The Quarter Meal—Berkeley’s only daily dinner service for low income and homeless residents and one of the city’s largest programs to meet their needs—will cut back service from five days a week to three beginning March 1, and to shut down by June 24. -more-
Berkeley—virtually world headquarters of the educated eccentric—would seem a perfect home for Paul Mitchell. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a letter sent to Berkeley Chief Building Official Joan MacQuarrie, Mayor Tom Bates, Planning Director Dan Marks, Housing Director Steve Barton and Mark Rhoades for submission to the Members of the Zoning Adjustments Board. -more-
Thomas Jefferson’s legacy in Berkeley may rest on the vote of school children born after William Jefferson Clinton took office. -more-
Nearly eight years after 86 percent of Berkeley voters approved a state ballot initiative opening the door for medical marijuana, local cannabis clubs fear the city might abandon its arm’s length embrace of them for a full-on bear hug. -more-
Berkeley’s bed and breakfast owners have nine days left to apply for a -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series about people and businesses that make things in Berkeley. -more-
KOLKATA, India—Usually the dour official at the Kolkata airport barks, “Any gold? Electronics? Computer?” But this time, when I landed in India from America via Singapore, he was more interested in the food I was carrying. Cooked food from abroad, especially from Southeast Asia, is now suspect. In the age of the bird flu, I have been upgraded from potential electronics smuggler to a disease vector. -more-
Farmworker groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle last month, charging the agency with ignoring important health data in 2001 when it re-approved use of two pesticides extremely hazardous to farmworkers. -more-
Editor’s Note: Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and documentarian Errol Morris will discuss the Oscar-nominated film The Fog of War with UC Journalism Professor Mark Danner Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall on the UC campus, accompanied by clips from the film. Admission is free to students, $10 for the general public and $5 for Commonwealth Club members. The film is playing in its entirety at the Act I and II Theater, 2128 Center St. -more-
My husband Ralph is back in the Intensive Care Unit at Oakland’s Kaiser Permanente Hospital. We are old hands at this. I can’t count the number of times we’ve been on the third floor, but this is our first visit to the most critical wing, the place where there is one nurse for every two patients, an always-on-duty respiratory therapist, television screens that monitor the patients’ rooms 24/7. -more-
An incident that left a $10,000 mural—meant to celebrate the city’s bike users—sitting at the Public Works Department’s corporate yard, caked in mud and punctured by gouges and holes, raises questions about Berkeley civic arts program -more-
The city’s bed and breakfasts—generally houses long inhabited by homeowners-turned-innkeepers who decided they had room to spare for short-term visitors to the city—offer a more personalized experience than a hotel, many guests say. -more-
Greens! Who needs them? -more-
Telegraph Avenue neighbors and merchants packed a Planning Commission meeting Wednesday to protest proposals to speed up buses from downtown Berkeley all the way to San Leandro by eliminating some traffic lanes for motorists on Telegraph Avenue and turning the three northernmost blocks of the street into a car-free, bus-only pedestrian mall. -more-
About 30 protesters withstood steady drizzle early Thursday morning, worried that once Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) completes its newest laboratory complex, far smaller, more dangerous particles could rain down on them. -more-
Chanting “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! M-T-O has got to go!”, an overflow crowd of city workers told the Berkeley City Council Tuesday night that a city manager’s mandatory time off (M-T-O) proposal to help close the budget gap wasn’t acceptable to the city’s non-public safety unions. -more-
A lawsuit filed early last week in San Francisco Superior Court by the Center for Environmental Health in North Oakland and another Bay Area activist organization could force the growing farmed salmon industry to radically change the way their product is raised. -more-
Instructors at UC Berkeley Extension’s English Language Program believe politics played a role in the university’s decision Monday to terminate the 31-year-old program. -more-
Top textbook publishers are giving students a costly lesson in exploitative pricing, according to a study released Thursday by California Student Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG). -more-
Friends and family of a well-known Berkeley activist will gather this Saturday to remember the remarkable life of Mildred Schoenberger, a 30-year resident of the city who died Dec. 15 at the Loving Care Nursing Home in El Cerrito after a long illness, three weeks shy of her ninety-eighth birthday. -more-
Sprint Wireless Communications and North Berkeley residents will have to wait another week to wait to find out whether city councilmembers will approve Sprint’s controversial cellular antennae facility at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Cedar Street. -more-
Fewer students applied to the University of California this year than last, the first such drop in over a decade, according to a UC report released Tuesday. -more-
My Mexican friends tell the story of two brothers who lived in a fishing village on the Monterey coast in the days when Alta California was still part of Mexico. From the time they were babies, the two brothers were all but inseparable; where one would be, so would be the other. One summer morning when they were in their late teens, however, they came into dispute. One of them wanted to go to the market at San Miguel, while the other wished to travel to the town of Gregorio, where a young woman lived. For the first time, neither would give way to the will of the other, so finally, one of the brothers hit upon the plan. -more-
Yellowman, which opened at Berkeley Repertory Theatre Wednesday night, finished the evening with two standing ovations. -more-
Naked singers and local folk heroes helped a packed crowd celebrate years of Berkeley activism on homelessness and mark the opening of a new temporary shelter during a benefit show at the Freight & Salvage coffee house Wednesday night. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last in a series of articles by UC Berkeley journalism students on the paths of Berkeley. -more-
Checking on UC Extension’s recent decision to shut down its world-renowned English Language Program was a discouraging exercise. While our reporter asked ELP faculty for their views on what hit them, I called looking for an official explanation and got more than I bargained for. I reached one of UC’s ubiquitous PR people, who offered to fax me part of Extension’s Strategic Plan (Capitalization is sic throughout, and they use a lot of it). It was headlined Ensure Program Quality. When I read the second sentence, I knew we were in trouble: “ …Extension will institutionalize the process of curricular review according to the criteria of Berkeley quality that was developed during the planning process.” ELP instructors could tell the author that criteria takes a plural verb. -more-
Tom Bates’ unsuccessful attempt to sabotage the Planning Commission task force on the university’s proposed hotel, which he himself had requested only two months earlier, was unfortunately all too typical of his political style. He can’t seem to remember that Berkeley’s form of government is a weak mayor model—he’s supposed to be not much more than a councilmember-at-large, with some ceremonial responsibilities, including chairing the council meetings, and a bigger staff. He might try to get the local voters to change that, following the lead of the two Big Bad Browns who became mayors of neighboring cities after serving in Sacramento. But at this point few would say that the Brown experiments worked very well for Oakland or San Francisco, so Bates’ chances of becoming a strong mayor don’t look good. -more-
