Berkeley firefighters battled a two-alarm fire in a vacant West Berkeley office building after the blaze was first reported at 4:25 a.m. Tuesday. 

When the last flames were extinguished 12 hours later, the building at 2332 Fourth St. lay in ruins, brought down by construction equipment after the building proved too dangerous for firefighters to enter, said Deputy Fire Chief David Orth. 

The building had stood vacant since a May 21, 2000 blaze that destroyed another building on the same lot as well as a building next door and damaged the structure that was destroyed Tuesday. 

The building had once housed the labs and offices of a computer manufacturer, and the owner had been seeking city permission to demolish the structure, Orth said. 

“The original fire four years ago began in a building used as a ‘burn-in’ room for testing computer parts. A heater started the fire which took out the testing building and spread into two nearby buildings,” Orth said. 

The other severely damaged structure, the Jetco building at 2334 Fourth St., remains a roofless gutted shell to this day. 

At the height of Tuesday’s blaze, one-fourth of the structure was heavily damaged and fire had spread throughout the buildings. 

“We poured in water from the outside, but because the property was at the end of the water lines, we didn’t have enough,” Orth said. 

“Initially, firefighters had to use ladders to enter the second floor windows and others cut in through the roof to fight the hot spots, but it so unsafe and we didn’t want to risk the lives of our firefighters going in to fight the hot spots,” Orth said. 

“The stairway had burned out and a penthouse on the roof had already partially collapsed into the structure, so we pulled the firefighters out and kept pouring water in from the outside.” 

With flames burning inside the walls at the core of the building, a call was made to the property owner with the request that he approve demolition of the burning area. 

“He rented an excavator and demolished about a quarter of the building and we ordered the rest torn down because it constituted an attractive nuisance,” Orth said. 

Even then, with the combined efforts of the crews of five engines and two trucks, the flames weren’t finally extinguished until after 4 p.m. 

“The main problem was the water supply,” Orth said. “It was a real issue for us.” 

Orth estimated cost of replacing the structure at $2.5 million, “although I don’t believe the property was insured,” he said. 

The deputy chief said the most probable cause of the fire was the band of homeless people who had squatted in the building. 

“There were several homeless people on scene when we arrived, and there was evidence of their presence throughout the building. The way the fire spread indicates that they were the cause,” Orth said. 

The homeless denizens had entered the property through a hole cut into the surrounding chain link face, he said. 

With that building gone, only the hulk next door remains from the 2000 fire. 

“The Jetco building has been a continuing project for the city’s problem properties crew. The owner’s been repeatedly cited and he’s accrued a substantial amount of fines, but nothing’s been done,” Orth said.  

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If good fences make good neighbors, Dan McLoughlin doesn’t think the folks who are moving next door look too promising.  

When the Berkeley resident returned to his home on Spruce Street from a morning run Wednesday he found construction workers, hired by his new neighbors, had sawed off and hauled away his vine and flower-covered wooden fence that divided the two properties and replaced it with about 100 feet of chain link construction. 

“I asked the construction crew, ‘Who told you to do this?’” McLoughlin said. “‘They said ‘Call [the owner’s] lawyers.’” 

Sounds like a minor neighborhood dispute?  

Not when the new neighbor happens to be Temple Beth El, which fought stiff local opposition to build their new home beside McLoughlin’s, and when the broken fence comes one day after McLoughlin filed suit against the congregation and its contractor, BBI Construction, seeking to halt construction on a portion of the new $8 million, 33,000-square-foot synagogue. 

“It seems like my lawsuit caused this vandalism,” McLoughlin said. According to a property survey he commissioned, the fence sat partly on both properties. 

Until recently McLoughlin had gotten on well with Beth El. In the summer of 2001 when neighbors, environmentalists and preservationists were in the midst of a three-year battle with the synagogue over its development plans, McLoughlin remained on the sidelines. He had withdrawn his opposition to the project in March of that year as part of an agreement with Beth El regulating how far it could build from his property line. 

The agreement, signed by both parties, specified that the new building would be set back 20 feet from McLoughlin’s property line. The setback space would be intended as “a landscaped area for quiet, passive uses by Beth El,” and Beth El would have to consult with McLoughlin over landscaping along the boundary, according to the agreement. 

But within months after the congregation broke ground in May 2003, McLoughlin said he realized the synagogue being built wasn’t the one that was promised. 

His complaint, filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court, claims that Beth El is building a concrete staircase 10 feet from his property line. Next to it will sit an air venting system, also already under construction, and just four feet from the dividing line the synagogue is planning to build a concrete pathway from the sanctuary to Spruce Street. 

In his complaint, McLoughlin claimed he had to spend $4,398 on a lawyer and architect to disprove a claim by Beth El member and Planning Commission Chair Harry Pollack that the city required the stairs, venting system and walkway to be located within the setback area so the congregation couldn’t legally comply with the agreement. 

Pollack said he wouldn’t comment on the matter during the Jewish New Year holiday, which began Wednesday at sundown and ends Friday at sundown. 

“All I wanted was a quite area,” McLoughlin said. “That’s what I thought I had, but that’s not what they’ve done.” 

Not only has Beth El violated its agreement, he said, but the construction workers, by removing mature trees at the site of the new synagogue, have severed electrical lines that powered part of his house, damaged his gutter and roof and broken his sewer line. 

“We have to flush the toilet about two or three times now,” he said. 

McLoughlin insists he tried to work with Beth El to lessen the impact of the new construction and get them to pay for damages, but congregation leaders rebuffed him.  

The complaint also charged that congregation leaders assured him that the concrete stairway and walkway would only be for emergency access and that the venting system wouldn’t be audible from McLoughlin’s property, but they refused to put it in writing. 

“If they had done that I wouldn’t have sued them,” McLoughlin said. “But I’m not going to let them trample all over me and lie to me. I think if the congregation knew how these guys are acting they’d be quite appalled.” 

The suit asks for a declaration that Beth El breached its contract, a preliminary and permanent injunction preventing the synagogue from construction in set back area and trespassing in his property and an unspecified amount of compensation for damages.  

McLoughlin said he would file a separate motion asking a judge to halt work on the setback area on Monday when the Jewish New Year had ended.  

Beth El attorney Jonathan O’Donnell said “Temple Beth El has complied with its agreement,” but added that he had just received the complaint wasn’t prepared to address McLoughlin’s accusations. 

Pollack was a leading player in the 600-member congregation’s three-year struggle to beat back opposition to their move from their current home at the corner of Arch and Vine streets to the new site at 1301 Oxford St. The address is landmarked and was once home to the Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne Mansion, which burned down in 1985 and once served as a working farm for free slaves before Berkeley was incorporated as a city.  

Opponents charged the synagogue and its proposed 32-space parking lot resting over a creek bed would increase traffic in a residential neighborhood and eliminate any hope on unearthing that section of Codornices Creek. An eleventh-hour settlement that moved the parking lot and scaled down the synagogue spared the City Council from ruling on the project. 

Alan Gould, a neighbor and leader of opposition to the project, said in addition to McLoughlin’s issues, neighbors have complained that construction crews have started before 8 a.m. and that they park their trucks and keep heavy equipment on top of the creek bed, which he said could damage culverts directing the flow of the creek. 

“Our compromise didn’t say much about what they could do during construction,” he said. “Much to our chagrin they’re pretty much running roughshod over the creek corridor.” 

Health care patient advocates have filed two class action lawsuits in Bay Area state courts against hospital conglomerate Sutter Health, asking the court to halt what they call the corporation’s “price-gouging” of uninsured patients and return “unfair” profits back to the public. 

The lawsuits were announced this week at a sidewalk press conference by a small group of attorneys, health advocates, and patients held in front of Summit Hospital in Oakland. The press conference was videotaped by two plainclothes Summit security guards standing across the street. The guards said they had “no comment” when asked why they were videotaping the press conference. 

Sutter Health is a not-for-profit health care system which serves as the umbrella organization for 26 hospitals in Northern California—including the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland and Berkeley—and one hospital in Hawaii. The network also has a number of affiliated clinics, health care organizations, and physician medical foundations. 

Bill Gleason, a spokesperson for Sutter Health in Sacramento, said that Sutter “believes the complaints are baseless and misdirected. Practices of our hospitals around charity care charges and collections have always been consistent with the law and regulations.” Sutter Health has not yet filed answers to either lawsuit. 

At the press conference, Bill Sokol, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the San Francisco-filed lawsuit, charged Sutter Health with participating in a “rapacious rip-off” and said the corporation “made $460 million in profit last year while calling itself a ‘non-profit.’” Sokol said Sutter’s profits came, in part, from $61 million in state and federal tax breaks. 

Among other things, the two lawsuits claim that Sutter “pursues aggressive collection techniques that often result in lawsuits, judgments, garnishments and bankruptcies against uninsured patients.” 

One of the lawsuits lists Nathaniel Pollack, an Albany resident and a former uninsured Alta Bates Summit patient, as a named plaintiff. The lawsuit claims that for a 10-day stay at Alta Bates Summit in 2003 for kidney failure, Pollack was charged close to $41,000 for treatment “largely consisting of...intravenous fluids to flush out his kidney.” 

Plaintiffs in the San Francisco lawsuit are represented by the Goldstein, Demchak, Baller firm and the Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld firm, both of Oakland, while plaintiffs in the Oakland lawsuit are represented by the Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann firm and Jenkins & Mulligan, both of San Francisco. 

Jessica Rothhaar, representing Health Access California, a statewide 501(c)(3) coaliton of more than 200 organizations advocating “quality, affordable health care for all Californians,” said that Sutter is guilty of the “outrageous practice of overcharging uninsured patients.” She said that the uninsured at Sutter hospitals are charged “three to 10 times what the privately-insured or patients in government-sponsored programs have to pay.”  

As one part of the overpayment charge, Sokol’s law firm produced what they said was a copy of a 2002 uninsured patient bill from California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco—also owned by Sutter Health—which shows three separate $8.73 charges for single 81 mg aspirin tablets. 

Christine McMurry, Media Relations Manager at California Pacific Medical Center, said she could not confirm the accuracy of the bill. But McMurry said she did not find such a charge for aspirin “unusual.” 

“It’s easy to be shocked at a price like that, and I can understand why someone might complain,” she said. “But hospital bills do not merely reflect the actual unit price of an item; they also reflect other costs billed in that are not reflected in other parts of the bill. You won’t see a charge on a patient bill for four nurses at $60 an hour, for example, but those charges—and other operating costs for such things as technicians and janitors—are added to item charges. That’s a standard hospital billing practice, not just for our hospital.” 

Sutter spokesperson Gleason said that while he had not yet studied the two lawsuit complaints in detail, “they clearly contain information provided by SEIU Local 250, a labor union that has been waging a campaign against Sutter Health for a decade. Much of the information that SEIU has developed is wrong.” 

Gleason refuted the excess profits charge, noting that as a not-for-profit organization, Sutter Health “invests any income above expenses into new programs, new services, new facilities, and we have quite an outstanding track record in that regard.” 

He said that while Sutter hospitals “have always offered charity care to people who couldn’t afford to pay,” those charity care policies changed this year with what he called a clarification of Medicare regulations. 

“Until this year,” he said, “hospitals around the country have interpreted Medicare regulations as prohibiting them from offering discounts to patients without insurance.” He called the Medicare clarification “as a green light for hospitals to begin offering discounted pricing for people without insurance. Our hospitals were among the first to step up and begin offering discounts.” 

Gleason said that under the new charity-care guidelines, uninsured patients at 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines or less ($37,700 for a family of four) “receive a full write-off for our services; they get free care,” while patients between 200 and 400 percent of the federal poverty guidelines (up to $75,400 for a family of four) “are entitled to a substantial discount,” paying the equivalent of what the Sutter hospitals receive from Medicare for any given service plus 20 percent.  

At the Summit Hospital press conference, Rothhaar of Health Access said that consumers would have to “wait and see” if Sutter Health care actually implemented those new charity care discount policies. She added that the two Bay Area lawsuits were part of a two-pronged effort aimed at lowering uninsured patient costs. 

The second prong is in the form of state legislation sponsored by State Senator Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento). SB 379, which has passed both houses of the legislature and is sitting on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk awaiting signature or possible veto, would require acute care hospitals in the state to develop charity care and reduced payment policies for patients unable to pay their bills. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said that the governor had not yet taken a position on the bill. The governor has until the end of September to take action. 

Sutter spokesperson Gleason said that Sutter Health has not taken a position on the Ortiz bill. “It’s somewhat of a moot point” for Sutter Health, he said, “because we have stepped up and addressed the issues that are contained in that legislation. Our charity care is probably fairly consistent with what is contained in the bill.” 

Gleason said the only substantial difference he knew about between Ortiz’ bill and the Sutter hospitals’ charity care policies was that the bill included charity discounts at “straight Medicare reimbursement rates,” while Sutter hospitals added 20 percent to that cost in their charity patient bills.

The ninth-annual How Berkeley Can You Be? Parade and Festival will run in conjunction with the city’s first Car Free Day on Sunday. 

The parade, scheduled from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., will begin at University Avenue and Sacramento Street and wind through downtown to Civic Center Park. The festival, which runs from 12:30 p.m. until 5 p.m. in the park, will have live music, dancing, food booths and children’s activities. 

The parade’s theme this year is “Loco-motion” and will feature alternative ways to get around other than cars, including roller-skates, solar-powered skateboards, electric go-carts and a fuel cell bus. 

To accommodate the parade and encourage people to go “car free” for the day, the festival will include expanded street closures downtown (see map). 

Karen Hester, co-coordinator, said the How Berkeley Can You Be? Festival, will showcase the best of the city as well as showing its sense of humor. 

“It’s going to be bigger and wackier and more irreverent than ever,” she said. “It’s to celebrate the creativity and diversity of Berkeley and really it’s a chance to laugh at ourselves a little.” 

International Car Free Day, which began in 1997 in La Rochelle, France, now includes about 1,500 towns in 40 countries, according to the Berkeley’s event organizers. The day was designed to encourage people to think about transportation options. 

“There’s a reason why people make fun of Berkeley,” Hester said. “It’s because the city does things that people respond to and end up adopting, like curb side recycling, we were the first to do that. And now with Car Free Day, I’m sure it will raise eyebrows and provoke laughs, but 10 years from now it will be a Bay Area phenomena.” 

But not all cars will be unwelcome at the parade. As always, the tail end of the parade will feature a contingent of art cars from the Bay Area Art Car Fest, which traditionally wraps up its annual three-day event with the Berkeley parade, said Justin Katz, one of the organizers of the Berkeley festival. 

“The parade has a long history of working with the Art Car Fest as well as we wanted to work with city of Berkeley this year to promote Car Free Day,” Katz said. “At first it may seem irreconcilable, but another way to look at it is as promoting various forms of alternative vehicles. I like to say that I hope one day the only cars will be art.” 

In the parade Katz will be driving his own art car—a 29-foot-wide, nine-foot-long bat car, with wings powered by bicycle wheels—towing a vegetable oil generator which will be powering a funk band playing on top of an attached float.@

A proposal to transfer control of the El Cerrito High School educational radio station to a private non-profit has sent shockwaves through the West Contra Costa School District. 

The proposal, drafted by Paul Ehara, who is responsible for the district’s public relations, along with a district legal counsel, would turn over managerial control of the station, KECG 88.1 FM and 97.7 FM, to MORE Public Radio, an Oakland-based non-profit that provides blues, jazz and gospel programming for broadcast and Intern et radio stations. 

“It was a shock that we had not had more of a discussion around this issue until now,” said Glen Price, a school board member. 

It also raised concern among parents and the El Cerrito High School principal Vince Rhea, who said he was n ever informed about the proposed agreement. 

The proposal was drafted, according to Ehara, because Vince Kilmartin, the district’s associate superintendent of the operations division, wanted to find an organization to sponsor the radio station as a way to keep it alive. 

“The district needed to have some kind of an agreement with another organization that would be willing to operate the station at no cost to the district, and MPR was a good candidate,” Ehara said. 

They turned to MPR because the district already had an arrangement where MPR provided weekend and evening programming to fill the gaps when the school wasn’t using the station. On July 1 MPR assumed interim management responsibilities until an official agreement is reached. 

The station’s $68,3 92 budget was cut by the district in an effort to try and close a $16.5 million district-wide gap last year. Under the agreement MPR will operate the station for free, but the school will continue to own the station and therefore be able to maintain the m ain FCC license. 

In return, MPR will be allowed to raise money by seeking commercial sponsors to underwrite the programming they air. They will also receive the secondary FCC license for the station’s other dial spot at 97.7 FM, which is a translator sta tion that rebroadcasts 88.1, for a period of seven years. 

This will help MPR cover funding for the station, according to Prentice Woods, the CEO of MPR, because certain grants require the applicant to hold an FCC license. 

This is the first time MPR will be responsible for managing a station. Woods said the organization usually only provides programming to other stations. It also runs radio training classes for the youth in the Bay Area out of its Oakland office. 

Full control of the station means MPR wi ll manage the day to day operations of the “offices, studios, station transmission, and equipment, and the personnel, business, financial and legal affairs as they relate to the [lease management agreement].” 

MPR will also control the programming schedul e. 

Phillip Morgan, the current radio programming teacher who has run the station for the El Cerrito High School since it started back in the early nineties, said the deal gives too much power to MPR and threatens the school’s ability to program the stati on as it wishes. He also questioned the legality of the FCC license transfer. 

The school district now has to approach MPR to ask for programming time. Kids are only guaranteed programming time from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. At a station th e school owns, said Morgan, kids should not have to ask for airtime. 

Woods, from MPR, said the school’s airtime needs will trump MPR’s programming schedule, but that promise does not appear in the draft agreement. 

The FCC could not be reached for commen t and a lawyer who represents the school and KECG said he did not have enough information to comment about whether the district could transfer the FCC license for 97.7 FM to MPR. 

In the meantime, students who ran programs outside the allotted 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. spot are still waiting to see if they get their shows back. Students Daniel Tureck and Kayvahn Steck-Bayat, who ran “The Dose,” which played hip-hop from around the world during what they referred to as the homework spot, or 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, are among them. 

“This is where I discovered what I want to do,” said Tureck, who had an internship with Youth Radio in Berkeley last year and is pursuing an internship with 92.7 FM, a Bay Area hip-hop station.  

Tureck said he does not wa nt to be in the position of having to ask for his show back. Instead, he said the slot should be available, as it was when the school ran the station. He plans to advertise the next school board meeting during the school’s airtime because he wants to enco urage students to turn out to protest the proposed agreement. 

With a taxpayer revolt mounting, Mayor Tom Bates is trying to shore up voter support for three proposed tax hikes, arguing that Berkeley has been a model of fiscal discipline during its prolonged budget crisis. 

“People have a perception of Berkeley not being a financially sound city. That is not the case,” Bates told reporters gathered at a Tuesday press conference where he unveiled his fiscal recovery plan.  

The 19-page plan booklet gives an overview of the city’s effort to close a $33.3 million short fall from fiscal year 2003 through 2009.  

Among the city’s accomplishments so far, the plan lists: 

• Cutting $14.3 million in spending since fiscal year 2003. 

• Eliminating more than 100 city positions, nearly all of them already vacant. 

• Compelling city unions to agree to a one-time giveback of about 2.5 percent of their scheduled 2005 pay raises. 

• Maintaining a AA3 bond rating from Moody’s, which the mayor said is tops for any city Berkeley’s size. 

But the plan also presents voters with a stark choice this November. If they don’t back three tax hikes totaling $5.7 million dollars, school crossing guards would be eliminated, seven police officer positions would go unfilled, a fire truck would be taken out of service during winter, and programs that help youth, seniors and the homeless would all be slashed. 

“We want the people to understand what’s at risk if they don’t pass the taxes,” said Bates, who was joined at the Tuesday press conference by councilmembers Linda Maio and Miriam Hawley. The plan is essentially a summary of the City Council’s budget debate last spring and offers no new policies that would require council approval. 

To tackle an estimated $15.7 million in deficits still remaining through fiscal year 2009, the plan calls for a combination of $6.1 million spending cuts, $5.7 million in tax increases and about $500,000 in general fund reserves. Additionally, the plan projects the city will reap $3.4 million in economic growth, based on city and county forecasts. In total, spending cuts would account for 61 percent of the recovery plan, while new taxes would amount to just 17 percent. 

But tax hike opponents were quick to dismiss the plan as political propaganda, rife with scare tactics that underlined core political problems at City Hall. 

“I call it the ‘political crisis recovery plan,’” said District 5 city council candidate Barbara Gilbert. “The purpose is to shore up support for the tax measures and their chosen candidates.” 

Michael Wilson, spokesperson for the newly formed Berkeleyans Against Soaring Taxes (BASTA), an alliance of neighborhood groups, criticized the mayor for creating a series of false choices for taxpayers. 

“There has been no effort to prioritize city services,” he said. “The city can find money elsewhere without cutting programs for children.” 

Also galling to Wilson was that city tax dollars went to pay for the booklet, which he maintained was essentially a pamphlet supporting the tax increases that should have been paid with private funds. 

“Voters need look no further for an example of wasteful spending than the mayor’s plan printed at taxpayer expense,” he said. 

Cisco DeVries, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the booklets will not be mailed to residents and the only costs incurred were photocopying pages and staff time. An official campaign kick-off in support of the tax measures is scheduled for Saturday. 

The mayor is pushing hard for three taxes on the November ballot:  

• A 1.5 percent increase in the Utility Users Tax that would raise $2.7 million for the general fund and expire in four years, 

• A one-half percent increase in the property transfer tax, set to expire in six years, for properties that sold for over $600,000 that would raise $2.2 million for youth services, 

• A $1.2 million increase in the Emergency Medical Services tax. 

Also on the ballot is an increase to the library tax that would cost the average homeowner $41 a year and a schools tax that would cost $185 a year. In all, if voters approved all five measures, the average homeowner’s tax bill would increase by about $300. 

Historically that likely wouldn’t have been too much to ask of Berkeley voters, but the tide against taxes has begun to turn. After Berkeley voters approved five out of six new spending measures in 2000, they rejected three out of four in 2002. And last year a revolt led by neighborhood groups forced the city to withdraw a proposed $7.5 million parcel tax scheduled for the March ballot. 

Data released by the city this spring showed that last year the average Berkeley homeowners shelled out about $4,128 in local taxes and assessments compared to $4,008 in Albany and $3,703 in Oakland. The primary difference was that, for voter-approved special taxes, Berkeley charged a rate based on the property’s assessed value, while Albany and Oakland charged a flat fee per parcel. 

Instead of asking taxpayers to dig deeper, tax opponents want the city to squeeze money out of nonprofits and UC Berkeley which are exempt from city assessments, and to renegotiate labor deals that gave city unions substantial raises and committed Berkeley, unlike many other California cities, to pay their employees’ full pension contributions to the California Public Employee Retirement System (CALPERS). 

The city’s contributions to CALPERS have skyrocketed 136 percent from 5.8 million in 2003 to $13.7 million this year. For the coming fiscal year CALPERS rate increases have already gone up $1 million, contributing to a rise in the projected budget deficit from $6 million to $7.5 million. 

Bates, however, maintained that reopening union contracts wasn’t realistic and that he was confident that if voters passed the taxes this year, the city could return to firm fiscal footing while still paying for employee pension benefits. 

“We have a solid plan in place,” he said. “We’re not going to keep coming out asking people to bail us out.”

Despite rumors to the contrary floating around the city in recent days, UC Berkeley and powerhouse hotelier Carpenter & Co. are continuing to hammer out a deal that would add yet another tower to the tallest intersection in Berkeley. 

As proof, Kevin Hufferd—project manager for UC—pointed to the recently concluded six-month extension to the one-year exclusive negotiating agreement between the school and the developer that expired Sept. 1. 

“We’re working with the developer, trying to frame and look at a variety of issues,” Hufferd said. “It’s taken longer than we thought.”  

The notion of another Berkeley-scale giant, developed by a sovereign branch of government outside city control, at the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street was something of a shock when first broached by UC. 

To provide a focus for concerns, the city planning commission formed a subcommittee to hold meetings with concerned citizens and organizations and then create a non-binding wish list to present to the university. The UC Hotel task force held its final session April 27, submitting its final report to the Planning Commission. 

Hufferd said that when specifics had been hammered out, the results would be presented to the community. “We’re looking at how it can be planned in a community context,” Hufferd said. “We heard that loud and clear in the spring.” 

Asked for specifics about the negotiations, Hufferd said, “There’s a whole range of issues. The project’s feasibility depends on the variety and mix of uses. How many rooms, how much conference space, how many ancillary uses, the likelihood of community acceptance.” 

Hufferd again promised that “there will be more community involvement when we have some specifics down the road. We’ll be meeting the community at a time when we have more of substance to present.” 

A San Francisco-based Carpenter & Co. official confirmed the ongoing negotiations.

Found: One Bullet Hole 

Berkeley police were summoned to Famous Phones at 2397 San Pablo Ave. at 3:30 p.m. Monday after a clerk discovered a bullet hole in a side window. 

Because no gunshot had been heard, the shot could have been fired any time after the store closed for the day on Sunday, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Roommate Spat Turns Ugly 

A 57-year-old North Berkeley man was arrested early Tuesday morning on a weapons charge and for threatening to do serious injury or death to his roommate.:

Growing corn in America’s heartland, distilling it into alcohol and mixing it with gasoline to power vehicles may sound like an ingenious way to be freed from dependency on foreign oil, cut down on air pollution and begin the transition to a renewable energy source. 

But depending on where you stand, ethanol, a grain alcohol usually made from corn, is either the answer to the United State’s energy concerns or a too-good-to-be-true boondoggle that serves only to pad the pockets of those who manufacture it. 

Regardless of who’s right, production and consumption of ethanol is on the rise, doubling since 2001. Eighty-one plants in 20 states are expected to produce more than 3.3 billion gallons of ethanol by the end of 2004, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, the national trade group for ethanol. 

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is now running about one-fifth of its vehicle fleet on E-85, a gasohol blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. The lab made the switch in July with an $83,000 Department of Energy grant, building Northern California’s first ethanol fueling station. 

Nearly every gas tank in California has some ethanol in it. Since the state banned MTBE, California refiners have been using ethanol to meet a federal oxygenate requirement.  

Although it’s supposed to help reduce emissions, California officials believe gasoline would actually burn cleaner without the two percent mandate and have requested a waiver. 

While touted as a renewable, cleaner burning fuel, critics call ethanol fundamentally unsustainable and argue its production is fouling the water and polluting the air. What’s worse, they say, it’s propped up by billions of dollars in subsidies. 

“It’s a real boondoggle, no question about it,” said David Pimentel, a professor of agricultural sciences at Cornell University, who has chaired two Department of Energy studies on ethanol. “It’s going to take a good deal of fossil energy (to make it) and we’re going to import energy from the Saudis to do it.” 

Most ethanol in the U.S. comes from corn, the nation’s biggest crop. The plant and how it is grown are key elements in the debate over the subject, which ranges from the meaning of sustainability to how best to tackle the country’s energy needs as cheap oil supplies dwindle. 

Pimentel and UC Berkeley engineering professor Tad Patzek argue in separate studies that the production of corn ethanol actually consumes more fossil fuel energy than the product can provide, in addition to destroying the environment.  

“The most important part of the story is that while we are producing ethanol we are using up resources,” Patzek said. “Don’t think for a second you are getting a free ride.”  

In his paper “Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle,” which is to be published in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences in December, Patzek argues that energy from corn ethanol is fundamentally unsustainable.  

With the corn crop’s heavy need for insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers, the production depletes the soil and pollutes the air and water, also contributing to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, he said.  

“The worst thing is, we are doing it for no good reason. It’s of no benefit to anyone in this country,” Patzek said. “Nobody gains, nobody.” 

This is a point vehemently denied by the ethanol industry, which says the product reduces smog-forming pollution, displaces imported fossil fuels and lowers prices for consumers. 

Numerous studies, including one by the USDA, have shown that ethanol has a “large and growing positive energy balance,” said Monte Shaw of the Renewable Fuels Association. 

“Is ethanol a perfect product? I guess you could argue no, because you use fossil fuels to create it,” Shaw said. “But if you want to criticize ethanol, it’s fair to say, What’s the cost of continued reliance on fossil fuels? We’re going to put something in the tanks today. I think which is more environmentally friendly is obvious.”  

Roland Hwang, vehicles policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, said the organization doesn’t support ethanol from corn because of the environmental effects of production. 

“We’re supportive of a long-term biofuel future, but not from corn,” Hwang said, noting that more sustainable crops like poplar trees can be made into ethanol. “Our primary concern is the fact that the way ethanol is being used right now is making the air dirtier.” 

That’s California’s concern, too. 

Since former Gov. Gray Davis banned use of the oxygenate MTBE by 2003, California’s had to rely on ethanol to comply with the federal requirement for two percent oxygenate in the state’s smoggiest areas. Oxygenates are supposed to make gas burn cleaner, but the state has argued California would be better off without them. 

New York and Connecticut have also switched to ethanol after banning MTBE, along with California, accounting for the dramatic increase in its use, Shaw said.  

California first requested a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1999. The waiver was denied, and a second request is pending, said Gennet Paauwe of the California Air Resources Board. 

“The California Air Resources Board has demonstrated that the oxygenate requirement is detrimental to our efforts to achieve healthy air quality,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote in a Jan. 28 letter to the EPA. The oxygenate “greatly increase the costs born by California motorists,” Schwarzenegger wrote. 

The Renewable Fuels Association opposes the waiver and has submitted arguments to the EPA urging the denial of California’s request. 

California’s gasoline vendors are important customers to ethanol giants like Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland Co. (more commonly known as ADM), which Shaw estimates controls about 30 percent of the market.  

California produces only 10 million gallons of ethanol per year, so it must buy the other 890 million gallons it needs from Corn Belt states like Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. That’s a pretty big chunk of the 3.3 billion gallons Shaw expects will be produced nation-wide by the end of the year. 

Technicians, and not politicians, should determine what is the appropriate formulation of fuel, says Leon G. Billings, president of the Clean Air Trust, a Washington DC group dedicated to protecting the provisions of the Clean Air Act.  

Ethanol may be entirely appropriate for use with gasoline, but that shouldn’t be decided by statute, he said. But because of the sway ethanol makers have in Washington and among Corn Belt state politicians, it is, said Billings. 

“ADM has an enormous stake in the production of ethanol, and they are a very high powered lobby,” said Billings. “If you look at the U.S. Congress you see the fine handiwork of ADM on the ethanol mandate.” 

Perhaps as important is the grain state electorate—corn growers who see ethanol as a secure market for their product. 

“Any politician who doesn’t support ethanol would be a recovering politician,” Billings said. 

Back at the in Berkeley lab, fleet manager Don Prestella said ethanol wasn’t his first choice to comply with a 1999 presidential order to reduce fossil fuel consumption at federal facilities. 

He’d have preferred electric or hybrid vehicles, but E-85 was his only realistic option. 

“When you’re up against the bureaucracy, when you have to go up against an executive order from the president, you have to go with what you got,” Prestella said. “Ethanol was our best strategy at the time.” 

›

At least three of the 10 fourth-grade students who scored in the “far below basic” category in California Standards Test (CST) taken at Berkeley’s John Muir Elementary School last spring were deaf students who received higher grades on that test, but were placed in the lower category because the test had to be signed to them. 

Muir principal Nancy D. Waters released that information this week as she and Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) officials continued a query with testing officials into how and why the highly-rated school’s CST scores “plummeted” from last year to this. 

At least one of the deaf students listed in the lowest category because of the signing modification actually tested “proficient,” the second-highest category in the CST. 

A California State Department of Education official and CST manuals confirm that students who take the CST with “modifications”—such as having the test signed to them—are listed in the school test summary as “far below basic,” regardless of which of the five performance level categories the student actually performed in. 

Waters said that she is requesting that the California Department of Education review whether four additional deaf students—who were signed the instructions but not the entire test—may have mistakenly been listed in the “far below basic” category as well. Deaf students who are signed the instructions only are not supposed to be included in the list of students with modifications. 

A report for Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) for the Berkeley school—released this month for CST tests taken last May—indicated that 30 percent of fourth grade students had dropped from proficient to below proficient in English Language Arts in a single year. The summary report listed that 10 of the 43 students taking the test had scored in the “far below basic” category, the lowest possible category. 

The posting of the report on websites of the State Department of Education and GreatSchools.net (where schools from across the state are rated), caused concern among Muir’s faculty and parents that the teaching and learning levels at the school were dropping.  

But after Waters complained to BUSD officials that the test summary may have been in error, BUSD initiated a query with Educational Testing Services (ETS), the New Jersey-based company which administers the test for the State Department of Education. BUSD Testing Coordinator Sarah Hamilton is handling the query. 

Hamilton was not available at press time, but earlier this week she said that she had left a telephone message with ETS officials concerning the Muir tests.›

Skateboard Triggers Grass Fire 

A skateboard operated by an 11-year-old Berkeley resident triggered a small grass fire in the Berkeley hills on Sept. 6, reported Deputy Fire Chief David Orth. 

The reason? A skateboarder’s maneuver called “grinding,” in which the rider straddles a concrete or metal edge with his wheels the way children straddle bannisters to slide downstairs. 

“They grind along the edges of benches and curbs, and they actually grind down the concrete. That’s why they’re starting to put metal edges or barriers along the concrete in places like the Thousand Oaks School,” Orth said. 

The metal supports of the skateboarder’s wheels generated a spark, triggering the blaze. 

Fortunately, he promptly called 911, triggering a massive multi-departmental response because the 630 Hillsdale scene is in a high fire danger area which prompts an automatic response by several jurisdictions. 

The rapid response kept the fire down to a 10- by 50-foot area.

Frustrated Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) members Monday night blasted city planning staff for failing to forward the commission’s critical comments to Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) members before they voted on a controversial project in a newly created city historic district. 

They also expressed outrage at staff’s late submissions of key documents on the issue. 

Complaints over last-minute submissions have been common, and Planning Director Dan Marks has blamed the delays on short staffing in his department. He told a recent ZAB meeting that he’s now fully staffed and delays should be significantly reduced in the future. 

The immediate cause of Monday’s LPC concern was a small developer’s plans to convert two small Victorian cottages—one significantly altered from its original form—into duplexes. 

The dwellings sit in the heart of the recently landmarked Sisterna Historic District in West Berkeley. 

Neighbors who reside or work in the district are passionate advocates of protecting the area from encroaching development. Neal Blumenfeld, who owns a restored Victorian next door to one of the would-be duplexes, appeared before the commission with other neighbors Monday. 

In earlier meetings, commissioners twice agreed that developer Gary Feiner’s plans were out of proportion with the other homes in the district and would change the buildings so much that they would detract from the historic character of the neighborhood. 

Feiner was scheduled to offer a third revision Monday, but he notified city planning staff last week that he wasn’t finished and asked for a continuance until the next commission meeting on Oct. 4. 

One problem facing commissioners and neighbors is that the Permit Streamlining Act—a state law setting strict limits on the time local governments have to process builder applications—gives the city only until Oct. 27 to act on Feiner’s plans before they are automatically approved. 

The other problem is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which sets its own timelines for discovering potential environment impacts and formulating plans to alleviate them. 

Gisele Sorensen, the city planning staffer assigned to the LPC, said Feiner had verbally agreed to a 30-day delay, which would extend the deadline until Nov. 26. But she’d seen nothing in writing before the meeting. 

By Thursday, the extension had been filed, according to commissioner member Leslie Emmington Jones. 

Monday was the commission’s first meeting since Zoning Adjustments Board members voted Aug. 25 to issue a key pre-construction mitigated negative declaration (MND), sparing Feiner the more rigorous, costly and time-consuming environmental impact report sought by neighbors and preservationists. 

LPC secretary and city planner Gisele Sorensen said ZAB had been forced to act because of a California Environmental Quality Act deadline two days later, requiring the city to define and act on environmental concerns within a certain amount of time. 

Seventeen days earlier, the LPC had passed without dissent a resolution finding particular fault with the declaration in the planning staff’s impact statement finding that the project did not “substantially degrade the existing visual character or quality of the site and its surroundings.” 

LPC members had repeatedly found Feiner’s plans to be proportionately and architecturally out of character with surrounding homes, and the resolution called for settling their concerns with the visual element through mapping out the specifics in discussions including Feiner, concerned neighbors and property-owners and commission members. 

The motion also called for a landscaping plan, an elevation showing how the homes blended with the streetscape and a neighborhood map. 

But that commission’s pleas never made it into the final MND approved by ZAB, a fact that rankled several commissioners, especially Jones, who declared: “Now, with the Permit Streamlining Act, we’re backed up against the wall. This happens project after project. 

“I went to the ZAB meeting, and then I read the staff report and I was appalled. The staff report didn’t even mention the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s concerns,” said the visibly angry commissioner. “(ZAB members) didn’t get our resolution. They could have amended” the declaration. 

“I don’t understand the problem,” said commission secretary and city planner Gisele Sorensen. “I didn’t think that a staff report goes into detail.” 

“I do want to be correct,” said Jones. “Maybe I can rewrite it, bringing up some of the points left out. The history has been ground out of the report and we still don’t have a plan on the table.” 

“If you feel the alterations are not sufficient, you don’t have to approve,” Sorensen replied. 

The commissioner replied, “There should have been time,” the plan should be respectful to its impact on the neighborhood. 

Adam Weiss—on the last day of his tenure on the commission—said he understood Jones’s concern at not having the commission’s arguments heard by ZAB, adding, “We have no authority over ZAB.” 

“I watched the ZAB meeting, and I don’t recall any discussion about the resolution,” said commissioner Steven Winkel. “It’s going to be important that we get that time extension.” 

“I want to get a sense of the commission if this item is important enough to set a special meeting,” said LPC Chair Jill Korte. “I feel it is.” 

“So do I,” said Jones. 

Winkle said he’d prefer an extended deadline, but if it wasn’t granted, he’d agree to a special session. 

“We have the ability to hold him hostage,” said Weiss. “The Zoning Adjustment Board either didn’t read the comments the neighbors sent or they didn’t care. They weren’t included in the report submitted to the Zoning Adjustment Board. 

“City staff doesn’t understand historic districts,” he said. “They understand development.” 

“We still don’t have today a design in front of us that we’re working with, we’re at the very end of the state cycle,” Jones said. 

“We should have design guidelines or uniform principles,” Korte added. 

Commissioners then voted unanimously to continue their discussion Oct. 4.›

Large contingents from the arts community and supporters of the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society turned out for the airing of a proposal to landmark two vintage West Berkeley buildings owned by the humane society and occupied, in part, by the artists. 

Both sides now say they want to preserve the structures, including a 1924 unreinforced two story brick building constructed by the Austin Company, the same firm that built two other Berkeley landmarks, the Heinz and Sawtooth Buildings. 

The real issue is the fate of the Nexus Gallery and Collective, a well-respected artist community which has occupied much of the site for nearly three decades. 

The artists want to stay, but the humane society needs more space. 

Mim Carlson, executive director of the humane society, had requested a two-month delay on the landmark application. “We are definitely going to be doing a retrofit, and we are not contemplating demolition,” she said. 

Though the commission heard comments from Nexus supporters, including some of the original founders, they accepted Carlson’s request and postponed a formal hearing on the testimony until their November meeting. 

The commissioners also got their first look at plans for a four-story condominium development that would take up most of the entire 700 block of University Avenue. 

Appearing before the panel was Dan Deibel, director of development for the Urban Housing Group—the San Mateo firm promoting the project that would fill almost the entire block between University Avenue and Addison Street and between Third and Fourth streets. 

Originally proposed as a five-story complex, Deibel presented the commissioner with plans for a more modest four-floor structure. 

The proposal falls within the commission’s purview because the site also includes the old Berkeley train station. 

Deibel said Brennan’s restaurant, one of two eateries now located on the site, would be relocated to the train station. The plans do not include new quarters for Celia’s, a popular Mexican restaurant at 2040 Fourth St.

KATHMANDU—While world attention is preoccupied with the Middle East, Nepal is falling apart.  

In recent weeks Maoist rebels, who control most of the countryside, have made bold moves in the capital Kathmandu. They clamped a week-long blockade on the city, forced the closure of 35 major businesses, and were blamed for a bomb attack on the American information center. The U.S. ambassador responded by ending Peace Corps activities in the country and seeking consent from Washington for the families of embassy personnel to evacuate.  

Maoist leader Rajman Pakhrin recently told the Nepali Times that the Maoists hoped to provoke the people of the capital to launch an urban uprising.  

In this tiny, rugged corner of the globe, the birthplace of Buddha and home of the world’s highest mountains, communist rebels are displaying a new height of confidence.  

The bloodshed is approaching a frenzied pitch. Most of the eight-year conflict’s 10,000 deaths have come in the last three years.  

In an indication of how serious the threat has become, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba arrived in the Indian capital, New Delhi, last week to plead for military and economic assistance. This week the US pledged an additional $1 million to the war effort.  

Nepal’s democracy was born in 1990 when its King was pressured to allow a multiparty democracy. The unity that followed among the country’s myriad ethnic groups though soon unraveled as the Brahmin aristocracy, hailing from the Kathmandu valley and east Nepal, took power and woefully mishandled the country’s development, particularly in the western region.  

After 14 years Nepal (population: 27 million) remains among the world’s poorest nations. Fewer than half of its population are literate.  

The Maoist revolt began in 1996 with the aim of building a classless society. Debt-bound tribes in the jungles of the west were the swiftest recruits to the cause with its objectives of abolishing feudalism as well as the institution that they view as the epitome of caste privilege: the monarchy.  

The rebellion maintained only a mild intensity until the royal massacre of June 2001, when King Birendra and his wife along with their two children were slaughtered by their eldest son, crown prince Dipendra following a dinner-table dispute. The prince committed suicide afterward.  

The Maoists took advantage of the political chaos that ensued.  

During an eight-month ceasefire in 2003 they built an arms pipeline with communist allies in India and Chinese gangs to the north, which, according to Army General Rajendra Thapa, increased their strength “by leaps and bounds.”  

With three centers of power—the Maoists, the King, and the political parties—now locked in a struggle for supremacy, it’s unclear where the country is headed. Peace talks have failed twice and little trust remains among the three.  

Indeed, many Nepalese have given up hope on a resolution.  

“People are saying maybe the previous regime was better,” says Ananda Shrestha, Director of the Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies, referring to the country’s old monarchy. “Democracy has got a bad name.”  

In the most telling sign of strife, the country has witnessed an incredible exodus. Over two million villagers have fled in the last two years. They are mostly young, farming men who have streamed out of the hills into the Indian plains to the south. The migration continues at about 75,000 per month, observers say.  

“The only people staying are those who can’t afford to leave,” says Subodh Pyakurel, Director of the Informal Sector Service Center (INSEC), a leading human rights group. While the Maoists give their institutions welcoming names—the People’s Court, the People’s Army, the People’s Education System—their methods appear to depend on terror more than persuasion.  

The rebels stone, amputate, decapitate or break the legs of suspected informants, say human rights observers. They killed more farmers than they did the King’s soldiers in 2003, according to INSEC.  

Mass abductions and indoctrination seminars have become common. Schoolteachers in rebel-held areas are required to wear Maoist garb and use a curriculum that favors the contributions of communist heroes Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, and Mao Zedong.  

“You can’t even think of free speech,” the National Human Rights Commission’s Sushil Pyakurel says of the current mood. The rebels coercive methods, he added, make it “hard to see them as a political group. They behave more like a criminal gang.”  

Activists criticize the army too. Amnesty International reported that in 2002 Nepal recorded the world’s most disappearances in army custody, calling it a “widespread and long-standing pattern.”  

In the country’s poorest region, the far west, the toll of the conflict is reflected at a local orphanage set up for war victims in the army-secured town of Dhangadi.  

Several grubby children describe the killing of their parents by rebels or soldiers. A scrawny five-year-old, Yaka Soud, says he has neither any memory of his father, who was killed by Maoists, nor of his mother who left him at the orphanage two years ago. The director says he assumes by now that she has also been killed.  

“Each month the number [of orphans] increases,“ director Min Kunwar says. Currently there are 91 orphans at the home. “We don’t have enough room for them.”  

Narayan Dutta Mishra, Chairman of Kailali District Development Committee (DDC), says he feels the Maoists are winning the war. “Day-by-day it is getting worse,” he says. “They are saying the country is in their grip.” 

Mike McPhate is a freelance journalist living in New Delhi.  

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard told the U.S. Congress, “America has no better friend anywhere in the world than Australia.” This might soon change.  

Opposition leader Mark Latham, who vows to pull Australian troops out of Iraq and has described George W. Bush as the most incompetent and dangerous American president in living memory, could soon lead Australia.  

Howard recently ended months of speculation by announcing Oct. 9 as the date for the country’s federal election. His conservative government has been a staunch supporter of the Bush administration.  

Bush refers to Howard as a close friend. Bush declared during his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “I deeply appreciate the courage and wise counsel of leaders like Prime Minister Howard,” naming him ahead of British leader Tony Blair. Bush has lavished praise on Howard’s leadership, calling him a “man of steel”—provoking more than a few laughs in Australia (Howard isn’t exactly viewed as superhero material).  

Ever since the World War II, Australia and the U.S. have been close allies. Australian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and both Gulf Wars. Australia was one of the few countries to send soldiers to Iraq before the fall of Baghdad.  

Latham has been strongly critical of Howard’s relationship with Bush, famously referring to the prime minister as an “arse-licker.” Since assuming the role of opposition leader, Latham has toned down his comments but still argues that Australia should withdraw its troops from Iraq.  

Latham’s opposition to the Iraq war has led to an unprecedented U.S. intervention in Australian politics. Bush in June derided Latham, claiming “it would be disastrous for the leader of a great country like Australia to say that we’re pulling out.” He added that such action “would say that the Australian government doesn’t see the hope of a free and democratic society leading to a peaceful world.” 

Latham stated that he supported good relations between Australia and the U.S. and that “the alliance is bigger and stronger than the mistakes made in relation to Iraq.” But U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage fired back, saying Latham could not choose the parts of the alliance he liked—it was all or nothing.  

Attempting to heal a potential rift, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell emphasized “Australia will always be a close friend of the U.S.,” and that the U.S. respected the right of the Australians to choose their own leader.  

Howard has made the U.S.-Australia alliance an election issue, charging that Latham “has demonstrated that in his new position he is dangerous so far as the American alliance is concerned. [Latham] has allowed his tribal dislike, because of the politics of the current American President, to overwhelm his concern for the national interest.” 

Howard says there isn’t much difference between Bush and John Kerry’s positions on Iraq, and that even a Democratic U.S. president wouldn’t look favorably on Latham’s position on Iraq. Howard argues that a positive relationship with the U.S. is very important for Australia’s security.  

The issue hasn’t registered as a high priority for Australian voters. A recent survey found the three most important electoral issues were health policies, the economy and education. The latest opinion poll shows the government and opposition tied with 50 percent support each. If Latham wins and goes ahead with his promise to withdraw Australian troops, it will follow a similar move by the newly elected Spanish government, which drew criticism from both the American and Australian governments.  

In practical terms, Australia’s withdrawal would make little difference. There are fewer than 1,000 Australian soldiers in Iraq and they have no combat roles. The move would be more important symbolically as it would punch a lot of air out of Bush’s claim to a “coalition of the willing” in Iraq.  

Some analysts have speculated on just how frosty relations between Australia and the U.S. could become if Bush remained in power and Latham won the Australian election. They pointed out that In 1984 New Zealand banned nuclear vessels from its ports. The Reagan administration responded by suspending defense commitments to New Zealand.  

It is unlikely, however, that a similar scenario would develop with Australia. Although Armitage hinted that blocking a Latham government’s access to intelligence information was a possibility, the U.S. relies on the Pine Gap satellite tracking facility in Central Australia for intelligence-gathering. Pine Gap would also form a key part of any planned “Star Wars” style missile defense system.  

Howard leads one of the few national governments left that haven’t been alienated by the policies of the Bush administration. Bush certainly wouldn’t want to lose such a close ally.  

Aidan Doyle is an Australian freelance journalist. 

›

I write to a friend in Maryland this week, asking her how the presidential election is going there. 

“I have no idea,” she e-mails in return. “Maryland, typically a Democratic state, has elected a Republican governor for the first time. Judging from the editorial letters in the Baltimore Sun, I’d say the voters are evenly divided. Some have criticized Bush for sending young folks in harm’s way, for lying. Today’s editorial letters criticize the Bush administration’s inept handling of 9/11, disagreeing with Cheney’s recent remarks. Others agree with your [California] governor [Schwarzenegger] and have chastised the Democrats for being economic ‘girlie-men.’ My gut instincts tell me that most are going to vote for Bush because of the war: they feel he started it and don’t want to change leaders in midstream.” She closes glumly: “It’s pretty grim to think of another four years with arrogant, idiotic Bush.” 

If this is the feeling in Maryland, where Mr. Kerry led Mr. Bush by 13 points, 53 percent to 40 percent, in the last poll one month ago, what must it be in more contested parts of the country? 

Decidedly downbeat, at least for Democrats. 

A definite gloom has spread around the anti-Bush camp following the Republican convention, and Mr. Kerry’s Awful August, and Mr. Bush’s opening of a respectable lead in a race that has been virtually dead-even for months and months and months. It’s not resignation, not yet, but it’s beginning to have the feel of desperation. The Democratic e-mail lists are full of notations as to “what the Kerry people did wrong,” along with suggestions about how they might make it right…quick, and in a hurry. 

As for me, I suspect it is not so much what the Kerry people have done wrong as it is what the Bush people have done right. They have prepared and so far carried out an election strategy that fits both their world view and the realities of campaigning in the 21st century. The Kerry campaign—flailing about—has so far appeared to do neither. 

Forget, for a moment, the ground over which this campaign has so far been fought—Swift Boat attacks and National Guard service and Iraq wars and the resumés of the president and the Massachussetts senator—and see how it has been fought. That is where the lesson lies. 

The Bush camp has done two things exceedingly well in this campaign. The first is that they not only have managed to define Mr. Kerry in a negative light (an old trick), but they have defined Mr. Kerry in exactly the negative light where Mr. Bush himself is vulnerable. And so we have the charges that Mr. Kerry has no true principles and bends to the political winds (the infamous “flip-flop” charge) and that Mr. Kerry is a coward in combat (the intimation, among other things, that Mr. Kerry fled from Swift boat battles and wounded himself in order to get out of Vietnam). 

The mud has stuck, so much so that it has become inseparable from Mr. Kerry, with no further discussion needed, only reiteration at appropriate times. And therefore, when the Kerry folks finally get around to making these charges against Mr. Bush, the old Southern saying comes into play: when you point a finger at someone, four fingers end up pointing back at you. “See, the president has flip-flopped on winning the war on terrorism!” the Democrats shout. “Yeah, well, you guys ought to know it when you see it,” the Republicans reply, unperturbed. 

The second Bush campaign triumph is what might be called the octopus defense whenever challenged on a vulnerable point—a wild flailing of many arms, along with a jettison of obscuring black ink, all designed to mask a rapid turnabout and/or retreat. The Bush response to the recent 60 Minutes report on Bush’s National Guard service record is a good example: instant attacks from various allied sources on the authenticity of memos from Bush’s old commander critical of Bush, attacks on the impartiality of Bush’s accusers (in this case, CBS’ Dan Rather), while at the same time a steady, droning intonation from the Bush camp itself that, after all, this is old stuff and has long ago been discussed, and really has nothing to do with present concerns. 

Viewed in tandem and as to effect, the two tactics end in a general assumption that the charges (any charges) against Mr. Kerry must be true because they have been repeated so often, while the charges against Mr. Bush are still in doubt because, after all, they have been denied so vehemently. 

Democrats shuffle around in envy, like Jack-Nicholson-as-the-Joker in the first Batman movie, wondering how come their toys don’t work that good. And there is great temptation to adopt the Republican way, at least until the Republicans can be gotten out of the way. 

But the problem for Democrats in adopting Republican tactics circa 2004 is that tactics only work in the service of strategy—strategy being where you want to go, while tactics comprising how you get there. And so while beating Republicans at their own game may appear momentarily attractive, it tends to take Democrats further and further away from what is supposed to be Democratic Party ideals (see the Clinton Presidency for the most recent, best examples). 

When economic conservatism merged with fundamentalism somewhere in the mid-’90s, it took an interesting tack. The conservatives of an earlier generation believed that they were smarter and their ideas were better, and took great pride and delight in winning over the public in open debate. (Find a tape of the old William F. Buckley show if you’re too young to have lived through those days.) But conservatives today—having taken on the armor of God, so to speak—believe that they are right, and therefore no proof is necessary. At least, that’s how they are presenting themselves. 

If one’s goal is a world where a pre-determined truth is implemented, then the Bush campaign tactics of twist-and-shout may make perfect sense. But if one thinks that truth has yet to be determined—and needs working out with human help—then a more thoughtful, reasoned approach is in order. 

My Maryland friend is right, it is pretty grim to think of another four years with arrogant, idiotic Bush. But a Bush-inspired America and world—with or without George W. at its helm—is equally frightening. If Democrats want to build a house, they’ve got to find other tools, tempting as it might be to follow the Bush camp’s lead. Picking up a rock generally ends up only in smashed windows all around, regardless of the hand holding. 

›

The people who fought against the king of England and his armies in order to establish the United States of America quickly declared, in writing, that they had rights that must be respected by their new government. They were building on the Magna Charta of 1215 in England and the Petition of Right of the English Parliament in 1628.  

The Bill of Rights begins with the First Amendment to the new Constitution and proclaims the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The First Amendment also proclaims freedom of religion, freedom of speech and of the press. 

The people who fought against the Southern states in order to abolish slavery quickly voted, through their state legislatures, to adopt the Fourteenth Amendment, declaring the fundamental right to equal protection of the law to every person within the jurisdiction of the United States, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, which has come to include the right to equal protection of women. 

The people who fought in World War II in order to defeat the fascist ideology and practices in Germany, Italy and Japan quickly joined peoples from other nations in writing into the United Nations Charter articles 2.3 and 2.4, which commit the United States and all signatory nations to “refrain ... from the threat or use of force” in the settlement of disputes. And they joined in writing articles 55 and 56 into the charter to commit the United States, and all other signatory nations, “to promote ... universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.” And the U.S. government in 1945 helped write the Nuremberg Principles to define war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity to govern all future actions of all nations.  

By 1994, the U.S. government had joined most other nations in ratifying three treaties that further define these rights: the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.  

After 9/11, people in the service of the United States government and under contract with the government frequently took actions that U.S. residents considered to be denials or abridgments of their basic rights or the rights of their neighbors or of people they saw reported in the media. 

The Right Not to be Tortured 

Every human being has a right not to be tortured. The first U.S. citizens insisted on including this right in their new Constitution. The Eighth Amendment states: in the territories governed by the United States there shall be no “cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The U.S. citizens who helped write the United Nations Charter in 1945 insisted on including human rights protections in articles 55c and 56. 

In 1994, the U.S. Senate ratified the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and adopted the U.S. regulation implementing that convention. The U.S. has also agreed to the third and fourth Geneva Conventions on Treatment of Prisoners of War and Civilian Persons, the Alien Tort Claims Act, and Torture Victims Protection Act.  

The following are expamples of this right violation: 

• Detention Center Guards Beat Ivory Coast Pilot: Tony Oulai 

(Mary McGrory, “Bungling on the 9-11 Prisoners,” Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2002) 

• INS Dentist Tortured Palestinian Canadian: Jaoudat Abouazza 

(Jaoudat Abouazza Free in Canada, but Struggle for Justice Continues,” Progressive Austin, July 15, 2002) 

• INS and FBI Agents Tortured Legal Immigrant from Egypt: Hady Hassan Omar  

(Matthew Brzezinski, “Hady Hassan Omar’s Detention,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 27, 2002) 

• Guards Tortured Saudi-Arabian Student: Yazeed Al-Salmi  

(“San Diego Material Witness En Route Home,” The San Diego Channel.com Oct. 10, 2001; “Terror Probe Raises Concerns About Civil Rights,” CNN, Oct. 22, 2001) 

• Palestinian Immigrant Died in FBI Custody: Muhammed Rafiq Butt 

(Somini Sengupta, “Ill-Fated Path to America, Jail and Death,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 2001; Aamir Latif, “Pakistani Relative Says FBI Tortured Dead Detainee,” Islam Online, Nov. 1, 2001) 

• Deportees Sue Attorney General and FBI: Ibrahim Turkmen 

(CCR Legal Team, “Turkmen v. Ashcroft, Synopsis,” Center for Constitutional Rights, July 16, 2003) 

To be continued… 

Berkeley resident Ann Fagan Ginger is a lawyer, teacher, activist and the author of 24 books. She won a civil liberties case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1959. She is the founder and executive director of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, a Berkeley-based center for human rights and peace law. 

This column is based on the Report by Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, Challenging U.S. Human Rights Violations Since 9/11, Ann Fagan Ginger, Editor (Prometheus Books 2005). Readers can go to http://mcli.org for a complete listing of reports and sources, with web links. 

POLICE DUTIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Customer service is difficult even under the best circumstances. Being a police officer combines the worst parts of customer service with threats to their very lives from belligerent reporters. To a reporter, whose business seems to consist mainly of invading private matters, a rude response to her persistent demands for public safety information is intolerable. To a police officer busy making sure that nobody can tell if his fellow officers are following their own rules, such an intrusion into police business is likewise intolerable. Balancing the “public’s right to know” with the “blue wall of silence” is an impossible task. Let us take a few moments to recognize all the positive services police officers provide in a civilized society, from escorting criminals to jail to beating social deviants, from harassing young people of color to enforcing the property relations of capitalism. Cops have much more important things to do beside giving raw information from a crime scene to a reporter before all the other officers involved have had a chance to get their stories straight.  

C. Boles 

• 

CAMPAIGN FINANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Sam Ferguson, co-chair of Yes on H, writes in your Sept. 3 edition that public financing of candidates for city offices in Berkeley and limitations on spending will “make elected officials more responsive,” “increase the diversity of candidates,” and even “help ensure that [the city’s budget] is spent according to the wishes of the community.” Only one of these claims is valid. 

Public financing of elections will certainly increase the diversity of candidates—it will require all of us to pay for candidates who are not qualified to hold public office or endorse positions we disagree with. City funds may have to be spent to support the campaign of an anti-Semitic, racist homophobe! 

Public financing of elections coupled with campaign spending limits will make elected officials (incumbents) less, not more responsive to the community. Incumbents will no longer have to make sure they have a broad and deep enough base of support to raise enough funds for their re-election. Instead, they will be able to get campaign funds from the taxpayer regardless of how unpopular or out of touch they are. Applying the same spending limits to incumbents as to challengers will make it almost impossible for challengers to overcome the inherent advantage of incumbency in elections, further reducing the need of incumbents to be responsive to their constituents. To truly level the playing field, only incumbents should be subject to campaign spending limits—but try to get that one past city hall. 

Finally to claim that city election financing will increase budgetary accountability is a non-sequitur. This measure will earmark city tax revenues for campaign financing, reducing the amount of money city officials can allocate for other city programs, thereby reducing their responsibility and accountability for budgeting funds. 

For these reasons, I hope Measure H is defeated. 

Keith Winnard 

• 

SEAGATE DEBATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last week Barbara Gilbert attacked me here for writing an op-ed piece of which I was not the author. As the byline made clear, the article was by Dave Blake, vice-chair of the Zoning Board, on which I also sit. 

The article concerned the placement of affordable housing units in new construction in Berkeley, in particular in the proposed downtown Seagate Building on Center Street. The gist of Gilbert’s complaint was: “While we ordinary middle-class folks pay through the nose to live in Berkeley, poor people are entitled to luxury ownership accommodations at the expense of taxpayers and a lower-density livable Berkeley.” 

For 15 years every city in California has been required by state law to provide a variety of strong incentives for the creation of affordable housing. We are required to loosen development standards, such as parking requirements, open-space requirements, and height limits, significantly for any building that provides a minimum percentage of affordable units. Most of all we have to increase the allowable number of units per acre for any such project by 25 percent. 

The principle involved in these state mandates is that without incentives developers would fail to create any new housing for low and moderate income citizens. Berkeley taxpayers don’t pay for these incentives with either local or state taxes: they are exchanged for whatever effect the relaxation of the development standards has. Whether these effects, in particular the increased density, are bad or good is a subject of great debate. What’s not debatable is whether or not we have to let them be built. That’s the law. 

Blake wrote about a further requirement in Berkeley law, that affordable units be spread out throughout each project. Staff has routinely granted requests to keep the highest, and most valued, floors of new projects free of affordable units: Blake felt that creating high-income enclaves is just the flip side of sequestering the poor in low-income enclaves, and that this law shouldn’t be treated as a relaxable development standard but as social policy. 

The project is still under consideration. I’ve proposed that the developer not be required to provide a strictly equal percentage of affordable units, but that the units be more equally dispersed through the project, with at least one on every floor. 

Laurie Capitelli 

• 

TEST SCORES SET RIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a John Muir Elementary parent, I just wanted to thank you guys for writing about the test score blunder. Our wonderful principal is very dedicated and she deserves a lot of credit. Even when the bad news came out, she supported her staff 100 percent. There was not any finger pointing which says a lot about the character of the school. As you know, test scores are important in attracting those students that live in the area and have other options. Over the last few years, John Muir has been on an upswing thanks in part to Ms Waters and a wonderful staff. As a John Muir and BUSD alumni, I am proud to send my children to such a great school. Thanks Again!  

Diana Yovino-Young  

• 

ARCHITECTURAL GRACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Two new buildings that are a block apart on University Avenue can teach us a lesson about traditional and modernist architecture. The five-story building on University at Shattuck is in a traditional style similar to the 19th-century Italianate style, with an asymmetrical tower, red tile roof, and ornamental tiling in the arches above the windows. Though its design is distinctive, it fits into its surroundings, because its stucco and red tiles are common materials in nearby buildings and because it is painted a modest tan. Even when you see it over the one-story building to its west, it looks as if it has been there for ever.  

The five-story building on University near Milvia is in a modernist style. Because it has no traditional ornament, the architect tries hard to make it distinctive by giving it bay windows set at an odd angle, large expanses of natural wood siding, and two colors of paint on its stucco, with tan on some facades and garish red on others. It looks like an intruder in the neighborhood. When you see it over the over the one-story building to its west, its wood siding and red stucco stick out like a sore thumb.  

These two buildings make an important theoretical point about modern architecture. Early modernists said that architecture should be an honest expression of function, without artificial ornamentation. But boxes without ornamentation soon became boring, and now modernists seem to be willing to do anything to be different: the angled bay windows, wood siding, and two-tone paint job at University and Milvia are mannerisms that are much more artificial than the traditional design at University and Shattuck. 

There is no theoretical reason for using this mannered style of modernism rather than traditional architectural styles.  

Even if developers do not care about the theoretical issue, they should care about this practical issue: there obviously would be much less opposition to development if the new buildings were traditional architecture that looks like it belongs in its context, rather than modernist architecture that looks like a garish intruder.  

Charles Siegel 

• 

ACADEMIC CHOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While I applaud Michael D. Miller’s goal of reducing contention and negativism in the Board of Education race and in the Berkeley High community as a whole, I cannot say I was as reassured as he apparently wished me to be by his column (“Us vs. Them!” Daily Planet, Sept. 10-13). 

Referring to candidates as “school reform advocates” instead of “small school advocates,” as Mr. Miller would have us do, would seem to be another case of the use of semantics to obscure rather than clarify, if those candidates believe, as Mr. Miller does that, “the small schools reform movement at BHS is the only significant movement designed to realize [success for all students]”.  

Mr. Miller also says, “If there are other viable solutions for broad student success in our district, bring them forward so that our entire community will benefit.” As he is well aware, there is a program in the large, comprehensive BHS high school which enjoys great support among parents, students and staff (along with a sizable number of critics). It is Academic Choice which—while not styling itself as a reform movement—does aim to increase academic excellence in the school as a whole via academically rigorous classes, open to all students without prerequisite, and by recruitment and support of students of color in those classes. People who support Academic Choice believe that the goal of “success for all students” can be furthered by increasing the offerings of Advanced Placement (not offered in small schools) and other classes with curricula that will prepare students for success in four-year colleges, and then increasing the number and diversity of students taking those classes.  

Small school reform advocates originally proposed that BHS become all small schools. The superintendent appointed a Small Schools Advisory Committee, representing a cross section of views, which ultimately recommended a mixed structure with 50 percent of students enrolled in several small schools and 50 percent of students enrolled in a large, comprehensive school. This compromise, approved by the Board of Education, rightly recognized, in my opinion, that the real benefits conveyed by small schools involve tradeoffs, and that while many students may prefer and be best served by small schools, others prefer and are best served by large schools. No one that I know is in favor of eliminating small schools at BHS or opposed to continuing the plan to add new small schools until the small school enrollment reaches 50 percent of the BHS total. But there does seem to be a number of small school advocates who would like to terminate the Academic Choice program. 

There is no question that Academic Choice needs to be improved, with respect to its diversity and in other respects as well. It is an important piece in the overall program of the large high school which is in danger of being neglected as energy is focused on small schools. At present, there is an unprecedented number of Academic Choice parents and students willing and eager to involve themselves in the process of redefining and improving the program, not only for their own benefit but for the school as a whole. Speaking as one of those parents, all I ask of School Board candidates and of BUSD and BHS administrators is the opportunity for the Academic Choice community to develop this program from within and to prove that it is not a move toward greater segregation but, properly implemented, a force to reduce the achievement gap. I am not against anybody, I am for Academic Choice. Choice is also a Berkeley value. 

Marilyn Boucher 

Parent, Academic Choice Student, Class of 2006 

2004-05 BHS School Site Council Member 

• 

PUBLIC ACCESS TO HUD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Public Access To City Info Not Always Available” (Daily Planet, Sept. 14-16)—for sure! Alas, there are likely examples galore. Here’s another: HUD consultant Ronnie Odom (MDStrum Housing Services) delivered his review report to the Berkeley Housing Authority and—although there was insufficient public notice of the meeting—to the Berkeley citizenry at a 2 p.m. May 7 “special meeting.” It has been virtually impossible for members of the public, including BHA tenants, to access a copy of Odom’s full report. Those who persevered were ultimately able to view and or receive a brief document titled “Summary of SEMAP Related Issues.” I was approached as an accessible former BHA Section 8 tenant representative (the position is yet again vacant) and housing advocate; my phone call to BHA Manager Sharon Jackson was not returned. When I broached this matter with Housing Department Director Stephen Barton, he suggested that the title of what a tenant had sought had not been specified! One tenant informed me that when he asked for the full document, he was told tersely, “this is what is being given out.” Another constituent was informed that “only city documents” can be shared, and that this was/is a HUD document! It is notable that this document was not made available at the Berkeley Public Library reference desk as major city documents normally are. 

Helen Rippier Wheeler 

• 

PRE-NOVEMBER ACTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There are seven weeks left before the “most important election of our lifetime.” I have never been involved in voter registration or much involved in electoral politics in the past. I, like many of my friends, have given some money and time to influence the election this year. Over the last few weeks, I have felt frightened and at times despairing about a Bush victory. What I realized is that whatever the outcome, I want to feel that I gave as much in money and time as I could. So I just contributed more than I ever thought I would and am contacting every friend and relative I can think of to help register new voters in swing states. I’m still scared by a Bush re-election and his policies. I’m no hero, but I’m doing more of what I know I can. The election remains very close in the swing states. Please join me in whatever way you can, donating time or money to ACT4Victory.org, ReDefeatBush.org, Moveon.org, etc. 

David Stark 

• 

GUIDES TO THE RESCUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today at about 3:45 p.m. there was a large, shirtless, obviously drunk man standing out in front of my store front at 1959 Shattuck Ave., yelling insults at people as they came and went from my gallery, GravityFeed. I called the Berkeley Guides instead of the police and they, in a quick, non-violent, non-humiliating way were able to find this man some direction to a nice cool place to sleep off what was going to be a very uncomfortable alcohol binge. 

I just wanted to thank and give recognition to our local heroes, the Berkeley Guides. They really did a great job! 

Thanks a lot guys, we at the GravityFeed are glad you’re here! 

James Lane  

• 

MORE ACADEMIC CHOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Reading the Planet’s coverage of recent controversies at Berkeley High, one might well get the impression that there is an unbridgeable chasm separating advocates of small schools from advocates of Academic Choice. In fact, the gap is not nearly so wide as the divisive rhetoric used by some proponents and critics of Academic Choice would make it appear. As a parent of a BHS senior and of another child who will be entering Berkeley High School next year, I have participated in both the small schools and the Academic Choice communities. Most people I have met in both communities want equity and academic excellence. There is no reason to treat these goals as mutually exclusive. To open up opportunities for success to every child at BHS and to hold every student, teacher, and program to an appropriately high standard or even to make substantial progress towards this goal will take a variety of approaches and a lot of hard work. Let’s not waste our energy vilifying one other. 

Carol S. Lashof 

• 

WILLARD GARDEN  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Once again, thanks to the Daily Planet for placing the Willard landscaping controversy in context. Frankly, having lived this long with the stark ugliness of the current Willard architecture, I had actually forgotten that it was a choice over retrofitting/renovating the former, far more attractive, building. I do, however, well remember how it sat, looking ever more like a neglected penitentiary, until the Willard Greening Project came along. (The reader who blamed that group for ignoring and destroying some earlier parent efforts was, I believe, well-intentioned but misinformed. The abysmal soil on the site could not support plants without major amending and mulching, and most of the plants had died before the current efforts began. As for the justifiably lamented red-flowering eucalyptus—which I, too, loved—it was the BUSD that had it cut down: they said the seed capsules clogged drains and caused flooding, and it may be true.) 

When the Greening Project began, it was to fly in the face of the neglect that had prevailed, and it was indeed in a joyous and participatory mode. People were willing to work hard, solicit donations, make up for district lack of funds—and frankly, of interest. If the district had been willing to respect those efforts and use what human and dollar resources they did have to work with the Greening Project to fine-tune and help maintain Willard, I believe that would have been a prudent and frugal way to achieve something lush and beautiful while solving some of the problems that did evolve. 

Instead, they chose to trade years of ignoring the site for a sudden massive, extremely expensive version of throwing out the baby with the bath water. And those who knew and really cared about the garden were shut out of the process arrogantly, intentionally and almost entirely. 

Now, having “paved the way” for yet more (!) concrete, but having removed the giant tractor after a community outcry, the district claims it is going to meet with the Greening Project to decide what to do next. Yet I ran into Yolanda Huang recently, and she said that no such meeting had been scheduled, or anyway she hadn’t heard of it.  

If and when they begin such a process, there might be hope for the long path to something in the front of Willard School we could all care about and be proud of.  

I’m not holding my breath. 

Donna Mickleson 

• 

MORE THAN MERE PLANTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A series of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle document how neighbors along the 1700 block of Quesada Avenue have reduced garbage, blight and crime by over 60 percent through planting a community garden. But it’s not the garden, it’s the gardners! It works in Chicago, it works in San Francisco, and it has worked at Willard Middle School. Willard had the reputation as the toughest middle school in Berkeley. When I first started the garden at Willard in 1992, everything was blamed on the students. Dead plants were blamed on students, who allegedly stomped them in their rage. The fear of student violence was pervasive. I was warned never to garden alone after school hours. I was instructed that nothing could be in the garden which could be picked up and used as a weapon. No garden stakes were allowed. Kids weren’t allowed to have yo-yos, because that was a projectile. For the first years, every child with a shovel had to be carefully watched. Graffiti was standard school décor. One teacher characterized Willard as a place of “low institutional self-esteem.” 

Anyone who works with Willard now knows that this has completely changed. The students in the cooking class use knives daily, safely and appropriately. And one mother with a tenth-grader who graduated from Willard, told me that her son loves to cook vegetables with her, because he likes the chopping and the slicing, skills he learned at Willard. Despite the fact that the Willard Greening Project is on Telegraph Avenue, without fences, and with all the problems that Telegraph has, we have never had a plant vandalized, and had only one plant stolen in 12 years. 

The outpouring of support for Willard is for more than the mere plants. It is for more than just the space. It is for the years of community, built through the regular work around the gardening and cooking program which is the Willard Greening Project. Due to these programs, community members, parents, and the kids, go the extra step for the school, and the school and community benefit in return. Because school board members and district staff rarely come around to school, have never volunteered in our project, and because they don’t live and walk in our community, they aren’t aware of the invisible glue that is an important part of our community. 

It has been a month since the tractor trashed our garden. I and other community members look forward to meeting with the school district, and hope that the garden can be repaired and replanted before the rainy season begins. 

Yolanda Huang 

• 

A PLEA FOR HARRISON HOUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Please will somebody take a look at the Harrison’s House backyard garden. They have laid off the gardner that turned a swamp into a place of tranquility for homeless people to meditate and get in tune with nature and God when they’re only allowed to return to the shelter at 5 p.m. daily whether they are sick, dealing with bad weather, at 8 a.m. they have to go. Take a look at the garden Nancy Jordan had created and now they have laid the gardnener off and building a $1.5 million building next door. We need all the help we can get to get the gardner back as soon as possible. Take a look a the lawns Jordan wanted. They are dying and she’s been trying to maintain them Please write boona cheema or the City Council. Maybe even the new mayor of Berkeley. Phyllis has been helping, but she is overwhelmed with multiple managerial tasks. Send donations to BOSS/Payroll or BOSS/Admin. Let’s work together to save Harrison House’s gardener.  

Ollie Daniels 

• 

VISITING THE BLANKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Go Away Blank Family! 

There was once a man named Jerome Blank, a local real estate developer in Albany, who owned so many properties and was involved in so much local wheeling and dealing, that he was given the nickname Mr. Albany.  

In the ‘60s, Mr. Albany fought to have the Safeway on Solano Ave. built promising nearby residents that there would no negative effects such as garbage or parking problems. Fast-forward 40 years to 2004 and you can see neighbors griping as they pick up debris that blows in their yards from the aging supermarket. To make matters worse, Safeway only cleans up the garbage on the sidewalk, leaving the trash that falls in the gutter to the whims of the wind and rain. 

Safeway employees, afraid to park in the employee parking lot due to break-ins, park in front of local residents’ homes, resulting in homeowners having to park wherever they can find a place. 

Now the ghost of Mr. Albany is back to destroy the quality of life again in the vicinity of 1530 Solano Ave., where his greedy heirs own an office building. The Blank Family Trust is negotiating with Nextel and Metro PCS to locate nine telecommunication antennas endangering health and lowering property values of nearby residents. 

The City of Albany’s environmental department recently issued what is known as a mitigated negative declaration. The findings were that the nine antennas would have no environmental impact at all to nearby residents. Consultants hired and paid by Nextel and MetroPCS did a study that demonstrated that the project would meet FCC regulations. Does the phrase, “conflict of interest” come to mind? 

Since these antennas are to be located not too far from my house, I decided to do a little research of my own. Nine cellular antennas! No environmental impact! “Something smells fishy,” I thought. 

Although not a scientist by profession, I had friends who provided links to research on the subject of EMF exposure. After reading several abstracts which dealt with the subject of potential negative health effects of living near cellular antennas, came to following conclusion: The research to date on the ill effects of exposure to EMFs is at best inconclusive. However, the following can be said with absolute certainty. 

1) Cell phone radiation can cause DNA damage! However, it is unclear if your body can repair DNA damage without mutating genes? 

2) Recent U.S. studies are showing more significant bio-effects at lower and lower power densities. Dr. Henry Lai has reported DNA single and double strand breaks at levels below the current FCC exposure standard. Magras & Xenos have reported irreversible sterility in mice after five generations of exposure to .168 to 1.053 microwatts per square centimeter in an “antenna park.” 

I could go on and on but the simple fact is that verdict is still not out on EMF exposure even if that exposure falls within the current FCC guidelines. 

It should be clear to Albany residents familiar with local history that what is good for the Blank family is probably not good for them! 

I would be grateful to hear from anyone or any group who has had experience and success in fighting these invasive projects.  

Steve Pinto 

Albany 

• 

SOMETHING TO PONDER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the sake of humanity, when will the human race wake up to the realization that there are hundreds of religious faiths in this world that know that the God they worship is the one and only true God? And will they ever stop slaughtering each other over which God is True?  

There are hundreds of millions of people in this world that believe in the Christian religion, and that the God they worship is “The One and Only True God.” How can that many people be wrong? 

There are hundreds of millions of people in this world that believe that Allah is “The One and Only True God.” How can those millions of people all be wrong? 

Then, there are hundreds of millions of Hindus in this world that believe that Krishna is “The One and Only True God.” Can that many people be suffering under a delusion? 

Then, there are hundreds of millions that profess that Buda is “The One and Only True God.” Again, can that many people be wrong? 

Then of course, there are millions of other faiths that have a lock on God, along with the tens of thousands of beliefs that have come and gone since mankind first started thinking about the “Spiritual World.”  

Religious conflict is one of the greatest causes of suffering in this world today, and has been for centuries. 

Will mankind have to wipe itself off the face of the earth before the conflict is over? The world seems to be gaining the ability and coming closer to that solution every day. 

Warren Ogren 

Hayward 

• 

THE REAL CRIMINALS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is it just the money folks? Is it OK to prostitute yourself for dinners, jewels, jobs? And, of course, we all wink at the ads for special massages. What a waste of time, money, and pretended morality! Wouldn’t it be great if all so-called “perverts,” such as prostitutes, homosexuals, even drug users, were all “closeted”! We wouldn’t have to spend all those millions on our noble wars against revolutionary evils like pandering, gay-marriage, or medical marijuana! Just think, law enforcement could spend those resources chasing real criminals instead!  

Gerta Farber 

• 

SUCCESSFUL TREES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I greatly enjoy Ron Sullivan’s articles about trees as well as your other writer’s pieces about the various fauna and flora with which we share this corner of the world. However I think Sullivan’s article on poor tree pruning did not go far enough. While she is correct about the basics of pruning, we should note that the problems which may befall a tree often begin much earlier.  

Many trees are planted with the thought “how fast will it grow?” with the desire for quick screening, privacy or shade as paramount. Often the tree that provides rapid growth and the desired results in five years will become a problem in 10 years. Frequently trees are planted where they will never achieve their natural size and form if they are too close to structures, paving or property lines. Over-large trees planted where they shade out a neighbor’s yard, perhaps also reducing access to solar energy, or create a fire hazard for the tree’s owner or neighbors can become a bone of contention and can create bad feelings all around.  

If you are going to plant a tree please consider what the tree needs to be successful. Will it have enough room in 50 years not just in five? Are its requirements for sun, water and space compatible with your yard and the adjoining properties? Will it be on top of sub-surface utilities or under power lines? Does it create a fire hazard? Most conifers, eucalyptus and acacias are not only fast growing but can be explosively flammable. Keeping hazardous plants away from structures is a must; it may well keep fire from getting in, it can keep fire from getting out as well.  

Most of Berkeley is closely developed with relatively small lots, yet big trees usually need big spaces. If your lot is small and your neighbors close, a smaller tree may provide all you want and still be in scale with Berkeley’s pattern of development. Additionally it should not tempt one to perform major amputations on it. If needed, quick screening may be achieved with fast growing shrubs while a choice but slower growing tree gains size and stature. Careful siting and selection of these major landscape investments is the best defense against an incompetently wielded chainsaw.  

Michael Farrell  

?

George Santayana, the great Spanish-American philosopher, told us that those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. This profound observation has been invoked out of context ad nauseam. Nevertheless, its real meaning stays fresh because it was intended for events like the Holocaust and for situations like ours today in Iraq. Many Americans didn’t learn the lessons of Vietnam, and so here we are, trapped in that genuine rarity, a disaster in which history repeats itself. The parallels between the two wars are breathtaking. 

Like Iraq, Vietnam was, first and foremost, a presidentially initiated misadventure, an unnecessary intervention in a place where we could not prevail by force of arms. Neither war protected American security. Both were interminable. And hideously, in both the lives of our soldiers were thrown away to no purpose. 

A huge amount of speculation has gone into trying to figure out why presidents Bush and Johnson took us to war in such distant lands. I used to dismiss examinations of the purely personal aspects of their decision making as the equivalent of pop fiction, less important than real facts, figures, historical trends and so forth. Nowadays I give a lot more weight to the personal. 

Many writers have said a big part of Lyndon Johnson’s decision to fight in Vietnam was his desire to beat Barry Goldwater in 1964 and win the presidency on his own, to get over being cast as Jack Kennedy’s ungainly, illegitimate heir. He was also personally offended by Ho Chi Minh’s intransigence. These were his private feelings while he was taking major, secret steps toward war and playing the role of “peace candidate” in public.  

Johnson knew better. On tape recordings made in the Oval Office in those days we hear him telling confidants like Richard Russell that he can’t see any way to avoid the war or any way to win it. Johnson was a fool. There were a lot of other ways to deal with Vietnam. After all, our people didn’t want to fight. We hardly knew how to find Vietnam on a map. Goldwater might have been a danger to the world, but Johnson could have whipped him without plunging into a foreign war. 

I was a GI then, stationed at Travis Air Force Base, just north of San Francisco. Everybody in my unit voted for Johnson. As soon as Goldwater came in view as a possible president, all those troopers—lifers and enlistees alike—decided he was too much of a nitwit to be trusted with their lives. So they believed LBJ’s lies. Me, too. As it happened, my enlistment ended before the war heated up, and like a lot of ex-GI’s, I lost track of the people I served with. But I know most of them were sent to Vietnam, a number of them were wounded, and I fear that some of them were killed. 

In American Dynasty, Kevin Phillips described Bush’s strong personal motives for making war on Iraq. We know from unchallenged news reports that when George Sr. was on a visit to Kuwait, Iraqi agents attempted to assassinate him. It has been less widely reported that Laura Bush was with him, and that she also would have been killed. As London’s Daily Telegraph put it (in “Unfinished Business for the Bush Family,” March 18, 2003), for the younger Bush, our current president, “toppling Saddam was a matter of the heart as well as an affair of state.” If true, this makes a grotesquely inadequate rationale for a war that has caused thousands and thousands of casualties. Everyone who paid attention knows there were real alternatives to invading Iraq in order to change the regime. 

As a causus belli, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was dubious at best. We know definitely that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet Johnson and Bush each claimed to be totally disinterested, patriotic custodians of our interests. Presenting Vietnam and Iraq as imminent dangers to us, they offered “national security” as the overwhelming justification for these unnecessary wars.  

Well, we lost the war in Vietnam. It’s hard to see what difference it made here at home. Our lives went on as though nothing had happened. Our standard of living didn’t drop. We did have a period of severe inflation when the cost of the war came due. (That will happen again.) And the air was a little clearer: we were no longer subjected to endless chatter about the domino theory or body counts as a measure of our military prowess. But in retrospect, it sure looks as though the Vietnamese threat to our “national security” was unreal. 

We were in even less danger of being conquered by the Iraqis. The Bush administration fouled the airwaves by substituting “weapons of mass destruction” for the domino theory. When the threat of WMDs became laughable, they switched (like their predecessors) to other rationalizations, the most unsavory of which is that we have a duty to impose democracy by force. Sometimes it sounds as though we are doing the Iraqis a good turn by blowing up their country, and that we have a moral obligation to complete the job, however long it takes. 

I’m afraid we’ve lost this war, too. Pretending we’re winning, Bush looks like a mortuary make-up artist trying to give the illusion of life to a corpse. His policy has failed completely. He and Johnson look more alike every day. But Bush may yet surpass him by becoming the first American president to lose two wars simultaneously. Remember Afghanistan? We’re also losing there. 

The Vietnam war seemed to go on forever. In fact, it lasted a decade. Today generals like Tommy Franks estimate that Iraq will last at least five more years. Perhaps, if things go on as they are now, we’ll see light at the end of the tunnel in 2009. Or 2010, or 2020. Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel will turn out to be the headlight on a train coming at us. 

While we wait to find out, the waste of lives continues. When I was at Travis we welcomed the walking wounded when we met them on the base. There wasn’t much we could do beyond trying to find a comforting word. We usually didn’t see the severely maimed and crippled. They went directly to hospitals for long term care. The dead were en route to their graves. We’ve had thousands of casualties in Iraq. Bush must hope he can distract people’s attention from them for at least two more months. 

After John Kerry came back from Vietnam, he famously asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?” For him and for us, it will be a painful and bitter irony if he is elected and becomes the leader who arranges our withdrawal from another unnecessary field of battle, where one more American 

soldier will be the last to die. 

Berkeley resident Phil McArdle is a freelance writer and author of Exactly Opposite the Golden Gate (Berkeley Historical Society) and Fatal Fascination (Houghton Mifflin). 0

Among the legislation sitting on the governor’s desk awaiting his signature is a bill that takes an important step towards the establishment of a system of universal access to preschool in California.  

Currently California lags behind the rest of the nation in access to preschool programs, particularly for minority and low-income children. Only four in 10 of California’s 3- and 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool.  

Research shows that children who attend quality preschool programs are better able to learn to read and do their best in school. In addition, they are better behaved in class and more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. 

Assembly Bill 712, which I authored along with assemblymembers Steinberg, Daucher, and Liu, calls for the establishment of a Blue Ribbon Committee, under the direction of the California Children and Families Commission, to prepare a workforce development plan that will yield a well-trained, culturally and linguistically diverse teaching and administrative staff, to work with all children from birth to age 8 in high-quality early care, preschool, and K-3 programs. 

In addition, the legislation calls for a study that will provide an estimate of the cost of a voluntary Preschool for All program for the entire state.  

Locally, my office worked with community leaders to establish a quality preschool at Fruitvale Elementary School in Oakland. Since its opening in March of 2003, the first class of children has passed through the program with impressive results. According to a follow-up study, students made major gains in their overall development, with marked increases in the number of fully mastered skills essential for success in kindergarten. 

In order to meet the challenge of preparing our young children for the future, we must take the important first steps towards access to a quality preschool experience for all children. Our first challenge will be to recruit, train, and sustain a diverse workforce capable of providing a quality preschool experience for our children. 

Towards that end, the Blue Ribbon Committee proposed in AB 712 will make recommendations which:  

• Delineate core competencies that teachers and administrators should possess. 

• Align college programs to provide the instruction and content needed. 

• Create a mechanism to approve or accredit training programs. 

• Provide for teacher certification in early childhood education. 

• Establish ongoing professional development for early care and education professionals. 

• Provide appropriate compensation incentives to attract, retain and reward staff.  

Despite our state’s current economic situation, we must begin to take the concrete steps that will give all children the opportunity to succeed in school. Laying the foundation for a statewide system of quality preschool is one of the smartest investments we can make in our children, our schools, our neighborhoods and the state of California. 

Assemblywoman Wilma Chan (D-Oakland) Chairs the Assembly Select Committee on California Children’s School Readiness and Health. 



Darvag, the East Bay theater company now staging Bahram Beyzaie’s Death of Yazdgerd at Ashby Stage through this weekend, has produced plays since 1985, often in Farsi. 

But Death of Yazdgerd is an opportunity for English-speaking audiences to experience an unusual, poetic drama that traces contemporary themes in an historical setting unfamiliar to many outside the Iranian community. 

The brief but informative program notes give the known facts: Yazdgerd III was the last of the Sassanid kings of Iran. His death in 651, during the Arab invasions that brought Islam to this Zoroastrian realm, was mysterious: his corpse was discovered in a mill, but the cause of his death—and the whereabouts of his remains—are unknown. 

Beyzaie’s poetic inquiry begins where the scant history leaves off—in the mill where Yazdgerd’s body lies in state on a bloody millstone, a priest prays over him (covered by a gold mask and his robes) while an army commander passes a brutal death sentence on the miller, his wife and daughter for their evident responsibility for the death of the king. The commander orders a captain to raise a gallows. The family protests. 

They begin to tell their story—of the arrival of the king disguised as a beggar. Then, one by one, they act it out as they tell, donning the crown and eventually using the golden mask to act out the part of the king. Each takes a turn, beginning with the miller, as the story shifts, more questions come up than are answered, and the point of view subtly changes.  

Did the king command—and pay for—his own murder? Did he seduce the miller’s wife, demand his daughter? Who really knows who the king is, anyway? Who’s really looked upon his face? The roles change ‘round, the wife playing king as the miller plays himself, reversing an earlier vignette . . . the priest and soldiers in turn grow angry, threatening, confused, wary. 

Clearly, the themes are universal enough, and the play-acting of the accused might seem like an Absurdist parable. But Death of Yazdgerd has ironies that are both deeper and more direct. It’s from that old tradition in theater and literature that talks about things close up through a story that’s far away in time or space. Ironically, the most famous example of this in European literature would be Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, in which he satirized France by talking about Persia. 

Beyzaie seems to be using the mystery of the death of the last pre-Islamic shah to speak of the career and death of a more recent one, also followed by an Islamic takeover. There are matters of corruption from top to bottom in both cases. The miller and his family protest their innocence, their humble honesty—but soon show their wiliness, their ability to compromise the truth and themselves. 

As the notes go on to say, “If a king’s glory was lost due to his misdeeds, his reign was doomed to collapse. In such an event, it was a common belief that only the king’s death could spare the country from further disaster.” 

Darvag’s production shows great energy, especially in the acting of the miller and his family. Though a modern play, it’s poetic and rhetorical—something English-speaking audiences aren’t as used to as they once were—realism is our current stylization. But despite great presence and voice by Richard Louis James, Bella Warda (co-founder of Darvag) and Sara Razavi as the miller and his family—and real stage presence by Ali Dadgar as the commander, Nicholas A. Olivero as the captain and D. Anthony Harper as the priest—Evren Odcikin’s stage direction didn’t come up to his evident conception of the play. 

Lines and movement were both strung to a high pitch throughout; there was none of the play of dynamics that would have brought out the subtle turnings of the text into clearer relief onstage. As the miller’s family acts, the others are left to stand and listen; surely some stylized business or attitude would have made them reflexive to the action? 

The impression that remains, though, is of the implications of the play, so Darvag put it across. There are wonderful exchanges: 

“Everything we have comes from the King.” 

“What are you saying, man? We have nothing!” 

“Even that comes from the King!” 

Or, after proclaiming that history is written by the victors, they bemoan “a hopeless war . . . from him we inherited a world we could not defend”—and they wonder how they’ll explain it all to the real victors . . . 

Bahram Beyzaie’s script, in Manuchehr Anvar’s translation, is delicious theater. 

›

As a way to voice their concern about the murders this summer in Berkeley, community members, city officials and several youth organizations turned out to Wednesday evening rallies held at the site of three different killings. 

“If your community was in crisis, where would you be,” said Aunt Bea, 76, one of more than thirty Berkeley community members who came to the two south Berkeley rallies held right next to each other at Adeline Street and Alcatraz Avenue and Adeline and Harmon streets. 

“Berkeley is like a tornado, every night there is flare up,” she said. 

The third rally was held in West Berkeley at Ashby Avenue and Harmon Street. 

Event organizer Candace Miles-Threatt, said the event was set up “to encourage residents to take try and find solutions for their community” and as a way to allow for “mourning and healing.” 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 17 

CHILDREN 

“Sock Monkey Goes to Hollywood” at Barnes and Noble at 10:30 a.m. 644-3635. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Mark P. Fisher “Love for Sale” paintings, reception for the artist at 5 p.m. at Turn of the Century Fine Arts, 2510 San Pablo Ave. and runs to Oct. 20. 849-0950. www.turnofthecenturyfinearts.com 

FILM 

Neo-Eiga: “Bokunchi-My House” at 7 p.m. “Peep TV Show” at 9:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Alameda Civic Light Opera, “Pippin,” Sept. 17, 18 at 8 p.m. Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. Kofman Auditorium, 2220 Central Ave. in Alameda. Tickets are $23 in advance, $25 at the door. Child and senior discounts. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Persians” opens at the Aurora Theatre and runs through Oct. 10. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Black Repertory Theater, “Copy Cat” at 3201 Adeline St. Fri. at 8 p.m. Sat., 5 p.m., Sun. 3 and 7 p.m. Tickets are $10. 652-2120. 

Berkeley Rep, “The Secret in the Wings” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. until Oct. 17. Tickets are $10-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Darvag, “Death of Yazdgerd” at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through Sat. Tickets are $15. 595-4607. http://darvag.org 

“General Waste-More-Land,” guerilla theater performed by Tom Dunphy at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 393-5685. 

Impact Theatre, “Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies” a sexually-honest comedy, at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Euclid, and runs Thurs. - Sat. through Oct. 2 Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Naked Masks “Landscape” by Harold Pinter, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through Sept. 26, at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $10 available at the door. 883-9872. www.nakedmasks.org 

Oakland Opera Theater “Akhnaten” an opera by Philip Glass, Fr. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 3 at Oakland Metro Theater, 201 Broadway, at 2nd St. Tickets are $18-$32, available on line at www.oaklandopera.org  

Unscripted Theater Company, “The Short and the Long of It,” an improv theater experience, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, through Oct. 2. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.un-scripted.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin” with Dr. John Holloway, Dept. of Music Regents’ Lecturer at 4:30 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Chitra Divakaruni reads from “Queen of Dreams” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Julia Vinograd at 7:30 p.m. at the Fellowship Café & Open Mic, Cedar & Bonita Sts. Donation of $5-10 is requested. The series is sponsored by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Suzanne Farrell Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$56 available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Sequoia Concerts Piano Recital and talk “The Fugue & Its Music” with Leonore Hall, pianist and founder of Sequoia Concerts at 7:45 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15-$25. 415-342-6151, www.sequoiaconcerts.com  

Organ Concert celebrating the Autumn Equinox with Dave Hatt at 7:30 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland Sanctuary, 2619 Broadway. Suggested donation $10. 444-3555. www.firstchurchoakland.org  

Mike Zilber and Friends present new work at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Grito Serpentino, spoken word and music, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson with Nick & Shana at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Richard Greene & The Brothers Barton, acoustic string band, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Opie Bellas Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Timothy Daniel, singer songwriter, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Phenomenauts, Harold Ray, Bart Davenport in a benefit for Jesse Townley at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8-$10. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Scarlet Symphony, Gasoline Please, Free Verse, Kudzu Wish at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Michael Zilber and Friends at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Most Chill Slack Mob at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Angel Spit, Julia Lau Band, Mastema at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Plan 9, The Killers 3, The Undertaker & His Pals at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Lemon Limelights at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Most Chill Slackmob, hiphop, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

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

Algerian Music at 7 p.m. at Cafe Raphael’s, 10064 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-4227. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 18 

CHILDREN 

Kids on the Block Puppet Show promoting acceptance and understanding of physical and cultural differences at 2 p.m. at the Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave., lower level. Sug- 

gested donation $3. Children under 3 free. 549-1564. 

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater, “All’s Well That Ends Well” Tues.-Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m. at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, through Oct. 10. Tickets are $13-$32. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“To the Dogs” an art show featuring all canine artwork by Lori Cheung, Jonathan Palmer, Mitchell Rose and Elizabeth Taylor. At 7 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Design Center, 1250 Addison St., Suite 102. 883-1126. www.innersport.com 

“Color” featuring works by Sue Jenkins, Ingrid King and Michael Sacramento. Reception for the artists at 7 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717D Fourth St. 527-0600. www.fourthstreetstudio.com 

“Metal Art 2004” an exhibition of wearable, ornamental and artistic metal art. Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. 834-2296. 

Mitchell Johnson, “Paintings and Works on Paper” Reception for the artist at 4:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Frame and Gallery, 1744 Shattuck Ave. Exhibition runs through Nov. 6. 549-0428. 

FILM 

Neo-Eiga: “Shara” at 5 p.m., “Ramblers” at 7 p.m. and “Akame 48 Waterfalls” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Japanese Cinema Now” a lecture with Matsuhiro Yoshimoto, in conjunction with “Neo-eiga: New Japanese Cinema Showcase” at 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Fim Archive. Free. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

Oscar Penaranda reads his po- 

etry at 5 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. www.ewbb.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Suzanne Farrell Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$56 available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Natto Quartet with Philip Gelb, shakuhachi, Shoko Hikage, koto, Tim Perkis, electronics, and Chris Brown, piano at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www. 

TrinityChamberConcerts.com 

Alexander String Quartet at 10 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 415-392-2545. www.performances.org  

Crooked Jades, old-time and bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Araucaria Dance Ensemble, Chilean folk dance, at 5:30 and 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Geoffrey Keezer, modern piano, at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Andrew Wilshusen and Chad Stockdale, jazz improv drum and saxophone, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Maye Cavallaro Cabaret Jazz at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

J-Soul, singer songwriter, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net  

The Cushion Theory, Espontaneos, The Audrey Session at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Scribe, Thriving Ivory, Blammos, Redline at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Internal Affairs, The Donnybrook, Stop at Nothing, Set Your Goals at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

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

SUNDAY, SEPT. 19 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“MATRIX 213: Some Forgotten Place” contemporary painters explore the subject of landscape. Opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. Artist talk at 4 p.m. in Gallery 1. 642-0808. www.banpfa.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

Neo-Eiga: “Red Persimmons” at 2 p.m. “Women in the Mirror” at 4 p.m. “A Woman’s Work” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian-American poet reads at a benefit for medical aid for Palestinian children at 4 p.m. at Middle East Children’s Alliance, 901 Parker St. Tickets are $50. 548-0542. www.mecaforpeace.org 

Poets for Peace at with Ilya Kaminsky, Peter Streckfus, and Fred Marchant at 8 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“A Question of Patriotism” a discussion of the Chicano and Latino experience in conjunction with the exhibit “California and the Vietnam Era” at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. www.museum.ca.org 

Poetry Flash with Valerie Coulton, Doug MacPherson and Edward Smallfield at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

An Afternoon of Music, Poetry and Zen Non-Wisdom to benefit MoveOn’s 50 for the Future Campaign with pianists Sarah Cahill, Marc Steiner, Margret Elson and Carl Goldstein at 2422 Hillside Ave., across from the Nyingma Institute. Suggested donation $75. For reservations, email kgoldstein@juno.com 

Organ Recital with Carl Smith of the Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University, at 4 p.m. at St John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. www.stjohns.presbychurch.net/Music/organ.htm. 

Live Oak Concert with Marvin Sanders, flute, Jonathan Davis, harpsichord at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $9-$10. 644-6893. 

Virsky Ukranian National Dance Company at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48 available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Music from Japan’s 30th Anniversary Project at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $28 available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“The Cosmic Dance” Odissi dance and music, featuring the dancers of the Jyoti Kala Mandir performing company at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $12-$25. 

The Welfare Cheats and Jon Frommer, political songs, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Boban Markovic Orkestar at 8:30 p.m. Ashkenaz. Lecture and demonstration with Mark Forry, Rachel McFarlane and Boban Markovic at 7 p.m. Cost is $15, $5 for lecture only. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Kenny Washington at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Rothbaum, Drake, Bruckmann & Stackpole Quartet, avant garde classics, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations accepted. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Tish Hinojosa, original and contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Americana Unplugged wtih Alhambra Valley Band at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Absent Society, Displace, Forthmorning at 8 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, SEPT. 20 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Eye Talk Art” Visions from three National Institute of Disabilities artists, Deatra Colbert, Marlon Mullen and Kevin Randolph, opens at Britt-Marie’s Art Gallery, 1369 Solano Ave., near Ramona, Albany. 527-1314.  

FILM 

Heidenreich and Hofmann in Postwar New York A special screening of “Land and Freedom” at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

William Sloane Coffin describes “Credo” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Poetry Express, featuring Cherise Wyneken, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Claudia Quintet at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $10-$15. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Tokiko Kato at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 21 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Suzanne Lacke: Paintings opens at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. at Ashby, and runs through Oct. 12. 848-1228. 

FILM 

Loose Ends: “The Sixties” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Authors and Advocates” with Dave Eggers and Ayelet Waldman at 7:30 p.m. at College Preparatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $5-$10. 658-5202. www.collegerep.org/livetalk 

Joseph Coulson, El Cerrito resident and author of “Vanishing Moon,” reads at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512. 

Clive Barker returns with “Abarat II: Days of Magic, Nights of War” especially for young readers, at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Michael Schapiro describes “A Sense of Place: Great Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives and Inspiration” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Chamber Performances presents Strata Trio with Nathan Williams, clarinet, James Stern, violin/viola, and Audrey Andrist, piano at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamber.perform.org 

Henry Kaiser’s Grooves of Mystery, psychedelic blues rock dance party, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jazz House Jam, hosted by Darrell Green and Geechy Taylor at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Baka Beyond, Africa-Celtic crossover, at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Wed. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Rob Ewing and Lisa Mazzacappa at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.

It’s daybreak at Berkeley’s Ohlone Dog Park and the pressure is on Rebecca Denison.  

Her dog Sally is an unrepentant barker, and with a tenuous cease fire in the city’s dog park wars officially underway, Denison will try just about anything to mute her six-month-old mutt. 

Early Wedesday—day one of a six-month trial period establishing quiet hours at the park—Dennison affixed a citronella cartridge to Sally’s collar. 

“When Sally barks she gets sprayed and she doesn’t like the spray,” Denison said.  

The potion worked like a charm Wednesday morning. Sally and her six canine comrades were as quiet as bunnies as they chased each other around the dusty park grounds at Grant and Hearst streets. 

Owners of Berkeley’s estimated 35,000 dogs might need plenty of citronella if they want to keep early morning and late night access to the city’s only fenced dog park. After 25-years of persistent barking, bleary-eyed neighbors want to muzzle the nation’s first-ever dog park. 

“We’ve been living with this for a long time and we’ve tried everything,” said Claire Schoen, one of 97 park neighbors who signed a petition last year demanding changes at the park. Last weekend, she said a dog owner threatened to shoot her husband when he asked him to keep his dog from barking. 

“We have confrontations every day,” she said. “It ruins our mornings.” 

Neighbors argued that the park’s weekday schedule from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. often meant they woke up and went to bed to the sound of barking dogs. Besides demanding that the city reduce park hours, they wanted the city to install an automatically locking door to prevent late night trespassers. 

Denison, who takes her dog to the park before work, said closing the park in the early mornings would ruin her neighbors’ afternoons. “If she didn’t get her wiggles out here, she’d just bark in the house all day long.” 

Last spring, amid heated debate, the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission crafted a compromise resoluton. Park hours would remain the same on weekdays, but dog owners would have to observe quiet hours from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. On holidays the park would follow weekend hours and open at 9 a.m. If dogs started barking during quiet hours, the owners would have to remove them. If the owners refused, the police could be called to escort the dog out of the park. 

On Tuesday afternoon, the city placed “Quiet Hours” signs at the park commencing the six month trial period. 

Park users interviewed generally supported the compromise, but several leaders of the Ohlone Dog Park Association (ODPA) fear the quiet hours are nothing more than a stepping stone in the neighbors’ drive to reduce park hours or close the park entirely. And unlike previous battles, they fear city support has swung in the neighbors’ favor. 

“I really can’t see [the neighbors] stopping now,” said Doris Richards, who founded the park in 1979. “Who is going to say if the six-month trial worked? There’s still going to be barking. It’s not a Zen monastery for dogs.” 

Richards was around in 1987 the last time neighbors joined forces against the dog park. In that battle, she said the city council was squarely on the dog owners’ side. When the neighbors declined to attend dispute resolution, she said the council dropped the item. 

This time around, she and other dog park leaders are having difficulty getting the council involved. In March, at the request of Councilmember Linda Maio who represents the dog park neighbors, the council delegated the issue to the Parks and Recreation Commission with suggestions to limit park hours. 

Sasha Futran, an ODPA member, questioned why the council didn’t have final say over the Parks and Recreation Commission’s compromise plan and why resolutions passed by the Commission on Disability and the Citizens’ Humane Commission in favor of maintaining the current park hours weren’t initially sent to the city council. 

“It seemed like an awful lot of fuss and breaking city regulations on behalf of neighbors who never documented their complaints anyway,” she said. 

City Attorney Zach Cowan replied that Berkeley’s city charter allows the City Manager to set park hours, but that the council can choose to intervene.  

Shirley Stewart, who has lived near the park for 28 years, admits she is skeptical about whether the compromise can work. 

“The dog owners don’t understand what it’s like to live next to a dog park that’s open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t wake you up, it affects you anyway. The ear never closes.”

An article in Sept. 14-16 edition of the Daily Planet about the Berkeley Bohemia exhibit incorrectly stated the title of Charles Keeler’s collection of poetry. The correct title is “The Simple Home.”  

Sally Hindman asked that donations for the tile wall project in Bulgaria (featured in an Sept. 7 article) should be sent to: 

Shalom Varna Tile Project 

Bulgaria, Central and Eastern European Program 

American Joint Distribution Committee Box 372 

847A Second Ave. 

New York, NY 10017

FRIDAY, SEPT. 17 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Chi-An Hu, PhD on “China’s Role in the United Nations.” 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. 

“General Waste-More-Land,” guerilla theater performed by Tom Dunphy at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 393-5685. 

Scottish Country Dancing in Berkeley Free introductory party at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. near Walnut. 234-8985.  

“Women on the Threshold of Change” A participatory evening of community singing for women, with Kate Munger of the Threshold Choirs at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10, no one turned away.  

Inspiration Point Hike with Solo Sierrans. Meet at 4 p.m. at the trailhead. Take Hwy. 24 to Orinda exit, go north on Camino Pablo, which becomes San Pablo Dam Rd., about 2 miles. Turn left on Wild Cat Canyon Rd. at the signal light. The trail is at the top of the hills about 2 miles. Optional dinner in Orinda after the hike. For further information, call Phyllis at 525-2299.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 18 

Darryl Moore for City Council Campaign Kickoff from 1 to 3 p.m. at San Pablo Park with entertainment and light refreshments. 649-1808. www.moorefordistrict2.com 

John Selawsky for School Board Campaign Kickoff at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz Cafe, 2087 Addison St. 848-0305. selawskyboe@yahoo.com 

California Coastal Cleanup Day Meet at 9 a.m. behind the Seabreeze Market at the corner of University and Frontage Rd.  Everyone needs to sign waivers, we give you trash/recycle bags, pencils, tally cards and a map of the areas we need to clean. For more information see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/marina/marinaexp/cleanup.htm 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of Rose Walk, Tamalpais Rd., Codornices Park, led by John Underhill. From 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For information call 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

Kids Garden Club Build a shade structure inspired by nature, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 7-12. Cost is $3-$5, registration required. 525-2233. 

“Howdy Farmers” come on up to the farm to pet a bunny, see some eggs and baa with the sheep at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $3-$5, registration required. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Chilean Bellflower Tour A tour to see Copihues (Lapageria rosea), the national flower of Chile and other Chilean plants in the collection. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $12-$17, registration required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Introduction to Permaculture for your garden. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Wildheart Gardens, 463 61st St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15, no one turned away. 548-2220, ext. 233. www.ecologycenter.org 

Spring Bulbs Learn how to use bulbs in landscape, as container plantings and as indoor floral displays in winter. At 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club Open House from 11:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The public is invited come try lawn bowling at the greens, which are located at 2270 Acton at Bancroft. For more information, please call Ray Francis at 234-6646 or email Berkeleylawnbowl@aol.com   

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Basic Personal Preparedeness 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 

Home Improvement Seminar: Decks at 9 a.m. at Truitt and White, 1817 Second St. Free, registration required. 649-2674. www.truittandwhite.com 

BAHIA Silent Auction with dinner and music, to benefit bilingual childcare programs in Berkeley, at 2 p.m. at the Duran Foundation, 1035 Carleton St. for information call 525-1463. 

Theater Classes for Adults taught by Shotgun Players, begin at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Shakespeare Scene Study, Sat. at 2 p.m., Acting on Sun. from 2 to 5 p.m., Directing on Mon. from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Classes run through Nov. www.juliamorgan.org 

Oakland High School Class of 1964 Fourtieth Reunion Picnic For more information please contact elliot@pacbell.net or P.O. Box 10454, Oakland, 94610. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain, Pacific Renaissance Plaza, 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Collecting Good Water Quality Data Workshop with Dr. Revital Katznelson, Environmental Scientist, State Water Resources Control Board at Merritt College. Cost is $11. 434-3840.  

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets at 9:15 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Conference Room, 1st Floor, 2727 College Ave. www.berkeleycna.com 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. All items for this sale are 50 cents or less. All proceeds benefit the Albany Library. 526-3720, ext. 5. 

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. 

Dance Allegro Ballroom Youth Dance Program for ages 5-18, for $5 per class, at 5855 Christie Ave., Emeryville. 655-2888. www.allegroballroom.com  

“Living with Multiple Sclerosis” with Liane Mark, Miss Intercontinental, at 9 a.m. at the Claremont Resort, Tunnel Rd. To register call 866-955-9999. 

“Natural Migrane Cures” with Dr. Arn Strasser at 3 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave.  

“Wisdom of Breema” with Jon Schreiber, of the Breema Center, at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck.  

“The Canaanite and Hebrew Goddess” with Max Dashu at 7:30 p.m. at Change Makers, 6536 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. Cost is $10-15.  

SUNDAY, SEPT. 19 

“How Berkeley Can You Be?” Parade at 11 a.m. at University Ave. at Sacramento, followed by Festival at Civic Center Park at 12:30 p.m. Festival includes arts & crafts vendors, food, libations, art installations, games, kids activities, non-profit organizations, and more.  

Botanic Garden and Summer’s End Explore the range of California’s flora in the native plant facility, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Hopper Hike It is time to look for Orthoptera: grasshoppers, crickets and catydids. From 2 to 4 p..m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Benefit for Middle East Childrens’s Alliance with Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian-American poet at 4 p.m. at Middle East Children’s Alliance, 901 Parker St. Tickets are $50. 548-0542. www.mecaforpeace.org 

“Conscientious Objection in a Time of War” with Steve Morse of the GI Rights Hotline, followed by a film on CO’s of WWII and their impact on society. At 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824.  

“Hijaking Catastrophe, Fear and the Selling of the American Empire” a film expose of the neo-conservative agenda at 7:15 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824.  

Free Sailboat Rides between 1 and 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring warm waterproof clothes. www.cal-sailing.org 

Sycamore Japanese Church Bazaar with Japanese food, crafts, and games for children, from noon to 5 p.m. at 1111 Navellier St. between Schmidt and Moeser Ave., El Cerrito. 

Introduction to the TaKeTiNa Rhythm Process with Zorina Wolf from 1 to 4 p.m. at Ashkenaz Back Dance Studio, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $25-35 sliding scale. 650-493-8046. 

“Religion and Spirituality in the Life and Work of Vincent Van Gough” with Marlene Aron at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Part of the Personal Theology Seminars. 525-0302.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Ken McKeon on “Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Sacred Vedic Fire Ceremony from 9 a.m. to noon at 2309 Eunice St., corner of Arch. RSVP to 527-3568. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 20 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. 524-9122. 

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

Berkeley Rep School of Theatre Fall Classes for Youth and Adults begin at 2071 Addison St. For information call 647-2972. www.berkeleyrep.org 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 21 

Afternoon Bird Walk from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline. Walk to the edge of the marsh and watch the rails, ducks and raptors. Turn into the park off Swan Way, follow the drive to the end and meet at the last parking lot by the observation deck. 525-2233. 

Residential Green Building and Remodeling Learn about healthier building materials, how to lower your utility bills, reduce home maintenance and minimize remodeling construction waste. From 7 to 10 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $35. 525-7610.  

Friends of Strawberry Creek meets from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Central Berkeley Public Library Meeting Room in downtown Berkeley. We will be preparing recommendations on creek protection and comments for the Creek Ordinance Public Hearing. 524-4005. jennifermaryphd@hotmail.com, caroleschem@hotmail.com 

“Environmental Dominion and the Ecology of Genesis” with Greg Zuschlag at 7:30 p.m. in the GTU Dinner Board Room, 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2560. www.gtu.edu/studentgroups/trees 

“Climbing Mt. Shasta” Lisa and Michael Krueger will show slides at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Wellstone Democratic Club with John Judis, author, on “Will the Emerging Democratic Majority Defeat Bush in Novem- 

ber?” at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Telegraph and Broadway. www.DemocraticRenewal.us 

“National Security in the Age of Terror” A talk by Gary Hart, fromer U.S. Senator and co-chair of the U.S. Commission in National Security for the 21st Century at 4 p.m. at the Chevron Auditorium, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy. 642-4670. 

Family Story Time at the Kensington Branch Library, Tues. evenings at 7 p.m. at 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

The New SAT with Tara Anderson of Kaplan Test Prep at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

“Are We Eating Too Much?” Is Caloric Restriction for You? with Toni Piechota, City of Berkeley Nutritionist, at 2 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center.  

“Eligibility and Services of State Department of Vocational Rehabilitation” a talk by Sonia Peterson, MA, Rehab Counselor, at noon at the Herrick Campus of Alta Bates Medical Center, 2001 Dwight Way. Those coping with Fibromyalgia and the people who support them are encouraged to attend this free meeting. 644-3273. 

“Weight Loss Surgery: Is It for You?” A seminar at 6 p.m. at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 400 Hawthorne Ave., Oakland. Free, but registration requested. 869-8972. 

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 if you can join us. 233-2144. dan@redefeatbush.com 

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

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Laurie Shay will speak about living with her guide dog and other issues for the blind at 11 a.m. 845-6830. 

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

Taiko Drumming Classes for adults and students at 725 Gilman St., rear studio. Cost is $12 per class or $60 for a course. www.tatsumakitaiko.com 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 22 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Annual Meeting at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Chuck Wollenberg will speak on the history of Berkeley. www.berkeleypaths.org 

“Demystifying the November Ballot” with Councilmembers Linda Maio and Kriss Worthington, including a discussion of City Measure Q and Prostitution at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by Berkeley Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

“Sowing for Need or Sowing for Greed” a film at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Admission is free. Part of the GMOs and Food series sponsored by GMO Free Alameda County. 527-9898. www.gmofreeac.org 

Fall Equinox Gathering at the Interim Solar Calendar, Cesar Chavez Park in the Berkeley Marina. Please come promptly at 6:15 so that we can all begin together. Sunset at 7 p.m. chavezmemorial@earthlink.net 

“The Issues: Terrorism and National Security” a panel discussion at 3 p.m. at 109 Moses Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Institute of Governmental Studies. http://politics.berkeley.edu 

“The Unfolding National Tax Disaster” Recommendations with David Cay Johnston and Chuck Collins at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302.  

“Is Taiwan Chinese? The Politics of National Identity” a panel discussion with Prof. Thomas Gold, UCB, Melissa Brown, Stanford, and Dr. Jing Huang, Brookings Inst., at 4:30 p.m. at the IEAS conference room, 2223 Fulton St. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

“Privatized Unemployment Insurance in Chile” with Kirsten Sehnbruch at 1 p.m. in the CLAS Conference Room, 2334 Bowditch St. 642-2088. 

“A Breath Inside a God” music and poetry workshop with Kim Rosen and Jami Sieber at 7 p.m. at 1517 Fifth St. Cost is $15-$20 sliding scale. To register email delphirose@earthlink.net 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday, rain or shine, at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes, sunscreen and a hat. 548-9840. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. For reservations call 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Argosy University Open House for those interested in learning about degree programs in the fields of psychology, education or business, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at 999-A Canal Blvd. in Point Richmond. Event is free. 215-0277. www.argosyu.edu 

Prose Writers’ Workshop An ongoing group focused on issues of craft, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 524-3034. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

The Berkeley Tango Studio Beginners Series with Argentine tango master Paulo Araujo at 7:30 p.m. Series lasts three weeks. Cost is $35. to register call 655-3585. smling@msn.com 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m., Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

“Roots of Jewish Humor: How It All Began in One Day in 1667” with humorist Mel Gordon, at 11:30 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237. 

“Sukkot: A Meeting Point between Cyclical and Linear” with Avital Plan, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237.  

Want to Quit Smoking? Free smoking cessation program offered at the Over 60 Clinic, 3260 Sacramento St. at 1 p.m. every second and fourth Wed. You need not be an Over 60 patient to join. To register call Jessica at 428-4550. 

“Low Vision Magnifiers and General Eye Health,” with Patricia Hom at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free. 981-5109.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Sept. 20, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. Sept. 20, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/designreview  

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 21, 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., Sept. 22, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/budget 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Sept. 22, 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., Sept. 22, 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., Sept. 22, 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., Sept. 22, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. Harvey Turek, 981-5213. www.ci.erkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/mentalhealth 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 22, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Sept. 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Barbara Attard, 981-4950. 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 23, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning  ª

Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board members authorized a key document last week paving the way for the tallest structure to rise in downtown Berkeley in decades, the nine-story Seagate Building slated to replace four 1920’s era low-rise structures on Center Street. 

On an initial vote, ZAB members voted to deny the mitigated negative declaration, a document enabling the builder to bypass a lengthy environmental impact report. But minutes later they reversed themselves and voted 6-2 to approve the document. 

Approval came despite opposition testimony from eight Berkeley residents—including two former and one current city commissioner—and no favorable testimony save from the developer. Another former and one current planning commissioner signed a written protest. 

The board delayed action on a second key document, the use permit authorizing construction, pending the resolution of questions concerning the size and placement of units for low- and lower-income tenants. 

While Seagate Properties, a 17-year-old Marin County real estate, investment and management firm with major holdings in at least four Western states, had first told city officials they were building an apartment building, plans have now shifted toward condominiums. 

Their controversial giant—10 feet higher and nearly three times the mass of the nearby Gaia Building—rises four floors above the five-story limit for new buildings in the downtown plan. 

Two additional floors were allowed because Seagate is providing some apartments at rates affordable to low and lower-income tenants. The second extra two floors were granted for leasing ground floor space to Berkeley Repertory Theater. 

Zelda Bronstein, a former planning commissioner who resigned earlier this year, was actively involved in the formulation of the downtown plan. She read a prepared statement, cosigned by former planning commissioner Rob Wrenn and current member Gene Poschman, declaring that even with the bonus additions, the downtown plan barred buildings higher than seven stories. 

“[S]taff seems to have misinterpreted the plan so as to allow affordable housing stories to be piled above the explicit seven-story limit. . .ZAB has no legal obligation to agree to extra stories,” Bronstein said.  

“I am appalled that the board would approve such a colossal building without an environmental impact report,” said Clifford Fred, another former planning commissioner. “This Seagate high-rise would be the death-knell for Berkeley’s remaining small town character.” 

He then rattled off a list of smaller structures where the city had required EIRs. 

Fred also declared the application “in stark violation of the downtown plan,” citing the 14-year-old document’s strict height limit of seven stories and 87 feet in the downtown core. 

Wendy Markel, president of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA), also called for an environment impact report.  

Richard Schwartz, a contractor and Berkeley historian, said he was outraged at the lack of an EIR. “There are hundreds of Native American burial sites in the area,” he said. “CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act) does not allow an exemption (from an EIR) when there is reasonable expectation of cultural resources.” 

Schwartz called the ZAB meeting “a cynical game in which the public good is sacrificed.” 

Landmarks Preservation commissioner, BAHA member and MoveOn.org Chief Operating Officer Carrie Olson said the Seagate Building violates the plan’s requirement that new development in the city center must take a back step to the historic nature of the area. 

“I’m shocked it’s not having an environmental impact report,” Olson told the board. “You guys should be requiring it. I went to 53 meetings of the General Plan Committee and came out of it thinking we couldn’t have a building like this.” 

Aiming a jab at the roof line housing the top floor penthouses, Olson said “that Quonset hut on top is going to scream out. This building is going to be glitzy, and once they’re condominiums, they’re going to be really junky. You can’t stop that.” 

Each of the critics drew applause. 

“Obviously, everybody has a different opinion,” said Seagate developer Darrell DeTienne. “The (city) Design Review Committee spent a lot of time and effort to make this thing work.” 

Following the testimony, ZAB members took the first of two votes on the project, rejecting the mitigated negative declaration on a 5-3 vote, with only Robert Allen, Deborah Matthews and Christina Tiedemann voting in favor. 

Allen, who said he wrote Berkeley’s first EIR in 1972, voted in favor because “the EIR has no effect on the final outcome except to raise housing costs and delay construction for at least a year.” 

“I think this will be the most elegant building to be put in the downtown for at least 40 years. We should be lucky to have this quality,” he added. 

“If we did an EIR it wouldn’t address most of the questions we’ve heard tonight,” Tiedemann added. “I don’t see a reason to reject this project.” 

Debbie Sanderson of the city’s planning staff said only “a handful of questions” involved EIR issues, while most of the others didn’t. 

At that point, member Laurie Capitelli announced he was ready to change his vote. Chair Andy Katz and Jesse Anthony followed suit. 

Sanderson and Senior Planner Greg Powell then dismissed concerns that the foundation might intrude on the undergrounded Strawberry Creek—which Powell said was far enough distant not to be a concern—and assured the board that construction would halt immediately if water or burials were discovered, pending appropriate remediation. 

Then, without the normal parliamentary niceties of introducing and passing a motion to reconsider, the board reversed its vote, leaving only David Blake and Carrie Sprague in opposition. 

Groans erupted from the audience, and several opponents walked out. 

“This building is so beautiful that it detracts from other buildings downtown,” said Tiedemann after the vote 

That left the issue of the cultural and inclusionary density bonuses for extra floors and the placement of low-income housing units within the complex. 

Civic Arts Commission Chair David Snippen huddled with DeTienne briefly, then announced that differences over the handling of a public gallery corridor had been resolved, eliminating one potential roadblock. 

During the discussion, Senior Planner Powell explained that under city rules, a developer who committed 5,000 square feet to arts and cultural space received one additional floor, with 10,000 square feet earning two floors—regardless of the overall size of the building. 

When ZAB discussed the Seagate Building two weeks ago, member Blake had challenged plans to restrict the 20 percent of units reserved for low-income tenants to the intermediate floors, while excluding them from the top two floors. 

At that time Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades insisted that the upper two floors “are not subject to the inclusionary bonus.” 

When Blake asked, “So you’re going to make a class-based penthouse?” Rhoades answered, “No, the state law does that.” 

Sanderson told the board Thursday that inclusionary units had been kept off the upper floors because of a “request from the applicant. . .it is justified in this case, but we are not making a blanket recommendation for all projects.” 

It was that issue that kept the board from approving Seagate’s use permit. Instead, they continued a decision until their next meeting on Sept. 23.

Recovering from surgery, Councilmember Dona Spring planned to spend Thursday night in front of her television set watching one of the most important Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meetings of the year. 

But when she turned to public access channel 33, the screen was blank. 

“I just figured somehow the meeting was canceled or something,” she said. 

But the ZAB did meet and approved what will be the third tallest building in Berkeley. They just didn’t do it from their usual home in front of the cameras at Old City Hall, which was listed as the meeting location on the city’s website. Instead, because of a scheduling conflict with the Rent Stabilization Board, the meeting was switched, without notice, to the North Berkeley Senior Center, which has no television hook-up. 

“I bet some people ended up going to the wrong building,” said Spring. “It just makes people so angry.” 

Even some of those who made it to the senior center were fuming.  

“They’ve just gotten really sloppy about this stuff,” said Zelda Bronstein, who learned from a friend the night before that the meeting location still listed on the city’s website was incorrect. 

While even its toughest critics agree Berkeley has made strides in getting information to the public and giving proper notice for meetings since the days when the school board was scolded for holding a closed meeting on an airplane en route to Los Angeles, trying to keep tabs on the machinations of city government and its 38 active commissions can still be a challenge. 

And the city’s most widely-read source for information, its website, isn’t always its most reliable. 

A quick check through the city’s homepage Friday showed that of four commission meetings scheduled for Monday, only one, the Peace and Justice Commission, had its agenda on-line. Last Tuesday morning, after the Labor Day holiday, seven out of thirteen commissions scheduled to meet that week hadn’t posted their agendas. Among them were two of the city’s most important citizen boards, the ZAB and the Planning Commission. 

Residents looking for online minutes of prior meetings might also be disappointed. Roughly half of city commissions that meet regularly were at least two meetings behind on posting minutes. 

“The web postings should definitely happen because people mostly rely on that,” said City Clerk Sherry Kelly. She added that she would remind departments to deliver agendas and meeting minutes promptly. 

Kelly said commission secretaries are responsible for delivering electronic copies of agendas to the clerk’s office five days before the scheduled meeting. 

“Sometimes it could be that the commission didn’t get [the agenda] to us, but some issues could happen on our end. If everyone sends us an agenda on the same day, we don’t have the capacity to post them all,” she said. 

Initially, individual commissions were supposed to post agendas and meeting minutes to the website, but Kelly said the city was concerned that there could be a breakdown if the clerk’s office didn’t take responsibility for posting. 

Anne Burns, secretary of the Design Review Commission, which hasn’t posted minutes for its past two meetings, blamed herself for her commission’s tardiness. “It seems things are a little more unmanageable than they usually are,” she said. “I know that’s no excuse.”  

Gisele Sorensen, secretary of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), which hasn’t posted minutes for six of its meetings dating back to January, cited numerous factors contributing to the lag. The LPC, she said, demands a more thorough narrative description of the meetings which take longer to draft, the department’s intern now only works 19 hours a week and often when she presents meeting minutes for approval, commissioners request changes which further delay their completion. 

The LPC, like many commissions, is also supposed to deliver the staff reports sent to commission members to the main library for public viewing. But Berkeley resident and retired planner John English said when he visits the reference desk on Saturday looking for the LPC commission packet for a meeting that Monday, he doesn’t always find what he’s looking for. 

“Often it’s there, but too often it is not,” he said. “I’m not pointing a finger at individual members of staff, but one is not able to look at numerous controversial issues.” 

Berkeley is under no requirement to post commission agendas and meeting minutes to its website, said Terry Francke of Californians Aware, an organization that promotes open government. State law only requires that agendas for regular meetings be physically posted in the public view 72 hours before the meeting and that commission packets with staff reports be made available to the public no later than when the commissioners receive them. 

By merely trying to post commission information to its webpage Berkeley has gone above and beyond most California cities, including Oakland. But among cities that do put commission meeting information on-line, most are updated more diligently than Berkeley’s. Nearly all of San Francisco’s commissions, for instance, had their future agendas posted and their meeting minutes up to date this past week. 

One factor separating San Francisco and Berkeley is that San Francisco has a “Sunshine Ordinance” which regulates how it dispenses public information and sets up a task force to enforce the law.  

The San Francisco law requires that a commission must post its meeting agenda to its Internet site at least 72 hours before a regular meeting and must complete its official minutes no later than 10 days after the meeting at which the minutes were adopted. 

Berkeley’s drive for a similar ordinance stalled over a year ago, Kelly said, when a citizen group charged to work with her on a measure fell apart. 

“I never got back comments on what I submitted,” Kelly said. “I was uncomfortable drafting an ordinance without getting feedback from the public.” 

Judith Scherr, a member of the Berkeley Citizens’ Sunshine Committee, said that even though the citizen group disbanded, city officials shouldn’t just shrug and walk away. 

“It would have been good if professionals got reinvolved, even if citizens don’t push the issue,” she said. 

Ä

Facing widespread public opposition, UC Berkeley announced Monday it will postpone submitting its Long-Range Development Plan (LRDP) to the UC Board of Regents. 

Originally scheduled to go before the regents for approval in November, the university will now submit the plan in January. School officials said the delay will give them time to reconsider two of the plan’s most controversial items: building 100 units of faculty housing high up in the Berkeley hills and building up to 2,300 new parking spaces, a 30 percent increase for the campus. 

“Those appear to be the two items that deserve the most analysis,” said UC Berkeley Planner Kerry O’Banion. He added that the university was still in the process of responding to over 300 letters of public comment and wouldn’t reveal if the university was considering other amendments to the plan, which was widely panned by residents, student leaders and city officials after the university released it last spring. 

The plan, which will guide new university construction on the central campus and neighboring city streets through 2020, calls for an aggressive expansion of university infrastructure. Besides the 2,300 new parking spaces, the plan envisioned 2,600 new dorm beds and 2.2 million square feet of academic and support space—about three-times more than the proposed increase in the university’s last strategic plan approved in 1990. 

To become official university policy, the regents must approve the university’s draft environmental impact report (DEIR) for the plan. Berkeley could try to stop implementation of the plan by filing a lawsuit against the university on grounds the plan violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

The city responded to the report with a critique charging the university’s plans would increase traffic, threaten the “eclectic and diverse” character of the downtown and add to the city’s fiscal burden by taking more property off the tax rolls. It also argued that the proposed faculty housing on the sparsely populated section of the Berkeley hills would exacerbate traffic and pose additional fire safety concerns.  

Although UC Berkeley has not conceded to the city’s demand to recirculate the plan for public comment, as they agreed to do in 1990, city leaders were pleased with the university’s decision to postpone seeking approval from the regents. 

“I think this is a good sign for the community,” said Assistant City Manager Arrietta Chakos, who coordinated the city’s reply to the plan. “It shows that the university is listening to criticisms of the plan.” 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington praised the university’s decision and said the postponement will give the city a hint as to what kind of partner it will have in incoming chancellor Robert Birgeneau.  

Birgeneau will take the reigns of the university next Wednesday, though Irene Hegarty, the university’s director of community relations didn’t expect his arrival to impact the plan. 

“Certainly the new chancellor has a role to play, but I wouldn’t expect dramatic changes,” she said. 

Hegarty said UC was looking into the city’s suggestions to reduce the need for parking by reducing the drive-alone rate. In October the university will unveil the “Bear Pass” which offers employees partially subsidized AC Transit bus passes. 

Student leaders, who last spring blasted the university’s parking proposal, welcomed news of the postponement. “Building parking at the expense of student housing and academic space seemed foolish,” said Student External Affairs Vice President Elizabeth Hall.  

ASUC Housing Director Jesse Arreguin argued that the new analysis on parking and faculty housing should require the university to recirculate the plan. “If they’re going to make significant changes the community needs to see what it looks like,” he said. 

Jim Sharp, a resident who lives on the north side of campus, remained skeptical the city would ultimately compel UC to alter its plans. Sharp fought against a university development plan for the northeast quadrant of campus, but said the city, after threatening a lawsuit, ultimately settled for minimal mitigations from the university. 

Councilmember Maudelle Shirek will mount a write-in campaign to keep her City Council seat, sources close to her said Monday. 

“She’s running, that’s definite,” said Dale Bartlett, her legislative assistant. 

Last Tuesday Shirek asked close friend Jacqueline DeBose to take out papers to run as a write-in candidate. The decision ended weeks of speculation among members of the 93-year-old councilmember’s inner circle as to her intentions to seek an eleventh term in office. 

Shirek, 93, had planned to run for reelection in South Berkeley’s District 3, but in an apparent mix-up she was disqualified from the ballot when her staffer Michael Berkowitz failed to collect the required 20 signatures from registered voters in the district by the city-mandated deadline. A campaign volunteer, assigned by Berkowitz, had collected signatures from across the city instead. 

Shirek refused to comment on her political plans when contacted by the Daily Planet on Monday. 

Her apparent re-entry into the District 3 race as a write-in candidate could be a blow to the candidacy of Max Anderson, a former Shirek supporter. Many city progressives endorsed him even before Shirek was disqualified from the ballot. 

“Certainly this will make things more difficult for me,” said Anderson, who said he fears that Shirek’s candidacy could throw the election to community activist Laura Menard, who he expects will draw support from more moderate voters. “The pool of voters Maudelle and I would draw from are the same in many respects.” 

Menard declined comment for this story. 

News that Shirek will mount a write-in campaign follows weeks of dizzying speculation over her future. For weeks Shirek had been signaling her intention to run. 

Two weekends ago she attended the endorsement meeting of the John George Democratic Club and two weeks prior to that she sought and received an endorsement from the Service Workers International Union Local 535. 

But at the same time that Shirek had asked DeBose to take out papers, rumors were spreading through city hall that she had decided to retire from public life. 

“Maudelle is pretty close with her thoughts,” said DeBose, who added she didn’t know Shirek’s intentions until she got the request to take out papers last week. 

Shirek has until Oct. 20 to submit at least 20 signatures from registered voters in the district to qualify as a write-in candidate. DeBose said she didn’t expect the campaign to file signatures until Friday, the day when aides have scheduled a meeting to organize the campaign’s chain of command. 

What role Berkowitz will play in the campaign, if any, after his apparent gaffe, remains uncertain. He has previously served as campaign treasurer, but DeBose’s husband, Charles Debose, a Cal State Hayward professor, said that he has been nominated for the post and a final decision will be made by Shirek on Friday.

With Mayor Tom Bates scheduled to unveil a financial recovery plan today, the city’s latest budget projections show Berkeley falling further into the red. 

The city is now facing a projected shortfall of $7.5 million for fiscal year 2006—$1.5 million higher than projected in June, said Tracy Vesely, the city’s budget director. 

The main culprit, she said, is higher than expected contribution rates charged by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS) that will cost the city an extra $1 million next year. Vesely said rising health care costs have also contributed to the additional shortfall. 

Current projections for future years appear rosier, or at least less bleak, she said, with a deficit between $3 to $3.4 million in fiscal year 2007 and about $2.4 million in 2008 and 2009. 

Cisco DeVries, the mayor’s chief of staff, wouldn’t reveal details of the mayor’s plan, but said Bates, along with councilmembers Miriam Hawley and Linda Maio, would call for the city to plug deficits projected through 2009 with spending cuts rather than additional tax hikes. 

The City Council has placed four tax measures on the November ballot that would raise a combined $8 million dollars if passed. Already, DeVries said, the city has cut a total of $14.3 million in spending since it started facing deficits in fiscal year 2003. 

The fiscal recovery plan is non-binding and will not have to go before the City Council, prompting some tax hikes opponents to charge that the plan’s release less than two months before the election sounds like nothing more than a ploy to boost support for the tax measures. 

“I think it’s a total lie,” Bob Migdal of Berkeley Budget Watch said of the mayor’s pledge not to raise taxes further. “They’re going to need more money every year; how else are they going to try to get it?” 

DeVries said that Bates had promised at his state of the city address earlier this year to release a plan by the end of the summer. 

Like many California cities, Berkeley’s pension costs have skyrocketed thanks to CALPERS’ poor stock market returns when the tech bubble burst four ago. The city’s labor expenses have also risen due to employee pension increases negotiated into current labor contracts. 

For fiscal year 2005 pension costs in the city accounted about $6 million of the $10 million general fund budget deficit. 

The revised CALPERS pension rates for fiscal year 2006 require the city, on top of regular salary outlays, to pay 39 percent of the salary for every police officer, 29 percent for firefighters and 17 percent non-uniformed employees. 

In 2000, when CALPERS was reaping double-digit returns, the city paid 2.5 percent for non-uniformed employees and 3.63 percent for police and fire in pension benefits 

That same year the state passed a law allowing cities to boost employee retirement benefits. Over the next two years, Berkeley signed long term deals with its biggest unions granting them raises and improved retirement benefits, which for police and firefighters meant they could now retire at age 50 with a pension that equaled three percent of their salary multiplied by their years of service.  

For instance, an officer who retired at age 50 after 25 years on the force would receive 75 percent of his or her highest salary annually for life. 

In 2002, 22 police officers—more than 10 percent of the force—retired and last year the city lost 72 employees to retirement. 

DeVries said the mayor’s plan would not address pension concerns or propose specific cuts. 

“It will be more of a budget overview. People want to see the big picture,” he said. 

The city’s budget problems could ease starting in fiscal year 2007 assuming two deals Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made with California cities materialize. Under their agreement the state will stop withholding local tax revenue and refund money lost by cities from last year’s repeal of the Vehicle License Fee. If the governor is true to his word, Berkeley stands to recoup $3.8 million in 2007, but Vesely warned that still won’t be enough to balance the city’s books. 

“We have a structural deficit,” she said. “Our expenses are greater than our revenue.”›

A watchful Berkeley Police officer and a crew of beefy private security guards kept a tight reign on revelers gathered Friday night during the second of in a series of “Battle of the Bands” events sponsored by a popular Shattuck Avenue tavern. 

The officer and added security resulted from a complaint by Berkeley City Councilmember Dona Spring after constituents called to voice their concerns after a similar event the week before. 

That evening, festivities ended two hours later than the permitted 10 p.m. closing time because a downtown power outage had delayed the opening. 

Sponsored by Beckett’s Irish Pub, the event was held in the public parking area in 2700 block of Shattuck Avenue as the second in a month-long Friday-night “Battle of the Bands” series. 

Spring said that when last week’s event ended late, some participants had carried the party to the roof of the Gaia Building, annoying neighbors and residents. 

She also received reports about offsite underage drinking—“probably with drinks given them by legitimate customers”—and complaints that bands had cranked up their amps to impermissible levels. 

Pub co-owner Martin Connelly acknowledged that the event had started late because of the power outage, and said the late closing came because “we want to give all the bands a fair shake. We did get a verbal okay from the police to continue.”  

As for the rooftop revelers at the Gaia Building, Connelly said, “I think it’s unfair that we’re being held responsible for someone else’s party.” 

Grace McGuire of the city manager’s staff said that because of Spring’s complaint, she instructed Beckett’s to close last Friday’s event promptly at 10 p.m., which they did. 

The guards kept sidewalk loiterers to a minimum, and the music was kept to a tolerable level. Entrance to the parking area was tightly restricted and IDs rigorously examined throughout as attendees walked through the six-foot-wide admission area. 

Spring said she’d received no complaints concerning the latest event, but she was concerned about another public drinking venue—a pair of rowdy tailgate parties in the city’s Oxford Street parking lot before Sunday’s Bears game. 

As a result, she said, lot attendants have been ordered to keep a close eye on game-time activities. 

Spring said she is “concerned with the inconsistencies in the city’s policies about drinking on the sidewalks on the public right-of-way. If you’re rich and can afford security guards, you can get a special event permit to serve drinks on the public right-of-way, but if you’re homeless and drinking on the streets, you get arrested.” 

While city policy prohibits restaurants and bars from serving drinks at sidewalk tables, the city does issue special events permits, which allow alcohol to be served at events like the Front Row Festival and other public events. 

“By calling it an event, Beckett’s is able to skirt the prohibition,” Spring said. “So much for a clean and sober downtown.” 

The councilmember said the city should be consistent in its drinking policies, and she would like to see to it that all outdoor alcohol consumption is banned. 

“Binge drinking is a nationwide problem on campuses and the city should be doing nothing to encourage it,” Spring said. 

John Martin, co-owner of Triple Rock Brewery at 1920 Shattuck Ave., said he’s participated in outdoor special events, but only on a non-profit basis. 

“If it’s done well, the event can be great for the community and great for the group,” Martin said. 

His microbrewery typically provides their beers and ales free, so the non-profit community groups can gain the full markup for their coffers. 

“Alcohol sales help defray the costs of putting on the events, but not so much if they’re restricted,” Martin said. “We’re a little disappointed with the Front Row Festival and the How Berkeley Can You Be parade for confining drinking to beer gardens.”

Uninsured patients are scheduled to hold a press conference today (Tuesday, September 14) to announce two class action lawsuits against Sutter Health, the corporate conglomerate that owns Alta Bates Summit Medical Center as well as hospitals throughout Northern and Central California and the state of Hawaii. 

The lawsuits, filed respectively in California Superior Court in Oakland and San Francisco, charge that Sutter Health is in violation of what they called “numerous laws” by overcharging uninsured patients. 

The suits are asking for restitution for overcharged patients, as well as a court injunction prohibiting what they call “unfair, unreasonable, and inflated prices for medical care to its uninsured patients.” 

The California State Legislature recently passed legislation introduced by Senator Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento), which would require each California hospitals to develop a charity care and reduced payment policy. 

Area residents will have the opportunity to pick up a free digital thermometer near the UC campus during an end-of-September promotion for National Pollution Prevention Week. 

There are two restrictions: Only one digital thermometer will be given per household, and a mercury thermometer must be given in exchange. The mercury thermometers should be brought either in their original cases or inside two sealed plastic bags. 

The exchanges can be made at the Cal Student Store on Bancroft Way at Telegraph, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday, Sept. 20 through Friday, Oct. 1. 

The exchange is being promoted by UC Berkeley, the East Bay Municipal Utility District, and the City of Berkeley as a way of getting the old mercury-based thermometers out of the public’s hands. Mercury is a toxic metal linked to numerous health risks, including neurological damage and death. 



Supporters of Academic Choice, a controversial program at Berkeley High School, packed the Little Theater Thursday and elected four of their own to the School Site Council that had been critical of the program since it began three years ago. 

Three of the parents (Juliann Sum, Marilyn Boucher, and Regina Simpkins) appeared on a four-person slate distributed by an ad hoc group of Academic Choice advocates, while the fourth (Da’Rand Shariah) indicated that he was in favor of the controversial program. 

Any parent with students attending Berkeley High could vote at the meeting. 

Prior to the PTSA meeting, a group identifying itself only as “Parents and Families in Support of Marilyn Boucher, Regina Simpkins, Juliann Sum, and Janet Wise” circulated a leaflet announcing that “Academic Excellence at BHS Is Threatened!” and calling on parents to attend the meeting and vote in the election. A “pink card” slate with the four candidates’ names was circulated at the meeting under the banner “Vote For Excellence.” 

Thirteen candidates vied for the four seats on the School Site Council. Among the losers was Federal Judge Claudia Wilken, who had served as president of the council for the last five years and shared the concerns of many council members that Academic Choice threatened to segregate the school. Wilken said Thursday that if she lost, she would continue to attend council meetings as an alter 

School Site Councils are state-mandated policy making bodies, comprised of parents, students, teachers, administrators and classified employees. Berkeley High’s council is entrusted to devise an annual site plan. 

The plan approved by last year’s council called for instituting a diversity requirement for Academic Choice, which combined with a scheduling decision by Principal Jim Slemp to cut Academic Choice classes led to Thursday’s backlash against the council. 

Comments by meeting participants reflected the disagreements in the closely contested election. 

“I like the people on the [pro Academic Choice slate] pink card,” said Elizabeth Scherer, a parent of a ninth grader who said she moved her child from private school to Berkeley High specifically because of the Academic Choice program. “[Academic Choice] offered excellent teachers and the ability to be stimulated and challenged. A lot of us wanted to know which of the candidates was in support of giving students the choice to take rigorous classes.” 

But another parent, Amy Beaton, called the meeting “a joke of an election. A group of organized, connected people created a nice little show,” she said.  

“These people showed up because they only have interest in the controversy over Academic Choice. But it’s just one issue in a much larger school.” 

Berkeley High School academics has been moving in two different directions in recent years, with some advocating the move to autonomous small schools and others promoting academic improvement within a large-school framework. As in many such battles in modern American life, race is a tinderbox backdrop. 

By next year, nearly half of Berkeley High’s 2,900 students will be enrolled in four autonomous small schools, each of which is required to mirror the entire school population’s ethnic diversity, which is roughly 37 percent white and 32 percent African American. By contrast, more than 55 percent of last year’s Academic Choice students were white. 

Academic Choice, which is open to all BHS students, focuses on higher level classes and teaches some of the school’s Advanced Placement courses, with a goal of offering students a more challenging curriculum than in the school’s regular program.  

Critics of Academic Choice have said that the program was promoting segregation at Berkeley High, while its supporters counter that the program’s racial ratio is not far from the school’s total student racial breakdown, and that rigorous classes are the best remedy for the school’s achievement gap between white and Asian students and African Americans and Latinos. 

In a less-hotly contested election at the PTSA meeting, Mary Elliott Reiter, Dan Lindheim, Barbara Coleman, Allen King, and Sabe Hundenski all won seats on the BHS Berkeley Schools Excellence Project Site Committee. 

Staff Writer Matthew Artz contributed to this story.›

A legal challenge to Berkeley’s school integration plan that made national headlines last spring has died a quiet death. 

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a well-heeled conservative legal group that targeted the Berkeley plan for using race as a factor in assigning students to city elementary schools, failed to appeal a superior court ruling by an Aug. 31 deadline. 

John Findley, a PLF attorney said his group had planned to appeal the case, but the plaintiff, Lorenzo Avila and his two elementary-school aged sons, moved out of the district, depriving the PLF of standing before appeals court. 

Avila’s departure from Berkeley means that Berkeley Unified—which in 1968 became the first school district in the country to voluntarily desegregate—can continue to use race as a factor to produce diversity in its elementary schools. 

The PLF has argued that Proposition 209, approved by state voters in 1996, effectively prohibits districts from integrating schools by race. The proposition outlaws racial preferences or discrimination in public education, employment and contracting. 

Findley said the PLF now has no current cases challenging school desegregation plans, but still hopes to overturn Berkeley’s system. 

“We would welcome hearing from any resident of Berkeley who disagrees with their policy,” Findley said.  

Any new challenge to the district, Findley said, would have to be under a new school assignment plan, adopted by the school board last year. 

The new policy adds socio-economic factors in addition to race in assigning students. The plan still mandates that the racial mix for each grade be within five to 10 percent of the average for the district’s three school assignment zones. 

In dismissing the case last April, Alameda County Superior Court Judge James Richmond found the district’s former policy did not, on its face, violate Proposition 209. 

f

On Election Day 2004, everyone’s attention will turn toward Florida—the quintessential battleground state which marred the reputation of the electoral system for many voters, especially blacks. But months before the actual casting of ballots, the black m edia have been reporting that Florida already is embroiled in an electoral controversy rooted in discrimination.  

When the Miami Herald broke the story this July of a flawed felon list that mistakenly included a large number of eligible black voters, the state was propelled back into immediate notoriety.  

The “newsworthiness” of the story faded in and out for mainstream media but African American publications have steadfastly tracked each emerging detail. For black voters, the implications are too impor tant to ignore.  

Bill Alexander, a writer for BET.com, posted an article headlined “A Mess in Florida” on the website on July 17.  

“Florida politics too often have been birthed in outrageousness and burped by shamelessness…(the) controversial Florida pr esidential vote count of 2000 is on its way to a sequel,” writes Alexander.  

He explains that more than 2,000 voters, many of them African American, were “accidentally” placed on the list of 47,000 ineligible voters who were ex-offenders. The pressure pu t on the state after the list was made public triggered the resignation of Ed Kast, head of Florida’s election division.  

Several media organizations sued to have the list made public. The Westside Gazette, a Miami newspaper serving a predominantly black community, immediately published a story when a Florida court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.  

The decision, considered a “victory” by many, was seen as a crucial first step in resolving the crisis, according to the Aug. 6 article in the Gazette.  

Bu t some in the black community felt that more needed to be done.  

Kweisi Mfume, head of the NAACP, called on U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to stop the chaos, according to the J. Zamgba Browne in the Aug. 8 Amsterdam News.  

“We are now seeing the ni ghtmare of unjustified disenfranchisement unfolding before us, especially in Florida,” Mfume was quoted as saying.  

Another problem with the felon list is that in Florida ex-felons are not automatically returned their right to vote once their sentence is complete. Instead, they have to petition for their rights to be reinstated through a complex bureaucratic process.  

Unfortunately, the voting irregularities in Florida are not limited to the felon list. Black newsgroups are publishing some unsettling fi ndings.  

BlackAmericaWeb.com published a story on Aug. 17 that looks directly at the issue of voter intimidation by the state’s Republican Party and top law enforcement agency.  

Sherrel Wheeler Stewart quotes Democratic activists in Orlando, who believe the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) zeroed in on black voters during an investigation into voter fraud.  

After the close March mayoral race in Orlando, defeated candidate Ken Mulvaney summoned the FDLE to look into the absentee ballots that prevented a runoff.  

While the FDLE contends there was no malicious intent and interviews were conducted with “sensitivity,” a spokeswoman for the Voter Protection Coalition in Florida, Alma Gonzalez, was quoted in news reports at the end of July as say ing:  

“FDLE agents showed up at the homes of absentee voters, many of whom were minorities and asked them if they had really voted, if they had actually sold their votes, and otherwise questioned them in an unfriendly manner while revealing their side-ar ms.”  

African American columnist Bob Herbert noted in the New York Times that a similar investigation done earlier in the spring had already found no fraud.  

“Why go forward anyway?" writes Herbert. “Well, consider that the prolonged investigation dovetails exquisitely with that crucial but unspoken mission of the GOP in Florida: to keep black voter turnout as low as possible.”  

Doing just the opposite—getting a high black voter turnout—has become the unspoken mission for many now.  

Hazel Trice Edney, a writer for the NNPA (National Newspaper Publishers Association), also known as the Black Press of America, reports in an article posted on Aug. 17 in the Sacramento Observer that there are numerous groups and individuals working hard “to make sure the Black vote is cast and counted.”  

The article focused on measures by programs like Election Protection, a project run by the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation that will have lawyers and law students at precincts all over the nation.  

They also set up a toll-free hotline so anyone who is concerned about their rights can talk to lawyers and voting rights experts.  

Due to the efforts of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Berkeley) and 12 other members of Congress, the Bush administration has heeded to the pleas for an outside, nonpartisan observer in Florida.  

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has been called on to watch over this year’s presidential elections according to the Aug. 18 edition of the San Francisco Bay View.  

›

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s exuberant speech at the Republican National Convention suggested that the Governator may be less the moderate Republican than advertised. Hailed by some during the convention as the Obama of the right, the California governor came across as a devout, rock-ribbed Bush lover. 

Just days after Schwarzenegger’s speech, more evidence emerged to indicate that this compassionate conservative may be borrowing not-so-compassionate tricks from the Bush-Cheney playbook: An Associated Press s tory last Friday revealed that a sweeping reform proposal for California state government commissioned by Schwarzenegger was “influenced significantly” by industry interests—in particular, ChevronTexaco, the largest publicly traded company in California a nd the fifth largest energy company in the world. 

“Many corporations and interest groups participated in the governor’s reform plan,” wrote the AP’s Tom Chorneau, “but state records and interviews with the participants show Chevron enjoyed immense succes s in influencing the report through its array of lobbyists, attorneys, and trade organizations.” 

The report repeatedly references ChevronTexaco input in footnotes, and its acknowledgments page names at least five lawyers and lobbyists associated with the company. 

Last February, some three months after assuming office, Schwarzenegger commissioned a team of 275 state employees to assemble recommendations for the California Performance Review, an analysis of the efficacy of state government. (The report is referred to as the CPR—apropos for a state that currently has a faint economic heartbeat.) 

Last month, the team unveiled a catalog of recommendations so colossal—coming in at a staggering 2,500 pages—that only the likes of Arnold himself could lift it s ingle-handedly. The proposals could significantly enhance the power of the governor to expedite the legislative process and affect everything from the levying of taxes to the procedures for siting oil refineries. 

“This is the biggest government restructuring proposal California has seen in years,” said Bill Magavern, senior legislative representative of the Sierra Club’s California branch and one of the few environmental advocates who got the chance to offer suggestions on the report during its drafting. 

“I know of only a few other environmentalists who were asked for input,” Magavern said. “In my case I got a call to attend one two-hour meeting, but I was never asked for feedback on the most important proposals, and very few of our recommendations were reflected in the report.” Magavern said he knew little about industry’s behind-the-scenes influence on CPR because everyone who worked on it was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement that prohibits discussions about the proceedings: “It was a rigoro usly secretive process.” 

Dozens of enviro groups and public-interest organizations say they were shut out of the process entirely. As Ann Notthoff, California legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained it, “While the indust ry interests were able to deploy huge lobbying forces and resources to shoulder their way into the drafting process, public-interest groups simply didn’t have the manpower required to outgun industry at the front end.” 

NRDC and other environmental groups have been invited to air their concerns about the report’s recommendations during the formal public comment period, which will last through September, but even here activists are at a disadvantage: “I’ve talked to leaders of community groups in low-incom e neighborhoods in parts of L.A. who live near industrial sites and are concerned about rollbacks in pollution and siting regulations, but they simply don’t have the time or resources to make a dent in this massive and complex report,” said Notthoff. 

Che vron spokesperson Stan Luckoski said that by appointing a team of lobbyists and lawyers to contribute to the drafting of the CPR, the company was “just participating in the democratic process.” He said, “As a major California-based company, [it’s perfectl y reasonable] that we participated to make recommendations on how to improve the performance of the California economy.” 

And the participation didn’t stop there. Chevron donated $100,000 to a political fund directly tied to Schwarzenegger just weeks afte r the report’s release, according to AP. The company also helped foot the bill for the governor and his staff to attend the GOP convention, and last week Schwarzenegger held a closed-door meeting for officials from Chevron and the other companies that sponsored his travel. 

“You have to admit, with all the gag orders and corporate canoodling, this smacks of the Cheney energy task force debacle,” said Denny Larson, coordinator of the National Refinery Reform Campaign, an organization that works to protect communities around the U.S. from oil-refinery pollution. 

Executive Sweet 

Siting and expanding energy facilities in California has become a concern for oil and gas interests, Chevron in particular, which is currently trying to build a liquefied natural g as facility in Southern California in the face of strong community resistance. Among the long list of concerns enviros have about the reports’ recommendations are the proposals to expedite the permitting and siting processes for constructing and expanding refineries and other energy facilities. Refineries are the biggest generators of hazardous waste in California and among the biggest contributors to the state’s air-pollution problems, according to Magavern. 

Perhaps even more objectionable from enviros’ standpoint is the report’s proposal to eliminate the independent commissions and boards that govern the regulation of California’s air, water and utilities. This means that the California Air Resources Board, for instance, which is responsible for implem enting some of the most groundbreaking and effective statewide pollution regulations in the country, would be subsumed within the executive branch. 

“The overarching theme of the report is to find ways to put more power into the hands of the executive bra nch and remove checks on the governor’s power,” Magavern said. 

Restructuring is not necessarily a bad thing, said Notthoff, but eliminating key independent boards and commissions is going overboard. “Independent commissions are critical avenues for publi c input,” she said. “Eliminating them could substantially reduce the opportunities for public comment on decisions regarding the environment.” 

These are hardly the kinds of changes one would expect from a leader who has been compared to New York Gov. George Pataki and Arizona Sen. John McCain as one of the most environmentally ambitious Republican politicians in America today—the same man who pledged to build the first hydrogen highway and put solar panels on the rooftops of a million homes in his state. 

Some critics see the news of industry influence on the restructuring report as a gloomy bellwether. “Now we are seeing Schwarzenegger’s true environmental colors,” said Larson, “and they’re not green at all.” 

Schwarzenegger has insisted that the report doesn’t represent his ideas or those of his administration, pointing out that it’s simply a set of recommendations from an independent task force. “At times the governor and his appointees have sought to distance themselves from the report,” said Magaver n. “But then he turns around and talks out of the other side of his mouth, saying he’s going to do everything he can to execute it.” 

The governor will have to come down on one side or the other within the coming months, as he decides which proposals from the massive report he is going to press forward with. 

The problem, as many observers see it, is that Schwarzenegger wants to please everyone. He put Terry Tamminen, a highly reputable environmentalist, in charge of the California EPA to gratify the green community, even as he hired former industry lobbyists to work in key staff positions to make business interests happy. 

But he can’t go on playing to both sides. More than half a dozen pro-environment bills are piled up on his desk, including ones that would require stricter tailpipe regulations on old vehicles, crack down on diesel exhaust from idling ships in California ports, curb overfishing in oceans and protect residential communities from pesticide drift coming off industrial farms. 

“Between now and the end of September, he’ll either have to sign these bills into law and anger some industry lobbies, or reject them and seriously discourage his green supporters.” says Magavern. “He’s at a crossroads.” 

Enviros also hope Schwarzenegger will make mo re of an effort to follow through with his Million Solar Homes initiative and his hydrogen-highway program, both of which he touts but has made little concrete progress on. Let’s just hope he’s not waiting for ChevronTexaco to give him the go-ahead.  

Am anda Griscom writes the Muckraker column for Grist Magazine. 

ª

CORPORATION YARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Well, it’s 2:57 Friday and I’m at the Corporation Yard get-together. I just talked to an employee who thought that “by the freeway” is a better place for the Corporation Yard. (I think he was fairly typical of the employees in general.) The employees are friendly with each other, but guarded concerning their jobs. The public is encouraged to sit at picnic tables, away from the employees, (and not next to the entrance to the food building where I staked out turf.)  

Mayor Bates was shaking hands and politicking less than 10 feet from me. Please, Planet readers, dig deeper into Corporation Yard issues for yourselves. 

Alice Jorgensen 

• 

EXPECTING RETORTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I welcomed Ms. O’Malley’s Sept., 7-9, 2004 editorial, “Hostility and Ineffectiveness,” for its content. But I didn’t move quickly to my word processor—it was simply refreshing to see in print what one knew to be the situation, especially when expressed in communicative syntax, spelling, grammar and punctuation. So now we have the threatened male-bonding retorts. Ho hum. 

Helen Rippier Wheeler 

• 

ISLAMIC TERRORISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While it was heartening to see a Muslim finally take a stand in print condemning terrorism done in the name of Islam (“To Muslim Extremists: Not in the Name of Islam,” Daily Planet, Sept. 10-13), Hassan Zillur Rahim will have to go a long way to convince a significant percentage of his co-religionists to sympathize with his perspective. A recent major international poll conducted by the respected Pew Foundation revealed that worldwide, the two international leaders a goodly percentage of Muslims held in most respect were Osama Bin Laden and Yasir Arafat. 

Moreover, while Rahim rightly castigates “Muslim fanatics” who “continued to wage one brutal terrorist act after another around the world — Moscow, Bali, Karachi, Madrid,” he conspicuously neglected to mention the cities of the country which has experienced far and away the most incessant violence done in the name of Islam. Until Muslims like Rahim are willing to condemn the non-stop acts of terrorism by Islamicists toward the citizenry of Israel, which has experienced on a per capita basis a thousand 9/11s, his commentary will appear more than just a little disingenuous. 

Dan Spitzer 

• 

WILLARD GARDEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a former Willard student, I was shocked to see the front of the school garden on Telegraph Avenue. Nearly all the hard work put into the Telegraph Avenue area was literally ruined. I remember, as a sixth grader, tending the front garden and appreciating the surroundings. Now it is history. All the hard work gone to waste. I am appalled by the Berkeley Unified School District’s destruction of this front area. And to add to the awe, BUSD claims that this was to “provide better handicap access.” This is confusing to me, as I think there is enough for four or five wheelchairs, side-by-side, to go through the Telegraph Avenue gate. For the next decision BUSD makes regarding this issue, it should consult with the PTA and Yolanda Huang, at least! Stop this now! 

Rio Bauce 

• 

THANKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your paper keeps getting better and better. Good choices and clear thinking and good writing—wow!  

I’m especially grateful for Ron Sullivan’s pieces on trees. Helping people recognize and appreciate our trees may result in more effective protest about the removal and/or mutilation of both public and privately-owned trees. Whenever I have asked why we can’t have more skillful pruners for our public trees, the answer has been “Prop. 13,” which has become a knee-jerk response to all problems. We can do better than that. 

Many thanks for your good work. 

Donna Davis 

• 

NEXUS BUILDING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for your ongoing coverage of the efforts of the Friends of Nexus (including the 64 Berkeley residents, architects, neighbors, artists and craftspeople, businesspeople and others who signed the landmark nomination petition) to save Nexus. The accompanying picture, even if black and white, caught the charm of the historic structures (“Humane Society, Nexus Battle for Fate of Building,” Daily Planet, Sept. 10-13). 

I would like to suggest two corrections, however. The most important concerns the willingness of Nexus to invest in the buildings’ maintenance and upgrades. Over the years, we have spent over $100,000 for new roofs, electrical upgrades, and other improvements, including a $6,000 new sewer line this summer. 

We are eager to begin the seismic upgrade, underwriting all the costs, but are hopeful that can be tied to a lease extension considering the six-figure costs and disruption involved. 

The retrofit deadline extensions have been granted to the owner of the property—the Humane Society, not Nexus. A win-win scenario from our perspective would be to have Nexus assume the costs and responsibility for the retrofit as soon as possible, allowing the Humane Society to focus on their important mission of animal welfare. 

Robert Brokl 

• 

ACHIEVEMENT GAP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley’s white liberals usually oppose diversity of thought or opinion but champion diversity of color, as long as they are not directly effected. Parents at Berkeley High are finally waking up to the fact that the manic attempt to erase the “achievement gap” is becoming detrimental to the education of their children. 

The four autonomous “small schools” planned for Berkeley High must reflect the demographic of the population at large (as per the school site plan). The Academic Choice program, which allows students to enroll in more challenging classes, is not a small school and therefore is not subject to the same quota system. 

As might be expected, the majority of students interested in Academic Choice were white and Asian. The Site Council suddenly became anti-choice and proposed a diversity requirement as per the small schools. Political correctness once again trumps common sense. 

Site Council President Claudia Wilken feared a segregated campus. If the closing of the achievement gap and a quality education were the true priority, segregation might not be a bad idea. Those at the lower end of the achievement gap have special needs and should receive special attention, but not at the expense of other students. Models which have proven to work best to help poorly achieving students include, separating not only by race but by gender, the wearing of uniforms and a learning environment with strict discipline. 

The biggest obstacle to closing the achievement gap was staring Principal Slemp right in the face as he addressed the capacity crowd at last Thursday night’s election for the Site Council. I counted a total of seven African American parents at the meeting! I estimate that to be less than two percent parental representation, where as they comprise 32 percent of the student body. 

The votes were cast, the people spoke, and Claudia Wilken and her group were swept out of office and replaced with a slate of candidates who ran on a pro-choice, pro-education platform. If these same Berkeley liberals would only apply such common sense to other issues in Berkeley, realize that political correctness makes it difficult to talk about actual reasons for many problems and therefor impossible to reach any real solutions, we might begin to make some real progress. Perhaps a step was taken Thursday night. 

Michael Larrick 

• 

BUSH’S RECORD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

CBS’s revelations that Bush got preferential acceptance into the Texas Air National Guard, and that he failed to serve his country throughout his term of duty were answered by Dan Bartlett, the White House’s flack, saying that these were “old charges,” “politically based,” and that they resurface every election year. True, but this time, the charges are substantiated by documents and testimonials of the people responsible for giving Bush that life-saving break. The White House’s denials, like the televised denial by Bush himself, are shown to be flat-out lies. 

Since we can’t trust the current president to tell the truth about his own military service, how can we trust him to continue as commander-in-chief of our sons and daughters who are actually serving our country with their lives? 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

RADICAL EXTREMISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I find it disgusting that people on the right, especially politicians, columnists, and some ordinary citizens who describe other people who are uncompromising environmentalists as either “radical environmentalists” or “environmental extremists.” Does that mean that other people, including myself, who want clean water, clean air, and no storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., which is home of the Western Shoshone People, are radical extremists? 

If that is the case, then it seems that these people on the right enjoy having dirty water, dirty air, and support President Bush’s action of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Above all, people on the right enjoy dirty water, dirty air, and want to live comfortable with four more years of President Bush.  

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

CITY EMPLOYEES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Unlike all private sector employees who pay Social Security (payroll) taxes, all state, Alameda County, Oakland and City of Albany employees, and even Berkeley public school teachers, Berkeley’s city employees do not have to contribute anything to their own publicly funded pensions. This unique employee benefit was granted by the City Council under the previous mayor in better economic times for reasons unknown to the general public. It was a fiscally irresponsible and short-sighted decision, and by one estimate accounts for more than half of the city’s current budget shortfall of $10 million. 

This overly generous provision is part of the collective bargaining agreements city officials negotiated with unions representing city employees. These agreements don’t expire for another two years or so, but could be amended much sooner if all parties to the contracts agree to do so. 

Before we, the voters and taxpayers of Berkeley, go to the polls in November, the mayor and the leaders of the city employees’ unions owe us a detailed explanation, using figures verified for accuracy by the city auditor, as to why city employees should not have to share the costs of their publicly funded pension plan to help us avoid most of the proposed tax and fee increases or many of the planned budget cuts. If these official fail to provide an adequate explanation, the voters should hold their feet to the fire and reject the proposed tax and fee increases. 

Keith Winnard 

• 

A NASTY FLAVOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding John Koenigshofer’s diatribe against Becky’s editorial about her recent Berkeley Police experience, I’d like to say that one can have a most unpleasant encounter with an officer and not file a complaint; so his statistics are undoubtedly way off the mark. 

I’m 63 and for ease of parking and gas conservation, I’ll ride a little Yamaha scooter to run errands. Last Sunday was sweltering and I couldn’t bear to wear my helmet. I got pulled over by Officer McDougall and ticketed! When he was finished with the 10 minutes of paper work (registration, insurance, license, etc.) he said, “You know, I could have your scooter towed.” Then he finished the process by saying, “Enjoy the rest of your day.” 

I’m sorry. It’s facetious, patronizing comments and attitudes like McDougall’s that put a nasty flavor in citizens’ mouths. I don’t think it’s typical, but it happens and it’s unnecessary. 

Mary Wilson 

• 

A NEW CAPTAIN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The crew of the giant sinking ship U.S. America will elect a new captain. Miraculously they are divided into two parties and every adult sleeping on the sinking ship will cast one vote for person A, the nominee for captain of party A, of for person B, nominee of party B. The nominee who gets the most votes will be the new captain of the sinking ship. 

Great effort is made and much money is spent by the managers of parties A and B to convince the people it is in their own best interest to vote for their party. How do you get the women to vote for you, the blacks, the Mexicans, the rich as well as the poor, organized labor, pensioners, lawyers and government service, people clamoring for free education and medical care and free drugs? You make all these promises, you pay for all these advertisement, you get all these votes. 

The winner wins. This is the famous American Democracy every country should adopt as its form of government, Once every four years the little man is made to believe he has a vote in the kind of society he lives in, that representatives he elects will protect his autonomy and his right to work and his ability to take care of himself and his children. 

Reality is different. Money rules absolutely now, the same money rules and runs the country before as after an election and money rules in its own interest, using people and their governments for its own purpose. Global money needs free trade in a global market to maximize profits.  

Governments, dependent for their election and re-election on this money, have to support always free trade legislation and are thus powerless to protect their own people from the ravages of free trade and unable to stop global capital from scouting all over the world for the cheapest labor to manufacture the goods to be sold in the rich countries to the lucky people who so far have escaped from the hell of unemployment caused by global capitalism. 

The people who are so excited about voting for or against Mr. A or Mr. B are not aware they are both lackeys of global money impotent to save them from the great rape of global capitalism for whom the war in Iraq, like the war in Vietnam, is just a welcome source of extra income. 

Also, lately, we Americans have become quite fanatic about religion. So Mr. A and Mr. B must proclaim belief in the Judeo-Christian God and ask often for His blessing. No non-reborn-Christian or non-pro-Israel person can ever be elected to the presidency. 

This is a call for protectionism and isolationism, for peaceful coexistence and non-interventionism, a call for the fulfillment of the ideas of the American Revolution. 

Jan H. Visser 

é

“Are you getting enough sleep?” asked Pearl, peering into my eyes over the Scrabble board.  

“Yes,” I said. 

“Are you sure?” added Rose. “You look tired.” 

“What’s with the hair?” said Louise. “You need to comb it back, or forward, or something.” 

I looked at Louise. Her soft, black hair was cropped short and there was a trace of carefully applied lipstick on her lips. She had a colorful scarf arranged artfully around her neck. 

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get right on it when I get home.”  

“And another thing,” said Louise, holding her fork with perfectly manicured fingers, and taking a small, delicate bite of the apple crisp Pearl had made. 

“What?” I asked. 

“You need to slow down,” she said. 

“Yes,” agreed Rose.  

“Absolutely,” said Pearl. 

“Whose turn is it?” I asked, trying to change the subject. It was disconcerting having all three Scrabblettes stare at me at the same time.  

“Mine,” said Rose with the sound of victory in her voice. “I’ve got a J. I just love Js, don’t you? So many points, so many neat words.” She put a J and an O on the board above the O and N in onager (a wild ass found in the deserts of Central Asia), and spelled the word jo vertically and horizontally in addition to spelling the word on. The J is worth 8 points and Rose had placed it on a triple word square. “Yahoo!” she shouted, counting up her points. “That’s 24 and 24, plus 4 more which adds up to 52. Pearl, you got that?”  

“Dutifully noted,” answered Pearl, penciling in the number 52 on the scorecard. “You’re in the lead by 10 points.” 

“What the heck does jo mean?” I asked.  

“A cup of coffee,” said Rose. “You know, like, ‘Get me a cuppa jo, right now’.”  

“You want a cup of coffee?” asked Louise. 

“No,” said Rose. “I was just explaining to Suzy the definition of jo.” 

“Watch this,” said Louise. She added an E to the end of the vertical jo, and put letters in front of it to spell zonure. Zonure ran across a double word square. When the score was added up Louise had gained 40 points and taken over the lead from Rose. 

“What does joe mean?” I asked. “What’s the definition of zonure?” 

“A zonure is an African lizard,” said Louise. “I would have thought you knew that. And joe means ‘He’s a regular joe’. Haven’t you heard that expression before? It means he’s a sweetheart.” 

“Who’s a regular joe?” asked Pearl. 

“No one,” said Louise. “I’m defining the word joe with an E for Suzy.  

“Speaking of jo,” said Rose. “I mean jo without an E, this coffee needs to be stronger. Who wants more? I’ll make another pot.” 

“I’ll take a cup,” said Pearl. 

“Me too,” said Louise. 

“Not me,” I said. “I’m wired.”  

“Wired?” said Pearl. “You look tired to me.” 

“She’s wired, but then she’ll be tired,” said Rose. 

“She needs a vacation,” said Louise. 

“Oy,” I said defiantly, firmly placing a Y under the O in zonure. “The Y is on a triple letter score so give me 13 points, Pearl.” 

“Not a word,” said the Scrabblettes in unison.  

“It’s foreign,” explained Pearl.  

“Yiddish,” added Louise. 

“Not allowed,” said Rose. 

“All right then,” I said, with as much patience as I could muster. “I’ve got an O. How ‘bout if I put it above the Z in zonure and spell Oz for a measly 11 points.” 

“No,” said Louise. 

“No?” I asked. “Why not?” 

“Proper noun,” said Pearl. 

“Not allowed,” repeated Rose. 

“Maybe I am tired,” I said, sitting back in my chair in defeat. “Maybe I will have another cup of jo. Maybe I do need a vacation.” 

“To Oz,” said Pearl. 

“With Joe,” said Louise. 

“Joe who?” asked Rose. 

Author’s note: The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Third Edition (Merriam Webster, Inc., 1996) has the following definitions: jo: a sweetheart; joe: a fellow; oy: used to express dismay or pain. Oz is not listed. The Scrabblettes have been informed. 

Strong-Arm Artist Gets Cash 

A bandit with ready fists convinced a pedestrian to hand over his cash shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday near the corner of Russell and King streets, then drove away, said Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Spat Takes Sharper Edge  

A Berkeley man called police after a row with an acquaintance evolved into a potentially deadly confrontation about 7:30 p.m. Thursday when one of the participants pulled and knife and stormed off, vowing to come back with a rifle. 

The suspect returned when police arrived at the scene near the corner of Michigan and Maryland avenues, Okies said. The incident is still under investigation. 

Upper Story Hot Prowler  

An alert citizen spotted a man with a ladder trying to force his way into a second floor dwelling near Delaware Street and McGee Avenue 20 minutes before midnight Thursday. 

Alarmed at being discovered, the would-be hot prowl burglar gave up his efforts and took flight before police arrived. 

Reluctant Bashing Victim 

When a man appeared in a the Alta Bates emergency room with a wound to the back of his head at 6:30 p.m. Friday, he wouldn’t tell health care workers how he’d been injured, so they called Berkeley Police. 

Under questioning, the injured man allowed that he’d been struck with a metal object. Police identified a possible suspect, but no arrest has yet been made, said Officer Okies. 

Battering Teens Sought 

Berkeley police are seeking a pair of teenagers on assault with a deadly weapon charges stemming from a fists and kicks beatdown administered to another young man Saturday morning near the corner of Russell Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

Elevated House Takes Tumble 

Something went awry last Monday after contractors elevated a house at 1112 Bancroft Way in preparation for building a new foundation and the dwelling slipped off its supports and into the adjoining driveway, said Berkeley Deputy Fire Chief David Orth. 

“We were able to secure the driveway and brace up the structure, but it did displace families living in two other properties to the rear of the site,” he said. 

The ailing dwelling is now fenced off, awaiting more repairs. 

Power Substation Blows 

The Pacific Gas & Electric substation at Hearst and McGee avenues blew a transformer just before 7 p.m. last Wednesday, igniting several trees and a car after red-hot 1,200-volt high tension lines dropped from their polls, according to Orth.  

The incident caused a wide-spread power outage. Power was restored to a majority of homes within an hour.

As a result of the actions by the U.S. Government after 9/11, what is the reality in the “war against terrorism” three years later? 

Some observers have noticed some interesting facts: 

• None of the agencies of the U.S. Government has stated why it believes that its actions since 9/11 will decrease the number of people in the world who now hate the U.S., its institutions, and its people and might therefore commit terrorist attacks on the U.S. 

• None of the U.S. Government agencies has made a point of working against terrorism with any of the U.N. bodies under the U.N. Anti-Terrorism Treaties that the U.S. Government has ratified. 

• Many U.S. military officers, and Bush as commander-in-chief, have expressed concern that U.S. military staff may have taken, or may take, actions under the stress of battle (as in Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq) that could lead to charges that they committed war crimes or crimes against humanity or crimes against peace forbidden by the Nuremberg Principles, or violated the Geneva Conventions.  

(This fear caused Bush to announce U.S. withdrawal from the new International Criminal Court, and to seek bilateral agreements with many nations that they would not seek to arrest or charge U.S. Troops with violations of the Nuremberg Principles or the law of nations.)  

• Many concerned people allege that U.S. Government officials repeatedly violated many fundamental principles of law. They have filed many law suits to stop some of these violations. 

• Many lawyers have gone to court to defend clients who said they could prove they were wrongfully arrested or accused.  

• The government has appealed virtually every decision by a U.S. court finding its actions in the “war on terrorism” to be illegal. 

• Many students of history wonder whether they are seeing the beginning of the end of the long evolution of the basic human rights of the people, from ancient Egypt to the United States before 9/11, at the moment when the people of Venezuela are trumpeting their first written bill of rights. 

• An unending “war against terrorism” was declared, with no victories in sight and with rumors of new nations to be invaded by U.S. troops. 

• Is it not becoming clear that human rights violations in the U.S., and by the U.S. at home and abroad, will not defeat terrorism. They will breed additional men and women and children willing to sacrifice their lives in suicidal attacks on “the U.S.” because the U.S. Government has acted violently toward their families and friends and faiths. 

1. Right of Every Human Being Not to be Killed or Disappeared 

(continued from column 1, Friday, Sept. 10) 

This right is clearly stated in the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, in the United Nations Charter, Article 55c, and in the three human rights treaties ratified by the U.S. by 1994. There are clear limits to killings even in wartime, defined in the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions, and in the customary international humanitarian laws of war. 

Report 1.9 

Deadly U.S. Attack on Afghan Wedding: Kakarak Village 

(“Civilian Catastrophe as U.S. Bombs Afghan Wedding,” The Guardian, July 1, 2002; Luke Harding, “No U.S. Apology Over Wedding Bombing,” The Guardian, July 3, 2002) 

Report 1.10 

Afghan Prisoners Die after U.S. Military Interrogation: Dilawar, et al. 

(Duncan Campbell, “Afghan Prisoners Beaten to Death at U.S. Military Interrogation Base,” The Guardian, March 7, 2003) 

Report 1.11 

U.S. Troops Charged with Massacre of Afghan Prisoners: Mazar 

(Genevieve Roja, “Documenting the Massacre in Mazar,” AlterNet, July 8, 2002; “Film Documents Alleged Massacre of 3,000 Taliban Prisoners in Afghanistan,” Democracy Now!, May 22, 2003; “Physicians for Human Rights Renews Calls for Full Forensic Investigation into Alleged Killing of Taliban Prisoners,” PHR, June 13, 2002; David Rose, “How we survived jail hell,” The Guardian, March 14, 2004)  

Report 1.12 

After Iraq Invasion, U.S. Soldiers Kill Unarmed Iraqi: Mazen Nouradin 

(Medea Benjamin, “The Occupations’ Hidden Victims—Innocent Iraqis,” Occupation Watch Center, Aug. 5, 2003) 

Report 1.13 

U.S. Sergeant Reported Killing of Iraqi Prisoner at Abu Ghraib: Ivan Frederick, et al. 

(Seymour M. Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib, the New Yorker, May 10, 2004) 

To be continued… 

Berkeley resident Ann Fagan Ginger is a lawyer, teacher, activist and the author of 24 books. She won a civil liberties case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1959. She is the founder and executive director of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, a Berkeley-based center for human rights and peace law. 

This column is based on the report by Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, Challenging U.S. Human Rights Violations Since 9/11, edited by Ann Fagan Ginger (Prometheus Books 2005). Readers can go to http://mcli.org for a complete listing of reports and sources, with web links. (c. 2004 MCLI)›

It seems everyone—politicians, voters, letter writers and editorial columnists—expressed surprise—shock even—at the process by which a small San Pablo card room could morph into a super-size slot machine mecca.  

But another deal being crafted nearby des erves an equally critical look. 

In October, 2002, just as Berkeley’s bitter mayoral battle was about to be decided, the Berkeley Daily Planet reported that then candidate Tom Bates had “facilitated” a deal whereby the East Bay Regional Park District woul d purchase 10 (or more) acres from Magna Corporation—which owns Golden Gate Fields racetrack. This land would be used for soccer fields, in spite of the fact EBRPD openly stated it doesn’t like including sports fields on their property. And in spite of th e fact that EBRPD has thousands of acres “land-banked,” closed to the public because of a lack of maintenance funding. 

The deal was heartily approved by local Sierra Club spokesman Norman LaForce and Robert Cheasty, the leader of Citizens For The Eastsho re State Park. The logic was that this removed the threat of ballfields on the Albany Plateau, part of the proposed Eastshore State Park. Tom Bates is quoted as saying that this deal could be settled by election day! The Sierra Club and playing field advo cates endorsed Bates for mayor of Berkeley. 

Doesn’t sound so bad, right? 

Those of us who questioned the Magna/Bates/EBRPD/Sierra Club soccer field deal asked “What does Magna get in return?” And as time has passed, we finally have our answer. It isn’t a pretty one, nor should it give any comfort to people who look to their local environmental groups for advice on land use. 

The Magna Corporation has been expressing their desire, for years, to build a 600,000-square-foot retail/hotel development on their north parking lot facing Buchanan Street. This scheme, along with the proposed ferry terminal at the base of Gilman Street, as well as visions of Gilman becoming a commercial strip, would make much of the Berkeley/Albany Waterfront look just like Emeryvi lle.  

In March this year, Norman LaForce was still talking tough: “We will sink any ferry boat that tries to get into Gilman,” he is quoted as saying. In the same Daily Planet article the myth was perpetuated. “They (environmentalists) are fighting a hot el and entertainment center planned by Magna Corporation….” 

So, imagine our surprise (not really) when just a few weeks ago, the same Norman LaForce announced at a public meeting that the Sierra Club had its own development plan for the north parking lot—325,000-square-feet of hotel and shopping. Right on the waterfront, right on top of the new state park. 

So this was the payoff for the 2002 deal for East Bay Regional Parks to buy the planned soccer field acres. Instead of 600,000 square feet, Magna Corporation gets environmentalist support to build 325,000 square feet.  

A recent Daily Planet article provides the information that a telephone “poll” being conducted might be forming opinion rather than receiving it. Obviously, Magna Corporation sees the prime waterfront site by the Albany Landfill as one of the most lucrative casino paydays this side of the Nevada border. 

And in the letters page, writers are expressing outrage at the decimation of the meadow in the Eastshore State Park “design” process. This land, which Norman LaForce declared the most ecologically sensitive area due to the abundance of bird and animal species, has been clear cut and surrounded by a chain-link fence. Clearly the nesting Northern Harrier liked the meadow just the way it was—non-native plants et al. 

The homogenizing and sanitizing of this newly created state park waterfront might yet prove to be an albatross around the necks of those who fought so hard for it—because the state will control and regulate how you can use yo ur local parks, and Magna Corporation has the Sierra Club’s blessing to build a 325,000-square-foot commercial center sitting like a festering boil on the face of the park.  

In their determination to see the Eastshore State Park built, the very people who fought valiantly to prevent development of the waterfront in the ‘70s may have inadvertently helped create a development nightmare. 

Those of us who spoke out against the restrictions implicit in a state park—saying we wanted cities to maintain control of urban parks to meet the needs of local people—were mocked in public meetings, and ignored by politicians, environmentalist leaders and planners alike. 

Thankfully there are many in Berkeley and the surrounding cities who still have the urge to protest. It is never to late to show our disgust—at the ballot box, in the media, in City Council chambers and in the parks themselves. 

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ZAB CAVES IN ON SEAGATE EIR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Thursday, Sept. 9, I attended the Zoning Adjustment Board hearing about the Seagate project—nine-and-a-half stories and four lots wide on Center Street below Shattuck Avenue. The project would be the biggest building constructed in Berkeley in 30 years, with underground parking three stories deep. 

I knew from many maps that the north fork of Strawberry Creek was either under or adjacent to the proposed project in a very old brick culvert. As a contractor for over 20 years, I know that the weight of a huge building would impact underground soil laterally as well as under the building, and could destroy the culvert even if it is under an adjacent lot. This could happen during construction, or years later. 

This meeting was profoundly sobering. The Board initially denied the mitigated negative declaration (an end-run around the necessary environmental impact report). A city staff member then began to advise the board, behaving like a booster for the developer. She told them not to worry about architectural, traffic and density issues as they would be dealt with elsewhere. She told them not to worry about the creek or the culvert because if a creek was found, the developer would talk to the city and deal with it then. She urged ZAB not to vote for an environmental impact report! I thought the ZAB was meeting expressly to make sure CEQA laws were followed, and determine if environmental impacts might be caused by the project, thus triggering an EIR. An EIR would have neutral experts examine the salient issues and present their findings for public review. The public is supposed to have a say in the process. 

After the staffer spoke to the board, the board members, eager to follow her lead, changed their vote, allowing the project to go forward without an EIR. Buildings that are just one twenty-fifth the size in Berkeley have been required to draft an EIR. 

Then things started to become clear. Board member Allen stated that he was sure that any EIR here would offer nothing, but would cost the developer 30 percent more. Amazingly he knew that this massive project would have no environmental impact to access before the project would be approved. Another board member voted for no EIR because “Berkeley needs buildings.” They were not voting on the need for buildings. They were mandated to assess whether the project had a reasonable chance of having a substantial environmental impact. I witnessed the board abandoning their obligations. 

Meanwhile no one could tell the board exactly where the creek is even though they asked many times! 

In the New Berkeley there is clearly a pro-development culture from the mayor’s office down. The Landmarks Commission has been appointed with employees of developers. ZAB is staffed with people who claim to know worthless outcomes of studies that have not been performed. Public comment time is reduced and decisions are increasingly made by a city attorney, without public knowledge, review or comment. The attorney, behind closed doors, decided that a project in a five-story zone could have a bonus of 4.5 more stories. 

Staffers are hand picking certain rules to follow and ignoring others, such as CEQA, the Creek Ordinance, the Downtown Plan, etc. Monied players are given massive special favors by our planning department when the regular working people are simply required to obey the law. Berkeley was the home of free speech, environmental concern, and urban creek restorers. In the New Berkeley developers have taken over. Bad development planning is literally eating our land, creeks and culture alive. I urge people who care about our environment here in Berkeley to contact the mayor and the City Council. Ask why the Planning Department and ZAB have become bodies which advise developers on how to “score” rather than advocates for the greater good.  

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When the Democratic National convention ended, on July 30, John Kerry had a slight lead in the presidential polls and George Bush had a negative approval rating. By the time the Republican National Convention ended, on Sept. 2, Bush had taken a lead in the polls and had gained a positive approval rating. What happened during the month of August that explains this reversal?  

In a word, Kerry was “Roved.” Bush’s bounce is more about the success of a skillfully orchestrated campaign to discredit Kerry, than it is about voter enthusiasm for his policies. During August, the president’s campaign manager, Karl Rove, launched a four-pronged attack on the challenger, which managed to shift media focus from Bush to Kerry.  

The Republican response to Kerry’s acceptance speech was to assert that he had done nothing as a U.S. senator. Immediately after the convention, every conservative pundit spoke dourly of the “hole” in Kerry’s resume covering the time between his military service in Vietnam and his presidential candidacy. The Kerry campaign failed to point out that he has had a solid career in the senate, most notably as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and as an expert on affordable housing, energy and the environment. 

Next came an avalanche of negative e-mails. In the fall of 2003, word circulated that Karl Rove had used some of the formidable Bush reelection war chest to build an e-mail list of over five million names. (To put this in perspective, MoveOn is said to have an e-mail list about one-third this size.) Once Kerry’s nomination was assured, the Republicans began to use this to circulate “flame-mail” aimed at Kerry. Many of these missives accused him of a consistently anti-defense voting record. (The guts of Zell Miller’s speech at the Republican convention attacking Kerry were lifted directly from one of these flamers—“As a senator, he voted to weaken our military.”) The Kerry campaign failed to make clear that all of the weapons systems that Kerry was said to vote again were part of a single 1990 appropriations bill—that then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lobbied against because it was loaded with pork. 

The third prong of the attack on Kerry was an effort to blur the distinction between his position on Iraq and that of the president. Bush challenged Kerry as to whether he would have voted the way he did, in the fall of 2002, if he had known that no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. Kerry answered foolishly. Where he could have simply dodged the question and said that the war was a mistake, he responded that he would have approved giving Bush the power to go to war. Bush immediately declared that he and Kerry had the same position about the war. The Kerry campaign failed to make the case that Bush was distorting Kerry’s response.  

The final prong of the attack was the notorious swift-boat ads. Presidential adviser Karen Hughes first voiced the charges that Kerry’s Vietnam medals were undeserved during her spring book tour. During the same period, a friend sent me a flamer from the Rove e-mail network that repeated these charges. Apparently this was the “test marketing” period, because the swift-boat accusations dominated the media during the bulk of August. 

These attacks featured two television ads accusing Kerry of misconduct during active duty and of undermining the war effort by his leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Republicans unleashed a media blitz to ensure that the public was aware of the ads and the simultaneous publication of a scurrilous attack on Kerry, Unfit for Command. The swift-boat strategy culminated in the convention speech of Dick Cheney who repeated the charge that Kerry was unfit for command. 

Given the ferocity of these attacks it comes as no surprise that Kerry’s poll numbers have shrunk. But this does not mean that the election is over, rather that the campaign battle lines are clearly drawn; the remaining 50-plus days will be as much about presidential ethics as about policies. 

What should Democrats do to turn the tide before Nov. 2? You and I can turn our disgust and anger into action; a good place to start is volunteering. Check out www.kerrynorcal.com. 

The Kerry campaign must make dramatic changes. To shift media focus back to failed Bush policies, Kerry needs to go on the attack. He should abandon “nuance” and speak directly about his policies that offer real alternatives to those of the Bush administration. He must assail the methods of the Bush campaign, their reliance on lies and distortions. Obviously the Kerry campaign must develop a capacity for rapid response to whatever new negative attacks are unleashed by Karl Rove.  

The majority of voters are not enthusiastic about Bush, but they don’t know John Kerry; they haven’t accepted him as the replacement for an incumbent president. The challenger has a reputation as a battler, as somehow who shows his true mettle when he is behind. Now is the time for Kerry to earn this reputation, and convince voters that he is fit for command. 

The roots of what might be called Berkeley’s counter-culture reputation go back long before the 1960s.  

While late 19th and early 20th century Berkeley was a small, often staid, town in comparison to today’s city, it was also home to a loosely knit group of self-identified “bohemians” who chose to live in alternative ways. 

The story of that early Berkeley is outlined in an interesting exhibit at the Berkeley History Center. “Berkeley Bohemia, 1890-1925” describes the lives, activities, and attitudes of the locals who not only marched to different drummers, but often made the drums and wrote the music themselves. 

If you haven’t yet seen the exhibit, don’t wait. It closes at the end of this week. It’s compact, intriguing, and worth a half-hour visit downtown. 

The idea for “Berkeley Bohemia” was, appropriately enough, according to exhibit notes, “hatched over breakfast at Au Coquelet Café.” Historical Society board members and volunteers Ed Herny, Shelley Rideout, and Katie Wadell went on a treasure hunt through archives and the local community unearthing fascinating traces of Berkeley’s early artists, artisans, thespians, and original alternative lifestyle practitioners. 

The exhibit features several photographic and written cameos of prominent locals including photographer Oscar Mauer whose Maybeck-designed studio home still stands on Le Roy Avenue, plein air painter Charles Dickman who “campaigned against the prevailing demons of ugliness and bad taste,” composer and “radical club” activist Charles Seeger (father of folksinger Pete Seeger) and Jaime De Angulo, “poet, linguist, rancher, atheist, medical doctor, anthropologist, socialist, transvestite and alcoholic.” 

Some of Berkeley’s early bohemians pursued what would have been considered, then or now, wild lives. For example, after De Angulo (who taught briefly at UC) married, he and his wife lived “in her home in the Berkeley Hills, which became a gathering place for students and ‘wild young people’.”  

And revered early California poet and Oakland Librarian Ina Coolbrith, who lived the last five years of her life in Berkeley, declined to write an autobiography because, as the exhibit quotes her, “were I to write what I know, the book would be too sensational to print; but if I were to write what I think proper, it would be too dull to read.” 

But, “unlike the wild young men and women of San Francisco,” the exhibit notes, “Berkeley’s hill dwellers lived respectable if unconventional lives.” 

“Only a few of Berkeley’s artists succeeded in living entirely off the proceeds of their artistic output. Most were content to lead a predominately middle class life centered on family and community and pursue artistic expression in their spare time.” 

Examples of that approach include Charles and Louise Keeler. They met when young and, eventually, “feeling that they were both doomed to die, they decided that they might as well die married as unmarried.”  

Instead of expiring early, they went on to build one of Berkeley’s first “brown-shingle” homes, designed by Bernard Maybeck, and vigorously promoted a Berkeley aesthetic of living through the Hillside Club and Charles Keeler’s book The Simple Life.  

Keeler was also a student of ornithology and poet and earned a living for a while as the manager of Berkeley’s Chamber of Commerce.  

The exhibit makes an interesting digression into the natural character of Berkeley and the role of organizations such as the Sierra Club and Hillside Club in combining appreciation and stewardship of nature with artistic pursuits. 

“Shapely oak trees and views of the glistening bay made the Berkeley hills inviting places to hike, picnic, and build a home,” the curators note. “Something about Berkeley’s climate and location attracted a large number of nature-lovers in the early 20th century. Many of the city’s artists were influenced by the natural world and then used their art to promote a radical new philosophy of natural living.” 

The exhibit contains text and photographs but is also rich in artifacts, from clothing to watercolors, to a sound recording of Charles Keeler reading from his collection of poems, Elfin Songs of Sunland.  

There are Japanese lacquer boxes, samples of tappa cloth, early arts and crafts tiles manufactured in Berkeley, hand-painted letters from Japan, and even a box of art supplies used by famed local architect Julia Morgan. 

The invitation to a 1921 “jinks” at the California School of Arts and Crafts, an institution founded in Berkeley, admonishes attendees to arrive, “at 8:15—Not Later,” hinting that fashionable tardiness was a Berkeley habit even back then. 

“Bohemian Berkeley” begins with a map of Berkeley identifying sites connected to early artists and bohemians, and ends with a short and clever section that invites visitors to match up names of local bohemians with some of their more famous or notorious activities.  

An example is Purple Cow author Gellett Burgess, who lost his job at the University of California after helping to topple what he considered an offensive statue on San Francisco’s Market Street. 

Along the way there are vignettes of Berkeley life and lifestyles, from descriptions of home theatres, which then meant rooms designed for live performances, to the Berkeley Playhouse, a leading light of the “Little Theatre” experimental movement in America half a century before the Berkeley Rep was conceived. 

A particularly charming item is a newspaper clipping and set of small, hand colored, photographs concerning a 1912 “fairy play” that a group of Berkeley children put on as a “vacation past-time.”  

“More than a hundred friends of the young actresses gathered under the trees and applauded their efforts” in the large garden of a Bonita Street estate, the article relates.  

“The stage and the grounds were lit with dozens of Chinese lanterns and made a very pretty effect.” So does this exhibit. 

Steven Finacom is a board member of the Berkeley Historical Society. 

There have been plenty of docudramas based on interviews or on confessional monologues, even a glut in recent years, but The Faith Project (playing Tuesday and Wednesday at the Ashby Stage) stands alone on this familiar ground. 

The unusual process of it s creation incorporates elements both so personal and so elusive as to defy cliché. It is a kind of auto-documentary of its own origin, and its testimony hits registers unusual to the live stage. The dynamics of these outpourings and the way they’re inte rlaced alone justify their staging. 

“Confessional, testimony, justify”—these words function as puns for the primarily Christian (Catholic and evangelical) outpourings of faith and doubt that make up the show. (Karuna Tanahashi adds energetic and humorous diversity telling about her Jewish-Shinto roots.) For me (and, I think, for the rest of the audience), the most profound moment experiencing this outpouring came when I became aware that these were direct statements, performed by the cast out of the mate r ial of their own lives, their own wrestling with faith and disillusion. 

This realization seeped gradually into the consciousness of audience members, who usually watch from a critical distance as actors perform stories about other people, real or imagi na ry. Not even the program notes really hint about what’s going on. 

Director Susannah Martin later explained her conception and the way it became fleshed out in the “brief talk-back” after the intermissionless show (running under 90 minutes). This was much more worthwhile than many post-performance discussions, if only for the unusually forthcoming nature of the cast. 

After 9/11, Martin became fascinated to discover what people in America (the presumptive home of tolerance versus “religious extremism . . . over there”) were really thinking about religion, belief, faith. She put out a call for multifaceted performers, and the five cast members wrote—and now perform—the script from their own backgrounds, life experience and musings. Martin’s hope, that t he experiment produces something greater than itself, “some modicum of both insight and entertainment—spectacle and reverence,” is realized. 

The Faith Project is put together with strong theatrical intelligence. A choir of six enters at the start with ca ndl es, singing and processing behind the audience. In the darkness after the candles are blown out, the performers’ multiple overlapped stories are told in gesture and movement using a great deal of the theater’s space, with fine singing, mostly melismat ic a nd rhythmical. 

The production’s wayward, almost formless shape avoids the artistic problem of the most familiar docudramas (for example Anna Devere Smith’s performance derived from interviews after the L.A. riots): lack of real theatricality, of anything  

really happening onstage in a truly dramatic sense, ending up as nothing more than a live depiction of the media’s endless talking heads. There are points when The Faith Project comes off like sociological cabaret, but the integrity and suppleness of th e cast make up for much of this structural lack. 

Takahashi, Samantha Blanchard, and Erica McIntire provide a show-stopping burst of song, the almost overly appropriate “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” This comes in the midst of grief recalled by Chri stopher Maikish, and excellent contrasting tale-telling by Carolyn Doyle, who goes from the humor of an unfamiliar Catholic summer camp to her anguish upon coming to grips with her son’s autism.  

This is real acting. Martin’s comment: Doyle found her own character, and played it. Playing yourself onstage is considered one of the most difficult tasks in many acting traditions. 

The cast’s stories are blended with taped interviews of people on the street (some conducted by assistant director-dramatu rge Kar en Marek, others by cast-members) as well as dance and physical theater. There’s something of a parallel to the excitement John Cassavetes’ films provoked in the candor of this piece still in progress, which is unusually polished and stageworthy f or a “la b” piece. But that’s what it is, subject to change as it evolves, a project of Shotgun Theater Lab, a program supporting collaborative ventures by mentoring emerging artists at the Shotgun Players’ new home at the Ashby Stage. 

A last thought for this pro ject and what Martin talks about as its “impetus . . . political, personal, and creative”: Bertolt Brecht’s recognition that, though the beginnings of theater are definitely religious, as soon as it becomes truly theatrical, it’s different from its origi ns, unique. 

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TUESDAY, SEPT. 14 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theatre Lab “The Faith Project” runs Tues. and Wed. at 8 p.m. to Sept. 15 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby at MLK. Free with suggested donation. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Mitchell Johnson, “Paintings and Works on Paper” opens at North Berkeley Frame and Gallery, 1744 Shattuck Ave. and runs through Nov. 6. 549-0428. 

FILM 

Loose Ends: “The Early Years” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Larry Tye will read from his book “Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class” at 11 a.m. at Merritt College, Newton-Seale Lounge, R Bldg., Campus Drive, Oakland. 531-4911. 

Joe Loya describes “The Man who Outgrew his Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Mildred S. Barish, longtime Berkeley resident introduces us to “Tamalpais Tales: A Berkeley Neighborhood Remembers” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

The Whole Note Poetry Series, with Michael Kelly and Edwin Massey at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

Jill Lubin discusses the importance of connections in “Networking Magic” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tom Rigney and Flambeau at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Peter Barshay Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jazz House Jam, hosted by Darrell Green and Geechy Taylor, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. www.thejazz- 

house.com 

“George Bush is an Evil Man and other Patriotic Songs” CD release party at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

E.S.T. Esbjorn Svensson Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazz- 

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

David Rovicks, songs of social significance, at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 15 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Threshold: Byron Kim 1990-2004” The first solo exhibition of Kim’s work opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. and runs through Dec. 12. 642-1295. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“De Colores,” the tropical fruit watercolor paintings of Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss. Reception for the artist from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the EBMUD Gallery, 2nd floor, 375 11th St, between Webster and Franklin, Oakland. Exhibition runs to Oct. 8. 

FILM 

Performance Anxiety: “John Baldessari” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Esmerelda Santiago reads from “When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Aimee Phan describes Operation Babylift before the fall of Saigon in “We Should Never Meet” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com 

Ellen Weiss and Kiran Singh introduce “Berkeley: The Life and Spirit of a Remarkable Town” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Zack Rogow will read from his new translation of Colette’s classic novel, “Green Wheat” at 12:10 p.m. in 2515 Tolman Hall, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik, featuring Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, Monica Chew, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

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

Bluegrass Intentions and Evie Ladin, lecture and demonstration at 7 p.m. Concert at 9 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

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

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

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

Acoustic Wednesday with Mikie Lee Prasad at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$15 sliding scale. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Lee Sarah Big Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 16 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Tesoros Escondidos: Hidden Treasures from the Mexican Collections” opens at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Bancroft at College, UC Campus. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

Bella Feldman and Katherine Westerhout, sculpture and photography. Reception for the artists at 5 p.m., at the Craft and Cultural Arts Gallery, State of California Office Building Atrium, 1515 Clay St. Exhibition runs until Oct. 29. 622-8190. www.oaklandculturalarts.org 

FILM 

Maurice Pialat: “Loulou” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Threshold: Byron Kim 1990-2004” Curator’s talk at 12:15 p.m. Artist’s lecture at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. and runs through Dec. 12. 642-1295. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers Kirk Lumpkin and David Shaddock at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra performs Borodin, Webern, Lutoslawski and Tchaikovsky at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$39 available from 415-392-4400. www.ncco.org 

Kitty Margolis, with her new CD, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Christine Lavin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Matt the Electrician, Shiftless Rounders at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Gini Wilson, solo piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

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

Pieces of a Dream, contemporary R&B, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Marci Geller and Sonic Underground at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $5-$10, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Jazz Mine, string swing jazz quartet, at 6:30 p.m. at King Tsin Chinese Restaurant, 1699 Solano Ave. www.jazzmine.net 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 17 

CHILDREN 

“Sock Monkey Goes to Hollywood” at Barnes and Noble at 10:30 a.m. 644-3635. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Mark P. Fisher “Love for Sale” paintings, reception for the artist at 5 p.m. at Turn of the Century Fine Arts, 2510 San Pablo Ave. and runs to Oct. 20. 849-0950. www.turnofthecenturyfinearts.com 

FILM 

Neo-Eiga: “Bokunchi-My House” at 7 p.m. “Peep TV Show” at 9:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Alameda Civic Light Opera, “Pippin,” Sept. 17, 18 at 8 p.m. Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. Kofman Auditorium, 2220 Central Ave. in Alameda. Tickets are $23 in advance, $25 at the door. Child and senior discounts. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Persians” opens at the Aurora Theatre and runs through Oct. 10. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep, “The Secret in the Wings” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. until Oct. 17. Tickets are $10-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

“General Waste-More-Land,” guerilla theater performed by Tom Dunphy at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 393-5685. 

Impact Theatre, “Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies” a sexually-honest comedy, at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Euclid, and runs Thurs. - Sat. through Oct. 2 Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

“Landscape” by Harold Pinter, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through Sept. 26, at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $10 available at the door. 883-9872. www.nakedmasks.org 

Oakland Opera Theater “Akhnaten” an opera by Philip Glass, Fr. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 3 at Oakland Metro Theater, 201 Broadway, at 2nd St. Tickets are $18-$32, available on line at www.oaklandopera.org  

Unscripted Theater Company, “The Short and the Long of It,” an improv theater experience, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, through Oct. 2. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.un-scripted.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin” with Dr. John Holloway, Dept. of Music Regents’ Lecturer at 4:30 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Chitra Divakaruni reads from “Queen of Dreams” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Julia Vinograd at 7:30 p.m. at the Fellowship Café & Open Mic, Cedar & Bonita Sts. Donation of $5-10 is requested. The series is sponsored by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Suzanne Farrell Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$56 available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Sequoia Concerts Piano Recital and talk “The Fugue & Its Music” with Leonore Hall, pianist and founder of Sequoia Concerts at 7:45 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15-$25. 415-342-6151, www.sequoiaconcerts.com  

Organ Concert celebrating the Autumn Equinox with Dave Hatt at 7:30 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland Sanctuary, 2619 Broadway. Suggested donation $10. 444-3555. www.firstchurchoakland.org  

Mike Zilber and Friends present new work at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Grito Serpentino, spoken word and music, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson with Nick & Shana at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Richard Greene & The Brothers Barton, acoustic string band, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Opie Bellas Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Timothy Daniel, singer songwriter, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Phenomenauts, Harold Ray, Bart Davenport in a benefit for Jesse Townley at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8-$10. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Scarlet Symphony, Gasoline Please, Free Verse, Kudzu Wish at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Michael Zilber and Friends at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Most Chill Slack Mob at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Angel Spit, Julia Lau Band, Mastema at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Plan 9, The Killers 3, The Undertaker & His Pals at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Lemon Limelights at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Most Chill Slackmob, hip,hop, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

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

SATURDAY, SEPT. 18 

CHILDREN 

Kids on the Block Puppet Show promoting acceptance and understanding of physical and cultural differences at 2 p.m. at the Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave., lower level. Sug- 

gested donation $3. Children under 3 free. 549-1564. 

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater, “All’s Well That Ends Well” Tues.-Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m. at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, through Oct. 10. Tickets are $13-$32. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“To the Dogs” an art show featuring all canine artwork by Lori Cheung, Jonathan Palmer, Mitchell Rose and Elizabeth Taylor. At 7 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Design Center, 1250 Addison St., Suite 102. 883-1126. www.innersport.com 

“Metal Art 2004” an exhibition of wearable, ornamental and artistic metal art. Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. 834-2296. 

Mitchell Johnson, “Paintings and Works on Paper” Reception for the artist at 4:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Frame and Gallery, 1744 Shattuck Ave. Exhibition runs through Nov. 6. 549-0428. 

FILM 

Neo-Eiga: “Shara” at 5 p.m., “Ramblers” at 7 p.m. and “Akame 48 Waterfalls” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Japanese Cinema Now” a lecture with Matsuhiro Yoshimoto, in conjunction with “Neo-eiga: New Japanese Cinema Showcase” at 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Fim Archive. Free. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

Oscar Penaranda reads his po- 

etry at 5 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. www.ewbb.com 

MIUSIC AND DANCE 

Suzanne Farrell Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$56 available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Natto Quartet with Philip Gelb, shakuhachi, Shoko Hikage, koto, Tim Perkis, electronics, and Chris Brown, piano at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St., between Bancroft and Durant. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.Trinity 

ChamberConcerts.com 

Crooked Jades, old-time and bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Araucaria Dance Ensemble, Chilean folk dance, at 5:30 and 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8 in advance, $10 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Geoffrey Keezer, modern piano, at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Andrew Wilshusen and Chad Stockdale, jazz improv drum and saxophone, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Maye Cavallaro Cabaret Jazz at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

J-Soul, singer songwriter, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net  

The Cushion Theory, Espontaneos, The Audrey Session at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Scribe, Thriving Ivory, Blammos, Redline at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Internal Affairs, The Donnybrook, Stop at Nothing, Set Your Goals at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Superbacana at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277.ô

Sycamores are among the West’s most biologically useful trees. They line creek-cut canyons in the desert, extending a green and gracious welcome to the human traveler and to whole plant and animal communities with their shade and shelter and, not least of all, the holes in their trunks. 

It’s one of those oddities that work well: they’re prone to developing hollow spaces when a branch breaks or falls off, and many of those holes are nicely suited to house squirrels and woodpeckers and even fancier birds. They’re the favorite housing option of elegant trogons, for example.  

The elegant trogon (yes, “elegant” is part of the name; it used to be “coppery-tailed trogon”) is the northernmost relative of the resplendent (yes) quetzal, Central America’s nearly mythical emblem. Trogons get into southern Arizona, and those sycamore canyons are where to see them, and Cave Creek Canyon near Portal is the sycamore canyon to try first. It’s a birder’s haven, lively and inviting and full of hummingbirds and other treats. And trogons.  

We drove there years ago, looked in vain for trogons in the evening, and crawled into the tent when it got dark. At some ungodly hour of the morning, we jolted awake at the distinctive “Gowp gowp gowp” we’d been hoping for, shot sheet-clad out of the tent, and focused on that incredible blue, no, green, no, blue iridescent back and intense red belly, and another bird, a soft-brown and coral female, following closely from hole to hole in the trees above us. 

We were watching part of their courtship, in which the male takes the female around to every available tree hollow he can find and says, “This one? This one? How about this one?” until she decides on their home for the season.  

Unfortunately I’ve never heard a report of a trogon in Berkeley, in spite of our numerous sycamores. Maybe we have the wrong ones. Mostly what we have, like innumerable other cities, is Platanus X acerifolia (or Platanus X hispanica, depending on what book you’re consulting), called London plane. The species is from Spain, and was cultivated and crossbred there and in Oxford, so I guess it has some academic cachet too.  

This has become a wallpaper tree, ubiquitous and taken for granted; one guide calls it “more at home in city than in country environments.” It’s something of a plain Jane in this climate, as it doesn’t even manage to turn yellow in fall. It does have its virtues as a street tree, though: relatively well-behaved vis-à-vis sidewalks; tough about air pollution; tolerant of drought and water and assorted kinds of drainage. It has a handsome profile, and the bonus of good looks up close, with its platy, mottled bark. It’s adaptable to pruning, too, including stunt-pruning like pollarding. 

There are several double rows of pollarded planetrees on the UC campus, one right by Sather Gate. This poodle-ish practice had a practical origin, as a way to harvest firewood every year without killing trees. After early training to a strong profile, a tree is cut back every winter to the same few limbs, and in spring it sends out a spray of shoots from each of those. After a few years, those points become huge knobs, which give an interesting winter profile to the tree. It’s important not to cut behind those knobs—and to choose your species carefully, as this is a mutilation that not every tree can tolerate.  

Sycamores, including planetrees, are susceptible to anthracnose, a fungus infection that hits the leaves late in the year and makes them look gray and listless and nasty. Of course it sets the tree back a bit. It’s also allergenic, a big consideration when you’re planting lots of the same species in a small space with lots of humans. Fortunately, tree mavens have bred resistant cultivars, and those are being planted.  

Some of our tame sycamores demonstrate the virtue of having trees—any trees—in cities, as vertical habitat. When I’m working at the Ecology Center in winter (which is starting now in bird terms) I can always look out a window to the median strip on San Pablo and see yellow-rumped warblers darting around in the planetrees. 

›

TUESDAY, SEPT. 14 

“The Unfolding National Tax Disaster” background and options with Prof. Alan Auerbach and Prof. John Ellwood at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302.  

“The Polls: The Battleground States” a panel discussion at 3 p.m. at 109 Moses Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Institute of Geovernmental Studies. http://politics.berkeley.edu 

“Preemptive Peace, Finding Solutions to the War System” with Jonathan Curiel from 7 to 10 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Sponsored by the World Federalists of Northern California, the International House and UC Berkeley’s Peace and Conflict Studies. 415-227-4880.  

Furthering the Movement End US colonial occupation of Iraq, presented by James Cosner with Shaka At-Thinnin from the Black August Organizing Committee and Carlos Padilla from Students for Justice at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Oakland. Donation $5-$10, no one turned away. 419-1405.  

“Saving the Coast: A Job That’s Never Done” with Peter Douglas, Executive Director of the California Coastal Commission, at 5:30 p.m. in 10 Evans Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Water Resources Center Archives. 642-2666. 

Introduction To Sustainable Landscape Design Create an environmentally friendly oasis in your yard using the principles of sustainability. Use of native plants, recycled materials, water conserving techniques and pest control will be discussed. From 7 to 9 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $35. To register, call 525-7610. 

“Trail Running” for fun or competition with Ethan Veneklasen at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Organic Produce at low prices sold at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon Streets every Tuesday from 3 to 7 p.m. This is a project of Spiral Gardens. 843-1307. 

Solid Waste Management Public Workshop on Organic Materials, residential and commercial services, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley Solid Waste Management Commission. 981-6357. 

Berkeley Youth Alternatives Flag Football for boys and girls ages 9 to 11, Tuesdays 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. at 1255 Allston Way. Cost is $10 for residents, $15 for non-residents for 5 weeks. 845-9066. sports@bysonline.org 

Family Story Time at the Kensington Branch Library, Tues. evenings at 7 p.m. at 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Kurukula Self Defense Classes for girls ages 10-16 at 6:15 p.m. in Albany. Drop in for $15 a class. 847-2400. www.albanykarateforkids.com  

Dance and Visual Arts Classes offered by All Souls Episcopal Parish for middle and high school students. Classes begin Sept. 14. Scholarships available. 848-1755. www.youthartstudio.org 

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.  

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

Acting and Storytelling Classes for Seniors offered by Stagebridge, at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Classes are held at 10 a.m. Tues.-Fri. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

Phone Banking to ReDefeat Bush from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Bring your cell phones. Please RSVP if you can join us. 415-336-8736.  

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 15 

Wednesday Bird Walk Discover the first of the migrants and help us with the monitoring of the shoreline, at 8:30 a.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline. Turn into the park off Swan Way, follow the drive to the end and meet at the last parking lot by the observation deck. 525-2233. 

“Alternatives to Greed” a talk by Antonia Jiuhasz, project director of the International Forum on Globalization at the Berkeley Gray Panther’s evening meeting, 7 p.m. 1403 Addison. 548-9696. 

“Against the Grain” and “Genetic Time Bomb” films at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Admission is free. Part of the GMOs and Food series sponsored by GMO Free Alameda County. 527-9898. www.gmofreeac.org 

Forum on Transportation Affordability Panel discussion about a recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California on the subject of the Cost of Mobility: Transportation Spending by Low-Income Households in the Bay Area. At 9:30 a.m. at the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter Auditorium, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. 415-431-7430 ext. 112.  

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Prebyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. For reservations call 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday, rain or shine, at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes, sunscreen and a hat. 548-9840. 

Prose Writers’ Workshop meets at 7 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 524-3034. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets at 7:15 a.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 524-3765. 

“Cardiovascular Herbs” How they can save your life at 6 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave.  

Celebrate a Humanistic Rosh Hashanah with Kol Hadash, at 7:30 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Hall, 1325 Portland Avenue, Albany. 428-1492.  

THURSDAY, SEPT. 16 

UC Botanical Garden Volunteer Orientation from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 200 Centennial Drive. Free, but registration required. 643-2755. http://botnaicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Bridging Zapatismo to Our Communities a teach-in with proceeds supporting the Chiapas Community Mural Project at 8 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Redefining Agrarian Power” with Nancy Peluso, Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at 4:10 p.m. at 223 Moses Hall, UC Campus.  

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the LeConte School Library, Russell and Ellsworth. 843-2602. karlreeh@aol.com 

Simple Living, Fear, and Activism Come share your concerns on preserving balance and mental simplicity in the presence of fear and while contributing time and effort to important political issues. At 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, Claremont Branch, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 526-6596.  

Introduction to Green Building and Ecological Design A hands-on workshop from Thurs. through Sat. on solar energy, siting, building envelope, interior finishes, conserving and reducing waste, home and commercial green retrofits, rating systems and standards. Field trips will be arranged. Offered by the East Bay Watershed Center and the Environmental Program at Merritt College. Cost is $56. 434-3840. ecomerritt@sbcglobal.net 

Kairos Youth Choir Open House for boys and girls age 7-15 at 4:30 p.m. For information call 414-1991. www.kairoschoir.org 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 17 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Chi-An Hu, PhD on “China’s Role in the United Nations.” 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. 

“General Waste-More-Land,” guerilla theater performed by Tom Dunphy at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 393-5685. 

Scottish Country Dancing in Berkeley Free introductory party at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. near Walnut. 234-8985.  

“Women on the Threshold of Change” A participatory evening of community singing for women, with Kate Munger of the Threshold Choirs at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10, no one turned away.  

Inspiration Point Hike with Solo Sierrans. Meet at 4 p.m. at the trailhead. Take Hwy. 24 to Orinda exit, go north on Camino Pablo, which becomes San Pablo Dam Rd., about 2 miles. Turn left on Wild Cat Canyon Rd. at the signal light. The trail is at the top of the hills about 2 miles. Optional dinner in Orinda after the hike. For further information, call Phyllis at 525-2299.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 18 

California Coastal Cleanup Day Meet at 9 a.m. behind the Seabreeze Market at the corner of University and Frontage Rd.  Here, everyone needs to sign waivers, we give you trash/recycle bags, pencils, tally cards and a map of the areas we need to clean.There are seven sites, most within walking distance of this area. For more information see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/marina/marinaexp/cleanup.htm 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of Rose Walk, Tamalpais Rd., Codornices Park, led by John Underhill. From 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For information call 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

Kids Garden Club Build a shade structure inspired by nature, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 7-12. Cost is $3-$5, registration required. 525-2233. 

“Howdy Farmers” come on up to the farm to pet a bunny, see some eggs and baa with the sheep at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $3-$5, registration required. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Chilean Bellflower Tour Join Peter Klement, Horticulturist for the South American area, and Carlos Rendon, Lead Volunteer Propagator for Vines, on a tour to see Copihues (Lapageria rosea), the national flower of Chile and other Chilean plants in the collection. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $12-$17, registration required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Basic Personal Preparedeness 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 

Introduction to Permaculture for your garden. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at The Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. near Dwight Way. 548-2220, ext. 233. www.ecologycenter.org 

Spring Bulbs Learn how to use bulbs in landscape, as container plantings and as indoor floral displays in winter. At 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club Open House from 11:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The public is invited come try lawn bowling at the greens, which are located at 2270 Acton at Bancroft. For more information, please call Ray Francis at 234-6646 or email Berkeleylawnbowl@aol.com   

Home Improvement Seminar: Decks at 9 a.m. at Truitt and White, 1817 Second St. Free, but registration required. 649-2674. www.truittandwhite.com 

BAHIA Silent Auction with dinner and music, to benefit bilingual childcare programs in Berkeley, at 2 p.m. at the Duran Foundation, 1035 Carleton St. for information call 525-1463. 

Theater Classes for Adults taught by Shotgun Players, begin at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Shakespeare Scene Study, Sat. at 2 p.m., Acting on Sun. from 2 to 5 p.m., Directing on Mon. from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Clasees run through Nov. www.juliamorgan.org 

Oakland High School Class of 1964 Fourtieth Reunion Picnic For more information and to be added to our mailing list please contact elliot@pacbell.net or P.O. Box 10454, Oakland, 94610. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Collecting Good Water Quality Data, a workshop with Dr. Revital Katznelson, Environmental Scientist for the State Water Resources Control Board at Merritt College, Cost is $11. For information call 434-3840.  

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets at 9:15 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Conference Room, 1st Floor, 2727 College Ave. www.berkeleycna.com 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. All items for this sale are 50 cents or less. Come early for incredible bargains on paperbacks, cookbooks and children's books. All proceeds benefit the Albany Library. For more information, please call the Library at 526-3720, ext. 5. 

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. 

Dance Allegro Ballroom Youth Dance Program offers classes for ages 5-18, for $5 per class, at 5855 Christie Ave., Emeryville. 655-2888. www.allegroballroom.com  

“Living with Multiple Sclerosis” with Liane Mark, Miss Intercontinental, at 9 a.m. at the Claremont Resort, Tunnel Rd. To register call 866-955-9999. 

“Natural Migrane Cures” with Dr. Arn Strasser at 3 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave.  

“Wisdom of Breema” with Jon Schreiber, founding director of the Breema Center, at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck at Cedar. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 19 

“How Berkeley Can You Be?” Parade at 11 a.m. at University Ave. at Sacramento, followed by Festival at Civic Center Park at 12:30 p.m. The theme is “Loco-Motion!” focusing on unusual, alternative, and crazy ways of moving around. Festival includes arts & crafts vendors, food, libations, art installations, games, kids activities, non-profit organizations, and more.  

Botanic Garden and Summer’s End Explore the range of California’s flora in the native plant facility, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Hopper Hike It is time to look for Orthoptera: grasshoppers, crickets and catydids. From 2 to 4 p..m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Benefit for Middle East Childrens’s Alliance with Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian-American poet at 4 p.m. at Middle East Children’s Alliance, 901 Parker St. Tickets are $50. 548-0542. www.mecaforpeace.org 

“Conscientious Objection in a Time of War” with Steve Morse of the GI Rights Hotline, followed by a film on CO’s of WWII and their impact on soci- 

ety. At 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824.  

Free Sailboat Rides between 1 and 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring warm waterproof clothes. www.cal-sailing.org 

Sycamore Japanese Church Bazaar with Japanese food, crafts, and games for children, from noon to 5 p.m. at 1111 Navellier St. between Schmidt and Moeser Ave., El Cerrito. 

Introduction to the TaKeTiNa Rhythm Process with Zorina Wolf from 1 to 4 p.m. at Ashkenaz Back Dance Studio, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $25-35 sliding scale. 650-493-8046. 

“Religion and Spirituality in the Life and Work of Vincent Van Gough” with Marlene Aron at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Part of the Personal Theology Seminars. 525-0302.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Ken McKeon on “Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, SEPT. 20 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. 524-9122. 

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout 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. 

Berkeley Rep School of Theatre Fall Classes for Youth and Adults begin at 2071 Addison St. For information call 647-2972. www.berkeleyrep.org 

ONGOING 

WriterCoach Connection (formerly Writers’ Room) seeks volunteers for this coming academic year. Help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills; become a WriterCoach Connection mentor to students at Berkeley High, King, Longfellow or Willard Middle Schools. For information call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

Afterschool Center providing tutoring and support for Berkeley students age 5 to 14 at 1255 Allston Way. Cost is $20 per week. Sponsored by Berkeley Youth Alternatives. 845-9066. 

Regional Parks Botanic Garden offers docent-guided tours every Sat. and Sun at 2 p.m. starting at the Visitor Center, Wildcat Canyon Rd. and South Park Dr., Tilden Park. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

People’s Park Community Advisory Board is seeking members. Meetings are the second Thurs. of the month at 7 p.m. Application dealine is Sept. 30. For information call 642-3255. pplspark@uclink.berkeley.edu 

Twilite Basketball for young women age 11 to 18 Wed. and Fri. from 6 to 9 p.m. Sponsored by Berkeley Youth Alternatives. 845-9066. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Sept. 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., Sept. 15, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Lisa Ploss, 981-5200. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/aging 

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed., Sept. 15, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Marianne Graham, 981-5416. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/welfare 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Sept. 20, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. Sept. 20, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/designreview ç

A week or so ago the Planet received an invitation to a fundraiser for realtor Laurie Capitelli, who’s running for Berkeley City Council in District 5. It had been re-sealed and re-addressed to us, which seemed odd, and when we opened it a little slip of paper fell out with an anonymous typed note: “The Developers’ Ball? They are urging a vote for their pro-development candidate. Interesting cast of endorsers.” 

As a card-carrying grandmother and former English major, I instantly grasped the literary allusion. Berkeley author Thacher Hurd has a book for the 4 to 8 set which, with wonderful pictures, tells the story of how Miles Possum and his band of little swamp critters are invited to play for the Alligators’ Ball. After the music stops, the alligators are hungry. “What’s for dinner?” says Miles. “Something tender! Something juicy!” says an alligator, holding a menu behind his back that features “Swamp Band Soup.” On the next page, “the alligators snapped their jaws and snapped their lips” as they drag the struggling band members ever closer to a big boiling pot. 

A look at the invitation solidified the reference. The venue was the office of former legislator and now lobbyist and consultant Dion Aroner, with co-hosts Mayor Bates and Assemblywoman Hancock. The other co-hosts were key players in Berkeley’s fat and sassy development industry: Norheim and Yost, commercial real estate brokers; Memar Properties, the new commercial vehicle for former non-profit developer Ali Kashani; Trachtenberg & Associates, architects; Hudson McDonald LLC, the new favored recipient of funding from powerhouse financier David Teece, also a funder of Patrick Kennedy; Miriam Ng, another real estate broker, and Richard Hill and David Early, decision-makers for the Livable Berkeley pro-development lobbying organization. Mm-hmm. Looks like Berkeley’s headed for the soup for sure.  

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, for starters Capitelli is still a member of the Zoning Adjustment Board, where several of these players could be expected to ask approval for project proposals in the near future. If he’s elected to City Council, he will probably be reviewing some decisions on their development projects. It’s not illegal, mind you. A California court decision has established the right of city councilmembers and commissioners to adjudicate cases involving their campaign contributors. But still, it smells fishy. 

The glossy handout in the envelope, listing more supporters, was not reassuring. Capitelli is endorsed by the quartet of developer-friendly planning commissioners who have been roundly criticized by neighborhood groups, Stoloff, Pollack, Perry and Tabb, as well as by an assortment of lesser lights in the development firmament (along with some innocent bystanders). Our anonymous correspondent is right, an interesting cast.  

He is not endorsed by any of the planning commissioners from the faction formerly known as progressive. He is not endorsed, as far I was able to recognize names, by any leaders in the non-factional effort to put some brakes on the no-holds-barred Berkeley building boom which has produced big ugly buildings and vacant storefronts all over town in the last few years.  

All of this does not mean Capitelli is not a nice guy. He is. And the Swamp Band in the book (Mama Don’t Allow, Harper Collins Publishers, soon to be a major musical by Berkeley composer Julie Shearer) does eventually escape the soup by playing one last lullaby which puts the alligators to sleep. But that’s a fable with a happy ending, concocted for kids. In real life politics, a truer tale is that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.  

It’s early days in the City Council race. There’s still time for candidates to make it perfectly clear to voters where they stand on development issues, and other issues too. The Planet is doing our part by offering all of them a sizable hunk of our commentary section in the month of October to make everything perfectly clear. They’ve been invited to submit pieces of 600-800 words by Oct. 1, which will be run in rotation during the month. Readers have their part to play: We’re also going to run a “Questions” column on our letters page for the rest of September. You can submit short questions or challenges for the candidates, which they may or may not choose to answer in their October commentaries. And of course we do sell ads, for candidates who want even more room to explain themselves and list their supporters. 

Even though Capitelli and some of the other candidates look like they’re up to their ears in alligators at this juncture, Berkeley might still escape the soup pot. We’ll see what lullabies would-be councilmembers can come up with before the election. 

—

Sunday’s Solano Stroll was a typically festive Berkeley event. It started out cold and windy, but eventually the fog burned off and citizens came out to stroll in more than respectable numbers. The Planet was lucky—because we’d contributed space to the S olano merchants’ association for advertising the event, we got space across from Andronico’s to set up a table and chairs with a sunshade, where we could sit with our grandchildren and enjoy the passing throng.  

And throng they did. Easily one Planet re ader per minute stopped by our table to tell us how much they enjoy the paper. (And a few said they hate it—but they’re reading it.) We saw many people from outside Berkeley who are regular readers. One woman told us she comes all the way to 51st Street in Oakland from San Leandro to pick up every issue. Now that’s reader loyalty. Another person inquired about a mail subscription for someone in Mongolia. (We don’t know, but we’ll try to figure it out.)  

Because it was Berkeley, almost everyone voiced an opinion about what should be in the paper. All love the nature columns, without exception. Some said that though they disagree with most of the editorials, they enjoy the letters attacking the editorials. The only real complaint about the news coverage wa s that people would like even more of it. The Stroll is also in Albany, and Albany people said they’d like their Planning Commission and City Council to get the same scrutiny we give Berkeley bodies. Oakland, Richmond and El Cerrito people said the same t hing. We’re trying to increase our coverage of other cities as fast as our advertising increases, which allows us to increase our page count prudently. (The publisher has printed up some cards for readers to leave at places they do business, suggesting Pl anet advertising, and many visitors to the table took some to distribute. We’ll see if local businesses take the hint.) 

One person voiced a heartfelt plea for more news coverage of the controversy over the Willard Middle School landscaping. That was puzz ling at first, since we’ve printed so many letters pro and con that many readers must be tired of the whole thing. I suggested that enough information had been contributed to the opinion pages that the story has emerged on its own, with no intervention fr om a reporter needed, but she still wanted a news story. Why doesn’t she write her own letter, if she thinks something has been left out, I said? She didn’t want to do that, she insisted, and finally she gave me her card as she was leaving. She’s from the consulting firm which has been making the changes at Willard, and I suppose they are reluctant to have to argue the case for their work in the public forum. That’s understandable, but with limited reporting resources the Planet can’t always afford news c overage of every controversy, particularly since our literate and articulate readers do such a good job of letting other readers know what we miss. 

The November ballot has a number of revenue-raising proposals on it, and proponents would do well to study the Planet’s opinion pages if they want to know what their chances of success are. The Willard debate is emblematic of the sentiments that many public school parents have expressed in our pages, fairly or not: that the school district wants their childre n and their dollars, but not their participation or their opinions. Longtime residents still remember that the current Willard building, frequently compared to a penitentiary, replaces a gracious Mediterranean-style structure which the district chose to d emolish rather than renovate. They remember that the Telegraph frontage was ugly bare dirt for many years before parents undertook the planting. Lack of money is frequently given as the excuse for poor Berkeley Unified School District decisions like these, but sometimes that’s not the whole story. Residents also remember that BUSD “accidentally” painted over Osha Neumann’s wonderful mural on the building which houses the Willard pool (which is no longer used to teach students to swim.)  

A newspaper can’t possibly do a comprehensive job of reporting stories like these which are part of the community memory. That’s why the opinion pages of the Planet are hands down the most widely read part of the paper. Our readers’ eyes and ears are everywhere, as we are not. We make a sincere effort to print all the letters we get, and to respond to all our calls, though it’s getting harder, because we’re hearing from more of you all the time. But that’s a problem we’re delighted to have.