The City of Albany is removing homeless encampments on the Albany Landfill as part of a process that will bring the 31-acre site closer to becoming part of the Eastshore State Park. -more-
A decision last week by the Albany City Council to hold St. Mary’s College High School to a 10-year-old conditional use permit square-footage limit has left school representatives and at least one city councilmember trading charges of reneging on an agreement, as well as another councilmember’s charges that city staff encouraged St. Mary’s to break their deal with the city. -more-
Tuesday’s City Council meeting looks to be the latest battleground for pro- and anti-development forces as the council holds a public hearing on changes to a law that governs the future of Berkeley’s historic buildings. -more-
A marriage between two national media chains has apparently deprived the San Francisco Bay Guardian of one of its top advertisers. -more-
On July 28 the curtain is scheduled to rise once again at the Elmwood Theater, operator Greg King said Monday. -more-
UC Berkeley has temporarily gnawed off yet another hunk of city turf, moving the Bancroft Library collection to a downtown building while the campus library is retrofitted. -more-
The Berkeley Planning Commission will take up three major projects when it meets Wednesday night, leading off with the joint UC-city Downtown Area Plan (DAP) process. -more-
Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board is confronting yet another dispute over construction plans on La Vereda Trail. -more-
A joint school lunch and school-garden-to-school-table project of the Berkeley Unified School District and Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation has received the attention of national legislators and the country’s national museum. -more-
Berkeley has hired Claudette Ford as acting director of public works to replace Rene Cardinaux, who is retiring Aug. 5 after eight years with the city. -more-
The London attacks are the symptoms of an internal war among two Islamic trends, and may be a sign of growing desperation by one group. -more-
http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Workst -more-
It will be three years until the next Democratic convention, but Washington insiders not only expect Hillary Clinton to run for president, they believe that she will easily garner the nomination. According to veteran prognosticator Charlie Cook, Hillary is far ahead of the other contenders, both in terms of money raised and support among the party faithful. First, she has to win re-election to her New York Senate seat; if she wins that race handily in 2006, then her historic presidential nomination seems assured. Anticipating Hillary, conservatives have already launched a no-holds-barred assault on the former first lady. -more-
For years there has been a small leak in the ceiling between the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs dining room at our house. As leaks tend to do, it has grown progressively worse with time. The first major seepage was discovered after a charming young Russian guest decided to hand wash clothes in the bathroom sink. She forgot to turn off the hot water spigot before leaving the house. A crack in the downstairs ceiling plaster developed and water dripped onto the dining room table. Fortunately, no one was sitting there at the time, and after some investigation and discussion it was decided that as long as no one left the water running, or as long as there were no Russians in the house, we didn’t really have a major plumbing problem, we just had a big hole in the ceiling. -more-
Your story “Board Vetoes Jefferson School Name Change” (July 8) was misleading. I was never “torn” about the name change. I objected to labeling opponents of the name change as racist, and opposed arguments that the nasty nature of the campaign somehow justified ignoring the result of the vote. I said what the School Board taught about the value of democracy was more important than any school name. I reminded the School Board how disgusted we were when the Supreme Court interfered with the 2000 election. I implored boardmembers to prove that in Berkeley one’s vote still counted, and concluded that admiration for Jefferson required respecting the democratic process he so loved by honoring the vote to re-name the school. -more-
While some of our better lawmakers are working hard to improve our schools, keep fire stations open, fix our roads, and bring jobs to our beloved city of Berkeley, a chosen few are once again wasting their time, and our dollars, writing resolutions on na tional and international issues. -more-
The new fiscal year is a good time to look back on the last two and a half years and reflect on where we are in Berkeley and on what we have accomplished together. -more-
Last week the City of Albany installed three enormous green dumpsters on the upper road leading to the Albany Bulb and began an operation the purpose of which we’re being told is to clean out campsites of the homeless, some of which have been reoccupied in recent months. -more-
From its origins about 400 years ago, opera has been conceived as a synaesthetic experience. The voices, the lyrics, the orchestration, stylized acting, costumes, sets and lighting are meant to add up to a total effect on all the senses of the audience. This is what has given credence to the frequent claims that opera is the greatest of arts—because it combines them all in an aesthetic apotheosis. -more-
You think of fossil-hunting as something that takes place in faraway barren places: the Flaming Cliffs of the Gobi Desert, the windy wastes of Patagonia, the Dakota badlands. But not downtown Berkeley. That was the source of Specimen 78858 in the UC Museum of Palaeontology’s collection, though, a fossil I finally got to meet at last year’s Cal Day. It’s a massive thighbone, the femur of an extinct ground sloth that inhabited these parts in the Pleistocene Era, tens of thousands of years ago, and it turned up when the Berkeley BART station was being excavated. -more-
The Shattuck Hotel, once one of the toniest hotels in Northern California, is headed for a new era of grandeur, thanks to the partnership of owner Roy Nee with Starwood Hotels—considered by many the world’s leading hotelier. -more-
In what the University of California is calling “the most severe and comprehensive disciplinary action that UC Berkeley has taken against a fraternity in several years,” the fraternity accused in last spring’s pellet gun hazing attack on a Berkeley street will be disbanded and forced to reorganize. -more-
Seeking to restore stability to Alameda County’s much criticized public hospital system, hospital trustees are negotiating with Dr. Samuel Ross of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Tex., to become the system’s next CEO. -more-
State regulators are threatening to strip E-Z Stop Deli, the liquor outlet nearest to Berkeley High, of its alcohol license after police cited it for selling beer to minors for the third time since last March. -more-
Visitors to Edwina Perez’s West Berkeley apartment are greeted by a sign that reads, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” -more-
The latest incarnation of Ozzie’s, the beloved soda fountain at the southwest corner of the College Avenue and Russell Street intersection in the Elmwood, has expired. -more-
July 4 Calm, But Several Other Fires Keep City Firefighters Busy -more-
An apparent miscommunication has Fire Chief Debra Pryor in hot water with Berkeley hills residents. -more-
Berkeley police revealed Tuesday that they’d arrested 56-year-old Berkeley resident Paul Mitchell four days earlier in connection with the 1997 rape of a 39-year-old Berkeley resident. -more-
Long-time Berkeley resident Herta Bregoff died peacefully in her home on June 26. She was born Herta Maas in 1922 in Karlsruhe, Baden Province, Germany. -more-
http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Works -more-
The Draft Ron Dellums Movement that is currently sprouting wings and flying all over town has generated the most excitement in an Oakland mayoral race since, well, let’s see...since Jerry Brown announced his plans to run some eight years ago. -more-
In my June 28 commentary entitled “Historical Preservation: It Takes A Community,” I wrote that proposed changes to the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO), due to come before the City Council on July 12, would (among other problems) remove state prot ections that encourage developers to work with the community. The state protections to which I referred are those provided by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). -more-
Suicide bombers? Anarchists? That’s not my impression. It’s hard to believe that Alan Tobey (Commentary, July 1) and I both attended the same Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) meeting on the evening of June 27. -more-
The Mexican comic strip character “el negrito” Memín Pinguín has been put on a series of postage stamps. The character is bug eyed, fat lipped, has enormous ears and looks like a black rubber mask compared with the white people in the cartoon, who are drawn with the realistic precision of the old “Prince Valiant” strip. Compared to the whites in the strip, Penguin is Bugs Buggy in the movie Roger Rabbit. -more-
One of the living treasures of Berkeley is the Kala Art Institute. Now that this facility is over 30 years old, an exhibition of about 80 works by 71 artists can be seen at the Artists Gallery of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at Fort Mason acros s the bay. The exhibition stresses works on paper, created in a very wide range of processes, from woodcut and etching to digital photography, and includes sculpture, books and video works. It presents an overview of some of Kala’s multifarious activities. -more-
The Domestic Crusaders, a new play by Bay Area-native Wajahat Ali about the reactions of three generations of a Pakistani-American family in the wake of 9/11, will be staged for three performances only, July 15 and 16, at the Thrust Stage of Berkeley Repertory Theater. -more-
The pursuit of fitness in nature continues, as does the Trails Challenge. This month we shift from the redwoods of the East Bay hills to the East Bay shore, exploring Point Isabel and Point Pinole. -more-
First, the breaking news: The Berkeley Daily Planet has captured a flock of prizes in the statewide Better Newspapers Contest sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. At the awards luncheon on Saturday we learned that we’d won two first prizes, for editorial pages overall and for an editorial cartoon by Justin DeFreitas, second prize for a spot news photo by Jakob Schiller, and honorable mentions (top 10 percent of entries in Northern California, statewide finalists) for local spot news (Matthew Artz), writing (Richard Brenneman) and for another DeFreitas cartoon. Please excuse us if we’re mighty proud of this record, especially since we’ve only been around for two years. -more-
Mr. Tobey, who appears again today to our right, seems not to know that editors, not writers, always write the headlines. Headlines in this and most papers will always be the choice of the editor—we’re happy to clarify that for him. There’s a simple practical reason for this: headlines have to be adjusted to fit into space available. Also, we do try to write headlines to catch readers’ eyes, and “Landmarks Meeting of June 27th” just isn’t a very catchy title. And if Mr. Tobey did predict that a headline writer might combine the epithets “anarchist” and “suicide bomber” into the concept of “terrorist” in a headline, he should have used less, shall we say, “inflammatory” language in the first place. -more-
