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a Nov. 25 letter, Steve Geller praises UC’s proposed hotel/convention/museum megaplex on Center Street. But he wants to omit its underground garage, bring Strawberry Creek to the surface, and close off Center Street as a “pedestrian mall.” 

I think most Berkeley residents would agree that these preferences are precisely upside-down. In particular: 

First, UC absolutely must conserve its printing press building at Center and Oxford, even if it’s reused to house the museums. This is a significant Art Deco structure—and the U.N. Charter was printed there. Its destruction would represent an irreplaceable loss of history. 

Second, the underground garage is essential: UC must replace the parking it would remove by destroying its Addison/Oxford parking structure. And it must provide parking for the new traffic that its megaplex would generate. 

Third, it’s time for city leaders to finally drive a silver stake through the unworkable notion of “daylighting” Strawberry Creek. This would be an unimaginably costly, disruptive, and uncertain undertaking for a city government that is (a) broke and (b) incapable of keeping even small public works projects within schedules or budgets. 

At best, it would open the creek to fast food waste and toxic runoff. Creek fans should go see Strawberry Creek upstream on the UC campus (where it runs above ground for everyone’s enjoyment). 

Note how much trash the creek suffers even in this sheltered environment. Let’s hear a plan to better clean up and protect the creek’s exposed portion—not to endanger its safe underground stretch. 

Fourth, closing off Center Street should also be forever forgotten. Center Street is a transit corridor, a gateway to the UC campus, and an essential pressure-relief valve for a downtown that’s already too congested. 

Finally, UC should not own the hotel property—Mr. Geller seems to agree with me here—and the hotel should rise no higher than the Downtown Plan’s allowed five to seven stories. UC ownership would deny the city important property tax revenue. And UC’s exemption from local zoning would deny the public any control over the parcel’s future development. 

Let’s hope city officials have finally learned their lesson from UC’s past encroachments elsewhere. It’s time to take our city back—not give more of it away. 

Tom Brown 

• 

WISHFUL THINKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Geller’s letter (“Planning Ahead,” Daily Planet, Nov. 25-27) makes some good points about the exciting new possibilities for a hotel, conference center, art museums, etc. in downtown Berkeley. But on one point he reveals some wishful thinking, shared, I’m afraid, by too many of our fellow citizens. 

Mr. Geller suggests that “The conference center shouldn’t need much parking...... visitors arriving by air can ride BART directly from either OAK or SFO.” He thinks “Maybe the hotel can get by with minimal parking.” And he believes that in due course Berkeley residents will free up spaces “by using transit instead of monthly passes. Evening restaurant and theater -goers will come by bus.”  

If we follow through on this line of thought, I suggest we’re in for a disaster. First, no one coming to a conference from Fresno, Modesto, San Jose, Santa Cruz, or Santa Rosa is going to fly. They’ll drive. So will many from Sacramento and even Los Angeles, especially if family members are with them. Second, Berkeley theaters and restaurants can say goodbye to their patrons from Walnut Creek, Alameda, the Oakland hills, Marin County and countless other places if they’re expected (especially at night) to wait for a dwindling, sometimes unreliable or even non-existent bus service.  

For the past three decades I’ve heard well-meaning people suggest less reliance on cars and more on public transit. During all that time, things have gone in the wrong direction. Transit has faced increasing challenges, required more and more subsidies, and been compelled to reduce service. Goodness knows it’s a necessary part of our lives, but except in a few limited instances, public transit is never going to be a serious rival to the private car (least of all at night), and the sooner we realize that, the better. Mr. Geller lives in an urban part of town, on a major bus route. So do most people who prescribe the bus for others. I can only suggest they come to terms with the fact that cars have been around for well over a century, that good reasons exist for their popularity, and that regrettably, the way to a achieve an exciting downtown is not by wishful thinking.  

Revan Tranter 

• 

ANIMAL SHELTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was delighted to read that Mayor Tom Bates agrees with animal shelter supporters, shelter staff and members of the community that an animal shelter “would be great” on the southern portion of the two-acre site at Sixth and Gilman streets—the old Urban Ore site. (“Red Tape Snares Animal Shelter,” Daily Planet, Nov. 25-27). 

Those of us who always envisaged the new animal shelter there did so because of the high visibility without encroaching on a residential area. On the Council Sub Committee and at the Humane Commission, we are very aware of the traditional image of animal shelters as nothing more than warehouses to store and kill unwanted animals. Our alternate view—of an exceptionally well designed, landscaped, family friendly, living, community resource—is gaining momentum as more municipalities are taking pride in their animal shelters and putting in place reform policies to end the tragedy of pet overpopulation and high euthanasia. 

I wish to correct the suggestion in the article that animal shelter supporters have rejected other sites for scant reason.  

One of the sites, 15 feet from the railroad tracks, was so noisy that the realtor suggested we put in triple glazing and keep the windows permanently closed. Another site is earmarked to be part of a new bike trail linking Emeryville and Berkeley and requires a substantial swath of the land, and the site on Carlton Street, west of Seventh Street near the railroad tracks, is so close to the Bayer plant that many people felt the proximity to a company engaged in live animal testing would present an image problem for the Berkeley animal shelter. 

As to the comment attributed to me, that the land swap could have been accomplished with more political support, reporter Matt Artz misunderstood me. I told him I agreed with Mr. Cowan’s assessment that the deal was too complex.  

I do stand by my remark that it takes guts to put the animal shelter with it’s affordable ‘well-pet’ clinic where it should go—at Sixth and Gilman, and hope that the city will be able to craft a deal with BUSD to facilitate the bus yard moving elsewhere and for the animal shelter to be built there. It can become the centerpiece of an energized neighborhood, to the benefit of the local communities and every Berkeleyan. Animal shelters are part of our community, they enhance an area, they encourage children to learn about animals. In short: An animal shelter is a good neighbor.  

Jill Posener 

Chair, Council Sub Committee on the New Animal Shelter 

• 

NOT OUT OF SIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am puzzled by the claim that an animal shelter on University and Third Street would be “out of sight, out of mind,” and that this “hidden location” would mean fewer volunteers and less connection to the community. (“Red Tape Snares Animal Shelter,” Daily Planet, Nov. 25-27). 

Just build it with a sign on the roof that says it is the animal shelter and calls for volunteers. The sign would be visible to everyone using the University Avenue freeway entrance—and this would be one of the most visible buildings in Berkeley. 

This is not brilliant urban design, but it is an obvious way to end the current impasse and get the shelter built. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

VOTERS NOT STINGY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I deeply resent Mr. Artz’s uncalled-for editorial comment about “Berkeley’s increasingly stingy voters” in a purported news story about the woes of the animal shelter. Berkeley’s homeowners pay some of the highest property taxes in the state. Perhaps Mr. Artz should try paying property taxes on a limited income before he makes any more snide remarks about Berkeley voters. Maybe he should also give up trying to report news and confine his opinions to the editorial page. 

Helen Ettlinger 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his op-ed commentary (“Public Demands Tax Accountability For Tax Payments,” Daily Planet, Nov. 21-24), John Koenigshofer again perpetuates the myth of thousands of “untaxed” Berkeley renters who don’t contribute to owner property tax obligations. 

Also, in an earlier letter (Daily Planet, Nov. 17-20), Mr. Koenigshofer assails the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board’s annual citywide rent increase/adjustment process, or Annual General Adjustment (AGA), as “unfair.” 

As a real estate industry professional associated with a Berkeley-based firm, I can appreciate what apparently motivates Mr. Koenigshofer’s ad hominin polemical attacks against both the elected rent board’s policies, and the city’s 1980 voter-approved Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which regulates nearly 20,000 rent controlled units citywide. 

The rent board’s AGA calculation includes 27 separate rental property owner expenses, taxes, fees, utility costs, etc. To cite several components: During 2002-03, the Peralta Community College and East Bay Regional Park tax assessments both declined by—12.30 percent respectively. 

During the same period, for example, the following AGA components remained flat or increased: city business license (0 percent), street lighting (0 percent), lead abatement (0 percent), insurance (1.6 percent), school bonds (1.6 percent) and property taxes (2 percent), to list a few items. 

As required by the California Supreme Court and the city’s rent ordinance, rental property owners in Berkeley are entitled to a constitutionally mandated “fair return” from their property investment. Accordingly, a one percent AGA rent increase (plus an additional $3 per unit per month) was provided for all units that already receive the state Costa-Hawkins vacancy decontrol—or full market rent—increase (the average rent for these units is now $1,220 per month).  

Since 1980, AGA adjustments have kept pace with Bay Area inflation, and maintained the constitutionally mandated ”net operating income” (or profit) level for all rent controlled units in Berkeley.  

Omitted from Mr. Koenigshofer’s letter is any mention of the years 1990 to 1994: During that time, a real estate industry-backed rent board majority increased Berkeley’s rent levels by an unprecedented 50 percent across the board leading to extreme hardship for many renters. 

If Mr. Koenigshofer feels passionately that the current rent board or the rent ordinance is ”unfair,” I urge him again to devote his time and energy to campaigning on behalf of—and democratically electing—candidates who better reflect his views rather than complaining. 

Chris Kavanagh 

Carjacking and Sexual Assault 

Police are searching for the knife-wielding man who forced his way into a woman’s car Tuesday morning car and sexually assaulted her before releasing her in Oakland. 

Police said the assailant approached the woman while she was parking her car in the area of Stuart Street and Shattuck Avenue, then climbed into the vehicle and sexually assaulted her. He then drove to Oakland. 

Police withheld further details. The suspect is described as a black male, 25-30 years old, approximately six feet, 170 pounds with short hair, an unshaven face, a mustache, and dark, possibly decayed, front teeth. He was wearing a navy blue windbreaker. Police ask that anyone with information about the crime call the Sex Crimes Unit at 981-5735. 

Attempted Robbery 

Two men attacked a Berkeley resident Sunday night, only to find his wallet was empty. According to police, the victim was walking along the 1900 block of Woolsey Street when the pair raced up behind him. One man punched the victim in the face sending him to the pavement. When the victim got up and showed them the empty wallet, the would-be robbers fled.

The gardeners of the Greater Berkeley area are doubly fortunate. They enjoy the blessings of nature—a climate that is exceptionally congenial to horticultural pursuits—and the blessings of commerce—an uncommon number of first-rate, one-of-a-kind, locally owned gardening supply stores.  

For the 2003 holidays, these shops have gathered a wide array of distinctive quality goods likely to please the discerning plantspersons on your gift list.  

Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, 1310 McGee Ave. 526-4704.  

• This fanciful, 10-liter watering can in the shape of a frog will make you smile. From Germany, of bright green plastic. $31.99.  

• Vegan fertilizer (no s---!). Organic alfalfa meal: high in nitrogen, but with a fresh, sweet smell. Gardeners, especially rose gardeners, love it. The only fertilizer you’d want to find under your Christmas tree. 3-lb. box, $6.99; 12-lb. sack, $14.99.  

• Sweeten the season with Sasanqua camellias: fragrant, winter-blooming, pink, white, or rose-colored flowers. 3 and 5 gallons. Morning sun. $34.95-$43.95. 

• Versatile Asian hand cultivator. This versatile digger has a hand-forged 7” curved iron blade that resembles a small plough and can be used to mound, to level, to weed, to cut furrows, and to tamp down newly planted seeds and plants. A superb one-stop hand tool for vegetable and flower beds. $16.99.  

• Bare root pear trees (partridges not included). Seckel, Bartlett, and 6-in-1 espaliers, varieties suited to local growing conditions. Reserve plants now; their arrival in January will chase away the post-holiday blahs and conjure up the coming, bountiful season. Seckels and Bartletts, about $30; 6-in-1 espaliers, $50.  

The Dry Garden, 6556 Shattuck Ave. 547-3564.  

Drought-tolerant, rare and unusual plants, many notable for their striking, e.g. elegant, amusing, just plain weird, form and color.  

•Mother-in-law’s Chair. A large (18” diameter) lethal golden pincushion studded with 2” long spikes. $275.  

• Winter-blooming (in our winter) South African bulbs. One that stands out is Lachenalia viridiflora, with astonishing turquoise flowers that make you want to get up close. 4” pot. $4.95.  

• Elephant’s foot (Crested Pachypodium). From Madagascar, this wonderfully bizarre plant grows in a fanlike shape with a finely textured, silvery-green, almost iridescent surface, topped with a leafy green fringe. $50.  

• Alluandia ascendans. Lemurs like to jump on this plant’s thick stem, which grows to 6 feet and is covered with little green heart-shaped leaves growing in vertical rows amidst substantial spines. $100-$150.  

• Ficus petiolaris. Beautiful, sun-loving plant with deep green, red-rimmed leaves (like those of a fig tree), deep pink stems and veins. Up to 2 feet tall. $20-$40.  

• Great selection of succulents and agaves. Stiff-leaved, rosettaed plants. Two eye-catchers among many: Euphorbia obesa. Resembles a living golfball; and Astrophytum myriostigma: A miniaturized, pale green version that evokes its common name, Bishop’s Mitre. $3.95-$40.  

East Bay Nursery, 2332 San Pablo Ave. 845-6490.  

• Cool-looking cyclist-designed gardening gloves made by West County Gardener afford exceptional dexterity and tactility. They come in bright colors (avocado, gold, electric blue, and burgundy), so you’ll always be able to find them. Men’s and women’s sizes. $18.  

• Handsome harvesting baskets. Sturdy wire mesh coated with green plastic, walnut handle, pine body. Two sizes. 12” x 18”, $38.50; 8” x 14”, $33.50.  

• River rock vases. The insides of these water-smoothed granite rocks have been hollowed out and sealed. $25-$60.  

• Good-looking garden tote bag w/tools. Forest green nylon fabric with wooden handles and durable leather look-alike brown trim. Comes with a stainless steel trowel, fork, and three-tined cultivator, all with red oak handles. Lots of pockets plus room inside for plenty of other garden supplies. Lifetime guarantee from Monrovia. $25.  

The Gardener, 1836 Fourth St. 548-6116.  

• Top-size (17 cm.) paperwhites and accessories. Watch fragrant flowers bloom in your home this winter. (A dollar per bulb) Mount them on Japanese river stones ($4.50/lb.) or tumbled glass—beautiful, rounded, icy-pale aqua or white pieces of glass ($4.15/lb.), in a vessel of your choice. Or buy The Gardener’s Paperwhite Kit that includes bulbs, pebbles, a green ceramic dish and instructions. $24.  

• Handblown glass hummingbird feeders. Hang one or more gorgeous, multicolored globes on your Christmas tree before setting them outside for the birds. Blue, green, yellow, with a metal feeding tube whose red tip will lure the hummers—the kind with wings. $34.  

• Molded garden totes from Germany have a clean, modern design. Sling one over your arm or shoulder in the garden, just hose it off. Orange, aqua, white. $16.  

• Hang your garden tools on pretty rubber straps that screw into the wall. Almost a yard wide, in raspberry, citron, grass green. $22.  

Hida Tool & Hardware, 1333 San Pablo Ave. 524-3700.  

Fine Japanese tools and supplies. Now through Christmas: from now until Christmas, at least 10 percent off everything in the store.  

• This picturesque yet utilitarian rustic bamboo broom sweeps up leaves, even wet ones, with ease. It could double as a great home dec accent and/or Halloween accessory for the witch(es) in your life. $8.80.  

• Long-reach pruners, 1 to 8 feet long, plus extendable handles that add up to two feet, will enable you to reach that elusive fruit at the top of the tree. The cut-and-hold model keeps the harvest from falling onto the ground and getting bruised or broken. Smooth, trigger action feels good in the hand. $50-$100.  

• Elegant, high-carbon garden shears for bonsai and flower arranging are each fashioned by a single craftsperson. With their elegantly curved handles, they could be displayed as art objects in their own right. $20-$50.  

• Sickles for cutting grass and brush are better than your electric weed whip: no cord, no utility bills. Their laminated, high-carbon steel blades will stay nice and sharp. Light in the hand. $23.  

• Hoes with nice balance, very sharp blades, oak handles 1-5 feet long, are made by small companies in Japan. $14-$20.  

Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351.  

• For a really green Christmas, get a living spruce, cypress or cedar Christmas tree. A December 13 class at the nursery will teach you how to choose the right tree for your needs, how to decorate its container, and how to keep your tree in good health. $100.  

• Onyx planter pots turn opalescent in the sun. Filled with a variety of succulents that will spill over the edge, they make a simple but dramatic planting. $15-$60.  

• Large ceramic pots in jewel tones—mustard, cobalt, deep jade—look good with the spiky leaves of phormiums. Nursery staff will help you match plant to pot. Pots, $20-$160; Phormiums, 1 gallon $12.95; 5 gallon, $34.95.  

• Set several of these utterly charming moss stone frog musicians from Indonesia, and you have the makings of a frog gamelan (Balinese musical ensemble) for your garden. Figures include a drummer, a flutist, a cymbalist and other instrumentalists. Watered, they get covered with moss. 5 – 12” high. $7-$28.  

UC Botanical Garden Garden Shop, 200 Centennial Drive. 642-3343.  

In good time for the holidays, the Bot Garden’s next plant sale will be on Saturday, Dec. 6, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will feature an interesting selection of indoor and outdoor plants, all propagated by volunteer horticulturalists. Some of the choice offerings:  

Outdoor plants: 

• Coreopsis giganta, Channel Island Tree Coreopsis. With its substantial trunk and mophead of yellow daisies, this California native—three feet high at maturity—would be right at home in a Dr. Seuss illustration. Planted right after the holidays, it will get established over the winter so that it’s ready to go and grow in the spring. Drought tolerant. 4-inch pot, $7. 

• Lapageria rosea, Chilean bellflower, is the national flower of Chile and would make a very special gift for a true plant connoisseur. Because it’s hard to propagate, it’s hard to find in nurseries. Its flowers are shaped like elongated, rosy red bells about three inches long. Stunning. $50. 

Indoor plants  

• Lovely Begonia fuchsiodes sports beautiful, deep red, fuchscia-like flowers. $7. 

• Bemuse a good vegetarian friend with a gift of the carniverous, vaguely sinister-looking Sarracenia alata consists of a green stem, about a foot and a half long, that ends in a cobra shaped head. Set in water water, it will attract the gnats it likes to eat. Indoor/outdoor. $15-$20.  

• Mounted bromeliads would make lovely and unusual gifts for lovers of houseplants. The Botanical Garden has Tillandsias, small bromeliads that grow on the trunks of trees in the jungle, placed on special clay mountings that can be hung on the wall. $12-$20.  

• Rosarians (the fancy name for rose gardeners) will really appreciate “The American Beauty,” Tahoe Gloves’ long leather and nylon gauntlets. Unlike many other rose pruning gloves, this pair, in green and cream, really protects arms from the nastiest thorns and longest canes. $37.  

Westbrae Nursery and Gift, 1271 Gilman St. 526-7606.  

• Metallica gazing balls reflect a garden (and its onlooker), inviting contemplation and providing an intriguing accent to flora and foliage of all sorts. Westbrae has gazing balls in silver (the most popular color because it provides the best reflection), gold, green, red, teal and puprle. 12-16” in diameter. $54-$69.  

• Garden gnomes got popular at Westbrae after one appeared in the movie Amelie. The ones at the nursery this year are imported ceramic reproductions of European gnomes that were originally produced in France, Germany or England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 10-12” high. $30-$60.  

• Ceramic toadstools from England and from the United States add a beautiful touch of whimsy to a garden. Many colors and sizes. $5-$20.  

• Choose from a wide assortment of Buddhas and Kwan Yis (the female form of the Buddha of compassion), available in architectural resin, cement or laval rock, in varied colors. $18-$150.  

• Colormark’s metal watering wands come in rainbow hues that recall the aluminum tumblers of the 1950s. Designed to be screwed onto a hose, they are made in Wisconsin and have brass fittings, an on-off shut-off valve, and a heavy-to-light spray feature. Parts are replaceable. 8-10” long, $13; 30” long, $25.

Getting gifts makes me miserable. 

I’ve convinced myself my aversion to the present has its roots in the past. Specifically, following my Bar Mitzvah, at which I received a half-dozen wristwatches, I had far too much time on my hands. Bar Mitzvah lessons no longer needed, I wound up spending my newly-freed Friday afternoons at the Brooklyn Public Library. And, if memory serves, it was one windy, fall day that I literally stumbled over Proust and my life changed. 

Marcel Proust was notorious for manipulating his friends through gift-giving. And I’m sure it was during the hours I filled turning the pages of À la recherche du temps perdu that I became acutely aware of the malevolent intentions of gift-givers. Undeniably, their sole purpose is to control the lives of the recipients of their largesse. Thus, if somebody gives me a sweater or a book as a gift, it’s my gut reaction they’re telling me what to wear and what to read. A pair of slippers clearly means they want me to walk in their shoes. A necktie with an Edward Munch print—could it be more obvious? They want me screaming for their love. Yes, evil gift-givers are conspiring to transform me from who I am to who they want me to be. 

When I was a Berkeley tenant activist in the 1970s and 1980s, I was regularly the target of landlord curses and frequently found death threats left on my answering machine. If, instead, the landlords had showered me with gifts they would have quickly driven me out of town. 

These days my gift-receiving phobia isn’t much of a problem. Mainly, because I hardly ever get any. Actually, there’s only a single individual who persists in plying me with presumed tokens of her affection, mon significant amour, La C. Over the years, she’s learned edible gifts are least likely to drive me up the wall. Perhaps, it’s that my gift paranoia is outweighed by my free food mania. And when it comes to edible gifts, nothing beats chocolate. 

If there’s a member of your crowd tormented by an affliction similar to mine, let me suggest a few chocolate delicacies to consider for holiday gift-giving. 

Chocolate Bars 

I’ve always envied people with short last names. And, on occasion, have contemplated bidding hasta la vista to the latter part of my own polysyllabic patronym. Lately, however, Big Namen have acquired a distinct cachet and I’m less discontented with my lengthy appellation. By cachet, I’m thinking not so much of our Governator but of Berkeley’s very own world class chocolatier, John Scharffenberger. 

Scharffenberger and partner Robert Steinberg moved their doubly eponymous Scharffen Berger Chocolate business to Berkeley a couple of years ago and their pure dark chocolate rivals that fabricated by the creme de la creme of continental chocolatiers. 

Scharffen Berger chocolate bars come in various sizes and blends and are widely available locally, from the Elmwood Pharmacy (at Russell & College, where I get my fix) to the company’s factory store (914 Heinz Ave.). 

Here’s an idea. Buy an assortment of premium European chocolate bars and include them in a gift basket along with Scharffen Berger selections. This thought in mind, I consulted my Personal Chocolate Trainer (PCT) to put together a list of such imports: Bernard Castelain, Valrhona and Michel Cluizel (France), Slitti and Venchi (Italy), Lindt, Rapunzel and Toblerone (Switzerland), Callebaut and Cote d’Or (Belgium), Droste (Holland), Valor (Spain), Hachez (Germany), Green & Black (U.K., but chocolate made in Italy). Of this illustrious lot, my PCT reserves her highest accolades for Cote d’Or, which she claims is not just palate-pleasing but a powerful antidepressant (she should know, as in her spare time she’s a shrink). 

Hot Chocolate 

Guess which is healthier for you: red wine, green tea or hot chocolate? 

Yup, it’s hot chocolate. 

Researchers at Cornell University recently compared the three beverages and determined hot chocolate had almost twice the antioxidant concentration of red wine and two to three times the concentration of green tea. Antioxidants, as every Berkeley citizen has undoubtedly heard, help fight heart disease and cancer as well as slow aging by exterminating pesky free radicals. 

Three organic, hot chocolate brands that caught my eye while browsing shop shelves are Dagoba, Lake Champlain and Ah!Laska. All use Fair Trade cocoa and Ah!Laska donates a percentage of the company’s profits to Alaska wildlife organizations. 

Another excellent choice is Ibarra’s traditional Mexican hot chocolate product. Ibarra’s cinnamon-laden chocolate discs are packaged in a pretty, hexagonal, red and yellow box, so you can save on gift-wrap. 

I’d be disloyal if I didn’t pay homage to the pride of Brooklyn, Fox’s U-bet chocolate syrup. Famous as the indispensable chocolate egg cream ingredient, the legendary syrup is also terrific for concocting yummy hot chocolate. 

In addition, a number of chocolate bar manufacturers sell hot chocolate mixes. These include Scharffen Berger, Droste, Valrhona, Green & Black and San Francisco’s popular Ghiardelli. However, according to my PCT, the planet’s preeminent hot chocolate is served at Chez Angelina Rumpelmayer in Paris—where Proust himself plotted his conquests. (The nearest supplier of authentic Angelina’s hot chocolate mix I could find was the Café Society in Napa; 1000 Main St., (707)256-3232.) 

Chocolate-Covered Stuff 

Decades ago I had a girlfriend who had a passion for chocolate-covered halvah bars—or, more precisely, she had a passion for the chocolate on chocolate-covered halvah bars. She’d methodically pick the chocolate off the bar, joyfully ingest it, then dump the halvah into the trash. I never understood why consuming chocolate in this unique fashion gave my former girlfriend such satisfaction. But, I suppose, there are lots of things about my girlfriends I’ve never understood. 

Anyway, it seems the yen for stuff covered with chocolate is universal, from chocolate-covered matzohs to chocolate-covered crickets. And cruising local markets, I spotted an embarrassment of chocolate-covered riches, including: raisins, cranberries, cherries, strawberries, almonds, peanuts, pistachios, pecans, ginger, espresso beans, pretzels, malt balls and licorice. 

And let’s not forget the vast cookie, cracker, biscuit and biscotti categories, with even madeleines available chocolate-dipped. But I’ll limit myself to noting a single personal addiction here: McVitie’s Chocolate-covered Digestive Crackers. Imported from England, the crumbly karma of these British Browncoats never fails to flash me back to the American Revolution. No, not the one in 1770s, the one in the 1960s when I discovered McVitie’s while in a transcendent state. (I rediscovered them when they were La C.’s holiday gift last year.) But, beware, only McVitie’s Plain Chocolate (not milk) Digestives are worth the pounds. 

There are, of course, multitudes of other chocolate wonders for sale. You’ve got truffles, puddings (Kozy Shack deserves kudos), brownies, ice cream and gelato, fudge, confections, spreads (e.g., Nutella), sauces, liqueurs, cigars and kisses, to list a few. Plus, there’s your basic cut pieces of bulk chocolate (I’m told the Coffee Market on Gilman Street is a neighborhood shop with decent bulk prices) and, not to mention, edible chocolate products intended to enhance creative erotic practices (e.g., check Good Vibrations on San Pablo Avenue.) 

So, use a little imagination and it should be easy to find a chocolate treat that won’t trigger a tantrum in your gift-phobic recipient. And, with luck, you might elicit a glimmer of gratitude. 

Final tips: To a chocolate snob, which I’m rapidly becoming, milk chocolate is tres uncool. As for white chocolate, my PCT says it’s fine if you enjoy the taste of suntan lotion. In case you don’t catch my drift, dark chocolate is de rigueur!

Last week I had a chance to take a look at a little exhibit in the basement of International House, the residence hall near the UC campus where students from all countries live together in order to, as their web page says, “foster intercultural respect and understanding, lifelong friendships and leadership skills for the promotion of a more tolerant and peaceful world.” 

The display cases are filled with memorabilia going back almost 75 years since the house opened: a letter of recommendation for Canadian John Kenneth Galbraith, pictures of formal dances in the 40s and 50s with daringly mixed racial and ethnic groupings, the saga of how I-House arranged for a Japanese student to live a Midwestern home instead of an internment camp when she was marooned during World War II.  

The exhibit brought back the most vivid memory I have of my first day in Berkeley: walking through Sather Gate and seeing an Indian woman in a sari coming toward me. At that moment, 18 years old, I felt that I was indeed a citizen of the world, even though I’d never been farther from the U.S. than Tijuana. One of the continuing joys of living in Berkeley is that the world has always come to us. But now it seems that this could change. 

Thanksgiving at our house has often included guests from other countries, as it did this year. But this year I was sadly conscious of the guests who weren’t there: the Cambodian student who left for a short visit to his family and was inexplicably denied a return visa after 9/11; the Canadian opera singers who had to leave because they never could get working papers; the Israeli girl who went home to months in prison because she is a conscientious objector. A Parisienne at the table has been here for five years, thanks to her husband’s high-tech job, but her family hasn’t visited her. Her father is old, she said, and was originally from Algeria. He’s not willing to risk going through U.S. visa procedures because of the stories he’s heard about how foreigners, especially foreigners from Arabic-speaking countries, are treated in the U.S. these days.  

Enrollment of international students at Cal is down since 9/11, enough to affect the vacancy rate for Berkeley rentals. Students report endless hassles from U.S. consular employees when they apply for visas, even in countries like China with very little logical connection to fears of terrorism. The American president is a man who had never left the country until he was elected, and who now travels isolated in military jets wearing soldier suits he hasn’t even earned.  

The prospect of a “more tolerant and peaceful world” seems more remote than ever. But if Japanese-American friendships survived the Second World War, perhaps friendships being made by students in Berkeley today will survive the current unpleasantness. The I-House exhibit is a touching reminder of what has been accomplished in 75 years, against all odds, by dedicated internationalists determined to rise above the periodic eruptions of national strife. We Berkeleyans who enjoy the rewards of living in an international community should continue to do as much as we can to prevent our government from working against these goals. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet.

There’s a best-selling book with a title something like Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. As far as I’m concerned, I learned most of what I need to know in my ninth grade English class. One semester of ninth grade English in my school was devoted to what we called “Mythology,” that is, the stories that the ancient Greeks and Romans used to explain the universe. It never fails to amaze me how often contemporary human behavior can be described in terms of what I can remember from the old stories I learned fifty years ago. People haven’t changed much since ancient times. 

A quick Google search reveals that publications all around the world have had experience with newsmakers blaming the press for reporting bad news. The articles on this phenomenon inevitably refer to the Greek custom of killing the messenger who brought the news. Berkeley’s mayor seems not to be immune from this historic human tendency. 

He told the Daily Planet’s reporter that articles about opposition to the proposed parcel tax were responsible for the decision not to put it on the March ballot. When pressed, he amended his statement to include just “editorials” and “letters,” not news articles per se.  

First, we here at the Planet would like to make it clear that we have never come out in opposition to the parcel tax, either for the March ballot or for the November ballot. We have, Cassandra-like, suggested in editorials that things were not going well for tax supporters. Our correspondents have been much more forthright with their opinions.  

We print almost every letter and commentary piece we get that’s not completely illiterate or overwhelmingly obscene, and during the whole discussion of the tax proposal we received no more that two or three letters favoring the tax, plus a commentary from Revenue Task Force Chair Dion Aroner. We printed all of them. 

We also received and printed a lot of letters opposing the tax. Like many others in Berkeley who are on e-mail trees, we got even more letters from opponents reluctant to have their names appear in print because they feared (rightly or wrongly) retaliation from city officials.  

The citizens of Berkeley need to pull together to solve our fiscal problems. Here are a few suggestions for where we should go from here: 

First, having the main discussion of the revenue shortfall in the unpublicized venue of the Mayor’s Revenue Task Force was a lousy idea. Public hearings should have been at the beginning, not at the end of the process. We can start, now, with more and better open public conversations about what’s gone wrong.  

And this whole discussion started much too late anyway. The Santa Cruz city council was warned in late 2001, maybe earlier, that declining state revenues would require substantial cuts, so they went right to work on trying to figure out what to do. 

Berkeley, on the other hand, went on believing that the future was rosy for much too long. A UC pundit, with cooperation from official sources, authored a glowing description of Berkeley’s purported budget surplus which was widely and approvingly reprinted in the progressive press. Behind the scenes, among Berkeley progressives who understood what was really going on, that piece was greeting with much gnashing of teeth. The Daily Planet received first drafts of two different commentaries which attempted to set the record straight, from local activist writers who later withdrew the pieces, again because they feared political retaliation.  

City unions are getting a major share of the blame from tax opponents. Whether that’s justified or not should be openly evaluated in the public arena. There was a very modest discussion of whether or not contracts should be re-negotiated, but it took place in the Council’s afternoon rump session, mostly behind closed doors, with a very short public session held only after Councilmember Worthington insisted.  

So here we are, late in the game, with no game plan. Killing the messenger isn’t going to make the crisis go away. (Don’t even think about stealing this paper!) There’s no way that the city won’t have to go to local taxpayers for more money, probably in November 2004, in competition with the schools, who are also suffering. But between now and next November, let’s talk. The pages of this paper are open to all points of view. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet.