Features
Letters to the Editor
BERKELEY BOWL
Editors, Daily Planet:
All those who oppose Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley obviously have never had to take the bus to go grocery shopping They have never had to dedicate most of a Saturday just so they can have food in the house.
Berkeley Bowl is one of the unique places in Berkeley where I see women in saris shopping while chatting in Hindi; where Spanish is being spoken as the bins of many types of fresh chilis are perused; where there are durian, star fruit, a plethora of medicinal mushrooms, lotus root, nopales, and yes, potatoes other than white russets. There are over 800 varieties of potatoes in my native Bolivia, and I am glad that there is a store supporting small farmers who are growing heirloom varieties.
I welcome a place where I can walk to buy potatoes that reflect the diversity of plants and the diversity of culture. And I thank Berkeley Bowl for always having fresh varieties of many things which are essential to third world cuisine.
Xo Huarez
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PUT IT IN WRITING
Editors, Daily Planet:
Please, please, please, Planning Commission, so we don’t continue to have the distress to everyone concerned, as with the Roberts Center and 1650 La Vereda Road addition, make a decision in writing concerning when and how a project presented to city staff is put before the Landmarks Commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board. It is so hard to try to heal the wounds from these battles.
Joan Seear
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BUSH THE BELIEVER
Editors, Daily Planet:
Regarding Jane Stillwater’s Jan. 14 letter: Believe it or not Bush is not acting, I mean the man is not even capable of remembering his lines if he was. But he is definitely a pathological liar, which is an illness where one actually believes their own lies. So we do not have an actor up there as president but actually we have a very ill person who believes his own lies. Also Bush is not the only one in his administration who is a pathological liar, there is quite a few there. Obviously this is not a good situation for the country or for the rest of the world. The question now is what can be done about having such ill people in these very powerful positions within the Bush administration?
Thomas Husted
Alameda
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FLYING COTTAGE
Editors, Daily Planet:
I have been considering a letter ever since the article you wrote on the “Flying Cottage” at 3045 Shattuck Ave. (Daily Planet, Dec. 21, 2004), because of various inaccuracies and biased reporting. Now I see a letter to the editor (Jan. 14) on your website in which one of the inaccuracies is repeated: “Andus Brandt told the Design Review Committee that a city employee looking over Christina Sun’s plans ... suggested she could add a third story.”
Let me clarify the record on this. I, as architect of record, said “[Ms. Sun’s] original intention was to strengthen the foundation, when a helpful plan-checker suggested she could develop the whole under-floor area for little more expense ... Upon negotiating a contract, her contractor told her she could actually have two residential floors above a commercial space, if square footage is under 5,000.”
One other item I’d like to clarify, while I’m at it, is that your article implied that the design was mine. It is not. You can call me if you’d like to know about my involvement.
For lack of time I won’t address any other inaccuracies or biases in this letter.
Andus H Brandt
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DOWNTOWN
Editors, Daily Planet:
If it turns out that a convention center would not be economically viable for downtown or UC then I have some ideas for other uses that would perhaps benefit us. Build a modern hotel (which our downtown sorely needs) with underground parking, ice skating rink, bowling alley, live music dancing/night club venue and expose the creek on Center Street expanding the pedestrian walk way. This block with these amenities would be user-friendly to existing nearby communities and to distant communities through the BART. I believe there are not enough fingers on two hands to count the benefits.
In short, Becky O’Malley’s editorial does a great job of stating what she does not want for Berkeley. She stands tall in the “build absolutely nothing” column. This would be ok except for the fact that she controls considerable financial and editorial resources which she brings to bear on the majority through her “Town Crier” the Berkeley Daily Planet. There seems to be no room in this paper for the role of “Town Booster” extolling a more optimistic view and direction of development in our town and its future. You have worked hard to bring this paper to the community, but as I recall the citizens helped fund it—so please remove the blinders from your editorial. The Daily Planet and the city would both benefit.
Peter Levitt
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PERALTA ELEMENTARY
Editors, Daily Planet:
A round of applause is due the California Board of Education for recognizing the outstanding work of parents and teachers at Oakland’s Peralta Elementary School.
Last week the State Board of Education listened to parents and voted to grant the school an exception to an overly rigid rule that would have prevented Peralta from receiving an API school test score for 2004. The school had to apply to the state board for a waiver after a teacher made an error administering one question of 77 on the test to 17 students. Because Peralta is a small school, this put them over the threshold to deny them a test score.
Peralta is a tight knit community where parents, neighbors, teachers staff and administrators work as a team to help every student, and their work shows. Scores went from 638 in 1999 to 757 in 2003. Peralta’s test score goal is 800 and they are almost there.
It was a pleasure to support and work with such a dedicated school community to win the board’s approval and an honor to represent Peralta in the California Assembly.
Wilma Chan
Assemblywoman, 16th District
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MORE FROM SPITZER
Editors, Daily Planet:
There are two basic genres of news publications in the free world: 1) newspapers who attempt to present balance and objectivity in their reportage 2) advocacy journals with defined ideological postures on the events they cover such as the Bay Guardian. For a newspaper to pretend to its readers to be the former when in reality its reportage consistently advocates the perspective of a particular stance is duplicity “in extremis.”
Unfortunately, the Daily Planet—taking its cue from the news department of KPFA, aka Radio Jihad—regularly departs from the realm of balanced reportage when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The paper’s Jan. 18 edition is exemplary. Assigned to cover the Rally Against Global Terrorism in which the bombed remains of a Jerusalem bus stood as a haunting symbol, the BDP’s writer chose to devote coverage of the pro-Palestinian counter-demonstration at a ratio of 3:1 to the content of the rally. In fact, while there were numerous quotes from the pro-Palestinian faction, there was not one sentence from the articulate speakers at the rally, including an Israeli doctor who treats Jews and Arabs alike and Nonie Darwish, an Egyptain who deplored the propaganda Arab children are inculcated with that ultimately leads to murderous martyrdom.
No other news service, save Radio Jihad, covered the rally with such unmitigated bias. Correspondingly, may I suggest that Ms. O’Malley drop her pretense of objectivity and come out of the closet as the publisher of an advocacy journal which openly expresses her desire for the end of Israel as a Jewish state? Hopefully, by now, those few readers she has left will have recognized this rag for being the toxic font of bias which in truth it is...
A question for the reporter: Since he saw fit to largely cover the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, why didn’t he put in print their two most prominent chants, regurgitated ad nauseum? After all, they speak volumes about the Palestinian stance on terrorism: “Black, red, green and white, we’re Palestinians. We’re here to fight.” And “Two, four, six, eight, we are martyrs, we can’t wait.”
Dan Spitzer
Kensington
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TILDEN PARK
Editors, Daily Planet:
Not all issues are earth-shaking; some are aesthetic. For instance:
The best 360-degree viewspot in Tilden Park is on the broad, high, east-end trail variously known as Seaview or Ridgeway, at a hilltop lookout vista. As a reward for your uphill hike, you can see the bay, the Golden Gate and the ocean one way, and Mt. Diablo and beyond on the other. There’s a circular concrete-lined foundation there (probably a remnant of World War II fortifications), some 20 feet in diameter, on which, from time to time, people have placed over 100 stones in an attractive and intriguing spiral—instant folk art, which to those of us walking there are as attractive as, say, the piles of stones sometimes encountered in Yosemite Park.
Unfortunately, these inviting Tilden designs get wiped out and thrown far down the hill periodically, probably by the powers that be that are fearful that nefarious cults (or Al Qaeda, perhaps???) will be dominating the park. Right now there is no design, not even a stone, left, just an unsightly concrete foundation. Hikers and bikers who stop there are baffled by all this gratuitous vandalization. If the spiral of rocks is so objectionable out in the wild, why doesn’t the park administration simply remove the whole concrete foundation?
In the meantime, let sleeping stones lie!
Paul Hertelendy
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MISLEADING STORY, HEADLINE
Editor, Daily Planet:
I attended the Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting reported on by Richard Brenneman in your Jan 14-17 issue. I would not say that commission members “blasted” city Housing Director Tim Stroshane for his work on the Ed Roberts Center. Not even by a long shot. As Brenneman reports eight paragraphs later, members were disappointed and frustrated, which was more like it.
While colorful language like “blasted” makes for entertaining headlines and one is accustomed to find it in tabloid journalism, Berkeleyans might expect better from its hometown paper, notwithstanding its tabloid format! Especially when the topic is civic in nature and the discussion is serious.
Otherwise, readers may want to adjust their journalistic emotional thermostats down several notches to get an accurate picture of what Brenneman reports on and his headline writer summarizes.
D. Mayeron
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CRAGMONT ELEMENTARY
Editors, Daily Planet:
In response to last week’s article on Cragmont Elementary School:
I was interviewed for this article last autumn, a few weeks before the November election. Measure B for our Berkeley Public Schools was on the ballot. At the time I was concerned that Berkeley might deny more funding but thankfully this measure passed. I stated then that while Cragmont Elementary School, with its awe-inspiring architecture and bay views, may appear to be the “public school on the hill,” our issues are the same in all our schools: how to meet the needs of each student. The enriching difference in our Berkeley public schools is diversity. We will succeed in our public education when every student feels valued, educated and safe. Sometimes the PTA seems disempowered to the belittling capacity of doing nothing more than supplying balls and hoola hoops for the playground. However, the bigger picture is that we are truly dedicated to doing something differently here in our Berkeley schools. I am grateful this article appeared on the Friday before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. It is his vision and ideals we wish to put to practice here. The success of our schools depends upon the success of our community. If public education and diversity can thrive anywhere, it is here.
Ann Williams
Co-Chair, Cragmont PTA
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A CORRECTION
Editors, Daily Planet:
I understand that it is your policy that requests for clarification of facts incorrectly reported in the Berkeley Daily Planet must be made directly by the company involved, and that you were uncomfortable relying upon material provided by NORAM’s Communications Counsel, Ron Heckman.
With regard to your December 28 story mentioning NORAM, your statements regarding the timing of NORAM’s business relationships with certain federally-recognized Indian tribes was not accurate, leaving the impression that NORAM jumped from one tribal partner to another. This erroneous impression certainly has the potential to harm NORAM’s good name and reputation in Indian Country.
NORAM’s relationships with both the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians and the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo date back to 2002. NORAM’s relationship with Scotts Valley preceded NORAM’s relationship with Guidiville by several months.
NORAM’s relationship with each of the 3 tribes are not inter-related, and NORAM’s relationships with Scotts Valley and Lower Lake had nothing to do with any changes in our relationship with Guidiville. All of our tribal relationships were begun long ago and were pursued concurrently.
I would appreciate your correcting the inaccurate impression your article created as the opportunity to do so presents itself.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Paul N. Filzer,
General Counsel
NORAM Equities, Ltd.
Maitland, FL
