After three months of relatively smooth sailing, the UC Hotel Task Force struck a reef Wednesday night after Chairperson Rob Wrenn presented the 25-member panel’s final report to the full Planning Commission. With the backing of Commission Chairperson Harry Pollack, Planning Commissioner Jerome Wiggins, who is African-American, blasted the task force as a “hand-picked, non-diverse group of white people” and said that he “couldn’t care less” if it continued. -more-

Anwar Zadran is used to not seeing his wife and four children. When he leaves for work, they are still asleep. Often when he gets home, they are already in bed. That’s because Zadran has to spend 10-16 hours a day driving a Berkeley cab in order to make enough money to support his family. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of a two-part series on taxation issues between the City of Berkeley and the University of California. In the May 11 edition, we compared the Berkeley/UC tax relationship with similar relationships in other university cities around the country. -more-

FRIDAY, MAY 14 -more-

At a time when city government officials are scrambling around for money to close a continuing budget deficit, Berkeley City Council’s resident research scientist—Councilmember Gordon Wozniak—says he has looked into the budgetary returns on the city’s 23 parking enforcement officers and come to a conclusion: spend more time on meter enforcement and less time patrolling unmetered zones. -more-

UC Berkeley is growing and so is the litany of complaints from neighbors demanding the university cease and desist its expansion. -more-

Forty percent of Alameda County’s chronically homeless spend their nights in Berkeley, according to detailed findings released Thursday from a county-wide homeless report. -more-

With less than a month left to decide how to shrink new buildings on University Avenue, city staff presented a highly detailed draft zoning overlay to the Berkeley Planning Commission Wednesday night that disappointed some commissioners and residents and left others scratching their heads. -more-

Reddy Family Restaurant Loses Liquor License -more-

When the five-member Berkeley City Council Subcommittee on the New Animal Shelter and the Citizens Humane Commission sat down at their joint meeting Wednesday afternoon with the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society to discuss the future of animal care in the city, nobody expected a catfight. They got one anyhow. -more-

Heisters Flash Piece, Grab Cash -more-

According to retired Berkeley music teacher Jesse Anthony, “Music is the language that has the most possibilities of communication. There is no language that communicates better than music. That language, it goes deeper that what we can create in word, it gets to the heart and soul of people, it communicates feelings on that level. One soul can talk to another soul with music.” -more-

After nearly two hours of pleas and discussion, the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission Monday night denied a request to bestow “structure of merit” status on the Amos Cottage, built the year Berkeley became a city. -more-

For a city whose fate and future is so bound up in violence, Oakland is remarkably ignorant of the nature of that beast. Oh, the street people hanging out in the ‘80s and ‘90s along International pretty much know what to do when someone is stepping around the corner to pop their trunk, and scatter well ahead of time. That is why you rarely hear of street people getting hit by stray bullets. The young folks, too, tend to know in advance when things are about to turn ugly, and why. But Oakland—official, acknowledged Oakland, anyhow—does not pay much attention to the opinions of our young people. And as for the street people, well, we do not pay any attention to them, at all. -more-

PROPOSED BUDGET -more-

We should be ashamed that, in a country of unmatched wealth and prosperity, we simply allow people to suffer and die if they don’t have the money to pay for our array of medical technologies and services. We should be ashamed that, with everything we have to offer, people who work hard to support their families are frequently left bankrupt or untreated when they or their children get sick or injured. Why? Because they can’t afford health insurance. -more-

For many Berkeley voters, Friday’s special Berkeley Housing Authority afternoon meeting was unexpected. The sparse turnout may have been due to several factors. Matthew Artz’s article “HUD Report Finds big Problems with City’s Section 8 Program” (Daily Planet, May 11-13) account is well done, but the complex structure of subsidized housing everywhere and in Berkeley in particular inevitably leaves a few necessary clarifications. -more-

Accuracy has not proved to be the Bush administration’s strong point, as journalists ought to have discovered long before they did. Take the simple matter of Condoleezza Rice’s curriculum vitae. After she was named as National Security Adviser, I decided to read some of her work, to see how her mind worked. For a list of her publications, I called her office in the White House, and was told they didn’t have her CV on file. I then called Stanford University’s Political Science Department, which kindly faxed it to me. -more-

IRAQ CONTRACTORS -more-

I started to cry when I saw the pictures of the the flag draped coffins -more-

The commentary piece written by Neighbors for Fire Safety (“Fire Station Foes Ignore History, Wildfire Fighting Reality,” Daily Planet, May 7-10) is a dangerously misleading attempt to disguise their true goal of using taxpayers’ bond money to fund a project to serve their neighborhood rather than protect the entire city from the next wildfire. Time after time proponents of this project said at public hearings that they wanted this station as close to them as possible in case of a house fire or medical emergency. Opponents of the plan were trying to get the city to build a real wildland station on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, one that would protect the entire city, not just Fire District 7. Berkeley citizens should fully realize and agree that “opposition” and “dissent” are NOT anti-civic. Indeed, the right to dissent and be fairly heard is one of the foundations of our country’s democracy, even though such activity is being misrepresented nationally as well as locally. -more-

The recent letter from Neighbors for Fire Safety (“Fire Station Foes Ignore History, Wildfire Fighting Reality,” Daily Planet, May 7-10) contains numerous factual omissions and inaccuracies, and moreover obscures the role this group has played in delaying and inflating the costs of the Hills fire station project. The facts of the matters are as follows: -more-

The Berkeley Opera is on a roll. After the sensational mini-Ring produced earlier this season, they are now presenting Mark Streshinsky’s witty and piquant production of Acis and Galatea. This work by George Frideric Handel is a “pastoral masque.” It has been described variously as a “little opera,” not quite an oratorio, and an “entertainment.” Nevertheless, it is often performed as a fully staged two act opera, and has been in the repertory for the last two centuries. The text was adapted by John Gay, Alexander Pope, and John Hughes from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. -more-

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968 led to riots in more than 100 major U.S. cities, cities that were already far from complacent and quiet. Maya Angelou says of the period: “The cry of ‘burn, baby, burn’ was loud in the land.” -more-

FRIDAY, MAY 14 -more-

The plight of California’s cash-strapped cities and counties would have delighted the man many say is most responsible for the increasingly serious fiscal crises confronting local and regional governments. -more-

Suddenly it hits you. You’ve had one of those weeks. You need a vacation. Unfortunately, vacation time and resources are not available. Is there somewhere you can go? Somewhere you can be as active or passive as you want within an environment that gives you an opportunity to relax, reflect—catch your breath? -more-

Cartoon by Justin DeFreitas° -more-

The Berkeley Housing Authority’s Section 8 program is mismanaged, poorly staffed, and on the brink of insolvency, according to a sweeping independent study delivered to BHA board members Friday. -more-

What promises to be the biggest local tax on the November ballot is looking like it will be a little less costly to Berkeley taxpayers. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series. Part two will appear in the May 14 edition. -more-

According to friends and family, Berkeley’s Wendell Ralph Lipscomb was a renaissance man in the true sense of the word. A former instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen, a physician, musician, and teacher, those who knew him best said he was good at whatever he did. -more-

TUESDAY, MAY 11 -more-

Planners To Get Hotel Task Force Report -more-

Berkeley Arts Magnet Elementary School is learning that despite a new vaccine that promises to one day vanquish the disease from the face of the earth, the chicken pox can still pack a wallop. -more-

The Berkeley School Board is asking the City Council to step up to the plate and dig up a Berkeley street so that the district can build a new home for the Berkeley High baseball team. -more-

Four Berkeley engine companies battled a blaze fanned by 35-mile-an-hour winds atop Grizzly Peak after Oakland firefighters issued a call for mutual assistance at 10 minutes after midnight Monday morning. -more-

My mother thinks that everyone in California runs around naked. It’s one of her theories left over from the ‘60s, when Life Magazine was delivered weekly to our house in New Jersey. In each issue were big photographs of pain and tragedy: train wrecks, car crashes, runaway children, missile crisis, racial strife and a war somewhere across the Pacific. In-between these articles were snippets of life in California: tan surfer girls shopping in bikinis at the grocery store; movie stars in group therapy; common housewives primal screaming; nude people on the Big Sur coast, sitting in hot tubs discussing their feelings; naked folks in communes having sex with one another; hairy kids in the desert doing god knows what without their clothes on. That’s how mother got the idea that everyone in California was naked, including her daughter: Life Magazine told her so. -more-

STRANGE RINGING -more-

A friend of mine just put a new bumper sticker on her car. It says “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!” When I first saw it, I quipped, “Or, if you are outraged, stop paying attention!” -more-

As our city struggles with budget shortfalls, one fat sacred cow continues to gorge itself at the public trough. The mayor and the City Council willfully ignore it, tip-toeing around this bloated bovine for fear of awakening a stampede of crushing political correctness. -more-

I am writing in response to the recent letter to the editor in your newspaper (Daily Planet, May 4-6) entitled “Warsaw Ghetto” by Jane Stillwater. I would like to commend her on her particularly clear-sighted comparison between the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza and the state of the Jews in Warsaw prior to the Second World War. She is scathingly accurate in writing that the “independent” Gaza that Ariel Sharon would create would be “an exact re-creation of the spirit and mood of the ghetto at Warsaw—no more, no less,” and that “being an Arab these days is chillingly similar to being a Jew in 1939,” with “the only difference” that she can see being the source of the financing of such genocide. -more-

She steps out onto the platform, looking about 16—rail thin and pale—flashes a shy smile, and sits down at the piano. Her long, straight red hair cascades over her shoulders as she focuses, placing her hands on the keys, then begins some hesitant modal runs that become buoyant, lively evocations of Irish dance, then—CRASH!—her right forearm smashes down across the treble keys—CRASH!—her left forearm across the bass, right, left, right, relentlessly, and all illusions of timidity and frailty explode into bursts of joy. -more-

TUESDAY, MAY 11 -more-

I never thought I’d find myself writing in defense of eucalyptus, but here I am. Go ahead, quote me: Eucalyptus is not the devil. -more-

I never thought I’d find myself writing in defense of eucalyptus, but here I am. Go ahead, quote me: Eucalyptus is not the devil. -more-

Cartoon by Justin DeFreitas* -more-

Over the past three months we have received and printed many letters from correspondents with a variety of points of view on the Israel-Palestine situation. We’ve received letters from people who describe themselves as Jewish, both by heritage and by rel igion, criticizing the actions of the government of Israel. We’ve gotten letters from people describing themselves as having such backgrounds which defended the government of Israel. We’ve had letters from people who make no reference to their religious b ackground which were both pro and con the Israeli government. We’ve printed letters attacking the actions of the Palestinian insurgents, and letters defending them. -more-

Sunday afternoon was lovely, as Berkeley afternoons in the spring often are, and like another 200 or so lovely Berkeley residents we attended a lovely garden party at a lovely home in one of Berkeley’s loveliest (and most expensive) neighborhoods. The purpose of the event was to raise money for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, and since all of us in Berkeley are pretty smart and know that we’re really at the water’s edge this time, we were all on our very best behavior. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who’s been wintering in Berkeley, gave a stirring speech, complete with convincing pragmatic answers to a few challenging questions about Kerry’s somewhat pallid campaign to date. A pitch was made, with the comment that Marin Republicans has already raised, was it $80k, for Kerry at one party, and couldn’t Berkeley Democrats do as well? Eyeballing the crowd, with some knowledge of the net worth of some attendees from Piedmont, the goal seemed possible. Checks and credit cards were accepted. Everyone went home smiling: a lovely event. -more-