In advance of their eighth and final session today (Tuesday, April 27), members of the Planning Commission Task Force on the proposed downtown UC Hotel complex are looking over the first draft of the report they’ll give the City Council in early June. 

The 13-page document spells out the recommendations the panel adopted in their April 13 session, which ended before decisions were reached on: 

• Daylighting Strawberry Creek along the block of Center Street between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street that the panel already voted should be closed to routine traffic and transformed into a pedestrian corridor. 

• Offering ground-level eateries on the hotel side of the proposed Center Street plaza, preferably with outdoor seating. 

• A call for streetfront facades to conform to the rhythm of existing buildings. 

• Grouping retail uses into a continuous frontage. 

• Utilizing universal accessibility design in pedestrian public spaces and addressing universal accessibility needs at every level of planning and design. 

• A few proposals relating to economic impacts, taxes and finance. 

Decisions on those items will be made from 1 to 3:30 p.m. today (Tuesday, April 27) in the Sitka Spruce Conference Room of the Permit Service Center, 2120 Milvia St. 

Drafters of the task force’s preliminary report, which will be finalized after today’s session, grouped their recommendations into nine main subject areas: 

• 1. “Create a public pedestrian-oriented open space or plaza on Center Street between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street, immediately to the south of the proposed hotel and conference center site.” 

While Task Force members agreed on closing Center Street to traffic, they want it done in a way that doesn’t degrade transit service quality in downtown Berkeley. They also agreed the closed area should include benches, trees, plantings and public art to encourage pedestrians to linger, supplemented by areas for shopping and outdoor dining. 

• 2. “Create an overall master plan for the two-block area bordered by University Avenue, Oxford Street, Center Street, and Shattuck Avenue.” 

Members agree that the project should be designed as a single integrated project, with a priority on an early study of the impacts of street closure on local businesses and on pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Land swaps should also be considered when appropriate. 

Key participants in planning should be the city, the university, local transit agencies, the project developer and the public. Further, the proposed plan envisions that the city should initiate an all-encompassing downtown urban design study to arrive at a community vision for the city core. 

• 3. “Implement good design principles for the entire project and its surroundings.”  

Task force members want the design to blend harmoniously with the rest of the downtown, offsetting the hotel tower from Shattuck Avenue as far northeast as possible while harmonizing streetfronts with the facades of existing buildings and preserving solar access as much as possible to nearby buildings. 

Underground hotel parking should be sited deep enough to avoid creating a garage wall on Center Street, and above ground parking along University Avenue should be offset sufficiently to preserve the street’s retail character. 

Developers should hire architects and designers of the highest possible quality to create a bold and distinctive complex. 

• 4. “Provide public amenities and community access.” 

Members want mid-block pedestrian passageways or galleries to connect Center Street, Addison Street, University Avenue and Walnut Street, improved access from the complex to the Downtown Berkeley BART station (possibly by a sub-street tunnel), a design that directs conference attendees toward downtown shops and merchants. 

The task force wants an artist included on the design team, as well as a project budget that allocates at least 1.5 percent of costs to go toward public art, including creations for the plaza. 

One suggestion that many Berkeley groups should like calls for conference center operators to consider offering a lower “community rate” on available meeting rooms to non-profits and community groups. 

• 5. “Conserve, adaptively re-use, and respect the area’s historic uses.” 

Developers will be urged to design their buildings to complement nearby historic buildings and the early 20th Century feel of the downtown. Specifically, the task force is expected to ask that consideration be given to preserving the historic UC Press Building and the street facade and retail character of 2154-2160 University Ave. 

• 6. “Design, construct and operate the projects according to green building principles.” 

Ideally, developers should aim for creating the greenest hotel in the country following LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) guidelines, incorporating solar energy and sunlight access while minimizing runoff water and installing treatment systems to reduce suspend waste solids and reducing the amount of tap water in sewage flow. 

• 7. “Emphasize alternative and public transit instead of automobile access, and provide only limited on-site parking.” 

Among proposals adopted are calls for limited parking space available to hotel guests—no more than 25 spaces per hundred rooms—at expensive prices, no free parking for hotel staff and executives (who could be provided with BART ECO Passes), relocation of Center Street bus stops and layovers to other downtown locales and provision of transit information to hotel and conference guests and outdoor displays for pedestrians. 

• 8. “Assure labor peace and equity.” 

Developers should have a labor agreement in place before construction begins, including a card check neutrality agreement, and give preference to East Bay contractors and subcontractors. 

Contractors should include an agreement to comply with city prevailing wage, equal rights benefits, and First Source hiring requirements, provide adequate health car benefits to employees and their families, and contribute to the city job training program. 

Members also called for builders to pay city childcare and housing development linkage and mitigation fees. 

• 9. “Maximize net economic benefits for the city and for neighboring businesses.” 

While the developer will pay city property taxes and fees on the hotel, the task force recommends that the university offer the equivalent amount of taxes and fees on property acquired for non-commercial uses such as the proposed museum complex. 

One final suggestion, offered in the preliminary submission by task force chair and Planning Commissioner Rob Wrenn, calls for suspending the task force once the final draft is submitted, instead of dissolving it as originally planned. The suggestion said the task force and planning subcommittee could be reactivated in conjunction with the formal presentation of the developer’s detailed proposal for the site. After contributing their insights throughout the approval process, the panel could then be dissolved with the final city authorizations9

West Berkeley, the proposed nine-story Seagate Building and the need for more performance and exhibition space dominated audience concerns Saturday when Civic Arts Commissioners called for public comments on its proposals for the Cultural Element of the city’s General Plan. 

The commission will ponder adoption of suggestions from Saturday’s session at their next regular session from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Once adopted by the commissioners, the plan goes to the City Council in May or June. The council is expected to adopt a final version to be incorporated into the city’s General Plan. 

Two councilmembers, Mim Hawley and Linda Maio, took it all in from the audience. 

First to comment Saturday was West Berkeley woodworker John Curl. “The city ordinances are written in a Kafkaesque way, and just getting them in line with the West Berkeley Plan will go a long way toward helping the arts in Berkeley.” 

Curl also requested reactivation of the city’s West Berkeley Building Acquisition Fund to help groups of artists and artisans buy buildings funded by mitigation payments paid by developers who have eliminated industrial uses in the area. In addition, he called for a change in city zoning laws to allow for a change in building use from industrial and manufacturing to arts and crafts. 

Bob Brockl of the Nexus Gallery and Collective called for city recognition of West Berkeley as both an arts and a historic district, while deploring the city’s use of $100,000 in mitigation funds from the Durkee Building renovation allocated for affordable artists’ space to fund Urban Ore. Brockl called Urban Ore “a nice place, but certainly not an arts and crafts use.” 

He also called for the city to create an inventory of arts and cultural spaces in Berkeley, “the locations, square footage, and the number of people involved in them. You should start by figuring out what you have and where it is and go from there.” 

Austene Hall lamented the commission’s endorsement of the Seagate Building, a controversial nine-story edifice which busted the city’s downtown five-story height limit by qualifying for “density bonuses” by offering low-income apartments and two theatrical venues totaling 11,000 square feet. 

“Seagate should have been required to provide 40,000 square feet of cultural density space, 10,000 for each of the four lots they’re building on,” Hall said. 

Arts Commission chair David Snippen told Hall that plans for the projects had been worked out in conjunction with the city planning director and the city’s Office of Economic Development in compliance with the General Plan. 

“The language is unclear,” Hall responded. “Look at the Gaia Building,” another height-busting downtown project that relied on a combination of low income apartments and a ground floor reserved for a nonprofit bookstore that went bankrupt before the building opened. “Now they’re putting in a restaurant,” Hall said. “That’s art space?” 

Snippen responded that he has “already been talking to city staff about the cultural density bonus.” 

An impassioned performance artist George Coates declared that the Seagate project had been “rammed down the city’s throat in secret” after 32 months of negotiations, resulting in “a valuable treasure downtown” being handed to one group—the Berkeley Repertory theatrical troupe—when “artists in West Berkeley, North Berkeley, and South Berkeley would like to have a place downtown where they can sing for their supper.” 

“Unfortunately, the language of the density bonus isn’t in place yet,” Snippen replied. “We have met with the city on creating language for enforcement, but nothing has been adopted by the City Council.” 

Snippen said that because the council hasn’t given final approval on the Seagate project, “we’re trying to work within the framework of regulations and ordinances in place now. We’re with you, George.” 

“I’d like to suggest one possible mitigation,” Hall interjected. “Seagate owns the Wells Fargo tower and the annex behind it, which is hard to rent. It might be worth looking into converting that into arts space.” 

“Don’t forget the historic and artistic importance of our buildings,” said Wendy Markel, vice president of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). “We want to bring your attention to the West Berkeley Plan, which calls for identifying, maintaining, and preserving historical places. We recommend creating an Arts and Crafts Historic District in West Berkeley.” 

“I’d like to see something here like the Palo Alto Arts Center,” said artist and art teacher Bob Horning. “How about [city arts funding] of about $25 [per capita]?” 

“In Berkeley [per capita arts funding is] $1.65,” said Commissioner Bonnie Hughes. 

“Berkeley’s certainly at the low end of the scale in terms of supporting the arts,” said Snippen, “and $25 came up as a suggested figure during our discussions.” 

“In San Francisco, it’s $15, and it’s certainly reasonable for us to come within $10 of what Stanford’s city does,” said Mary Anne Merker, the city staff member assigned to work with the commission. 

“One of the things we see in this plan is that the terms haven’t been defined,” Hughes said. “What do we mean by ‘arts’? By ‘culture’? It seems to refer mainly to visual arts, and almost everybody here (in the audience) is a visual artist.” 

Artist Archana Horsting proposed amending the city requirement that builders install public visual art in new buildings to allow them to contribute the equivalent cash to a city grant program that could fund non-visual arts like music and theater. 

“The ordinance specifies visual arts,” Snippen said. 

“And here I am, a visual artist, calling for funds for the other arts,” Horsting responded. 

Merker picked up on Hughes’s question of definitions. “The word ‘culture’ is very slippery, and I’d like to see it excised from this document and replace by ‘arts’. . .because a restaurant could be considered ‘cultural’.” 

“We wrestled with this,” said commissioner Sherry Smith, “but the general plan calls for a ‘cultural’ plan.” 

“The devil is in the details,” said Brockl, who said the plan “is so nonspecific that it becomes kind of meaningless and pious.”  

“We’re trying to promote the arts, to set a basis for policy and eventually have real funding to support the arts at a far greater rate,” Snippen said. “We want a mechanism for what’s happening when and where. That’s the sort of information you have to find now by looking at telephone poles” [or from the Daily Planet’s Calendar page—editor.] “But we have to define who’s going to do it.” 

“Right now there’s a dearth of rehearsal space [for performing artists],” said another audience member. “It doesn’t have to be in a prime real estate area, just clean and wheelchair accessible.” 

“We want affordable cultural space with workshop space for artists,” said commissioner Jos Sances. “One of the main points of the plan is that people want space where they can make and do art—and there’s a definite need for affordable work space in West Berkeley.” 

“There are two separate issues,” said Hughes. “One is building new space, and the second is preserving the space that already exists.” 

Lisa Bullwinkle, organizer of the Solano Stroll, said she would like to see city funding for the arts administered through a grants program “administered by people with some artistic sense like the Civic Arts Commission, and not as a pork barrel program to be administered by the City Council.” 

“We have extracted that promise from the city council,” Snippen said. 

“Then it should be spelled out in the plan,” Bullwinkle replied. 

“We need to be sure we’re going to have some structural part in city government to pursue the objectives of the plan, Snippen said. “We’ve designed one based on what’s in place in the City and County of San Francisco.”n

The people at Berkeley High think the newest addition to their school has a lot going for it. On Sunday they gathered to share their exuberance with the entire community. 

A crowd estimated at about 2,000 showed up for the grand opening of the campus’ first addition since the Donohue Gym in 1979 to see what $37 million and more than a decade of planning could do for a school better known for having a building burn down than built up. 

By and large, everybody was impressed. “This is just gorgeous,” said Daniella Thompson, a Berkeley resident. Thompson had opposed a previous design plan, which she said would have clashed with the neighboring 1930 art deco buildings. 

Inside the stuccoed structures, wood is the most dominant feature, and functionality rules. The two new buildings—christened D and E—front Milvia Street at Allston Way and Bancroft Way and account for about 86,000 square feet of space that includes a new library, college center, administrative wing, food court, gym, locker rooms, parent center, swimming pool and dance studio. 

“It just feels more like a real high school now,” said Caitlin Boucher, a sophomore. “It’s hard to imagine we didn’t even have a cafeteria until a few weeks ago.”  

That wasn’t all Berkeley High was missing, students said. For years, Jessica Kingeter and her teammates on the girls water polo team had to trek to Willard Middle School, where they scraped the tops of their feet trying to tread water in a pool that in some sections measured only three feet deep. “This makes you feel more like a part of the school,” she said shortly after emerging from the new regulation size pool that opened last week. 

Maria Hossey, a member of the school’s Afro-Haitian Dancers, said the new studio was a “huge improvement” from the space at the universally despised Old Gym where she said paint was peeling off the walls and the roof leaked. 

For several years Rory Bled, now a vice principal, ran the college center from the Old Gym right next to the boy’s locker room. “It just reeked,” she said. “I used to spray Lysol every time a college interviewer would come.” 

The new buildings came into being because of the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. Responding to concerns that schools were seismically unsafe following that natural disaster, the district won voter approval for two bond measures—the first for $158 million in 1992, the second for $116 million in 2000—that have funded repairs or total reconstruction for every school in the district. 

Though two high school buildings were upgraded in the early 90s, the campus mostly languished for a decade while other schools got facelifts. Former superintendent Jack McLaughlin said that after the seismically unsafe old cafeteria was leveled in 1993, the eastern edge of campus along Milvia Street consisted of a steam plant, a parking lot and rubble. In 2000, after an arsonist burned down the B building, that gave way to a sprawl of portable classrooms. 

When it comes to the design, McLaughlin insists the credit belongs to him. “I drew the whole thing out on paper,” he said. 

“This is truly the house the Jack built,” agreed Lloyd Lee, a former school board director, who recalled McLaughlin constantly tinkering with cardboard models of the buildings. 

Once the exterior was set, determining what should go inside the new buildings wasn’t too hard to figure out, said Lee. “We knew we needed a new cafeteria and gym. Everyone agreed the old library was dismal and the old pool and locker rooms were disgusting.” 

The big question was how the different pieces would fit. “There was a holy war over who would be in the middle,” said School Board Director Joaquin Rivera. The board ultimately chose to put the food court and gym at the center of the facility to emphasize that it was a student center, Rivera said. 

Two enormous glitches in the plan were the presence of underground PG&E storage tanks on the site that contributed to an eight-month delay in the completion of the project, as well as the arson at the B Building.  

Lee said the new pool was designed to connect to that building, which had been slated to house the dance studio, and a weight room. The dance studio was moved to the new building, but a new weight room will have to wait for the next round of construction, according to Lee, who still serves on the district’s School Construction Oversight Committee. Lee added that the beginning of the new construction is not too far off. 

The district is shopping for a master planner to redesign the south end of campus, which will also be paid for with the voter-approved bond money. A new design will tackle the shortage of playing fields and parking spaces at the campus and determine what to do with the Old Gym complex, which houses the warm water pool used by many of Berkeley’s disabled residents.  

Several students interviewed hoped the next round of construction would include classrooms, which, they say, are becoming increasingly overcrowded despite declining enrollment. 

“People have to sit on the back ledge of my physics class,” said Zack Mitchell, a senior. 

There were a few other complaints as well. Kathleen Winger and Mischa Spieglemock of the school’s badminton team were angry that they would be temporarily relegated to the Old Gym after the contractor apparently forgot to lay badminton lines on the floor of the new gym. “We’d even take the Donohue Gym,” Winger said. “Something that doesn’t leak, maybe.” 

TerryLynne Turner, a Berkeley High parent and school librarian in Union City, said the new library “looks beautiful,” but was “way too small” for a school with 2,750 students. “The librarian should have her own classroom,” she said. “I have a full room [in the school library in Union City] with a door that shuts.” 

But graduates of Berkeley High marveled at how far their campus had come since their days at the school. “As a freshman I was afraid to go to my locker in the G building. It was so dark and bleak,” said Stephanie Baker who graduated in the early 1980s and now teaches in Richmond. “Hopefully the students will keep it nice, because not all schools look as good as this.” 

Karen Gordon Brown was so elated by what she saw Sunday she said she would consider moving from Oakland when her son reaches middle school. “I’ve been impressed by the people here, the conversations I’ve heard, and the interest they’ve shown,” she said. “This has opened my eyes that there might be other options for my child besides private school.” 

Berkeley voters will get some clues about the future state of the city’s financial affairs tonight (Tuesday, April 27) when the City Council considers an array of potential November ballot measures to help plug a $10 million budget deficit. In addition, the council is scheduled to take a first look at reforming the city’s campaign financing rules. 

The measures are scheduled for presentation by the city manager’s office at the council’s 5 p.m. working session, with the council set to vote on what action to take at the regular 7 p.m. council meeting. The council has until July to decide on which ballot measures, if any, will be put before Berkeley voters in the fall. 

Also at its 7 p.m. regular session, the council will consider a bill calling for more than a seven-fold increase in permissible cannabis cultivation by licensed patients. 

First on the agenda at the 5 p.m. work session will be discussion of four ballot measures that would raise $4.2 million in property taxes to compensate for deficits in the city’s General Fund and special funds.  

They include: 

A $1 million tax increase to fund the city’s emergency medical services fund that pays for roughly 40 percent of ambulance and paramedic services for Berkeley residents. The measure would impose a citywide special tax on improvements to real property. 

A $1.2 million tax increase to erase the deficit in the library fund that threatens to reduce hours and cut staff. The library board of trustees has not yet considered the tax measure, which would also place a special tax on improvements to real property. 

A $1 million tax increase to fully implement the Clean Storm Water fund to repair and improve the city’s storm drainage system. Money would also go for creek restoration projects, and Councilmember Dona Spring said she hoped that it could help to fund the unearthing of Strawberry Creek beside a planned hotel and conference center. Mayor Tom Bates has said previously he did not support this tax measure. 

A $1 million tax increase to fund youth services slated to be cut from the General Fund. The measure would sustain city-run summer camps, literacy programs, after school programs, crossing guards, and school-based police officers. It could be funded either by taxing improvements on real property or by raising the tax on property transfers.  

The youth fund services measure was proposed by Bates and Councilmembers Linda Maio and Worthington before the Board of Education made it clear they planned to proceed with a $12 million school support tax of their own. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz recommended the other three measures last month. 

On campaign finance reform, after failing to reach a consensus in March the council has three options before them.  

They can choose not to change the current system which prohibits contributions from businesses and limits individual contributions to $250. They can proceed with a limited ballot measure asking voters to amend the Berkeley Election Reform Act (BERA) so the council can devise a publicly financed campaign system at some point in the future. Or they can ask voters to amend BERA with a detailed plan to publicly finance campaigns. 

Kamlarz recommended opting for the limited measure that would leave the details for a later date, but Mayor Bates and Councilmember Spring have proposed going forward with a detailed system devised for Berkeley by the Center for Governmental Studies and Common Cause. 

Authors of the Center plan estimated that it could cost the city between $1.4 million and $4 million each election cycle. A city manager’s report put the cost of publicly financing the next mayor’s race at between $425,000 and 975,000. 

On the medical marijuana issue, three years after the council limited Berkeley patients to no more than ten cannabis plants, medical marijuana advocates continue to insist that the limit prevents patients from growing enough to meet their needs.  

They back a proposal by Councilmember Worthington to increase the limit to 72 plants, ten of which could be grown outdoors, where plants usually grow far larger. The bill would bring Berkeley in line with Oakland, which has one of the most liberal medical cannabis cultivation laws in the state.  

Worthington’s bill would also codify a peer review committee to oversee the operation of medical cannabis dispensaries. A peer committee already exists with city support, but is not written into Berkeley ordinance. 

Don Duncan, director of the Berkeley Patients Group and other medical cannabis advocates have threatened to put a measure on the November ballot to support their goals if the council does not pass Worthington’s bill. The advocates’ ballot measure would allow patients to grow as much cannabis as they need. In addition, it would order the city to distribute the marijuana to patients in the event of a federal crackdown.  

At tonight’s meeting, the council will also take its first look on how it wants to allocate the $3.6 million it will receive from Vista College in transit mitigations for the school’s new downtown campus.  

Mayor Tom Bates has said previously he expected to allocate the majority of the funds towards the construction of a bigger, seismically safe Center Street Garage—estimated to cost $18 million. 

The Transportation Commission, however, proposed spending $2 million for improving alternative modes of transportation, and $1.6 million for different parking programs. Transportation Commissioner Dave Campbell said the commission’s breakdown was based the project’s Environmental Impact Report, which showed that only 42 percent of trips to Vista are drive-alone commutes. “It’s eminently reasonable,” Campbell said. “The mayor has said he wants at least $1 million for alternative transit measures, it’s our job to push for more.” 

ˇ

TUESDAY, APRIL 27 

Morning Birdwalk Meet at 7 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area to look for Laurel Canyon birds. 525-2233. 

Return of Over-the-Hills Gang at Black Diamond Regional Preserve. Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history and fitness are invited to join us on a hilly 3 mile hike, meeting at 10 a.m. at the end of Somersville Rd. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Robert B. Reich “Taking Back Politics” at 11:30 a.m. at the Doubletree Hotel, Berkeley Marina. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Tickets are $50 and reservations can be made by emailing lwvbae@pacbell.net 

Phone Banking to ReDefeat Bush on Tuesdays from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Bring your cell phones. Please RSVP 233-2144. dan@redefeatbuch.com 

Berkeley Special Education Parents Network Forum with Michele Lawrence, Ken Jacopetti, and Gerald Herrick, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Ala Costa Center, 1300 Rose St. 525-9262.  

Ohlone Dog Park Association meets at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 843-6221. 

Biodiesel and Sustainability A panel discussion from 7 to 9 p.m. at BioFuel Oasis, 2465 4th St. at Dwight. Donation $5-$15. 

Adventure Racing: Spring Training Tips for Women with Terri Schneider at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Both men and women welcome. 527-4140. 

“The Integration Trap, Generation Gap” with Oba T’Shaka at 5 p.m. in Dwinelle 370. Part of the Distinguished Lecturer of Color Series. 642-2876. 

“The Gender Agenda in Africa” with Jacqueline Adhiambo Odoul, US Int’l Univ., Nairobi, Kenya, at 4 p.m. in 652 Barrows Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by Center for African Studies. 642-8338. 

“Is Middle East Peace Possible?” with Iftekhar Hai, United Muslims of America, Souleiman Ghali, Pres. Islamic Society of SF, and David Meir Levi, Dir. Israel Peace Initiative at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley Ave. 848-3440. www.ahimsaberkeley.org 

Organic Produce at low prices sold at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon Sts. every Tuesday from 3 to 7 p.m. 843-1307. 

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

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

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28 

“The Local Housing Crisis” with Kriss Worthington, Berkeley Councilmember, and Nancy Nadel, Oakland Councilmember at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the Gray Panthers of the East Bay. 548-9696. 

“Victorian Glory in the San Francisco Bay Area” with Paul Duchscherer at 7:30 p.m. at Church by the Side of the Road, 2108 Russell St. Tickets are available from Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

“Fact and Fiction: An Inside Look at Islamic Cultures” An exchange of perspectives with Peace Corps volunteers and recent immigrants from Islamic countries at 7 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. sswiderski@peacecorps.gov 

“A Place Called Chiapas” A documentary by Nettie Wild covering eight months inside the Zapatista Uprising in 1997, at 7 p.m. at The Fellowship of Humanity, 390 27th St., Oakland. 393-5685.  

“Compassion Defies Violence and Hate” on the five year peace- 

ful journey of Falun Gong at 6 p.m. at 182 Dwinelle, UC Campus. 

Bayswater Book Club monthly dinner meeting will discuss Richard Clark’s “Against All Enemies” at 6:30 p.m. at Liu’s Kitchen Restaurant, 1593 Solano Ave. 433-2911. 

“Beyond Networking: Building Win-Win Strategic Partnerships” at 7 p.m. at Gate 3: Emeryville, 1285 66th St. Emeryville. 665-1725. 

Acdemic Quiz Bowl with high school teams at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Nobel, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

“Astral Travel & Dreams” a free 9-week course starts April 28, meeting from 6:30 to 8 p.m at 2015 Center St. 654-1583. www.mysticweb.org 

Fun with Acting Class every Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome, no experience necessary. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 29 

Dining Out for Life at participating East Bay restaurants to benefit The Center for AIDS Services. For a list of participating restaurants call 282-0623. www.DiningOutForLife.com 

“Gardening and the Ethics of Place” with Australian EcoFeminist Val Plumwood, a forest activist/dweller, wombat mother, and crocodile survivor. She has authored over 100 papers and a number of books including “The Fight for the Forests” and “Feminism and the Mastery of Nature.” At 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Public Works Commission Public Hearing on Foothill Bridge at 7 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center. For information call Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks/default.htm  

Community Sing Honoring Mothers with Jennifer Berezan, Melanie DeMore and Betsy Rose at 8 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., at Castro. Sliding scale admission of $10-$20 benefits the Berkeley Women’s Daytime Drop-in Center. 

“The Imagined Worlds of Martyrdom” a conference sponsored by the GTU and the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hewlett Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. ocker@sfts.edu 

“Living With The Genie - On Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery” A panel discussion with Denise Caruso, Ray Kurzweil, Howard Rheingold, Richard Rhodes, and Mark Schapiro at 7 p.m. at Pimentel Hall, UC Campus. http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events 

“Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits” with William Porter, author “Red Pine” at 5 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St, 6th Floor. 549-2668. http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events  

FRIDAY, APRIL 30 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Kiren A. Chadhry, Prof. Political Science, UCB, on “Challenges in Iraq.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020. 

“Media, Democracy, and the Informed Citizen,” The 8th Annual Travers Ethics Conference, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. at Lipman Room, 8th floor, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by Charles T. & Louise H. Travers Program on Ethics and Government Accountability, Political Science Department, Institute of Governmental Studies, The Commonwealth Club of California. 642-4691. http://ethics.berkeley.edu/ 

SATURDAY, MAY 1 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour “La Loma Park, Maybeck Country” led by Robert Pennell from 10 a.m. to noon. 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

UNICEF Open House at 1403-B Shattuck Ave. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sponsored by the United Nations Association - East Bay. 849-1752. 

Thousand Oaks School Carnival from 11 a.m. to 3 pm. Games, cakewalk, talent show, fortune telling, tostadas, cupcakes, quilt raffle, and silent auction. 840 Colusa Ave, north of Solano. 

St. Joseph the Worker Church 125th Anniversary Celebration at 6:30 p.m. at Doubletree Hotel, Berkeley Marina. 843-2244. 

May Day Celebration of Labor Solidarity from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. $5 donation requested. 595-7417. 925-828-8184.  

Sick Plant Clinic from 9 a.m. to noon, the first Sat. of every month, UC plant apthologist Dr. Robert Raabe, UC entomologist Dr. Nick Mills, and their team of experts will diagnose what ails your plants. Free. At the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 

Organic Plant Sale Beautiful, healthy organically grown vege- 

table starts, herbs, and flowers for sale, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the corner of Walnut and Virginia Sts. www.ocf.berkeley. 

edu/~soga/ 

Iris Show and Sale, featuring all iris in bloom locally, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellvue, Oakland. Free. 525-6536. 

Permaculture Ethics and Activism Learn permaculture ethics and explore what they really mean when applying them to permaculture activism. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10 EC members, $15 general, no one turned away for lack of funds. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

Education Not Incarceration Teach-In, Speak-Out from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Oakland Tech High School, 4351 Broadway. Childcare and refreshments provided. www.ednotinc.org 

Berkeley Festival of Digital Arts hosted by Vista College Multimedia Arts Dept. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Also on Sun., May 2. Cost is $10-$15. For details see www. 

vistacollege.edu/multimedia/if 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Responding to Terrorism from 9 a.m. to noon at 2100 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. To sign up call 981-5605. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Car-Free Morocco Slideshow a slide presentation by CarBusters’ Randy Ghent, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. Experience the maze of Morocco’s medinas, medieval pedestrian cities. Co-sponsored by Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation, The Ecology Center, EcoCity Builders & Bicycle Friendly Berkeley Coalition. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

“Dialogues Towards a Strong Women’s Movement Diversity Summit,” from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Oakland Airport Hilton, 1 Hegenberger Rd. Cost is sliding scale $10-$45. Sponsored by California NOW, Black Women Organized for Political Action, California Women’s Agenda, Casa de las Madres, National Asian Women’s Health Organization, and Women of Color Resources Center. To register call 916-442-3414, or go to www.canow.org/ 

conf04/home.html 

Projects for Peace in Israel/ 

Palestine from 9 to 11 a.m. at Oakland Public Library, Madison St. between 13th and 14th. The Friends of Deir Ibzi’a describe their projects for women and children in Palestine. 653-0776. 

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

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

Dream Workshop on Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to noon at 2199 Bancroft Way. Cost is $10. www.practicaldreamwork.com 

SUNDAY, MAY 2 

Bicycle Tour “Hidden Gems of Berkeley” A 10-12 mile ride to explore historic street car and creek lines. Begins at Halcyon Commons, Halcyon Ct. next to Prince St. at 3:30 p.m. 847-0575.  

St. Joseph the Worker Church 125th Anniversary Celebration begins at 9:30 a.m. with a Children’s Mass followed by a Family and Friends Festival at 10:30 a.m. 1640 Addison St. 843-2244. 

Bay-Friendly Gardening: From your Backyard to the Bay simplify garden care, reduce chores and use as few resources, from water to fertilizer, as possible. Free self-guided tour of over 30 residential gardens from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 444-SOIL. www.stopwaste.org 

Native Plant Restoration Join Friends of Five Creeks and the California Native Plant Society restoration team on Codornices Creek at Live Oak Park, removing more ivy and tending the many native plants we put in last fall. Email for time and other information f5creeks@aol.com 

Elegant Salvias from Africa and California with Betsy Clebsch, author of “New Book of Salvias: Sages for Every Garden” from 1 to 4 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $25-$30. Registration required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

National Women’s Political Caucus honors Joan Blades at 4 p.m. at Hiller Highland Country Club, 110 Hiller Drive, Oakland. Tickets are $50. 452-1600. www.nwpcan.org 

“Searching for Asian America,” documentary film screening at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting Want to work on a radical newspaper? Come to the meeting and work on the upcoming issue at 1 p.m. at The Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.longhaul.org 

Critical Mass & Carbusters Cafe Nite Join us for “Medieval Urbanism in Morocco: Lessons for the Modern World,” with Randy Ghent of Car Busters at 8 p.m. at The Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.longhaul.org 

“Healing the Mother in Your Heart” with Teresa LeYoung Ryan and Linda Joy Meyers in a celebration of motherhood through writing at 2 p.m. at Borders Books and Music, 5800 Shellmound St. 654-1633. 

Treats and Talents Auction from 12:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

Iris Show and Sale, featuring all iris in bloom locally, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellvue, Oakland. Free. 525-6536. 

Honoring Lake Merrit’s Birds at the Bird Refuge, 600 Bellevue Ave. foot of Perkins St. at Lakeside Park, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Please RSVP to 238-3739. 

Open Forum on Haiti, moderated by KPFA’s Dennis Bernstein at 5 p.m. at Pro Arts Gallery, 550 2nd St. Oakland. 415-391-3844. 

“Behind the Headlines: A Palestinian-Israeli Talks Frankly About the Conflict” with Kahled Abu Toameh, correspondent for Palestinian affairs for the Jerusalem Post at 7 p.m. at Congregation Beth-El, Arch and Vine Sts. Donation of $10 requested. 848-3988. 

Golden State Model Railroad Museum opens from noon to 5 p.m. Located in the Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline Park at 900-A Dornan Drive in Pt. Richmond. Admission is $2-$3. 234-4884 or www.gsmrm.org 

Tibetan Buddhism, with Abbe Blum on “The Tibetan Wheel of Life” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

“Father of the Modern Mystic Movement” at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

“Eckhart Tolle Talks on Video” at 6:30 p.m. at the Feldenkrais Ctr., 830 Bancroft Way. First and third Sunday of each month. $3 donation requested, no one turned away for lack of funds. Contact Maitri at 415-990-8977. 

MONDAY, MAY 3 

“Green Roofs and Hanging Gardens” with Paul Kephart, environmental consultant with Rana Creek Habitat Restoration, and Aurora Mahassine, designer of “vertical habitats” for cities, at 7 p.m. at the Friends of Five Creeks meeting at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. All welcome; the meeting is free. 848 9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter of meets at 6 p.m. in the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. Guest speaker from the Bay Area Women Against Rape. 287-8948. 

“Urban Conversions: Reworlding African Cities” with Abdoumaliq Simone of the Wits Institute, Johannesburg, at 5 p.m. at 112 Wurster Hall, UC Campus. 642-8338. http://ias.berkeley.edu/africa/ 

BTV Public Orientation How to get involved by becoming a member, take classes and get on the air on B-TV Channel 28 using the media facilities at Berkeley Community Media, from 6 to 8 p.m. 848-2288 ext. 12. www.betv.org 

Baby Yoga at 11 a.m. and Yoga and Meditation for Children at 2:45 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. 883-0600. www.belladonna.ws 

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthening at 1:15 p.m. every Monday at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING 

Vista College Study Abroad in Mexico Live with a family and learn language skill in a two-week session in July in Guadalajara. For information please call 981-2917 or visit www.peralta.cc.ca.us/interntl/studyabr.htm. 

Find a Loving Animal Companion at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society Adoption Center (open from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday). 2700 Ninth St. 845-7735. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

Medical Care for Your Pet at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society low-cost veterinary clinic. 2700 Ninth St. For appointments call 845-3633. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues. Apr. 27, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers, Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/budget 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. Carol Lopes, 981-5514. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy 

Mental Health Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at 2640 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Harvey Turek, 981-5213. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/mentalhealth  

Planning Commission meets Wed. Apr. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Public Works Commission Public Hearing on Foothill Bridge, Thurs. April 29, at 7 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center. For information call Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks/default.htm ô

Something like a close cousin, St. Joseph the Worker Church fits right into the heart of Berkeley. The church is a reflection of a community with a unique history and strong commitment to social justice and equality. 

  Founded around the same time, the city and St. Joseph’s have now been together for 125 years. This Saturday, the church will be celebrating its birthday, and all are encouraged to come out and remember its legacy. 

  St. Joseph the Worker might be most well-known for its beloved priest Father Bill O’Donnell, who amassed a protest arrest record that rivals the many other well-known Berkeley activists. 

  But the legacy of St. Joseph doesn’t start with Father Bill. Since its founding, St. Joseph has been committed to the kind of principles that are associated with Berkeley.  

  St. Joseph originally started as a convent and school for girls founded by Mother Mary Teresa Comerford in 1878. With a growing Catholic population in the area, it was necessary to have more than a school to minister to the community’s religious needs. As a result, Mother Teresa invited Father Pierce M. Comerford, her brother, from Ireland to come and be the pastor for a newly established church connected to the school.  

  The church structure was quickly built, and began to hold services for a diverse Catholic community primarily made up of immigrants from Ireland, Chile, France, Germany, Portugal and Canada. A school for boys was also started in the same early period. 

  While the community attended mass together, their children all went to school together, and a close knit community centered around the church began to form. 

  “The school was a large part of the integration of those groups into the parish,” explains Father George E. Crespin, the church’s current priest. “From very early on it was a very diverse community, unconsciously diverse. There has been a diverse community long before diversity became a quality to be touted.” 

  Over the years, the church has continued to attract such widespread and varied groups to its parish. Large groups of African American from heavily-Catholic southern Louisiana and East Texas came to the Bay Area during World War II and soon joined. In the 1970s the influx of Mexican, Central and South American immigrants also made St. Joseph’s their main church. 

  St. Joseph’s diversity and success is not just luck, however. Since its founding, the church has had a commitment to the community and a strong leadership that have turned into Berkeley’s flagship church.  

  St. Joseph’s has always viewed itself as a community organization of sorts as well as a church, according to Father Crespin.  

“This parish really is home to me,” said Norma Gray, who has lived in Berkeley since 1936. Starting with her husband, who went to the school, Gray has raised 10 children who have also gone to the school, and she has sung in or led the church choir since 1944.  

  “It was so good to raise [my kids] here,” she said. “You didn’t need to get along, you just did.” 

  And while the beloved Father Bill O’Donnell might be the most well-known priest to lead St. Joseph’s, the lineage of priests is equally noteworthy. At least one of the other notable priests was Father Patrick Galvan, who started in 1951. During his time, Father Galvan saw rapid increases in the number of immigrants and helped shape a church that they could call home.  

  Gray said he was also known for hanging out with Free Speech activist Mario Savio, who lived next door. 

  “I don’t think it changed either of their minds,” said Gray about the conversations Savio and Father Galvan used to have about politics and the different worlds they came from. 

  And of course, no one more than Father Bill O’Donnell helped shape St. Joseph as the community now knows it. A committed activist, community figure and religious leader, many say Father Bill is the unofficial saint of Berkeley.  

During his lifetime he notched over 240 arrests on his record for his participation in various protests. His list of involvements, like his police record, was long, including work with Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the Farm Worker’s movement, his work in Central America, the Middle East, the anti-Apartheid and anti-nuclear movements, and at Georgia’s Fort Benning, home to what was formerly known as the School of the Americas. Activists have charged that the school teaches torture tactics to foreign police personnel. 

Father Bill’s recent death attested to his reach in the community, as thousands poured out to remember and celebrate his life. 

Today, Father Bill’s legacy and the legacy of the church carry on. With a growing Latino population the church holds a separate mass in Spanish, a tradition Father Bill started and one that Father Crespin proudly carries on. The school continues to flourish, although it is in the process of raising money for repairs. The parish continues to open its doors to the community with several organizations such as the church’s social justice committee. 

“I think what we’re trying to emphasize is the history,” said Father Crespin about the upcoming birthday celebration. “It’s honoring that faith, that commitment. It’s celebrating what is unique to us, the strong commitment to education, the living out in very practical ways [the idea] of diversity and more recently the commitment to social justice.” 

St. Joseph the Worker encourages all to attend its birthday mass which will be held Saturday May 1 at the church at 4:30 p.m. After the mass there will be a celebration at the Double Tree Hotel at the Berkeley Marina, with a no-host bar at 6:30 p.m. and dinner at 7:30 p.m. For tickets and information about the mass and or the dinner, contact the church at 843-2244.  

ˇ

Sexual Battery Suspect Busted 

Following an attack on a 15-year-old student near the Berkeley High School campus, police arrested a 36-year-old man they had already identified as a suspect in a series of recent sexual batteries near the UC campus. 

The young woman was walking along Allston Way at Milvia Street when a man grabbed her from behind. Drawn by the woman’s screams and the sight of her struggling with her assailant, an unidentified Good Samaritan grabbed the attacker and the student was able to flee to safety.  

The attacker also fled, but Melvin Scott was arrested and taken to Berkeley City Jail after the student picked his image from a photographic lineup, said BPD spokesperson Kevin Schofield—who urged anyone with information on this or other recent attacks to call the departments Sex Crimes Detail at 981-5735. 

Strong-arm Robbers Grab Purses, Phone 

A hapless 20-year old woman walking near the intersection of College Avenue and Parker Street was thrown to the ground by a strong-arm robber who made off with her cell phone. No suspects have yet been identified, according to Berkeley Police spokesperson Kevin Schofield. 

Police arrested a 17-year-old juvenile early Sunday morning Sunday after two strong-arm types robbed a pedestrian at Prince and Sacramento streets. A suspect, unidentified, suspect remains at large.  

Sunday’s second strong-arm attack came shortly before 1 p.m., when a thief grabbed the purse of a Berkeley woman walking along Telegraph Avenue at Channing Way. The robber fled on foot, and no suspects have been arrested.  

Mother charged with kidnap, abuse 

When neighbors called police after hearing screams and cries for help in the 1300 block of Harmon Street Sunday evening, nine Berkeley police officers responded. 

BPD spokesperson Kevin Schofield said the incident involved the mother of a 3-year-old girl and the foster parents charged with caring for the daughter. 

The mother, 26-year-old Christina Petite, was arrested on charges of kidnapping and child abuse, then taken to Berkeley City Jail. 

Piano tuner Ben Treuhaft says he started sending pianos to Cuba in 1995 “as sort of an enema to [then-President Bill] Clinton’s Cuba policy, but somehow his Commerce Department gave their approval.” 

Not so under the regime of George W. Bush, whose Commerce Department ordered the program shut down in February after the State Department said it wasn’t in the interests of the president’s foreign policy. 

But Treuhaft’s not known for turning away from a scrap, due in part to his exuberantly scrappy parents, both active communists when he was born. 

His mother, muckraker Jessica Mitford, was the daughter of English aristocracy. Her first husband, a nephew of Winston Churchill, perished during World War II. In 1943 she married Ben’s father, Robert Treuhaft, a scrappy labor and civil rights attorney born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. 

Ben Treuhaft was born five years later, after his parents had settled into a comfortable house at 6411 Regent St. in Oakland . 

His parents left the Communist Party in 1958, part of the mass exodus that followed Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev’s exposure of Josef Stalin’s bloody misdeeds. But neither gave up their commitments to labor, civil rights, and the exposure of corporate corruption. 

Robert Treuhaft played a major role in the defense of students arrested in the Free Speech Movement’s struggles at UC Berkeley. Mitford worked with current City Councilmember Maudelle Shirek to bust the restrictive covenants barring African Americans from owning homes in much of Berkeley.  

Small wonder, then, that their son turned his ostensible trade as a tuner of Steinway pianos into an act of political defiance. 

“I went to Cuba in 1993 on a trip organized by Global Exchange to challenge the embargo on tourism,” he said. “We wanted to get arrested so we could challenge the policy in a courtroom. But they never arrested us.” 

Treuhaft did learn that Cuba’s pianos were in terrible shape, leading to his first shipment of pianos to the island nation in 1995 after the Clinton administration approved their request for an exemption from the trade embargo. 

Three years later, he departed for the Big Apple. “I decided 50 years was enough,” he said. 

He loaded up his gear from the Underwater Piano Shop—named, he says, “because I sometimes work under middle-C level”—and set up shop in Manhattan, while he continued his Send-A-Piana-to-Havana campaign (see his website, www.sendapiana.com). 

With the help of volunteers and donations, he had sent 237 instruments and made several trips to tune pianos in Cuba before the Bush administration clamped down in February. 

Treuhaft enlisted the support of Oakland attorney Tom Miller and Congressional Representatives Barbara Lee of the East Bay and Jose E. Serrano of New York to help plead his cause. 

In a joint letter, the lawmakers praised his program as “a first-class example of Americans applying their expertise to improve the lives of Cubans, while sharing the democratic and humanitarian principles of the United States.” 

Miller’s letter, written with a dry wit, included a direct jab targeted at the administration’s heavy tilt toward the evangelical community. After pointing out that many of the pianos ended up in Cuban churches, the attorney asked, “How an attempt to silence Cuba’s churches is the fulfillment of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba is difficult to comprehend. Please explain.” 

“I figured that appealing to religion was the way to them,” Miller said. 

“After they read Miller’s letter, they capitulated,” Treuhaft said. “They called on Friday and told us they were sending a letter confirming that we’d get our license,” he said, adding, “I think they pulled our license originally because they realized we were anti-embargo.”›

Thursday Diners Contribute to AIDS Services 

Anyone looking to do well by doing good will have an opportunity Thursday when an array of East Bay restaurants—including 14 in Berkeley—are scheduled to contribute between a quarter to a half of your tab to the Center for AIDS Services. 

The Center, located at 5720 Shattuck Ave. in Oakland, provides meals and other services to HIV/AIDS patients and their loved ones. 

Dining Out for Life is one of the Center’s major fund-raising efforts. “Last year we raised $35,000 and this year we hope to raise $50,000,” said event coordinator Simona Fina. 

Some restaurants are participating for a single mealtime (breakfast, lunch or dinner), while others participate for two or more meals. For a complete list of participating restaurants, their addresses and benefit mealtimes, see the Center’s website at thecenter.org (note: not www) and click on the upper right hand corner of the opening page. 

Participating restaurants in Berkeley include Bar Ristorante Raphael, Breads of India & Gourmet Curries, Cafe Cacao, Cesar (which is donating half the tab), Filippo’s, the Claremont Hotel, Juan’s Place, Kirala, Le Theatre, Locanda Olmo, Meal Ticket, Pomegranate, Rick & Ann’s Unicorn Pan Asian Cuisine, Venezia, Venus and Zatar. 

—Richard Brenneman 

Firefighter Loses Cancer Battle 

Veteran Berkeley firefighter Bill Wigmore died last Wednesday after a six-month battle with cancer. Wigmore was 59. 

Wigmore joined the Berkeley Fire Department in 1977 and in 1983 he was promoted to apparatus operator. 

Assistant Chief Michael Migliore joined the department at the same time as Wigmore and remembered his co-worker as completely dedicated to his profession and his colleagues.  

“Bill would extend himself to anyone associated in the fire service,” said Migliore, who recalled Wigmore renting a room in his house to the daughter of a fire captain in Los Angeles until she could find her own place. 

Earlier this month, Wigmore’s fellow Berkeley firefighters shaved their heads to raise money for the American Cancer Society. 

Wigmore is survived by his sisters Patti and Linda.  

A memorial service will be held on Tuesday April 27 at 11 a.m. at St. Joseph the Worker church located at 1640 Addison St. 

—Matthew Artz 

Every spring I head for Alamos, a pink-adobed, cobblestoned village tucked against the western slopes of the Sierra Madres in the state of Sonora, Mexico. It’s a pinprick spot on the map, located at the end of a narrow, two-lane road. The way to Alamos was paved in 1962. Before that it was just a rugged, pot-holed dirt track through miles and miles of high Sonoran desert. 

Mammoth saguaro cacti and oddly striated rock formations punctuate the monotonous scenery until you arrive within a few miles of Alamos. Then things begin to get interesting. The terrain grows hillier and the road becomes windy. Bougainvilleas bursting with color grow tangled and thick between crooked vara blanca fences, tethered together with bits of string and pieces of cloth. Orange, red and day-glow pink explodes over earth-tone walls capped in smooth adobe or pointy shards of broken soda pop glass. Green, blue and purple doorways demand that one wear sunglasses, not because of the glare of the hot Sonoran sun, but from the sheer intensity of their brilliance. Emerald palms, neon parrots, tropical flowers, trees laden with bananas, mangos and dates make it impossible not to squint in Alamos. 

I have friends who live in this colonial paradise—Bay Area transplants who once took Highway 15 due south from Tucson, followed the road until it dead-ended in Alamos, and quite simply never came back. Sure, they visit relatives and friends from time to time, head up to Tucson for supplies, jaunt here and there across the border as needed, but their hearts and minds are back in Alamos. It is not a bad place to be. 

Dogs and children run lose and wild in Alamos. Roosters crow throughout the day. Burro hoofs click on the narrow cobblestoned streets, echoing off the high adobe walls of the old haciendas and the ancient, crumbling cathedral. And throughout the village, day after day, week after week, year after year, the people of Alamos sweep...and sweep...and sweep. 

There is nothing more sweet sounding to me then the lilt of straw bristles hitting tile, palm fronds swishing against stones, crooked coarse sticks sweeping over packed dirt in a mesmerizing, soothing melody. Alamos could be the epicenter of the universe when it comes to sweeping. It’s a wonder it hasn’t already been swept away. 

Everywhere you go in Alamos, someone is holding a battered metal dust pan and a smooth wooden handled broom, its bristles well-worn, but in perfect alignment. On doorsteps, in churches, within tiny bodegas, outside on the sidewalks and in the middle of the street—sweeping tile, wood and bare ground into a high polish—pushing a broom and holding a dustpan is the rhythm of Alamos. It is its song and its dance. Everyone is sweeping the town dust-free until a flock of chickens skitter around a corner, the wind comes up, or a farmhand in a perfectly white straw hat, plaid shirt, tight jeans and a tired pair of cowboy boots pushes through the bodega’s swinging doors. 

In Alamos I awake to street sweepers—not monstrous, obnoxious five-ton city trucks, but one or two stooped old men pushing dust back and forth outside my high bedroom window. 

Back home in the East Bay I own two vacuum cleaners—bulky, heavy pieces of machinery that perch precariously on my steps, snake awkwardly around corners and squeeze tightly underneath the sofa. They roar and rumble, choke and snort, like wild pigs truffle-hunting in a cluttered forest. 

I grab a broom in frustration and try to sweep the way people do in Alamos. But it is not a natural rhythm for me. It’s not in my genes, my blood or my family history. It is not a dance I know. No matter how hard I try to sweep in Oakland, it never sounds like Alamos. 

For information about Alamos, go to www.solipaso.com. 

›

ANSWERED FEARS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Justin DeFreitas’s cogent, balanced and thoughtful response to his inflamed readers may be dangerous to his career as a cartoonist — it suggests that he should consider being a columnist, as he is a very fine one indeed. 

Frankly, I feared his recent cartoon (an American flag emblazoned with a star of David impaling a prostrate Palestine) might be implying that (among other things) “the Jews control America.” We Jews do sometimes have a reaction of fear (hmm, I wonder why?). But he answered my fears and his somewhat intemperate critics well, and articulated briefly a position with which I and many other Jews agree: both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, deeply saddened and angered by many of the actions on both sides (not to mention the recent actions of our own destructive president).  

Thank you, Justin, and write some more sometime! 

David Herzstein Couch 

• 

HORRIFYING CARTOON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is to strongly protest the inappropriate and horrifying cartoon in the Berkeley Daily Planet by your staff member DeFreitas (“State of Palestine,” Daily Planet, April 16-19). This is not the sort of thing you ought to run in your newspaper. Earlier in the week you ran a highly anti-Semitic commentary. Shame on you! You should print a retraction and an apology for suggesting that Jews run America and promoting other anti-Semitic ideas. In these time when anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, you should be a voice for reason and tolerance. We cannot be proud of you, or support you, as our local paper. 

Stefanie C.Guynn 

William H. Guynn 

• 

THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for your thoughtful, intelligent response to those who would libel you anti-Semitic. Out here in the suburbs there are some of us who are also horrified by Israel’s actions and our government’s approval of them. 

Any ideas on how to make our voices heard and have an effect on this unbelievable situation? 

Tina Lekas Miller 

Alamo 

• 

SUPPRESSING FREE SPEECH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was disgusted by the spate of threatening letters sent to the Daily Planet in an attempt to suppress free speech and full debate on Palestine and Israel. The DeFreitas cartoon suggests that the U.S. is primarily responsible for the expansionist and violent policies of the theocratic State of Israel. Most reasonable viewers of the crisis would agree with his assessment. The Israeli military would grind to a halt in one month without the massive donations of American arms and money. To raise the charge of anti-Semitism in defense of Israel’s land grabs is to desecrate the sacrifices and the memories of real victims of anti-Jewish hatred. 

I am currently a renter in Berkeley, planning to buy a house in the near future. You can be sure I will never use the services of Joan Brunswick in seeking out a real estate agent, not after she announced her boycott of the Planet in an attempt to stifle free speech. Her bullying attitude is something she can choose but we can also choose to steer a wide swath around her in our economic dealings. 

Sam Markham 

• 

FALSE CRIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Three cheers for Justin DeFreitas and his right to draw a political cartoon depicting U.S. and Israeli injustice against the Palestinians, and kudos to the Daily Planet editors for defending his right to freely tell the truth! I really wasn’t surprised at the usual threats and hate mail pouring in from the local Israel-backers—to them, any criticism of “dear, blameless Israel” is cause to raise a false cry of “anti-Semitism”—the first refuge of a Zionist scoundrel. 

Israel has killed over 3,500 Palestinian civilians since the beginning of the current Palestinian uprising against Israel’s violent and illegal occupation of their homeland. Israel has imprisoned and tortured thousands of Arabs without trial, bulldozed and destroyed over 20,000 Palestinian homes, and uprooted over a million trees from Palestinian soil—while some 850 Israelis have died during the same period. These numbers alone tell us that not only is the occupation harming both Arab and Jew, but obviously the Palestinians are suffering far greater violence at the hands of the U.S.-backed Israeli military. Before complaining of Hamas violence, Israel’s local backers should examine Israel’s own role as a far more violent terrorist state—and their own role in supporting that terrorism. 

With Bush supporting Sharon’s unilateral seizure of West Bank land and confinement of 3.5 million Palestinians in walled-up ghettos, Israel has truly become the apartheid “White South Africa of the Middle East.” With U.S./Israeli rejectionism on Palestine and the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the obvious policy of the Bush regime’s neo-cons is simply perpetual war against the entire Arab world, disguised as the “war on terror” —really a war for oil and empire, driven by neo-con ideologues like Abrams, Wolfowitz, Pearle and Feith. Am I an “Anti-Semite” just for pointing out that these leading Neo-Cons —all Jewish—are all rabid, right-wing Israel-backers? Is their agenda really in the best interests of U.S. citizens here at home? 

If American Jews are truly worried about anti-Semitism, they should do all they can to stop Israel’s racist ethnic cleansing and terror against the Palestinians. If they wish to stop the identification of the Star of David with injustice, they should speak out against that injustice—as I know many Jews of good conscience continue to do here, in Israel, and around the world. 

Mark Dewhurst 

• 

ASSASSINATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Israel’s recent assassinations of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi are cause for mourning not celebration. Murder with impunity of a demonized “monster” cannot further peace, justice or even stability. Rather, these murders, and the ongoing killings of children and youths in the Palestinian refugee camps, have made their victims martyrs and will serve only to inflame the hopelessness, hatred and desperation of Palestinians trapped in their own land by a foreign invader and occupier. 

People everywhere have fought for their land and will always do so, and the right to resist colonial domination by proportionate force is recognized in international law. What made Yassin and Rantisi heroes to most Palestinians was their steadfast and unyielding opposition to Israeli subjugation and occupation. 

There will never be peace in the Middle East until Israeli Jews see themselves as part of it, value the lives of Arabs as much as their own, and think of the Palestinians as their true blood brothers instead of as Untermenschen to be exterminated like so many vermin. 

Ken Scudder 

San Francisco 

• 

HUMANE SOCIETY RUMMAGE SALE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What happened to the rummage sale? We made at least $600 a month in a slow month. All items were donated and all the help were volunteers; it was pure profit for BEBHS. 

The public is extremely disappointed in not bringing back the rummage sale. It was like a family get together on the first and third Saturday of the month— all to support the animals. 

It has been almost a year and still no rummage sale. I am surprised that a nonprofit organization can afford this. 

Please bring back the rummage sale for the good of the animals and the communities that supported it. 

Jane E. Roberts 

• 

PUBLIC ART 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Myrna Sokolinsky writes (Letters, Daily Planet, April 20-22) that we should all vote on public art in Berkeley. Somehow, in a town where so few can agree on anything, I doubt that voting on art would produce much of lasting value, if anything at all. 

She concludes by saying that “we can’t really afford to buy art at this economically stressed time anyway.” The Great Depression was arguably worse than this disastrous age of Bushanomics, but under the enlightened leadership of FDR and his advisors, the (publicly funded) arts flourished, and we now regard “WPA art” as communal treasures. San Francisco is particularly rich in New Deal art; in the East Bay, we have the reliefs on Berkeley High and the Community Theatre, mosaics on the old UC Power House, a fresco and relief in the post office, and inlaid murals in the Alameda County Courthouse, itself a WPA project. In addition, New Deal workers left us innumerable life-enhancing landscapes such as the Berkeley and Oakland Rose Gardens, the John Hinkel and Woodminster Amphitheatres, the Berkeley Marina, and a great deal of the recreational features of Tilden Park. 

What was done once before could be done again if we only had the will; we could put people to work building something worthy of the name civilization rather than destroying it both here and abroad. 

Gray Brechin 

• 

AQUATIC PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A grant application to the State Coastal Conservancy to fund habitat improvements at Aquatic Park will be on the City Council’s agenda this evening (April 27). Make your wishes known to support funding for striped bike lanes and a walkway separated from cars. Connect the trail south of Dreamland more safely with Shellmound in Emeryville. New landscaping can replace former parking lots. Native coastal shrubs can create shorebird screening. New egret roosts can be planted to replace those being lost. Visitor seating overlooking the waterbirds will be a perfect introduction to these wetlands. Better connections to the tidal waters of San Francisco Bay can bring a fresher, life-giving flow to this amazing biological resource. Lend your voice of support for Berkeley’s precious baylands. 

Mark Liolios 

• 

ON PEOPLE’S PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your invigorating story on the founding of People’s Park ended too early (“The Bloody Beginnings of People’s Park,” Daily Planet, April 20-22). After the murder of Rector and the shooting of many others that day, the park remained in UC hands and a tall chain link fence kept the people out of their park. 

Months passed. Fortunately, a massive Berkeley protest of the Vietnam war got out of hand and opportunity opened to take the park. A segment at the front of some 2,000 demonstrators decided to trash Telegraph Avenue. At the time the demonstration broke in two I was among those marching up Dwight. The police melted away from us to rush to protect property on Telegraph. A cry went up, “Take the park!” Hundreds of us descended upon the chain link fence. It took nearly ten people between each pole to yank down the sturdy fence. When it lay on the ground someone started singing “Ding dong the witch is dead...” Hundreds of people danced while singing over and over the song from the Wizard of Oz. 

The next morning a hundred or so of us gathered to role up the torn down fence. We were but a few minutes into our work when half a dozen squad cars zoomed to a stop at Haste and Bowdich. The cops lept out holding rifles not clubs. One of our number shouted, “Don’t move when they shoot. “ The idea took. The cops marched a few feet down Haste. We went on folding the fence. They fired. I moved so that if I was hit it would be in the back. I heard cries of pain and “ouch,” and also “Don’t move.” The cops freaked. They left and didn’t come back till late afternoon. By that time People’s Park was well on its way. 

Ted Vincent 

• 

SLIGHT OVERSIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was surprised to read a quote by me in Matt Artz’s article of April 20, 2004 regarding Ex Parte (“City Council to Tackle Ex Parte Rule Reform,” Daily Planet, April 20-22). In fact, I was not surprised by Marie Bowman fabricating the quote, but rather by Matt not checking with me about it. I have been impressed by Matt’s effort to provide balanced views on issues he writes about and it seems he had an oversight in this case. 

This is not the first time Ms. Bowman fabricates things about me or about Affordable Housing Associates. She has done so in community meetings, at Council meetings and in the courts. So far, the community and the courts have made their judgements about her. 

She claims I bragged about how Councilmember Maio had made certain promises to me regarding the approval of Sacramento Senior Homes. This is just not true. By the time we had submitted our zoning application to the City, Ms. Bowman and I were communicating only through mediators. 

Ali R. Kashani 

AHA Executive Director 

• 

THE U.S. AND HAITI 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Why is the news from Haiti being virtually ignored by the American mainstream press? Why are we Americans not outraged by the United States’ role in removing the democratically elected leader of Haiti and supporting a violent military coup in that poorest of poor countries? This is a sobering example of the Bush administration’s total disregard for international laws and the sovereignty of foreign nations, and makes a mockery of the U.S. government’s claim that it is promoting democracy worldwide. 

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected President of Haiti twice, each time by large majorities in internationally supervised elections. In 1995, President Aristide disbanded the Haitian military, which had been the source of much violence and repression in the country. His government made literacy, health care, AIDS treatment, and agricultural production its top priorities. These are priorities I wish my own government would support, both in Haiti and here at home. 

As concerned Americans, we need to call for a full congressional investigation into the role of the United States government in the deliberate destabilization of the Haitian government and the implementation of the coup. 

Sandy Kroigaard 

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 

The increasing development by UC Berkeley beyond its traditional boundaries and its resulting encroachment on the city’s central business district and adjacent neighborhoods has been accelerating at an alarming rate. New and proposed construction will require untold additional city services, including fire and police protection as well as public works expenditures. 

The total impacts, which can’t even be calculated at this time, will place an ever-growing burden on an already diminished city tax base. 

UC’s Long Range Development Plan, adopted with much fanfare over a decade ago, was to be a roadmap for UC development, but also assurance to the city that growth would not go unchecked. This has proved to be illusory. The plan is constantly being revised to reflect UC’s latest priority. “Our goal,” writes the chancellor in a recent newsletter, “is to promote social interaction and intellectual collaboration, preserve open space, protect our architectural treasures, and help enrich the communities around u s.” UC, however, has taken the position that as a state institution it can expand wherever and whenever it wants to, and that it is exempt from city zoning regulations. 

The latest project to implement its plan is a UC hotel and conference center in the heart of downtown, with up to 200 rooms and 20,000 square feet of development. In this proposal, unlike others, UC would agree to be subject to the city’s review process—but only because it needs the city to contribute substantial public works to make the project feasible. 

We believe that, in the light of relentless UC expansion, and the severe fiscal problems facing the city over the long term, the best solution would be for the city to declare bankruptcy and for the university to take over the city, acting as agent for the State of California. This would benefit the city and UC in a number of ways: 

• UC could end its piecemeal dismemberment of the city—they could have it all at once, without delays or acrimonious meetings with city commissions. 

• Berkeley homeowners and businesses would no longer have to pay onerous local property taxes, since university ownership of the city would mean city properties would be tax exempt. 

• Substantial savings would be achieved by eliminating overlapping staff s, services and facilities. Also, there would be no need for costly municipal elections, or the expense of maintaining our City Council and its paid staff. 

• Since the city’s bond rating is higher than the state’s, the latter would be able to borrow more cheaply and pass these savings on to UC for land development, even beyond city boundaries. Conceivably, when it runs out of space locally, the university could acquire arch-rival Stanford. 

We propose that the Regents, together with the governor, appoint a committee to further explore these recommendations and to lay the groundwork for a strategic implementation plan.  

Finally, we recommend that any newly created entity have a name which reflects the reality of the present situation. No, it would not b e “UC-Berkeley.” It would be “U-Saw Berkeley.” 

Alan Goldfarb and Frank Trinkl are concerned Berkeley citizens.  

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El Cerrito’s City Council is putting the finishing touches on a new view ordinance. Will view-deprived property owners get to preserve and restore views via an ordinance “with teeth,” as in Tiburon? Or, will tree lovers achieve an ordinance geared to compromise, as in Berkeley? El Cerrito’s past ordinance implied a right to views. This worked when downhill neighbors read it the same way. But when tree owners dug in their heels, and disputes went for resolution to a “Tree Commission,” it showed the rules weren’t suited for a clear-cut court decision, pun intended. 

This dispute has a long history. More recently, three years ago, the neighborhood above Canyon Trail Park saw a chance to have the city remove some 50 Monterey Pines, which had over the years obscured views for uphill house owners. But park users rallied to have red crosses painted on the condemned trees, and insisted the city come up with a staged plan to preserve habitat and park ambiance. It became apparent that City Hall is capable of chopping trees, but is not ready to spend the money to seriously apply “Urban Forest Plan” principles. Staff turned the City Council’s call for a “phased plan” into a “tree inventory” with no follow-up, and stopped calls for further action. Presumably by pointing out that “If one park gets clear-cut, why not others?” and “Money (to not just cut but to re-plant) does not grow on trees.” 

Frustrated above-park residents have since then allied themselves with residents deprived of views by privately owned trees “to correct mistakes of the past.” Joined by real estate interests and new hillside property owners seeking valuable view rights, even in “little and placid” El Cerrito, it makes for hundreds of vocal view-seekers demanding action from the council. With a council election looming in November and many voters probably agreeing there needs to be “some right to a view”, the council asked the Tree Commission and the city attorney to craft a new ordinance. Just as predictably, City Hall protected itself by excluding “public trees,” leaving some view-seekers in limbo. 

The Tree Commission’s proposal was deemed too Berkeley-like by the view-seekers, whereupon Mayor Letitia Moore, proposed a Tiburon-like ordinance: “No person shall plant, maintain, or permit to grow any tree that unreasonably obstructs views.” The mayor is up for re-election and shows blatant favor to “hillside votes and money.” Predictably, the tree-lovers have mounted a counteroffensive, and the excesses are being whittled away, mainly by environment-friendly Councilmember Mark Friedman. 

The final ordinance outcome is unclear. If it is unacceptable to tree promoters, they may try for a referendum to defeat it. If unacceptable to view rights people, they may go for an initiative, or even seek a new council. At this stage it seems that El Cerrito is heading towards political and legal battles when it should be confronting crucial economic issues. 

This is not an intractable problem. Most voters would agree that view and tree rights should be fairly balanced. But the devil is in the detail. A council, needing to raise taxes while preserving political control, is unlikely to come up with well-crafted ordinance. It may be ready “to ditch” one or the other extreme position. Balancing property rights and quality-of-life interests, rights to maximum profits for uphill homeowners versus the economic interests of the overall community, taking into account soil stabilization and other environment concerns, are complex issues. This is not the proper time to risk alienating one or another of two large voter groups, possibly both. It may be better to have this issue be resolved, not by council fiat, but by voters directly choosing either a Berkeley or a Tiburon-like ordinance. Another possibility is for the two outgoing Councilmembers on either side of the tree vs. view debate, Mark Friedman and Gina Brusatori, to invite the leaders of the two “citizen groups,” Glenn Davis and Ann Thrupp, to hammer out as much of a compromise as possible, geared to the specifics of El Cerrito. 

Council and staff are tempted to exploit this issue to forge new alliances and divert attention from pressing problems. On the other hand, heated-up politics may be what El Cerrito needs. Pruning can benefit politics as much as it does the greenery. It is time for citizens to look beyond trees and views and notice politicians seeking reelection, staff protecting their jobs, attorneys spending hours to craft an ordinance. Once voters start clearing away deadwood they may go beyond what’s on the ground and start looking to the city’s true issues and interests, good neighbor relations between all residents. Most tree/view disputes are settled amicably, it is silly for the council to even consider an ordinance which provokes so much discord. Leave it to the voters! 

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RESPONSE FROM WINOKUR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Morris Berger in his response (Letters, Daily Planet, April 13-15) to my April 9, Good Friday commentary on Jesus and the Jews (“Film Shows Need for Complex Interpretation of History,” Daily Planet, April 9-12), claims that it is the “excesses” in Mel Gibson’s The Passion that “demonstrate the persistence of the virus of anti-Semitism.” But anti-Semitism has been on the rise long before The Passion of the Christ hit the silver screen. As a matter of fact, indications are that the film may, in fact, be reducing such prejudice. After all, it spends most of its energy beating the daylights out of a poor Jewish man. Even hard-core Christian bigots might likely respond with some minimal empathy, as it is their guy, in all his Judaic glory, who takes it on for the sake of humanity. 

In my article I made it clear (as he quotes) that when referring to the crucifixion I am speaking, historically, only of: “some of the Jews.” But with all due respect to the Jewish tradition and its spiritual establishments, I believe that mainstream Judaism has made a disingenuous omission by continuing to treat Jesus as if he were barely a footnote in their history. Fortunately, there are growing exceptions to this, demonstrated by such rapidly growing movements as Messianic Judaism and Jewish Renewal. Represented right here in Berkeley, by the burgeoning membership of Kehilla Synagogue, the Renewal movement, at least gives Christ the respect of an essential teacher in the tradition of such prophets as Baal ShemTov. 

Meanwhile, let’s not obfuscate the issue by invoking uncertainty about details as a means of conveniently denying probability. When it all sifts out, sacrifice and resurrection aside, we are talking about a political execution. Of course, castigating all Jews for all time is draconian and unjust. But are repeating the old weary mantras of accusation and denial producing anything but insecurity and systemic suspicion? Bringing Jesus into the mainstream, ritual Jewish experience is the least we can do for our own legacy, and perhaps toward healing one of the monumental, inscrutable schisms in the history of religion.  

Marc Winokur 

• 

UNIQUENESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Marc Winokur’s commentary on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: 

I would doubt the “uniqueness” of Jesus’ message. Jesus speaks with the same voice as the Old Testament prophets, and is supported by a great deal of earlier scripture. It is a principle known in the Orient as “parampara” or “disciplic succession.” Some of his sayings were Aramaic proverbs inserted into the Gospel narrative. To say that nobody ever spoke of peace, love, and forgiveness before Jesus would be ridiculous. 

Jesus was a man of submission to God, not an “iconoclastic rebel.” If rebel, he certainly joined the Establishment in a hurry, becoming the whitewashed plaster Icon of the dominant order for 2000 years. 

And of course the Jews killed him, and so what! Had he preached in Mongolia, the Mongolians would have killed him! They would have killed him wherever he preached! Since every Mother’s son of us is going to die, why make so much of the death of this one individual – there are many similar deaths, and, “Neither he who thinks the living entity the slayer nor he who thinks it slain is in knowledge, for the Self slays not nor is Slain.” (Gita 2:19) 

It is not a simple matter of “complex interpretation of history” but of simple common sense and a little spiritual understanding to come to terms with Ol’ Jesus. Gibson’s Passion is a passion play. Passion plays have been popular for thousands of years—this is a particularly violent and bloody passion play—very Catholic. For those who like such things, good! I would not see it because I don’t like to see the spiritual master treated in such a manner. As far as the complaint of the Jews that they are painted as the bad guys—shouldn’t have done the first thing! Does political correctness indicate that we can’t blame the Germans for the deaths of so many Jews? 

Clayton C. C. O’Claerach 

AIN’T BUYING IT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here’s a modest but radical proposal: Isn’t it time Berkeley stopped promoting knee-jerk anti-automobile policies that threaten to run businesses, cultural institutions, and their patrons out of town? 

Berkeley residents aren’t buying Rob Wrenn’s notion that reducing parking somehow reduces traffic congestion (“Taking Away Parking Did Not Increase Europe’s Traffic Congestion” Daily Planet, April 9-12). At least, not judging by the contrary letters the Daily Planet has run both before and since his April 9 commentary. I think Berkeley will ultimately reject his broader “pedestrianization” notions too, and Wendy Alfsen’s specific proposal (in an April 16 commentary) to close Center Street. 

Mr. Wrenn took up a whole page trying, but failing, to rebut Jon Alff’s earlier letter about how limited parking and good transit have failed to reduce traffic congestion in European cities like Bilbao, Spain. Mr. Wrenn failed because he presented no evidence that excluding or inconveniencing motorists improves anyone else’s quality of life. 

Certainly, such evidence is hard to find locally. Berkeley’s most “pedestrianized” areas are Telegraph Avenue north of Parker Street, and the Shattuck Avenue BART/bus/movie plaza from Center to Kittredge. Given American realities, both strips have drawn such hostile sidewalk dwellers that many Berkeley residents either stay away entirely, or dash through as fast as they can. 

Does Mr. Wrenn seriously propose expanding these no-linger zones? Do he and Ms. Alfsen really want to extend Shattuck’s chain of gaping, vacant storefronts onto Center Street? Center now hosts a thriving restaurant/commercial row, thanks to both city investment and automobile access. 

Mr. Wrenn also blithely writes that “London has implemented congestion charging which has reduced traffic in the center.” But let’s be specific: Surveillance cameras now photograph the license plate of every car driving into central London, and computers send the owner a bill for $9. This is arrogant Orwellianism up with which Americans will not put. 

Does Mr. Wrenn want to dig a similar electronic moat around Berkeley, to kill off the rest of the city’s businesses? This intrusive scheme is failing even in London—where traffic volumes are creeping back up, but businesses are failing. 

I heard a sad radio report last week about a venerable London bookstore that’s closing down specifically because of the congestion charge. Its employees don’t want to pay it, and nor do its (former) patrons, who’ve stayed away in droves. 

Berkeley can manage cars and traffic through reasonable incentives, design, and enforcement. But we shouldn’t risk our city’s vitality by deferring to unelected nonprofessionals who have an ideological axe to grind—and whose abstract schemes are running on too few cylinders. Evidence matters, and so do consequences. Let’s have the broad public debate that Jon Alff’s April 6 letter called for. 

Henry Sloan 

• 

BICYCLE REVOLUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Beginning with Rob Wrenn’s thoughtful, articulate and well-researched commentary on traffic in Berkeley (“Taking Away Parking Did Not Increase Europe’s Traffic Congestion” Daily Planet, April 9-12) to Malcolm Carden’s letter in response to Wrenn’s article (April 13-15) to UC Berkeley students Andy Katz, Brandon Simmons and Jesse Arreguin’s commentary “UC on Collision Course with Traffic Jam” (Daily Planet, April 13-15)...are we seeing a trend here? 

Mr. Carden begins his agenda with a boost-business pitch: “Restricting parking and vehicular access in downtown Berkeley will mean less retail sales since shoppers will be required to schlep their shopping bags large distances from the stores to their cars.” He then assumes the role of the devil’s advocate by entertaining the Berkeley-moonbeam idea of a “totally pedestrianized downtown” as a possible alternative scenario. Finally, he tightens his stiff collar and gets back to business when he admonishes readers: “Don’t complain about the absence of quality retail stores. You can’t have your cake and eat it.”  

UC Berkeley students Katz, Simmons and Arreguin seem near paralysis struggling with their apocalyptic vision: “Imagine 2,900 new commuter parking spaces in Berkeley’s downtown and southside making Berkeley’s traffic nightmare only worse.” Only once in their long commentary did they allude to bicyclists and pedestrians, and then only as victims of tailpipe emissions in a landscape of marooned cars: “People getting to campus by bicycle and on foot will travel in clouds of car exhaust as 2,900 cars rest parked in the middle of major streets if the vision of the UC Berkeley Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) is realized.” 

While many people are concerned about the connection between public health, transportation and land use in Berkeley, the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority (ACTIA) is actually doing something about it. Recently it’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee recommended large cash disbursements of Measure B Alameda County Sales Tax Revenue to two Berkeley-based programs: The UC Berkeley Bicycle Plan and the Tinkers’ Workshop. The UC Berkeley Bicycle Plan addresses issues of bike access with the goal of increasing bike commuting and safety, access to the campus and bike parking. The Tinkers’ Workshop offers free opportunities for Berkeley residents to develop skills using bike repair and maintenance tools. The also offer bike workshops for youth (averaging 75 participants per week) as well as a rides-program for 100-youth participants. 

California, and Berkeley in particular, are experiencing a huge bicycle revolution: In the biggest bicycle commute event in state history, an expected 35,000 cyclists will take part in “California Bike Commute Week 2004” from May 17-21. More than 200 pit stops will operate during the event offering riders an attractive alternative to the currently soaring gasoline prices. 

While some Berkeleyans see only traffic jams others, like author Iris Murdoch in “The Red and the Green,” see the dark side of run-away technology, as well as a more life affirming vision of the future: “The bicycle is the most civil conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.” 

Joe Kempkes, Vice Chairperson 

Bicycle and Pedestrian  

Advisory Committee,  

Alameda County  

Transportation Improvement Authority 

Fact: In the United States over 550,000 children are in foster care. Over 150,000 of them are awaiting adoptive placements. 

My foster baby is sleeping. He’s breathing puffy breaths that are slow compared to the rapid beat of his heart. I know its rhythm well, because with  

each heartbeat a green light flashes on the monitor that’s connected with wires to electrodes on his chest. My foster baby is tiny in his cotton nightshirt, the wires snaking out beneath it. The light pulses green over and over, and if he stops breathing it will turn red and the monitor will shriek like a smoke alarm. Maybe I’ll have to perform CPR. So far, I’ve only performed CPR on plastic dummies provided by the Red Cross during the refresher courses I take to continue being a certified foster parent. 

I think he’s number 16, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to check the ledger where I write down the names of all my foster children, the duration of their stays. This one is with me because of testing positive for methamphetamine during the premature birth. His mother received no prenatal care and was ordered to complete a drug treatment program before he could be returned to her, so for now he lives with us. 

My son and daughter accept the comings and goings of my mostly younger foster children as easily as if it’s normal for every family to house a rotating cast of “throwaway” kids: premature babies who need to be hooked up to monitors lest they die in their sleep, children and toddlers who were starved by neglectful parents, abused by relatives, or developmentally delayed due to drugs or alcohol.  

Last night was rough. The baby began crying and didn’t stop for two hours, even after being fed and bathed and massaged. I put on a CD of classical music and then one of Mexican lullabies and when those didn’t work I tried reggae. My son said, “I think you should take him to the hospital.”  

“You don’t take a baby to the hospital because he’s crying,” I reminded him, adding, “Maybe he’s crying because on some subconscious level he knows his mom rejected him.” I halfway believed myself, and finally when my baby dozed off I hooked him up to the monitor before placing him gently in his bassinet.  

To relax, my son and I stayed up late watching old eight millimeter home movies of me in the family I’d grown up with during the ‘60s and ‘70s. My dad has been putting them on videotapes for us. Lying on the sofa I asked my first-born, “How would you rate my appearance as a thirteen-year-old on a scale of one to 10?” Without hesitating he answered “Oh, four or five.” I smiled to myself, not really offended, merely noting how much less important my physical appearance is to me than what I’m doing with my life that gives it shape and purpose—being a foster parent.  

We watched the strangely soundless but happy scenes of my youth: me turning somersaults in the backyard wearing paisley bellbottoms, then mischievously pushing my sister off an inflatable chair. I thought of how my foster baby, and many of the other children I’ve fostered for varying lengths of time might never know the easy stability of a permanent home with loving parents. Thought of how I’ve felt occasionally self-righteous but simultaneously humbled being foster parent to children with biological families whose realities I try not to judge: parents too often helpless to fight a system that takes their kids and might never give them back; men and women vulnerable to the ways society still preys on minorities of lower socioeconomic status, causing stress factors that can make it difficult to raise children without instances of abuse or neglect. 

Impulsively I asked my son, “How would you rate me on a scale of one to 10 as a foster parent?” 

“Eight,” he responded. 

Then, before I had a chance to say anything, he added “...teen.” 

“Eighteen?” I asked, flattered. “On a scale of one to 10?” 

“Yeah,” he said, expressionless, embarrassed to acknowledge his pride in me.  

“Wow, thanks, kiddo. That makes me feel really good.” 

Just then the foster baby started crying—a jagged, raspy cry, from the bassinet in my bedroom. 

Freelance writer Annie Kassof lives in Berkeley with her son and her adopted daughter and foster children. She is certified with A Better Way Foster Family and Adoption Program, which is always recruiting new foster and fost-adopt parents. They can be reached at 601-0203. 

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Saturday April 24 was a hot day for a garden makeover, or any other strenuous outdoor activity. But approximately 30 volunteers turned out to help transform the grounds of Chaparral House, a skilled nursing facility at Allston Way, under the auspices of Rebuilding Together. 

Formerly known as Christmas in April, Rebuilding Together organizes annual clean-up and fix-up work parties at private homes and community institutions. All over Berkeley, teams were painting, drywalling, laying carpet, constructing fences and garden beds.  

We’ve admired this group’s work for years, but never expected to get involved in one of their projects—let alone wind up wearing the gray shirts of authority, labeled House Captain and First Mate. But when Sandi Peters, Chaparral House’s high-energy Activities Director, asked for help, it was impossible to say no. Chaparral is a nonprofit without a huge budget for maintaining or improving its grounds. When Joe’s mother lived there, we noticed that the front and interior gardens, while extremely pleasant places to hang out and watch the birds and feed (or frustrate) the squirrels, were beginning to look a little threadbare. We got together with the family members of other residents to plan long-term improvements and schedule work days. Rebuilding Together’s involvement was a natural follow-up. 

A core group of family members strategized how to deploy Rebuilding Together’s volunteers for a big push to upgrade the gardens. Landscape architect Charles McCulloch arranged for donations of compost—eight cubic yards of prime Walt Whitman from American Soil Products—and plants from The Dry Garden and other nurseries. Several private individuals pitched in with plant donations. Chaparral House’s Environmental Supervisor Rafael Gutierrez rounded up tools, work gloves, dust masks. 

Saturday dawned bright and cloudless. The volunteers began to report—a mix of ages and skills, people from UC Berkeley student groups Gamma Zeta Alpha and Tau Beta Pi and their friends, a local LDS church, the office of Judge Julie Conger, plus some Chaparral House family members and a rep from the UC vice-chancellor’s office. Cal and the Oakland Tribune co-sponsored our site. 

Team leaders McCulloch, Dennis Fox, and Anne Hudes sorted them out and put them to work. One group, armed with power tools, went after the ivy that had overwhelmed a garden fence and invaded the only accessible raised bed; another prepared the streetside and entrance areas for planting; a third cleaned and replanted an interior courtyard. A pick-up group also planted a newly cleared corner that gets a lot of wheelchair and walker traffic, and horticultural therapist Sam Moreau used the day to assemble and fill planters that hang from deck railings, easy to reach and work on from wheelchairs. 

Things got a little chaotic at times, but the collective energy and good will more than compensated. Volunteers who claimed to know nothing about plants proved to be naturals at pruning and planting. Willowy-looking young women worked like stevedores, while folks on our side of middle age kept plugging away under the broiling sun. A row of purple-leaf plum trees went into the ground along the driveway; bright perennials were tucked into margins; four pickup truckloads of ivy went to the dump. Site Safety Coordinator Karuna Fosselius had no mishaps to report. As First Mate, Joe went “Arrrgh” a lot and muttered darkly about the rats getting into the hardtack. Ron’s primary act as captain was informing the crew that “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” scans perfectly to the theme from Gilligan’s Island. 

This day’s work was a kickoff to a long-term project to make Chaparral House’s gardens more useful and accessible to its current residents—a group older and more frail, on the whole, that the population of 15 years ago, when the place was an assisted-living facility. The plantings in front, particularly those plum trees, will improve the view (currently an asphalt driveway and the parking lot of the city’s corporation yard) and improve the vision; they’ll filter sunlight through the big living room windows, eliminating the glare that aging eyes can’t handle. The raised bed will become more useable when it’s lowered by a few inches and the splintery wood top rail is replaced by smooth repurposed-plastic lumber. 

One member of Chaparral’s landscape cabal knows a couple of Friends of Strawberry Creek, and they dropped by to talk to us too. An amalgam of creeks’ friends has been re-landscaping the margins of Strawberry Creek, whose daylighted section near Bonar Street borders both Chaparral’s gardens and the grounds of Strawberry Lodge, a larger independent seniors’ residence. They had ideas for opening the view of the creek and integrating it into the garden. Now we hope to combine the interests of the creek people, the native-plant people, wildlife advocates, the seniors’ residences, the City of Berkeley, the clean-water folks, the neighborhood, Alameda County, and gardeners including those living at Chaparral House to make the most of this urban oasis. 

As the afternoon got late, we realized that whatever else happened, eight cubic yards of compost had to disappear from the front lawn. Shovels swung furiously, wheelbarrows barreled through the garden, spontaneous work chants broke out. The last newly planted trees and shrubs, irises and pelargoniums got their blanket of Walt and a good soaking. The last volunteers, including those indefatigable Cal engineering students, took off, hardly limping at all. 

Some of us, although almost too tired to eat, had enough energy left to make it to Rebuilding Together’s picnic at Live Oak Park. Standing in line for burgers, barbeque, and a splendid array of desserts, we swapped tales of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. And some of us were a bit surprised to hear ourselves talking about doing it again next year. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 27 

THEATER 

First Stage Children’s Theater “Confession of a Cat Burgler” at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $4 at the door. 845-8542. 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 6:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Ar chive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Steve Olson describes “Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World’s Toughest Math Competition” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Brad Olsen introdu ces “Sacred Places Around the World” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

Jacqueline Kramer introduces “Buddha Mom: The Path of Mindful Mothering” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

The Whole Not e Poetry Series with Mary Rudge and poet contributors to peace and justice anthologies at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave. 549-9093. 

Poets Gone Wild Readings from the historical anthology “California Poetry” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0 861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dennis D’Mennance, Brimstone and Kingston 12 perform reggae at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a showcase of up-and-coming ense mbles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Flora and Fauna” and “Garden of Peace” two new exhibitions open at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Gallery hours are Mon. - Fri. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Victorian Glory in the San Francisco Bay Area” with Paul Duchscherer at 7:30 p.m. at Church by the Side of the Road, 2108 Russell St. Tickets are available from Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Joan Blades introduces MoveOn’s “50 Ways to Love Your Country” at 7:30 p.m. at Diesel Bookstore, 5433 College Ave. in Oakland. 653-9965.  

Daniel Dorman discusses “Dante’s Cure: A Journey Out of Madness” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Susan Halpern describes “The Etiquette of Illness: What to Say When You Can’t Find the Words,” in a benefit for Alta Bates Comprehensive Cancer Center at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Nina Marie Martínez describes an adventure story/soap opera in “!Caramba!” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam Finals for the National Slam Team Competition at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Andrew Carriere & Cajun Classics at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $4. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Swing Mine at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Julio Bravo performs salsa music at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Ragas and Talas open jam session of Classical Indian music at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

THURSDAY, APRIL 29 

EXHBITION OPENING S 

“Still Moments in a World of Flux” photographs by Dafna Kory, Elizabeth Lane, and Jason Malinsky at Wuster Hall Lobby, UC Campus. Reception from 5 to 8 p.m. 

THEATER 

“Scenes of Unseen Prejudice” Presented by Piedmont’s Appreciating Diversity Committee at 7 p.m. at Piedmont’s Veteran’s Hall, 401 Highland Ave., Piedmont. Free. 663-9649. 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jesse Shepard reads f rom his collection of short stories, “Jubilee King” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Jonathan Rausch talks about “Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Arianna Huffington describes “Fanatic and Fools: A Game Plan for Winning Back America” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-5900. www.codysbooks.com 

“Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness” a discussion o f bipolar worlds with Sascha Scatter and Ashley McNamara at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674 A 23rd St., Oakland. Donation $5. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers April Chartrand and Phillip Nails at Mediter raneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra performs Mendels- 

sohn, Shostakovich and Grieg at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$39. 415-392-4400. www.ncco.org 

Quetzal performs Chicano music at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Greg Brown at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $25.50 at the door. Presented by Freight and Salvage. 548-1761. 

John Schott’s Typical Orchestra and Myles Boisen’s Past Present Future at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Sacred Music Night at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Swoop Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 30 

CHILDREN 

The Little Engine That Could at Barnes and Noble at 10:30 a.m. 644-3635. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Jack London Art Invitational with art from five Bay Area studios, opens at 240 Third St., Oakland. Reception at 6:30 p.m. Gallery hours are Tues.-Thurs. 2-8 p.m. and Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 893-4100. www.jacklondondistrict.org/art  

“Re-Create” a recycled art exhibition by youth from Alameda County from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Museum of Children’s Art, 494 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770, ext. 350. www.mocha.org 

FILM 

Serge Daney: “Journey of a Ciné-Son” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a comedy by Wendy Wasserstein, op ens at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck, through May 15. Tickets are $10. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre Company “Antigone Falun Gong” at 8 p.m. Wed.-Sat., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through May 16. Tickets are $28-$4 0 available from 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley High School “Man in the Musical” premiere of an original musical theater piece by Phil Gorman and Lila Tschappat at 8 p.m. at the Little Theater, Allston and MLK Jr Way. Also May 2 at 7 p.m., May 6-8 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5-$10. 332-1931. 

Berkeley Rep “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” Charles Ludlam’s theatrical cult classic at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, through May 23. Tickets are $39-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

“Casino!” a musical comedy by Jo yce Whitelaw at 8 p.m at The Glenview Performing Arts Center, 1318 Glenfield Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $20. 531-0511. www.glenviewpac.com 

Impact Theatre “Money and Run” an action serial adventure with different episodes on Thurs., Fri. and Sats. Runs thr ough June 5 at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid. For tickets and information call 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Shotgun Players “The Miser” opens at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater, Thurs.-Sun. through May 2. Free admission. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash, Special National Poetry Month Reading with Gerald Sterna and Willis Barnstone at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Lawrence Osborne describes “The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

University Symphony performs Lutoslawski and Shostakovich at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channin g Way. Tickets are $3-$10. 642-9988.  

Arauco, South American nuevo folk, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12 in advance, $14 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Caminos Flamencos with Yaelisa with dinner at 6 and 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Pa z, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $42-$52, show only $17. 843-0662. wwwcafedelapaz.net 

Beat Box Showcase hosted by Andrew Chaikin and Tim Barsky at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

GoJoGo, world beats, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Greg Brown with Pieta Brown and Bo Ramsey at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $25.50 at the door. Presented by Freight and Salvage. 548-1761. 

Todd Sickafoose and the Tiny Resistors at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway at 2nd St. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Singer-Songwriter Night at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Red Pocket at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Over My Dead Body, Internal Affairs, The Warriors at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

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

Hyim and The Fat Foakland Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

Mushroom at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SATURDAY, MAY 1 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Lydia Mills and Arianna Guthries performing traditional and original Latin American songs at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $3-$4. 849-2568. www.l apena.org 

Wild About Books with Ruth Halpern, winner of the Parent’s Choice Award at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

FILM 

Vista College Independent Festival of Digital Arts from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at 2020 Addison St. Tickets are $4-$15. 981-2800. 

New From Trinh T. Minh-Ha: “Night Passage” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at the West Branch Berkeley Public Library, 1125 University Ave. 527-9905.  

Darren Shan shares more vampire stories in “Hunters of the Dark” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Luis Alberto Urrea describes the dangerous crossing on the US/Mexican border in “The Devil’s Highway” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Early Music Society “Zarzuela” a Spanish program drawn from Sebastian Duron’s “Salir el Amor del Mundo” at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

University Symphony performs Lutoslawski and Shostakovich at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $3-$10. 642-9988.  

Amici di Buxtehude by Trinity Chamber Concerts at 8 p.m. at 2320 Dana St. at Dana. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. 

Caminos Flamencos with Yaelisa with dinner and dessert at 6 and 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $42-$52, show only $17. 84 3-0662. wwwcafedelapaz.net 

Motown Tribute Show, an all -ages high energy production at 7 and 9 p.m. at Claremont Middle School, 5750 College Ave., near Rockridge BART. Tickets are $25. 879-3170. 

Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited, music from South Afri ca, at at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $18. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Bay Area Follies with Gil Chun Musical comedy, tap, ballroom and ethnic dances at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Also on Sun. at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10-$15. 526-8474. 

S queeze Box Social World Accordian Festival with Familia Pena-Govea, Creole Belles and California Klezmer at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

Noche de Skatemoc: La Pachucada at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost i s $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Broun Fellinis at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Wadi Gad and Jah Bandis, conscious roots reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

West Coast Live wi th Luis Urrea, Jane Smiley, Duffy Bishop and others at 10 a.m. at the Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15 in advance, $18 at the door, available from 415-664-9500 or www.ticketweb.com 

Bluegrass Intentions, traditional quintet, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvag e Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

E is for Elephant, Research and Development at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Marcos Silva at 8:30 p.m. at Downt own. 649-3810. 

Samantha Raven at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Braziu, Brazilian music, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Fleshies, 50 Million, Shotwell, S.H.A.T., Kung-Fu USA at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MAY 2 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Shocked and Awed” an exhibit of drawings by Iraqi school children at the Museum of Children’s Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. To June 6th. 465-8770. www.mocha.org 

“Bird Houses” an exhibit of bird houses and bird art by local artists of all ages and backgrounds from 3 to 5 p.m. at NIAD Art Center, 551 23rd St., near Barrett Ave., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

FILM 

Vista College Independent Festival of Digital Arts from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at 2020 Addison St. Tickets are $4-$15. 981-2800. 

Film and Video Makers at Cal, works from the Eisner Award competition at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES  

Deborah Bloomfield, photographer, introduces “Four Corners” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Flash Tribute to Lennert Bruce at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.c om 

Alan Bern reads from his new collection of poetry “No, No the Saddest” and Linda Weaver will perfrom dances choreographed to the poems at 2 p.m. at Diesel Bookstore, 5433 College Ave. Oakland. 653-9965. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra performs Verdi’s “Requiem” at 4 p.m at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations welcome. 964-0665. www.bcco.org  

Broceliande May Day Concert at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Parish Hall, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Suggested don ation $10-$12. www.broceliande.org 

David Abel and Julie Steinberg, violin and piano, at 4 p.m. at the Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. 559-6910. 

Dance-Kenaz, a fundraiser for Ashkenaz Music and Dance Community Center at 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5-$10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

ACME Observatory Contemporary Performance Series presents percussionist Tom Nunn, and Aaron Bennet and John Finkbeiners Drinking Straw Music at at 8:15 p.m. at The Jazz House, 3192 Adeline.  

Dick Hindeman Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com  

Squeeze Box Social World Accordian Festival with Baguette Quartet, Conjunto Romero and Tsvetan Mitev Chakurov at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

Harlem Shake Burlesque at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Susan Werner, jazz-tinged orginals, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Cost is $18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.orgˇn

To Bolivian-born author Edmundo Paz Soldan, Berkeley is a magnifying glass through which he examines the world from which he came.  

While studying for his Ph.D. in literature at UC Berkeley in the early ‘90s, Paz Soldan started walked the streets of the city, noticing its history painted on walls, noting its awareness for social justice issues. He was inspired, he said, to take a closer look at his native Bolivia. 

“I couldn’t unplug myself [from Berkeley], there was always something going on, it was in the air, it was hard to avoid,” Paz Soldan said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “What I tried to see was what my experience in the U.S. would help me understand in Latin America.” 

After social and cultural upheavals that dominated the continent into the ‘80s, Latin America seemed to be on idle when Paz Soldan left to study in the United States. But what he discovered when he looked back—and what he began to write about—was a flourishing, vivid subculture, not widely acknowledged. 

Other young authors like Paz Soldan were also taking another look at their southern native lands, and daring to acknowledge the changes that were quietly reshaping Latin America. Like Berkeley, their work went against the grain, creating a backlash from literature critics.  

The grain this new group of Latin American authors was working against had been set down by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the near-mythical Colombian novelist whose ground-breaking, prize-winning work has made modern Latin American literature synonymous with the term “magical realism.” In that genre, fantasy and fact merge into a seamless narrative whole, almost as if someone told a fairy tale in the manner of a news story. Once that form became a popular seller in the United States, Latin American authors who did not conform found themselves without publishing contracts. 

But Paz Soldan and his fellow Latin-American up-and-coming authors were realists (in their writing form, if not necessarily in their approach to the potential market). They kept writing, however, and eventually created a new generation of Latin American literature called McCondo. The name itself is both a parody and a political-social statement. It derives from Maconda, the town that was the setting in the Marquez book—One Hundred Years of Solitude—that put the author on the literary map and is still considered the seminal magic realism work. But the altered spelling is meant to symbolize the Yankification of Latin America—a play on the cultural world of McDonalds, Macintosh computers, and condominiums. 

For Paz Soldan, the McCondo literary form symbolized looking at his native land through the eyes of an outsider—from Berkeley.  

“I realized that I could contribute,” he said, “because I had an outside perspective. [That idea] jelled for me at the time, [the idea that] I’m changing, I’m seeing my country with the eyes of a stranger.” 

This allowed him to recognize certain things that others took for granted, like the heavy American cultural influence that was shaping Latin America culture. And the political apathy of his generation that was very different from both the previous Latin American generation as well as from the political sensitivity that dominated Berkeley. 

“In 1993 in Bolivia, for the first time, they chose an indigenous leader,” Paz Soldan explained. “I lived that through the eyes of Berkeley. I read it in an article about how things were changing in Latin America. Of course, I was very happy. So when I went back home that summer with all my multicultural Berkeley points of view, I was shocked to see that they were shocked to have an Indian as vice president. They would say, ‘can you imagine, if the president dies, then we will have an Indian president?’ If I had stayed in Bolivia I might have been like them. But I was in Berkeley.” 

Like the other authors in the McCondo genre, Paz Soldan wrote the world as he saw it, with all its quirks and faults and changes. Paz Soldan was not afraid to expose the fact that the modern Latin America was different from the Latin America Garcia Marquez and others had described in their books.  

For example, he said he originally read some of the other authors’ work and saw how much their characters sounded like American teenagers. At first he thought it was just an attempt to mimic America because it was “cool.” But then he realized that these authors had caught an important point. 

“The cultural forces industry in Latin America is not very strong,” he said. “Maybe in Mexico and Argentina. [But if] a kid in Bolivia meets a kid from Ecuador and they want to talk about something common, they talk about The X-Files. The kid in Bolivia hasn’t seen Ecuadorian sitcoms. American popular culture was becoming a way to communicate.” 

Paz Soldan said the Latin American cultural critics, while secretly revering the United States, refused to publicly acknowledge their respect. So McCondo’s attempt to expose the U.S. cultural dominance of Latin America generated heat. 

In his most recent book, The Matter of Desire, Berkeley continues to be an important theme. The book is about a young Bolivian, much like Paz Soldan, who comes to the United States only to refocus on Latin America. In the book the protagonist returns to Bolivia after teaching in the U.S. to rediscover the life of his father, an iconic revolutionary figure, whose manifesto is aptly titled Berkeley.  

“I wanted to show what Berkeley represented for Latin America, it was the symbol of the fight against the war, for civil rights,” he said. 

The young man’s father, who was in Berkeley during the 60s, finds his political calling and returns to Bolivia to fight. He then dies, before the protagonist really grows to know him. All the young man knows of his dad is the posters and statues of him hung around the country. 

Without giving away the plot, the young man decides he has to return to Berkeley to try and find what created the human being behind the poster. What he finds is something we here in Berkeley all know to be true, that times have changed. 

“Berkeley represents many things [in the book]. It represents a lost paradise,” Paz Soldan said. “One day all these dreams were in place. But afterwards Berkeley became a pale imitation of itself with the years. But the stereotype remains, and many people have benefited from that stereotype.” 

Paz Soldan’s new book, The Matter of Desire, is published by Houghton Mifflin and is available at all major bookstores. 224 pages. $12. ›

The just-published Quick Index to the Origin of Berkeley’s Names delivers on the promise of its title, offering in 28 pages a definitive account of the reasons behind the names of the city’s streets, creeks, walks, paths and parks. 

Created by the Berkeley Historical Society under the guiding hand of editor and fifth-generation city resident John Ginno Arnovici, the text offers concise one- to seven-line accounts of how some unfamiliar and very familiar names in the city came to be. 

Consider Telegraph Avenue. Originally named Telegraph Road for the wires stretched along its length from Oakland to Claremont Canyon, it became—successively—Choate and then Humboldt Avenue before reverting to an upgraded version of the original. 

The telegraph also figures in the name of Ellsworth Street, which was named for federal patent commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, who enticed Congress to come up with $36,000 for Samuel F.B. Morse’s first telegraph line. 

Many Berkeley names derive from early settlers, business folk, prominent figures in the history of UC Berkeley, and activists. 

Journalists left their brands on at least three streets. Early Oakland Tribune scribe Herman Whitaker lent his last name to the avenue, and each of former San Francisco Chronicle editor Scott Newhall’s names adorns one of the city’s paths. The last name of California’s most famous early newsman, Mark Twain, graced both an avenue and a path. Later, the walkway was renamed Anne Brower Path after the environmental activist. 

One avenue was named after a play—Posen Avenue—for the drama Sam’l of Posen.  

There are streets named after poets, playwrights, English cities, real estate developers, city officials and naturalists. 

There’s even a street—Prince—named for a horse that belonged to early Berkeley resident J.B. Woolsey. 

One name residents stopped seeing for political reasons is Axis Drive, renamed University Drive in World War II, when the U.S. was waging battle against the so-called Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. 

As a nifty bonus to the Quick Index, there are photos of some of the early settler who gave their names to local landmarks, as well as a foldout panel of three maps which locate the city’s creeks, neighborhoods, and successive annexations. 

In short, it’s the perfect bathroom and nightstand book. 

Quick Index to the Origins of Berkeley’s Names is available for $10 from local bookstores and at the Berkeley Historical Society, Veteran’s Memorial Building, 1931 Center St., 94701, or by mail for $15 from B.H.S., P.O. Box 1190, Berkeley 94701. 

A cascade of doubts over the Iraq war has been resurfacing in U.S. Latino media, coinciding with the recent announcement that Honduras will join Spain in withdrawing troops from Iraq amid escalating violence. 

On March 19, Spanish-language daily La Opinión ran an editorial criticizing the U.S. presence in Iraq, reminding readers that President Bush started the war by calling Iraq an “imminent threat” due to its weapons of mass destruction and ties to Islamic terrorism. “Twelve months later none of these charges has been proven and, on the contrary, our country has been bogged down in the reconstruction of a society where it is not even welcome.” 

Recent surveys indicate that a majority of U.S. Latinos would agree with this evaluation. A poll released April 4 by the Miami Herald found that more than half of Latino voters oppose the Iraq war, according to an article in New York City Spanish-language daily Hoy. 

In fact, the disapproval of the war in Iraq has consistently been higher among Latinos compared to the general U.S. population, as indicated by a series of polls conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center. In its survey released this week, 59 percent of native-born and 44 percent of foreign-born Latinos said they thought the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about the threat in Iraq before the war. 

An editorial in the April 16 issue of the bilingual weekly La Prensa San Diego responds to the President’s reaffirmation that he intended to keep U.S. troops in Iraq: “Señor Presidente, perhaps you would have been more correct to have said: ‘The war in Iraq will continue no matter how many poor and middle class servicemen are killed.’”  

More than 600 Americans have been killed in Iraq since the war began. This month, more than 80 Americans have been killed. 

“The war that was intended to secure Americans has done the opposite, and has instead caused more violence and attacks against Americans in Iraq,” writes Eva Munoz in the L.A.-area bilingual weekly chain Eastern Group Publications (EGP). In interviews with Latinos ranging from age 18 to 55, she finds that they have “more questions than answers” about the war. 

Latinos in the United States may be more critical of the U.S. war in Iraq because they face a more precarious economic situation in the United States. Salaries are down for Latino workers, reports La Opinión, and unemployment is higher than in the general population, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.  

With economic uncertainty at home, many Latinos are likely skeptical of funds and resources expended in a foreign war. 

The history of U.S. interventions in Latin America also informs the skepticism. The U.S. military invaded Mexico three times, and the CIA’s involvement in Central and South America in the 1980s makes Latin American leaders dubious of U.S. intentions in Iraq. 

“[Latinos] have the image of the United States as the super-powerful country that is always abusing its power to dominate other nations,” said Miguel Angel Báez, editor of Noticiero Semanal. “Many Latin American nations are victims of the U.S. interventionist policy that has provoked economic, social and political crises in those nations, forcing immigrants to come to this country. I believe that this in part is a reason why we tend to identify more with (the) less powerful nations.” 

Connections between the United States’ mission in Iraq and its role in Latin America may not be so far off. President Bush’s recent appointment as U.S. ambassador to Iraq happens to be John Negroponte, former U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s. Negroponte has been criticized for assisting the Contras, U.S.-funded insurgents fighting to oust the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, according to an Associated Press report published in the April 19 edition of Fresno, Calif., bilingual weekly Vida en el Valle. 

The article reports: “When questioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on whether he had acquiesced to human rights abuses by a Honduran death squad funded and partly trained by the CIA, [Negroponte] said: ‘To this day, I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras.’” 

Negroponte’s denial that the death squads ever existed has led him to be described by Stephen Kinzer, the New York Times Nicaraguan bureau chief from 1983 to 1989, as “a great fabulist” who “professed to see a Honduras almost Scandinavian in its tranquility, a place where there were no murderous generals, no death squads, no political prisoners, no clandestine jails or cemeteries.”  

Meanwhile, young, low-income Latinos and other minorities are disproportionately targeted by military recruiting propaganda, according to data collected by Rick Jahnkow and University of California at San Diego Professor Jorge Mariscal, members of Project YANO (Youth and Non-Military Opportunities), reports Raymond R. Beltrán in bilingual weekly La Prensa San Diego.  

Slogans such as “Army of One” appeal to the ideals of youth, says poet and screenwriter Jimmy Santiago Baca. And as part of Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy, high schools cannot receive financial aid from the government unless they make available students’ personal contact information to military recruiters. 

Elena Shore works for New California Media, an association of over 600 print, broadcast and online ethnic media organizations founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service and members of ethnic media.›

I have a love/hate relationship with fruitless mulberry trees—in fact, I have a love/hate relationship with the individual outside my house. It shades a big south-facing window quite nicely in summer, then drops its leaves so we get some much-needed sun in winter. It gives me a bird’s-eye view of birds, when the local robins and finches and chickadees hang out in it, and it provides a customary perch for Himself, the Anna’s hummingbird that rules our front-porch feeder. When we’re lucky and get the right sequence of weather in fall, the whole street glows a glorious yellow, between the trees and their runway carpet of fallen leaves. It has a friendly, leafy presence, and aesthetically, the row of them on our street is one of the best things about it. 

However. 

It’s also giving my little front garden more shade than I’d prefer—picky, picky, I know, but it’s a shady lot in general. The leaves are big and sturdy and while they make OK mulch, we really have to keep them raked when they fall, or they’ll smother some small plants. They’re also slippery when wet. But these are just the standard price for having a tree. My big complaint is with its sex. 

Fruitless mulberries, like a lot of fruitless tree cultivars, are all male clones. They make decent street trees and, in hot places like the Central Valley and Nevada, they’re used to shade yards and buildings too. One common strategy is to pollard them, cutting most of the branches every year, starting when the tree is young, back to the same few points. This creates knobs from which lots of fairly straight, densely leafy shoots grow (it originated as a way to harvest firewood without killing trees). You have to cut back to the top of this knob every year, and allow only a year or two between cuttings for safety, because the branches that grow out are weakly attached and will fall if they get large. Planetrees and mulberries tolerate this treatment well. 

Male trees, especially wind-pollinated ones (which usually have small, inconspicuous flowers) dump lots of pollen into the air. I can sit on my front porch and watch the pollen curling off the catkins like cigarette smoke in spring. Fetching, but allergenic as heck. It infuriates my sinuses, which in turn abuse the rest of me. I’m not alone—cities in Nevada and Arizona have forbidden planting fruitless mulberries, and olives too. Same problem—and I love olives. 

You can find dried white mulberries, called “tut” (pronounced “toot” in Farsi), in Middle Eastern groceries; they’re mildly sweet. Fresh, they’re even better, but they don’t travel well so you rarely see them for sale. 

There was a red mulberry—the fruiting kind—near my house when I was a kid. We used it as a playhouse; its branches drooped to the ground in a wide arc and there were a couple of handy limestone boulders under it for furniture. We climbed it too, and ate lots of the lovely fruit it bore. We’d come home happy and quite purple-stained. Sometimes a bird would feast too and leave a thank-you on the laundry drying on lines in the yards. I suppose I’ve inherited my love/hate relationship with mulberries from my mother.

Berkeley’s medical cannabis advocates issued a clear threat to the Berkeley City Council at last Tuesday night’s (April 20) regular meeting: If the council doesn’t pass Councilmember Kriss Worthington’s medical marijuana plant increase measure next week, the activists will go to the voters next November with a ballot initiative that would potentially make Berkeley the most pot-friendly city in California. 

At the same meeting, the council decided to reverse the “ex parte” rule that prevents members from talking to developers or residents about pending development projects which might ultimately come before the council. In a 5-3-2 vote (Bates, Maio, Spring, Breland, Worthington aye, Hawley, Olds no, Shirek, Wozniak abstain), the council approved a recommendation that ex parte contacts should be allowed on such projects, with the provision that each council, board and commission member must document and disclose all contacts before the beginning of a public hearing.  

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said that the draft language for the new rule could be presented for council approval within two months. 

But it was the medical marijuana issue that generated the most interest at Tuesday’s meeting. 

Worthington’s proposal on next week’s council agenda asks the council to adopt the Proposition 215 “Implementation Plan” which would, among other things, allow medical cannabis users in the city to increase the number of personal marijuana plants in their possession from 10 to 72. That is the same number as is currently allowed in Oakland. 

Proposition 215 was the California voter-passed initiative that legalized medical marijuana use in the state. 

“[But] just as a precaution we took the liberty of filing the ballot petition,” Berkeley Patients Group Director Don Duncan told about 30 demonstrators outside of Old City Hall. “If next week we can’t get the council to do what we want, we’ll do it ourselves.” 

Dubbed the Patients Access To Medical Cannabis Act of 2004, the proposed ballot measure would allow licensed patients to grow as much marijuana as their doctors deemed necessary. In addition, the initiative would put the city in charge of distributing medical cannabis if the federal government ever shut down the city’s three established cannabis clubs. No other city in the state presently has such a distribution fallback guarantee. However a historic preliminary injunction Wednesday might make that a moot point.  

In a first-of-its-kind case, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel barred the U.S. Justice Department from raiding or prosecuting the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz after a 2002 raid sparked public outrage. 

Though the fear of federal intervention now appears on the wane, cannabis advocates say Berkeley’s strict limits on the number of marijuana plants patients can grow remains a pressing concern. 

If the November measure makes it onto the ballot and passes, Berkeley would also join Santa Cruz as the only cities in the state with no limits on the number of marijuana plants patients could grow and become the first city to guarantee the distribution of marijuana in the event of a federal crackdown on cannabis clubs. 

In an interview after the council meeting, Worthington was quick to separate himself from the cannabis advocates pressuring the council to support his bill. “I had nothing to do with writing their initiative or encouraging them,” he said. “I’m doing what I think three-fourths of Berkeley thinks is a reasonable improvement.” 

In 1996, 86 percent of Berkeley residents supported Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act that set the stage for medical cannabis clubs. Regulating medical cannabis, however, was reserved for cities. In 2001, the City Council voted 5-4 to limit patients to 10 plants. A counterproposal that garnered four votes would have allowed patients to grow 144 plants.  

The 10 plant limit is fairly average in California, with only Santa Cruz, Oakland, and San Diego allowing significantly more plants than Berkeley. A state law passed last year (SB420) set a floor of six plants for all cities that do not set their own medical marijuana plant limit. 

Ten plants is enough for a single medical marijuana user if they are grown outdoors, Duncan said. Berkeley law, however, states outdoor plants, which can grow as high as trees, must be out of view. Duncan explained that in a dense city like Berkeley, this means that nearly all plants are raised indoors. 

Berkeley police don’t actively enforce the 10 plant law, but that isn’t the point, said Duncan, adding that “patients don’t want to live in fear that they are breaking the law.” Claiming that he was confident Worthington’s bill would be supported by Mayor Tom Bates and councilmembers Linda Maio and Dona Spring, Duncan urged supporters to lobby Margaret Breland and Maudelle Shirek to cast the remaining necessary votes. In 2001, Breland sided with Worthington, Spring and Maio in supporting a 144 plant limit. 

Other potential November ballot initiatives also came up at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council postponed a city manager’s report on two initiatives—one that would establish a civic board to govern the removal of trees in public spaces and the other, the Angel Initiative, that would decriminalize prostitution in Berkeley and call on the state to do the same.  

Elliot Cohen, author of the Berkeley Tree Act, argued that in the midst of a budget crisis, the city shouldn’t waste staff time studying the ramifications of his measure until he collected enough signatures to qualify it for the November ballot.  

Robin Few, author of the Angel Initiative, feared that a negative report from the city manager could harm her efforts to collect signatures.  

Despite objections from the Transportation Commission, the council voted 8-1 (Worthington, no) to approve a new flat-rate $1.50 fee for two hours of parking between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturdays. Transportation Director Peter Hillier said transportation commissioners were concerned that the move would encourage more drivers to come into the downtown area, but would do little for pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit riders. 

Last month, the council had requested the commission issue a recommendation before taking a final vote on the proposal. Hillier will prepare a report on its effectiveness after three months. 

The council held off on approving the allocation of $3.88 million in 2004-2005 Federal Community Development Block Grant funds while the staff looks for more money for the Center for the Education of Infant Deaf. The Housing Advisory Commission granted the group $10,000, but Director Jill Ellis said that a $50,000 grant would enable it to utilize a separate federal grant to open an audiology suite. The suite would allow babies complete, timely diagnostic screening. Currently, Ellis said, babies with hearing problems must wait four to six months for tests and hearing aids which drastically hinder their development. 

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  Students from five student-run outreach and retention centers on the UC campus gathered in front of California Hall on Thursday afternoon to express their frustration over the state of recruitment and enrollment for minority students at the university, and to present a list of demands to correct what they feel is the problem. 

  “I’m embarrassed to be at a university that prides itself on diversity,” said Dallas Goldtooth, a UC student and member of the Native American Recruitment and Retention Center. “I can no longer do a disservice to my people and tell them to come to a campus that doesn’t respect them.” 

  “The state of black affairs at UC Berkeley is one of emergency,” said Renita Chaney, a student and executive director of the Black Recruitment and Retention Center. “I will not continue to implore my community to face a hostile environment.”  

Figures released Tuesday by the university indicated the source of the protesters’ concerns, showing a severe decline in the number of minority students admitted this year, angering many who say the university and the state have not done their part to create campuses that mirrors the diversity of California. 

  According to the UC Berkeley news center, African American admissions are down 29.2 percent since this time last year, American Indian admissions are down 21.6 percent, and Chicano/Latino admissions are down 7.3 percent. While admissions for students under the broad category of Asian American went up 4.7 percent, the number of students admitted to the university who identify themselves as southeast Asian and Pacific Islander was down 12 percent. White student admissions went up 10.6 percent since last year. 

  The students and their supporters at Thursday’s press conference said they are particularly upset because the state has continually turned its back on outreach programs, forcing students to create and run their own services. 

  The five student centers represented at the press conference—the Native American Recruitment and Retention Center (NARC), the Black Recruitment and Retention Center (BRRC), the Pilipinio Academic Student Services (PASS), Raza Recruitment and Retention Center, the Asian/Pacific Islander Recruitment and Retention Center (REACH)—are all student run and perform a major part of the university’s outreach services. They were joined by bridges, a multicultural resource center. 

  “I do it because the university won’t do it or won’t do it right,” said James Valdez, about his work with Raza. “Instead they reap the benefits. If the university is serious about diversity, the university must start supporting us.” 

  Demands presented by the minority student groups included the appointment of a vice chancellor of minority affairs, active support for policies that support diversity, scholarships for students working with bridges and the student outreach centers, a multicultural student center, and a position for a member of bridges on any university committee that makes decisions concerning outreach and yield.  

Several administrators showed up to the press conference but none spoke. In a later interview, John Cumins, associate chancellor, said the university “was as concerned as [the students] about these unusually low numbers,” and pledged to “certainly take their demands seriously.” 

  Chancellor Robert Berdahl did not attend the press conference but did issue comments in a campus press release. “I am profoundly saddened and disappointed that so many of these students, especially African American students, will not receive the exceptional education and experience that this public institution has to offer,” the statement said. 

  Berdahl, who will retire at the end of the school year, said he will do all he can in his remaining time to ensure that numbers grow in subsequent years. 

  Many of the students at the press conference acknowledged the programs the university does run and said they realized that minority recruitment and enrollment problems are often caused by state policies. Starting with the voter-passed Proposition 209 in 1997, which banned affirmative action in California’s government agencies, the state’s public higher education institutions have faced a series of laws, voter initiatives, board of regents edicts, escalating budget cuts, and other setbacks in recent years that have hurt outreach and retention programs. This year, all monies currently earmarked for state university-sponsored outreach programs are slated to be cut once the governor’s budget passes. 

  Budget cuts, besides hurting outreach programs, also raise fees for students and cut back on the amount of financial aid the university can offer. 

  In 2003, Regent John J. Moores turned the spotlight on UC Berkeley when he released a report criticizing the university’s comprehensive review program, an admissions policy accepted in 2001 by the UC Regents. The policy forced UC admissions departments to look at more than a students SAT scores and grades, as well as to consider the students’ socioeconomic background, talents, extracurricular activities and community involvement. Many saw the program as a legal attempt to take into consideration some of the information that Prop. 209 had banned. 

  In the meantime, minority students say they have had other recruitment help from the university. According to Richard Black, associated vice chancellor of admissions, student recruitment and retention centers receive money from the university’s outreach budget, from Prop. 3, a student ballot initiative that added a fee to student registration, and also get a nominal fee that is usually around $50,000 from the chancellor. Because they are student organizations, the groups also get funding from the student government, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). 

  Nonetheless, students at Thursday’s press conference said running the outreach programs often amounts to a full-time job, which takes away from their academics. 

  “Students are really sacrificing their own academic work because they are organizing,” said Lisa Walker, coordinator for the Cross Cultural Student Development office, the office that does multicultural programming on campus. “They are doing tremendous amounts of work because they care about their community.” 



Without taking a formal vote Wednesday night, directors of the Berkeley Board of Education vaulted ahead of their superintendent and left no doubt that they will present voters with a November ballot initiative that could raise property taxes by as much as $12 million. 

At their first formal discussion on renewing the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project (BSEP)—a $10 million parcel tax targeted to cover specific programs the district’s general fund can’t cover—directors, one by one, declared the urgency of a November ballot. 

“It would be irresponsible for us as a school board to let children suffer while we figure out correct funding,” said Director Nancy Riddle. 

BSEP doesn’t expire until 2006, but increased costs and reduced state funding have undermined the effectiveness of the measure approved by voters in 1994, directors said. Over the past three years, the district’s financial crisis has forced the board to increase class sizes and cut music programs—two of the areas BSEP was supposed to safeguard. 

Though directors were in agreement on moving ahead with a November ballot with funds earmarked for class size reduction, music, and libraries, they differed on dollar figures, the length of the measure, and how much flexibility the district should have in the distribution of the funds. At the urging of Superintendent Michele Lawrence, the school directors voted unanimously to approve a survey, at a cost of about $20,000, to gauge the political viability of different options. 

A new BSEP measure on the November ballot also comes as the city is planning to go before voters with at least two tax measures—one specially designed for youth services.  

BSEP has traditionally been the city’s most widely supported tax measure, garnering 92 percent of the vote when it was re-authorized in 1998. However, Berkeley voters have proved less amenable to new taxes of late. In 2002, voters rejected three out of four tax measures, and just six months ago, a tax revolt by a coalition of Berkeley residents, community organizations, and labor unions killed a planned $7.5 million city parcel tax to help plug its budget deficit. 

Still, the school directors showed little fear that voters would spurn a call to help the schools. Director Terry Doran called for a measure that would double funding to $20 million and Director Shirley Issel proposed $22 million. For an average homeowner, Issel’s proposal would raise the annual BSEP tax from $234 to $495. 

While the school directors charged ahead with BSEP, Superintendent Lawrence continued to prescribe a more cautious approach. “I’m expected to lead a group of people here out much further than I am,” she told the board. “Without appropriate analysis of what’s good for children, I think we’re being short-sighted.”  

Lawrence has pushed for restraint while the district engages in a year of strategic planning to identify core needs and integrate BSEP funding into other district resources. 

“This is what I came here for. I never get to talk about public education and what’s good for kids,” she said.  

In an apparent compromise move, Lawrence proposed presenting voters with a five-year bridge measure (a short-term ballot measure intended to provide the district with current funds until BSEP is fully-renewed), with money dedicated for teacher development, music libraries, and language access, to supplement the current $10 million BSEP measure.  

Four of the five directors had already stated their preference for a bridge measure that would preserve the current BSEP measure and infuse cash into the district while they plan a future initiative. But Board President John Selawsky feared that going to voters for a big tax twice in two years would be pressing their luck. “We are asking for a big amount of money,” he said. “That’s a pretty big pill for people to swallow.” 

If the board agrees to a bridge measure, the vote for on a new long-term BSEP measure would likely come in March or November of 2006. Though BSEP expires in 2006, funding continues until June 2007. 

The structure of a new measure remains undecided. Director Terry Doran called for more flexible funds for the district and school sites to employ as different problems arose. But after three years of struggling to fix its creaky financial and data process systems, other directors questioned if Berkeley voters would be comfortable giving the district more discretion over their tax dollars. 

“Too much flexibility might not get us a lot of votes,” said Director Joaquin Rivera. 

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Six months after losing their union election battle on a disputed 119-70 vote, Berkeley Bowl workers might still get union representation. 

On Tuesday, Local United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Butcher’s union local 120 president Tim Hamann and union attorney David Rosenfeld both received calls from the local National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) office, telling them the NLRB will soon be issuing a complaint against the Berkeley Bowl for unfair labor practice charges filed during last year’s union drive. 

Along with that complaint, the NLRB will also deliver a bargaining order under which Berkeley Bowl must start negotiating with the union without holding another election. 

The decision does not mean that Local 120 will automatically and immediately become the union representative for the Berkeley Bowl workers. The NLRB’s order will now go before an administrative law judge for adjudication, and can be appealed from there. 

In the interim, however, Rosenfeld said the local NLRB board will file for an injunction that would allow the bargaining order to go through while the administrative law judge decides on the case. Without an injunction the process could take years. With an injunction, both sides could meet at the bargaining table in a couple of months. 

Alternatively, the Berkeley Bowl can try and negotiate a settlement outside the courts.  

“This is about the biggest slap on the hand you can get from the feds,” said Hamann. “Did the union get beat [last year]? I don’t think so.” 

For the workers, who organized for more than five months before going to an election, the decision is verification of their claim that the Berkeley Bowl committed numerous violations to sway the vote. 

“I’m delighted the federal government, the NLRB, has come to a decision that they feel that the Berkeley Bowl has violated our rights because this is what we were saying all along,” said Kevin Meyer, a cashier at the store.  

Berkeley Bowl officials said they had no comment on the NLRB’s decision. 

Part of the complaint that the NLRB issued includes a charge that former produce worker Arturo Perez was fired illegally during the union drive. If or when the decision is handed down against the Berkeley Bowl, Perez will be entitled to his job back plus full back pay.  

For the workers, Perez getting his job back and walking back into the store would be an especially sweet victory because many believe he was fired for being an outspoken union supporter. 

“The most important thing, hopefully, will be that the Berkeley Bowl will be forced to offer Arturo his job back plus full back pay,” said Meyer. “That was one of the biggest wrongs that they did and he certainly deserves that. That would be a huge symbol to the workers here, it will prove that we have rights.” 

After Perez was fired he had to fight to get unemployment, and found himself commuting several hours to another grocery job in the north bay. His wife, who had heart surgery, needs expensive medicine and at times the only way he could survive was with the help of his children.  

“I have a lot of hope, since the first moment I knew I had pretty good case,” said Perez. Before celebrating, though, he said he wanted to make sure everything went through. He did say he was happy to hear the news and was hopeful that any changes will benefit the entire store, not just him. 

“This is what everybody wanted, this is what we fought for,” he said. 

Berkeley Bowl workers originally tried to avoid an NLRB election as a way to verify the union. Instead, they originally advocated a card check election, where the union would be certified if a majority of the company’s workers signed cards indicating they wanted to be represented by the union.  

Unlike an NLRB election, a card check verifies the union immediately. Union supporters had said last year that because the NLRB election takes months, it gives the employer time to run an anti-union campaign and sway the vote. Several of the current charges against the Berkeley Bowl occurred during the time between the scheduling of the union vote and the time the vote actually took place.  

The board decision, said union lawyer Rosenfeld, “proves that the employers can always defeat a union election by doing enough illegal things and the result is it takes years for the union to get bargaining rights. It proves that the whole election process is flawed.” 

According to Michael Leon, assistant regional director for the local NLRB office in Oakland, a bargaining order can only be filed when there is enough evidence to prove that there is no way to hold another election that would be fair.  

“The theory is that the union didn’t win because of the unfair labor practices and it’s pointless to hold a second election because there would be no way to get back to the status quo that existed before the alleged unfair labor practices,” said Leong. 

Four years after it struck out in its bid to close a block of Derby Street to build a baseball field in South Berkeley, the Berkeley Unified School District is proposing a far more modest field of dreams. At least for now. 

The district last week announced plans to build a multipurpose athletic field at its East Campus site on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, between Derby and Carleton streets.  

Though the stated goal would likely result in a softball field and soccer field on the two-acre lot for use by the high school, the Alternative High School Program and Longfellow Middle School, several school board members have professed their preference for reintroducing a controversial plan to dig up the adjoining block of Derby Street to create enough space for a baseball diamond.  

Currently the Berkeley High baseball team plays their games a mile-and-a-half from campus at San Pablo Park—long a sore spot for backers of the team. 

In 2000 a similar baseball diamond plan proposed by Berkeley Unified fell flat on its face when neighbors and the Ecology Center’s Berkeley Farmers’ Market (which uses Derby Street Tuesday evenings) objected and the City Council refused to close Derby between Martin Luther King Jr. and Milvia Street. 

Since then, the lot has remained home to a collection of portable classrooms that once housed the Berkeley Adult School and the Alternative High School Program, but is now mostly storage space with a few offices. Neighbors have pushed for the district to tear down the buildings, which several said attracted rowdy homeless people at night. 

Berkeley Unified had always planned to develop some sort of field on the site, said Lew Jones, the district’s Director of Facilities and Maintenance, but the bad blood caused from the first proposal led the district to pull back for several years. “There was so much acrimony, it wasn’t anybody’s favorite project to pick up and run with,” he said. 

The new project presently being proposed doesn’t appear likely to face the same level of passionate opposition as the previous one. Jones said the plans are to remove the portable classrooms, rip up underground utilities, and fix the drainage problems.  

The drainage woes are caused, in part, by Derby Creek which flows below the property, said School Board President John Selawsky. After fixing the grounds, the district plans to build athletic fields, fences, bathrooms and bleachers to hold between 60 and 100 people. Jones gave assurances that the district would not install lights for night games. 

The project would likely require environmental review resulting in a mitigated negative declaration, Jones said. In 1999, the city spent roughly $150,000 on an environmental impact report to study the closing of Derby, but neither the city nor the district ever adopted its findings. 

In all, the project should be completed by spring 2006 ,and cost no more than $1.5 million, paid for by money from voter-approved school bond Measure AA passed in 2000.  

But the question remains: Will that be the final project or will the district push to close Derby and build a bigger field? At a Board of Education meeting last week, Directors Shirley Issel, Joaquin Rivera and Terry Doran all expressed a preference for the bigger project if the political climate was right. 

“We should keep the door open so when we’re allowed to close Derby, we can go ahead with bigger plans,” Rivera said. 

Should the district proceed to request the closure of Derby, a renewed battle with the Ecology Center’s farmers’ market doesn’t appear likely. Pam Webster, an executive board member at the Ecology Center and one of the most vocal critics of the district’s former plan, is the wife of School Board President Selawsky, who has already stated he will support closing Derby only if the farmers’ market can stay at its present home.  

Penny Luff, the market’s director, said that during the first battle over Derby vendors rejected a proposed move to Sacramento and Oregon streets out of fear they would lose customers.  

Selawsky’s assurance that the farmers’ market would be safe was good enough for her, Luff said. Her primary concern was that a proposal to pave over a stretch of grass beside Derby for a new farmers’ market would make her the tenant of the school district, which had previously forced the market to move repeatedly when it operated out of school parking lots.  

While the farmers’ market doesn’t appear to be an obstacle to either plan, neighborhood sentiment remains mixed and not all passions have died down. “If they build a field life as we know it comes to and end,” said neighbor Michael Bauce, who lives a block from the property. He discounted assurances that the fields would not have lights. 

Brian Boudreau, who lives across the street from the portable classrooms, said he wants to see a field, but not the bleachers or bathrooms that might accompany it. “Bathrooms open up a whole can of worms,” he said. “We live just close enough to a problem area that they could be a draw for activity we don’t want to see happening.” Boudreau also worried that fire trucks from the engine company at Shattuck Avenue and Derby, would use his street, Carleton, as its main thoroughfare. 

Boudreau’s next door neighbor, Ruth Reffkin, said she wasn’t as concerned by the final project as much as establishing a fair process that wouldn’t lead to the same animosity that led many of her neighbors to hang signs in their windows reading “Keep Derby Open.” 

The School District’s Jones said that he will form a site committee with neighbors and the farmers’ market to discuss the project. 

Though Reffkin was hesitant to reveal what kind of park she wanted to be built across her street, she was quick to say what she wanted gone. “Those buildings,” she said pointing to the portable classrooms. “Nothing could be as bad as them.”

The public gets one last chance Saturday to discuss the Civic Arts Commission’s proposed Arts and Culture Plan element for the city’s General Plan during a 4 to 6 p.m. session in the Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park, 1275 Walnut St. 

The 33-page draft document, available online at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/civicarts/artscultureplan.htm, attempts to fulfill six objectives aimed at enhancing artists, art training, artistic and cultural appreciation, and cultural programs in the city. 

Any changes arising form Saturday’s meeting will be considered for adoption by the commission at their next regular session on the April 28, and the final plan will be submitted to the City Council in June. 

—Richard Brenneman

What do the Fleshies, the Funky Nixons, the Fat Chance Belly Dance Troupe, the Willy Bologna Circus Show and the Chirgilchin Tuvan Throat Singers all have in common? 

They’re part of the fascinating cast of performers who’ll be sharing the stage Sunday afternoon (April 25) to celebrate People’s Park and its 35 years as a Berkeley institution. 

Drawn together by the People’s Park Council, the 35th Anniversary Fair runs from noon to 6 p.m., featuring People’s Movement workshops, an art museum, meals from Food Not Bombs, and a block-long stretch of Haste Street next to the park reincarnated as a roller skate park. 

Also featured are Bike Rodeo, wandering clowns, and the traditional May Pole winding. 

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” promised Arthur Fonseca, who has been busily painting the Free Speech stage in anticipation of Sunday’s festivities. A volunteer at the park for over a decade, Fonseca promises a good time to visitors of all ages at Sunday’s free festival. 

“Every year we reclaim the park at the anniversary. This is how we keep the park,” said Debbie Moore, co-director of Berkeley’s X-plicit Players and one of the organizers of Sunday’s events. “For me, this is a wonderful time, and it’s a good time for people who love the park to come out and reaffirm their connection.” 

The All Nations Singers, a drum and vocal troupe of Native Americans, will offer the first hour’s entertainment from noon to 1 p.m. 

The next 40 minutes feature the Funky Nixons, often called “the house band of People’s Park,” offering some of their outrageous fare. Considering the titles of two cuts on their latest CD (“Smoke a Joint With Jesus” and “Barbara Bush’s Dog”) they’ll be sure to both outrage and delight. 

After a 10-minute poetry reading, three unusual acts from the cold deserts of the former Soviet Union as well as an instrumentalist playing the oldest instrument of the Australian Outback will appear.  

The Chirgilchin Tuvan Throat Singers troupe offers the hauntingly earthy throat singing stylings of the ancient and little known land of Tuva. As national champions of the art, they’re been touring the world, drawing wide popular and critical acclaim. Sarymai, a Buddhist monk from Siberia who often travels with the troupe, plays the traditional folk music of the Altai culture and imitates the sounds of nature, animals and birds. 

The Aussie instrument is the didjeridu, an Australia aboriginal instrument played by Stephen Kent in a variety of musical genres. 

For the next hour, after 2 p.m., park participants will break up into a series of free workshops.  

For children, there will be a playground, music lessons, a chance to learn the didjeridu with Steven Kent, face-painting, puppeteers, balloon-twisters, an old-fashioned May Pole and skateboard lessons—with a block of Haste Street turned into an improvised skateboard park. 

Both young and old can delight in “Dr. Techno’s Traveling Minstrel and Music Show” as it revives a bit of classic vaudeville with Bruce Cartier (Dr. Techno) juggling and balancing while he plays an assortment of musical instruments. He also offers some dramatic magic, including a balancing act done over a sword box. 

The Willy Bologna Circus show features a puppet show, stilt-walking, a magic routine and other delights by Willie the Clown, otherwise known as Glenn Allen. 

No People’s Park celebration would be complete without an array of activists, and Sunday’s workshops include some of Berkeley’s most familiar names. 

Michael Delacour—who hosted the first meeting that led to the park’s creation—will lead a session on park history, and singer/activist Carol Denney will discuss the UC Berkeley lawsuit that stifled her rights to openly challenge the school in its efforts to develop the park. 

Peace and Justice Commissioner Elliott Cohen will be busy talking about and collecting signatures for his proposed Berkeley tree protection ordinance, and Harold Adler will exhibit and discuss Free Speech photography. 

Other workshops feature Dave Beauvais on civil liberties, Robin Few on prostitute’s rights, Gena Sasso on disabled rights, Yoko Barringer on the California Public Interest Research Group, and Kirian on the Barrington Collective. Michael Diehl will discuss saving the safety net in an era of tax slashing, while Glenda Rubin will talk about park/community relations. 

Debbie Moore will host a session on body reading and Terri Compost will lead a plant walk.  

The action returns to the stage at 3:25 with the critically acclaimed Beth Custer Ensemble, featuring Custer, backed by her band, presenting an array of song and clarinet stylings from jazz to hoe down. 

Next up—from 4:50 to 4:25—is the widely traveled and much-imitated Fat Chance Belly Dance Troupe of San Francisco, treating the audience to a demonstration of sensuous undulations. 

Big Brutha Soul, aka Hip-Hop artist Chopmaster-J, will offer up some of his trademark “Herb ‘N Hippie Soul,” with an eccentric collection of characters of his own creation. 

From 5:05 to 5:20, Julia Vinograd, a poet who was there at the creation of the park in 1969, will lead a young people’s poetry session. 

Then, with the closing act, comes the day’s rowdiest performers, The Fleshies, one of the few remaining hard core Punk bands. The band often lives up to their name, with their epidermal exposure increasing as their performances progress. 

Moore urged all who attend to bring clothing to give away. While that’s a noble gesture, discarding clothes shouldn’t be hard for the X-plicit Players leader, since her troupe is famous for performing in the altogether.  

ˇ

The 25-member Berkeley Planning Commission task force charged with making recommendations about the proposed UC Berkeley hotel and museum complex holds its final meeting Tuesday. The meeting, which begins at 1 p.m., will be held in the second floor Sitka Spruce Room of the city Permit Service Center at 2120 Milvia St. 

Formed by the City Council under the auspices of the city’s General Plan, the task force is charged with making non-binding recommendations to guide the council in negotiations with the university over the proposed project. 

The massive project, which would reshape the city center, is projected for the two-block area bounded by Shattuck Avenue on the west, Center Street on the south, Oxford Street on the east and University Avenue on the north. 

The task force has held a series of meetings taking public input on the complex. 

During their last session two weeks ago, the panel reached decisions of all issues except the fate of Strawberry Creek along the block of Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford. Several environmental groups have called for closing Center to traffic and “daylighting” the creek, which now runs through an underground culvert pipe. The creek issue will be voted on at Tuesday’s meeting. 

Following Tuesday’s wrap-up, a drafting committee will prepare the final task force report for submission to the City Council.

Feds, Oakland Settle 1990 Earth First! Bombing Suit 

The City of Oakland and the U.S. Department of Justice ran up the white flag Thursday, agreeing to pay $2 million each to settle a suit filed by two Earth First! activists injured in a 1990 Oakland car bombing. 

The lawsuit was filed in 1991 by Judi Bari and Darryl Chaney, who were in Oakland to generate support for their campaign to save old growth redwoods when a nail bomb exploded inside the car in which they were riding. 

Bari—left paralyzed by the blast—was arrested in her hospital bed, and she and Chaney were held on suspicion of possessing and transporting explosives. 

The Alameda County District Attorney refused to press the prosecution, and no federal charges were ever filed. Bari died from breast cancer six years later, but the suit was continued on behalf of her two daughters. 

The two environmentalists charged that county and federal investigators made false and misleading statements in their search warrant affidavits and lied about matching the round-headed nails in the bomb to flat-headed nails found in Bari’s home. 

In 1992, a federal civil jury found in favor of the activists, but the awards were withheld pending appeals by the losing law enforcement agencies. 

Thursday’s settlement was reached after the agencies agreed to abandon their appeals. 

Bay City News contributed to this report. 

—Richard Brenneman 

D.A. Drops Port Anti-War Protest Charges 

The Alameda County District Attorney’s office dropped charges against the 24 remaining people who were being prosecuted for participation in the anti-war protest at the Oakland docks in April of 2003. 

According to a report by Bay City News, the charges were dropped by the district attorney’s office because the protesters had not been charged with any new violations since the protest last year, and because there had been three lawful and peaceful anti-war protests since the protest at the docks.  

Bobbi Stein, the lead attorney for the defendants, was also quoted by Bay City News as saying, “The prosecution didn’t have any evidence against protesters and the defendants would have prevailed at a trial.” 

The protesters were facing misdemeanor charges of creating a public a public nuisance, failure to disperse, and interfering with a business. 

—Jakob Schiller 

State Panel Recommends Diebold Ban In Four California Counties 

The California Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended in an 8-0 vote Thursday that Secretary of State Kevin Shelly ban four counties from using 15,000 Diebold Election System Inc. voting machines in the November election. The counties affected include San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin. 

Diebold manufactures the touch screen voting machines used in Alameda County. 

The panel’s decision came after Diebold admitted the obvious: that the company has provided several counties in California with machines that have serious security flaws and that have helped disenfranchise voters. 

  The voting panel is set to make a recommendation about thousands of other Diebold machines used in 10 other California counties next Wednesday. It could not be verified before press time whether Alameda county will be one of the counties affected.  

—Jakob Schiller 

t

Alleged Sexual Batterer Arrested With Help of UC Police 

Berkeley Police, in cooperation with the UC Berkeley Police, arrested a 36-year-old man Thursday and charged him with sexual battery on a minor and false imprisonment. Melvin Scott, whose hometown was not released at press time, is suspected of grabbing and holding a 15-year-old student last April 15 during school hours near the Berkeley High School campus, according to a police bulletin.  

A passerby pulled the assailant off the victim. 

The bulletin said that Scott escaped, but was later identified in a photo lineup by the unidentified victim, who said she did not know him. 

Berkeley police say that are investigating whether Scott might be responsible for any other local sexual battery cases still under investigation. 

Seven-Hour Robbery Spree Hits City 

Berkeley Police are seeking suspects in five armed robberies that occurred in the seven hours between 5:13 p.m. Tuesday and 12:15 a.m. Wednesday. 

A 34-year-old Oakland woman was accosted near the intersection of University and San Pablo Avenues shortly after 5 p.m. by a pair of armed robbers who fled after stealing her purse, said BPD spokesperson Kevin Schofield. 

Three hours later, at 8:37 p.m., a lone adult robber brandished a pistol at a Berkeley man on Peralta Avenue near Gilman Street and escaped with the victim’s wallet. 

Twenty minutes after that, a juvenile armed with a handgun robbed a pedestrian at Gilman and Sixth Street. 

Six minutes before midnight, a gunman tried to rob a pedestrian at Fourth Street and Allston Way but fled before completing his crime. 

The final crime of the day went down 15 minutes after midnight when a solo bandit stuck up a pedestrian in the 1400 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, fleeing on foot with the victim’s cash. 

Still, Berkeley’s Crime Is Down 

Berkeley’s violent crime rate dipped last year to its lowest rate since 1968, according to Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Kevin Schofield. 

Only 582 violent crimes—murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault—were reported in 2003, down from 1992, the most violent year in the city’s history, when 1665 crimes of violence reached police attention. 

Captain Stephanie Fleming of BPD’s Field Services Division attributed some of the decline to the department’s Community Involved Policing Program, which stresses citizen involvement in crime-stopping.  

“Having all of our officers dedicated to this philosophy has proven productive,” Fleming said. “The greater community involvement in addressing many problems is invaluable.” 

Fleming singled out citizen participation in BPD-sponsored Neighborhood Watch programs as a significant factor in the declining crime statistics. 

For more information on Neighborhood Watch and other prevention programs, call BPD’s Community Services Bureau at 981-5806 or log on to the department’s website at www.BerkeleyPD.org. ›

There is no textbook template for leadership in difficult times. Lincoln, we are told, suffered through doubt and depression throughout the years of the Civil War, walking the nighttime White House halls like a lanky wraith, agonizing over every decision and adverse turn of events. Truman, on the other hand, reportedly gathered all his facts in front of him, made up his mind, gave his orders, and slept in peace. Eisenhower, we are told, wrote in advance two short speeches to announce the events of the D-Day invasion of the French coast, to cover both possible outcomes. One of them—accepting personal responsibility for the defeat of the Allied forces at Normandy and the deaths of thousands of brave men—stayed in his pocket. Nixon sent Henry Kissinger in secret to China, ending the Cold War world as we heretofore knew it, breaking all our old assumptions with one swift blow like a hammer striking—cracking—shattering rock. Whether we agree with all of their actions or not, these men are remembered as firm, resolute American leaders when the time came for action, guideposts by which all future leaders might be measured. When told by one of his generals following the fall of Richmond that Lee was fleeing west with his command and “if the thing be pressed” the Army of Northern Virginia might be overrun and the long national nightmare brought to an end, Lincoln wrote back a simple, one-line note: “Let the thing be pressed.” One can almost hear the taking of the long breath, see the sad hounds-eyes’ slow blink, before the scratch of pen on paper. 

Idle thoughts in the aftermath of the president’s recent press conference, and the bubbling chatter of his public supporters—backed, apparently, by the polls—how Americans admire Mr. Bush because of his qualities of strong leadership. “Where have all the flowers gone?” the old Vietnam-era song began. Substitute “standards” for “flowers,” and there might be a point to be made here, somewhere. In our haste—to get where, one wonders—we seem to be abandoning our standards willy-nilly, shedding them like a goose dropping feathers as we fly through the air. 

Our young soldiers must die—and others along with them—we are told, in order to bring democracy to the people of Iraq. If so, it is not Halliburton our Iraqi friends must beware, so much as the folks at Diebold. 

In the early days of the nation, we took this democracy thing seriously—argued over it, fought over it, gave it up grudgingly, even to our own fellow citizens. We saw it as something of value, the foundation of our society. Now we see it merely as something to do, or a slogan to be broadcast in Arabic and other exotic languages. Doubt me? The Supreme Court halts the counting of the presidential ballot, deeming inconvenient the taking of the time to complete the actual tally. “You seem more yourself,” an aide says to the British King George, of madness fame. “I have always been myself,” the king replies. “But now I seem more myself. It is the seeming that is important.” Yes. 

Oakland recently divided over the issue of how we ought to attack crime and the social causes thereof. The vote of Measure R was so close that it came down to the absentee paper ballots which, being noted on paper, had to be counted by hand. It is the way of count—the elders might remember—that served us well from the beginning of the republic. Days passed, then weeks, as the election workers went through the count, ballot by ballot. No chaos ensued. No charges of dirty tricks. Only a steady, dignified, patient public wait as we determined what was our will. 

Why, then, one wonders, have we decided to turn our democracy over to Diebold? Why go ye that way, America? (to paraphrase the Revolution-era ditty) What madness your mind fills? Haste and greed, one supposes. The greed of profiteers, figuring out a way to make a buck by filling a “need” where no known “need” actually exists. Playing upon our haste. We have become a hasty people. We must have electronic vote tallying because we must know how the election came out within seconds after the closing of the polls because—goodness—one forgets exactly why we must know how the election came out within seconds after the closing of the polls. We just know that someone told us it is important, and it must be so. And so, the Diebold debacle, with the downcast glance, the embarrassed scratching at the side of the cheek, the shuffling of the feet, the sad, “Well, yes, we miscounted a thousand votes, here and there, but?” and here the fleeting smile, the hopeful rise in tone—“but didn’t we get it wrong so awfully fast, don’t you think?—” And rather than chucking the whole nonsense, we muddle on. 

The modern American, we are told by the media analysts, want a leader who makes up his or her mind quickly, and sticks to it. God help us, if that is all. 

›

FRIDAY, APRIL 23 

“Spring Flora of Mount Diablo” Weekend workshop sponsored by Jepson Herbarium. A unique opportunity to stay “on the mountain” for extended hikes and exploration. Registration and deposit required, for information, see http://ucjeps. 

berkeley.edu/jepwkshp.htm 

Inspiration Point Hike with Solo Sierrans at 4 p.m. Meet at large parking lot off Wildcat Canyon Road. You need not be a member to attend. 525-2299. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Terry Woronov, PhD, Anthropology, on “Transforming Chinese Culture: Raising Children’s Quality.” Lunch at 11:45 a.m. for $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925.  

East Bay Farm Worker Support Committee Dinner Dance, with the 2004 Chavez Legacy Award, at 6 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Oakland. Cost is $10-$25. 832-2372. 

César Chávez Commemoration, with speakers, performers, music, food and an altar, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the César Chávez Student Learning Center, UC Campus. Program includes Federico Chávez, grandson of César Chávez. 642-1802. 

Healthy Kids Day from 6 to 9 p.m. at Berkeley YMCA with a cooking class with Joey Altman of KRON 4 Bay Café. 665-3271. 

“The USA Patriot Act: Californians Respond” with Sanjeev Bery, Field Organizer for the Northern California ACLU, at 6 p.m. in the FSM Cafe at Moffitt Library, UC Campus.  

“Eyewitness to Empire” 2nd National CAN Speaking Tour with Khury Peterson-Smith, CAN activist from NY who visited Iraq in January, Military Families Speak Out and Campus Antiwar Network. at 7 p.m. at 126 Barrows Hall, UC Campus. www.campusantiwar.net 

Night of Cultural Resistance presents “Borderspeak: Tak(l)king Us Home” at 6:30 p.m. in the Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Center, UC Campus. Free. 642-4270. 

“Life and Debt” a film explaining the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies and free trade, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751.  

“Feng Shui: The Principles Behind the Rules” with Jessica Levine, at 7:30 p.m. at Enchanted Skye, 1487 Solano Ave., Albany. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. All levels are welcome. 652-5324. 

Women in Black Vigil noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310. 

Kol Hadash meets at 7:30 p.m. for Shabbat, at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. 428-1492. www.kolhadash.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 24 

Earth Day at Civic Center Park from noon to 5 p.m. with cultural performers, activities for children, food, craft and community booths.  

Family Farm Day at Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center St. at MLK, Jr. Way. Co-sponsored by The Ecology Center and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Bike Tour in Eastshore State Park leaving from Civic Center Park at noon and going to Richmond. Sponsored by Citizens for the Eastshore State Park. Bring water, sunblock, and windbreaker. Bikes should be in good condition. Course is flat. Route is approximately 25 miles. Helmets are encouraged. For more information 461- 4665. www.eastshorepark.org 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of Aquatic Park at 10 a.m. Pre-paid reservations required, $8 for members, $10 for non-members. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/  

Berkeley High Work Day from 9 a.m. to noon to weed, plant and pick up trash to welcome spring and to look our best for the Grand Opening Celebration on April 25. Bring trowels and weeding tools, work gloves, sunscreen/hat. Water, snacks, garbage bags, disposable gloves provided. Come to the lower courtyard through the Allston Way gate. 333-6097.  

Creek Tour with Urban Creeks Council from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with restoration expert Ann Riley. Tour of East Bay Restoration Sites includes Wildcat, Baxter, and Blackberry Creeks. Bring a lunch and dress for hiking. To register visit www.urbancreeks.org 

Turtle Time at Tilden Reptiles all around the park will be coming out of winter hibernation. Meet and greet the three exotic turtles that live at the Nature Center from 2 to 3 p.m. 525-2233. 

Earth Day Paddle at Gallinas Creek just north of China Camp State Park in San Rafael. All equipment and instruction included. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sponsored by Save the Bay. Cost is $30 members, $40 non-members. To register call 452-9261. www.savesfbay.org 

A Neighborhood Walk Through South West Berkeley, sponsored by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. Meet at 8:30 a.m. at Berkeley Chinese Community Church, 2117 Acton St. for music and light breakfast before the walk. 658-2467. 

Spring Plant Sale at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Spring Blooming Perennials and Shrubs with Aeirn Moore, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Community Music Day from noon to 5 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. 559-2941. 

Thumbs Up Child Protection Project will provide free child identification cards from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Eastmont Mall. Sponsored by the California Youth Authority. 563-5361. 

Women’s Peace Day at Mosswood Park, McArthur and Broadway, Oakland, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. An open-air fair calling attention to the impact of US military presence in Okinawa, Korea and the Philippines on women, communities, and the politics of the region. www.koreasolidarity.org 

Civic Arts Commission Hearing on Berkeley’s Arts and Cultural Plan at 4 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 981-7533. 

“Eyewitness to Empire” West Coast Campus Antiwar Network Conference from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Evans Hall, UC Campus. To register, contact can_wc_conf_2004 

@hotmail.com  

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Fire Supression from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 997 Cedar St. To sign up call 981-5605. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Berkeley Copwatch Know Your Rights Orientation Join us for this hands-on workshop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. near Shattuck Ave. Free, wheelchair accessible and open to the public. Donations gratefully accepted. 548-0425. 

Small Press Distribution Open House, with refreshments, readings and books, books, books. From noon to 4 p.m. at the SPD Warehouse, 1341 7th St. off Gilman. 524-1668. www.spdbooks.org 

Breast Cancer Action’s Town Meeting for Activists, with Anne Lamott and Dr. Sandra Hernandez on “Taking Care in a Toxic Time” from 1 to 5 p.m. at Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th St. 415-243-9301, ext. 17. www.bcaction.org 

“Families Dealing with Dementia” a workshop from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Mercy Care & Retirement Center, 3431 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. Eileen Zagelow, BA, CMC, Geriatric Care Manager for Eldercare Services will lead the workshop. $15 donation is requested. 534-8540. www.mercyretirementcenter.org 

Guerrilla Media Action Tour with Cascadia Media Collective’s films and more at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674A 23rd St. Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Luna Kids Dance Open House for ages 10 and up, at 10 a.m. at Black Pine Circle School, 2027 7th St. 644-3629. www.lunakidsdance.com 

Tai Chi Demonstration by Wen Wu Studio at University Village on San Pablo at 11 a.m. 524-1057. 

Yoga for Seniors at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. 848-7800. 

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

SUNDAY, APRIL 25 

Berkeley High School Open House and Ribbon Cutting from 1 to 5 p.m. with music, sports, arts, and refreshments.  

People’s Park 35th Anniversary Circus from noon to 6 p.m. with the Tuvan Throat Singers, Beth Custer Ensemble, The Fleshies, The Funky Nixons and many more. Bike rodeo, clowns, and community workshops. 658-9178. 

Spinning Demonstration Witness the alchemy of spinning plant fibers into yarn at 1 p.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Free with garden admission. 643-2775. http:// 

botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu  

Flowers: Their Parts and Partners We’ll take a close look at intimate parts of plants, and learn stories of their mating habits, from 10 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

A Lot of Galls Insects and other organisms cause swellings on plant parts that serve as homes for offspring. We’ll search for a variety of these growths and learn their history. From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

“Voice of the People” A variety show on current political, social and environmental concerns by The Traveling Bohemians, at 4 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10.  

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sponsored by Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. 2315 Durant Ave. 848-7800. 

Learn Sufi Dances, Dances of Universal Peace at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 526-8944. 

“Spirited Action: Coming Together For A Change” with Buddhist author and teacher Sylvia Boorstein, activist Daniel Ellsberg, and singers Linda Tillery and Betsy Rose at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10. www.spiritedaction.org 

Forum on "A Christian Ecological Perspective" at 9 a.m., service at 10 a.m., tree and native plant planting after service at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. 848-1755.  

Anam Cara House Open House from 4 to 8 p.m. at 6035 Majestic Ave. near Mills College. Anam Cara House provides work space to healing arts practitioners, workshops, and groups. 333-3572. 

“Yoga and the Vedic Sciences,” with Sam Geppi, certified Hatha Yoga instructor, on the three Vedic sciences at 11:30 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy. 549-9200. www.elephantpharmacy.com  

“Modern Mystics: Bede Griffiths” with Dody Donnelly, author, theologian at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd. Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Yoga with Jack van der Meulen on “Body Psychology” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Mikvah Taharas Israel invites Jewish Women to a Spa for the Soul from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Claremont Resort. Cost is $36. For reservations call Chabad of the East Bay 540-5824. 

MONDAY, APRIL 26 

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 nesting birds and flowering shrubs, 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. 

Honoring Lake Merrit’s Birds at the Bird Refuge, 600 Bellevue Ave. foot of Perkins St. at Lakeside Park, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Please RSVP to 238-3739. 

Earth Month Community Talk on Climate Change, by Dr. Margaret Torn, of Berkeley Lab, at 5:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Community Meeting Room, 3rd Fl, 2090 Kittredge St. Sponsored by Friends of Science. http://www.lbl.gov/friendsofscience 

No Child Left Behind? A discussion with students, teachers and activists in the Richmond School District, led by Cesar Cruz, at 7:30 p.m. at Fellowship Hall, Cedar and Bonita Sts. 669-1842. 

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthening at 1:15 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 27 

Morning Birdwalk Meet at 7 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area to look for Laurel Canyon birds. 525-2233. 

Return of Over-the-Hills Gang at Black Diamond Regional Preserve. Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history and fitness are invited to join us on a hilly 3 mile hike, meeting at 10 a.m. at the end of Somersville Rd. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Robert B. Reich “Taking Back Politics” at 11:30 a.m. at the Doubletree Hotel, Berkeley Marina. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Tickets are $50 and reservations can be made by emailing lwvbae@pacbell.net 

Phone Banking to ReDefeat Bush on Tuesdays from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Bring your cell phones. Please RSVP 233-2144. dan@redefeatbuch.com 

Berkeley Special Education Parents Network Forum with Michele Lawrence, Ken Jacopetti, and Gerald Herrick, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Ala Costa Center, 1300 Rose St. 525-9262.  

Ohlone Dog Park Association meets at 7:00 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 843-6221. 

Biodiesel and Sustainability A panel discussion from 7 to 9 p.m. at BioFuel Oasis, 2465 4th St. at Dwight. Donation $5-$15. 

Adventure Racing: Spring Training Tips for Women with Terri Schneider at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Both men and women welcome. 527-4140. 

“The Integration Trap, Generation Gap” with Oba T’Shaka at 5 p.m. in Dwinelle 370. Part of the Distinuished Lecturer of Color Series. 642-2876. 

“The Gender Agenda in Africa” with Jacqueline Adhiambo Odoul, US Int’l Univ., Nairobi, Kenya, at 4 p.m. in 652 Barrows Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by Center for African Studies. 642-8338. 

“Is Middle East Peace Possible?” with Iftekhar Hai, United Muslims of America, Souleiman Ghali, Pres. Islamic Society of SF, and David Meir Levi, Dir. Israel Peace Initiative at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley Ave. 848-3440. www.ahimsaberkeley.org 

Organic Produce at low prices sold at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon Sts. every Tuesday from 3 to 7 p.m. 843-1307. 

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

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

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28 

“The Local Housing Crisis” with Kriss Worthington, Berkeley Councilmember, and Nancy Nadel, Oakland Councilmember at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the Gray Panthers of the East Bay. 548-9696. 

“Victorian Glory in the San Francisco Bay Area” with Paul Duchscherer at 7:30 p.m. at Church by the Side of the Road, 2108 Russell St. Tickets are available from Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

“Fact and Fiction: An Inside Look at Islamic Cultures” An exchange of perspectives with Peace Corps volunteers and recent immigrants from Islamic countries at 7 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. sswiderski@peacecorps.gov 

“A Place Called Chiapas” A documentary by Nettie Wild covers eight months inside the Zapatista Uprising in 1997. At 7 p.m. at The Fellowship of Humanity, 390 27th St., Oakland. 393-5685.  

“Compassion Defies Violence and Hate” on the five year peace- 

ful journey of Falun Gong at 6 p.m. at 182 Dwinelle, UC Campus. 

Bayswater Book Club monthly dinner meeting will discuss Richard Clark’s “Against All Enemies” at 6:30 p.m. at Liu’s Kitchen Restaurant, 1593 Solano Ave. 433-2911. 

“Beyond Networking: Building Win-Win Strategic Partnerships” at 7 p.m. at Gate 3: Emeryville, 1285 66th St. Emeryville. 665-1725. 

Acdemic Quiz Bowl with high school teams at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Nobel, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

“Astral Travel & Dreams” a free 9-week course starts April 28, meeting from 6:30 to 8 p.m at 2015 Center St. 654-1583. www.mysticweb.org 

Fun with Acting Class every Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome, no experience necessary. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Apr. 26, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Apr. 26, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Deborah Chernin, 981-6715. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/parksandrecreation 

Solid Waste Management Commission Mon., Apr. 26, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. Becky Dowdakin, 981-6357. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/solidwaste 

City Council meets Tues. Apr. 27, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers, Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/budget 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. Carol Lopes, 981-5514. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy 

Mental Health Commission meets Wed., Apr. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at 2640 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Harvey Turek, 981-5213. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/mentalhealth  

Planning Commission meets Wed. Apr. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planningˇ

GARDENING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to let you know that I really enjoyed the article by Shirley Barker (“Cucumbers: A Treat That Predates Agriculture,” Daily Planet, April 16-19) and hope you will continue to publish stories on local “experts.” The Berkeley Daily Planet has been a routine read in the mornings during dog walks since I moved to the Bay Area in 1999. I pick up my copies at a paper box on Alcatraz for my morning walk between the Rockridge and Elmwood neighborhoods. 

Ann Stovel 

Oakland 

• 

SIREN TESTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Can you imagine a fireman coming to your house to slap you in the head? Unimaginable? Put on your thinking cap. Sirens will be tested on April 22 and 29 at four different locations in this city, that supposedly cares about its residents. People and animals (including birds) close to the places the sirens will scream are the most vulnerable. The decibel level of the noise produced is in the range of 118 to 123 decibels. Sound is pressure. The sound strikes your ears. BANG! You've just been hit, a huge slap to your ears. The level of sound the sirens produce is louder than adult humans should be exposed to because noise at that loudness can impair hearing. For information, see www.nonoise.org.  

Sirens in Berkeley? Sirens that must be tested on a regular basis? At what price? 

Ann Reid Slaby 

• 

CYA ABUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In January, California Youth Authority staffers Delwin Brown and Marcel Berry (at Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility) were caught on tape, showing them viciously beating two youths while two other staff members held them down and two others watched. One youth is seen on tape lying motionless and handcuffed on the floor as he is beaten and kicked repeatedly. The San Joaquin county D.A.’s office has publicly reported that it won’t file charges against the six staff. Is California now like pre-60s Mississippi?  

The odious message being sublimally broadcast through CYA, a state agency, is that California takes care of its children with brutality, cruelty, and by starving/closing school systems.  

Concerned citizens need to urge Atty. Gen. Lockyear (fax: (916) 445-6749 or (916) 327-7892) that he respond immediately to the vicious beating; he has the jurisdiction to do so. At the very least, he has the obligation to prosecute the CYA employees. Correctional officers are not above the law. 

Justice isn’t served when defenseless youth are brutally beaten in the man-made hell the CYA has become. 

Maris Arnold 

• 

EXPORTING DEMOCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am happy to hear that President Bush is planning to install a western-style democracy in Iraq by the end of June. Does this mean the whole nine yards? 

Does it include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion? Does it mean ownership and control of Iraqi oil will revert to Iraqis? Does it mean that Iraqi tribes will be able to build tax-free casinos on their tribal lands? 

And what about same-sex marriage? 

Marion Syrek 

Oakland 

• 

PLACING BLAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Attorney General John Ashcroft recently blamed Clinton administration intelligence policies for failures that led up to 9/11. Apparently, after nearly one year into the Bush administration, it was Bill Clinton who was responsible for any problems that might have contributed to that horror! Okay, it may have been the lies of the liberal media, but, by golly, I’d thought George Bush was the president! Clearly that’s absurd! 

Michael Steinberg 

• 

JUSTICE, COMPASSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many faith groups flourish in freedom throughout California, and, as our founders would have wanted it, hold a wide variety of differing beliefs on issues ranging from theology to foreign and social policy. However, all hold that we are called to care for one another when we are ill or suffer from disease, and provide healing. 

As faith leaders, we are often called upon to console and care for the sick and dying in our community. But when our neighbors are unable to get the medical attention they need because they do not have health insurance coverage, we must do more than console or pray. We must speak out. 

That’s why leaders of different faiths throughout Oakland, Alameda, and the entire Bay Area are joining with countless others across the nation to speak out for health coverage for all in America during Cover the Uninsured Week, May 10-16. We encourage people of all faiths to unite in a common call to ensure that all Americans have access to health care coverage, private or public. 

We ask for a more just and compassionate society that does not stand by while nearly 44 million Americans go without health insurance for a full year. These men, women and children who are uninsured are not strangers to us. Some of them are in our families. Others live in our communities. They pray, work, and study with us. Uninsured Americans are found in every neighborhood. They include followers of every religion and members of every race. 

It is time for leaders of this state, and our nation, to ensure that all of us have the health care coverage we need in order to live in the fullness of health that we are intended to live. 

We encourage everyone to log on to the Web site at www.CoverTheUninsuredWeek.org, to learn more about the uninsured and to find out how you can become involved in your community. 

Rev. Kelvin Saulsw 

Downs Memorial United Methodist Church 

Rabbi Allen Bennett 

Temple Israel 

• 

DOWNTOWN PARKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Malcolm Carden writes that downtown Berkeley needs more parking to become “a vibrant retail center, along the lines of Walnut Creek” because people will never take transit to go shopping. (Letters, Daily Planet, April 13-15). 

Apparently, he does not know that the most successful shopping district in the Bay Area is the Union Square area of San Francisco, where there is relatively little parking and most shoppers come by transit. 

Downtown Berkeley will never succeed by trying to provide better automobile access than Walnut Creek or suburban malls. It is too far from the freeway, there is limited capacity on local streets, and there is limited land left for parking.  

Downtown Berkeley will succeed by providing pedestrian-friendly streets and a mix of uses that is much more interesting than anything you can find in suburbia. The university’s proposed convention center and museums and the new residential development in downtown will help create the mix of uses that will draw more people and will create a thriving retail center.  

We certainly need some customer parking, but if we provide too much parking, downtown will become so congested that it will be less attractive to shoppers. Many intersections in downtown are already at a D or E level of service. If we try to provide as much parking as Walnut Creek, those intersections will reach the F level of service -- commonly known as gridlock. 

People who drive everywhere and who complain that it is difficult for them to shop downtown should face the fact that downtown Berkeley cannot accommodate every car that wants to come here, any more than downtown San Francisco can. If they have chosen to live someplace where they drive every time they leave their homes, then they are going to have to do much of their shopping in suburban malls, and they are going to have to miss some of the most interesting parts of the Bay Area, such as downtown San Francisco and downtown Berkeley. 

Maybe these people should consider moving to a transit-oriented neighborhood. They would have less trouble getting around, and they would do less damage to the environment. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

MARRIAGE AMENDMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

President Bush and other conservatives have been accused in recent weeks of seeking to “put bias in the Constitution” by endorsing an amendment that would define marriage as solely the union of one man and one woman. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Gay marriage has never been a constitutional right in America—or any other civilized nation. Those who support the amendment aren’t trying to deprive homosexuals of any of the legal protections they currently enjoy; instead, they are trying to prevent runaway courts from creating out of thin air new “rights” that would prove detrimental to society. 

Yelling “discrimination” is not the only strategy liberals have unleashed to defeat this amendment, though. They also have argued that gay marriage is a civil rights issue akin to the African-American struggle for equality. No less a civil rights icon than Jesse Jackson has denounced that claim, noting that “gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution.” 

This aggressive campaign to undermine marriage as it’s always been known can be defeated—but only if we all stand up to support the Federal Marriage Amendment. 

Marlene Friedlander 

• 

IRAQ OCCUPATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Although domestic opposition to the U.S. occupation and war against Iraq is growing, serious confusion about U.S. purposes remain. Many who say, how can “we” leave before “we get the job done” or “fix the mess” are sorely misguided. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to bring democracy, nor has it any intent to do so. That was and remains a subterfuge just like the lie that Iraq was a threat to our security. In fact the U.S. will try to control Iraq indefinitely and for a different reason: the loss of control of Iraq can damage U.S. political and economic dominance (of Europe, Japan, Russia, China, as well as the Israeli-U.S. dominance of the Middle East—all well documented in “Oil, Power and Empire” by Larry Everest). Barring fierce public opposition, the Iraq war could become longer and worse than Vietnam leaving no peace for a generation. Getting the U.S. out of Iraq may test our nation’s democratic institutions even more than ending the Vietnam war did because the American people are facing off against a faltering U.S. imperialism with more to lose now.  

Marc Sapir 

ˇ

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The “State of Palestine” cartoon by Justin DeFreitas (Daily Planet, April 16-19) depicted a Palestinian impaled on a flagpole bearing a United States flag. The stars in the flag were arranged as the Star of David, a potent religious symbol identified with Jews the world over. 

Because he chose to use a religious symbol, Mr. DeFreitas goes beyond what I assume to be a criticism of current U.S. and Israeli policies and opens the possibility that he was implying Jews have manipulated the foreign policy of the United States. This anti-Semitic canard has been repeated for generations by extremist hate groups and used to justify hateful and discriminatory actions against Jews. 

Let’s hope Mr. DeFreitas will be more careful in avoiding hu rtful stereotypes—his political satire will be stronger for the effort. 

Andrew Stoloff 

Anti-Defamation League 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to write and thank you for the exceptional editorials that you have run in recent weeks, particularly concerni ng what is going on between Israel and Palestine. Not only were you willing to comment, but the way you did it was extremely thoughtful. 

It takes guts to comment on what is happening on this issue, but it takes real insight and intelligence to do it so e ffectively. 

I particularly appreciated the cartoon in the April 16 issue. All I could do was read in horror about what Bush did with Sharon. His support for Sharon gives Israel a green light to continue the occupation and annexation of the Palestinian st ate and effectively deals a death blow to any sort of just peace, and the cartoon expressed this effectively. The U.S. has always been supportive of Israel, sending billions of dollars in aid every year and then turning its back as Israel continues to com mit war crimes and destroy the livelihood of all Palestinians. Now it’s out in the open. Even the New York Times came out and commented on the consequences of Bush’s support. And if the Times allows that through its editorial board, you know the depths of the issue. 

The editorials about the execution of Hamas leaders have also been excellent. Both expose Israel for what it is: a country that is running an unjust occupation and an unjust war against those who oppose the occupation. Without taking sides, the editorials have plainly explained why extrajudicial killings are wrong, and why they are not effective. And again, I commend you for speaking up. Those who support Israel would like to quash all dissent, which can be seen in the letters in your paper. 

Please know that even though there seems to be a backlash against those who speak up on this issue, there are also those of us who support it. Please continue to do so. 

Max Reiner 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As an American and a Jew I was shocked and revo lted by the cartoon which appeared in the weekend edition of the Daily Planet. It suggests the Jews control U.S. policy and are stabbing Palestinian rights in the back. 

This cartoon is frankly anti-Semitic as well as anti-Israel and is an insult to all A mericans. Jewish Americans do not control the U.S. foreign policy. This cartoon reminds me of Nazi art which libeled the German Jews in the 1930s. 

I will not patronize any of your advertisers and I will tell them so. 

Susanne (Sanne) DeWitt 

•  

Editors, D aily Planet: 

The cartoon that was presented in your weekend edition was a shocking display of anti-Semitic overtones in our public discourse. The notion that Israel and the United States—two democratic allies—are single handedly responsible for a disrupt ion in the creation of a Palestinian State is an irresponsible claim. Making such a claim ignores the inability of the Palestinian Authority to teach its population to promote co-existence with their Israeli neighbors in addition to the countless terrorist attacks that are funded by known terrorist Yasser Arafat. Israel since 1948-56 years ago—has made endless attempts to achieve peace with her Palestinian neighbors with no reward in return except for increased terrorist attacks and anti-Semitic cartoons falsely accusing of the only two democratic countries working to achieve a lasting peace in the region. 

Ziv Shmargad 

Political Director, Israel Action Committee, UC Berkeley 

•  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the spate of letters by Israeli State apolo gists recently published in the Daily Planet: 

First point, Israel’s size is irrelevant. “Little England” once ruled most of the world. Little states can be as aggressive and imperialistic as large states. 

Secondly, Israel did displace close to one milli on Palestinians in 1947-48. The U.N. accounted for over 950,000 Palestinians living in its refugee camps by 1949. 

Third, most of the “250 million Arabs” are not wealthy and most live under reactionary regimes supported by the U.S., which is also the chie f payroller of Israel. 

Fourth, Israel encouraged and funded Hamas going back to the late 1970s in an effort to discourage the secular PLO. Now the chickens have come home to roost. 

Fifth, Israel is the fourth strongest military power in the world and contrary to myth, has never been the underdog. In 1948 the Zionist paramilitary forces already greatly outnumbered the pathetic combined Arab “armies.” 

Sixth, Broudy gives no sources for the probably inflated claims of Arafat’s wealth. Israel itself has a much higher standard of living than its productivity would justify, and it is U.S. aid which is behind this. 

Seventh, selective and out of context quotes from the ultra-right and Zionist New York Post do not an argument make, contrary to Arthur Braufman. 

Eight, Clinton’s fabled final peace plan was a fraud, as Noam Chomsky has demonstrated in detail. The Israeli settlements were going to stay, Israel would retain control of the water supply, the apartheid highways would continue to isolate Palestinian a reas from each other, and no return or compensation for the millions of Palestinian refugees. 

Nine, John Kerry has been terrible on this issue. He has if anything moved to the right of Bush here. Many of us are not going to vote for him but instead for a great Arab American, Ralph Nader. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

•  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a realtor in Berkeley, and as immediate past president of the Berkeley Association of Realtors, and as a long time resident of Berkeley, I was appalled to find out that your newspaper has deemed an anti-Semitic cartoon to be worthy of dissemination by your paper. Shame on you and on your paper. To infer by your political cartoon that the United States of America is run by the State of Israel is not only laughable, but it is the same kind of propaganda of hatred that has been around for millennia. Hasn’t the world gotten beyond its blind hatred of “the Jew”? When will this end? Certainly not with the continued publication of smut such as yours. 

As a realtor with 31 years of working in the Berkeley community I can assure you that your paper will not be receiving any of my advertising business. I do know that a representative of your paper has been calling to solicit real estate ads. I will actively urging my colleagues in my office and in the city to refrain from sending you their advertising dollars. I cannot make you stop publishing anti-Semitic cartoons, but I can speak loud and clear with my dollars.  

Joan Brunswick 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your weekend cartoon by J ustin DeFreitas was completely one-sided and does not reflect the efforts of Israel to agree to a fair two-state proposal which was offered by President Clinton and Barak at Camp David. 

This was rejected by Arafat who instead started the Intifada and terrorism against Israel. 

The basic problem is that Arafat and many Palestinians are in agreement with the goals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which is for the destruction of Israel. And a subsequent one-state solution. 

Irving Berger 

r

It’s been said that a political cartoon has about eight seconds to make its point before the reader moves on to other things. Therefore the cartoonist must communicate in a language consisting of symbols, caricatures and archetypes—figures and concepts that are easily and immediately recognizable. 

In some cases these symbols come loaded with other meanings—meanings that may or may not have anything to do with the topic at hand, meanings that may or may not be intended by the artist. 

One of the most sensitive of these symbols is the Star of David, for it is a religious symbol and yet it is also a national symbol, present on the Israeli national flag. And this is often a source of confusion where political cartoons are concerned. 

“The State of Palestine,” the cartoon I drew for the Daily Planet’s April 16 edition, is by no means the first editorial cartoon critical of Israel to be branded “anti-Semitic” by newspaper readers. It is not even the first of my cartoons to be so judged. I faced the same criticism once before while working for another newspaper, after drawing a cartoon that questioned the United States’ ability to function as a mediator in the Middle East conflict while supporting one side. Another cartoon calling for Arafat’s removal earned me the charming epithet “Zionist pig” from one reader. And still another cartoon, shown at left, depicting an endless mosaic of Israeli and Palestinian coffins in an effort to capture a feeling of futility, was attacked as cowardly, afraid to take a side while implying that blame was to be shared equally. 

The intent of the “State of Palestine” cartoon was to show the United States striking down the Palestinian state by throwing its full support behind what I believe to be the wrong-headed policies of the Sharon administration. Disagreement on this point was and is both expected and welcome, for the goal of a good cartoon is to provoke debate and invite discussion, to engage readers in a give-and-take on issues that concern us all. What are not welcome are unwarranted accusations of bigotry. 

To make its point the cartoon uses a simple theme employing national flags to represent the three entities involved. This, along with the timing of the cartoon (published immediately following Bush’s announcement of support for Sharon’s plan), should make it obvious that the Star of David is intended as a national symbol, not a religious one.  

The purpose of incorporating the Star of David into the American flag is not, as some readers have suggested, an effort to depict some sort of Jewish control of the U.S. government. These are the idiotic theories of true anti-Semites and I do not subscribe to them. It was merely to demonstrate that these two powerful nations have now officially united in opposition to Palestinian sovereignty. The impaled figure is meant to drive home the point that the Palestinians, with no military and little political clout, are up against the world’s largest and fourth-largest militaries—both nuclear powers, in fact. 

If these symbols should conjure other, perhaps hurtful images in the minds of some readers, that is unfortunate. But a cartoon can be a bit like a Rorschach test, and one never quite knows who will see what in its configurations of black ink and white space. And its creator cannot possibly predict or fathom all of these interpretations. 

The cartoon is not anti-Semitic. Nor is it even anti-Israel; though a cartoon can only make one point at a time, the human being behind the cartoon does not necessarily think in such black and white terms. It is possible to condemn the policies of the U.S. and Israel without condoning suicide bombings; it is possible to deplore Sharon while also deploring Arafat; it is possible to criticize Israel’s use of military force while also deploring the tactics of Hamas.  

In other words, it is possible to be both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel. For me—and, I suspect, for most—it is not a matter of one triumphing over the other; it is a matter of both respecting one another enough to come up with a workable compromise. And it is my humble opinion that Israel’s offers have not yet come close to respecting Palestine. I do not expect agreement on this point, but I do think it is reasonable to expect the Planet’s readers to respect my right to express it without fear of being branded an anti-Semite.  

Criticism of Israel and Ariel Sharon is not anti-Semitic, any more than criticism of America and George Bush is anti-American or anti-white or anti-Christian. And throwing around accusations of bigotry where it does not exist benefits no one. For not only does it reduce what could otherwise be a reasonable debate to the level of a shouting match, but it undermines and trivializes the plight of victims of true bigotry and hate.  

Anti-Semitism is real and it is dangerous. Bigotry is real and dangerous. Racism and hatred and violence are real and dangerous. There are many real and dangerous enemies in this world, but your Daily Planet cartoonist is simply not among them.  

›

Berkeley’s beautiful creeks have been receiving a lot of attention lately. The good news includes the start of a million-dollar state-sponsored restoration program on lower Codornices Creek; the elimination of the sewage leaks that were contaminating Bla ckberry Creek as it runs past Thousand Oaks Elementary school; and the all-volunteer restoration project at Strawberry Creek Lodge that is the joy of its residents.  

Not all the news is good: A lawsuit has been filed against the city over who is responsible for expensive maintenance on deteriorating culverts that run under private property; and the Thousand Oaks school cleanup cost the city over $100,000 because of the need to break into the upstream culvert at many locations to plug leaking sewer lines.  

What can we do to increase the good news? For starters, we can keep doing the good things we’ve already begun. Berkeley has many active restoration projects, and has successfully daylighted several stretches of its local creeks, such as those at Stra wberry Creek Park and on lower Codornices Creek around Ninth Street. Where creeks can be daylighted and restored, they should be. Restored creeks and their associated vegetation filter pollutants out of the water, carry more water than culverts, and provi de habitat for fish, birds, and animals. Moreover, the state and regulatory agencies now view creek restoration as one way of improving water quality and controlling floods. 

Another step is to better educate people about urban runoff and how to reduce th e pollutants it carries. Many people still don’t realize that whatever is dumped onto streets ends up in the creeks: detergent from washing cars, pesticides, herbicides and oil dumped into storm drains. Once people understand that such pollutants ultimately contaminate creeks and the bay, they can often take easy steps to reduce or stop such pollution. The city can also encourage measures that cause less stormwater to run directly into creeks. For example, it can require or provide incentives for the use of permeable paving stones instead of asphalt for driveways and parking areas; and it can encourage the enhancement and protection of natural habitats and vegetation, through projects like the National Wildlife Federation’s “Backyard Wildlife Habitat” pro gram. 

Most of Berkeley’s creeks were put into underground culverts more than 70 years ago, when the creeks were literally used as sewers. Also, culverting the creeks allowed developers to build over them. Now, many decades later, these culverts are start ing to fail. Failed culverts undermine homes, buildings, and roadways, costing the city—and property owners—huge sums of money, whether through legal battles, or massive repair bills. Natural creeks cost less to maintain, and provide far more benefits, th an artificial channels and culverts. 

Berkeley can actively encourage the restoration of natural creek conditions by repairing sewer breaks and removing illegal hook-ups, as well as stepping up enforcement of existing laws that prohibit illegal dumping into storm drains. And the city should be firm about enforcing the existing Creek Ordinance, which was implemented both to protect our creeks, and to protect the health and safety of homeowners and property.  

Mechanisms that encourage creek restoration on private property should be explored and implemented; for instance, the City could offer a partial transfer tax rebate modeled on the seismic upgrade rebate. The city also needs to come up with ways to finance the long-term maintenance and restoration of o ur treasured creeks, using ideas that have been effective in other cities and counties. For example, the city should consider implementing stormwater fees for basic infrastructure maintenance and creek restoration, as well as a long-term bond measure, sim ilar to Oakland’s wonderfully successful measure last year for restoration of Lake Merritt, wetlands, and creeks. 

Finally, we need a more fundamental zoning change as well: It is time to update and strengthen Berkeley’s Creek Ordinance. 

The City of Berk eley passed one of the nation’s first watershed protection ordinances in 1989 (Chapter 17.08). That ordinance was primarily designed to prevent further culverting. Since then, many other jurisdictions have adopted ordinances that go much further toward preserving and restoring creeks, and have incorporated a much more sophisticated body of knowledge into their regulations.  

We—an ad hoc group of Berkeley residents, including creekside landowners, creek experts, and interested citizens—have spent several months reviewing the city’s creek ordinance, with an eye towards making it clearer, more effective, and fully up-to-date.  

Our review included researching creek ordinances in other California cities, and comparing effective strategies elsewhere with Berk eley’s current regulations. We also looked at possible funding sources for water quality improvement and protection over the long term. Our initial recommendations are simple: 

1) The ordinance should be overhauled as a comprehensive piece, not as pieceme al responses to particular cases that come before the City Council; 

2) The process should be careful and thoughtful, with public input; 

3) The process should first identify the issues to address, through research on other cities’ and counties’ ordinance s, advice from experts, etc., before developing specific recommendations on these issues. After the issues and recommendations have been identified and settled upon, specific language of the ordinance can be drafted to achieve these goals. 

The city is facing an exciting—but challenging—time with respect to its creeks and watersheds as a whole. Increased knowledge about the importance of healthy creeks, new stringent state regulations for water quality, and a failing culvert infrastructure, all argue for a comprehensive and pro-active long-term strategy to protect and restore these ecological treasures. We possess some of the strongest environmental sensibilities in the nation, a cadre of concerned, committed citizens, and the intellect to come up with in novative, effective approaches that benefit both current and future generations of Berkeley residents. It is time for us to come together and face these challenges directly, and with ecological sensitivity. We urge the city to move ahead in addressing the se challenges, and offer our help in doing that. 

Juliet Lamont, Phil Price, Carole Schemmerling, Junko Bryant, Alan Gould, Diane Tokugawa, Tom Kelly, Jane Kelly, Chad Markell, Jeiwon Choi Deputy, Vikrant Sood.Ä

What Berkeley’s Creek  

Ordinance Does and Doesn’t Say 

Here’s a quick summary of some key points about Berkeley’s Creek Ordinance. For a copy of the ordinance itself, see Section 17.08 (“Preservation and Restoration of Natural Watercourses”) of the Berkeley Municipal Code at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/bmc/. 

What it says: 

(1) Berkeley’s Creek Ordinance prohibits certain types of new construction and expansion within a 30-foot “setback” distance from a creek (including a culverted creek), to protect property from damage, as well as to protect the creek and improve flood control. In particular, the ordinance prohibits the construction or expansion of roofed structures within the setback distance. 

(2) The ordinance prohibits the construction of new culverts, walls, channels, etc., within the creek banks. Such “hardscaped” engineered structures cause problems with water quality, flooding, and loss of habitat, and thus they are only allowed as a last resort, and require special permitting.  

What it doesn’t say: 

(1) The ordinance does not prevent improving or repairing existing structures subject to the ordinance. Only new building (including expansion) within the creek setback is prohibited. 

(2) The ordinance does not prohibit homeowners from building a fence. The creek ordinance only prohibits the construction of roofed structures within the setback area.  

(3) The ordinance does not require homeowners to pay for repairing culverts on their property. The ordinance is silent on this issue, except for culverts that were illegally installed after the ordinance took effect. The claim that property owners are responsible for culvert repairs on their property is the City of Berkeley’s position on this issue and is not a part of the creek ordinance. 

(4) A new map has been produced by the City of Berkeley to assist in the identification of sites that might be subject to the creek ordinance. This map is a guide to help both landowners and the city understand potential permitting issues and restrictions on properties. The map shows property parcels that may be subject to the ordinance; not all necessarily are. Moreover, there may be properties that are not identified by the map, but that may be subject to the ordinance (if some creeks don’t go where the city thinks t hey do). The ordinance is the law. The map simply provides guidance as to the location of the city’s creeks.  

For more information about how you can help to protect and restore creeks—and about projects happening right near you—visit the Urban Creeks Council website at www.urbancreeks.org , or contact UCC at ucc_berkeley@earthlink.net or 540-6669. 

Friday, April 23—that is to say, tonight—Volti celebrates its 25th anniversary with a concert at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Once known as the San Francisco Chamber Singers, Volti is one of the few professional vocal ensembles in the Bay Area that regularly presents contemporary repertoire (in fact, I count one other: Chanticleer). 

If you’re gun-shy about new music concerts, this may be the restorative you need. The singers are superb, and director Robert Geary manages to find his way to the warm heart of even the most challenging modern score. With The Left-Coast Ensemble as guest artists, a scheduled premiere of new work by Mark Winges, and selected favorites from the group repertoire, this is a concert I’ve been looking forward to for some time. 

Originally from Rhode Island, Bob Geary came to the West Coast from the University of New Hampshire 30 years ago to study conducting with Howard Swan. As Geary tells the story, the group’s inception in 1979 was more serendipity than sweeping vision. It began as a collaborative effort drawing from some of the better vocal ensembles extant at that time. “And I was the one with conducting experience, so I was enlisted.” 

I asked Geary how he felt about the West Coast as a home for the pioneering programs he has presented every year since then. 

“My personal belief is that new music is a symptom of a healthy culture,” he told me. “If we are only creating situations where audiences are given music from hundreds of years ago, then we keep looking b ackward. I always felt, as far as the West Coast, that there’s a history of experimentation and innovation here.” 

I wondered how the Bay Area has changed, in his view, for this work. 

“In many ways, we’re fortunate,” he told me. “The caliber of singers has risen steadily. And there’s a tremendous affection and loyalty—both from the audience, and within the group. We have some singers that have been with group as long as eight, 10, 12 years. At the same time, we’re chronically under-funded, of course. We have small grants from Irvine, and, thankfully, individual donors. But the California Arts Council has essentially ceased to exist. And the San Francisco Foundation, which was one of our big supporters, stopped funding us when they made cuts during the Re agan years. I have a personal rule-of-thumb, which I know seems cynical, but it’s really true in my experience! That is ‘The better the art, the worse the funding.’” 

Financial hardship is always a big secret in America. Everyone puts on a bold face and t heir best suit, even if the wolves are at the door. Talking to Bob Geary, I was reminded of a family that rented a house down the road from where I grew up. I used to play with their kids, bicycling around, trekking through the woods. Then, one morning, they were just gone. The word around the neighborhood was that, hopelessly behind on rent and bills, they’d packed up and moved in the middle of the night. 

I’ve been thinking about that family lately, and about the way we go to plays, dance performances, and concerts with a certain amount of complacency. We enjoy ourselves, are perhaps even deeply moved. Meanwhile, we assume that the work that went into presenting that program is replicable—that the director and the artists will pull it together one more time, and we’ll be back to visit with them next season. 

Yet we know, we who have been watching the arts in the Bay Area in recent years with a worried eye, that it ain’t necessarily so. 

Volti has, in its 25 years, performed internationally, and has tour ed the states several times. They have made recordings, including a CD on the Innova label. They have on four different occasions been a recipient of ASCAP’s award for Adventurous Programming. I can’t imagine a better way to assist them in well-deserved a nd continued long life than to celebrate, with them, their 25th Anniversary at St. John’s this Friday evening at 2727 College Ave. in Berkeley. Tickets are $25. More information can be had at (415) 771-3352. And if you miss the East Bay concert, Volti wil l be performing at 7 p.m. this Saturday night at the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco, 1187 Franklin at Geary (champagne reception and silent auction to follow that performance). 

Clark Suprynowicz is a composer living in Oakland.›,

Aurora Theatre is presenting an impressively staged world premier of San Francisco playwright Cherylene Lee’s Antigone Falun Gong. Lee may well be remembered from TheatreWorks’ production last year of The Legacy Codes. 

Lee, a fourth generation Chinese-A merican, has been drawn to create an amalgam of materials taken from both the great Greek tragedy, Antigone and the now-outlawed Chinese movement entitled Falun Gong. The result, although uneven, is quite remarkable and, in many places, stunningly beautif ul. 

Not surprisingly, the classic Greek tragedy Antigone provides the structure and much of the plot, with significant alterations from Lee. An effective Bonnie Akimoto is cast as “A,” the protagonist. As in the classic tragedy, “A” is attempting to prov ide proper burial for one of her dead brothers, who has been condemned to decay unburied by her uncle “C,” the magistrate (ably played by David Furumoto). More than unafraid, “A” actually seems to look with anticipation upon the death sentence she will in evitably incur. (No, it isn’t depression; it appears to be based on her beliefs from the Falun Gong.) 

Defining the Falun Gong would probably require a dissertation. First, the huge masses of people who practice it deny that it is a movement. It simply is n’t clear whether it’s a cult or a religion or just a set of spiritual exercises. (It took the Chinese government until about three years ago to consider it any kind of political threat and to begin serious attempts to wipe it out.) 

What did happen was t hat huge numbers of people regularly gathered in parks and open spaces where they practiced five exercises ( known as qigong) of something apparently rather like yoga movements. One aspect—relevant to this play—is the concept of the development of a “thir d eye” through which practioners can “see” events otherwise unknown to them. It is through this “third eye” that “A” has experienced her uncle’s part in her brothers’ deaths. 

Antigone is, of course, the third and final play in the trilogy in which the horror of the curse upon her father, Oedipus, is played out through his children. Oedipus’ suicide led to a fight between his two sons over who would inherit the throne. Both died, and their uncle assumed the monarchy. In this production the uncle, “C,” is transformed into a “magistrate,” but clearly one with absolute powers over life and death. Furumoto, who also directed the play, portrays the character effectively. 

And this is where it becomes rather difficult to discuss what are clearly some of the bes t parts of the production, the group scenes which can perhaps be best described as based on dance. Peter Kwong, the choreographer, says that his choreography is “a fusion of martial arts, jazz, and hip-hop.” He is a practitioner of Northern Shaolin Kung-F u, Tai Chi Chuan and Chi Kung. Other movements appear to be derived from the Falun Gong positions that “A” has used in many of her appearances on stage. 

Whatever the source, these scenes are tremendous and, fortunately, frequent. One suspects that it boi ls down to the fact that Kwong is an extraordinarily gifted choreographer who obtained absolutely first class dancers for these roles. And their frequent appearances on stage are the primary reason to see this production. 

Despite excellent performances—you can’t fault the actors—the play itself seems to flounder under the weight of way too much story to tell. There just isn’t time to develop any feeling about any of the items that are being thrown at you. Even the pathos of a self-doomed heroine is lost in the lengthy grocery list of events. 

(We haven’t mentioned the rather startling and fairly lengthy discussions about the American planes and television cameras flying overhead as if they are there for 24 hours a day. And there’s the doomed love affair between Antigone and her cousin (an excellent performance by Michael Cheng). Then there had to be room for a lengthy confrontation between Antigone and her uncle? 

A whole lot of stuff goes on in this play—much too much to fit into the time restraints a m odern audience expects. As it stands, the themes can’t be developed into issues that the audience is going to care a hoot for. Even the horror of a brother’s body left to open decay arouses no significant response. There isn’t time. 

Clearly this is a gre at production—worth seeing for the beauty and drama of the frequent martial arts and dancing scenes. And the actors are talented. If the play could go thorough a few more rounds of re-write, it would be simply breathtaking. 

Aurora Theatre Company perform s Anigone Falun Gong at 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $28-$40. 2081 Addison St. 843-4822 or www.auroratheatre.org.›f

FRIDAY, APRIL 23 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a comedy by Wendy Wasserstein, opens at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck. Fri. and Sat. through May 15. Tickets are $10. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre Company “Antigone Falun Gong” at 8 p.m. Wed.-Sat., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through May 16. Tickets are $28-$40. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” Charles Ludlam’s theatrical cult classic through May 23. Tickets are $39-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Shotgun Players “The Miser” at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater, Thurs.-Sat., Sun. at 7 p.m. to May 2. Free. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“Company” a musical performed by UC Choral Ensembles at 8 p.m. in the Choral Rehearsal Hall, Cesar Chavez Student Center, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$10. 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Pico Iyer describes “Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck. 843-3533. 

Lynne Truss introduces “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

University Dance Theater, directed by Marni Thomas, at 8 p.m., Sat at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sun at 2 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse. Tickets are $8-$14. 866-468-3399. www.ticketweb.com 

VOLTI and the Left Coast Chambe r Ensemble at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $25. 415-771-3352. www.voltisf.org 

California Bach Society at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $12-$25. 415-262-0272. www.calbach.or g 

The Georges Lammam Ensemble, Middle Eastern music in a benefit for youth in the Palestinian village of Deir Ibzi’a, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Tickets are $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Amy Obenski, original folk roots, at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Martyn Joseph, Welsh folk troubadour, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Youthquake Teen Music Winners at 8 p.m. at Ashkenez. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Maverick, Ottis Goodnight, Stymie at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 548-1159.  

Moonrise Concert with Deborah Hamouris, Robin Dolan and Denise Casleton at 8 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $8-$12. Reservat ions requested. 595-3915. 

All Ages Show! at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Julie Kelly and the Vince Lateano Trio, jazz and Brazilian vocals at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Singer-Songwriter Night with B arry Syska at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

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

The Reputation, Love Kills Love, The Sky Flakes at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilma n St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 24 

CHILDREN 

“Wild About Books” storytime at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Jeff Lead and a Cinco de Mayo presentation at 10:30 a.m. at La Pe ña. Cost is $3-$4. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Word for Word presents “The Wonderful Story of Zaal” a Persian legend about a baby rescued by a magical bird, at 3 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720.  

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Icons: Expressions o f the Spirit” works by Karen Gutowski, Denise Hartley and Jennifer Sipple. Reception at 7 p.m. at 4th St. Studio, 1717D Fourth St. Exhibition runs to May 15. 527-0600. www.fourthstreetstudio.com 

Skyline High School Art Exhibit from 2 to 6 p.m. at St. Cuth bert’s Church, 7932 Mountian Blvd. 414-9807. 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mordecai Gerstein tells the story of “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Rhythm and Muse with Tres Santos at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dance for Community and World Peace at 7:3 0 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20, no one turned away. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Healing Muses “Fantasy, Humor and Elegence” music from the Baroque at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Tickets are $15-$18, r eservations recommended. 524-5661. www.heaingmuses.org 

Kensington Symphony with Geoffrey Gallegos, guest conductor and Patrick Galvin, violin at 8 p.m. at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. Donation $8-$10. 524-4335.  

Joe Lova no Nonet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$46. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Handel’s “Messiah” University Chorus, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $3-$10. 642-9988.  

KITKA and Maria na Sadovska, “Enchantment Songs” ancient music and stories from the Ukraine at 8 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 444-0323. www.kitka.org 

Wake the Dead performs Celtic Roots of the Grateful Dead at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Zion 1 & The Crown City Rockers at 9 p.m. a t Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Philip Greenlief and Tony Malaby at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $8-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Irina Rivkin CD release concert at 8 p.m. at Rose Street House of Music, 1839 Rose St. Sliding scale donation. 594-4000 ext. 687. www.rosestreetmusic.com 

Rock that Uke Tour with Carmaig de Forest, Songs From A Random House, Oliver Brown and film screening of “Rock That Uke!” at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin, traditional music duo, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Wayne Wallace, jazz trombone, at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Bands Against Bush Replicator, An Albatross, Greenlight Bombers, The Yellow Press at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 25 

CHILDREN 

Tim Cain at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054.  

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Bohemian Berkeley 1890-1925” an exhibition on the colorful artistic community of late 19th and early 20th century Berkeley. Opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. Regular hours Thurs.-Sat. 1-4 p.m. Exhibition runs to Sept. 18. 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

“Kids Collect: Honoring Elders” an exhibition by students from four Oakland schools. Reception from 1 to 3 p.m. Runs to June 6 at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Admission $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

THEATER 

The Traveling Bohemians, “Voice of the People” an ecclectic experimental performing arts group integrating poetry, prose, music and dance at 4 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Fest ival at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Pressing Issues” on contemporary printmaking with Donald Farnsworth, founder of Magnolia Editions at 3:30 p.m., Oakland Museum of Califo rnia, 10th and Oak Sts. Admission is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Ant Farm 1968-1978” Guided Tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Poetry Flash with Karen Kevorkian and Gail Wronsky at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zakir Hussain Masters of Percussion at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Dance-A-Rama Open Studios at the Saw Tooth Complex, Dwight and Eighth from 12:30 to 5 p.m. Performances by Motivity Center, Terry Sendgraf Aerial Dance, Western Sky Studio and Eighth Street Studio. 848-4878. 

UC Jazz Ensembles Spring Concert at 7 p.m. in Pauley Ballroom, in the MLK Student Union Bldg. Tickets are $5-$10.  

KI TKA and Mariana Sadovska, “Enchantment Songs” ancient music and stories from the Ukraine at 7 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 444-0323. www.kitka.org 

Music from Scotland, England and Beyond with David Massengill at 7:30 p.m. Donation of $15. For reservations and location email sally@greenberg.org 

ACME Observatory’s Contemporary Music Series with John Shiurba and Daniel Popsicle at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Los Cenzontles, traditional Mexican music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Redemption 87, All Bets Off, Rely, Love Equals Death, Jealous Again at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Pete Magadini Quartet at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 26 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mahmood Mamdani talks about “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War, and the Roots of Terror” at 12:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Elizabeth Berg reads from her new novel “The Art of Mending” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Student Reading Night presenting works from UCB’s Extension Writing Program at 6:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

UN/Dialogue Through Poetry celebrating the 100th birt hday of Pablo Neruda. Bring Neruda poems to read, plus your own, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

TUESDAY, APRIL 27 

THEATER 

First Stage Children’s Theater “Confession of a Cat Burgler” at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $4 at the door. 845-8542. 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 6:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Steve Olson descri bes “Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World’s Toughest Math Competition” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Brad Olsen introduces “Sacred Places Around the World” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 8 43-3533. 

Jacqueline Kramer introduces “Buddha Mom: The Path of Mindful Mothering” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Mary Rudge and poet contributors to peace and justice anthologies at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave. 549-9093. 

Poets Gone Wild Readings from the historical anthology “California Poetry” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dennis D’Mennance, Brimstone and Kingston 12 perform reggae at 9:30 p.m. a t Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Flora and Fauna” and “Garden of Peace” two new exhibitions open at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Gallery hours are Mon. - Fri. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Victorian Glory in the San Francisco Bay Area” with Paul Duchscherer at 7:30 p.m. at Church by the Side of the Road, 2108 Russell St. Tickets are a vailable from Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Joan Blades introduces MoveOn’s “50 Ways to Love Your Country” at 7:30 p.m. at Diesel Bookstore, 5433 College Ave. in Oakland. 653-9965.  

Daniel Dorman discusses “Dante’s Cure: A Journey Out of Madness” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Susan Halpern describes “The Etiquette of Illness: What to Say When You Can’t Find the Words,” in a benefit for Alta Bates Comprehensive Cancer Center at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Nina Marie Martínez describes an adventure story/soap opera in “!Caramba!” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam Finals for the National Slam Team Competition at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $$5-$7. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Andrew Carriere & Cajun Classics at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost i s $4. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Swing Mine at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Julio Bravo performs salsa music at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Ross Hammond, creative ja zz guitar, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

THURSDAY, APRIL 29 

EXHBITION OPENINGS 

“Still Moments in a World of Flux” photographs by Dafna Kory, Elizabeth Lane, and Jason Malinsky at Wuster Hall Lob by, UC Campus. Reception from 5 to 8 p.m. 

THEATER 

“Scenes of Unseen Prejudice” Presented by Piedmont’s Appreciating Diversity Committee at 7 p.m. at Piedmont’s Veteran’s Hall, 401 Highland Ave., Piedmont. Free. 663-9649. 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jesse Shepard reads from his collection of short stories, “Jubilee King” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Jonathan Rausch talks about “Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Arianna Huffington describes “Fanatic and Fools: A Game Plan for Winning Back America” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-5900. www.codysbooks.com 

“Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness” a discussion of bipolar worlds with Sascha Scatter and Ashley McNamara at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674 A 23rd St, Oakland. Don ation $5. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers April Chartrand and Phillip Nails at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra performs Mendel- 

ssohn, Sho stakovich and Grieg at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$39. 415-392-4400. www.ncco.org 

Quetzal performs Chicano music at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Greg Brown at 8 p.m. at Berkele y Rep’s Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $24.50 in advance, $25.50 at the door. Presented by Freight and Salvage. 548-1761. 

John Schott’s Typical Orchestra and Myles Boisen’s Past Present Future at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Sacred Music Night at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Swoop Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277.?à

Anyone who’s driven past Essex Street on Shattuck Avenue in South Berkeley in recent months has delighted in the stunning underwater scene emerging on the exterior walls of The Octopus’s Garden at 3039 N. Shattuck, Erin Janoff’s tropical fish and aquarium store. 

“I wanted to paint on those walls since I first came to Berkeley over 30 years ago,” says Joe Silva, a burly bear of a man usually seen at work on the walls in his trademark African cone straw hat. “But it was a liquor store back then, and they weren’t all that interested.” 

Three decades later, a friend brought Janoff and Silva together and the painting began. 

Silva always knew he was an artist, and at age 4 he discovered his passion for murals when he took his mother’s nail polish and painted “a mural of rather primitive animals on my mother’s dresser.” He smiles, his gentle brown eyes sparkling at the memory. “I got dressed down for that.” 

Silva was born in 1951 in Providence, Rhode Island, a serendipitous locale for an artistically gifted youth because of the presence of the legendary Rhode Island School of Design. 

At age 8, he won the first of the weekend scholarships at the design school that would help him master the fine points of his chosen media. Then, at age 16, while he was attend ing a summer session at the school, Silva had a momentous and life-changing encounter while he and his best friend were grabbing a bite at Joe’s Sandwich Shop, a local institution on the east side of Providence. 

“Because I was kind of shy around the oppo site sex, [my friend] bet me five dollars I wouldn’t talk to the next woman who walked in the door,” Silva explained. “That was a huge sum of money to me in those days, so when a woman walked in wrapped in a rather tattered fur coat, I tapped her on the s houlder, and when she turned around I said, ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Janis Joplin?’ She said, ‘I walk in here and you tell me I look like me.’” 

Joplin told the stunned young artist she and her band were looking for a pleasant place to kick back and unwind after weeks on the road. 

“We were three blocks from Prospect Terrace, a scenic overlook with nice benches and a great view of downtown Providence, and we hung out and talked. I was surprised to discover she was an artist, too, and she liked to create murals. She invited me out to California, and it sounded like this wonderful creative place.” 

Two years later, Silva hitched his way across the country, arriving in Berkeley in October, 1970, just days after Joplin’s death. He’s lived here ever since. 

“I started doing illustrations right away, and I supplemented my income by doing quick graphics and cartoons for the Berkeley Barb and the Berkeley Tribe,” he said. “I did flyers for rock and roll clubs and posters for the Long Branch an d groups like Asleep at the Wheel.” 

In 1976, Silva met Gary Graham, who taught a class on murals at Oakland’s Laney Community College. “He was more of a carnival painter than a muralist, and I became his teaching assistant,” Silva explained. 

Immersing h imself in the mural form, Silva was painting a whale in a Laney mural project on the wall of a freeway underpass at Claremont Avenue and Hudson Street in Oakland when a car pulled up and two men jumped out and said, “This is what we want on our wall.” The new-found fans were the Mitchell brothers, Jim and Artie, the San Francisco porn and skin show moguls, who were in search of art for the walls of their O’Farrell Theater. 

Silva painted his murals at the O’Farrell in 1978 and 1985 and was in the middle o f yet another work at the O’Farrell in 1989 when Jim Mitchell shot his brother. 

During his last gig at the O’Farrell, Silva was busily painting when David Warren, proprietor of The Giant Camera, walked up bearing an urn and two requests. Inside the conta iner were the ashes of a long-time fan, “unbeknownst to me,” of the artist’s murals. 

A well-known clown who’d worked at the long-vanished Playland of the Pacific, the dead man’s first wish had been to be incorporated into one of Silva’s murals. 

“I short ly set about sifting the finer ashes into my paint mixtures,” Silva said. “I painted him into the vegetation and the anaconda in the lower right section of the ‘Rainforests’ mural.” 

That task complete, he fulfilled the clown’s second wish—scattering more ashes beneath the O’Farrell stage so the clown could spend part of eternity close to his equally beloved strippers. 

In 1979, Silva created “Cross Section,” a slice of California from ocean to desert on the exterior wall of University Press Books at Banc roft Way and Dana Street. 

Over the years the painting has been damaged by car bumpers and leaks in the wall. “I asked if the university would be interested in partially funding a restoration, but I have yet to hear from them,” he said. 

He created anothe r underwater scene for the swimming pool area of the UC medical center, and a mural depicting prehistoric whales for the Steinhardt Aquarium at the San Francisco Academy of Sciences—recently claimed by the wrecking ball as part of a major renovation. 

Oth er murals are gone, too—vanished at the whims of new owners. 

“I have a very detached philosophy about public art,” he said. “I put it out for people to see, and because the energies change from day-to-day, you have to accept that that’s part of what goes along with creating public art. I have a friend who’s very attached to his public art and almost goes crazy when some of his work disappears. But that’s just part and parcel of doing public art. The best approach I find is when I complete a mural, I make a photographic record.” 

On a smaller scale, Silva has created countless illustrations, many of marine mammals, for academic textbooks. He’s also worked as a naturalist at the Desert Tortoise Natural Area in the Mojave Desert. 

“Whenever I can, I like to get out and spend time in the desert or on the ocean,” he said. “I also like chase snakes to photograph them because I like to work them into my paintings. I also have this fascination for crocodilians, which has taken me to Northern Australia several times.” 

That would explain the presence of one of the toothsome critters on Shattuck Avenue. “I’ve traveled extensively through the South Pacific, and I’ve spent time in Vanuatu, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.” 

What’s next? 

“Well, I’ve been asked to consult with Epic Arts. One of their projects is Artify Ashby, and they want to fill every available space around Ashby with murals.” 

Then he smiles again. “Since I started on this mural, about half the people in the neighborhood have asked me about doing murals on their homes. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”?n

It wasn’t easy, but the Daily Planet managed to get an advance look at the Planning Commission’s agenda and packet for Wednesday. Among the items we noticed was a proposal from the planning director to raise fees on most planning and zoning permits by 10 percent “to cover higher cost-of-living, equity and fringe benefit rates.” Also, he wants to place a 15 percent surcharge on discretionary applications to pay for “the cost to maintain the General Plan and the Zoning Ordinance.”  

Now, the ordinary Berkeley citizen, ever skeptical of corporate influence on public policy, might be pleased by this at first glance. Finally, she might say, the nasty developers are being forced to pay their own way. But just a minute. It’s not quite that simple. In the first place, the fee hikes apply to everyone, not just the big guys. Want to rebuild a deck? That’s going to cost you a bit more, in order to fund the latest round of staff pay increases. Never mind that, with the current state fiscal crisis, some staffers in, for example, Santa Cruz, have agreed to decreases to help their city’s bottom line. 

And what about the new fees which are supposed to pay for “maintaining” the General Plan and Zoning Ordinances? Exactly what do homeowners’ taxes go for, if not for enforcing these laws? Well, in fact, the current controversy about the University Avenue Strategic Plan is about just that— the city’s had eight years to update the Zoning Ordinance to match the plan, and it still hasn’t happened. And might never happen. The staff’s progress report on that boondoggle didn’t make it into this week’s Planning Commission packet, even though it’s on Wednesday’s agenda. It’s one of those infamous TBD documents—To Be Delivered to the Commissioners Whenever, certainly too late for Plan Berkeley to distribute it to the public at large. The timing can’t help but reinforce public suspicion that the promised zoning revisions will turn out to be yet another attempt to evade the citizen-approved plan on behalf of developers.  

But won’t the new fees at least save taxpayers money by dinging developers? The proposal notes that “the purpose of increasing and adding new fees is to recover the cost of providing services as much as possible, thereby minimizing the need for General Fund support.” Surely that’s A Good Thing. The director speaks optimistically about a goal of “full recovery”—a planning department completely funded by pay-as-you-go levies on projects. But this strategy contains a hidden built-in incentive toward increased development. No projects? No budget, no staff increases, maybe even layoffs. In the eyes of staffers, Not A Good Thing.  

Call us idealists, but we think the staff should be paid from the General Fund to enforce plans and zoning laws. It’s just a cleaner deal that way. One of the main citizen complaints is that land use plans are honored more often in the breach than in the observance. The proposed Seagate building (generator of many lucrative fees for the Planning Department even under the existing schedule) is believed by many to violate Downtown Plan guidelines, and the Big Ugly Boxes growing on University Avenue flagrantly contravene the University Avenue Plan .  

It’s also staff’s legal contention that Berkeley as a charter city can violate its own land use plans if it wants to, and that might unfortunately be true. If it’s not, there are always plan amendments, which a majority of the City Council can approve. They will probably be tempted to amend the West Berkeley Plan on behalf of the Berkeley Bowl’s proposed megastore. 

Citizens are not now getting what they’re already paying for, given the current dismal level of fealty to hard-fought adopted land use plans. They might eventually be tempted to look for other remedies.  

A Planet correspondent forwarded a column by the Miami Herald’s redoubtable foe of exploitative development, columnist (and satiric mystery author) Carl Hiassen. A new statewide ballot initiative, the Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment, would give citizens the final vote on projects requiring changes to local comprehensive land-use plans. In Hiassen’s pungent prose: “such a radical notion-- giving voters a direct say over projects that affect their lives -- is viewed as pure poison by the special interests that hold power.” He describes Florida’s so-called Growth Management Act as “a polite charade in which the public’s input is sought, acknowledged, then often ignored.” Sound familiar?  

Now, Berkeley is not exactly Florida, where development controversies have traditionally been so lurid they’ve inspired two great crime novelists, Hiassen and John McDonald. But Hiassen’s take on how citizens get steamrollered by the growth professionals rings true in many details. His conclusion, which I can’t improve on, is this: 

“In theory, of course, we shouldn’t have to go out and vote on every major development. In theory, the people we elect to office should be able to make those decisions competently and free of secret influence. 

“In theory, the interests and welfare of a neighborhood should carry just as much weight as those of... any…big powerful company. 

“Maybe things really work that way somewhere in the universe, but not here in Florida. 

“Not in real life.” 

And not always in Berkeley, either. 

—Becky O’Malley›

Looking across the bay from Berkeley to the drama around District Attorney Kamala Harris’s decision not to seek the death penalty for the young tough accused of killing an undercover San Francisco police officer, I am struck by how much times have changed, and at the same time how much things remain the same. A central argument of the early suffragists was that when women had the vote and were elected to public office their decisions would be more humane and thoughtful. From my perspective, Kamala Harris seems to embody that image of the woman as leader: humane, because she recognizes that nothing would be gained by executing a young person who seems to have acted without premeditation, using a weapon he should never have been able to buy, against a challenger that he may not even have known was a police officer; thoughtful, because seeking the death penalty would be an expensive and pointless symbolic gesture, since San Francisco (as well as Alameda County) juries almost never vote for death sentences.  

But then I think about Diane Feinstein: always willing to rattle sabers, as bloodthirsty as any man when it comes to crime and punishment. And about the new San Francisco police chief, Heather Fong, just one of the boys in blue, calling for death to the cop killer. Also, I remember that Kamala Harris is able to take the humane perspective only because she’s standing on the shoulders of one of the Hallinans, a group of boys-will-be-boys so generally rowdy that I can never remember which one goes with which name, who made opposing the death penalty look macho enough that the lady-like Ms. Harris could get elected on an anti-death platform.  

So much for gender stereotypes. The case against the death penalty is better made not on humane grounds, or on the basis of short-term pragmatism, but statistically, looking at what it actually accomplishes, or doesn’t. All of the relevant data are long since in, and can be found on the deathpenalty.org web page. Here are just a few of the points made there: 

Execution doesn’t deter: “Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime. The respected Thorsten Sellin studies of the United States in 1962, 1967 and 1980 concluded that the death penalty was not a deterrent.” 

Innocent people have been executed: “Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 113 men and women have been released from Death Row....some only minutes away from execution.” 

The death penalty is more expensive: “A 1993 California study argues that each death penalty case costs at least $1.25 million more than a regular murder case and a sentence of life without possibility of parole.” 

Life without parole protects the public: “Only two people sentenced to life without parole have been released since the state of California provided for this option in 1977, and this occurred because they were able to prove their innocence.” 

All of this information should be used by Harris to bolster her resolve, just in case she’s tempted to cave in to the pressure she’s facing. Hanging tough has been more traditionally associated with conventional males, but in fact it’s a human virtue which has been demonstrated historically by both men and women.  

One thing we Berkeley people have got to love about San Francisco is that the political process there seems increasingly to produce two good opposing candidates for every office. Yes, most of our friends probably voted for Gonzalez, but even Newcomb has been doing pretty well so far. (Angela Alioto, bless her heart, seems to have figured this out when she endorsed him.) And certainly, Greater Berkeley admires the Hallinans (three of them are now living here) but Harris has turned out to be no slouch either. San Francisco should be proud of the whole bunch. 

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