With the close of the year, one of the Bay Area’s greatest scientific and cultural monuments will disappear as we know it. 

There are only a few days left before the venerable buildings of the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park close forever. Visit now, before the old Academy is gone for good. 

Of course the 150-year-old Academy itself is not going away. As a scientific and educational institution it will be emphatically reborn, first in temporary exhibit quarters near the Moscone Center, then back in Golden Gate Park by 2008 in an elaborate new building on the same old site. 

However, in the New Year wrecking balls will reduce to rubble eight decades of irreplaceable institutional history in the form of the Academy’s existing buildings. 

Something similar happened once before, nearly a century ago in 1906, when the Academy’s Market Street headquarters was destroyed by earthquake and fire. The current buildings in Golden Gate Park were the result. 

Some years ago San Franciscans approved rebuilding the current Academy almost literally from the ground up as a solution to extensive seismic problems and other major deterioration in the old buildings. The allure of a state of the art museum facility won out over a more nuanced reconstruction. 

Although the scientific treasures of the Academy—one of the nation’s premier centers of natural history, collections, research and education—will be carefully packed up and preserved, eight decades of Golden Gate park buildings are now regarded as a disposable part of San Francisco’s cultural patrimony. 

It’s a tragedy, since older buildings help define and enhance the gravitas and character of elder institutions. Consider, for example, if Berkeley’s UC campus were to be cleared then rebuilt with only 21st century structures. 

The time to see the Academy—for the first time, or for one last time—is now. 

If you go, allow about three or four hours for a visit if you can. Begin in the main lobby, which faces the Music Concourse of Golden Gate Park and the hulking hanger-like mass of the “new de Young” museum rising beyond. 

I suggest touring clockwise. Start with the Simson African Hall. 

Here, in one of the earlier and least altered parts of the Academy, is a slice of early 20th century natural history mystique and pre-electronic exhibit magic. It’s one of the few fragments of the current Academy structures that will be recognizably incorporated into the new structure. 

The softly lit hall, painted cream and apple green and ornamented with abstract arabesques and rosettes, is filled with vignettes of wildlife collected in an era when the word “Africa” still implied mystery and exoticism to most Americans. From stuffed hippos, to giraffes gathered beneath trees around a watering hole, it’s a look into a different world, detailed down to blades of grass and insects. 

Next is the Morrison Planetarium. A marquee fixture of the Academy for more than half a century, the venerable theater in the round is equipped with a unique “star projector” designed and built at the Academy. In the new Academy, a video projector will replace the ornate mechanical equipment. 

If you can take in a planetarium show (separate admission), note around the base of the dome the silhouette cutout of San Francisco’s skyline seen from Golden Gate Park in an earlier, less hurried, age before high-rises. 

Near the planetarium, pause to watch the Foucault Pendulum swinging back and forth like a giant metronome while the earth turns below it. Children crowd around watching with breathless anticipation, as at regular intervals, the pendulum knocks over a wooden peg. You may witness the last swings; it’s unclear if there will be any pendulum in the new Academy. 

Near the pendulum are exhibits and models describing plans for the “new” Academy building. Take a look—it’s an intriguing plan—but use your time to fully appreciate the old Academy first. 

Next is a historic heart of the Academy, the Steinhart Aquarium’s stately, columned, neoclassical hall featuring reptile cases around a sky-lit sunken “swamp” of alligators and turtles, enclosed by a wonderful railing of cast bronze seahorses, one of the Academy’s iconic symbols. 

Be sure to appreciate the fantastic tile work depicting reptiles on the walls and floors of this central area; step outside to the central courtyard to admire the wonderful cast metal animal figures adorning the entrance doors. 

While a similar “swamp” is supposed to be installed in the new Academy building, flanked by a columned gallery, it seems likely the new space will be only an echo, not a re-creation, of this gracious interior. 

Allow plenty of time to stroll through one of the premier glories of the Academy, the Steinhart’s “U” shaped tunnel-like space filled with underwater wonders. The walls are lined with displays from jewel-like cases the size of a home aquarium to huge tanks. The aquatic variety is almost endless, from a pitch-black tank of bioluminescent “flashlight fish,” to penguins, a coral reef, and garden pond koi. 

The last part of the aquarium is the must-see “Fish Roundabout.” Ascend on a spiral ramp within the “hole” of an enormous donut shaped tank. Around you in an ocean of rippling blue light swim fish of the open sea from rays to barracuda to tuna. The Roundabout, too, will be a thing of the past in a few months.  

Beyond the Steinhart, double back for a few minutes to walk through the linear “Life Through Time” gallery with its wall displays, dioramas and living exhibits. The gallery is a coherent rebuttal, informed by solid science, of the dogmas of those who attack evolution. It, too, may go away in the new Academy. 

Two key parts of the Academy remain to be seen. First, there’s a wonderful mineral display; a long corridor showcases a tremendous variety of geological specimens from tiny jewels to huge crystalline structures. Just beyond is what’s now known as “Wild California” but was the old North American Hall, one of the earliest parts of the Academy. Here, as in the Simson African Hall, there are fantastic dioramas of wildlife.  

Like the diminishing wild spaces they depict, they await the apparently relentless approach of progress. 

The Academy is located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, on the Music Concourse, across from the de Young Museum. If driving, take Lincoln Way along the southern edge of the Park to 7th Avenue and enter the Park; the Academy is located a short distance ahead, on the right. Or enter the Park from the east end and take John F. Kennedy Drive to the north end of the Music Concourse (on Sundays, Kennedy Drive is closed to cars.) 

Standard operating hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission ranges from $2 for children under 11 to $8.50 for adults. Planetarium show admission is extra. 

On Dec. 29, 30, and 31, admission will be free and the Academy will have special, extended hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

For more details, visit the California Academy of Sciences, check its website at www.calacademy.org.

SATURDAY, DEC. 27 

Celebrate Kwanzaa with story- 

teller Diane Ferlatte at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, West Branch. 981-6270. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 28 

Kwanzaa Celebration for Berkeley residents at 4:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, with storytelling, dancing and fashion show. Please bring a dish to share. 981-5362. 

MONDAY, DEC. 29 

Civic Arts Grant Workshop, sponsored by the City of Berkeley, Civic Arts Commission, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. For information call 981-7539.  

Dana Smith and his Dog Lacey at the North Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 1170 The Alameda, at 3 p.m. His family show combines juggling and other circus arts and showcases the energetic show stopper, Lacey. The free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library and is recommended for children from 3 through 9 years. For further information, contact the Children’s Library, 981-6223. For information on other free library programs, check www.infopeople.org/bpl 

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. 

TUESDAY, DEC. 30 

Dana Smith and his Dog Lacey at the South Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 1901 Russell St. at 10:30 a.m. and the West Branch, 1125 University at 2 p.m. His family show combines juggling and other circus arts and showcases the energetic show stopper, Lacey. The free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library and is recommended for children from 3 through 9 years. For further information, contact the Children’s Library, 981-6223. For information on other free library programs, check www.infopeople.org/bpl  

ONGOING 

Berkeley Youth Orchestra Auditions will be held during the week of Jan. 5th. To schedule an audition, please call 663-3296 or visit www.byoweb.org 

The Berkeley School Board is now accepting applications for Board Committees and Commissions. Applicants interested in representing a Board Member will find information and applications on the BUSD web site www.berkeleypublicschools.org or by contacting the Public Information Officer at 644-6320. Applications can also be picked up in the Superintendent’s office. 

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.  

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.

OUTRIGHT LIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The article by George Bishwarat (“The Other Diaspora Israelis Must Confront,” Daily Planet, Dec. 9-11) is full of errors and distortions. Palestinians were not “driven out of Israel” in 1948 but left on the advice of the leaders of the Arab states. Israel absorbed over 600,000 of the 900,000 Jews who were driven out Arab lands. The United States supported the UN’s 1947 mandate which established two states, but the Arab states and the Arabs of Palestine rejected it. The combined aries of the Arab states attacked Israel the day after Israel was created.  

Today Arabs are citizens of Israel and serve in the parliament. Over 1.2 million Arabs live in Israel. If they were driven out in 1948, then where did they come from?  

Bishwarat’s article is full of outright lies and is a pure propaganda piece.  

Sanne DeWitt  

• 

NEGATIVE PORTRAYAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Verizon Wireless Company runs a commercial which depicts the U.S. Cavalry’s use of cellular phones to defeat American Indians. It is as anti-Indian as it can get. What was Verizon thinking? The people of this company demonstrate their 19th century mentality with this negativeportrayal. 

The U.S. Government during that century waged a genocidal war against American Indians in the name of expansion. American Indians were only defending their way of life when the government took their land. I demand that Verizon stop running these commercials which portray American Indians in a negative light. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

INCOMPETENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading Susan Fleisher’s letter (Daily Planet, Dec. 19-22) it finally dawned on me that we are rapidly approaching the Pentagon in the absurdity of spending money without questioning what we are getting in return, for surely the $11,533 curb cut has to be right up there with the $640 toilet seat and the $200 hammer. Outside of San Francisco, Berkeley has the most bloated, overpaid and underworked city government in the entire state. Berkeley pays the highest property taxes in the bay area but we certainly don’t get what we pay for. It’s typical that Susan Fleisher got no reply from Vicki Elmer and Councilmember Wooley-Baur. I could fill this whole page with examples of the incompetence and arrogance of the government of this city but I think I’ll have a beer instead and try to figure out how you can spend $11,533 on a curb cut. 

Mitchell Rose 

• 

TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT 

Dear Mayor Bates and Councilmembers, 

I want to thank you for approving Peter Hillier’s recommendation for an automated traffic enforcement program at the Dec. 16 City Council Meeting. 

I attended the meeting hoping I’d have a chance to speak in its favor. I planned to remind you all that Berkeley is still not a safe town for pedestrians and cyclists, and automated traffic enforcement will help. This program also can contribute substantial revenue to the city, the more it is rolled out throughout Berkeley, and that feature is very important during these severe budget times, when we face cutting important city services such as fire fighting. 

Given the severe budget, I also wanted to speak in favor of Mr. Hank Resnick’s letter to council in favor of Cost-Effective Traffic Calming circles. Stretching the budget funds across as many traffic-calming circles as possible is a more efficient use of Berkeley’s limited funds. Making Berkeley safer for bicyclists reduces the tremendously expensive demand for increased downtown car parking. 

I hope the automated traffic enforcement can be used extensively in Berkeley and applied to speeding and crosswalk violations. My experience Tueday night reinforces that (automated) traffic enforcement in Berkeley, has tremendous potential to not only eliminate the city’s deficit, but to give Berkeley a huge surplus!  

On my walk to the meeting, I had a very close call with a car racing down the Hearst Avenue Expressway and ignoring me & another person in the Le Conte Avenue pedestrian crosswalk. When I walk my darling dog, Flower walks a few paces in front of me on her leash; and if I had been walking Flower to the UC campus this time, in that crosswalk, she’d surely have been roadkill. 

On my walk back from the meeting, I had another close call in the pedestrian crosswalk at the Oxford Avenue Racetrack, at Addison Street. I was clearly in the curb lane when the car was a half block away, speeding southbound, in the innermost lane. The car did not slow down as I entered the middle lane, so I had to halt (& consider racing back to the western sidewalk). The car ultimately skidded 20 feet as the driver slammed on her brakes just as she reached the crosswalk. She apologized and said she hadn’t seen me, despite my light clothing. She denied that she had been speeding excessively, despite the long skid, and she promised to be more careful in the future. 

Berkeley can & must become safer for pedestrians & bicyclists. Illegal and unsafe car drivers can & should finance the city’s way out of our budget mess. Car driving is a privilege, rather than a right, and drivers need to obey the laws. Without adequate traffic enforcement, car drivers apparently have no incentive to drive safely. I’d like to see automated traffic enforcement provide the catalyst to create a safer Berkeley. 

Mitch Cohen 

• 

PRACTICING PEACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Jesus was a pacifist and a peace activist. He still is. 

The Jesus that I know and love is so filled with compassion that He makes special field trips to Hell, taking pitchers of ice water to those who ignore “Thou shalt not kill” signs to their own peril. 

He also brings fruit baskets to the poor. 

And He is dead-set against corporate welfare too. It’s that “eye of the needle” thing. If Jesus had staged His Second Coming last month, for instance, he would have been out protesting in Miami. And Bush, Halliburton, NAFTA and them would have had Him beaten, jailed and sent off to Guantanamo (Jesus was, after all, a Palestinian.) 

So. In Christ’s name, let’s all have a Merry Christmas, bring our troops safely home from Iraq and send Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney and them off to fight their own deceitful sleazy wars so that it will be them, not us, who end up in Hell. 

In honor of the birthday of the Prince of Peace, may those of us who would be Christians make a solemn vow to do unto others as we would have others do unto us.  

And let’s also start to practice what we preach. 

Jane Stillwater 

SATURDAY, DEC. 27 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Surco Nuevo performs salsa at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Through Walls, Thriving Ivory, Drive Line at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

World Beat Celebration with Neal Cronin, Joyce Wermont, and Vlad Ulyashin perform acoustic rhythmic/harmonic sounds of the Middle East, and Rap, Tuvan harmonic singing, at 7 p.m. at A Cuppa Tea, 3200 College Ave., corner of Alcatraz. 654-1904. 

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

Kammen and Swan at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Reggae Party with Irie Productions at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

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

Spencer Day at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

The Phenomenauts, The Soviettes, The Stellas, No Apologies Project, The Skyflakes at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Blue and Tan at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 28 

THEATER 

The Big Fat Year End Kiss Off Comedy Show XI, with Will Durst, at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $17, and are available from 925-798-1300. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fireproof and The People performs Reggae and Hip Hop at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

43rd Street Studios Showcase at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $3. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

David Grisman Bluegrass Experience at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $20.50 in advance, $21.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, DEC. 29 

CHILDREN 

Steam Train Science and Song at noon at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $4.50 to $8.50. 642-5132. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express, open mic night, “Between the Holidays” from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC 

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. 30 

CHILDREN 

“Wind in the Willows” presented by The Oakland Public Theater at 3:00 at the Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. Sponsored by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library. For further information, contact the Children's Library, 981-6223. For information on other free library programs, see www.infopeople.org/bpl 

NanoRama at noon at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $4.50 to $8.50. 642-5132. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sauce Piquante at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Cheryl McBride at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 31 

CHILDREN 

New Year’s Eve Day Party at noon at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $4.50 to $8.50. 642-5132. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra New Year’s Concert with Sally Porter Munro, mezzo-soprano, and 12-year-old Evie Chen, violin, performing the music of Handel, Hayden, Mendelssohn and Schubert at 8 p.m. and First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $20 suggested donations, $50 preferred seating. 415-392-4400. www.sfchamberorchestra.org 

The Top Hat Waltz Ball, from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. in the Chevron Auditorium, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Music By The Brassworks Band, dance performance by “The Top Hats” Formal dress admired but not required. This is a non-alcoholic event. All ages. Tickets $20 in advance, $25 at the door. 650-326 6265. www.FridayNightWaltz.Com 

New Year’s Eve Zapatista Party Join a Global Celebration for the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising, from 8:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. at Humanist Hall 390 27th St. Oakland. With live music and spoken word. Admission is $15.  

Orquesta La Moderna Tradición, New Years Eve Dance at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center 849-2572. www.lapena.org  

New Year’s Eve Bluegrass Bash with High Country, Dix Bruce and Jim Nually at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $22.50 in advance, $23.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

New Year’s Eve Balkan Bash with Zabava, Izvorno, Anoush, Joe and Leslie, And Edessa at Ashkenaz. Cost is $18.  

525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

KGB and Sol Americano at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $12 in advance, $15 at the door. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

New Year’s Eve Soirée with Rosin Coven at 9 p.m. at 1923 Teahouse. All ages are welcome. $30 per person includes hors d’ouevres and champagne toast, children half price. Reservations required. 644-2204. justin@epicarts.org 

New Year’s Fiesta at Café de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave., featuring a latin dance with Jose Roberto y Los Amigos and a dinner buffet, at 8 p.m. Cost is $75. 843-0662.  

Fourtet Jazz Quartet at 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5, midnight champagne and party favors included. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

New Year’s Eve Party with Glider performing eclectic rock, at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. Cost is $10. 848-8277. 

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

THURSDAY, JAN. 1 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

George Pedersen, John Havord & Friends at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

It was 34 years ago last month, but the memory of my first Townsend’s warbler is still vivid: a tiny, brightly colored bird flitting through the trees in the Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. I was fresh out of North Carolina and everything in the Bay Area—the birds, the trees, the weather, the politics, the music—was new and exciting. It was another “Welcome to California” moment. 

Since then, every winter has brought a few Townsend’s warblers into my life. Their arrival from the north has become a milepost of the changing seasons. One was searching for bugs in my next-door neighbor’s redwood a few weeks ago, and they used to frequent the Hollywood juniper below my front porch before we had it cut back (in self defense).  

There’s been another in the garden behind my mother’s nursing home. Unlike many winter-plumaged warblers, they’re easy to identify: Both sexes and all ages have a crisp yellow and green pattern, accented with black in adult males. 

Sunday before last I took part in another Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count at Point Reyes. Whatever else we find on that count, we’re pretty much assured of Townsend’s warbler. This year was no exception: My area had them in double digits. In fact, the only time I can recall not having Townsend’s was the infamous 2002 count, when gale force winds and torrential rains kept bird activity down and forced an early retreat by the few intrepid observers who had gone out anyway. 

(Townsend who? John Kirk Townsend was one of those 19th century naturalist-explorers, a young Philadelphia Quaker who went west in 1834: out to the Oregon Territory, where he met his warbler, and on to what were then called the Sandwich Islands. Fieldwork had its challenges in those days: a companion once consumed the whiskey Townsend had brought along as a preservative, and another roasted and ate an owl the naturalist had planned to skin and stuff. Besides the warbler, Townsend’s name was bestowed on a solitaire, a shearwater, a bunting, a chipmunk, a ground squirrel, a pocket gopher, a mole, a vole, a big-eared bat. He died in his forties, poisoned by exposure to the arsenic he used to protect museum specimens from insect damage.) 

Only a minority of the species spends the winter with us. Most make the longer flight from their breeding grounds in the northwestern old-growth forests to winter range in the mountain pinewoods of Mexico and Central America. Migration is risky business: there are predators, storms, navigation errors. Every year a few lost Townsend’s warblers show up on the East Coast. This makes the local birders happy, but the warblers usually succumb to the rigors of the season. 

The habitats at each end of the route are also at risk. Things don’t look good for old-growth right now. And further south, the forests of the Sierra Madre are being logged off and cleared for opium and marijuana plantations. The warblers that short-stop in Berkeley may be better off, despite cat predation and other urban hazards. 

Does it seem like a strange time to be worrying about warblers? It’s still a dangerous world, even if you’re not being shot at in Baghdad. In the name of homeland security, entities less benign than Santa Claus are making lists and checking them twice. And along with our civil liberties, 30 years’ worth of environmental legislation is under siege. Did anyone else notice when Congress exempted the military from the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection Acts? (The Pentagon wanted relief from the burdens of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Superfund acts as well. Maybe next year…) 

So going out to count birds may look like the height of frivolity. The Christmas Count, which takes place over a two-week period throughout the Americas and the South Pacific, can be defended as citizen science at its best. It’s a crucial source of data on bird population trends. But for me—and lots of others, I suspect—it’s more than that, an important seasonal ritual in its own right. We need all the continuity we can get these days, whether it’s slogging through the wet woods after warblers or something more conventional. The season wouldn’t be the same without the call-and-response litany of the countdown dinner, the party leaders’ reports, the rumors of Something Really Good. 

As I contemplate the warblers of winter, I think about Pablo Neruda, who never lost his eye for a bird; about that great misanthrope Robinson Jeffers, taking a kind of austere comfort in his belief that the earth and its creatures would manage to survive us and our follies. And about George Orwell, writing in 1946 in praise of the common English toad: “How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can’t….The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.” 

So as Orwell took pleasure in his toads, I take mine in this season’s Townsend’s warblers, small flickers of light in a darkening world. 

Good luck to you little guys. Good luck to us all.

Jury deliberations in the multi-million dollar Beretta “unsafe pistol” trial in Alameda County Superior Court may have been closer than a 6-6 deadlock would indicate. So the father of a 15-year-old Berkeley boy accidentally shot and killed by a friend nine years ago says that his family will bring the issue back to court for a third time. 

“We came very, very close to winning,” Griffin Dix said in a telephone interview shortly after Superior Court Judge Gordon Baranco declared a mistrial after an eight-day trial and four days of jury deliberations. 

“We were able to talk to the jury afterwards,” Dix said. “The first time they voted 9-3 in our favor. But then two people were changed. One got sick and one had a babysitting problem, and couldn’t come. So other people were brought in, and that disrupted their discussions, and they had to go back to the very beginning. They lost some time and they lost some momentum.” 

A Walnut Creek-based attorney for Beretta USA of Maryland did not return telephone calls from the Daily Planet. 

Dix’s son, Kenzo, was killed in 1994 in the Berkeley home of 14-year-old Michael Soe when Soe pulled out his father’s 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol and shot Kenzo Dix in the chest. Soe said later that the shooting was unintentional, that he had replaced the pistol’s full magazine with an empty one, and wasn’t aware that the pistol still retained a bullet in its chamber. 

Griffin Dix and his wife, Lynn, sued Beretta, alleging that the pistol was defectively designed because it lacked an indicator that would show if a bullet was in the chamber and didn’t have devices that locked out unauthorized users. The Dix family also settled a $100,000 claim against Soe’s parents. 

Five years ago, an Alameda County civil jury ruled in favor of Beretta, but in 2000, that verdict was overturned due to jury misconduct. 

Dix blamed this week’s verdict on what he called “intransigent jurors. Some of them could only see the misuse of this gun and the way it was stored by the father. They got hung up in some language in the jury form that they had to fill out. 

“But others of them recognized that the design of the gun ultimately contributed to my son’s death. So I still think we have a good chance of winning the case. The point is to try to prevent these unintentional deaths that are caused by defective designs of guns.” 

Since his son’s death, Dix went to work for Physicians For A Violence Free Society, a San Francisco-based organization that lobbies and advocates for various violence-prevention issues. 

Dix said he’ll continue to work to have handgun manufacturers change the design of their weapons, and to ban the sale of all guns that do not have such features installed. 

“There are two research studies that say that one-fourth of unintentional shootings would be prevented if guns had chamber-loaded indicators and what’s called a magazine disconnect safety device,” Dix said. “You take out the magazine and the gun won’t fire, even if there’s a bullet still in the chamber. One-fourth of all unintentional shootings would be about 200 lives a year could be saved in the United States if we had these safety features.” 

Dix said that Beretta had designed a gun with a lock built in, but while it is being advertised by the company, it is not on the market yet. 

And he said that bad news is on the national horizon even if he wins the next round of the lawsuit. “The House of Representatives has already passed a bill, and there are 54 sponsors in the Senate that would give the gun industry a special, unique exemption from these kinds of lawsuits lawsuits. Some of them say these lawsuits are frivolous. The truth is, they really don’t want them to go in front of juries and for juries to see the facts.”

On the twelfth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: twelve no-bid contracts asmellin’. 

On the eleventh day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: eleven cost overruns arunnin’. 

On the tenth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: ten insurgents insurgin’. 

On the ninth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: nine CFOs acookin’. 

On the eigth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: eight tanker trucks overchargin’. 

On the seven day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: seven war profiteers aprofitin’. 

On the sixth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: six Pentagon auditors awhitewashin’. 

On the fifth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: five broken pipelines. 

On the fourth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: four bawling Kurds. 

On the third day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: three French freezeouts. 

On the second day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: two dead doves. 

On the first day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: a chickenhawk in a date palm tree. 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland

å If you think a proper New Years Eve can only be had by weaving your way to San Francisco and back, praying for safe passage, think again. Plot Wednesday evening properly and you can sidle from one Berkeley nightspot to another—getting your fill of food, drink, and revelry—without ever getting near a cab, a limo, or your own endangered set of wheels. 

Starting off downtown, Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut play at 9:30 p.m. at the eponymous restaurant. For those who haven’t been, Downtown is an upscale eatery hanging off the edge of what Berkeley is calling its theater district. 2101 Shattuck Ave., 649-3810. 

Less pricey, and certain to be more raucous, is the trouble that’ll be perpetrated right across the street that evening at Jupiter’s New Year’s Eve party, featuring Glider performing “eclectic rock” at 9 p.m. 2181 Shattuck Ave., 848-8277. $10.  

San Pablo Avenue is the Bowery of Berkeley. It has escaped the face-lift and collagen that are making over the center of town, and retains the funky charm that I remember from my own landing here 20 years ago. If the streets down in the flats are not glamorous, the ambiance is warm and inviting inside the Albatross, a local watering hole that has always reminded me—in the best way—of an English Pub. Founded in 1964, there’s often live music at the Albatross, always several dart games underway in back, always popcorn in the popper, always single-malt at the bar and Guinness on draft. Their plan for New Years Eve is the Fourtet Jazz Quartet, 10 p.m.-1 a.m. 1822 San Pablo Ave., 843-2473 or www.abatrosspub.com. $5, including midnight champagne and party favors. 

Without having to find car keys or a taxi you can launch yourself either north or south from the Albatross. At the Freight and Salvage Coffee House (south), you got your New Year’s Eve Bluegrass Bash with High Country, Dix Bruce and Jim Nually at 8 p.m. 1111 Addison St., 548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.org. $22.50 in advance, $23.50 at the door.  

North from the Albatross you got the New Year’s Eve Balkan Bash at Ashkenaz with Zabava, Izvorno, Anoush, and Edessa, and Joe and Leslie. For those who may have just landed on these shores, Ashkenaz is the place to go dancing in the East Bay. Dancing to Balkan music, by the way, counts for two Pilates classes and a weekend of Bikram Yoga. 1317 San Pablo Ave., 525-5054 or www.ashkenaz.com. $18.  

In the East Bay you can have New Years Eve with petitions and manifestos, if you like. And you can commute from one bastion of righteous ideology to another without burning a single petro-molecule. First, there’s the New Year’s Eve Zapatista Party from 8:30 p.m.-2 a.m. at Oakland’s Humanist Hall. “Join a Global Celebration for the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising!” is the pitch. And the fun factor seems to be in place, with live music and dancing, featuring ORIXA—Rock en Espanol, Cumbias Bodhi Busick Band (“World Conscious Latin Folk Rock Son de la Tierra”), traditional Son Jarocho from Veracruz, plus (wait, there’s more) Aztec Dancers Cuahtonal, and Spoken Word artist Rolando Carrillo. 390 27th St., Oakland. $15 admission goes to benefit the sister Zapatista county of San Manuel.  

A 15-minute bike ride north through the urban jungle and you can be at La Peña Cultural Center. Their New Years’ Eve Fiesta Fabulosa is built on a simple credo: classic Cuban dance music with Orquesta La Moderna starting at 9:30 p.m. $20 in advance, $22 at the door. And the Cafe Valparaiso’s open for dinner. 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. 

The University of California, of course, is where some of our finest troublemakers got their start. Right next to campus you can get stinking drunk and really deaf in the basement of Larry Blake’s, then wake up in your dorm room the next morning, having staggered there under your own steam. Larry Blake’s, is of course, the time-honored dungeon that lurks just below street level a block south of Sather Gate. KGB and Sol Americano hold forth at 9:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. 2367 Telegraph Ave., 848-0886or www.blakesontelegraph.com. $12 in advance, $15 at the door.  

You want it quiet, elegant, virtuosic? The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra Season comes to our side of the bay for the 18th annual Berkeley New Year’s Concert. Guest soloists this year are mezzo-soprano Sally Porter Munro, and violin prodigy Evie Chen, age 12, who will play a concerto that Felix Mendelssohn wrote when he was a composing prodigy of 13. Same program: music of Handel, Hayden, and Schubert. It’s 8 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. (415) 392-4400. www.sfchamberorchestra.org. $20.  

Nearby—all this action is in a three block radius, folks—after a short inebriated stroll up Bancroft, the Top Hat Waltz Ball will take place at “The beautiful Chevron Auditorium in the 1930s historical landmark International House.” 9 p.m.-12:30a.m. Music by the Brassworks Band, dance performance by the Top Hats. Formal dress, they say, is admired but not required. A non-alcoholic event, meaning both that hip flasks will be much in evidence, and that all ages are welcome. 2299 Piedmont. (650) 326 6265 or www.FridayNightWaltz.com. $20 in advance (by Dec. 27), $25 at the door. 

One more stop? Midway between the revelry down in the flats, the parties downtown, the various bacchanals near campus, and the various events trailing out to the south toward Oakland, we have the Epic Arts Studio. Good, weird fun will be had with Rosin Coven at 9 p.m. This is cabaret by way of Tom Waits and the Andrews Sisters: two female-style singers out front, a trombone, bass, couple of cellos, a glockenspiel, and (of course) an accordion. And, again, all ages are welcome at this event. It’s $30 per person, children half-price. Price of admission includes hors d’ouevres and champagne toast. 1923 Ashby Ave., 644-2204 or rosincoven.com. Reservations required. 

So who needs a limo and a reservation at the Top Of The Mark? It’s all right here, brothers and sisters, in the People’s Republic. 

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

The holidays are bringing a mixed bag to Berkeley’s homeless.  

Alameda County will receive $21.2 million in federal funding—second most in the state—to sustain programs that house the chronically homeless, The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced last week. 

But the Berkeley Fire Department has run out of blankets for the homeless, the county food bank recently ran out of food, and City of Berkeley officials still expect more cuts to state-funded programs. 

Thirteen Berkeley-based programs are among the county’s 58 slated to receive continued funding from the HUD funds, said city Community Services Specialist Kristen Lee, though she added that fallout from the city and state budget crises will likely mean reduced services to the homeless this year. 

Only Los Angeles County received more funding than Alameda, which garnered over $5 million more than San Francisco. 

“Over the past several years Alameda has had good programs so they have a higher number of renewals,” said HUD spokesperson Larry Bush. 

After years of purely competitive bidding for HUD money, Alameda County created a vast array of HUD-sponsored programs. Now that the agency uses a formula to allocate renewal grants, the county has grandfathered in the programs guaranteeing it a larger share of the pie, explained Megan Schatz of the Alameda County-wide Homeless Continuum of Care. 

Also, by tailoring their programs to emphasize permanent housing solutions, which the White House is pushing, Bush said, the county has given itself a leg up on other jurisdictions. This year Alameda County won a competitive bid from HUD to fund a group home in Livermore. 

Homelessness across the county is declining according to a survey released by the Continuum of Care earlier this year. Results showed that at any given time there are 6,215 homeless people in Alameda County, 1,280 listed as chronically homeless. In Berkeley, the survey found 835 homeless people, mostly middle-aged men. 

Among the city programs safeguarded by the HUD allocation are the Shelter Plus Care Program, which provides rental assistance and social services to 129 households, the Harrison House Shelter operated by Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency and the Peter Babcock House which proves housing and care for AIDS patients. 

County officials hope they can eventually wipe out chronic homelessness, but, except for the new Livermore facility, the money from HUD will not expand services at a time when, anecdotal evidence suggests, the need for essential services is growing. 

Fire Station 5 in South Berkeley has had to turn away homeless after they ran out of blankets, said Capt. Rod Foster. “There’s been more demand this year than any other year I recall,” he said. “[The Blankets] were flying out of here.” 

Over Thanksgiving, the Alameda County Community Food Bank had to turn away needy after it ran out of food, said Executive Director Suzan Bateson. “We’re struggling to make ends meet,” she said, adding that her organization had received about 400,000 pounds of food—about the same as last year—but that need is up 35 percent. 

Schatz said that cutbacks to Medical and other state programs have added to the ranks of the needy and strained the county’s service delivery system, including emergency shelters and case management services. 

Berkeley services face cuts as well. Last week Barton had to submit 20 percent department-wide cuts to help the city dig itself out from a massive budget deficit. Though the final cuts will likely fall short of 20 percent, they will likely impact the city’s $1.6 million homeless budget, three-fourths of which goes to support the city’s 250 emergency shelter beds as well as emergency support services such as meals, showers and drop-in centers. 

“We’ll look for areas where there’s efficiencies by merging programs,” he said adding he would seek the input of citizen commissions to prioritize services. 

Anyone wanting to make a donation to the food bank can contribute at a local Safeway or Albertsons or call 834-3663.

SAN JOSE—Every holiday season, people are told to donate canned food or money to the local food bank to feed our community. I always assumed the food being donated was healthy. I was wrong.  

Now, perhaps more than ever, it seems like there are a lot of young people in the South Bay Area who don’t have the money to eat a decent meal. Food banks help by giving food to “low-income” families or organizations. But not all food is good food. If donated food is unhealthy, it isn’t helping the problem of hunger—it’s making it worse.  

Recently, I tried to get some food for people I know who could use the help. I went with my cousin to a local food bank to get essentials like bread, cereal and eggs. 

The food bank was located in a warehouse in back of an office building. Very unnoticeable. When we got inside, I looked around and saw packaged food everywhere. Everything from macaroni and cheese to frozen packed soups; there was also fruit, milk, ice cream and 50-pound bags of potatoes and onions. More food than you can imagine, stacked on metal shelves. In the back of the warehouse, some older white people were busy putting food in boxes. 

We signed in to get carts, which were just like the ones they use in Home Depot to pull lumber. We were given a list of things that we could get. The things we weren’t allowed to get were U.S. Department of Agriculture food items. These were the canned juices, meat and much of the produce, which were reserved for organizations that had been approved by the food bank—mainly homeless shelters and senior centers. 

The problem is that a lot of young people who need good food aren’t at homeless shelters. A lot of them are like myself, people who are working, but all their money goes to rent and bills.  

I have friends, family and even colleagues who are in the same position as me. Some of them have kids and, after paying rent, car notes and credit card bills, must try to save enough money to buy groceries. Sometimes when that money gets spent, they are stuck eating Top Ramen noodle soup or greasy lunchmeat for a week. Or they end up eating food that is quickly made, cheap and quick to eat like fried chicken wings or lunch truck burritos. They find themselves gaining weight even though they are busting sweat at work. The kinds of people who usually do this are around 20-25 years old, low-income, working-class people who are living from check to check.  

In the aisles of the food bank, there were some boxes we called “mystery boxes” because inside of them was a variety of food that was donated from random people. That’s what we were allowed to get, and we must have hauled back 20 of those boxes.  

We went from aisle to aisle getting things like cookies, pasta, crates of candy, crackers and spices. Basically, what people threw out when they were cleaning out their kitchen shelves. There was some healthy food, but it wasn’t anything people would want: near-spoiled pineapples, for example, or cheese that didn’t taste good. You know, the kind of cheese that if you put it in between two slices of bread and meat you would still spit out. By the end of the day, we had so much food. Luckily we had two trucks to haul it.  

I gave out all the food to young people who were providing for themselves and their families. We went back a couple of more times, but we soon realized we were coming back with more junk food than healthy food. It made me wonder: Why are we getting so many sweets? It wasn’t that we were just picking it, it was just that the healthy food wasn’t reserved for us. We were choosing between the Baby Ruths or the spoiled pineapples.  

I understand that you have to accept what you have been offered. But if the food you are eating is putting your health at risk for things like obesity or tooth decay, then accepting that food is not worth it. Even people with good intentions can sometimes bring on contradictions and not know it. When I serve hungry people food, even if they are broke, I don’t want their free breakfast to be a Butterfinger and a can of soda. 

Shana White, 23, is a writer with Silicon Valley De-Bug, a PNS publication by young workers, writers and artists in Silicon Valley, and Youth Outlook, a PNS publication for Bay Area youth.

For Berkeley High Librarian Ellie Goldstein-Erickson, Christmas break is no vacation. 

On Tuesday morning, with students and teachers basking in a two-week recess, Goldstein-Erickson sloshed through puddles, working overtime to put the final touches on the school’s long-awaited new library—scheduled to open when students return Jan. 5. 

“It’s going to be magnificent,” she said. “I’m just hoping we can start services on the fifth.” 

Construction workers and specially trained, Dewey Decimal-literate library movers worked along side Goldstein-Erickson Tuesday, racing against the clock to complete the new library and administrative offices—the first stage of a $34 million campus development to finally come on line. 

After repeated setbacks, a new pool, dance studio, two gyms with a locker room and student union with a food court are scheduled to open in March, offering exciting new opportunities for students but tough choices for district officials who must find a way to staff the facilities despite a $2.4 million budget deficit. 

Completion of the library and administrative wing will mark the campus’s recovery from a 2000 arson fire that gutted the “B” Building and condemned the high school to nearly four years of administrative trailers, portable classrooms and a library better suited for an elementary school. 

Now, however, the library is set go from munchkin to marvel.  

Designed like a New York City loft, the roughly 12,000-square-foot space features windows that rise to the slanted wood paneled ceiling, oozing natural light even on an overcast morning. 

Yet after three years occupying two classrooms in the “H” building that held about 10,000 books and 70 students, Goldstein-Erickson focused on the facility’s practical benefits. 

The new library will house a computer lab, an instructional alcove for a teacher to give lessons on a computerized projector, a reading annex with soft, squishy chairs, an archive to store school memorabilia, a work room for librarians to process shipments and shelf space for about 40,000 books. 

“For the first time since the fire, we’ll have the whole collection back together again,” said Susie Goodin, a part-time district librarian who is coordinating the move. Over the past several years, she said, Berkeley has purchased books through a state grant but had to store many at East Campus along with older volumes because it lacked self space. 

There’s a hitch though. With the countdown on, the library is still incomplete: The computer room is missing its 41 computers, the furniture hasn’t been assembled, the floor is unwaxed, columns lack paneling, and there’s still no sign of the new circulation desk. 

The last-minute squeeze at the library is emblematic of the entire Milvia Street construction project, which has been beset with delays. Originally scheduled for completion in April, construction crews got off to a rough start when they discovered an old PG&E storage tank while digging. That delay was compounded by late deliveries of steel, pushing the due date for the project to this summer. 

A district decision to switch food service equipment and problems with subcontractors that missed deadlines or bailed on the project, among other delays, pushed the estimated completion date to January, and now March for the gym, dance studio, student union and pool, said Director of Facilities and Maintenance Lew Jones. 

When the work is done, the district will have to find $242,957 to staff the buildings—a tough pill to swallow considering the budget deficit. 

At last week’s school board meeting, the board, after a lengthy debate, voted 3-1-1 to approve funding for a new librarian to help manage the larger space and the equivalent of two new custodians and 2.66 new safety officers. 

When asked by Director Joaquin Rivera how she planned to pay for new staff, Superintendent Michele Lawrence intimated that the district would have to make cuts elsewhere. 

“There’s no magic bullets, here,” she said. “We have created a building over there and it has to be staffed.” 

Director Terry Doran took a different tack, saying the current staffing proposal amounted to “a skeletal crew,” and he fears that without adequate staff the buildings could deteriorate prematurely. 

Meanwhile, work continues at the library. Goodin said that wiring could be completed Tuesday, allowing them to set up the computer tables in advance of the computers that are due to arrive within two weeks. By that time the floor should be polished and the tables assembled, though it appears Goldstein-Erickson will have to start the new era with her old circulation desk, though that didn’t seem to faze her. 

“No matter what,” she said, “come Jan. 5, I’ll be here saying hello at the front door.”

In the United States, the most common election system is to have each voter choose one candidate, and the person who garners the most votes wins, regardless of whether that person has achieved a majority. There are many alternative methods for picking one winner out of a field of candidates. Some examples are listed below: 

Runoffs or Sequential Voting 

Each voter chooses one candidate, but to win, a candidate must gain a specific fraction of the votes, often a majority. If no candidate wins that fraction, a second election is held between the top votegetters. 

The Borda Count 

Named for Jean-Charles de Borda, a French physicist, the Borda count requires each voter to rank the candidates and assign points. The Associated Press and the Coaches Poll use the Borda count to rank teams in certain college sports. 

Approval Voting 

Each voter gives one vote to each candidate of whom he or she approves. The candidate with the most approval votes wins.  

Instant Runoff or Single Transferable Vote 

In this method, voters rank two or more of the candidates. If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the second-place votes of the losing candidate(s) are transferred to the remaining candidates. This procedure is repeated until one candidate gains a majority or a plurality after a specified number of rounds. 

Recently, the Berkeley City Council voted to place an unspecified form of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) on the March 2004 ballot (Measure I) leaving the final choice to a future City Council. 

The “full preferential” form of IRV used in Australian gives a winner with a “true majority” of the total votes cast. However, its drawback is that the voter must rank all candidates or his/her ballot is spoiled. For example, if full preference IRV had been used in the recent California governor’s election, voters would have been required to rank all 135 candidates or their ballot would not be counted! 

A form of “optional preference” IRV is currently used in London to elect its mayor. In this form, voters rank only first and second choice candidates. If no candidate receives a majority of the first-choice votes, all but the top two candidates are eliminated simultaneously. Ballots that rank eliminated candidates first are then counted for whichever remaining candidate is listed second on each ballot. Ballots which rank another eliminated candidate second are treated as if no second choice was provided.  

The chief disadvantages of this form of IRV is that many second choice votes are not counted and the winner can be elected with only a plurality. For example, in the 2000 London mayoral election, of the 581,761 first choice votes for eliminated candidates, 36 percent were counted in the second round and 64 percent were not. Thus, several hundred thousand voters were effectively disenfranchised. 

Let us now examine some of the claims of the proponents of IRV. One claim is that IRV increases voter participation. All forms of IRV, except for “full preference”, result in decreased participation in the higher rounds. For example, in the London mayoral election only 78 percent of the voters had their ballots counted in the second round. Furthermore, because of the incompatibility of the traditional and IRV ballots, the Alameda County registrar has refused to allow municipalities that use IRV to consolidate with the county. Thus, a Berkeley IRV election would have to be conducted on a separate date from the county election with a dramatically lower voter turnout. 

A second claim is that “all voters have a chance to participate in selecting the winner.” The 2000 London mayoral election has shown this claim to be false since 373,508 votes were not counted in the second round, which produced the winner. 

A third claim is that IRV will save tax dollars. Because Alameda County has stated that it will not allow IRV elections to be consolidated with the county elections, the Berkeley city clerk has estimated that a special IRV election would cost more than the both the general and runoff elections combined. 

A fourth claim is that IRV is simple and easy. On this topic the Alameda County registrar has stated “As an election official with nearly 20 years experience conducting elections, I can assure you that this type of system would result in very high numbers of disqualified ballots and disenfranchised voters.” 

Putting Measure I on the ballot is premature for the following reasons: 

1. There are no forms of IRV that are presently certified by the State of California 

2. There are currently no voting machines that can handle mixed traditional and IRV voting on both regular and absentee ballots. 

3. If IRV where to be used in the November 2004 election, it would be more costly, because Berkeley would not be allowed to consolidate its election with Alameda County.  

4. Only half of Berkeley’s elected offices are proposed to use IRV. Rent and school board offices would be excluded. 

5. Claims of increased voter participation in IRV are not borne out by London’s recent mayoral election and would be drastically lower if a special Berkeley IRV election were held. 

6. Due to the increased complexity of an IRV ballot relative to a traditional ballot, spoiled ballots will be more common. 

7. The present ballot measure does not specify which form of IRV would be implemented. Most forms of IRV do not count all ballots nor require a majority to win. 

Voting systems play an important role in sustaining our democracy and should not be changed without a careful evaluation. Although our present plurality voting system has faults, it has one overwhelming advantage: It is simple enough that the majority of people can understand it. All alternative voting systems have a common devil, complexity. Since the deficiencies associated with Instant Runoff Voting depend crucially on its particular form, it is important to know which form of IRV is being proposed before you vote and not leave this essential choice to the discretion of a future City Council. 

Gordon Wozniak is a Berkeley City Councilmember. 

Urban Outfitters, the clothing and boutique chain that found itself mired in controversy over the board game “Ghettopoly,” might draw heat again after distributing a shirt that some say stereotypes Jewish women. 

Berkeley resident Baitiya Jacobs found the t-shirts, featuring the words “Everybody Loves a Jewish Girl,” accompanied by several dollar signs, sufficiently outrageous to consider filing a complaint. 

“It’s a very negative cultural stereotype that’s dangerous,” said Jacobs, who is Jewish. “It’s really offensive.” 

The shirt is one of a series that include other ethnic stereotypes, including “Everybody Loves an Italian Girl” with a picture of a pizza slice, “Everybody Loves a German Girl” alongside a beer mug, and “Everybody Loves an Irish Girl,” featuring a shamrock. 

“I don’t even know why they threw ‘Jew’ in,” said Jacobs. “And if they did, it could have been a bagel.” 

The release of the shirts follows last year’s uproar over a series of shirts released by Abercrombie & Fitch that featured caricatures similar to those produced in the early 20th century of Asian men with slanted eyes and conical hats. The shirts bore the slogan “Wong Brothers Laundry Service—Two Wongs Can Make It White.” 

After protests erupted across the country outside the stores the shirts were yanked in less than a week. 

“The t-shirts were caricatures, and it’s something that our society would certainly be outraged about if it was a depiction of African Americans or Latinos here in California, but there is not that same level of awareness about the Asian American community,” said Vic Malhotra, a policy advocate for Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco based organization. 

“It was important for the community to voice that outrage, not only to force them to pull the t-shirts, but also to build awareness that this kind of humor is completely unacceptable,” he said. 

Urban Outfitter’s Regional Director refused to comment on the shirts other than to say no official complaints had been filed. Nonetheless, organizations in the Bay Area, when alerted, said the imagery raises concern. 

“I’m frankly very concerned,” said Abby Porth, from the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), the public affairs arm for the numerous Jewish organizations in the Bay Area. “That kind of stereotyping is dangerous for a variety of reasons. Jewish women, like all women, are multi-dimensional beings. They are diverse in their perspectives and beliefs.” 

Porth, along with Deborah Louria, regional director for the JCRC’s East Bay office, say the imagery also promotes the image of what is commonly referred to as a JAP, or Jewish American Princess. 

“This introduces the idea to a whole new generation after so much work to try and put the stereotype to rest,” said Louria. “It does a disservice to not just Jewish women but to all women.” 

The imagery of money is the real sticking point for most organizations contacted, referring back to the age-old derogatory classification of Jews as greedy. 

A representative from the National Italian American Foundation took offense at the imagery of a pizza slice on the “Everybody Loves an Italian Girl” but was able to distinguish between that and the severity of the dollar signs on the Jewish shirt. 

“Historically Italian Americans have a problem where we’re stereotyped as gangsters, buffoons, and restaurant workers,” he said.  

“The [Italian shirt] is much more benign than some of these other ones… The difference is in the Italian American community nobody bats an eye when [Italians are stereotyped]. It’s acceptable.”  

Because the shirts haven’t generated much criticism yet, both Porth and Louria say the JCRC has not investigated. Meantime, they urged consumers to voice their concern to the store. 

“I would hope that people don’t purchase and wear the shirts, but also communicate to the people who are trying to make a profit from them that they be removed from the shelves,” said Porth. “This isn’t about freedom of speech but about negative stereotyping that disintegrates the moral fabric of society.”

UC Berkeley enrollment held steady this year, according to final registration figures released last week. 

In all, 23,206 undergraduate students and 9,870 graduate students enrolled at the Berkeley campus this fall, for a total of 33,076—just 69 fewer students than last year. 

To keep education quality high in the face of mounting budget deficits, UC Berkeley has sought to hold enrollment steady, said Assistant Vice Chancellor for Admissions and Enrollment Richard Black in a written statement. 

UC Berkeley enrolled 3,652 freshman this year, three fewer than in fall 2002. 

The ethnic breakdown of the freshman class remained basically unchanged from last year, with groups enrollment rising or dipping by less than a percentage point. 

Asian Americans comprised 45 percent of incoming freshman, followed by whites at 30 percent, Latinos at 11 percent, African Americans at 4 percent and Native Americans at 0.5 percent. Students who chose to define themselves as “other” or who declined to state their ethnicity represented about 10 percent. 

Woman comprised 54 percent of the undergraduate population, while males accounted for 54 percent of graduate students. 

—Matthew Artz

Online Fraud 

San Francisco police are warning patrons of Bay Area community website Craigslist.org that they could fall prey to a check scam. 

Craig Newmark, the website’s owner, told police that he has received hundreds of reports that his online classified section has been used to defraud people with fake cashier’s checks. 

Police say suspects with a Nigerian address contact folks running ads on the site. The con man claims to want to buy merchandise, and sends the victim a counterfeit cashier’s check for more than the value of the item. 

The victim is then instructed to cash the check at a bank and mail back any excess money via Western Union. That money is sent back to the Nigerian account. 

Eventually the check proves to be a forgery and the victim’s bank penalizes him for the entire amount of the fake check. 

Strong Arm Robberies 

Six juveniles stole a purse from a woman at the intersection of Harrison Street and San Pablo Avenue at approximately 7:45 p.m. Sunday evening, police said. 

Police arrested three men in connection with a robbery on at University Avenue and McGee Street at approximately 11:15 p.m. Friday night. Berkeley Police spokesperson Kevin Schofield said a group of teenagers approached the victim and grabbed his wallet before fleeing in a car. Shortly thereafter, police stopped a car that matched the victim’s description and arrested Justin King, 18, of Richmond, along with two others whose identities the police dispatch system failed to provide.

With the window of opportunity closing quickly, developer John DeClerq of TransAction Companies and the Downtown Berkeley YMCA are hammering out a deal to salvage 100-public parking spaces and end merchant opposition to Library Gardens—the biggest housing development ever proposed for the city center. 

An agreement would call for both sides to jointly finance construction of an underground parking level that would give slots to Y members during peak hours and the public at other times. 

Should the deal fail to materialize before Jan. 8—the day DeClerq is scheduled to present his 176-unit project before the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB)—DeClerq said he would submit his present proposal, which provides just 11 public parking spaces to replace the loss of 350 spaces.  

Y members previously enjoyed parking privileges at DeClerq’s 350-spot Kittredge St. garage, which Library Gardens will displace. 

After DeClerq outlined his compromise proposal to the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) Thursday, the merchants announced they would withdraw opposition to Library Gardens if a deal were struck. 

The DBA turned on the project last year after DeClerq—citing prohibitive costs to construct two levels of underground parking—reneged on his promise to maintain the downtown parking supply as part of the Library Gardens Project. His current design includes only 116 street-level parking spaces, of which 105 are reserved for future residents of the complex. 

The plan meets city codes, but downtown merchants fear that without accessible parking for the Y, library and nearby movie theaters to the north and east of the garage, local businesses will lose far more revenue than Library Garden’s projected 300 tenants can provide. 

“Those anchor tenants collectively bring in between 3,000 to 5,000 people a day,” said DBA Executive Director Deborah Bahdia. “We want to make sure that our network of businesses can continue to profit from that economic chain of purchases.” 

Rather than battle the merchants at the ZAB hearing, DeClerq has negotiated behind the scenes to appease downtown interests. 

In November, the Library Board of Trustees voted to withdraw their opposition to the development, to be built just west of their building, after DeClerq offered an undisclosed number of parking spaces for the disabled and parents bringing their children to library events, as well as more bicycle spaces. 

Since getting the library on board, DeClerq has reopened negotiations with the YMCA, which he sees as the key to winning over downtown business interests. 

“This comes down to YMCA parking downtown,” he said. 

Price estimates for a 100-space underground lot differ, with DeClerq coming up with $10 million, and a city-funded survey with $6.8 million, said Principal Transportation Planner Matt Nichols. 

DeClerq would not disclose how much he expected the Y to kick in for the project, though he said a final deal would likely guarantee them access to between 50 and all 100 spots during their peak hours before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m.  

The underground lot would not include mechanical lifts, DeClerq said, citing the costs of hiring valets to run the machines. The DBA opposes lifts, insisting the hi-tech system would confuse downtown visitors. 

In November, DeClerq severed a long-standing relationship with the Y that gave members free peak-hour access to 75 parking spots at the Kittredge garage, one block from the Y. 

Downtown YMCA Director Fran Gallati declined comment 

Even if a deal is reached, downtown parking capacity will undoubtedly remain a hot-button issue. With the loss of the 50-space lot on Center Street—soon to be the new home of Vista College—and the inevitable demise of either all or most of the Kittredge garage, Berkeley faces the loss of up to 400 parking spaces—more than a quarter of its total supply. 

Although Berkeley’s general plan specifies that the city should first work to reduce parking demand before spending public money to build new parking, the sudden depletion of spaces has planners and city officials considering options to increase supply. 

The most likely plan of attack, Nichols said, would be to demolish the city’s 420-space, structurally unsound Center Street garage in favor of a bigger facility, paid for possibly by floating bonds or an assessment on downtown businesses.  

The Kittredge Street garage has been a source of controversy for a half-decade. In 1997, the progressive majority on Council carried a 5-4 vote recommending an eminent domain expropriation of the garage as the future site of the Berkeley Municipal Courthouse, with the county paying to replenish lost parking spaces.  

DeClerq, then the Chamber of Commerce president, sided with City Council moderates and led the charge—with the backing of the DBA—against the progressives’ plan, arguing, among other things, that the temporary displacement of parking caused by construction of the new courthouse would damage downtown businesses. 

Amid the internal division, the county moved the Berkeley courthouse to Oakland. Shortly thereafter, DeClerq proposed Library Gardens, a mix of four stories of one and two-bedroom apartments above parking and five retail shops along Kittredge Street.  

His original plan called for two levels of underground parking—455 spaces in total—to preserve the city’s parking supply, but he withdrew that proposal last year after determining that building parking underground was too expensive. 

Assuming the ZAB approves either project, which the planning department will reportedly recommend, DeClerq said construction would begin in April and finish in July 2006.

TUESDAY, DEC. 23 

Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair with 350 craftspeople and food, held between Bancroft and Dwight, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 649-9500. www.telegraphberkeley.org  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Christmas Party at noon. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

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 for information or check our web page, http://home.comcast.net/~teachme99/tildenwalkers.html or email teachme99@comcast.net 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 24 

Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair with 350 craftspeople and food, held between Bancroft and Dwight, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 649-9500. www.telegraphberkeley.org  

THURSDAY, DEC. 25 

Christmas Day - City Offices are closed. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 27 

Celebrate Kwanzaa with storyteller Diane Ferlatte at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, West Branch. 981-6270. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 28 

Kwanzaa Celebration at 4:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, with storytelling, dancing and fashiosn show. Potluck. 981-5362. 

MONDAY, DEC. 29 

Civic Arts Grant Workshop, sponsored by the City of Berkeley, Civic Arts Commission, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. For information contact Charlotte Fredriksen at 981-7539. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/oed/civicarts  

Dana Smith and his Dog Lacey at the North Branch, Berkeley Public Library at 3 p.m. His family show combines juggling and other circus arts and showcases the energetic show stopper, Lacey. The free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library and is recommended for children from 3 through 9 years. For further information, contact the Children’s Library, 981-6223. For information on other free library programs, check www.infopeople.org/bpl 

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. 

TUESDAY, DEC. 30 

Dana Smith and his Dog Lacey at the South Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 1901 Russell St. at 10:30 a.m. and the West Branch, 1125 University at 2 p.m. His family show combines juggling and other circus arts and showcases the energetic show stopper, Lacey. The free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library and is recommended for children from 3 through 9 years. For further information, contact the Children’s Library, 981-6223. For information on other free library programs, check www.infopeople.org/bpl  

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 

Berkeley Youth Orchestra Auditions will be held during the week of Jan. 5th. To schedule an audition, please call 663-3296 or visit www.byoweb.org 

The Berkeley School Board is now accepting applications for Board Committees and Commissions. Applicants interested in representing a Board Member will find information and applications on the BUSD web site www.berkeleypublicschools.org or by contacting the Public Information Officer at 644-6320. Applications can also be picked up in the Superintendent’s office. 

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.

TUESDAY, DEC. 23 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 24 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

THURSDAY, DEC. 25 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

10th Annual Dykelah Escape-from-you-know-what-day Musical Extravaganza, benefit for Shalom Bayit (Jewish women working to end domestic violence) concert & potluck, featuring Cofi Kwango, the Rivkin Twins, Eileen Hazel, Helen Chaya, Lia Rose, at 4 p.m. at Rose Street House of Music. For information and location call 594-4000 ext. 687. www.rosestreetmusic.com 

Jerry Christmas, Grateful Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave at 10 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

FRIDAY, DEC. 26 

CHILDREN 

Drumming with Nigerian Masters, Rasaki Aladokun and Olusola Adeyemi, at noon and 1:30 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $4.50 to $8.50. 642-5132. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Caribbean Allstars and Pan Extasy at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenez. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

ELMNOP and FourOneFunk at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com  

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

Blowout Trio at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

SATURDAY, DEC. 27 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Surco Nuevo performs salsa at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Through Walls, Thriving Ivory, Drive Line at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

World Beat Celebration with Neal Cronin, Joyce Wermont, and Vlad Ulyashin perform acoustic rhythmic/harmonic sounds of the Middle East, and Rap, Tuvan harmonic singing, at 7 p.m. at A Cuppa Tea, 3200 College Ave., corner of Alcatraz. 654-1904. 

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

Kammen and Swan at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Reggae Party with Irie Productions at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

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

Spencer Day at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

The Phenomenauts, The Soviettes, The Stellas, No Apologies Project, The Skyflakes at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Blue and Tan at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 28 

THEATER 

The Big Fat Year End Kiss Off Comedy Show XI, with Will Durst, at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $17, and are available from 925-798-1300. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fireproof and The People performs Reggae and Hip Hop at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

43rd Street Studios Showcase at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $3. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

David Grisman Bluegrass Experience at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $20.50 in advance, $21.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, DEC. 29 

CHILDREN 

Steam Train Science and Song at noon at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $4.50 to $8.50. 642-5132. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express, open mic night, “Between the Holidays” from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC 

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. 30 

CHILDREN 

“Wind in the Willows” presented by The Oakland Public Theater at 3:00 at the Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. Sponsored by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library. For further information, contact the Children's Library, 981-6223. For information on other free library programs, see www.infopeople.org/bpl 

NanoRama at noon at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $4.50 to $8.50. 642-5132. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sauce Piquante at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Cheryl McBride at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The responses to George Bisharat’s article on the Palestinian right of return filled me with sadness, because hopes for peace in the region rest on Palestinians and Jews—in Israel and the wider world—entering into dialogue with good faith and mutual respect—just what Bisharat was attempting. 

Avraham Shalom, one of four former directors of Israel’s Security Service who recently warned that Israel was heading toward catastrophe, said: “We must, once and for all, admit that there is another side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully.” 

As Bisharat insists, recognizing the other side’s feelings involves going back to 1948, the time Palestinians call “al-Naqba,” the catastrophe, and seeing it through Palestinian eyes. Israelis must find the courage to publicly acknowledge the suffering caused by the founding of Israel. 

Bisharat writes, “Accepting back refugees, who would form a larger Palestinian minority in Israel than has been deemed ideal for Jews, may be the price Israel must pay for establishing a Jewish state in Arab Palestine.” (Note that Bisharat does not call for the end of the Jewish state.) This may be the price Israel has to pay for peace—and it needs peace to survive. 

But Israel’s acknowledging responsibility for Palestinian suffering is compatible with a restricted right of return—for example, to a newly established state of Palestine, with some exceptions, as proposed by the recent non-governmental Geneva accord. Fairness and good faith, however, demand at the least extensive payments of reparations by Israel. 

To deny that in 1948 Jewish armies and paramilitary groups drove out more than 700,000 Arabs from the land that became Israel is futile—it did happen, just as the holocaust happened. 

The celebrated I.F. Stone—a Jew, the first newspaperman to travel with illegal Jewish immigrants to British mandate Palestine, and a frequent visitor to Israel thereafter—wrote in 1967 of “the myth that the Arab refugees fled because the Arab radios urged them to do so. An examination of British and US radio monitoring records turned up no such appeals; on the contrary there were appeals and even ‘orders to the civilians of Palestine, to stay put.’” Today’s 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel are descendants of the 133,000 who stayed put. 

Even if some Palestinians fled in response to Arab inducement, their flight did not give Israel the right to permanently take over their land. 

Stone further writes: “Jewish terrorism, not only by the Irgun, in such savage massacres as Deir Yassin, but in milder form by the Haganah itself, ‘encouraged’ Arabs to leave areas the Jews wished to take over for strategic or demographic reasons. They tried to make as much of Israel as free of Arabs as possible.” More recently, Israel’s new historians (e.g., Benny Morris) provided abundant confirmation of this. 

As stated in James Sinkinson’s letter, the various Arab countries in which Palestinians took refuge do bear responsibility for Palestinian suffering for denying them and their descendants citizenship, whether or not some of the refugees refused resettlement, as Bisharat writes. 

But the Arab countries’ misuse of the refugees in no way cancels out 1948. Apologies are also due on the Israeli side for the increasing horrors of an occupation aimed at forcing Palestinians from their land; and on the Palestinian side, for the policies adopted by their various resistance groups of targeting civilians. 

Maybe it would be more to the point to call for apologies from all those responsible for the current tragedy: the European nations, for 2000 years of persecution of the Jews; the Allies in WWII, for giving the Jews a territory that was not theirs to give; the Arab nations, for their self-serving policies toward Israel and Palestinians; and the United States, for unconditionally supplying Israel with vast military and economic resources it used to pursue expansionist goals. As Stone writes: “A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements”—some form of ethnocentricity is present in every instance mentioned above. 

Could it be time to set up a Truth and Reconciliation commission like that of South Africa? Would it make sense to do it now, maybe in some neutral country—and not wait for a peace agreement? 

Annette Herskovits

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is the closest thing we have to a modern sacred text, and there’s only a few days left to catch it. Like the older scripture from which it arises, it connects social morality with the transcendent, this life with the promise or warning of what is to come. Its plot—the cynic’s conversion—is the model for every Christmas movie, from It’s A Wonderful Life to A Christmas Story to this year’s Elf. 

The A.C.T. adaptation by Laird Williamson is everything one could ask. It preserves the psychological core of Dickens’s story: the desperate yearning beneath Scrooge’s harsh cynicism. It gives us splendid images of the three great ghosts, as well as Robert Blackman’s wonderfully suggestive and ingenious set. It uses child actors with unusual effectiveness. Its rapid pacing and stirring music conceal the dramatic weakness of individual episodes like Fezziwig’s ball or the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner. I have seen it many times before, and I am always glad to see it again. 

This year I especially enjoyed the energetic, good-humored Fred of Jeff Galfer, Jud Williford’s poignant Bob Cratchit, and Tommy A. Gomez’s grand Ghost of Christmas Present. On the other hand, in the performance I saw, the Scrooge of Rhonnie Washington, an understudy, was a bit tentative, not horrified enough by Marley’s Ghost, not sharp enough in his early exchanges with Bob Cratchet and Fred, not liberated enough at the end. I didn’t like Washington’s yelps and hoots, and I missed the Scrooges of Christmas Past. In addition, Craig Slaight has added an occasional false note to the current production, such as the mood-wrecking moment in which Scrooge wiggles his backside at the audience. 

These are minor flaws in a gorgeous ensemble production, however, and they shouldn’t keep anyone from going to see it. When the Ghost of Christmas Present is revealed perched high up on Blackman’s set, when poor Jacob Marley appears through the fog with all his chains, or when the entire cast joins in singing Lee Hoiby’s lovely carol (“Joy Have They Who Give Good Cheer”), it is impossible not to feel a bit of the real Christmas spirit, as much of it as we can find in a frantic and secular age. 

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Adapted by Laird Williamson and Dennis Powers, directed by Craig Slaight, through Dec. 26. Tickets $19-$68 at the Geary Theater box office, 415 Geary St., San Francisco or by phone at (415) 749-2228.

A trip to an African-American greeting card and calendar design and distribution business in an out-of-the way North Oakland warehouse—tucked back in that little sliver between the Berkeley and Emeryville borders—demonstrated to me once more how small and close-knit the East Bay’s African-American extended family community once was. 

In the middle of an interview, I found out that the woman I was talking to was the great-granddaughter of the midwife who delivered my mother, and that her mother and mine once lived across the street from each other while growing up in Berkeley. 

Berkeley native Margot Dashiell, the president, co-founder and driving force behind Frederick Douglass Designs, wasn’t surprised at the connections. Discovering and nurturing connections within the African-American community is one of the major purposes of her business. 

Along with traditional holiday cards, books, and figurines—all with positive, Afrocentric images, the 20-year-old company may be one of the larger distributors of Kwanzaa cards in the country. 

“It’s very important for people to have ways of expressing sentiment through our culture,” Dashiell says. “Not just our color. We need to affirm our achievements.” 

Leafing through the company’s extensive catalogue or poking into boxes lining the many metal shelf rows lining the cavernous warehouse, both the color and the positive achievement reach out to you in the greeting, holiday, and event cards, the wall calendars featuring African masks, black history photos and events, or jazz artists, the music boxes and figurines, the Southern soul food cookbooks. 

The colorful cards feature original designs by internationally famous Brenda Joysmith (a UC Berkeley and California College of Arts and Crafts alumnus), Oakland artist and activist Tarika Lewis (my own cousin), or fine artist and Los Angeles native Synthia Saint James (best-known for illustrating the covers of Terri McMillan’s novels). 

Only a few days before Christmas—as well as the start of the Kwanzaa season—business is still booming.  

Dashiell estimates that the company has sold 20,000 boxes of holiday cards this season alone, and our interview gets started a half-hour late as walk-in customers come into the company’s showroom office in a steady stream. 

It’s all the more amazing because Frederick Douglass Designs sits in the middle of an out-of-the-way industrial neighborhood with no identifying sign on the front. 

“We actually need a storefront, to handle those kind of customers,” Dashiell admits, adding that most of the walk-in traffic comes from word-of-mouth, as well as local people who apparently pick up the company’s address from mailed catalogues. 

Most of the business, however, is done through mail distribution around the country: to bookstores, individuals who resell, churches and other fund-raising organizations. 

Dashiell, a Berkeley High graduate, says her inspiration for the business came from her political activism “and the sort of social consciousness that I developed” while she was a UC Berkeley undergraduate in the early 1960’s. There she was a member (along with my older brother—oh my goodness, another connection!) of the African-American Association, the black nationalist group that was the political training ground of both Bobby Seale (who later went on to co-found the Black Panther Party) and Ron Karenga (who later became the creator of the Kwanzaa holiday). Two decades later, she decided to put that social consciousness to practical use. 

“I always liked sending out holiday cards with positive, African-American themes,” she explained. “I thought other people would like that, too. So I asked my brother, Joseph, to come in with me in the business.” 

Joseph Dashiell, an Oberlin College graduate, had a background in an area that his sister admits she lacked: sales. It was 1983. Working out of the basement of her Berkeley home on a $13,000 investment, the sister-and-brother company worked with an initial line of cards illustrated by Brenda Joysmith. They lost $1,000 the first year. “But we knew, intuitively, that there was a market,” Dashiell says. “And after that, the volume began to double each year.” 

The company located African-American artists around the country who illustrated the cards that the Dashiells designed. “We do the art direction and most of the writing,” she says. “We shape the work.” 

Four years after its founding, the company outgrew Dashiell’s basement and moved to its first independent home on Folger Street in Berkeley. The company moved to its North Oakland warehouse headquarters five years ago. 

In addition to Margot and Joseph Dashiell, the company employs one full-time worker to operate both the warehouse and the company website (www.fddesigns.com), along with 12 workers specifically hired during the holiday rush. 

Dashiell also put her political training into other areas, running as an unsuccessful candidate for Berkeley City Council in the 1970s. 

The company, Dashiell feels, is fulfilling her original goal of highlighting African-American achievements. “Many people don’t know what African-Americans have accomplished,” she says. “Many people take it for granted. Even for people who work here at the company, you can see the inspiration on their faces when they look through some of the books, or at some of our ‘knowledge cards.’” She described these as series cards which contain brief, biographical descriptions of African-American achievers. “People look at these things and say, ‘Aha!’ You can see the joy of knowing.”

GIVING THANKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This morning I heard a knock on my door... Although there was no clatter, I sprang from the chair and flew like a flash. What to my wondering eyes should appear eight tiny reindeer accompanied by Ms. St. Nick. I heard them explain “We have some groceries for you!” 

From this droll little mouth (by way of Clement Clark Moore), thanks to the members of the community who made this possible: Berkeley Firefighters Association, Berkeley Fire Department, Berkeley Lions Club, Girl Scout Brownie Troop #319! 

Helen Rippier Wheeler 

• 

FREE ELECTRICITIY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Los Angeles Times of Nov. 28 reports that Riverside County provided generators to the elderly and disabled for use during outages caused by the big fires. This was paid for by the State Dept. of Community Services and Development for generators that cost from $834 to $1, 273 for a total of $204,990. 

I propose that the near homeless be provided free electricity if they are about to have their supply cut off by their electric company. It could make a world of difference to them. 

At the same time, the electricity should be used in a conservative way to get the most out of it. 

The City of Berkeley has a program where high school students are employed during the summers to insulate homes of deserving persons. 

About 20 or 30 years ago, we were able to cut our electricity use by about 50 percent and natural gas by 75 percent and are still enjoying low monthly bills. The costs that have repaid to us many times by our savings. 

Charles Smith 

• 

TEACHERS’ INPUT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just read the article regarding the possible development of the BHS tennis court/parking site into a mixed use site that would include teacher housing and teacher parking (BUSD Studies Development On Former Tennis Court Site,” Daily Planet, Dec. 19-22). I am rather astounded that such an article would be written without any inclusion of perspectives from teachers themselves. After all, if such a development were indeed to happen at that site it would obviously have a huge impact on teachers. 

It was teachers through their union, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT), who introduced this very same development idea a few years ago to the superintendent and the school board and who said that we would be interested in spearheading it. I have since had numerous meetings and conversations with developers (Patrick Kennedy being only one of them), city officials, and others in further exploring the issue. BFT also has also shared with BUSD officials some preliminary ideas and potential connections we have for financing such a development. 

Please don’t forget to ask a Berkeley teacher next time that you write an article that pertains directly to us. 

Barry Fike, President,  

Berkeley Federation of Teachers  

• 

FLOATING COTTAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to fill in a few omissions and correct a couple of errors in your article, “‘Floating Cottage’ Owner Dealt Setback by Council” (Daily Planet, Dec. 19-22), regarding the Dec. 16 City Council hearing in which Council rejected Christina Sun’s appeal of the Zoning Adjustments Board’s decision revoking her permits for 3045 Shattuck Ave. 

On April 19, 2002, owner Christina Sun submitted an application to remodel her two-story house at 3045 Shattuck Ave. In her sworn testimony, she told City Council it was vacant at that time, and thus her characterization of the existing use as “single-family house” was accurate. In truth, her own appeal contains sworn statements from two of her former tenants indicating they lived there through the end of May. 

Since Ms. Sun was renting her tenants individual rooms on separate leases, she was not using the property as a single-family residence. Although in 1999 she lost single-family status for her property at 2414 Carleton St. for that very reason, she told City Council that she was unaware separate leases made any difference. 

Ms. Sun told Council it was after she received her original permit that she first learned, from planning staff, that she could add a third story. In fact, as Ms. Sun stated in a legal complaint she filed against her original contractor, she solicited estimates for both two and three stories before she applied for a permit, and she signed the three-story contract on May 31, 2002, the day after she received the two-story permit. 

In her application, Ms. Sun left “Demolition—Whole or Partial” unchecked and stated that one of the two garages would remain. Nevertheless, in the first half of June 2002, before applying to revise her permits to reflect her plans for a three-story building, Ms. Sun demolished the first story. She then immediately applied to revise her plans, and the remaining second story stood on blocks until after she received her revised permits in March 2003. 

On April 29, 2003, Ms. Sun submitted revised plans that would have eased renting the second and third floors as separate flats. Staff responded by asking Ms. Sun to remove interior doors, eliminate a second water heater, add an exterior door at the bottom of a stairwell, and execute a deed restriction limiting use of the building to a single-family dwelling plus a commercial space. On May 20, Ms. Sun executed the requested restriction. Nevertheless, between June 1 and 18 she discussed renting the third story as a separate flat with a couple who own the business across the street, and also with one of their employees. 

These rental offers call into question Ms. Sun’s claim that she needs six bedrooms and four bathrooms to house her extended family when they come to visit. If she rented out one floor, she would be left with the same three bedrooms and two baths she told City Council she has in her current residence. 

Robert Lauriston 

• 

FOOD SERVICES RESPONSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am responding to Yolanda Huang’s letter to the editor (Daily Planet, Dec. 16-18). I have no philosophical argument with Ms. Huang and others advocating better, more nutritious food in our schools; the issue as a School Boardmember is how to provide this food within budget, without detracting from the General Fund (as is currently happening), which of course translates into taking money from our classrooms and our educational programs. However, accuracy is important to me. Ms. Huang has conflated several different circumstances and board actions in her letter; all bargaining unit administrators received a raise in 2002-2003, as per contractual obligations. The food services director was not singled out for additional compensation. Secondly, the vote related in Ms. Huang’s letter, 3-2 by the school board, and the quote attributed to me (Spring, 2003), was in fact for three individuals promoted due to increased administrative and supervisory duties and was not related in any way to our food services program. It was not even part of the same discussion. The vacated positions in fact were not filled due to budget constraints. These are always difficult decisions in times of budget deficits; however, the business of the district has to continue. We need to provide services, as well as continue to supervise and evaluate staff and program. 

I urge interested parents to check out our lunches at Longfellow and Willard, and the forthcoming lunches at the reopened Berkeley High facility in January. We have other viable lunch programs at some of our elementary schools. These are the models for what I believe can be successful, within-budget, healthy food for our kids. 

I also urge all of us, Ms. Huang, the school board, and other concerned members of this community, to find solutions in Sacramento and elsewhere to the historic underfunding of our food services (and other) programs. In these times of shrinking state support for our schools this is even more imperative. 

John Selawsky 

President, Berkeley School Board 

• 

THE SPIRIT OF BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I live in Santa Barbara, and my visits to Berkeley are infrequent. The atmosphere of Berkeley is very different than that of my home town. Berkeley has the feel of a time capsule, where a free-spirited yesteryear still lives on while the rest of us have settled down. There is a vibrancy and life absent from other cities. I recently visited Berkeley with my father, and as we walked past street vendors hawking their wares on Telegraph Avenue, and enjoying the live performance of street musicians, he commented that things hadn’t changed much since he lived in Berkeley in the 60s. I felt glad that there were places like that left. 

I was shocked to read in the Berkeley Daily Planet (“Musician’s City Hall Feud Carries a Hefty Price,” Dec. 5-8) that long-time street musician Michael Masley was served an $800 ticket for selling his CDs without a license, and playing with an amplifier without a license, and may face jail time if he isn’t able to pay the fine. Has Berkeley come to this? Is even improvisational and dynamic street music subjected to heavy handed beauracracy? 

In my mind, Masley, who I first encountered while he was visiting Santa Barbara, personifies the atmosphere and spirit of Berkeley. And rightly so, he has played its streets for two decades. In fact in 2002, Masley was the Grand Marshal of the “How Berkeley Can You Be” parade. His legal troubles foreshadow a disturbing trend of regulation for regulation’s sake. 

If permits is what the city requires, then make the permit process simple, fast, and efficient. When Masley went to the permit office, expecting to get a permit the same day, he was laughed out and told to wait six months. It’s bad enough that the permit cost over $100, no small sum for a street musician, but what is the man supposed to do in the mean time? And how can issuing a street music permit possible take six months? Such bureaucratic inefficiency is a shame to the city. 

The city of Berkeley should be proud that such talented musicians as Michael Masley, who has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and performed with such well known groups as Garbage, call it home. I would urge city officials to rethink the laws that require street musicians to be permitted. If permits are to stay, then Masley’s fines should revoked, and he should be given an apology and a permit (free of charge, today—not in six months). Let the spirit of Berkeley live! 

Parker Abercrombie 

Goleta, CA 

• 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you very much for publishing George Bisharat’s excellent, informative op-ed (“The Other Diaspora Israelis Must Confront,” Daily Planet, Dec. 9-11) which told of the dispossession of the Palestinian Arabs from what is now Israel in 1947-48. The actual expulsions of the native Arabs started in 1947 and the five pathetic Arab “Armies” only intervened in what was still predominantly Arab Palestine in May, 1948 to prevent the expulsion of the remaining Arabs which they correctly feared would happen after the unilateral declaration of the State of Israel by the Zionist military units. The Jewish forces actually outnumbered the combined Arab forces by 3 to 1 (60,000 to 20,000), so much for “little Israel” as a victim of aggression. There were no Arab broadcasts urging the Palestine Arabs to flee, this was documented in 1958 by the UK journalist, Erskine Childers, in his essay The Other Exodus. The BBC monitored all broadcasts in the region and there were no such orders to flee, as has been a staple of Zionist propaganda for half a century. At least 750,000 but probably as many as one million Palestinian Arabs were expelled or forced to flee. That this was in any sense “voluntary” could only be believed by a psychotic. The 600,000 Arab Jews who Israel enticed from Iraq, Morocco and Yemen, largely, do not cancel out the Palestinians who were expelled. This is a head of cattle argument that Zionism’s racist proponents make as an attempt to whitewash the original expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs. If any of the specious “arguments” made by the usual Israeli apologists in response to Dr. Bisharat’s cogent op-ed were used in a Ph.D. thesis in Israel itself, they would flunk out. Israel has killed many, many more Palestinian civilians than vice-versa since 1948. We need to cut off all aid to this state. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

• 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

The responses to George Bisharat’s article on the Palestinian right of return filled me with sadness, because hopes for peace in the region rest on Palestinians and Jews—in Israel and the wider world—entering into dialogue with good faith and mutual respect—just what Bisharat was attempting. 

Avraham Shalom, one of four former directors of Israel’s Security Service who recently warned that Israel was heading toward catastrophe, said: “We must, once and for all, admit that there is another side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully.” 

As Bisharat insists, recognizing the other side’s feelings involves going back to 1948, the time Palestinians call “al-Naqba,” the catastrophe, and seeing it through Palestinian eyes. Israelis must find the courage to publicly acknowledge the suffering caused by the founding of Israel. 

Bisharat writes, “Accepting back refugees, who would form a larger Palestinian minority in Israel than has been deemed ideal for Jews, may be the price Israel must pay for establishing a Jewish state in Arab Palestine.” (Note that Bisharat does not call for the end of the Jewish state.) This may be the price Israel has to pay for peace—and it needs peace to survive. 

But Israel’s acknowledging responsibility for Palestinian suffering is compatible with a restricted right of return—for example, to a newly established state of Palestine, with some exceptions, as proposed by the recent non-governmental Geneva accord. Fairness and good faith, however, demand at the least extensive payments of reparations by Israel. 

To deny that in 1948 Jewish armies and paramilitary groups drove out more than 700,000 Arabs from the land that became Israel is futile—it did happen, just as the holocaust happened. 

The celebrated I.F. Stone—a Jew, the first newspaperman to travel with illegal Jewish immigrants to British mandate Palestine, and a frequent visitor to Israel thereafter—wrote in 1967 of “the myth that the Arab refugees fled because the Arab radios urged them to do so. An examination of British and US radio monitoring records turned up no such appeals; on the contrary there were appeals and even ‘orders to the civilians of Palestine, to stay put.’” Today’s 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel are descendants of the 133,000 who stayed put. 

Even if some Palestinians fled in response to Arab inducement, their flight did not give Israel the right to permanently take over their land. 

Stone further writes: “Jewish terrorism, not only by the Irgun, in such savage massacres as Deir Yassin, but in milder form by the Haganah itself, ‘encouraged’ Arabs to leave areas the Jews wished to take over for strategic or demographic reasons. They tried to make as much of Israel as free of Arabs as possible.” More recently, Israel’s new historians (e.g., Benny Morris) provided abundant confirmation of this. 

As stated in James Sinkinson’s letter, the various Arab countries in which Palestinians took refuge do bear responsibility for Palestinian suffering for denying them and their descendants citizenship, whether or not some of the refugees refused resettlement, as Bisharat writes. 

But the Arab countries’ misuse of the refugees in no way cancels out 1948. Apologies are also due on the Israeli side for the increasing horrors of an occupation aimed at forcing Palestinians from their land; and on the Palestinian side, for the policies adopted by their various resistance groups of targeting civilians. 

Maybe it would be more to the point to call for apologies from all those responsible for the current tragedy: the European nations, for 2000 years of persecution of the Jews; the Allies in WWII, for giving the Jews a territory that was not theirs to give; the Arab nations, for their self-serving policies toward Israel and Palestinians; and the United States, for unconditionally supplying Israel with vast military and economic resources it used to pursue expansionist goals. As Stone 

writes: “A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements”—some form of ethnocentricity is present in every instance mentioned above. 

Could it be time to set up a Truth and Reconciliation commission like that of South Africa? Would it make sense to do it NOW, maybe in some neutral country—and not wait for a peace agreement? 

Annette Herskovits 

• 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

We can blame the Zionists for dispossessing the Arabs, or the Arabs for denying Jews a national home. Or we can blame both together. The central issue is still the existence of the Jewish state. There is a solution to the conflict. I think it’s the only one. It is to have both sides live in the same country. 

Yes, that’s what I said—the same country. That’s the only possible solution to the conflict. Remember the stated reason for the fighting is occupation of somebody else’s land. Make the land ownership common and that problem goes away. 

We Americans first identify ourselves as Americans, then we recognize our national origins, or the origin of our ancestors, or our ethnicity. If the political divide that gave us the unsatisfactory 2000 presidential election were to further factionalize the country and degenerate into territorial war, we might have something like the Israeli-Palestinian terror war here in the U.S. As it is, we are fighting the war on terror as an extension of the Israel-Palestine war. 

If we Americans, with all our ethnic variety, can live together in one country, if the Canadians, Belgians and Swiss can operate with multiple languages, it’s clear that it is possible for Arabs and Jews to live together in the same country. Just stifle the hate. Those other countries had periods of hatred; the US had a civil war. 

The “peace process” should start with the city of peace—Jerusalem. Make it officially a diverse settlement, with neighborhoods of Muslims, Jews, Armenians, Coptics and American Evangelicals. Run the place with a representative council. Hey, we expect the Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites, Baathists Brits and Americans to get together to run Iraq, don’t we? 

Of course, the “new Jerusalem” would have to be a weapons-free zone. Palestinians and Israelis may continue killing each other outside the city, but would check their weapons at the city gates. 

I think a new Jerusalem is the only reasonable starting point for a true peace process. People have to get together to operate a multi-lingual, multi-culture, multi-religion city of peace. If they really can’t do that, then any road map leads to a barren waste, and the UN should make the Mideast into one big theme park, entertaining tourists with gladiatorial battles among terrorist groups, promoted like a bull fight. 

What would follow success in Jerusalem? The new nation, of course. What is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and part of Egypt would become a new country, with autonomous cultural regions. Of course the capital would be Jerusalem. 

I know many Israelis and Palestinians spit and scoff at the “one state solution,” but there simply is no other way that doesn’t involve more of the war. 

Let’s start with the new Jerusalem. Bring in a bunch of Belgians, Swiss Canadians and even a few Americans to run a temporary government and  

infrastructure. Who would take over after that? The citizens of new Jerusalem. Hallelujah. 

Steve Geller 

As Berkeley High Senior Marco Espinoza finishes off his college applications, he knows his future looks bright.  

Not so, however, for a program that helped guide him through high school and set his course for college. 

Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger used emergency powers to cut the remaining $12.2 million from this year’s state funding to UC Outreach—a program that extends UC into thousands of state high schools and community colleges to prepare poor and minority students for university. 

Collectively, UC Outreach programs serve over 110,000 K-12 students, including about 240 in Berkeley, offering students SAT prep courses, weekend study sessions, and summer scholastic programs among other activities. 

A friend’s mother recommended a UC-affiliated program—Y Scholars—to Espinoza while he was struggling through his freshman year at Berkeley High School.  

“There’s no way I would have done as well without it,” he said, noting his grades rose to a B average after enrolling. “When I first started school I was slacking off. It really shook me up.”  

The program, run out of the Downtown Berkeley YMCA, offers students three hours a week of tutoring, group activities and—most important to Espinoza—one-on-one mentoring.  

“They’re kind of like a big brother. They give you a lot of tips and really help you out,” he said. 

Evidence compiled by UC Berkeley’s Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP)—which the proposed cuts would eliminate—shows that Espinoza’s success is hardly the exception. 

Of this year’s UC Berkeley freshman class, half of the Mexican Americans and 40 percent of African American, Latino and Vietnamese students participated in educational outreach programs. In total, 40 percent of EAOP graduates qualified for admission to a UC, compared to 12.5 percent statewide. 

Nevertheless, Gov. Schwarznegger placed UC Outreach on a list of emergency cuts—executed last week without the assent of the legislature—to pare $150 million from the state’s reported $25 billion deficit. 

California Department of Finance Deputy Director of External Affairs H.D. Palmer defended the cuts, which could end programs as soon as next month, as a lesser evil than cutting “core instructional activities of state universities.”  

“Given the state’s fiscal situation every part of the government will be shouldering responsibility for cuts,” he said. 

In addition to unilaterally ending this year’s funding for UC Outreach starting in January, Schwarznegger’s proposed budget for 2004-05—due out Jan. 10—wipes out future funding as well. 

If the legislature accedes, the cuts would end state-funded Outreach programs, including the Early Academic Outreach Program which provides test preparation, academic advising and Saturday and summer academic enrichment classes. Other programs set for elimination include Mathematics Engineering and Science Achievement program (MESA) which gives instruction to a Berkeley High scholastic program, PUENTE and TAP, which help community college students transfer to UC. 

“This is really devastating,” said Marsha Jaeger, Director of UC Berkeley Outreach which until budget cuts last year served 6,061 Bay Area students in 65 schools. “The cuts close the pathway to higher education for so many young people.” 

Berkeley students might have more to lose. In addition to their standard programs, the EAOP also funds the Berkeley Scholars to Cal program operated by nonprofit Stiles Hall.  

Begun four years ago with a $25,000 grant, the program has sponsored a group of 40 fourth graders—as they work their way through district schools—offering them mentoring and requiring them to participate in a UC Berkeley summer program and 20 weeks of Saturday study sessions. 

Annual program costs total $100,000, said Stiles Hall Executive Director David Stark, adding that without the $25,000 from UC, he would have to seek outside funding to keep the program afloat. 

The Y Scholars Program at the Downtown YMCA is mostly independent of UC Outreach, though UC does pay the salary of one staff member and Y students often fill the ranks of UC’s SAT prep course and Saturday classes. 

Still, state cuts could devastate the Y program. Downtown YMCA employee Tracy Hanna said the Y recently lost its $85,000 state grant that paid for nearly half of the program’s $175,000 budget. While they try to fundraise to fill the gap, Hanna said, the Y has had to turn away students and would likely reduce enrollment from the current 200. 

Outreach has been part of UC for over 25 years, but the state bolstered funding in 1998 after voters passed Proposition 209, ending Affirmative Action in public education. 

UC hoped outreach programs could better prepare minority students for college to maintain ethnic diversity at UC schools. But a 50 percent cut to the $33 million Outreach budget earlier this year had reduced funding to below pre-209 levels, Jaeger said. 

Already this year, Outreach ceased all programs in state middle schools and stopped paying the salaries of other staffers at the YMCA program. 

Unless the legislature manages to restore funding, the only hope for Outreach would be for UC officials to shift money to the program—a prospect that appears unlikely. 

“The problem is we’ve taken hundreds of millions in budget cuts in the last several years,” said UC spokesperson Brad Hayward. “If the university was to self-fund the programs that means we’d have to make cuts of equal amounts to other programs.” 

He said the university had continued to address criticisms that Outreach programs were sometimes inefficient and tended to overlap one another. 

For now, Hayward said, UC will keep programs in place until the budget picture clears up. 

“We need a look at the January budget proposal before we can have a sense of what the future holds for these programs.”

Following the start of the winter break, many international students and scholars have chosen to stay and welcome in the New Year in Berkeley. 

“I’ll be here with my cat,” said 23-year-old Yehoshua Shay Sayar as he wiped away the line of wet paw prints on the floor at his Berkeley home one recent rainy afternoon. “Israel these days still has a lot of tension, so it’s easier for me to relax here.” 

Sayar is on a seven-year Ph.D. program in comparative literature. He moved to UC Berkeley two years ago after obtaining his undergraduate degree in Los Angeles. He said the last time he went back to Israel is about three years ago. Though he did think about returning again this winter, his mom has decided to come over to Berkeley for her first time rather than having her youngest son fly back. 

This gives Sayar more time to look after Shooz, a black fluffy cat he adopted a year ago. “That’s a decision very much influenced by what I feel for Berkeley,” said Sayar. “I’m really making Berkeley my home. Going back to Israel will not be necessarily going back home, but going back where I come from.” 

Sayar said he particularly enjoys Berkeley’s intellectual community and the political environment. He’s found it much easier to make friends here. A well-known Israeli poet recently asked Sayar to translate his 80 poems from Hebrew to English. It’ll take Sayar at least this whole winter to complete the project. 

“It’s really hard,” said Sayar. “But it’s satisfactory.” 

As happy as Sayar are some young women who live in UC Berkeley’s International House. 

“I didn’t plan to go back home for this break at all because I want to see how people here decorate and have Christmas,” said 22-year-old Olympia Kyriopoulos who left Germany for Berkeley this August for one-year graduate study in Mechanical Engineering. 

“I’ve never seen snow falling from sky, and never touched it,” said Nidhi Tandon, 24, a law school graduate student from India. “Maybe this winter in Tahoe, I can make a snowman!” 

Both Kyriopoulos and Tandon said they had just gone through a rigid semester that offered few opportunities for fun. Thanks to an I-House friendship program, they’ll be having Christmas dinner with local host families, one in Oakland, the other Benicia. 

“I miss my family and friends at home, but I’m not homesick, not depressed,” said Tandon at the I-house Café. “I’m having my first-time every day here.” And yes, it’s going to be Tandon’s first time to not only observe, but also participate, in celebrating Christmas in the U.S. 

There’ll be a series of events available to students, according to Liliane Koziol, director of programs at I-house. Koziol’s office is organizing coffee hour gatherings, pizza and movie days and an ice skating trip for the break. 

“From 600 down to 100 (in residence at I-House), students will feel lonely, and would like to get together so that they can have a little community,” Koziol said. 

Marija Drezgic, who is on a three-year master’s psychology program, decided to stay because the $800 round-trip airfare for returning Serbia was just too expensive. 

“I miss home very, very much,” said 26-year-old Drezgic. “(But) I can’t afford going back probably until I finish the program.” 

Since she arrived in August, Drezgic has been studying hard, often late into the evening. She said she wanted to win a scholarship, and she plans to keep on working six hours a day during the vacation. 

Drezgic is not alone. Hundreds of Chinese students on Ph.D. programs may be busier. 

“Five-week winter break?” exclaimed Tang Shan, who majors in mechanical engineering. “Wow, I feel so jealous!” 

Except for a few days around Christmas and New Year, Tang said he’ll be doing his research. “My boss keeps me work hard and expects me to show up here,” he said from an underground lab where cell phones never work. 

Li Sha, who studies engineering with Tang, agreed. Li’s outstanding work won her an invitation to present her research paper at an international conference in the Netherlands next month. 

But Li had to cancel the trip because she feared encountering a lengthy security check when applying for a re-entry visa for her return to Berkeley after the conference. 

“My professor worries much about it,” Li said. “It’s such a pity that things like this are becoming particularly difficult for Chinese.” Five of Li’s fellow students are going as planned, simply because none of them comes from mainland China. 

But that still leaves plenty of reasons to party. About 15 Chinese students gathered at Li’s UC Village apartment Sunday afternoon to celebrate the end of the fall semester and Li’s successful passage of her doctoral candidacy exams. They progressed from making hamburgers to splitting cheesecake, then on to champagne, games and wild karaoke. 

None plans to visit China this winter. According to Berkeley’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association, at least four-fifths of the university’s 400 or so Chinese students will stick close to Berkeley. As the city becomes immersed in Christmas atmosphere, many have already quietly teamed up to explore other parts of California. 

“We usually celebrate the New Year,” said Tang. “There’ll be lots of parties for me to go after they come back from their Christmas trips.” 

Each of the international students said that getting the most out of the American adventure counts much for having a fulfilling life, and they always seem to be able to find a way in Berkeley to both enjoy a great time and achieve academic success. 

Xiaoli Zhou comes from Shanghai and is a master’s student at the UC Berkeley Journalism School. 

For some, the holiday season means shopping, eating, and relaxing with a cup of warm cocoa, but for others—me included—it means the start of ski season. 

The same storms that brought recent rains to Berkeley have dumped good snow on the Sierra, and there’s no better opportunity to take that well-deserved time off, pack up your snow gear, and head for the slopes. 

As a former ski and snowboard instructor, I thought it might be helpful to provide a guide of sorts, laying out everything you will need to create a successful trip. Whatever your snow toy of choice might be—skis, snowboard, sled or saucer—the following suggestions should help you enjoy the warmest and funnest time in the snow. 

Clothing 

The first secret to staying warm is layering. Contrary to popular belief, bulkier doesn’t necessarily mean warmer or more effective. With the right layering scheme, you’ll not only stay warm, but also be able to adjust to the elements as they shift, which often happens. 

The first layer should always be a whole-body liner. Long underwear, unlike the red flannel longjohns of yore, is now both super thin and much warmer. With several materials to choose, the industry standards are polypropylene and silk. Both keep you warm by hugging your body, keeping heat in while wicking moisture away to keep you dry. 

The next layer for your feet should be a good pair of ski socks. No need for bulky wool socks. Today’s ski socks combine materials (60 percent polyester, 40 percent wool for example) to ensure warmth along with comfort. Besides, there’s nothing more painful than a thick, cramped sock stuck in a plastic ski boot for hours. 

Advances in outdoor clothing go far to render the elements null and void, leaving several options for pants and upper body clothing. 

Gore-Tex, in my opinion, is by far the cleverest invention in the recent years. This material is completely waterproof but also breathable. If you’ve worn one of those old fashioned yellow rain slickers, you know that even though you stay dry, you get awfully stuffy. By comparison, Gore-Tex is a godsend.  

Gore-Tex jackets and pants are available, but often, you can get by with just the jacket, since Gore-Tex usually carries a heavy price tag. You’ll find jackets at local stores at prices from $200 to $400, but as you sit on the ski lift in a blizzard, you’ll realize just how worthwhile your investment was. 

Good gloves are a must because there’s nothing more uncomfortable than cold hands. I find mittens a smarter choice than fingered gloves, and even though the fingers on gloves provide greater mobility, mittens are always warmer.  

A newer but equally important piece of equipment is a helmet. Increased numbers of people die every year from head injuries incurred on the slopes so head protection is becoming the norm. Not everyone needs headgear, but if you’re an intermediate skier with a sense of adventure or planning on making that next step to advanced, a helmet is a must. 

Lastly, make sure you have glasses or goggles. On a sunny day, snow is so bright that without eye protection you will go blind. If you venture out when it is snowing, take goggles because glasses won’t protect you from flying snow. 

Equipment 

To ski or to snowboard, that is the question. 

The rift between the two has developed into one of the great rivalries and continues to rage, mostly falling along generational lines, with the young crowd on the snowboards and the traditionalists on skis. 

Until a couple of years ago you’d typically find equal numbers of both skiers and snowboarders at any given area. Today, however, snowboarders rule. 

And for those with a little more motivation and who don’t insist on being hauled up the slope by a machine, there’s the age-old sport of cross-country skiing, the number one cardiovascular workout in the world.  

Also surging this year are telemarkers (not to be confused with telemarketers)—skiers who ride equipment that is a cross between a downhill and cross-country ski.  

Where To Go and What to Buy 

Sadly, both snowboard and ski equipment is tres expensive. The entire package for either—including telemarking—often runs close to $1,000 new, though cross-country gear costs about half that. As with any consumer product, variables abound, so the best way to insure you get the right product at the right price is by comparison shopping. 

Fortunately, Berkeley is filled with recreationalists and plenty of stores who cater to them. 

The two big names that dominate are REI, at 1338 San Pablo Ave., and Any Mountain at 2777 Shattuck Ave. Other shops offer smaller but sometimes more specialized services, including California Ski Company at 843 Gilman St. and Marmot Mountain Works at 3049 Adeline. Wilderness Exchange at 1407 San Pablo Ave. carries a large selection of used equipment.  

For anyone who plans to just go up once or twice, renting’s the logical choice. All ski areas will provide rental services, but if you want your gear before you leave, stop by Any Mountain. Weekend ski packages weekend are $50, including boots, poles and skis. A snowboard package is $65 and features both board and boots. 

Both REI and Any Mountain also run ski shops where you can bring in your board or skis to get them mounted, repaired and tuned-up. Like any equipment, proper care insures better functionality and safety.  

Expect a three-day turnaround at Any Mountain for any work, while REI is backlogged until the new year. Both places however, run rush services that cost an extra $10 and get your equipment back that same day. Basic tune-ups at Any Mountain are $37 and include a machined edge and base grind, and hot wax. The same service is $40 for REI members and $50 for non-members. Both places employee highly qualified technicians, so your skis will be in good hands. 

Where and How To Go 

Lucky for us, we have Lake Tahoe in our back yard. With 15 ski areas, it’s one of North America’s premier ski spots. There are too many areas to list but a quick Google search will produce a comprehensive guide to each individual area. Keep in mind what kind of skier you are when choosing an area, because each caters to a different crowd. Also bear in mind that the more popular areas like Heavenly and Squaw Valley are more crowded, meaning longer waits at the lifts and less time on the slopes. 

Lodging and food options also run the gamut. Prices range from reasonable to outrageous and, like any good resort town, always run to the high end. 

Most areas can be reached within 2-3 hours if the traffic’s good and there’s no bad weather. Because the drive’s a crucial part of the outing, a successful trip starts with thorough planning. Heading from the East Bay North on a Friday night is usually a traffic nightmare, so keep that in mind—be prepared to leave early or drive late or you’ll spend an extra hour sitting around. Return traffic from Tahoe on Sunday night can be just as bad, especially in South Lake Tahoe as thousands of people try to squeeze into the two lanes on Highway 50. 

And last, but not least, don’t try and beat the weather because Mother Nature always wins. Check the weather reports and bend your schedule around them. The roads in and out of Tahoe often close during storms, and if you have a two-wheel drive car, bring chains and know how to put them on before you leave—there’s nothing more painful than trying to figure out how to put on chains in the middle of a blizzard. If you don’t have chains or a four-wheel drive the state police will turn you away during a storm. 

For more information on equipment please contact any of the following stores in Berkeley. 

Any Mountain-665-3939 

REI-527-4140 

Wilderness Exchange-525-1255 

California Ski Company-527-6411 

Marmot Mountain Works-849-0735

Mothers can be difficult. I know. I am one, and have had my share of eyes rolled at me, and sighs of exasperation vented my way. 

But shopping for mothers can be even more difficult. 

Especially mine.  

First of all, she doesn’t want “things.” For the past several years she has been trying to give many of her things away, and agonizes over how to divide up household possessions fairly between children and grandchildren. So more things are not what she wants. 

When my children were little she was always delighted to have the latest crayon artwork in a frame, and a nice photograph of them, but the crayons have long been put away, and it has been years since I’ve been able to assemble everyone on the living room couch for a nice family picture. 

For a while mother requested homemade beeswax candles from the farmers market, but that has apparently gone out of fashion. And hiking socks were always welcome. In her mid-seventies, my mother is still an avid hiker and adventurer. I even used to knit the socks myself, but now someone has invented a sock that wicks moisture away, and has a long list of ingredients, so plain old wool appears to have gone out of fashion also. 

One year we gave a much appreciated set of gardening hand tools. I asked, last year, if they perhaps needed replacing. But no, the tools have been as carefully cared for as her glorious garden, and will probably last to be handed down to the next gardener in the family. 

Books are usually a good bet. My mother is a voracious reader, so we have to find a book that just came out, in the last month or so, and hope she hasn’t read it. History, scientific discovery, and nature are all good subjects. And local California authors usually come through for us. She will unwrap the book carefully, “saving the paper for next year” and read it over the next three days of her visit to Berkeley, leaving it for us on her bedside table. Sometimes she leaves with the book a brief commentary, jotted on an index card, ending with a thank you. 

It is now a few days before Christmas, and I still don’t have a book, or socks for her. When she calls to tell us her arrival time at the airport, I ask if there is anything she wants for Christmas this year. “No,” she responds, “Nothing, I don’t want things.” I hang up, and sigh. 

The telephone rings seconds later. “I know what I want,” says the familiar voice. “Oh really, great!” I say, mentally calculating the free hours I have to find what ever it is she wants. “What is it?” I ask. “A mask and snorkel,” mother responds. Did I roll my eyes? I certainly breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Wonderful,” I respond, “I even know a dive shop where we can get you outfitted when you get here.” Finally. Shopping for mother, is done.

Every year at Christmastime I think of my friend and neighbor, Mrs. Gerstine Scott. She was born on Christmas day, 1930, in a dirt poor Texas town close to the Louisiana border. In the late 1940s she moved by herself to the Bay Area, raised a son and a pack of foster children, worked for 30 years as a cook and maid at various UC Berkeley fraternity houses, and presided over our North Oakland neighborhood with an iron fist.  

In April 1994, when my husband Ralph had a bicycling accident that left him a C-4 quadriplegic, Mrs. Scott took over our household. By the time Christmas rolled around that year, she was my constant companion. We went everywhere together: to Ralph’s medical appointments, to the pharmacy, the grocery store, the movies. We were inseparable, and so it was only natural that several days before Christmas we found ourselves at Longs Drugstore on 51st Street in Oakland, searching for a Christmas tree. 

I was not in the holiday spirit and I wasn’t optimistic that we would find a tree that would fit inside a house full of bedpans, leg bags, syringes, bandages, and adult diapers. But Mrs. Scott was bursting with Christmas good cheer. She wanted me to get a tree, a big tree. It was Christmas, after all, a time to commemorate our good fortune, a time to celebrate her birthday.  

At the tree lot I picked out a small, skinny treetop. As I dragged it across the busy parking lot, Mrs. Scott followed behind me, offering suggestions and advice, cautioning me to be careful of my back. I stopped and let her catch up. She was dressed, as always, in a bizarre assortment of brilliant, mismatched clothes: a bright paisley scarf was wrapped around her head, tinkling silver earrings hung from her earlobes, a purple and red dress covered a pair of lime green stretch pants, gold slippers graced her wide, flat feet and a loopy strand of plastic pearls flapped around her neck. 

“Mrs. Scott,” I yelled to her above the tinny Christmas music that blared from speakers on the light posts. “Aren’t you getting a tree?” 

“Honey,” she laughed, “don’t you know? I am the Christmas tree!” 

And it was true. She was like a Christmas tree, an angel, a holiday force all wrapped up in one big soft package of crazy clothing, inexpensive jewelry, comfortable and smooth warm flesh.  

On Sept. 6, 2001, Mrs. Scott passed away, but her spirit lives on at our house as do a number of other souls who have provided us with hope and light these past 10 difficult years. There’s Harka Bhujel, who came to us from Nepal, lived in our home for five years and gave us his heart. There’s Jerry Carter, who came from the streets, stayed with us for almost a decade and went back from where he came. There’s Leroy Ligons, who shared an upstairs bedroom with Jerry and joined Mrs. Scott on April 11 after a brave battle with lung cancer. And now there’s Hans Enrique who helps me take care of Ralph and lives in the room that Jerry and Leroy once occupied. Like Mrs. Scott, Hans is a big person, full of love, empathy and religious zeal. The Nicaraguan version of Harka, Jerry, Leroy and Mrs. Scott rolled into one huge package, Hans has a lot of important shoes to fill (or in the case of Harka, a pair of flimsy flip flops). But when Hans wraps his strong arms around me, and like Mrs. Scott, presses me to his chest, rubs my head and tells me everything is going to be all right, I believe him.  

“Suzanna,” Hans shouts to me a few days before Christmas. He is standing outside, looking at the front of our house. “We need to hang some Christmas lights around the windows. Leave ‘em up all year-round. Turn ‘em on for Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving.” “No,” I answer firmly. “We don’t need to. You’re like Mrs. Scott and the Christmas tree. You are our holiday lights.”

Bank Robbery 

Police are searching for a robber who struck at Mechanics Bank on the 1800 block of Solano Avenue at approximately 10:53 a.m. Thursday. The robber—insisting that he was carrying a gun which he never displayed—demanded money from a teller and then fled from the bank with cash, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Kevin Schofield. 

Details of the ensuing pursuit are fuzzy. Based on the dispatch report, Schofield said 20 BPD and Albany police officers combed a block in Albany where they suspected the robber might be hiding, but could not locate him. Schofield couldn’t discern whether the robber fled via car or foot, based on the dispatch report.  

Police radio reports indicated that, while fleeing from the bank, the robber dumped the dye-packet—which banks stash in a banded wad of cash to track bank robbers. Schofield could not confirm this, adding that even if he had the information he could not share it for fear that bank robbers would get a better understanding of techniques used to track them. 

Radio transmissions also linked a traffic accident involving a patrol car to the pursuit of the robber, though Schofield was unable to confirm that the accident, which occurred at 11:26 a.m. at the intersection of Solano and The Alameda, was connected to the bank robbery. No one was injured in the crash. 

Request For a Helping Hand 

The Berkeley Public Education Foundation is collecting donations to replace $3,500 in video equipment stolen last weekend from Berkeley Alternative High School. 

Philip Halpern, who teaches video production classes at the school, described in a letter how he arrived at his classroom Dec. 15 to find his locked storage closet open and the video equipment missing. The gear was used as part of a special curriculum to engage students in their studies. Students had nearly completed a semester-long movie project.  

Among the items lost include: Five Sony digital video cameras, two Sony lavalier microphones, four long-life batteries, two battery chargers, one NADY wireless microphone kit (one lavalier, one handheld mic), two microphone cables (20’ xlr), four pairs of Sony studio headphones and one used, bank-quality metal storage cabinet.  

Since the district’s insurance deductible is far greater than the value of the stolen equipment, the foundation has started a fundraising drive to replace the equipment by Jan. 2. Donations may be sent to the Berkeley Public Education Foundation with “BAHS Video” written in the memo space.

I dread the holiday season. As a psychotherapist with over 20 years experience in private practice, listening to clients’ sorrows, pain and suffering has been a tolerable part of the holiday blues. 

There is another part inside me that cringes as the month of November approaches. I am overcome with fear and terror as memories flood of an earlier time in my life. My entire system goes into a state of acute alert. Every nerve in my body stands at attention, prepared again for the shock of a Christmas Eve I can never forget. 

It is a movie that plays endlessly, over and over again inside me. 

“No, no,” I cry out. “Not again.” Whether I like it or not, every holiday season brings back a Christmas time when I was alone with my mother in a hovel of a tenement back east. No matter how hard I try to push back the memory, to deny the impact of it on my psyche, come November it comes knocking on my door and insists on playing out, one more time, the Christmas Eve drama from my past. 

It was Christmas Eve, 1943, and I was alone in the living room of our apartment on Trinity Avenue in the Bronx, with my mother in her bedroom. My older brother enlisted in the Navy and was somewhere in the South Pacific. My two older sisters were away for the holidays with relatives. Even though I was the youngest, the responsibility for caring for my mother had been left to me. 

It was freezing outside and there was little heat in our tenement. 

Everything was silent except for a groaning sound from the refrigerator, as if it were about to expire. My mother, more depressed than ill, was lying in bed with covers up to her chin, her body slathered with Vicks and Ben Gay, complaining of pain no doctor could find or diagnose. For most of my life this is the way I’ve remembered her: not sick enough for a doctor, not well enough to be on her feet.  

She was an immigrant from the Greek island of Mytelene. She would moan, “Aach, aach,” and complain to anyone willing to listen, about the bitter, hard life she had bringing me up without the support of a husband. My father, a sophisticated man from Athens, left her two years before, and a day never passed that she did not curse him, or remind me all that he had done to make her life miserable. 

Guilt was piled high and deep upon me as she spoke of the countless sacrifices she made for me, how she almost died at childbirth with me, and I should never forget it. 

The apartment was quiet and dark, save for the lone lamp in the living room where I sat solemnly waiting for something to happen. Perhaps a knock on the door from a neighbor would break the deafening silence. I fidgeted around in my chair. 

“This is Christmas Eve,” I said to myself, “and we don’t even have a lousy Christmas tree.” 

I sighed loudly, hoping my mother would hear me and do something. Anything. After what felt like hours of dull despair, I could not stand it any longer. I went into the dark bedroom where my mother lay “ach, aching,” bemoaning her bitter fate. She had not even tried to get up and cook or bake something, or bring some holiday spirit, some small cheer into the gloomy place. 

“Ma,” I started. “It’s Christmas Eve, you know? Aren’t we going to even get a tree or something?” She quickly shot back. “A tree? What are you talking about? Can’t you see how sick I am? If you weren’t so selfish, you would run to the nearest church, fall on your knees and pray to God to give me good health.” 

Now it was my turn to groan. I knew her lines by heart. 

“And besides,” she added shaking her finger at me from her bed, “where am I going to find the money? Your father, that ‘Koproskilo’ (rotten dog), left us penniless.” And once again, I heard what a tyrant he was, how he had mistreated her, betrayed her with other women, drank and gambled his money away. All men, she reminded me, where just like my father, no good and after only one thing. I would find that out for myself someday, just wait. 

It took me many years in therapy to piece together her story and understand what happened to my parents. 

Theirs had been an ill-fated, sight-unseen, arranged marriage between my cosmopolitan father from the city of Athens and my unworldly, peasant mother from a small, remote village on the island of Mytelene. My grandparents owned olive groves, leaving my mother in charge of the household. They left each morning to harvest the olives for market. My mother had cared for her five younger brothers and sisters at too early an age. She was burned-out and finished before she had her first child. She had nothing left to give her fourth child, a daughter, me. 

I did not understand at the time, but coming to America from Greece was bad enough. Marriage to my father was an added insult. She felt alone and abandoned in a foreign land, married to a man who did not love her and had no interest in being a father with responsibilities. She was a depressed woman, bereft of hope. Another Greek tragedy. 

I sat there until I felt the apartment and my mother’s depression suffocating me. With my last ounce of hope, I pleaded with her once more. 

“Please, Ma, let me try to get a tree.” I begged. “Can’t you even give me a dollar for one?” 

“No,” she shouted back. “Have you lost your mind? It’s too cold and dark out. Besides, where can you buy a tree for a dollar?” 

“We should have a tree, “ I repeated, feeling I was talking to an impenetrable wall. 

By this time, I just wanted to escape. The tree now seemed tremendously important, despite the obstacles my mother put in the way. I believed the tree would make a difference to the darkness of the apartment and my life. Perhaps it would not only cheer the dismal place up, but by some miracle, my mother might even venture away from her creaking bed and get into the holiday spirit. 

Once more I went back into her bedroom and stood silently at the foot of the bed, waiting. Without speaking, she took her purse from beneath the pillow and carefully gave me a single dollar. Before she could change her mind, I grabbed my jacket and with the dollar tight in my fist, ran down the stairs, two at a time to the street. 

It was so cold I could see my breath in the winter air.  

The streets were deserted. A thin crust of snow had turned to ice and I walked carefully, not to slip and fall. 

Everything was quiet, except for the icy wind that stung my face like needles. I dug my hands deeper into my jacket pockets and fought the wind, head down. 

I headed for Union Avenue. It was always fun to shop there on Saturdays with my mother because the clerks were generous with their samples of olives, cheese and fruit. But now, all but one store was closed. As one of the produce store owners was about to close, I asked him, “Mister, do you have any Christmas trees?” I hoped he might have a few hidden in the back of his store. “Do you know where I can get one?” 

“No, girlie. Don’t you know there’s a strike on?” he said as he closed out the till. “We ain’t got none this year.” 

But I didn’t want to give up and go home yet. 

I walked on to Prospect Avenue. Then I saw two enormous, giant Irish policemen walking towards me. This felt promising. 

I stopped in front of them, feeling very small and scared. 

“Officer,” I began, but I could not say more as I choked up with tears and began to cry. 

“What’s the matter?” one asked. 

Through my sobs, I told them of my search for a tree. 

Once again I heard, “But don’t you know there’s a strike on, little girl? There are no trees.” I kept crying and shook my head, no. “I have to have one,” I said desperately. 

They exchanged looks and between them each took my hand. 

We walked, checking with the few last store owners who were closing up on Prospect Avenue. Somehow I felt hopeful as we walked up and down the streets. 

Late shoppers eyed me with suspicion. Their silent stares seemed to ask what crime might this little girl have committed to be walking between two officers of the law. I began to shiver. 

My teeth began to chatter. I felt so cold that finally I, too, gave up. 

What an idea that I could get a tree on Christmas Eve.  

My mother was right. I was crazy. Through my chattering teeth, I turned to one of the policemen and said, “Maybe I better go home now; it’s getting late.” 

He nodded. 

Then, as we turned to walk back, a huge truck rounded the corner piled high with Christmas trees. One of the policemen whistled and hailed the truck down. Tires screeched, and the truck came to a halt. The policeman ran over and talked to the driver for a moment, pointed to me, went to the back of the truck and took down a tree. To this day, I’m still not sure what magic that policeman wove to get it for me. 

The tree seemed huge before me. The policeman steadied the tree for me to hold it. I was stunned, in shock that the tree was actually standing in front of me. Even now, I can remember the smell of the pine and how the bark of the tree hurt my small fingers as I held onto it. I shoved the crumpled dollar in the policeman’s hands, thanked them both and ran home, half carrying, half dragging the tree behind me. 

When I finally got home, steam was singing from the radiator, and the apartment was warmer than before. 

My mother responded long enough to sit up in bed, mystified. 

Then she reminded me we only had a few tree ornaments and most of them were broken. “That’s okay,” I said, and I searched deep into the closets until I found two dented boxes with old ornaments and used tinsel. I decorated my tree with care, and to me, it was the most beautiful Christmas tree in the world. 

I wish I could say my mother smiled when she saw the tree, or embraced and praised me for my courage to venture out alone in the cold night to find one. But hers was a small world of sorrow she could not escape. She could never know that the tree was a symbol of a deeper faith within me that helped me survive that Christmas Eve and my desolate life. 

You may be wondering what has changed over the years? 

How has the memory of that Christmas Eve affected me today? 

I would be lying to you if I said each Christmas is better, happier and more joyful. The truth is that every holiday season I am catapulted back to that cold Bronx tenement, alone again with my Greek mother. 

Some things have changed. I am kinder to myself each year. 

With the help of a nurturing therapist, I hold that small, lonely, deprived child of mine a little closer. It is hard, but I have learned to slow down, listen inside more attentively to the needs of that 10-year-old that were never met many years ago. Instead of running amok, I stay close to home. I sing Christmas carols in church. I buy the tree earlier in December and it stays up till late January. When I venture out, I make a point to reach out to those friends and relatives who know who I am, where I came from, who understand, love and accept me. 

I’ve come to see that particular Christmas tree from my past as a part inside me with strength and courage that helped me persevere when it would have been easier to give up in defeat. 

The tree that night was a symbol of hope for that kid who was desperate for something to hold onto. It still is.

SAN FRANCISCO—It’s Christmastime, and that means nearly 100 relatives and friends of the Shott family are awaiting the arrival my mother’s several-page, handwritten, wisecracking, tree-hugging, unapologetically left-wing Christmas letter.  

Most Christmas letters chronicle the mundane: a son’s marriage, funerals, promotions. Mom covers that, but her passion for broader, more controversial spheres can’t be contained.  

“Yes, we’re for national health insurance, though not sure how it can be done,” she announced in 1992’s letter, written from Kentucky, where she and my father have lived for 30 years. On teaching in a women’s prison, from the 1991 letter: “In contrast to the activities of some of your S&L managers, it doesn’t take many bad checks for a woman to land in this place.” She went over the top in 1993, somehow linking the new puppy’s “needle-sharp teeth” to her own outrage over reports of sexual harassment in the Navy: The dog would be “sent along with ‘Mrs. Bobbit’ as security delegates to next year’s Tailhook convention.” Ouch!  

I’m still smarting from 1999’s installment, the infamous “While You Still Can” year, by many accounts the best of the recent Christmas letters. My parents, Roger and Diane, and I share a love for nature, and when they visit we go hiking. That year, as we walked through the sunlit meadows and dark forests north of San Francisco, they lagged behind, huffing and puffing. I grew impatient. When the conversation turned to their travel plans, I suggested a visit to Hawaii’s spectacular Na Pali coast, “while you still can.”  

To my chagrin, a retelling of the incident—abbreviated by my mother to “WYSC”—opened that year’s letter. In fact, the ominous phrase popped up throughout. “Roger insists he wants to learn to horseback ride—WYSC.” Later, “Uncle John decided to take a tandem hang glider ride—WYSC.” Finally, “Have a meaningful holiday season—WYSC.”  

Beyond the humor, however, I read a sense of loss in Mom’s Christmas letters that I think resonates with many of our clan, regardless of their political orientation. Loss of youth to age, loss of semi-rural landscapes to bulldozers and pavement, perhaps even the decades-long loss of our country to corrupt leadership.  

“As industrial parks and golf courses surround our neighborhood, displaced wildlife invades our barn,” Mom wrote in 1992, before telling the story of trying to drive a trapped raccoon out into the countryside before it gnawed through a cage in the backseat. “Either road we travel to the farm is being stripped of really big maples, ashes and oaks for development,” she wrote last year. “They burn them—not even used for furniture or flooring—makes you cry.” 

You can only joke about aging, though. “We all have our anti-inflammatories according to our worth—generic aspirin for Diane; nothing but Bayer for Roger; buffered extra-strength Ascriptin for the dog, and a $48 DMSO-derivative for the horse.” 

My father, a retired physician, doesn’t write in the Christmas letter, but he, too, can recognize and relate a good story. A few years ago he wrote in a family album about his father, who died in a drowning accident before I was born. Dad told of the time my grandfather learned of my older brother’s birth and was “ecstatic”—an unusual reaction for the normally reserved professor. A few days later, Dad wrote, my mother received a letter of congratulations from my grandfather in perfect handwriting—shocking because his penmanship was typically unreadable. “After Dad’s death,” my father wrote, “while going through his papers, I found the practice sheets for Diane’s letter. It was then that I felt the enormity of my loss.”  

I have yet to receive this year’s Christmas letter, but I hope I spoke no unkind words to my parents in 2003. Mom laughs gently at my contrition and insists my “WYSC” quip didn’t upset her much. Today I know my anger that day was cover for fear—the fear an adult feels when he sees his once-surefooted parents carefully measuring their steps on a rocky trail in Northern California.  

As for my own writing, I like to imagine I’ve gallantly cobbled together important skills through years of low-paid internships and grueling copy-desk jobs. In truth, I grew up reading and listening to beginnings and endings, foreshadowing and punch lines. My parents taught me to observe the world, care about it, and communicate that passion to others. For that I’m grateful.  

This Christmas, I’ll tell Mom and Dad that. While I still can.  

Brian Shott is an editor for Pacific News Service.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This one in a continuing series by UC Berkeley students on the paths of Berkeley. 

On a hot and dry Sunday afternoon, Dave Semple and his youngest son, Chris, smiled and joked as they made their way up Visalia Steps.  

The family’s black Lab, Casey, pulled Dave up the set of 90 concrete stairs that lies between houses in Thousand Oaks, their North Berkeley neighborhood. Chris carried two loaves of bread they had purchased at Semifreddi’s, down the hill in Kensington. It’s a Sunday tradition for them to walk down the steps, pick up the bread, walk back home and enjoy eating the loaves when they get there. 

“If it lasts,” Chris said as he tore off a handful of one seeded baguette. The father and son had stopped to enjoy the shade under a thick canopy of oak branches that grew in a tangle overhead.  

Nearly a century ago, developers of Thousand Oaks began crafting a hillside suburb that incorporated housing plots, roads and footpaths with the beauty of the area’s existing landscape.  

Since then, seismic forces have skewed a small section of the Visalia Steps at an angle that would make any funhouse designer envious. While the leaning concrete presents a slight challenge to walkers, it also illustrates the developers’ decision to craft a hillside neighborhood that was built in, and not just on, its natural surroundings.  

“Instead of defying nature, it was more like building with nature and trying to feature it and showcase it,” said Zelda Bronstein, president of the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association.  

The neighborhood’s builders set aside a right of way for the Visalia Steps, giving pedestrians a quick-but-steep way between Vincente Avenue and Menlo Place. Originally, Berkeley residents used hillside paths like this one to get to streetcars. Now, a handful of neighbors still use the walkway as part of a leisurely stroll or for a bit of exercise. 

The lack of foot traffic and the thick dark-green ivy that grows along the steps’ lower half make the path a perfect place for spiders and ants. Lines of these ants can sometimes be seen marching safely up and down 10 or 20 steps to flat sections of the path where they cross from one side of the concrete to the other.  

These ants, it seems, know that their chances of ending up as Visalia Steps roadkill are quite slim. By the numbers, the little creatures seem to get more use from the Visalia Steps than people like Dave and Chris do.

Early one morning last week I woke up to a driving rainstorm outside. The television had been left on for some reason. I lay and watched the public humiliation of an old man, officials probing his hair for lice. This was the monster who menaced the world? I wondered how many others heard echoes of the line from Lawrence of Arabia (“Now we see him without his armor and magic cloaks, bereft of friends and sword, reduced here to his bare and tawdry essence for all eyes to view: a little man, greedy, barbarous, and cruel”), applied, in that case, to the Arab people as a whole. And therein lies the danger in our treatment of the captive, Saddam Hussein. 

Tolstoy believed that time and great events drove great men, rather than the opposite. Bonaparte did not invade Russia so much as he was led there, impelled by the pressure of all the world swirling around him. Perhaps. But within these irresistible currents, we can sometimes observe the path the swimmer takes. And so we watch the journey of George W. Bush, fascinated, as he tows the world we know along behind him. To our doom, perhaps. 

There has always been something of the woebegone and the ne’er-do-well surrounding little George, despite the protestations of our Republican friends (Look! they crow, at how he displayed leadership this morning, as if that were not the opening requirement of the presidency, but rather its ultimate goal). Little George. The frat-boy son, screw-up son, the spigot of a beer keg clutched in one hand, a fistful of failed accomplishments in another. Always in need of a bailout. Not like Jeb. The good son. The steady son. The son of sons. The one being groomed for president. 

Oh, how it must have galled little George, as they crowed and cooed over his younger brother. Galled him, too, as he measured the journey of his own life against the towering accomplishments of his father. 

Papa George, after all, was a member of that Greatest American Generation, that odd title pasted on by news anchor Tom Brokaw (not to denigrate the conquerors of Tokyo and Berlin, but it would be difficult to place them in stature above those who fought the Civil War, or who took up arms—with little hope of a future short of the hangman’s noose—against the redcoat British; but that’s an argument for another day). For little George, weaned in the shadow of his war hero father, then watching him stand as Barbarossa, the great Christian commander, the Holy Roman Emperor, rallying the world around him, banners and pennants flying, leading the nations on the last Crusade, scattering the Saracens in his path, burning their villages, hearing the lamentations of their women, driving a stake into the wicked heart of their infidel capital. 

What can a son do, after all, to gain the respect of such a towering figure of a father? Surpass him in his one failed accomplishment. And one thing that the Greatest Generation failed to do, and the Gulf War, likewise, was to come home with the monster, in tow, dragging him through the dust behind the war chariot for the cheering crowds to rain down refuse and spit upon. 

I am fairly certain that for the soldiers entering 1945 Berlin—Russian and American alike—it did not much matter that Adolph Hitler blew his brains out in his bunker, one step ahead of capture. The world, I am sure, breathed a sigh of relief that Hitler was gone, and a threat no more. The generals of ‘91 drove to the outskirts of Baghdad and then called a halt to their troops, reasoning, we are told, that a burning Iraq, lawless, leaderless, and in chaos, was more of a threat to American security than a weakened Hussein. 

But to little George—who passed, one may remember, the chance to go a-soldiering with the men of his own generation—these lessons may not have mattered. To sit at the dinner gathering opposite his father—in a chair as tall and ornate—may be all that was important. And so once more to Baghdad. And the streets of Tikrit. And the spider hole. 

At the end—at the crucial moment—Sadaam Hussein failed of nerve. We are told that he sought the victory of history, that he foresaw, in his own firestorm of demise, a bright, burning signal on a sandy hill, a rally signal for his people, a guide and a symbol for all the ages. Instead, he surrendered without a shot. Head hung, he shambled into our living rooms in shame and disgrace. How could we have feared him, so? This little man. This bent and broken man. Look how we can humiliate him, and he has not even the nerve to raise his eyes. 

But in the public humiliation of Sadaam Hussein there is great peril for the future. It can be too easily construed—by each side, in its own way—as the humiliation of an entire people. A multitude came in from dusty, sand-strewn streets to watch the spectacle of disgrace. Dirty Arab! Fakir! And in those thousand eyes, dark eyes, desert eyes, what will we see reflected back? Resignation? Defeat and growing admiration for their conquerors? Or the smoldering, unbanked fires of redemption’s need? A little man. Therefore, a little people. How must they rise, to reclaim their place in the sun? 

And therein, my friends, lies the danger.

We still call the refrigerator at our house “the icebox,” which confuses the grandchildren. On the door of the icebox we have many things, some very old. We have a magnetic promo for a state senate candidate who was elected, served, and termed out. There’s the driver’s license which one of our daughters got in high school, retrieved from behind the dryer 20 years later. And there’s a collection of fully yellowed bits clipped from papers, including a picture of a youthful, elegant Rosa Parks walking up the stairs of the Montgomery courthouse (not as published at the time—we’re not that old!) A Jon Carroll column tells how the premature death of a friend inspired him to give up his onerous day job and start doing work he enjoyed (I hope he kept a copy in case he needs to think about that now.) And there’s Ellen Goodman’s brilliant Thanksgiving column from November of 1993, containing this telling observation: “For most of the year, it is quite enough to fail to live up to Hillary Clinton. At holidays, we get a second chance to fail to live up to Martha Stewart.” (Writers can add a third chance: to fail to live up to Ellen Goodman.) In her column 10 years ago she summed up the challenge facing contemporary women around the holidays: to do almost everything their mothers did, almost everything their fathers did, and to do it in double-time with a big smile and a well-toned physique. We’ve added another wrinkle since 1993: do it all while maintaining constant communication with everyone who counts by cell phone and e-mail.  

On the other hand, the intervening 10 years haven’t been easy either for Hillary or Martha. Hillary is perhaps over the worst, but poor Martha’s troubles are just beginning. A little item on the news wire tells us she’s had to forego her big holiday party this year. Well, yes. And that probably isn’t the worst punishment the gods have in store for her hubris of trying to be both the perfect hostess and a corporate tycoon. 

Martha Stewart and her ilk are easy targets for people who are proud of living minimalist lives under tightly controlled conditions. At this time of the year, it’s traditional for some writers to wonder why we bother with any of the holiday fuss. A male columnist in the Wall Street Journal writes a patronizing column about his wife’s odd habit of giving gifts to family members. Adherents of the more Spartan religious sects grumble about the extravagant practices of members of more expansive denominations. Those who don’t celebrate Christian solstice holidays complain about those who do, and vice versa. Seasonal sob stories suggest that it’s wrong to entertain your near and dear on a day when you could be waiting table at a shelter. Organizational press releases opine that if you care too much about the welfare of others you might have a co-dependency problem.  

But the main thing to remember, as you try to celebrate the winter solstice according to the customs of your tribe, is that it’s supposed to be fun. One Christmas that sticks in my mind as somewhat challenging was the year we brought our newborn third daughter home from the hospital after a Caesarian section birth, and according to medical advice at the time I was supposed to do nothing but sit in a rocking chair and watch the action. That year we’d “taken care of presents early” for daughters one and two (four and six years old) by ordering a toy kitchen stove and sink from the Sears catalog. They were made of cardboard, and shipped flat, the proverbial “easy to assemble” item. We opened up the stove on Christmas Eve, after the kids were in bed, to discover that the easy assembly instructions had 53 steps, folding and inserting Tab 1 into Slot 1, all the way up to Tab 53 into Slot 53. It took an hour and a half, but it was finally done by 10 o’clock. Then we opened up the sink package and found that Sears had accidentally included the stove instructions instead of the sink instructions, and we’d have to do the 53 (or was it 59?) steps to put the sink together ad lib. Luckily we had two engineers in the house at the time, and they managed to make it work—eventually. No one got much sleep that night, but we laughed a lot. 

That’s the goal for everyone’s winter festivities. Whatever you do, you’re supposed to laugh a lot. The days are short, the nights are long, and even in California, it’s chilly, so it’s important to find something to do that makes you laugh. You don’t actually have to do it, whatever it is, perfectly, a la Martha—look where it got her. With the right attitude, the more mishaps, the funnier it should seem. Some day I’ll tell the story of when the 26-pound turkey caught on fire because it was touching the walls in a tiny oven in a friend’s New York apartment. Now that was a funny Christmas dinner…. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet.