Two issues not listed on the agenda—a teacher “work to rule” slowdown and a proposed plan for the district’s Derby Street field—dominated discussion at this week’s meeting of the board of directors of the Berkeley Unified School District. 

Members of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) union began the work action last month in a contract dispute with the BUSD. Participating teachers are refusing to conduct any school activities outside their contracted seven-hour day. Contract negotiations between BFT and the BUSD are being conducted through a state-appointed mediator. The next mediation session is scheduled for March 15. 

On Wednesday night a string of anguished parents appeared before the board during the public comment period, most of them critical of the district administration. 

“At first I was saddened about the current situation, but my sadness has turned to anger,” said parent Alejandra Nuñez, whose child attends Thousand Oaks Elementary. “Our children are suffering.” 

Nuñez, who said she had attempted in vain to get information on the district’s contract position, told board members that the teachers deserve a raise. 

“Teachers put far more hours into their work day than they are compensated for,” she said. 

Another parent, Marilyn Sagna, said that she was upset about the teachers’ plight. 

“I’m concerned that there is no recognition of the amount of work being done by the teachers,” she said. “I’m concerned about the working conditions. I’m concerned about the condition my daughter is in.” 

And Gwyneth Galbraith, the parent of a Thousand Oaks kindergarten student, said that she was “appalled that parents haven’t been informed about these contract negotiations” before the work slowdown began. 

“All I’ve heard is through the grapevine, and that’s probably not reliable,” she said. “I realize that there are two sides to this issue, and the district has its financial obligations. But teachers are due their fair share.” 

Galbraith urged the district to “resolve this dispute quickly and fairly.” 

In later comments during the director report period, Board Director John Selawsky told the assembled parents, “We’ve heard your comments, and we will get out more information to you.” 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence said the reason why the district has not been more forthcoming is that state mediation law prevents the district from discussing contract negotiation details in public. 

Berkeley PTA Council President Roia Ferrazares said that her organization has scheduled a March 14 session at Longfellow Middle School to present information on the contract dispute. 

“This is purely an information session for the public” she said. “It won’t be a debate or a contract negotiation.” 

Ferrazares said that the PTA was prevented by state law from entering into the contract dispute, but urged the district to submit any proposed contract to the public for comment “once negotiations are completed, but before the contract is signed.” 

Board members also weighed in on the dispute. Director Joaquin Rivera, who is a member of the district contract negotiating team, said the district’s interest is keeping the district solvent. 

“Our incentive is to get better salaries for our employees. But it’s not in the best interest of the students or the district to go back to the brink of bankruptcy.” 

Student-Director Lily Dorman-Colby got applause from some members of the audience when she called the work slowdown “a very upsetting time for students.” 

“Our teachers won’t grade some of our papers, they’re not as prepared as they used to be, and they won’t give us help at lunch or after school,” said Dorman-Colby, a student at Berkeley High School. “Our education is definitely being affected right now.” 

Pointing to the situation in the Oakland Unified School District, which was seized by the state two years ago after it gave a teacher pay raise it could not afford, Dorman-Colby warned that the district “is in danger of losing our school board and being replaced by a state administrator if we promise extra pay and can’t meet our obligations.” 

Derby Street Fields Development 

In other matters, a second string of citizens—these ones residents of the neighborhood surrounding the district’s old East Campus property on Martin Luther King Jr. Way—came out to praise the district’s recent movement toward converting the property to park ground and playing fields. 

East Campus neighbors are locked in an ongoing dispute with advocates of a Berkeley High baseball field. Field advocates want Derby Street closed between MLK and Milvia so that a regulation-sized high school baseball field can be built on the East Campus property and the district’s adjoining Berkeley Alternative High School property. While most East Campus neighbors want the old East Campus buildings to be torn down and something done with the property, they oppose the closure of Derby Street. 

While waiting for a City Council decision on the possible closure of Derby Street, the district has hired WLC Architects of Emeryville in association with Vallier Design Associates of Richmond to come up with temporary plan for the use of the East Campus property. During a Monday night community meeting at the Alternative High School, WLC and Vallier released proposed drawings of two alternative plans for the property, both of which involve a combination of a multi-purpose field for the use of Berkeley High sports teams, basketball courts, a tot playground, and a community garden. 

Vallier said that the plans would probably be submitted to the board sometime in May. 

But already, East Campus neighbors say either of the two plans are fine with them. 

Ruth Reffkin, a community representative on the East Campus site committee, told board members, “I can assure you that the community will support these plans.” 

Those sentiments were echoed by neighbor Pam Webster. “In the past, the process [surrounding the use of the East Campus property] has been contentious, but this round has been exceptional. We have real respect for the district staff and the design team in what they’ve been doing.” 

Webster said she had 500 cards signed by neighbors in support of “keeping Derby Street open, the Farmer’s Market remaining on Derby Street on Tuesdays, and the development of the East Campus site for multiple uses for youth.” 

The only dissent at the board meeting was presented by baseball field advocate Doug Fielding. Fielding told the board, “The logical and most cost efficient approach” would be for “the design contract to be amended to include a closed Derby plan. The minor increase in staff load at this juncture will more than offset the additional amount of time staff would spend to repeat this entire process for a full size field.” 

Fielding said that both field supporters and East Campus neighborhood residents “would like this all to come to an end. Build the [regulation size baseball] field or don’t build the field, but don’t keep the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the neighborhood and don’t continue to dangle a baseball field in front of the field supporters. Get your plan, get your costs, make your decision, and let us all move on to other things.” 

›

Trying to lower consumer energy bills and increase its use of renewable energy, Berkeley, along with other Bay Area cities, is considering jumping into the energy business. 

Last week, the city’s Energy Commission voted unanimously to recommend that the City Council put aside $100,000 to cover start-up costs for a plan that would put the city, not PG&E, in charge of picking its energy suppliers. 

The goal of the feasibility study to see if the city can keep rates on par with PG&E and determine how much green energy can be added to Berkeley’s portfolio, said Neal De Snoo, the city’s energy officer. The city hopes that by diversifying its energy sources, Berkeley will release fewer greenhouse gases and be less prone to wild swings in the natural gas market, he said. 

“We think this can give us more energy independence, stable prices and non-polluting energy sources,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington. 

Besides California, Ohio and Massachusetts have passed laws allowing cities to establish bulk energy consortiums, known as community aggregates. 

Ohio’s program, established in 2001, currently has 905,000 customers, according to The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. 

Under California’s law, passed in 2002, PG&E would continue to distribute power through its system, and Berkeley residents would have the option of sticking with the utility as its purchaser of electricity. 

“We have always supported the idea of giving customers a choice in their energy service provider,” said Brian Swason, PG&E spokesperson. Previously, PG&E had sought to block a plan for San Francisco to follow the lead of Alameda and take control of both the utility’s purchasing and distribution network. 

Berkeley is working with Oakland, Emeryville, Pleasanton, Marin County, Richmond and Vallejo to form a consortium that could negotiate bulk rates for electrical energy and possibly take ownership of green power plants, De Snoo said. No California city has begun buying energy outside of PG&E under the law, but San Francisco and Chula Vista are also setting up separate purchasing blocks. 

Even if the other Bay Area cities backed out, De Snoo said, Berkeley could go ahead with the program, although it would face higher administrative and planning costs.  

In the event that Berkeley joined forces with neighboring cities, they would likely form a joint-governing body to oversee energy purchases and investments, De Snoo said. Because the energy load must be planned continuously, he said, Berkeley or the consortium would likely contract out those duties.  

Under the California law, PG&E would continue to bill consumers and then turn over the money to Berkeley to pay energy producers. Annually, Berkeley consumers, excluding UC which has its own energy contracts, use 530,000 megawatt hours of electricity at a cost of $46 million, De Snoo said. 

City officials said they believe Berkeley has two advantages over PG&E that would enable it to buy more expensive renewable energy while keeping rates in line with the public utility. Since PG&E charges small business a higher rate to subsidize residential customers across its system, De Snoo said, Berkeley, which has proportionally more small businesses, pays more to PG&E. Also, since Berkeley can borrow money more cheaply than PG&E, it could reap greater profit from investing in a generation plant. 

“That’s where there’s a real economic benefit,” De Snoo said. “If we just purchase power from private producers we wouldn’t have any advantage over PG&E.” 

De Snoo said the most likely energy investment for the city or consortium would be to upgrade a wind farm. A feasibility study, funded by the California Energy Commission, is slated to be ready for the City Council’s review in April, De Snoo said. 

The state energy commission is pushing the consortiums to boost renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power, to 40 percent of their total use. PG&E is required make renewables 20 percent of its portfolio by 2017. 

Energy deregulation has a bad name in California, where the state’s previously forced utilities to buy energy on the volatile daily spot market. Under the new law, cities like Berkeley would be able to enter into long-term contracts for power as utility companies have historically done. 

“In Ohio, it’s been a success, but not as big a success as some people were hoping for,” said Robert Burns, senior research specialist with the National Regulatory Research Institute at Ohio State University.  

Burns said that as a result of cites more aggressively seeking lower prices than utility companies, customers have seen a 5 percent average rate decrease. However, when added municipal administration costs are factored in, he said, the total savings was unclear. 

The program, he added, had unquestionably helped boost the use of renewable energy in a state where 85 percent of energy comes from burning coal. 

The future of reform in California rests largely on rules set forth by the State Public Utilities Commission, expected to be finalized by the end of the year. The PUC will have the final say on how much PG&E can charge for handling billing, fees paid to PG&E for exiting their energy contracts as well as on whether large-scale users will again be free to negotiate independent deals. 

PG&E’s next purchasing round is scheduled for June, De Snoo said. If Berkeley hasn’t announced its intention to exit the PG&E purchasing plan by then, he said the city will have to pay an added opt-out penalty if it leaves. 

De Snoo didn’t think a move by larger companies to buy power outside of the community blocks would affect Berkeley. However, he added, if small businesses chose to stick with PG&E, Berkeley would lose part of the financial incentive for buying its own power. 

Backed by a coalition of activists and endorsed by their county’s leading public health official, Richmond City Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin’s call for a change in oversight at two toxics-contaminated shoreline sites won the unanimous endorsement of her colleagues Tuesday. 

If accepted by the California Environmental Protection Agency, the city’s request would give the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) the lead role in the ongoing cleanups at UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station and the adjacent Campus Bay site. 

Tuesday’s vote represents a major victory for the activists of the Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development (BARRD), a coalition formed in response to earlier actions at Campus Bay, and for McLaughlin and the Richmond Progressive Alliance to which she belongs. 

An earlier version of the measure had been voted down two weeks earlier, despite the protests of a packed audience. 

Sherry Padgett, BARRD activist and an outspoken critic of cleanup activities at both sites, hailed the council’s action. 

“I’m impressed that the council came around to the right answer and unanimously passed the resolution. After they read the facts, they came to the same conclusion as has the rest of the community, that DTSC should be in charge,” she said.  

Padgett works mere yards away from Campus Bay and emerged as a critic after she became the victim of several life-threatening cancers and other ailments her doctors said they believed were caused by environmental exposures. 

Peter Weiner, a leading San Francisco attorney who has volunteered to lead the legal fight for BARRD, said, “The unified expression of the city council in asking the California Environmental Protection Agency for action is both very unusual in itself and very important to state government. My expectation is that Cal EPA will listen very closely.” 

Both DTSC and the water board are EPA sub-agencies.  

Richmond Mayor Irma Anderson, who had voted no on the earlier proposal, said Tuesday, “I feel the resolution now. . .is a win-win proposition. I’d like to thank Councilmember McLaughlin.” 

Though more than thirty people had signed up to speak in favor of the resolution, Mayor Anderson told them it wouldn’t be necessary. The council was now willing to give its endorsement. 

“I’m willing to make it unanimous,” said John Marquez, who had voted against the earlier draft. 

Beaming, McLaughlin praised Anderson, new City Manager Bill Lindsay, Padgett, BARRD, the business owners who live near the sites and the community for their backing. 

Though UC Berkeley had resisted the switch, Contra Costa County Public Health Director Wendel Brunner offered support in a Feb. 18 letter to Lindsay. 

While both sites had been under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, the board ceded control over the upland portion of Campus Bay following a Nov. 6 legislative hearing on the site called by Assemblymember Loni Hancock. 

Brunner’s testimony played a major role in that change. In his letter to the Richmond council endorsing McLaughlin’s proposal, Brunner wrote concerning Campus Bay that “the Regional Water Quality Control Board has neither the expertise or experience to handle a site this complex.” 

Brunner also noted, “In my 20 years of experience as Public Health Director, the [DTSC] has been the lead agency in the remediation of all toxic sites in Contra Costa that have been this complex.” 

Although he wasn’t as concerned with the Richmond Field Station—also known as Bayside Research Campus—Brunner wrote that “nevertheless, I believe the DTSC would be the best agency to provide oversight to that property also.” 

Both sites hosted long-term manufacture of dangerous compounds, contaminating the soil and shoreline marsh with a wide range of highly dangerous substances ranging from heavy metals such as mercury as well as a variety pesticides, some now banned, to noxious volatile organic compounds, PCBs and similar hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals.  

UC Berkeley registered strong opposition to the measure when it first appeared on the council’s agenda on Feb. 15. Mark B. Freiberg, director of the university’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety, told the council that the school was quite happy running its own cleanup under water board supervision. 

The original measure was twice defeated at that meeting, in part because several councilmembers wanted Brunner’s input before they voted. The physician wrote his letter three days later. 

McLaughlin’s resolution was redrafted, incorporating the council’s concerns that the water board continue to play a role under DTSC supervision, and brought back to the council. 

Included in the draft was a new provision that calls for deed restrictions on both sites to protect the public health and safety to “return these properties to the tax rolls for the long term benefit to the residents and businesses of Richmond.” 

Freiberg was present in the audience for the unanimous vote. He didn’t sign up to speak during the public hearing nor did anyone from Cherokee Simeon Ventures, the firm set up by Marin County developer Russ Pitto and a multinational venture capital firm to develop Campus Bay. 

Activists focused on the Field Station in November after a Daily Planet report revealed that the university had picked CSV as their choice to build a 2.2-million-square-foot corporate/academic research complex on the site. 

BARRD and other Richmond environmental activists, most notably Ethel Dodson, have criticized Cherokee Simeon’s role of the Campus Bay cleanup, and word that the firm may be developing the second site spurred them into action and led to the inclusion of both sites in McLaughlin’s resolution. 

Padgett said the next stage for the activists is making certain that Cal EPA follows through on the council’s request. 

A group of six Oakland residents were arrested in the offices of Randolph Ward, the state school administrator, Tuesday evening after demanding a meeting with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell over plans to close adult education. 

The six demonstrators, including an attorney, two teachers, and an Oakland City Council candidate, were arrested on trespassing charges during a sit-in in Ward’s office that prevented the offices from closing for the day. On the street outside the Oakland Unified School District Administration Building, about 100 demonstrators rallied during the sit-in to support the demonstration. 

The arrestees were led out by police in handcuffs, and were released an hour later on bail. 

The sit-in was organized by a coalition of organizations, including the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Oakland Parents Together, Education Not Incarceration, and Youth Together. 

Ward reportedly left his office shortly before the demonstrators arrived, and was at a “funders meeting” in Piedmont while the demonstration and arrests took place. 

Oakland Unified School District Board members Dan Siegel and Greg Hodge, both candidates in next year’s Oakland mayoral race, were among a group congregating in the third-floor hallway outside of Ward’s office in support of the sit-in demonstration. The two board members did not participate in the sit-in itself, and left when police cleared the hallway. 

Oakland public schools were taken over by the state two years ago after discovery of a massive budget shortfall. Ward was hired by O’Connell to run the schools and pay off a $100 million state loan. Since that time, Ward has closed several schools, and recently announced possible takeover of a second group of Oakland schools by charter organizations. But what sparked Tuesday’s demonstration was Ward’s announcement of the possible closure of Oakland Unified’s adult education program. 

Before police were called, OUSD Chief of Staff Woodrow Carter tried to reason with the sit-in demonstrators, suggesting that they either wait in the building’s downstairs lobby or outside, and offering to pass on a request for a meeting to O’Connell. Carter said that he did not have O’Connell’s telephone number and said that when he called Ward’s bodyguard, he was told that Ward was making a presentation and “could not be disturbed.” 

Malcolm X Grassroot Movement member Kali Akuno, an Oakland-based educator acting as the spokesperson for the sit-in demonstrators, called Carter’s efforts to contact his superiors “ridiculous.” Akuno also rejected later efforts by Oakland Police Lt. Ed Tracey to end the demonstration short of arrests. 

“It’s been two years since the Oakland schools were taken over by the state, and Jack O’Connell has refused to come down and meet with us,” Akuno said. Tracey asked him, “Do you want to be arrested?” Akuno answered that Carter “has made his point plain, and we’ve made our point plain. You do what you have to do.” 

During the sit-in, the discussions between demonstrators and Carter and Tracey were polite and formal, if not cordial, and Tracey told demonstrators, “you have to understand, the police don’t want to take a position on this. We’re neutral.” 

In a prepared statement, Akuno said that the coalition “does not recognize the current district leadership as legitimate. We call on Superintendent O’Connell to restore democratic control to Oakland’s public school system.” 

Arrestee Michael Siegel, the son of Boardmember Dan Siegel, added in the prepared statement, “Recent actions by State Administrator Randolph Ward to close schools without community input, to open our campuses to private school and charter school corporations, and to threaten the complete shutdown of our adult education program only further our resolve to resist this hostile takeover until Oakland parents, educators, and community members can once again decide how best to educate our children, youth, and adults.” 

The coalition also issued four demands, including the “immediate restoration of local democratic control over the Oakland Unified School District, no school closures and no charter conversions, no layoffs, and an immediate meeting with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell to discuss the implementation of these demands.” 

State Superintendent O’Connell’s press secretary, Hilary McLaean, said that O’Connell had no comment directly concerning the sit-in or arrests, adding only that “Jack O’Connell is most concerned about academic achievement in the Oakland schools. He hopes that people in Oakland who are passionate about their schools will direct their passion toward the improvement of those schools.” 

State-appointed Oakland school administrator Ward did not return phone calls to answer questions concerning this article. 

Coalition members have called a meeting for Tuesday, March 8, at 6 p.m. at the First Congregational Church on Harrison Street in Oakland to discuss further action. In addition, the Oakland Education Association has scheduled a March 15, 4 p.m. march and rally at the State Office Building on Clay Street in Oakland to protest the school closures. 

In addition to Akuna and Siegel, the four other demonstrators arrested at the Tuesday action were Micah Clatterbaugh of the Chicano Moratorium Coalition, civil rights attorney Anne Weills, Community Day School teacher Linda Halpern, and Oakland adult education teacher and Oakland City Council District 2 candidate Pamela Drake. 

?

A member of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education is calling the proposed charter takeover of a West Oakland elementary school “illegal” and the justification for the takeover “to put it nicely, untrue.” 

Boardmember Dan Siegel made the comments in response to an announcement by Oakland Schools state-appointed administrator Randolph Ward that OUSD plans to close Golden Gate Elementary this spring, to be turned over to a partnership run jointly by the University of California at Berkeley and Oakland-based Aspire Public Schools non-profit organization. 

As a boardmember, Siegel has no say over the charter conversion. Oakland Unified School District was seized by the State of California two years ago. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell hired Ward to run the schools, with the Oakland school board acting in solely an advisory capacity. 

Genaro Padilla, vice chancellor of student affairs at UC Berkeley, called the charter collaboration “a wonderful opportunity” for UC. And P. David Pearson, dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, called it “a chance for us to demonstrate that diversity in all of its faces—racial, linguistic, intellectual, and economic—provides the right context for preparing high school students for the challenges they will face in the colleges and universities of tomorrow.” 

The school is scheduled to initially serve 120 to 160 sixth and seventh grade students in a college preparatory curriculum, with priority given to students living in the school’s neighborhood. 

Aspire currently operates 11 charter schools in urban areas of California, including two in Oakland, two in East Palo Alto, and four in the Stockton-Modesto area. 

In announcing the closure of the San Pablo Avenue school, Ward invoked a provision of President George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, which calls for district action after a school operates under a low-performance “Program Improvement” status for four consecutive years. 

But Siegel says that the national education law allows for other possible actions against low-performing schools besides converting them into charters, including a catchall phrase that allows “any other action that reforms the school and gives rise to an expectation of better performance.” 

“Those of us who don’t want these types of charter takeovers believe that Ward could have used Oakland’s previous policy of restructuring Golden Gate in the autonomous, small school model,” Siegel said. “He had the flexibility to do that.” 

In addition, Siegel charged that by announcing the school closure first and then awarding a charter afterwards, as was done in the case of Golden Gate, Ward is breaking a California state law mandating that a majority of teachers at an operating public school have to approve its transformation into a charter school. 

“I think that makes his actions illegal,” said Siegel, who is a practicing civil attorney. “Dr. Ward is using reasons that run from the fanciful to the ludicrous to justify the circumvention of state law and the closing of Oakland schools.” 

Ward did not return telephone calls to answer questions for this article. 

Siegel says he was “somewhat torn” about the UC Berkeley/Aspire charter school. 

“It seems to me that if they can put together a good school for that area, that’s a good thing,” he explained. Citing the fact that he participated in OUSD School Board approval of 12 to 13 charter schools in recent years, including Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s Oakland School For The Arts, Siegel said that he had reservations that charters can do a better job than schools run by a public school district. 

“I’m not dogmatically opposed to charter schools in principle,” he said. “What I am opposed to is charter schools being forced down the throat of the community. That’s what’s happening in this case.” 

A UC press release said the school would be funded through state Average Daily Attendance monies and regular federal school funds. Startup costs have been financed by a $400,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.›

Proposed revisions to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance hit a minor stumbling block Wednesday when a Planning Commission subcommittee couldn’t agree on what to change. 

Members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had worked over a period of years to hammer out a new ordinance, only to run into objections from the Planning Commission, where some members had other notions of what the law should be. 

All sides agreed that some aspects of the current law needed revision, particularly when it comes to bringing the ordinance into line with the state Permit Streamlining Act, which mandates that local governments act on building permits within a strict timeline. 

Four Planning Commissioners attended the session, including commission Chair Harry Pollack and colleagues Susan Wengraf, Sara Shumer and Helen Burke. 

Three LPC members also showed up: Carrie Olson, Leslie Emmington and Fran Packard, as well as former LPC member and Berkeley Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O’Malley. All had plenty to say, with the exception of Packard. 

Under the proposal, all structures 50 years old and older would automatically be submitted to the LPC for review. If deemed significant by the commission or a member of public, a landmarking application could result, setting in motion a process with specific deadlines. 

Much of the early part of the session dealt with Planning Director Dan Marks’s description of the “worst case scenario” timeline a developer could face waiting to learn the fate of his application to demolish or alter a potential landmark structure. 

Emmington challenged Marks’s term. 

“I always cringe when I hear this phrase ‘worst case scenario,’ I am concerned with the importance of this ordinance to community,” she said, objecting to the use of a term with decidedly negative connotations. 

“I stand corrected,” said Marks. 

Then the planners launched into a discourse about the use of the term “integrity,” prompting a discussion about places where “Mario Savio slept here” and an eventual burst of laughter from O’Malley and more discussion. 

In the end, the planners couldn’t agree and voted to accept Burke’s suggestion to send the proposal back to LPC for clarification. 

“We’re done,” said Marks. “We haven’t changed any of the past recommendations.” 

That left hanging Pollack’s discussions of incorporating the Landmarks Ordinance into the Zoning Ordinance and revision of the process of getting projects through the LPC.  

City planning staff will send the ordinance back to the planners with cleanup language in time for the commission’s regular meeting next week. 

Two months after threatening to shut down Berkeley’s historic ice rink, city officials are giving a tentative thumbs up to Berkeley Iceland’s plan to upgrade its operations. 

“At this point Iceland is staying in business,” said Deputy Fire Chief David Orth. “They’re doing exactly what we asked them to do.” 

A city audit of Iceland last year found 36 violations, the most serious connected to the rinks’ ammonia-based system used to chill the ice surface.  

Ammonia, a common refrigerant for skating rinks, is a toxic gas that can be lethal in high concentrations, and can turn highly combustible when mixed with oil. 

In response to fire department demands, Iceland, which opened in South Berkeley 64 years ago, has agreed to three safety mechanisms designed to reduce the risk to firefighters and patrons in the event of a leak. The rink will install a discharge tank in its control room to neutralize escaped ammonia by dumping it into water, a water spray system to treat ammonia contaminated air, and a remote control system to allow firefighters to move the ammonia away from the source of the leak without having to enter the contaminated control room. 

Last week, Iceland submitted its upgrade plans for city approval and is scheduled to complete the work by November. 

The Fire Department’s only objection at this point is Iceland’s contention that an open garage door qualified as providing a continuous source of outside air, Orth said.  

Iceland officials were unavailable to comment on the price of the upgrades and whether they planned to pass the costs to customers. General Manager Jay Wescott had previously ruled out installing a Freon-based cooling system, used at the company’s other rinks, because it couldn’t afford the estimated $300,000 price tag. 

Berkeley’s Toxics Supervisor Nabil Al-Hadithy said the city would hire a consultant to review Iceland’s plan, and bill the rink for the work. 

In addition to addressing the Fire Department’s priorities, Iceland must address other city concerns including demonstrating that the concrete building is structurally sound in the case of an earthquake and improving management controls and safety procedures, Al-Hadithy said. 

Meanwhile tests of the rinks piping, performed by a consultant for Iceland, showed that the rink’s equipment were in working order. 

›

The Library Board of Trustees will likely hold off voting on a controversial reorganization plan that would mean pink slips for an estimated 12 employees. 

“The feeling is we need more information and more time to study the facts before making a decision,” said Darryl Moore, the City Council’s representative to the library board. 

Library Director Jackie Griffin had originally hoped to win approval for her plan at Wedesday’s monthly meeting to stay on track with the city’s schedule for adopting next year’s budget. 

Facing a $1 million shortfall, and not wanting to further reduce service hours, Griffin had proposed reorganizing library staff and cutting positions, primarily library aides and library assistants. 

If the plan is approved, the library would be the only city department to issue lay-offs. 

At last month’s trustee’s meeting SEIU Local 535, which represents library workers, offered countermeasures it said could save money and reduce lay-offs. The union proposed, among other ideas, reducing work weeks from 40 to 37.5 hours and instituting mandatory and voluntary time-off days. 

Moore said the board is looking for library officials to return with a cost analysis of the union’s proposal. The analysis, Moore added, might be difficult for the library to produce since it lost its long-standing finance head, Bob Derbin, retired last month. 

The board meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the South Berkeley Library at the corner of Russell Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

—Matthew Artz›

Plans for the proposed Ed Roberts Center for the disabled took a major step forward Wednesday when a key congressional committee endorsed a $3 million funding package for the Ashby Bart Station project. 

The same funding package also includes $1.5 million for long-delayed improvements to the Gilman Street/Interstate 80 interchange and $2 million for bus shelters and intelligent systems for AC transit which will be installed along Telegraph Avenue. 

Last year, the city installed temporary lane striping as a stopgap measure to improve traffic flow at the frequently congested Gilman/I-80 interchange. 

The funds are part of $16 million in funding for the 9th Congressional District included in the Transportation Equity Act, said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland). 

Calling on the full House of Representatives to pass the $284 billion funding measure, Lee said the bill “provides much-needed money for East Bay transportation projects and a vital economic stimulus for our community.” 

The city’s Zoning Adjustments Board has approved the permits for construction of the Ed Roberts Center earlier this year, a necessary step before center directors can receive the full funding needed to building the project, which will house a wide range of groups serving the needs of the regional disability community. 

The bill would fund a variety of projects in Lee’s district including $1 million for an transit center at the Emeryville Amtrak Station and $2.5 million in improvements to I-880 in Oakland.›

The hotly contested March 8 mayoral race in Los Angeles has put a spotlight on the contentious issues of urban racial balkanization, white flight, surging Latino voter strength, declining black political power and police abuse. Two of the top challengers in the race, California State Sen. Richard Alarcon and Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa are politically savvy and nationally known Latino candidates. Villaraigosa was a national co-chair of Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign.  

Alarcon and Villariagosa have made no overt appeals to Latino voters. But if either one wins, he would become the first Latino mayor in modern times to run the nation’s second-biggest city. That would be a major boost for Latino political power in Los Angeles and in California, the nation’s most populous state. Latinos now make up nearly half of the city’s 3.8 million residents. In the past decade their vote numbers have nearly tripled. They now account for one in five Los Angeles voters. Many Latinos have prospered in the professions and business and have deepened their influence within the Democratic and Republican parties. Latino political leaders and activists relentlessly demand that political and social issues no longer be framed solely in black and white.  

As Latino voting strength has grown, black voting strength has declined in Los Angeles and in California. The number of blacks in the state legislature has plunged in the past decade. In Los Angeles, Latinos now make up the majority of the population in what were once exclusively or predominantly African-American neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles. The number of black elected officials in Los Angeles almost certainly will erode further in the next decade.  

These facts have deeply worried some African-American leaders. A win in the mayor’s race would be a chance to stop the political hemorrhaging. Many black leaders have rallied behind the candidacy of Bernard Parks, an African-American. During a contentious term as LAPD chief, Parks and the department garnered national headlines following the 1999 shooting of Margaret Laverne Mitchell, a middle-aged, homeless African-American woman. The killing sparked massive protests and renewed demands for LAPD reform.  

Parks was a popular, reform-minded chief, but he bumped heads with the mostly white police union. The city’s white mayor, James Hahn, unceremoniously dumped him. African-American leaders screamed racism and betrayal. They had overwhelmingly backed Hahn for election largely on the promise that he’d retain Parks as chief if elected. Parks banks heavily on the anger and long memory of black voters to help put him over the top.  

The recent shooting of an African-American teen, allegedly while fleeing from police, again dumped the hot-button issue of police violence back on the city and nation’s political table. The mayor and the other candidates have promised to make LAPD reform a priority issue.  

Mayoral candidates have repeatedly promised reform in the past. Yet, the issue of police violence continues to tatter relations between the LAPD and African-Americans in Los Angeles. Whoever wins the top spot again will be called upon to fulfill that promise. Elected officials in other cities will be watching closely to see if that happens.  

White flight has also inflamed passions during the campaign. Another top candidate, former California Assembly speaker Robert Hertzberg, has demanded the breakup of the Los Angeles school district, which is predominantly black and Latino. This is a not-so veiled effort to pander to suburban whites. In the 1970s and 1980s, white parents waged bitter court fights, lobbied the state legislature, and sponsored ballot initiatives to split the district. That would have created a two-tiered system in which white students attended better-funded, high-achieving suburban schools, and blacks and Latinos remained trapped in poorer, grossly underserved inner city schools.  

California’s Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed Hertzberg, another signal to conservatives to line up behind Hertzberg.  

Villaraigosa has barnstormed through the city promising to forge a multi-ethnic coalition. If he can pull it off, that could serve as a model for racial peace and progress in Los Angeles and beyond. Four years ago, though, Villaraigosa’s multi-ethnic pitch fell on deaf ears in black communities. He got less than one-fifth of the black vote. Blacks went overwhelmingly for Hahn. While Hahn won’t get much of the black vote this time around, the real test for multi-ethnic politics is whether enough blacks, Latinos and whites can resist the tacit and overt racial appeals and vote for the candidate that has the best program to combat the city’s towering urban and racial ills.  

Mayor Hahn and his challengers have publicly promised to unify the city’s widely diverse ethnic groups, a promise made and broken time and time again. This election is yet another chance for the candidates to keep that promise. The nation is watching.  

Hutchinson is author of the forthcoming Beyond Michael Jackson: The Clash of Celebrity, Sex and Race (AuthorHouse Press, April 2005). ›

It’s a hundred-million-dollar-a-year business, a business that provides outstanding benefits for its 147 employees, that engages in many practices to protect the environment, supports community building around laudable causes, avidly promotes participation in sports—and produces something indescribably delicious and outrageously healthy. 

Clif Bar Inc., headquartered in Berkeley, was founded in 1992 by Gary Erickson who was motivated, the company literature says, by “his love of the outdoors, cycling, business, good food and social responsibility.” It’s all there, in spades. 

Starting with the Clif Bar, named after Gary’s father Clifford Erickson, the company now makes six different products; the original Clif Bar in 14 flavors, Clif ZBaR for kids in three flavors, Luna for women in 12 flavors, Clif Builder’s heavy on the protein in three flavors, MOJO Bar with a salty-sweet taste in four flavors, Clif Shot, an energy gel for really athletic types in five flavors. And they’re coming up with new ones all the time. 

They all use organic, natural ingredients, no partially hydrogenated oil, no trans fats or genetically modified products. Just reading the nutrition information and the names of the bars will make you feel virtuous and your mouth water—Luna “Nutz Over Chocolate” or “Orange Bliss, Clif “Cranberry Apple Cherry” or “Chocolate Almond Fudge,” while three of the Clif Shots contain caffeine for an extra burst of energy. All are loaded with vitamins and minerals galore. 

These are the basics but there’s a great deal more to be said about Clif Bar, Inc. It’s a fantastic place to work. Thao Pham, Human Resources Director, has been working for the company for four years she says but, “It doesn’t feel like four years. It’s like that first day of work, the excitement of going through the door, still enjoying people, still enjoying your work.” 

There are all sorts of perks she explains, for the employees “to help relieve stress in their lives.” There’s a fully equipped exercise room to match the poshest gyms, offering classes and a personal trainer available for the asking. There’s a hair dresser/barbershop on the premises, someone who takes employees’ cars to be serviced, clothes to be dry cleaned, who picks up take out dinners for people to bring home; taking care of things, Thao explains, “that employees have to do that would take them away from their families.” Employees are eligible for a six month sabbatical every seven years. 

The workplace itself is energizing. Large bright, airy rooms with lots of plants, decorations on the walls and one entire wall made to simulate a climbing wall. The individual work spaces are arranged randomly with no confining screens around them—there are no cubicles here. And just as the employees don’t sit in little boxes, they are encouraged to think outside the box.  

Dean Mayer, communications manager, ticks off the principles that motivate the operation of the company: “Sustaining our business, our brands, our people, our community and the planet.” All are equally important.  

“Giving back” to the community encompasses some a truly impressive programs. Through its “2080 program” the company donates 2,080 hours a year, that’s the equivalent of one full time employee, to community service. The way it works is that the employees are encouraged to perform volunteer work for a non profit community organization of their choice—on company time. Almost all the employees participate, Thao says, averaging about 20 hours each. 

The company also supports many fund raising events, in partnership with community organizations, or as Clif Bar, Inc—there is a small theater space right in their building. Bryan Cole, Northern California Field Manager describes some of them. 

“We get a ton of sponsorship proposals” he says. “We look for something that’s going to give back to the local community.” 

They like environmental projects with groups like Save-The-Bay or local creek clean-ups and, not surprisingly, they love to have a tie-in with sports, like a 10-K or bike run for a cause. The sports they support, are individual, human powered sports, “unlike other kinds of nutrition bar companies,” Bryan points out. “You won’t see us partnering with NASCAR.” And of course those are all great places to give away their bars and gain Clif Bar devotees—what better way to promote their product.” 

Luna Bar, which is formulated specifically for women, provides a beautiful example of creative marketing and powerful community building. Heidi Slavsky is the guiding spirit of that one. 

She says, “A lot of the work we wanted to do with Luna is to take the product beyond the wrapper, make the product come to life for people to show how we can be involved in communities, how we support and empower women, bringing different parts of their lifestyle to life through the different programs that we oversee and develop.” 

Five years ago they started Lunafest, a film festival by, for and about women. The purpose was to give more of a voice to women in the film industry and to raise money for The Breast Cancer Fund. The first year they produced eight Lunafests around the Bay Area. This year they expect to do 70 all over the country. The festivals have raised thousands of dollars for the fund and won a loyal following for Luna Bars. 

Other Luna Bar promotions include support of V-Day, a global movement started by Eve Ensler of “Vagina Monologues” to end violence against women and girls. Luna co-sponsors fund raisers for V-Day with college and community organizations and has even put on a couple of events in their own theater space.  

Promoting women’s sports is another big item on their agenda. The Luna Chix go out into communities and get women involved in sports, organizing teams for competition or just for fun and socializing. Luna Bar will support a team by providing equipment, uniforms and even a tent they can put up at events. New sports and new cities are being added all the time. 

These are just a sample of Clif Bar, Inc. projects that support their principle of sustaining the community. To carry out their broader vision of sustaining the planet they do everything possible both in operating the business and the events they sponsor to limit their impact on the earth—composting, recycling, using biodegradable products wherever they can, using bikes and generally reducing CO2 emissions in every way possible. Educating and increasing public awareness gets worked in too. 

Marketing Manager Bryan Cole describes a recent ‘biodiesel mobile marketing tour’ on the east coast “driving this biodiesel rig which is all branded with Clif Bar logos and stickers and also educational materials about biodiesel.” 

They even have an ecologist on the staff. 

Clif Bar, Inc. is a fine example of a company that combines successful business with ethical principles. The workers there credit founder and owner Gary Erickson for the inspiration and the vision that sustains their programs—and the fact that not being a publicly traded company they don’t have to answer to a mass of shareholders interested in the bottom line. Let’s hope it stays that way. It is a Berkeley treasure. 

PUBLIC LIBRARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If Laura Anderson really wants the community to help the Berkeley Public Library find solutions to preserve intellectual freedom at BPL she would find a bigger space for the next BOLT meeting on March 9 and she would make sure that the Daily Planet printed correct information in its announcement for this meeting. 

Pop Vox 

• 

total security 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for your editorial on the analogy between squirrels/bird-feeders and the homeland security problem (“The Total Security Myth,” March 1-3). I feel a lot safer now. I hope in the future Becky O’Malley will have time to delve into raccoon mating habits and their relationship to nuclear proliferation. 

Wade Ramey 

• 

TUBMAN TERRACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On the Planet’s March 1 front page, once again Berry Gardner, the president of the Tenants Council at Harriet Tubman is heroized. No mention is made of the Black History Month dinner not being served until 7:30 p.m.—and cold, at that. Well, not such a big deal? We were lectured—forced to sit on hard chairs for over two—while Mr. Berry was getting all the credit for putting on this event with donated money and a definite lack of consideration for people’s comfort. The event was not well attended. 

My purpose here is not necessarily to criticize Mr. Berry—just the glorification of “our president.” Margo Norman, a poet and tenant and activitist—member of the Council on the Aging for the City of Berkeley—was not in attendance. On New Year’s Eve she also cooked a huge dinner for a party which could not be held in the multi-purpose room presently reserved for only the Tenants Council—when, really, it is a room for all of the tenants. Mr. Berry has not dealt with our management over the decision to withhold this meeting place until after the renovations of the new owners; and, who knows when that may be. Why can’t it be used if no one is using it? 

There are so many problems that need correction at Harriet Tubman Terrace. Use of the multi-purpose room seems insignificant—but, just as with our mighty and unchecked President Bush—abuses of power and praise should not go unchecked.  

Iris Crider  

• 

OH, ‘DEM DEMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Bob Burnett’s Feb. 25 article “Howard Dean Hits the Ground Running”:  

Insider reports of the Dem machinery at work are of some interest, but the question is are they of use—do they shed light on the party’s dilemmas? I would like insider reports that explain something, like the Dems’ failure to challenge elections scams, let alone the war in Iraq or the Patriot Act. It’s nice to hear thinking about “messaging” from the “ground up,” presumably the same terrain as in “Howard Dean hits the ground running.”  

What does that say about policy issues? Did the candid discussions deal, for instance, with Dean’s thinking about the implications of being killed off by the media, after his anti-war campaign proved surprisingly popular? If Dems are to be anti-war—and most of the convention delegates in 2004 were, and were silenced by party bosses—how will Dean address that issue? 

I see our job as “outsider” supporters to lobby the insiders to face these huge challenges. We just had a success in persuading Barbara Boxer to sign on to the Black Caucus 2004 election challenge, and prevent the debacle of 2000 when—as seen in Fahrenheit 9/11—Al Gore surrealistically gaveled down the challenge to his own questionable loss of the presidency.  

There is a history in the Democratic Party of a substantial minority opposed to empire, war, and neo-colonialism—just like the 2004 delegates. This history is disposed of in the same manner as was Howard Dean’s anti-war popularity—it is killed off by the Establishment, which should be understood to include the majority of insider Dems. (A piece of that history has to do with the role of the New York Times as establishment Dems, whose mild insider critiques are positioned to head off the nitty-gritty ones of the populist, anti-imperialist wing. That is why you never see an op-ed piece by Noam Chomsky, the most widely read political writer in the world.) 

I see our outsider position as saying the “Emperor Has No Clothes.” Sure enough, we know that the insiders and office-seekers will have to compromise, but let’s make them do so after hearing the rank-and-file message loud and clear. So, what has Howard been saying lately about the military budget and the war in Iraq? 

Neal Blumenfeld 

• 

TEACHERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is no more important group of people to the residents and families of Berkeley than our public school teachers. They take our children for half their weekday waking hours and teach, guide, nurture, advise and inspire them, prepare them for life’s challenges and mold their outlooks on the world. 

I have been a parent of children in the Berkeley public schools for seven years (and will be so for ten more). My children’s teachers have been, almost without exception, hard-working and dedicated, willing to go beyond the call (and hours) of duty to take care of special needs, introduce special projects, innovate and stimulate the students. The recent “work-to-rule” action reminds us just how hard and long these teachers work, in ways that we have come to take for granted. 

It is critical, especially given the projected 4.2 percent increase in unrestricted funs coming into BUSD, that we give our teachers their fair share, for several reasons: 

1. Fairness: They deserve, at minimum, the cost-of-living increase they are asking for, after going more than two years without. 

2. Quality: We cannot maintain or improve the overall quality of our teachers without meeting basic economic necessities for them, or have salaries slip in comparison with nearby school districts. This is basic supply-and-demand economics. And if the quality of our teachers decline, we will inevitably lose more children to the private schools, further draining the schools of outside resources and active families. 

3. Morale: Even the most dedicated teachers-- as anyone in any job-- will stop going the extra mile when they feel their employer, and, by extension, the entire community, is disrespecting their efforts. By neglecting even basic cost-of-living increases, we are saying to them, you are just not quite important enough for our community for us to go the extra mile for you. For the impact on all students and our community, we cannot afford for that to happen.  

As for the class size issue: Class size reduction has been the single biggest improvement in California in the last generation. Let us put into practice and maintain the commitment we as voters made with Measure B, as the teachers have reminded us. 

We need to support the teachers within Berkeley, while expanding our efforts statewide and with the governor to obtain more money for education for all California teachers and schools. Let us all go the extra mile—for our teachers, for our children. 

Rick Goldsmith 

• 

DIABLO VALLEY COLLEGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many of you may be familiar with Diablo Valley College, a community college out in Pleasant Hill, which for many years had the reputation of being among the very top community colleges in the state. It gained this reputation because it was largely a faculty-driven college, run on the assumption that the people in contact with the students everyday should have a great deal of input on how the college and curriculum operate. This faculty empowerment led to a high degree of faculty involvement and dedication, which in turn led to a high degree of student success. Diablo Valley College has for a long time been one of the top colleges for transferring students to UC Berkeley. I bring this to your attention because I predict that things will change. 

The administration at the Contra Costa Community College District has begun a campaign to break down the faculty. It started two years ago when the elected faculty division chairs were fired and replaced with high paid deans that were unfamiliar with the college, but only had to answer to the president. Thus enabling the highly paid administrators who have little contact with the students a great deal of power in running the college. The faculty have been in contract negotiations with the district since last July, and the only offer the district has made entails: a 7 percent permanent salary reduction retroactive to July 2004, a considerable increase in faculty pay towards healthcare, an increase in class sizes, and the administration would like to control when and where faculty prepare for and grade coursework. To top that off, last September, during contract negotiations, the board of directors “fired” the chancellor, and his severance package included $250,000 and life-time health benefits. For some reason California law doesn’t require community colleges to reach binding arbitration, and the district has been offering the same “last best and final offer” since September, which they will soon have the right to impose upon faculty. 

I bring this to the attention of the people of Berkeley because there are a large number of students that attend DVC from Berkeley, and a large number that transfer to UC Berkeley. I predict that if the administration at DVC get their way, the faculty which has in the past given 110 percent because they loved their jobs, will do only what is required of them. They will teach, hold office hours and leave. The quality of the education DVC offers will decrease, and the quality of students transferring to UC will decrease. For the administration it looks good on paper to have low paid faculty, few full-time faculty, and large classes. In their equation revenue is up, expenses are down. Strange how this equation doesn’t include the quality of education. 

If you have five minutes and care about the community college system, go to the Contra Costa Community College website at www.4cd.net, click on governing board, and let them know how you feel. 

Karl McDade 

South Berkeley resident 

Professor, Diablo Valley College 

• 

HOWARD DEAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While not as optimistic as Bob Burnett’s fine recent article: Perhaps you already saw the op-ed piece in the Feb. 5 New York Times by David Brooks about Howard Dean leading the Democratic Party. 

Brooks feels that Dean and others already in party leadership positions are far enough to the left that the Democrats will be able to attract only quite liberal voters. He even mentions our fair city, saying: 

“Thanks to this newly dominant group, the Democrats are sure to carry Berkeley for decades to come.” 

Perhaps the Dems are simply continuing in the proud tradition of Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore. We choose people who we like to do practical things and feel good about it. But we don’t pick people who have much chance of succeeding in their roles in practical terms. 

And the Republicans, for all their sometimes hard-to-fathom views, don’t mind picking people who can actually succeed.  

Is it possible that the Dems have become a sort of Lite version of the Green party? The Greens would call the Dems too centrist to be relevant, but perhaps the Dems too liberal to be more than semi-relevant. Are the Dems as self-marginalizing as the Greens are, only to a lesser degree? 

Or are the Dems in the pay of the administration... to be a semi-useless opposition party to keep all of us lefties occupied while the administration does so many things in the interest of who knows what? A nicely paranoid notion, but what is it that makes the Dems so impractical and ineffective?  

Many of us (present company excepted) seem to be spinning our wheels politically. What can be done to get some actual traction? If the Republicans can do it and we can’t, will liberalism simply become extinct, one of political evolution’s dead ends? 

Nice cartoon you may have seen in The New Yorker, with a very large man in a suit sitting behind a large desk looking down at a very small man standing before the desk.  

The very large man says: “I don’t believe in evolution, but I do believe in Darwinian selection.” 

Or were the Democrats practical enough to win the last election but the result was changed through unfair means? In which case, do we need to change the Democratic Party at all?? 

Brad Belden 

P.S. Thank you for a wonderful, vibrant paper for this interesting, important city. 

• 

PETER HILLIER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Jerry Landis’ ugly attack on city traffic chief Peter Hillier in the last Daily Planet: 

Yes, there are some officials in Berkeley who have to be dragged into helping their fellow citizens and some who are prone to snits. They should, as Landis says, leave office since we “pay your salary; you work for us and answer to us.” 

Judging from my experiences during the Adult School fight, these are usually elected officials.  

Peter Hillier, on the other hand, treated us in a thoroughly open and professional manner and worked hard to mitigate the effect of the school on our neighborhood. It may have helped that we respected the heavy demands on his time and acknowledged (eventually) that there are not always perfect solutions to traffic problems and that some problems are well beyond the reach of any traffic strategy. 

I was not at the meeting Landis writes about.  

However, if Hillier did something wrong—and reportedly some think he didn’t do anything terribly wrong—then he should make it right. Ditto anyone else at the meeting who may have been over the top. Maybe a lot of people around here should review their communication skills. 

Perhaps Hillier was just being a human being under pressure. Unfortunately that is not a safe thing to be in a town with so many scolds lurking everywhere (see Bates v. the Daily Californian).  

In any case, nothing deserves the ugly mockery Landis spewed out in his letter.  

Of course, most of us like to rant and rail at officials. They usually deserve it, it’s fun, and it eases the pain of losing. It’s the price the powers that be pay for getting their way. But some rants are better kept private lest we wake up the next morning embarrassed and owing apologies.  

Finally, it’s true that Hillier does not have—nor in a grown-up world should he need to have—the bullshitter smile too many of our city and school district officials and flacks have perfected, that kindly establishment face that says to the lowly citizen heavy with worry, “We’ll just put you in our Process Machine for a year or two and you’ll come out completely numb, neutered and never wanting to bother us again, and you’ll even thank us for it.” 

Maybe a dour puss is a sign of integrity.  

James Day 

• 

GRAMMAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kathleen Berry’s spirited response to Michael Larrick’s complaints about teachers is fascinating. It is not particularly fascinating for its pettiness, which may, perhaps, have been called for. What is fascinating is that she accuses Larrick of being uneducated and inattentive to detail because he uses poor grammar, while her parenthetical boast at the beginning of the letter claims she was “a teacher who, incidentally, had all As and three Bs in four years of high school...” Larrick may have difficulty with subject-verb agreement, yet one would hope that our teachers would understand what the word “all” means, especially those teachers who criticize logical fallacies. 

Besides, whose job was it to teach Larrick grammar? 

Justin Azadivar 

• 

GRADING THE TEACHER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kathleen Berry, the “I am a teacher”, who wrote suggesting that Mr. Larrick might benefit from a course in remedial English should consider taking the course with Mr. Larrick. Ms. Berry wrote that she “had all As and three Bs in four years of high school … .” If she had all As, why did she have any Bs? 

Dan Brown 

Emeryville 

• 

PUBLIC APOLOGY 

People of Berkeley: 

This letter is a public apology. On Wednesday, March 2, at approximately 12:50 p.m., I was driving northbound on Sacramento Street between Bancroft Way and University Avenue. I was not paying attention and I almost hit an elderly African-American woman pedestrian who was legally crossing Sacramento from east to west. 

Although I missed hitting her and nobody was injured, I have no excuse for my actions. A white woman in an SUV with a peace sign followed me, issued a middle-fingered gesture in my direction and called me an “a--h---”. In that instant, she was justifiable in doing so. If she hadn’t done it, I might not have thought twice about my regrettable actions.  

After crossing University Avenue, I made a legal U-Turn at the first available opportunity and tried to find the elderly pedestrian whom I had just missed hitting to personally apologize for my careless and thoughtless actions. I couldn’t find her. 

Therefore, I do hope she is reading this. I am profoundly sorry. I myself was run over by an 18-wheel semi truck while riding my bicycle through Oakland four years ago. The driver was at fault. I am lucky to be alive today and I would never dream of (even accidentally) causing anyone the pain I suffered in my own accident. Please accept my sincerest apologies. I will be much more careful and attentive from now on. 

Steve Ongerth 

• 

BUSD BUDGET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence continues to blame Gov. Schwarzenegger for Berkeley Unified’s alleged inability to keep its teacher salaries competitive, but her stance leaves three crucial questions unanswered:  

1. Why is it that other districts in this area are able to offer their teachers cost of living adjustments even though they face the same statutory burdens as BUSD, and even though Berkeley has a base revenue limit per child higher than the state average? BUSD’s overall expenditure per student is roughly $10,000, while the state average is $7600. In Northern California only the Palo Alto school district has higher overall expenditures per student than Berkeley.  

2. What steps has this district taken in the two years that negotiations have been going on to ensure that when significant new revenue was finally available, as it will be next year, they would be in a position to keep their teachers’ salaries competitive? At the table they have offered no cost of living adjustments, but are demanding significant new employee contributions to health care costs. Superintendent Lawrence must know that her recent comment to the Daily Planet that, “...compensation is similar to other districts” is false under the district’s proposals. Indeed, with other districts in this area getting cost of living adjustments for this year, which the BFT has not asked for, Berkeley Unified teacher compensation levels are reportedly slipping below average already.  

3. What steps did Superintendent Lawrence and the school board take in the last five years to ensure that teacher compensation in Berkeley, which had finally become average for this area after years of rock-bottom conditions, could be maintained at a competitive level? It’s true that this district has made cuts, but much of the savings came on the backs of children and teachers who have had to suffer through the largest class sizes this district has seen in at least a decade. When our last contract was signed we urged this district to commence a careful examination of its finances so that Berkeley teachers could stay at average compensation levels into the future. Should Berkeley students and teachers now have to pay the price for BUSD’s failure to restructure its budget?  

Cathy Campbell  

• 

BUSD SALARIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I seem to remember that the superintendent of Berkeley schools got a pay rise this or last year. I believe the same thing happened in Oakland. If so, you may have published the figures at the time. But even if you did, it’s worth printing them again, so amounts can be checked against the teachers’ salaries. How much do these superintendents make? 

Nancy Ward 

• 

UNIVERSITY AVENUE PROJECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have never seen a description of the project underway at the foot of University Avenue, just south of the Seabreeze Cafe adjacent to the bicycle bridge. What is going on there? It is a giant mound of dirt with no indication of intent. Please illuminate me! 

Miko Sloper 

• 

ARNOLD’S TEAM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Did you know that Terry Tamminen, cabinet secretary of the governor’s office does not even have a B.A. degree? He is a good example of how far one can get with having the right personal contacts. Tamminen was a ship captain and a part-time Shakespeare actor in Australia. He came to the U.S. and cleaned pools in Beverly Hills and Malibu when he met his wife. He thought he is an environmentalist since he had been cleaning pools, so he teamed up with a friend and opened an environmental firm. Later he met Schwarzenegger and convinced him that he is the best candidate to lead the Cal/EPA, thus Schwarzenegger appointed him. After a year-long resistance from scientists who hold PhDs, Schwarzenegger appointed Tamminen to the highest position in his cabinet. 

Would this have been possible if Tamminen were a woman? 

Mary Hayes 

• 

NO TAX FOR WAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a recent letter (Feb. 1) to Daily Planet, I wrote that I would not file taxes this year to oppose the war and hopefully stop it. I believe that if people collectively refuse sending their tax money to IRS, the Bush’s regime will go bankrupt and will have to stop the war. Bush has recently asked for 82 Billion more for the war. I will not contribute a penny to it. 

There are people in America who do not file taxes to oppose the war. There is a group in Northern California. There will be a rally in Berkeley in April. Interested people can check the following sites: www.nowartax.org/Main%20HTML%20Pages/index.html, www.nwtrcc.org, www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0212-03.htm. 

Helena Bautin 

• 

BUSH’S BUDGET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

No one was surprised when the first budget of Bush’s second term was immediately attacked. It does not contain the costs of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It does contain a deficit. It adds up to astronomical dollars and ordinary citizens are too busy to read the multiplicity of items much less evaluate them.  

We who did not vote for Mr. Bush must, per force, rely on Congressional Democrats, left-leaning think tanks, progressive columnists and non-partisan agencies who agree, at least in general, that the Bush budget favors the military industrial network, treats the rich kindly and big corporations deferentially but is inordinately mean toward many millions in need, towards voiceless children, the chronically poor and infirm.  

Thus, as a born again Christian the president delivers a budgetary theme that updates the moral climax of the Prodigal Son parable in Matthew Chapter 20: many are called to satisfy the greed of the chosen few. And those among us desperately clinging to the lower rungs of society are thus abandoned to continue weeping and gnashing their teeth. 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 



Click here to view the latest work by Planet cartoonist Justin DeFreitas

What should be the role of the police in our community? 

Once a crime has been committed, we rely upon the police to gather the evidence that leads to the arrest of a suspect, and allows the district attorney to prosecute—and the courts to convict—the guilty party. 

But we have also charged the police with another role-crime prevention. In some communities, that means working closely with groups of citizens to monitor problem situations and step in early to prevent them from escalating into crimes. That type of work has sometimes been called “community policing,” although it is one of those easily-confusing terms that means different things to different people. In any event, in Oakland that police-community crime prevention collaboration usually comes in the form of the Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils (NCPCs), which function as neighborhood crime watch groups. 

In this column, we have spoken in the past about one potential problem with calling this NCPC-police collaboration “community policing.” The people who participate in these crime prevention councils do not represent the entire community, and so sometimes what the NCPC people want the police to do is not necessarily what others in the community want the police to do. This doesn’t mean that the NCPC members are bad people. Most of them, I suspect, are good, concerned, dedicated citizens who take out time out of busy days and nights to try to make the community better for all of us. But we always have to be careful in confusing the interests of the few with the interests of the whole. 

But there is another, more serious potential conflict between the crime prevention role of the police in their NCPC collaboration, and the investigative role of the police once a crime has been committed. What if the person accused of a crime is a member of a crime prevention group with which the police have been working? 

Of course, most of us know that the police often play favorites in law enforcement, giving one person a break, coming down hard on another, taking sides based upon their own prejudices and assumptions. The Oakland Police Department is currently operating under federal court monitoring because of just such problems, and three former Oakland police officers (commonly known by the name of the “Riders,” a gang-like title they gave to themselves) are on trial on charges of breaking the law to harass people who they couldn’t legally put in jail. 

But when making public comments after a crime has been committed, police usually try to make a show of objectivity to make us believe that they are being fair. 

In the case of the recent North Oakland flatlands vigilante shooting, at least one prominent Oakland police official is not even bothering to do that. 

In reading the Berkeley Daily Planet article on the shooting by Matthew Artz and two San Francisco Chronicle articles by Jim Herron Zamora, we can agree upon two sets of facts: First, 49-year-old North Oakland homeowner Patrick McCullough is a member of the North Central Oakland NCPC who has been active in recent years trying to rid his 59th Street neighborhood of drug dealers. Second, on a Friday night in mid-February, McCullough shot 16-year-old Melvin McHenry in the arm while McHenry was with a group of young men on the sidewalk in front of McCullough’s home. McHenry was not seriously injured. 

After that, the stories of the perpetrator and the victim go in opposite directions while describing the same chain of events. 

According to the newspaper accounts, McCullough said that the group of youths taunted him as he was walking out to his car, at least one of them calling him a “snitch” because of his actions in calling the police on local drug dealers. McCullough then said that some of the youths threw some objects at him, and he got in a scuffle with one of them-McHenry. McCullough says that McHenry then went to one of his friends to get a gun at which point, to protect himself, McCullough pulled his own weapon and shot the youth in the arm. 

McHenry, who is a junior at Deer Valley High School in Antioch and lives with his family a few doors away from McCullough, said that it was McCullough who instigated the confrontation, yelling at the youths as he came out of his house. McHenry says that he and his friends called McCullough a “snitch” in retaliation, and that McCullough then came up to him and grabbed him. He said he punched McCullough, and then McCullough pulled the gun and shot him as McHenry was trying to leave. McHenry denies that he was trying to get a gun from one of the other youths. 

Both McCullough and McHenry are African-American. 

Both stories sound plausible and when you read it in the paper—without knowing the individuals involved or all of the circumstances—you can’t really tell which side is correct. Sorting out the truth of it—and presenting the evidence to the district attorney’s office—is the job of the police. To get at that truth, the police need to approach their investigation with an objective eye. 

But it’s hard to find any objectivity in the statements of Lt. Lawrence Green, the North Oakland watch commander and police liaison with the North Central NCPC. 

“The reason that Patrick was assaulted by these suspects is that he stands up to drug dealers in a way that normal citizens do not,” Lt. Green was quoted in one Chronicle article. In the second Chronicle article, Lt. Green says, “In our opinion, [the 16 year old] was the aggressor—he instigated the whole event.” The “our” in this case presumably means both Lt. Green and the officers under his command who are charged with investigating the case. And the Planet article says that Green has gone even further, mobilizing North Central NCPC members through an Internet discussion group to pressure the district attorney’s office not to prosecute McCullough. Green has told the Chronicle that it is the younger McHenry who should be prosecuted. 

Perhaps Lt. Green is right, and the 16-year-old and his friends were the aggressors in the incident. But as a society, that is something we are supposed to decide in an orderly process—in a criminal trial, where each side gets to present its facts, and the police are called upon to testify as to what they have uncovered. When police officials become impatient and decide that they need to interject themselves as public advocates for one side or the other before the trial begins—before anyone has even been charged—then the question necessarily arises: did the police have their minds made up when they got the first call of a shooting on 59th Street and found out it was one of their allies who was charged with a shooting? And if that is so, how can any police investigation in this matter be trusted, or any evidence they present be believed? 

By going from investigator to public advocate, Lt. Green has crossed a line. The rest of society is free to take sides in such disputes. The police department is not.

Last summer my then-14-year-old daughter Liana and her friend Jen walked up to Telegraph Avenue to participate in the all-time favorite teen pastime: hanging out. As defined by Liana, “hanging out can mean anything. Going to a friend’s house and sitting around, watching TV or playing video games, going in the backyard or just talking about stuff. Basically, hanging out is this: 

“Going somewhere to do whatever there is to do there, whether it’s nothing or whatever.” 

End quote. 

The girls walk around the avenue doing whatever for awhile then end up at La Val’s to do whatever. Actually, they wanted to shoot pool—an activity that defies time by defining cool—and waited for a table to open up. As they began to play, Liana noticed that the two guys at the adjacent table kept staring at them. Liana glanced their way to see if she knew them. “They were really old, like 28 or 35 and they looked scraggly.” 

“Hi, Princess,” the one with the gold tooth says. 

Liana smiles and quickly looks away. The decrepit old guys keep looking but Liana and Jen ignore them. They eventually hobble out of there only to return a short time later. “They each took one of us and started talking.” Liana grimaces. 

“Hey, how ya doin. Do you smoke? Really? You don’t smoke at all? Not even just a little bit? Do you drink? Not at all? Really? Well, me and my friend want some company to maybe smoke a little, drink a little. You know, have a good time.”  

“Um, yeah. We’re 14.” Liana looks at the guy like he’s some kind of perv.  

“Aw, for real? You’re really 14?” 

The guy talking to Jen echoes, “Fourteen? For real? My man over here wanted to get with your friend. Please don’t tell me she’s 14, too?” The old fogies nudge each other, say “Alright,” then leave. 

How did you feel when they left, I asked.  

“We laughed. It was really stupid, those old guys trying to hit on 14-year-olds...It was weird. Actually, it was kind of gross.” 

And then some.  

A few weeks later Liana was hanging out with another 14-year-old girlfriend, Zee, this time doing whatever on Shattuck Avenue. Two guys they recognized as high school seniors were following them, repeatedly calling out “Excuse me! Excuse me!” After a block and a half of this, the girls finally turn around.  

The boys fall in stride. The taller one starts in on Liana. 

“What’s your name? Where are you from? Let’s exchange numbers so we can talk sometime.” 

“I don’t even know your name.” 

“My name’s (Creepo).” 

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t even know you.” 

“Well, we can be friends.” 

“I’ll be a friend.” 

“Friends with benefits?” 

Liana laughs. “No. I’ll just be your friend.” 

“Well, where are you guys going?” 

“Around to McDonald’s.” (I never feed my kids fast food, honestly! What a sneak!)  

(Creepo) returns to the issue at hand. “So, you wanna be friends with benefits?” 

“I don’t even know you,” Liana responds. “Do you go to Berkeley High?” 

“Yes.” 

“How about if I just see you next year?” 

(Creepo) laughs. “Oh man, c’mon.” He then turns his attention to Zee. 

“How about you? What’s your name? Where are you from?” 

Liana and Zee exchange looks. After a few more minutes, the boys take off. “Alright.” 

Yeah. 

What did he mean by “benefits”? I ask. Liana patiently explains:  

“Benefits means sex. Friends with benefits are friends you have sex with.” 

Oh my god. So, hanging out with friends can include fringe benefits. For whom? I remember navigating these same rocky waters as a teenager in the late ‘60s—early ‘70s. The terminology may be different but as my grandma used to say: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Here’s hoping my daughter is wiser than I was. So far, so good.  

›

Imagine you are walking downtown with the two kids in tow. It’s Saturday afternoon. The streets are bustling with people. Suddenly, The Noise, louder than anything you’ve ever heard, blasts your attention. It sounds like the pulsing pressure of a motorcycle, grating like a car alarm, with the intensity of a foghorn blasting right into your ears. What the? It’s so LOUD! Gotta get away. Where is it coming from? People on the street are running every which way, hands glued to their ears, eyes squinting with pain. Not that way. Not there. Try inside the building. Where’s Susie? You look down at her terrified face. Blood is trickling from her ears. Her eyes are about to explode. You can’t bend down to carry her because your hands are locked over your ears. It doesn’t help. The Noise is blaring inside your head. You head into the building. The pulsing. The grating. Machine guns are shooting into your ears. People are falling over each other. You can’t hear their screams. You only feel the pulsing pain. And the warm blood running down your neck. 

A horror something like this happens to the intelligent animals that live in the sea, whales and dolphins, when the U.S. Navy activates its hyper-loud, under-water sound blaster called Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) Low Frequency Active (LFA) sonar. The Navy’s LFA sonar blasts The Noise so loudly that whale ear drums break, their sinuses explode, blood hemorrhages in their brains and lungs. In March, 2000, immediately after a Navy LFA sonar test in the Bahamas, fourteen whales  

ended up “stranded”; their dead bodies washed up on the sand. Biologists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute examined them and observed the tissue damage. The Navy’s test blared The Noise at 195 decibels (dB). LFA sonar’s full operating volume of 240 dB is 20,000 times LOUDER. 

Under the sea, sunlight dims quickly. Deeper than 100 ft., little can be seen. Whales and dolphins use sound to find food, to evade danger, to watch over their young, to communicate with their mates, and to keep their group together as they swim on their migrations. Their sense of hearing is highly developed and very sensitive. They can hear much better than humans, and like bats, they use sound echoes to locate prey and each other. While we use sight to orient ourselves, to know where we are and to communicate, whales and dolphins use hearing. Caught within the radius of The Noise, sea mammals get disoriented. They can’t hear, they can’t see, they don’t know where they are, or which way is up. They loose their young. Those not killed from tissue damage starve from deafness. 

As sound travels outward from its source, it attenuates. Yet, even at distances between 100 to 200 miles from the LFA, where the 240 dB Noise diminishes to “only” 160 dB, severe tissue damage still occurs in sea mammals. Deafness, disorientation, and other dysfunctions occur wherever The Noise is louder than 120 dB, more than 1,000 miles from the LFA source. 

Why is the Navy sound-blasting the silent seas? Navy documents claim they need loud, “active” sonar to detect enemy submarines over long distances. But Rear Admiral Malcom Fages has pointed out that passive (silent) listening systems are more effective. Former Director of the U.S. Naval Weapons Lab, Dr. Charles Bernard, says that active sonar identifies the source vessel and highlights our own submarines as well as enemy subs, thereby placing our own personnel in jeopardy. LFA would alert an enemy to our intention to track them. It would give them warning to take evasive action. 

Others have said that the Navy needs active sonar to communicate with our deep-water nuclear subs. Normally, these fully-loaded behemoths deploy large, floating antennas to pick up low-frequency radio waves in order to know whether to launch their nukes and go to war. But when they are in “stealth” mode, deep under water where radio waves don’t penetrate, only sound messages travel through the dark ocean’s depths. So, to control our nuclear arsenal, the Navy must send sound signals to its subs. The LFA hyper-loud speakers are being deployed to reach them wherever they may be, The death and injury of thousands of creatures is considered unfortunate, unavoidable, collateral damage. 

A strange thing happens to sound deep under the sea. Within the first 400 to 500 feet, wave action and warming from the sun keep the water turbulent. Below the turbulent surface area lies a stable layer of deep water called the isothermal sound channel, capable of conveying sound over thousands of miles with little attenuation. Eons ago, whales discovered this and use it for navigation and long distance communication. When the Navy’s LFA sonar is fully deployed, 80 percent of the world’s ocean could be polluted with sound. Sound so loud, according to the Marine Mammal  

Commission’s 1997 report to Congress, that uncountable numbers of living creatures will die. What will happen to the ecology of the ocean? What will happen to our source of seafood? What will happen to us, if we allow such pain and suffering to be unleashed upon other feeling beings? Will we still be able to call ourselves human? Or will we become “golem,” soul-less creatures in human shape? 

“National security”, “homeland security”, “protection from terrorists,” these are the magic mantras that fuel the Navy’s single-minded quest to wire up the seas like a huge loudspeaker. So focused are they on this one technology that their response to thousands of objections to the Navy’s Environmental Impact Statement on deploying SURTASS-LFA has been to seek exemption from the environmental review process. Undeterred that the LFA technology is not as effective, and also more dangerous, than passive sonar, the Navy has not seriously looked at alternative technologies. There are other ways to communicate with our hidden nuclear submarines. Effective methods exist that would not damage and possibly destroy nearly all sound-sensitive sea creatures. 

One such alternative is the use of Local Acoustic Transducers (LATs). These are relatively inexpensive, floating devices that contain radio receivers and low-level acoustic transducers (speakers). When the Navy needs to communicate with a particular sub, a coded message could be sent via satellite to the floating radio buoys. Only the buoys nearest the specific sub would activate its sonar transducers. Being closer to the sub, its sound would not need to be as loud as the LFA sonar. Being specifically activated, the total amount of noise in the sea would be greatly reduced,  

and the sea animals and fish would be spared suffering a horrible death. Inexpensive buoys could be anchored to the sea floor, and be regularly replaced if they were dislodged. Highly sensitive microphones on the subs would enable them to receive communications within a range of several hundred miles from each floating LAT. Enough LATs could be deployed so that each sub would be within range of two or three LATs to assure accurate communication. 

Perhaps even better technologies are possible as well. But none will be explored unless the Navy is stopped from deploying SURTASS-LFA sonar. Funds for this deadly program (over $ 350 million has already been spent) should be reassigned to other methods. Our Senators and Congress representatives need to know that we are concerned and opposed to the Navy’s sonic blasters. Gordon England, Secretary of the Navy, and Donna Weiting, Chief of the National Marine Fisheries Service, as well as President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld need to know that destruction of the silent sea and most of the ocean’s life is not a viable option for living on Earth. 

Bruce Joffe is the founding principal of GIS Consultants in Oakland, which provides geographic information planning, management, and public policy services to public agencies.  

›

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia—The U.S. government is demanding that the Bolivian Congress approve an agreement that would grant immunity to U.S. troops and officials accused of human rights violations, exempting them from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. That effort, which includes a threat to withhold financial aid and access to free trade, seems to be backfiring.  

Bolivia is one of 139 nations that have signed the Treaty of Rome, which set up the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998. A respected Bolivian judge, Renee Blattmann, also sits as a member of the court. The treaty’s goal, according to its Preamble, “is to establish an independent permanent International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.”  

It was in the ICC that the former Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, was tried for crimes against humanity. The United States, alongside China, Iraq, Libya and others, is one of just seven nations to vote against the treaty. Many believe that the war in Iraq and cases of U.S. torture have made the United States vulnerable to criminal charges of international human rights violations.  

The Bush administration has been pressing its opposition to the ICC. In 2002, the U.S. Congress approved the American Servicemembers Protection Act, which prohibits the United States from providing military aid to any nation that does not agree to grant U.S. soldiers and officials immunity from the ICC.  

Since then, the Bush administration has been pressuring poor countries worldwide to ratify bilateral immunity pacts with the United States, often under the threat of withholding aid. Government officials say that the United States has already secured more than 90 such agreements. At least 50 governments, however, have refused to cede to the U.S. demands. The new president of Uruguay recently announced that his government would refuse the U.S. request, declaring that his country honors its international agreements.  

The primary threat by the United States to countries like Bolivia has been to withhold military assistance, including discount prices on used military hardware such as tanks. Gary Fuller, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, described the government’s position as, “If countries aren’t willing to protect our soldiers, why should we sell them equipment?”  

But the United States has just upped the ante, by adding the threat of withholding economic aid, a sanction included in an amendment approved by the U.S. Congress late last year. Human Rights Watch reports that U.S. diplomats have informally threatened economic sanctions for some time. The group says that an assistant secretary of state informed foreign ministers of Caribbean states that they would lose the benefits for hurricane relief if their governments did not sign immunity accords.  

“U.S. ambassadors have been acting like schoolyard bullies,” wrote Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice program at Human Rights Watch, in a letter to then-U.S. Secretary of State Collin Powell.  

Some within the Bolivian government have pressed hard for the country to cede to the United States’ request. The Bolivian minister of government, responding to charges that such a resolution was an affront to the nation’s dignity, was quoted as saying, “You can’t eat dignity.” Last year the Bolivian Senate approved an immunity pact, creating a political uproar. The lower house has steadfastly refused.  

U.S. power is a major political flashpoint in Bolivia. The U.S. government is at the heart of the controversial war on drugs here, and U.S.-forced eradication of coca farms is an ongoing target of public protest and accusations of human rights abuses.  

Meanwhile, U.S. threats against Bolivia appear, for now, to be more gums than teeth.  

The economic sanctions just approved by the Congress specifically exempt counties covered by the anti-poverty Millennium Challenge program, which includes Bolivia. Bolivian government sources reported here earlier this month that the United States has privately threatened to keep Bolivia out of talks to form an Andean free trade pact with the United States if immunity is not approved.  

However, free trade pacts with the United States are no more popular among the Bolivian left than is U.S. military aid, and it is the Bolivian left that is the main stumbling block for approval.  

Evo Morales, the leader of the Socialist Party, who came in second by just two percent in the last presidential election and is a front-runner for 2007, has declared the U.S. sanctions “blackmail” and has threatened nationwide protests. President Carlos Mesa has said that the government would only approve an agreement for U.S. immunity if it were supported by the majority of the Bolivian people, something highly unlikely here.  

“Bolivia would be the only country in the world to agree to such a pact that also has a judge on the court,” says Sacha Llorenti, president of Bolivia’s National Human Rights Assembly. “We believe in the fundamental principles of international law. Honestly, we’re not especially worried about what will be the pressure coming from the U.S.”  

Attempted Murder 

Police have few leads in the attempted murder of a Berkeley man who was found unconscious in the parking area of a building in the 2100 block of Dwight Way about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday night, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

The victim was rushed to a local hospital, where he remains unable to speak. 

Okies declined to give the name of the injured man. 

Wrench Assault 

A wrench attack on a bicyclist in Peoples’ Park early Monday ended in the arrest of two suspects on charges of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. 

Iris Chantel Hodges, 19, and Hank Travis B. Williams, 29, were booked in city jail after Berkeley Police responded to a call for help.  

Home Invasion 

Two young gunmen men appeared at the home of a 59-year-old Berkeley woman about 9 p.m. Wednesday night and forced their way into the home near the corner of Dohr and Oregon streets, said Officer Okies. 

They left with her purse and contents. 

Stabbing Suspect Arrested 

Police arrested a 49-year-old man on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon after a 31-year-old man was attacked in the 2100 block of Oxford Street just after 5 p.m. Tuesday. 

Officer Okies said the victim received a non-life-threatening laceration to his neck.›

As the City of Berkeley and the University of California tackle the problems of the LRDP 2020, it seems they are both avoiding the real issue of cooperation to solve the problems it creates. It is useful to see how other large public universities manage their relationships with their host cities, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor provides a good example. 

In a search to determine how other great public universities treat the communities they preside in, U of M in Ann Arbor has the right approach. U of M is considered one of the top universities in the world. The physical layout is strikingly similar to UCB and Berkeley. The U of M is located in the city of Ann Arbor just as UCB is in Berkeley. 

Now comes the striking differences on how the two universities treat their host cities. According to an article from the Ann Arbor Regional Business to Business September 2004, Volume 24, No. 9, the U of M is a partner in the community. 

In 2002, the U of M paid $14,262,245 to the city of Ann Arbor and city affiliates. Yes—this is a public university just like UCB. 

“The U of M property rentals and leases contributed to the city and affiliates through direct payments and property taxes”. Examples are $149,000 to the public school system for use of the district’s parking lots for athletic events. U of M paid Ann Arbor nearly $3,500,000 in property taxes, imputed in rental fees. This amounts to about 5 percent of the city’s total tax revenue. 

Ann Arbor received more than $6,000,000 for water and sewer services. $600,000 was donated to analyze the city’s sanitary system to assess its adequacy against current and projected needs, and U of M does much more.  

The Ann Arbor Police Department has received more than $102,000 for supplemental police services. The university’s own 56 police officers in turn provide assistance to the city police force. 

The U of M also is a partner in many capitol improvement projects in the city. “They have helped construct and fund projects such as the 1996 Main Street and Stadium Boulevard street widening project, Fuller Road/Oakway storm sewer project, and the South State Street AATA commuter parking lot.” U of M donated the land for the last project. For the Forest Ave. parking structure, the university contributed $5,751,000. “The U of M pays an average of $250,000 per year for its share of the annual city street repaving program. The city and U of M teamed up to research ways to improve lighting and opportunities for restoring two-way traffic on one-way streets. The university paid $30,000 of the $130,000 projected cost. 

The Ann Arbor Fire Department is called upon in the event of a campus fire, just like UCB does. The difference is the level of support both planning and financial. The U of M is also an environmental leader in its community. It constantly monitors overall environmental performance to the benefit of the outlying community. 

All of the above and more can be found on the U of M web-site under community relations. In light of the lawsuit filed by the city against the university the above facts should be the goal of Berkeley. This is true university-city cooperation which benefits all. 

Ann and Dean Metzger 

ô

Berkeley is becoming the poster child for the Brave New World of radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking tags in library materials, and helping to legitimize a potential billion-dollar RFID industry—unless citizens take action to stop it. A piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the surveillance society is now being installed at public expense at the Berkeley Public Library—with little public discussion beforehand and a library administration selling it with information that is incomplete, misleading, and at times simply wrong. 

In late December 2004, Library Users Association and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) jointly requested documents from the library about the costs and benefits of RFID. In particular, we wanted to examine the library’s repeated claims that repetitive stress injuries (RSI) have cost the library significant amounts of money and that RFID would cut those costs. While the library responded to our request with less information than we expected, the documents that we did receive tell a markedly different story than that presented by the library administration. 

What the library trustees were told: In December 2003, Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) President Laura Anderson asked if the RFID system “would result in savings.” Library director Jackie Griffin responded that “the library spent about $1 million in direct costs for workers’ compensation claims for the past five years, mostly due to repetitive motion injuries. This technology should result in a significant decrease in injuries and associated costs.” (BOLT Minutes, Dec. 10, 2003) 

What the documents show:  

The documents provided by the library do not support the library director’s response. 

1. For the five years ending June 30, 2003, the library spent $642,161 on all workers’ compensation claims. All RSI-related claims totaled $167,871, just 26 percent of the five-year total. 

2. In the five-year period 1995-2000, the library spent $1,079,807 on all workers’ compensation claims—but just $4,009 on RSI claims, or less than 1 percent of the total. 

3. In the seven-year period 1998-2004, RSI claims accounted for 19 percent of the library’s workers’ compensation costs ($167,871 out of $894,067).  

4. Since 2001, the library’s total worker’s compensation claims and its RSI claims have declined steadily. Indeed, for fiscal year 2004 the library spent only $10,548 on workers’ compensation claims and zero on RSI claims. 

Simply put, the documents we received from the library contradict the library’s claims that RSI is a major financial burden. 

Nor do the documents support the library’s claim that the new RFID system will significantly decrease RSI injuries. The logic here is that using RFID will eliminate repetitive motions associated with using bar code scanners to check books in and out. But we see no evidence that the library’s RSI injuries were caused by bar code scanners, which have been used for years. There were no RSI claims in 1998, 2000, and 2004, and only one RSI claim worth $1,008 in 1999.  

Even if all of the library’s RSI problems were caused by bar code scanners, the savings afforded by an RFID system costing at least $643,000 (for which the library took out a $500,000 loan costing $52,360 in interest over five years) are minimal at best. Moreover, the library has never explained why other, cheaper mitigating measures, such as rotating employees more often between tasks, are inadequate. 

Reassurances from the library administration and BOLT President Laura Anderson (Daily Planet, Feb. 25) that RFID poses no privacy threat are as unsupported as library claims about RSI. Unlike bar codes, RFID tags can be read secretly through clothing, book bags or briefcases by anyone with the appropriate reader device. There are various ways to associate a book title and bar code, both with AND WITHOUT access to the library’s database. Furthermore, tracking where you go with a tagged item requires only the ability to read its tag. Therefore, retailers, individuals, and government agencies armed with RFID portable or doorway scanners will have the potential to figure out what you are reading, where you go with the material, and when.  

To some, this may sound like science fiction, and we hope it stays that way. But every month we read about some new high-tech method for invading privacy, while our current reliance on massive computerized databases of personal information has brought us an epidemic of identity theft and data “spills.” The lesson? The surveillance society will not be built in a day by evil people. It will be built because we accept privacy-invading technologies for supposed short-term convenience, ignoring the long-term social costs. 

Have no doubt about it: the soul of the public library as an open forum for ideas and information, free from the threat of spying and potential chilling effects, is under attack from the RFID implementation happening now at the library. Berkeley should not spend its library dollars on a technology that Big Brother would love. This implementation should end, now. 

Peter Warfield is executive director and co-founder of Library Users Association. Lee Tien is a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a long-time Berkeley resident. 

The challenge that confronts the working class in America is mounting. Unprecedented levels of military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy have left federal, state and local governments scrambling to address growing budget deficits. The result has been widespread layoffs of public sector employees and the privatization of well paying public sector jobs with union representation. With an emphasis on profits and market share, private sector employers must cut costs to remain competitive, and these costs include workers’ wages, retirement, and health care. Attempts by workers in the private sector to organize are often met with strong resistance by employers who seek to stave off workers’ demands. This shift from public to private and the accompanying “de-unionization” of the workforce has been disastrous for working people: real income continues to decline for workers while the richest one percent in the U.S. now own as much wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined; over 40 million Americans lack basic health care and those with coverage face soaring costs; and retirement security is being threatened for working people across the country.  

The economic inequality, rising health care costs, and attack on retirement security that now confront the U.S. working class did not come to pass in a vacuum. These problems are the result of policies that were planned and implemented by elected government officials, most notably George W. Bush, often in plain view of the very people who are most harmed by them. So, how is it, one might ask, that the person who is responsible for many of the problems faced by the U.S. workforce was just re-elected for another four years? There are many reasons for this discrepancy; let’s examine two of them. First, many Americans remain apathetic with respect to U.S. electoral politics (e.g.; 40 percent of eligible voters did not participate in the 2004 presidential election). The reasons for such apathy are complex. Nevertheless, opinion polls are a good place to begin. Polls taken on the eve of the 2000 elections, for example, reveal that about 75 percent of the electorate regarded the 2000 elections as a game played by rich contributors, party managers, and the PR industry, which they believe trains candidates to project images and produce meaningless phrases that might win some votes. In other words, its likely that large numbers of Americans stayed home on election night because they believe that candidates do and say what they need to in order to get elected but that, in the end, they answer mainly to the “rich contributors” who bankroll their campaigns. 

Secondly, those who do vote are subjected to such a torrent of misinformation and deceit that it is very difficult to accurately extrapolate anything about a person based on the way he or she votes in a U.S. presidential election. As voters correctly assume, electoral campaigns are essentially run by the PR industry, the guiding principle of which is deceit. The goal of the PR industry is not to provide information but to delude voters into supporting a specific candidate. This deceit was rampant in the months leading up to the 2004 elections, with the Bush camp demonstrating an unrivaled mastery in the art of deception. Take Bush’s “tax relief” plan, for example. The relief that was to flow from Bush’s proposed tax cuts would be experienced mainly by middle and low income earners, we were told, and it was on these grounds that workers supported the cuts. Well, here’s how Bush’s tax cuts will actually play out: those with annual earnings of $1 million will receive a tax cut of approximately $135,000 a year, while those with annual incomes less than $76,000 will get about $350 on average. That is, while millionaires will be given a raise that amounts to nearly 13.5 percent of their income, the great majority of Americans will see their incomes increase by about 1 percent. Given the deception that surrounded the selling of Bush’s “tax relief plan” to middle and low-income earners, it is not difficult to understand why this group supported a plan that, in the end, will do very little for them, but will shower huge sums of money upon the richest one percent of the population.  

The deceit that plagued the 2004 presidential campaigns makes it next to impossible to infer anything about a person based on how he/she voted in the election. Opinion polls, on the other hand, can tell us a great deal and despite all the post-election lamentations about a “divided nation”, recent polls suggest that a majority of Americans have a great deal in common. For example, polls reveal that the vast majority of Americans are deeply concerned about issues such as economic justice, health care, and retirement security. In some polls, voters cited “greed and materialism” as the most urgent moral crisis facing this country, while “poverty and economic justice” were a close second (Pax Christi). With respect to domestic programs, mainstream polls reveal that up to 80 percent of Americans favor guaranteed health care even if it would raise taxes (in reality, a national health care system would probably reduce expenses because much of the heavy administrative costs associated with for-profit health care would be avoided). Large majorities of those polled also favor the expansion of social security and other domestic programs such as public education (Chicago Council on Foreign Relations). Although opinion poll results should be interpreted with caution, they suggest that there is the potential to organize vast numbers of Americans around the issues of economic justice, universal health care and retirement security.  

Labor unions are in a strong position to reach out to the millions of Americans who believe they are unable to affect real change in their lives, or who believe that “leaders” such as George W. Bush are truly fighting on their behalf. Unions, which have been at the forefront of campaigns for economic justice, affordable health care, and retirement security, have the potential to rally workers around these three issues which, according to polls, resonate with working people from across the political landscape. Organized labor can offer a message of hope to those who have given up on political action as a means to realize their dreams for a better life, and can counter deceitful campaigns by exposing the lies that are heaped upon voters, while attending to the bread and butter issues that matter most to working people. The impact that millions of working people could have on the U.S. political system if they were to speak with one voice would be profound. Such an impact could yield free quality health care for all, a secure retirement in which retirees worry about where to vacation instead of how they will make ends meet, and a living wage so that all working people can enjoy a quality of life that is currently enjoyed by only a minority of the workforce. Such gains, however, will not come easy. It will take a lasting and well coordinated effort within organized labor to confront the cynicism and misinformation that afflicts many working Americans, and to therefore bridge the gap that divides working people and leaves them unable to affect real change in their lives. 

Michael Marchant 

Don’t let the title fool you. The San Francisco Chamber Ensemble’s American Classics program this weekend pays due homage to both Europe and America, the past and the future, crabbed age and youth. 

From Europe’s past, from its youth, there are two now hoary Bach concertos. From America, there are New World compositions from Aaron Copland (20th Century) and Paul Dresher (21st Century). An especially youthful note will be sounded by debut artist Juliann Ma, a 15-year-old tenth grader at Albany High School and already a highly acclaimed performer. 

If you were lucky enough to catch the San Francisco Chamber Ensemble’s New Year’s Eve Concert, you know how much fun this group and its music director, Benjamin Simon, can be. That evening, as well as performing the world premiere of Harold Meltzer’s quirky “Concerto for Two Bassoons,” a couple of Boccherini’s fluffy confections and an exquisite rendering of Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante,” there was also a fund-raising auction for the Ensemble that lead to Mr. Simon’s surrendering his baton to an adorable little girl who hammed her way through all the choruses of Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne” with the audience singing along. 

It put me in mind that Mozart and Burns were contemporaries and fellow Masons. It was a perfect transition, both musically and emotionally, into the new year, effervescent, wacky, yet still haimish. 

This weekend’s program promises just as much mixing of music and moods. The Bach pieces, the “Third Brandenburg Concerto” and the “D minor Piano Concerto,” are acknowledged masterpieces. Like so much of Bach’s greatest work, they seem to peel the skin off the universe to reveal “all that mighty heart” pulsing underneath. One of the oddities of the “Third Brandenburg Concerto” is its inexplicable two-chord second movement. It feels at once truncated and modern. In the ensemble’s version, the violinist will play a brief improvised cadenza leading into the final movement. 

Juliann Ma will be featured on the “D Minor Piano Concerto,” a piece Bach wrote to display his own harpsichord virtuosity in performances with his orchestra at Zimmerman’s Coffee House in Leipzig. This is a muscular music that is still tender, celestial and inevitable. 

Our scene shifts from the German baroque to the American modern with Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” here performed in its original version as a suite for thirteen instruments. Copland (1900-1990) started out as a neo-classical follower of Nadia Boulanger, but in the Thirties his music took a populist path when he wrote the ballet scores, “Billy the Kid” (1938) and “Rodeo” (1942), both set in the American Old West. 

Then in 1943, dancer Martha Graham commissioned “Appalachian Spring.” The title comes from a Hart Crane poem, but the ballet was about a Shaker couple building a new farmhouse in Pennsylvania. The old Shaker hymn, “Tis the Gift to Be Simple” is featured prominently in the suite. As a lagniappe, the Ensemble’s version will also include additional ballet music that was left out of the suite. 

The Ensemble’s world premiere of Paul Dresher’s “Still, Rise, Fall, Again” takes us from 20th Century modern into 21st Century post-modern. Dresher’s compositions show an awareness of American jazz, folk, rock and popular music; indigenous non-European music; and classical and avant-garde European music. 

In other words, everything. The writing of this new piece also took into account the fact that it would share the program with Copland’s original chamber version of “Appalachian Spring.” Beyond that, expect to be surprised. The same might be said of the whole tripartite program, a big, delicious slice of musical Neapolitan ice cream.  

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When Nancy Schimmel is invited to perform for a fourth grade California History unit, she tells stories using her mother Malvina Reynolds’ experiences in the 1906 quake, then sings “Heroes,” a song Nancy wrote about acts of courage in crisis by ordinary people. 

For the fifth grade U. S. History unit, she tells stories about her own participation in the 1963 “I have a dream” March on Washington and in the later San Francisco Palace Hotel sit-ins for black workers’ rights, then sings “A Child Like Me,” her song about child activists. 

“I’m thinking about a song for the Rosie the Riveter Park in Richmond, inspired by my mother’s working in a World War II bomb-casing factory while my father built scaffolding at the Mare Island shipyards,” she said. 

Nancy’s mother Malvina wrote her first songs in 1948 when she and Nancy’s father, carpenter, raconteur, and union organizer Bud Reynolds were working on the Henry Wallace campaign. Nancy was about 13, and the meld of music and activism was in the very air she breathed in their homes in northern and southern California. She had some piano and dance lessons, but she wasn’t looking toward a career in music. 

She entered UC in 1952, first with an interest in zoology, but took her degree in psychology. “Why? I don’t know, because people were always telling me their troubles? By the time I graduated, I knew I didn’t want to be a therapist.” 

The man she married in the late ‘50s was a social worker. “I tried that for about a year,” she said, “but it wasn’t for me.”  

She and her husband lived in San Francisco, where Nancy was active in neighborhood community organizations and in wider ones, like Women for Peace. She also sang and did storytelling in the Potrero Hill Library. Inspired by the community-oriented librarian at Potrero Hill, she went to library school, and became a children’s librarian in 1965. For the next 10 years she answered reference questions, helped kids find books, and did the storytelling hour in libraries all over the Bay Area. 

“First in the city, then in Marin County, then San Mateo County, all the way from Belmont to Pescadero,” Nancy said, as she laughed. “You know how books in certain fields, like astrology, tend to get stolen from libraries—in Pescadero it was the books on goat husbandry.” 

She also became active in the American Library Association. 

The mid-’70s brought big changes: she ended her marriage, came out as a lesbian, and quit her library job. That was when Guy Carawan (of the famous civil rights center, the Highlander School in Tennessee) persuaded her to attend the 1975 Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tenn. 

“The scales dropped from my eyes!” Nancy said. “I took my retirement money out of the state fund, bought a van and hit the road. Through my ALA contacts, I knew librarians all over the country who invited me to tell stories or do a workshop.” 

For seven months Nancy and her then-partner Carole drove 22,000 miles, giving over 60 performances and workshops, attending 20 Women Library Workers meetings, hitting two conferences along the way. 

“It was great, but I never spent that much time on the road again,” she said. “I was a basketcase by the time we got home!” 

Since 1976 Nancy has been based in Berkeley and for nearly that long has been with Berkeley librarian Claudia Morrow. 

“Claudia used to be a lawyer,” Nancy said. “She’s a great organizer, of her union and of the Storytelling Festival in Kennedy Grove The Jonesborough Festival just got too big, gigantic, mobs of people. The festival we started here in the early eighties attracts story-tellers from all over the U.S., but it’s still manageable.” This year’s festival, east of El Sobrante, at the foot of San Pablo Dam, is May 21 and 22, information at www.bayareastorytelling.org. 

Nancy reached another goal in 1993, reconnecting with her daughter, born when Nancy was in college and given up for adoption. 

“She’s a fiction writer and a software designer,” Nancy said. “She designed my website and came to one of our storytelling festivals. We’ve led some workshops together for adoptees and their parents, both adoptive and biological.” 

As Nancy goes on listing her current projects, I imagine a creative juggler keeping many balls in the air while relishing every tricky moment. In addition to writing songs and giving singing/storytelling performances for local schools and libraries, she still travels to conferences and workshops. I Will Be Your Friend (a song and activity book free to teachers from Tolerance.org) includes her “1492,” a song that reminds children that other peoples were here before Europeans came. She is helping to compile archival songs for a Malvina Reynolds Lyrics website. 

She has been recording songs written by herself, by her mother, and by others since 1982, starting with Plum Pudding, a record of songs and stories for children performed when she was part of the group, Plum City Players. A compilation CD of more recent songs she wrote with Candy Forest, Sun, Sun Shine: Songs for Curious Children, is available, along with information about her other activities at www.sisterschoice.com. 

“I’m still singing with the Freedom Song Network, which started back in 1982 with people getting together to share activist-political-freedom songs,” Nancy said. “We meet to sing old songs and try out new ones. It’s a loose bunch of people who are ‘on call’ to sing at demonstrations, on picket lines like the Claremont Hotel strike. People call us every month or so, and whoever can make it shows up. Of course, for a big peace march or demonstration, no one has to call us; everyone’s there.”  

Another current project is singing with the Threshold Choir, founded by Kate Munger in 2000, and soon inspiring similar groups in Bay Area counties and beyond. The Threshold Choir offers songs, often specially composed, sung a cappella by two to four people at the bedside of comatose and dying patients. 

“You have to choose songs carefully,” Nancy said. “People who are very near death can’t take even quiet polyphonic songs like our Saint Francis Prayer (‘Make me an instrument of your peace—’), set as a round. For them a pure unison line works best.” 

The songs on the CD Listening at the Threshold, recorded live in the tunnel at the Marin Headlands, have spiritual, non-sectarian titles like “By Love Alone” and “It’s All Right,” and are uniformly mellow and calming. For more information on this CD (which includes one of Nancy’s songs) and on the founding of the choir go to www.thresholdchoir.org. 

“Of course,” Nancy said, “we take requests, and a conscious person or a family member might ask for some old favorites. Recently I was called to Alta Bates to sing old lefty songs for a Jewish woman who was dying. I also sang her a Yiddish lullaby I’d learned from my mother. Her son really appreciated that.”  

Nancy’s voice, like her mother’s, is soft, with little resonance, but a surprisingly wide range, an unpretentious “ordinary” voice that encourages you to forget your inhibitions and sing along. She takes satisfaction in that fact, but takes even more pleasure in her ability to write a song with an important message in a style so simple that everyone gets the tune and the words right away. “I like it when a child hears a couple of verses of a new song, and then begins to sing along with the refrain on the next verse,” she said. 

Nancy will celebrate her 70th birthday on Saturday night, March 12, at Freight and Salvage. It’s a benefit concert for Freight and Salvage as well as for the Threshold Choir and the Freedom Song Network. “We’ll all be performing,” Nancy said, “the Plum City Players, Candy, Judy, and my daughter.” 

Details at www.sisterschoice.com. Tickets at the door or at www.thefreight.org.º

A prime candidate for Berkeley’s most under-recognized asset may well be the University’s Theater Department. (Actually the academic title is the mouthful “Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies” but, for the nonce, you’ll probably forgive the abbreviation).  

Blessed with an abundance of budding professional actors—who work for free—a faculty who have proved their directoral, acting and design chops in very impressive surroundings—as well as control over the campus’s beautiful Zellerbach Playhouse, these people can put on productions that would be totally impossible for most theater companies. Last year’s terrific Marat Sade stands as an example.  

As does, of course, Chekhov’s Three Sisters that opens at Zellerbach’s Playhouse this weekend and plays through the next one. That’s the one real problem with the Theater Department’s productions: you have to make up your mind pretty fast if you intend to go. There really isn’t time to wait around for the reviews to come out before the run is over. The academic environment does require that the department’s presentations fit into the academic schedule, and that’s it.  

So we get a two week run of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. First presented in 1901 at Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre, it is considered one of his greatest plays and Chekhov himself is considered perhaps the greatest playwright of the 20th century. Directed by the well-known director and actor Christopher Herold, there is every reason to expect a good production. 

The actors almost chorus their delight in their experience with him. 

The play is famous for its presentation of Russia’s upper class in the years leading up to the revolution of 1917 (Chekhov himself died in 1904). It is a complex study of a family of young adults—and their friends—who live in the provinces of Russia trying desperately to find meaning in lives in a world which does not expect them to work.  

Three out of four of the actors who play leading characters, the sisters themselves, and the dashing lieutenant-colonel “Vershinin” (Cole Smith), are committed to establishing professional careers in acting. The one exception is Pamela Davis, who plays “Irina,” the youngest sister. She’s a Political Science major at this point but seems to be spending quite a lot of time in the theater department.  

The others appears to have no qualms; they’ve known for years how they want to spend their lives. Smith, who will graduate this year, seems never to have questioned his goal.  

Holly Chou, who plays Olga, the oldest sister, first began to act in the third grade. Jennifer Kretchmer, who plays the sexy “Masha,” has parents “in the business” who “very strongly wanted me to go into something else.” It didn’t work.  

With a cast of fourteen, a great (and large) set, and the endless numbers of other artisans that produce the evening, it will probably be a good while before there is another production of this drama as elaborate as the one that will play for these two weekends.  

UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies presents Three Sisters. 

8 p.m., March 4 and 5; 7 p.m. March 6; 8 p.m. March 11 and 12; 2 p.m. March 13. 

Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC campus. 

$14 general admission, $10 UC faculty/staff, $8 students/seniors. 

For tickets or more information call 642-9925 or see http://theater.berkeley.edu. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

Jeremy Kirsch Photographic Portraits. Reception at 8 p.m. at Auto 3321 Gallery, 3321 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 31. www.freewebs.com/ 

autoartgallery 

Boontling Gallery “Overhung,” Works by over 50 Bay Area artists. Opening reception at 7:30 p.m. Exhibition runs to March 15, at 4224 Telegraph Ave. www.4leagueindustries.com 

“The Journey of Staying,” mobile sculpture by Stan Huncilman. Reception at 5:30 p.m. at Atelier Gallery, 1812B Sixth St. Exhibition runs to March 25. 486-1485. www.ateliergallery.com  

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Bending the Beat” at 7:30 p.m at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre, “Dublin Carol” by Conor McPherson Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun at 2 and 7 p.m. through March 6 at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Central Works, “Enemy Combatant” at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Performances are Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. through March 26. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “Buried Child” on the disintigration of the American Dream, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through March 13, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Tickets are $10. 524-9132. www.CCCT.org 

Impact Theatre, “Othello” at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Euclid. Thurs.- Sat. through March 19. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Shotgun Players “The Just” by Albert Camus. Thurs.- Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through April 10. Tickets are sliding scale $10-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

UC Theater, “Three Sisters” a contemporary staging of Chekhov’s drama, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. Mar. 6 at 7 p.m., Sun. Mar. 13 at 2 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-9925. http://theater.berkeley.edu 

Un-Scripted Theater Company “You Bet Your Improvisor!” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. through March 26 at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.unscripted.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ward Churchill talks about “Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

The Great Night of Soul Poetry at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Bach Society “Schütz Cantiones Sacrae” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $10-$25. 415-262-0272. www.calbach.org  

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Jenna Mammina, in a celebration of International Women’s Day at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Prefixo de Verão, Brazilian, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

Beth Waters with Adrianne at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Lee Waterman’s Shake/Silver Moon Band at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Liesl’s Wet Dress at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Luke Janela with Sam Stearns at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

The J. Byrd Hosch Trio, Jug Free America, Audrey Auld Mezera, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Phenomenauts, Rasputin, Sheephead, Stiletta 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. 

3 Hours Old, Alia for Release at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Richard Bitch, The Absentee, Scissor for Lefty at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174. www.storkcluboakland.com 

Brown Baggin, funk, jazz, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Pat Martino Quartet in a tribute to Wes Montgomery at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 5 

CHILDREN 

Jeff Smith visits with “Bone” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Art of Living Black Art Tour” Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Richmond Convention Center. For information call 620-6772. www.therichmondartcenter.org 

“Exhibitions of Expression” a conference and forum for Asian Americans in art, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 643-5497. httpp://multicultural.berkeley.edu/apasd/conference2005 

T. Scott Sayre, paintings, prints and murals at Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave. Reception for 6 to 8 p.m. 848-9847. www.studiowindows.com 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Our Cosmos, Our Chaos” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Smug Shift, a night of underground stand-up comedy at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 444-6174. 

John Cho, Asian American actor, on his career at 7 p.m. in Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 643-5497.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

New Millenium Strings with Christa Pfeiffer, soprano, at 8 p.m. at the Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Donation $10-$20. 528-4633. 

Trinity Chamber Concert “Brassiosaurus” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Nayo Ulloa, Andean flute virtuoso at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra Recital featuring Elspeth Franks, mezzo-soprano with Daniel Lockert, piano at 8 p.m. at Crowden School Auditorium, 1475 Rose St. 601-1718.  

Marley’s Ghost at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Rhiannon with Bowl Full of Sound at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Beausoleil at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054.  

Earl Howard and David Wessel at 8 p.m. at CNMAT, 1750 Arch St. Tickets are $5-$10. www.cnmat.berkeley.edu 

Vince Lateano Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Braziu at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

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

Nasty Breeze, Kung Fu Vampire, World Wide Sickness, hip hop, at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. 

Wayward Monks at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org  

Fleshies, Veronica Lipgloss & The Evil Eyes at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 

CHILDREN  

Gayle Schmitt & The Toodala Ramblers at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THEATER 

“Beowulf” The epic translated and performed by Philip Wharton at 7:30 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid. Sun. nights through Mar. 20. Tickets are $10-$15. 415-608-9683. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Quilt Self-Protraits” by students of Peralta Elementary School. Reception at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

“Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens” guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-1295.  

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Querida Familia” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

“Imagining Brightly Colored Flowers I Rise” The late Neala Haze’s look at a dancer’s artistic process, at 7:30 p.m. in the Mills College Music Building Concert Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd. Tickets are $25-$75.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Women’s History Month Lecture with JoAnn Levy discussing “Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California” at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200.  

“Picturing Pain in Rubens’ Time and Our Own,” a panel discussion at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-1295.  

“Folk and the Tales They Tell” with African-American artist and storyteller, Karen McKie at 2 p.m. at the Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft at College. 643-7648. 

Mildred S. Barish will discuss her book, “Tamalpais Tales: A Berkeley Neighborhood Remembers,” at 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 527-0450. 

Poetry Flash with Cathy Coleman and David St. John at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Boychoir with organist William Ludtke at 8 p.m. at First Church of Christ Scientist, Dwight Way at Bowditch. Tickets are $25-$30, to raise funds to replace the roof of this historic 1910 landmark. 925-376-3908. www.friendsoffirstchurch.org 

Berkeley Youth Orchestra performs “A World of Melodies” at 2:30 p.m. at the Laney College Theater, Oakland. Tickets are $5 at the door. 663-3296.  

Dance IS Festival at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Chamber Music Sundaes with Catherine Payne, flute, at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door $7-$19. 415-584-5946.  

Musicians from Marlboro at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38. 642-9988.  

Volti “Left Turn @ Albuquerque” a cappella music of Cuba, Peru, Argentina and Mexico at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $8-$20. 415-771-3352. www.voltisf.org 

ACME Observatory Contemporary Performance Series With Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 441B 23 St. Cost is $6-$10 sliding scale. http://music.acme.com 

Montclair Women’s Big Band at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373.  

Pappa Gianni and the North Beach Band from 2 to 5 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198. 

Potential Threat at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174.  

Twang Café at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen, contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Mikey Dread, Pacific Vibrations at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $12-$15. 848-0886.  

MONDAY, MARCH 7 

FILM 

Buddhism and Film: “Lost Horizon” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mark Danner explains “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Actors Reading Writers Celebrating writing through live readings. “Eccentric Children” stories by Truman Capote and Frank O’Connor, at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 845-8542, ext. 376. 

Bart Schneider reads from his novel “Beautiful Inez” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

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

The Last Word Poetry reading with Jannie Dresser and Rich Yurman at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Songwriters Symposium at 8:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Trovatore, traditional Italian songs, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Mimi Fox in a tribute to Wes Montgomery at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $8-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, MARCH 8 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: New Works by Andrew Noren at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Robin Tolmach Lakoff discusses her revised edition of “Language and Women’s Place” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Deborah Rudacille looks at “The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

In Harmony for Asia, a cappella fundraiser for tsunami relief, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Nebulas, The Lava Rats at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Red Thread, The Famous, alt country, at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174. www.storkcluboakland.com 

Kurt Rosenwinkel Quintet at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Wed. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

The David Lefebvre Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9 

THEATER 

“Bright River” A hip-hop retelling of Dante’s Inferno, every Wed. through March 16 at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Tickets are $12-$35 available from 415-256-8499. www.inhousetickets.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Youth Arts Festival opens with a reception at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center. Exhibition runs to April 2. Gallery hours are Wed. - Sun. noon to 5 p.m. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

FILM 

History of Cinema: “Umberto D.” at 3 p.m. and Games People Play: “Parallel Universum, Part II” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Artistry of Keith Jarrett” with Susan Muscarella at 7 p.m. at The Musical Offering, 2340 Bancroft Way. Free. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Frank Delaney introduces his novel “Ireland” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Pam Houston reads from her new novel “Sight Hound” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and 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, “Handel & Telemann” with the Kharabaja Baroque Ensemble at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$80 available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Ned Boynton Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Ka Ua Tuahine Fundraiser, Tahitian music and dance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Peppino D’Agostino, guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Rad Audio, indie nu-wave, at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Tetsuo at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174. www.storkcluboakland.com?

Lacey, a pitbull mix, enjoys the afternoon breeze in West Berkeley Thursday afternoon. Lacey was rescued by Kathy Kear, a dog trainer who specializes in working with abandoned pitbulls.

Rain or shine, a good place to be in Berkeley this weekend is indoors, listening to a memorable musical performance.  

There are two special organ concerts on Sunday afternoon, each in an outstanding local setting.  

At one event you can hear organ and vocal music in Berkeley’s most remarkable church, the Bernard Maybeck-designed First Church of Christ, Scientist, and help to preserve the landmark structure.  

At the other, you can experience one of Berkeley’s great secular performance spaces, the Community Theater, and appreciate the grand tradition of “theater organ” music. 

Unfortunately, both concerts start at virtually the same mid-afternoon time. The choice may be hard but whichever you choose, the experience should be satisfying. 

To appreciate these concerts you need to put away any stereotypes of organ music being suitable only for weddings, funerals, and traditional Sunday hymns. In the hands of skilled musicians these organs, spiritual or secular, are wonderful instruments, capable of expressing a vast range of musical themes and traditions. 

Community Theater Concert 

The first concert on Sunday afternoon is sponsored by the NorCal Theater Organ Society, in the Berkeley Community Theater. The event starts at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $12. 

The white-walled building is a masterpiece of mid-20th century Moderne architectural design and style, from the pleated, apple-green, seat supports in the immense oval auditorium to the sinuous, sky-high, bas relief sculptures on the exterior.  

I must confess, however, that before attending a February concert there I had no idea that the Community Theater also contained a Wurlitzer organ and a “mighty” one at that. But now I know, and I’m enthusiastically converted. 

If you’ve ever listened to an organ performance at a place like Oakland’s Grand Lake or San Francisco’s Castro Theater, you have a sense of what these instruments can do.  

Their devotees are careful to point out that they are not just ordinary organs but “theater organs,” designed to accurately simulate the music of entire live orchestras. 

Developed to accompany silent films, theater organs are played from an elaborate on-stage console, which gives the audience a good view of the energetic, sometimes acrobatic, performance techniques of the organist. 

When he or she has all four limbs in motion, manipulating the polished wooden console with its hundreds of stops, keys, and controls that look as elaborate as those in a jet airplane’s cockpit, this appears to be one of the most athletic types of musical endeavor. 

Berkeley’s organ—which rises from the floor on a moveable slice of stage—stands atop a lighted pedestal that glows, like the stage backdrop, with different colors to suit the mood of the music. 

Hidden from sight, but not sound, are some 4,000 pipes and 40 tons of elaborate back and above-stage organ equipment at the Community Theater.  

The organ can whisper soft music at the edge of hearing, rolic along in ragtime, tinkle with tiny bells, or roar out a stirring arrangement of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  

The NorCal Theater Organ Society keeps watch over the Berkeley organ and holds public concerts and members events there. This Sunday’s concert is the third in a series of four, each featuring a different guest organist.  

Nationally known, Portland-based Jonas Nordwall is this weekend’s performer. He’s been a guest organist with several orchestras as well as an individual performer around the world, and has recorded 15 albums. 

If Nordwall’s work is in the same league with David Wickerham’s performance at the second series concert on Feb. 6, this should be a great occasion. Wickerham, an ebullient organist from Florida, almost literally bounced up and down with delight at the opportunity to play the Berkeley theater organ, while he called “one of the very finest, not only in the country but in the world.”  

Nordwall’s March 6 concert announcement promises music from the 1910s through the 1960s.  

The Community Theater is at 1930 Allston Way, on the Berkeley High School campus. Buses, BART, and public and private parking garages are nearby. 

Christian Science Church Concert 

The second concert this Sunday musically illuminates one of Berkeley’s best known buildings, the First Church of Christ, Scientist. If you haven’t seen the inside of this amazing building before, this is a superb opportunity to visit and listen to it fill with music.  

In designing the church, Bernard Maybeck orchestrated an eclectic hybrid of architectural styles, from Gothic to modern Industrial, in a way not seen before or since. 

The building is one of his undisputed masterpieces, and one of Berkeley’s National Historic Landmarks.  

William Ludtke will be at the organ for Sunday’s 3 p.m. concert.  

Ludke is the regular organist at First Church, and also a noted local composer. He plans to play Bach’s “Toccata & Fugue in D Minor,” as well as other selections. 

Ludke will be accompanied by singers from the Pacific Boychoir Academy. Founded in 1998 and headquartered at the First Presbyterian Church in Oakland, the organization enrolls more than 100 boys, ages 7–17, in either day school or after school programs and five different choirs. Two of those choirs, the Troubadors and Changed Voices, will perform at the March 6 event. 

Tickets for the concert fundraiser are $25 in advance, $30 at the door (if space is available).  

The purpose of the First Church concert is not to raise the roof, but to repair it. The building dates to 1910 and needs a substantial amount of renovation work. 

The church is at 2619 Dwight Way, corner of Bowditch Street. Paid parking is usually available in nearby University lots, and buses run nearby on Telegraph and College avenues. 

For information on the NorCal Theater Organ Society, call 632-9177 or go to http://theatreorgans.com/norcal. 

For information about the First Church concert and Friends of First Church, go to www.friendsoffirstchurch.org. 

›

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 

Annual Seed Swap Bring and get locally saved seeds and learn about BASIL, the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Free. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Outings on Fridays with Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association Tour of The Pardee House in Oakland’s City Center, at 11 a.m. Cost is $15. Reservations required. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Steve Heminger, Exec. Dir., MTC on “Improving Traffic in the East Bay.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925.  

Trees for Haiti Benefit from 5 to 7 p.m. at What the Traveller Saw, 1880 Solano Ave. For reservations call 524-7989.  

The Berkeley Forum “Reframing the Progressive Movement” with Prof. George Lakoff at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. 525-0391, ext. 376. admin@berkeleyforum.org 

“Understanding the Israel-Palestine Conflict in Historical Context” with Rosemary Radford Ruether, Prof. GTU, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson St., behind the church. Free. This location is not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062. 

World Day of Prayer at 9:30 a.m. at McGee Avenue Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St.  

Womansong Circle, a monthly participatory singing evening for women, celebrates Women’s History Month at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10-$15. 525-7082. 

Alternative Lifelong Learning presents “Globalization and Its Impact on Iranian Culture,” with Maryam Javanshir at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center.  

SATURDAY, MARCH 5 

Sick Plant Clinic UC plant pathologist Dr. Robert Raabe, UC entomologist Dr. Nick Mills, and their team of experts will diagnose what ails your plants from 9 a.m. to noon at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755.  

Introduction to Herbs Learn simple herbal alternatives for the cold and allergy season, on a walk to identify the plants. At 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. 

“Waterwise Gardening with California Natives,” a slide lecture with Nathan Smith at 12:30 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $20-$25, registration required. 643-2755.  

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. 

Healthy Gardening at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Origami with artist, teacher and storyteller Margo Wecksler from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Bring your own wrapping paper, or use paper provided. Free. 526-3720 ext 17. 

Reports Back from the World Social Forum and the Women and Water Forum with Phoebe Sorgen and Laura Santina at 10 a.m. at Gray Panther Office, 1403 Addison St. 548-9696. 

“Exhibitions of Expression” a conference and forum for Asian Americans in art, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 643-5497.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Hands-on Cob Workshop Get your hands dirty and learn about building houses and other structures from earth, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $20-$30, registration required. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Progressive Democrats of America, East Bay Chapter, general meeting, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Temescal Library, 5205 Telegraph, Oakland. 526-4632. 

Berkeley Forum Workshop: “Reframing Progressive Issues” from 2 to 5 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Cost is $10. 525-0391.  

“Closing the Achievement Gap” a seminar for parents and educators, with David Berg, educational therapist, at 9 a.m. at Black Pine Circle Upper School, 2016 Seventh Ave. Pre-registration required. info@makingmathreal.org 

Women in Leadership Conference “Reflecting Forward-Celebrating Progress and Inspiring the Future” from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Haas School of Business, UC Campus. www.wilconference.org 

Osh, by Gosh! A party for Oakland Zoo’s young elephant from 9 a.m. to noon at the Oakland Zoo. Free with Zoo admission. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

Oakland Museum White Elephant Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sun. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 333 Lancaster St., Oakland. 238-2200. 

Dr. Seuss Birthday Party with games and stories at 11 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Tickets required. 524-3043. 

“Write for Your Life: Unmasking Sorrow, Living Joy” A writing workshop with Beth Glick-Rieman from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Cost is $35. 524-2858. 

“The Bhagavad Ghita - The Mystery of Human Soul and its Symbols” at 7:30 p.m. at the New Acropolis Cultural Center, 1700 Dwight Way. Tickets are $7-$10. 665-3740. www.acropolis.org  

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 

Breakfast with the Birds Bring your own beverage and we’ll share pastries and wander down to the lake to see who is nesting, flirting and feeding. Binoculars available for loan. Cost is $3, registration required. 525-2233. 

Spinning Demonstration Watch the wool from the Little Farm’s sheep turn into yarn on our spinning wheel, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Work in the Garden We needs lots of help weeding, planting and preparing the garden for spring and the butterflies. At 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Strawberry Creek Work Party from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Please wear sturdy shoes and bring work gloves. RSVP to kateholum@yahoo.com 

Sunset Walk with the Solo Sierrans through the Emeryville Marina with quiet views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge. Paved trail, wheelchair accessible. Meet at 4 p.m. behind Chevy’s Restaurant at small parking lot. 234-8949. 

Alan Rinzler’s Writer’s Workshop at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Seating is first-come, first-served. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Institute for World Religions Book Study Group meets at 2 p.m. at Vara Healing Arts, 850 Talbot at Solano. 548-4517. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Amdo on “Entering the Bodhisattva Path” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 7 

“Returning the Tides” to Salt Ponds Briggs Nisbet, Restoration Campaigns Manager for Save the Bay, will speak on restoring nature to more than 16,000 acres of San Francisco Bay salt ponds at Friends of Five Creeks’ monthly meeting at 7 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. 848-9358. f5creeks@aol.com 

Tea and Hike at Four Taste some of the finest teas from the Pacific Rim and South Asia and learn their natural and cultural history, followed by a short nature walk. At 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233.  

Mercury in View The best views of the planet Mercury are during the next two weeks. Join us at Tilden’s Inspiration Point at 6:30 p.m. and we’ll walk down Nimitz Way. 525-2233. 

Town Hall Meeting with Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Max Anderson at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul A.M.E. Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. 981-7130. 

National Organization for Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter with Lucy Sells on “The Future of the Democratic Party” at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. 287-8948.  

Richard A. Walker, author of “The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in California,” will speak on agriculture in California at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St.  

“Critical Viewing” examines the craft of short film, TV drama, and commercials from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

TUESDAY, MARCH 8 

International Women’s Day Proclamation at Berkeley City Council, 7 p.m. City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

“Best Mountain Bike Rides in the Bay Area” A slide presentation with mountain bike racer Lorene Jackson at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“The Gravel Pirates: Strip-Mining the Russian River Water Supply” with L. Martin Griffin, Jr., Founder, Friends of the Russian River, at 5:30 p.m. in 105 North Gate Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Water Resources Center Archives. 642-2666. 

WriterCoach Connection Volunteer Training Help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. Training session from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping in Berkeley Public schools at 3 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

International Women's Day Dance Party at 7 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Cost is $10. Proceeds go to benefit Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and a scholarship for the Belladonna Mystery Camp for Girls. 282-2486. www.belladonna.ws 

Shivaratri - Night of Shiva A benefit for tsunami relief with yoga, rituals, food and music, from 4 to 10:30 p.m. at Yoga Mandala, 2807 Telegraph Ave. 486-1989. 

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

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9 

Great Decisions 2005: “China” with Prof. Emeritus Joyce Kallgren, UC Davis, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. Cost is $5, $40 for the series. For information and reservations call 526-2925. 

Information Night for BHS Class of 2009 at 7 p.m. at the BHS Community Theater and the C Building. Presentations on academic departments, the 9th grade curriculum, small schools, athletics and activities. 644-6320. 

“Memorial Party for Judi Bari” a film screening at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland.  

AARP Free Tax Assistance for taxpayers with middle and low incomes, with special attention to those 60 years and older. From 12:15 to 4:15 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. This service will continue through April. Appointments must be made in advance. 526-3720, ext. 5. 

Home Buyer Assistance Information Session at 6 p.m. at 1504 Franklin St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Home Buyer Assistance Center. Reservations required. 832-6925, ext. 100. www.hbac.org 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Artify Ashby Muralist Group meets every Wed. from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, to plan a new mural. New artists are welcome. Call Bonnie at 704-0803. 

“Does God Exist?” A talk on the Reconstructionist, Humanist and Other Jewish Views about God’s Existence with Rabbi Jane Litman at 11 a.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237, ext. 110. 

“Faith and Politics” at 7:30 p.m. at All Souls Parish, 2220 Cedar St. Part of the Journey of Faith Lenten Series. 848-1755. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

Winter Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MARCH 10 

Bird Walk along the Martin Luther King Shoreline to see marsh birds at 3:30 p.m. for information call 525-2233. 

Hidden Lodges of Berkeley An illustrated lecture on the Senior Men’s Hall and Senior Women’s Hall, with Harvey Helfand, Campus Planner, at 7:30 p.m. at Senior Hall, UC Campus. Cost is $10. For information contact Berkeley Architectural Heritage at 841-2241. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

“Diet for a Dead Planet” with author Christopher Cook at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. 

“The Great Conspiracy: The 9-11 News Special You Never Saw” benefit screening with producer Barrie Zwicker, at 7:30 p.m. at The Grand Lake Theater Oakland. Tickets are $10, available at local bookstores. 452-3556. 

“So How’d You Become an Activist?” with Carolyn Scarr and Dr. Marc Sapir at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Donation $5. 528-5403. 

“The Universal Grammar of Religion” with Prof. Huston Smith at 7:30 p.m. at Memorial Chapel of the Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 848-9788. 

“Awakening the Heart of Enlightenment” with Dr. Gaylon Ferguson, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Shambhala Center, 2288 Fulton St. Donation $25. www.norcal.shambhala.org 

ONGOING 

Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour The tour, on May 1, will showcase Alameda and Contra Costa County gardens that contain at least 30% native plants, don’t use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and provide habitat for wildlife. Admission is free, but tickets are required. Kathy@KathyKramerConsulting.net or 236-9558.  

All Net Basketball for boys and girls ages 9 to 11, begins Tues. Mar. 8, from 4:30 to 6 p.m., and runs for five weeks. Fee is $10-$15. For information call Berkeley Youth Alternatives, 845-9066. sports@byaonline.org 

Domestic Violence Training for people interested in volunteering at Oakland’s battered women’s shelter, Sat. March 12 - April 9 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 986-8600, ext. 316. 

“Half Pint Library” Book Drive Donate children’s books to benefit Children’s Hospital. Donations accepted at 1849 Solano Ave. through March 31. 

Spring Break Program for Children offered by the City’s Recreational Division, March 28-April 1, for children ages 5-12, at the Frances Albrier Community Center, 2800 Park St. For information call 981-6640. 

CITY MEETINGS 

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

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Creeks Task Force meets every Monday at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center through April 4. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/creeks 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/landmarks 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/peaceandjustice 

Youth Commission meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 6:30 p.m., at 1730 Oregon St. Philip Harper-Cotton, 981-6670. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/youth 

City Council meets Tues., Mar. 8, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Mar 9, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Don Brown, 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/disability 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Mar. 9, Wed. Feb. 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Library Board of Trustees meets Thurs. Mar. 9, at 7 p.m. at 1901 Russell St., Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/library 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Mar. 9, Wed., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Mar. 9 at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Mar. 9, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti, 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Mar. 10, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Angellique De Cloud, 981-5428. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/earlychildhoodeducation 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs, Mar. 10, at 6:45 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/health 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs. Mar. 10, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/housing 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 10, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. Iris Starr, 981-7520. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/westberkeley  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Mar. 10, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning ™

At 3:30 on a blustery Friday afternoon a group of Cragmont Elementary fourth graders are lining up in the hallway in front of Room 209 for the second part of their educational day. 

For the next two hours—while most Bay Area elementary school students are already deep into their weekends, wearing out their fingers on XBox keys or engaged in other leisurely pursuits—13 members of the Cragmont Scholars program are honing up on their state testing skills or learning how to write science reports. 

The teacher for the first hour is Cragmont’s principal, Jason Lustig, who hears groans as he passes out a pile of thick Spectrum California Test Practice Books. 

“Are we going to do all of this today?” one girl asks, flipping through the hundred or so pages. 

“I love your ambition,” Lustig answers in quiet deadpan. “Maybe you should hold a sleepover and stay until we finish it.” 

There are general shouts of “yeah!” around the room, but Lustig dampens their enthusiasm. “No,” he says, “we don’t want to do these too fast. The purpose is to learn how to do it, not to rush through it.” 

It is not until later that the reporter learns that the program actually does hold sleepovers for its students, but just not for this particular night. We are learning already that this is not your regular classroom. 

“Will we get graded on this?” another girl asks. 

“On practice?” Lustig answers. “Do you get graded on anything in Scholars?” 

He gets nods all around. One boy gives him a serious stare and says, “But it will help us with our education.” 

“You don’t sound convinced,” Lustig says. 

But, actually, they do seem convinced and for the next hour—instead of nodding off in their seats, hitting each other with wadded paper, or staring out the window at Cragmont’s spectacular view of sunset over the San Francisco Bay—the Scholars (as Lustig refers to them) follow along, clearly engaged. That engagement takes them over regular weekly and Saturday sessions, as well as three to four week sessions during the summer. 

At 4:30 fourth grade teacher Kathy Freeburg takes over, starting with jumping jacks, toe-touchings, and a deep breath.  

The planned calisthenics are hardly necessary. Periodically the room lights suddenly go out during Freeburg’s portion of the program, the children all leap from their seats as if making for the light switch, and then, just as suddenly, the lights go back on, and the children jump back in their seats and continue the work as if nothing had happened. It is not until later that the reporter is told that the lights are on motion sensors, and some movement is needed every now and then to keep them going. 

As Freeburg arranges the students in a circle on the floor and begins leading them in preparation for upcoming astronomy reports, the reporter makes another discovery while making a head count. Of the 13 Cragmont Scholars in the day’s session, four are African-American, nine are Latino. 

It’s not by accident. The Cragmont Scholars program is aimed specifically at African-American and Latino students, and closing the education gap with whites and Asians that has occupied so much of Berkeley’s public education debate and policy. The difference at Cragmont is that—if state test scores are any indication—they have fashioned a solution. 

Between 2003 and 2004, state performance scores for African-American students at Cragmont rose 66 points; Latino students’ scores rose 110 points. The closest African-American score gain in the rest of Berkeley’s elementary schools in the same period was 60 points at Jefferson; the closest Latino gain was 27 points at Thousand Oaks. In fact, leaving out Cragmont, the remaining 10 Berkeley elementary schools witnessed an average gain of 9.1 points in African-American API scores; the Latino average actually dropped close to half a point. 

While Freeburg helps the Scholars find out how to come up with good research questions (“If the sun blows up, what will happen to the earth?” is better than “Do you like the sun?”), the program’s other teacher—Mary Martin—explains the rationale behind Cragmont Scholars. 

“We don’t want these students just to think about getting out of school and getting a job,” she says. “But we want them to see being a student as their job. We don’t want them to think that average is all right. We want them to think about going to college. In fact, everything we do is geared towards college, college, college. We want to create a tightly-knit peer group where the focus is on raising expectations.” 

The Scholars program had its genesis in a long-term project put together several years ago by UC Berkeley’s Stiles Hall at Cragmont and three other Berkeley Unified elementary schools. That project—which is following four groups of students from grade to grade—was geared towards “at-risk students with social or emotional problems,” according to Cragmont principal Lustig. 

In contrast, he says, the two-year Cragmont Scholars program “targets African-American and Latino students who we believe should be going to top-tier colleges based upon their test scores, but who might drop off in middle school or high school if they don’t get support. We’re not just telling these students that they’re smart. Of course they’re smart. Everybody’s smart. We’re telling them that they need to work.” 

When the Scholars program was started for fourth graders last year, participants were picked on three criteria: grades, teacher recommendation, and scores on their third grade achievement tests. According to Martin, most of last year’s participants remained to form the core of this year’s 5th grade group, and new students are added “by word of mouth. I was talking to one student about our Saturday program, and they said, ‘why would I want to come to school on Saturday?’ And one of the Scholars said, ‘you want to come on Saturday because we have a good time.’ And so the student ended up coming.” 

Lustig says that while the Scholars functions as an accelerated learning program, it also “goes back to basics when gaps in academic knowledge gets exposed. So it’s essentially a hybrid program.” 

And the key to its success at Cragmont, he said, is that the Scholars program does not close the gap by focusing on African-Americans and Latinos at the expense of whites and Asian-Americans. 

“The first thing we did was bring the scores of the entire student population up in the years before the Scholars program got started,” he said. “You can’t run this kind of program unless you’re at a certain academic level.” 

Back in Room 209, the students in Ms. Freeburg’s class learn that they are writing their own small books to be produced in a few weeks, each one with her or his own individual astronomy topic. They call out the subjects: Neptune, Saturn, black holes, Jupiter, stars. High in the hills above Berkeley, the real stars are being developed.›

With a week-long teacher work slowdown “having an effect,” according to Berkeley Unified School District Public Information Officer Mark Coplan, Superintendent Michele Lawrence has sent out a letter to teachers and community residents explaining the district’s position in the dispute. 

Berkeley teachers have worked without a contract for the past two years, and contract negotiations are now being handled through a state-appointed mediator. Two weeks ago, to enforce their demands for a contract and a pay raise, members of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers union announced a district-wide “work to rule” action in which most teachers are refusing to work outside their contracted 7 hour work day. 

A bargaining session with the state mediator is scheduled for next week. 

Word of the slowdown has spread rapidly in Berkeley, and Coplan said that the superintendent’s office is “getting a lot of calls and e-mails from parents asking questions.” 

In response, Lawrence sent out a prepared statement to Berkeley residents late Monday night as a “community version” of a letter placed in teachers and staff pay envelopes on Monday morning. In it, Lawrence called the “work to rule” action a “legal activity” growing out of unresolved contract issues over “class size caps and total compensation.” 

Lawrence tells residents that the work action “could mean alternative plans will have to be made for special evening events, field trips or some meetings.” 

On the salary issue, Lawrence holds out little hope for a raise in the near future, saying that “the district budget is very precarious, and has little room for maneuvering.” She adds that “at the time of the signing of the last BFT contract, the goal was to achieve teacher compensation comparable to other districts. This goal continues to be met; compensation is similar to other districts.” 

On class sizes, she writes that “the district is committed to the class size ratios we promised in Measure B. The class size averages will be 20:1 in grades K-3, 26:1 in grades 4-5, and 28:1 in grades 6-12.” 

In her letter, as she has done in her public pronouncements and interviews on the action, Lawrence walks a tightrope, acknowledging that Berkeley teachers deserve a raise and sympathizing with their frustration at the lack of a raise while making the case that the money isn’t there in the budget. Instead of fighting on the local level, she says that Berkeley citizens should turn their attention to Sacramento. 

“I am asking you and members of our community to write the governor and our legislators to help them understand the necessity of ‘guaranteed’ funding for public education, and the need for revenue increases, not cuts, to balance the state budget,” she writes. “The education of California’s children should not be tossed aside in an effort to maintain ill-considered tax cuts. Now is the time to tell our state and federal lawmakers that we value public education and the people who dedicate their lives to educating children.” 

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Residents gathered Saturday in a meeting room in a building named for one of the heroes of the African American struggle for freedom and equality to dine and celebrate Black History Month. 

Convened by the Residents Council of Harriet Tubman Terrace Apartments, the gathering featured addresses by poets, a psychologist and Max Anderson, the city councilmember whose district includes the apartments. 

Berry Gardner, president of the residents council, hailed Anderson’s presence.  

“I don’t remember our city councilmember ever coming here three times,” said Gardner. In addition to his most recent appearance, Anderson attended the complex for a Christmas party in December and again last month when the building’s new owners unveiled their remodeling plans. 

Anderson’s address focused on African Americans who were part of the troops who battled the Axis in World War II. 

“Black Americans were denied the full blessings of liberty” during the war, he said. 

The civil rights movement, he said, was driven in large measure by those such as slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers who had had played their parts in the great war effort. 

“Black soldiers wanted to be involved,” Anderson said, “and they helped liberate the Nazi death camps.” 

Anderson contrasted the roles of African American soldiers as portrayed in two memorable films, A Soldier’s Story and Patton. 

The background of the first story was a Louisiana military base where highly visible African American soldiers in a segregated army were chomping at the bit to get into combat. 

In Patton, conversely, the film’s opening depicts Gen. George S. Patton delivering a stirring address praising the soldiers before him, who remain invisible to the camera. 

The address was real, “but he was actually talking to these same units from Louisiana who had finally been called up,” Anderson said. “Yet there was only one black person shown in the movie, and that was his aide.” 

One of those soldiers in the unseen audience is a neighbor of Anderson’s, who commanded a tank battalion in Patton’s Third Army that later played a major role in the breakthrough that relieved Bastogne in Nazi Germany’s last great gamble, the Battle of the Bulge. 

“Both movies had their lessons for me,” Anderson said, “when I understood the intersection between these two realities.” 

Black American soldiers developed their own gesture to signify their place in the historical moment, the double-V sign, with one V symbolizing victory over Germany and the other symbolizing victory over the institutionalized repression at home. 

It was also World War II that sparked the great migration of African Americans to the factories and shipyards in California where jobs once reserved for whites were suddenly thrown open to people of color. 

Anderson also singled out the mass of African Americans who formed the backbone of the civil rights movement. 

“For every Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, there were thousands of people like you who ran off the flyers and cooked the meals,” he said. 

After Anderson finished and the applause died down, Gardner recalled an uncle stationed in Louisiana when one of the African American troopers was arrested and lynched the night before his unit was scheduled to ship out. 

Following the program, residents and guests settled down for a dinner of Louisiana soul food cooked by Gardner and fellow resident Bill Chapple.3

Before setting out to buy groceries for his wife and 8-year-old son two Fridays ago, North Oakland resident Patrick McCullough made sure he had his wallet, keys and pistol. 

It was the gun, a Sig Sauer 230 semi-automatic pistol, he would use first.  

McCullough, 49, said that as he headed to his car parked in his driveway that day, about 15 youths appeared outside his house and one yelled, “There’s the snitch.” 

A fight ensued, McCullough said, recounting that the young male who called him a snitch punched him, while others pelted him with whatever they could find. Then, he said, the youth raced to where five friends were standing and told one, “Give me the pistol.” 

“As soon as I saw the one guy lift up his jersey and the other reach for a handle that’s when I shot him,” McCullough said. “I was aiming for his torso.” 

McCullough said he struck the juvenile in the arm. After the gunfire, McCullough said, the victim and his friends fled from his house to the adjacent corner of 59th Street and Shattuck Avenue. 

District Attorney James Lee said he has completed his investigation, but has not decided whether to press charges against McCullough, who was arrested and spent Friday night in jail. Lee said McCullough could be charged with assault with a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon in a public place or carrying a loaded weapon in a public place. 

Oakland police are urging Lee not to prosecute McCullough, who they say is a vital ally in their efforts to squelch drug dealing on 59th Street, right next to Bushrod Park. 

“The reason that Patrick was assaulted by these suspects is that he stands up to drug dealers in a way that normal citizens do not,” said Lt. Lawrence Green of the OPD. Through his Yahoo! discussion group, Green has mobilized members of the North Central Oakland Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) to pressure Lee not to prosecute McCullough.  

“I just have zero tolerance for this thug life,” said McCullough, who grew up on the southside of Chicago, served in the Navy for seven years and now works for the City of Berkeley as an electronics technician. “I just don’t think it’s acceptable at all.” 

McCullough said he often takes pictures of drug dealers in action and is quick to call the police and talk to officers in view of dealers. 

“I don’t hide it like a lot of people do around here,” he said. “If they call the police they won’t give their name or be seen talking to them in public.” 

Most of McCullough’s neighbors interviewed Sunday supported his action. “He’s been a positive activist for the neighborhood,” said Michael Frayne. “I can understand his frustration with seeing drug dealing at his corner.” 

But Tor Berg, who lives on McCullough’s block, said he was bothered by any form of gunplay in his neighborhood whether the shooter was a neighbor or a dealer. 

“If he misses the guy, then there’s a bullet flying down 59th Street and my daughter plays here,” he said. 

McCullough said he bought his gun after being attacked outside his home in 2003 by another local youth, Wayne Camper, and two associates. Months after the fight, Camper, whom police arrested for assault, was gunned down in what Oakland police believe was part of a border war between North Oakland and South Berkeley drug dealers. 

McCullough doesn’t have a permit for his gun. State law prohibits carrying a concealed or a loaded gun in a public place, but allows homeowners to carry a gun on their property, Lee said.  

“Realistically, given the threats he’s had, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for him to carry a weapon,” Lt. Green said. 

Don Link, chairperson of the NCPC, said no one in his group has ever suggested that members carry weapons. “Our strength is in the support neighbors give to each other and our partnership with the police,” he said. 

Link said 59th Street has long been considered a hot spot for drug dealing and rowdy behavior and that McCullough has been front and center in combating it since he moved there in 1994. McCullough has twice sued the city to make sure that officials didn’t remove a traffic barrier at 59th Street and Shattuck Avenue that kept motorists from speeding down the street. 

In recent years, neighbors have filed nuisance suits against two properties believed to be connected to the drug trade, neither of which McCullough joined. A second nuisance suit against one of the properties is now pending.  

Violent crime is on the decline in North Oakland, Lt. Green said. Last year, he said, there were two murders in the beat, compared to 12 in 2003 and 11 in 2002. 

Although other members of the NCPC photograph drug dealers and call the police, Link thinks drug dealers have singled out McCullough because he is African-American. 

“I’ve never known anyone else to be called a snitch,” he said. “Snitch means that you’re one of us and you’re snitching on us.” 

McCullough said that in addition to the two attacks, local youths whom he believe are connected to the drug trade have shot bullets into his house and his car, tossed a brick through his window, and yelled threats outside his home. 

Last week a man who went by the name Cornbread knocked on his door. “He told me that guys were talking about doing stuff to my family, but that he wanted to hear my side of the story,” McCullough said. 

Moving, he added, is currently out of the question. McCullough bought his home through a shared equity loan offered by Oakland that would require him to surrender a portion of the sale price to the city if he puts the house on the market before 2014.  

“We’re trapped,” McCullough said. “I’m not going to have those punks put me into the poorhouse.” He is planning to demand the city let him out of the contract. 

Since the attack, McCullough said he has been more vigilant in scoping out his block before he and his family leave the house and has received help from neighbors who keep an eye on his home. 

Green said the OPD has responded to the attack by making 59th Street the number one police priority for the western section of Oakland. McCullough said he has noticed stepped-up police presence, but understands there is only so much the police can do for him. 

“They can’t be here all the time,” he said. “It’s those critical few-minute periods when I’m vulnerable.” 

Facing the loss of one quarter of its four-person staff, Berkeley’s Police Review Commission (PRC) is positioning itself for a fight. 

“There’s tremendous concern that it will be next to impossible for the PRC to operate with three people,” said Commissioner Michael Sherman. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz has proposed across the board staffing cuts to city departments to reduce a $7.5 million structural budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year. 

The PRC, established by a voter-approved initiative 32 years ago, conducts public hearings on charges of police misconduct and considers policies to govern police protocol. 

Under Kamlarz’ proposal first issued last year, the commission would lose one of its two administrative positions, leaving it with a secretary, an investigator and an administrator. The plan must still be approved by the council when it finalizes next year’s budget this June. Sherman said he and fellow commissioners would lobby hard against the cut. 

“I feel like four is the bare minimum that office can survive with,” said Former PRC Secretary Barbara Attard. “What you’re going to do is burn out the staff and lose the institutional memory.” 

PRC administrators are responsible for, among other things, preparing transcripts of commission hearings, a time-consuming task, according to Attard. “It’s going to bog down cases because the transcript won’t be ready.” 

“There will definitely be some lag time,” said acting PRC Secretary Dan Silva. The PRC receives an average of 50 complaints against the police every year, according to commission records. Until the mid 1990s, the commission was staffed with three investigators, two administrators and a secretary. 

Since the city has been slow to look for a replacement for Attard who left in December, the PRC has been operating with three staffers, with Silva doing double duty as investigator and secretary. 

“There’s no way he will be able to deal with police policy issues if he’s also the investigator,” Attard said. She questioned why the city has hesitated to look for her replacement. 

“They’ve already saved about $30,000 this year by not filling the position,” she said. “That’s almost as much as they could save by eliminating a staff position. 

Kamlarz said city policy is to hold off on filling positions until the department and the city determine how to complete its tasks most efficiently. “We’re looking at every vacancy as an opportunity to reorganize,” he said. 

As one measure to ease the commission’s load, Kamlarz has struck a deal to outsource police appeals of PRC findings to an Oakland-based hearing board. Kamlarz said the appeals, which are being heard by a panel of city staffers, were backlogged. He anticipated the new arrangement would cost the city about $40,000. 

Kamlarz has proposed cutting 35.3 city staff positions by the start of the 2006 fiscal year in July. Besides the PRC, other departments that face the loss of positions currently filled include the city clerk’s office, one position; Finance, one position; Health and Human Services, three positions; Housing, 0.5 positions; Parks, one position; Planning 0.75 positions; Police, 7.5 crossing guard positions; Public Works, one disability services specialist position; and Fire, the equivalent of 10.5 positions from the closure of a fire truck. 

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For the second time, city Design Review Commissioners have expressed their unanimous disapproval of designs for South Berkeley’s “Flying Cottage.’ 

Architect Andus Brandt’s earlier version of the three-story structure at 3045 Shattuck Ave. was rejected unanimously by the DRC in December. 

Owner/builder Christina Sun elevated an existing cottage atop a plywood shell in 2003 and was stopped after neighbors complained that the ungainly structure was out of character with the neighborhood and that Sun hadn’t taken out the necessary permits. 

Architect Andus Brandt’s revisions of his earlier plans failed to pass DRC muster again on Feb. 17. 

Commissioner Carrie Olson called the structure “a very odd building,” and described the proposed windows and “hideous.” 

Brandt was asked if he was willing to submit another set of revisions, but he chose outright rejection instead so he could take his proposal directly to the Zoning Adjustments Board.  

Olson said the unanimous rejection was the first vote of its kind she could remember. 

West Berkeley Land Use Disputed 

Stirred by the incursion of retail and other development into land once reserved for industry, arts and crafts in West Berkeley, the West Berkeley Association of Industrial Companies has convened a Thursday night public forum to discuss the issue. 

Moderated by West Berkeley woodworker John Curl, the meeting will feature a panel discussion featuring City Councilmembers Linda Maio and Darryl Moore, Susan Libby of Libby Laboratories, Mary Lou Van De Venter of Urban Ore, Don Yost of Norheim & Yost realty, economic analyst Neil Mayer and Sharon Cornu, Political Director of the Central Labor Council of Alameda County. 

The two-hour meeting begins at 7 p.m. at Alliance Graphics, 905 Parker St. (at Seventh Street). 

The West Berkeley Plan, which calls for protection of existing industrial space, is up for reconsideration this year.  

Fuzz Get Charity Clipping 

Officers and civilian staff members from Berkeley’s finest gave up their hair Monday for the best reason of all—so that it can be woven into wigs for indigent children suffering from cancer and other ailments that lead to hair loss. 

The lengths of lost tresses ranged from seven to 14 inches, and the lone male contributor was a dispatcher, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

The event was organized by Officer Jessica Navozny. 

“I’ve had several friends and coworkers who have been afflicted with cancer and I felt it was time to step up to the plate and do something for people suffering from these kinds of ailments,” she said. 

The Hermosa Salon at 2703 College Ave. donated their services for the drive. The hair will go to the Locks of Love program, which weaves the locks into wigs and distributes them to afflicted youngsters.  

Ripped Off, But When? 

Weatherford BMW called police late Thursday afternoon that they’d been ripped off for a sizable amount of cash, but they could only date the theft to sometime during the previous ten days, reports Berkeley Police Spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Family Dispute Escalates 

What started as a case of battery involving two members of the same family took a more serious turn at 5 p.m. Thursday when one of the disputants pulled a pistol on the other and threatened to shoot. 

By the time police arrived at the Russell Street residence, the pistol-packer had departed. 

Branch Beating 

Berkeley Police arrested a 41-year-old Berkeley man on charges of assault with a deadly weapon after he battered a 21-year-old man with a tree branch near the corner of Piedmont Avenue and Stuart Street Friday afternoon. 

Stabbing Heist 

Two men in their thirties confronted a Berkeley man in the street in front of the Jack-in-the-Box restaurant in the 2100 block of San Pablo Avenue shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday. 

One of the pair stabbed the victim, after which the robbers fled with his cash, said Officer Okies. 

No information was available on the victim’s condition, he said. 

Student Injured in Accident 

As a UC Berkeley student lies in Highland Hospital in critical condition, the vice president of the Berkeley Chinese Students and Scholars Association is seeking witnesses to the Wednesday evening accident. 

Jai Wang, a chemistry student from Shanghai, was broadsided by a car fleeing from Albany Police as he attempted to drive across the intersection of San Pablo and Ashby avenues. 

Renbin Yan, of the Chinese students organization, said witnesses are needed to confirm what happened when Wang was broadsided by a 1996 Honda driven by Adam K. Jones of Albany. 

According to Albany Police, Jones fled when officers attempted to question him about a drug deal they believed they had witnessed inside the Honda as it was parked near the Albany waterfront. 

Officers set out in pursuit, following the Honda onto Interstate 80. A police spokesperson said they soon lost sight of the vehicle. 

The pursuing officer took the Ashby Avenue freeway exit, where he soon spotted what he believed to be the suspect vehicle. 

Albany police said their officer was not involved in a chase when the accident happened, a position endorsed by the California Highway Patrol officers investigation the crash. 

Jones’s vehicle ran through the red light as it was traveling eastbound on Ashby, striking Wang’s car. 

Yan is not convinced it wasn’t a chase. 

“We want to know if the car was being chased when it struck Jai Wang’s car,” he said. 

Yan asked anyone with information about the crash to call him at 847-6929. 

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Israeli Air Force pilot Yonatan Shapira calls himself a patriot. After 11 years as part of a elite helicopter unit, he though he had proved his commitment to his country. Yet since 2003, Shapira has more often referred to as a traitor, than a patriot. 

That year Shapira was one of 27 Air Force pilots who signed a letter refusing to fly missions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, especially those that could harm innocent civilians.  

Citing a rule in the Israeli military that says soldiers can refuse a mission if it is illegal or unjust, the pilots went public with their decision and were immediately discharged. 

“We are willing to sacrifice our lives to stop a suicide bomber, but that has nothing to do with sending bombs and missiles into heavily populated Palestinian territories,” Shapira told a receptive crowd in Berkeley who had gathered at the Berkeley/Richmond Jewish Community Center on Sunday afternoon to hear his presentation. 

Shapira, who is on a nation-wide tour, was brought to Berkeley by Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, a national Jewish organization dedicated to finding a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Shapira is part of a growing number of Israelis who are refusing to serve in the Israeli Defense Force. Many of them are now in jail because military service is mandatory in Israel.  

According to Shapira, the breaking point came in July 2002. Late that month an Israeli F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb in the Gaza Strip that killed the leader of Hamas. The bomb also killed 14 civilians, including nine children. The next day, Shapira said, he remembered reading an article that quoted an Air Force commander urging the Air Force pilots to sleep well at night because the mission was “perfectly executed.”  

Shapira said he was shocked by the statement and realized that the Air Force too often was provoking violence instead of preventing it. Although he only flew rescue missions, Shapira decided he had to speak up. 

“To me it was clear that we were not flying missions to protect our country, it was revenge,” Shapira said. “Of course if you hit someone with a one ton bomb in the most crowded area in the world you will kill innocents.” 

At first Shapira thought he was alone. Then he approached other pilots, almost all of whom said they felt the same way. Many refused to sign the letter, however, even though they supported the idea. Those that did sign, appeared with Shapira to publicly announce the intent. 

Today Shapira works as a civilian helicopter pilot. He had two contracts broken by companies that found out about his refusal to serve. Shapira said he has also run into considerable opposition on his speaking tour, but invites people to question his decision.  

He wanted to come to the United States, he said, because he thinks the country is also responsible for provoking violence through its blind support for Israel. All his criticism, he said, is because he loves his country and wants to find a just solution. 

“As a rescue pilot,” he said, “I feel this is the most important rescue mission I can take upon myself.” 

›

Two weeks after the Berkeley Unified School District dropped its budget rating from positive to qualified and the announced start of a teacher work slowdown over a pay raise dispute, fiscal issues dominate this week’s BUSD board meeting. 

The meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m., Wednesday night, at the Old City Hall on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Looking backward, the board will be asked to approve the Audit Report by independent auditors Vavrinek, Trine, Day & Co. for the 2003-04 fiscal year. The audit was due to be filed with county and state educational officials last December, but the district was granted an audit extension until the end of this month. Details of the report were not available at presstime. 

Looking forward, board members will hear a report by Deputy Superintendent Glenston Thompson on the expected effects of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s state budget recommendations on the Berkeley Unified schools. Schwarzenegger has proposed severe cuts in state money available to local districts under Proposition 98, the state constitutional initiative that was supposed to provide a base level of educational money. 

One item that will not be on Wednesday’s agenda is the decision on the expulsion of the Berkeley High student caught on campus earlier this month with a gun in her backpack. The student, who has not been named, has not been on campus since a legally-mandated recommendation of expulsion by BHS principal Jim Slemp. 

BHS officials have said the girl told them that the gun belonged to her father, who gave it to her for safekeeping from her siblings. 

BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan said that an expulsion panel has held a hearing on the student’s expulsion, and will present its recommendation to the BUSD Board at the board’s March 8 meeting. Coplan said he did not know the panel’s recommendation and, by law, could not reveal it even if he did. 

“All of this is being conducted in secret,” he explained. Coplan said that the expulsion panel will present its findings to the board in closed session, and while no details will be revealed, the board will announce its decision on the recommendation in open session. 

Meanwhile, Berkeley Police Information Officer Joe Okies said that the police will turn over its findings in the BHS student gun case today (Tuesday) or Wednesday to the Alameda County district attorney’s office. 

D.A. officials will then decide whether or not to bring charges against either the student or her father, or both.

It’s been more than 30 years since the Free Speech Movement and the battle over People’s Park, but in the eyes of conservative pundits, Berkeley has once again become the center of the progressive universe. Just ask New York Times columnist, David Brooks, who in his Feb. 5 column deplored the ascension of Howard Dean to the position of chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and argued that it’s Berkeley’s fault. 

Brooks blamed Dean’s victory on the increasing power of the “university-town elite,” who, he said, “dominate the Democratic Party not just intellectually, but financially as well.” He concluded, “The energy and the dough is in the MoveOn.org wing, which is not even a wing of the party, but the head and the wallet.” Brooks opined that if the party follows Dean, in the next election Democrats would carry Berkeley but lose the rest of the nation. 

If Brooks’ column is a reliable indicator, conservatives have shifted their focus from the “media elite,” the denizens of tinsel-town who are accused of lavishing their ill-gotten money on the Democratic Party, to the “university-town elite,” those of us who live in towns such as Berkeley, Cambridge, or Ann Arbor, where we can hang out with smart people, read subversive literature, and partake of all things French. Because we happen to have birthed MoveOn.org, Berkeley is held up as the epitome of these progressive university towns. Hallelujah, we’re number one! 

As usual, Brooks made a few factual errors along the way to reaching his conclusion: While it is true that folks who are well educated preferred Kerry over Bush in the last election, it is also true that lots of folks who have lesser degrees of education voted for the Democratic nominee. In fact, poor folks, who typically have a high-school degree, at best, preferred Kerry to Bush. Apparently, the ability to see the awfulness of the administration requires that you either be literate or thoroughly screwed over. 

And, while it is true that university-town folks gave a lot of money to the Kerry campaign, and the associated Democratic and “527” groups, it is more accurate to report that donations were made by people from all parts of the country, regardless of means. For example, MoveOn.org—which I donate to, by the way—has 3 million names on their e-mail list; they received donations from all 50 states, from the rich as well as those who are struggling. 

What conservative pundits are afraid of, what their ranting seeks to conceal, is the fact that 2004 changed the demographics of political fundraising: the Republicans were funded, as usual, by conservative fat cats, corporate PACs, and “independent” organizations such as the NRA, Chamber of Commerce, and the Christian Coalition. However, Democratic funding shifted away from corporate PACS—which, in the main, were bullied into donating only to Bush—to individual donors. In this sense, rank-and-file Democrats took control of the Party. 

So when Brooks observed that, in 2004, MoveOn.org became the “head and the wallet” of the party, he’s not far off because the MoveOn.org variety of fundraising did make a huge difference to the party. Some of this is due to the success of the Internet model for reaching out and soliciting money. But, unlike the Republican Party, the Democratic fundraising process has grown beyond “show me the money.” 

MoveOn.org, and the Dean campaign, asked rank-and-file Democrats for their opinions, and then listened to what they have to say. (It is probably more accurate to say that they asked, and listened to, progressives, as many of their constituents are not card-carrying Democrats.) 

MoveOn.org features a process where they ask their constituents what they think, and then reflect this in what they do. This is the same process that is employed by successful Congress people, like Barbara Lee and Barney Frank, but seems to have been lost in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. (One exception would be Senator Barbara Boxer, who recently has taken very strong stands on the legitimacy of the 2004 vote, the war in Iraq, and the nomination of Condoleezza Rice, because of feedback she got from her constituents.) 

In a democracy it’s a good thing to listen to the people. To David Brooks and his brothers in the conservative punditocracy, this may seem like a radical notion spread by the university-town elite, but to those of us who believe in the promise of America, who believe that grass-roots democracy, as opposed to big-money democracy, is the best and fairest form of government, this seems like common sense. 

Maybe, despite his tortured logic, David Brooks has stumbled onto the truth. Maybe MoveOn.org is providing fresh inspiration to the progressive movement. Maybe the election of Howard Dean as chair of the DNC is a reflection of this insight and energy. Maybe Berkeley, as the number one university-town in America, has once again taken its rightful place as the center of the progressive universe. Maybe, just maybe, these are good tidings, for the Democratic Party, and for our country. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.t

Most observers of the Middle East sensed that the U.S. invasion of Iraq, instead of bringing stability, would bring chaos to the region. The most recent signal of this unraveling was the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a Sunni billionaire with ties to Washington and Riyadh, who had been credited with much of Beirut’s reconstruction. Popular protests have now led to the resignation of the country’s pro-Syrian government.  

Although Syria is being blamed for the killing—Hariri was a staunch opponent the Syrian presence in Lebanon—the crime is most likely the extension of the Sunni-Shiite conflict that is coming to a boil in Iraq.  

The killing has been claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself “Victory and Jihad in Bilad as-Shan.” Bilad as-Shah could be translated as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine.  

This should be enough to convince even the most skeptical observer that the demon of Shiite-Sunni tension has escaped the Iraqi Pandora’s Box. It is now spilling into neighboring countries, reviving a religious schism that dates back to the seventh century, to the death of the prophet Mohammed and the rise of his cousin and son-in-law Ali as one of Fourth Rightly Guided Caliphs.  

That the fire of the Shiite-Sunni divide would take root so promptly in relatively calm Lebanon is an even more worrisome sign that the chaos may spread quickly to unexpected latitudes in the Middle East.  

Lebanon is a pivotal element in the pacification of the Middle East for a number of reasons. First, its geopolitical position makes it a key factor in the unfolding Israeli-Palestinian saga. Second, its governmental instability is the weakest link in the U.S.-led effort to spread democracy in the whole region, its government unable to assert central control of its territory since 1958, making it the best avenue for foreign meddlers.  

According to Clement Moore Henry, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, who spent four years in the 1980s teaching at the American University of Beirut, Hariri’s killing should be read as part of an increasingly unstable Middle East.  

“I’m not at all convinced that Syrians per se are behind this attack,” Henry explains. Hariri’s assassination was a sign that the power structure in Syria was weakening and that President Bashar was no longer totally in control.  

“If a Syrian hand has to be found behind this attack it must be found with the separate faction that operates inside the country’s secret service, like those linked to Lebanon’s Amal and Hezbollah,” Henry says.  

The two Shiite resistance organizations both enjoy Syria’s support but are often at each other’s throat. Amal, an indigenous Islamic group, operates mostly in southern Lebanon and some urban areas like Beirut. The Hezbollah is dominant in the Beqaa Valley and the southern districts of Beirut. It was formed in 1982 when Syria, in a horse-trade with Iran for its oil, allowed some 1,000 Pasdran-Iranian revolutionary guards to set up shop in the Syrian occupied eastern part of the country.  

The anti-American and anti-Western European Hezbollah is active in southern Lebanon. Iran recruited hundreds of young members of Lebanon’s Al-Da’wa—a Shiite fundamentalist group—and members of Islamic Amal, an offshoot of Amal. In 1985 the leadership of Hezbollah pledged allegiance to Khomeini and to the ideal of an Islamic state in Lebanon. Hezbollah was also responsible for a series of bombings in Beirut, which killed hundreds of French and American Marines and led to the withdrawal of the U.S. and French peace contingents from that country.  

The idea that Shiites are trying to muscle in on Lebanon is not new even to King Abdullah of Jordan. Talking to the Washington Post last December, the Hashemite ruler affirmed that Iran was attempting to “create a Shiite crescent from Iran to Syria, and Lebanon.” Although he immediately retracted his remarks following a firestorm unleashed by the Iranians, the monarch gave voice to an unspoken regional concern: Shiite control of Iraq could jump-start militant Shiite-based alliances in other countries in the Middle East.  

Even as he tries to disprove King Abdullah’s theory, Mourhaf Jouejati, a Syrian foreign policy expert and director of the Middle East program at George Washington University, admits the king’s thesis isn’t far-fetched. Jouejati writes in an online periodical that Shiite dominance in Iraq could fill the divide—political and geographical —that runs between Iran and Syria, where the Allawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, still holds power and has been wary of the transition of power from Hafiz el-Assad to his son Bashar.  

The extent of Iran’s Shiite reach could be bolstered by Lebanese Shiites and the Damascus-backed Hezbollahs. The specter of Iranian-Shiite influence is so credible, says Jouejati, that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait—which all have a sizeable and repressed Shiite communities -- tried unsuccessfully to delay the Iraqi elections.  

Lebanon, where Shiites are among the poorest of the poor, is a fertile ground for the “Shiite crescent.” In a country famous as an international tax haven, poor people are hit with an overbearing gasoline tax—40 percent of the consumer price.  

Last May, reacting to a government announcement of a new tax hike on gasoline, Shiites of Beirut’s southern neighborhoods took to the streets, triggering a riot that led to the death of six people and left the neighborhood of Hay al-Soulom ablaze. The speed with which the riot spread, like that of burning oil on water, led many observers to believe a hidden hand was directing it. Then came the Hariri assassination.  

Paolo Pontoniere is the San Francisco-based correspondent of Focus, Italy’s leading monthly magazine. e

The short-lived labor action at the Oaks Theater has ended in a settlement, and the picket line has vanished outside the Art Deco showcase at 1875 Solano Ave. 

The pickets stopped Friday evening, after the theater’s new operator and a union representative reached an accord that will end the job of one union member and enable the other, Richard Graves, to work the final year needed to achieve full retirement benefits. 

The settlement will go to union members for ratification at a meeting tonight (Tuesday).  

The dispute began after Allen Michaan, owner of Renaissance Rialto Inc., sold his lease to Metropolitan Theatres of Los Angeles. 

David Corwin, the fourth generation of Corwins to serve as president of the 115-screen family-owned Metropolitan chain, began operations with the intent of eliminating both union positions, though Corwin said he planned to retain one of the workers for the time being. 

“We’re pleased,” said Corwin, president of Metropolitan. “We tried from the beginning to take care of Richard Graves, and he’ll be able to retire with full union benefits.” 

“They wanted us to promise that we’d go away at the end of the year,” said Jason Mottley, business agent for Local 169 of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada (IATSE). 

“There’s no way we would agree to that,” he said. 

It remains to be seen whether the job will remain a union position after Graves’ retirement. 

“I wish we’d had more time before we took over,” Corwin said, lamenting beginning his ownership at the Oaks amidst labor strife. “As it was, we ran out of time.” 

“When they found out we were going to picket, they made a ridiculous offer,” Mottley said. “We could fight, but they said they would rather close than continue” with both union workers. 

“It’s a matter of economics,” said Corwin. “The economics of the business have changed.” 

Like other unions, IATSE has been losing ground since former President Ronald Reagan smashed the air traffic controllers union early in his administration, Mottley said. 

IATSE, which is still strong in Hollywood despite the increasing number of films and television shows shot in non-union locales and in Canada, where wages are lower, has lost ground in the projectionists’ booth. 

“Before, we represented only the projectionists in theaters, but now we’re doing manager/operators and technicians and workers at specialty art centers,” Mottley said. 

Local 169 represents projectionists at the Saul Zaentz Film Center and at two locations on the UC Berkeley campus—the Pacific Film archive and Wheeler Auditorium—as well as some workers at the Landmarks Theater on Shattuck, the California Theater and Act I & 2 in downtown Berkeley. 

Giant chains like Regal Theaters, the largest motion picture exhibitor in the country and the operators of the UA Berkeley 7 multiplex on Shattuck Avenue, have no unions in their shops except at those in Chicago and New York, where unions remain relatively strong. 

Mottley said he was pleased with the enthusiastic response to the pickets, but feared the union would have been unable to maintain the enthusiasm if the labor dispute stretched from days into months.  

“Jason was reasonable,” said Corwin. “We all had a common goal in hand and we were glad to be able to reach an agreement.”

In Michelle Carter’s San Francisco State workshop entitled “Writing in the Public Context,” we are to develop a project that requires us to step out of our daily routines and do something we wouldn’t normally do. 

For example, we might sit weekly in the same seat at the Oakland airport and watch what goes on around us. We can volunteer at a nursing home or rehab center, attend a Log Cabin Republican meeting, or take up sky diving. We are not to do anything dangerous, but at the same time we should take a few non-threatening risks, by going somewhere physically or mentally that is unfamiliar. 

Each week we are to report to the class about our findings. Eventually we are to go further and deeper into our subject matter to mine the material and, in the end, to discover things about ourselves and the world around us.  

I decided to hang out at the barbecue joint where my husband’s attendant works part-time. My plan was to sit and observe and then report back to my classmates what I had learned. A barbecue restaurant on San Pablo Avenue is not a place I would normally patronize, but when I walked down there with Willie several weeks ago I discovered that there was no table service. Customers stroll in, order, wait, and then leave. It’s a serious, no-nonsense take-out establishment, not the kind of eatery that emphasizes atmosphere or leisurely dining service. Food arrives at the counter packaged in Styrofoam and plastic or covered in paper and foil.  

I had to change my strategy. Instead of observing where Willie works, I would file reports on my walk with him. The two-mile hike that meanders southwest from my house in North Oakland to the edge of Emeryville takes about 30 minutes, plenty of time for me to get into trouble.  

But Willie is doing his best to keep me in line. We start by turning left at 54th and then cutting over to West Street. At 40th we turn right, then left onto Market until it temporarily dead ends at the freeway. From there it’s only a block to San Pablo Avenue and Doug’s B.B.Q.  

I’ve driven most of the route before but walking it with Willie is a different experience altogether. He insists on staying streetside, protecting me from falling off the curb and into the gutter. He says hello to everyone we pass by and in return we receive good wishes and blessings. On the way to Doug’s we pass six churches and several nail and hair braiding salons. We also pass a bright yellow Mexican restaurant and a car wash that offers barbecue, sodas and recorded music under colorful flapping plastic flags.  

Last Friday we stopped at the Fair Deal Meat Company, a place I’d never been before. While Willie ordered sliced American cheese and cooked ham, I peered inside long refrigerated display cases that held pig’s feet, ham hocks, rabbit, and quail. The proprietor insisted that I try some head cheese, and when I demurred he wrapped up a slice and instructed me to eat it later. 

Willie and I walked around the corner to Doug’s where I met his bosses and co-workers. Then I headed back home, exactly the way Willie and I had come, passing by 37th Street Baptist Church, Hot Dog’s B.B.Q., R A Carwash, Lyna’s Nails and Kinks Hair Salon. 

When I got home I unwrapped the head cheese from its wax paper package and took a small bite. It was hot and spicy and if I hadn’t known what it was composed of, I might have consumed all of it. But something about pig’s brains got in the way of my enjoyment and I rewrapped it and put it in the refrigerator. 

I have 12 more weeks of class, I reasoned, before I have to do the full-on, out-of-body experience. Maybe I’ll get my hair done at Kinks, wash a few cars at R A’s, or flip some burgers at Hot Dog’s. At any rate, I’ve got some time to think about it. n

Click here to view the latest work by Planet cartoonist Justin DeFreitas

TEACHERS’ CONTRACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Like other parents with children in the Berkeley Unified School District, I am saddened to see the teachers engage in a work action in retaliation for the continued absence of a work contract. The teachers must be helped to understand what the parents and taxpayers observe daily, that the school system is engaged in an unprecedented behavior that keeps Berkeley taxes high, its schools troubled and its teachers under-compensated. Rather than guard access to Berkeley schools as all other districts do, a third to a half of each class is made up of free-riders drawn as far away as Hayward and Hercules but mostly from Oakland and Richmond. Berkeley engages in this costly behavior as its own protest against the injustice of the existence of impoverished districts. While Berkeley’s unique stand against enforcing residency is understandable as an expression of our city’s politics, it saddles all participants with an unfair burden. Albany, Piedmont and Orinda have better teaching and learning conditions because they are not using the schools to make a political stand. Teachers cannot thoughtfully protest the effects of Berkeley policies without considering the wisdom of those policies.  

David Baggins 

• 

SOCIAL SECURITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Some of my fellow Berkeley residents are Republicans. I know, so I try to be open minded. 

But recently, my tolerance was attenuated when I heard that outside Sen. Rick Santorum’s Social Security town hall meeting in Philadelphia, some Republicans were doing a Berkeley-style protest, chanting:  

“Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Social Security has got to go.” 

Evidently some Republicans want to go beyond the foolishness of “privatizing” Social Security (i.e. selling it to Wall Street, home of the Enron scam). They actually want to eliminate the program. 

I heard about that protest after recently attending a slide show on campus about all the New Deal construction projects. (Local examples: the former Farm Credit Building and our Rose Garden.) 

Eliminate Social Security? Sure, how about getting rid of Medicare too? Privatize all the schools. Get rid of the buses, along with AMTRAK. 

What on earth is the matter with these Republicans? Do they live in the same country, let alone on the same planet? Perhaps not; they don’t see global warming as a problem. 

It sure is hard to be “liberal” about Bush’s Republicans. I wish they’d just stick to being anti-choice, anti-gay, pro-oil and pro-war.  

Steve Geller 

• 

PRESERVING WHAT? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Alan Tobey wrote that Gale Garcia’s defense of preservation did not “help the preservationist cause most of us espouse” (Daily Planet, Feb. 25-28). Though Mr. Tobey has opined on subjects as diverse as 30-year-old wines, West Berkeley Bowl expansion, and his African safari, he remains silent on preservation. While he suggests we must compromise with “creative destruction,” he gives no clue as to what he means when he calls himself a preservationist, and therefore what he would preserve. It’s easy to criticize, but far more difficult to actually take a stand and adopt a position on a development. His use of qualifying adjectives is not reassuring—if we only preserve what is “truly distinctive,” don’t we lose the underlying historical and cultural context that our national, state and local preservation laws were especially drafted to protect? 

Jerry Sulliger 

• 

BRENNAN’S, CELIA’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was perplexed by Alan Tobey’s response to an earlier letter of mine—there was no hint that he’d actually read it. I did not “passionately denounce” any particular type of developer (although that might be a fine idea). Since Mr. Tobey introduced the topic of developer types, I’ll say a word about the corporation behind the proposal to demolish Brennan’s and Celia’s. 

The Urban Housing Group is a recently formed development arm of Marcus & Millichap, the largest real estate investment brokerage company in the nation. A survey of their investors was conducted in 2004, and published in a report called 2005 Real Estate Investor Outlook, offering insight into the values of the company. The report details how many billions of dollars of property transactions the company closed in years 2003 and 2004, and concludes with a tion entitled, “A Vote of Confidence for Bush.” 

The report repeatedly refers to disturbing vacancy rates in commercial and residential real estate. “’What is surprising is the level of optimism among respondents, particularly at a point when pricing is at an all-time high and property fundamentals have not improved all that much,’ says Hessam Nadji, managing director of research services at Marcus & Millichap. ‘One explanation is that a dearth of alternative investments is driving capital to real estate at a feverish pace’, Nadji says.” 

What a relief—no danger of insensitive profiteer developers here! 

Gale Garcia 

• 

SMART GROWTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have been following with interest the ongoing debate about preservation and “Smart Growth” but need some clarification on the terminology. I know what preservation means, but am a little fuzzy on “Smart Growth.” Sounds like a buzz-phrase to me, reminiscent of “Clean Air Act,” “Healthy Forests Initiative” and “No Child Left Behind.” (Perhaps Emeryville could advise us.) 

Christopher Osborn 

• 

BIG BUILDING PLANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is a mania going on right now. Big plans for big building and we need to take a hard look at why that is a dumb idea. 

  Casinos on the Wetlands, Wal-Marts, downtown Oakland and Jack London Square, UC Berkeley’s expansion plan including Gill Tract and downtown Berkeley, and the Bay Bridge. 

  Take the Bay Bridge debacle for example. The plan was bad to begin with. Retrofitting the old bridge made more sense. The new bridge had no good plan, has been loud, expensive and completely devastating to the bay and it probably won’t save any lives. It should never have been started!  

  All of the above plans are short sighted and destructive. They will use incredible resources, ultimately draining the public with little in return, unless you are the building industry. They are detrimental to the environmental, economic and historical characters of our communities. Most people have little information on exactly what is being planned! These projects are trying to attract a customer base that is harmed by their very construction. Bad planning. There are hundreds of “for rent” and” for lease” signs out there now. We don’t need more construction! Certainly not to be locked into these mega plans. 

We should be using our resources on positive improvements to the actual lives of the people in the Bay Area; caring for people, education, sustainable agriculture, real green science and upkeep and use of our existing buildings. The planners do us a dis-service with these mega building plans. 

Tierra Dulce 

Oakland 

• 

NOTE TO PETER HILLIER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association meeting of Feb. 24, Transportation Manager Peter Hilllier was invited to hear and respond to issues of traffic and parking. The moderator posed rather pointed questions about past difficulties in getting timely information from the Transportation Department. Rather than respond, Mr. Hillier left the meeting in a snit, reinforcing the perception that communication with the department is problematic. I would like to say to Mr. Hillier: We, the residents of Berkeley, pay your salary; you work for us and answer to us. If your brittle ego can’t stand the pressures of public office, please retire and make way for someone with more open communication skills. Council member Laurie Capitelli was also a guest at the meeting, and in marked contrast, he was open, receptive, and helpful in other discussion. Our thanks to him. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

AGAIN WITH THE  

POLICE BLOTTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m convinced that when or if Richard Brenneman or a member of his family becomes the victim of a violent crime, his very next Police Blotter will not contain as much “entertaining reading.” Your editorial response to letter writer Dan Brekke (Feb. 15-17) is exactly the same as when other concerned people have written to criticize Brenneman’s crudity: you mirror it with a letter from somebody who thinks it’s funny. There will always be somebody like that. By responding in this fashion, you’re like a pendulum. Is that what mindful judgment is really all about—a mechanical display of tit for tat? Personal crime is not the same as a parking issue or a building dispute. You must look at it for what it is—a very personal loss—and you need to show respect to victims. That isn’t done by making a funny story out of it. This is what Dan Brekke was trying to tell you, and he did it well. To Dan and the others who’ve written the Daily Planet with the same criticism and been treated this way: Unfortunately, most journalists simply cannot be wrong; they might admit errors of fact (begrudgingly), but not of judgment. For them, presenting differing opinions is enough. Sadly, we just have to live with it. This particular situation may not change until the writer or perhaps his publisher friend suffers a personal loss of some sort and very quickly sees the light. Or maybe until somebody of better judgment they respect convinces them to “tone it down,” as they seemed to do for an issue or two awhile back. 

Sandy Rothman 

This March marks the beginning of a third year of negotiations between the Berkeley Federation of Teachers and the Berkeley Unified School District, and we have yet to reach a settlement. Over 25 negotiations sessions occurred before impasse was declared in June of 2004, and now the process is directed by a state mediator. Because progress has been minimal, extremely slow and frustrating, Berkeley teachers have worked without a salary increase for the past two years. At the same time, our working conditions have deteriorated. Class sizes have increased dramatically in grades 4-12, as has the amount of assessments and paperwork that we are required to submit. Despite limited and inadequate instructional supplies, we have been asked to assume a range of new responsibilities, well beyond our workday.  

The Berkeley Federation of Teachers has bargained with the utmost integrity and believe that we have not made unreasonable demands. It is true that the district is recovering from a large deficit. This is why Berkeley teachers have not asked for a retroactive increase. We are asking for no more than our fair share of increased revenues that the district will receive for the school year 2005-06 and beyond. Teachers should not be the district’s last priority for spending.  

Our union is also aware that the cost of health benefits has increased significantly over the past few years. This is why we have offered to shoulder a fair share of the increase.  

We are thrilled that Berkeley’s taxpayers approved Measure B; this will result in smaller classes for the next two years in BUSD. This is why we are proposing class size maximums in grades K-12, for as long as smaller classes are funded by the local parcel tax. Most school districts have class size maximums in their teacher contracts, but there are currently no class size limits at the secondary level in BUSD. Meanwhile, teachers face more than 40 students in some academic classes and over 50 students in some physical education classes at BHS.  

Our superintendent is justifiably concerned that our district maintain financial sustainability into the future and we support her interests in this area. However, we believe that it is unfair to ask employees to shoulder increased health care costs while, at the same time, receive no salary increase. This would result in a net effect pay cut were we to accept it.  

We maintain that with proper budgeting and planning, the district could afford to fund salary increases for certificated and classified employees with at least a portion of the over 4 percent cost of living allocation that the District will receive from the state for the 2005-06 school year. We also maintain that our class size proposal will not hurt the district financially.  

The Berkeley Federation of Teachers is committed to getting a fair settlement and avoiding a strike if at all possible. However, we cannot continue to conduct “business as usual” within the district, given the progress of negotiations. Therefore, after receiving feedback from all schools in the district, our executive board has voted to “work to contract” until further notice. This means that teachers will work only the hours specified as our duty day rather than the 50- to 60-hour weeks that we often work to plan curriculum and homework, produce materials for students, evaluate student work, communicate with families, serve on committees, coordinate special events and provide extra help well beyond the school day and on weekends. We hope that parents and guardians will understand our position and support us as negotiations continue. 

I have proudly worked in Berkeley Unified School District for the past 10 years. I was the principal of Jefferson School, a teacher at King Middle School, and now, as a teacher on special assignment, coordinate beginning teacher support for the district, in addition to my work with the teachers’ Union. In order for Berkeley to recruit and maintain high quality teachers, we must remain competitive in salary with other Bay Area districts and provide working conditions that support optimum student achievement. I sincerely hope that BFT and BUSD reach agreement very soon. Until that time, teachers will continue to work to contract and wear red armbands to symbolize our anger at the lack of progress in negotiations and also our passion for teaching. We want the contract to be settled so that only our passion remains. 

Jan Goodman is a teacher in the Berkeley Unified School District. 



During the last four years I have believed it inappropriate, as superintendent of Berkeley schools, to engage in newspaper debates, so I have refrained from ever responding to letters to the editor. However, because the recent attack by Michael Larrick (Letters, Feb. 25-28) on public education and Berkeley teachers was so ill considered and uninformed, I am compelled to respond. 

In a state where students have to sue the government in order to receive access to books and bathrooms, the disdain that Mr. Larrick shows for teachers and public education is not surprising. Surveys indicate that teachers feel less respected by society as a whole than they do by their students. This lack of respect is manifested in the vulgar belief that anyone can teach, an attitude that in part has helped contribute to the consistently low pay and status for teachers.  

Perhaps the question is, if anyone can teach, why don’t they? One reason is teachers’ salaries. While it is true that California teachers receive the highest salary of all teachers nationwide, California teachers actually place 32nd on the national salary index when adjusted for the cost of living and earn 8.4 percent less than the national average. Lack of a salary increase and the money to support such is the current anguish and conflict in our own District. The governor’s budget proposal robs Berkeley of $1.5 million this year and last.  

In 1998, U.S. teachers ages 22-28 earned an average of $7,894 less per year than other college-educated adults of the same age. From 1994-1998, salaries for master’s degree holders outside teaching increased 32 percent, or $17,505, while the average salary for teachers increased less than $200. In 2002, new teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area earned an average annual salary of $34,580. This works out to be approximately $7,700 less than the state estimates it actually takes to live in the Bay area. 

Contrary to Mr. Larrick’s contention, the “real world” does not send teachers scurrying to classrooms; more teachers leave the profession each year than enter it. With urban, high-poverty schools losing nearly 20 percent of their workforce each year, it should come as no surprise that almost half of all first- and second-year California teachers are unqualified. Yet, this “current crop” of teachers is arguably the most qualified of any to date. It should please our community to know that Berkeley has the highest percentage of fully credential teachers in the County, and the highest number holding a National Board Certification. The standards set by No Child Left Behind require that all teachers be certified and hold a degree in their subject specialty. Such a requirement is laudable, but it would still exclude non-credentialed physicists, like Edward Teller, from teaching in our public schools. Why? Because being an effective teacher requires more than subject matter knowledge. It requires an understanding of learning and pedagogical theories, of lesson plan design and classroom management, of second-language acquisition, of how best to attend to the needs of as many as 200 different students every day, many of whom enter our schools ill-prepared, hungry, and neglected. Do all teachers currently employed in our public schools possess this knowledge? Hardly. But lowering professional standards will not raise the quality of the profession or the quality of our schools. Neither will complaining about the quality while simultaneously cutting financial support for teacher training and staff development programs, which is exactly what initiating vouchers and the Governor’s proposals would do. 

The National Center for Educational statistics and a recent Harris poll of urban teachers supplies these additional facts: 

• Teacher certification and experience have been found to be two of the strongest and most consistent predictors of student achievement. 

• The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that requires a licensure examination in addition to the examinations given by the teacher education institution. 

• More teachers leave private or charter schools than public. 

• Over half (54 percent) of science teachers report that they do not have enough equipment and materials necessary to do science lab work, such as lab stations, lab tools and materials. 

• Nearly a third (32 percent) of teachers report that there are not enough copies of textbooks for all students to take home.  

• Nearly a third (29 percent) of teachers report that they have seen evidence of cockroaches, rats, or mice in their school.  

• Over a third (39 nine percent) of teachers rate their facilities as only fair or poor. 

I am honored to work in a community that has generously demonstrated that it values and supports education by approving several local tax measures. However, after working 34 years in California public schools, I can say without reservation that the decline of state funding for public education has reached its nadir, and local measures cannot sustain Berkeley for long. Moreover, the governor’s new proposals are certain to make matters worse and are, to my mind, morally reprehensible.  

It saddens me that individuals like Mr. Larrick cannot see how their misdirected contempt is helping to dismantle public education as an institution that has been the cornerstone of our democracy.  

Michele Lawrence is superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District. 



Although not a Christo groupie, when I got the offer of a free place to crash on Manhattan’s Upper East Side I couldn’t resist Jet Blueing to the Big Apple to take in “The Gates.” I wasn’t the only Berkeleyite who made the pilgrimage to the Central Park saffron spectacle staged by Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude. In my week-long whirlwind adventure of Gates-gazing and copious noshing, I kept bumping into Berkeley folks—at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the Stage Deli, on Broadway and in the park itself. 

While in New York I heard mostly positive comments about “The Gates,” from natives and visiting out-of-towners alike. But, being New York City, there was of course no lack of complaining. Quite a few deplored the $20 million cost of the 7,500 gates, calling it an obscene waste of money. Others grouched that Christo had desecrated Frederick Law Olmsted’s perfect park. Then there’s the Greek cab driver who transported me and a friend from JFK airport to the City. A self-described poet and not one to mince words, he ridiculed Christo’s creation as “a bunch of shower curtains.” 

Well, sure, they were indeed that, but much, much more. 

My personal break down of “The Gates” is that they managed to be both wonderfully idiotic and surprisingly beautiful at the same time. Certainly, Christo and Jeanne-Claude deserve kudos for luring hundreds of thousands to Central Park for a huge Be-In on each of the 16 days “The Gates” stood. And the faces of those I saw parading under the orange arches were almost always happy ones. “The Gates” began to be dismantled yesterday (Monday). 

“The Gates” also worked in other ways. Just the thought of the colossal chutzpah it took for Christo and Jeanne-Claude to conceive of and actually pull off their insane idea had me chuckling more than once. And whether you loved or hated “The Gates,” they compelled you to think and talk about the meaning and function of art. My lefty buddies, in particular, should be grateful they gave us something less depressing to discuss besides the daily horrors of the Bush reign. 

On yet a further level, by colorfully highlighting the contours of the park paths, “The Gates” forced you to appreciate Olmstead’s grand design from a unique perspective. This was especially true after the park was covered by snowfall, producing stunning white and bright orange contrasts. And watching a procession of “The Gates” when a gust of wind got their fabrics flapping in unison or catching a glimpse of saffron through the leafless tree branches was really neat. 

In addition, “The Gates” were a tremendous financial success. Entrepreneurial geniuses as much as artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude earned back the millions they personally fronted to pay for their cost by selling the sketches and plans for the project to collectors. So, essentially, the rich guys who bought their stuff paid for the whole deal. Plus, all the substantial profits from sales of hats, T-shirts, post cards, posters, books and assorted memorabilia will go to support the Central Park Conservancy and other local parks. It’s also been estimated “The Gates” will bring in close to $100 million in extra tourist dollars to the New York City, a windfall for hotels, restaurants and retailers, not to mention the chauffeurs of the famed Central Park horse-drawn carriages. 

Given my favorable impression of “The Gates,” I’ll definitely make an effort to check out Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s next artistic enterprise. And, hey, since they have loads of Berkeley fans, maybe we can convince them that following Central Park, People’s Park is the natural choice. 

o

Deep in the recesses of LaVal’s Subterranean, Philip Wharton is about to unlock his word-hoard. Dressed simply as a scop or scald, ancient bard and reciter, he begins alliteratively in Anglo-Saxon, then switches seamlessly into Modern English, his translation of Beowulf, heroes and monsters sketched in with graceful gestures and quick grimaces. 

From above, the Sunday night noise of LaVal’s becomes that of a rude mead-hall in the tale spun out before us. 

Beowulf, the story of the hero of the Geats (seafaring people of southeastern Sweden) on a mission of monster-abatement to the Danes, long a staple of English Lit surveys, has garnered new interest by the translation of Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. 

In sinewy, rhythmic verse, the hero-tale tells of Beowulf’s triumph over the anthropomorphous yet man-devouring Grendel (“the master-butcher”) and his even more ferocious mother, bent on revenge (“She took her son’s bloody arm away, and sorrow returned to the house”), and of his Pyrrhic victory over the more conventional treasure-guarding dragon (a.k.a. worm, firedrake) in old age (“So must every man give up his borrowed days.”) 

Replete with epithets—“whale road” or “swan’s road” for sea, “sea-treader” for ship—that remind one of Homer’s “wine-dark sea” and “rosy fingers of dawn,” Beowulf alternates between extremes: of a rough existence on the edge of brutality with bright moments of celebration (“the hearth rang out and the poet sang”), of chivalric boasts and bloody street-fighting tactics, of appeals to Christian belief (“Now his soul awaits the terrible brightness of God’s judgment”) with pagan tribal customs (the hero’s cremated and interred in a barrow he commissioned). 

Indeed, the turnaround is swift—“The world’s candle was shining, the mighty sun from the south—until in the dark night something else began to wield power ...” 

Besides the alliterative rolling of the verse, and the stark portrayal of a remote time and way of life, Beowulf’s attraction comes from the clarity of that picture, of the little vignettes and details of that life. In Philip Wharton’s telling, there’s not a slack moment nor hazy word. His smooth transitions (assisted by light changes and blackouts, his daughter at the board) and movements syncopate the rippling verbal flow, and set up the cameo portrayals of men and monsters, a flicker of the eye or swift gesture. 

Wharton’s an exponent of the acting technique of Michael Chekhov (nephew of the great playwright) , and its subtlety shows in the breadth and range of expression, all modulated to a storyteller’s presence, one the audience immediately responds to and follows throughout. The only scenic element, besides what the teller provides, is a stool—appropriately, Danish Modern.  

Commenting on his translation—“no pretensions at scholarship, but with hope that it has some value as poetry and theatre”—Wharton noted he began with Heaney’s translation, but was unable to get permission to perform it. He wondered whether he should follow the text from Julian Glover’s Beowulf , which took off in part from Edwin Morgan’s translation. 

(In the thick of the praise over Heaney’s, Edwin Morgan’s version stands out as supple and clear, tinged with the grimness of struggle in WW II Britain. Morgan, now 80, is being hailed as the greatest living Scots poet; his translation was published by UC Press, and is now available through Carcanet). 

Finally deciding to do his own, Wharton originally wrote in prose, but “I couldn’t get away from the rhythms of the alliteration.” 

There have been fine translations made for telling orally before. The fluidity of Wharton’s translation and delivery just accent the quaintness of the strange Classical echoes (and Scriptural confusions) in a Nordic landscape—Grendel, reminiscent of Polyphemus the Cyclops in The Odyssey, is of the race of Cain, from which also sprang giants who did battle with God. (An Old English poet once referred to “Christ, the gentle shepherd of Greece.”) 

And, like the Homeric epics, it seems Beowulf was told a thousand years ago about a time long before its telling, even then a quaint, twilit antiquity for the time of Charlemagne. Hearing Philip Wharton bring it—and the storyteller’s art—to life again makes it plain why Ezra Pound began his Cantos with Odysseus’ voyage to the underworld in a style drawn from his translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem “The Seafarer.” Both are our heritage, completely different and irretrievably mixed together in our speech. 



After that long siege of rain, it’s been warm enough this week for the turtles to be out basking. You can see them at Jewel Lake in Tilden Regional Park: the larger, darker ones are western pond turtles, the Bay Area’s only native chelonians; the green stripy ones with red patches on their necks are red-eared sliders, the descendants of inconvenient pets who were released in the lake. (“Slider” here pertains to a group of freshwater turtles, not to a curving fastball or a small hamburger.) Their lives appear peaceful, apart from the occasional jostle over the best spot on the log. 

Overall, though, western pond turtles aren’t doing so well. Like most freshwater creatures in California, they’ve lost a lot of habitat to farmland and urban sprawl. The streams they favor have been drowned by reservoirs; their hatchlings have been eaten by exotic bullfrogs. In the 19th century, thousands were harvested for the tables of San Francisco, selling for $3 to $6 a dozen; you could order local turtle at the Palace Hotel. Our resident subspecies, Clemmys marmorata pallida, is a California Species of Special Concern, and both it and the northern C. m. marmorata have been proposed for federal endangered status.  

According to the Turtle Conservation Fund, two-thirds of the world’s 270-odd land and freshwater turtle species are at risk of extinction. The Asian food and traditional medicine market takes a heavy toll, with wild-caught turtles from Burma and Indonesia shipped by the ton to China. And there’s a brisk and often illegal international pet trade: like parrots and orchids, some turtle species have been prized to the point of extinction. 

But all that may just be prelude to the big hit. Turtles, it seems, are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Global warming could throw the sex ratios of turtle populations out of whack, leading to a terminal demographic crisis. 

We tend to think of sex determination as being all in the chromosomes. In most mammals (and in some insects, oddly enough), the X’s and Y’s dictate an offspring’s sex. If you get an X chromosome from your father, you become female; if you get Dad’s Y, you’re male. I say “most” because of the duck-billed platypus, which was recently discovered to have a set of 10 sex-determining chromosomes, and the howler monkey, which has 4. Birds have an analogous “ZW” system, in which a ZZ combination creates a male while ZW makes for a female. 

But reptiles are different. In almost all turtles, as well as alligators and crocodiles, some lizards, and the lizardlike tuataras of New Zealand, temperature during the first trimester of incubation dictates sex. At temperatures below approximately 30 C (86 F), turtle embryos develop into males; above 30, into females. I haven’t found specific studies of western pond turtles, but the phenomenon has been documented in many of their relatives, including the European pond turtle, painted turtles, map turtles, and sliders. The exceptions to the rule are snapping turtles, which produce females at warm or cool incubation temperatures and males at intermediate temperatures, and softshell turtles, whose eggs seem unaffected by temperature. Crocodilians show a reverse pattern: females at lower temperatures, males at higher.  

And fish are something else again. The sex of a juvenile Australian coral goby becomes the opposite of that of its first adult partner. This might not seem unusual to a visitor from Ursula LeGuin’s planet Gethen, but it’s fairly strange by Terran standards. 

Back to the turtles, though. Two French biologists, C. Pieau and M. Dorrizi at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris, have worked out the mechanism for temperature-dependent sex determination in European pond turtles and two sea turtle species. At higher temperatures, the enzyme aromatase floods the gonads of the turtle embryos with estrogens. Experimental treatment with aromatase inhibitors and anti-estrogens turns off the temperature effect, producing male hatchlings at higher temperatures. 

And real-world studies have reinforced the lab work. Frederic Janzen of the University of Chicago spent five years monitoring a population of painted turtles on an island on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. He found a strong correlation between average air temperatures in July—the critical period for sex determination, when incubation begins—and the sex of the hatchlings. In one year, 1992, all the hatchlings Janzen censused were female; in 1988, all were male. 

You see where this is going. Janzen projects that with an increase of four degrees in July mean temperatures over the next century—well within the parameters of climate change models—the result will be “an eventual extinction of this painted turtle population because no males will be produced.” The only hope would be a shift to earlier nesting dates. And although some creatures, notably migratory birds have already shown signs of adaptation to a warming earth, turtles are not known for their behavioral flexibility.  

It’s been speculated that skewed sex ratios driven by climate change may have contributed to the decline of the dinosaurs before the meteor finished them off. Maybe so, if their sex-determination system was more like that of alligators than that of their probable surviving next of kin, the birds.  

Granted, the extinction of turtles is not the first consequence of global warming you’re going to worry about if you’re a tropical medicine specialist, or a resident of New Orleans or Bangladesh.  

But the danger appears to be real. And what an ironic way to lose creatures that have become such icons of durability. In a drawer in UC’s Museum of Paleontology, there’s the shell of a western pond turtle from the Blackhawk Ranch fossil quarry. It’s about 10 million years old, and it looks like it could have come from Jewel Lake last week. It would be a shame if a species that outlived the four-tusked gomphotheres and sabertoothed nimravids finally succumbed to an excess of carbon dioxide. e

TUESDAY, MARCH 1 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: “Light and Shadow Bandit” at 7:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Steve Erickson reads from his new novel “Our Ecstatic Days” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Ross Tobia, El Cerrito author reads from “Grand Unified Theory, Physics for a New Age” at 7 p.m. at the Friends of the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Anoush & Smyrna Time Machine at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Long Lonesome Road, bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $18.50- $19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Marcos Silva Brazilian Piano Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Bob Harp, Danny Allen, Americana, at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174. www.storkcluboakland.com 

Omar Sosa Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 

THEATER 

“Bright River” A hip-hop retelling of Dante’s Inferno, every Wed. through March 16 at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Tickets are $12-$35 available from 415-256-8499. www.inhousetickets.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Drawn by the Brush: Oil Skteches by Peter Paul Rubens” opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. and runs through May 15. 642-1295. www.banpfa.berkeley.edu 

“Mapping the Landscape of Learning” artwork by Bay Area youth and CCA students, opens at the Tecoah Bruce Gallery, Oliver Art Center, California College of the Arts, 5212 Broadway. Reception from 5 to 7 p.m. 594-3754.  

FILM 

Film 50: History of Cinema “The Lady From Shanghai” at 3 p.m. and “Tron” at 7:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Andrew Sean Greer reads from his novel “The Confessions of Max Tivoli” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Donna Henes reads from “The Queen of Myself: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife” at 7 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. 655-2405. www. 

changemakersforwomen.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Symphony Orchestra 4th Annual Choral Festival, benefitting the Musicians’ Pension Fund at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$49 available from 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

The Marcus Shelby Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Fundraiser for Joe Paquin with Tom Rigney & The Sundogs at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10-$20. 525-5054.  

Ledward Ka’apana, Hawaiian slack key guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Ubzorb, Dead Sea Scribes, Daddy Axe at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174.  

Omar Sosa Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens” guided tour at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-1295.  

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Outside the Box” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free First Thursdays. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems Reading Series with Eugene Ostashevsky at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library in Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. http://lunchpoems.berkeley.edu 

Georgina Kleege and Katherine Sherwood Gallery Conversation in conjuction with the exhibition “Blind at the Museum” at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-1295.  

Gillian Conoley, featured poet at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Morteza Baharloo reads from his novel of Iran “The Quince Seed Potion” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers Elz J. Cuya and Myron Hardy Jr. with Sonya Renee at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mutabaraka, DUB poet, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Against the Empire A night of radical folk legends with Robb Johnson, David Rovics and Folk This! at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd St. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Celtic Fiddle Festival, with Kevin Burke, Christian Lemaitre and Andre Brunet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Charming Hostess, Dina Maccabee at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Sebastien Lanson, solo jazz guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Adoration Machine, Evacuee, The New Usual at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174. www.storkcluboakland.com 

Pat Martino Quartet in a tribute to Wes Montgomery at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

Jeremy Kirsch Photographic Portraits. Reception at 8 p.m. at Auto 3321 Gallery, 3321 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 31. www.freewebs.com/ 

autoartgallery 

Boontling Gallery “Overhung,” Works by over 50 Bay Area artists. Opening reception at 7:30 p.m. Exhibition runs to March 15, at 4224 Telegraph Ave. www.4leagueindustries.com 

“The Journey of Staying,” mobile sculpture by Stan Huncilman. Reception at 5:30 p.m. at Atelier Gallery, 1812B Sixth St. Exhibition runs to March 25. 486-1485. www.ateliergallery.com  

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Bending the Beat” at 7:30 p.m at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre, “Dublin Carol” by Conor McPherson Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun at 2 and 7 p.m. through March 6 at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Central Works, “Enemy Combatant” at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Performances are Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. through March 26. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “Buried Child” on the disintigration of the American Dream, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through March 13, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Tickets are $10. 524-9132. www.CCCT.org 

Impact Theatre, “Othello” at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Euclid. Thurs.- Sat. through March 19. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Shotgun Players “The Just” by Albert Camus. Thurs.- Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through April 10. Tickets are sliding scale $10-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

UC Theater, “Three Sisters” a contemporary staging of Chekhov’s drama, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. Mar. 6 at 7 p.m., Sun. Mar. 13 at 2 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-9925. http://theater.berkeley.edu 

Un-Scripted Theater Company “You Bet Your Improvisor!” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. through March 26 at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.unscripted.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ward Churchill talks about “Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

The Great Night of Soul Poetry at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Bach Society “Schütz Cantiones Sacrae” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $10-$25. 415-262-0272. www.calbach.org  

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Jenna Mammina, in a celebration of International Women’s Day at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Prefixo de Verão, Brazilian, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

Lee Waterman’s Shake/Silver Moon Band at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Liesl’s Wet Dress at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Luke Janela with Sam Stearns at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

The J. Byrd Hosch Trio, Jug Free America, Audrey Auld Mezera, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Phenomenauts, Rasputin, Sheephead, Stiletta 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. 

3 Hours Old, Alia for Release at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Richard Bitch, The Absentee, Scissor for Lefty at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174. www.storkcluboakland.com 

Brown Baggin, funk, jazz, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Pat Martino Quartet in a tribute to Wes Montgomery at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 5 

CHILDREN 

Jeff Smith visits with “Bone” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Art of Living Black Art Tour” Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Richmond Convention Center. For information call 620-6772. www.therichmondartcenter.org 

“Exhibitions of Expression” a conference and forum for Asian Americans in art, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 643-5497. httpp://multicultural.berkeley.edu/apasd/conference2005 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Our Cosmos, Our Chaos” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Smug Shift, a night of underground stand-up comedy at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 444-6174. 

John Cho, Asian American actor, on his career at 7 p.m. in Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 643-5497.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

New Millenium Strings with Christa Pfeiffer, soprano, at 8 p.m. at the Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Donation $10-$20. 528-4633. 

Trinity Chamber Concert “Brassiosaurus” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Nayo Ulloa, Andean flute virtuoso at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra Recital featuring Elspeth Franks, mezzo-soprano with Daniel Lockert, piano at 8 p.m. at Crowden School Auditorium, 1475 Rose St. 601-1718.  

Marley’s Ghost at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Rhiannon with Bowl Full of Sound at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Beausoleil at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054.  

Earl Howard and David Wessel at 8 p.m. at CNMAT, 1750 Arch St. Tickets are $5-$10. www.cnmat.berkeley.edu 

Vince Lateano Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Braziu at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

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

Nasty Breeze, Kung Fu Vampire, World Wide Sickness, hip hop, at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. 

Wayward Monks at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org  

Fleshies, Veronica Lipgloss & The Evil Eyes at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 

CHILDREN  

Gayle Schmitt & The Toodala Ramblers at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THEATER 

“Beowulf” The epic translated and performed by Philip Wharton at 7:30 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid. Sun. nights through Mar. 20. Tickets are $10-$15. 415-608-9683. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Quilt Self-Protraits” by students of Peralta Elementary School. Reception at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

“Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens” guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-1295.  

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Querida Familia” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

“Imagining Brightly Colored Flowers I Rise” The late Neala Haze’s look at a dancer’s artistic process, at 7:30 p.m. in the Mills College Music Building Concert Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd. Tickets are $25-$75.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Women’s History Month Lecture with JoAnn Levy discussing “Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California” at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200.  

“Picturing Pain in Rubens’ Time and Our Own,” a panel discussion at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-1295.  

“Folk and the Tales They Tell” with African-American artist and storyteller, Karen McKie at 2 p.m. at the Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft at College. 643-7648. 

Mildred S. Barish will discuss her book, “Tamalpais Tales: A Berkeley Neighborhood Remembers,” at 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 527-0450. 

Poetry Flash with Cathy Coleman and David St. John at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Boychoir with organist William Ludtke at 8 p.m. at First Church of Christ Scientist, Dwight Way at Bowditch. Tickets are $25-$30, to raise funds to replace the roof of this historic 1910 landmark. 925-376-3908. www.friendsoffirstchurch.org 

Berkeley Youth Orchestra performs “A World of Melodies” at 2:30 p.m. at the Laney College Theater, Oakland. Tickets are $5 at the door. 663-3296.  

Dance IS Festival at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Chamber Music Sundaes with Catherine Payne, flute, at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door $7-$19. 415-584-5946.  

Musicians from Marlboro at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38. 642-9988.  

Volti “Left Turn @ Albuquerque” a cappella music of Cuba, Peru, Argentina and Mexico at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $8-$20. 415-771-3352. www.voltisf.org 

ACME Observatory Contemporary Performance Series With Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 441B 23 St. Cost is $6-$10 sliding scale. http://music.acme.com 

Montclair Women’s Big Band at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373.  

Potential Threat at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174.  

Twang Café at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen, contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Mikey Dread, Pacific Vibrations at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $12-$15. 848-0886.  

ª

TUESDAY, MARCH 1 

“Great Day Hikes in California’s Desert Parks” a slide presentation with Steve Tabor at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Mid-Day Meander for budding botany at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at 2:30 p.m. 525-2233.  

Mini-Rangers for ages 8-12 for an afternoon of nature study, conservation and rambling through the woods and waters. Meet at 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Fee is $6-$8, reservations required. 525-2233. 

“How and How Not to Fight Terrorism” with Michael Scheuer, “anonymous” author of “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror” at 6:30 p.m. at The Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Cost is $15-$40. 632-1366. www.independent.org 

“Sustainable Seas: The Vision and the Reality” with Sylvia A. Earle, oceanographer, at 7 p.m. at The College Preparatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway, north. 658-5202. 

Berkeley Salon Discussion Group meets to discuss “Travel” from 7 to 9 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Please bring snacks and soft drinks to share. No peanuts please. 601-6690. 

“Thirst” a documentary on water management, at 7:30 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237, ext. 110. 

“All Together Now: Building Bridges to Our Future” a fundraiser at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Pacific Renaissance Plaza, 388 Ninth St., Oakland. Cost is $50. 637-0455. www.oacc.cc 

Sing-A-Long every Tues. from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic. All ages welcome. 524-9122. 

Tap Into It Jazz and Rhythm Tap classes at Montclair Recreation Center, 6300 Moraga Ave., Oakland. Experienced at 6:30 p.m., beginners at 7:30 p.m. 482-7812. 

Organic Produce at low prices sold at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon Streets every Tuesday from 3 to 6 p.m. This is a project of Spiral Gardens. 843-1307. 

School Age Storytime for ages 5 and up at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext.17.  

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

Brainstormer Weekly Pub Quiz every Tuesday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Pyramid Alehouse Brewery, 901 Gilman St. 528-9880. 

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. Gerry Arko will return to lead us on a bird walk right here in our neighborhood at 10 a.m. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 

Great Decisions 2005: “Outsourcing Jobs” with Ashok Bardhan, Haas School of Business, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. Cost is $5, $40 for the series. 526-2925. 

“9/11: The Road to Tyranny” An Axex Jones documentary at at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, $5 donations accepted. 393-5685. 

“Pollution in a Promised Land: How Zionism Launched Israel into its Current Environmental Crisis, and How It Can Save It” with Alon Tal, founding director of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, at 8 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 839-2900 ext. 214. 

AARP Free Tax Assistance for taxpayers with middle and low incomes, with special attention to those 60 years and older. From 12:15 to 4:15 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Appointments must be made in advance. 526-3720, ext. 5. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets at 7:15 a.m. at Au Cocolait, 200 University Ave. at Milvia. 524-3765. 

Artify Ashby Muralist Group meets every Wed. from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, to plan a new mural. New artists are welcome. Call Bonnie at 704-0803. 

Chanting Circle for Women Wed. at 7 p.m. through April 6, at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Tuition is $160. www.edgeofwonder.com 

“Faith and Sexuality” at 7:30 p.m. at All Souls Parish, 2220 Cedar St. Part of the Journey of Faith Lenten Series. 848-1755. 

Winter Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

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

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 

Early Morning Bird Walk to look for early spring arrivals. Meet at 7:30 a.m. at far parking lot of the Bear Creek entrance of Briones. 525-2233. 

Bird Walk along the Martin Luther King Shoreline to see marsh birds at 3:30 p.m. for information call 525-2233. 

“Managing Garden Pests and Diseases” with UC Plant Pathologist Dr. Robert Raabe at 7 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $10-$12, registration required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

“The Future of Industry, Artisans, and Crafts in West Berkeley and the Future of the West Berkeley Plan” a public forum on the protection of industrial space through zoning at 7 p.m. at Alliance Graphics, 905 Parker, at 7th St.  

BUSD West Campus Site Planning Meeting at 7 p.m. at 1222 University Ave., in the Cafeteria. 644-6066.  

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council will speak on “Environment, Health and Democracy,” at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 

“Cascadia Cob: The Healthiest Housing in the World” A lecture and slide presentation on building housing from earth, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

“Native Land and Water in Jeopardy” A documentary on the Winnemem sacred sites at 7 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, Oakland. Tickets are $15. 415-452-3556. 

“Fighting for Our Schools, Fighting Against Imperialism” A panel discussion on the the movements against the military, the prison-industrial complex, and school closures at 6:30 p.m. at the Oaklandish Gallery, 411 Second St., Oakland. 451-2677. www.oaklandish.org 

“Confronting Power: A Century of Struggle and Movements” a 3-day Empowering Women of Color Conference at UCB, with workshops, book-signings and cultural performances. 642-2876, ext. 5. ewocc.berkeley.edu 

“Empire’s Embedded Intellectuals” with Dr. Hatem Bazian, Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies, at 7 p.m. at 110 Barrows Hall, UC Campus.  

Creating Harmony in our Lives, a workshop at Changemakers, 6536 Alcatraz, with Bonita Ford. Cost is $25. No one turned away. To register call 286-7915 or email bford@jfku.edu  

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping in Berkeley Public schools at 7 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 

Annual Seed Swap Bring and get locally saved seeds and learn about BASIL, the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Free. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Outings on Fridays with Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association Tour of The Pardee House in Oakland’s City Center, at 11 a.m. Cost is $15. Reservations required. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Steve Heminger, Exec. Dir., MTC on “Improving Traffic in the East Bay.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925.  

Trees for Haiti Benefit from 5 to 7 p.m. at What the Traveller Saw, 1880 Solano Ave. For reservations call 524-7989.  

The Berkeley Forum “Reframing the Progressive Movement” with Prof. George Lakoff at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. 525-0391, ext. 376. admin@berkeleyforum.org 

“Understanding the Israel-Palestine Conflict in Historical Context” with Rosemary Radford Ruether, Prof. GTU, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson St., behind the church. Free. This location is not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062. 

World Day of Prayer at 9:30 a.m. at McGee Avenue Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St.  

Womansong Circle, a monthly participatory singing evening for women, celebrates Women’s History Month at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10-$15. 525-7082. 

“Three Beats for Nothing” meets at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center to sing for fun and practice, mostly 16th century harmony. 843-7610.  

Alternative Lifelong Learning presents “Globalization and Its Impact on Iranian Culture,” with Maryam Javanshir at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center.  

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 5 

Sick Plant Clinic UC plant pathologist Dr. Robert Raabe, UC entomologist Dr. Nick Mills, and their team of experts will diagnose what ails your plants from 9 a.m. to noon at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755.  

Introduction to Herbs Learn simple herbal alternatives for the cold and allergy season, on a walk to identify the plants. At 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. 

“Waterwise Gardening with California Natives,” a slide lecture with Nathan Smith at 12:30 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $20-$25, registration required. 643-2755.  

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. 

Healthy Gardening at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Origami with artist, teacher and storyteller Margo Wecksler from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Bring your own wrapping paper, or use paper provided. Free. 526-3720 ext 17. 

Reports Back from the World Social Forum and the Women and Water Forum at 10 a.m. at Gray Panther Office, 1403 Addison St. 548-9696. 

“Exhibitions of Expression” a conference and forum for Asian Americans in art, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 643-5497.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Hands-on Cob Workshop Get your hands dirty and learn about building houses and other structures from earth, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $20-$30, registration required. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Progressive Democrats of America, East Bay Chapter, general meeting, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Temescal Library, 5205 Telegraph, Oakland. 526-4632. 

Berkeley Forum Workshop: “Reframing Progressive Issues” from 2 to 5 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Cost is $10. 525-0391, ext 376.  

“Closing the Achievement Gap” a seminar for parents and educators, with David Berg, educational therapist, at 9 a.m. at Black Pine Circle Upper School, 2016 Seventh Ave. Pre-registration required. info@makingmathreal.org 

Women in Leadership Conference “Reflecting Forward-Celebrating Progress and Inspiring the Future” from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Haas School of Business, UC Campus. www.wilconference.org 

Osh, by Gosh! A party for Oakland Zoo’s young elephant from 9 a.m. to noon at the Oakland Zoo. Free with Zoo admission. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

Oakland Museum White Elephant Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sun. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 333 Lancaster St., Oakland. 238-2200. 

Dr. Seuss Birthday Party with games and stories at 11 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Tickets required. 524-3043. 

“Write for Your Life: Unmasking Sorrow, Living Joy” A writing workshop with Beth Glick-Rieman from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Cost is $35. 524-2858. 

“The Bhagavad Ghita - The Mystery of Human Soul and its Symbols” at 7:30 p.m. at the New Acropolis Cultural Center, 1700 Dwight Way. Tickets are $ 7-$10. 665-3740. www.acropolis.org  

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 

Breakfast with the Birds Bring your own beverage and we’ll share pastries and wander down to the lake to see who is nesting, flirting and feeding. Binoculars available for loan. Cost is $3, registration required. 525-2233. 

Spinning Demonstration Watch the wool from the Little Farm’s sheep turn into yarn on our spinning wheel, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Work in the Garden We needs lots of help weeding, planting and preparing the garden for spring and the butterflies. At 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Strawberry Creek Work Party from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Please wear sturdy shoes and bring work gloves. RSVP to kateholum@yahoo.com 

Sunset Walk with the Solo Sierrans through the Emeryville Marina with quiet views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge. Paved trail, wheel chair accessible. Meet at 4 p.m. behind Chevy’s Restaurant at small parking lot. 234-8949. 

Alan Rinzler’s Writer’s Workshop at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Seating is first-come, first-served. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Institute for World Religions Book Study Group meets at 2 p.m. at Vara Healing Arts, 850 Talbot at Solano. 548-4517. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Amdo on “Entering the Bodhisattva Path” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 7 

“Returning the Tides” to Salt Ponds Briggs Nisbet, Restoration Campaigns Manager for Save the Bay, will speak on restoring nature to more than 16,000 acres of San Francisco Bay salt ponds at Friends of Five Creeks’ monthly meeting at 7 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. 848-9358. f5creeks@aol.com 

Tea and Hike at Four Taste some of the finest teas from the Pacific Rim and South Asia and learn their natural and cultural history, followed by a short nature walk. At 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233.  

Mercury in View The best views of the planet Mercury are during the next two weeks. Join us at Tilden’s Inspiration Point at 6:30 p.m. and we’ll walk down Nimitz Way. 525-2233. 

National Organization for Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter with Lucy Sells on “The Future of the Democratic Party” at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. 287-8948.  

Richard A. Walker, author of “The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in California,” will speak on agriculture in California at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St.  

“Critical Viewing” examines the craft of short film, TV drama, and commercials from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

ONGOING 

Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour Seeks Host Gardens The tour will showcase Alameda and Contra Costa County gardens that contain at least 30% native plants, don’t use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and provide habitat for wildlife. Kathy@KathyKramerConsulting.net or 236-9558.  

Collect Cleats for All Feet Donate your cleats and other sports equipment to Sports4kids Swap Shop. Donation barrels at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. www.sports4kids.org 

All Net Basketball for boys and girls ages 9 to 11, begins Tues. Mar. 8, from 4:30 to 6 p.m., and runs for five weeks. Fee is $10-$15. For information call Berkeley Youth Alternatives, 845-9066. sports@byaonline.org 

“Half Pint Library” Book Drive Donate children’s books to benefit Children’s Hospital. Donations accepted at 1849 Solano Ave. through March 31. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Mar. 2, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Tasha Tervelon, 981-5347. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/women 

Disaster Council meets Wed., Mar. 2, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. William Greulich, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 3, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/housing 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 3, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks 

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

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Creeks Task Force meets every Monday at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center through April 4. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/creeks 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/landmarks 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/peaceandjustice 

Youth Commission meets Mon., Mar. 7, at 6:30 p.m., at 1730 Oregon St. Philip Harper-Cotton, 981-6670. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/youthª

“…the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking…”  

Huh? What was that again? Who said that? And why would he say it? 

The speaker is the president of a corporation which, among other things, has a major role in training many of the leading U.S. investment bankers. He employs those responsible for admitting would-be investment bankers to elite training programs, and he hires those who train them. The speech in which he expressed this opinion lacked both citations for the data he confidently relied on and a hypothesis for why he believed it to be true. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to expect that in his executive role he would be poorly prepared to make sure that Catholics were not discriminated against in admissions or hiring.  

The question of religious belief qualifications for the lucrative but not necessarily well-regarded job of investment banker is seldom discussed these days, though it was probably a major issue a generation or more ago. My own acquaintance with movers and shakers in the finance industry has been limited to dealings with venture capitalists and investment bankers in the high-tech industry, and religion didn’t play a major role in my transactions.  

Ethnic stereotypes are a different matter. When I was in business I used my father’s White Anglo-Saxon Protestant name to balance my husband and partner’s Irish name on the management roster, and the stereotypically inclined were free to make whatever assumptions they wanted about our respective religions. They would usually be wrong, since I, despite my WASP name, was raised a Catholic, and Mike, despite his Irish name, was raised as a WASP, and neither one of us is now religious. When I used my WASP name, I did hear lots of anti-Catholic quips, even in the 90s.  

Nevertheless, the financial field is now full of people with Irish and Italian names, and it’s a reasonable guess that many of them are Catholics. The tragic loss of hundreds of employees of the Cantor Fitzgerald bond firm in the World Trade Center, all of whose names were listed in various memorial tributes, spotlighted the diversity which now exists in high finance. But just because there’s diversity, prejudice has not necessarily vanished.  

A Wall Street insider who witnessed the spectacle of Richard Grasso being drummed out of the president’s office at the Stock Exchange believes that Grasso’s Italian background was partly involved in the feeding frenzy over his high salary. This observer says that Italians have been traditionally supposed to do the lower level work in the back rooms of the Exchange. The fact that an Italian like Grasso rose through the ranks and ended up making more money than those who were supposed to be running things annoyed some, and they got rid of him. 

The corporation president who opined that Catholics aren’t investment bankers has a surname that seems to be of English origin. Does this make a difference? His WASP name puts him in the position I was in, able to overhear anti-Catholic stereotypes in the course of doing business. Perhaps he unconsciously absorbed them, and they formed the basis for the data-free opinion quoted here. He says about himself “I am Jewish, identified but hardly devout,” and it’s even conceivable that he has subconsciously bought into stereotypes about superior financial acumen associated with his own ethnic group.  

Why does any of this matter? Primarily because he’s an employer, and as an employer he has an obligation to obey laws against discrimination in employment and enforce them in his organization. He is most unwise, as an employer, to reveal his own stereotypic beliefs, if he does indeed hold them, because they give rise to justifiable suspicions that he is not complying with anti-discrimination laws in his corporation. 

And, of course, for those of you who haven’t already guessed his identity, Lawrence Summers is now being accused of condoning discrimination against another under-represented group within his corporation, which is Harvard University. The part of his speech in which he elaborated on his opinions about women’s capabilities got the most attention, but maybe Catholics too should start checking out hiring patterns at Harvard Business School. 

The flag of academic freedom has been erroneously waved over the discussion of Summers’ now infamous speech. He has, as a citizen, the right to think and say anything he wants, and in his role as a professor his right to do so on the job should also be protected. But when he’s speaking as the president of a corporation which is sitting on a $22.6 billion pile of capital, larger than the gross domestic product of Costa Rica, he has the responsibility of an employer, not a professor. His intemperate off-the-cuff remarks should give his board of directors (called Overseers in Harvard-speak) cause for concern about how well he’s carrying out his management duties. Like Caesar’s wife, the president of Harvard Inc. should be above suspicion of discrimination, whether against Catholics or against women.  

—Becky O’Malley 

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A margarine commercial of yore featured the catch phrase “you can’t fool Mother Nature.” We can no longer remember why this was supposed to prompt viewers to buy the featured brand of margarine—perhaps it contained some butter—but the concept seemed true then, and it still does.  

Take squirrels, for example. Someone years ago gave us a very fancy bird feeder as a present. It features a handsome spherical cage of metal grillwork wrapped around a mesh cylinder which holds the birdseed. The device, called “The Nuttery,” comes in a box with illustrations and prose claiming that birds could get in, but squirrels, greedy little beggars that they are, would be foiled.  

We’ve just gotten around to putting it up, and it does indeed provide an excellent opportunity for nature study, though not the one the manufacturers intended. When we opened the box, we found a plastic envelope containing “The Nuttery Extra-Protection Brackets,” with an explanation that “for those of you who have persistent and pesky ‘super’ squirrels and raccoons, we are offering these Extra-Protection Brackets to deter them.” We put them on as directed to secure the lid—no measure was too much to ensure the safety of our birdseed. We hung the feeder from a wire on the branch outside the window by my desk. 

The first day it was up no birds visited. The squirrels, however, who have become quite numerous in a yard devoted mainly to free-range oak trees, found it right away. They jumped out on to the cylinder and hung from it at every angle, trying to figure out a way to get to the seed. Within two hours one of them had gotten his teeth on the edge of the lid and learned how to pry it up a few inches, Extra-Protection Brackets and all. Perhaps we’d made some mistake in putting it together, we thought.  

The manufacturer, in England, has a lovely website, explaining the concept in detail, showing even more specific installation tips, and repeating the claim that squirrels would be foiled. Ha! Wimpy British squirrels, perhaps, but not red-blooded Berkeley squirrels. 

By the second day, the lid, which was attached not only by the Extra-Protection Brackets but by a chain, was hanging off to the side, and a clever squirrel had gotten his head in the top and was gobbling seeds. Another one had mastered a technique for hanging upside down and shaking the cage until seeds fell out into his mouth. Still no birds.  

On day three, a couple of plain titmouses, little birds with cute tufts of feathers on their heads, had finally figured out how to get inside the cage to eat the seeds. The squirrels had detached the lid completely, chain, brackets and all, and had hurled it ignominiously to the ground. They were enjoying eating the seed they’d managed to shake out.  

Today, a week later, squirrels and birds (chickadees have joined the tits) are cheerfully co-existing, sharing the seed that’s left in the feeder. And the lesson Mother Nature is teaching us here? Well, there’s no such thing as total security. 

We took a short airplane trip a couple of weeks ago, after not having flown for almost a year. We were stuck on the freeway behind an accident, so we got to the airport very late and feared that we were going to miss our plane. We raced into the terminal, thinking that we’d surely be held up in the security line. Not to worry. People were being rushed through, without even having to take off their shoes as they did on our last flight. Our check-in procedure was perfunctory, with boarding passes printed on home computers and passed over a simple bar-code reader. We were, of course, exactly who we said we were, harmless middle-aged travelers, but if we hadn’t been, who would have known? 

Nevertheless, when we sent a friend off to the airport to go back to Martinique last night we made sure he left early, because we feared that his combination of dark skin and French accent would make him a target of special scrutiny. Harassing “suspicious-looking” travelers is the “Extra-Protection Bracket” of homeland security—a pointless measure intended to impress, but adding nothing to ensure real protection.  

And there are more extreme and very serious infringements of civil liberties which are just as ineffective. In New York, lawyer Lynne Stewart is facing 35 years in jail for a minor breach of court rules in defending an accused terrorist, an act which normally would result at most in sanctions from the Bar. In Los Angeles, four Iranian brothers are in jail because they were members of an Iranian exile organization opposed to the current regime in Iran, which is also opposed by Condoleezza Rice, among others.  

Neither of these cases poses any real threat to public safety, but they are being vigorously prosecuted by the thugs who have gotten control of the federal department of justice. At the same time, countless real danger zones like chemical manufacturing plants and railroad crossings continue to be exposed to potential terrorist assault, if anyone really cared. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, while the U.S. government’s attention is diverted in Iraq.  

All of this proves once again the vanity of much that humans foolishly think we can control. If we can’t outwit squirrels for more than a couple of days, why should we think we can fool human would-be terrorists for longer?  

—Becky O’Malley 

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