News

UC’s Development Plan Aims to Remake Downtown By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday January 03, 2006

UC Berkeley dominated Berkeley’s land use news in 2005. -more-


2005 Brought Disputes Over Development Projects By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday January 03, 2006

While UC Berkeley projects dominated the politics of land use in the surrounding city, numerous other projects kept the city hopping in 2005. -more-


Oakland in 2005: Campaigns for Mayor Begin as Brown Plans Exit By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Tuesday January 03, 2006

The biggest story in Oakland in 2005 was a story not actually scheduled to take place until 2006: the race to succeed Jerry Brown as mayor. -more-


Storm Damage Calls Keep City Crews Busy By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday January 03, 2006

Storm-related calls have kept Berkeley firefighters hopping over the past week, said Assistant Fire Chief Lucky Thomas. -more-


Major Changes Afoot in Land Use Laws By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday January 03, 2006

City officials, commissioners and the public spent much of 2005 not only debating the politics of development and land use but formulating proposals for new laws governing both new development and existing construction. -more-


Lillian Rabinowitz 1911-2005

Tuesday January 03, 2006

Berkeley Gray Panther founder Lillian Rabinowitz died Wednesday, Dec. 21 at the age of 94. She lived at Chapparal House in Berkeley for the last few years. -more-


Grandmothers Organize By DOROTHY BRYANT Special to the Planet

Tuesday January 03, 2006

“Do I have to be a grandmother to come?” was the first question asked by recipients of an e-mail invitation signed by Pat Cody (co-founder, Cody’s Books, EB Women for Peace, DES Action), Clare Fischer (GTU Professor of Religion and Culture ), Marge Lasky (DVC Emerita, History), Joan Levinson (Media Consultant), Sydney Carson (CCA, Professor of Dramatic Arts), and Rita Maran (UC lecturer on Human Rights). -more-


Editorial Cartoon By JUSTIN DEFREITAS

Tuesday January 03, 2006

To view Justin DeFreitas’ latest editorial cartoon, please visit -more-


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday January 03, 2006

CINDY SHEEHAN -more-


Column: The Public Eye: It Takes a Potemkin Transit Village By Zelda Bronstein

Tuesday January 03, 2006

In 18th century Russia, Grigori Potemkin purportedly tried to impress Catherine the Great by building elaborate fake villages along a route she traveled in Crimea and the Ukraine. Today, “Potemkin village” signifies a showy false front intended to hide embarrassing or disgraceful conditions. Sad to say, that description fits the project that the City Council endorsed Dec. 13 when it voted 8-0-1 (Spring abstained) to support an application from the city, in partnership with the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation (SBNDC), for a $120,00 California Department of Transportation Community-Based Transportation Grant. The money would be used to plan a 300-unit “transit village” at the Ashby BART west parking lot, where the city controls the air rights. -more-


Column: The Year In Review By SUSAN PARKER

Tuesday January 03, 2006

January 2005: A former child star and talented song and dance man, but now a drug addled nincompoop, throws a rock at our upstairs front window and smashes the pane. I climb onto the porch roof to access the damage and find an entire quarry, leftovers from the times he missed. It is a double-pane window and he has broken only the front layer. Due to monetary restraints, I don’t replace it. -more-


Odetta Headlines Concert For Friends of Negro Spirituals By KEN BULLOCK Special to the Planet

Tuesday January 03, 2006

Famed folk singer Odetta and award-winning lyric baritone Robert Sims will be featured along with Ghanaian drummer Pope Flyne and pianist-arranger Jacqueline Hairston in Sunday’s “Let The Spirituals Roll On,” a concert and fundraiser for Friends of Negro Spirituals at Oakland’s historic Beth Eden Baptist Church. -more-


Arts Calendar

Tuesday January 03, 2006

TUESDAY, JAN. 3 -more-


Commentary: Is The Berkeley Honda Boycott A Just Cause? By Raymond Barglow and HARRY BRILL

Tuesday January 03, 2006

The strike at Berkeley Honda is nearly half a year old now, and still the new owners refuse to acknowledge the quite reasonable request that workers should be treated decently, and a union should be allowed to represent them. -more-


Mudsuckers May Be Ugly, But They Have Value By JOE EATON Special to the Planet

Tuesday January 03, 2006

“The long-jawed mudsucker is not a sexy fish,” admits UC Davis marine biologist Susan Anderson. No argument there. Gillichthys mirablis has a face only another mudsucker could love: beady little eyes and a huge mouth whose gape extends back to the gill covers. It’s small (8 inches long) and sedentary, spending its whole life on one patch of mudflat. This is one fish whose name will never be bestowed on a fast car or a major league sports franchise. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday January 03, 2006

TUESDAY, JAN. 3 -more-


Editor’s Note

Friday December 30, 2005

Welcome to this year’s second Reader Contribution Issue. In this issue you will find more submissions from our readers, as well as a few columns from our regular contributors. -more-


A West Oakland Visit By Mertis L. Shekeloff

Friday December 30, 2005

“I talked to Elizabeth yesterday. Can you believe she’s 90-years-old? Anyway, she wants to see you,” Mother said on the phone. Miss Elizabeth had been our landlady when I was in junior high school. This was right up my alley—I’m always thrilled to take a walk down Memory Lane. -more-


About a Gorilla By Sherry Bridgman

Friday December 30, 2005

With a three-foot acacia branch, Bwana, the then massive male gorilla at the S.F. Zoo sits down, shucks the leaves off and stuffs them in his mouth and begins to chew. -more-


The Secret Ingredient By RUBY LONG

Friday December 30, 2005

Soon after Ruff joined our household, my husband and I hosted a family event to introduce him to everyone. -more-


Supermarket Love By JUDY WELLS

Friday December 30, 2005

Last week at Whole Foods -more-


Elderly Woman Arrested in West Berkeley Shooting By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Friday December 30, 2005

A 78-year-old Berkeley woman was arrested early last Friday morning after she allegedly shot another woman in the abdomen near the corner of Sacramento and Russell streets. -more-



Column: The View From Here: Tookie and Tina: A Christmas Carol By P.M. Price

Friday December 30, 2005

“That’s the way the Tookie crumbles,” jokes KGO’s Pete Wilson on his San Francisco-based radio show the day before Stanley Tookie Williams is scheduled to die. Upon hearing Wilson’s snide, callous attempt at humor, I am incensed. Even if considered guilty, as Wilson believes him to be, does that make Williams undeserving of even the most basic courtesy and respect as he faces the last few hours of his life? -more-


A Guide to Bay Area New Year’s Eve Celebrations By KEN BULLOCK Special to the Planet

Friday December 30, 2005

A plethora of local and internationally known favorites will ring in 2006 around Berkeley and the bay, with an array of festivities to choose from: nostalgia to glitz, humor to hillbilly music, jazz to DJs, cruise to battle ships, circus to Japanese bell-ringing. Prices also vary from high ticket extravagance, to high or low culture on the cheap, or for free. -more-


Forty Years of Donovan By Patrick T. Keilch

Friday December 30, 2005

Just in time for the December holidays and the New Year, musical troubadour Donovan is releasing The Autobiography of Donovan: The Hurdy Gurdy Man. -more-


Arts Calendar

Friday December 30, 2005

FRIDAY, DEC. 30 -more-



About the House: If the Shower Scalds With Each Flush By MATT CANTOR

Friday December 30, 2005

A man showers happily. He is singing to himself. Not bellowing, but really singing. It’s a torch song … no, it’s Donovan. “Mellow Yellow” I think. He’s smiling. He’s soapy. Suddenly a shadow falls across the shower curtain, a figure looms, then a sound, Ahh … Ahh … Ahh … He screams, backing away ... He screams, scalded by the remaining 125-degree water. -more-


Ask Matt

Friday December 30, 2005

Dear Matt, -more-


Garden Variety: Winter Is a Good Time to Choose Seeds for Planting By RON SULLIVAN

Friday December 30, 2005

Winter’s a good time to ponder seeds as well as books. The local world’s way of bestirring itself and greening up has a way of urging us hairless, featherless bipeds indoors to be warm and dry; most of us like being cold and soaked to—or through—the skin rather less than seeds and bulbs and roots do. And the gray skies of today make us gloomy if we can’t stir up our own knowledge that they contain possibilities for tomorrow. -more-


Sweetie By LENORE WATERS

Friday December 30, 2005

This morning I went to the Lab on Telegraph for a fasting blood test. This means 12 hours of no food, starting, say, at 8 p.m. I get to the lab at 8 a.m. Then, phew, that’s over. I got there at 8:14 a.m. (not bad, eh?). The waiting room was crowded, and only one Blood Tech was on duty. My stomach was grumbling, and I felt like growling along with it. -more-


Hexclusive! GOP, Fortune 500 Battle Over 2006 Hurricane Branding By ARMIN A. LEGDON

Friday December 30, 2005

In a not-so-simple twissssst of fate, the Republican Party and major corporations have joined a mythicky battle over the naming of hurricanes in 2006. Ironically, it would mean the elimination of individual (rugged?) names to identify the late summer and fall big blows. -more-


Beds. Beds. Beds. By MAYA ELMER

Friday December 30, 2005

There’s a whole dictionary of used beds I have tried out for size in my life time. The iron cot in the room I shared with my small sister when I was 5 years old. I dream of a pretty, long, cold snake lying next to me. It wasn’t scary, but that’s what happens to a bed wetter when the sheets are wet in a cold winter morning. Mommy, I really tried to wake up. -more-


A Candle for Cindy By Melanie Wendell

Friday December 30, 2005

A candle defies the darkness, -more-


Heirloom By JANIS MITCHELL

Friday December 30, 2005

When I turned 50 my mother gave me an heirloom, her mother’s only piece of real jewelry. I was surprised that it had not already been given by seniority to my older sister, Cheryl. The gift was a rose gold ring set with pieces of opal arranged as a blue flower. -more-


Lost Love By Roopa Ramamoorthi

Friday December 30, 2005

I look again at that black and white photo from more than 30 years ago. I am 2 years old, sprawled on the sand at Foreshore Beach clad in tiny pants and full-sleeved top, busy with my bucket and spade. My mother is pointing her finger telling me to look at the camera. My aunt and mother are wearing similar nylon 644 saris in that photo. I recollect my mother’s sari, large purple flowers on a white background. My uncle was on the other side taking the photo. -more-


High Ropes By J. Steven Svoboda

Friday December 30, 2005

The cable traces the treacherous line -more-


Christmas After Mastectomy By Ellen Scheiner

Friday December 30, 2005

Light sounds drench the world. -more-


Soup, Glorious Soup By Claudia Pessin

Friday December 30, 2005

For the first 11 years of my life I lived in a small town outside Newport, Delaware, which was on the map, but barely bigger that the bedroom community where I lived. Winters were severely cold, rarely more than six or seven inches of snow, but often freezing rain. When the ground froze, no mother would dream of keeping a child home, and certainly not for a little ice or snow. Schools didn’t close for weather in those days, and since there were few automobiles, we were in no danger from traffic. The trackless trolleys continued their routes, and most used them to get to work. -more-


To Excess By ALLISON FLOYD

Friday December 30, 2005

Eunice tucked her thin strands of pale red hair behind her ears, as was her nervous habit, and peered about the dining room. She was seated at her regular table in the Palace of Secretarial Eats. There was no sign of Amanda amidst the trill of anxious voices and the unsteady clatter of coffee cups refilled far too many times. The carcasses of single-serve packets of non-caloric sugar substitutes lay dismembered in unceremonious heaps on the other tables. The sight of this made Eunice swell with a perverse pride. Of the secretaries assembled, she and Amanda were the ones who ate. -more-


Holiday Spirit By GERALD COTE

Friday December 30, 2005

it’s the bottom end -more-


Lake Merritt by Michael Howerton

Friday December 30, 2005

A Holiday By Linda J. Rawls

Friday December 30, 2005

It was hot and humid as it always is in East Texas during the months of June, July and August. The year was 1956 and I was 6 years old. It wouldn’t be long now according to my daddy before I would be joining my two brothers, going to school and learning how to read and write. My daddy gave me the only head start that I got before starting first grade because my little hometown did not have a Head Start or kindergarten program. -more-


I Dream of Circus Characters By Judy wells

Friday December 30, 2005

For months I’ve dreamed -more-


Strolling Through Tilden By Yvette Hoffer

Friday December 30, 2005

T he beauty and tranquility of Tilden Park, a few minutes above the city soundscape, await our Tuesday Tilden Walkers. Although we have enjoyed our “secret” treasure for over 10 years, the park constantly changes and we never tire of its birds, flowers, and waterways. -more-


Monterey Market By lENORE WATERS

Friday December 30, 2005

MONTEREY MARKET I -more-