With the close of the year, one of the Bay Area’s greatest scientific and cultural monuments will disappear as we know it. -more-
SATURDAY, DEC. 27
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. -more-
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. -more-
On the twelfth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: twelve no-bid contracts asmellin’. -more-
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. -more-
The holidays are bringing a mixed bag to Berkeley’s homeless. -more-
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. -more-
For Berkeley High Librarian Ellie Goldstein-Erickson, Christmas break is no vacation. -more-
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: -more-
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. -more-
UC Berkeley enrollment held steady this year, according to final registration figures released last week. -more-
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. -more-
Editors, Daily Planet: -more-
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. -more-
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. -more-
As Berkeley High Senior Marco Espinoza finishes off his college applications, he knows his future looks bright. -more-
Following the start of the winter break, many international students and scholars have chosen to stay and welcome in the New Year in Berkeley. -more-
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. -more-
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. -more-
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. -more-
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. -more-
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. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This one in a continuing series by UC Berkeley students on the paths of Berkeley. -more-
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. -more-
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. -more-
