As part of a city effort to crack down on liquor store violations, Dwight Way Liquor may soon sell its last bottle of booze. 

To the cheers of dozens of neighbors Thursday, the Zoning Adjustment declared Dwight Way Liquor “a nuisance” and ordered it shut down. The store has been cited for violating city zoning and state liquor laws 45 times over the past 18 months. 

Dwight Way Liquor, at 2440 Sacramento St., remained open Monday, while owners, Abdulalaziz Saleh, Behjat Yahyavi and Johnny Shokouh prepared to appeal the ZAB ruling to the City Council.  

Deputy City Attorney Zach Cowen had recommended that the board reduce the store’s hours, but give it another chance to clean up its act. Since Berkeley has never closed a liquor store at the first ZAB nuisance hearing, Cowen warned that it could complicate the city’s efforts to win a court appeal filed by the store’s owners. 

“It seemed the zoning board was acting hastily without listening to their city attorney,” said the owners’ attorney, David Bryden. “Maybe the City Council will take a slower approach.”  

If the council dismisses the appeal Dwight Way Liquor would be the first Berkeley liquor store shut down since Brothers Liquor in 2001. 

Also Thursday, the ZAB declared Berkeley Market at 2369 Telegraph Ave. “a nuisance” and put the store on probation, which could lead to its termination if clerks continue to sell alcohol to minors. 

The two cases signal that Berkeley is taking a more aggressive tact against problem liquor stores, said Community Service Liaison Taj Johns. 

Johns said the increased enforcement has followed education of city staff by the State Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) on the city’s power to regulate liquor stores. ABC has authority over liquor licenses, but Berkeley can regulate liquor stores through its zoning laws. 

“We now feel we have the power to abate nuisance liquor stores,” Johns said. “We never felt that way before.” 

Key to the city’s enforcement of liquor stores is a $50,000-a-year ABC grant that funds training sessions for liquor store operators and decoy operations to enforce regulations. 

A police sweep in March 2004 found six of 15 targeted liquor stores sold alcohol to minors, according to ABC District Administrator Andrew Gomez. The usual violation rate on decoy operations is about 10 percent, he said. 

Since then, Berkeley police have filed 12 cases against Dwight Way Liquor for selling liquor after 11 p.m., which is prohibited in their use permit. Police also cited the store in one instance for selling to minors. 

On Sept. 2, the day after ABC slapped the store with a 15-day alcohol suspension, a Dwight Way Liquor clerk sold alcohol to an undercover police officer. ABC has scheduled a hearing on the store’s liquor license for Oct. 27. 

For the zoning board to shut down a liquor store it must first declare the store a nuisance, then find it in violation of city zoning laws. Many neighbors testified before the board that the store had subjected them to constant late night noise, harassment from store patrons, litter and crime. 

“It’s unbearable,” said Richard King who lives across from the store. “I’m woken up all the time by two or three cars blasting their stereos hanging out outside the store.” 

Dwight Way Liquor has so far eluded strong ABC sanctions by transferring its liquor license three times among its owners. Gomez, the ABC administrator, said that tactic is sometimes successful at giving troubled stores a clean slate. “We do an investigation into the applicant, but we don’t know if the applicant is the former licensee’s brother or sister,” he said. 

In the case of Berkeley Market on Telegraph Avenue, ABC put a hold on a proposed license transfer from the owner Iqbal Mumtaz to a corporation of which Mumtaz serves as the CEO. 

The attempted transfer came after ABC gave the store with a 15-day suspension and $2,228 fine for selling alcohol to minors and after its closing time. 

Gregory Daniels, Berkeley’s head of code enforcement, said at Thursday’s meeting that he considered Berkeley Market to be a predatory business because all of its violations involved the sale of alcohol to minors. 

But the ZAB went easier on Berkeley Market, which faced complaints from just three neighbors and received support from members of UC Berkeley’s student government. 

Speaking in his own defense, Mumtaz said he was buying an ID scanner and would now ID all of his customers. “I might have made mistakes, but I’ve learned from my mistakes,” he said. 

The ZAB required Mumtaz to reimburse the city for the costs of its enforcement actions and report back in six months on any new violations for selling alcohol to minors. 

Advocates for stricter alcohol policies are not satisfied with the city’s stepped up enforcement. They are drafting an ordinance that would establish a permanent monitoring system based on fees assessed to liquor store owners, said Laura Menard of the Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition. 

Meanwhile, Councilmember Max Anderson said he has met with Berkeley’s Yemeni Grocers’ Association and won agreement for stores to stop selling single shot malts and packaging alcohol in brown paper bags. 

Omar Ahmed, owner of Lee’s Market, at 2700 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and a member of the Yemeni Grocers’ Association, criticized the recent police stings as “harassment.”  

“They’re putting every store, even the good ones, in the same category,” he said. “They should recognize the good stores to give them some encouragement.” 

With former Congressmember Ron Dellums setting a self-imposed deadline of Oct. 1 to announce whether or not he will run for mayor of Oakland in next year’s elections, organizers of a “Draft Dellums” campaign have announced that they will conclude their petition drive at a Wednesday morning press conference at the Ron Dellums Federal Building in Oakland. 

According to petition campaign worker Kitty Kelly Epstein, an Oakland teacher and education activist, Dellums has not been invited to the press conference.  

“We want to show the congressmember and the public the groundswell of support for his candidacy, including petitions and letters from leaders of various constituencies and organizations throughout the city,” she said. “We want the congressmember to take all this information in, and then give him the space to make his decision by October 1st.” 

According to Oakland Black Caucus chair Geoffrey Pete, another petition drive organizer, “there’s been no coordination of the petition campaign” with Dellums. 

“He didn’t ask for it,” he said. “I haven’t talked with him directly since the campaign began, and there’s been no association with him.” 

Pete said that he expects the number of petition signatures “will be in the thousands.” 

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown must leave office next year at the end of his second term, and several candidates have already announced that they are running to succeed him, including Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, Oakland City Councilmember Nancy Nadel, Alameda County Treasurer Donald White, and Oakland School Board members Dan Siegel and Greg Hodge. 

But earlier this summer, saying that he was dissatisfied with the choices, Pete stood up at a meeting of the Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR) and started the crowd in a chant of “Run, Ron, Run.” Shortly afterwards, Pete and several other friends and associates began the petition campaign, calling for Oakland residents to sign up to ask Dellums to run for mayor. 

Over the summer, members of such organizations as the Oakland Black Caucus and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 790 have been volunteering as individuals to get signatures at public events throughout Oakland, including this month’s Art & Soul Festival. 

At times, the petition campaign has appeared more like an election campaign, with “Draft Ron Dellums” posters showing up on telephone posts and inside storefront windows. At Councilmember Desley Brooks’ Unity In The Community free concerts at Arroyo Viejo Park this summer, SEIU members set up a petition-signing booth, complete with campaign banner. 

Epstein said that she spoke with Dellums last week in Washington about the petition campaign, “and he’s really moved by it. He said it was putting a lot of pressure on him and his decision.” Epstein said she got no indication from Dellums as to what his decision might be. 

“I hope he does, of course,” she added, “but whether he runs or not, this movement has already had a positive effect upon the future of Oakland politics. We’ve had Latinos and Black Caucus members and union organizers getting together in a more of a dialogue than I’ve seen in quite a while. Whatever happens, things aren’t going to be the same.” 

Dellums, who once served on the Berkeley City Council, resigned as the 9th District U.S. Congressmember from California in 1998 after 28 years in Congress. He continued to live in Washington D.C. after his retirement, and in recent years has worked both as a corporate Congressional lobbyist and on issues relating to the AIDS epidemic in Africa. 

Geoffrey Pete is the cousin of the author of this article.

The suspected shooter in the July 17 killing of Meleia Willis-Starbuck was captured in a Fresno apartment Friday as he hid in a bedroom closet. 

Lt. Randy Dobbins of the Fresno Police Department said the Friday arrest came 12 hours after Hollis, the boyfriend of the slain Berkeley High School graduate, was first detained following a traffic stop the night before. 

He is scheduled for arraignment this afternoon (Tuesday) at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse at 616 Washington St., Oakland, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Hollis, 21, was the second suspect arrested in connection with the shooting. Christopher Wilson, 20, who police say drove Hollis to the scene of the shooting, surrendered to police shortly after the incident and is scheduled to enter a plea before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Winfred Scott on Oct. 3. 

Hollis was first taken into custody by the Fresno Police at 11 p.m. Thursday after traffic officers stopped a car for running a stop sign at the corner of Winery and Lane streets in Fresno. Neither the driver nor her passenger was carrying identification, Dobbins said. 

The woman behind the wheel, Easter Curry, provided a name and driver’s license number that belonged to her sister, and the passenger identified himself as Brandon Davis, giving a birth date of July 27, 1982. 

“Because they provided false information and they seemed really nervous, they were arrested and brought to police headquarters for processing,” said Dobbins. 

Because the department’s computer system was backlogged at the time and there was no indication they were wanted locally, the pair was returned to Curry’s apartment and released, Dobbins said. 

The computer returned “hits” on both suspects, identifying them and turning up the homicide warrant on Hollis and the fact that Curry was currently on felony probation from nearby Madera County, Dobbins said. 

Officers returned to Curry’s apartment at 11:30 a.m. Friday after receiving an anonymous phone tip that Hollis had returned. 

As they were driving up to the building, officers spotted Hollis walking across the street. As they gave chase, Hollis fled into the Winery apartment complex, a maze of buildings that covers a square mile. 

“They lost him, and then went back to the girlfriend’s apartment, where Curry was arrested after erasing Hollis’s name from her cell phone,” Dobbins said. 

Investigators discovered that she had recently made a call from the telephone in the apartment, and a quick check matched the number to an address in the apartment complex. 

Officers went to the apartment, where they were granted permission to search by the tenants—who were then evacuated. Moments later, officers found Hollis. “He was cowering down in the back of a bedroom closet and was taken into custody without incident,” said Dobbins. 

Okies said Berkeley Police officers arrived the next day to return him the city. 

Curry was booked into Fresno County jail on suspicion of harboring a fugitive and for violating her probation, Dobbins said. 

Fatal shooting 

Willis-Starbuck, 19, graduated from Berkeley High School in 2003, and was about to enter her junior year at Dartmouth College when she was shot and killed outside her apartment near the corner of Dwight Way and College Avenue following an encounter with five young men, witnesses said. 

She had stopped by her apartment with a group of friends when five men approached and an argument ensured. According to Berkeley Police spokesperson Okies, one of the witnesses said that Willis-Starbuck called Hollis to come to the scene and “bring the heat.” 

Shortly afterward, at about 1:45 a.m., while her friends were climbing into a car, someone fired a pistol from nearly a block away, fatally injuring her. The gunman then fled in a car eastbound on Dwight Way. 

Fire Department paramedics arrived on the scene within five minutes of the 911 call. 

Willis-Starbuck had been attending Dartmouth on a full scholarship, and her death shocked both the Berkeley community, where she was well-known for her volunteer efforts, and her teachers and fellow students at Dartmouth, where she had been elected president of the Black Student Union in her sophomore year. 

She had returned to Berkeley to work as a summer intern at the Women’s Daytime Drop-In Center, which provides services to homeless women. 

Willis-Starbuck’s mother, Kimberly, worked for many years in the Berkeley City Manager’s office, and the family had moved to Georgia last year.

The owner of the two-story plywood shell with a house atop that South Berkeley neighbors call “The Flying Cottage” has won a major battle in her fight to resume construction on the building. 

Over neighborhood objections, Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustment Board voted 8-0-1 to issue a Design Review Permit for developer Christina Sun to build two stories of housing over a ground floor shop at 3045 Shattuck Ave.  

The ZAB is requiring Sun provide the city with a landscape bond so that if she fails to maintain the property, the city can take over the upkeep. After neighbors stopped the project two years ago by charging that Sun intended to build an illegal boarding house, the decision essentially gives Sun the go-ahead to complete the building. 

Robert Lauriston, who lives near the property, said neighbors might appeal the permit to the City Council. 

The ZAB vote came after Sun agreed to shrink parts of the building to appease neighbors. 

“I think we’ve almost produced a swan,” said Anders Brandt, the project’s architect. 

But neighbors said the improvements still left them with a towering eyesore that left little green space on the corner of Shattuck and Prince Street. 

“There’s just way too much concrete,” said Doug James. “The whole rear yard will be paved.” 

Jennifer Elrod feared that the nine-bedroom building would mean more cars parked on crowded side streets. 

The new design, conceived during meetings between Brandt and a ZAB subcommittee, lowers the roof and removes living space on the third floor.  

The building, which looms above neighboring structures, is now proposed as two separate apartments. Although Shattuck Avenue nearby is lined with two-story buildings, Berkeley zoning law gives developers the right to build up to three stories on the site because it’s zoned commercial even though adjacent streets are residential. 

Before approving the design, ZAB chair Andy Katz said the board would have voted differently if it had the authority to lower the height. 

“We did the best we could within the design review process,” he said. “This is unfortunately the best we could do.”

For the second time in less than a week, UC Berkeley officers have ripped apart the latest incarnation of a long-standing clothing donation box at People’s Park. 

On Monday, UC Berkeley officers demolished two wooden crates that homeless advocates had placed the day before besides the park’s basketball court. A week earlier at the same site police ripped out the foundation for a new box that was to be made of clay, sand and straw. 

The “free box” is one of People’s Park’s traditions, and the fight to restore it has reignited the battle between UC Berkeley and homeless advocates over the park. 

“The university is stepping beyond its domain,” said Shan Masuda of Friends of People’s Park. “They’ve pulled out something that had been here for 10 to 15 years. We’re saying you can’t do that without consulting us.” 

City Councilmember Kriss Worthington also objected to not being consulted by the university. He said the university has shut the city out of decisions about the park since it halted meeting of the People’s Park Advisory Board last November. 

“I’m concerned about the secret and imperial nature of the university administration,” he said. “It’s my district, you’d think they would call me.” 

People’s Park has gone without a free box since February when the last box, like its predecessor, was torched by arsonists. 

Irene Hegarty, UC Berkeley’s director of community relations, said the university had warned homeless advocates that it would not permit them to rebuild the box at the park, which is university property. 

Hegarty said the free box has been a costly nuisance to the university, whose employees are often left carting off “crates of trash,” from the park, including clothes and household appliances.  

She said park users often throw free box items throughout the park and then fight over them. “There seems to be a problem with selling clothes at used clothing stores and using the money for alcohol,” she said. 

On Sept. 18, about 35 homeless advocates staked eight-foot pillars into the ground as the first step in installing a six-by-ten-foot free box made from natural materials. Masuda said the new box was inspired by the state’s recent removal of homeless people’s belongings from the Albany Bulb. 

The project was scheduled for completion last Sunday, but when UC police tore down the foundation last Wednesday, Friends of People Park called off the building project and instead brought in the two four-foot-by-four-foot wooden crates that police dismembered Monday. 

“The free box is a necessity,” said Daniel Torrez, a local homeless man. “When there’s no free box, things get a lot dirtier and darker than they need to be,” he said. 

Masuda saw the university’s hard line on the free box as a signal that it planned to remove homeless services from the park, but Hegarty said UC Berkeley had no grand designs for remaking the space. 

“We don’t think the free box is an efficient way to get clothes to people who need it,” she said.1

A compromise to keep Berkeley Iceland open hit a snag last week when the skating rink reported that a temporary outdoor refrigeration system the city ordered it to install would be too noisy for neighbors. 

“If we brought it in the way it sounds now, neighbors across the street would not be happy,” said Iceland General Manager Jay Wescott. 

City officials declined comment on whether Berkeley might close the rink if the temporary cooling system proved too noisy.  

In July, Berkeley demanded Iceland install a portable ice cooling system or shut its doors while the rink upgraded its permanent system.  

The Fire Department said that Iceland’s 65-year-old cooling system lacks safety features and contains too much ammonia—over 4,200 pounds—for the city to handle in the case of a major release.  

Last week Berkeley extended Iceland’s deadline to install the new cooling system two weeks to Oct. 7. Iceland has kept the system at a warehouse while engineers work to reduce noise. 

Wescott wouldn’t disclose the system’s decibel level, but said it was significantly louder than city codes permit.  

“I just know that right now it’s loud and we’re looking for ways to see if we can mitigate the noise level,” he said. 

Engineers are considering replacing the cooling fans to reduce noise, said Berkeley Toxics Manager Nabil Al-Hadithy, who has worked closely with Iceland on complying with city codes. 

“Dampening sound is more of an art than a science,” he said. “There are tools to kill noise, but there is no guarantee that the tools will work.” 

Under an agreement with the city, singed last month, Iceland has until April to complete upgrades to its permanent cooling system. The upgrades include reducing the rink’s ammonia capacity to about 750 pounds.f

With conversion to the new PeopleSoft management software causing problems in an overworked Peralta Community College payroll office, Peralta trustees have called for an update on the PeopleSoft conversion at tonight’s (Tuesday) trustee meeting. 

Meanwhile, district and union officials were divided over whether the PeopleSoft software was working properly, or if this was the prelude to massive problems. The report by Peralta Chief Information Officer Andy DiGirolamo came at the request of Peralta Trustees Nicky Gonzalez Nguyen and Cy Gulassa. 

The payroll system has already suffered its first “glitch,” although district officials are blaming that on human error rather than a software problem. 

In its end-of-August payroll, some Peralta workers were paid twice and some were not paid at all. In addition, a district union official said that some portion of the payroll deduction component did not work, with money deducted from some workers’ salaries but not transferred to the accounts needed to be paid. 

“The inadequacies of the PeopleSoft software are enormous,” said Peralta Federation of Teachers President Michael Mills. “If you wrote them on a scroll and dropped it down, it would roll out across the floor. The district’s expectations have not been met.” 

But Peralta Director of Communications Jeff Heyman contradicted that assertion, stating that the recent payroll problems were “human error rather than system error,” adding that “the good news is that the PeopleSoft system works.” 

And speaking to trustee members at the last trustee meeting, Peralta Chief Information Officer Andy DiGirolamo said that the conversion problems “are to be expected. This is a very complex conversion, highly complicated. We’re learning this new software at breakneck speed. These problems are teething pains.” 

But Peralta Trustee Linda Handy, who chairs the board’s Information Technology committee, said she believes the problems are going to get worse. “I have been raising these issues about problems in the district’s IT department for a year and a half, but nobody wanted to hear about it until they didn’t get paid,” Handy said. “Then everybody wants to know what’s going on. They’re going to find out that it’s deeper than this.”  

Handy has been a persistent board critic of Peralta’s IT department. Last June, at her request, trustees approved a $30,000 independent study and assessment of the community college district’s information technology operations by Hewlett-Packard. The conclusions of that study were supposed to go directly to the board to help the board determine whether the IT department was following “best policies and practices.” 

Both DiGirolamo and Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris opposed the study, saying that the timing interfered with the PeopleSoft conversion. 

But Handy said this week that HP officials had declined to enter into the contract after they learned that trustees had included a provision that HP would not be able to later bid on any items that were touched on by the study. She said the study is presently on hold. 

Peralta is currently in the midst of a district-wide conversion to an information management system purchased from PeopleSoft. Last December, after the Peralta contract was signed and while the district was in the middle of that conversion, PeopleSoft was purchased by Oracle corporation, with the Peralta contract rolling over to Oracle with the purchase. The finance, human resources, and payroll portions of that conversion were scheduled for implementation this summer, with the entire software scheduled for full implementation by October 2006. 

Communications Director Heyman said that the payroll problem occurred when a worker in the district’s payroll department failed to manually transfer seven separate payroll files into the system. 

“The humorous part—although I guess it wasn’t so humorous,” Heyman said, “was that the employee category left out was management.” 

Instead of transferring the management employee file, Heyman said the payroll employee transferred two sets of classified employee files, one for August and one for the July payroll that had previously been paid. The result was that while management employees got no payment for the August period, classified employees were paid twice. Heyman said the problem only affected employees with direct deposit, not employees who were issued checks. “The problems we are having is what you would expect out of such a huge changeover,” he said. “Overall, it’s going smooth.” 

But Peralta Federation of Teachers’ Mills, who does not represent the payroll workers, said that the changeover is putting a tremendous strain on the district’s payroll department. “Normally I’d be the first person raising complaints about payroll,” Mills said, “but the process of catching up to the new system has been arduous and lengthy, not to mention the extra training they’ve had to go through in addition to completing their regular daily tasks. They’re being asked to perform herculean tasks. The number of people in payroll was adequate to do the work under the old system software, but it doesn’t appear to be enough to carry out the functions under this conversion.” 

Peralta CIO DiGirolamo agreed with that assessment in his presentation to trustees earlier this month, stating that “we have limited staff for implementation. Some staff positions haven’t been filled.” 

The initial question about the PeopleSoft conversion at the last trustee meeting came not over the payroll problems, but over questions raised by trustee Handy about a $90,000 change order request for a PeopleSoft version upgrade. 

DiGirolamo told her that the $90,000 cost was not for the upgrade itself, which he said was provided free of charge to the district under the PeopleSoft contract, but was for the cost of consulting services from PeopleSoft to implement the upgrade. DiGirolamo also said that the $90,000 change order was not an added cost. He said that the upgrade costs had always been anticipated, and had actually been deducted from the original contract amount in an agreement between the district and PeopleSoft and was listed as a credit in the budget. DiGirolamo said that the request for the change order was merely adding the money back in again.

A gala dinner at HS Lordship’s Restaurant Sunday evening raised an estimated $83,000 for victims of Hurricane Katrina both in Berkeley and across the country. 

About 250 people paid $100 a plate for the four-hour event, co-hosted by Mayor Tom Bates and UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, and largely organized by local Persian-American organizations. 

“Berkeley’s generosity was tremendous in aiding the victims of the earthquake in Bam (Iran),” said Niloo Nouri of The Persian Center. “As citizens of this country we felt compelled to give back to our fellow Americans.” 

HS Lordship’s donated the ballroom space, and Alborz, a local Persian restaurant, donated food. An auction raised an additional $11,000 and Relief International matched $19,000 in donations. 

Top executives from the city, school district and university were all in attendance, but the stars of the evening were two families that are living with family in Berkeley after their homes in New Orleans were destroyed. 

“It was the families and the love that made New Orleans what it was. To be in another family-like city is very encouraging,” said Kanika Stewart, who came to Berkeley with her 6-year-old daughter Kyla to live in an aunt’s house. 

Stewart said city officials have given her clothes and helped her look for work. Along with two other evacuee families, Stewart will be moving to an apartment building at Seventh Street and Allston Way owned by Affordable Housing Associates. 

AHA’s Executive Director Susan Friedland said volunteers from Rebuilding Together and Prospect Sierra School worked to fix up the building for the evacuees. 

Families and staff at Rosa Parks Elementary School have raised about $3,000 for the family of Lamont Snaer, the Rosa Parks’ after-school coordinator. 

Snaer, a New Orleans native, has been hosting his father and three cousins who lost their homes in the earthquake. Snear’s cousin, Charles Baptiste, told those assembled Sunday, “Thank you for everything you are doing for us. We appreciate it.” 

So far, equipped with a local fund set up by the Rotary Club and Mechanics Bank, Berkeley has given aid to nine families, consisting of 31 people, that have arrived in the city following the hurricane.›

The Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees meets Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the district administrative headquarters, 333 E. 8th St., Oakland. Items on the agenda include: 

• Public hearing and proposed adoption of the 2005-06 Final Budget. The detailed budget document includes $224 million in total revenues and maintains a state-mandated 5 percent General Fund reserve. 

• Update by Peralta’s Chief Information Officer Andy DiGirolamo on the implementation of the district’s PeopleSoft management software. Peralta is currently in the midst of a district-wide conversion to an information management system purchased from PeopleSoft. The finance, human resources, and payroll portions of that conversion were scheduled for implementation this summer, with the entire software scheduled for full implementation by October 2006.Ã

After a brief respite from his work of recovering the bodies of victims of Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, Miss., Berkeley Fire Department Lt. Darren Bobrosky is at it again. 

This time, he’s in Dallas, Texas, preparing for similar efforts in towns ravaged by Hurricane Rita. 

This time, Bobrosky is the only Berkeley emergency worker called by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

For the Katrina rescue efforts, FEMA sent three city firefighters and two health care workers to the scene. 

Bobrosky was called up on Thursday, just 11 days after his return home from his stint in Mississippi. 

“He was supposedly on the third tier for call-up,” Orth said, “but they called him anyway.” 

Bobrosky is part of a 27-member search and rescue task force that includes members from the Alameda County, Oakland, Fremont, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Santa Rosa and other Bay Area fire departments. 

Of 28 such teams nationally, eight are based in California. 

“They will probably do search work in small communities with heavy damage,” said Orth. “We don’t expect him back for another week or two.” 

When not engaged in national disaster rescue work, Bobrosky heads the department’s rescue dog program.

The spirit of Katrina—accompanied by anger that government foresight and dollars could have blunted much of the hurricane’s damage—blew into San Francisco Saturday, stirring passions at the anti-war march and rally. 

“From Iraq to New Orleans/Fund people’s needs not the war machine,” read one of two banners that kicked off the march as it started down Dolores Street. The crowd of an estimated 20,000 people that followed that banner and a second one calling for an end to U.S. occupation of Iraq, Palestine and Haiti, eventually poured into Jefferson Square Park, where people browsed activist literature and paraphenalia, visited with old friends and listened to speeches. 

“It’s really important to construct the infrastructure rather than killing—it makes a lot of sense,” said Kate Giles of Santa Cruz, as she made her way along the march route. Giles carried a homemade sign, proclaiming: “Levees not Bombs.” 

The Gray Panthers of San Francisco targeted government militarization manifest both in Iraq and New Orleans. “Our troops are in Iraq and people (in New Orleans) feel like they’re being occupied,” said Patricia Jackson of San Francisco. “They’ve brought that war home to our streets.”  

Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, marched with U.S. Labor Against the war. “All the money that is being wasted in Iraq, killing and endangering our people, should be used for infrastructure, for jobs, for fixing the residents’ problems in New Orleans, for taking care of hospitals and education,” he said. “The priorities are absolutely and completely skewed with this administration.”  

Calling for “College Not Combat/Relief Not War,” the nationwide College Anti-War Network brought a large contingent to the march. The network links inadequate education funding to the high cost of war and also calls for removing military recruiters from centers of learning. “Military recruiters have no place in high schools or colleges. They can’t look to poor or low-income students to be their cannon fodder for this war," said Justine Prado of San Francisco’s Academy of Art University.  

Longtime peace activists Terry and Lenore Doran of Berkeley marched to protest the war and condemn the cost of war that take funds from schools. “We spend our tax money in incorrect places,” said Terry Doran, a retired Berkeley High School teacher and vice president of the Berkeley school board.  

The Massachusetts-based National Priorities Project estimates that the war has cost $196 billion. At that price, 3,410,424 teachers could have been hired for one year or 26,068,054 children could have attended Head Start for a year, NPP says.  

Nancy Townsend of El Cerrito had a personal reason to march. Her son, whom she preferred not to name, has been in Iraq for three weeks. 

“I don’t think the war is justified. I don’t think we should be in Iraq,” she said. “My son signed up right out of high school. We weren’t at war with Iraq then. He wanted to do something good for the country. And as a young man, he wants to do something that’s ‘manly.’”  

Townsend went to Crawford, Texas to support Cindy Sheehan, the outspoken anti-war mother of 24-year-old Casey, killed in combat. In Crawford, she met a number of mothers whose sons had died in Iraq. She said they inspired her to speak out. 

“When you’re talking to someone whose son is in Iraq or who has died in Iraq, it really brings it quite in your face about what is happening over there and makes you ask, ‘Is it worth it?’ My personal opinion is it’s not,” she said. 

In addition to death and the cost of war, the conflict has imposed new limits on the ability to seek information from the federal government, according to Rick Knee, acting chair of the journalism division of the Bay Area National Writers’ Union. 

“One of the more worrying aspects is not just of the war, but of the entire way the Bush government is conducting things is secrecy,” Knee said. “After 9/11, John Ashcroft sent around a memo urging agencies to resist Freedom of Information requests as much and as long as they could and the justice department would back them. To my way of thinking, secret government is one of the biggest dangers to this country or any country.”  

George Bush and Dick Cheney, called liars, profiteers and more, were the obvious targets of the anti-war protesters. But the local politico who drew the ire of many, most notably San Francisco’s Code Pink, was Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, the Democratic House leader. Code Pink’s Janet Rosen condemned Pelosi. 

“She’s not representing her direct constituents,” Rosen said, pointing to San Francisco’s November 2004 Proposition N, which called for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and passed by about 63 percent of the vote.  

She further argued that Pelosi “has a record of saying the war was a mistake—‘we were lied to about why we went into the war’—but on that very same day she goes into the House of Representatives and votes funding for the war, she votes in favor of measures for U.S. bases [in Iraq] and a number of other things which keeps us engaged there. When people like Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) step up with legislation, with proposals, Nancy Pelosi’s response is, as the House leader of the Democrats, she can’t take a stand on them.”  

On the international front, Adrianne Aron of Berkeley said that in addition to marching for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, she came to the march to call for troops to leave Afghanistan and for the U.N. to leave Haiti. “U.N. troops have occupied and massacred the people of Haiti—and it’s gotten very little attention,” she said. 

Faisal Kahn of Berkeley was among those carrying black-shrouded caskets “to represent the death and all the ideals that have been sacrificed,” he said, adding that his casket “also represents the war on Palestine that goes on every day and the innocents that die every day in Palestine.” 

Dan Kliman of San Francisco Voice for Israel, some of whose members support the war in Iraq while others oppose it, stood with Israeli flags to protest the stand some organizations within the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition have taken to support the right of return for Palestinians to their homeland. A.N.S.W.E.R. organized the coalition that came together to put on the march and rally. 

“We are standing up for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” Kliman said. “What (the right of return) refers to is a right unique to Palestinians that does not apply to any other ethnic group involved in any other conflict, when the great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren are supposed to be given the right to flood into Israel to demographically overwhelm the Jewish state.”  

As always in San Francisco, spirited music and good humor were not lacking. Placards such as “Mend your fuelish ways,” “Dyslexic Democrats Untie!” and “I never thought I’d miss Nixon” drew laughs, as did the group Insane Reagan, which brought likenesses of Bush, Chaney and Condoleezza Rice to dance to the tune of “going on a summer holiday.” 

NEXT YEAR IN NEW ORLEANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just got this email from my friend Alice. She said, “Some really good Christian wrote to our local paper and said that Katrina’s wrath was God’s way of punishing New Orleans because they celebrate Mardi Gras.” That’s like saying that Hurricane Rita is hitting the innocent people of Texas in retribution for all the embezzling and corruption caused by Texas-based Halliburton and the Bush bureaucracy. 

Well. There’s only one way to deal with that kind of ignorance and intolerance—aside from tossing the Bush bureaucracy out of our White House and hopefully avoiding God’s wrath on that one. 

Let’s Save Mardi Gras!  

Jane Stillwater 

• 

NATIONAL GUARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I speak for many when I tell you how deeply disappointed we are that the Berkeley Daily Planet did not cover to any meaningful extent the adoption of the Resolution to Bring Home Our Guard from Iraq Immediately by the Berkeley City Council on Sept. 13. 

We would expect a full report when our City Council takes action on something so vital and important to the ending of this war in Iraq, and so extremely timely and necessary to the protection and well-being of Californians, as bringing home our Guard. 

It has been made too painfully clear after Hurricane Katrina the price our citizens‚ pay when our Guard and our equipment is not around to do the job they signed up to do—assist citizens in times of emergencies. 

The warning from FEMA in the beginning of 2001 should be what we heed these days: not the fear tactics of our president who needs our Guard and Reservists to supply 45 percent of his fighting forces in Iraq. This warning alone should  

make all of us in California insist that our Guard be returned immediately. 

And the movement that is swelling in California to return the Guard, with Berkeley City Council once again in the vanguard, should be front-page news in our local paper. 

Suzanne Jo 

• 

PLANET COVERAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have a suggestion for Suzanne Jo and others who express disappointment in the Berkeley Daily Planet for not covering particular issues, items on a local council meeting, etc. 

Write it yourself. Clearly, the person who wishes coverage has an interest and should be knowledgeable and even possibly passionate about it. Take the initiative and write something up. I’m certain if the Planet has the space, they’ll publish it. 

I find it amusing that it’s common for the Planet’s public to complain about “expected” coverage for several reasons. It’s a free publication, meaning that it’s completely supported by advertising. Plus the Planet has an unusual policy of taking the 1st amendment seriously—I’ve seen articles/letters printed critical of local businesses—(potential) advertisers. See if you can consistently see that in other local publications—especially considering that there are hardly any others which aren’t part of a larger conglomerate. 

When I compare the Planet to other local papers, it’s clear to me that the Planet is in a league of their own when it comes to editorial integrity. 

I doubt many of the complainers have much of an idea of how much effort, commitment, and tenacity it takes to crank out a quality publication twice a week. 

We’re very lucky to have such an outstanding local free newspaper in our community and I don’t take them for granted for one moment. 

Richard Fabry 

Point Richmond 

• 

TEEN LIBRARIANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is the teen readers program of the North, South, West and Claremont Branches dead? Sadly, yes they are—and we can thank the director the Berkeley Public Library for this fiasco she has perpetrated, at the behest of her own bloated ego. So where do these teenagers go now? To wal-mart and shop? To MacDonalds and socialize? To home and watch television? Probably. Thanks Berkeley Public Library director—you’re doing a fine job representing the ‘pulse of Berkeley’s most valuable asset, the kids’ by throwing their teen-librarians and program out on the street. What is next? Seeing as the Teen-librarian program has come to a grounding halt, will you then recommend to the Library Board of Directors that the Teen-librarians be laid off—seeing as they are not productive enough as compared to their prior Sept. 1 non-voluntary transfers? We’re watching you, and what you try to do. I for one want to see the Teen-librarians back where they were doing what they do best: Serve and enrich our lives in a way, you Ms. Berkeley Public Library Director have no comprehension, or confidence by many Berkeley citizens, to execute. 

Mark Bayless 

• 

BRAVO PROSTERMAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is one word to describe the opinion piece by Scott Prosterman in the Berkeley Daily Planet, Sept. 23-26 issue: Bravo! 

It is the height of arrogance for writers like Mr. Gertz to assume for themselves the right to describe a “Jewish” position on political issues in the Middle East. It is as if he said that it was anti-Semitic for a Jew to vote Republican—misguided, perhaps, but certainly not anti-Semitic. 

Many of us—I don’t have a clue how many—American Jews support the right of Israel to exist, oppose all terrorist activities directed against civilians—whether Palestinian bombing of night clubs in Tel Aviv or Israeli bombing of civilian targets on the West Bank—and oppose the settlements in Palestinian territory—which are in any realistic juridical analysis wholly illegal—as self defeating by perpetuating the violence that threatens the security of Israel. All of these are legitimate, arguable positions. We don’t call those who disagree with us anything but, in our opinion, wrong. 

But the Gertz’s of the world do not accord us an equal respect and Mr. Prosterman has nailed it 100 percent. Thanks. 

Mal Burnstein 

• 

REVALATIONS OF DUNCES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There are countless examples of media word-storms but the deluge from hurricane Katrina in sound and print copiously illustrated has set a new benchmark.  

Most writers are misinformed opinionated dunces when it comes to New Orleans; what they don’t know would fill a library.  

I went to high school there, I taught school there, my oldest brother retired there after thirty-five years in New Orleans’ schools, my youngest brother was Assistant Postmaster, and much more. Mama and Daddy died there. What makes New Orleans unique is centuries of nurturing two parallel and symbiotic worlds, one white and one black, the former symbolized by the Rex parade on Mardi Gras Day and the other by the same day parade of king Zulu, different cultures equally colored. 

New Orleans is as much a way of life as it is a city. Katrina disrupted that life but did not destroy it. By and by les bons temps will roll again. 

Marvin Chachere  

San Pablo 

• 

POLICE REVIEW 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

On Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, the Berkeley Police Review Commission will be hearing my complaint against Officer Allen of the Berkeley Police Department. 

In February of this year I was evicted from my home of 22 years at University Avenue Cooperative Homes, in Berkeley, on the basis of dozens of calls made by UACH management accusing me of crimes ranging from dealing weapons and drugs, assault, and child molestation. I was never charged with any of these crimes. 

In January I returned home to find I had been robbed, and called Police. Although Officer Allen testified to PRC staff that Mr. Charles West, manager of UACH, admitted going into my apartment, and even showed Officer Allen the stolen items, nothing was done. Nothing was even reported. 

These events led directly to my eviction. I am 60 years old, suffering from testicular cancer, in poverty, and homeless. 

University Avenue Cooperative Homes is, purportedly, a 47-unit, limited-equity housing co-operative, but after I paid a monthly carrying charge on a mortgage for over two decades and tried to find out my legal and financial status at UACH, and the legal and financial status of UACH itself, the harrassment began. 

I have learned from Alameda County documents that UACH receives $60,000 a month in Federal Section 8 subsidies, yet residents include employees of the developer, of the shadowy Partnership that apparently owns it, and of various local and state agencies. Also hidden by the confidential silence surrounding UACH is its several rich commercial rentals. 

The land under UACH, and also under some of the commercial rentals was, it was said, sold to the City of Berkeley by the late and much-lamented Consumers Co-operative of Berkeley, and leased back to the developers, who were associated with CCB’s planning and Development Committee for $1 a year. 

But Alameda County records tell the real story. CCB sold the land to the developers, who sold it to themselves under a different name, who sold it to themselves again under a second different name and then sold it to themselves a third time under a third different name! 

Then the developers sold the land to the City of Berkeley, which immediately granted it back to the developers, who sold it to the City a second time the very next day. 

It was shortly after UACH opened that CCB was sold. The reason given was that CCB had expanded into areas that were not ready to support co-operatives. No one looked into the history of the sale of CCB-owned land in North and West Berkeley. 

The attitude of the City of Berkeley, its co-operation with who-ever it is that owns and controls UACH, can be traced back to the motion made by the Newport-led City council who—in its Berkeley Redevelopment Agency hats—lent the developers of UACH $644,000, and also moved that: “For the purpose of the application to CHFA, the City is the developer.” 

California Housing Finance Agency is the State agency that funnels Federal Section 8 funds to the various municipalities.  

While the poor remain homeless, the City in its partnership with “Non-Profit” corporations continues to house their chosen people, continues to hide the pockets that fill with monies that should house the poor, continues to hide the face of those who profit from hidden commercial rentals, and continues to aid the criminal activities of profiteers who punish people who try to learn the truth. 

There have been many members of the Berkeley Police who have responded, I believe, appropriately, in the situation. I want to thank them, especially those who visited me when they were not called. There are police who act with integrity and courage. 

Richard Berkeley 

• 

JUSTICE ROBERTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Senate committee backs Roberts for chief justice; Senator Feinstein D-CA refuses to back Roberts in vote, Sen.Leahy D-Vt goes the other way. You would think that Democrats who backed Bush on his war would have learned their lesson.  

What is Roberts hiding? People with nothing to hide, conservative or liberal, will usually tell you what they believe. Deceivers on the other hand hide their true motives with lies, deception and silence. John Roberts has hidden behind a veneer of legal ethics and privilege and a litany of excuses as he skirted important issues that divide America today.  

Roberts is telling America that secrecy and deception are the way of democracy and judicial prudence. President Bush and religious right-wingers have been misleading Americans since Day 1 of their incorporation. Are we to believe George W. and the faithful have all of a sudden had an epiphiany and a change of heart? Unlikely!  

Ron Lowe  

Nevada City 

• 

AUGUST BUSD MEETING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The August BUSD board meeting was exciting to watch as this summer’s maintenance and building programs were 

showcased. Mostly paid for out of bond money, they ranged from routine upkeep to large scale construction. Each project seemed beneficial for our students. 

At Malcolm X, the area outside the fence was re-configured to ward off a recurrence of winter storms that flooded many classrooms. At Washington, the standing water pond behind the play structure was drained and the overall yard upgraded with more seating and trees. Le Conte’s drop off and pick up area began to be improved and the butterfly yard started to be repositioned. 

The largest area of construction was at the Middle Schools. Willard began a full rehabilitation of its main academic and administrative buildings. M.L. King is constructing a dining commons along with a new science building. 

Berkeley HIgh School is having its “C” building repainted, lead paint removed, and the Donahue and South Campus gyms renovated. Meanwhile, the old East Campus buildings have been leveled. Additionally, there are plans for redeveloping West Campus and move central administrative offices. The garden/play area at Frankln Adult is also being completed. 

While some sites will be ready in a few weeks, most will not be finished for some time. Remembering similar past BUSD projects, I wondered how many would actually be finished with current bond monies available. Often projects have remained incomplete until new bond measures were passed. 

And then the first issue on the agenda was the report back on the fiscal feasibility of the closed site option for the Derby Street playing fields. (This report was issued by BUSD’s own Lew Jones and is “must” reading for people involved in the issue, to check for exact numbers). The review team reported that $900,000 remains set aside for improvements at this location. However, the closed site option, totaling hard and soft costs, would be around 6 million dollars. The Board asked for a reconciliation of these numbers, and a further study of “bare bone” cost comparison between the open and closed site options. However, it’s obvious that there will remain a gap in the millions between the money available and what’s needed for the closed site plan. 

And so, the question is, how will this shortfall be funded? By raiding some of the wonderful improvement projects begun this summer? And if any extra BUSD money is available, it seems that there are other projects already in line, e.g. the completion of the South Berkeley High School plan. BUSD has already admitted not having enough money to finish this 

project And what about the warm water pool on the High School Campus? Since BUSD’s financial situation is widely viewed as still very shaky, this doesn’t seem the time to begin raiding other programs, not completing ones already started, and not fullfilling agreements.  

Waldo Esteva 

• 

NEW PARK NEEDS YOU 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There are few things in life as fine as a neighborhood park and garden, and you are invited to help us build one this coming Saturday, Oct. 1, from 10-2 at Curtis and Virginia streets, the northeast corner of the new Berkeley Adult School.  

A wonderful, special time is promised. 

Bring shovels, metal rakes, and any strong family members as we prepare the site for planting later this fall and, as the community further refines its thinking, for a play area, community and school meeting space and possibly individual planting plots. this will be one of the very few new open spaces in Berkeley in recent years.  

“Sweat equity” is always important, but if you are unable to make it but would like to help, there is information about tax deductible donations to the Schoolhouse Creek Commons—the official name—at the bottom.  

Refreshments will be served and will be better than the usual rubberized donuts and warm o.j.  

This site, roughly a quarter acre, has long been used by neighborhood kids and families, with various degrees of official approval. Its exact status was never clear. Just how open to the public would this school district property be, how would it be used? 

That was answered as the district and school board finalized its plans for the site, with them paying for removal of asphalt, grading, installation of some turf and pathways. The rest -- the work and the not at all insignificant costs—is completely up to the neighborhood.  

Saturday’s work is crucial. 

The large majority of plants will be California native trees, shrubs, perennials and bulbs. Native gardeners are wary of working the soil much, if at all, before planting. But much of the soil here is compacted, lacking air and drainage. After a brief discussion, residents decided that the soil would be worked by double digging, the manual, time-honored way, instead of rototilling.  

Everyone, including children, is invited, if only to perch on some of the park’s interesting boulders and watch. 

For more information, email Jamie Day at dayork@infinex.com or call 559-8368, during the day, if possible. 

Tax deductible donations can be sent to Schoolhouse Creek Commons, c/o Brad Smith, 1205 Francisco St. Berkeley 94702. The Commons works in cooperation with Berkeley Partners for Parks, which allows for donations under 501(c)(3) of the tax code. 

Donations will go for plants, tools, a sign/community bulletin board, perhaps a few initial play area needs, benches and other equipment. 

Jamie Day 

•

One of the many nice things about Berkeley is our town’s neighborhood shopping districts. Their linear form is a legacy of the city’s early twentieth century development as a streetcar suburb. Their distinctiveness is a holdover of another sort: unlike much American retail, this city still abounds in unique mercantile enterprise, a lot of it locally owned and operated.  

As the daughter of independent small entrepreneurs—for 36 years, my parents ran a music store in South San Francisco—I appreciate Berkeley’s homegrown shops and the effort it takes to keep them running. As a resident of Thousand Oaks, I’m glad to have a shopping street (Solano Avenue) within walking distance of my house.  

Of course, commerce can impair as well as enhance a neighborhood. For that reason, the Berkeley Zoning Ordinance includes laws governing both specific neighborhood commercial districts and neighborhood commerce in general. With a few exceptions (Downtown and South Berkeley), these laws make it clear that their primary purpose is to encourage and maintain business that serves the neighborhood. That stipulation may sound innocuous; in fact, it’s generated some nasty disputes.  

Here’s why. To be truly neighborhood-serving, a commercial district needs variety. Aiming to maintain a diverse retail mix, five of the seven district-specific commercial ordinances—those governing Solano, the Elmwood, Telegraph, Central (Downtown) and North Shattuck—limit the number of certain kinds of businesses that are permitted in their area. Absent regulation, some uses—most notably, food services (as they’re known in plannerese), but in some districts, both purveyors of clothing and of personal care (beauty supplies, manicures)—will crowd out other sorts of retail.  

To observe food service run amok, check out the scene around Hearst and Euclid. Here, where there are no quotas, 22 of 33 businesses are restaurants or other food establishments. In effect, the area has become an off-campus cafeteria for the university.  

But food services have also multiplied to excess in commercial districts that have quotas—for example, Solano and the Elmwood.  

The quotas haven’t worked for a simple reason: selective enforcement. In his Sept. 13 memo to the City Council, “Revision of the Elmwood Business District Quotas” (Item 18 on this week’s council agenda), Councilmember Wozniak states: “there is a feeling among [Elmwood] merchants that the quotas have not been consistently enforced.”  

It’s more than a feeling; it’s a conviction rooted in documented fact. Last December, the council held a public hearing on Jeremy’s controversial, quota-busting application to expand its 2161 College Ave. shop into the adjacent storefront at 2163 College. At that time, city staff admitted that in issuing Jeremy’s its original use permit for 2161 College, they had already violated the Elmwood’s quota on clothing stores. Nevertheless, staff recommended approval of the expansion.  

Official negligence also contributed to the food fight over the new La Farine on Solano last winter. Everyone was thrilled to have another classy bakery in the neighborhood. The problem was that the Zoning Adjustments Board had granted La Farine a use permit for table service, which is to say, a use permit for a restaurant, not just a bakery. Solano in Berkeley already had 20 sit-down food services, which is to say eight over the legally permissible number, and that’s not counting the three operating without restaurant permits. Concerned neighbors pointed out that use permits are granted to addresses, not specific businesses. When La Farine departs, any other food service, including the greasiest of greasy spoons, can legally take its place.  

The council cavalierly dismissed both an Elmwood merchant’s appeal of Jeremy’s expansion and three Thousand Oaks residents’ appeal of La Farine’s restaurant use permit. In the case of Jeremy’s, councilmembers said the fault lay with the law! With La Farine, the council dismissed the appeal “on consent,” meaning that it accepted planning staff’s specious defense of the ZAB’s action with no discussion.  

A different sort of dereliction was exhibited by the planning commission in April 2004. At the behest of the Northside Merchant Association, the city council had unanimously asked the commission (for the third time in a row) to establish restaurant and food service quota systems similar to the ones on Solano, College and Telegraph Avenues. Instead, the commission voted 5-3-1 to endorse staff’s recommendation “that the Planning Commission advise the Council not to direct further action” on the matter (for the record, I cast one of the no votes). And indeed, no further action has been “directed.”  

To let food service creep go unabated or, worse, to abet it, is to surrender to the crudest market forces. Most retailers are tenants. Landlords like to rent to eateries because they yield much higher rents than other sorts of retail. I asked Berkeley commercial real estate broker John Gordon how food services can afford to pay more. “Food services have higher sales per square foot,” he explained. That’s partly because there’s a more constant demand for their product. “How often,” Gordon asked, “do you buy a pair of shoes, compared to how often you eat out?” Not very often, especially these days. “A generation ago,” writes Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, “three-quarters of the money used to buy food in the United States was spent to prepare meals at home. Today about half of the money used to buy food is spent at restaurants...”  

Berkeley Office of Economic Development staffer Dave Fogarty agrees. An “increasing proportion of upper and middle-income household expenditures,” he says, “are going to eating, and less to traditional retail.” He adds that the demand for interesting food experiences is being met in part by an influx of immigrants with culinary skills, entrepreneurial backgrounds and ambitions, and long-hour/low-wage prospectuses. Meanwhile, “classic retail has been hurt by the displacement of demand to malls and discounters.” Throw in the Internet (no sales tax) and chain stores. “What’s left is restaurants and hair salons.”  

Fogarty was exaggerating. But clearly, the challenges facing “traditional” merchants are formidable. In the past few years, several revered Berkeley booksellers—Gaia, Easy Going and Shambhala—have closed their doors. Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that neither of the two Cody’s Books in town is turning a profit.  

If we—meaning the city government, the merchants and the consuming public—had done everything possible to ensure that diverse, independent local retail had a future in Berkeley, then the outlook would be grim. The good news, so to speak, is that so far we’ve done very little. Here, then, are some suggestions for action:  

For the city, the obvious first step is to start enforcing the zoning laws—consistently. In this regard, the council’s decisions about the Elmwood quotas will be a bellwether; Councilmember Wozniak is actually proposing to increase the number of food services allowed in the district. Bad idea.  

Next step: implement, i.e. fund, the “Shop Local and Shop Berkeley Campaign” that the consultants Brion & Associates developed for the city in Winter 2002. Commissioned at the urging of Councilmember Maio, that proposal outlines strategies for promoting Berkeley’s varied retail districts, citing similar, successful efforts in Boulder, Austin and downtown Los Angeles.  

At the same time, the council should rescind its spring 2005 directive to staff to prepare plans for commercializing Gilman and Ashby west of San Pablo—areas now mainly zoned for mixed-use/light industry. Initiated by Mayor Bates without prior consultation with either West Berkeley businesses or merchants elsewhere in the city, much less a market study, this project will deal a body blow to our industry, artists and artisans, while draining patronage from the existing neighborhood commercial districts.  

As for the merchants: Amy Thomas, who owns and operates Pegasus and Pendragon Bookstores, is planning to start a Berkeley version of the new San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Association. “The idea,” she says, “is to get people to recognize that there are very good reasons to shop local: more money stays in the community, and we have businesspeople who respond to local needs.” Very good idea.  

Finally, there’s the rest of us, Berkeley residents and consumers. We need to balance our wish to save time and money with our desire to live in a place whose commerce isn’t dominated by giant corporations and their distant managers (and bank accounts), a place that’s a lot like the one we still inhabit but won’t be for long unless we make it our business to shop there. Shop local, shop Berkeley.a

Last weekend I took care of my 3 1/2-year-old nephew, Bryce. It was party, party, party for 49 hours straight. We went to three parks and several places of business. We threw a small tantrum in Ross Dress for Less, and we forgot (several times) how to share while playing with Clyiesha, Maynard, and Lil’ Bobby. But all in all we had a pretty good time.  

While in my care Bryce ate three bowls of sugar-coated cereal, (Apple Jacks and Trix), six glasses of apple juice, one glass of whole milk, two bananas, some green and red grapes, 22 jellybeans, three mini Tootsie Rolls, one mini Tootsie Roll Pop, one Coffee Nip, one bite of a peanut butter and jelly (strawberry) sandwich, one small nibble on a grilled cheese (sharp cheddar on white bread) sandwich (cut diagonally for esthetic purposes), unknown quantities of micro-waved popcorn, two slices of watermelon, half a bottle of orange juice, a serving of Fenton’s homemade lemon ice cream, a small bag of Cheetos courtesy of our housemate, Willie, and one slice of Cheeseboard sundried tomato, black olive, and goat cheese gourmet pizza.  

Bryce crashed a birthday party taking place up the street. He jumped and somersaulted for awhile inside a large plastic cage-like structure that boasted a blow-up Dora doll attached to the entryway. The birthday girl gave him two gummy candies individually wrapped and shaped to look like a mouth with teeth and a hamburger with pickles, and an extraordinarily generous piece of yellow birthday cake covered in white icing. We came home and looked for snails in the garden. We neglected to take a nap, but we did enjoy a bubble bath accompanied by two floating rubber duckies. 

At 2 a.m. Sunday morning Bryce woke up screaming. I thought he was having a bad dream, but as the crying, kicking, and clawing continued I wondered if he might be having a seizure, or if his head hurt, or if he needed to have his stomach pumped. He did not open his eyes and he didn’t shed any tears, but no amount of comforting could ease his pain. I called his parents. 

They said he often had this kind of nightmare after an extremely busy day. Try to wake him up they said, but his eyes remained closed and I couldn’t stop him from howling.  

Fearing we would wake the next door neighbors and the people across the street, I coaxed Bryce into my car, strapped him into his car seat, and took him for a cruise around the hood.  

It was scary driving up and down familiar streets at 2:30 in the morning without a driver’s license. I learned which bars stay open past the mandated 2 a.m. closing time, and which fellow citizens keep their television sets on despite the hour. I saw three enormous raccoons brazenly hanging out in the middle of Dover Street, and a man with a shopping cart collecting bottles and cans.  

My nephew finally fell asleep. I drove home and carried him upstairs. He woke up and asked for a banana. I peeled it for him and he ate it, then he fell asleep on the couch in my bedroom. I covered him with a blanket, lay down on the floor next to the sofa and tried to sleep. In the morning, Bryce rolled off the couch and snuggled next to me. He whispered into my ear “pee, poop, pee, poop,” over and over, and giggled hysterically when I finally opened my eyes. I suppose these are the dirtiest words he knows, and he wanted to get my attention. I responded with the scholarly phrase “dirty underwear” and I thought he might die laughing.  

As I stated in the beginning, it was one big party at our house last weekend. You should have been there.›

The agreement signed by the City and the University earlier this year provides a historic opportunity to work together on a range of community issues—from summer literacy programs to economic and urban development plans. 

One of the most important pieces of this agreement is the creation of a new Downtown Area Plan to guide new development in the heart of our City. There has been considerable discussion, and some anxiety, about how all this will work. Let me offer answers to some of the questions that have been raised. 

First, I want to dispel the most troubling misinformation I’ve heard over the past few months – that the City gave the University veto power over City planning decisions regarding the downtown. This is absolutely false. In fact, the settlement agreement requires the University to work with the City on new development rather than simply act unilaterally to build whatever it wants on the land that it owns. 

The Downtown Area Plan is the most effective way for the citizens of Berkeley to have a voice in UC development. The 2020 UC Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) calls for 1.1 million square feet of new buildings off campus, but provides almost no detail as to where the development might take place or the purpose for the new buildings. Unfortunately, under the State Constitution, the University can build most anything it wants on the land it owns without following the city zoning laws, as any private developer must. Prior to the Downtown Area Plan, our only recourse to a university project that we did not like was to sue UC under the California Environmental Quality Act in an effort to force some changes. This lack of community control over university growth was the single most important reason we filed a lawsuit to stop implementation of their LRDP. We fought hard for the University to step back from its unilateral position and work with the City and the community on its plans. After much back and forth, they agreed to participate in the creation of a detailed new plan that will provide us information about their plans and give the City and the community an opportunity to shape those new plans from the outset.  

While we will work closely with the university, this is a City plan. The City will lead the process. The City will create its own community task force to help draft a new plan. The City’s Planning Commission will review, edit, and take action on the new plan. And the City Council will ultimately decide whether to adopt it.  

The University cannot veto any decision by these bodies. I am confident that we can work collaboratively and cooperatively with the campus throughout this effort. If the campus ultimately decides they do not like the plan, their only recourse will be to pull out of the process. If that should occur, the City would retain the authority to move forward with its downtown plan would leave us no worse off than we are now. The University retains its Constitutional right to build without our permission and we retain our right to sue the university when we do not like a proposed project. The only specific projects we agreed not to sue over are two on-campus buildings, the new Asian Library and the planned joint business and law school academic building. 

Second, people have asked why the boundaries of the Downtown Area Plan are somewhat larger than the downtown core and include portions of residential neighborhoods that border the downtown. This was done in to allow the City to consider ways to better protect those neighborhoods nearest the downtown from encroachment. The Downtown Plan boundary stretched north to Hearst in order to incorporate the old State Health Building, which will likely be taken over and redeveloped by the university in the near future. 

Third, some community members have wondered what is wrong with the City’s existing downtown plan. The current downtown will be used as a starting point for the new plan. However, it was developed over 15 years ago and is, in many cases, out of date. In 1990, when it was adopted, the downtown had seen little new development and the arts district was just getting started. Now, the downtown is teeming with new restaurants, arts venues, and shops. Hundreds of new housing units—both rentals and condos—have been built. New hotels and transit options are being planned. It would be time to take a fresh look even if the University were not looking to build downtown. 

Fourth, the downtown planning process provides an opportunity for the City to conduct an updated and complete historic survey of all buildings within the downtown area. An update of our old survey is long overdue and is needed to help the City, preservationists, and property owners have a better sense of our historic inventory. It will allow us to better protect our historic resources.  

Lastly, the City must work with the University to protect the interests of our community. The University of California’s constitutional protections make it immune from nearly all taxes and fees and give it authority to build outside of local control. I continue to strongly believe that this authority is out-of-date and has been misused in established and built-out communities like Berkeley. But only an amendment to the State Constitution can change that.  

This is a great time for downtown Berkeley. After years of hard work, Berkeley’s downtown is thriving. The Downtown Area Plan gives us all a great opportunity to get involved in shaping our downtown’s development for the next decade or more.  

In front of us are years of public discussion, public meetings, and public hearings. We will start by creating a community-led task force that will work over 18 months or so with the public, city staff, and the university on considering ideas and drafting a new plan for the downtown. I look forward to getting to work. 

Tom Bates is the mayor of Berkeley.›

On Tuesday night, Sept. 27, the Berkeley City Council will take up the planning process for a new Downtown Area Plan. The concept of a new Downtown Area Plan has generated quite a few letters and commentaries on the pages of the Berkeley Daily Planet, and also one lawsuit by Berkeley residents, (including the authors) against city officials and the Regents. We thought you might like a few facts about the Downtown Area Plan as envisioned by the City of Berkeley/UC regents Settlement Agreement: 

1) The City already has a downtown plan, created by residents, community and neighborhood groups, commission members, representatives from ASUC, UC, Berkeley High, AC Transit, business associations, and others, in the late 1980s and approved by City Council in 1990. This plan was reaffirmed in the city’s General Plan of 2001. 

2) The Planning Commission is the body charged with developing land use plans for the city of Berkeley. (Berkeley Municipal Code 3.28.100). However, the Planning Commission is not scheduled to take action on the new proposed Downtown Area Plan until Wed., Sept. 28, the day after City Council meets. 

3) The idea for a new Downtown Area Plan appears, for the first time, in the Settlement Agreement between the city and the UC Regents, approved in closed session on May 24, 2005, without any prior public knowledge. 

4) The concept of a Downtown Area Plan was not mentioned in UC’s Long Range Development Plan, the accompanying Environmental Impact Report, or in the City’s response to these documents. 

5) There was no public input on the need for, or parameters of, a new Downtown Area Plan. The proposal for a new plan was never discussed with the Planning Commission, or indeed with City Council prior to the Settlement Agreement. 

6) The area included in the new Downtown Area Plan is significantly larger than the existing plan, and includes over 150 residential parcels. No residents of these parcels were informed, or had any input in the determination of the new plan boundaries. 

7) As described in the Settlement Agreement, the Downtown Area Plan will be developed by a joint “City of Berkeley/UC Berkeley planning process” (Sec. II) and will “establish development envelopes and design guidelines … not just for UC Berkeley development sites.” (Sec. II A. 1.). 

8) However, even after the Plan is developed “[t]he Regents will reserve their autonomy from local land use regulation.” (Sec. II. B. 1.) This means they help develop the rules which they then do not have to follow. 

9) Staffing for the preparation of the Downtown Area Plan is to include one full-time city planner and one full-time UC planner. If they don’t come up with a plan within 48 months, then UC’s payments to the city (for sewer and fire services) will be reduced by $15,000 per month or $180,000 per year out of the $800,000 annual payment. (Sec. II. B. 3. (a)). 

10) Any meeting before any city commission regarding the Downtown Area Plan must be coordinated with UC Berkeley (Sec. II. B. 5.). 

11) The plan, in draft or final form, cannot be released “without concurrence of both parties.” (Sec. II. B. 6.). 

12) “Any mitigation measures … must be acceptable to UC Berkeley and applicable to all projects in the Downtown Area, regardless of ownership or sponsorship.” (Sec. II. B. 6). 

13) “UC Berkeley reserves the right to determine if the D[owntown] A[rea] P[lan] or E[nvironmental] I[mpact] R[eport] meets the Regents’ needs.” (Sec. II. B. 7.) 

If you don’t like what you have just read, let the City Council know. For information on the lawsuit contact blue@igc.org 

Jim Sharp and Anne Wagley are members of BLUE, Berkeleyans for a Livable University Environment. Anne Wagley is an employee of the Berkeley Daily Planet.

All across the nation people are collecting clothes for the needy. But in Berkeley they're throwing clean, freshly laundered clothing in dumpsters, locking the dumpsters, and threatening potential donors with misdemeanor tickets. 

And you’re paying them to do it. 

The University of California, which is flirting with paying its $200,000 - $300,000 executives even larger salaries from private donors while asking you for donations, is paying its park staff to destroy clean, useable clothing rather than allo wing it to be distributed to the poor. 

Because, they say, they have no place to put it. 

They have a point. People's Park’s freebox was recently damaged and removed. But in September the University of California ripped out both the footings for the old freebox and destroyed the initial efforts of a group trying to replace it with a new freebox, making it safe to assume they don't really want a place to put it. 

People’s Park, like many other parts of Berkeley, has always had a tradition of free clothing exchange which takes the form of boxes, cardboard and otherwise, large and small, in which one might find a sweater, a book, or the discarded kitchen utensils donated by someone trading up. You take what interests you, and you toss in whatever doesn’t. Th e scarf or the shoes you no longer wear find a new home, and you don’t have to worry about hauling things down to the dump or figuring out when the receiving hours are for a local non-profit. 

My neighborhood has several of these boxes, in which one might find a couple of books, a pair of pants, the sweater Aunt Mabel, who likes very bright colors, decided to give you for Christmas. As the autumn chills deepens, an extra layer is not only handy, it can make the difference between life and death for someon e in need. 

Write to the city and the university. The alleged era of cooperation between the two ought to at least enable us to discuss alternatives to the wholesale destruction of clean, usable clothing. We look foolish in no small degree scrambling to c lothe those shivering in Louisiana and Texas while letting people shiver here at home. 

The city and the university could agree to store the clothing in the park’s office, where it is dry. They could gather it up and donate it to a local charity. They cou ld simply allow the community to create a dry place for it. They could stop trying to ticket people simply moved to help others. Times may not be hard for executives at the University of California, but for some, even some here at home, these are very hard times, indeed. 

Carol Denney has been an advocate for People’s Park for many years.

Pigeon Drop 

Two women approached a Berkeley woman outside the Berkeley Bowl Wednesday and told her they’d found some cash, thus launching one of the oldest cons in the business—known as the Pigeon Drop. 

The con is complex in explanation but simple in execution, with the team of cons—who pretend not to know each other—inducing an elderly mark to put up temporary collateral to help the cons give some recently received cash to charity. 

The play involves the exchange “cash” wrapped either in handkerchiefs or sealed envelopes, and the mark winds up with a bundle which supposedly contains her own boodle but invariably turns out to be not valuable lucre but stacks of worthless paper. 

The duo escaped with their mark’s cash, and remain at large, said Officer Okies.  

Hot prowl 

A Berkeley man who lives near the corner of Ward and Fulton streets woke up Thursday morning to discover that he had been victimized by a hot prowl burglar—cop speak for one who burglarizes homes while the resident are sleeping. 

In this case, the felon had snuck through an open window and absconded with the sleeping victim’s wallet and laptop computer, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Bingone 

Berkeley police are looking for the volunteer for a local non-profit organization who made off with the group’s winnings from Gilman Street Bingo about 8 p.m. Thursday. 

Officer Okies said the volunteer walked out with what he would only describe as a “sizable amount” of cash collected in bingo games. Police are still seeking the suspect, who is wanted on suspicion of embezzlement. 

Masked bandit 

A man wearing a mask and dressed in dark clothing approached workers at Office Depot at 1025 Gilman Street early Friday morning and demanded cash. His demand satisfied, the fellow fled on foot. 

Glass slasher 

Emergency room personnel at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley called police after a man arrived with a slashed arm. 

Officer Okies said the 43-year-old fellow had been slashed with a piece of broken glass by a man he knew. No arrest has been made in the case. 

Arrest bonus 

Police serving an arrest warrant on a man in the 1900 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way discovered an extra bonus—property stolen in an out-of-state crime, 

In addition to the charge on which he was already wanted, the arrestee now faces an additional count of possession of stolen property. 

Brave citizen 

Police rushed to the 2500 block of College Avenue at 4:15 Friday after a caller reported that a citizen was holding on to a suspected burglar. 

Officers arrived to find that the fellow had not only captured the criminal, but had relieved him of a pistol as well. 

The 23-year-old suspect was also found to be in possession stolen property and burglary tools as well as methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. He was booked on suspicion of probation violation and for possession of a firearm while in possession of illegal drugs.?

Arsonist strikes again 

The latest in a series of arson-caused fires at King Middle School destroyed an $80,000 construction tractor on Sept. 18, said Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

In addition to the fire that destroyed the massive piece of John Deere equipment, a second fire did limited damage to the dining commons building currently under construction. 

Orth said the fires were reported at 5:21 p.m. and were extinguished soon afterward. 

The middle school site at 1721 Rose St. has also been the site of a series of arson fires set in portable toilets and another fire that ignited construction debris. 

The latest fire is by far the most costly. 

“Berkeley police and the school district are working on the incidents,” Orth said. “Security has been increased and cameras have been installed to prevent future incidents.” 

Eucalyptus fire 

A Thursday evening fire burned eucalyptus trees and brush along the railroad tracks at the south end of Aquatic Park. 

Two engines quickly controlled the blaze, which was limited to a small area, said Orth. No structures were endangered. 

The fire could have been started by a train, or by one of the homeless people who camp in the area around Bay Street, he said. 

Roof fire 

A fire on the roof of a building at 1533 Prince St. caused $10,000 in structural damage and $5,000 in losses to contents of the dwelling Saturday. 

When firefighters answered the 5:41 p.m. call, they arrived to find tenants fighting the blaze with fire extinguishers and a bucket brigade. 

Deputy Chief Orth said the fire was apparently caused by shingle work during the construction of a rooftop catwalk leading from an upstairs bedroom to a fire escape ladder. 

Too flaming Berkeley 

One display at Sunday’s How Berkeley Can You Be Parade proved a little too hot for the taste of Berkeley police, who called in the BFD for a second opinion. 

Orth said the ride in question was a renovated fire truck sponsored by the Crucible, a workshop for artists who work with flame in Oakland. 

“It had been rigged to shoot a 15- to 20-foot flame” from the truck top mount more traditionally used to blast water, and a second arrangement set off small blasts from the exhaust. 

“The police notified us, and we ordered them to stop because they didn’t have a permit and it was dangerous,” said Orth. 

The truck’s operators complied, and the truck paraded on, though with considerably less sturm und drang than before.

A casual chat between a customer and the proprietor of a butcher shop about spousal murder ... an aggressive real estate investor torn between evicting a pregnant woman and her passive husband, (former neighbors), or reinstituting her old affair with the husband instead ... a suicide-prone go-fercum-hit-man in an amorous clinch with the monstrous realty lady while her butcher husband watches a strip-show in a seamy club. 

These predicaments could only be from a hallucinated, over-the-top soap opera, or C aryl Churchill’s “first-mounted” full-length play, Owners, now at the Ashby Stage, produced by Shotgun Players and directed by Patrick Dooley, their founder and artistic director. 

First produced in the United Kingdom in ‘72, following hard on abysmal tim es economically and a rough winter of eviction wars, Owners forecasts, in a way, the beginning of gentrification: buying-up and conversion of tenements, with high profits for fly-by-night absentee owners and nowhere to go for tenants during a period of fo undering industry and high unemployment. 

The monstrous realty woman in question (Marion, played with piss and vinegar by Shotgun stalwart Trish Mullholland) seems like an intern Margaret Thatcher. The web this cast of human arachnids weaves is less intri cate than tangled, each pulling insistently at her or his own particular thread, often wrapped round another who will serve as prey. 

The laughs are just as outrageous as the situations, though they may not always please the fans of the vaguer, Pythonesqu e brands of Brit comedy. The sense of agit-prop political theater is never that much further from the text of this very early work of Churchill’s than it is from, say, the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s outdoor shows. 

“Most plays can be looked at from a pol itical perspective and have said something, even if it isn’t what you set out to say ... Sometimes it’s going to be about images, more like a dream to people, and sometimes it’s going to be more like reading an article. And there’s room for all that,” acc ording to the playwright. 

And her technique seems to consist of bombarding the articles read with the images dreamt, and—as in a reactor—seeing what comes loose. There is a relation to the pre-Python kind of gonzo humor of The Goons (Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe), whose cockeyed radio brouhahas set the tone for post-war Brit comedy. But Churchill, with eyes on whatever political or social prize, is tamer. 

Maybe the best slightly askew original elements in Churchill’s script date back to “that savage old English humour” T. S. Eliot saw in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays like Marlowe’s Jew of Malta or Tourneur’s Revenger’s Tragedy, having its final echo in the grotesques of the socially conscious Dickens. Owners seems at times like an up side-down White Devil or Duchess of Malfi, with an eccentric and overly self-conscious (not to say sensitive) cast of prima donnas meting out a form of unintended justice on each other as they mutually betray their allies or lovers of a scene ago and broo d on it in image-laden soliloquies. 

The Shotgun production doesn’t much get to that stratum of theatricality, but does catch these unlikely soap opera divas caroming off each other like bumper cars. It’s a little rough at first keeping up, but the cast—e specially Zehra Berkman, Howard Dillon, John Mercer and Mulholland as the two crossed couples—warm to their mad roles and proceed to tear up the stage. They appear ready to chew the tacky wallpaper on the tenement set Jean-Francois Revon puts on a lazy su san turntable with the realty office and the strip club, all coordinated with Christine Crook’s costumes. 

There are theatrical moments under the laughs: “I feel so funny; I think I must be guilty,” muses venomous Marion. Or Alec, asked by Worsley the mur derous suicide-manqu’s, (Ryan O’Donnell) if he’s attempted it: “No; I don’t need to.”  

And it all ends very quickly, not only because of the snowballing catastrophes climaxing or the soap opera tempo of production. It’s just that “one thing led to so many others. It wasn’t what was on my mind.” 

Shotgun Players present Owners at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave, through Oct. 9. Performances are Thurs.-Sun. 8 p.m. For more information call 841-6500 or see www.shotgunplayers.org.

A documentary that takes aim at the business of genetically modified food will debut Friday at Shattuck Cinemas. 

In making The Future of Food, Filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia traveled in Canada, Mexico and the United States, lending a critical eye to wha t she sees as a corporate drive to control the world’s food supply. 

“I thought people should find out what was happening so we don’t lose control over the food we eat,” said Koons, a Mill Valley resident, and the widow of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. 

The film is one of the first feature length documentaries to critique how the increasing use of genetically modified seeds might affect independent farmers and human health. 

Featured prominently in the film is UC Berkeley professor Ignacio Chapela. In 2001, Chapela published in the journal Nature findings that genetically modified corn had unintentionally contaminated native corn in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

Chapela, who traveled to Mexico with Koons Garcia, will be on hand at Friday’s premier screening to field audience questions. 

Koons Garcia said the film took three years and several hundred thousand dollars to make. The funding came exclusively from Jerry Garcia’s estate. 

“It felt like it was the most responsible thing I could do with the money,” said Koons, who has directed several feature and documentary films and was the creative consultant for the Jerry Garcia retrospective, Grateful Dawg. 

Koons Garcia said she hoped her new film, which has already debuted in New York, Los Angeles and Oaxaca, Mex ico, would encourage viewers to support local organic farmers and help spur an effort to label genetically modified food in grocery stores. A labeling bill sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Sen. Barbara Boxer has so far failed to garner support in either legislative chamber, she said. 

After several years of research, Koons Garcia said she was most surprised by the lack of health tests performed on the genetically modified foods. 

“There are elements that have never been in food before and aren’t being tested,” she said. 

Koons Garcia makes no bones that the documentary takes a strong anti-genetic engineering stance. Her biggest target is agri-business giant Monsanto, which she says is buying up the world’s seed supply. 

Monsanto refused interv iew requests for the film, but agri-business firms have bought four copies of the documentary, she said.  

“They still haven’t acknowledged me, but I know they know about it,” she said.  

The Future of Food is scheduled to run for one week at Shattuck Cin emas, 2230 Shattuck Ave., beginning Friday. Showtimes Friday will be 7:10 p.m. and 9:20 p.m. A question-and-answer session with Koons Garcia and Chapela will follow the early show. For show times on other days, see www.landmarkthreatres.com or call 644-2992.

In his 80s, George Stewart was a tall, slender gentleman with white hair and white moustache carefully trimmed, in a businessman’s style. I thought his observant blue eyes were his most interesting feature. He wore his years elegantly and spoke carefully, with a great concern for accuracy. In his speech, as in his writing, he was clearly not a man given to verbal extravagance.  

A year after his death, Wallace Stegner wrote of George Stewart as “a much more important writer than the general public knew.” The editor of an anthology of California literature described him as a “revered professor of English.” He was both, but his fiction and non-fiction writing carried his words far beyond the classroom. One of his novels actually changed how we talk about t he weather. 

Berkeley 

Born in Pennsylvania, Stewart (1895-1980) attended Princeton in the era of Edmund Wilson, John Peale Bishop and F. Scott Fitzgerald (he didn’t speak well of Fitzgerald’s college novel, This Side of Paradise). He served in the Army A mbulance Corps during World War I and, after his discharge in 1919, he came to Berkeley for graduate studies. Looking back in 1970, he gave us his first impression of the campus: 

“On what was, if I remember correctly, a fine August morning I came upon the campus by one of the west entrances, looking for the place to register—a tallish young man, wearing glasses, on the slim side. I had recently been seriously ill and I doubt if I gave much impression of energy and durability ... I found the registration desk ... near the present bridge across the creek, not far from the northeast corner of the present Life Sciences Building ... my credentials from Princeton had not arrived, and I had brought my diploma along ... The girl looked at it, and found it all in Latin, of which she did not read a word. But she could see the orange-and-black ribbon. She said, ‘That’s a pretty one!’ And so I was admitted, without the aid of a computer.”  

He studied with Chauncey Wells, who “did much to inspire and shape my style of writing,” and with the historian Herbert Bolton. “Out of [Bolton’s] course,” he wrote, “has sprung about half of all that I have ever written.” His M.A. thesis was “Robert Louis Stevenson in California.” Stevenson spent a lot of time around Monterey in 1880, and it occurred to Stewart to go there, looking for people who had known him 40 years earlier. Of course he didn’t find anyone, as he told me, but he did meet an elderly woman who might have seen Stevenson for a few moments. Little as it yielded, S tewart enjoyed the experience and it whetted his appetite for “the pleasures and possible rewards of field work, as opposed to library work.” Going to the scene and meeting people who knew the place became a basic part of his method as a writer.  

Stewart left Berkeley long enough to get a Ph.D. at Columbia, teach at Michigan for a year, and marry Theodosia, his beloved wife. They returned to Berkeley in 1925, and he began a teaching career which lasted into the 1960s.  

His career as an author began with The Techniques of English Verse (1930). His second book was Bret Harte, Argonaut and Exile (1931) a biography; his third, English Composition (1936), a useful text on writing; and his fourth, Ordeal by Hunger (1936), a history of the Donner Party. Each w as well-received. 

“But it was the universal ambition in my generation, at least,” he told me, “to write novels.” He achieved this for himself in 1938 when he published East of the Giants, a historical romance set in early California. For his second novel, Doctor’s Oral (1939), he chose an academic setting, presenting a lightly disguised picture of his own Ph.D. exam as something akin to an auto-da-fe.  

Storm 

Then, in 1941, at the age of 46, he published Storm, the strikingly original novel that made him famous. The storm is the protagonist, and the story is its biography, telling of its birth in the mountains of Asia, its growth as it travels across the Pacific, its power as it inundates the Bay Area with wind and rain, and the beginnings of its death as it travels into the Midwest. The storm is named Maria by an anonymous junior meteorologist, who follows its progress from beginning to end, but who never speaks its name to any of his colleagues. In the aftermath of Storm’s success, real weather forecasters all across the country began naming storms for the public. Every time you hear a reference to “Tropical Storm Alice” or “Tropical Storm Fred,” you hear life imitating the art of George Stewart. 

Storm pits the power of the storm against life, human and animal, and the shape of the land itself. The fortunes and misfortunes of individual truck drivers, electrical linemen, wild pigs and birds caught in Maria’s path demonstrate its all encompassing force and power. The storm is opposed by people as soci al beings, doing their best, performing their duties as well as they can. 

Following the practice begun with his quixotic quest for signs of Stevenson in Monterey, Stewart prepared for Storm by doing research and getting to know the people and places he proposed to write about. He made a study of meteorology, and then (he wrote later) “When a bad storm broke, I took to the road—up to the Pass, out with the Highway Patrol, through the flooded Sacramento Valley. I talked with the men and saw what they were doing, and I was sometimes cold and wet and hungry along with them. Not the least among my later pleasures was to get comments and letters from men who...knew the book to be genuine.” Storm is a singular act of imagination disciplined by research, humane observation, and participation. Everything in the story could have happened as described. He used no tricks or special effects.  

Brilliantly clear and accurate as it is, Storm was an unlikely best-seller. Perhaps its popularity stemmed from being the rig ht story at the right time: storms traditionally symbolize turbulence in human affairs. He has told us he wrote some of Storm’s bleaker passages in 1940 “during those grim and terrible months of Dunkirk and the fall of France.” I think this novel, which shows people working together against vast adversity, struck a note readers responded to spontaneously in those last troubled months before Pearl Harbor. 

And then...  

In Fire (1948), Stewart dealt once more with a natural catastrophe—a California forest fire—and the ordinary people caught up in it. Earth Abides (1949), which takes place largely in Berkeley, gave us his version of how our society might come to an end. To his surprise, the novel developed a cult following. He told me young people came to see him for years after its publication, eager to sit with him and discuss the concerns it caused them.  

In his final novels, Sheep Rock (1951), and The Years of the City (1955), he explored the unchanging permanence of nature, and the rise and fall of a civilizations. “I wrote seven novels in fifteen years,” he said to me, “and after that, I just didn’t have the drive to write another.” Subsequently, he concentrated on non-fiction, notably Not So Rich as You Think (1967) and American Place Names (1970). 

I asked him whether he had ever considered leaving the university to devote himself to writing on a full-time basis. His answer was, “No. I do not consider myself to be a good money writer.” He added that he was glad he had not done so because he valued the freedom the University gave him to write as he pleased and because he also really enjoyed teaching. 

His Qualities as a Writer 

Stewart possessed an exceptional ability to choose subjects and themes that caught the attention of large numbers of people and touched them deeply. In retrospect, his choices often seem obvious. Storms and fires, for example, are common enough. Weather is one of the staples of ordinary conversation, and in any vicinity where there has been a fire, people talk of it for weeks and months afterwards. It takes penetration of a peculiarly lofty kind to find riches in such apparently threadbare topics. His ability to focus on the commonplace and to find something new in it may be his most remarkable quality. Beginning with simple materials and commonly accepted assumptions, he creates effects which are powerful and strikingly original. 

He was not a technical innovator. His influence on writers has been exemplary and indirect. In an amiable celebration of his work, Wallace Stegner spoke for a lot of authors: “Of George Stewart’s twenty-eight books, I find I have seventeen on my shelves. Some of them I have read only once. Eight of them I have just reread to remind myself of George’s historical and fictional methods. Three or four of them I read all the time, and refer to, and quote, and steal from, and couldn’t get along without.” 

For his eightieth birthday, the Bancroft Library honored George Stewart with a comprehensive exhibition of his writings. Visiting it, I found myself da zzled both by the abundant quantity of his work and by the number of languages into which it had been translated. The display made it clear that his audience was world-wide, transcending cultural differences, class lines, and ideological barriers. Even now, people in all walks of life continue to discover his books, read them, and keep them in memory as vital parts of their experience. 

George Stewart changed my life. 

It was 1958 and I was a precocious 8th-grader at Lincoln Junior High in Fort Collins, Colo., when a great teacher lent me a book she said she was certain I would like. 

Pat Scheffer taught social studies while she was hel ping her husband earn a graduate degree at Colorado A&M (now Colorado State University). She was the epitome of the Good Teacher, gifted at reading and playing to the approaches that could inspire a passion for learning. Quickly determining that I was a 1 2-year-old best motivated by a challenge, she immediately provided them—earning my instant and enduring gratitude. 

So the day came when she handed me a paperback. “Here, read this. It offers a lot to think about, and I think you’ll like it.” 

It was a re print of George Stewart’s 1949 book, Earth Abides, an account of the collapse of modern civilization in the wake of a plague that claims the lives of all but a widely scattered handful of humans. 

The basic concept was all too familiar in the late Eisenho wer years, when horrifying images of nuclear annihilation were regular offerings on the nightly news, the front pages, movie screens and both the fiction and non-fiction racks at local libraries and booksellers. 

Younger readers won’t be able to fully gra sp the undercurrents of fear that played through the mind of children who had grown up with the graphic images of nuclear test fireballs and sky-rupturing mushroom clouds broadcast on small black-and-white TV screens and printed in the daily press. 

The U nited States and the Soviet Union seemed destined to meet in a war of nuclear Armageddon, and the instant annihilation of the vast majority of Homo Sapiens was considered a daily reality. 

Unlike the fire-and-radiation blasted landscape of thermonuclear w ar, Stewart’s holocaust was aimed solely at people, leaving all the physical structures of mid-20th Century life in place. Electricity and the water kept flowing for months, kept in operation by mechanical governors in those pre-computerized days. 

The pr otagonist is a socially isolated graduate student named Isherwood Williams, known in his post-apocalyptic life only by his nickname, Ish. 

Ish survives the apocalypse because he is bitten by a rattlesnake while exploring in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada and forced to seek shelter in an abandoned cabin, laying in the grips of feverish delirium while the rest of the human race succumbs to a far grimmer fate. 

He returns to a abandoned world, and days pass before he finally encounters another survivor, and then, very slowly, another. 

Ish evolves through the book, shaped by his character and circumstances to become the head of a prototypical tribe of whose progeny gradually transform his stories, sayings and acts into an oral mythology as literacy vanishes and the writings of the ages are reduced to dust and fire fuel. 

As I devoured Stewart’s book, I immediately grasped the implications of the tale he spun. 

Stewart’s cataclysmic context is ecological, describing the collapse of industrial civilization in tandem with the rapid cycling of organismic explosions and natural forces that followed when humans lost their place atop the pyramid of life. 

Confronted by a vivid account of the consequences of social collapse, Earth Abides left me with an enduring se nse of the fragility of everyday life in a universe where the unexpected is the rule. 

I had seen another world, and it struck me to the quick. My world was never the same after that, and I was driven to ask questions I’m still asking today. I will be for ever grateful to Stewart, who led a young future journalist to search for a deeper understanding of the world around him. 

My Berkeley connection 

Though I didn’t quite realize it then—mainly because I was 12 and the city’s name was never invoked—the story was set in Berkeley. 

I only later learned the hidden meaning of the protagonist’s tribal name years later when I read Ishi in Two Worlds, Theodora Kroeber’s account of the last survivor of a Northern California Native American tribe known as the Yahis, a group that had once numbered about 15,000. 

Brought from isolation in the wilds into contact with a population that exposed him to new organisms, Ishi died of tuberculosis three years layer. He ended his days in the museum of UC Berkeley’s anthropology department where the author’s future spouse, Alfred Kroeber, would become one of the school’s better-known academic luminaries. 

Like Ishi, Ish ended Earth Abides book as the last representative of his people—those who had known the pre-tribal era that h ad been the Industrial Age. 

One future irony for me was his depiction of the demise by fire, termites, weather and time of the structures I would later encounter as a reporter covering land use and landmarks for the Berkeley Daily Planet. 

I was prompted to revisit Earth Abides after seeing it mentioned by Mike Davis, California’s most provocative journalist/writer, in his 2003 book Dead Cities: A Natural History. I recently managed to locate a 1983 paperback reprint at Shakespeare Books on Telegraph Avenue and a fresh reading reaffirmed of the vital power of the images conveyed by Stewart’s prose.t

OK, it’s autumn. The warblers are migrating through town—Joe saw two yellow warblers and a Wilson’s, another yellow and an orange-crowned, two more yellows and a Townsend’s; we’ve seen Townsend’s and hermit warblers with gangs of Wilson’s warblers and the usual chickadees and bushtits in Tilden Park. The fog has a colder, Arctic-flavored edge to it in the evenings. The trees are starting to fall into step, the mulberries tossing leaves to the ground with an audible whack.  

And there are persimmons on the persimmon trees. 

There are persimmon trees dotted all around here, all of them, as far as I know, privately owned. They’re Diospyros kaki, a species from Asia, known as “Japanese persimmon.” There are astringent and non-astringent varieties.  

The astringent kind is a bit more familiar in most places; you find them in the market, labeled as ‘Hachiya’ variety. They’re pointy at the bottom end, and you have to let them get so soft they won’t hold their own weight before you eat them; you cut them in half and spoon the translucent flesh out like pudding. (Or you use it to make real pudding, sweet, dark and spicy. Or bread. Or cookies.) At that point it’s been transfigured to incredible sweetness. Traditionally you were supposed to wait for the first frost, but even here, they do ripen—if they’re allowed to. 

I’ve seen a squirrel hopping across the street with a ripe-looking persimmon in its teeth, looking absurdly top-heavy but squirrelishly smug. Those annoying rodents also have the habit of taking one bite out of each fruit they find and leaving the rest to fester. Pfui. Well, sometimes birds will, too. Most of the persimmon trees I see are small enough to use bird netting on. 

The non-astringent persimmons—the ones you see in the produce store are mostly the ‘Fuyu’ variety—are flattened little globes and you can eat them while they’re still hard and crunchy, just so they’re orange. It’s counterintuitive, but they are actually a bit harder to store than the ‘Hachiya’ types, because they often get mushy if you put them in the fridge. You can sieve out ripe ‘Hachiya’ pulp and freeze it and it’ll be fine for months. 

I used to like working on persimmon trees when I was an arborist. It’s hard to explain, but some trees just feel pleasant under the pruning shears, and are open in structure and not jabby and rude, and generally show you what they want besides. When you develop some tree sense, it quickly becomes clear what will keep the tree healthy and give it the form it wants to grow into, in the space it’s allowed. They like the climate here, but they don’t go crazy and get huge either.  

Aside from the fruit, one reason people plant persimmons here is their fall color. Not every tree will get gorgeous without cold weather, but persimmons’ big oval leaves can turn outrageous shades of bold gold, deep orange, and scarlet, sometimes all on one leaf. This, all on a small tree with an open structure that you can look through with minimal pruning—it makes for a nice inhabitant in a small yard.  

We have a tansu in the dining room, found at a bargain price maybe 15 years ago. It caught my eye from across the warehouse because, while perfectly natural and unaltered, it was gaudy and extravagant; the veneer on the front looked like tiger hide. The seller said it’s persimmon wood, with cypress insides and Japanese maple trim. The veneer must be peeled off the log like an apple peel; persimmons are pretty skinny even when they’re mature—at least on this side of the Pacific.  

Persimmons do have a native North American representative, Diospyros virginians. That’s the one the folk songs refer to: “Possum on a ‘simmon tree/ Raccoon on the ground;/ Raccoon tell the ‘possum/ Won’t you shake them ‘simmons down?” They grow in the eastern United States as far north as southern Pennsylvania and Illinois, at least, and bear much smaller fruit, compared to cherry tomatoes or walnuts. I’m still trying to chase one down, myself, as the little fruits are supposed to be much more intensely flavored than the big ones. Clues appreciated! 

Ron Sullivan’s last column (Sept. 20 issue) was not printed in its entirety. The whole piece is posted on www.faultline.org /place/toad/archive/002590.html and on the Berkeley Daily Planet web site.›

TUESDAY, SEPT. 27 

FILM 

Madcat Presents: “The Time We Killed” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling with Marjorie Mann, Maiyah Hirano, Jessica Ferris and Sandra Niman at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

Ken Goffman looks at “Counterculture Through the Ages” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Dr. Jeff and Dr. X at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Coro d’Amici, a capella, at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamberperform.org 

Wild Catahoulas at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffmaan with Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Bohola, Irish-American folk trio, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvag e. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Four Corners of the Round Table, with Adam Caroll, Beaver Nelson, Jud Neson and Steve Poltz at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

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

Luciana Souza & Romero Lubambo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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

Eric Swinderman, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 

FILM 

Tropical Punch: The Video Works of Tony Labat at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Cine Documental: “Intermissions” on the 2002 Brazilian presidential elections, at 7 p.m. at the CLAS Conference Room, 2334 Bowditch St.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jim Lynch introduces his novel “The Highest Tide” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

William Sloane Coffin introduces “Letters to a Young D oubter” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation of $10 suggested. Sponsored by 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 S tarry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Garrett McLean, violin, Gabriel Trop, cello, and Inning Chen, piano at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Music fo r t he Spirit with guest organist, John Walko at noon at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. www.firstchurchoakland.org 

Calvin Keys Trio Invitational Jam at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazz Isla nd.com 

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

Balkan Folk Dance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Lessons at 7 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Universal, salsa, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cos t is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Loosewig Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dervish, traditional Irish music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mel Martin All Star Band with vocalist Jamie Davis at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $7-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

Closing Ritual for “Wholly Grace” Works by Susan Duhan Felix at noon at the Bade Museum, 1798 Scenic Ave. 841-1781. 

Nordic 5 Arts, paint ings, basketry, and sculpture. Reception at 5 p.m. at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Clarement Ave.  

FILM 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “Felice... 

Felice...” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTUR ES 

“L.P. Latimer: California Watercolor Painter” with Alfred C. Harrison, Jr. at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $8-$12. Part of the Arts and Crafts Lecture Series. 843-8982. 

“Why I Commissioned ‘Dr. Atomic’” with Pamela Rosen berg, Ge neral Director, SF Opera at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Central Reading Room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

“On Nuclear Time” A discussion of the marker to be placed over a New Mexico nuclear waste dump to warn future g enerations, with Julia Bryan-Wilson of the Rhode Island School of Design at 5 p.m. in Room 160, Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 6 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Paul Anderson introduces “Hunger’s Brides: A Novel of t he Baroque” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Jacquelynne Baas describes “Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series wi th Joan Gatten and Eliza Sheffler at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Albany Music in the Park with The Shots, Irish, bluegrass, Cajun music at 6:30 p.m. at Albany’s Memorial Park. 524-9283. ww w.albanyca.org 

Oakland Opera “La Belle et la Bete,” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 2 at the Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway at 2nd. Tickets are $18-$32. 763-1146.  

Mark Morris Dance Group at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Camp us. Tickets a re $30-$58. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

The Dave Bromberg Quartet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. 

LiveAndUnplugged Open Mic, acoustic music by local artists, at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalists, 19 24 Cedar St. a t Bonita. 703-9350.  

Terry Rodriguez Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Phillip Rodriguez, guitar, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Michael Fracasso, Ana Egge at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Isaac Peña at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Carlos Oliveira Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Earl Klugh, contemporary jazz guitarist, a t 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is 20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector: Smartbeat Sound- 

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

FRIDAY, SEPT. 30 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Price” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 a nd 7 p.m., through Oct. 9, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

California Shakespeare Theater, “The Tempest” at 8 p.m. at Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., between Berkeley and Orinda, through Oct. 23. Tickets are $10-$55. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Impact Theater “Nicky Goes Goth” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, through Oct. 1. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Lunatique Fantastique “Executive Order 9066” Thurs. -Sat. at 7 p.m. at 2 120 Allston Way. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750. www.themarsh.org 

Shotgun Players, “Owners” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sun. through Oct. 16 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Reservations suggested. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Wilde Irish Productions “Som eone Who’ll Watch Over Me” Thurs. -Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Oct. 2. Tickets are $18-$22. 644-9940. www.wildeirish.org 

FILM 

Films from Along the Silk Road ”The Adopted Son” at 7:30 p.m. and “The First Teacher” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Neil Gaiman introduces “Anansi Boys” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Spons ored by Cody’s Bo oks. Advance reservations requested. One ticket is available with each purchase of the book. 845-7852. 

“A Composer’s Colloquium” with John Adams about his opera “Dr. Atomic” at 3 p.m. in the Elkus Room, 125 Morrison Hall, UC Campus. 

Dutc h Voices: Jos de P utter and Peter Delpeut Salon with Peter Delpeut at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Opera “La Belle et la Bete,” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 2 at t he Oakland Metro, 2 01 Broadway at 2nd. Tickets are $18-$32. 763-1146.  

Mark Morris Dance Group at at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$58. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

I Gatti Freschi with guest flutist Marty Stoddard perform Schubert and J.S. B ach, at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 848-1228. www.giorgigallery.com 

Ives String Quartet, with Anna Carol Dudly, soprano, at 8 p.m. at Mills College Concert Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 430-22 96. 

Dick Hindman Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz 

school.com 

El Hombre y el Flamenco at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mal Sharpe Sextet & Anna de Leon at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Stompy Jones/Lindy Hop at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. East Coast swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

David Frazier’s Cuban Jazz Ensemble at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Halibut Moon at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Penelope Houston, Mike Therieau, Sean Smith at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plou gh. Cost is $7. 841-2 082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Crow, World Burns to Death, Artimus Pyle 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. 

Santero at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

The Push, funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Earl Klugh, contemporary jazz guitarist, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is 20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, OCT. 1 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Colibri at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Romanian Lace Costume and Sentimental Embroideries” Exhibition runs to Feb. 4 at Lacis Museum to Lace and Textiles, 2982 Adeline St. 843-7178. lacismuseum.org 

“Jewish Traditions” Works by Harry Lieberman opens at the Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Dress: Clothing as Art” Artist’s talk with Anna Maltz at 2 p.m. at Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond. 620-6772. www.therichmondartcenter.org 

Walter Mosley introduces his new Easy Rawlins novel, “Cinnamon Kiss” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading and contest from 3 to 5 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. To enter contest call 527-9905. 

Synergy Women’s Open Mic at 3 p.m. at Lakeview Branch Oakland Public Library, 550 El Embarcadero at the column end of Lake Merritt. 632-7548. 

Synergy Women’s Open Mic at 3 p.m. at Lakeview Library at 550 El Embarcadero, Oakland.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Singing Through the Storm A hurricane-relief benefit for New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, at 7:30 p.m. at the Mother’s Cookies Lofts, 1148 E. 18th St., Oakland. 594-4000 ext. 687.  

The L iving Room, live music from emerging artists, at 8 p.m. at 3230 Adeline St. Donation. 601-5774. 

Rhonda Benin & Soulful Strut at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sekouba “B ambino” Diabate at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Mosáico with José Roberto y sus Amigos at 8:30 p.m.at La Peña. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Braziu, Brazilian music, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shat tuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Samantha Raven and Friends at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Austin Lounge Lizards at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Myra Melford Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-18. 845-5373. www.jazz 

school.com 

Gini Wilson’s “Chamberjazz” at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Steve Smulian at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-08 81. 

Victoria WIlliams, Carolyn Mark, Bermuda Triangle Service at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $12. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jason Webley, Sour Mash Jug Hug Band, Dead Hensons at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alc ohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Earl Klugh at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $10-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, OCT. 2 

FILM 

African Diaspora Film Society: Bay Area Independent Filmmaker s Mini-Festival at 2 p.m. at Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $5. www.picturepubpizza.com/special-events/diaspora 

THEATER 

PlayGround, two original short plays at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Rep., 2025 Addison St. RSVP to kickoff@playground-sf.or g 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Single Moms: Invisible Lives” Artist’s talk with photographer Katherine Bettis at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, Central Community Room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Bill Martin discusses “Maarxism a nd the Call fo the Futu re: Conversations on Ethics, History and Politics” at 6 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Poetry Flash with Anne Valley-Fox and Joan Logghe at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.co m 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkel ey Arts Festival: Barely Human Dance Theatre “From Here We Watch The World Go By” at 5 p.m. at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza. 883-0302. 

Four Flavors of Jazz from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Woodminister Amphitheatre in Oakland. Featured artists are Khalil Shahe ed, Belinda Blair Quartet and Duo Gadjo & Joyce Grant. 238-3092. 

Sarah Manning, jazz saxophonist at 2 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 701-1787. 

Mike Vax Jazz Orchestra at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theate r, 2640 College Ave. Ticke ts are $10-$18. 655-4593. www.bigbandjazz.net 

Via Rio! at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Carlos Zialcita and Myrna del Rio, jazz, blues at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkena z.com 

Michael O’Neill Quintet, featuring Kenny Washington, at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

“The We That Sets You Free” a benefit for women in prison with Sistas in the Pit, Invincib le, Tru Bloo, Tree Vasquez a nd others at 6:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$25, sliding scale, no one turned away. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Catie Curtis, contemporary folk originals, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Anti-W orld, Love Songs, Lost Days of Jesus at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, OCT. 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Bijoux” An exhibition in conjunction with th e Northern California Bead Society, at NIAD Art Center, 551 23rd St., Richmond, through Nov. 18. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Andrew Beahrs reads from his debut novel about life in the early American colonies, “Strange Saint” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Poetry Express with Daniel Johnson at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

Last Word Poetry Series with Christine DeSimone and Jesse Redpond at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Boubacar Traoré, from Mali, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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TUESDAY, SEPT. 27 

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. to discover the Miller/Knox Shoreline. For information and to register call 525-2233.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. No younger siblings please. We will learn about birds and bird migration. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

The Berkeley High School Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. in the school library. bhs.berkeleypta.org/ssc 

“Issues in Dying: Learning from Terry Schaivo” An evening with Anne Wall, Ryan Lesh and Kathleen Kelly at 7:30 p.m. in the Tuscan Common Room, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, 2451 Ridge Rd. To register call 204-0720. www.cdsp.edu 

Mountain Biking Basics for Women at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Why We Need Black Power” with Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, at 6 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations accepted. 625-1106. 

Workshop on the Individual Education Program for parents of children with special needs at St. Paul’s AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. Free, but registration required. To register call the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, 644-2555. 

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 PC Users Group Problem solving and beginners meeting to answer, in simple English, users questions about Windows computers. At 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. corner of Eunice. All welcome, no charge. 527-2 177.  

Family Story Time at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free, all ages welcome. 524-3043. 

Brainstormer Weekly Pub Quiz every Tuesday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Pyramid Alehouse Brewery, 901 Gilman St. 528-9880. 

Be rkeley 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 

“Estate Plannin g” at 4 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

St. John’s Prime Timers Annual Picnic at 10:30 a.m. at Lake Temescal. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members ove r 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 

Green Business Tour of the Teleosis Institute to learn about ecologically sustainable medicine at 7 p.m. at 1521B 5th St. 558-7285. www.teleosis.org 

Berkeley Gray Panthers celebrates the 100th Birthday of Maggie Kuhn at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

WriterCoach Connection Training Sessions Wed. Sept. 28 and Oct. 5 at 6:30 p.m. Help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills; become a mentor to students at Berkeley High, Willar d, King or Longfellow Middle Schools. Commit to 1-2 hours per week during the school day. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

An Evening for Educators at the Magnes at 6:30 p.m. Reservations required. 549-6950 ext. 333.  

Writers of t he Storm: “Fake News and Public Decency in the Age of Terror” a writers panel moderated by Clinton Fein of the First Amendment Project, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$15. 848-0237. 

Bayswater Book Cl ub meets to discuss “The Long Emergency” by James Kuntsler at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito Plaza. 433-2911. 

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 and a warm hat. 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 

Prose Writer’s Workshop An ongoing group made up of friendly writers who are serious about our craft. All levels welcome. At 7 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

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. 

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. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 

“Impacts of the Proposed Rezoning of Ashby and Gilman” Comm unity Workshop on the potential displacement of industries, artisans, and artists; and impacts on traffic, jobs; neighborhood character and quality of life, at 7 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St. 841-7283, ext. 304. 

WAGES: Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security celebrates ten years of work with women’s cooperatives, at 5:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1255 First Ave., Oakland. Donations welcome. RSVP to 532-5465. 

Funkytown Trunk Show by East Bay fashion designers at 6 p.m. at 510 17th St., Oakland. Salvation Army trucks will be on site to accept clothing for Katrina victims. Tickets are $10. 879-3724. www.at17th.com 

Protest Rally at Berkeley Honda, Shattuck and Parker every Thursday 4:30 to 6 p.m.  

World Affairs/P olitics Group for people 60 years and older at 3:30 p.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $2.50. 524-9122. 

Science of Breath Seminar, for stress management, at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. For inform ation call 894-2920. www.artofliving.org 

Communication for Caregivers An ongoing free Berkeley Adult School class meets Thurs. at 1 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

“Using Medications Safely” at 7 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 30 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Ted Miles, Curator, San Francisco Maritime Museum, on “Historic Ships.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

Community Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. To make an appointment call 1-800-448-3543. www.BeADonor.com 

“The Future of Food” A film about our corporate-controlled food system opens at the Landmark Shattuck Cinem a, 2230 Shattuck Ave. For show times see www.landmarktheatres.com 

Kitka Vechirka Ukranian-style party to raise funds for Kitka’s “The Rusalka Cycle” and Musicares Hurricane Relief Fund at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $50. RSVP to 4 44-0323. 

Movement: Chi Gung to improve energy and health, at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. at Cedar. 549-9200. 

Three Beats for Nothing sings early music for fun and practice at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 655-8863. 

Berke ley Chess Club meets Fridays 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. 

M editation, 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 

SATURDAY, OCT. 1 

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

Hawk Migration with Hans and Pam Peeters on their new book, “Raptors of California” at 10:30 a.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. Field trip with authors before the talk, meet at Claremont Ave. and Grizzly Peak at 9 a.m. to watch some raptors in action. 

Autumn Arachnids We will see slides first then explore the area to look for orb weavers, jumping spiders, wolf spiders and more from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of the Berk eley View Terrace Neighborhood, led by Phila Rogers, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For information call 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tou r lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Field of Dreams A family day at the Oakland Museum of California in conjunction with the exhibition “Baseball As America” with pitching and fielding demonstr ations, fast-pitch radar machines, memorabilia appraisals and historic film clips. From noon to 4 p.m. at 1000 Oak St. Free with museum admission. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Inspiring School Gardens A tour of successful school gardens in Berkeley and Oakl and, sponsored by the Watershed Project. Meet at 9 a.m. at Hillcrest Elementary, 30 Marguerite Dr., Oakland. COst is $25. For information call 665-3689. www.thewatershedproject.org 

National Solar Homes Tour in Oakland and Berkeley from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are self-guided. Cost is $15 for two adults. Register online at www.norcalsolar.org 

Native Plant Sale of shrubs, perennials, succulants, grasses and bulbs, plus books and horticultural information. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sat., 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sun., at Merritt College, 12500 Campus Drive, Oakland. 925-376-4095. www.ebcnps.org 

Plants with Fall Blooms with garden designer Hank Jenkins at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Swim a Mile for Women with Cancer to benefit the Women’s Cancer Resource Center. Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Trefethan Aquatic Center, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland. 601-4040 ext. 180. www.wcrc.org/swim/index.htm 

Benefit Yoga Workshop for the Woman’s Cancer Resource Center, in memory of Katie Allen from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Yoga Room, 2640 College Ave. Taught by Bonnie Maeda and Gay White. Donation $20-$40. 848-0993. 

Progressive Democrats of the East Bay meets at 1 p.m. at the Temescal Library, 5205 Telegraph, Oakland. The agenda includes a discussion of the organizing for the get-out-the-vote campaign, in coalition with Alliance for a Better California, labor groups, and other progressives. 526-4632. www.pdeastbay.org 

Rally to Fight Government Repression with Lynne Stewart and others at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 839-0852. 

Caldecott Tunnel 4th Bore Project will be the topic at Oakland Councilmember Jane Brunner’s Community Advisory Meeting at 10 a.m. at Peralta Elementary School, 460 63rd St. 2 38-7013. 

Sankofa Health Fair on Afrocentric roots of heath and healing, Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 4550 San Pablo Avenue, Suite E, Second Floor, Emeryville. 839-6127. 

“Know Your Rights” A free training on what your rights are when dealing wi th the police from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Copwatch, 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Protest Rally at Berkeley Honda at 1 p.m. at Shattuck and Parker.  

Blessing of the Bunnies for St. Francis of Assisi Feast Day at 3 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Please bring bunnies in carriers. 525-6155. 

Spirit Walking Aqua Chi (TM) A gentle water exercise class at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $3.50 per session. 526-0312. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. fr om 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552 

SUNDAY, OCT. 2 

Morning Bird Walk to welcome back the Northern Flicker, Kinglets and others, at 9:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Spice Of Life Festival in Nort h Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto with demonstrations, tastings and live music from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Shattuck Ave. from Virginia to Rose Sts. www.northshattuck.org 

Halloween Animals Learn the facts and myths about snakes and spiders from 2 to 4:30 p.m. at T ilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 525-2233. 

Retirement Party for Alan Kaplan, for 33 years a naturalist with East Bay Regional Parks District, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Indian Camp picnic area near the entrance to t he Tilden Nature Area parking lot. 444-0355. 

African Diaspora Film Society presents “Bay Area Independent Filmmakers Mini-Festival” at 2 p.m. at Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $5. www.picturepubpizza.com/special-events/diaspora 

Johan Galtung, Norwegian Peace and Conflict Mediator will speak at 4 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 526-2900. 

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 

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 

ONGOING 

Find a Loving Animal Companion at the Berkeley-East Bay Hum ane Society Adoption Center (open from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday). 2700 Ninth St. 845-7735. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

Medical Care for Your Pet at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society low-cost veterinary clinic. 2700 Ninth St. For appointmen ts call 845-3633. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

MONDAY, OCT. 3 

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. in the boardroom of the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker will be from Narika an organization which addresses the unmet needs of abused South Asian women. 287-8948. 

“Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living” with Berkeley architect Charles Durrett, at 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 315-0431. 

“An Emerging Church” An evening with Tony Jones and friends at 7:30 p.m. in the Tuscan Common Room, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, 2451 Ridge Rd. To register call 204-0720. www.cdsp.edu 

Critical Viewing An ongoing group to examine the art/craft(iness) of short films and television product ions and its effects on our daily lives, at 1 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Free. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

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

Kol Hadash Humanistic Rosh Hashanah Celebration at 7:30 p.m. at Albany Community Centre, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring non-perishable food for the needy. To RSVP email Lmgutner@aol.com 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 27 at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041.  

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wed., Sept. 28 at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. William Greulich, 981-5 502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, 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., Sept. 28, 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. Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/p olicereview9

On the day the Water Transit Authority announced it had received a major infusion of federal funds to all but guarantee a new ferry line in Berkeley, the City Council made clear that a terminal at the mouth of Gilman Street was off-limits. 

“Gilman Street is a non-starter for us,” Mayor Tom Bates told WTA head Steve Castlebury at Tuesday’s council meeting. “There’s no room for it there. We’re squeezing in sports fields as it is.” 

By an 8-1 vote, the council recommended that the WTA study only the environmental impacts of a ferry terminal at the edge of the Berkeley Marina.  

A Berkeley-to-San Francisco ferry is being planned to debut in 2010. WTA studies show that the ferry stop would generate about 500 to 700 daily trips. 

Berkeley is first in line among East Bay cities for the new direct ferry service to San Francisco, Castlebury said. Regional Measure 2, passed by voters in 2002, called specifically for a ferry line to connect Berkeley and San Francisco as long as the city or the WTA secured money for a Berkeley Ferry terminal, estimated to cost $10 million. 

On Tuesday, the WTA announced that it will receive $14 million from the recently passed federal transportation bill. With $4 million earmarked for a planned Oakland-South San Francisco Line, Castlebury said the WTA would likely spend the remaining funds to build the Berkeley terminal. 

If the Berkeley terminal somehow falls through, the WTA would then consider terminals in either Albany or Richmond, according to Castlebury. “Right now Berkeley is not in competition with Richmond or Albany for a ferry terminal, it’s in competition with itself.” 

Environmental groups have opposed a Gilman Street terminal because it would require dredging of the bay and threaten a bird habitat. 

Castlebury added that the WTA might still have to do a cursory study of a Gilman Street terminal to satisfy the requirements of Measure 2, but that the agency would honor the council’s wishes. 

“The council’s message was loud and clear and we’ll reflect that,” he said. 

The WTA is preparing an environmental review of alternative terminal sites to begin later this year. 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli cast the lone dissenting vote, saying that the council didn’t have enough information to write off Gilman as a possible terminal site. 

Even if Berkeley gets a ferry terminal, the WTA could still put a second terminal in either Richmond or Hercules, Castlebury said. A Contra Costa County sales tax has put aside money for a terminal in either city."

East Bay little leaguers could have five new playing fields by 2007, after the State Department of Parks awarded $2 million in grants Tuesday for the Gilman Street Playing Fields in Berkeley. 

“This is a huge deal for us,” said Doug Fielding, chairman of the Association of Sports Field Users. “The grant lets us serve about 90,000 more people a year.” 

Before the state grants came through, the East Bay Regional Park District, which owns the 16.5-acre plot, had $3 million in grants for the project—enough to build two artificial turf soccer fields by next year. 

Fielding said the extra $2 million meant that by spring of 2007 Berkeley could now build out the entire park: the two soccer fields, two grass softball fields and one grass baseball diamond. He added that another million would be needed to build a field house with bathrooms. 

But Roger Miller, Berkeley’s manager for the field project, cautioned that rising construction costs might prevent the city from building all the fields right away. 

“We have to talk to our architect and see what can be built for $5 million,” he said. 

The entire project was originally budgeted at $6 million, but Miller said the estimates have risen as construction costs have surged. “Unfortunately what we’ve seen in the city is that when bids come in they’re way over the estimates,” he said. 

The fields are planned for the area just south of Gilman Street, along Frontage Road. East Bay environmentalists have backed developing fields as part of a compromise that kept playing fields out of the newly formed Eastshore State Park. 

“This is a win-win situation for everybody,” said Norman La Force of the Sierra Club’s East Bay Public Lands Committee. “We’re getting recreation that we need and better habitat protection as well.” 

The Sierra Club is working on a plan with the regional park district to set aside 10 acres further north at the Albany Bulb for owls that burrowed at the Gilman site. 

The proposed fields appeared at risk last year when the park district lost out on a $2.5 million state grant for the project. The $2 million it received this year was part of the state’s final allocation of money for public parks from Proposition 40, passed by voters in 2002. 

“This was the last big train of money for sports fields that’s passing through California,” Fielding said. “If we hadn’t gotten the grants we’d be stuck with two artificial soccer fields beside a nicely graded weed patch for a number of years. 

Fielding expects the five new fields to attract a total of 150,000 users annually. With 21 fields, Berkeley is squeezed for space, said Fielding, whose organization manages the fields. He said new athletic groups must wait at least six months for field space.  

“The shortage of field space doesn’t keep kids from playing, but it limits access, it forces too many kids onto one field, and it keeps us from doing outreach,” he said. 

The prospect of a baseball field at Gilman won’t stop his organization’s drive to put a regulation-sized diamond at Derby Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, he added. 

The Berkeley City Council is scheduled to vote next week on approving an environmental report for Gilman project. As the lead agency, Berkeley is managing construction of the fields and will then seek to turn over management to an outside organization, such as Fielding’s group. To help pool grant money, Berkeley entered into a Joint Powers Agreement with Emeryville, Albany, El Cerrito and Richmond. Those cities will also have access to the new fields. 

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Berkeley Unified got bad news and good news under the federal No Child Left Behind Act this week, with Rosa Parks Elementary entering the fifth year of low performance “program improvement” status, and John Muir Elementary winning national “blue ribbon” honors for program excellence. 

Under No Child Left Behind, public schools in the United States receiving Title I funding for disadvantaged students must make federally-mandated “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) goals based on standardized state tests. 

In addition, the State of California uses those same tests to judge public schools on a different standard: the Academic Performance Index (API). 

NCLB guidelines list certain steps that a school must take each year for five years if it remains on the “needs improvement” list. A spokesperson in the Berkeley Unified School District’s administrative offices said that because this is the first year that any schools in the state or the nation are entering the fifth year of such “needs improvement” status, it is still unclear what may happen if Rosa Parks remains on the list. 

“But we don’t expect that to happen,” BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan. “We’re making steady improvement at Rosa Parks, and we expect it to get out of ‘needs improvement’ status at the end of this school year.” 

On the federal AYP standard, Rosa Parks Elementary made progress from the spring of 2004 to the spring of 2005, but not enough to satisfy the federal goals. While details of the 2005 AYP results were not yet available from the California Department of Education, department records showed that the Rosa Parks’ overall school test scores rose 9 points between the spring of 2003 and the spring of 2004, the same growth rate total for all of California’s public schools. But NCLB mandates that schools must meet a certain proficiency rate within each selected racial and socioeconomic group as well as for the overall school. In 2004 Rosa Parks had an 11.7 percent proficiency rate for African-American students in English and an 11.7 percent rate in Math, missing the NCLB standards of 13.6 percent and 16 percent respectively. In that same year, the school also missed meeting the NCLB proficiency criteria for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.  

Rosa Parks met its state-mandated API growth requirement in 2005, jumping almost 40 points from the year before (from 663 to 701). The State Department of Education had given the school a growth target of 7 points. 

According to BUSD Information Officer Coplan, Berkeley Unified has been taking a “series of steps” to bring up the Rosa Parks’ AYP scores ever since the school was placed on the program improvement list. 

“In the first year, NCLB mandates that 10 percent of Title I money going to the school must go directly to staff improvement, and that’s what we did,” he said. “But in addition, the district hired 60 extra tutors above and beyond the number of tutors we normally have in our schools.” 

In addition, Coplan said that the district set up a Parent Resource Center at Rosa Parks, supported in part by Alameda County, to provide tutoring, mental health services, and other services for Rosa Parks parents. 

In the second year on the “needs improvement” list, Coplan said that the district “rotated in a number of stronger teachers to the school, which is what helped cause a 30 point jump in the school’s API score,” and at the end of last year, BUSD moved veteran principal Pat Sadler over to Rosa Parks. 

“The NCLB says that the district must reorganize the ‘needs improvement’ schools in order to bring them up to state and national standards,” Coplan said. “That’s what the district has already done, and we expect that to pay continued dividends in the next year and beyond.” 

Meanwhile, BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence sent her congratulations to the staff and administration for John Muir Elementary for being one of 34 California public schools to be honored in the No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon Honors Program, saying that “they should be very proud of this recognition, that they so richly deserve.” 

To receive the award, schools must meet API growth targets as well as federal AYP requirements. John Muir was one of only four schools selected from Alameda County, and one of only nine schools selected from the Bay Area. 

BUSD Superintendent Lawrence and Board President Nancy Riddle gave credit for the John Muir national award to former Muir principal Nancy D. Waters, who retired at the end of last year for personal reasons. At the time of the school’s nomination by the California Superintendent for Public Instruction last December, Waters called the nomination “way too cool” and said that “we’re flying pretty high around here, right now.”

Despite its name, the San Francisco Foundation showed this week that it has not forgotten the East Bay. Three of the four recipients of the foundation’s annual awards this year at Tuesday’s Herbst Theater ceremonies were either from the East Bay or were recognized for activities undertaken in the East Bay. 

• Former 9th District Congressman Ron Dellums received the Robert C. Kirkwood Award for outstanding community service and inspired leadership. 

• Retired Oakland Unity Council CEO Arabella Martinez received the San Francisco Foundation Award for her work in helping to create the vibrant Fruitvale Transit District in East Oakland.  

• Drummer and ethnomusicologist Kakarya Diouf, founder of the Oakland-based Diamano Coura West African Dance Company, received the Helen Crocker Russell Award, which is annually given to an under-recognized, mature artist making significant and ongoing contributions in the Bay Area. 

• The fourth award, the John R. May Award, went to Marin County-based Insight Prison Project for its rehabilitation work at San Quentin Prison. 

Dellums was honored for his “decades of courage, leadership, and vision in championing peace, justice, diversity, and economic equality, both locally and globally, and for his impact in moving the AIDS pandemic and its solutions to the top of the global agenda,” according to a Foundation spokesperson. 

In his acceptance address that drew a standing ovation from the Herbst Theater audience, Dellums said he was “glad to have been born in the Bay Area because activism is in our genes.” He spent much of his five minute speech on recent events in the gulf coast and Hurricane Katrina. 

“Katrina is a metaphor for what is wrong with America,” Dellums said. “There were 40 million poor people with us in America before the winds of Katrina. There are still 40 million poor people with us in America, afterwards. It would be criminal if the winds of Katrina blew the images of poor people into our living rooms and dining rooms, but then we allowed them to retreat back into the dark recesses of our minds once those winds have receded.” 

The San Francisco Foundation, founded in 1948, is a community foundation serving San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo counties in the areas of community health, arts and culture, neighborhood and community development, social justice, and the environment. In 2004, the foundation awarded grants totaling $64 million. 

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What began as one of the more contentious development/preservation battles in recent Berkeley history ends with both sides reasonably happy this Sunday when the First Presbyterian Church dedicates its new Geneva Hall and refurbished McKinley Hall facilities. 

Dedication services will be held twice during the day, once at 12:30 p.m. and again at 6:30 p.m. to accommodate the 1,800-member church’s morning and evening services, with ceremonies to include prayers, singing, ribbon-cutting, and a reception. First Presbyterian is located at the corner of Dana and Channing Way, and the dedication services, like almost all First Presbyterian functions, will be open to the public. 

The $25 million two-year building project included erecting the three-story Geneva Hall facilities, renovation and conversion of the historic landmark McKinley School building, and construction of a two-story underground parking facility. 

“I think this is a positive project,” said Berkeley Landmarks Commission member and Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) staff member Leslie Emmington Jones. “The church has done something very sophisticated, incorporating the original McKinley building into their plans in a way that knits together something which had only been a fragmentary reminder of the historic Telegraph Avenue area, as well as changing the original design of the new building so that it better interfaces with the historic one.” 

Calling the dedication services “a big deal for us,” First Presbyterian Administrator Julie Sept said that “we could have moved the church somewhere out in the country and got acres and acres of land, but over and over, we’ve affirmed part of our mission as staying in Berkeley. It’s not just about buildings.” 

That sort of mutual admiration could hardly have been predicted in the midst of the initial planning for the project, when church officials contemplated demolishing the old McKinley School and putting up a four- or five-story administration/education building with a design that Mark Gillem, present concept architect and project manager, called “just awful.”  

The church hired Gillem to replaced the original project designer, a move that both sides credit with helping to work out a compromise and move the project forward. Under Gillem, the cost of the project dropped from an estimated $45 million to $25 million. 

BAHA first raised the issue of the demolition of the historic landmark McKinley School building, prompting the City of Berkeley to require an Environmental Impact Report for the project. The church fought the EIR requirement in court and lost, which ultimately led to the compromise that saved the building. Instead of demolishing McKinley, church officials settled on a plan that turned the building 180 degrees, causing it to form part of the church’s inner courtyard plaza rather than facing outward to the street, and utilizing the structure for counseling services and youth rooms. 

During the building procedure, construction crews lifted up the McKinley Building and set it down in a corner of the lot, built an underground parking facility, and then lifted the building up again and set it on top of the parking structure. 

Founded in 1878, First Presbyterian Church is a day older than the City of Berkeley itself. The church considers its ministry to UC Berkeley students as part of its core ministry, and a portion of the new Geneva Hall will include a university student lounge.

A Berkeley organization that sends elementary school children from different income levels into nature together to help them better understand one another was awarded the Agape Foundation’s 2005 Peace Price. 

The prize, awarded to Mosaic, includes a $500 donation and technical consulting. 

“We’re in a situation we’re every penny helps a whole lot,” said Lara Mandel, Mosaic’s executive director. “We hope this help gets the word out about what we’re doing.” 

Since 2001, the Mosaic project has run a one-week course in Napa where three elementary school classes representing students of social and ethnic backgrounds learn to work together. 

The program works with 18 schools, including Malcolm X, Berkwood Hedge and Craigmont in Berkeley. 

Agape is a Bay Area philanthropic organization that offers money to small social justice organizations. It has raised approximately $9.2 million for local groups since starting out 36 years ago. 

Two years ago when Carl Farrington and his four partners bought the three-unit building where they now live, they hoped to one day convert it to condos.  

But Farrington says that a pair of recommendations which came before the City Council Tuesday would keep fees too high for them to convert, leaving them stuck with an undesirable tenancy in common. 

“If one of us loses our job, we could all lose our property,” he said.  

The council, which voted to hold over the issue for a month, is split on converting apartments into condos. 

Several councilmembers wanted conversion fees lowered to give middle-income residents a better opportunity to own homes in Berkeley, while others feared that more condos would mean fewer available rental units and higher rents. 

For years Berkeley’s condo conversion policy was clear: To maintain the supply of rental housing, the city slapped prohibitive fees on owners looking to convert apartment units to condos. Consequently, no units were converted. 

But that changed earlier this year when a state appeals court invalidated a San Francisco law similar to Berkeley’s ban on tenancies in common (TICs) for buildings with more than three units. 

TICs are considered a riskier investment than condominiums because shareholders own the entire building as a single entity rather individual apartments. Finding financing for TICs is more difficult, and since all the owners often cosign a single loan, if one partner goes bankrupt, the others are held liable for payments. 

Fearing that the city would see a surge in TICs, the council last May passed a temporary law making it cheaper to convert them to condos, in hopes that buyers would be willing to pay more for condos instead of buying riskier TICs. 

The law, scheduled to expire Oct. 26, set condo conversion fees at 12.5 percent of the unit’s sale price. (For an average condo, which sells for $440,000, the 12.5 percent fee would equal $55,000—less than half the fee required under the old law.)  

So far, lower fees have failed to yield many condo conversions. The city has received applications to convert 30 units in the five months since the council lowered fees, said Housing Director Steve Barton. 

Now the council, facing dueling recommendations from city boards, must reconsider the law. 

The Rent Board, fearing the loss of affordable rental housing, is urging the council to boost the fee to 15 percent. 

The Housing Advisory Commission has endorsed the 12.5 percent fee, and called for lowering the fee to 5 percent for owners of TICs with three or fewer units and where the owners have resided in the building for more than seven years. 

Farrington and his partners wouldn’t qualify because they’ve lived at their TIC for just two years. He said they bought the TIC relying on the opinion of city officials that condo conversions rules would be relaxed. 

“It doesn’t seem right that people in the hills can sell their homes for $2 million and keep the profit, while people on the bottom rung are the ones being forced to subsidize new affordable units,” he said. 

Councilmember Dona Spring countered that TIC owners should pay a hefty fee because converting to condos, a legally more secure form of home ownership, would dramatically increase the value of their property. She also credited city laws for making TICs affordable to lower-income residents. 

“The irony is that TICs were an affordable option because rent control and high condo conversion fees brought down the value of the properties,” she said. 

Spring, along with Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Max Anderson, backed a 15 percent fee. 

On the other side of the aisle, councilmembers Gordon Wozniak and Laurie Capitelli suggested a smaller fee.  

“The city does a pretty good job building low-income housing, but we don’t do anything for the workers,” Wozniak said. “The librarians and employees who work downtown, condos could let them move into the ownership market rather than having them move outside of Berkeley.” 

The City Council meets Tuesday Sept. 27. Items on the agenda include: 

• A proposal from city staff for the council to appoint a Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee to guide city staff in establishing new land use rules for downtown Berkeley in partnership with UC Berkeley.  

In his report to the council, Planning Director Dan Marks presents several public participation programs for council consideration, but advises against having the Planning Commission lead the discussion and against holding public workshops on the plan.  

Many city commissioners have objected to Marks’s proposal to limit participation. Last week members of the Planning Commission and a unanimous Landmarks Preservation Commission demanded that their members and the public be allotted a greater role in the downtown plan formation. The Transportation Commission asked the council to allow it to appoint one of its members to any advisory committee. 

Marks says in his report to the council that the Planning Commission “already has a full plate of other issues.” He recommends against public workshops saying that the format wouldn’t allow for in-depth discussion or consensus building, and says that the committee should be held under 20 people to keep it manageable. Marks also calls for the university to be allowed to send representatives to the committee, and asks that the council allow staff to establish a technical advisory committee composed of public agencies with a stake in downtown, such as BART and AC Transit and perhaps professional planners, architects, and designers. 

• A request from Councilmember Kriss Worthington that Berkeley review its laws regulating newsracks. Several local publications, Worthington wrote in his report to the council, have had their newsracks removed from city streets without notice. 

• A recommendation from the Homeless Commission that the council establish sites where homeless residents can park their cars. The commission also asked the council to waive time limits for homeless people to work off vehicle fines and keep fines from compounding so the homeless would be at less risk for having their cars impounded for unpaid fines.  

• A proposal to make nonprofit tenants of the Veterans Building pay for a portion of building maintenance costs. 

• A request from Councilmembers Linda Maio and Darryl Moore that the city ensure that a fuel pipeline running along the Union Pacific Railroad in West Berkeley is structurally sound enough to withstand an earthquake. 

• An appeal of a use permit granted by the zoning board to demolish a live/work unit and add a fourth floor with two apartment units at 2750 Adeline St. 

—

Five years ago Theresa Johnson of South Berkeley headed off to work at Federal Express, a healthy 30-year-old woman with two jobs and a fiancee. 

A drunk driver, speeding 80 mph. on the wrong side of the Market Street plowed his Camaro into her 1996 Mazda 626. The crash left Johnson with a crushed pelvis and punctured lungs. Four surgeries later, Johnson, now separated from her fiancee, can walk short distances with the help of a cane, but doesn’t expect to be able to work again. 

“I’m still in a lot of pain,” she said. “I can’t stand for very long. It’s hard for me right now.” 

Earlier this year, Alameda County Superior Court Judge William McKinstry awarded Johnson $53 million in damages, one of the largest awards recorded for a drunk driving case and one of the 50 largest awards recorded this year. 

Last week, the case was designated a “Case of Note” by VerdictSearch—a legal resource that list major verdicts. 

“The court delivered a forceful message—drunk drivers will be held responsible for the destruction they cause,” said Robert Cheasty, the Albany lawyer who represented Johnson. 

Mothers Against Drunk Driving State Executive Director Paula Birdsong said, “This verdict should be a wake up call to those who drink and drive.” 

But so far Johnson hasn’t seen any of the settlement. 

“It’s not money that I’ll ever see,” said Johnson, who lives on disability checks. “I’m in a worse financial situation now than before the crash.” 

Cheasty said the driver, Tyrone Hazel, didn’t have insurance for his car making it difficult to collect. Hazel, who is unemployed, is out of jail after serving less than a year on a work furlough program, Cheasty said. 

Hazel has appealed the ruling, said Cheasty, who is representing Johnson before the appeals court. 

“My goal is to try to get her something from the settlement,” he said. 

Johnson said she hoped the verdict would be a warning to other drunk drivers and added she was more focused on overcoming her injuries than collecting the award. 

“I keep telling myself, I still have my life,” she said. “It might never be the same again, but I have that.”›

An article in the Sept. 20-22 issue about Jonathan Kozol mistakenly reported that a reception would precede his appearance at Martin Luther King Middle School tonight (Friday) at 7:30 p.m. There will be no reception. 

Police are have made no arrests in a suspected arson early Saturday that badly damaged the Tilden Park Golf Course offices. 

“There are no suspects at this time,” said East Bay Regional Park Police Sgt. Dale Davidson. “We’re treating this as an arson and the investigation remains open.” 

Park District police and firefighters responded to a fire alarm at the clubhouse at about 2 a.m. Saturday, Davidson said. Firefighters had the blaze contained by 4:30 a.m. Davidson said the clubhouse office annex and roof sustained significant damage, but other sections of the building went unscathed. 

No firefighters were hurt putting out the flames. The golf course remained open Saturday. 

—Matthew Artz 

›

EDITOR’S NOTE: The avian flu virus, H5N1, has the potential to kill millions once it learns how to jump from human to human. So far, most people who become infected have worked with live chickens. But scientists say it’s a matter of time before avian flu makes the leap. The virus most recently surfaced in Indonesia, where four people have died. Pacific News Service and New California Media editor Andrew Lam spoke with Dr. David Relman, professor of medicine and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University. Lam is author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, forthcoming in October from Heyday Books. NCM is an association of over 700 print, broadcast and online ethnic media organizations founded by PNS and members of ethnic news media.  

NCM: Should we ask if avian flu will jump from animal-to-human transmission to human-to-human transmission—or is it a question of when?  

DR: It probably is a question of when, not if. This virus is progressing right down the path you would predict for a virus that will eventually become quite good at human-to-human transmission.  

NCM: Is there a timeline?  

DR: That’s the hard thing. Some people say it could be as early as this winter. Those of a more optimistic sort say maybe two years, or five. I think the really important question is, when it acquires that capability (human-to-human transmission), what will it cost the virus? Most people think it won’t be as virulent.  

NCM: Since the number of people who have died so far is small, can we really speculate about the number of fatalities avian flu could cause?  

DR: Right now, of the known cases of avian flu in humans, it has killed about 50 percent. The big question is, are there others out there walking the streets, sitting in their homes, eating dinner and talking to their family members who have become infected and didn’t even become sick? I don’t think there are many. There are some surveys out there of blood from people who are healthy to see if they have evidence of exposure to this virus, and there haven’t been many episodes or incidences of that. But it’s still possible.  

NCM: How will it be transmitted among humans? I imagine if it is airborne, like SARS, it is going to be very contagious.  

DR: Correct. It almost certainly will behave just like all the influenza viruses before it, meaning that it will be aerosol-transmitted. In fact, the current human-to-human flu viruses that we all experience each winter are more transmissible than SARS. They actually become transmitted easily through fine-particle aerosols, person to person. SARS required large droplets or even direct contact.  

NCM: I was traveling in Asia near the beginning and at the end of the SARS epidemic, and the attitude regarding SARS, especially in big cities, was one of sheer panic. Yet with avian flu the attitude is 180 degrees different. In Hanoi friends said to me, “Oh, it’s just farmers who get it, so just don’t eat chicken now and you’ll be OK.”  

DR: It probably reflects something about human nature. At the time you’re talking about, during the height of the SARS event, there were a lot of people who were sick. There were hospitals that were shut down. There was already a fairly substantial impact on the health care system in a few major world cities.  

We’re not there yet with avian flu. I think the inevitable course will be that this virus will become better at human-to-human transmission, and when it does that, SARS unfortunately may look like quite a small little blip.  

NCM: What about the new vaccine being developed against avian flu?  

DR: The vaccine does appear to induce what should be protective immunity in humans. That’s the good news. The bad news is that even with the prototype vaccine in hand, we still don’t have the production infrastructure to make enough doses quickly. If every vaccine producing factory in the world were devoted solely to the purpose of making this new influenza vaccine, at current levels of production we would only have enough for maybe 50 to 100 million doses worldwide, for a whole population that needs 10 times more doses.  

NCM: Why do you think the last few diseases of concern—SARS, avian flu and now swine flu—all seem to originate from one particular area, either Southeast Asia or South China?  

DR: For reasons that are still unclear, influenza, even yearly, seems to evolve out of the bird population of Southeast Asia. Nobody knows why. SARS seems to also have found a natural home in animal populations of China, and then moved into humans when those animals were moved about. But every continent has its sites for the origin of a new emerging infection.  

NCM: But are there common conditions that promote the development and spread of such viruses?  

DR: Where you see emerging infections around the globe, you see dislocations of animals, you see disease in animals because of crowding, you see displacements of humans, crowding of humans, poor sanitary conditions, poor hygiene, war, famine—anything that perturbs what might have previously been a fine-tuned balance in nature.  

NCM: Has our changing relationship with animals encouraged the rise of new diseases?  

DR: There have been major changes in the way we manage animal populations. One of the most important in the more developed world is the rise of very large-scale, industrial scale livestock management, farming that involves populations of hundreds of thousands of millions of animals all packed together. It’s easy to see where an infectious agent might have lived and died within a small population of animals, but now has the opportunity to move within millions very easily.  

We also move animals about the globe in ways that we never ever did ten, 20 years ago. Look at monkey pox, which showed up in the United States two years ago. How did it get here? We are importing millions of exotic strains and species of animals that have no place being in North America, due to Americans’ desires for exotic and unusual pets.  

NCM: So basically the rise of new diseases, or a lot of them anyway, are the direct cause of our human behavior?  

DR: Correct. We are at fault in many ways.  

NCM: But with technology we are also quicker in defining and isolating the cause of diseases.  

DR: Yes, you have to hope that on the one hand, while we’re the cause of many of our own problems, we are also the potential solution.  

T

HOUSTON (Sept. 13)—Outside the Houston Astrodome earlier this week, dozens of tents for State Farm Insurance, the Bank of America, Chase, Veteran’s Aid, and many more seemed to promise a quick return to something like shopping-mall normalcy. It was easy to sign up for a credit card. An ATM city had sprung up, so you could slide your new card in and get cash right away, and pay the bill later. 

At press briefings organized by local officials, the story was upbeat, a shining example of government, business, and charity coming together to do good. Thousands of evacuees were being processed, more than 500 children were been reunited with their families, and life went on. 

But behind the doors of the Astrodome, survival and frustration were the order of the d ay. Jamel Bell, who fled his flooded Ninth Ward in New Orleans, found no salvation here. “Inside it feels like prison,” he said. At curfew, he says, the evacuees were locked in. 

News teams from independent sources, such as our own, were continuously harassed by local officials and police. Reporters from KPFT, the Pacifica station in Houston, tossed their press badges for Red Cross volunteer badges in order to do their work. 

In Baton Rouge, hip-hop journalist and WBAI reporter Rosa Clemente was arrested and briefly detained after National Guardsmen attempted to confiscate her recording equipment. 

Despite news reports that evacuees were being moved through the system and out of the center efficiently and quickly, there were up to 35,000 evacuees daily in the building. Cots of weary people stretched across the floor. Celebrities, followed by television cameras, filed in and out. The food was terrible, the meat in the sandwiches sometimes served still frozen. Surveillance was heavy, and the tensions on the floor remained thick. 

Many evacuees tried to forget the brutal images of their evacuation: skin sores on a man wading through toxic waters, a chaotic stampede of evacuees on a bridge towards a line of buses, the traumatic separation of families at evacu ation checkpoints. An unnamed woman survivor told KPFT radio host Robert Muhammad that National Guardsmen had raped her friend and left her in the swamp. Amidst apocalyptic scenes that seemed biblical, Dionne Wright, a custodian in her mid-30s, tried to c alm her daughter. “This is not the end,” she said. “This is not the end.” 

Raver Price, a 19-year old woman from the largely black and poor Ninth Ward, felt she heard rumblings before the levee break, and wondered if they were the sounds of man-made dynam ite. When she and her hungry friends took food from a flooded store, she encountered a Guardsman who sneered at her, “I can’t wait to kill you bitches.” 

Among the displaced New Orleans youths in the Astrodome, some neighborhood rivalries did not go out w ith the tide, and fights sometimes broke out between different crews. Many evacuees said that when they went to sleep, they kept one eye on their belongings.  

Before dawn, often as early as 5:30 a.m., lines for basic services, including those to find hou sing or obtain the much-desired $2,000 relief check from FEMA and the $235 relief check from the Red Cross, began forming, and processing continued until 8 p.m.  

Many were mystified by FEMA rules. Households are only allowed to report one address for the one-time check to be sent to. But for families still in the midst of being reunited, or on the verge of being sent to another evacuation center or even another city, the logic seemed bizarre. 

Yet some families left without anything. Immigrants, includin g many of the estimated 30,000 displaced Vietnamese Americans here in Houston, were being turned away. Even legal residents learned that their green cards are not enough to qualify them for disaster aid. These realizations invariably came after hours of w aiting. FEMA and the Red Cross had no translators on hand. 

Au Huynh came down from Philadelphia to help in the relief efforts. “I was a refugee, I came here in 1989,” she said. “I don’t think there is a political mark on being a refugee. (Being a refugee means) being displaced because of political reasons or environmental reason. It’s important to recognize the rights of refugees, it shouldn’t be based on being a citizen in terms of getting relief.” 

Huynh had called the Red Cross to volunteer as a trans lator, but they said they had no need for her. So, through the Internet, she found a small Houston group called Save The Boat People SOS that was setting up relief efforts. The organization is one of the Asian American community organizations working with a network of Buddhist temples in Houston on an extraordinary parallel relief effort. 

With most Asian American evacuees being routed away from the Astrodome, volunteers took them in at the Hong Kong City Mall. In the parking lot, there are piles of donat ed clothing. At a card table, volunteers work on their own personal laptops and cellphones to find shelter, make urgent medical referrals, and reunite families.  

Some 50,000 Vietnamese worked the Louisiana coast as fisherman and in New Orleans in the service and manufacturing sectors, alongside a large community of Filipino American shrimpers, the oldest Filipino community in North America. So the volunteers at the Hong Kong City Mall expect many more evacuees. 

But these efforts are short-term. Houston officials have been pushing to move all the evacuees out of the Astrodome and the Reliant Center by Saturday into the Reliant Arena. They say that they might not be able to complete the efforts until next week. 

Meanwhile, the evacuees wonder and worry about their future. Many want to return, and most believe they will be able to do so in a week or two. But while New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has allowed the homeowners and business owners of the Garden District and the French Quarter to return this week, there are still no dates set for poor, largely African American neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward to reopen. 

Evacuees are being shipped off all over the country, San Francisco, Michigan, and New York, with no return ticket. As pundits and planners acros s the country have begun to call for neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward to be bulldozed and permanently abandoned, many evacuees have begun to ask if there is an agenda afoot to eliminate the city’s poor and people of color. Organizers from the New Orleans organization Community Labor United have begun calling for “evacuees from our community to actively participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans.” 

In the Astrodome, Dolores Johnson has another cold sandwich and shakes her head. She asks, “We are able-bodied. Why can’t we be involved in the process to rebuild our homes?” 

Third World Majority and Hard Knock Radio reporters Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Anita Johnson contributed to this article. t

When former Oakland resident, now Haiti-based filmmaker Kevin Pina and Haitian journalist Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste were arrested Sept. 9 in Port-au-Prince while covering a police search of the home of a political prisoner/possible presidential candidate, the wheels of justice ground forward.  

That’s rare in Haiti these days. 

Freeing Pina and Ristil took action from Rep. Barbara Lee, e-mails from across the U.S. to Haiti’s justice minister, condemnation from a non-neutral Port-au-Prince press corps and pressure from U.S. Embassy officials.  

Victims of Haitian police and U.N. military violence do not have access to such clout; neither do the some 1,000 political prisoners incarcerated mostly without charges and the kids stuffed into the children’s jail.  

Pina, whose frequent reports on Haiti can be heard on KPFA’s Flashpoints, got a tip Sept. 9 that police were searching the home of Fr. Gérard Jean-Juste; Associated Press stringer Ristil also got the tip; both were at the St. Claire Church rectory to report on the search. Pina went inside.  

The police search of the priest’s living quarters was a particularly newsworthy event. Jean-Juste had been jailed since July 21 without charges, incarcerated after interim government officials accused him of murder. Around the time of the search, Lavalas leaders—Lavalas is the political party of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, forced out of Haiti’s presidency by U.S. officials Feb. 29, 2004—were calling on the jailed cleric to accept the party’s nomination for president. (As it turned out, the Haitian government squelched the candidacy, saying Jean-Juste had to be present at the election office to submit his name.)  

As Pina tells it, the judge overseeing the search told police to confiscate the journalist’s camera. Pina held onto the camera and the judge ordered his arrest on suspicion of “disrespecting a magistrate.” Ristil alerted Pina’s friends of the arrest via cell phone, then was also taken into custody.  

Along with other journalists, a Bay Area human rights delegation and Pina’s friends, I got to the jail Friday night a couple of hours after the arrest. Pina wore the detention, which he said was unjust, as a badge of honor, even crooning “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See” and vociferously criticizing guards for their lack of nametags.  

Ristil was more shaken by the incarceration. “I was doing my job,” he said through tears.  

The journalists were kept through the weekend, though after a visit from U.S. embassy folks, were moved to a “V.I.P.” cell, which had beds, color T.V., and access to a cell phone. They shared the cell with police officers accused of murder.  

Monday, the judge, who showed up at 1 p.m. for the 11 a.m. hearing, spent the afternoon arguing against the release, but finally assented. Pina and Ristil were represented by Mario Joseph, attorney for many of the country’s high-profile political prisoners; Guy Delva, a Reuters reporter who heads the Haitian Journalist Association and Alfred de Montesquiou, representing the Associated Press, which employs Ristil, attended the hearing to defend press freedom. Other press and the public were excluded.  

The pair walked free around 5:30 p.m. Justice had been slow, unfair jail time had been served, but in the end, justice won the day.  

That was the first and last time I saw signs of justice during my two-week stay in Haiti.  

Drive around Port-au-Prince and injustice jolts you like a Caribbean lightning storm. Masked police with guns appear from time to time along heavily trafficked corridors, peering into cars—looking for whom? Tanks carrying rifle-ready U.N. soldiers rumble through the narrow streets as if to claim them as their own.  

The streets of Bel Air, a shantytown whose avenues once bustled with vendors selling anything they could to eke out their hard-scrabble lives, now echo an eerie quiet, save for the lumbering U.N. tanks. “People are moving out of Bel Air,” one man told me, pointing to a neighbor’s vacant home. “And the market women have gone to Petionville,” a well-heeled suburb above Port-au-Prince.  

You can’t blame them—who would want to live and work under foreign occupation? But most people in Bel Air have nowhere to go.  

One afternoon I was in Bel Air with radio journalist Hervé Aubin of Radio Indigène and two Bay Area human rights workers, Ben Terrall of San Francisco and Sr. Stella Goodpasture of Oakland. A group of young men, seeing us speak with a neighborhood leader, called us over and asked for help. U.N. troops had opened fire during a demonstration earlier that day. No one was reported killed or wounded, but six of their friends had been arrested.  

The demonstration was called to support Fr. Jean-Juste’s candidacy for president. Demonstrators from Bel Air planned to meet up with demonstrators from Cité Soleil, the capital’s largest shantytown. They would march together to the elections office, where the candidature papers would be submitted.  

But in a show of force that angered the protesters, the U.N. with its guns and tanks prevented the separate demonstrations from merging. “I have only 150 soldiers with me,” Capt. Leonidas Carneiro, who commands the Brazilian troops in Bel Air, would say later. “One hundred fifty is not enough.”  

The young men feared the worst for their arrested friends, as detainees are often beaten and sometimes found in the morgue. Apparently the men thought we, as foreigners and press, might be able to prevent such an eventuality.  

Over at the Fort National lock-up, we were not permitted to see the prisoners, but we did have an opportunity to chat with Capt. Carneiro.  

We explained the fears of the detainees’ friends. “You know that the police beat and even kill prisoners, don’t you?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered, affirming press reports and interviews. The captain underscored, however, that police under his command are well-trained and law-abiding. U.N. Security Council’s Resolution 1608 of June 22 placed the Haitian National Police under U.N. control.  

Carneiro said his officers opened fire only after a demonstrator was sighted with a pistol and his soldiers were pelted with stones. They arrested “the guys with stones in their hands,” Carneiro said, and also the young person thought to have had the pistol whom they found hiding under a bed.  

The next day Bel Air residents reported seven new arrests there, and said five of the six arrested the day before at the demonstration had been freed. The one who continued to be detained, a 15-year-old, was sent to the children’s prison. If his case is treated like that of other children I saw in that jail, he is likely remain there a long time.  

The children’s jail, which I had visited a few days earlier with Sr. Stella Goodpasture, is located just behind the holding cell where Pina and Ristil were incarcerated. It is probably the saddest place I’ve ever seen.  

Four small cells sit in a row, each about 8 by 10 feet, just big enough to fit three bunk beds in a U-shape. The cells are dark, with light penetrating only through the barred cell door. There are 16 boys crowded in each cell; at least three of the 64 children are as young as 10.  

I spoke to each of the boys in the first cell. One 16-year-old had been in jail since July 5, 2004, picked up in a police “operation.” This is what they call a police sweep of the poor pro-Aristide areas. Like 80 percent of those I spoke to, he said he had never been brought before a judge to be arraigned, as the Haitian constitution requires.  

Another boy, 17, had been incarcerated since July 21, 2004, accused of being a “bandit.” He had not seen a judge. Another 17-year-old has been in jail since Sept. 24, 2004. He had been in a fight during which he injured someone with a rock. “The only one to help me to be released is God,” he said.  

A 15-year-old from Bel Air, was picked up May 29, 2004 for smoking marijuana; A 14-year-old had been incarcerated since May 12, 2004, accused of gang affiliation. Another 14-year-old, incarcerated since Dec. 5, 2004, was picked up in a police sweep.  

One guard told me many were incarcerated for “preventive detention.” Several of the boys who had hearings said the judge asked for large sums of money for their freedom—as much as $5,000. None complained of poor treatment—the guards walked out of earshot during the interviews—but several said police had beaten them at the time of arrest. They get no medical attention, although the Red Cross has been there to see them. They get out of their cells for a shower every day and have a couple of hours “recreation” in a small yard—they can use a toilet when they shower or recreate and have a common bucket they use at other times. None have legal representation.  

If there’s a lesson in all this, it may be that justice in Haiti under this unelected government is distributed in proportion to the pressure of eyes and e-mails. Were it not so, the kids in the children’s jail, Jean-Juste and the 1,000 other political prisoners, the Lavalas adherents in hiding within and outside the country, would be as free as Pina and Ristil, who, it should be noted, watch their backs at all times. 

Injury to Insult 

Upon witnessing five young men shove his motorcycle to the ground near the intersection of Adeline Street and Ashby Avenue Wednesday night, the 43-year-old motorcycle owner chased after them, Officer Joe Okies said. 

During the chase, one of the young men whipped out a motorcycle chain and struck the motorcycle owner with it. Another young man kicked a bystander, Okies said. 

No one was seriously injured and the four culprits remain at large. 

Starbucks Strife 

Two high school-aged boys started fighting outside the Starbucks at 2128 Oxford St. just before 11 a.m. Monday. Police arrived on the scene, but neither boy wished to press charges. 

Hands Off 

Police were called to a neighborhood squabble on the 1600 block of Russell Street Monday afternoon after one neighbor grabbed the other’s hand during an argument. No arrests were made.›

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

CITY-UC AGREEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I appreciated Zelda Bronstein’s clear analysis (Daily Planet, September 13-16) of Councilmember Linda Maio’s puffpiece (Daily Cal, Sept. 6) about Berkeley’s City/University LRDP Litigation Settlement Agreement, known colloquially as the “Bates/Birgeneau Deal.” 

Bronstein incorporated several choice quotes from the settlement, which was approved by a majority of the Berkeley City Council through a process steeped in duplicity and subterfuge. One of the quotes bears repeating.  

The new joint plan between the university and the “city” completely excludes people who merely inhabit and pay for the city, rather than rule over it. Regarding development within the “downtown area”, which they define to include many residential parts of Haste Street, Berkeley Way, Fulton Street and others, the agreement states: “Whereas, the City and University agree this vision and plan shall be comprehensive, and shall encompass the entire scope of future downtown development, including all private and public sector landowners and developers”(Section I.L). 

This stunning agreement, a gift to the 800-pound gorilla in our midst (which is hardly in need of a larger piece of the town), was approved by Councilmembers Linda Maio, Max Anderson, Laurie Capitelli, Darryl Moore, Gordon Wozniak and our fearless leader, Tom “Building Boom” Bates. I thought they were elected to look after our welfare. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

PEOPLE’S PARK RANT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your editor once wondered why people assume the Daily Planet has a target audience that scared away a potential advertiser. 

Well, Ms. Denney is one reason why that assumption exists. She typifies the anti-business, whining and bitching supposedly peacenik type. And yet, she isn’t for peace at all and is very willing to resort to violence to impose her views on others. 

I cannot believe you published her letter to the chancellor with not one but two threats against the man. “It’s a good way to avoid riots” is just another way of threatening to create a riot if Denney and her other whining friends don’t get their ways. 

You know, they say the trade embargo against Cuba will finally end when the old anti-Castro crowd dies off in South Florida because the young Cuban-Americans are obsessed with getting rid of Fidel. Well, I hope Carol and her bunch realize that once she finally dies (and frees us of her rants) that People’s Park will not live on but will be a parking lot or a dorm or something more useful than a place where drugs are sold and bums hang out and students are afraid to go. Sooner or later, Carol, People’s Park will be gone and no riots will occur. And you will just be some wacko terrorist that people laugh about when your name is mentioned. 

But in the meantime, Daily Planet—maybe you could refrain from printing blatant threats of violence. Hate and violence should be part of your target population. 

John Stillman 

• 

“PULLING STRINGS” 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing today because I am so deeply offended by the words of one of the writers of a letter to the editor in your last edition titled “Pulling Strings” that I just cannot sit still. Ms. Leuren Moret, whom I have not had the privilege of meeting, has written one of the most vitriolic, hateful and racist diatribes, the likes of which I hoped to never see in this, the most “progressive” of towns.  

Like all who participate in a democratic society, I appreciate and respect everyone’s right to their opinions. I further understand that elected officials place themselves willingly in a position from which criticism of their actions will come from every conceivable angle. But come on, people! Whatever happened to the concept of civil discourse? I thought that Karl Rove had cornered the market on Willie Horton-style, attack, defame, and demean tactics? 

However much one might agree or disagree with the decisions of our local politicians, what gives anyone the right to viciously attack them on a personal level, let alone a racist one? Yes, I said racist! 

Ms. Moret characterizes Linda Maio as a “poodle”—which in itself is offensive. But she steps way over the line by painting Councilmember Darryl Moore as a “monkey.” There are a few other words in the history of African-American people that can evoke more outrage, pain, and outright disgust than that one, but not many! 

As one of Darryl’s constituents (and one, I might add, that has had occasion to both agree and disagree with his decisions), there is simply no other way to characterize this man than as a gentleman of the highest order. He carries himself with respect, and treats all those he encounters with the same respect. I have witnessed him in too many settings, public and private, to believe otherwise. Regardless, I hope that Ms. Moret takes time to take stock of herself, understand the full implications of what it means to call a black man a “monkey,” and hopefully realize that there has only been one animal-like behavior in this entire process.  

Disagree, yes. Hold accountable, by all means! But please….everyone….can we keep our disagreements on a humane and respectful level? Please? 

David W. Manson, Jr. 

• 

LEGALIZE BRIBERY? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“UC looks to donors to help pay executives.” Is the corruption blatant enough?  

“UC officials want to tap private donors to boost the salaries of their highest paid executives who already make more than $350,000 a year.” Excuse me?! (Quotes from the Sept. 20 San Francisco Chronicle.) 

First, If we want UC run in the interest of the students, faculty, staff, host communities and people of California, we do not want them paid by “private salary donations”!  

Second, I am sure we can find capable administrators with the public’s good in mind for much less than $350,000-$400,000-plus a year. Third, when UC President Robert Dynes says, “there are some donors who come to me and say that it is absolutely vital that we find a chancellor who is truly a leader,” one should be immediately suspicious of the way those donors want UC led and their willingness to pay for that control. 

If these donors and corporations were fairly taxed, the university would have plenty and democracy. 

That the current administration could consider this amoral, debatably illegal method to increase the wealth of top officials at a time when the university system has real financial needs, is a sign of deep corruption.  

Maybe we should consider a good cleansing of the administration. Start by democratizing the Regents and finding public university administrators willing to work for reasonable pay and for the public good. 

Cyndi Johnson 

• 

PARKER ON ATTENDANTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Publication of Susan Parker’s column on Sept. 20 (“High Finance on Dover Street”) does a huge disservice to the hundreds of hard-working personal care attendants in our area. The article gives the impression that all attendants, as a group, spend their money on cigarettes, lottery tickets, hair products and beer. I found her condescension outrageous. 

More than ever, personal care attendants are essential to many of us who are aging and/or have disabilities. Ironically, for such an important position, attendant wages are frequently not enough to live on, and our governor only recently backed off from further decreases. Nonetheless, I and many others in Berkeley have been assisted for many years by a tremendous group of people who work in this capacity. I’m embarrassed to think that any of my personal care attendants might have read Parker’s damning and arrogant article. 

It seems that Ms. Parker and her husband have had considerable difficulty in relationships with attendants over the years. I highly recommend the workshop, “How to Succeed in Attendant Management”, at Herrick Hospital in October. It will be co-directed by Hannah Karpilow, a local treasure of expertise with many years experience in this field. 

Susan O’Hara 

• 

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Those of us in our forties or older may remember two presidents who appeared on live TV to make dramatic announcements. The first was Lyndon B. Johnson who on March 31, 1968 stated, “...I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” The second was Richard M. Nixon, who on Aug. 8, 1974 announced his resignation.  

Neither man went willingly. Nixon stated that leaving office was “abhorrent to every instinct in my body.” But he faced certain impeachment if he did not resign. Johnson presided over a divided nation with tens of millions opposed to the war in Vietnam. Both of them faced a crisis of legitimacy and were no longer able to successfully govern a divided nation. 

Today the U.S. faces a similar crisis. We have a president and a regime that is also having its legitimacy questioned. While many questioned the Bush presidency since the 2000 selection by the Supreme Court, many more question its ability to govern today. The Bush regime has gone from one crisis to another. The two biggest are clearly the war against Iraq and the handling of the manmade disaster of Katrina.  

Today we have a national government that has deliberately eroded civil liberties and openly tortures people. We have an attorney general who has written memos justifying this torture. We will soon have a Supreme Court chief justice who has no problem with incarcerating people indefinitely, with limited access, if any, to the courts. 

We have a president who thinks that god wants him to be president as we move our government closer to a theocracy everyday. This government suppresses science that does not fit its religious, political and economic agenda forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price. 

This government is moving to deny women here and all over the world the right to birth control and the freedom to control their own bodies by choosing abortion. 

In Iraq and Afghanistan our government has killed so many that it does not even bother to keep track of the numbers. While here at home, in the areas hit by hurricane Katrina, the body count mounts daily. The Bush regime’s actions and inactions have made a natural disaster a much larger manmade disaster and brought untold suffering to millions. 

The world can not wait until the Bush regime is out of office on January 20, 2009. More than three years from now will be too late. We need to create the conditions to remove this regime now. We must drive the Bush regime from power. It can be done. Two presidents were driven from power in the last 40 years. It is time to add a third to the list. 

The future is unwritten. Which one we get is up to us. 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

• 

KATRINA AND ANIMALS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has been three whole weeks since the levees broke, but many animals are still awaiting rescue in the hurricane-riddled areas of New Orleans. Much has been shown written about the human tragedies surrounding hurricane Katrina. But little has been written about the forgotten animal victims of the hurricane. Animal rescue organizations like the Humane Society and the ASPCA have already saved thousands of animals, but there still many awaiting rescue, and untold thousands for whom it is too late. 

There are many sad stories; dogs that have been found drowned, still chained up, and animals that are emaciated, combing the streets for food. In the LSU Tulane laboratories, all 8,000 animals experienced the grizzly death of drowning in their own cages or starving. Yet in the media, they only gleaned a brief mention as researchers lamented the years of “lost data.” 

So often in these last few weeks the people refusing to evacuate have been taken to task for not heeding the hurricane warnings, but many of these people were caring pet owners. It is estimated that 65 percent of the American population owns a pet. There are many stories of residents refusing to leave their animals, or even shooting their companion dogs, rather than leaving them at home to die. Pet owners and lab administrators who fled knew the kind of death that might befall their animals—the very kind that they were fleeing. Some were just irresponsible. But many felt they had to make a kind of Sophie’s Choice, choosing to stay with their animals and perish, or leave some or all behind.  

Perhaps the bulk of the blame should lie on the federal and local government policies which prohibit pet owners from bringing pets with them to evacuation centers, and do not allow for animal and human rescue organizations to work in tandem with one another in a disaster. We have to question how we can live in one of the richest nations on earth, and yet not have an efficient plan for evacuating pets before and after disasters. Animal rescue groups were frustrated in their attempts to gain access to New Orleans by FEMA until a full six days after the disaster. For most animals, six days were too many. 

Most people don’t realize that none of the money donated to the large relief groups like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army goes toward animal supplies or animal rescue efforts. The Red Cross “is dedicated to meeting the needs of humans affected by the disaster only,” said Red Cross spokesperson Joyce Perry. They are not authorized to run animal shelters or care for animals. Admittedly, the human needs in the aftermath of this tragedy far exceed the resources of the Red Cross. But a separate donation should be made to large animal rescue organizations to address animal needs as well.  

Perhaps in the future, these two types of organizations should be linked under one relief effort, so there would just be one phone number to call at the bottom of our television screens. Having separate groups which work on separate parts of the equation is not a viable solution. 

Laura Wiley 

Castro Valley 

• 

NATIONAL GUARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to the letter of Suzanne Joi in your Sept. 20 issue, I would like to venture an answer to her challenge, from my own point of view. I, for one, am getting a bit sick of our “show democracy,” or “democracy for show.”  

Last things in her letter first, the Berkeley City Council is not in the “vanguard” of the movement to “Bring the Troops Home.” Under the leadership of Mayor Bates, they have acted on this only after it became politically advantageous to do so, i.e., after it was already the majority opinion around the country. It had always been the majority opinion here in Berkeley, so they cannot claim that they were merely representing their constituency.  

Moreover, showboating on matters over which they have no control reeks of hypocrisy when they renege again and again on matters over which they do have complete control. Mayor Bates sends out a questionnaire in his newsletter to determine the will of the people, but where was that questionnaire concerning the recent settlement of the LRDP lawsuit? That autocratic settlement will largely determine the future development of Berkeley for the next fifteen years, unless my petition now before the California Supreme Court is granted or another parallel lawsuit is successful. 

It would seem that on relatively small matters that have no major political or economic impact on the ruling class, which seems to be his real constituency, or on very large matters over which he has no control, Mayor Bates is all too ready to make a dramatic show of pro-people democracy-in-action. But on matters over which he has complete control that impact directly the ordinary people in his constituency, he again and again sells out the rights and lives of the people to the well-heeled developers and other exploiters of society. 

Mayor Bates seems to advocate development at all costs. He is the founder of that policy here in Berkeley, who has once and for all established it as public policy. But with unregulated development comes the need for more maintenance and renovation, until the toxic burden from hazardous particulate matter reaches dangerous proportions for every citizen of Berkeley. I have heard that studies in West Berkeley showed that as much as 10 percent of children there now have asthma and that the airborne particulate matter is indeed in the danger zone. I doubt that this is just a coincidence. 

My health took a dramatic turn for the worse about seven years ago, when I was exposed to two successive six-month renovations in my apartment building on Telegraph Avenue. The city failed to protect us from the deliberate inflictions of a landlord intent on a constructive eviction of his tenants under rent control.  

As a direct result of the impairment of my immune system from the toxic burden imposed on me at that time, I developed WPW syndrome, a life-threatening form of tachycardia. Just recently another long-brewing problem has come to the fore—I have been diagnosed with a usually fatal form of cancer. I will soon die on the cross for the sins of those who pretend to care about people, but really do not. I have no doubt that had I not been made sick seven years ago, these genetic proclivities for disease would never have germinated into life-threatening illnesses.  

Even now, I can possibly heal, through the miraculous power of the body and of God, if the City of Berkeley does not kill me by subjecting me to two successive renovations, totaling 18 months, in the building next door. That appeal of the ZAB decision comes before the Council on Oct. 18. That landlord is also trying to cause a constructive eviction of her one remaining tenant under rent control. A mere coincidence? 

So, as I said at the beginning of this letter, I, for one, am getting a bit sick of our “show democracy,” or “democracy for show.” Is this “show democracy” the real fruit of the genuine struggle here in Berkeley? I, for one, think Berkeley can do better. “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” (Matthew 5:13, KJV.) A consistent radicalism through and through is the real heart of Berkeley. I call forth that Spirit of God in each and every one of you. 

Peter J. Mutnick 

• 

POINTLESS PRIMARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recently released report of the Carter-Baker Commission on federal election reform devoted 550 words to the problem of the presidential primary schedule, about the length of this editorial. It wastes most of that verbiage expounding on the obvious: things need to change. The commission’s recommendation actually contains only 75 words, so perhaps they just didn’t give this part of the report much thought: they endorsed a system of four regional primaries, the order of which rotates from one cycle to the next. 

Why this particular recommendation? This remains unexplained. You’re supposed to just accept this on faith. Will a rotating regional presidential primary system “allow a wider and more deliberate national debate?” Wider than what? 

When Bill Bradley and John McCain threw in their towels in early March 2000, just under half of the delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions had been selected. When the Howard Dean campaign collapsed in late February 2004, less than a quarter of the delegates had been chosen. The other way of looking at it is that more than three-quarters of the nation’s Democrats had absolutely no say in the nomination of John Kerry. That’s democratic? 

The rotating regional plan would permanently disenfranchise three-quarters of the electorate in both parties. Because the winner of the first regional primary would look like The Winner and the others would come off looking like also-rans, every candidate would spend all of his or her time, energy, and money in those first states in a do or die effort. The rest of the country would be completely ignored. Since no resources would remain for any real campaigning after this electoral Armageddon, the states in the remaining three regional primaries would get on the bandwagon with the winner of the first primary. Win one, get three free. Any politician can do that math. 

The lucky first 25 percent would rotate from one four-year cycle to the next. Your particular region would get to cast a meaningful vote once every four cycles, or once every 16 years. You would be privileged to choose your party’s nominee three or four times during your life. That’s enough voting privileges for one lifetime, right? 

The rotating regional presidential primary idea dates back to the early 1970s, when womanizing wonder Bob Packwood (R-OR) introduced a bill for such a plan in the U.S. Senate. The bill had only two cosponsors and it died in committee. Thirty-two similar bills have been floated in Congress over the past 30 years, and they have met the same fate.. Quite simply, this is a plan that can’t survive outside the committee room. 

It’s an idea that goes nowhere... again and again. Think about it. This plan was designed around the same time as the space shuttle. Its saving grace has been that, unlike the shuttle, thank God, it has never been launched. Now they’re seriously talking about reanimating this creaky old idea and launching it... duck and cover! 

According to H. L. Mencken, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” This is one of them. There are much better alternatives out there, but politicians are ignoring them so they can continue riding their tired old hobby horses. That’s much easier than studying new solutions based on solid political science. 

Thomas Gangale 

Petaluma 

• 

LOOK AT PROP 73 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let’s get past the publicly palatable statements made by the advocates of prop. 73 and take a look at what’s really going on. On the surface it looks simple, parents have a right to know if their teen daughters are having an abortion. That simple position will garner many votes. One must mine the proposition for its deeper meanings. 

Even a shallow dig uncovers wording that can and will certainly be used in further attacks on abortion rights. “Death of an unborn child,” is an inflammatory term, one that will eventually be used as an argument against all abortions. That should be a red flag to look even deeper. 

Picture yourself a 14-year-old girl. You’ve given in to temptation and seduction and have had sex with your boyfriend. Statistically, he is somewhat older and more sophisticated. Now you find yourself pregnant, and the loving boyfriend has, like a ghost, faded away. Adolescence, without complications, is difficult enough to get through, given all the biological changes and mixed messages. But, now you are pregnant and face the hurtle of telling your parents. As a typical teen, your relationship with your parents has gone from warm to confrontational, and they seem totally intolerant of your new needs for independence.  

Now picture yourself a person who has invested time and energy into promoting prop. 73.  

You are religious, not in the “God is love” mode, but rather the “wrathful God mode.” Your religion dictates that the truth has been given and is immutable, and those who deviate must be made to see the error of their ways. There is no OK, alternate way to take this world. 

Your religion closely ties sex and sin, and premarital sex is one of the biggest sins of all. You feel besieged on all sides by heathens and humanists, and you are sure that Satan has launched an all out campaign against God’s people. Teen sex is a sign of the degenerate times, and you are compelled to put an end to it. It doesn’t occur to you that teen motherhood can spell the end of education and perhaps a life of poverty and even crime. 

Now picture yourself a casual observer. The media promotes sex continually. Media stars are exalted for their sexual charm. In most families both parents work, and kids must fend for themselves for much of the day. The stigma of teen sex circa 1950 is a thing of the past. Kids tend to, by way of being immature, make really foolish decisions. Pregnant teens seldom complete their educational goals, so they are limited in their ability to provide for themselves and their children. Even the government promotes abstinence, without educating kids about condoms.  

Now picture yourself a voter, which you likely are. If you don’t look deeply into any issue, you run the risk of voting on the basis of a sound bite or a slogan on a bumper sticker. There are issues of basic human freedom and personal autonomy riding on this issue. You must forget the notion that the law has said you are not an adult until you are 18. If you are old enough to get pregnant, you are old enough for that event to shape the rest of your life. 

Meade Fischer 

Watsonville 

• 

LIQUOR STORES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the second time in as many months the Berkeley Daily Planet has gotten a story wrong, your article on Sept. 20, “Liquor Store’s Demise Spurs Neighborhood Hopes,” never seems to get the whole picture just like another article in august about South Berkeley liquor stores. I recommend that your reporters get more then one source for there story. My name is Hazim Elbgal and my father owned the business at grove liquors from 1993 tell August 2005 and in that time we have built a reputation as a good family operated liquor store. Your article mentions that there was drug dealing in front of our establishment which is incorrect. I have spoken to many Berkeley police officers who will tell you that Grove Liquors was a model for all Berkeley liquors stores, we have never had any major issues with the city, our neighbors and customers loved us and continue to do so. Although the damage has already been done by this story all we ask is for Mr. Mathew Artz to please have the common decency to at least try to get our side of the story before publishing a story like this. In closing we wanted to say thank you to all our customers for 12 wonderful years at Grove Liquors we wish you all the luck in the world and god bless you. 

Hazim Elbgal 

• 

LAND USE DEMOCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I notice that any and all proposed courses of action in regard to land use or neighborhood development are uniformly controversial in our city, except one. Everybody justifies everything on grounds of making an environment “vibrant.” How has vibrancy escaped the meatgrinder of Berkeley’s participatory democracy? Where are the enemies of vibrancy, and why don’t we hear from them? Is the Planet fronting a vibrancist conspiracy? Are we as a community headed for a dull conformity of universal vibrancy? As a bona-fide senior citizen, AARP member and crotchety old man, I look upon vibrancy with a jaundiced eye - I’m not sure that too much of it is quite the thing. 

David Coolidge 

• 

TRAFFIC CIRCLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s hardly of major importance in the hierarchy of things to be concerned about these days, but I want to weigh in with the increasing number of Berkeley residents (most recently Nicola M. Bourne) asking, Why Traffic Circles? 

I’m a minority-viewpoint resident in the LeConte neighborhood (which is so enamored of these devices that the runic ‘this way around the circle’ sign has become a logo on our neighborhood association’s letterhead). Over the past seven years or so, traffic calming circles have proliferated in this already lightly-trafficked area, often at intersections which already had four-way stop signs. 

In fairness, I will admit that I have gotten used to the circles. I no longer flinch when I’m crossing the street on foot and a car seems to be veering into my path. I only rarely see drivers, who either don’t understand the signs or choose to ignore them, going around the wrong way. And I cannot fault the dedication of my neighbors to the upkeep of the circles—each one is beautifully planted and maintained; they do not attract trash and are mostly quite pretty. Although, the ones with shrubbery (like the Mexican sage at Carleton and Ellsworth) or bushy conifers make it extremely difficult to see, say, a child, a bicycle or even a low-slung car on the far side. 

The thing that raises my blood-pressure—still, after seven years—every time I negotiate a traffic calming circle, is the sheer redundancy and waste of our tax dollars. As far as I can see, stop signs do the job every bit as well. (And, as far as visibility is concerned, often better.) But, apparently, stop signs are boring; traffic circles are sexy. Can they be stopped? I doubt it. 

P.S.: I’ve wanted to write for some time to say what a gem you have in Joe Eaton! Your back-page nature pieces are always of interest, but Eaton brings such a breadth of knowledge and sparkle of wit to the study of our fellow creatures. Thank you! 

Alice Jurow 



At a recent performance, Bill Maher noted that 36 percent of Americans continue to believe that George Bush is doing a good job. The political comedian shook his head and wondered what it would take for them to change their opinion, “On [Bush’s] watch, we’ve lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans.” Despite his many blunders the President continues to get stolid support from his base; he’s viewed positively by 81 percent of Republicans. One factor accounts for this loyalty: Bush supporters trust that he is a Christian. 

The tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina coupled with the Iraqi constitutional crisis has amplified criticism of the President, and again called into question his morality, which stems from his Christian faith. George Bush has been unusually public with his religiosity, stating, for example, that he prays before making every decision. Nonetheless, many would argue that Bush’s spirituality is unorthodox—best described as “magical” Christianity. 

The President’s peculiar brand of Christianity seems devoid of the hard personal work that leads to deep religious devotion. It’s a watered-down version of the teachings of Jesus, long on form and short on substance, a creed of pat phrases—“I’ve taken Jesus Christ as my personal savior”—and confused ethics—opposing euthanasia but supporting capital punishment. The magic appears when Bush’s personal conduct is separated from his profession of faith; apparently, it’s not what he does, but what he says that should matter. 

George Bush’s presidency provides many examples of his magical morality: While his public comments appear contrite, “I admit I’m a lowly sinner;” his personal conduct shows little connection to conventional Christian ethics. Jesus taught that believers should tell the truth—“You shall not perjure yourselves … Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No’”—yet, the Bush Administration seems to revel in dissimulation; their claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction is one notable example. Moreover, George Bush has personally authorized assassinations, bombings of civilians, and the torture of detainees; none of these actions are consistent with Jesus’ admonition, “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.” Over the past five years, the Bush Administration has been guided by a belief that “the ends justify the means,” an ethic which is totally inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus. 

In the Gospels, Jesus often spoke of sacrifice, for example, about the necessity for the rich to care for the poor. This moral value is the theme of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus’ encounter with the rich man who wanted to join Jesus’ entourage, “If you wish to be perfect, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor.” In contrast, the policy of the Bush Administration is to ignore the ethic of sacrifice. Rather than taxing the rich to help the poor, Bush’s position has been to reduce taxes on the rich, and blame the poor for their misfortune. After 9/11 many expected George Bush to do what FDR had done, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and ask Americans to make a common sacrifice to help out the war on terror; instead Bush encouraged people to go shopping and asked Congress for another round of tax cuts. 

A one-sentence encapsulation of the wisdom of Jesus would be that he believed that each individual makes a choice between good and evil, and those who choose the good, resolve to love God and their fellow humans. Jesus taught that each individual was accountable for this choice. Despite his claim to be a Christian, George Bush does not wish to be held accountable for any of the missteps of his administration: the failure to anticipate the attacks of 9/11, the unnecessary invasion of Iraq, the dreadful quagmire of the occupation, and the failure to protect New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. 

Finally, the Bible teaches, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Jesus offered a vision of a world where humankind could live together in peace and justice. In contrast, George Bush offers a vision of a world where there is perpetual war, where Americans—particularly rich, white Americans—are viewed as “good guys” and everyone else is presumed to be part of the evil empire. Jesus instructed his followers to reach out to all people and treat them as our brothers and sisters. Bush’s conduct suggest that he only feels comfortable reaching out to “my base … the haves and have-mores.” George has a short-term, win-at-all-costs mentality that flies in the face of conventional Christian morality, which takes a long-range view and rejects the ethic that the ends justify the means. 

Near the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mountain, Jesus warned his followers, “Be on the lookout for phony prophets, who make their pitch disguised as sheep; inside they are really voracious wolves.” It appears that a phony prophet, artfully disguised as magic Christian, has deceived those Americans who doggedly cling to the belief that George Bush is doing a good job. 

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

My children and I all have birthdays this week, mine sandwiched between theirs, usually neglected. This year my husband wanted to do something special so he packed up the kids and took them to New York for five days. My gift was to stay home alone and as it’s turned out, it has been a real treat. 

I just called to see what time my kids’ plane arrives—9:30 a.m. (Are you sure it’s not p.m.? It’s not? Oh. Uh, Great!) Which means today is my last day of peace and quiet and luscious freedom. Of lying around all day and never getting out of my PJs. Of chocolate for breakfast and wine and chocolate for dinner. Of using the bathroom without someone banging on the door with a “Mommy, I want this,” or a “Mommy, I need that.” Of answering my own phone calls (if I choose to). And of not asking politely then yelling then screaming at the kids to turn that music/tv/radio/your vocal chords down! Down! DOWN!  

There’s a certain joy that goes with being in the house all alone. A certain magic. I can clean the sink and go back to it the next day and it’s still clean! I can clear the entry way of clutter (basketballs, jackets, backpacks, mail) and the next day and the next and the next, it’s still clutter free! I can think, write, organize, plot and plan, do or not do whatever I damn please uninterrupted! Oh my God, I’ve found Nirvana! And all I had to do was to keep my mouth shut about the extravagance of this trip and wish them well. I can do that. I did it and oh, what a reward. 

A luxury, indeed. My children are not missing. I know exactly where they are and they’re having fun. I have a roof over my head and it’s not leaking. I have electricity, heat, food, water and more. If I choose to, I can call a friend and meet for dinner or a movie. Or both. And when I return home, I’ll turn on the alarm, snuggle into a nice warm bed with a good book and sleep soundly.  

There is so much we take for granted. During my five days of going solo, I took two days off from the news and listened to jazz, harps and rock’n’roll while I cleaned out my closet and cleared my head. I needed a break from Bush, Katrina, class disparity and other malfunctions and I took it. Because I could. For those still knee-deep in toxic sludge, still missing loved ones, still camping out under the worse conditions, there is no break. 

I know what it’s like to experience tragedy. Our firstborn child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when she was three months old. I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed with numbing shock and unspeakable grief. It’s difficult to imagine how the world can move along as though nothing has happened while you are dying inside. But, the world does. When it’s not happening to you or right in front of you, all that grief and tragedy doesn’t seem quite real. We see it on television and we empathize but then it passes. It’s somebody else’s pain. We have children to pick up, dinner to prepare, work to do. Their world is not our world. Not right now, not in this moment. 

I just received an e-mail from a New Orleans’ cousin who got out with her family just before the storm. They’re staying in a trailer outside of Baton Rouge waiting for the Archdiocese to relocate them. One neighbor has loaned Kathy a car, another, her computer. The local church is throwing a benefit for the flood victims and Kathy is grateful and sends us love and hugs. 

And here I am, relishing this time away from my family, from my precious children whom, not too long ago, I was terrified to let out of my sight.  

My little retreat into myself has been rejuvenating. I have taken myself stripped of motherhood and matrimonial ties and have looked at myself bare, remembering who I was and how I enjoyed living my life absent all the “stuff” of life. We are not our stuff, after all. That fact really came home for me two years ago when my mother passed away from breast cancer, right in my arms. I never would have thought that I could do that; that I could hold my mother, connect with her and actually assist her in her transition from this world into the next. Sometimes, we have no clue what we are capable of until we are right in it, knee-deep and getting deeper. Then, something happens and we rise to the occasion, meet the challenge, then rise even higher, well above our fears.  

This is what our Gulf Coast neighbors are struggling to get to now: how to meet the challenge and create new lives, new ways of being in the world. Certainly our government can and should help out, providing new opportunities for education, job training and home ownership. Brand new schools with decent supplies and dedicated, well-paid teachers. This tragedy can be turned into an opportunity. (By the way, are the wealthiest 2 percent Christians? Does this mean that because they are their brothers’ keepers they are, at this very moment, knee-deep and donating?) 

Don’t blow it, Bush. Now is not the time to focus on fear or greed, mistakenly thinking that giving to someone else means there’s less for you and yours. Change. Meet the challenge and you’ll grow inside. Where it really counts..

Even when you’re crawling around on the bottom by your own admission, it’s sometimes possible to sink to a new low. And so comes the item “Dellums vs. De La Fuente?” by East Bay Express columnist Will Harper in this week’s “Bottom Feeder” column about a possible heavyweight matchup in the 2006 Oakland mayoral race. 

Several months ago, the anticipated match was between Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente of the Fruitvale area and Councilmember Nancy Nadel of West Oakland. There are several other “name” candidates in the race-including Oakland School Board members Dan Siegel and Greg Hodge and Alameda County Treasurer Donald White—but it was Mr. De La Fuente and Ms. Nadel who were expected to get the most attention from the media. 

There was already an interesting spin in the race before the name of retired 9th District Congressmember Ron Dellums began surfacing as a possible candidate. Media outlets were saying that Mr. De La Fuente was the frontrunner in the race, even though the last time he ran for mayor he came in a distant fourth in an 11-candidate field. That was 1998, the year Jerry Brown first won, and to show how bad Mr. De La Fuente was defeated, he got a little over 5,000 votes in that election, while Mr. Brown got almost 44,000. 

One of the things that hurt Mr. De La Fuente in 1998 was high negative ratings among many Oakland voters. Those high negatives never went away. And so, while media outlets were consistently calling Mr. De La Fuente the 2006 mayoral frontrunner, Oakland political insiders were pointing to two unreleased but respected political polls that showed Oaklanders feeling more comfortable with Ms. Nadel than they did with Mr. De La Fuente. In my mind, even while Ms. Nadel was taking some peculiar turns away from her normally reliable progressive positions, she and Mr. De La Fuente were dead even last winter, and the race was up for grabs between them. 

That all changed when a group of Oakland black political activists began a very public campaign to woo Mr. Dellums into the race, and Mr. Dellums said that he was considering it, with an announcement to come by the first of next month. Even a possible candidacy by the powerful and still popular Mr. Dellums sucked all of the air out of Ms. Nadel’s room, taking away many progressives and black activists who would have supported her. 

It also set up a possible Dellums-De La Fuente 2006 mayoral race to succeed the outgoing Mr. Brown, if Mr. Dellums decides to run. That would pit two powerful, savvy, experienced, well-financed candidates against each other, candidates with contrasting visions and politics that would give the citizens of Oakland clear and distinct choices for the future direction of the city. Living in a democracy, you can’t ask for better than that. 

A Dellums-De La Fuente race would also bring a lot of media attention to Oakland, although Oakland citizens would probably prefer that it not be the type of attention that Mr. Harper demonstrates in his most recent “Bottom Feeder” column. 

In the Sept. 21 “Dellums vs. De La Fuente?” item in that column, Mr. Harper decides to focus on what he says is one thing that Mr. De La Fuente and Mr. Dellums have in common: serious criminal problems suffered by one of their adult children. 

“De La Fuente’s son, Ignacio Jr., currently faces rape charges,” Mr. Harper writes. “Dellums’ son, Michael, has spent the last 25 years in state prison for killing a man in 1979 over a $20 bag of weed. How the two dads have dealt with their troubled sons also shows their contrasting styles. De La Fuente, at least for now, has struck by his son, even attending some court hearings. Dellums, who has publicly lamented the plight of young black men who end up in prison, has seemingly forgotten his own imprisoned son: In his memoir, Dellums acknowledged all his kids except for Michael.” 

What, exactly, does that paragraph tell us about the character of either of these two men—Mr. De La Fuente or Mr. Dellums—or how they might govern as mayor of the City of Oakland? Nothing, as far as I can see. It doesn’t even tell us if they were good parents, since even children raised by loving and attentive parents sometimes go wrong and get into trouble, particularly in these difficult days, despite the best efforts. And the accounting of the two instances of how the two men have dealt with the two situations—Mr. De La Fuente showing up at court hearings and Mr. Dellums leaving an acknowledgment of Michael out of his memoir—also tells us absolutely nothing about the two men’s relationship with their sons, or exactly what they might be doing behind the scenes, one way or the other. 

It’s just gossip. And sometimes, even for a political gossip column, that’s not enough to pass the test for publication. 

The Dellums item has a history with the Express. In 2003, when Michael Dellums was coming up for parole on the murder conviction, Mr. Harper wrote a piece about the issue called “Not-so-favorite son” in the newspaper’s “7 Days” column, the predecessor to “Bottom Feeder.” In that earlier item, at least, Mr. Harper attempted to give some possible context to Mr. Dellums’ relationship with his son, stating that Michael “was born during the divorce proceedings that ended his first marriage” and adding that when asked in a 1988 East Bay Express interview “‘Your son by your first marriage is in jail for armed robbery and murder. Do you feel that you could have done something different, as a parent, to have prevented his troubles?’ Dellums tersely replied, ‘You’re in an area that I don’t want to get into. And I did not raise him. ... I don’t want to deal with that.’” 

I don’t have a clue as to Mr. Harper’s motivation in writing these pieces. I will simply note that I find it interesting that in the item when Mr. Dellums was retired and seemingly out of local politics and living in D.C., Mr. Harper included information that might explain Mr. Dellums’ actions—or non-actions—towards his son. But in the recent and later item published during a time in which Mr. Dellums is now considering running for political office in Oakland again, the explanatory information is left out, and you have to have a long memory—or do an internet search—to find it. 

In any event, sometimes the allegations against an adult child has the possibility of reflecting on their politician parent and in those instances, it is entirely proper for the media to link parent and adult child together. That’s the case with State Senator Don Perata and his son Nick, both of whom are under investigation by the FBI and a federal grand jury for allegations of working together for illegal political payoffs and kickbacks. The key phrase here is “allegations of working together.” 

But at least as far as the information available to the public goes, that is not the case with the problems of the sons of Mr. De La Fuente and Mr. Dellums. As far as we know so far, both Ignacio De La Fuente Jr. (the Councilmember’s son) and Michael Dellums acted on their own, as adults. Unless someone has some other information that changes that, the De La Fuente-Dellums sons “Bottom Feeder” item is something that should have been left on the bottom, where it belongs. 

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John Gertz’s commentary titled “Anti-Israelism: Only in Berkeley” misses the mark on multiple levels. While the foundation of some observations are valid, his assumptions about people he doesn’t understand destroys any sense of context. 

Unknowingly, the writer contributes to the very strains of anti-Semitism, against which he rails. How? By failing to note the distinction between Judaism as a religion; and Zionism as a political ideology! Many ignorant people THINK they hate Jews, because they see the brutality of Israel’s “security excesses” as the most prominent expression of modern day Judaism. This is no more “Jewish” than the crusades were Christian. It is not a Jewish thing to expropriate land, pirate water and farming resources, close schools and cut people off from their families or jobs. Nor are those sins Israeli things, any more than the Bush Jr. vanity war in Iraq is an American thing. Bad leaders hijack their national agendas sometimes and bring shame to their country. The growing Israeli shame ultimately led to the evacuation of Gaza. And there’s still a long way to go. 

It is shocking that a “community leader” in Berkeley would dare to disparage the Judaism of many good Jews, on the basis of where they stand on Zionism. How dare he? In other parts of the country, I have experienced community leaders denigrating and marginalizing thoughtful Jews, who take exception to Israeli policy. But Ehud Barak got elected as Israeli prime minister for a while, on the basis of recognizing the need for a dialogue with the Palestinians. Barak had the courage to argue for evacuation of some occupied territories. Since Ariel Sharon administered the evacuation, does Gertz consider him to be an anti-Zionist too? 

Ultimately, Gertz assumes that the only thing driving the critiques of Israel in Berkeley is a dying strain of Trotskyite Communism. Oh, please! I haven’t heard that one since I was earning my master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan in the late 1970s. The only thing I had in common with the Spartacus Youth League was . . . well, nothing. We even disagreed on WHY Israel was doing the wrong thing, and most of the “Sparts” weren’t big on historical context. But neither is John Gertz. 

Jewish community leaders have freely engaged in character assassination against their own for generations. Over the years, I’ve been called a “self-hating Jew,” among less kind things by rabbis and community leaders. I earned this enmity by publishing many articles and broadcasting radio commentaries arguing that: 

“Israel as a country has a right to exist and defend itself. But many things about Israel policy are self-defeating and downright suicidal, namely the insistence on establishing a Jewish presence in occupied areas where we are not welcome. Jews emigrated and lived peacefully in Palestine for at least 100 years before the advent of the political Zionist movements beginning in 1896. It was only when large-scale immigration began in the early-20th Century that conflicts began. For as long as Jews emigrated at a natural pace, they blended harmoniously with their Palestinian landlords. The influx of thousands at a time upset the natural order of these relatively primitive societies. Israel has a right to exist, but not to brutalize the Palestinians.” 

I’ve given talks on Israel and Middle Eastern history in a variety of synagogues and community forums. Most Jews are shocked to learn of the many parallels of Judaism and Islam. Some Jews actually refuse to believe that Islam recognizes all the Jewish prophets as vital to their own theology; that their system of Halal was derived from our Kashruth (Kosher); and that the Palestinian traditions of family and academic achievement rival our own. Why don’t some Jews want to believe these truths? Because it is inconsistent with what they’ve been taught about why it’s OK to hate Arabs. They become faced with dissonance, confusion and inconvenience, and it does not compute. 

Finally, Gertz begs the question as to why so much of the academic community, the global journalism trades and many thoughtful people criticize Israel. Since 1967, Israel has administered an occupying force in another country. No country in the world gets a free pass for that. During the 1967 war, there was never any intent to keep these lands. Abba Eban, the Israeli president at the time, made it clear he did not want to administer to a hostile population, and intended to use those lands as bargaining chips. When Menachem Begin became prime minister in the mid 1970s, Israeli politics made a brutal turn to the right that is now slowly self-correcting. That the pendulum is swinging back can be seen with the Gaza evacuation, and the widespread reluctance of soldiers to serve in occupied areas. 

There are all kinds of Jews in this world. And in Berkeley, the full spectrum is represented among the 25,000 in this town of 105,000. You gotta admit, our large number here has a lot to do with defining Berkeley for better or worse. 

Recently, I was at a Shabbat dinner in the home of a young rabbi. When the conversation revealed that I have academic credentials in Israeli-Palestinian relations, one of the guests became suspicious and hostile, demanding to know where I stood on various issues. In deference to Shabbat, I deflected his hostile questions, until he left the room, upon realizing he had made a total fool of himself. I might have expected such an inappropriate challenge in Memphis or Atlanta, but it was disheartening to find it in Berkeley. 

It is more shocking and downright sad, to see that a former president of the local Jewish Community Center appoints himself as judge of the validity of other people’s Judaism. How dare he denigrate Holocaust survivors, who are entitled to feel exactly as they do? Gertz’s interpretation of his “three strains of anti-Zionism” illustrate a vacuous misunderstanding of history and his own people. To equate thoughtful Jewish critiques of Israel with the brazen Uncle Tomism of Clarence Thomas is an expression of gross ignorance. In so doing, Gertz marginalizes himself.  

H. Scott Prosterman holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan. He frequently publishes humor and political commentary in a variety of publications and websites. ›

Again I find myself having to respond to a commentary liberally spiced with mistruths and disinformation written by Tim Lubeck, an employee of Berkeley Honda (owned by Stephen and Tim Beinke and Steve Haworth.) Mr. Lubeck claims he is a service writer at Berkeley Honda. This is the person customers count on to tell them the truth about what services and or repairs are needed on their cars. If this commentary represents how he does his job at Berkeley Honda, I would hope he get more training quickly. Perhaps the fact that he acts like an assistant service manager and is being paid a guaranteed wage in the six-figure range when the old service writers were being paid well within five figures may explain some of the statements that Mr. Lubeck makes on behalf of his “benevolent” employers. By the way, nobody walked away from a six-figure job at Berkeley Honda; only the non-union new hires such as Mr. Lubeck were offered that kind of money.  

The employers have stated that merit was not a factor in determining pay rates because they did not have an understanding of individual abilities before, during, or after the interviews were being done. Additionally, the decision to replace highly qualified technicians with training school graduates and experienced service writers with anti-union service writers was made long before the interviews ever took place. It appears that Mr. Lubeck has no experience as a service advisor/manager prior to Berkeley Honda. Yet he was hired at a higher rate of pay that any of the experienced service writers that worked at Doten Honda or were retained by Berkeley Honda.  

Mr. Lubeck remarks about Future Ford are so far off base and separated from fact that I have to call into question his source of information or his honesty. Since the record of any proceedings in the National Labor Relations Board is public information, I would suggest that he does a little research next time. The union was never held to be in violation of any laws, labor or otherwise. The picket line was never deemed to be “illegal and without merit.” Mr. Lubeck quoted something that was the employer’s allegation as though it was a decision of the U.S. government. That decision does not exist.  

When I grew up that was called a lie. Shame on the employer for telling Mr. Lubeck such mistruths. 

Mr. Lubeck has attacked this union and the pension plan that he clearly does not understand or he is distorting for the employer’s benefit. Additionally, the employer refuses to listen to credible information about the pension. Instead his employer elects to listen to the attorney whose obvious agenda for years has been the destruction of all things union, including the pension.  

Mr. Lubeck statement that the pension plan is the only outstanding issue in the ongoing negotiations simply shows that ignorance or deceit is prevalent at Berkeley Honda. The union made a proposal in regards to the pension plan that insures that this new employer will not suffer any un-funded withdrawal liabilities. The employer rejected it and persists in instructing Mr. Lubeck to misinform the readers of the Daily Planet that the un-funded withdrawal liability potential is the only issue outstanding.  

When I grew up that was called deceit. Am I accusing the employer of deceit? 

Yes! The employer cynically displays the last editorial from Mr. Lubeck on the street side windows for the public to read despite the fact the employer knows that it is filled with misinformation and outright dishonest statements. The letter is displayed just under the “strike sale” sign that they put up immediately after the strike started.  

Let’s quit beating around the bush on the issue of Berkeley Honda. Stephen Beinke, through his son Tim Beinke, Steve Haworth and their attorney are engaged in pure and simple class warfare. These extremely rich people have decided to come into Berkeley, wrap themselves up in the potential-for-tax-revenue flag, and pull the eminent domain scam, if needed, to “redevelop” as much of Berkeley as they can for tremendous profits.  

Well some middle class working people working for Doten Honda didn’t like the obvious discrimination and disregard for working people and the public that these folks displayed when they took over Doten Honda. The employer is deliberately delaying negotiations to prolong the strike and “burn” the strikers down. The employer thinks this picket will go away when everyone has gotten a job somewhere else to make ends meet during this dispute. These workers don’t have the mega-dollars that the Beinke’s have to survive the pain of a strike. This “war” is mean-spirited and they are simply using their wealth as a weapon.  

This class warfare and the obvious disregard for the quality of work on the customer’s vehicles and the persistent cynical disregard for the truth and the intelligence of the people in this area should indicate to even the most casual observer that the agenda is not one that deserves anything better that the “RAT.” Indeed it deserves strong action by the citizens of Berkeley and the surrounding areas.  

Many citizens of Berkeley are currently helping with our strike and are seeing the agenda of this employer and are not pleased. I ask the people of the Berkeley area who do not subscribe to the agenda of class warfare and deceit to come to the picket line and spend a couple of hours helping us peacefully convince these wealthy people that the American working person doesn’t condone this insult. 

Michael S. Cook is a proud member of and business representative for East Bay Automotive Local 1546. 

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Amichai (Ami) Kronfeld’s death on Sept. 1 deeply saddened the extensive group of his family, friends, and colleagues here and abroad. It represents a major loss to the activist peace community. 

Ami was a very humane and effective worker for a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis, one of those who had been through a personal, philosophical, and political struggle with a very difficult past, with the horror and disillusionment he experienced as a young Israeli soldier in three wars (1967, the war of attrition with Egypt, and 1973).  

For the past 30 years he worked tirelessly for peace in the Mideast, never losing hope, constantly writing, translating, and publicizing important information about the situation on the ground. Ami greeted pessimists with a brilliant wry skepticism that only he could summon: “Even the Holocaust came to an end,” he would comment, an observation that kept us focused on continued political activity. 

His years with the Israeli army left him with absolutely no tolerance for war and military power. His devastating experience in three wars actually transformed him into an outspoken critic of Israel’s militarization of society and a fervent opponent of its brutal occupation and settlement of Palestinian lands.  

His unstinting political activism reflected his passionate concern: as a founder and organizer of peace groups in Ithaca, N.Y., in the early 1980s; co-founder of American Friends of Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit, an Israeli organization formed by those who refused to participate in Israel’s war against the Palestinians); and other groups, including New Profile, an Israeli feminist anti-militaristic organization which, according to Ami, was “the first to focus on militarism and the cult of power as major threats to Israel’s moral and political survival” and Courage to Refuse, soldiers (Refusniks) no longer willing to carry out government policies in the occupied territories. 

He was also a co-editor of the newsletter of Jewish Voice for Peace; and as one of the four who initiated Jews Against the Occupation, a Bay Area based campaign that drew several thousand signers nationwide to an advertisement in the New York Times. His e-mail messages and Internet columns during the Intifada constantly reminded us of the devastating cost of the occupation for both Palestinians and Israelis. 

Speaking with his usual candor at a fundraiser in 2001 for Yesh Gvul and New Profile, Ami tried to explain his difficult transformation from military warrior into peace activist. He refused a direct order to execute an Egyptian prisoner of war in 1967, but, as he said, “saw dozens of captured Egyptian soldiers summarily executed, Palestinian women and children shot at just because they were trying to return to their homes in the West bank, young Israeli soldiers in Gaza harass and humiliate Palestinian men old enough to be their grandfathers.” 

Although he believed the 1973 war was entirely unnecessary, he said, “I did what I was told and more or less followed the path I was expected to follow.” For years he struggled to understand why “I could not find it within myself to stand up and say hell no, I won’t go.”  

“Given the uniformity of Israeli culture at the time,” he continued, “and my need to be a part of it, there was simply no way for me (and people like me) to resist the overwhelming pressure to conform.” His recognition of the terrible consequences that resulted from the confluence of uniformity, conformity, and obedience underscored his passionate and very vocal support of soldiers who refused to participate in Israel’s brutal occupation.  

Ami saw in Yesh Gvul “the very first time in the history of Israel that soldiers dared question, collectively, the right of the government to use force whenever and wherever it felt like it. Yesh Gvul provides the absolutely crucial moral and social support for soldiers of conscience who, unlike me, dared to challenge the overwhelmingly powerful military establishment.” 

In 2003, in an essay entitled “The Shoe is on the Other Foot,” Ami, a philosopher by training, provided a philosophical basis for his position: that one must refuse to recognize and accept the intolerable, even criminal, authority and power of those who rule. The growing numbers of soldiers of Courage to Refuse brought another wonderful moment of Ami’s needed optimism: “What does matter,” he wrote in that essay, “is the fact (and it is a fact, whether one likes it or not) that an ever expanding number of soldiers no longer unconditionally recognize the power of the Israeli army to tell them what to do in the Occupied Territories. If this trend continues, the government would have to change its policies, because, as Brecht would have put it, the government cannot fire its subjects and elect new ones to rule over.”  

“It is important that the soldiers of Courage to Refuse understand how much power they wield,” he continued. “Not individually—as individuals each of them is powerless—but as a group.”  

So Ami had mapped the terrain from his experience as a young soldier to the growing refusal to allow the government to take soldiers’ obedience for granted. Ami’s life and thinking delivers a powerful political and moral message that needs always to be remembered.  

Amichai was born 1947 in Hadera, one of the first agricultural towns established in Israel and named for his uncle Amichai Honig, the first Jewish pilot from Palestine who died fighting with the British RAF in World War II. His mother’s family had lived seven generations in Palestine and Israel; his father’s family were founders of Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, part of the heroic saga of the building of Israel that Ami eventually viewed critically, partly because he had no tolerance for nationalistic jingoism, but also because he came to know the price the Palestinians paid for its fulfillment.  

In his teens Ami moved to the nearby Kibbutz Gam Shmuel, where the leftist ideology of the day nourished his concern for egalitarianism, candor, and justice. He flourished as an accomplished athlete, musician, modern dancer, and writer, and developed a passionate commitment to critical thinking and political engagement. But his youth was interrupted in 1967 when he was drafted into the military. 

Ami met Chana at Tel Aviv University where she was his teacher, and during their marriage of more than three decades, they shared a relationship in which each was both teacher and student. Their daughter Maya, now almost 20 years old, shares her parents’ critical, musical, philosophical, and literary interests.  

Chana and Ami arrived in Berkeley in 1975, where he earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy and she in Comparative Literature. He taught at Cornell University where he earned a Masters degree in Computer Science, concentrating on artificial intelligence. His book, Reference and Computation: An Essay in Applied Philosophy of Language, published by Cambridge University Press, focuses on these two fields of interest.  

After working for several years in the computer industry, he recognized that he could no longer be a part of the global corporate world and returned to Berkeley. He taught philosophy at UC, Berkeley and at Santa Rosa Junior College, and also returned to his life long passion, jazz, drumming with his band, “The Lincoln Street Brigade.”  

Music and philosophy finally converged in the last project on which he was working: the congruence of the mathematical structure of West African rhythm and jazz with the harmonic structure of classical music. This work was interrupted by his death after a very difficult two-year battle with brain cancer. 

Donations in Ami’s memory may be made to Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org). 

“In our town, we like to know the facts. About everybody.” 

So Barbara Oliver, as the Stage Manager, intones a wry commonplace, both pragmatic and self-aware, a scrap of the everyday that seems to define Our Town (now at the Berkeley Repertory Theater) as both parochial and worldly, spiritual in the way of a cosmology of changing seasons and human lives—and disappearing in the wake of progress. 

Berkeley High graduate Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece and Pulitzer Prize winner—“a little play with all the big subjects in it,” as Wilder wrote to Gertrude Stein—is a late entry (1938) in what began as an offbeat American genre, heralded by the “grotesques” of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and the poem cycle of small town epitaphs of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, published during the First World War. Critical, even mocking of American provincialism, these earlier “small town anatomies” were underpinned by the bittersweet awareness of the passing away of that once-defining stratum of American life. 

Nostalgia triumphed over critique, sensationalism over scandal, and “the dark underbelly of a small town” became a cliche, though notable additions to the canon have persisted, including Orson Welles’ film of The Magnificent Ambersons, some of John O’Hara’s and Edward Dahlberg’s prose, and poet Carl Rakosi’s “Americana” cycle.  

Wilder’s play is like a summing up, a quiet but insistent voice talking to the future about what can reach it only as an aroma, a rumor. In spite of the steady erosion of the integrity of ordinary life Wilder records, he manages a startling flash photo, an afterimage of the subliminal effect of that life, only realizable with its loss. As one of his characters says from beyond the grave, looking back is painful, seeing the beauty that nobody living notices. 

Theatrically, this was managed through a deliberate scarcity of means, a “poor theater”—no sets; the sense, almost, of a run-through of a village pageant introduced by the Stage Manager, who takes on a few parts himself, mingling with the townspeople-performers. 

Jonathan Moscone has combined his talents as director with the conceptions of designers Neil Patel (set), Lydia Tanji (costumes), Scott Zielinski (lights) and Mark Bennett (sound and music) and an accomplished cast to bring the Rep’s audience a lyrical, somewhat evocative interpretation of Wilder’s immortalization of late New England Puritanism. 

The collaborative effort strives to catch the fleeting sense of a first awareness of things—a first glimpse that’s also a memory.  

The three acts cover the microcosmic panorama of the town and its citizens, with young love beginning to blossom, then the humorous rites of the plunge into marriage, followed quickly by the stark deadpan realities of mortality.  

The Rep’s production peaks with the beautiful night scenes of moonlight— “terrible” moonlight, as lovestruck Emily Webb (Emma Roberts) calls its seduction—and the smell of heliotrope, as the whole town looks out at the moon. Lifelong neighbors Emily and George Gibbs (Bill Heck) are falling in love—in counterpoint to the careening drunken choirmaster (Ken Ruta) and his misanthropy, half tolerated, half a subject for gossip.  

The second act begins with a flash and a thunderclap, and the dry commentary of the Stage Manager: “ ... three years gone by ... here and there babies who hadn’t even been born talking regular sentences ... all that can happen in a thousand days ...” George and Emily are getting married; they recall how they first knew just what they meant to each other. Heck and Roberts are charming as the young lovers, performing well-choreographed physical comedy as a kind of ongoing mating dance. But their attractiveness becomes brittle as the play changes phase, cutting through the director’s conception. 

The deliberate anachronism of the original isn’t matched by inadvertent anachronistic touches in this production; spare simplicity and a penchant for showing and naming get overtaken by over-embellishment and a kind of agitated vivacity, which becomes cloying in the face of the awful serenity of the sublime.  

There’s a problem, too, with authenticity. Much of the behavior, as one spectator put it, is more early 21st century looking back to the films of the 40s and early 50s than the late 30s looking back to the very early 20th century. 

Ken Ruta’s hapless choirmaster—whose tombstone has no verses for epitaph, “just some notes of music”—strikes the right chord, but somehow the character lineaments of most of the rest of this talented cast, the children excepted, don’t seem to pass through the shadow, or the quiet subtleties of Wilder’s plainspoken vision, without getting spoiled a little. 

“Whenever you get near the human race, there are layers and layers of nonsense,” one character says. 

But a nonsense that in retrospect shines with humanity as well as self-disgust, and evaporates in the light. Wilder’s play, like the time capsule the citizens put in a cornerstone, is still fresh. It stands up. The Rep’s charming evocation of a modern classic does a dance around its original. 

The Berkeley Rep presents Our Town through Oct. 23 at the Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St. For more information, call 647-2900 or see www.berkeleyrep.org. 

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Our Town author Thornton Wilder, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, best remembered for his stage portraits of small town American family life, went to Emerson Grammar School in Berkeley’s Elmwood District, and was an alumnus of Berkeley High School class of 1915. 

Second son of a newspaper editor, Wilder was born in 1897 in Madison, Wis., that “heartland” whence much of the literature about small town Americana would originate, especially from the Chicago School of the second and third decades of the 20th century. 

But Wilder’s family didn’t stay put. His father, Amos Wilder, was appointed U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong in 1906. His family joined him for six months, then returned to the United States until 1911. The family briefly reunited accompanying Amos Wilder to his new post in Shanghai, and then returning to settle in Berkeley. 

After a lonely boarding school stint in Ojai, Thornton Wilder enrolled at Berkeley High for his junior and senior years, living at home with his sisters and his mother, Isabella Niven Wilder, who attended lectures at UC, joined foreign-language discussion groups and sewed costumes for her children’s walk-on parts in Greek Theatre productions. 

Thornton, who’d begun writing stories and plays in Ojai, began to frequent the Doe Library on the UC campus to read European Expressionist drama and newspaper accounts of the great German director Max Reinhardt. 

After graduating from Berkeley High, Wilder enrolled at Oberlin College, studying classics, then transferred to Yale, where his first full-length play appeared in the Yale Literary Magazine in 1920, though not to be staged until 1926. 

After a stateside stint in the artillery corps during World War I, Wilder studied archaeology at the American Academy in Rome, then earned a master’s degree in French Literature at Princeton in 1926 before embarking on a teaching career. 

Even after the success of his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which earned him his first Pulitzer Prize in 1927, Wilder continued to think of himself as a teacher, and became friendly with Gertrude Stein when both were lecturers in literature at the University of Chicago. 

Wilder continued writing and successfully publishing until his death in 1975. Among his best-known works are The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), which earned Wilder his third Pulitzer; the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943, set in Santa Rosa); and The Matchmaker (1954), which was adapted into the musical Hello Dolly! in 1964. 

Though set in fictional Grover’s Corner in New Hampshire, a few slight traces of Wilder’s own family life may occasionally be detected in Our Town. The protagonist’s father is the town’s newspaper editor (Mr. Webb, played at the Rep by Paul Vincent O’Connor), who is somewhat ineffectually scornful of his wife’s constant “motivating” of their children, and a lecture on local prehistory and fossils by “Professor Willis from our state university,” (Jarion Monroe for the Rep). 

The younger characters of Our Town play a notable part in the script, and are played well by the junior members of the Rep’s cast, including Trevor Cheitlin, Jacob Cohen, Alex Kaplan, Gideon Lazarus, Sarag Smithton and Emily Trumble. 

Three are from Berkeley: Trevor Cheitlin, a seventh grader at Prospect Sierra and acting student at Berkeley Rep’s school and ACT, is in his first professional stage production, splitting a couple of parts with Gideon Lazarus, including a newsboy cynical about matrimony; Gideon, has attended two Rep Summer Intensives and plays double bass at The Crowden School, where he’s a sixth-grader; and Emily Trumble, playing little sister to George Gibbs, a seventh grader at King Middle School and veteran of the Willows Theatre in Concord and CalShakes in Orinda, as well as many other shows around Contra Costa, and as a spelling bee contestant in the new film Bee Season. 

,

I have to say at the outset that I’m an old friend of Jerry Carlin, indeed, a fellow realist and sometime “plein air” artist. Such closeness and affinity make it difficult to lash-out at the odd picture or period that I don’t really like, as I probably would faced with half a cow suspended in formaldehyde in a plate-glass tank! Fortunately I love and admire most of Jerry’s work, so am urging readers to go see some of it for themselves, especially in such an enjoyable setting. 

For apart from the daunting business of parking, this modest show livens up two adjacent campus-side destinations, quite rewarding in themselves; the Musical Offering Café and CD store, and the fabulous University Press Books next door. Both are located on Bancroft Way just below Telegraph Avenue. 

Three distinct bodies of work are distributed between the two settings—small realistic paintings of Tilden Park and an exploration of a North Berkeley neighborhood in the bookstore, and Jerry’s much larger Imaginary Landscapes in the café. Fortunately three out of 11 of these big semi-abstract works are hung in the back room of the bookstore, close to some little Tilden pictures, enabling us to enjoy—or ponder—the huge leap in size and character from familiar Carlin realism to more flamboyant self-expression. 

But first the small works. These range from 11”x14” to 16”x20”, and in the case of the Tilden series, are, rather disarmingly, unframed. Completed on the spot, they have delightful freshness. The paint has been applied in broad vigorous strokes lush enough to make a watercolor-on-paper artist like me green with envy. And green they unashamedly are, especially the foreground meadow featured on almost every one. My own favorites are those where this grassy foreground has been tamed by, say, a left-to-right slope, and dark shadows cast by trees. “Tilden #18” is one I particularly like, with its inky blue-black pines and background hillside of brown eucalypts under a foggy sky. “Tilden # 16” and “Brazilian Room” are other well-integrated compositions. 

Apart from their similarly small size—typically 16”x16”—the Berkeley suburban views on the staircase wall near the store entrance are profoundly different from the fresher more spontaneous Tilden pictures. With the exception of “Edie’s Ice Cream Parlor” of 1976, the six street scenes, all painted in 1977, amount to a love affair with four little hillside avenues just below upper Spruce Street; Michigan, Florida, Maryland and Kentucky. Separated by as much as fifteen years from his more recent Tilden series, the paint has a drier, flatter quality, indicating perhaps you can’t be quite as spontaneous when coping with jigsaw-puzzle compositions of front gardens, street trees, curving avenues, stucco houses and cars. Kept a bit somber to calm the busy compositions, the colors here are admirable. Notice for instance the dark orange vehicle in “Maryland Street.” 

Carlin has a well-deserved reputation as a “plein air” painter, a term that deserves explanation. Meaning “painting in the open air” as opposed to painting in a studio, this method of working became popular only as romantic landscapes replaced heroic figure compositions, often huge, that required controlled conditions—and collaborations—of a workshop. In the mid-19th century, Camille Corot, among others, pioneered direct outdoor observation, at least by sketches, but by the time of the Impressionists and Monet in particular, it had become common to complete whole paintings “in situ.” 

Strict “plein air” painting however, is not Jerry’s only passion, which brings us to the big, radically different canvases he calls Imaginary Landscapes. Patently executed in a studio, these large invented compositions are a surprise in more ways than one. Before looking at the information sheets, available at both counters, I had assumed that such joyful uninhibited pictures must be very recent work, as if Jerry had “paid his dues” and ascended into final freedom, like late Chagall. But not so, for according to the listed dates, they were painted during and slightly after the North Berkeley urban landscapes, and a little before their natural opposites, the Tilden miniatures. It’s as though John Constable interrupted his gentle Suffolk scenes to dash off “Rain, Steam and Speed” before returning to his Salisbury Cathedral series. Perhaps they reveal a yearning for looseness, inventiveness and joyous color—bold reds, frothy pinks, and strident whites, oranges, and pale greens—that the artist had denied himself during his small streetscapes period of 1977. 

For what it’s worth, I like most the ones that have recognizable form, like “Farm,” “Cruise Ship,” or “Pink Mountain,” and least the scenes with figures like “City,” though individual preferences become highly subjective when all these pictures demonstrate equal technical skill. It’s your call, and even if they are not your cup of tea—or cappuccino—it’s very pleasant siting in this unpretentious space, enjoying the good food, and listening to the ever-changing classical music. 

Missing from this show, and certainly missed by me, are paintings from Jerry’s fairly recent work around Tomales Bay. Larger in some cases that the small works exhibited here, these somber-but-poetic portraits of that strange “seismic” coast, structured an d enlivened by ancient pilings and abandoned walkways are memorable, beautifully resolved paintings. 

Not many artist have started out in a profession as respectable and prestigious as the law. Wassily Kandinsky is perhaps the most celebrated. The English painter John Piper is another, as so also is Jerry Carlin. Those of us who value beauty at least as much as justice can rejoice that he as been able to devote the last 34 years to quite a special gift.  

Jerome Carlin paintings are on exhibit at the Musical Offering Cafe and University Press Books through October. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays. 2430 Bancroft Way. For more information, call 849-0211.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 23 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Price” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., through Oct. 9, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $38. 843-4822.  

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “You Can’t Take it With You” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Pomona Ave. at Moeser Lane, El Cerrito, through Oct. 22. 524-9132.  

DMCF Productions “Florence” by Alice Childress and “The Pot Mker” by Marita Bonner, Thurs.-Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Center, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$25. 633-6360. 

Impact Theater “Nicky Goes Goth” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, through Oct. 1. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468.  

Lunatique Fantastique “Executive Order 9066” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at 2120 Allston Way. Through Oc. 21. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750.  

Shotgun Players, “Owners” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sun. through Oct. 16 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Reservations suggested. 841-6500.  

Wilde Irish Productions “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” Thurs. -Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Oct. 2. Tickets are $18-$22. 644-9940. www.wildeirish.org 

FILM 

Films from Along the Silk Road: “The Roof of the World” at 5 p.m. “Angel on the Right” at 7:p.m. and “Osama” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Kozol describes “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1780 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $8-$10. 845-7852.  

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

Ariel Levy examines “Female Chauvanist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Los Cenzontles in concert, and the documentary “Pasajero: A Journey of Time and Memory” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $15. 925-798-1300.  

Oakland Opera “La Belle et la Bete,” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 2 at the Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway at 2nd. Tickets are $18-$32. 763-1146.  

Mark Morris Dance Group at at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$58. 642-9988.  

Sarah Cahill, solo piano recital at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 701-1787. 

Dick Hindman Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373.  

Samora & Elena Pinderhughes, nine and 13 year old jazz musicians, at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10, $5 for children 12 and under. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Stephanie Bruce & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Groundation at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Pam & Jeri Show at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Due West, progressive California bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Stephanie Rearick, Good for Cows, John Lindenbaum and Liam Carey at 7 p.m. at Mama Buzz Cafe, 2318 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $6.  

Julie Hardy Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

The Morning Benders, The Paranoids, The Family Arsenal at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

The Phenomenauts, The Sting Ray, The Knights of the New Crusade at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Kofy Brown at 10 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Slydini, funk-jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dave Weckl Band at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

Institute of Mosaic Art Faculty Exhibition Reception at 6 p.m. at 3001 Chapman St., Oakland. 437-9899. www.instituteofmosaicart.com 

THEATER 

“The Art of Aging Festival” at 7 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $20. Workshops on Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sponsored by The Center for Creative Aging West and Stagebridge Senior Theater Co. 222-3988.  

FILM 

Farewell: A Tribute to Elem Kilmov and Larissa Shepitko at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at the North Fork of Strawberry Creek, Valley Life Sciences Building lawn, UC Campus. www.poetryflash.org 

“Take Back the Power: Bread Roses and Revolution” in conjunction with UC Theater’s production of “The Cradle will Rock” at 4 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. http://theater.berkeley.edu 

Huston Smith reflects on “The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10. 845-7852.  

Rhythm & Muse with poet Zara Raab at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Free. 527-9753. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concerts presents Vicki Trimbach, pianist and composer at 8 p.m. at 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com  

Katrina Benefit Show with the Scott Law Band at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Downlow. Cost is $10. 548-1159. 

Benefit Concert for the Friends Committee on Legislation with folksongs by local musicians at 7 p.m. at Friends Meeting House, 2151 Vine St. Donation $20-$25, no one turned away. 848-7357. 

Mark Morris Dance Group at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$58. 642-9988.  

The Fourtet Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Megan Slankard, The Bittersweets, Keith Varon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Frankye Kelly & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Eric Bogle, Australian singer-sonwriter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Joe Vasconcellos from Chile at 9 p.m. at at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$25. 849-2568.  

Hali Hammer and Rany Berge Family Concert at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7 per family. 558-0881. 

Tom Peron/Bud Spangler Interplay Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Fog with Brian Maxwell, Peter Barshay and others at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Verbal Abuse, Death Toll, Useless Wood Toys, One in the Chamber at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

André Similius Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 25 

CHILDREN  

Space Station Mars, a book party with children’s author Daniel San Souci at 2 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Free with general admission. 336-7373. www.chabotspace.org 

FILM 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “Nagasaki Stories” at 2 and 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Sacred Sites” films about the struggle to protect sacred sites at 3 p.m. at Fantasy Recording Studios, 10 and Parker Sts. Donation $10. 525-1304. www.sacred-sites.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Peter Campion and Laton Carter at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

“Hurricane Dramathon” Six hours of staged readings of plays set in New Orleans, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. by the Teen Council at the Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Donations welcome, benefits victims of Hurricane Katrina. 647-2972. 

“From Africa to America: A Voicing Exploration” with Jacqui Hairston on black musical styles at 2 p.m. at Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft and College. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

“Modern Girls (Unless They’re French) Don’t Wear Kimono” a lecture by Lisa Dalby, the only American to have worked as a geisha, at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Theater. 642-2809. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Collegium “Music from the Eton Choir Book” at 3 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$18. 459-2341. pacificcollegium.org 

James Tinsley, organist and pianist, “Five Centuries of Music” at 4 p.m. at All Souls Parish, 2220 Cedar St. Donation $15, $10 students. Benefits Open Door Dinner and Youth Arts Studio. 848-1755.  

Benefit Concert for the Friends Committee on Legislation with Jesse Palidofsky at 7 p.m. at Friends Meeting House, 2151 Vine St. Donation $20-$25, no one turned away. 848-7357. 

Rudolf Buchbinder, piano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42. 642-9988.  

Robert Temple and His Soulfolk Ensemble CD release of “What Would You Do?” at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Art Lande/Mark Miller Duo at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Ronnie Gilbert & Adrienne Torf at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Ryan Burke and Valerie Troutt at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Geezerpalooza at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054.  

Shotgun Ragtime Band at 10 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Jeannie & Chuck’s Country Round-Up at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 26 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Arlene Blum, mountain climber describes “Breaking Trail: My Path to High Places” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

“Science and the Soul: J. Robert Oppenheimer and ‘Doctor Atomic’” Peter Sellars and John Adams about the making and meaning of their opera at 8 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 642-9988. 

Poetry Express Theme Night: “Beginnings and Endings” at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Luciana Souza & Romero Lubambo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 27 

FILM 

Madcat Presents: “The Time We Killed” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling with Marjorie Mann, Maiyah Hirano, Jessica Ferris and Sandra Niman at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

Ken Goffman looks at “Counterculture Through the Ages” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Dr. Jeff and Dr. X at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Coro d’Amici, a capella, at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamberperform.org 

Wild Catahoulas at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffmaan with Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Bohola, Irish-American folk trio, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Four Corners of the Round Table, with Adam Caroll, Beaver Nelson, Jud Neson and Steve Poltz at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

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

Luciana Souza & Romero Lubambo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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

Eric Swinderman, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 

FILM 

Tropical Punch: The Video Works of Tony Labat at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Cine Documental: “Intermissions” on the 2002 Brazilian presidential elections, at 7 p.m. at the CLAS Conference Room, 2334 Bowditch St.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jim Lynch introduces his novel “The Highest Tide” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

William Sloane Coffin introduces “Letters to a Young Doubter” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation of $10 suggested. Sponsored by 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.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Garrett McLean, violin, Gabriel Trop, cello, and Inning Chen, piano at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Music for the Spirit with guest organist, John Walko at noon at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. www.firstchurchoakland.org 

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

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

Balkan Folk Dance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Lessons at 7 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Universal, salsa, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Loosewig Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dervish, traditional Irish music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mel Matin All Star Band with vocalist Jamie Davis at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $7-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

Closing Ritual for “Wholly Grace” Works by Susan Duhan Felix at noon at the Bade Museum, 1798 Scenic Ave. 841-1781. 

FILM 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “Felice... 

Felice...” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“L.P. Latimer: California Watercolor Painter” with Alfred C. Harrison, Jr. at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $8-$12. Part of the Arts and Crafts Lecture Series. 843-8982. 

“Why I Commissioned ‘Dr. Atomic’” with Pamela Rosenberg, General Director, SF Opera at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Central Reading Room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

“On Nuclear Time” A discussion of the marker to be placed over a New Mexico nuclear waste dump to warn future generations, with Julia Bryan-Wilson of the Rhode Island School of Design at 5 p.m. in Room 160, Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 6 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Paul Anderson introduces “Hunger’s Brides: A Novel of the Baroque” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Jacquelynne Baas describes “Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series with Joan Gatten and Eliza Sheffler at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Albany Music in the Park with The Shots, Irish, bluegrass, Cajun music at 6:30 p.m. at Albany’s Memorial Park. 524-9283. www.albanyca.org 

Oakland Opera “La Belle et la Bete,” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 2 at the Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway at 2nd. Tickets are $18-$32. 763-1146.  

Mark Morris Dance Group at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$58. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

The Dave Bromberg Quartet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. 

LiveAndUnplugged Open Mic, acoustic music by local artists, at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 703-9350.  

Terry Rodriguez Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Phillip Rodriguez, guitar, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Michael Fracasso, Ana Egge at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Isaac Peña at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Carlos Oliveira Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Earl Klugh, contemporary jazz guitarist, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is 20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector: Smartbeat Sound- 

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

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FRIDAY, SEPT. 23 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

Berkeley High School Class of ‘60 Reunion Tour of BHS at 4 p.m. followed by get-together at Beckett’s. RSVP to Suzanne Fowle Horning at 505-994-2660 or Susan Goodwin Chase at 526-4284. 

Watershed Nursery’s Fall Native Plant Sale from 3 to 7 p.m. and Sat. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 155 Tamalpais Rd. www.TheWatershedNursery.Com 

“The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” with author Jonathan Kozol, at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1780 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $8-$10. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Activism Series with Ann Fagan Ginger and Aimee Allison at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

Californian Indian Day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft and College. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Sayre Van Young, author of “London’s War.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

Lunar Lounge Express Music, movie shorts and a Sonic Vision planetarium show at 8 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 336-7373. www.chabotspace.org 

Spirit Walking Aqua Chi A gentle water exercise class at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $3.50 per session. 526-0312. 

Jewish Cooking with Joan Nathan at 11:30 a.m. in a private home. For information call 839-2900, ext. 203. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays 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. 548-6310. 

Kol Hadash Humanistic Shabbat with Rabbi Jay Heyman, music led by Bon Singer, at 7:30 p.m. at Albany Community Center 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. Info@kolhadash.org 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 24 

Berkeley High School Class of ‘60 Reunion Picnic at noon at Cordornices Park, Euclid Ave. Reception and Buffet Dinner at 6:30 p.m. at Golden Gate Fields Clubhouse. RSVP to Suzanne Fowle Horning at 505-994-2660 or Susan Goodwin Chase at 526-4284. 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Disaster First Aid from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St., between 8th and 9th. To sign up call 981-5605. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at the North Fork of Strawberry Creek, Valley Life Sciences Building lawn, UC Campus. www.poetryflash.org 

“Equal Day and Equal Night All Around the World” Explore past and present cultural celebrations from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nture Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Going Native” Symposium on California native plants, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., field trip on Sun. Cost is $125, plus $45 for the field trip. Sponsored by the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. To register call 527-9802. www.nativeplants.org 

Workshop on the Individual Education Program for parents of children with special needs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. To register call the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, 644-2555. 

“A Union Man: The Life and Work of Julius Margolin” a film by George Mann at 8 p.m., followed by discussion and music, at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5-$10. 841-4824. 

Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club Open House from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free instruction and snacks will be available. All are welcome. 2270 Acton St. at BAncroft. 841-2174. 

Memorial for Marylin Davis Glover at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Yacht Club, 1 Seawall Drive. 

Eldercare 101 Learn about care options for seniors, how to pay for it, and communication on difficult topics at 9:30 a.m. at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 6013 Lawton Ave., Oakland. Cost is $39, registration required. 415-661-3271. eldercoach@sbcglobal.net 

Child Health and Safety Fair with games and activities, free immunizations and safety information, for families with children ages 1-12, from 1:30 to 5 p.m. at Highland Hospital, 1411 E. 31st St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Alameda County Medical Center. 437-4644. 

Kids’ Night Out Carnival Benefit for Berkwood Hedge School, with piñatas, slide shows, basketball and art projects. From 5 to 10 pm. at Berkewood Hedge in downtown Berkeley. Tickets are $40, siblings $25. 540-6025. 

Asthma Walk at Lake Merritt at 9 a.m. starting across the street from the Rotary Nature Center, 600 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the American Lung Association of the East Bay. 800-586-4872.  

International Maritime Center Shoreline Stroll Walkathon Registration on-site begins at 8 a.m., walk begins at 9 a.m. The $75 entry fee will be waived for participants who obtain pledges for donations on a per-mile basis that total $75 or more. Korean-style barbecue lunch at 11:30 a.m. 839-2226. www.sfbayfarer.org 

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. 

ActivSpace Art and Crafts Sidewalk Fair Sat. and Sun. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2703 7th St. 

School of the Madeleine Fall Festival from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1225 Milvia St. Live entertainment, children’s games, vendors, farmers market and more. 526-4744. 

“Deer Resistant Plants” with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Pacific Coast League Players’ Reunion at 11 a.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Meet the players and see the exhibition “Baseball As America.” 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Free Quit Smoking Class for pregnant and parenting women from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Alta Bates, first floor auditorium, 2450 Ashby Ave. Childcare provided. Free but registration requested. 981-5330. quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Bilingual and Multicultural Program Orientation for Hispanic/Latino children ages 2-10 at 10 a.m. at Centro VIDA, 1000 Camelia St. For more information call 525-1463. 

Free Help with Computers at the El Cerrito Library. Workshops held on Sat. a.m. at 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Registration required. 526-7512.  

SUNDAY, SEPT. 25 

How Berkeley Can You Be? Parade at 11 a.m. at University Ave. at Sacramento. Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park. www.howberkeleycanyoube.com 

People’s Park Free Box Rebuilding using the natural building cob, from 1 to 6 p.m. at People’s Park. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Re-Opening of the Berkeley Public Library Sunday Hours Celebration at 1 p.m. with a presentation of a check from friends of the Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6115. 

Out and About in Rockridge Street Fair from noon to 5 p.m. on College Ave. between Alcatraz and Broadway. Music, food and activities for children. Free trolleys up and down College Ave. www.rockridgedistrict.com 

Breakfast with the Beasts Bring a donation of fresh produce to share with the animals and learn how the animals are cared for. From 8 to 10 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

“Sacred Sites” films about the struggle to protect sacred sites at 3 p.m. at Fantasy Recording Studios, 10 and Parker Sts. Donation $10. 525-1304. www.sacred-sites.org 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Hurricane Relief Fundraising Dinner and Auction from 5 to 8 p.m. at Hs Lordships Restaurant, 199 Seawall Drive in the Berkeley Marina. $100 minimum donation per person to the charity of your choice: Berkeley Rotary Endowment - Hurricane Katrina Fund, Relief International, or The American Red Cross. 100% of your donation will go to charity. All event costs have been donated. Please RSVP to 848-0264. 

Fall Plant Sale at the UC Botanical Garden from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 

Meet the Guinea Pigs and learn about basic small animal care at 2 p.m. at Rabbitears, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

“Hollywood Hats” the film at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0237. 

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 

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 

“Probing the Interface Between Science and Religion” with David Lingenfelter at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 26 

“Getting Adequate Rest As We Age” at 6 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

Critical Viewing An ongoing group to examine the art/craft(iness) of short films and television productions and its effects on our daily lives, at 1 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Free. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

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

TUESDAY, SEPT. 27 

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. to discover the Miller/Knox Shoreline. For information and to register call 525-2233.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. No younger siblings please. We will learn about birds and bird migration. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

The Berkeley High School Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. in the school library. bhs.berkeleypta.org/ssc 

“Issues in Dying: Learning from Terry Schaivo” An evening with Anne Wall, Ryan Lesh and Kathleen Kelly at 7:30 p.m. in the Tuscan Common Room, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, 2451 Ridge Rd. To register call 204-0720. www.cdsp.edu 

Mountain Biking Basics for Women at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Why We Need Black Power” with Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, at 6 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations accepted. 625-1106. 

Workshop on the Individual Education Program for parents of children with special needs at St. Paul’s AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. Free, but registration required. To register call the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, 644-2555. 

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 PC Users Group Problem solving and beginners meeting to answer, in simple English, users questions about Windows computers. At 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. corner of Eunice. All welcome, no charge. 527-2177.  

Family Story Time at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free, all ages welcome. 524-3043. 

Brainstormer Weekly Pub Quiz every Tuesday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Pyramid Alehouse Brewery, 901 Gilman St. 528-9880. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

“Estate Planning” at 4 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

St. John’s Prime Timers Annual Picnic at 10:30 a.m. at Lake Temescal. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 

WriterCoach Connection Training Sessions Wed. Sept. 28 and Oct. 5 at 6:30 p.m. Help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills; become a mentor to students at Berkeley High, Willard, King or Longfellow Middle Schools. Commit to 1-2 hours per week during the school day. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Green Business Tour of the Teleosis Institute to learn about ecologically sustainable medicine at 7 p.m. at 1521B 5th St. 558-7285. www.teleosis.org 

Berkeley Gray Panthers celebrates the 100th Birthday of Maggie Kuhn at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

An Evening for Educators at the Magnes at 6:30 p.m. Reservations required. 549-6950 ext. 333.  

Writers of the Storm: “Fake News and Public Decency in the Age of Terror” a writers panel moderated by Clinton Fein of the First Amendment Project, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$15. 848-0237. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “The Long Emergency” by James Kuntsler at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito Plaza. 433-2911. 

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 and a warm hat. 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 

Prose Writer’s Workshop An ongoing group made up of friendly writers who are serious about our craft. All levels welcome. At 7 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

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. 

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. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 

“Impacts of the Proposed Rezoning of Ashby and Gilman” Community Workshop on the potential displacement of industries, artisans, and artists; and impacts on traffic, jobs; neighborhood character and quality of life, at 7 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St. 841-7283, ext. 304. 

WAGES: Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security celebrates ten years of work with women’s cooperatives, at 5:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1255 First Ave., Oakland. Donations welcome. RSVP to 532-5465. 

Funkytown Trunk Show by East Bay fashion designers at 6 p.m. at 510 17th St., Oakland. Salvation Army trucks will be on site to accept clothing for Katrina victims. Tickets are $10. 879-3724. www.at17th.com 

Protest Rally at Berkeley Honda, Shattuck and Parker every Thursday 4:30 to 6 p.m.  

World Affairs/Politics Group for people 60 years and older at 3:30 p.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $2.50. 524-9122. 

Science of Breath Seminar, for stress management, at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. For information call 894-2920. www.artofliving.org 

Communication for Caregivers An ongoing free Berkeley Adult School class meets Thurs. at 1 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

“Using Medications Safely” at 7 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Virginia Aiello, 981-5158. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/parksandrecreation 

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 27 at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041.  

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wed., Sept. 28 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., Sept. 28, 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., Sept. 28, 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. Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview

A few weeks ago we received an email from a member of the Downtown Berkeley Association’s design committee asking if the Planet’s opinion pages would be available for a forum on the future of downtown Berkeley. The idea, not yet adopted A few weeks ago we received an email from a member of the Downtown Berkeley Association’s design committee asking if the Planet’s opinion pages would be available for a forum on the future of downtown Berkeley. The idea, not yet adopted by the DBA or fully fleshed out, was that there would be a two-part process. First, the public would be asked to submit ideas in writing for publication: a kind of “civic visioning exercise” to tap the creativity of Berkeley citizens to think about what Berkeley Downtown might be. That would be followed by a well-conceived scientific phone poll to gauge citizens’ preference for what should be happening downtown.  

Our quick reply was an easy “yes!” That’s why we’re here—to provide a way for good ideas to be brought forward and debated in public. The group’s preliminary proposal can be viewed on the internet at http://busduse.org/VisioningDowntownProposal.html. It hasn’t yet been launched, but it’s promising. 

In the same spirit, we’re happy to provide space for the opinion from the Mayor’s Office which appears today. We firmly believe that sunshine in the planning process is the best way to avoid mistakes. In the days to come we expect that citizens with all kinds of opinions on how to plan for improving downtown Berkeley will come forward to comment on the Mayor’s ideas, and that’s great too. We’ve already received comments on the University-City aspects of the planning process, and we expect more. 

And of course we reserve our own right to make our own comments on the process as it develops. In fact, as it happens, when we got the mayor’s comments on Friday we were preparing comments on the proposal for public participation in planning for Downtown, authored by Dan Marks, head of the city of Berkeley’s planning department, which the City Manager included in the Council’s packet for this week’s meeting. Comparing the mayoral statement and the staff proposal, we note a certain amount of overlap, indicating perhaps a certain amount of pre-proposal collaboration, which is fine. But we urge the city council, who should be the ones with the real power to decide what’s going to be the policy here, to pause for reflection before rubber-stamping any process which bypasses the Planning Commission, the body which under the city charter has been set up specifically to do this job.  

One comment on the mayor’s opinion: we haven’t heard what he characterizes as “troubling misinformation”—that the city gave the university explicit veto power over city planning decisions regarding downtown. That’s a straw man, easily knocked down, as it should be.  

What we have heard is that the University has the right to dock the city, at the rate of $15,000 a month, if the joint plan isn’t finished on schedule. The money would come out of the very meager compensation the university has agreed to provide in lieu of taxes for sewer use, fire protection and other necessities of life for campus employees and residents. At the rate of $15,000 a month, the tiny hoard would soon be gone. Since the total is so small anyway, perhaps the penalty clause isn’t a major issue, but it’s profoundly irritating.  

What’s more serious in the agreement is that the university can indeed veto lots of aspects of the process, for example in Section II.B.6 of the agreement: “Joint review of DAP and EIR: because the DAP is a Joint Plan, there shall be no release of draft or final DAP or EIR without concurrence by both parties.” If that’s not a veto, what is it? 

Here’s the worst problem with the agreement: it says nothing about public participation in the planning process, which has always been one of Berkeley’s core values. It’s clearly an attempt to bypass our long tradition of citizen-led planning. Yet Mayor Bates’s opinion says that the Downtown Area Plan is the most effective way for the citizens of Berkeley to have a voice in downtown development. If that’s the case, why is the Planning Commission, the body which is entrusted by the city charter with planning responsibility, not leading the effort? In Sacramento, where the Mayor has perhaps spent too many years, decisions are often made in advance behind closed doors, but here in Berkeley we’ve become accustomed to open planning. But the Marks proposal, in bureaucratic double-speak, says that “staff specifically does not recommend” that the planning commission take the lead—in other words, he’s against it. 

The key to the staff attitude regarding citizen-led planning can be found in the Marks proposal’s frequent use of the word “manageable” in discussing various approaches to citizen participation. We counted four instances with no effort, and there are probably more. Yes, yes, we get it, city staff wants a process that they can manage! 

Well, “managed public participation” will be no more successful than “managed care” has been, and for many of the same reasons. The city of Berkeley’s planning department submitted an appalling first draft of the city’s general plan, which required four hard years of citizen effort to straighten out. We expect the City Council to speak up for all of us at this juncture, to make sure that if we’re stuck with a UC-led downtown plan, at least citizens’ voices will be heard loud and clear from day one of the planning process, even if Berkeleyans aren’t always “manageable.” Democracy is a messy process, hard to manage indeed, but a lot more likely to work in the end than top-down planning a la Robert Moses.  

A professor friend called me on Thursday morning, furious. She’d just heard a radio report on a committee formed to advise the University of California Board of Regents which is recommending that seven U.C. executives, who already make more than $350,000 a year, now need to have raises funded by private donations. Why did that make her so mad? Well, she’s the chair of a science department at a state university, and with seven years experience and a four-course teaching load she has yet to take home $60,000 a year. I was already planning this editorial on the topic, because I’d seen an excellent piece by Tanya Schevitz in the Chronicle earlier in the week with all the facts and figures. An example of shocking data: one senior vice president, a committee member who is listed as making $350k, actually pays taxes on more than $450k, probably because of bonuses on top of his salary. And, if we are to believe the report, he and his cohorts want even more. That’s greed, plain and simple. Obscene greed, actually. 

The excuse the committee gives is that it’s hard to recruit competent executives because other institutions and private businesses are now paying so much more. Sorry, but I can’t believe that somewhere in the United States there’s not a competent woman or man who can handle a vice-president’s job at UC for less than half a million dollars a year. That’s what some of these compensation packages could net out at, if you add in jobs for significant others, like the one offered to the partner of the latest UC Santa Cruz chancellor.  

And we all know employees of educational institutions up and down the line who are living on wages more like $25,000 a year. It’s probably easier to get food service employees than to get executives, but is there a ten-or-fifteen-to-one value differential? I doubt it. Even if you concede that a university executive might feel entitled to a comfortable upper-middle-class standard of living, that can be achieved, even in the expensive Bay Area and even with only one breadwinner for a family, for a lot less than $350,000 and up.  

The new proposal, that the “and up” should be financed by private donations, offers extensive opportunities for corruption. Corruption doesn’t necessarily mean stealing—it can mean distortion of the university’s historic mission by entanglement with for-profit enterprise whose goal is not necessarily education. If university executives have private sponsors, divided loyalties are an ever-present temptation.  

Talking to my friend, I started riffing sarcastically on the idea of selling naming rights to university executives, along the lines of the late PacBell Park, whatever it’s called now. We could have, for example, the Bechtel President of the University of California. He could agree to wear Bechtel logo t-shirts at all university sports events, and for formal gatherings, a tasteful lapel rosette with the logo in diamonds. His official car could have a Bechtel-logo license plate. His house could sport a Bechtel billboard on the roof. The opportunities are endless. Well, as usual, reality has outstripped satire.  

My professor friend tells me that her university has already been sold off in every particular. The building she works in, like most university buildings, is named after a major local industrialist. But even worse, the classroom where she teaches about, among other things, how California’s climate has been degraded by the power industry, is named after PG&E, and has a plaque to prove it. Does this kind of corporate branding affect her teaching? No, but it undoubtedly has a subtle effect on her students’ perception of society and its goals. And Bechtel? It’s UC’s new partner in the bid for managing Los Alamos National Laboratory.  

America is being torn apart by the greed of the elite and the powerful, just as it was in the Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century. The poor of New Orleans are left to die while the rich hire mercenaries from South Africa and Israel to defend their possessions. It is wrong (how old-fashioned that word sounds) to choose leaders for educational institutions, especially public institutions, who contribute to this widening gulf by exemplifying the concept that greed is good.  

From a recent UC press release: “The University of California President’s Task Force on Faculty Diversity has formally launched its program review of faculty diversity efforts at each UC campus. The task force met Sept. 16 at the Office of the President here to begin its review. To assess the status of faculty diversity, UC President Robert C. Dynes appointed an 11-member systemwide task force to review faculty diversity.” It doesn’t take yet another task force to tell UC that women and some “minority” populations (now a majority in California) are seriously underrepresented in the UC system. The reasons for this have been exhaustively studied. Among other things, faculty women like my professor friend don’t make enough money in starter jobs to support families. 

Here’s an idea: Perhaps the seven overpaid UC executives, instead of lobbying the private sector for even more loot, could take a voluntary 25-percent salary cut, which they could contribute to a fund for recruiting more faculty members from the underrepresented groups. That’s another old-fashioned concept, what used to be called “setting an example.” But it’s not likely that the seven high-rollers are the kind of people who are motivated by the idea of public service, because people like that are cut out of the pack in today’s corporate university culture.  

B