Berkeley said goodbye to Meleia Willis-Starbuck Friday. 

Hundreds of people lined the bleachers at Berkeley High’s Donahue Gym at the memorial for the 19-year-old Dartmouth College student murdered in the early hours of July 17. Before the memorial got underway, Meleia’s mother, Kimberly Willis-Starbuck, received hugs from every direction she turned. 

“All these wonderful people I haven’t seen in so long,” she said during one embrace. 

When she addressed the audience more than three hours later, Willis-Starbuck described her initial reaction to hearing of her daughter’s death. 

“I dropped the phone and proceeded to run around our home screaming ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do, how am I going to live?’” 

“I knew I had to be here,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed hearing stories about Meleia and getting hugs from all of you.” 

Police say Meleia Willis-Starbuck was murdered by Christopher Hollis, a former classmate she described as being like a brother to her. Hollis remains at large. Speculation is that Willis-Starbuck called Hollis for help as she and friends were arguing with a group of men outside her College Avenue apartment. The men reportedly tried to flirt with the girls and when rebuffed, insulted them. 

There was no mention of Hollis at Friday’s memorial, or of Christopher Wilson, another friend of Willis-Starbuck’s who police say drove Hollis to the murder scene. Several speakers called for stricter gun control laws. Willis-Starbuck’s 10-year-old half-brother Zachary said, “I think we should have a gun-free future.” 

There were several lighter moments during the service, including a recording of a young Willis-Starbuck singing “Jingle Bells.” Tears were shed throughout the afternoon, especially in the front two rows where Willis-Starbuck’s closest friends from Berkeley High sat. 

Sean Erick, a high school friend of Willis-Starbuck’s, broke down as he played a tribute to her on his trumpet. Several friends cried out, “It’s OK, we love you.” 

While Oakland recording artist Goapele sang “Closer,” a song Willis-Starbuck used as her cell phone greeting, her friends could not contain their grief. Anthony Washington, a former Berkeley high classmate of Willis-Starbuck, collapsed to the hardwood floor. Other friends consoled Washington and a woman fanned him with a copy of the memorial program. 

Danielle Youngblood, one of the four friends who were with Meleia when she was shot told the audience, “I just want you to know she left feeling loved. We were holding her hand telling her we loved her.” 

Bill Pratt, one of Willis-Starbuck’s teachers at Berkeley High, said she “didn’t participate in classroom discussions, she ignited them. She wasn’t always an easy person to deal with, but few of the beautiful and original people are.” 

Willis-Starbuck, who was attending Dartmouth College on full scholarship, has been remembered as a fighter against inequality. But several friends Friday said she was also bit of a glamour girl. 

Mercedes Hong, who is due to give birth to a girl in the next two weeks, joked in an open letter addressed to Willis-Starbuck, “I imagined you taking her for her first manicure, pedicure, teaching her about clothes, make-up and Tiffany’s.” 

Mayor Tom Bates and City Manager Phil Kamlarz represented the city at the memorial. Kamlarz, who worked with Kimberly Willis-Starbuck for several years, recalled Willis-Starbuck dropping by the office at one point while she was trying to convince her mother she could tour Europe on $200. She got to go, Kamlarz said, but her mother “was writing checks for the rest of the summer.” 

Twenty of Willis-Starbuck’s friends from Dartmouth were at the memorial and told the audience how highly she thought of her hometown. 

“You finally got me to the ‘best place’ in the world,” said Jonathan Lesesne, addressing Meleia. “This was truly her home.” 

Lesesne, who is from Atlanta, where the Willis-Starbucks now reside, said the family home was the only one he had visited in the South that had three different types of pita bread. 

“She taught me what an empanada is,” he said. 

Again addressing Meleia, Lesesne said, “You were our stubborn, free-spirit friend who is now our stubborn guardian angel.” 

~

A deal is in place to sell the illegal West Berkeley warehouse where several long-time residents have refused to leave their homes, owner Lawrence White said Friday. 

White would not disclose the buyer or the sale price for the East Bay Drayage at Addison and Third streets. He said the new owner would build housing on the 40,000-square-foot site, but didn’t know if the new units would be condominiums or apartments. 

White also would not comment on whether the deal is contingent on his successfully evicting the 11 tenants still living in the building. 

Claudia Viera, a tenant, said several of the remaining residents planned to fight eviction proceedings, scheduled to begin this fall.  

The tentative deal appears to end chances that White will grant the wishes of his tenants and sell the property to the Northern California Land Trust. The land trust had pledged to bring the building up to code and give residents a chance to buy their units. 

Land Trust Executive Director Ian Winters had said his group offered White $2.5 million for the property, a claim White rejected Friday. 

“They never made a serious offer,” he said. 

White said he would consider requiring the new owner to give some of the remaining tenants first rights to units in the new building set aside under Berkeley law for affordable housing. 

White had been asking $2.7 million for the property which he purchased in 1997 for $1.08 million. 

The refusal of tenants, many of whom lived in the warehouse for a decade, to leave their homes has drawn attention to the loss of affordable live-work artist space in Berkeley as real estate prices continue to rise. 

“The key thing is a whole bunch of affordable housing is about to get flushed down the toilet,” said Jeffrey Carter, the tenants' legal advisor. He said he doubted that any units in a new development would be set aside for former tenants. 

Earlier this year, White had a deal to sell the property to Developer Ali Kashani for $2.05 million. Then a fire inspection uncovered more than 200 code violations. White has been fined over $200,000 by the city since April 15 for failing to evacuate residential tenants from the building. He said he plans to contest the fines. 

Deputy Fire Chief David Orth said the city was in the process of filing a lien on the property to collect fines in the case of a sale.  

o

Six months into its tenure, the newly constituted Peralta Community Colleges Board of Trustees has gotten mixed reviews. 

Veteran board observer Michael Mills said the board is “acquitting itself quite respectfully,” but veteran Board Member Linda Handy said that the group “hasn’t yet found its balance.” 

Three and a half years ago, the League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany, and Emeryville released a study in which it severely criticized the Peralta trustees. 

The group wrote, in part, “the trustees’ money management style ... remains a source of sharp criticism from the press and the faculty.” 

The study referred to various newspaper stories in the spring of 2001 which highlighted foreign board trips to places such as China and South Africa in search of increased enrollment of foreign students. 

“The trustees are also being questioned about their oversight of contracts between the district and external suppliers,” the league wrote. “In the spring of 2001, for example, a $4 million no-bid contract with a computer installation firm came before the board with very skimpy notice and no hard numbers in the contract. Under criticism, the board rolled over an existing contract with the firm for a much smaller sum, but their casual attitude about spelling out contract limits continues.” 

Four of the board’s seven members chose not to run for re-election last year, leading to their replacement by trustees Nicky Gonzalez Yuen, Bill Withrow, Marcie Hodge, and Cy Gulassa. Their first six months has been marked by increasing board oversight over the district’s fiscal matters, sometimes leading to sharp clashes between board members and staff as well as between board members themselves. 

To Mills, president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers (PFT), that oversight is a good thing. 

“The previous board was too accepting of what the district administration presented to them,” Mills said in a telephone interview. “It made me wonder what their role was. So last December, when the new board took office, the PFT asked for three things from them. We wanted them to demand more information from the district first, before making decisions. We wanted them to ask questions and not be passive. And we wanted them to avoid any conflicts of interest. On those accounts, they’ve done a good job. From a PFT perspective, I’m pleased. We’ve seen a significant improvement in board conduct.” 

Board Vice President Linda Handy was not on the Peralta Trustee Board during the period of the critical League of Woman Voters’ study and was elected in part because of community fiscal concerns about former Peralta Chancellor Ronald Temple. 

During her 2003 campaign, Handy wrote: “This is a question about who is the boss and I do not believe that the board as a whole has exercised its appropriate authority in managing the chancellor’s performance.” 

For her part, Handy said she is not yet convinced that the new board has reached its oversight potential over the regime of Chancellor Elihu Harris, who replaced Temple shortly after Handy was elected to the board. 

“The board has shown a lot of interest in strategic planning and in the raising of industry standards within the district, and that has made me happy,” Handy said. “Everyone wins with that. But we haven’t yet been able to maximize the benefit of the talents of the new members. If we ever can, it will be a tremendous asset to the district.” 

She praised newcomer Withrow for his “wealth of experience in organizational development and in raising the bar of professionalism,” and Gulassa and Gonzalez Yuen for their “background in education that allows them to bring a good awareness of the needs of a community college district.” 

But she said that Gulassa and Gonzalez Yuen, both of whom are community college professors, “are still learning how to separate their roles as a staff member from their roles as trustees. It’s a different responsibility entirely. So as a board, we haven’t yet found a balance between doing our jobs as trustees while not interfering with the tasks of the people we’re overseeing. I think, sometimes, we’re all over the place.” 

Handy and Gonzalez Yuen have generated the most clashes between Peralta trustees. The two sit next to each other at meetings, and often continue sometimes-animated discussions on their own, mostly over fiscal oversight issues. 

Gonzalez Yuen’s 2004 campaign platform sounded similar to the one that Handy ran on the year before. One of Gonzalez Yuen’s campaign goals was “openness and accountability,” which he described as “creating the administrative and fiscal conditions for the district to focus on its primary mission of providing a great education to students; and creating an open and inclusive process of governance, especially in the areas of budget and finance.” 

Even before the four new board members took office in mid-December, the controversy that dominated the new board for the next six months was already being dropped in its lap by the outgoing board. In its final meeting, the outgoing board approved contract negotiations with Oakland developer Alan Dones to put together a development plan for Laney College and Peralta administration lands. 

Handy was a supporter of the proposed contract, while Gonzalez Yuen was one of its most vocal critics on the board. 

The proposed contract generated much heat, both from the public at trustee board meetings and in the press, and was eventually dropped altogether last May when Dones voluntarily withdrew his proposal. 

But while the Dones contract was getting the most press attention, the board has been quietly working to put the district’s oversight house in order. 

“The style of decisions in the board in the past has been rather abrupt and often without very careful inclusion of all the interested parties in the process,” newcomer Cy Gulassa told the Daily Planet last January. “We have to clarify the board procedures so we don’t have surprises and we don’t invite hasty decisions.” 

Last January, after hearing repeated requests for more money for the $65 million Vista College construction project, trustees passed a new policy mandating increased board oversight for cost overrun requests, requiring that except in emergency circumstances, the requests come to the board before the money is spent. 

Trustees now require that the district’s chief financial officer and its general counsel both sign off on construction requests meeting certain criteria, ending the practice in which those requests passed solely through the director of general services. And late last month, trustees authorized an independent assessment of the district’s information technology operations, effectively saying that it was difficult for the district’s staff to assess itself.  

While Handy gives some of the credit for the changes to the newly-elected board members, she doesn’t give all of it. 

“There is a constant flow of issues that are ongoing, and the new board has simply become a part of that,” Handy said. “As [Chancellor] Elihu [Harris] says, there’s no stop and start to district business. So there’s no ‘this year’s board’ for me. It’s just the board.”›

The young man who police say shot and killed Meleia Willis-Starbuck telephoned the former Berkeley High boys’ basketball coach over the weekend as he continued to hide from the law. 

Vincent Trahan, now the owner of Doggie High, a restaurant just across the street from Berkeley High, said he talked to Christopher Hollis over the weekend. 

Trahan said the 21-year-old graduate of Berkeley Alternative School seemed “scared” but refused to go into details about their conversation. 

He said Hollis didn’t tell him where he was hiding, and added “I didn’t want to know. I’m praying that he calls me or someone else he trusts to accompany him to the authorities.”  

Hollis never played on the basketball team, but made friends with Trahan at his restaurant, Trahan said. 

Christopher Wilson, who is also facing a murder charge in the July 17 death of Meleia Willis-Starbuck, was scheduled to be arraigned on Friday afternoon in Superior Court in Oakland, but formal arraignment was put off until Wednesday.  

Wilson is alleged to have driven the car in which Hollis was riding. 

Wilson and his attorney, Elizabeth Grossman of Berkeley, appeared Friday in a courtroom that was packed with spectators, many of them Wilson’s relatives. 

Several of them left the abbreviated hearing in tears, holding each other for comfort, walking through a barrage of television cameras and news reporters there to cover the first formal court appearance in this high-profile case. 

Grossman said that Wilson is being held without bail on a murder charge, and that on Wednesday she will ask for setting of what she called “a reasonable bail so that he can be home to help fight against these charges.” 

Grossman told reporters that she did not believe that a charge of murder “will be sustained. My client had no idea that any violence was intended or that Mr. Hollis had a gun in his possession.”

The deal that ended the city’s lawsuit against the UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan has survived yet another challenge. 

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Bonnie Lewman Sabraw denied a motion filed by Berkeley resident Peter Mutnick calling for an inquiry into his allegations that the settlement should be canceled because it was obtained by “extrinsic fraud.” 

Sabraw’s decision, handed down late Thursday, ruled that Mutnick’s motion failed on two grounds. 

First, she wrote, Mutnick had filed the wrong motion, noting that the court “does not have the jurisdiction to make such an inquiry, even at the request of a non-party, brought inherent to the court’s power to vacate a judgment obtained through intrinsic fraud ... however no such motion to vacate was made in this instance, and so the Motion for Inquiry is” denied. 

Even had Mutnick filed the proper motion, Sabraw wrote, she would have denied it because Mutnick had not shown that extrinsic fraud was involved in forging the pact. 

Declaring his intent to contest the ruling before the First Division of the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco, Mutnick said Monday, “The court was wrong in its application of the law on all of the grounds upon which it based its ruling. 

“The error of the court was not harmless, but caused it to come to a conclusion that was diametrically opposite to the conclusion that must be drawn from the undisputed evidence that was presented, when the proper law is properly applied. 

“Therefore, the court abused its discretion in a most obvious and hideous manner.” 

The Berkeley activist said he plans to file an appeal on Aug. 14., after he receives copies of documents and the court transcripts of Wednesday’s hearing. 

The decision granted Mutnick one small victory from the judge, a denial of the city attorney’s motion to strike City Councilmember Dona Spring’s declaration in support of Mutnick’s motion. 

Deputy City Attorney Zach Cowan represented the city during the hearing. Hope A. Schmeltzer of the University of California’s Office of the General Campus argued on behalf of the UC Regents. 

Mutnick had argued that the city, by keeping the accord secret until the City Council voted its approval, had deprived him and other citizens of the right to examine and comment on the deal until the May 24 council vote. 

That secrecy, he argued, violated the Brown Act, the state law governing the conduct of public officials. 

Spring, who has grown increasingly critical of city staff, filed a declaration supporting Mutnick’s claims and declaring that the accord violates both state law and the city charter, and makes an illegal end run around the California Environmental Quality Act by granting UC the power to veto adverse findings in environmental impact studies as well as potential mitigations. 

Judge Sabraw ruled that Mutnick could have made a more timely intervention while the city’s suit against the university was still pending, and she said there was no evidence his inaction was caused by fraudulent actions by the city or the university.›

A panel of citizens, government officials and community activists appointed to advise the state on toxic waste cleanups in south Richmond will hold its second session Thursday. 

The Community Advisory Group (CAG) named to advise the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) on the ongoing cleanup of the Campus Bay project site greatly increased its role during its first meeting on June 30. 

Panelists at the first meeting voted to expand their purview to include other sites, starting with UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station and several other contaminated or potentially contaminated sites around, north and west of the Interstate 580/Bayview Avenue interchange in south Richmond. 

The CAG has no formal power over the cleanup efforts at the sites, but the various agencies involved, including the state Department of Health Services, have promised to open their files to the group. 

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Bermuda Room at the Richmond Convention Center, 493 Civic Center Drive, located near the intersection of Nevin and 25th Streets. ›

The fate of two landmark structures located just east of Telegraph Avenue rests in the hands of three Berkeley developers, two of them planning major developments and the third planning a new home for the vintage dwellings. 

Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board get their first look at plans for one of the houses Thursday—the Ellen Blood House, a two-story 1891 Queen Anne Victorian now at 2526 Durant Ave. 

Ruegg & Ellsworth, a Berkeley development firm which hopes to build the Durant Apartments Project at the site of the Blood House, has filed applications for demolition of the Blood House and construction of their apartment complex. 

The demolition permit doesn’t mean the venerable structure is headed for the chopping block. Instead, if all goes as planned, developer John Gordon will relocate the structure to a pair of lots he owns at the southwest corner of the Dwight Way/Regent Street intersection. 

Ruegg & Ellis project manager Brendan Heafey said that the firm has an agreement to sell the building to Gordon for $1. 

The move won’t include an addition at the southwestern part of the building, Heafey said. An earlier measurement of the home and the relocation site by a Daily Planet reporter revealed the house wouldn’t fit with the addition. 

The Durant Street home was designated a structure of merit by the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission in September 1999, over the objections of Ruegg & Ellsworth, whose appeal to the City Council failed a month later. 

The developer’s plans for the vacated si te call for construction of a 44-apartment mixed-use building with two retail store fronts and 17 stacked parking spaces.  

Gordon’s plans for his property also include the move of a second landmark, the John Woolley House at 2509 Haste St., one of Berkel ey’s oldest homes, built in 1876. 

If all goes as planned for both homes will be moved to Gordon’s lot at the southwest corner of Regent Street and Dwight Way, where they will be refurbished. 

The Woolley House is currently owned by UC Berkeley, and devel oper Ken Sarachan, owner of Rasputin Music and Blondie’s Pizza, is in negotiations with the university to buy the property to add to land he already owns at the northeast corner of the Haste Street/Telegraph Avenue intersection to build a mixed use projec t of his own. 

Sarachan filed plans last September to build a structure that starts at two stories at the Telegraph Avenue end of the property, rising to five floors at the property’s eastern end. As planned, it would include three ground-floor commercial spaces, a second-floor restaurant with a roof garden and 20 one-bedroom apartments. 

For decades, Sarachan’s property housed the Berkeley Inn, a single room occupancy hotel that catered to low income tenants. A 1986 fire destroyed 77 of the units and a s econd fire in 1990 finished what the first blaze had started. 

A subsequent plan to have Resources for Community Development—the same non-profit building the housing component of the David Brower Center complex—build a 39-unit apartment building on the si te failed, and when that plan died, Sarachan bought the property in 1994. 

Sarachan was forced to file development plans last September or risk paying $800,000 in liens against the property. 

Heafey said both projects are dependent on city approval of the structural moves to Gordon’s property. 

Because both structures are designated as historic landmarks, the city’s Landmark’s Preservation Commission will also have its own say in the moves. Heafey said Gordon will be presenting his plan to the commission. 

“We hope to have the approvals to move the houses between six months and a year,” Heafey said. 

›g

A group of neighbors that unsuccessfully fought an affordable housing project all the way to the state appeals court learned Wednesday that Berkeley would have to pay for part of their legal costs. 

The First District Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Marie Bowman and Neighbors for Sensible Development qualified for $18,000 in attorneys fees from the city. 

The ruling upholds a superior court judgment that Berkeley violated the neighbors’ due process rights when the City Council first approved Affordable Housing Associates’ Outback Senior Homes project at 2517 Sacramento St. 

Berkeley had appealed the ruling. 

The developer and opponents had been in mediation at the time the council first approved the project in 2002. Assuming that no action would be taken on the project during mediation, opponents were not in council chambers to voice their opposition when the council approved it. 

After the initial ruling in favor or Bowman, the council subsequently reapproved the project. Bowman sued again arguing that the development was too big and would cause traffic congestion and environmental hazards. Last year the appeals court ruled in favor of the city affirming the legality of 40 units of affordable senior housing. 

›

With the annual August recess approaching, the city’s land use panels will be voting this week on several major hot button planning issues and development projects. 

When it meets Wednesday, the Planning Commission will ponder condominiums, the proposed new Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley, the Gilman Street Playing Fields and the Downtown Area Plan mandated in the settlement of the city’s lawsuit against UC Berkeley. 

The meeting, which begins at 7:30 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., features: 

• action on the Housing Department’s proposed revision to the city’s condominium ordinance; 

• a scoping session to gather the commission’s comments for the Environmental Impact Report on the proposal to build a new Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley, plus a decision on scheduling the commission’s hearing on the General Plan and rezoning changes needed to build the project; 

• a hearing on Waterfront Plan and zoning ordinance changes needed to build the Gilman Street Playing Fields, a cooperative effort of the East Bay Regional Parks District and East Bay cities led by Berkeley; 

• A hearing on adoption of a condominium tract map for a planned 30-unit condominium project at 2025 Channing Way. 

• A discussion of the anticipated planning process and timeline for the Downtown Area Plan agreed on by the city and UC Berkeley as part of the settlement of the city’s lawsuit against the University’s Long Range Development Plan. 

The Zoning Adjustments Board, which meets Thursday, faces its own burgeoning agenda, which includes: 

• Modification of the use permit for the David Brower Center. If all goes well, construction could begin next summer. 

• An update on plans to move the historic Blood House at 2526 Durant Ave. to make way for a 44-unit, five-story mixed use apartment complex on the site. 

That meeting gets underway at the unusual hour of 6 p.m. in City Council Chambers in Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The opening one-hour session begins with an appeal by four neighbors of ZAB’s decision to allow construction of a 608-square-foot addition to a home at 2750 Buena Vista Way and the Blood House update.  

The use-permit modification for the Brower Center is logged as an item for the consent calendar. 

The regular meeting begins when the special session ends and features hearings on the installation of four ATM machines in the Telegraph Avenue area, with one each at 2200 and 2519 Durant Ave. and 1823 and 1879 Euclid Ave. 

Also on the agenda is a hearing on plans to demolish a single family home at 1532 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and replace it with a two-story duplex and a single story cottage. 

Another single-family home demolition proposal will also be heard which would result in the building of a two-story, 2846-square-foot home on a lot at 1638 Carleton St. following the demolition of the 1,158-square-foot one-story home now on the lot. 

Also scheduled are hearings on plans to add a second story addition to a home at 1323 Kains Ave., a permit application to open a quick service restaurant with outdoor seating at 81 Shattuck Square and a permit application to transform an existing commercially zoned building at 1827 Fifth St. into a combined light manufacturing and commercial use.›

The article “Arsenal Found in Adeline St. Apartment” in the July 22 issue incorrectly reported that Black & White Liquor Store owner Sucha Singh Banger also owned Grove Market at 2948 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

While Banger owns both buildings, his tenant, Grove Market, is owned by Nasser Egbal. 

“We have worked hard to maintain a good relationship with our community, and we are not a problem store” as was reported in the story, said Egbal’s son, Muhammud Egbal.›

One of Oaxaca, Mexico’s two major newspapers suffered a violent attack by a group of union enforcers in what some say is a part of the state government’s attempt to shut the paper down.  

Just after 8 p.m. on July 18, about 100 members of a union known as the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Laborers (CROC) stormed the Noticias newspaper’s building and dragged out 31 employees who had been in the building since June 17, when the same group barricaded them in.  

The conflict first erupted in June when David Aguilar—president of the CROC union and a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)—claimed he was representing the newspaper’s workers and initiated a strike. His group surrounded the building June 17 and trapped 31 of the paper’s employees.  

Noticias staff said none of the newspaper’s 102 unionized employees were involved in the union raid. They have denied any affiliation with the group and say they do not support what CROC has done.  

But Aguilar told the New York Times that 56 Noticias employees had joined his union’s strike, although he would not identify any of them. “They are afraid,” he said. “They have been threatened.”  

CROC was created in 1952 by the PRI, which, after 71 years of reign, was ousted by President Fox’s party in 2000. In Oaxaca, where the state government is still dominated by the PRI, the party retains its presence and some unions are still used by politicians. Historically, the CROC has only supported candidates who belong to the PRI, and CROC has been used by the PRI as a forceful intimidator in the past. The union has about half a million members at the national level, though membership numbers vary.  

“What happened on Monday was savagery,” Raciel Martinez, a veteran reporter who has been with Noticias for 13 years, said by phone. “They went in violently, and not only did they hurt our colleagues, they stole their things and destroyed part of the paper’s operating system. But despite it all, we have continued and will continue to publish the newspaper. A lot of people have supported us.”  

Martinez was not trapped inside when the paper was first taken over in June and has been working with other employees to ensure Noticias’ ongoing publication.  

According to Martinez, who is from Oaxaca, the mob arrived Monday with police cars and local police who were dressed in civilian clothes. Soon after the attack, state police arrived to “see what was happening.”  

Oaxaca’s state government—which is composed mostly of PRI party members—has never hidden its disdain for Noticias, one of the only large, independent media organizations in the state and a longtime government watchdog. The PRI’s old guard—known as the “dinosaurs” in Mexico—is notorious for its intolerance of any opposition and using any means necessary to eliminate it.  

“Now the state government says that we’re committing a state offense because the paper is on strike. But none of the Noticias employees belong to the group of supposed strikers,” said Martinez. “The incongruent part of all this is that the Council of Reconciliation and Arbitration, which is supposed to reconcile disputing parties, has declared that the strike is legal.”  

Employees of the newspaper haven’t been the only victims in the ordeal. Newspaper vendors have also been attacked. Last week the vendors union in Oaxaca denounced members who continue to sell the newspaper. “We have an actual recording from the governor [Ulises Ruiz], who declared during his electoral campaign that Noticias would not survive six months while he was in office,” Martinez said. But despite the pressure, many advertisers continue to buy ads in the paper, and this has allowed Noticias to keep publishing, Martinez said.  

The newspaper is 29 years old and prints 15,000 copies daily. Numerous international organizations—including Amnesty International, the Inter-American Press Association, and Journalists Without Borders—have expressed concern and outrage over the situation in Oaxaca.  

“This attack is a desperate attempt by the government, which is irate because we continue to publish and because it is now being scorned by the national and international community,” Martinez said. “Gov. Ulises Ruiz has five years and four months left to complete the threat he made to finish us off. But we have an entire lifetime to continue to do what we believe is right.”  

Eduardo Stanley hosts the bilingual “Nuestro Foro” weekly radio program on KFCF in Fresno.›

http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Workµ

GROVE MARKET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My name is Muhammad Elbgal and I am the son of Mr. Nasser Elbgal who owns Grove Market at 2948 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. I am writing to ask that your newspaper please make a correction in the next edition on two accounts.  

First in your article entitled “Arsenal Found in Adeline St. Apartment” you mention that the owner of Black and White Liquor store is also the owner of Grove Market. This is wrong: Mr. Banger (owner of Black and White) does not own Grove Market; he owns the building in which Grove Market is located. We at Grove Market do not deserve to be affiliated with what happened at the Black and White Liquor store, so please let your readers know that your paper has made a mistake.  

Secondly you quote former City Council candidate Laura Menard as saying that neighborhood activists have been trying to close Grove Market and that we are a problem store. This is also not the case. We have worked hard to maintain a good relationship with our community and we are not a problem store, as Ms. Menard has said.  

Also we are not located in North Berkeley; we are located in South Berkeley. So if Ms. Menard has made a mistake we ask that you inform her of this. We have had nothing but support from our neighbors and customers and it is wrong to say that we are a problem store if there is no evidence to back up that claim.  

Thank you for your time and we are hoping to see some action taken on this matter. 

Muhammad Elbgal 

• 

LEAVE GROVE OUT OF IT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to put in a good word for the Grove Market. I don’t think they have anything to do with what happened to the other store. And the bust of guns and drugs may not have anything to do with the store. 

Grove is two blocks away, and shouldn’t be associated with what happened in that apartment. The people who run Grove Market are just trying to make a living, and are a service to this community. I like going there more than having to hassle with Berkeley Bowl, which is expensive (I go to Canned Foods, much more economical) and is also a human beehive, though they make some good burritos. 

Seriously, I don’t think Grove Market should be threatened like that by “neighborhood activists” because of something that happened two blocks away and that had nothing to do with them.  

John Delmos 

• 

MARITAL STATUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My husband and I don’t always agree on political matters. 

While Ms. Taubenfeld is certainly entitled to her own opinion, I think it would have been ethical to point out when she wrote defending Albany City Councilmember Robert Lieber that she is married to him.  

She has written two recent letters. If she writes on a topic such as homeless kittens, I see no problem. 

If she writes again defending her husband’s point of view, I respectfully request that the Daily Planet mention her marital status. 

Marsha Skinner 

Albany 

• 

KPFA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As one who has been associated with KPFA since its inception in 1949 as a member, supporter, volunteer programmer and producer, and member of the unpaid staff organization, I would like to make two observations about the station’s current state. 

It is not my experience that there has “always been a running battle between (paid) staff and the general manager.” I would invite listeners and reporters to ask the three general managers preceding the current one if they had problems with paid staff. Paid staff is hungry for a sensitive general manager, as the documented complaints against the current one would indicate. 

I would like those who speak of “entrenched paid staff” to consider what they are saying. They are talking about people whose career is radio, who have jobs at the station. Isn’t it better that we have a seasoned experienced staff that establishes continuity, that understands radio and is proud when they do exceptional work in it? I’d hate to go to a restaurant where the cook was changed every two months and the waiters were learning their job. 

I have utmost respect for the current paid staff at KPFA. I see them as serious, hard working professionals of integrity who produce outstanding radio under onerous conditions. 

Adam David Miller 

• 

LANEY COLLEGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Yipes. I had to read your front-page story on the Laney Africa trip (July 19, 2005) three times in an attempt to discern the controversy. After the first paragraph, it took 10 paragraphs (by my count), giving the history and rationale of Rehema Gueye’s actions, in order to get to the fact that money was allocated for only four Laney College students. Subsequently, there is one sentence in the article vaguely referencing Gueye’s fund-raising activities, and another sentence about “expressions of concern and skepticism from Laney College trustees and administrative staff members.” No details are given. The article then ends with a couple paragraphs about the presumed value of the trip. I’m glad that no one is likely to ask me what this front-page controversy is about because I would have no substantive information. 

Robert Gable 

• 

FATAL SHOOTING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Not to be missed in the tragic story of the fatal shooting of Meleia Willis-Starbuck is that though the victim was a Berkeley girl, her friend and alleged slayer is a Hayward youth. It is understandable why troubled youths from around the East Bay crash Berkeley High. No where else is there a school as supportive of angry culture. Berkeley’s resident’s pay a terrible price for the unique non-enforcement of residency in Berkeley schools. Until the school board decides to enforce residency requirements, the education gap and social problems will continue to mar our city. Meleia and others pay a steep price for this liberal policy. 

David Baggins 

• 

MISREPRESENTED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems as though the liberals in the Bay Area has shoved their in their mouth again. Like so many others, including UC Berkeley students with an agenda, Ms. Mellow (Letters, July 22) grossly misrepresented this crime as a call for action for a completely irrelevant cause. If she had inquired further into this tragedy, she would realize that this was no misogynist crime, as she portrayed it. Shame on her for exploiting a tragedy as a platform for her own views! I fully support the advancement of women, and in this context, it would have been more appropriate to have celebrated Meleia’s life and accomplishments—instead, Ms. Mello incorrectly repainted the scenario as a hate crime, when in reality, it was her friend who shot her.  

Kathy Tieu 

Berkeley 

EDITOR’S NOTE: The letters published in the July 22 edition were all written before it was revealed that the shooting suspect was a friend of the victim. 

• 

BIAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is appalling to see, once again, the Berkeley Daily Planet publish under the rubric of objective reporting that which is in reality a reflection of the paper’s profoundly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias. The reference here is to the so-called “hostile takeover” of the Peace and Justice Commission (July 22 edition) by what might reasonably be inferred from the piece to be a conspiracy of appointees to create a pro-Israeli stance on the commission. 

The hackneyed canard of Jewish conspiracy implied by Planet’s reportage is a standard invocation of age-old anti-Semitism and the Planet owes the Jewish community an apology for it.  

Because a majority of the Commission no longer believes Berkeley should be a national laughingstock by promulgating inane city decrees on international matters doesn’t make said commissioners components of a pro-Israeli cabal. In fact, you don’t have to be part of a Jewish conspiracy to believe that measures like the Rachael Corrie matter should not be part of a city commission’s function. 

Indeed, there are far more pressing local issues to which the commission should confine itself, for by addressing these it just might actually have an impact instead of wasting time with the pathetic international ideological posturings we have seen it exhibit so often in the past. 

One matter for the commission to consider would be the incessant violence of local minority communities which has led to the murder of the gifted Meleia Willis-Starbuck along with scores of other young residents of the East Bay. As usual, we see plenty of letters from both gun advocates saying it was not the fault of access to handguns that precipitated the violence and typical rejoinders from left-liberals which would have one believe that handgun availability is the root cause of murder in minority communities. Both arguments have merit and both are all too simplistic.  

Left-liberals eschew the responsibility factor exhibited by the paucity of parenting in the minority communities and then condemn realistic criticism by the likes of Bill Cosby when he urges the black community to start doing right by its own populace rather than always projecting the blame on guns, racism, poverty, etc. Until the question of individual responsibility is properly addressed by left-liberals, Republicans who advocate it will find continued support by a public too intelligent to succumb to the facile societal excuses of the left. 

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the ease of obtaining firearms which are used far more for criminality than self-defense has facilitated the unspeakable death toll among minority youth. Until the nation addresses this murderous tool regularly utilized by violent youth, the carnage will continue. 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

HALF-TRUTHS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My thanks to Mr. Doran who, in very few words, dramatically demonstrated the belittling attitude and lack of response to citizens’ questions and concerns displayed by BUSD during the discussions concerning the West Campus site. The Daily Planet would certainly be capable of responding to Mr. Doran’s sarcastic references to its decisions relating to publication of opinion and commentary, if a response were warranted. 

With respect to Mr. Doran’s gratuitous remarks about “half truths” and “ignorance,” I have the following response: As to ignorance, the point I made was precisely that West Campus neighbors feel that we are being kept ignorant of the school district’s processes, planning and funding. I did not detail the many hours I spent and the lengths I had to go to obtain basic documentation readily available once I was allowed to look at material that is not posted on the website and can only be viewed at the district’s office. I also didn’t point out the curious fact that to date, no one at the district has been able to locate the documents relating to the board’s voting to purchase the property at Sixth and Gilman, which should have included a description of the purpose for which the land was to be used. The response I received to my request to view these documents, mysteriously absent from the board’s minutes can only be characterized as a “run around.” 

As to “half truths,” had Mr. Doran taken the time to explain the other half of the statements he refers to as “half truths,” I’m sure the planet would have graciously printed however many words it took. And we would all have been the wiser. Instead, we now have a perfect example of the arrogant and frustrating conduct that impelled me to write to the Planet in the first place. 

Ruchama Burrell 

• 

UC DEAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your recent story on disclosure of the city’s nondisclosure agreement with UC ended: 

“In an effort to prevent controversy over future agreements, Mayor Bates and Councilmember Kriss Worthington introduced a proposal last month to require future confidentiality agreements dealing with major land use lawsuits to include provisions that allow for public review and comment before the council acts. 

“Last week, however, the mayor temporarily withdrew the proposal, according to his aide Cisco DeVries, because he was concerned that the City Council could not legally set a policy which would bind future councils.” 

I’m beginning to think Berkeleyites need a category in which to collect and remember such statements by city officials. It might be called “Can they be that stupid—or is it just that they think we are?” City councils, and above all those in the Bay Area, increasingly set policies increasing the transparency and inclusiveness of their processes. To that end, they bind themselves and future councils until and unless those future councils amend the policies through the regular legislative process. The policies are called sunshine ordinances. In light of recent events it’s hard to think of a community that needs one more. 

Terry Francke 

General Counsel 

Californians Aware 

Carmichael  

• 

SUPPORT THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If you’re reading this letter, odds are you share my view that the Berkeley Daily Planet is providing an invaluable service to the greater Berkeley community. Yet the powers that be at City Hall are trying to drive the Planet out of business. 

Because some of the Planet’s editorial and news content has been critical of these powers, they’ve retaliated by withdrawing city public notice and other advertising from our local newspaper. Instead, they’ve decided to place city ads in the East Bay Daily News, a paper owned by the Knight Ridder chain whose apparent sole purpose is to financially crush the Planet in order to replace it with their pseudo-local-newspaper. Unfortunately, there are those at City Hall equally eager to accomplish this egregious goal. 

Becky and Mike O’Malley, who edit and publish the Planet, are at an age when most people retire. Nonetheless, they have devoted enormous amounts of their own time, energy and money to create a local newspaper that’s by far the best I’ve read in my 38-plus years as a Berkeley resident. The O’Malley’s efforts have not gone unrecognized. And, most recently, the Planet was awarded a number of prizes by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. But rather than honoring the O’Malleys as Super-Citizens, the decision-makers at City Hall are hoping to bankrupt and silence them. 

We can stop the politically-motivated boycott of the Berkeley Daily Planet by City Hall. Please call, write and e-mail the mayor, councilmembers and the city manager to demand that city advertising be returned to the Planet. 

Contact information for city officials is available at Berkeley’s website, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us, or in the phone directory. 

Marty Schiffenbauer 

• 

TAXES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Fred Foldvary doesn’t get it. The “club” is American society. Taxes are the dues. It is true that sales taxes are quite regressive and probably should be replaced by an increased progressive income tax and luxury taxes on certain goods. And the poor should be protected from excessive property taxes as well. 

But the point remains: If we want the “benefits” of a thriving society, police and fire protection, an adequate educational system to give us better trained workers and professionals, a health care system that is not driving our society and our employers into bankruptcy, etc., we need to pay for it and taxes are the mechanism (the dues as it were). We should be discussing which taxes do the job most fairly and successfully, not how to avoid taxes altogether as Fred seems to think we ought to do. 

Mal Burnstein 

• 

ROSE-COLORED GLASSES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I, like most of you, mourn and am sick at the death of yet another young person to the careless use of guns. It is time for many to remove their rose-colored glasses. Berkeley High School is a school where the Black Panthers are idols. A school where “radical” politics encourages the “by any means necessary” approach to social change, where social justice can be twisted to the “politics of blame” rather than personal responsibility. 

At BHS there is a huge problem of teaching by indoctrination rather than critical thinking. A few years ago, the school board adopted a “controversial” speaker’s policy, which of course is not enforced. Last year in my son’s English class the “Unity Day” speaker was a youth advocate (your tax money hard at work) who filled the students’ heads with utter nonsense. He suggested black males are discriminated against for minor behavior problems at school. Suspended, they find themselves home alone and end up arrested for selling drugs on the corner. His tale further explained that society eventually put this drug dealer away for good using the three strikes law. I complained, and rather than address the misinformation, my son was moved to a different class. 

Last evening one of the students from this English class jumped our fence running from the cops. My son had to stop mowing the lawn, while the cops searched our yard and the block for two hours. The search could have been done in a few minutes with a canine unit. But the Berkeley Police Review Commission voted against that request last year, and Mayor Bates did not provide leadership to move Berkeley out of the tired 1960’s rhetoric. The importance of civil rights has been exchanged for the “politics of blame.” 

Read Meredith Maran’s book, Class Dismissed, supposedly an accurate portrayal of BHS. Absent is any realistic picture of the thug culture on campus, which at that time was scarier than down in the ‘hood. Read how the teachers took students out of class and marched on the police station demanding the release of a youth who had run from the police. This community still believes the war is against the cops, not against the thug culture. 

Last night, my son who graduated from the same program as the murder victim finally decided to not listen to gangster rap again. Other young adults are feeling the same. Please for the sake of the youth; remove your rose-colored glasses. 

Laura Menard 

• 

SIDESHOWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s most recent commentary (“Did L.A. Times Story Spark Brown’s Sideshow Law?” July 22) omitted some critical details about Oakland “sideshows.” For example, Mr. Allen-Taylor failed to mention that the same March 7 L.A. Times article reported that while the sideshow phenomenon began in Oakland about a decade ago as impromptu street parties featuring stunt driving, “about two years ago, it took an ominous turn, with crashes, beatings, fatal shootings, and a rave-like lunacy fueled by the psychedelic stimulant Ecstasy.”  

Mr. Allen-Taylor has consistently downplayed the violent—and all too often lethal—nature of sideshows in his opinion and news pieces. His most recent column failed to mention that since November 2004, there been have five homicides in which spectators were shot and killed during or near street races or sideshow events in Oakland. Moreover, spectators are often robbed, beaten, or sexually assaulted during sideshow events (San Francisco Chronicle, July 12).  

Finally, I urge Daily Planet readers to log on to www.yourcallradio.org and listen to an archived broadcast of a July 11 KALW radio call-in program, in which several Oakland residents vividly described the harmful impact that sideshows have had on their neighborhoods, such as not being able to leave their homes for fear of getting hurt. As one of the callers noted, it is preposterous for anyone to argue that legalized, regulated sideshows could ever be a viable alternative to the illegal kind, since it is the illegal nature of sideshows which makes them appealing to sideshow drivers and the spectators who cheer them on.  

Eric Tremont 

?

Popular culture has given us a series of memorable duos—Laurel and Hardy, Sonny and Cher, Batman and Robin. Now the Republicans have produced George Bush and his alter ego, Karl Rove. Because of “Plamegate,” the relationship of the GOP’s dynamic duo dese rves close attention. 

The Bush-Rove partnership formed in 1993 when George decided to run for governor of Texas. Rove was the architect of Bush’s successful gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. Often characterized as “Bush’s brain,” Karl choreograph ed George’s public appearances and fabricated his image as a leader. While Bush had a reputation for being ill-tempered and belligerent, after Rove began his makeover there were few glimpses of W’s dark side. Building upon Bush’s bonhomie Rove created a p opular image of George as a regular guy, “a good Christian.” 

Now, Karl’s day job is to certify the loyalty of all White House appointments and nominations; he also considers the political ramifications of all Bush policies—a huge chore considering that i n this administration, everything is political. Karl’s night job is more sinister. Often described as the consummate political trickster, Rove is W’s enforcer. If a Democrat’s career is destroyed by a carefully staged negative campaign, Washingtonians usu ally credit this to the deceptively cherubic Karl; it is said to bear, “the mark of Rove.” In 2004, John Kerry led Bush in the polls until the notorious Swift boat ads flooded TV screens. Kerry never recovered from the attacks on his patriotism. Most poli tical observers credited the Democrat’s demise to the machinations of Karl Rove. 

Bush and Rove have a strong personal bond. Writing in the May 1, 2003, edition of the New York Review of Books, veteran political analyst Elizabeth Drew remarked that the two share an appetite for extreme conservative doctrine along with a capacity for ruthlessness and a reservoir of resentment. Drew observed that while W covers his true nature with a veneer of amiability, Rove is more transparent; he plays not only to win, but also to destroy his opponents. In the White House the two work in unison; neither takes political action without consulting the other. 

When Robert Novak outed CIA-operative Valerie Plame in a July 14, 2003, column, it was widely felt to bear the mark of Rove. In 2002, Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, had gone to Niger to investigate the possibility of Iraqi purchase of uranium. Although Wilson, a seasoned diplomat who had worked for the first President Bush and Bill Clinton, reported that the purchase was “highly unlikely,” George W. Bush ignored this information and used the unfounded accusations in his controversial 2003 State of the Union Address justifying an attack on Iraq. 

Subsequently, Wilson told his side of the story in a July 6, 2003, op-ed piece in the New York Times, titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” After the Wilson article ran, the Bush administration was deluged with questions about why one of their representatives publicly disagreed with them. Novak served as their mouthpiece, indicating in his column that it hadn’t been the administration that suggested that Wilson go to Niger but, instead, his wife. “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction,” he wrote. 

In the course of this explanation for seemingly inconsistent administration conduct, Plame was outed as an undercover CIA operator, a federal felony. A grand jury was convened and an aggressive special prosecutor, Robert Fitzgerald, was assigned to invest igate. 

At the time the Novak column appeared, many Washington insiders saw the machinations of Bush-Rove. It was assumed that Karl had been tasked to clean up the Wilson affair, and in the course of providing deep background to Novak and others, identifi ed Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent. Most hypothesized that Bush and Rove were unaware that it is a crime to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent. While Karl has consistently denied identifying Plame by name, recent e-mails provided to the grand jury by Time magazine reporter, Matthew Cooper, indicate that Rove did describe her as “Wilson’s wife.” 

Since Time revealed Rove as their primary source for information about Valerie Plame, the White House has been assailed with calls for Karl to resign or, at the least, give up his security clearance. Predictably, George Bush and his press secretary, Scott McClellan, have stonewalled, refusing to respond to reporters’ inquiries about Rove.  

Plamegate provides a rare glimpse into the Machiavellian world of Bush and Rove. This administration talks a lot about character and responsibility, but its operational philosophy is that the ends justify the means; that it doesn’t matter how you get the job done so long as you are successful. In a rigid hierarchy, Bus h and Rove demand discipline and don’t tolerate dissent. Most Washington observers believe they outed Valerie Plame in order to punish Joseph Wilson and provide a warning for others. 

As we consider Plamegate, it should be remembered that Rove is Bush’s a lter ego. He plays Mr. Hyde to the president’s Dr. Jekyll. If Karl is guilty, then George is too. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net 

›n

Last week, as I was reluctantly writing a $1,500 check to send my two kids to a Berkeley summer camp, I started to think of what my parents, uncles and aunts did in the 1950s and ‘60s to provide childcare for their families during the summer months when school was out full-time.  

The following is a story of how I spent my summers. 

Every summer, my younger brother and I spent the sultry months in a rural backwater somewhere on the eastern shore of Virginia. This southern outpost, which was reverently referred to as “Down Home” by my grandmother and assorted aunts and uncles, drew my relatives like a magnet southward in cars stuffed with kids and fried chicken, and talk of past lives and remembered times. 

I found out later that the reason we always packed food for long trips in those days was “Jim Crow.” We couldn’t stop at the diners and restaurants we passed along the way because we wouldn’t have been served. Forget using the restroom, even in the gas stations! Be glad you got gas and go! The woods were our bathroom and fried chicken was our travel food of choice (it’s good hot or cold). After a seven to eight hour ride from New York City and Philadelphia our caravan of three to four cars (we always traveled down south as a group) would finally arrive down home. 

The modest piece of earth we so proudly owned was called Bay Side. It was originally owned by my great grandfather, Luke Burton, a former slave, farmer and mule team driver. There was a “country style” house which was elevated from the ground for some unknown reason and was infested with flies. I used to wonder how my mother, who would spend hours trying to eradicate the life of just one single fly that happened to invade her world in Philadelphia, would have dealt with these buzzing and flitting hordes. 

My grandmother, whose unselfish love and protection I will carry with me always, was never prouder than when she introduced “her boys” to almost forgotten, ill-clad and foreign-talking second and third cousins. 

An acre of cultivated field that yielded corn and tomatoes lay to the left of the house. I’ll never forget Nana eating a raw tomato right off the plant, with no salt! Outside of the field, the house, and assorted fruit trees and grapevines were the woods. The sound of the word “woods” catapulted my 12-year-old imagination into flight. “The woods.” Not a park with its safe trees and harmless squirrels, but the woods, full of unknown “dangerous” creatures and all sorts of adventures. I’m convinced that my fascination (in my telling stories of these woods) was the only reason I allowed myself to be stuffed in the back seat of an overcrowded Chevy and whisked away from mother and friends for an entire summer. 

I loved venturing into the shadowed wooded depths, armed with bow and arrow. My urban eyes would strain into every crevice; every clump of underbrush, looking for something that I know was hiding and waiting for two little boys like me and my brother. 

This particular summer, prior to the pressures of puberty, I knew an adventure was imminent. I became obsessed with the idea of finding a snake. It may have been something my grandmother said about the weeds around and under the house being ideal for serpentine domesticity that made me conscious of the possibility of their existence in my own backyard. A snake. There are no snakes in West Philadelphia but here, right next to the woods, there had to be at least one snake. I now had a purpose and a plan. 

The days that followed my revelation found me busy at work. Limbs and branches from every conceivable tree were askew about the yard. I made snake clubs and forked sticks with the same fervor that Noah must have possessed when building the Ark. There wasn’t a side of the house or an area of the yard where my craftsmanship was not in evidence by the presence of a giant club or some other primitive looking weapon. 

The days summered by. My brother and I vacationed the days away. My grandmother lovingly labored about with the energy of an army of grandmothers, cooking, peeling, washing and calling after us. “JOEEEY,” I can hear her now. Her voice traveling for miles, it seemed, or as far as necessary, to hasten us back to her protective perimeters.  

It was this soprano wail that I heard as I was approaching the steps on which she was descending with a load of wash in her arms. But she wasn’t calling Joey. The word she was shrieking was “SNAKE.” I responded like a soldier hearing a call to arms. I spun around in the direction she was flailing her now empty arms and there it was, slithering right next to my brother, not more than ten feet away. A snake. 

The club was in my hand as one-third of its shiny blackness disappeared into a clump of weeds. With all of my 12-year-old might, I sent the club crashing onto its ebony midsection. What a mighty blow! The snake twisted its front around to see what had happened to the rest of its length and the club found the snapping head with the precision of a billiard shot. 

My grandmother was shouting and trying to pull us away, but I would not be denied the trophy. My brother grabbed his club and joined in the pounding. The snake rolled and twisted its broken body from side to side until the inevitability of death calmed the scene. I was ecstatic! I beamed. My brother was in awe. “You got him Joe,” he kept saying. “You got him.” 

My grandmother was hysterical. “He was crawling right by Winston’s leg,” she kept repeating, “right by his leg!” 

I poked and played with my prize all that day. As the flies swarmed and converged on my trophy, I emptied can after can of Raid into their midst in my futile attempt to give dignity to a lifeless piece of meat. 

What a kill! It was black, about four feet long. My grandfather said it was a water moccasin, which are poisonous. To me, it was an anaconda. I wanted to skin it and keep this treasure forever, but my grandfather quickly rejected this idea and, around dinnertime, he threw the rotting carcass into the woods where it got caught in a tree. 

I stood there and watched it hanging from a branch, silhouetted against a purple sky. Turkey buzzards circled the tree. I grabbed my bow and arrow and thought, “Wow, I’m going to shoot a buzzard out of the sky!” 

I sneaked around from tree to tree until it got too dark to see. The next morning, it was gone. 

As my kids were boarding the bus in downtown Berkeley to go to camp I told them, “Don’t kill any wildlife, especially snakes.” 

As the bus pulled away, full of kids of many different colors and cultures, I was glad for how far we had moved from the “Jim Crow” summers of the past. I also wondered if they could ever have as much fun as we did. 

›

Saturday night I’m upstairs lying on my couch, which is also my bed, when my computer makes a little pinging sound alerting me that a new e-mail has arrived. I can barely get myself disengaged from the covers but since I’ve been secretly hoping that something might entice me off the couch, I get up and check my inbox. It’s a rant from my friend Karen and a part of it reads, “I’m SO useless. It’s Saturday night and I’ve got nothing to do. No life, no energy, nada. I’m reading New Yorkers dating back to March 28. What are you doing?” 

I consider telling Karen I’m in the midst of dressing for the symphony and that I don’t have time to spread good cheer all the way to the northern-most region of the Idaho Panhandle, but I change my mind. “You think you’re pathetic?” I type in response. “Paleeeese. I’m lying on the couch reading tomorrow’s New York Times wedding announcements. How depressing is that?” 

“At least you can get the New York Times,” she fires back. 

“It gets worse,” I answer. “I’m trapped in a house full of lay-around slobs. Everyone here is prone.” 

It’s true. I live in a horizontal household. 

Willie, who helps me take care of my husband, is in the next room, in bed, watching TV. His excuse? He’s broke.  

In the attic, Jernae is sprawled across a mattress, channel surfing while talking on the telephone. Earlier in the day she’d given me a handwritten note entitled, “Things I Can Do Around Here for $20.” A list followed that included items such as “clean my room, do my laundry, wash the car, weed front yard, weed backyard.” There were instructions for me to put check marks in front of the chores that needed doing. I told her that her list contained things she could and should perform for free. Her response was to remind me that she was 15 and desperate. 

“We’re all desperate here,” said Andrea, who was leaning on her bedroom door, eavesdropping. “Look at me, I haven’t gotten out of my pajamas yet and it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon!” 

Jernae and I ignored her. Andrea is always dressed in pajamas. This time she was wearing a gold satiny ensemble that had once belonged to my grandmother. She went back into her room and lay down. Lying around in other people’s pajamas is what she does best. 

Downstairs, Ralph was, as usual, in his hospital bed. He was the only one with a good excuse. He’s paralyzed and can’t get up unless we help him. But Ralph wasn’t interested in getting out of bed. He was watching two different baseball games on two different TV sets, and he was monitoring the scores of other games on his computer screen. A portable radio was perched on a stool nearby, tuned to a game that wasn’t televised. Periodically, Willie, Andrea, Jernae or myself shuffled into the kitchen to look for something to eat. While passing by Ralph we asked if he needed anything, but he was too busy to respond.  

Now it’s 9 p.m. and I’m waiting for another e-mail from Karen so we can argue about who has the more pathetic life. I hear the ping of my computer indicating a new e-mail. But this time it’s from someone I don’t know, informing me that I can super enhance the size of my penis. I hit the delete button and go back to bed. My dog, Whiskers, takes her usual position, stretching across my pillow, wrapping her warm furry body around my head. From the other rooms in the house I hear the familiar, comforting sounds of one radio and five television sets tuned to six different programs. Andrea clears her throat, Willie argues with Judge Judy, Jernae laughs at something one of the Cosby kids says, and Ralph cheers for the As. I close my eyes and wait for Sunday. 

›

Reason for running 

What started out as a routine San Pablo Avenue early morning traffic stop on July 18 took a different twist when a 26-year-old man stepped on the gas instead of the brake. 

When he finally came to a halt near the corner of San Pablo Avenue and Addison Street just after 3 a.m., the driver opened the door and made a sprint for freedom. 

When officers finally slapped the cuffs on him, they discovered the reason for his flight. The gentleman in question, it seems, had been packing a concealed weapon while driving. 

He now faces a variety of criminal charges, ranging from the weapons rap to resisting arrest, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Simulated gun 

When a couple of young bandits walked up to a 57-year-old pedestrian strolling along Parker Street near Shattuck Avenue six hours later and one claimed to have a concealed weapon, the pedestrian wisely handed over his wallet and avoided a potentially more dire outcome. 

Cash heist 

A man wearing a gray jersey with the number 26 on the back walked up to a 64-year-old man near the corner of Ninth Street and Hearst Avenue and demanded cash. 

The victim complied. 

Scooped at B & J’s 

A gunman walked into the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream parlor at 2130 Oxford St. about 9:15 p.m. on the 18th and demanded cash. 

His request fulfilled, the bandit departed. 

Sexual battery 

An anonymous caller informed police in the pre-dawn hours last Tuesday to report that he’d just seen an unpleasant encounter between a man and a woman near the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Emerson Street. Subsequent investigation revealed that the man had committed sexual battery on a 22-year-old woman. 

No arrest has been made, said Officer Okies. 

Unpleasant surprise 

A man who lives near the corner of Page and Fourth Streets in West Berkeley discovered something unpleasant when he walked into his home about 10:45 last Tuesday evening: a pair of fellows in the midst of a burglary. 

Officer Okies said one of the bandits punched him in the face, but the fellow managed to turn the tables, shoving and pushing them out of his home before they managed to loot the place. 

A call to the police and a quick search of the area turned up the two suspects, one 22 and the other a juvenile. 

The punch turned a mere burglary into a robbery, and the pair was booked on one count each of resisting arrest. 

Gunman robs three 

A lone gunman robbed three pedestrians near the corner of Gilman and Cornell Streets at 12:12 a.m. Wednesday, making off with their cash. 

Dumbest bandit ever? 

The fellow who robbed the Wells Fargo Bank at Tenth Street and University Avenue Thursday just before 11 a.m. forgot Rule Number One of his trade: Don’t pull off a heist unless you’ve got a full tank. 

The fleeing felon, who pulled off the robbery with a demand note, was spotted after he’d stopped to gas up at a station at Seventh Street and University Avenue. 

He made one more block before the black-and-whites pulled him over, said Officer Okies. 

Suspicious fire 

Berkeley firefighters are investigating the cause of a car fire that managed to ignite trees near the corner of Prince and Woolsey streets about 12:25 a.m. Friday. 

The blaze was quickly extinguished, said Officer Okies. 

Another robbery 

Two gunmen robbed a 20-year-old woman of her cash, cell phone and ID as she walked along the 1700 block of San Pablo Avenue about 4:30 Saturday morning. 

Brandisher 

Police arrested a 58-year-old man after he threatened a 21-year-old woman with a knife in the 1100 block of Harrison Street at 11:10 a.m. Saturday. 

A quick search by police turned up the suspect, who was booked on one count each of suspicion of brandishing a deadly weapon and resisting arrest. 

Max to the rescue 

A young Berkeley man who was the intended victim of a rat pack bicycle robbery shortly before 10:30 p.m. Saturday found an unusual rescuer coming to his aid—City Councilmember Max Anderson. 

A group of six or seven would-be robbers confronted the 25-year-old cyclist and grabbed his mountain bike. Anderson and another Good Samaritan stepped in before police arrived. 

The cyclist got his wheels back, and one of the would-be robbers was briefly arrested and then released.

On July 13 at their monthly meeting, the Berkeley Board of Library Trustees announced a forum to be held Aug. 1 at the South Berkeley Senior Center, titled “RFID: What’s it all about?” The supposed aim of this forum is to assemble a group of experts who will discuss the pros and cons of radio frequency identification (RFID) equipment and the appropriateness of its installation in the Berkeley Public Library system. 

This “forum,” more than a year after the board authorized and spent three quarters of a million dollars of Berkeley taxpayers’ money on RFID, and after RFID equipment has already been installed in Berkeley libraries, is a mockery. The San Francisco Public Library held hearings and meetings before they made a decision about RFID, and they rejected it. We were never given a choice. 

Months ago, squads of temporary employees were hired and deployed to stick RFID devices in our library materials. Gates have been erected in the libraries to monitor what we are checking out. The bar codes already in our library materials have been a cheap and efficient way to check materials in and out of our libraries and there was no reason to supplement them. (Contrary to claims by the director, repetitive stress injuries of library staff declined dramatically last year, before RFID equipment was installed.) 

If we, the taxpayers, who are being subjected to this questionable technology, decide that it is an unwanted invasion of our community and potentially dangerous to our privacy and to our health, does the library administration intend to remove the equipment and give our money back? 

The sole purpose of this forum is to pretend that the director and the board are going to be influenced by a free and open discussion of RFID, which is absurd. Some experts on RFID have already said they will decline to participate in the Berkeley forum unless there is the potential for these devices to be removed. 

Library Director, Jackie Griffin, whose idea it was to buy this equipment, seems to have no difficulty steamrolling through damaging changes to a local library system that was a national model of excellence. Her position as “secretary” to the board puts her in a role of power that is entirely inappropriate. Griffin monitors materials presented to the board, prepares minutes, and mail to board members is sent to her office. She is indifferent, at best, to suggestions and criticism from the public and from library staff. As library director, she is supposed to be our employee, and responsive to us, the board and the City Council. Instead she seems to be functioning like the CEO of a private company. 

The Berkeley Charter says trustees are appointed by the City Council, and trustees are responsible for the actions of the director. Until we start paying attention to board appointments, and until a more responsible attitude is adopted, we will see further dismantling of the Berkeley library system.  

Shirley Stuart is a Berkeley resident.

The installation of radio frequency identification devices in the Berkeley Public Library is a complex issue that deserves everybody’s attention. The devices are comprised of an antenna and a microchip embedded in a 2x2 inch square tag. The microchip contains information and the antenna conveys this information to readers/scanners/sensors that are within a distance of 18 inches. Often described as promiscuous, the tags will “talk” to any reader. So, if you were to borrow a book from the Central Branch and then walk into the Ross Dress for Less Store a block away, the readers in the security gates at the door will read whatever information is on the microchip that is embedded in your library book. Privacy, health, labor and costs issues come with the application of RFID in libraries. Privacy advocacy groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU ) are opposed to RFID in libraries because its application is new and untested. Both groups are convinced that the privacy of library users will be compromised. For more information you can visit their websites at www.eff.org and www.aclu.org.  

Health issues and RFID have to do with unknown heath risks associated with the low-frequency radio waves that the sensors/readers/scanners emit (the gates at the entrance of libraries are readers). Doug Loranger from the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna Free Union (SNAFU) tells us that there are studies emerging showing that there are “potential risks to public health posed by the radiation used by RFID wireless scanners.” You can read more on this in a letter that Doug wrote to the editor of this paper in the Feb. 18. Breast Cancer Research in San Francisco is also opposed to RFID in libraries because of potential health risks associated with radio frequency. These concerns are well worth examining in an increasingly automated world.  

The labor issues have to do with the ultimate goal of the RFID industry: a fully automated library system using RFID to track its materials. This means conveyor belts, automated book sorters and self-check machines. Presently, people transport library materials from the book drop room, sort the books and then shelve them. When automation does everything except shelve the books, the variety of tasks narrows and the chance of repetitive stress injuries increases. It should be noted here that the RFID industry boasts, without any backing evidence, that it reduces repetitive stress injuries. In fact, it will reduce the variety of tasks and eventually workers themselves.  

The issues of costs are plenty. The initial cost was $650,000, $500,000 of which was loaned to the library to be paid back over the next five years. This price tag just covers the supplies and equipment for installation. What is not included is the labor used to install tags and to modify library space to accommodate the new system. We don’t know how much it will cost the library to maintain RFID. Tags costs at least 50 cents apiece, and then there’s the imminent improvements since it is a new and untested technology. Checkpoint, the company that the library contracted with, owns the RFID system as “proprietary software.” They can charge whatever they want for upgrades and, should Checkpoint go bankrupt, the library will have to start over from square one and pay who-knows-what to a brand new vendor! Important note: two recent financial publications (SmartMoney, August 2005 and the insiders’ www.alwayson-network.com posted Sept. 27, 2004) doubt that RFID will be a “meaningful revenue generator,” and out of eight new “hot” technologies, one of the four to avoid is RFID: “high costs of implementation; bar-coding works just fine.” (SmartMoney, Aug. 25.) The public had no input into this purchase nor was the precautionary principle used.  

I guess this is a good time for two reminders to our gentle readers: first, Berkeley is famous for its Free Speech Movement and the progressive and left politics that came out of that movement. Right now the Berkeley Public Library is not reflecting this rich cultural history. Secondly, under the current presidency, progressive thought and action is under attack. Homeland Security’s primary mission is a surveillance infrastructure, and Berkeley Public Library is now part of it.  

Lee Tien of EFF and Peter Warfield of the Library Users Association explore all of these issues in specifics in three informative commentaries published in the Daily Planet: 

• “RFID Should be Canceled Immediately,” March 4-7 edition. 

• “RFID: Many Problems, Little Public Discussion,” April 8-11 edition.  

• “Industry’s Gain, Library’s Pain,” May 10-12 edition.  

Hopefully you would find these articles and websites at your local library. Get informed and attend the coming “Community Forum on RFID” that the Board of Library Trustees has promised on Aug. 1 from 6:30-9 p.m. at the South Berkeley Seniors’ Center. 

The Berkeley Public Library is one of the only institutions that any person can enter for free and walk away from richer. Its mission is to reflect the community’s culture and history. Protect the Berkeley Public Library from technology designed to take away our freedoms and demand that it be rejected!  

Wanda Crow is a Berkeley resident. 

While Bush’s mantra is “WMD,” the Berkeley Board of Library Trustees’ is “WCC” (workers compensation claims for repetitive stress Injuries). Expect to hear more about the radio frequency identification (RFID) system having been installed in the Berkeley Public Libraries to reduce WCCs for RSI; that is, unless the trustees change their minds about having Councilmember Gordon Wozniak as the panelist on RFID safety issues at their Aug. 1 RFID community forum.  

Wozniak, former deputy head of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s (LBNL) Nuclear Science Division, although a specialist in ionizing radiation (not the radio frequency radiation of RFID) cannot be trusted to give an undeceptive report even on ionizing radiation, let alone on RFID health and safety issues. 

On Aug. 20, 1998 (see letter to Berkeley City Council, signed “Gordon J. Wozniak, Radioactive and proud”) Wozniak stood before the City Council, and, in an attempt to downplay community concerns about tritium emissions (radioactive hydrogen) at LBNL, tried to bamboozle the council and the public by comparing the 10 milligrams of tritium emitted by the Tritium Facility to the 50 billion atoms of tritium in the human body. When asked if the 10 milligrams was a smaller quantity than the 50 billion atoms, Wozniak answered in the affirmative. This was a lie. The 10 milligrams of tritium, or 100 curies, is 5,000 billion billion atoms, 100 billion times as many as in a typical human. 

(Dr. Julian Borrill, “Many lab scientists duck responsibility to present issues honestly, clearly,” Berkeley Voice, Nov. 26, 1998, and Dr. Roger Byrne, in a Nov. 17, 1998 letter to Mayor Shirley Dean).  

Unfazed, Wozniak, now a councilmember, attempted once again “to snooker his colleagues with some statistical legerdemain” (Rob Browning, Daily Planet, Nov. 15, 2002). This time it concerned the narrow difference in effective radio transmission between the controversial Public Safety Building’s communications tower and a proposed alternative. One misfired 6 percent of the time, the other 9 percent, which Wozniak said was a 50 percent gap (3 being 50 percent of 6?!?). 

What more fitting speaker than Wozniak to perpetuate the myth that RFID was installed at the Berkeley Public Library to reduce worker compensation claims (WCC) for repetitive stress injuries? In December 2003, Library Director Jackie Griffin told the library trustees that the library spent $1 million in the past five years for worker compensation claims, mostly due to repetitive motion injuries. Actually, the library, in that period, spent just $167,871 on RSI-related claims, only 26 percent of the total $642,161 for WCC. There were no RSI claims in 1998, 2000 and 2004 (“RFID should be canceled immediately,” Daily Planet commentary, March 3, 2005). 

How can we trust Wozniak to honestly present the safety and health effects of RFID? His statement in 1998 that concerns about tritium (which emits ionizing radiation) were “wildly exaggerated and unfounded” have been totally discredited by the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) whose recently released study states “The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionized radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial,” (“Even lower radiation poses risk, panel says,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 30, 2005). 

Please come with an open mind and hard questions to the Board of Library Trustees Community Forum on RFID, Monday Aug. 1 at 6:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. We hope the library trustees will have second thoughts and replace Wozniak with an RFID health effects expert such as Nancy Evans of Breast Cancer Fund, SNAFU’s Doug Loranger, or Cindy Sage, environmental consultant. 

Gene Bernardi is a member of Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense (SuperBold).  

The recently recommended revisions to the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance are basically intended to simply and clarify a process that is currently very interpretive, often ambiguous, creating landmarks that are later overturned by the City Council. Clarifying the ordinance would help everyone by creating standards everyone understands. This would improve the functionality of the commission, assist historic preservationists in preserving unique Berkeley buildings and clarify to builders what’s an appropriate site to build on. 

This controversy has everyone both in Berkeley and the Bay Area laughing about how the landmarks process works—or should I say doesn’t. I mean, come on, how can this system be used to designate Celia’s restaurant a structure of merit, for example? This vastly interpretive view of the ordinance allows those sitting on the commission to use a very wide set of standards to discover and ordain a landmark or the more ambiguous “structure of merit.” As a result, these moves are then overturned by the City Council after weeks of delay and wasted time—and yes, Berkeley tax dollars. To date I have never heard a clear and rational explanation behind Celia’s designation. If anything it makes those priding themselves on historic preservation look uniformed and arbitrary in their approach. 

The structure of merit designation, for example, does not landmark a building but says that the building or property has “significant qualities” that warrant prevention of alteration or demolition. This gray area does nothing in terms of clarification but gives great sway to those who may not want to see any new buildings on a site or may not want to see a building altered—for reasons having nothing to do with its history. But aren’t these powers really vested in the Zoning Adjustments Board and the Planning Commission? This is what clarity and purpose mean with the ordinance. 

In the ongoing hearings those supporting no change to LPO constantly talk about developers wanting to demolish Berkeley landmarks. Tell me one developer in town or out of town who has it on their check list—demolish historic buildings in Berkeley, make way for L.A.-style development. This is Berkeley, folks—BERKELEY. Those working, living and building here must be sensitive to the needs of the community and want to be. The days of bulldozing redevelopment ended in the 1970s. More than 30 years have passed and both the historic buildings of Berkeley’s past and innovative new structures need to share the progressive future of Berkeley. By the way, aren’t we supposed to be a PROGRESSIVE city? 

The bottom line is that the landmarks commissioners are supposed to be looking out for the common good of the entire population of Berkeley and our historically significant buildings. Well, let’s do that and make the rationale behind it up front and clear. 

I encourage the City Council to modify the ordinance with rational thinking at its core. Change the structure of merit designation to a requirement for a historic plaque that reflects how a location fits into the historic web of Berkeley’s past and define our Landmarks Preservation Ordinance along the lines of state and national standards to preserve our great inventory of historic buildings. 

Steven Donaldson is a life-long Berkeley resident and property owner. 

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Zelda Bronstein’s “Planner’s Alchemy” column opinion correctly pointed to a problem that’s salient in our own Planning Department—staff’s interest in having greater independence and authority even while staying professionally committed to objective service and communication. But it would be helpful to separate that from the speculation about an embedded political agenda in favor of growth at any price—what she might deplore as “dumb growth.” The two dynamics are probably not connected. 

Putting the private-agenda question aside for a few paragraphs, let me apply a different theory to the process of “aggrandizement of staff authority and power.” Grabbing more authority and power is what almost any political or bureaucratic entity will do if given the opportunity—it’s the nature of the beast. Let me illustrate with two examples from the ongoing attempt to revise the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO), which I’ve observed quite closely: 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) set out at the beginning of 2004 to produce a revised LPO draft in response to a City Council request and advice from the mayor’s permit streamlining task force. They originally intended to write a “technical only” revision that narrowly met new requirements of the Permit Streamlining Act and CEQA, leaving more consequential changes to a hypothetical second round. But they simply couldn’t resist the temptation to also make policy changes (thereby opening Pandora’s box for all subsequent interest in making big changes). To no one’s surprise, every policy-level change they proposed would have had the result of increasing the LPC’s scope and authority: including every permit-subject building over 50 years old to landmark review, gaining authority over demolitions of historic resources and CEQA-level determinations, and several more. 

That self-aggrandizing draft, however, need not be attributed to evil political motives—rather to an excess of zeal. Of course a commission will believe that if given more authority and less oversight it could do a better job. That enthusiasm is commendable, and even desirable in a vigorous democracy—but it needs to be vetted and constrained by the city as a whole to avoid potential abuses of power. That’s exactly what the subsequent year of work on the LPO revision has been about—trying to balance narrow commission enthusiasm with big-picture civic needs. 

The LPC was hardly alone in following this path. The same dynamic applied to the subsequent production of the Planning Commission’s LPO draft. At several problematic points—such as when there was difficulty in deciding how to make the every-building provision practical for ordinary homeowners desiring ordinary additions—the Planning Commission asked staff to “come up with language” that would provide alternatives. Lo and behold: all the “alternatives,” through multiple drafts, involved giving Planning Department staff and the zoning officer more authority to make independent decisions of consequence, based on criteria that would not actually be specified in the proposed ordinance. 

Once again we can best attribute this to “excess of zeal” rather than “devious plot.” Of course staff will believe that if given more authority and less oversight they could do a better job, and could then certainly work more efficiently than via a process requiring more messy public involvement. And once again our civic need is to balance narrow bureaucratic enthusiasm with what’s actually better for the city as a whole. 

So, Zelda, I hope we can keep these two important concerns separate in the future. Enthusiasm for power-grabbing happens not just among the bureaucrats but also among the commissions, and needs to be checked by very careful attention to the details of the legislation we approve. Private political agendas, however, originate among elected officials and their appointed senior managers and are—for better or worse—in the politicians’ hands to wield or check. 

The solution to organizational power-grabbing is continued vigilance in the legislative process, as the city council is now attempting with the LPO. But the solution to political agendas comes only via the ballot box. And even political change at the top wouldn’t eliminate those political agendas, it would only substitute new ones for the ones we have now learned to recognize. Be careful what you ask for there. 

Berkeley resident Alan Tobey is a retired technologist. 

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I scarcely believed my ears last week when I heard Councilmember Wozniak ask staff if there was a list of all the landmarks designated thus far in Berkeley, including their dates of designation. 

If I’m not mistaken, it was Councilmember Anderson who chimed in, asking if the list could also include designations that had been overturned by the City Council. 

This line of inquiry makes me wonder if the honorable councilmembers ever read their mail, or pay attention to what community members have been telling them. 

A complete list of Berkeley Landmarks is available on (surprise, surprise) the Berkeley Landmarks website: www.berkeleyheritage.com/berkeley_landmarks/landmarks.html. 

Click the “All Landmarks” link, and you’ll find three pages, each listing in table form up to 100 landmarks. Listings include name of property, address, architect’s name, date of construction, date initiated, date designated, and additional notes informing whether this property is on the National Register, the SHRI, a historic district, a structure of merit, or demolished. 

Each property name is also linked to an illustrated article about the landmark or, at the very least, to a photo of the property. 

In addition, a separate, redundant page lists only the structures of merit: www.berkeleyheritage.com/berkeley_landmarks/structures-of-merit.html. 

And there’s much more there, if the City Council would only take the trouble to look. 

I created the Berkeley Landmarks website in September 2003, because the city’s own listing was more than three years out of date. Berkeley Landmarks is now the largest and most complete such website in the nation. Architectural historians use it regularly for research purposes, and it is distressing to discover that the Berkeley City Council, while deliberating on the LPO, still appears to be totally unaware of it. 

The Berkeley Landmarks website does not include designations overturned by the City Council, but based on my research while constructing the website, I will venture to say that their number is fewer than 10. The BAHA office has a record of them. 

Councilmember Wozniak also asked about surveying the city for historic properties and wondered how many historic properties there might be in Berkeley. In the 1970s, with a grant from the State of California, BAHA volunteers surveyed hundreds of properties that are now listed in the SHRI (State Historic Resources Inventory). My printout of the state’s Historic Properties Directory for Berkeley, dated June 11, 2003, lists 918 such properties. However, this survey is not complete; many neighborhoods remain unsurveyed. 

The bulk of the surveyed historic properties have not been designated. This is not because we don’t know where they are, but because we don’t know enough about them, and it takes time and effort to research each one and write a landmark application. If you’ll take a look at any LPC agenda, you’ll see a long list of properties awaiting their turn. 

That said, not every historic property need be designated a landmark. Historic districts or neighborhood conservation districts can help protect historic neighborhoods. 

Councilmember Wozniak’s idea is excellent. If the city would take the initiative to secure grant funds, the surveying of Berkeley could be completed, and the whole issue of request for determination might be laid to rest. 

And as long as you’re visiting the Berkeley Landmarks website, take a little detour to the neighborhoods and see these recent photo surveys: 

Ashby Station 

www.berkeleyheritage.com/essays/ashby.html. 

High-Peaked Colonial Revival 

www.berkeleyheritage.com/essays/high-peaked_colonials.html. 

These and other recent surveys (e.g., Sisterna Tract and Central Park Tract) are entirely the work of neighborhood volunteers. 

Daniella Thompson is the website editor for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

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I sure learned a lot about guns and those who love them from the recent letters to the Daily Planet that were prompted by the slaying of Meleia Willis-Starbuck and the editor’s subsequent commentary on gun control. One letter writer claims that all women should be armed with handguns in order to fend off would-be rapists. Presumably gun possession would also help prevent muggings; thus men should pack heat every time they leave the house too. While it’s true that with everyone carrying guns the potential for the damn things to go off increases and they may be used in anger rather than self defense and their proliferation will increase the possibility of them finding their way into the hands of children, drunks and the mentally impaired, it will not be the gun’s fault if someone is killed or wounded in error (that is little solace to any victim’s family, I’m sure). 

One letter writer from Kansas (who refers to us as being in “The People’s Republic of California”) claims we Berkeley residents don’t fully understand proper firearm maintenance and technique and that we write about guns from ignorance. Here are some things I’m not ignorant of: 

• According to FBI statistics, in the year 2000 his state of Kansas had a higher rate of overall crime, murder and rape than California.  

• Also from the FBI, violent crime, rape, and murder all rose from 2003 to 2004 in Wichita (the writer’s home city) while here in Berkeley in those same years the number of rapes rose by one while there was a huge drop in the other crimes. 

• And according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence the nation’s crime rate has fallen in recent years but states that chose to fight crime by loosening their concealed weapons laws have experienced a significantly smaller drop in crime than states which looked to other means to combat crime in their communities. 

Nonetheless we hear from our gun loving brethren that it is not the gun that kills, but the person. 

However, in the case that started this discussion, the shooter’s intended target was not the one struck down. Had he decided to employ a knife or blunt object it is a certainty that Meleia would have not died. Indeed one of the greatest tragedies communities suffer is when a stray bullet takes an innocent life. Collateral deaths tend only to result when assailants use guns. 

Another writer tells the Planet’s editor that “the lies you tell get people killed every day.” I’m amazed I read this bizarre claim. I should have stopped reading the letter when he called the editor “a condescending bitch.” He concludes by suggesting that “if you want go after something, why not cars” as they are responsible for more deaths than guns. Excuse us if we wait until cars are aimed and fired at our citizenry.  

As if this whole affair weren’t sad enough we have to endure one letter writer’s complaint that Meleia’s death has garnered so much more publicity because of her left-leaning political views. It’s hard to overstate how cruelly insensitive is such a remark. Never mind the great promise Meleia had demonstrated and what she had already accomplished. The writer would have been better served claiming that media reaction was fueled by this being an educated African American woman of some means, rather than one of the many who die in relative anonymity within our nation’s inner cities. This same letter-writer started off by noting “some more young blacks kill each other and the editor...” 

Such callousness and its deeper meaning is left to the individual to interpret. Yes, I’ve learned a lot about guns from recent letters. I’ve learned that guns and the right to posses them pale in importance next to three promises some great men once put forth for this country, those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, guns often stand in the way of these promises, as one did for Meleia Willis-Starbuck.  

Richard Hourula is a Berkeley resident.›

You know the answer to the riddle: Where does a 900-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere he wants. Forty-one years ago, during the Free Speech Movement (FSM), we learned that there is indeed a gorilla in town, but camouflaged in Blue and Gold and crying out “Go Bears!” Questions about nuclear weapons labs, the treatment of UC workers and teachers’ assistants, or deals with the City of Berkeley are finessed by the administration ultimately down—or up—to the Regents, the university’s own college of cardinals.  

UC’s administration is not averse to hiding bureaucratic power plays behind parading Nobel laureates and a top-of- the-line student body—whose tuition has also gone top-of-the-line. Yet Clark Kerr, chancellor during the FSM, made no bones about what he called the multiversity: Run it like a corporation, hook up with other corporations and the government. These are already part of the military-industrial complex in general, and (quietly) the nuclear labs at Livermore and Los Alamos in particular. 

The Blue and Gold gorilla has recently done double duty, sitting first on the citizens of Berkeley, and then onto everyone in the country opposed to continued work on the nuclear arsenal. The local issue was covered by the Daily Planet, giving a history that characterized the City of Berkeley’s stance toward the UC administration as: “Speak loudly and carry a rubber banana.”  

I don’t mean to get Freudian here, I don’t know that the city attorney’s office got anything from the gorilla for offering backroom legal advice about how to keep backroom decisions secret. While this was in remarkable concordance with the presumed other side UC attorneys’ position, it may be as simple as an instinct to not irritate gorillas, or to bond with fellow bureaucrats at UC, rather than the messy citizens of Berkeley.  

While pondering this disheartening news, an even bigger UC story appeared. Because of “oversight” failures, UC administration had to bid publicly to keep running Los Alamos. And who would be a better partner than Bechtel, a genteel San Francisco-style war-profiteering corporation, not of the obvious and crude Halliburton stripe? And Bechtel has a distinguished pedigree, epitomized by Reagan’s now-beatified secretary of war, Caspar Weinberger.  

In case you’ve (hopefully) forgotten, he was called Cap for his friendly manner, though those of us not captivated by his charm called him Doctor Death—or Strangelove. He showed unremitting zeal in the build-up of weaponry that ranged from nukes to cluster bombs, making possible the “shock and awe” sideshow that the DOD put on in Iraq. Reagan’s secretary of state, George Schultz, was another Bechtel principal. 

With due modesty Bechtel could claim, without appearing right-wing themselves, to be principals in the right-wing driven military buildup of the last 25 years. This has culminated not only in the war on Iraq, but in a virtually unlimited free lunch for the MIC at the public treasury. This spending straps all peacetime purposes, including universities. As a result, the university needs to—it says—pursue military contracts. And since the competing bid is coming from Texas, let’s show California loyalty. UC and Bechtel executives eat raw carrots and don’t quote Jesus, at least out loud. 

UC administration claims that, besides patriotism and national security—rationales now proclaimed by several generations of regents—the “basic” research done at the labs is best done by academics rather than some heartless soulless corporation (I’m joking, the administration would never refer to a corporation that way). This reasoning has been picked apart in the old days when there was a faculty peace movement that used to protest the UC administration’s making money while giving an educational fig leaf to the “campuses” at Livermore and Los Alamos.  

Now it’s underreported student activists who carry on the long-term fight to expose UC’s bedding down with the military-corporate—and academic—complex. They protested at the last UC regents meeting, questioning Blue and Gold pride over UC employees grooming the world’s biggest nuclear weapons (see the Coalition to Demilitarize the University of California, or TriValleyCares.org). 

So it’s probably small potatoes for the UC administration to finesse the city of Berkeley out of a few million in a 20-year backroom deal. Maybe it’s just keeping in shape for the Big Game—not Stanford, but that key to the public treasury. 

Neal Blumenfeld is a psychiatrist and FSM veteran. 

I was standing in a gallery in the New York MOMA in April when I saw it. “Invisible Man?” I went straight across the room toward the huge photograph of a young black man, seated on a stool, hunched over a pad of paper, writing, as hundreds of electric li ght bulbs glared yellow from the walls and ceiling only an arm’s length from him. 

“It is!” I exclaimed to the three or four people glancing at it as they roamed past. “It’s the opening of Invisible Man!” They looked at me with the polite patience reserve d for elderly nuts. “The novel,” I insisted. “Ralph Ellison. Around 1950. You remember. Man hides underground to write archetypal black American experience. Everybody read it.” 

Not them. They looked blank, shrugged, and moved on to the next painting. 

Ba ck home, I decided to reread Invisible Man and two other short novels using a similar metaphor: The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright, and Notes From the Underground by Dostoevsky. I wondered if I would see a hereditary line running through them, Dostoevsky to Wright to Ellison; if I’d learn more about the meaning and attraction of the “underground” as a metaphor. 

The connotation of the term “underground” (apart from its literal use, as in the London Underground train system) can be symbolicall y positive (down the rabbit hole with Alice). More often it is negative, or mixed. In Greek mythology, the underworld is the kingdom of all the dead, with eternal tortures for evil souls, but dancing in the Elysium Fields for the virtuous. In Christian my thology, the underground is negative, designed only for sinners—hellfire, but possible purgatory, redemption, and a rising up to Heaven, somewhere “up” there in the skies. 

In “noir” movies of the 1930s and 1940s, the “underworld” referred to the not-so-hidden evil but glamorous doings of urban criminals. As a political metaphor, underground can be a positive term for undermining the rule of the unjust: the underground railroad for escaping slaves; the underground press to expose news that is censored. 

“Going underground,” can mean a change of identity in order to avoid joining in government-ordered violence (the draft) or, more dubiously, can mean using violence to counter government violence (the splinter group of the 1960s, Weather Underground).  

Inv isible Man does not actually take place in the protagonist’s hidden hole. The closed-off, forgotten basement which he makes bright by tapping illegally into city power lines is only the temporary shelter where he writes his above-ground life story so far: a series of aborted disasters—college, a move from rural south to urban north, menial jobs, left-wing politics, demagogues, murderers, race riots. The central metaphor of the novel is not the underground; it is his “invisibility” as a man, as a human be ing in the reality behind the sham promises held out to him on all sides of American society. 

Richard Wright’s black protagonist, Fred Daniels, actually does live his story underground, in the city sewer system where he had fled from police who were tort uring him to force him to confess a crime he did not commit. The sewer tunnels are a rich and strange part of the city, surface and underground levels dependent on one other. Fred moves back and forth between levels, finding food and tools in forays above ground, finding rest, shelter, and a kind of free expression underground. He expresses his rejection of the lies of the world above with gestures like papering the walls of his little sleeping alcove with paper money, tamping down the damp earth floor an d studding it with diamonds (all taken from a safe in one of his above-ground forays). Fred lacks the formal education of Ellison’s unnamed protagonist, but he is also free of naïve belief in false promises and intellectual theories. Furthermore, Fred shows impressive skills and creativity in making his underground survival possible. 

Dostoevsky’s unnamed protagonist calls his shabby apartment “a dreadful, horrible hole,” but the underground from which he sends us his “notes” or self-analyses is a mental underground, a place of spite and the “disease of consciousness.” 

At 40, with a small inheritance, he can now quit his petty civil service job and retire completely to that “hole” and wallow in feeling—as we say today—disrespected. He sets up situations sure to inspire disgust in the most benign acquaintances, then spends his time alone mulling over his shame and plotting a revenge which is sure to backfire on him. Finally he turns his spite onto someone more despised and helpless than he, so that he can enjoy feeling even more base, analyzing and re-analyzing his “insincere motives, so deliberately invented, so bookish,” until he avows that he cannot stand himself. Neither can we. And we suspect that our revulsion, too, thrills him. 

The underground of Dostoevsky’s spiteful man resembles the lower depths of the Christian Hell—with this particular tormented sinner uninterested in purgatory or redemption. For both Ellison’s invisible man and Wright’s Fred Daniels, the underground is a shelter from danger, but Ellison’s hero definitely plans to resurface with his story. Fred Daniels has no plans except survival, moment by moment; the rising of hope for more than that becomes his undoing.  

Women hardly exist in the worlds of these three men. One old black woman is the savior of Ellison’s hero when he is sick and starving, and she is the only person who does not betray his trust. Dostoevsky’s spiteful man pretends to love a vulnerable young prostitute, only to insult her when she returns sincere love. In Fr ed Daniels’ desperate flight into the sewers, there are no women, not even in his fantasies or his memory. 

How do the three books hold up at second reading? Invisible Man seems a bit schematic, the symbolism, the surrealism of the race riot, a tad liter ary and abstract. But some parts seem better than at first reading. For instance, in the 1950s Ellison was criticized for his “too-negative” satire on the Communist Party USA; in the years since reading the novel, I’ve read and known a lot more communists and ex-communists whose now less-censored memories of those days match Ellison’s take on “The Brotherhood.” 

Perhaps the book is less stunning only because we are more familiar than we were fifty years ago with the racist poison it digs up. The final words still hold a quiet power, perhaps more than they did in 1950: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you.” Maybe because I’m 50 years older, I feel even more strongly that the disillusionments, damage, failures, lies, and stupidity that the young Invisible Man barely survived are those of most human lives, in his case writ large and deepened by racial oppression. Ellison had to have a fine mind and a large heart not to lose sight of that. 

Reading the Dostoevsky story still feels li ke being at a party or a bar, cornered by a mean drunk who enjoys watching you writhe as he repeats his sordid confession over and over. I hate to admit that I was forced to find myself identifying as well—just a little—with Dostoevsky’s spiteful old bore. He is that inner voice that wakes me at three in the morning to pick at the scab over some old insult or lie or neglect I suffered—or, worse, inflicted on someone else. 

He feeds me the words of the retort I should have spouted against some slight or i nsult, but didn’t think of at the time. He nags me about my own stupid, hurtful remarks that I should have swallowed, or rehearses the apology I should have made before it was too late. My great distaste for these sadomasochistic creeps who infect Dostoe vsky’s work may simply reflect my distaste for the trace of them I try not to see in myself.  

But this time around, Richard Wright’s novella—the shortest of the three—was a revelation, an economical, poetic evocation of much more than I had seen the fi rst time, when only Fred’s victimhood registered with me. I would be happy to identify with Fred, to see more of myself in him. 

He is clever, inventive, creative, curious, sensitive, moral, and—given the chance, which he wasn’t—loving. He has no pretensi ons, no self-pity, but plenty of courage, along with an unconquerable love of life. Yet he isn’t an idealized abstraction; he is a real, credible, “ordinary” man, unable to intellectualize the deep wisdom of his feelings, yet not simple. The awful words o f the bad cop, “You’ve got to shoot his kind. They’d wreck things,” read like a word of hope in these dark days, a promise that his spirit can still upsurge and “wreck things” as they are.  

›

“Our Father who art in heaven ... how, how ... how?” 

On the floor of a caged enclosure in a jail, a Nyorican man kneels in the middle of the night and frantically tries to recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory, sticking on “hallowed,” while other unseen inmates holler obscenities, telling him—and then each other—to shut up. 

Much later, he’ll be just as frantically apologizing to everyone like some sort of mantra, all his street cockiness gone. 

The shaky prayer and its response opens the Fellowship Theater Guild’s production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Jesus Hopped the “A” Train, running through Aug. 20 at San Francisco’s Fellowship Church, on Larkin Street just north of Broadway. 

A jailhouse drama is an unusual kind of play to see in a church hall, especially one that doesn’t offer any particular answers—religious or social—to either the personal dilemmas of the inmates or the questions that arise in a society that incarcerates (and sometimes executes) a sizable proportion of its citizenry. 

Jesus Hopped the “A” Train is also low on the usual brutality and sentimentalism of the genre. It successfully employs confessional monologues as character studies that also reveal insights into motivation and responsibility for criminal acts, insights that don’t leave out contradiction. 

Angel Cruz (played by Hector Osorio) is in the slammer for attempted murder. 

“All I did was shoot him in the ass! What’s attempted murder about that?” he protested to his appointed lawyer (Nell Schwartz), whom he runs through the ringer in glib, streetwise fashion. But the lawyer’s sympathetic and sees a chance to pull out the stops of the legal skills she’s proud of. 

The lawyer tells a story about her father accompanying her to a school dance and making a big hit, before stabbing a bigotted suburbanite with a dessert fork. She says that’s why she wants to take on Angel’s case, despite his resistance. She’s seen the same look on his face her father had that night, “incredulous ... as if the whole world was crazy and he the only sane one ... The dysfunctional side of me was proud of him. One man’s neurotic is another man’s hero.” 

Meanwhile, another, more seasoned prisoner is going through a change of fortune. Lucius Jenkins (Felix Justice) is working out in an outside cage on his hour exercise period, revelling in the sunlight and talking a blue streak to himself in semi-Biblical lingo. 

“Usurp the serpent, Lord, it’s crawling up my leg,” he says. “Let me jog in place up to heaven, with your grace.” His friendly guard, offering a steady flow of cigarettes and food, is replaced by a cynical hardnose, Valdez (Peter Fitzsimmons). 

“It used to amaze me, the valuable objects people cavalierly discard,” Valdez has previously told the audience. “[They] do not understand that, once you discard an irreplaceable object, it’s lost forever.” 

He baits Lucius: “I hear you give out autographs.” Lucius protests, ”Prayer cards!” The hazing gets ugly. Lucius protests the violation of his constitutional rights. 

“I’m the constitution and you’re a skinny black faggot,” Valdez tells him. “You are not here because you’re a VIP, but because the livestock downstairs wants to cannibalize you.” 

In a series of revolving scenes and monologues, these four (and Lucius’ sympathetic ex-guard, Charlie D’Amico, played by Jaime Gutierrez) play out the compulsions and hidden agendas of their own characters and of their strange interpersonal relationship in the most impersonal of circumstances. 

The plot quite literally thickens. Lucius and Angel exercise opposite each other, sometimes arguing, sometimes exchanging thoughts. 

The cast is solid, with Felix Justice and Peter Fitzsimmons—cofounders of the recently reactivated Fellowship Theater Guild—as standouts. C. J. Verburg’s direction relies on the actors’ directness and appeal to the audience; this helps overcome the limited opportunity the script provides for staging. A sense of claustrophobia doesn’t always translate to internal or emotional truth, though this cast gives a great deal to a compelling story.  

Something deserves to be said about the Fellowship Church, a unique landmark under whose aegis the Guild performs. Founded in 1944 by San Francisco State philosophy professor Dr. Alfred Fisk, and Dr. Howard Thurman, a well-known theologian and a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples was the first interfaith and interracial church in the nation. 

It has always encouraged “the expression of spirituality through performance,” clearly a priority of its pastor, the Rev. Dorsey Blake, and its congregation. 

The Fellowship Theater Guild is real community theater, and not at all in the usual pejorative meaning of local amateur entertainment. It is in, of and about the community. As seasoned stage folk, they touch a chord of what theater is all about. They deserve support. 

Jesus Hopped The “A” Train plays at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 and 7 p.m. through Aug. 20. Fellowship Theater Guild, 2041 Larkin St., San Francisco. There will be no Sunday performances in July. $18-20. For tickets call (866) 811-4111. For more information call (415) 776-4910.  

TUESDAY, JULY 26 

CHILDREN 

Nick Barone Puppets with a cast of over twenty friendly dinosaurs dressed as cowboys at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

FILM 

Eyeing Nature “Proteus: A Nineteenth-Century Vision” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell it on Tuesdays Solo performer storytellers share their work at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $5 at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

David Ewing Duncan introduces “The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with my DNA” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Eugene David Parch and Jim Barnard at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dan Zemelman Trio with Dayna Stevens at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Melissa Ferrick at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Randy Craig Trio, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Django Reinhardt Festival with the John Jorgenson Band and David Grisman at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Eric Shrifrin, solo piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27 

FILM 

For Your Eyes Only “Billion Dollar Brain” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Arab Women Film Festival “Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Latin American Working Class Film Fest at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, but donations accepted. 415-642-8066. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ernest Callenbach on the 30th Annniversary of “Ecotopia” at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. www.ecologycenter.org 

Writing Teachers Write with host Judy Bebelaar at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-3635. 

Christopher Sorrentino describes “Trance: 1974; the SLA; Tania” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.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 

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Phil Berkowitz & Louis’ Blues at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Paris King Band, funky rock, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Charason, salsa, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Flowtilla, world groove jazz funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Jack Williams at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Django Reinhardt Festival with the John Jorgenson Band and David Grisman at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 28 

THEATER 

The Lobster Project “Killing My Lobster and the Wonderful World of Science” Thurs. and Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 7:30 and 10 p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $12-$17. 415-558-7721. www.killingmylobster.com 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “Heroes for Sale” at 7:30 p.m. and “Mayor of Hell” at 9:05 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Latino Film Festival “ANC Hip Hop Revolution” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dana Adam Shapiro introduces his mystery “The Every Boy” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series with Russell Gonzaga and Karen Gorman at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Super Hoss, bluegrass, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Waterson Carthy at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Helene Attia & Own Davis Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Brandi Carlile at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

Anton Schwartz Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Django Reinhardt Festival with Dorado Schmitt, Florin Niculescu and others at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector, laptop funk, beat machines, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, JULY 29 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, “A Murder is Announced” by Agatha Christie at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck at Berryman. Runs Fri. and Sat. through Aug. 13. Tickets are $10. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “The Thousandth Night” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. 2 and 7 p.m., through July 31, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $36. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep, “The Ugly American” Created and performed by Mike Daisey at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Aug. 13. Tickets are $30-$35. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works, “The Grand Inquisitor” by Dostoevsky. Thurs - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 31. Tickets are $9-$25 sliding scale. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Anything Goes” Cole Porter’s musical, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Aug. 13 at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

“Livin’ Fat” a comedy about an African American family struggling over a financial blessing, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., through July 30, at Sweets Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $12.50-$35. 233-9222. 

The Lobster Project “Killing My Lobster and the Wonderful World of Science” Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 7:30 and 10 p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12-$17. 415-558-7721. www.killingmylobster.com 

FILM 

For Your Eyes Only “The House on 92nd Street” at 7:30 p.m. and “Pickup on South Street” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Youth Writing Festival with students from Mentoring for Academic Success (MAS) at 6 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

COterie DAnce, CODA, presents “Emotionsa Passages” at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $13-$15. 925-798-1300. 

De Rompe y Raja, Afro-Peruvian at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ellen Hoffman, Dick Conte Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums with Ms. Carmen Getit at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Greg Lamboy at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Waterson Carthy at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

LoCal Music Expo II at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Wanda Stafford Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Mike Glendinning at 7 p.m. at A Cuppa Tea, 3203 College Ave. Free, all ages show. www.mikeglendinning.com  

All Ages Show with The Botticellis, Nineteen Eightyfour, Pyramus Never Dies and The Picture Theory at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Ampere, Bones Brigade, Motherspeed, Hiretsuken 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. 

Shotgun Wedding Quintet, Felonious at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 548-1159.  

LoCal Music Expo II, acoustic folk/rock, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10.  

Zadell: Zoe & Dave Ellis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Django Reinhardt Festival with Dorado Schmitt, Florin Niculescu and others at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 30 

THEATER 

“Hiroshima Stories” 60th Anniversary Commemoration with personal stories, drumming, and theater at 7:30 p.m. at International House Auditorium, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Tickets are $10. 642-9460. 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Mosswood Park, MacArthur and Broadway, Oakland. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

Shotgun Players, “Cyrano de Bergerac” at 4 p.m., Sat. and Sun. through Sept. 11, at John Hinkle Park, labor day perf. Sept. 5. Free with pass the hat donation after the show. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “Blonde Venus” at 7 p.m. and “Midnight Mary” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Official Pep Talks” Gallery talk on the installation and interactive project by The Susan O'Malley Research Team at 1 p.m. at ProArts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361. www.proartsgallery.org 

“No No the Saddest” A poetry and dance collaboration with Alan Bern and Lucinda Weaver at 7 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. 883-0600. www.belladonna.ws 

A Night of Voices, a nomadic variety show, at 7:30 p.m. at Comic Relief, 2026 Shattuck Ave. Free. 843-5002.  

Mark John Sternal on “Guitar: Total Techniques, Scales & Applications” at 2 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 5604 Bay Street, Emeryville. 547-0905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cambio X Change Join the Berkeley Plama Soriano Sister City group for Cuban music and dance, art exhibit, and information on upcoming delegations to Cuba at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St.  

PortFest World Music & Jazz Festival with Hugh Masekela, Kenny Garrett Quartet, Dave Ellis Quintet, Mo’Rockin Project and others from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, at the end of 7th St., Oakland. 627-1111. www.portofoaklandpublicartprogram.com 

Mohammad Reza Lotfi, Persian classical music, at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $30-$45. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Grapefruit Ed at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Hideo Date, Ed Reed & Laura Klein Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

One Block Radius, hip hop at at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7-$8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Mac McAnally at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Maestro de Bomba en la Bahia, Afro-Puerto Rican dance and music at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Daniel Marschak & Friends at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Zydeco Flames at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Alan Smithline, blues, at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Bud Spanger/Taylor Eigsti 4-Tet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Famous Last Words at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

“From Brooklyn with Love,” with Maya Azucena and DJ Sake-1 at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

Grapefruit Ed at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Fleas & Lice, Star Spangled Bastards, Motorama 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. 

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

SUNDAY, JULY 31 

CHILDREN  

Putamayo “Swing Around the World” at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players, “Cyrano de Bergerac” at 4 p.m., Sat. and Sun. through Sept. 11, at John Hinkle Park, (labor day perf. Sept. 5). Free with pass the hat donation after the show. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Harold Lloyd “Welcome Danger” at 3 p.m. with Jon Mirsalis on piano, and Pre-Code Hollywood “Gold Diggers of 1933” at 5:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Jewish Film Festival from 11:45 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater. Tickets are available from 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Jacqueline Berger and Shelley Savren at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Collegium “Penitential Psalms” at 3 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$15, at the door. 452-0503. ww.pacificcollegium.org  

Rose Royce at 3 p.m. at Music in the Park at Arroyo Viejo Park, 7701 Krause St., Oakland. Sponsored by Councilperson Desley Brooks. 

Samora Pinderhughes Quintet at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Via Rio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Alexandria, belly dance, flamenco, South Indian Dance at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Americana Unplugged: Tom Kingsley & The Moonbats at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Maya Azucena, at 10 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

MONDAY, AUGUST 1 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 2 to 8:35 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater. Tickets are available from 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Actors Reading Writers “Travels” stories by Lorrie Moore, Maria Thomas, and John Updike, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free. 845-8542, ext. 376. 

Poetry Express with Tureeda Mikell at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sandy Cressman’s Homenagem Brasileira at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Standing on a West Berkeley sidewalk, I watched three young barn owls jostling around in an Atlas cedar near the palm tree where they had hatched. The light was fading, but you could still see their ghostly shapes among the branches. And you couldn’t miss their incessant “feed me” calls—a vocalization described by ornithologists as the “snore.” The parents were nowhere in sight; maybe out hunting, more likely roosting nearby, away from the racket. 

When dinner eventually arrived, it would be some kind of small mammal. Barn owls in rural locations prey heavily on voles and shrews; in urban settings, the mix would include house mice and young rats (adult rats would be too much for the owls to handle). 

With their silent flight and hyperacute sense of hearing, the birds are consummate hunters. They can locate their quarry in total darkness, dispatching it with a bite through the back of the skull. 

I had been thinking about predation since a couple of days earlier, when I had an unexpected encounter in the Lakes Basin region of the Sierra. At Sand Pond, near Sardine Lake, there’s a nature trail that winds through a patch of forest flooded by beavers, full of dead snags where woodpeckers and other birds nest. A pair of hairy woodpeckers, joined by a mixed posse of neighbors—a flicker, a warbling vireo, a couple of mountain chickadees—were harassing what I first took to be a squirrel poking its head into a nest cavity. But it wasn’t a squirrel; it was larger, with an elongated body and a semi-bushy tail. When it pulled back from the hole and turned toward me, I realized it was a marten—an arboreal member of the weasel family, a creature I’d never seen before. 

The marten went back to the hole and pulled out an almost-fledged woodpecker, already in its black-and-white plumage. It ran down the snag to cache its prey somewhere at the base, then back up. In a frenzy, it began gnawing at the rim of the nest cavity; I could see chips flying. Then it managed to cram its entire body into the hole. 

Exiting rump first, the marten brought out a second woodpecker. Back down, back up, into the cavity again, and out with the third and last nestling. The birds continued to call and swoop, but the show was over. 

I had stood speechless through the whole sequence; it never occurred to me to try to scare off the predator as it cleaned out the woodpeckers’ nest. A bad day for the woodpeckers, of course; it may have been too late for them to begin a new brood, making their nesting season a complete bust. The marten might have been a female with a litter of hungry kits, which I believe is what you would call young martens. It might have been an opportunistic male, killing more than it immediately needed (as weasels are prone to do). In any case, it was fascinating to watch the predator at work. 

The woodpeckers were predators in their own right, of course, although we tend not to think of them that way. Like most birds, they are voracious consumers of insects, beetle grubs and the like. And the gopher snake I’d seen earlier this spring being dismembered by a parent red-shouldered hawk had done in its own share of rodents. Predation is inescapable: part of life in the food chain. It’s also a large part of our perception of nature. Spend some time watching Animal Planet or PBS and you’ll see a significant body count.  

This bothers some people on a philosophical level. The naturalist Alexander Skutch, who died earlier this year (around the same time as the great evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr and the eccentric but splendid Dame Miriam Rothschild), considered it life’s fundamental evil, and enforced a zero-tolerance policy for predators at his Costa Rican ranch. Although he loved birds, he detested hawks, snakes and other nest-robbers. For Skutch, the moment the first single-celled organism made a meal of one of its neighbors was a kind of evolutionary Original Sin. It was all downhill from there; better we should have gone the route of photosynthesis. (Skutch was willing to give some slack to scavengers that eat what something else has killed.) 

Skutch’s is definitely a minority view, though. Others see predation as the force that drove the diversification of life. I’m wary of reading progress into the evolutionary record, but I’ll buy Richard Dawkins’ argument (in his recent The Ancestor’s Tale) that arms races between predators and prey have ratcheted up adaptations on both sides: “Arms races are deeply and inescapably progressive in a way that, for example, evolutionary accommodation to the weather is not.” As Robinson Jeffers put it: “What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine/ The fleet limbs of the antelope?” And the antelope helped shape the wolf, too, as the moth shaped the bat and the vole shaped the barn owl. 

The case can be made (as in Donna Hart and Robert Sussman’s Man the Hunted) that the human brain is one more product of the prey-predator dynamic. Modern primates are subject to heavy predation pressure by cats, raptors and snakes. Instead of cryptic coloration or defensive armor, they have evolved social and communications skills (like the African monkeys with specific alarm calls for leopards, pythons and eagles). Long before crude weapons made our ancestors effective predators, they must have been prey as well—and their responses to that role were part of the long path to humanity. 

A world without predation might be a kinder one, but I suspect it would be a whole lot less interesting. (I’ll admit, though, that I might view the issue with less equanimity if a local great horned owl happened to mistake my associate Matt the Cat—a semiretired predator himself—for a tasty skunk).›

Federal agents seized a major arms cache that included explosives, machine guns, assault rifles, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition discovered as Berkeley firefighters battled a blaze in a 3027 Adeline St. liquor store early Wednesday. 

The arsenal was found in an upstairs apartment over Black & White Liquor Store. In addition to the weapons and explosives, the apartment contained 178 marijuana plants in a sophisticated “grow” operation. 

Among the items seized from the apartment were: 

• Two machine guns. 

• A 50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle, which fires slugs capable of killing at ranges of more than a mile. 

• At least two dozen military assault rifles. 

• Assorted shotguns. 

• Handguns. 

• A pair of bullet-proof vests. 

• Illegal “loud reports,” a mortar-launched fireworks explosive charge that produces a sharp noise and a brilliant flash of white light, that federal agents said can cause considerable damage. 

“Thank goodness the fire didn’t spread to where the weapons were stored. It could have been a real disaster for the neighborhood,” said Marti McKee, public information officer for the Northern California office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). 

Police found the apartment’s tenant, 45-year-old Leslie Tanigawa, in the crowd that had gathered to watch the firefighters in action. He was taken into custody without incident, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Tanigawa’s address is listed as 2001 Emerson St. because the entrance to the two upstairs apartments is located on the side of the building facing the cross street one block south of Ashby Avenue. 

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said the fire appeared to have been intentionally set and began outside the downstairs liquor store. Firefighters discovered the weapons cache as they entered an upstairs apartment in their efforts to contain the blaze. 

The fire began in the narrow, four-foot space between the liquor store and La Balafon, an African art store and braiding salon at 3217 Adeline St. The blaze didn’t spread to the other structure. 

Orth said the fire caused an estimated $35,000 in structural damage and $15,000 in losses to contents of the wooden, two-story building. 

“Most of the damage to the store was done to one wall, but when we arrived it was spreading inside the wall to the apartment upstairs,” Orth said. 

Firefighters inadvertently broke dozens of bottles of booze as they struggled to contain the blaze. Orth said, “When the first guys came out of the store, the smell of liquor was so bad that I asked them, ‘What’ve you been drinking?’” 

Emergency dispatchers were notified about the fire at 2:48 a.m. Wednesday, and by the time the blaze had ended at 3:39, ten companies had responded with five engines, two ladder trucks, two ambulances, 28 firefighters and two chiefs. 

A fire company from Oakland was dispatched to cover Berkeley in case another fire broke out in the city, Orth said. 

Firefighters chopped a hole in the roof to provide ventilation in case the fire spread to the attic, “where it would have taken hours to contain,” he said. 

The first had already spread to the kitchen of the apartment with the arsenal.  

Only one of the two upstairs apartments was occupied; the second was undergoing renovation, Orth said. Berkeley Police called in the ATF after the arms were discovered, “and they have taken over many of the firearms aspects of the case,” he said 

By mid afternoon Wednesday, Berkeley and Oakland Police and a team of ATF agents were hauling out the contents of one of two apartments.  

“It was a good-sized seizure,” said John Lee, Resident Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Oakland Field Office, deferring other comments to Marti McKee, press officer for the ATF’s Northern California Office. 

Tanigawa has been booked on six felony counts, Okies said. Three of the charges stem from the loud reports: storage of fireworks without a valid permit, possession without a valid permit and felonious possession of fireworks. 

He is also charged with two drug counts for the cultivation and possession for sale of marijuana. 

The sixth count is a felony firearms charge stemming from the assault rifles. 

Additional and still more serious charges could result from the federal investigation, particularly if tests confirm early suspicions that many of the weapons have been illegally modified to fire automatically—that is, to fire continuous bursts so long as pressure is maintained on the trigger. 

“From a preliminary examination, it appears that at least a few are fully automatic,” McKee said, “although we will have to await a final determination by our experts.” 

McKee declined to give an exact count of the weaponry or a list of their types, saying that such information was confidential and would only be released if an indictment is handed down by a federal court. 

Possession of the explosive fireworks could also result in federal felony charges, because permits for possession and storage are required at both the state and federal levels. 

The liquor store has been targeted by neighborhood activists, who see it as a source of violent crime. 

Six weeks ago Black & White Liquors was the target of a Berkeley Police sting resulting from reports that the store was willing to buy stolen booze. 

Officers arrested store clerk Satnan Singh on five felony counts of attempting to possess stolen property on June 10 after a police recorded him attempting to buy liquor he was told was stolen. 

Black & White owner Sucha Singh Banger, the building’s owner, also owns Grove Market, two blocks to the west at the Ashby Avenue/Martin Luther King Jr. Way intersection. 

Neighborhood activists have tried to close both stores, said former City Council candidate Laura Menard. “Both of them are our problem liquor stores in North Berkeley,” she said. 

Two men helping to clean up the fire scene Thursday morning threatened to assault a reporter who took a photograph of the fire damage through the store’s open front door.

Today (Friday) when loved ones attend a memorial for 19-year-old Berkeley High graduate Meleia Willis-Starbuck, one of her best friends will be facing arraignment in connection to her murder. 

Chistopher Wilson, a 20-year-old Berkeley High graduate, turned himself into Berkeley police Wednesday. Police say he drove the getaway car after a friend sprayed bullets in the direction of Willis-Starbuck and others shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Wilson was arrested for murder and is being held in Berkeley jail on $100,000 bail. 

Police have identified the shooter as Chistopher Hollis, a 2001 graduate of Berkeley Alternative School. Hollis, who now lives in Hayward, remained at large as of Thursday evening.  

A source close to the event told the Daily Planet that Willis-Starbuck and the two suspects in her murder were at the same party that Saturday night, and parted ways shortly before Willis-Starbuck and her friends were accosted by several men some of whom are believed to be UC Berkeley football players. 

Feeling threatened, Willis-Starbuck, the source said, telephoned Hollis. Wilson drove up Dwight Way with Hollis and a third man in the car, the source said. At College Avenue, Hollis jumped out of the car and shot one bullet into the air and three into the crowd. 

The men then drove to a house where other Berkeley High graduates were hanging out, according to the source. The men asked their friends to let them park their car in the driveway so it would be out of view. At the time, the three men did not know that one of the bullets hit Willis-Starbuck. 

Later that night Hollis reportedly returned to the scene of the shooting, figured out what had happened and fled, the source said. The third boy in the car is said to be out of the country on a pre-planned trip. 

The arrest of Wilson shocked those who knew him and Willis-Starbuck. 

“It absolutely could not have been on purpose. They were close friends,” said Berkeley High teacher Rick Ayers, who taught both students. Ayers called Wilson “a really great kid.” 

Willis-Starbuck, a Dartmouth College junior, was murdered outside of her apartment on College Avenue between Dwight Way and Haste Street. She was living there for the summer while interning at a local center for homeless women. 

According to eyewitness Dana Johnson, shortly before the shooting, Willis-Starbuck and several female friends were verbally accosted by a group of five men. An argument began and as most of the women prepared to get into a friend’s car, Willis-Starbuck continued talking to the men.  

Police say that a car driving up Dwight Way stopped at College Avenue. A man got out and opened fire at the group, striking Willis-Starbuck with at least one round. No one else was hit. 

Okies refused to comment on reports that Willis-Starbuck knew Wilson and Hollis and called them for help following the argument. 

“At this stage I cannot go into specifics about any of that,” he said. 

Berkeley Police spokesperson Joe Okies said police were not currently looking for other suspects in the crime. 

Wilson, a former Berkeley High baseball player, had completed two years at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, and was planning to attend UC Santa Cruz in the fall, according to Ayers. 

“I’m shocked he would even be in the same car as someone with a gun,” said Ayers, who had lunch with Wilson this spring. 

Okies said police had worked around the clock “on a number of leads.” The investigation led to search warrants for the homes of Wilson and Hollis. Wilson turned himself in after police searched his house. The car he was driving is now in police custody. 

The victim’s mother, Kimberly Willis-Starbuck, issued a statement Thursday morning that didn’t address the arrests. 

“This has become a tragedy for the whole community,” she wrote. “What the family wants most is for violence to end and for healing for everyone to begin.” 

The memorial service for Willis-Starbuck will be held at Berkeley High School’s Donohue Gym at 11 a.m. Friday. 

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Berkeley peace activists are fuming over a hostile takeover, but not by Republicans in Washington, D.C. or corporations abroad. 

They see appointees who oppose taking stands on controversial national and international issues, especially those which include Israel and Palestine, amassing power within Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission.  

Since the 15-person commission was created by voters in 1986, councilmembers and school board members who wanted Berkeley to weigh in on issues across the globe appointed like-minded residents to it. Many others chose to ignore the commission. It has been a vehicle for promoting pacifist ideals at home and abroad that has made some city lawmakers proud and others a bit uncomfortable. 

But not anymore. A recent series of appointments by officials uncomfortable with Berkeley taking stands on issues outside the city limits has some commissioners crying foul. 

“There has been an obvious attempt to change the face of Peace and Justice,” said commissioner Michael Sherman. 

The same commission that in 2001 voted unanimously to support conscientious objectors to war couldn’t muster an eight-vote majority last month to support a federal Department of Peace. The council ultimately adopted the resolution without the commission’s endorsement. 

“Some people seem to have come to the commission with the determination not to foster peace or justice,” said Rita Moran, removed last month from the commission by Councilmember Laurie Capitelli after serving for two years.  

“When I came on I was kind of a conservative, but by the time I was off I was a liberal,” she said. “It was funny to see my political role change for me.” 

The Peace and Justice Commission has no power to dictate policy, but over the years it has shown a knack for grabbing headlines and making lawmakers squirm. 

The most recent cases came at the height of the Palestinian Intifada, when the commission sent the council resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian dispute that polarized lawmakers and residents. 

In 2002, the council narrowly defeated the commission’s proposal for the City of Berkeley not to sign contracts or hold stock in any company doing business in Israel or Palestine. Opponents at the time charged that the resolution really targeted Israel since it has the larger economy.  

The next year the council narrowly passed a commission proposal that Berkeley support a house bill calling for an investigation into the death of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old pro-Palestinian activist from Washington run over and killed by an Israeli bull-dozer.  

“I think there were members of the community who were very opposed to those two resolutions and decided they wanted to take over Peace and Justice,” said Councilmember Dona Spring. The commission has not taken up an Israel-Palestine resolution since the Corrie vote. 

After the two resolutions, John Gertz, former board president of the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, began lobbying sympathetic councilmembers and school board directors to appoint commissioners who would oppose similar resolutions. 

“Corrie was the straw that broke camel’s back,” said Gertz, the president of Zorro Productions, which controls the worldwide trademark to the famed Spanish swordsman. A local player in Democratic politics, Gertz in the past year said he has played host to three congressmen and calls Sen. Joe Liberman (D-Conn.) a good friend. 

“What I have observed is that a lot of people were sick of the commission being run by the lunatic left and some brave people came forward to put a stop to it,” Gertz said. 

After the Corrie vote, Peace and Justice Commissioner Elliot Cohen said Gertz met with several colleagues and demanded that they rescind their votes. “He told us we had to reverse our vote or else,” Cohen said. 

For Gertz, his vendetta over the Corrie vote goes beyond the Peace and Justice Commission. He is focusing on future mayoral elections when two councilmembers who voted for the Corrie resolution, Linda Maio and Kriss Worthington, might run for the city’s top job. 

“The real political objective is that Maio is going down and so is Worthington,” Gertz said in a phone interview, but didn’t specify how he would ensure their defeat. “They refused to rescind their vote on Corrie. That’s it for them. They’re toast.” 

Last year Gertz also proposed arranging a meeting between Daily Planet editors and local Jewish leaders over an editorial cartoon he thought was anti-Semitic. 

Gertz said he knows three of the commissioners appointed in the last year, but didn’t push for any of them to be put on the commission. 

Moderate councilmembers and school board directors said they weren’t aware of any lobbying effort for them to appoint pro-Israel members to Peace and Justice. 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who last year appointed Jonathan Wornick, one of the commission members hesitant to support resolutions not specifically dealing with Berkeley, said he had trouble finding volunteers for the post and that he had no intention of removing him. “I think the commission should be willing to tolerate diversity,” he said. 

Right after the commission voted to approve divesting from Israel and Palestine, School Board Director Joaquin Rivera filled his appointment on the commission with Thom Seaton, the former president of Congregation Beth El.  

Although Seaton’s appointment to the commission came the same week as those of two other staunchly pro-Israel residents, David Weinstein and Micki Weinberg, neither of whom still serve on Peace and Justice, Rivera said he didn’t need any lobbying effort to convince him the commission needed a wider range of opinions. 

“I thought the commission was out of control,” he said. “They needed people who would bring some balance.” 

“My view was that the city and the commission were mired in ideological orthodoxy,” said Seaton. “Everyone in Berkeley says to question authority. Now people are questioning authority and people don’t like it.” 

Over the past year, Seaton has found more kindred spirits on the commission. Since 2004, four councilmembers and school board directors have appointed new members, all of whom are bucking the commission’s traditionally internationalist agenda. 

Wornick, who identifies himself as “a solid Democrat and vegetarian” called the Department of Peace “a silly idea,” that would duplicate the work of the State Department. 

Although he has been active in AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, he said the Israel issue was not a factor in his decision to seek a seat on the commission. 

“I had read about the commission when I lived in San Francisco and it seemed like it might be an interest of mine,” he said.  

Elisabeth Kashner, who replaced Moran, said that as an elementary school teacher she would fight hard for children’s and health issues. But when it comes to controversial matters, she doesn’t want the commission going too far out on a limb. 

“They clearly have a distressing effect in Berkeley and set people against each other,” she said. 

The divide between the new appointees to the commission and the old guard was evident at this month’s meeting. 

Among the five members opposing a resolution Monday calling for Gov. Schwarzenegger to recall state guardsmen from Iraq, three of them, Wornick, Kashner and Jessica Weddle, were appointed within the past year. The four most senior members of the commission backed the proposal, which didn’t get the eight votes needed for passage. 

The failure in back-to-back meetings to pass resolutions for a Department of Peace and to pull out the guard has some commissioners gunning for a counter offensive.  

“We’re not going to roll over and be doormats,” said Commissioner Phoebe Anne Sorgen. “We need to lobby the council and the school board to appoint true advocates of peace and justice as is their duty.” 

The commission was approved by voters with a mandate to advise the council on social justice issues across the globe. Ann Fagan-Ginger, a former commission chair, said anyone who didn’t believe in that mission shouldn’t sit on the commission. 

“It’s not the job of commission members to change the content of the ordinance and resolution that established it,” she said. “If they want to do that they should start an initiative petition.” 

Commissioner Cohen said he didn’t think the commission should have an ideological litmus test, but added that the new commissioners seemed bent on obstruction. 

“They want to defeat everything without giving reasons for their opposition,” he said. “These people are not interested in working with us, they’re interested in destroying us.” 

Cohen said the new members had not offered any proposed resolutions for the commission to consider. 

The new commissioners said the resolutions are often poorly researched and presented, giving them little choice but to object. 

Stuck in the middle of the divide is Commission Chair Steven Freedkin, who said he supports taking stands on controversial national and international issues, and has struggled to keep the peace at commission meetings. Freedkin has taken the unusual step of having commissioners take time to introduce themselves at meetings to build better rapport. 

The arrangement is still a work in progress. Members who supported pulling the guard troops from Iraq walked out of last week’s meeting after 10 p.m. rather than take up an item they knew they didn’t have the votes to carry.  

“It’s not realistic to think that if officials appoint people to the commission who don’t believe in its purpose that there won’t be some controversy,” Freedkin said. 

Nevertheless, he said the commission still functioned reasonably well. Over the past year, the commission passed 11 resolutions approved by council, he said. 

“Maybe, with some exceptions, having a commission to the right of mainstream Berkeley offers an opportunity,” Freedkin said. “When we get broader support here, we end up with something that has a bigger impact across America.” 

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A Superior Court Judge in Oakland has tentatively ruled that while the Berkeley Daily Planet is entitled to see some 17,000 Wal-Mart documents related to an employee lawsuit, the newspaper or its attorneys must pay $76,000 for the privilege of doing so. 

The July 19 ruling by Judge Ronald Sabraw comes in a case in which the Daily Planet intervened as a third party in the Savaglio v. Wal-Mart lawsuit, involving plaintiffs who are seeking to recover lost wages from the retail giant store for more than 204,000 current and former employees. 

The Daily Planet got involved solely for the purpose of unsealing documents which Wal-Mart had filed with the court. 

“Before the Daily Planet intervened with a motion under the California Sealed Records Rules,” the newspaper’s attorney in the case, Suzanne Murphy of Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld of Alameda, wrote in an e-mail, “almost every document relating to the case ... was effectively ‘under seal.’ As a result of our efforts, over 17,000 pages of court records are now (or will be soon) available for inspection by the public both in the paper files and on the court’s domain website.” 

Murphy said that she filed a motion with the court asking for Wal-Mart to pay the newspaper’s attorneys fees because “no media organization anywhere should have to spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to gain access to documents that unquestionably should have been available to the public for ... the actual cost of photocopying.” 

Judge Sabraw disagreed. 

In his tentative ruling, the judge said that the Daily Planet was not a successful party in the case or a “classical intervenor” who would qualify for attorneys fees, and that most of the thousands of pages of Wal-Mart documents that were unsealed by the newspaper’s actions “were of limited interest to the general public.” 

The judge also tentatively ruled that the newspaper had a “private commercial interest in covering the underlying lawsuit in the newspaper. The Berkeley Daily Planet, like all newspapers, must expend funds to gain access to information. In this case, it appears that the Berkeley Daily Planet was sufficiently motivated by its own interests to seek to unseal the documents and does not need the incentive of the prospect of a fee award.” 

Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O’Malley said, “It is difficult to understand how the judge could tentatively rule that the documents were of limited interest to the general public, while simultaneously asserting that our newspaper could derive some financial benefit from distributing information to the public which the judge says the public doesn’t necessarily want.” 

Ben Bagdikian, former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, said in a telephone interview in response to the ruling, “I think it’s essential that the Daily Planet not be penalized in this matter. If that persists, it will have a deleterious effect on all journalism, as well as on the rights of citizens to get a hearing without paying for it.” 

No date has been set for Judge Sabraw’s final opinion. If that opinion does not change from the tentative ruling, Murphy says she plans to appeal.

Thanks to the combined efforts of sports fans and of East Bay cities from Emeryville to Richmond, a new ball field complex in Berkeley is nearing reality. 

And it’s about time, says Doug Fielding, president of the Association of Sports Users. 

“If you came to me and said the Daily Planet wants to schedule a pickup game against, say, the San Francisco Chronicle and you’re looking for any week night or any time on a weekend except Saturday night, I would have to tell you we have nothing open until February 2006,” said the Berkeley manufacturer. 

Fielding, who is president of the Companion Group, a company that makes barbecue tools for retailers ranging from Williams Sonoma to Orchard Supply, is a key player on the local sports scene and one of the reasons Berkeley is about to get new playing fields where Gilman Street meets the bay, said Berkeley Parks and Recreation director Marc Seleznow. 

It took years of political maneuvering, an alliance of East Bay cities and a parks district plus millions of dollars to bring the dream into reality, but if all goes as planned a pair of year-round artificial turf rectangular playing fields will open in the fall of 2006, the first phase of a complex that will also include baseball diamonds when it’s completed. 

“There’s a deficit of at least 11 or 12 fields,” said Seleznow, explaining why Berkeley has teamed up with Albany, Richmond, El Cerrito, Emeryville and the East Bay Regional Parks District to build the complex. 

The Berkeley City Council, which is serving as lead agency under a Joint Powers Agreement with the other jurisdictions, is scheduled to vote its final approval on the complex on Sept. 27. 

The first two fields are scheduled to open 11 months later, with development of the three baseball fields—two softball and one regulation hardball—to follow as additional funds are raised. 

The site, currently used as the overflow parking lot of Golden Gate Fields, belongs to the East Bay Regional Parks District and will be operated on a self-sustaining basis by a private operator. 

Fielding has been advocating for extra fields for more than 12 years, and his alliance began doing maintenance on several fields about ten years ago. The organization incorporated as a non-profit eight years ago, and now schedules play at 23 fields, mostly in Berkeley and Albany, and represents about 17,000 players organized into 25 to 30 groups, he said. 

One of the major reasons for the group’s formation was that most of the fields in Berkeley were being allocated by the city for city-sponsored adult softball teams. 

“Youth teams couldn’t get on any of the fields,” Fielding said. “That was a big part of what got us started.” 

The first new fields in the East Bay were originally slated for development by the Albany City Council and Waterfront Commission for the Albany Plateau at the end of Buchanan Street at the base of the Albany Bulb. Environmental groups, including the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, Save the Bay and Citizens for the Eastshore State Park (now Citizens for Eastshore Parks) mobilized against the site, urging instead its development as wildlife habitat. 

During the planning process for the state park’s 2,000 acres, ball field advocates won agreement that some of the park’s upland acres would be reserved for their sports. 

“The East Bay Regional Parks District and the environmental community came up with the 16-acre (Gilman) site, which was owned by Magna Entertainment.” Seleznow recalled. “They worked a deal and got the Parks district to buy the land.” 

The cities created the Joint Powers Agreement late in 2003, with Berkeley as the lead agency. Originally, the plan was to raise grant money for simultaneous construction of all the fields, but one of the grants fell through, leaving only $3 million for the two artificial turf fields. 

“We’re now hiring a designer to see what we can build, and in the meantime we’re hoping other grants will come through,” said Seleznow. 

For the moment, the focus is on the planning commission, which needs to revise the Waterfront Specific Plan to allow construction to commence. Other city commissions are also conducting their final reviews, but no one doubts that the fields will be constructed on schedule. 

Fielding said several forces have reduced the availability of fields. First is the remarkable upsurge in women’s participation in field sports. Currently, he said, girls account for about 40 percent of the youth soccer teams, and there are now many more women participating in all field sports. 

Second is the rapid increase in urban infill development, which is eating up the vacant lots and fields once used for informal play. 

Third is the increasing awareness, driven by the media, of the need for physical activity to combat heart ailments and maintain good health. 

“We don’t have any over-40 women’s leagues yet, but they’ll be coming along too as players get older,” he said. 

Fielding said the rectangular fields are being constructed first because the artificial surface will allow year-round play, unlike grass fields which aren’t playable during the rainy season. 

“They’re also available for more sports like lacrosse, football and rugby,” he said. 

The location hasn’t won universal approval. Some, like L.A. Woods of Berkeley, say that playing so close to a heavily traveled freeway poses significant health risks to the developing lungs of young players. 

In written comments he filed with the city last Thursday, Wood noted that the section of West Berkeley nearest the I-80 also has the city’s highest rate of asthmatic children. 

Citing concerns about soil contamination, noise, traffic and wind-born contaminants—concerns minimalized in the city’s Environmental Initial Study on the project—Wood called for citing the complex further away from the freeway. 

The Parks and Recreation Commission will hear an update on the project when they meet Monday at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.

Calling some Berkeley staff recommendations “chicken poop,” Councilmember Dona Spring escalated the war of words over city land use and affordable housing at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. 

Spring and Councilmember Kriss Worthington fumed over the city’s interpretation of state housing law that they charge incorrectly gives developers higher profits without making them offer truly affordable housing. 

At one point, when Mayor Tom Bates asked the city attorney if Berkeley was in violation of state law, Spring chimed in, “You’re asking the wrong person.” 

Bates later told Spring to be careful about her language. 

“You make all these characterizations about things being illegal and secret,” he said. 

“I have a right to my opinion,” Spring said. 

Councilmember Betty Olds predicted mass resignations in the Planning Department following Spring’s outburst and asked Spring to mute her concerns in public. 

“If you have gripes with the staff, for heaven’s sake, air them in private,” she said. “It shouldn’t be put out for all the world.” 

When land use wasn’t on the table Tuesday, the council found some common ground. They voted unanimously to spend up to $300,000 over the next three months to reduce fire company closures and keep the Berkeley hills fire station open during fire season. The money will come from funds set aside for street repairs. 

A proposal to give the city manager authority to approve contracts of up to $200,000 without council approval passed 7-2. Spring and Worthington, voted no, preferring to keep the limit at $50,000. 

No vote was taken on proposed amendments to the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. The issue will return to the council in September. 

Density bonus at University Avenue project  

For several years there has been a brewing firestorm over Berkeley’s interpretation of the state density bonus law, which requires cities to give additional building space to developers who provide affordable housing units. 

Before the council Tuesday was the “Tune-Up Masters” project at 1698 University Ave., which has become the poster child for critics of the city policy.  

In January the council sent the five-story, 25-unit condominium project back to the Zoning Adjustments Board because city staff had erred in calculating the bonus space. 

The ZAB had granted the developer 25 percent more space for including condominium units to be sold at a price affordable to people making at or below 120 percent of the average local median income.  

But it turns out that for condominiums, the state allows a 15 percent bonus, equal to three additional units. A 25 percent bonus (five additional units) would only be permitted if the four affordable condos were offered at 80 percent of AMI.  

Rather than drop the price of the affordable units or reduce the number of bonus units, the developer invoked a separate section of the state law requiring Berkeley to grant additional concessions to offset lost revenue from including affordable units. 

The city determined the developer was entitled to an additional 1.6 units, bringing the number of bonus units from three to 4.6. To win the full fifth extra unit, the developer agreed to reduce the cost of one of the affordable units from 120 percent of AMI ($270,000) to 90 percent of AMI ($177,000).  

The ZAB approved the revised project in April. 

Critics appealed the ruling to the council charging that planning staff had incorrectly applied the state law and given the developer too many concessions. They also warned that the recommendation threatened to set a new precedent for developers to price affordable units at 120 of AMI rather than 80 percent. 

ZAB Chairman Andy Katz told council that a ZAB subcommittee has since begun reviewing the law, and if the ZAB had to vote over again, “we may have had a different result.” 

Seizing on the previous staff error, Councilmember Kriss Worthington called for the council to set a public hearing on the development. “I’m very nervous about setting precedent when the city government might be breaking the law,” he said. 

In most cities, the density bonus law encourages affordable housing. However, in Berkeley, which already requires developers to make one-fifth of new units affordable to low or middle-income residents, the law has often decreased the proportion of affordable units in new buildings since the bonus space goes to building more market-rate units. 

“For 25 percent more space, not to get affordable units for 80 percent of AMI is a travesty,” said Spring. “It will be a blot on everyone’s record who votes for this.” 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak countered that the project would help middle income home-buyers afford to live in Berkeley and didn’t want to see it delayed any further. “I have problems holding this project up while we resolve the density bonus issue. That could take a year or two,” he said. 

The council voted 5-3 (Spring, Worthington, Anderson, no) to uphold the ZAB’s ruling. 

With Tune-Up Masters behind them, the council stayed focused on the density bonus. By a unanimous vote councilmembers formed a nine-member joint subcommittee of the ZAB, Planning Commission and Housing Advisory Commission to review the city’s application of the law.  

The council also struck language from the proposal that would have prevented the ZAB from implementing new interpretations of the law until the council reviewed the complete subcommittee recommendation, a process that could take over a year. 

During the debate, Worthington demanded a copy of city rules, never approved by the council, that are used to set land use policies. 

“We’re being told it’s impossible to change these rules despite the fact that they are applied inappropriately and illegally,” said Worthington. 

Planning Director Dan Marks replied, “No one on staff has indicated that anything on the density bonus is illegal.” 

“It’s in the public record already that staff at a minimum gave inaccurate information to the zoning board in the case we heard this evening,” Worthington said. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz urged councilmembers to be patient while the subcommittee meets. “We want to come back to council with some straight answers and that will take some time,” he said. 

Spring then defended the right of the ZAB and the council to ignore staff recommendations and apply its own density bonus interpretation to future projects. 

“We don’t have to vote for all this chicken poop,” she said. 

Landmarks Preservation Ordinance Revisions 

For the first time Tuesday Councilmembers briefly staked out positions on how to deal with proposed changes to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. With conflicting recommendations from the Planning Commission and Landmarks Preservation Commission, Mayor Bates is expected to try to forge a compromise by the fall. 

Councilmembers Max Anderson and Darryl Moore both called for the council to establish a working group to iron out differences. Wozniak urged the city to find money for a survey to determine which city buildings should be protected before a property is proposed for a new development. 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli said the LPO had “become a tool” for opponents of new developments to control the development process. He also questioned the contention of Landmarks Preservation Commission members that the ordinance could be made to confirm with state law simply by changing a few words. 

Spring countered that there was little evidence the landmarking laws had done much to slow down or stop development in the city. 

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A parking dispute between Congregation Beth-El, Berkeley’s largest Jewish congregation, and its soon-to-be neighbors will now be decided by city staff. 

On Wednesday, Beth El submitted a parking plan that, if it meets with city approval, will likely result in the congregation receiving a permit to move into its new 34,000-square-foot synagogue at 1301 Oxford St. 

Deputy Planning Director Wendy Cosin said the city would meet with neighbors over the proposal and likely rule on it within a week. 

Beth El has planned an opening celebration for Sept. 9. 

Despite months of negotiations, neighborhood leaders say the final plan still doesn’t honor a settlement agreement designed to keep Beth El members and guests from monopolizing available on-street parking spaces. 

“They’ve come a long way, but not far enough,” said Nancy Levin, a member of the Live Oak Codornices Creek Neighborhood Association, which includes blocks of Spruce and Oxford streets just east of Shattuck Avenue’s Gourmet Ghetto. Many synagogue neighbors have posted signs on their lawns asking Beth El to honor the agreement. 

Members of the group said if the congregation doesn’t offer further amendments to the plan they would ask city officials to withhold the occupancy permit. 

Without a permit, Beth El would be at least temporarily shut out of the synagogue it has spent five years and around $8 million building. 

“We really do believe that we are following the agreement and that we have resolved the parking issues,” said Beth El First Vice President Katherine Haynes-Sanstad. 

The congregation and LOCCNA have battled over the new synagogue for years since Beth El announced it was moving from its home two blocks away at the corner of Arch and Vine streets. 

After coming to terms over the restoration of Codornices Creek, which runs through the property, Beth-El officials and LOCCNA signed an agreement outlining the congregation’s responsibilities to keep the neighborhood unburdened from members and guests looking for parking spaces. 

Neighbors have insisted that street parking around Oxford and Spruce streets is sparse, while an environmental study commissioned by the congregation found that there were between 50 and 100 on-street parking spaces available at all times of the day. 

The compromise required that for events of 150 people or more the congregation must use “on site valet parking and satellite parking or other effective techniques.” 

The congregation has contracted with Safeway, St. Mary Magdalen Church, First Union Title company and the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center to provide spaces for large events like weddings and congregation functions. 

Combined the satellite lots would add 102 parking spaces in addition to 31 spaces at the site and 26 on-street parking spaces along the synagogue’s street frontage. Beth El’s current home has two on-site parking spaces. 

Nevertheless Alan Gould of LOCCNA feared that several of the lots may not be available over the weekend when the congregation would likely need them.  

“They aren’t firm commitments,” he said. “The end result is the satellite parking schemes they have don’t seem like they would work.” 

LOCCNA members also oppose Beth-El’s proposal to monitor on-street parking usage during large events to gauge the synagogue’s impact on neighborhood parking. The plan calls for the congregation to lessen the neighborhood parking burden with additional signs and educational outreach if more than half of all available on-street neighborhood parking spaces are taken by Beth El patrons. 

“The general consensus is the 50 percent threshold [for taking action] is way to low,” Levin said. “It’s claiming too much of the parking spaces.” 

Haynes-Sanstad said neighborhood fears of big synagogue crowds were misplaced. She said that the 54 spaces on-site and along the synagogue’s frontage would be enough to accommodate up to 160 worshippers, a larger than usual crowd for Sabbath services. 

She added that the underground Safeway lot on Shattuck Avenue with 47 parking spaces would be available to the congregation for all occasions. Also parking at the church could be expanded from 15 to 115 spaces for some occasions because Beth-El patrons will be allowed to park in part of its playground area. 

“We’re going to direct people to the lots,” she said. “People will not be instructed to cruise the neighborhood.” 

Cosin said the final decision on the matter would be made by Zoning Officer Mark Rhoades based on whether the congregation’s parking plan honored the agreement with neighbors. Although Haynes-Sanstad is confident that it does, she said the congregation is still concerned the dispute could delay the synagogue’s grand opening. 

“Let’s just say we haven’t printed opening invitations yet,” she said. 

A West Berkeley senior housing development slated to open next year will bear the name Margaret Breland Homes, in honor of the former city councilmember and longtime West Berkeley resident who died earlier this year. 

“It seemed like a wonderful way to honor her memory,” said Dan Sawislak, executive director of non-profit housing developer Resources For Community Development. “She was a big supporter of affordable housing.” 

RCD is overseeing the project with Jubilee Restoration Inc., whose executive director Pastor Gordon Choyce was close to Breland. 

The 28-unit project at 2575 San Pablo Ave. was originally scheduled to be named Jubilee Senior Homes. 

Also under construction in Berkeley is Affordable Housing Associates’ Sacramento Senior Homes, which will have 40 units of senior housing at 2517 Sacramento St. AHA recently completed University Neighbors Apartments. The project at 1719 University Avenue has 27 affordable apartments. 

—Matthew ArtzÃ

High on a hilltop above the city, the researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are working every day to contribute to both the scientific and world communities. 

In the Donner Lab under Dr. Kenneth Downing, graduate student Alison Killilea works on a microscopic level to understand the medications used to treat breast, lung and ovarian cancer. She works with a chemotherapeutic drug, commercially sold as Taxol and generically known as paclitaxel, which inhibits the replication, or mitosis, of cells. Rapid mitosis is the basis for tumors. 

Since the discovery of paclitaxel in 1960, researchers have produced a multitude of drugs that work on the same principle. They target microtubules, a structure used in the division of cells, and stabilizes them to the extent that mitosis is disrupted. Microtubules are “very dynamic- they are like the railroad system of the cell. They transport proteins around the cell and are essential for mitosis,” Killilea said. 

“But cells are very smart,” she said. “If you inhi bit the dynamic nature of microtubules with a stabilizing drug, this blocks mitosis and the cell realizes that something is wrong. Since the cell can no longer proceed through mitosis, the cell essentially commits suicide. This keeps the cancer from growi ng.” 

Despite its effectiveness, paclitaxel has some drawbacks. Paclitaxel targets the fastest-growing cells, but it isn’t specific to cancer cells. It also kills hair cells and cells in the stomach lining, leading to the hair loss and nausea that are associated with chemotherapy. It is possible for patients to be resistant to it, and also to develop a tolerance, limiting the drug’s ability to fight future occurrences of cancer. The drug itself is mildly toxic, and it isn’t water soluble, necessitating a carrier to deliver it to cells. The carrier is toxic as well. 

Killilea is exploring how new drugs, similar to paclitaxel, bind to microtubules because the new drugs have the potential to be less toxic and more effective against drug resistance. According to Killilea, her goal “is to map the drug binding site, leading to a better understanding of how chemotherapeutic agents work on their biological targets.” This better understanding should contribute to the discovery and application of more effective can cer treatments. 

“The hope is that in a decade people will have more and better options,” Killilea said. 

Working alongside Killilea is Nicholas Leiby, an MIT undergraduate who is at the lab for the summer. His project involves microtubules as well, but g oes in a different direction. He is working on developing a model of how Parkin, a protein implicated in the onset of Parkinson's disease, binds to microtubules. To achieve this he looks at the complex in an electron microscope. The model may take between six months and a year to complete. 

Though their research has a known application, Killilea feels the exploration of how proteins bind to tubulin has its own merit. 

“Pure or raw science is terribly important, because you never know what will come of it. Sometimes it’s an atomic bomb; sometimes it’s a vaccination. You just never know when you start how much can be affected later on,” she said. 

Numbers and data are the inevitable result of research, and in the William Jagust Lab, Drs. Beth Kuczynski and J amie Eberling and research assistant Amy Gitcho spend their days analyzing observations of brain functions. They are looking at information gathered from a longitudinal study of Alzheimer’s Disease and Cerebrovascular Disease (CVD). 

Both diseases are pre valent in the elderly population and are often co-concurrent, Kuczynski said. It is her hope to separate the symptoms and disassociate the diseases to determine the cause of dementia in each. 

From a cohort of subjects from a multi-institutional study (UC Berkeley and LBL, UC Davis, UCSF and USC) on memory, Kuczynski and her team found that certain brain activities (or lack thereof) indicate a change in metabolic activities in subsequent years. All activities in the brain are fueled by glucose, so a reduc tion in glucose use indicates reduced brain function. By tracing the delivery of a substance that acts like glucose, scientists can determine with parts of the brain aren’t working as hard as they should. 

The next step for the team is to examine the whit e matter tracts, or axons. Axons are a part of the brain’s communication system. A new technique called diffusion tensor imaging allows one to see the white matter tracts, and more importantly, to see if there are any disruptions in pathways to areas of the brain that show a metabolic decrease. It is Kuczynski’s hope that this will reveal more about the ways memories are lost in a brain afflicted with Alzheimer’s. 

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Responding to a plea by UC Berkeley Boalt Hall Law School Dean Chris Edley Jr. that “if we don’t get these fees, we will be out of money,” University of California Regents this week approved increases up to 7 percent in professional school fees beginning in the second half of the 2005-06 school year. 

The increases are scheduled to begin in the winter quarter. 

The 12-6 vote took place Thursday in San Francisco. The increase affects 31 law, business, medical, and other professional schools throughout the university system. 

The increase is in addition to the 3 percent professional school fee increase approved by regents last November, bringing the total increase up to 10 percent from last year to this. 

In his Executive Summary recommending the increases, UC President Robert Dynes said that professional school faculty salaries have fallen an average 10 percent behind comparable institutions, and “the professional schools have been unable to make the financial investments necessary to maintain the academic quality of their programs.” 

Regents rejected the argument of several of their colleagues that the increase should be delayed until the board’s November meeting, when a discussion on a long-term professional fee schedule is scheduled. 

Even with the increases, UC’s professional fees compare favorably with fees at other institutions in the nation. Average base fee levels for state residents for UC law schools will be $21,863 in 2005-06, $373 more than the average resident fees for all public law schools. Law school fees at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale range between $35,000 and $37,000 per year. 

But in announcing her decision not to vote for the increase, Regent Monica Lozano, a Gray Davis appointee from Los Angeles, said, “I believe fees need to be increased, but it should be predictable and moderate. Rather than take incremental steps, we should wait for a few months to come back with a long term plan.” 

And Regent Norman Pattiz, a Davis appointee from Culver City, called the decision “shortsighted” and “a tremendous mistake.” 

Using UC Berkeley’s law school as an example, he said, “Boalt Law School should get the money they need, but we shouldn’t make it more difficult to go to Boalt.” 

But school officials argument vehemently for the increase, saying that state budget cuts over the past decade have eroded the system’s professional school standings. 

“We are seeing an alarming deterioration of quality as perceived by people considering coming to our professional schools,” Dynes said. 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgenau asked, “Do we want to have a second-rate law school with low fees? I didn’t come to Berkeley to preside over a second-rate program. It would be a betrayal of the University of California not to provide us with the budget to continue to be a world-class institution.” 

And UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale added, “People used to come to the university’s professional schools because we were of comparable quality with other schools in the nation, but we were less expensive. If we continue to be less expensive but are not as comparable in quality, that will lead prospective students to make a different calculation.” 

Some regents appeared to be swayed by the argument that at least 25 percent of the fee increase would be dedicated to financial aid for low income students. 

Regent Gerald Parsky, a Pete Wilson appointee from Los Angeles and a supporter of the increases, pointed out that unlike in past years, when professional fee increases only made up for cuts in state funds, the money generated by Thursday’s action would all actually add to the professional schools’ budgets. 

In addition to the 10 percent professional fees approved by regents for the 2005-06 year, regents also approved, on a 10-8 vote, a “temporary” two year fee increase—$770 in the first year and $1,050 in the second. University officials said that extra increase was necessary after a Superior Court Judge in San Francisco granted an injunction to plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed by students in 2003. 

In that lawsuit, the professional students—all of whom had enrolled in 2002 or before—alleged that professional fee increases approved by regents for the spring of 2003 and beyond violated a contract between the university and the students that professional fees would not be increased while they were enrolled. 

The court’s injunction prevented the university from collecting the additional fees, a decision the university says has cost them $22.5 million over the past two years. A final decision is expected by the court sometime later this year. 

A second, similar lawsuit was filed last week in Superior Court in San Francisco by UC professional school students enrolled in 2003. That lawsuit has yet to be answered by university attorneys. 

Community members are invited to join Berkeley Civic Arts Commission (CAC) Chair David Snippen for a Sunday afternoon tour and discussion of the proposed location for Spaceship Earth. 

The gathering is a preview to the Parks and Recreation Commission’s Monday meeting which could result in a final decision to locate the artwork in Ohlone Park. 

The sculpture, a massive sphere of bronze-bedecked blue Brazilian quartzite plus a life-size statue of the late Berkeley-born environmentalist David Brower, has been in search of a new home for months. 

Sunday’s gathering will occur at 4 p.m. opposite the softball fields at the southern edge of Ohlone Park near Sacramento Street. 

Mayor Tom Bates has been an outspoken advocate for the sculpture that has received at best a lukewarm response in the community. 

After the Waterfront Commission rejected the mayor’s favored site in the Berkeley Marina, the 350,000-pound creation of Finno-American sculptor Eino was dropped into the lap of the Parks and Recreation Commission, which will vote on the proposed site in Ohlone Park Monday night. 

The cerulean craft and its passenger of “Spaceship Earth” was commissioned by Power Bar founders Brian and Jennifer Maxwell before the former’s death last year. 

The Maxwells originally intended that the weighty work would be installed in San Francisco, and they enlisted some supporters on the Board of Supervisors to plead their case. 

But the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Visual Arts Committee saw things differently, rejecting the piece as “extremely grand and flamboyant” and lacking in “sensitivity to environmental issues.” 

They next turned to Berkeley, and Mayor Bates welcomed it as a friend of both Brower and the Maxwells. 

Considerable opposition greeted the mayor’s invitation, and the work as originally conceived with a life-size bronze Brower perched on the globe and reaching for the stars impressed some as the embodiment of the image of the imperialist urge. 

Eino and the Maxwells agreed to relocate Brower next to the sphere. 

If all goes as planned “Spaceship Earth,” a phrase popularized by inventor and visionary Buckminster Fulller—who hated weighty creations—will be one of two massive memorials to the environmentalist. 

The second, the proposed Brower Center at Allston Way and Fulton Street, will be five stories high. That memorial is currently near the end of the city approval process. 

The arts commission began with a list of 30 potential sites. UC Berkeley nixed sites in Tilden Park and near the Lawrence Hall of Science and others fell by the wayside. 

One by the alternatives were rejected, leaving only the Ohlone Park site. 

The Parks and Recreation Commission will hold their hearing on the siting at their regular meeting Monday starting at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.

Botched robbery 

A teenager approached a 46-year-old man near the corner of Alcatraz Avenue and California Street about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13, told him that he was packing a pistol, then demanded he fork over his valuables. 

When the man refused, the would-be bandit slugged him in the head and then departed. The victim did not require medical attention, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Shira Warren. 

Peeper 

A 19-year-old woman called police shortly before midnight on July 13 to report that a man with a buzz-cut was leering at her through a window. 

The man was GOA—gone on arrival—by the time officers arrived at her apartment at Allston Way and Shattuck Avenue. 

Gunman gets wallet 

A man armed with a pistol approached a pedestrian near the corner of Holly Street and Buena Avenue about 6:44 p.m. last Thursday and demanded his wallet. 

The victim, a 43-year-old man, complied and escaped without injury, said Officer Warren. 

Burglar busted  

Police arrested a 25-year-old man two hours after he allegedly burglarized the Wet Seal and Gap clothing stores in the 2300 block of Telegraph Avenue last Thursday evening. 

Clothes and other items were taken in the course of the crime. 

Extreme heist  

A gunman burst into Extreme Pizza at 2352 Shattuck Ave. just before midnight last Friday and emptied the till before fleeing. No arrest has been made, said Officer Warren. 

Gunshots reported 

Neighbors who live near the intersection of Prince and California Streets called police at 3:14 a.m. Saturday to report they had just heard gunshots. 

Officers responded moments later but were unable to find either a gunman or any damage inflicted by the shots. 

Rape arrest 

Police arrested a 40-year-old man near the corner of Bancroft Way and Byron Street shortly after 10 a.m. Saturday. Details of the attack were unavailable, said Officer Warren.

Berkeley developer James D. Levine’s plan to build a posh gambling resort on the Richmond shoreline has inched closer to reality with the release of key environmental review documents. 

The massive collection will determine the focus of the environmental review process that play a central role in determining whether Point Molate, a former naval refueling base, becomes a tribal reservation eligible for casino operations. 

Levine’s Upstream Molate LLC has enlisted the Guidiville Rancheria band of Pomos, Washington insider and former Defense Secretary William Cohen and Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company, to bring the project to fruition. 

The Results of Scoping document, as the collection of comments is called, will be used in preparation of a draft environmental impact statement (EIS), the federal equivalent of an environmental impact report (EIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act. 

Once the draft document is prepared, it will be released to the public for a 45-day comment period, which will include another public meeting in Richmond where individuals, groups and agencies can offer their comments on the document. 

The final draft will then follow, and the document will provide much of the basis for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ decision to grant or deny the reservation designation and the right to operate a casino on the site. 

The project, initiated by Levine, would turn Point Molate into a reservation for the Guidiville Rancheria band of Pomos, while Harrah’s would run the gaming and hotel operations. 

Levine and his partners have agreed that they will also prepare an EIR on the project, one of the major demands of the project’s critics. 

Two-stage project 

According to the scoping documents, the resort will be constructed in two stages. 

First would come the transformation of the nationally landmarked Winehaven building, which housed California’s largest pre-Prohibition winery, into a 180,000-square-foot casino, accompanied by the construction of a 400-room hotel, transformation of landmarked former naval officers’ cottages into luxury hotel suites, construction of 150,000-square-foot conference and showroom building and the building of 5,000 parking spaces. 

Also included in the first phase would be development of a ferry terminal on the former navy pier, widening of Western Drive from two lanes to four, extension of the Bay Trail through the reservation and construction of a tribal park including ceremonial dancing grounds. 

Development of the second phase would depend on the economic success of the first and would include the addition of two hotel towers bringing the total rooms to 1,100 and construction of a 300,000-square-foot upscale retail complex and a 2,500-space multilevel parking structure. 

Alternatives 

The scoping session also resulted in four alternatives that will be included in the final environmental report: 

• Creation of the Upstream proposal plus a one million-square-foot mixed-use development including 500 units of commercial and high-end residential dwellings. 

• Creation of a smaller project including a 400-room hotel, a 100,000-square-foot entertainment and conference center, 5,000 total parking space and 20,000 square feet of retail, with the additional of 200 acres of park land and open space. 

• A non-reservation, non-gambling alternative in which the tribe and Levine’s Upstream would build two housing complexes with 1,100 units of high-density housing, a 400-room hotel, a 50,000 square foot convention facility and additional retail and restaurant facilities along a pedestrian walkway. This alternative would also include a ferry terminal. 

• A final alternative in which no development would occur. 

Two other alternatives proposed at the scoping session were rejected. 

The first would have turned the entire site into parkland. This was rejected because the federal Base Realignment and Closure Act requires that former military bases transferred to local governments must be used to create jobs and replace income lost when the bases were closed. 

The second proposal, which called for the project to be built at other locations in the Bay Area, was rejected for the same reason. 

Report focus 

The scoping report identified areas of potential impacts to be addressed in the final environmental document, including: 

• Socioeconomic (the impacts of problem gambling, lost taxes, impacts on housing and local business). 

• Potential traffic problems (local and regional). 

• Hazardous materials (both leftovers from the naval station and the ChevronTexaco refinery just over the ridge). 

• Risks to threatened plant species and migratory bids. 

• A variety of land use and planning policies, effects of local governmental services (both emergency and non-emergency). 

• Threats to air and water quality. 

• Visual, noise and aesthetic implications.  

• Adverse effects on archaeological resources.  

• Whether or not the Guidivilles have any historic link to the site (which would determine their eligibility for a reservation in Richmond). 

• Site geological and soil suitability for a major project. 

• Environmental justice issues. 

• The cumulative effects of all potential impacts. 

Diverse comments 

State agencies which offered written comments for the scoping included the Department of Fish and Game, Caltrans, the State Lands Commission, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, the California Highway Patrol and the Regional Water Quality Control Board.  

On the local government level, comments came from Contra Costa County, Marin County, the East Bay Regional Parks District, and El Cerrito and Pinole. 

Organizations commenting include the Sierra Club, the California Native Plant Society, the Trails for Richmond Advisory Committee, the anti-casino Coalition to Save Point Molate, the San Francisco Bay Trail Project, Save the Bay, Citizens for East Shore Parks and the chair of the Point Molate Restoration Advisory Board 

A lawyer for Artichoke Joe’s, a San Bruno cardroom which opposes tribal casinos in the Bay Area, offered a lengthy and negative set of considerations. Other lawyers to who wrote included a Sacramento law firm retained by Contra Costa County and a Phoenix law firm, which wanted information only about upcoming scoping events. 

Comments from individuals were generally either pro and con, and most offered few specifics that could be addressed in the EIS. 

The strongest immediate concerns to the siting of a massive casino complex at Point Molate were raised by two state agencies with oversight over cleanups at chemically contaminated sites. 

One, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, has been overseeing the cleanup of contaminants left over from the days the site was used as a naval refueling basis. 

Berkeley developer James D. Levine, whose Upstream LLC is spearheading the project, once served on the board’s staff before setting up his own toxic contamination remediation firm, which he ran before launching himself on the career of a developer whose first major project, Point Molate, is located on a so-called “brownfield” site. 

Water Board Executive Officer Bruce H. Wolfe submitted a staff report that concludes the transfer of the site shouldn’t take place “until a more aggressive cleanup effort is completed, that cleanup success is evaluated, and final remedy consensus is achieved.” 

Of the 29 parcels transferred from the Navy to the city in September 2003, seven have enough residual contamination to mandate deed restrictions on use of the property and five are recorded as unsuitable for residential use. 

Of the remaining 15 percent of property still undergoing remediation, some is contaminated by the potentially deadly solvent TCE, another parcel was a landfill and is of continuing concern, a third has heavy metal soil contamination and two have worrisome concentrations of volatile organic compounds and petroleum products in subsurface groundwater. 

The Water Board doesn’t want a transfer until the cleanup is finished, despite a request for an earlier transfer made by the Richmond City Council in November 2004. 

The state Department of Toxic Substances Control raised its own concerns about on-site contamination, calling for the environmental documents’ acknowledgment of the ongoing cleanup, inclusion of the names all contaminants still needing to be cleaned up, a list of known or suspected releases of contaminants and plans for their cleanup, and preparation of a risk assessment and levels calling for action. 

CHP worried 

The California Highway Patrol letter offered a specific prediction:  

“I-580 is the only and would likely be the primary access to any form of development of Point Molate ... we expect significant increase in traffic would lead to extended commute times and an attendant potential for collisions and vehicle code violations on the part of those trying to access Point Molate.” 

The letter also said that with alcohol consumed at the casino and especially “during special events (concerts, sports contests, etc.), we would expect to experience an increase in incidents relating to driving under the influence.” 

The law enforcement agency also noted that Levine’s development might lead to a need for increased security and personnel to protect the refinery just over the ridge. 

Other state agencies 

Timothy Sable, a Caltrans district chief responsible for environmental impact issues, laid out many of the same requests as had been suggested by the CHP and county officials. 

Caltrans also asked for study of impacts on bridge travel, including examination of effects on specific interchanges with focus on both peak and off-peak transit hours and on potential mitigations. 

Among requests raised by the California State Lands Commission was a study of the impacts of Levine’s proposed ferry service on marine traffic in San Francisco Bay waters. 

The Department of Fish and Game asked that the reports focus on impacts to flora and fauna, particularly those involving rare, threatened and endangered species. 

Counties concerned 

A 21-page letter from Contra Costa County Administrator John Sweeten and the Western Contra Costa Transportation Advisory Committee made no secret of county officialdom’s disdain for the project. 

Sweeten declared that “the county has seen no objective evidence Guidiville Band’s interest in the Point Molate site for a casino/resort project is anything but reservation shopping, i.e., acquisition of land outside the area where the tribe was traditionally located.” 

That contention was supported by a letter from Randall Milliken, who holds an anthropology doctorate from UC Berkeley and is the author of A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810, who wrote to argue that Richmond had not been inhabited by any Pomo-speakers but was the ancestral homeland of the Huichin tribelet of the Chocenyo Ohlone. 

Sweeten also asked that the environmental documents deal specifically with a worst-case scenario and examine the cumulative effects of all impacts. 

The transportation committee called for inclusion of impacts on specific streets, highways and intersections, the effects on public transportation and of the proposed ferry service not only of the Levine resort, but on their effects in combination with the proposed Sugarbowl Casino in North Richmond and momentarily delayed expansion of Casino San Pablo. 

The list also included a call to examine a host of other potential areas that could be affected. 

Among the issues the Marin County Community Development Agency asked to be considered were impacts of the project on regional housing, possible spillover effects on neighboring counties and traffic impacts on Richmond/San Rafael Bridge travel. 

Marin County Administrator Mark J. Riesenfeld offered predictions of his own. 

“[O]ff-reservation impacts associated with gaming would affect not only Contra Costa County, but Marin County as well ... potential impacts include ... increased traffic congestion ... associated with air pollution and increased crime” and minor demands for increased emergency services. 

Marin County Board of Supervisors President Harold C. Brown wrote a similar letter addressing the same basic points. 

A letter from the Contra Costa County Administrator’s office asked that the environmental documents detail the impacts of the project on Emergency Medical Services, including those on the reservation, off-reservation demands cause by activities on the reservation and the effects of service delays resulting from the development. 

Other jurisdictions 

Pinole City Planner Elizabeth Dunn asked that the Contra Costa County report be incorporated as reflecting her city’s concerns as well. 

East Bay Regional Parks District lawyers filed a 17-page request, raising such issues as:  

• Impairment of views of the Bay and the site, destruction or impairments to sensitive habitats and species. 

• Visual and physical impacts on historic structures. 

• Destruction of archaeological sites. 

• Conflicts of local, regional, state and federal land use plans. 

• Traffic impacts. 

• Elimination or interference with aquatic and open space recreational uses.?

When asked why the religious right is so much more powerful in American politics than the religious left, a political observer quipped that it is because the religious right consists of cows, docile and easily led, while those on the left are cats, difficult to herd under any circumstances. While that may prove be the case, on Wednesday more than 1,200 of those cats gathered on the UC campus to attend a four-day conference on spiritual activism. 

The intent of the conclave is to create a new “Network of Spiritual Progressives.” The brainchild of UC Professor Michael Nagler and Berkeley Rabbi Michael Lerner, the conference was sponsored by a variety of faith-based groups, with the cornerstone organization being Lerner’s Tikkun community. 

Wednesday night the tandem of Lerner and Reverend Jim Wallis provided the keynote addresses. Wallis, whose latest book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, a bestseller, has become the best-known voice of the religious left. Given this cachet he has joined the elite group of celebrity consultants—another of whom is UC Berkeley’s George Lakoff—periodically summoned to Washington to advise Democratic leaders. 

An evangelical preacher, Jim Wallis was a leader of Students for a Democratic Society, and is a long-time activist, best known as the founder of the Sojourner Community in Washington, DC. Wallis lambasted the religious right, arguing that the time has come for the left to take back American religion. 

Remarking that “Religion’s job is to pull out our best stuff,” Wallis decried the “seduction” of key leaders of the religious right by the Republican Party. He observed that the true function of prophetic religion is to serve “not as a wedge, but as a bridge.” He argued that “religion should be the moral center of our public life,” and that the reawakening of the religious left would assure that this would again be the case. 

Noting that the religious right’s moral “agenda” is restricted to abortion and gay marriage, Reverend Wallis observed that while poverty is mentioned 3,000 times in the Old Testament, neither poverty, protection of the environment, nor the “illegal and immoral” war in Iraq has caught the right’s attention. Remarking that conservatives have painted a picture of Jesus as “pro-rich, pro-war, and pro-American,” Jim lamented, “We need to take our religion back.” 

Wallis observed that “the biggest mistake progressives made was to cede values and faith to the religious right,” implying that many people of faith decided that liberals, and Democrats in general, didn’t care about faith, didn’t care about their spiritual crisis, and as a result began to vote Republican. Reverend Wallis argued that progressives must have faith, that it “is about changing the big things” such as ending poverty in the world. 

Quoting a young activist, who when asked where the new leaders were, was fond of remarking, “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” Jim Wallis encouraged attendees to begin a new movement. “American history has been changed by social movements and the best ones have had a spiritual foundation.” 

Although the conference audience gave Reverend Wallis a standing ovation, many participants probably wondered what they should do next. How to build a bridge between his optimism and the network of spiritual progressives advertised in the conference literature? Rabbi Michael Lerner provided many of the operational details. 

Like Wallis, Michael Lerner is a long-time activist—interestingly, also a participant in SDS—a leader in Jewish Renewal and Rabbi of Beyt Tikkun in Berkeley and San Francisco. Lerner has a Ph.D. in psychology and has worked as therapist. He used this experience to provide a psychosocial analysis of American culture. Agreeing that faith-based social movements can transform American society, Lerner argued that their unique role was to “transform the energy from fear to hope.” He sees America as locked in a spiritual crisis where the average citizen is fearful, because we have been taught to treat each other as commodities in an increasingly materialistic culture. 

Lerner believes that the religious right sees this spiritual crisis and has proceeded with a faulty analysis that scapegoats groups such as Jews, blacks, feminists and gays. The left doesn’t understand that there is a spiritual crisis and therefore has lost contact with the average American—who would rather go with a faulty solution than no recognition of their alienation. 

Lerner’s solution is for spiritual progressives to unite in an awareness of the crisis and to then generate an analysis and compelling vision. He proposed the Network of Spiritual Progressives as the vehicle to accomplish this. Rather than stick to the conservative paradigm of “selfishness and materialism” the network would posit an alternative of “love and generosity.” Michael Lerner sees this analysis being worked out through a series of conferences; his target is to provide a progressive “platform” before the 2008 elections. 

The 1,200 “cats” packed into Pauley ballroom were obviously moved by the words of Wallis and Lerner. The question is whether they will line up to form a movement. 

Late last winter, a story on Oakland’s sideshows appeared in the Los Angeles Times. “Virtually every night, from midnight to dawn,” the story reported, “hundreds of young people gather at intersections throughout this city to watch cars spin and swerve wildly, the drivers and passengers often dangling halfway out of open doors as the vehicles burn rubber. Some drivers like to spew sparks by wearing their tires down to the steel belts. The people of Oakland have survived epidemic drug use, soaring murder rates and police corruption scandals, but now they face an increasingly violent homegrown movement that has police chasing one spontaneous driving exhibition after another at a cost of $500,000 a year.” 

Not good news for Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who wants to be California’s top law enforcement officer. Los Angeles is the home of the largest bloc of voters in the State of California. It is also the home of Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, Mr. Brown’s major announced opponent in the 2006 Democratic primary for California Attorney General. 

Three months after the L.A. Times article appeared, Mr. Brown suddenly introduced his last-minute, headline-grabbing “arrest the sideshow spectators” ordinance to Oakland City Council. Cause and effect? Your guess is as good as mine. But that would go a long way towards explaining why Mr. Brown waited until the beginning of the summer to introduce legislation aimed mainly at summertime activity, or why Oakland police officials testifying at City Council meetings concerning the proposed ordinance seemed to suggest that they already had the sideshows “under control” without the new law. 

In any event, last Tuesday, an hour or so before they went on their eight-week summer vacation, Oakland City Council passed the mayor’s ordinance this week, making it an infraction (and, on the third offense, a criminal act) to be a spectator at a sideshow in Oakland. 

One of the fears of many opponents of the new sideshow ordinance is that the fines will go unpaid by the young people who will be the main targets of these citations, leading to bench warrants, further involvement with the police, and a descent into the criminal justice system. 

Councilmembers Nancy Nadel and Jean Quan (who both voted for the measure) did their best to pretty up the ordinance, insisting that they would work on alternatives to the stiff $500 and $750 fines that the first two “sideshow spectator” offenses called for, saying that they would try to get judges and prosecuting attorneys to set up some sort of “community service” in place of the payments. 

I have great respect for both Ms. Nadel and Ms. Quan, two of the more progressive members of council who have conservative constituents to worry about (Ms. Nadel is running for mayor of Oakland in 2006 and Ms. Quan represents the most conservative council district in the city). 

Still, their insistence on finding unwritten substitutes for the financial penalties written into Mr. Brown’s sideshow law reminded me of the story a friend once told me about a country fellow who had no date to the summer barn dance, so he decided to take a hog instead. He spent several hours putting a pretty pink party dress on the animal, curling its hair, slapping on lipstick, and even painting polish on its hooves. “What did he end up with?” I asked my friend. “What the hell do you think?” my friend answered. “A dressed-up pig.” 

Instead of dressing up the mayor’s ordinance by making sure the fines are not enforced but, instead, are superceded by community service work-offs, why didn’t these two councilmembers simply try to take the fines out altogether and replace them in the law with the alternatives? 

Also left out of the law was a requirement that the police give a warning to disperse before police begin targeting spectators. Oakland police told councilmembers that they didn’t mind giving such a warning—in fact, they probably would give such a warning—they just didn’t want to be required by law to give such a warning. Since they made such a point of not having the warnings in the law, how many warnings to disperse do you think will actually take place? 

Another sideshow alternative missed the summer cut, this one being a safe, sanctioned, and legal entertainment alternative to the sideshows themselves. Several councilmembers at this week’s meeting—as well as Lt. David Kozicki, who oversees sideshow abatement activities for the Oakland Police Department—insisted that such an alternative was a good idea, and the city was actively working on setting it up. (On her city website, Ms. Brooks has thoughtfully provided a copy of a signed, undated memo from Mr. Kozicki in which he lays out all of the plans worked out for such a sideshow alternative, finishing with “Now all we need is a place to have it!”) 

The mayor’s “arrest the sideshow spectators” ordinance, in fact, was supposedly partially modeled after a San Diego drag racing ordinance in which both the crackdown and the legal alternative were done simultaneously. 

But the council took off for the summer without doing the simultaneous, deciding that the fines and penalties of Mr. Brown’s sideshow ordinance could not wait, while finding summertime entertainment alternatives for Oakland youth could. 

Another interesting item pointed out at the council meeting—by Ms. Brooks—was that Mr. Brown’s “arrest the spectators” ordinance mentioned arresting spectators only at sideshows, but not at Oakland’s dangerous and illegal drag races. Ms. Brooks suggested that there might be a racial motive there—sideshows are a primarily African-American and Latino activity, while drag racing involves people of other races. I might suggest another possible explanation. The Los Angeles Times article last March did not mention Oakland’s drag racing problem—only its sideshow problem—so Mr. Brown may not have been motivated to include those events in his rushed-through law (I only say may here because I cannot read Mr. Brown’s mind and therefore am only speculating, just like everyone else). 

Meanwhile… 

The day before Oakland City Council passed Mr. Brown’s “arrest the sideshow spectators” ordinance, the Oakland Tribune reported on a middday running gun battle between two cars along International Boulevard past 87th Avenue (a block from our house) which left “dozens of shell casings scattered” along the street and one bystander injured. Some of the shooters escaped, on foot, over backyard fences in our neighborhood. Part of the gun battle was actually witnessed by California Highway Patrol officers, who regularly spend a portion of their day giving out tickets and towing cars along International (an activity, if you remember, we were originally told would slow down the homicide rate in the area). My mother told me later that traffic was diverted down our street while police searched in vain for the shooters, with a police helicopter circling over the neighborhood, and police came down our street, knocking on doors, asking if anybody had seen anyone running from the scene. 

The Tribune reported that the gun battle “apparently began just before 3 p.m. in the area of 89th Avenue and Holly Street.” Anyone familiar with East Oakland knows right away that the area of 89th and Holly is one of Oakland’s long-standing, well-known, open air drug markets. 

If that incident got Mr. Brown’s attention, I missed it. But then, the International Boulevard shootout story didn’t make it in the Los Angeles Times, either, so maybe it’s not quite so important. 

›

RESPONSIBILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Some more young blacks kill each other and the editor can suggest nothing better than the tired old crap about the gun being the problem. 

Excuse me, did the gun fire itself? What about assigning responsibility for this ghastly killing to the punk who pulled the trigger? 

And by the way, every issue of the New American has pages on individuals successfully exercising their Second Amendment rights to ward off criminals. It’s not that people imagine they have guns for self-defense—they do. 

I have to also add that the hype on this particular murder seems to have a political agenda behind it. If the woman had been an acolyte of Ayn Rand instead of an admirer of Cuba, would there have been the media outpouring that we have seen over the past couple of days? 

The question answers itself. 

Michael Hardesty 

Oakland 

• 

DEFENSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While Ms. O’Malley is correct that guns make it easy to commit murder, she overlooks that guns would make it easy to defend herself from a 200-pound rapist. Otherwise she may as well follow the advice of another ivory tower anti-gun nut and “Lay back and enjoy it.” 

Sam A. Kersh 

San Antonio, Texas 

• 

A STRONG WOMAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am horrified to hear that Meleia Willis-Starbuck was murdered in Berkeley, despite not knowing this obviously remarkable young woman. What I find absolutely astounding about her death is that no one is calling it what it is: a misogynist hate crime. It is time that we applaud a strong woman such as Willis-Starbuck for her efforts to thwart sexism and identify hate crimes when they occur. In a city as liberal as Berkeley, I am stunned and appalled that her death is not spotlighting a larger societal problem—sexism—that many feel the need to ignore. Being gunned down is the ultimate example of the strong hatred many in our country feel toward strong women, especially strong women of color. It is time that communities stand up in support of its women and denounce all hate crimes, including those that are motivated by a hatred of women. 

Eileen M. Mello 

Oakland 

• 

GUN LESSON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to Becky O’Malley’s editorial on guns: 

“Women who fear being victims imagine that possession of firearms will make them safe.” 

You know you are being a condescending bitch with this statement, send your boyfriend over to try this one out by attacking one of these women. 

“Urbanites whose lives are controlled by their fears believe that guns in their homes will protect them, oblivious of the statistics that say that guns in homes are most often used against family and friends, not strangers.” 

I am a urbanite and I fear nothing but God, I don’t like spiders but I can step on them, I know hundreds or maybe thousands of people who have had guns in their homes, from their grandparents on down, and no one in their family has been killed by a gun in the home. I grew up around them and no one in the family was killed or at any family member’s home we went to was anyone killed even though the guns were there. 

I hope you know the lies you tell get people killed every day. You may not want to defend yourself but stop trying to stop others from doing so. I have seen the aftermaths of shootings, knifings and auto crashes, and guess what? People are just as dead from all three, the only difference would be that if you had a gun to defend yourself you might be able to stop the first two from happening. Either by just showing it or if need be using it. If you want to go after something, why not the cars? They kill 10 times more then guns do every year. 

Duane Owen 

NRA Certified Instructor 

• 

TOO MANY MOVIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Anytime that you feel like you would like to visit a red state and see how working people live, swing by Wichita, Kansas. I am a high school art teacher that also teaches handgun safety classes at a local range. I assume by the ignorant rantings in your editorial article that you have gathered most of your information from watching too many Bruce Willis movies. The article reflects that you lack “hands on” knowledge about which you write. I realize that the People’s Republic of California has some of the most Draconian gun laws in the U.S. so I came up with an idea: If Berkeley would be willing to spring for the plane ticket to send you to Wichita for a weekend I would be more than willing to educate you in proper firearms maintenance and technique. After that, if you still think that guns are the bogeyman of modern times, then I guess that I did not do my job right. But, at least you would not be writing from ignorance any longer. 

Craig Godderz 

Whichita, Kansas 

• 

GUN VIOLENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We are all devastated by the murder of Meleia. Our teenagers are very angry, rightfully. I am too. I am asking the mayor and City Council to imagine living with street shootings on a regular basis. Since Friday night, South Berkeley neighborhoods have experienced three shootings; attempted homicides are another way to categorize these crimes. Tuesday, the gunfire was in the middle of the day and kids were playing up and down the sidewalks. 

The felon living on the next block has been a target of drive-bys three times this year. His family promised neighbors and city officials that young men would not be hanging out on the street in front of their house attracting more shootings. Promises don’t mean much to criminals, as a large group was hanging out most of this morning. When will the automatic gunfire erupt again? 

It is clear that several disputes are being played out in our streets this summer. These young men are often perceived to be the social underdogs in need of services to change their ways. Most have criminal records, are on probation and cruise the streets with automatic weapons in their pockets. When will the families and people who live here peacefully yet are hostage to fear, intimidation and threat be seen as the true victims? These young men wreak havoc and disorder in our community. 

This morning I spent a half hour at the College Avenue memorial talking with a young man who has seen four of his friends murdered. This same week last summer was the first of three brutal murders in South Berkeley, and no suspects identified so far in all three murders. 

There are actions worth your consideration, but hoping it just stays down here won’t be good enough. Sometimes I joke about the tax credit we should be receiving for the misery we endure. At least post warning signs, entering “drive-by shootings zone.” Maybe you could double the speeding tickets within the zone. 

Laura Menard 

• 

GOD BLESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I did not know Ms. Meleia Willis-Starbuck but as a retired Child Protective Services Social Worker and Investigator with the City and County of San Francisco, who spent 28 years in the same field that captured Meleia’s interest, I am unable to locate adequate expression in the American language for the pain of her death. 

Certainly Meleia was smart; she was very smart but among those things that I have learned of her, it was her heartfulness, her courage, her breeding and the content of her character that has frozen my attention. 

The sorrow I feel shall never completely diminish and I shall never stop scrutinizing young men in the College Avenue environs—on my daily walks— until the day I die, or more mercifully, until that day—and make no mistake about it, that day will come, when the Berkeley Police Department apprehends the shooter and brings him before the court to answer for his conduct. 

God Bless Meleia today. 

God Bless Meleia tomorrow. 

God Bless Meleia for ever and ever. 

Gerry O’Brien 

• 

IN THE DARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think the reason the City of Berkeley switched from advertising in the Berkeley Daily Planet to advertising in the East Bay Daily News was to keep us taxpayers in the dark. 

The EBDN is on few corners and has nothing in it. Why would anyone in Berkeley pick one up? If they want to know about a city meeting they’ll have to find a little red box first—good luck to them. 

I’m not surprised our very own Caesar (def. 3 or 4 in my dictionary) and his planners (read: plotters) who have 1. reduced the number of commissions, 2. reduced the number of meetings the commissions have, 3. prefer to meet in secret, 4. prefer developers to tax payers who pay their salaries, 5. really wish no pesky citizens would attend meetings, etc., have decided to advertise their meetings in the EBDN. It makes perfect sense. 

For what it’s worth, I’ll write a letter of complaint to the City Council. 

Rosemary Vimont 

• 

COGENT ANALYSIS 

[Regarding Becky O’Malleys July 19 editorial on gun violence:] 

Horseshit if I have ever heard it!!!! Get a real job and a real life!!! 

William Glosson 

“Midwest” 

Lifetime NRA member 

• 

TAXES AND CLUB DUES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mal Burnstein in his July 19 letter states, “Taxes in society are quite analogous to club dues.” That applies only to taxes on real estate, especially land. In a condominium, the member chooses to join and pays an assessment in exchange for community services. In contrast, a tax on sales or income has no direct connection to services received, and are extracted by force. Club dues are voluntary and in direct exchange for benefits; taxes on sales and income are coercive and have no direct connection to benefits. When I buy shoes and have to pay a sales tax, this is not voluntary dues to a club, but money extracted from me by force, with no connection to any benefit. 

Fred Foldvary 

• 

BLOTTER VOTE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Damon Runyon of the Police Blotter, a.k.a. Richard Brenneman, obviously has some readers who are offended by his style (I am one), and others who are pleased. 

This would be an issue that I would like the Planet to conduct a poll on. Perhaps some way to telephone pro and con votes. 

Max Macks 

• 

OPEN FORUM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to compliment the Daily Planet on its enlightened policy of letting anyone write a commentary. Not just a letter to the editor, as most papers provide, but three quarters of a page on a subject of their own choosing. Most papers reserve their commentary space for people who represent more than just themselves, with some proven expertise on the subject they are elucidating upon. They may be elected officials, city commissioners, representatives of an organization or political grouping, or a neighborhood organization. The Daily Planet, to its credit, does this. The Daily Planet also turns over its pages to individuals, regardless of their knowledge of the subject they write about or its relationship to facts.  

Take, for example, the commentary in your July 15-18 edition by a Ruchama Burrell about the Berkeley School District’s planning process for the West Campus property on University Avenue. She is listed as someone living with her family near West Campus. Now Ms. Burrell has every right to her opinion, and I for one will consider it seriously, but instead of this individual, with no apparent knowledge of school district funding, school district planning processes, school district decision making, school district operations, or school district educational programs afforded the opportunity to write a letter to the editor, she is given three quarters of a page in your newspaper to vent her half truths and expose her ignorance. 

But nothing surprises me these days in the pages of the Daily Planet, especially in its search “for truth.” Keep up your unique style of informing Berkeley. I always look forward to each new edition and how many commentaries by individuals will be printed. We only have about 100,000 individuals in Berkeley to go. 

Terry Doran 

Vice President, Berkeley School Board 

• 

REINCARNATION 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

I am writing this letter in response to the commentary by Homayon in Berkeley Daily Planet of July 15. When I read pieces by Homayon, I tend to think he is the reincarnation of Shabon. Who is Shabon? He was a wrestler and gangster, who had an important role in the CIA sponsored coup d’etat in 1953 to bring Shah back to power in Iran. Due to his role, he was the beloved gangster in Shah’s regime that ended by the 1979 Iranian revolution. 

In his commentary, Homayon writes about a dissident in Iran who is now on hunger strike. The dissident has become the center of attention of the corporate media. You never know, he might be on the CIA payroll. Know that Iran is not a political Utopia; neither is any other country. Remember the massacre in Waco, Texas? In supposedly the most democratic country, during the presidency of a favorite Mr. Clinton, about 80 people and David Koresh were incinerated by an inferno in their compound. An excellent documentary called Waco: The Rules of Engagement shows that the massacre was a federally engineered crime. 

Homayon writes that he is ashamed to be an Iranian. Then, he must change his citizenship; no problem. Iran would be much better off without people such as 

Homayon or Shabon. 

Kurosh Arianpour, 

Bagalore, India 

• 

ALBANY BULB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dorothy Bryant’s account of her single visit to the Albany Bulb makes the place sound like some post-apocalyptic moonscape (Letters, July 19). That’s odd. My dog and I go there all the time, and we encounter something much nicer.  

We find pleasant trails through coastal chaparral; some vernacular scrap art that carries on a quirky Bayside tradition; and a gorgeous beach where dogs can chase tennis balls to their hearts’ content. 

Come for the art, stay for the ball-chasing. That’s what my dog says. 

But leaving aside our differing subjective reactions, Ms. Bryant is absolutely right about one thing: The Bulb is a former garbage dump. Nasty toxic stuff is buried there. 

The more accurately we describe the Bulb as a reclaimed dump, the more absurd it seems to try to “clean it up” or “restore” it into part of an “Eastshore State Park,” by evicting the art and dogs. 

The Bulb is a perfectly functional park the way it is. Let it be. 

Marcia Lau 

• 

AFRICA TRIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s “Controversy Surrounds Laney Africa Trip” (Daily Planet, July 19-21) focuses on a specific instance of the Associated Students of Laney College (ASLC) funding a trip for two Laney students. Allen-Taylor posits that the controversy stemmed from the fact that the student, Rehema Gueye, “Was not so well known to the Laney College and Peralta Community College District (PCCD) hierarchy.” I have written on this topic for the college paper, the Laney Tower and would like to give you further information about ASLC and PCCD’s funding history. 

In 2002, Ronald Temple, then PCCD chancellor, was using district funds to send himself and several of his friends on trips to Asia supposedly to recruit students for the district. The trips were very expensive and very few students were recruited. Meredith May, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who recently received a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, did a two-part expose on Temple’s use of district funds. Her uncovering of gross misuse of district funds subsequently led to his dismissal. Since then, both the ASLC and PCCD funding procedure has taken on an accountability that was not present prior to Chancellor Temple’s dismissal. Current Laney President Odell Johnson showed both financial integrity and generosity by personally helping out the students by providing them with funds “out of his own pocket.” 

Joe Kempkes 

Oakland 

• 

IN DEFENSE OF JAN GARRETT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a member of the disability rights community I disagree with Iris Crider’s recent criticism of CIL Director Jan Garrett. In the five years I have worked with Jan, I have found her to be professional and sincere. She is fiscally responsible and devoted to the core values that make CIL a world class leader in disability rights. Jan is dedicated to CIL’s continued success. 

Ralph Hager  

CIL Board Member 

Oakland 

• 

PEACE AND JUSTICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was greatly saddened recently by an action of the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission at their July 11 meeting. Our resolution, already endorsed almost unanimously by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last March, to bring our California National Guard troops home now, was voted down due to a lack of an eighth vote to pass it on to the City Council. Seven Commissioners voted for the Resolution with five against. 

Berkeley has a fine history of going on the public record against social injustices and militarism. For example, just last year before the U.S. attacked Iraq, the City Council passed Resolution 61,934-N.S., urging Congress to slow the rush to war, condemned “pre-emptive” miltary action against Iraq and called on Berkeley citizens to participate in nonviolent peace demonstrations. 

In 2002 Resolution 61,747-N.S. was unanimously passed by the council opposing those parts of the Patriot Act which are unconstitutional, stating in part that our city has been and remains firmly committed to the protection of civil rights and cilvil liberties for all people including those who are citizens of other nations. 

So now some peace and anti-war groups such as CodePink: Women for Peace, Vets for Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace, etc., are working in cities and towns up and down the state to pass the resolution urging the governor and our Congress members to use their influence in Washington to bring our 4,600 (approx.) Guard troops home now, out of harm’s way. They were not trained or equipped to fight in such a foreign war and are needed here at home. 

Unfortunately, five members of the Peace and Justice Commission failed to support the proposal, although acting under a mission statement clearly enabling them to endorse such a document to send on to CIty Council. How disappointing that not all the appointee members embrace the principles they are meant to uphold, i.e. peace and social justice. 

Corrine Goldstick 

CodePink member  

• 

AN URGENT PLEA 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Most of you probably know that the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to endorse a boycott of Berkeley Honda. And for good reason. The new owners have been uninterested in seriously negotiating with the union. They apparently believe that these older unionized workers—average seniority of 20 years—who have been replaced by recent graduates of a technical school, will become too discouraged to carry on the good fight. 

Berkeley Honda may be right unless we can galvanize the community on behalf of the strikers as soon as possible. Honda owners must be alerted to why the union called a strike and they should persuaded to service their automobiles elsewhere. Although fewer cars than usual are showing up, too many are still passing the picket line. I am asking you to distribute leaflets, no matter how few, by placing them on Honda cars in supermarket parking lots and in the streets, and/or taping them on poles and other conspicuous places. 

Just send me an e-mail at harry.brill@sbcglobal, and I’ll send you a leaflet that you can download. If this is inconvenient, just let me know how many you would like and where I can drop them off. You could also join the picket line on Parker and Shattuck. 

Harry Brill 

El Cerrito 

Labor Committee, 

Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club  

• 

BERKELEY HONDA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for covering the strike at the former Jim Doten Honda. I have been a customer there for more than 10 years and I was saddened to see that the new ownership is set on union-busting which seems to be happening all too frequently these days. I stopped by to get my service records and spoke with the strikers and the new service rep, who seems to have become the mouthpiece of the new management. I informed them I will no longer do business with them and gave them my reasons. After speaking with both sides, it became clear to me that this is one more case of owners taking away the power of workers to negotiate. I hope the people of Berkeley will support the strikers. They have a very good cause!  

Liz Raymer  

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COMIC RELIEF 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A sincere thank you to Stillyn Shawke for putting a lighter touch on the city’s sick’ning settlement with UC. This is the most I have laughed since hearing of the settlement. 

Carl Friberg 

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JOHN ROBERTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

John Roberts thinks that the Endangered Species Act is “unconstitutional”! Is there any limit to human arrogance? Life existed on this planet for 3.8 billion years before humans ever thought of appearing. What kind of hubris allows someone to say that a given species, however insignificant in our minds, does not deserve to exist, simply because it conflicts with some human’s petty wishes? Such ignorance doesn’t deserve to be on the bench, much less the Supreme Court. John Roberts may appear to be intelligent and knowledgeable, within the narrow context of “constitutional law,” but no human being can today afford to be ignorant of the biological basis for life on Earth, and we cannot afford to have such a person in a position of power. 

Mike Vandeman, 

Hayward 

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SCALIA, THOMAS, ROBERTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What do you know about John Roberts? President Bush has picked Judge Roberts to replace outgoing Supreme Court consensus maker Sandra Day O’Connor. Mr. Roberts is the spitting image of Mr. Bush. Did you expect anything different? The President has told us all along that he would select a Supreme Court justice cast in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. 

Does Roberts represent mainstream America? Religious right-wingers and anti-abortionists are ecstatic. What does that tell you about Mr. Roberts. Will Justice Roberts be any different than Scalia and Thomas? Would Bush take a chance with his partisan base breathing down his neck? Now is not the time to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. 

Let’s hear from John Roberts where he stands on the abortion issue. George W. Bush told us he was a uniter and look what we got.  

Ron Lowe 

Nevada City 

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ASBESTOS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How ironic that at a time when politicians in Washington are stepping over each other to show how much they support the troops, they are preparing to pass an asbestos bailout bill that would hurt veterans poisoned or killed by asbestos. 

Asbestos was used extensively on Navy ships during World War II. Today, thousands of American Navy veterans and ship workers suffer from asbestos-related diseases due to heavy exposure. But the asbestos trust fund considered by Congress excludes many of them from ever receiving compensation for their medical bills or ever being able to hold the asbestos manufacturers liable. 

Those who served deserve better. 

Jewell Mack, Sr. 

Oakland 

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FIFTH COLUMNIST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Having read the op-ed by Jonathan Wornick opposing the resolution for a Department of Peace and denigrating the very idea, I wondered why on earth would someone with his views be interested in sitting on a commission devoted to peace and justice. He indicated that city councils have no business concerning themselves with, among other things, Middle Eastern politics. 

I then had an “a-ha” moment. 

It is not far-fetched to believe that Mr. Wornick is part of a fifth column within the commission, dedicated to destroying the effectiveness of the commission. I remember that the PJC sponsored a resolution to honor Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist who was crushed to death by a Caterpillar tractor while defending a Palestinian home. Could it be that, at that moment, a decision was made to neutralize the PJC? 

Shining a spotlight on the Corrie killing could not have been welcome to those who wish to keep the gory details of the occupation secret. Politicians are well aware of the secrets, but acknowledging them publicly amounts to instant political suicide. 

I imagine that 60 years ago there were many who knew of the brutality inflicted on Jews in faraway Europe, but found it safer to hold their tongues.  

Now, the perpetrators and the victims are different, but the willful ignorance goes on. So our leaders are cowed and impotent. 

It’s left to us, the citizenry, to educate ourselves as to the history, past and present, of Palestine. Then, we can demand of our politicians that they intervene before another people is brought to the brink of annihilation. 

Barbara Henninger 

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DEPARTMENT OF PEACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Too bad so many people miss the point, being that the leaders who’ve appropriated our lands through our combined ignorance and our willingness to be deceived/deceive ourselves must control us through these institutions we’re told are good for us. “We have a Department of Peace (he says). It’s called the State Department.” 

But it will only be through mass control of our institutions, including our ownership of Earth/land, our ownership of production and distribution of our goods and services—food, communication, transportation—and all—that we will obviate the Owners’ brutal aggressions and afford ourselves growth of enjoyment of life and not of the profit margin. 

The person who suggests that there are already bodies designed to take care of us is in great mental and physical pain, unable to climb the little or great hurdles past which we march in the efforts to take this control for all of us. Leaving it up to the warmongers leaves us in the straits we’re in, now...the cities, the towns, the villages—the water!—despoliation being the manner of our oppression—ruination of us and Earth, sapping our power. 

It’s difficult, surely, but we are many and they, the owners, are few. But we do need to notice our discomfort and our need to turn elsewhere—to us all—for our salvation. 

Norma J. F. Harrison 

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GOD™ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In atheist Michael Newdow’s repeat lawsuit against the school districts, the state and Congress, declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, the opposition again asserts that the words “under God” are not about religion, but designed “to teach children about patriotism.”  

The majority of our lawmakers who steadfastly agree seem to be affirming that the word “God” is secular rather than religious. This may disturb many religious organizations, as indeed, they created “God” before the U.S. politicians did, and I assume that they have a copyright on the use of His or Her name.  

Gerta Farber  

S

As a great admirer of the work of Dorothy Bryant I was disappointed to read her July 19 letter to the editor, in which she spoke so casually and dismissively of the artwork at the Albany Bulb. On the basis of a single “afternoon hike” in this most complex and nuanced environment, she has seen fit to judge the artwork there as if it were no more than a museum exhibit. She describes “nightmarish and sado-masochistic fantasies” in some of the artwork, seemingly unaware of the influence of her voice in our community and the effect of her words in shaping public opinion about what is to happen to this fragile, untamed space.  

I have been going to the Albany Bulb for nearly a decade. It has been a place of solace and inspiration for me. I will never forget the first time I encountered the Sniff paintings. Walking after dusk down an unfamiliar trail I came upon mysterious shapes that I only later realized were large canvasses. Peering closer I began to see strange figures looming up from the dark surfaces. I felt a prickly sense of unease as if something singular were taking place. I became transfixed by the illusion that I was seeing something no one else had ever seen before. It felt exhilarating to discover something like this right here in Albany. And all of it assembled from mere “scrap art.” Returning again and again over the years, getting to know the unique character of the entire Bulb and its wide range of magical creations, I continue to marvel at these vulnerable, generous contributions to our community, and their creators, who trust their work to the elements and to the good intentions of their fellow human beings.  

The Albany Bulb is not “wild” in the sense of its being a pristine untrammeled wilderness. It is merely an untamed sliver of land in an urban setting. The place is a dump, after all, that has begun to be reclaimed by the natural environment. It has been settled by the homeless, discovered by artists (among them homeless residents of the Bulb), dog walkers and those who wish to step for a brief moment outside the grid of our paved-over, locked-down culture.  

So now the Bulb is becoming valuable real estate. Many interests want to get their hands on it. But in between the time it was a forgotten, unwanted dump, and now, when it is becoming a hot property, something has been created that exists nowhere else in the world. And it was made by ordinary people with imagination and ability. No one got an art grant to do it.  

Everyone has the right to express their opinion. I admit that I have been bewitched, enchanted, frightened, inspired, awed and honored to have been able to observe what has taken place on the Bulb over the last decade. But whether one likes or dislikes or dismisses what has been created there, the task at hand is to acknowledge publicly that much of this artwork is unique, irreplaceable and inarguably “site-specific.” Artwork in a museum at least has the advantage of being physically protected from harm, whatever our opinion of it.  

Those who wish to “clean up” the Bulb have the support of the monied interests. The artwork survives only on its own merits—its existence is extremely fragile and subject to the goodwill of the community. Negative public opinion could easily lead to the removal or destruction of the artwork, benefiting those who wish to “improve” the area. We need to be smart about how we critique what has been going on there. The developers count on the support of decent, law-abiding citizens who feel uncomfortable with anything they perceive as disorderly or chaotic.  

Once the Bulb is developed, the artwork and the historical moment it embodies will be gone forever.  

All one has to do is to look at the hideous seabird sculpture at the entrance to the park to see an officially sanctioned alternative to what has been created at the Bulb. This bird sculpture is public art in all its impersonal splendor—and aesthetically it is deader than a doornail. It is not too difficult to imagine a similar monument being erected in honor of the soon-to-be-destroyed Bulb artwork: Perhaps a corner of one of the existing paintings or sculptures could be salvaged and incorporated into a publicly-funded project honoring this unique, and now, sadly, extinct, moment in Albany city history. Someone could be awarded a grant to do it. It would resemble all the ways we have honored and continue to honor the natural wonders, environments, peoples, cultures and architecture we destroy in our mad rush to fence in and pave over every aspect of this fearsome untamed world.  

Probably the artwork will have to go. But only because our culture cannot bear to “leave things alone.” We seem to honor the most valuable things by trampling them underfoot. If we have reverence for anything do we have the restraint to “let it be?” To “not” do something to it? Or do we have to spill over into every fragile and sacred space, destroying it simply because “we can?”  

Maybe we have the right to do this. But to deny the value of something we are busy destroying is just a cheap way to rationalize our insensitivity. Though this work was created outside official sanction, it exists nonetheless, and is given by artists freely and generously for everyone to enjoy. It enriches our culture more than we will ever be able to know, until after it is gone.  

Our job is not to “judge” the artwork (though we have the right to do so). Our job right now is to figure out a way to coexist with this or any other accidental beauty that springs up unexpectedly in our midst, and which cannot survive without our good will.  

Albany resident Peter Josheff is a composer and performer.  

My name is Michael Cook and I am a business representative and a member of the Machinists Union that represents the bargaining unit employees at Berkeley Honda, formally Jim Doten Honda. I appreciate Mr. Lubeck’s exercise of freedom of speech with his editorial published in the July 15-18 edition of the Berkeley Daily Planet. He did, however take some liberty with the truth on several issues. Mr. Lubeck knew when he was hired that he was replacing a service writer that had been working for Jim Doten Honda for many years. Mr. Lubeck started work on June 1. He only worked alongside some of the mechanics that are walking the street. He never worked alongside any of the mechanics that were not hired; therefore he has absolutely no idea of what their abilities, training, or certifications were then or are today. However, he did watch as four Honda Top Tech or Master Tech award banners were taken down from display in the service drive because they were no longer working at Berkeley Honda. Not one of the Wyotech students that were hired to replace mechanics with as much as 31 years of experience has qualifications that exceeds even the least qualified mechanic in the old Doten crew. Mr. Lubeck watched several Wyotech students get fired because of mistakes that resulted in destroyed transmissions and loose wheels. Our members talked to the customers that had those problems and no amount of denial on his part will make that truth go away.  

Indeed the Wyotech students that are hired by other employers in union shops are placed in the Apprenticeship Program for four years and watched carefully to turn them into journeyman mechanics. They do become good mechanics when properly trained over a period of time.  

Mr. Lubeck has no idea what the union’s healthcare package consists of since he has never seen the package, but he is somehow an expert on the comparison of the plans. He is simply not informed. Nor am I, as I have yet to compare the plans as I am patiently waiting for the necessary information from the employer. He totally misrepresented the employer-implemented single Employer Profit-Sharing plan contribution amount. The employer offered to make contributions of $300 dollars a month into an untested high-risk plan that only vests after three years. Only the union’s Defined Benefit contribution was $465.97 for senior journeyman techs. Since 1993, the employees have been diverting wages into the increases in pension contributions. Literally, the employees have been earning every cent of that contribution. 

Mr. Lubeck attempts to speak about the union’s pension plan that he apparently knows nothing about. The plan assets exceed $1.2 billion dollars. Last year was the first year since 1957 that the plan has experience un-funded liability as a result of Federally mandated calculations. This is not a high-risk single employer pension plan like others that have been the news lately. The 5 percent employee realization he speaks of is actually the defined monthly benefit that members enjoy from the total contributed during their career. Compare 60 percent annual return on investment as a benefit with any 401(k) or other pension plans to realize the true value of our pension plan and that the fund management has been exceptionally good for a very long time and it took an unprecedented downturn in the economy that has lasted longer that any other in this country’s history to give our pension plan a minor and resolvable problem. Mr. Lubeck should look at his 401(k) in the last five years to see what has happened to his assets. Nobody lost benefit money in our pension. When and if Mr. Lubeck gets educated as to the facts and finds out just how good this plan is compared to the fantasy that he believes to be truth now, he will be absolutely tickled that he may have a chance to participate.  

If this employer was indeed concerned about the customers of Berkeley Honda, he would have accepted the offer made by this union when he first opened that would have ensured a smooth transition, good training and apprenticeships for any new hires and would have given him a chance to find out just what the true qualifications of the journeyman mechanics, parts technicians, and service writers and detail department were before he made decisions based on information as fallacious as Mr. Lubeck was repeating for his employer’s benefit in his letter to the editor.  

Instead the new owners made the decision to save money by hiring cheap help and expanded profits without ever considering what it would mean to the Honda owners of Berkeley in terms of safety and reliability of their vehicles or to the families of the highly qualified, union-represented employees that were not hired simply because they were represented by and believe in the Machinists and the Teamsters Union. 

Berkeley Honda will be a good place to have your car repaired as soon as they learn how to respect people before coveting profits and stop disseminating fallacies by hiding behind uninformed employees. 

Michael S. Cook is a proud member of the Machinists Union. 

As one of the original appointees to the Peace and Justice Commission when it was established in 1986, I welcome the opportunity to explain and define the purpose, goals and most importantly of all, the mandate of the commission. This is in response to a recent commentary in the July 12 issue of the Daily Planet titled “Opposed to the Department of Peace” by Johnathan Wornick, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s appointee to the commission. 

The article misrepresents the mandate of the Peace and Justice Commission in a way that supports unstated political agendas currently in play in Berkeley—at least one of which Councilmember Wozniak has publicly supported. 

The Peace and Justice was created by City Ordinance No. 5705 on Feb. 18, 1986. The Findings Section includes these statements: “(e) Peace is inseparable from justice; (g) Initiatives are needed to reverse the drift toward war and to remove the causes of war” [emphasis added]. 

Section 3 defines Peace and Justice as “the goal of creating a world community in which the relations between people are based on equality, respect for human rights, and the abhorrence of exploitation and all forms of oppression.” 

Section 7 describes the various functions of the Peace and Justice Commission: 

“(a) Advise the Berkeley City Council and the Berkeley Unified School Board on all matters relating to the City of Berkeley’s role in issues of peace and social justice, including, but not limited to the issues of ending the arms race, abolishing nuclear weapons, support for human rights and self-determination throughout the world, and the reallocation of our national resources so that money now spent on war and the preparation for war is spent on fulfilling human needs and the promotion of peace.” 

“(d) Hold public hearings and forums ...” 

“(h) Act as a liaison between community groups organizing around issues of peace and justice and city government ...” 

“(l) Perform other functions and duties as may be directed by the City Council or prescribed or authorized by any ordinance of the city. ...” 

Our commission is only one of many, but all share a deep and integral part of the body politic of the City of Berkeley and that is the concept of “participatory democracy.” This proud and historic tradition dates backs hundreds of years in our nation’s history to the New England town hall meetings. It was codified in modern times by the issuance, in 1965 of the “Port Huron Statement: Agenda for a Generation.” The following language, adopted in this document, provided the philosophical background for the evolution of the commission system in this and many other cities by wedding tradition with the modern: “As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation governed by two central aims; that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of life; that society be organized to encourage independence and provide the media for their common participation.” 

At the heart of the concept of participatory democracy is that we all, in whatever way possible, become involved—i.e. think globally, act locally—and that decision-making of basic social consequences be carried out by public grouping. This brief history/philosophy lesson explains why the commission system enjoys the strong support it does in our city, and how this is reflected in ordinance No. 5705. 

Commissioners should serve in areas that interest them most. Wornick, the author of the July 12 piece, indicates that rather than “wasting their time ... writing resolutions on national and international issues” (as mandated in the Peace and Justice Commission’s enabling statute), he believes local officials should focus on “working hard to improve our schools, keep fire stations open, fix our roads, and bring jobs to our beloved City of Berkeley.” There are several commissions charged with addressing these very issues. Some of them currently have vacancies, and would welcome a new appointee who feels strongly about such issues. 

Berkeley is an international city. It has a university of worldwide acclaim with student from over 110 countries. We are the home to hundreds of non-governmental organizations. If we as a commission or a city were to ignore the issues we are charged with addressing, then we would be slamming the door on hundreds of our citizens and groups who have raised issues and/or brought resolutions to our commission. 

This we cannot do, because of our mandate, and we will not do. 

National and international issues are directly relevant to the City of Berkeley. Does $1.4 billion spent per week on the war in Iraq not impact our city’s finances? Would not an anti-choice Supreme Court nominee severely and negatively impact us here? 

If commissions were not to address national and international issues, then it would be necessary to oppose, say, a resolution from the Labor Commission opposing cruel, unhealthy, unsafe and degrading conditions of workers employed by U.S. corporations in another country; or a resolution from the Commission on Women opposing gang rape as a weapon of war, or the practice of genital mutilation; or a resolution from the Environmental Commission criticizing Chevron for polluting the land, the water and the lives of the people living in the Nigerian delta; or a resolution form the Youth Commission in opposition to child labor, or to child soldiers. 

One of the unstated political agendas served by such arguments is reflected in Councilmember Wozniak’s position on the commission system. In numerous public pronouncements and proposals, Mr. Wozniak has made clear his opposition to the commission system. If he can’t destroy it, he at least hopes to weaken it. 

Finally, I want to bring closure to two other issues raised in the op-ed piece. First, in the history of the Peace and Justice Commission, many if not most of the resolutions we worked on were presented to us by outside sources: the City Council, city agencies and departments, individuals, non-governmental organizations, sister cities and community-based groups. 

Second, regarding costs, analysis after analysis have shown that the 40-odd commissions in this city not only cost an infinitesimal amount of money, but in fact save the city big-time dollars by doing much of the background work and research for the City Council. We commissioners are volunteers, working for free, out of love for our city. 

The Department of Peace resolution that has recently attracted so much attention enjoys broad support in Berkeley (and was endorsed overwhelmingly by the City Council). Local citizens and organizations also bring more-controversial issues to the commission, which is required by its mandate to consider their proposals and concerns. 

Whether the issues are popular or contentious, the commission must fulfill its legislated mandate. It is not our job to silence or ignore anyone raising issues that fall under our jurisdiction. It is our duty to be open as a political body to those who wish to debate and make recommendations on issues of justice and world peace. 

The Peace and Justice Commission generally meets the first Monday of each month (except August) at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Martin Luther King Way at Hearst Street. I encourage all Berkeley residents to express their views to the commission during its public comment period and to the City Council and School Board members who have appointed us. 

Michael Sherman is a member of the Peace and Justice Commission and a former chairperson of the commission. 

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, the “parking lobby” (DBA, YMCA, various business owners) was calling for an additional level of underground parking at the Oxford lot. Nobody offered to raise funds to pay for this additional construction; the lobby evidently wants the city to compel the developer to cover that cost as a public duty. 

As one speaker put it, they were singing the same old song. It’s the persistent refrain that downtown Berkeley is losing business to Emeryville and El Cerrito, where parking is abundant. According to the parking lobby, all customers come in cars, even the people exercising at the YMCA, even visitors to the library. The lobby tells us that the city has an obligation to accommodate each and every car with a place to park. 

This sad old song is a wrong song. First of all, there is plenty of parking downtown. One of the parking lobby speakers even had the grace to note that many spaces are taken up by meter-feeding employees. Yes indeed; Betty Deakin’s study showed us that. But then the speaker said these poor people can’t be forced to come by bus. It would cost too much. They should buy a car and get free parking. 

Nonsense. Business owners and their meter-feeding employees just need to get out of their own way. All-day parkers should switch to public transit and free up those parking spaces for short-term parking. This was the recommendation of the TDM study, which the parking lobby always ignores, while they continue to sing their sad old song.  

Planet Earth is coming to a crisis. We have too many people driving too many cars, filling the air with pollution and driving up the global temperature. A policy of unlimited parking begins to look like dangerous foolishness.  

If we must accommodate customers with cars, then at least shift the owners and employees to public transportation and free up those spaces. The cost of that would be way less than building another layer of underground parking. Just set up an agency to distribute bus passes and BART tickets. The DBA could run the agency, or at least fund it. The YMCA could distribute the passes at their front desk. 

Global warming is a reality. So is asthma and other diseases caused by automobile-generated air pollution. Do we WANT to kill our children, ourselves, our planet? Will we keep calling for more parking and do NOTHING while our quality of life steadily diminishes? Are we really that dumb? Or is it only the parking lobby?  

Our parking-first attitude may soon get a shock treatment from catastrophe. Oil is running out. Greenhouse gas accumulation, any day, could cause a snap-over in Earth’s climate. (Oh no, couldn’t happen. There will be more oil found. We’ll fight for it. Driving is a divine right.) 

Some people chuckle tolerantly at the notion of “alternative transportation.” Of course cars are the only way to go. Only the young and athletic can go about by bicycle. Most destinations are too far for walking. We need cars to haul groceries. Buses are for the poor and lower classes. BART might be OK for a trip to the City, for some people. But the simple truth is that people want to DRIVE.  

Sorry, the party’s over; we have to start facing reality. Now would be nice. 

So what should we do about the Oxford lot? Let’s make the David Brower Center a starting place, where the urban dwellers of Berkeley started the green-city movement, the place where the car culture finally peaked out. 

Don’t build ANY underground parking. Limit the surface parking to spaces for delivery, short-term visitors and work-related vehicles. All the ecology advocates in the Brower Center should be ready and willing to come and go via public transportation, if they don’t want to bike or walk. 

Of course we could just roll on, one person to a car, each with a smirk on his face. We could build more parking, encourage more cars, more congestion, produce more carbon dioxide. Hey, maybe it’s too late and we might as well just party-on, waiting for whatever snap-over catastrophe global warming will bring, wallowing in traffic and pollution, continuing to consume the last of the oil, burning it into the air.  

The parking lobby would be far more credible if they subjected themselves to a special assessment tax to cover the additional Oxford parking— and whatever other parking they desire.  

The parking lobby should stop singing their song and wake up to what’s happening. 

Steve Geller is a Berkeley resident. 

“The gallery floor is off limits, and there are no showcases, so they asked me to create 30 ceramic pieces that will hang on the walls!” 

We are standing in Susan Felix’s studio in the small basement garage of her home, surrounded by boxes, sawhorse tables, and unfinished walls, all covered by quarter-inch thick ceramic pieces, most of them about 8x12 inches in size, many patched together from broken shards, fired in cloudy colors, shot through with smoky black and metallic shimmers of gold and silver. 

Many feature Biblical quotations in neat, black Hebrew script emerging from the cloudy texture (“That smoky look comes from pit-firing with sawdust.”) Thirty of these pieces are now on exhibit at the Pacific School of Religion. 

Susan Duhan Felix was born in Queens, New York (she still has the accent to prove it) to a secular Jewish family, her father a doctor, her mother a Latin teacher. There were artists on both sides of her family, but her parents discouraged her from becoming an artist. 

“‘Artists are disappointed, bitter people,’ they told me. ‘No recognition, no money.’ So, when I went to Queens College, I majored in literature,” Felix said. “I read some poems in the college literary magazine, fell in love with them, and then fell in love with the poet. Morton was a graduating senior, on his way to the University of Connecticut to do graduate work and teach in Clinical Psychology. After a year, I joined him. We were married. I was 19.” 

After finishing her B.A. at the University of Connecticut, she took some art classes. 

“First I tried painting, but it was when I started working in clay that I felt at home. In 1961 Morton insisted I enter a piece in the New England Ceramic Show. I did, and won first prize!” She shrugs and rolls her eyes. “So—I guess that labeled me ‘artist’ and ‘art teacher.’” 

Daughter Lisa was born as the Vietnam War began, along with Susan’s interest in community activism. She helped found the first peace center in Providence.  

In retrospect, Susan credits two events with giving direction to her art. The first was her 1962 M.A. thesis. Her subject was T. S. Eliot’s “Wasteland” as a metaphor for the loss of sacred ritual in modern life. Four years later, in 1966, she made a ceramic menorah for a friend. When a local rabbi’s wife saw it, she asked Susan to make one for her, then one for each of her children. 

That year also brought a brief teaching stint in Mexico. Then Susan and Morton were drawn to Berkeley, where they settled permanently in 1967. 

Susan is best known here for her thirty-odd years of community art and social activism; the list of boards and commissions, titles and honors recognizing her efforts, is long and may be exemplified by one example. In the late seventies, she began working with UA Housing. 

“I was good at writing grants, and when I got a grant for the University Avenue Housing Co-op, they hired me as executive director,” she said. “We managed to create 122 units of housing for the homeless in Berkeley.” 

During all these years, how did she find time to devote to art? 

She laughs. “Working with clay evenings and weekends was what kept me sane! And since I had a small but steady salary from UA Housing, I was able to make ceramics without concern for whether they would sell. It seemed natural for me to turn toward sacred art, ritual objects. In some cases the object came to me first, and then I actually invented a ritual to go with it.”  

She shows me examples that don’t appear in the PSR exhibit (because they can’t be hung on a wall). Her “Blessing Bowl” is a receptacle for blessings by well-wishers on happy occasions. She also originated a candle-holder to be part of a girl’s baby-naming ceremony, then to be used in adulthood by the girl as she lights the Sabbath lamp. 

“Traditionally Jewish women don’t get to do much ritual, but they do light the Sabbath candles, and I wanted to emphasize that,” she said.  

Her “Miriam’s Cup” is a two-part vessel to be used for hand washing during a Passover Seder. The prophetess Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, led women in singing and dancing to celebrate the crossing of the Red Sea, which then drowned Pharaoh’s pursuing forces; Miriam is also credited with locating water during the long wanderings of her people. The Hebrew inscription on this “Miriam’s Cup” translates to “Rise up, oh well, respond to my song.” 

So, did the molding and firing of ritual objects lead Susan back to the religious observance her parents had rejected? 

“I’ve found two spiritual homes here in Berkeley, Chocmat HaLev (Jewish) and Spirit Rock (Buddhist).” 

Then she shows me the eight-piece set of deeply etched wall plaques symbolizing the Eight Noble Truths of Buddhism, hanging next to the five-piece set titled “Jacob’s Ladder.”  

These hang in the midst of more abstractly spiritual plaques dedicated to comforting individuals, inspired by friends who were ill or troubled, and given titles that suggest a mood, a hope, a shaft of light in darkness. Most of them bear a jagged, broken line down the middle or several across. Sometimes the line is emphasized with contrasting color. Marks of fusing broken plaques? 

“Yes, I made these from random shards, some old ones, some recently broken—you never know what will happen in pit-firing. To use them again, to patch them up, is symbolic for me of broken worlds, broken people that can be repaired and reunified, can make new wholes in the spirit of creative grace. That is why I’m calling the exhibit Wholly Grace, with the double pun on Wholly.” 

She smiles. “As for Grace, it’s a lovely, rich word. I’m not sure I can define it.”

Maestro George Cleve’s Midsummer Mozart Festival orchestra performed four of Mozart’s early works on July 17 at Berkeley’s St. John’s Presbyterian Church. Cleve’s disciplined concentration on Mozart has allowed him to discover and reveal qualities and nuances in both acknowledged masterpieces and obscure gems that might otherwise go undiscovered. 

If you missed last weekend’s concerts, you can still catch their second and final program this weekend which focuses on Mozart’s compositions from 1781 through 1786. 

Last week’s program began with the Divertimento No. 2 in D major. This was written in 1772 to be played as background music during celebrations of either the birthday of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg or the end of the academic year. Mozart wrote background music the way Art Tatum played cocktail piano. Although the unique element in this composition is the beautiful four horn chorale, the star of the piece was Maria Tamburrino on flute. Her lyrical playing gave this diversion its center. 

The Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola in E flat major, featuring violinist Robin Hansen, who never played better, and violist Victor Romasevich, was the highpoint of the evening. The back and forth movement and weaving interplay between the “male” violin and the “female” viola, like twisting strands of DNA locked in a helical embrace while performing a cosmic pas de deux, came off beautifully even though the viola’s sound was a little hard to hear at times. 

The second half of the concert began with the ballet music for Les Petits Riens. After the choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre stiffed Mozart, he then passed off the compositions as his own. These dozen or so brief numbers run the gamut from stately court dances to rustic Scottish jigs. 

The evening ended with the “Paris” Symphony No. 31 in D major. Here, Mozart was at once able to give the superficial French audience the pretty toy he knew they craved while transforming popular effects into something deeper, more substantial and of a rarer beauty. Cleve chose to play the supposed second version of the andante movement that Mozart wrote after the piece was premiered. 

This weekend, the final program, focusing on Mozart’s compositions from 1781 through 1786, will be performed Friday in San Francisco, Saturday in Sonoma and on Sunday in Berkeley. 

Mozart’s first of eight full-scale operas was Idomeneo, Rè di Creta, composed for Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria. For this program, Cleve will perform only the strange overture with its ominous, disappearing ending, so unlike the usual buildup before an opera begins. The music seems to dry up suddenly like water sucked into desert sand.  

In 1783 Mozart made his first trip back to Salzburg after leaving the Archbishop’s service. It was also the first time his wife of one year, Constanze, was to meet Wolfgang’s disapproving father, Leopold. Mozart had vowed to write a mass when Constanze was ill. She performed this challenging but never completed work at the abbey church of St. Peter in Salzburg during this visit.  

Now known as the Great Mass in C minor, it will feature Christina Major and Deborah Berioli, sopranos; Joseph Muir, tenor; Joseph Wright, baritone; and The Cantabile Chorale. There was no division in Mozart’s mind between sacred and secular and he used every resource available to him to create this human replica of angelic choirs: this is the music of the spheres. Mozart wrote only a few pieces of sacred music after leaving Salzburg, but every one is a masterpiece with this coming in just a bit behind his Requiem.  

World-renowned pianist Seymour Lipkin will perform the Piano Concerto No. 15 in B flat major, said to be the most technically challenging of all of Mozart’s piano concertos. Lipkin will also be at the keyboard to accompany Christina Major singing “Ch’io mi scordi di te?,” Scena and Rondo for Soprano, Piano Obligato and Orchestra. It fits nicely on this program because it was written to be inserted into performances of Idomeneo. Mozart composed this heartbreaking, demanding concert aria for his English friend Nancy Storace’s Viennese farewell concert with himself at the keyboard. This program should be a powerhouse event with four remarkable works from such varied genres being performed. 

If you miss the live concerts you can still pick up on the Festival Orchestra by getting their recordings. One, which is sold at the concerts, features two symphonies performed at previous festivals. The other, three non-stop sparkling performances, was given out to those who attended the June benefit, and features Jon Nakamatsu performing Piano Concerto No. 27; Dorota Anderszewska performing Violin Concerto No. 3; and the Haffner Symphony No. 35. Both the orchestra and the guest artists play at the highest level.  

The second program of this year’s Midsummer Mozart Festival will be presented, Friday, July 22 at 8 p.m. at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco; Saturday, July 23 at 6:30 p.m. at Gundlach Bundschu Winery, Sonoma (outdoors); and Sunday, July 24 at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley.  

Each concert is preceded by a free half hour talk about the music and Mozart. For tickets and information about the festival programs and recordings call (415) 627-9145 or see www.midsummermozart.org. l

FRIDAY, JULY 22 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, “A Murder is Announced” at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck at Berryman. Runs Fri. and Sat. through Aug. 13. Tickets are $10. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “The Thousandth Night” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. 2 and 7 p.m., through July 31, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $36. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Central Works, “The Grand Inquisitor” Thurs - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 31. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Anything Goes” Cole Porter’s musical, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Aug. 13 at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

“Livin’ Fat” a comedy about an African American family struggling over a financial blessing, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m., through July 30, at Sweets Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $12.50-$35. 233-9222. 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “The Spy in Black” and “Q Planes” at 9:10 p.m. at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Paul Buhle describes “Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Meistersinger” at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $10-$40. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

Jazzschool Summer Youth Concert at 6:30 p.m. at the Jazz 

school. Free. 845-5373.  

Hungarian and Night Music with tango lessons at 7 p.m. at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Benefits the Latin American Music Scholarship Fund. Cost is $12-$15. www.berkeleymusiccooperative.com  

Caimalantin Latin Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Terry Rodriguez, Buford Powers Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Free Peoples, bluegrass/jazz at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Houston Jones at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Tommy Emmanuel at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sara Leib Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Echo Beach, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Penelope Houston, Moore Brothers, Willow Willow at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Bafabegiya, Disconnect, The Sweethearts at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Radical Politics and Folk Music with David Rovics, Robert Temple and Folk This! at 7 p.m. at AK Press, 674A 23rd St., Oakland. Cost is $5. 208-1700.  

Beenie Man at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. 548-1159.  

Du Uy Quintet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Bobby Watson & Horizon at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, JULY 23 

THEATER 

Berkeley Rep “The Ugly American” Created and performed by Mike Daisey at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Aug. 13. Tickets are $30-$35. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Woman’s Will, “Richard III” Sat. and Sun. at 1 p.m. in Mosswood Park, Oakland. Free. 420-0813. www.woman’s will.org 

Big City Improv, comedy, at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby at MLK. Tickets are $15. 595-5597. www.ticketweb.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Ceramic Art of Vivika and Otto Heino” opens at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Gallery talk at 2 p.m. Cost is $8 adults, $5 seniors and students with i.d. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Clay Song” A 40-year retrospective of the work of Diana Bohn. Reception at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Potters Guild, 731 Jones St. 524-7031. www.berkeleypotters.com 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “Baby Face” at 7 p.m. and “Night Nurse” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rhythm & Muse with poet and musician Avotcja at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Free. 527-9753. 

Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng and Bejamin Ajak describe, “They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

“Official Pep Talks” Gallery talk on the installation and interactive project by The Susan O'Malley Research Team at 1 p.m. at ProArts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361. www.proartsgallery.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wild Mango & The Kelly Takunda Orphan Project 8:30 p.m. Conversation with the artists at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $14-$16. 849-2568.  

Folk This! members Marcus Duskin and Ramsey Kanaan in performance commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as a benefit for the Peace and Freedom Party at 8 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph, Oakland. Admission $10, no one turned away for lack of funds. 465-9414. www.folkthis.org 

Harry Best and Shabang, Caribbean music from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Bay Street Plaza, (near Old Navy) Emeryville. 

Gaucho, Gypsy jazz, at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Ellen Hoffman, Darryl Rowe with Yancie Tayllor Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Jude Johnstone at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Beenie Man at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. 548-1159.  

The McGinty Brothers at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Djialy Kounda Kouyate at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

“Women in Global Perspective” A benefit for the Supressed Histories Archives, with Luisah Teish, priestess, Matu Feliciano, drummer, and Julie Hammond, singer and harpist, at 7:30 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento. Cost is $10-$30, sliding scale. www.supressedhistories.net 

Forthmorning, Unjust, Sleep in Fame at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Dale Miller, finger-picking blues, at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Walter Savage Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Altamont Pass, singer-songwriters, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Jessica Lurie Ensemble, Mushroom at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

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

Lack of Interest, Reproach, Haymaker at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Swoop Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, JULY 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Blind at the Museum” guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

FILM 

Harold Lloyd “The Freshman”at 3 p.m., Pre-Code Hollywood “Employees’ Entrance” at 5:30 p.m. and “Two Seconds” at 7:25 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash Thicket Press reading with Virginia Westover, Jennifer Sweeny, Annie Stenzel, V. Moralex, Tricia Caspers, Katherine Case, and Jennifer Arin at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Meistersinger” at 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $10-$40. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

Midsummer Mozart Concerto in B flat major, Mass in C minor, at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$48. 415-627-9145. www.midsummermozart.org 

Josie Morgan, viola with Miles Graber, piano, perform works by Enesco, Bach, Schumann at 3 p.m. at The Crowden School, Sacramento and Rose Sts. 

The Jazz House Benefit for Teach the Kids, with The Al Lazard Quartet and Muisi-Kongo Malonga at 3 p.m. at Kimball’s Carnival, 522 Second St., Oakland. rob@thejazzhouse.com 

100 Years of Struggle A celebration of the IWW and the American Labor movement with readings by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, and music by Folk This! and Allegro Non Troppo at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568.  

Sol Do Brasil at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Maria Marquez at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bandworks at 2:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $4. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Shotgun Ragtime Band at 10 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Americana Unplugged: Homespun Rowdy at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Look Back & Laugh, Violent Minds, Jealous Again at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, JULY 25 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Blair Tindall describes “Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Poetry Express “Dead Poets Night” with friends of David Lerner at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

Uri Caine Trio with Drew Gress & Ben Perosky at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $7-$14. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, JULY 26 

CHILDREN 

Nick Barone Puppets with a cast of over twenty friendly dinosaurs dressed as cowboys at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

FILM 

Eyeing Nature “Proteus: A Nineteenth-Century Vision” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell it on Tuesdays Solo performer storytellers share their work at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $5 at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

David Ewing Duncan introduces “The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with my DNA” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Eugene David Parch and Jim Barnard at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dan Zemelman Trio with Dayna Stevens at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Melissa Ferrick at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Randy Craig Trio, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Django Reinhardt Festival with the John Jorgenson Band and David Grisman at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Eric Shrifrin, solo piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27 

FILM 

For Your Eyes Only “Billion Dollar Brain” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Arab Women Film Festival “Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Latin American Working Class Film Fest at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, but donations accepted. 415-642-8066. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ernest Callenbach on the 30th Annniversary of “Ecotopia” at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. www.ecologycenter.org 

Writing Teachers Write with host Judy Bebelaar at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-3635. 

Christopher Sorrentino describes “Trance: 1974; the SLA; Tania” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.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 

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Phil Berkowitz & Louis’ Blues at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Paris King Band, funky rock, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Charason, salsa, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Flowtilla, world groove jazz funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Jack Williams at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Django Reinhardt Festival with the John Jorgenson Band and David Grisman at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 28 

THEATER 

The Lobster Project “Killing My Lobster and the Wonderful World of Science” Thurs. and Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 7:30 and 10 p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $12-$17. 415-558-7721. www.killingmylobster.com 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “Heroes for Sale” at 7:30 p.m. and “Mayor of Hell” at 9:05 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Latino Film Festival “ANC Hip Hop Revolution” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dana Adam Shapiro introduces his mystery “The Every Boy” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series with Russell Gonzaga and Karen Gorman at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Super Hoss, bluegrass, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Waterson Carthy at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Helene Attia & Own Davis Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Brandi Carlile at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

Anton Schwartz Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Django Reinhardt Festival with Dorado Schmitt, Florin Niculescu and others at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector, laptop funk, beat machines, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

n

Early on a recent morning at J.R. Muggs cafe in El Cerrito, Lorene Francois stepped up to the counter to order her daily cup of coffee. But before being served, she had to answer a few questions.  

Suzie O’Brien, who has worked the counter for the last seven years, wanted to know how Francois’ granddaughters were doing. 

“They’re fine,” Francois said with a smile and a hint of pride. “The youngest, Mecca, is graduating preschool today.” That kind of exchange is common at J.R. Muggs where most customers are known by name. O’Brien, who takes a genuine interest in her regulars, is largely responsible for the homey feel of “The Muggs,” as most people call it. 

If the family atmosphere seems genuine it’s probably because the cafe is a family-run operation, which adds to the hominess. Suzi’s two daughters Allison and Molly work the counter with her, and her oldest daughter Carol is co-owner and coffee roaster. 

“I just really enjoy people so I feel very lucky,” O’Brien said. “I mean, I really look forward to seeing our customers everyday and I want them to leave here happy.” 

Over the last 13 years, the small cafe has earned a reputation as a community hub where locals can stop in for a bit of friendly conversation and some of the best fresh-roasted coffee in the Bay Area.  

But according to Muggs’ founding owner Julie Rowlett and Carol O’Brien, who was made a partner in 1995, J.R. Muggs is in danger of closing for an all too familiar reason; the Starbucks juggernaut is squeezing them out of business. About 18 months ago, Starbucks opened three stores in the El Cerrito Plaza two miles away and last February they put in a new drive-through store down the street.  

“In the last year and half, we’ve lost about 60 percent of our business,” Carol O’Brien said. “The property manager is going to help us with some promotion, but it’s hard to compete with Starbucks.” 

Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia (double, nonfat latte) is a regular customer at The Muggs. He said when large corporate businesses come into a community, it’s usually at the expense of the small business owner.  

“This is really the ‘Wal-Martization’ of America and we’re losing something very important in the process,” he said. “We lose the individual character of the community when we lose the individually owned businesses.” 

No one is more upset about the possible closure of The Muggs than the regular customers who say they can’t imagine having to switch to Starbucks and its corporate culture. They have also come to rely on The Muggs as a welcoming outpost among the sprawling car dealerships, mega chain stores and impersonal fast food joints that dominate San Pablo Avenue.  

Joanne Pieroni (double mocha with whipped cream and caramel), who works nearby at Feline Bed and Breakfast, is a regular at the cafe even though she says she doesn’t enjoy coffee that much.  

“Stopping in at The Muggs is just a daily practice for me,” said Pierone, whose preferred drink goes into production as soon as her car noses into the parking lot. “Suzie and her daughters make the atmosphere really warm and I come here knowing I’m going to see someone I can talk with for a little while. I’m going to see a friend.”  

Alexandra Gibbs (medium regular coffee in a large cup) and her son Adam, 19 months, are Muggs regulars who converted from the other side. Gibbs said she is not keen on going back. 

“I used to go to Starbucks, but now I come here for the sense of community,” Gibbs said. “You go to the same Starbucks for the fifteen-hundredth time and nobody knows who you are or what your name is. Here they actually want to know about your family.” 

Like many of the regular customers, Eugene Cassidy (triple latte) said if The Muggs closes the community will lose something else that’s very rare: extremely good coffee, which he described as the “real deal.” 

The Muggs is one of the few cafes in the Bay Area that serves fresh-roasted coffee. Carol, who runs a sister company that supplies markets and hotels with gourmet coffee, is up before dawn five days a week to roast the Muggs’ daily supply of beans. 

“I like a latte with lots of froth,” Cassidy said. “They give me the steamed milk pitcher so I can customize my morning jolt and that’s something that would never happen at Starbucks.” 

Gioia said he is hopeful The Muggs will be able to turn things around, but really it’s up to the community to pitch in.  

“We can talk about saving local businesses, but the only way to do it is to patronize them,” he said. “In this case we have to vote with our feet and our pocketbooks.” 

Carol O’Brien is quick to reassure customers that all is not lost yet.  

“You just never know what’s going to happen,” she said. “We’ve been in tough spots before and pulled out of them.” 

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FRIDAY, JULY 22 

Memorial Service for Meleia Willis-Starbuck at 11 a.m. at the Berkeley High Food Court. A memorial scholarship account has been set up in Meleia’s name for Berkeley High graduates interested in pursing work in social justice. Contributions can be sent to the Mechanics Bank, 2301 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, 94704. Checks should be made payable to the Meleia Willis-Starbuck Memorial Fund. 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

Bearded Iris Rhizome Auction at 7:30 p.m. at 666 Bellvue Ave. Lakeside Park, Oakland. Free growing instruction and advice from experts. Sponsored by the Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society. 277-4200. 

“Tigers Forever” with filmmaker Anthony Marr, followed by a talk on “Omniscientific Cosmology” at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. 

Radical Politics and Folk Music with David Rovics, Robert Temple and Folk This! at 7 p.m. at AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. Cost is $5. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Activism Series with Gulf War Vet Dennis Kyne and Pat Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 528-5403. 

Harry Potter Read-a-Thon A two-week program at the Jefferson School focusing on literacy and creative writing for children ages 6-13. 835-2215. www.teachacademy.org 

Red Cross Mobile Blood Drive from 1 to 7 p.m. at Church of Jesus Christ of LDS, 1501 Walnut St. 527-6215. 

Berkeley Chess Club at 8 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. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Kol Hadash Shabbat, nontheistic, Humanistic, with Rabbi Jay Heyman on “The Making of a Humanistic Rabbi, Part 2,” at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share for Oneg, and non-perishable food for the needy. 428-1492. info@kolhadash.org  

Salsa Dancing at “The Beat” Dance Studio at 8:30 p.m. Lessons with Joseph Gallardo. 2560 9th St. at Parker. 472-2393 www.wildsalsanights.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 23 

Town Hall Meeting with Barbara Lee, Daniel Ellsberg, Bill Mitchell, and Steve Cobble at 11 a.m. at Grand Lake Theater, Oakland. 763-0370. 

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. 

Bearded Iris Rhizome Sidewalk Sale from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Rockridge Mall, Broadway at Pleasant Valley Rd., Oakland, near Starbuck’s. Free growing instruction and advice from experts. Sponsored by the Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society. 277-4200. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class: Burgers and Backyard Bites at 10 a.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Wheelchair accessible. Sponsored by Compassionate Cooks. Cost is $35. Registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com  

Fundraiser for BayIT Help send at child to summer marine biology camp. Raffle and silent auction from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Shorebird Park Nature Center, 160 University Ave. in the Berkeley Marina. 981-6720. 

SpiritWalking at the Berkeley Warm Pool Ability to walk on land not necessary. Sat. from 10 to 11 a.m., to Aug. 11. Cost is $3.50 seniors/disabled, $5.50 others. Bring a towel and deck shoes. 526-0312. well-being@pacbell.net 

Breast Not Bombs Parade for Peace Meet at noon at People’s Park for a walk to Cedar and Bonita to the Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists. 848-1985. 

Child Car Seat Check with the Berkeley Police Dept. from 10 a.m. to noon at the UC Garage on Addison at Oxford. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Sushi Basics Learn the natural and cultural history of this ancient and healthy cuisine. You will prepare and taste many types of sushi. Parent participation required for children ages 8-10. Cost is adult, $35, senior $30, child age 8-12 $25. registration required. 636-1684. 

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 

Butterfly Gardening Learn what plants are important and how we can encourage butterflies to visit our garden, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Walk Oakland...For Life Special events celebrate health, peace, and life at 11 a.m. throughout Oakland. To participate call 444-9655. www.walkoakland.org 

Free Help with Computers at the El Cerrito Library to learn about email, searching the web, the library’s online databases, or basic word processing. Workshops held on Sat. a.m. at 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Registration required. 526-7512.  

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of the Produce Market and the Waterfront Warehouse District. Cost is $5-$10. For details call 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

NIAD Summer Art Sale, Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 551 23rd St., near Barrett Ave., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

“Women Make it Happen” Luncheon with Brenda Knight, Oakland’s Woman of the Year for 1995 at 10 a.m. at Linen Life Gallery, 6635 Hollis St., Emeryville. Tickets are $39. For reservations call 776-4992. 

Ohtani Summer Bazaar from 4 to 8 p.m. and Sun. noon to 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, 1524 Oregon St. Food, children’s games and crafts. 843-6933. 

“Women in Global Perspective” Benefit for the Supressed Histories Archives, with Luisah Teish, Matu Feliciano, and Julie Hammond, at 7:30 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento. Cost is $10-$30, sliding scale. www.supressedhistories.net 

Books by the Bay Bay Area independent booksellers outdoor celebration of writers, books and bookstores, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco. www.booksbythebay.com 

“True Stories of Travel with Man’s Best Friend” with editor Christine Hunsicker at 3 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

“Creating Conditions for Peace” a symposium on Buddhist spiritual activism from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Rd. 655-6169, ext. 304. www.bfp.org 

“East Meets West” Integrative Medicine Open House at AIMC, 2550 Shattuck Ave. To RSVP call 666-8248, ext. 106.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, JULY 24 

Pancake Breakfast on Board the Red Oak Victory Ship, moored in Richmond Harbor, Berth #6 off Canal Blvd. From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cost is $6. 237-2933. 

Berkeley Rocks, a Greenbelt Alliance hike that features volcanic rock formations. From 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. To register call 415-543-6771, ext. 321. www.greenbelt.org 

Snake Secrets See a serpent up close and learn how they move, eat and age without wrinkles. At 1 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Story Hour at 3 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

100 Years of Struggle A celebration of the IWW and the American Labor movement with readings by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, and music by Folk This! and Allegro Non Troppo at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Oakland’s first suburb and Preservation Park. Cost is $5-$10. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. 848-7800. 

Social Action Forum With Rita Maran, on recent developments at the United Nations, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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 

MONDAY, JULY 25 

“Time Bomb” A documentary that spotlights America’s exploding national debt. Filmmaker John Ince will be present. At 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club. Cost is $5. Free for members. 527-0450. 

Stress Less with Hypnosis A free seminar at 6:30 p.m. in Oakland. Registration required. 465-2524. 

“Natural Advocacy in the Medical Labyrinth” with Ed Bauman, Director of Bauman College, at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

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

TUESDAY, JULY 26 

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meets at 10 a.m. at Huckleberry Preserve on Skyline Blvd., Oakland. To register call 525-2233.  

GPS Navigation with Steve Wood, REI guide, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. If you own a GPS unit, please bring it. 527-4140. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Community Family Dance from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Live Oak Park Recreation Center, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5 per person or $10 per family. Sponsored by the Berkeley Folk Dancers. 841-1205. 

Nick Barone Puppets with a cast of over twenty friendly dinosaurs dressed as cowboys at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Healthy Eating Habits and Hypnosis A free seminar at 6:30 p.m. in Oakland. Registration required. 465-2524. 

Red Cross Mobile Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at MLK Student Union, UC Campus. 1-800-448-3543. www.BeADonor.com 

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. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at The Dzalandhara Buddhist Center. Cost is $7-$10. For directions and details please call 559-8183. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27 

“Artist Housing in West Berkeley” extended Public Comment at 6 p.m. at the Civic Arts Commission meeting at the West Berkeley Senior Center. For information contact Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. 

“Will the Governor’s November Election Sink California?” with speakers from teachers, aabor, activists and the Alliance for a Better California. At 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

“Why We Can’t Allow Gaza to Fail” with Marcia Freedman at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Suggested donation $10, no one turned away. 848-0237. 

Ernest Callenbach on the 30th Annniversary of “Ecotopia” at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. www.ecologycenter.org 

Insects for Kids A free class for children ages 5-10, at 9 a.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. www.barringtoncollective.org 

Adventure Racing with Robyn Benincasa on her experiences competing around the world, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Arab Women Film Festival “Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Latin American Working Class Film Fest at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, but donations accepted. 415-642-8066. 

2005 Asthma Walk Kick-Off Luncheon, hosted by the American Lung Association of the East Bay at 11:45 a.m. at the Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside Dr., Oakland. For reservations call 893-5474 ext. 237. 

Sing your Way Home A free sing-a-long at 4:30 p.m. every Wed. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 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 

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. 

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. 

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

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, JULY 28 

Early Morning Bird Walk in Tilden. Meet at 7 a.m. at the Padre picnic site off South Park Drive to look for woodland birds. 

Parenting Class: Baby Langugae and Brain Development, for new and expecting parents at 10 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Registration required. 658-7353.  

Easy Does It Disability Assistance Board of Directors’ Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1744A University Ave. Public is welcome. 845-5513. www.easyland.org 

Nonprofits and Grantwriting Workshop from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. freeskoolyes@yahoo.com 

Steps to Buying Your Own Home at 7 p.m. at Shaw Properties, 400 45th St., Oakland. Includes the process of pre-approval for financing, including income requirements and credit issues, and finding a realtor. www.barringtoncollective.org 

ONGOING 

Halogen Torchiere Swap!!! California Youth Energy Services is offering an on-going Torchiere Swap. Swap your halogen torchiere for a brand new energy saving torchiere for only $15! Please call CYES at 665-1501, ext.10. 

Summer Camps for Children offered by the City of Berkeley, including swimming, sports and twilight basketball, to August 12, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 981-5150, 981-5153. 

Free Lunches for Berkeley Children Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Frances Albrier Center, James Kenney Center, MLK, Jr. Youth Services Center, Strawberry Creek, Washington School and Rosa Parks School. 981-5146. 

Albany Summer Youth Programs including basketball, classes, bike trips and family activities. For information see www.albanyca.org/dept/rec.html 

Bay Area Shakespeare Camp for ages 7 to 13, two week sessions through Aug., at John Hinkle Park. Cost is $395, with scholarships available. 415-422-2222. www.sfshakes.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., July 25, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Virginia Aiello, 981-5158. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/parksandrecreation 

Solid Waste Management Commission Mon., July 25, at 7 p.m., at North Berkeley Senior Center. Tania Levy, 981-6368. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/solidwaste 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/budget 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commis- 

sions/civicarts 

Disaster Council and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., July 27 at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. William Greulich, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy 

Planning Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. July 27, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., July 28, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.ber- 

keley.ca.us/commissions/zoning

A story on the Pinebrook estate, at 1106 Keith Ave., on the front page of this issue’s Real Estate section, mistakenly reported the era in which a cottage on the estate was built. The cottage was built in the 1930s.  

In the story “UC Regents Consider Fee Hike This Week” (July 19-21) the figures for proposed increases in fees for Boalt Hall students (from $33,776 to $36,231 next year and to $36,581 the year after) should have indicated that those fees were for nonresident students only. The proposed fees for state resident Boalt Hall students will rise from $21,531 to $22,568 next year and to $23,644 the year after. These fee increases were approved by the UC Regents at this week’s meeting.

The most appalling aspect of the bombings in Spain, in England and in Egypt in the past weeks is that the choice of victims is indiscriminate. Though it appears that the bombers have some general connection to the Islamic religion, many of the victims, perhaps most of them, do too. 

The Guardian Unlimited website has a section which collects reminiscences about the London victims. One of them, Sharara Islam, was a young woman of 20 described as a devout Moslem. A school friend, Sarah Read, speaks about her:  

“I have known Shahara, or Shaz as we called her, for seven years as we attended the same school. Shahara was a very popular student with her teachers and fellow pupils and was an asset to Barking Abbey Comprehensive School. I was devastated when I heard the news of her tragic death and have thought of her every day since. Shahara was a pleasant upbeat girl who enjoyed socialising and loved her friends and family.”  

A devout, loving, pleasant girl, taken from her friends and family—why? And in Egypt, the great majority of the victims were average Egyptian working people, mostly Moslems themselves.  

What we have seen developing in the last 20 years in indiscriminate attacks like this one is not a war of one religious or ethnic group against another, though we have seen plenty of those as well. Bosnia, Uganda, Darfur—these are locations for the old sort of inter-group conflict, dreadful to be sure, but not fundamentally different from much of human history.  

The term “terrorism” once implied that terror was used as a tactic with a political goal. The expectation was that terrorists had demands, rational or not. But some recent bomb attacks are really just killing for its own sake: a war not against an enemy, but against the world itself. They are not different in kind from the Oklahoma City bombing, where the bombers were Christians instead of Moslems. Sometimes this new kind of bomber is compared to the Irish Republican Army or the Stern Gang in Israel, or even to the Palestinian Hamas, but those groups at least had an agenda for their terrorist acts. The attacks which are part of this new war demonstrate a craving for destruction for its own sake: a War on the World and all its perceived sins. 

Regarding the world and the flesh as evils to be extirpated is nothing new. Manicheanism in the early Christian era was one example, but there have been many more in religions around the world and throughout history. What’s changed is, if you will, part of the phenomenon of globalism. Aberrant offshoots of religious beliefs used to be confined to specific localities, though Manicheanism itself did eventually spread throughout Asia before it disappeared. Now fanatics can be anywhere in the world within days. Another difference is the availability of cheap technology which can easily be adapted to wholesale slaughter by a tiny cell of plotters. 

There’s no simple answer to the question of how to stop these vicious acts. The Bush administration’s nationalist wars against Iraq and Afghanistan have proved to be useless and even counter-productive, since they fuel religious hatred while stopping few of the culprits. On a local level, the British police have been firing the classic shots in the dark, but missing the real targets. They might end up killing many suspicious-looking foreigners with no effect at all on the fanatic bombers.  

Britons have gotten used to minicams everywhere, a sight still unnerving to visiting Americans. These have proven useful in identifying bombers after the fact, but don’t seem to be much of a deterrent to suicidal attackers. Airport searches are no barrier to weapons manufactured from parts available at local hardware stores.  

A modest hope for heading off these insane acts of destruction might be the usual clichéd remedy for all kinds of problems: communication. In this case, the communication needs to take place between communities—a continuous open dialogue between religious believers and those outside their own group—and especially within communities. Women of these communities, often opponents of violence, need to find ways of talking to their husbands, sons and occasionally daughters about any feelings of alienation from the world before they fester into violent acts. Religious leaders must preach the messages of peace and love for fellow humans which are central to all of the major world religions, as Islamic clergy in Britain are reported to be doing now at Friday services.  

In communities like Berkeley—or London—where inhabitants come from many parts of the world and have many different belief systems, ongoing dialogue holds out the only real promise of eventually conquering terror. Organizations like Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission will not by themselves put an end to inter-group strife, but they can function as testing grounds for openness and cooperation among participants. Councilmembers should query their appointees about their commitment to the commission’s goal of promoting peaceful resolution of conflicts among all kinds of groups. No religion, no ethnic group and no nation—even Israel—should be given a free pass out of the discussion arena. It’s too important. 

B

TUESDAY, JULY 26 

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meets at 10 a.m. at Huckleberry Preserve on Skyline Blvd., Oakland. To register call 525-2233.  

GPS Navigation with Steve Wood, REI guide, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. If you own a GPS unit, please bring it. 527-4140. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Community Family Dance from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Live Oak Park Recreation Center, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5 per person or $10 per family. Sponsored by the Berkeley Folk Dancers. 841-1205. 

Nick Barone Puppets with a cast of over twenty friendly dinosaurs dressed as cowboys at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Healthy Eating Habits and Hypnosis A free seminar at 6:30 p.m. in Oakland. Registration required. 465-2524. 

Red Cross Mobile Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at MLK Student Union, UC Campus. 1-800-448-3543. www.BeADonor.com 

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. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at The Dzalandhara Buddhist Center. Cost is $7-$10. For directions and details please call 559-8183. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27 

“Artist Housing in West Berkeley” extended Public Comment at 6 p.m. at the Civic Arts Commission meeting at the West Berkeley Senior Center. For information contact Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. 

“Will the Governor’s November Election Sink California?” with speakers from teachers, aabor, activists and the Alliance for a Better California. At 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

“Why We Can’t Allow Gaza to Fail” with Marcia Freedman at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Suggested donation $10, no one turned away. 848-0237. 

Ernest Callenbach on the 30th Annniversary of “Ecotopia” at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. www.ecologycenter.org 

Insects for Kids A free class for children ages 5-10, at 9 a.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. www.barringtoncollective.org 

Adventure Racing with Robyn Benincasa on her experiences competing around the world, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Arab Women Film Festival “Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Latin American Working Class Film Fest at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, but donations accepted. 415-642-8066. 

2005 Asthma Walk Kick-Off Luncheon, hosted by the American Lung Association of the East Bay at 11:45 a.m. at the Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside Dr., Oakland. For reservations call 893-5474 ext. 237. 

Sing your Way Home A free sing-a-long at 4:30 p.m. every Wed. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 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. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, JULY 28 

Early Morning Bird Walk in Tilden Meet at 7 a.m. at the Padre picnic site off South Park Drive to look for woodland birds. 

Norman Solomon, founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy, will speak on his new book, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” at 6:45 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Oakland. Sponsored byt the Wellston Democratic Renewal Club. 

Parenting Class: Baby Language and Brain Development, for new and expecting parents at 10 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Registration required. 658-7353.  

Easy Does It Disability Assistance Board of Directors’ Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1744A University Ave. Public is welcome. 845-5513. www.easyland.org 

Public Meeting on Pacific Steel Castings and concerns over West Berkeley odors and toxic emissions, at 6 p.m. at the Ecology Center. 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. www.ecologycenter.org 

Nonprofits and Grantwriting Workshop from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. freeskoolyes@yahoo.com 

Steps to Buying Your Own Home at 7 p.m. at Shaw Properties, 400 45th St., Oakland. Includes the process of pre-approval for financing, including income requirements and credit issues, and finding a realtor. www.barringtoncollective.org 

FRIDAY, JULY 29 

Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories and Photographs with Jewish-American activist Anna Pillerat 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 845-4740. 

Youth Writing Festival with students from Mentoring for Academic Success (MAS) at 6 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Skin Cancer Screening for people with limited or no insurance at Alta Bates, Markstein Campus. Free, but registration required. 869-8833. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. 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. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Salsa Dancing at “The Beat” Dance Studio at 8:30 p.m. Lessons with Joseph Gallardo. 2560 9th St. at Parker. 472-2393 www.wildsalsanights.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 30 

Breakfast and Birding Walk with Robbie Fischer. Meet at 8 a.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $25. Registration required. 525-6155. 

Year of the Estuary at Pt. Isabel Meet at the end of Isabel St. for a walk along the waterfront, marsh, bay and slough, to look for birds in bright plummage, down from their northern breeding grounds. 525-2233. 

Native Plant Society Star Thistle Removal from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. just below the large parking lot at 1150 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Sponsored by the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and the East Bay Regional Parks. 848-6489. 

Berkeley Kite Festival Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Cesar E. Chavez Park in the Berkeley Marina. Activities, kite competitions and demonstrations. 235-5483. 

Cambio X Change Join the Berkeley Palma Soriano Sister City group for Cuban music and dance, art exhibit, and information on upcoming delegations to Cuba at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 653-1009. 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Mosswood Park, MacArthur and Broadway, Oakland. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

Hiroshima Stories, a commemorative event of performances and ritual in observance of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 7:30 p.m., International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. 642-9460. www.ihouse.berkeley.edu  

PortFest World Music & Jazz Festival with Hugh Masekela, Kenny Garrett Quartet, Dave Ellis Quintet, Mo’Rockin Project and others from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, at the end of 7th St., Oakland. 627-1111. www.portofoaklandpublicartprogram.com 

Pancrustacea is Not a Dish: Insects and their Surprising Relatives. A realignment of animal groups has brought insects some interesting relatives and removed others from their family tree. At 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“The Peaceable Kingdom” will be screened at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824. 

SpiritWalking at the Berkeley Warm Pool Ability to walk on land not necessary. Sat. from 10 to 11 a.m., to Aug. 11. Cost is $3.50 seniors/disabled, $5.50 others. Bring a towel and deck shoes. 526-0312. well-being@pacbell.net 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Kaiser Center Roof Garden and the Oakland Museum of California Garden. Cost is $5-$10. For details call 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Homeopathy for Animals: Emergency Situations Learn about local holistic vets and homeopathic remedies that can be used in emergency situations, including puncture wounds, ingesting toxins, excessive bleeding, muscle strain, bites and stings, foxtails, and fear of loud noises, at 3:30 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $45. 525-6155. 

Your Backyard Pond Learn how to keep your backyard pond in balance, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Free Help with Computers at the El Cerrito Library to learn about email, searching the web, the library’s online databases, or basic word processing. Workshops held on Sat. a.m. at 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Registration required. 526-7512.  

“Guitar: Total Techniques, Scales & Applications” with Mark John Sternal at 2 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 5604 Bay Street, Emeryville. 547-0905. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552 

SUNDAY, JULY 31 

Bird Walk in Tilden Join Alan Kaplan on his 500th bird walk at 8 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Blessing of the Animals at 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824. 

Bicycle Crash Skills Clinic Learn how to deal with curbs, gutters, wet weater, pedestrians, dogs and especially car doors, and how to repair your bike and body. From 2 to 6 p.m. at Berkeley Center for Appropriate Transport, 1336 Channing Way. For more information, email bcat_events@yahoo.com 

Music in the Park at Arroyo Viejo Park with Rose Royce at 3 p.m. at 7701 Krause St., Oakland. Sponsored by Councilperson Desley Brooks. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Jingletown. Cost is $5-$10. For details call 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

The New Tree of Life We’ll look for examples of new ways of looking at life in forest, meadow and pond at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

“U.S. Imperialism and the Counterinsurgency War” with Antonio, a former political prisoner from South America, at 1 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, but donation of $5 accepted. 393-5685.  

Social Action Forum with David McPhail on School of the Americas, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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 

MONDAY, AUGUST 1 

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 515 Webster Street. The speaker will be Joyce Rutledge Starosciak, a member of the San Leandro City Council. Her topic will be “Sandra Day O’Connor: a Woman in the Men’s Club.” 287-8948. 

Wild vs. Hatchery Trout A lecture on the importance of saving wild trout with Mondy Lariz of California Trout’s Lake Merced Campaign at 7 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

“RFID: What's It All About?” Berkeley Public Library is holding a Community Informational Forum on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to hear both sides of the issue at 6:30 p.m. at at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. Gordon Wozniak will speak on the safety of RFID, and representatives from the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation will talk about the privacy concerns. For accessibility questions and more information, call 981-6121. 

City of Berkeley Walking Group walks Mon.-Thurs. from 5 to 5:30 p.m. Meet at 830 University Ave. All new participants receive a free pedometer. 981-5131. 

Stress Less with Hypnosis A free seminar at 6:30 p.m. in Oakland. Registration required. 465-2524. 

Vacation Bible School from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Aug. 5 at The Church on the Corner, 1319 Solano Ave., Albany. 243-7410. www.albanyfirstbaptist.org 

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

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2 

“National Night Out” Public safety awareness forum focusing on alcohol and drug fueled crime and violence in Berkeley from a faith-based perspective. From 6 to 9 p.m. at McGee Avenue Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St. at McGee Ave. 658-2467. www.berkeleyboca.org 

Exploring Baja California Hiking, kayaking, mountain biking and more with Trudi Angell at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140.  

Family Story Time at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free, all ages welcome. 524-3043. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Salon Discussion Group meets to discuss “The Coarseness of Culture” from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Please bring snacks and soft drinks to share. No peanuts please. 601-6690.  

Healthy Eating Habits and Hypnosis A free seminar at 6:30 p.m. in Oakland. Registration required. 465-2524. 

Brainstormer Weekly Pub Quiz 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. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. 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. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

ONGOING 

Summer Camps for Children offered by the City of Berkeley, including swimming, sports and twilight basketball, to August 12, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 981-5150, 981-5153. 

Free Lunches for Berkeley Children Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Frances Albrier Center, James Kenney Center, MLK, Jr. Youth Services Center, Strawberry Creek, Washington School and Rosa Parks School. 981-5146. 

Albany Summer Youth Programs including basketball, classes, bike trips and family activities. For information see www.albanyca.org/dept/rec.html 

Bay Area Shakespeare Camp for ages 7 to 13, two week sessions through Aug., at John Hinkle Park. Cost is $395, with scholarships available. 415-422-2222. www.sfshakes.org 

Halogen Torchiere Swap!!! California Youth Energy Services is offering an on-going Torchiere Swap. Swap your halogen torchiere for a brand new energy saving torchiere for only $15! Please call CYES at 665-1501, ext.10. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/budget 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commis- 

sions/civicarts 

Disaster Council and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., July 27 at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. William Greulich, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy 

Planning Commission meets Wed., July 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. July 27, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., July 28, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.ber- 

keley.ca.us/commissions/zoning?