Students Organizing for Justice in the Americas (SOJA) staged a rally on the UC Berkeley campus Wednesday clad in “Sweat-free UC” signs—and little else.  

On the brisk late-winter afternoon, roughly two dozen students stripped down to their skivvies—or poster board equivalents—to protest the sale of university-logo merchandise that they say is produced in sweatshops. 

Hordes of passers-by stopped to gawk at the chanting demonstrators, who donned signs like “You didn’t fix it, so we got naked,” and “Support the skinny Asian boys making your clothes.”  

Onlookers snapped photos with camera phones, grinned sheepishly and summoned their friends. 

“Dude, are you watching the naked people now?” one student said on his cell phone. 

The demonstration was part of a systemwide campaign to press the UC to ratify the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), a policy that mandates the production of collegiate apparel in “sweat-free” factories. 

UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Davis and Riverside participated.  

Colleges nationwide also held protests urging their administrators to take up the Designated Suppliers Program. 

United Students Against Sweatshops, an international network of student labor activists, drafted the program, which emphasizes living wages and democratic employee representation. 

Duke University, Indiana University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Georgetown University, Santa Clara University and the University of Maine-Farmington have already adopted the program. SOJA claims it has mounted pressure on UC officials for five months to follow suit.  

During the protest Wednesday, SOJA representative Lexa Grayner called out to the crowd: 

“You might think it’s a little extreme that we’re here naked,” she said, layers of saran wrap strategically shrouding her torso. “But the administration is ignoring us, they are not listening to our demands … and that’s the naked truth.” 

UC Berkeley representative Maria Rubinshteyn said that’s not the case.  

The Designated Suppliers Program is under consideration, but it requires further investigation, she said. 

“The university abhors sweatshops,” she said. “We don’t want to have any sweatshop producing UC Berkeley merchandise.” 

She added that the university is dedicated to “making positive changes, but it takes time.” 

UC Berkeley generates about $500,000 a year in royalties from the sale of logo merchandise. Whether the university would lose money if it adopted the Designated Suppliers Program is not an issue, Rubinshteyn said. 

In 2000, in response to student protests, the UC approved a systemwide anti-sweatshop policy requiring suppliers of school logo wares to adhere to a code of conduct. Later that year a report jointly funded by several major universities, including the UC, revealed that numerous collegiate apparel manufacturers were still operating under inhumane working conditions. 

The report prompted critics to question whether the UC could enforce the code, an issue that remains today. 

Rubinshteyn said the UC currently works with the Worker Rights Consortium and the Fair Labor Association to ensure compliance, but that it is an ongoing process. 

Some students aren’t satisfied. By not adopting the Designated Suppliers Program, Nina Rizzo, a senior at Berkeley, said, the university is shamed.  

“We’re supposed to be leaders in human rights,” she said. “We want to be proud of wearing a Berkeley sweatshirt.” 

Spectators at Wednesday’s rally generally agreed with the message. However, not everyone agreed the protest was effective. 

“The whole naked thing is bringing people out,” said Salil Chitnis, a junior at UC Berkeley. “But I don’t know if it’s just because they’re naked or because of the real reason for the protest.” 

Freshman Arielle Bosch said she thought the rally would have made a bigger splash if more people got naked. Nonetheless, she hopes it will force the UC to change its policy. 

As for her own policy, she said, “I’m definitely not going to buy anymore Cal stuff, but I will continue to wear what I own.” 

A UC committee to address university sweatshop issues is scheduled for March 10. 

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It was with a small nod to irony that Willi Paul, a professional community builder, admitted he made a name for himself in Berkeley by splitting a community group in two. 

After moving to Berkeley about a year ago, Paul, 46, joined a neighborhood watchdog group to protest Pacific Steel Casting, a West Berkeley steel foundry accused of generating noxious emissions. And now, he says, he is so fed up with the city’s inaction on the matter that he is considering challenging Linda Maio for her City Council seat. 

But when a Jan. 31 meeting between the West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs and a local air quality agency failed to sufficiently address pollution abatement, Paul said he formed a splinter group that would get the job done.  

Cleanaircoalition.net has one mandate, Paul said: “clean air. It is up to PSC to find a way to accomplish this critical task.” 

It was a departure for Paul, who has been involved in community planning projects for businesses and non-profits all across the country, but never spearheaded his own group.  

“I started out to be a team player in the neighborhood organization, and got frustrated with the lack of strategy, so I took the logical next step,” he said. 

He threatened to file a lawsuit. 

On Feb. 2, with the help of nonprofit mediators Neighborhood Solutions, Paul submitted a letter to Pacific Steel, demanding a complete emissions abatement plan by March 2—or risk a small claims suit. 

Pacific Steel General Manager Joe Emmerichs responded to the coalition’s ultimatum Wednesday.  

The Daily Planet obtained a copy of the plan, which delineates action already set in motion by a settlement forged between the steel company and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) in December. The settlement mandates that Pacific Steel implement a $2 million odor abatement system by October in addition to interim measures. 

“The company is going to move forward and do what it said it was going to do in the settlement,” said Elisabeth Jewel, a spokesperson for Pacific Steel. “We’re asking the community to give us a chance to make that work.” 

Jewel is a principal of Aroner, Jewel and Ellis Partners, the lobbying and public relations group which also includes former East Bay State Assemblymember Dion Aroner. The firm’s website explains that it “provides consultation on government and public affairs for public and non-profit agencies, associations and private sector clients.” 

The BAAQMD settlement has commanded extensive criticism from the coalition and other groups. 

Paul did not have the chance to review Emmerichs’ correspondence by press time. 

On Tuesday, Paul said if the lawsuit moves forward, he hopes to enlist 200 residents, each eligible to win up to $7,500. That means the steel company could be liable for as much as $1.5 million. 

In his letter, Emmerichs reproved the possible suit, saying litigation will only divert cleanup efforts. 

The foundry isn’t the only critic of legal action. 

The suit could force Pacific Steel into financial ruin, others say, taking away 600 West Berkeley jobs of which 575 are unionized. 

District 1 Councilmember Maio does not support the lawsuit. 

“She thinks it’s premature and not productive,” said Brad Smith, administrative aide for Maio. The councilmember was out of the office Thursday. 

Paul returned the criticism, arguing that Maio has been too slow to take action against Pacific Steel. 

“I’m very disappointed with Linda Maio’s performance,” he said. “Her record on Pacific Steel Casting is pathetic. She hasn’t cleaned up the air, she’s allowed the factory to stall and play games.” 

In fact, Paul is so unimpressed he said he wants to challenge Maio for her District 1 seat. Maio has been a Berkeley councilmember since 1992. 

Paul is a self-proclaimed “jack of all-trades, small business development guy.” He has worked as a business consultant, project manager and research assistant helping to develop communities for numerous businesses and non-profits, including GrowingPlanet.org, EcoRangers.com and the National Japanese American Historical Society. 

As a master’s student in urban and regional studies at Mankato State University in Minnesota, he developed “electronic charrettes,” or online planning communities, that were used to assist in the reuse of the city’s National Guard Armory and city library. 

He is in the process of completing a Ph.D. in environmental design and planning from Virginia Tech. 

Paul will hold an information meeting on cleanaircoalition.net on March 30. Details of the meeting are available on the organization’s website. 

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Foes of a proposed shopping mall at Albany’s Golden Gate Fields race track filed notice Monday that they’ll begin circulating an initiative that would temporarily halt waterfront development. 

If successful, the measure would appear on the November ballot. 

“Albany residents have consistently said they don’t want a lot of development on the waterfront,” said Norman La Force, an environmental activist and attorney who helped draft the ordinance. 

Former Albany Mayor Robert Cheasty, one of the measure’s sponsors, said the proposal would establish a setback banning new development within 500 feet of the waterfront. 

The measure is a direct challenge to Los Angeles shopping mall developer Rick Caruso, who is partnering with race track owner Magna Entertainment on the project. 

“We want to protect the shoreline and he (Caruso) wants to put a mall on it. That’s about it,” said Cheasty. 

The proposal specifically targets the 102 acres that encompass the track and its parking lots and stables—including the 45-acre plot at the base of the Albany Bulb targeted by the Caruso project. 

The ordinance also calls for creation of the Shoreline Protection Planning Process, and the implementation of a citizen task force to prepare a specific plan that would allow limited development outside the 500-foot limit. 

The limited development permitted by the plan would help provide additional revenue for schools and city government, Cheasty said.  

Albany City Attorney Robert J. Zweben said earlier this week that he expects a counter-initiative will be filed by the Albany Waterfront Coalition, a group more favorably disposed to development at the track. 

While group spokesperson Howard McNenny was not available for comment, the coalition’s website portrays the initiative as “an effort to deprive you of your right to decide what happens at the waterfront ... based on the idea that you can’t be trusted to decide whether there should be any changes at the waterfront.” 

Magna Entertainment, the Canadian corporation that owns Golden Gate Fields and other tracks around the country, has been hemorrhaging money in recent years and one response has been to partner with developers to building shopping centers and casinos at their tracks. 

Caruso has managed to overcome political opposition before, and has been willing to shell out massive funds to do it—as was the case in Glendale, where seven-figure sums were spent by both sides in an election Caruso won to build the Americana at Brand project. 

Caruso’s projects feature open air upscale theme shopping malls with housing built over the commercial spaces. 

Matt Middlebrook, the former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor who is Caruso’s local representative on the project, called the initiative “a sham” that masquerades as an open planning process but is designed to reach a foregone conclusion. 

“The city is facing a $12 million deficit, and this initiative is trying to drive the city’s largest revenue-generator (the track) out of town,” he said. 

Middlebrook also asked how the city could afford to pay for an environmental review that would be required by the initiative—which he said would cost at least $1 million—without sacrificing crucial services. 

Initiative proponents say the measure would allow limited development that would still generate revenue for the city.

Egrets, coots, cyclists, Frisbee players, rowers, bat rays, leopard sharks, rats, squirrels—Aquatic Park offers something for the many species who live or hang out there.  

These human, animal and bird occupants of the nearly 100-acre park sometimes compete for space. At the same time they must confront pollution from the freeway, which borders the park to the west, the trains that rumble along the tracks to the east and the airplanes and helicopters that roar overhead. 

A $2 million grant from the Coastal Conservancy aims to protecting the park by improving water quality and natural habitat. 

But the city doesn’t have the $2 million in hand just yet, cautions Deborah Chernin, senior parks planner. The Coastal Conservancy, a state agency whose aim is to preserve California’s coasts and wetlands, has written the city a “letter of intent,” saying that it will get the grant money once it details the ways in which funds will be spent. 

The parks department is working with consultants to write detailed plans. 

One of the projects being studied is improving the water flow between the bay and the three lagoons. Water flows into the lagoon bringing nutrients and it flows out removing pollutants, says a study written by Oakland-based consultants, Laurel Marcus & Associates. 

“Stagnant water is not oxygenated,” Chernin noted. 

Part of the grant money will likely be dedicated to the removal of invasive plants. “The non-native plants choke out natives,” said Mark Lilios of the Environmental Greening, Restoration, and Education Team (EGRET), a group of citizens who advocate for Aquatic Park. The invasive plants support the rats, but not the birds, he said. 

“We try to balance recreational uses of the park with habitat,” Chernin said. “It is beloved and well-used among a certain group of people.” 

Among the human users are frisky golf enthusiasts, rowing teams, water-skiers, joggers, dog walkers and picnickers.  

“The park is getting greater and greater use,” Chernin said, noting that since the completion of the pedestrian bridge that crosses the freeway, linking the marina with Aquatic Park, the park has enjoyed more access. 

More families come to the area with children since the completion of the play area, known as “Dream Land for Kids,” and there are plans to improve the connection between the Fourth Street shopping area and Addison Street which connects to Aquatic Park.  

The park, Berkeley’s largest, was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, along with the construction of the Bayshore Highway. Tubes bringing Bay water to the park’s three lagoons run under the freeway. 

If you’ve been out recently for a walk beside the large lagoon at Aquatic Park —especially around the little wharf that extends into the water on the east side— you may have been struck by a very distinct, very bad odor. 

It was likely the stench of dead fish—about nine dead bat rays and a couple of leopard sharks have been reported, according to Mark Liolios, whose organization, the Environmental Greening, Restoration, and Education Team (EGRET), supports the park. 

Waterfront Manager Cliff Marchetti says he isn’t able to know with absolute certainty what’s caused the death of the fish until he’s able to find a dead one and turn it over to the California Department of Fish and Game for analysis.  

But he says he’s quite sure the fish didn’t die as a result of any toxic substance in the lagoons. Rather, he thinks it’s a change in the ponds’ salinity. 

When there is a lot of rain, the salt water level gets very low, he said. The sharks and the rays need a high level of salt water to survive. The striped bass in the lagoons, which are more adaptable, apparently have not suffered, he said.  

The deaths “are kind of a natural occurrence,” he added. 

In what is quickly becoming a running political soap opera, the ouster of Alameda County Medical Center trustee Gwen Sykes took a new turn this week when Sykes participated in this week’s trustee meeting, insisting that she was still one of the 11 board members. 

Apparently, she is. 

Earlier this month, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson informed medical center trustees by mail that Sykes “will no longer serve on the Alameda County Medical Center Board of Trustees.” 

Carson nominated Sykes to the board in 2004, but said in an interview that he removed her because of complaints from “a majority of her colleagues” on the board that they were “having a difficult time conducting business” because of Sykes. As a result, Sykes’ picture was removed from the medical center trustee board webpage. 

Sykes had earlier announced that she had retained an attorney and was considering legal action to keep her position on the board. 

But on Tuesday night, supported by a published statement by Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie that a medical center trustee could only be removed by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, Sykes arrived just before the beginning of the public session of the trustee meeting and took her place at the trustee table. 

After a quiet but animated discussion with Board President J. Bennett Tate and board clerk Barbara Miller-Elegbede, in which Elegbede could be heard saying repeatedly “but you’re no longer on the board,” Sykes remained at the trustees table, participating as a trustee in both discussions and voting throughout the meeting. 

By Thursday, Sykes’ photograph had been returned to the medical center trustee board webpage. 

No public announcement was made at Tuesday’s trustee meeting about Sykes’ status on the board. When asked following the meeting, Board President Tate would only say “no comment.” 

Sykes said that she was “still on the board, unless something else happens. Keith [Carson] did not have the authority to remove me on his own.” 

Carson could not be reached for comment. 

At the meeting itself, trustees received depressing news on the condition of the medical center’s finances, with board Finance Committee Chair Tom Pico saying that the center’s cash flow “has become critical,” with a projected $11.5 million projected deficit this year “if we continue at the budgeted levels.” 

Pico said that the $11.5 million deficit was “the best possible case. A more realistic assessment is that we will have a deficit of another $2.5 to $5 million above that unless we get a handle on expenses.” 

Board member Daniel Boggan agreed, saying that “there are major structural problems with this budget. Revenue is increasing, but there are still problems with balancing the budget.” 

During her two years on the board, Sykes has been critical of the medical center’s hiring and budgeting policies, and in his comments, Boggan said that many of the medical center’s financial problems are “things that Dr. Sykes has been concerned about.” 

In addition to a structural budget deficit, medical center officials also reported a cash-flow problem, with the finance department now holding vendor payments 10 days later in order to have enough money on hand to meet payroll. Medical Center CEO Wright Lassiter called the situation “rather acute,” and said that center administration officials have made a “significant amount of effort with state officials in addressing issues related to our cash flow problems.” 

Lassiter said that as a result of those efforts, the medical center has received a commitment from California Department of Health officials to release $31.4 million in payments owed to the center. 

“We’re expecting that money in two to three weeks,” Lassiter said. 

In other news, Lassiter said that the center is expecting a “positive compliance” designation on the center’s pending accreditation report within a week. 

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Some members of the Berkeley Fire Department may be operating with expired paramedic certification. 

Berkeley Fire Department Chief Debra Pryor said Tuesday that the department is conducting a probe into the possible expiration of “some companion certificates” that are required of paramedics to perform emergency medicine in Alameda County.  

In addition to standard state licensing and county accreditation requirements, Alameda County paramedics must maintain certification in advanced cardiac life support, advanced pediatric life support and prehospital trauma. The former two are renewable after two years; the latter after four years. 

Those with expired certificates cannot work in the county as paramedics until they come into compliance, according to the Alameda County Emergency Services Agency. 

Pryor refused to comment on how many employees are involved or if they have been suspended from duty. 

“It’s a confidential personnel matter to be handled on a case-by-case basis,” she said. 

Assistant Fire Chief Rod Foster, who oversees the department’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) division, would not comment on whether employees have worked in ambulances with expired certificates, but said, “When someone is found not to have certification, they will not be found to be working in an ambulance.” 

Recertification involves an eight- to 16-hour course. Classes are available in multiple locations throughout the county. 

The Berkeley Fire Department receives 12,000 calls a year of which 60 percent are for emergency medical care. There are 40 paramedics, including firefighters, apparatus operators and officers, in the department, Foster said. 

Both Pryor and Foster say employees—not the department’s administration—are responsible for keeping records up-to-date. 

Until last week, the EMS division did not have a system in place for keeping tabs on certification and licensing. But as a result of the investigation, Foster said the division set up a database that will help employees stay abreast of certification deadlines.  

“It’s my policy that we’ll monitor (certification) months in advance and we will send out notifications” when renewal deadlines approach, he said. “I think it would be in the best interest of the department to monitor certifications.” 

In his 20 years at the Berkeley Fire Department, Foster said he has never encountered a similar incident. But he pointed out that the additional Alameda County requirements have only been in existence for about five years.  

“That’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing this,” he said. “It’s something that’s being dealt with and we don’t expect it to be a recurring issue.” 

Think “transportation” and you’ll probably imagine trains, buses, cars and such. But the city’s Pedestrian Master Plan is focused on a more elemental method of travel. 

“We need to get walking recognized as a mode of transportation,” said Wendy Alfsen, who heads the Transportation Commission’s Pedestrian Subcommittee. 

About 50 residents gathered at the North Berkeley Senior Center Wednesday night to talk about making walking safer and easier in Berkeley. 

Despite a reputation for a large number of pedestrian accidents, “Berkeley is the safest place for walking in California” with a population of more than 60,000 people, transportation planner Heath Maddox told the group. 

Maddox explained the paradox: Given the large volume of walkers in Berkeley—including the 15 percent who walk to work—the accident rate is low, he said. “We do have a high per capita rate of pedestrian collisions,” he further explained in an e-mail on Thursday. “But we have an extremely low “per walker” rate (of collisions), and from the perspective of assessing risk (and therefore danger), it’s the latter that counts, not the former.” 

The citizen planners divided into five groups at the meeting, each focusing on a specific area of the city. They discussed the various impediments they found to safe walking in the city. 

Wide, dangerous and inhospitable streets make people resort to cars, even for short trips, said Matt Nichols, planner with the city’s transportation division. 

The intersection of Adeline Street and Ashby Avenue is wide and dangerous, said people in the group looking at South Berkeley streets. 

Lack of lighting and cracked sidewalks makes walking on Alcatraz Avenue difficult, added Richie Smith, of the Alcatraz Avenue Neighborhood Organization. “Alcatraz is a speed zone,” she said, advocating for a solar speed monitor on the street. 

People in the group examining central Berkeley discussed ways to encourage walkers. While high volumes of people walk along Shattuck Avenue, businesses on University Avenue suffer from limited pedestrian traffic.  

“We’d like it to be vibrant,” said Connie Woods, noting that something as simple as extending the city’s seasonal Christmas decoration program down University Avenue would help bring foot traffic to that sometimes deserted area. 

Others suggested instituting “pedestrian days,” where merchants give discounts to people who come to shop without their cars. 

“We could close a couple of streets and have a pedestrian fair,” offered Susan Scheller. 

A car-free zone was suggested near the train station and another was suggested at the Fourth Street shopping corridor. 

The volume of pedestrians downtown also brings its own set of problems. Some workshop participants suggested prohibiting turns on red downtown—or perhaps all over Berkeley. 

Improving Berkeley’s paths will encourage walking, said Lori Kohlstaedt of the Path Wanderer’s Association. Many of the paths are in disrepair, said Kohlstaedt, who walks down the Indian Rock path daily to catch the bus to work. 

“The city owns the land, it’s a matter of the will to do it,” she said. 

People also looked at reducing the traffic volume. One thought was instituting a shuttle, similar to the Emery-go-round, that would circle Berkeley, targeting people who work downtown and those who work at or are students at the university. 

City planners will take the workshop participants’ comments into consideration when they draft their plan to facilitate walking in Berkeley. Those not attending the workshop can e-mail comments to hmaddox@ci.berkeley.ca.us or mail them to 1947 Center Street, 3rd Floor, Berkeley, 94704. 

Planners will come back to citizens in the fall for input on the plan, then go to the City Council to ask for approval of specific projects early next year. Funding will come from a number of sources, including funds for sidewalk repair and county transportation funds. 

The Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees unanimously approved a massive $390 million construction bond measure Tuesday night, voting to place the issue before area voters on the June ballot. 

Peralta Communications Director Jeff Heyman said by telephone that “because the last bond measure passed by 80 percent, we feel confident that this one will pass as well.” 

But immediately, district officials had to fend off concerns over whether staff, students, and the community at large would have continuing say on how the money is eventually spent, and that promised construction will be carried out. 

District Academic Senate President Joseph Belinksi and Peralta Federation of Teachers President Michael Mills both announced support at Tuesday’s trustee meeting for the bond measure, but only so long as the trustee’s motion included an amendment, added by trustee Bill Withrow, that the bond measure set up advisory committees on each campus through the existing facilities committees. Those committees include faculty and student representatives. 

“We want to make sure that there are provisions in place so that the people in the trenches—the actual stakeholders—are being heard,” Mills said. “We need your assurance that [Withrow’s] amendment will do that.” 

While voting to put the bond measure on the ballot, trustee Nicky Gonzalez Yuen said that he was “uncomfortable with the rush to put this through. We haven’t had time to get the input that I’d like to have.” 

Yuen also said he was “uncomfortable that we are going to end up with a $390 million slush fund.” 

Yuen is one of several trustees who have sharply criticized bond measure spending and reporting in the past. 

But speaking just before the vote, Chancellor Elihu Harris told trustees that “our intent is to not repeat the mistakes of the past. We know that plans have not always gone forward as promised. And we want to make sure the oversight is there.”  

The proposed bond would finance 10 years of construction and renovation projects spread throughout the district’s four colleges, with the bulk of the money—$213.2 million—going to the district’s oldest facility, Oakland’s Laney College, and the least of it —$3.2 million—going to the newest facility, Berkeley City College. Merritt College in Oakland and College of Alameda would get $128.3 million and $76.8 million of the construction money respectively, with another $9 million going to the College of Alameda’s Aviation Maintenance Technology Program at the college’s Alameda Air Facility. 

Construction of the new Berkeley City College campus (recently renamed from Vista College), took up the bulk of district construction bond measures passed in 1992, 1996, and 2000. 

If passed by district voters, the bonds would add slightly under $25 in taxes per $100,000 in valuation to propertyholders within the district’s boundaries. 

Oversight difficulties plagued the last Peralta construction bond measure, the $153 million Measure E passed in 2000 under former Chancellor Ron Templeton. 

Last year, some trustees complained that there was no running list of projected construction projects, so that the board was approving new projects without knowing what alternate projects those decisions might affect. In response, General Services Director Sadiq Ikharo published a comprehensive report on completed and projected Measure E construction projects last October. 

And while the new bond measure would require annual expenditure review by “an independent citizens’ oversight committee,” the district has been lax in following through with that commitment in the past. 

A November 2001 Vista College newsletter reported that a community advisory committee had been set up to oversee Vista Measure E construction projects, including then-Assemblymember Tom Bates, then-mayor Shirley Dean, Berkeley’s director of Community and Economic Development, and representatives of the UC Berkeley Office of Capital Projects, the League of Women Voters, the Berkeley YMCA, and the Berkeley Repertory Theater. 

A year later, a “report on status of colleges’ Measure E Advisory Committees” to the district trustees only indicated a statement from Chancellor Temple that “the Measure E Committees are the vehicles that include the community in the process to weigh the appropriateness of projects.” 

But SEIU Local 790 Chief Steward Greg Marro told trustees Tuesday night that he understood that the Measure E committee “met infrequently and then it was abandoned.” 

No Measure E Advisory Committee reports have been made to Peralta trustees in the past year. 



Berkeley’s 66-year-old ice-skating rink is up for sale, but some fear it will close before new operators take it on.  

Berkeley Iceland owners East Bay Iceland, Inc. placed the rink on the market Monday for $6.45 million, citing an inability to meet the increased costs of maintaining the facility. 

The rink, at 2727 Milvia St., is operating on an administrative use permit that expires in April. If not extended or if new owners don’t step in, the rink will shut down. 

Berkeley Iceland was forced to revamp its refrigeration system in October, when it was discovered that it contained potentially hazardous ammonia. The city of Berkeley granted Berkeley Iceland an administrative use permit until April, allowing it to operate with a temporary cooling system. 

But as the permit deadline approaches, the owners have decided that rather than fund a new permanent system—which could cost about $500,000, according to East Bay Iceland, Inc. General Manager Jay Wescott—they’ll seek new investors. 

“With everything we’ve been through economically, it’s just not making sense anymore” for the owners to keep the facility, Wescott said. 

The property is being sold by Gordon Commercial Real Estate Services. Buyers would pick up the cost of a new cooling system to bring the rink up to city code.  

Wescott is currently beseeching the city to grant a use permit extension, under the premise that it will make the rink a more desirable sale. 

But some skaters fear the worst.  

“It’s horrible,” said Chris McLaughlin, who has been skating at Berkeley Iceland since the 1970s. McLaughlin plays pick-up hockey games at the rink up to three times a week. His children learned to skate there. 

He guesses new management will be difficult to come by, given the aging facility is in need of costly renovations. 

“I think most people who skate here would like to see it stay open, but I think that’s a long shot,” he said. 

Sharon Derr echoed his sentiment. 

“It’s a tragedy,” she said. “It’s been here for 66 years and now it’s going to be gone.” 

Since 1994, Derr has skated at Berkeley Iceland, where she also teaches skating lessons. If the rink closes, she’ll hit the ice in Oakland or Vacaville, but said neither rink is as desirable. 

Berkeley Iceland was founded in 1940. At 100 feet by 200 feet, Wescott said, it is a rare international-sized skating rink. It held the U.S. National Ice Skating Championships in 1947, 1957 and 1966, and has played host to the Ice Capades and roller derby matches. In the late 1980s, Brian Boitono rehearsed the Olympic programs that earned him gold in Calgary in 1988. 

It hosts myriad programs, including skating schools and hockey and broomball leagues. 

Wescott hopes the community connection will be a selling point. 

“My God, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of people who have learned to skate here,” he said. “It’s been an incredible asset to the community.” 

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Nearly a quarter of a million residents went hungry in Alameda County last year, a new report said. 

A study released by the Alameda County Community Food Bank last week shows that 40,000 residents seek emergency food assistance each week, including 16,000 children and 6,144 seniors, many of whom skip meals because there isn’t enough food on the table. 

“It’s a sad fact that more children and seniors in our community are missing meals,” said Suzan Bateson, executive director of the county food bank, in a prepared statement.  

Part of a nationwide study, the report surveyed 407 local food assistance recipients in the first detailed portrait of hunger in Alameda County since 2001. The county food bank, which distributes foodstuff to 300 local pantries, soup kitchens and shelters, conducts the study every four years. 

Among the findings, many who received food assistance are the working poor, and nearly half report they’ve had to choose between eating and paying rent. 

Allison Pratt, director of policy and services, said one of the most alarming statistics is the sheer volume of residents seeking help, up 30 percent from 2001. 

“The number of people we’re seeing has gone up significantly,” she said. 

Pratt speculates that the skyrocketing cost of subsistence in the Bay Area is a major contributing factor. 

“Our cost of living is so much higher,” she said. “We have a lot of people who fall into the gap, who are earning too much to get food stamps but not enough to put food on the table.” 

According to the study, the median monthly income for food assistance recipients is $800; roughly three-fifths live below the federal poverty line. 

The report also details the underuse of federal nutrition benefits. 

One in five households receives food stamps, but an estimated 70 percent qualify. This is virtually unchanged from data released in 2001, when one in five households secured food stamps while 80 percent qualified.  

Yet nationally, food stamp use is up.  

According to the federal study, also released last week and jointly conducted by America’s Second Harvest, The Nation’s Food Bank Network and Mathmatica Policy Research, 35 percent of the nation’s food assistance recipients participated in the food stamp program in 2005. 

In 2001, Bateson told the Daily Planet the food stamp program is underfunded and difficult for Alameda County residents to navigate, a sentiment she echoed in a phone interview Friday. But she said the county food bank has been working with local agencies to improve accessibility and awareness. 

“We wanted to use that information (from 2001) to encourage more populations in Alameda County to become aware of the food stamp program and over the past four years, we have worked assiduously with the people in social services and Alameda County and I think we’re improving our enrollment,” she said. 

In addition to unused federal food benefits, Bateson said the study has shed light on the food bank’s need to address the hunger afflicting both senior citizens and the working poor. 

Van Yazarian, 66, lives off Social Security and after paying rent he says he takes home $200.  

“It’s barely enough to buy groceries,” he said. So Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, he frequents the McGee Baptist Church at 1640 Stuart St., where he piles meat, potatoes, macaroni and leafy greens onto a plate and lunches among fellow Berkeleyans who are unable to make ends meet. 

On Friday at 12:30 p.m., the backroom of McGee Baptist was abuzz with hungry residents young and old enjoying a hot meal.  

Many have been coming for years, said chef Norman Franklin, who’s been turning out “down home cooking” at the church for nine and a half years. Diners call him Mr. Franklin. 

But recently he’s seen a spike in clientele, particularly among families and children.  

“We used to see 140, 150, now we see 180 to 200” people a day, he said. Some of them are as young as 5 or 6. Many are senior citizens. 

Rosalind Smith has noticed a busier dining room, too. She’s been coming to McGee Baptist Church for three years, and said of recent days, “It’s very, very crowded.” 

She’s not sure why the upsurge, but ventured a guess:  

“There are hungry people out there,” she said, adding with a laugh, “And Mr. Franklin is a good cook.” 

›

Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto makes its African-American staff work in the back of its Fourth Street restaurant, away from most customers, according to the complaint in a lawsuit filed by the San Francisco law offices of Angela Alioto. 

Further, the complaint says, management has referred to African-Americans using racial slurs, such as “boy,” forces them to work more hours than their white counterparts without more pay, refuses them promotions, and derides them in public. It names Spenger’s owners, McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants, as defendants. 

Alioto attorney Steven L. Robinson says the allegations, filed on behalf of eight former employees, are particularly shocking, given Spenger’s location. 

“Berkeley is one of the most liberal places in the state, the country and the world,” he said in a phone interview. “If something like that happens here, it’s very bad. This is one of the most hostile work places we’ve ever heard of.” 

In a written response filed with the courts, McCormick & Schmick, which owns some 50 restaurants and catering operations around the country, denied all allegations. The company, founded in the early 1970s, asserted that it “maintain(s) and enforce(s) policies prohibiting discrimination, harassment and retaliation against its employees. These policies encourage employees to come forward with complaints of discrimination, harassment and retaliation and provide for discipline (including termination) of any employee (including supervisors) found to have violated [the company’s] policy prohibiting discrimination, harassment and retaliation.”  

McCormick & Schmick and their attorneys, Jackson Lewis LLP, did not return calls requesting comment before deadline.  

To illustrate the prejudicial attitude, the complaint alleges that at a management meeting in November 2004, the company’s vice president “specified the kind of people corporate wanted in the front of the restaurant are ‘bubbly blondes with long legs.’”  

In addition to racial discrimination, the complaint charges that overweight staff and those over 50 face bigotry at Spenger’s. Management allegedly told one of the plaintiffs to place obese and older staff in the back, saying that “the old prima donnas … need to retire.”  

Further, employees were directed to discriminate against African-American customers, the suit alleges. Management told one of the plaintiffs that “African-American customers are loud, complain too much and don’t spend as much money as the Caucasian patrons,” the suit says. When the plaintiff complained, the suit alleges that, in retaliation, he was overloaded with work. 

“The workplace itself is segregated,” Robinson said. 

The company “has no problem hiring (minority) bus boys and waiters,” he said, adding that a large percentage of this staff is African American, Filipino, or Latino. “The wait staff is mostly white,” he said. 

At the same time, Robinson said, the Alioto law firm is looking into charges of discrimination at other McCormick & Schmick restaurants, though they have not filed other lawsuits against the company. 

Robinson said the case is likely to go to trial, but no date has been set. 

?

One of the attorneys the Albany City Council hired to handle talks with a controversial Southern California developer over a project at Golden Gate Fields may have represented the developer on a similar project. 

According to a document filed with the state Court of Appeal, Michael H. Zischke, a partner with Morrison & Foerster, a powerful and well-connected law firm based in San Francisco, represented Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso in a legal battle over a contested mall development in Southern California. 

But Albany City Attorney Robert J. Zweben says there’s no conflict, and that the Zischke’s involvement in that case may be a big plus for the city. 

Two environmentalists disagree. 

“On the face of it, this appears to be a conflict of interest,” said Norman La Force, an attorney and Sierra Club activist. 

“What’s going on here?” asked former Albany Mayor Robert Cheasty, one of the founders of Citizens for the Eastshore Park (CESP), which, with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, opposes Caruso’s plans. 

“Why are we having Caruso’s former attorney represent us?” asked Cheasty. “And why wasn’t his representation of Caruso discussed?” 

Zischke was an attorney of record for Caruso Affiliated Holdings, the developer’s firm, as of Nov. 17, 2005, when the California Court of Appeals Second District issued an unpublished decision upholding Caruso and the city against the owners of the Glendale Galleria.  

Co-chair of his law firm’s Land Use and Environmental Law Group, Zischke was hired to help the city prepare an Environmental Impact Review of Caruso’s plans for the Albany waterfront. 

Caruso, aided by his employee and former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook, has been lobbying heavily to gain public support for his proposal, which would place an upscale, open air mall on the Golden Gates Fields parking lot adjacent to the base of the Albany Bulb to north of the race track. 

Zweben said that Zischke had been hired by the city of Glendale and its development agency to handle the environmental review process for the Caruso project. 

When the owners of the Glendale Galleria sued to challenge the approval of the EIR on that project as well as the development itself, the city and redevelopment agency joined with Caruso in a joint defense. 

“For the purposes of the litigation, they were conducting a joint defense, so technically you could say he was representing all the defendants,” including Caruso, said Zweben. “I do not see that there is any conflict of interest” with his relationship to the City of Albany. 

Cheasty said that city officials and the City Council should have been more open about the previous relationship between Caruso and the attorney before the city retained him to work on the Caruso project. 

“The subject was raised by speakers” at a recent council meeting, said Cheasty. ”He (Zischke) didn’t say anything. The city attorney didn’t said anything. It would have been appropriate to have discussed the issue.” 

Regardless of whether or not there is an actual conflict of interest, La Force said, “this is such a controversial project that the city shouldn’t have this issue hanging over its head.” 

Caruso’s plans call for a mall that would feature housing built over retail spaces.  

The developer’s projects in Southern California have become major draws, and the Grove in Los Angeles even outdraws the famous Farmer’s Market, located immediately next door. 

Initiatives ahead? 

Zweben said he had heard that the project has inspired two rival groups to prepare initiatives to take to the voters on the future of the waterfront. 

Under Measure C, passed by voters in 1990, developments on the Albany waterfront must be presented to voters for approval. 

Zweben said he has heard that two competing initiatives are in the works, one by development foes including CESP, the Sierra Club and Citizens for the Albany Shoreline, and a competing measure by the Albany Waterfront Coalition, a group that looks more favorably on the project. 

Zweben said that the developer is at least a two years away from taking the project to the voters himself. 

An environmental impact report would take about a year and a half and possibly longer, he said. 

›

The controversy over the removal of Oakland medical professional Gwen Sykes from the Alameda County Medical Center Board of Trustees descended into confusion this week. 

Alameda County Board of Supervisors President Keith Carson said that he had removed Sykes only after she had told him that she was going to resign but refused to do so. Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie said that Sykes had actually resigned from the board by letter, but Sykes denied that she had resigned. 

The only thing all sides agreed on was that Sykes’ removal stemmed from her complaints about fiscal matters at the Alameda County Medical Center. The center includes Highland Hospital in Oakland, Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro, the John George Psychiatric Pavilion, and three county outpatient clinics. The center has been in financial difficulty for several years. 

Sykes said that she has retained an attorney and is considering legal action to fight her removal from the hospital trustee board. 

Winnie said that he had seen Sykes’ letter of resignation from the board, and promised to provide a copy if he had one available in his office, but had not done so by late Monday afternoon. 

Winnie agreed with the assertion in last week’s Daily Planet article that Carson by himself did not have the authority to remove Sykes from the board and that the bylaws of the Alameda County Medical Center only allow a trustee to be removed by a majority of members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. 

But asked by telephone if she had resigned from the board, Sykes said, “No, I never did. Several people with the hospital and the county tried to get me to do that, Richard Winnie included. But I didn’t resign.” 

Carson confirmed that. 

“She’d agreed on numerous occasions to step off the board,” he said in a telephone interview. He added he called a joint meeting of representatives of the trustee board, the board of supervisors, and county and medical center staff in early February to address Sykes’ concerns and “understood that at the end of the meeting she would step down. She elected not to do that.” 

Carson said that he knew that Sykes was considering an appeal of her removal and said that “she has every right to pursue that avenue, but I think she’s really damaging herself.” 

As reported last week in the Daily Planet, Carson announced in a Feb. 15 letter to the trustees that “effective Feb. 27, Dr. Gwen Rowe-Lee Sykes will no longer serve on the Alameda County Medical Center Board of Trustees.” Carson appointed Sykes to the board in March 2004. 

Even though the removal was to be effective this week, Sykes’ name and picture had already been removed from the ACMC Board of Trustees web page by late last week. 

“I drafted the letter to be ambiguous,” Carson said in his interview, “so that it wouldn’t impugn her integrity and that people reading it would not know that she had been terminated. I have tried to be protective of her.” 

According to Sykes, the situation reached a head during the Jan. 24 trustee meeting when she raised questions about the state of the medical center’s finances, which Sykes called “bleak.” 

“I told the board members at that meeting that we had been misled by Cambio,” she said. “We were told that we would meet our budget, but we will not. I asked why we were not reviewing Cambio’s contract for noncompliance.” 

Tennessee-based Cambio Health Solutions was hired by the medical center in February 2004 to analyze the medical center’s finances. Cambio’s involvement with the medical center ended with the appointment of Wright Lassiter as ACMC CEO last September. 

Carson’s February meeting of trustees and supervisors came as a result of the issues raised by Sykes at the Jan. 24 meeting. 

Sykes said that at that meeting former Pleasanton mayor Tom Pico, the recently-elected treasurer of the medical center’s trustee board, “invited me to join him on the finance committee. He renewed that request at the Feb. 6 meeting and told me that my questions about the accuracy of the financial statements coming from the staff were valid.” 

Pico could not be reached for comment. 

But Carson said that he removed Sykes from the board because she was getting no support for her concerns from other trustee members. 

“I tried to make sure her issues were heard by the appropriate body,” Carson said. “But when it gets to a place where she’s not being heard by her colleagues and there is a unanimous conclusion about her issues, then she’s not able to do good work any more.” 

“Nobody was trying to muzzle her,” Winnie said. “I know that she had a whole variety of complaints, and a subcommittee of the board was formed to hear them and document them. Keith [Carson] was interested in what she was saying. He made sure my office heard what she was saying. But she was raising very antagonistic charges against the staff and board members that were increasing in volume over time. They were very heavy charges.” 

Carson said that he “understood” from J. Bennett Tate, the president of the medical center board of trustees, that the issues raised by Sykes “are still being investigated.” 

But while Carson was giving guarded praise to Sykes, saying that he “thought she did a good job” while on the board, Sykes said that what disturbed her most about the situation was the lack of support by a fellow African-American. Both Carson and Sykes are black. 

“I can’t accept it when one African-American asks another one to do a task,” Sykes said, “and then, when she does it, she gets shot down by the same African-American who made the request.”

It was business as usual in front of Berkeley Honda Saturday. 

Dozens of demonstrators assembled at 2600 Shattuck Ave. with picket signs in hand to support the union strike that, for the past eight months, has pitted veteran Berkeley Honda service employees against dealership owners in a battle over workers, pensions and pay. 

The strike is going strong, picketers say. But they have new cause for concern. 

A Berkeley Honda employee filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last month seeking an election to decertify the dealership’s service unions. If granted, workers could vote to dissolve union representation altogether.  

The unions, Machinists Local 1546 and Teamsters Local 78, called a strike June 15 when Danville businessmen Stephen and Tim Beinke assumed control of the auto shop, required employees to reapply for their jobs then declined to hire back roughly half the workforce. 

Instead, they opted for a pool of cheaper, less experienced workers—who are more qualified, they say—and refused to extend a union contract that expired at the end of June.  

The petition to summon an election was submitted by Assistant Manager Barry Strock, who was hired in June, and signed by at least 30 percent of the employees. The labor board is in the process of reviewing the petition and deciding whether an election is warranted and who is eligible to vote. 

Elections typically take place within 50 days of the petition filing date, according to the labor board website. However, area director of Machinists Local 1546 Don Crosatto said the board often breaches deadlines, and he doubts it will render a decision anytime soon. 

Crosatto said if employees cast votes today, there would be a draw. But if an election takes place after June 15—when strikers are no longer considered employees —anti-union workers would assume the catbird seat. 

Strike supporters say the petition is just the latest in a long line of tactics dealership management is using to bust the unions. Steve Haworth, general manager for Berkeley Honda, replied that it’s the workers—not the owners—who are fed up with union antics. 

“It has been very frustrating for those employees that have not walked out,” Haworth said.  

Berkeley Honda Internet Sales Manager Chris Regalia said strikebreakers are frustrated over the verbal abuse they’ve endured for the past eight months. (Strikers have made the same allegations.) 

But an election won’t change anything, Crosatto said, except to spark louder protest. 

“Even if this comes to pass, a boycott will continue,” he said. “We can boycott them forever.” 

The bi-weekly rallies in front of Berkeley Honda gather strikers, union supporters and general community members in urging passers-by to boycott the dealership. 

Both sides say the strike is exacting a toll on business. Though car sales are up 12 percent, Haworth admits service business has sharply declined. 

Bill Mixsell, a Berkeley Honda service advisor for 15 years who was re-hired in June then walked out, estimated the auto shop used to service about 60 cars a day. Now it sees 20—and sometimes as few as 12—a day, he said. 

Crosatto warns that ousting the unions won’t spell flourishing patronage. 

“Let’s say they get rid of us,” he said. “Business is not just going to pop back up.”  

In the meantime, both sides say they’re willing to negotiate. 

“[We’ve] been willing to talk,” said Harry Brill, of the Berkeley Honda Labor and Community Coalition, which formed to support the strike. “They basically didn’t want to bargain from the very beginning. We’re willing to make all kinds of concessions.” 

Haworth countered that management has been trying to cut a deal for seven months, much to no avail.  

“We all think the union was very quick to hold a preemptory call for a strike without sitting down at the bargaining table for us to work out at deal,” he said. “In doing so, I think they put themselves between a rock and a hard place.”  

At the crux of the dispute are worker pensions. 

In June, Berkeley Honda management declined to renew contracts that included pension coverage, among other benefits. Instead, workers were offered better pay and 401Ks but the unions rejected the offer. 

“The guys want to give me a raise but don’t want to give me a pension,” Mixsell said.  

“A pension will be more valuable when I retire,” he said. “They’re offering a 401K, but that doesn’t begin to compare to a pension.” 

Regalia says pensions are “terribly outdated”—insisting they bankrupted airline companies—and thinks workers should consider other options.  

Union representatives are slated to bargain with management March 9. 

›

Construction of the Sugar Bowl, a $200 million tribal casino on industrial lands in unincorporated North Richmond, would have no negative environmental impacts so great that they can’t be mitigated, according to a recently released environmental impact statement (EIS). 

The document, prepared as one of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s requirements for transfer of land to reservation status, is the equivalent of an environmental impact report under California law. 

Both the state and federal documents require a detailed examination of the potentially negative impacts on the human and natural environments as well as proposed mitigations that would offset those effects. 

“Environmental analysis throughout the EIS has determined there are no unavoidable adverse environmental effects,” concludes the report, employing the technical jargon of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). 

The document was released in advance of a March 15 public hearing, starting at 6 p.m. in the Richmond Memorial Auditorium, 403 Civic Center Plaza. 

The Bureau of Indian Affairs will continue to take written comments on the project until April 28. 

The site in question contains 29.9 acres of land along the eastern side of Richmond Parkway north of Parr Boulevard. It is one of two tribal casino projects now under development in the Richmond area, and the one closest to approval. 

The Guidiville Rancheria Pomo band in conjunction with Berkeley developer James D. Levine and Harrah’s Entertainment are planning a much grander casino with a larger entertainment venue and a hotel complex on Richmond’s Point Molate on the site of a former U.S. Navy fueling station. That project is about eight months behind the Sugar Bowl project in the approval process. 

Plans to expand an existing tribal card room, Casino San Pablo in San Pablo, into a full-scale gambling hall and hotel have been stalled in the face of opposition to massive expansion plans initially approved by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

The Sugar Bowl would be a major boon to the Scott’s Valley Pomos, a small and impoverished group which is developing the casino in conjunction with Noram Richmond LLC, a special purpose corporation formed by Noram LLC, a Florida firm which is part of the multi-corporate empire which has evolved from North American Sports Management. 

The companies were created by Alan H. Ginsburg of Maitland, Fla., a major player in the Native American gambling boom, with casino ventures spanning the nation from the extreme Southeast to the far Northwest. 

According to the EIS, of the Scott’s Valley Band’s 181 members, one-third of the adults are unemployed, 56.8 percent of tribal members receive some form of government assistance, and 95.5 percent are categorized as low income. 

Only 22.7 percent of tribal members have full-time jobs—though the majority of the tribal members—93 out of 181—were under the age of 18 in 2005, and 86 between the ages of 18 and 64 and two age 65 and older. 

Plans call for a 225,000-sqaure-foot building that would house a 79,320-square-foot casino, with a 24,000-square-foot showroom with seating for 1,500 plus a 250-seat venue for lounge acts and a 150-seat sports bar. It would feature a 600-seat buffet, plus a 120-seat restaurant and a food court. The facility would also have 3,549 parking spaces, 2,044 of them in a five-level structure. 

The document predicts the casino would generate an additional 14,000 weekday car trips, with 441 of them during the peak morning commute and 932 during the equivalent evening hour. The report concludes that the increase wouldn’t result in delays beyond a few seconds at intersections in the area with the traffic improvements suggested in the report. 

Because most employees are expected to be hired locally and Richmond now has 1,431 vacant housing units, the EIS concludes that the casino would not result in the need for new housing construction. 

Economic benefits 

The casino is presented as a major economic boon to the ailing Richmond economy, with construction labor costs estimated at $28.1 million, the equivalent of 553 fulltime builders working for a full year. 

The gain in jobs is one of the reasons that several prominent members of the African-American clergy in Richmond—a group traditionally opposed to gambling—have endorsed both the Sugar Bowl and the Point Molate casino projects. 

Once in operation, the casino is expected to create 2,279 new jobs, 1,937 of them full-time, with most predicted to be hired locally. The predicted net increase to the region is 1,885 jobs. 

Document available 

The massive document is posted on the Internet (www.analyticalcorp.com), and copies have been placed for public viewing with the Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, and the San Pablo Branch of the Contra Costa County Library, Suite D, 2300 El Portal Drive.  

Written comments on the project can be mailed to Regional Director Clay Gregory, Pacific Regional Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento CA 95825. They must arrive by April 28. 

›

The long-anticipated proposed Peralta Community College District bond measure will come up to district trustees for consideration tonight (Tuesday), but district staff has still not decided on details of the $390 million measure. 

Trustees are scheduled to vote on the bond measure at 7 p.m. tonight (Tuesday) at the district administrative headquarters, 333 East Eighth St. in Oakland. The new bond measure is tentatively scheduled for the June ballot. 

The proposed bond measure lists no specific facilities projects in the trustee’s agenda packet, and Trustee Board President Linda Handy said that the proposed project list is still being finalized. 

“Faculty members and union officials are weighing in on priorities,” Handy said by telephone. “There’s a discussion going on, and I don’t think it’s a negative discussion. It’s the normal course of input. The board wants to know what staff members want. It’s their lives that we’re dealing with. They’re the ones who are in the trenches.” 

If the board cannot come to an agreement on the proposed projects, the bond measure could be moved to the November ballot. 

In November 2000, area voters passed a $153 million Peralta bond measure to repair and renovate classrooms, training facilities, science and computer labs, meet health and safety standards and replace inadequate electrical and sewage systems, as well as construct and acquire other facilities. 

Included in the 2000 measure was money for construction of the new Berkeley City College facility in downtown Berkeley, formerly Vista College. 

But Measure E money is almost used up, with district officials reporting last October that $141.9 million of the original $153 million is already spent or committed, and trustees and district administrative officials have been hinting for months that a new bond measure would be placed on the ballot.å

While the Sierra Club has endorsed Oakland City Councilmember Nancy Nadel in the city’s mayoral race, a spokesperson for the organization said the group is also “in the process of considering an endorsement” of her rival, former Congressmember Ron Dellums, and a dual endorsement is a possibility. 

While there are several Sierra Club chapters in the area, the organization authorizes individual chapters to make political endorsements in the name of the entire organization. 

Nadel, Dellums, and Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente are the top candidates running to replace outgoing Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown in the June 6 primary. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters will compete in a runoff in the November general election. 

Last week, Nadel’s campaign sent local media a press release on the Sierra Club’s endorsement of her mayoral candidacy, quoting the club’s Helen Burke as stating that “for over 20 years, Nancy Nadel has consistently been a leader on environmental issues. She’s one of the few elected officials in Oakland to work so hard for the environment.” 

In the press release, Nadel said that “as an Oakland city councilmember, I have worked on countless initiatives to make Oakland a cleaner, healthier city to live in. It’s important that the residents of Oakland know that they have a viable environmental choice for mayor. And that candidate is Nancy Nadel.” 

But Andy Katz, chair of the Northern Alameda County group of the Sierra Club, which includes Oakland, said this week that the Nadel endorsement “was done early, before Dellums entered the race.” 

He said that organization leaders were presently meeting on the issue, with an announcement expected the first of next week. 

While Katz said he would not comment on what the organization’s decision might be, he said that the Sierra Club “has done dual endorsements in the past.” 

Dellums regularly received high marks from environmental organizations during the years he served in Congress. 

In 1996 for example, the last year Dellums ran for Congress, a Sierra Magazine feature entitled “Who are you most looking forward to voting for in November?” quoted Sierra Club member Judith Kunofsky as saying, “Representative Ron Dellums. He is committed to the environment, with a League of Conservation Voters score that is invariably 100 percent. On almost all other issues, he holds views identical to mine as well. ... [I]t is nice to be able to cast one vote with no reservations whatsoever.”›

A series of blustery storms that pelted the Bay Area during most of the day and night Sunday drove locals indoors to enjoy the warmth and comfort of their homes. 

Michael Crim and his wife Beverly have no permanent home, but found warmth and welcome at Berkeley’s Emergency Storm Shelter located, since the roof fell in at St. Mark’s Church in early January, at the Trinity United Methodist Church on Bancroft Way. 

“On a night like this, this place saves us,” said Crim, a Vietnam veteran. 

Sunday evening he was sitting on one of the 50 or so cots, wrapped in an army surplus blanket, studying for Monday classes at Vista College, where he’s majoring in computer engineering. 

“This winter’s been very tough on everybody—a lot of rain,” he said. 

The city funds three winter shelters. One located at the Oakland Army base houses some 50 homeless persons each night from November through April. Berkeley residents get vouchers from service providers and can stay for 30 days. This shelter, which will probably not be available next year due to development of the property, also houses 50 people from Oakland.  

There are motel/YMCA vouchers available for between two and four medically fragile people each day for two-week periods. 

And then there’s “J.C.’s place.” That’s the emergency shelter where Michael Crim and his wife were staying Sunday night. 

“That man right there has helped a lot of people, J.C.,” Crim said. “He’s been doing it for years. It’s very helpful for us. A lot of people are grateful. I’m grateful.”  

J.C. Orton is the affable man associated with the Catholic Worker who runs the shelter and an emergency food program. Orton said this shelter is unusual because it enforces fewer rules than most. 

“There’s no intake assessment,” he said. “You don’t need referrals.” There’s no limit of days a person can stay. “You can come in and out.” 

Another man who asked that his real name not be used said he would not go to other shelters. 

“Basically this place is good,” he said. “People are nice. You don’t feel like you’re in a jail atmosphere. (At other shelters) they lock you in. This is not institutional. Right now, I have no tobacco, so I’m going to hop on my bike and go up the street and get some tobacco.” 

The shelter is bare-boned. 

“You can’t make lasagna when you want to and you can’t watch HBO,” the man said. “You can’t sit on the couch with your girlfriend, but you’re not exposed to the elements, which basically consists of policemen.” 

People don’t even have to identify themselves, Orton said, pointing to a sign-in sheet. “There’s a couple of John Does.” 

Also, if people come in with what he called a “situation,” and they’re boisterous, he or other staff will ask them to take a walk around the block and come back.  

Ultimately, shelters are not the answer, Orton said. 

“People need to get housing and retain housing,” he said. To keep their housing, some people need advocates working long term with them, he said. 

The county estimates that there are about 850 homeless people in Berkeley; 150 are housed in year-round shelters and another 150 are in winter emergency shelters. Others are in transitional housing. The city has no estimate of how many people are on the street each night, according to Shelter Plus Care Coordinator Jane Micallef. 

Michael Crim’s wife Beverly, who asked to be identified only by her first name, snuggled under a blanket on her cot, lined up with six other women’s cots and screened off from the much larger men’s section. Beverly said she was attacked and beaten on San Pablo Avenue and became prone to seizures as a result. She survives on state disability income. She and Michael would prefer a real home, but that’s not possible right now. 

“Everything is so high—first and last month’s rent,” Beverly said. “They want $400 for a place then they want $400 [for first and last month rent], then they want $50 more for the key. I don’t have it to spare. I’m not lazy or nothing. Before I knew it—it’s all my check.” 

Crim said he used to sleep in Strawberry Canyon, near the university.  

“That was kind of hard for Beverly, and it got so wet,” he said. “I lost a lot of clothes and books. We started moving around. The Berkeley police found us in one spot and they made us move. We went to the underground parking lot of a church and the UC police gave us a ticket. So then we went to Oakland and we were sleeping in the back of a school.” 

That works when it’s not raining. 

It’s not easy to find workers who can come in and spend the night at the shelter with little lead time, Orton said. Jnana Bryant is a massage therapist and able to combine both jobs. 

“The vast majority of them are very sweet, very tender, very caring,” she said. “It’s the part people miss. They just see somebody on the street begging. If you take a few minutes, and talk to that person you can have some of the most amazing moments of your life by talking to somebody. They have great perceptions because they are really living on the edge. They can teach us something.”

A man who calls himself “Cheddar Cheese” spent his 20th birthday recently singing and performing for spare change in front of the Powerbar building in downtown Berkeley, as he has every day since arriving in Berkeley last January. 

Homeless for almost 10 years, he hitched a ride with a UC Berkeley professor last New Year’s Eve and finally arrived at what is known as the mecca for the country’s homeless—Telegraph Avenue. 

“The rains gave me a hard time,” he said. “I thought of going to the public library but then if all the homeless went to the public library, there wouldn’t be much place for anyone else there.” 

Instead, Cheddar Cheese went to YEAH! 

The Youth Emergency Assistance Hostel (YEAH!) is a program that provides seasonal shelter for homeless youth in Berkeley. Four Berkeley women came together in the fall of 2002 to provide shelter for the growing number of young men and women living on the city’s streets.  

Although daytime services were provided in the form of drop-in centers, the youth had no legal place to sleep at night. With YEAH!, street kids in Berkeley had a place to go to for hot showers, peanut butter sandwiches, cough syrups, clean socks and, most important, a comfy bed. 

According to Jane Micallef, secretary of the city’s Homeless Commission, “Young people often avoid adult shelters because their pets are not allowed entry. Also they feel threatened by adults. Young people don’t want to be associated with the older homeless crowd.”  

However, Micallef also said that the city couldn’t force young people to leave the streets and seek shelter at YEAH! Many youths are afraid of rules and regulations and want to live a barrier-free life, she said, so they can be found snuggled up in nooks and corners all over the city, in the tree-lined pathways on the UC Berkeley campus, or just about anywhere the cops won’t be able to get a hold of them. 

“I was once harassed by the cops for sleeping near the back door of Rasputin Music,” Cheddar Cheese said. “They said it was a fire exit and gave me a citation. Sometimes people throw water at me when I sleep. Sometimes I don’t know if I am going to wake up in the morning. Sometimes I don’t want to wake up in the morning because it’s just another day of the same old problems.” 

Cheddar Cheese keeps going back to YEAH! because of its friendly staff and clean amenities, he said. If there is something that holds him back from not going there on certain nights it’s the other homeless youths in the program. “Would you want to sleep in a room full of crack heads every day of the week?” 

Robert Nelson, procurement coordinator at the New Bridge Foundation in Berkeley, volunteers every night at YEAH! 

“Our doors are open to anyone who needs us,” he said. “If we get kids under 18, we transfer them to DreamCatchers. For the mentally ill, we recommend the Mental Health Service. We try and make it as comfortable as possible for kids. Dinner is followed by a movie or reading and then it’s off to bed. Girls and boys get separate sections of the sleeping area. Someone watches over the kids all night.” 

City Councilmember Kriss Worthington stressed the importance of having a service facility aimed especially towards the youth. 

“YEAH! is one of the most cost-effective programs in the City of Berkeley.” he said. “We need to extend the program from its limited amount of winter shelter hours.” 

Sara Isakson, pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Cross whose congregation houses the homeless youths, told the Daily Planet that YEAH! was working with Mayor Tom Bates to turn the winter shelter service into a four-year program for 18-25-year-olds. 

“It will offer those fresh out of foster care with that much needed transitory phase to plan their lives more carefully,” she said. 

Osha Neumann, who runs a legal clinic for the East Bay Community Law Center, said that there’s no doubt about the fact that YEAH! was doing a great job. 

“The problem is that not all the youth can use it or will use it,” he said.  

Neumann added that shelters don’t provide permanent solutions. 

“It’s not a home—it’s not a place where you can find security and privacy,” he said. “We need to start thinking of these kids as individuals instead of lumping them together as ‘homeless.’ The government should think of introducing funding changes at the local level instead of wasting money on foreign wars. This is our country’s youth we are talking about.” 



Hyim Ross doesn’t look like a hero. He’s a 30-something musician and school teacher and, like many, he’s angry that money that is needed for schools is going to fight the war in Iraq. 

He has taken his convictions to the street. He spent the week of his school vacation fasting, chained to a bench on Grand Avenue across from the Grand Lake Theater. Around him were posters with anti-war messages, an American flag, a chair and a tent to shelter him at night.  

“I’m here saying my piece and trying to get the word out that we’re spending too much money and putting too much energy into the war in Iraq and that we need to put our energy and efforts into children,” he said.  

Hyim Ross was there to get attention and he was getting it. Radio, TV, print journalists came out to interview him. He was there to get out the message that our country needs to change direction. Brother Muzika, a fifth-grade teacher at Lakeview School across the street, said he could appreciate what that means. He brought his class, a group of 10- and 11-year-old girls and boys, over for a conversation with Hyim.  

The kids had some questions: “Are you a victim of this war?” one asked. 

Hyim didn’t have anyone in this war he told them, but his family had been affected by violence. A girl was concerned about his health because he was not eating. 

“Are you satisfied with doing this?” she asked. He assured her that he was, particularly he was satisfied meeting with them. 

“If you were president, would you stop the war?” one boy wanted to know.  

Another asked, “If you had a chance to talk to the president, what would you say to him?”  

The youngsters were not shy about expressing their own opinions to this reporter. “My name is Donnell and I want to say this war is stupid!” John demanded, “Bush, save our schools and stop the war.” 

A girl spoke more gently, “My name is Marnay and I just want to say, please Bush, give money to schools, give teachers their pay cuts back.” 

Some of the kids made posters and taped them up on the concrete wall behind Hyim’s tent. 

Everyone gathered around to talk about how to make change happen. Brother Muzika, the teacher, spoke of the civil rights movement. It was an example of how “a lot of people acting peacefully could bring about change.” 

That’s what Hyim is about, he said, adding, “I’m not doing anything violent. I’m out here because I care.” 

What is important is to get the word out, to get more and more people involved. Hyim asked the kids, “Have each of you told at least one other person about this?” All of the children raised their hands.

Berkeley police announced Monday that they would offer two $15,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murders of Juan Ramos and Keith Stephens. 

Ramos, 18, of El Cerrito died on Feb. 10, stabbed to death while attending a party on Contra Costa Avenue and Keith Stephens, 24, was shot to death Feb. 19 on Carrison Street in Berkeley. 

According to statistics, rewards don’t typically help solve murders, said Officer Ed Galvan, police spokesperson. But he added it was worth a try in these cases. 

“We’d hate to not put something up and lose the opportunity that someone would (offer information) for the money,” he said. 

To date no credible tips have been offered and no suspects have been identified, Galvan said. Anyone with information about either case can call 981-5900. 

—

Two weeks ago the temperatures fell, and there was snow on Mt. Diablo and at other higher elevations. Also there was lots of TV coverage of snow storms on the East Coast and Midwest. I must admit that during the recently passed holiday season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and Super Bowl) I also kind of missed the snow, something that rarely happens in Berkeley. 

When it snows everyone looks better. With a hat pulled over your head, scarf wrapped several times around your face, layers of multiple sweaters on and wearing big boots—what’s not to like. You’re barely recognizable! Who needs to work out at a gym? With layers of clothes wrapped around you and a big overcoat on we all look kind of round and chunky, ear muffs instead of I-Pods! We all have one goal—trying to stay warm, unlike surfers who are trying to look cool. Snow makes people friendlier too. When it’s snowing people that don’t know each other jump-start each other’s car and dig out their neighbor’s driveways. Snow can be a mini disaster as well. It’s fine when you visit it (skiing), but it’s not so much fun when it visits you—it might not leave when you want it to.  

In Berkeley there is an unwritten law, that if you don’t call, don’t come. Everyone’s lives are so busy and planned that someone just dropping by unannounced, for an hour long visit because they happened to be in the neighborhood, is just out of the question. It could disrupt your whole day! You may visit, but you often won’t get pass the threshold. No tea, no crumpets and sometimes no invite inside at all. “I’m too busy right now” or “I was just on the way out”; “Call me and we’ll get together next week.” 

But if someone visits you during a snow storm it’s a completely different story. You hear them stomping the snow off their boots before they ring the bell, because they know that regardless of why they came you will let them in, before you tell them to leave. Usually if someone visits you when it’s snowing they truly want to see you, are not just passing by, and you’re surprised that someone has made such an effort in bad weather. 

Spring might be the time of mating for the birds and the bees, but we are neither fowl nor insect. Actually, in the winter when the snow’s falling, it may be the most romantic time of all. Should I spend the evening in? I have no choice, and to leave in the middle of the night in a snow storm could be a death sentence. 

I think Ray Charles and Betty Carter described the moment best in their classic recording, “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” How can I forget being snowed in at some lucky lady’s house with a tall glass of Thunderbird wine, sitting on a bean bag, “Voodoo Child” playing on the stereo, in front of a kerosene heater. When someone comes in out of the snow, it’s like a slow striptease show just watching them take off their outer garments. How sensuous. If you were born on the East Coast or Midwest between September and November, you may be a snow baby (count back nine months)!  

Oh but I wax nostalgic.  

I’m not sure I want it to snow in Berkeley, but maybe, sometimes, we should treat each other like it is snowing outside and say, “Come on in and get warm. ... Would you like some tea and soy muffins? I’ll go to the gym tomorrow.”  

Fake gun 

Alarmed civilians called police Saturday evening after they spotted a 17-year-old who appeared to be drawing a pistol as he walked along the 2900 block of King Street. 

Officers from the Berkeley Police Drug Task Force were the first to arrive, and when the young fellow spotted them, he leapt a fence and tried to outrun the police radios—a futile effort. 

Though he’d ditched his gun in his flight, officers found what turned out to be a fake pistol, and not the real thing. 

He was booked on suspicion of brandishing a fake firearm. 

Domestic spat 

Berkeley police arrested a 31-year-old South Berkeley man after he reportedly took a stick to the mother of his child just before 2:30 a.m. Sunday, said Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

The woman was not seriously injured and decline medical attention, said the officer.

Familial arson 

An arson-caused blaze did $100,000 in damage to the structure and contents of a home at 1212 Bonita Ave. last Tuesday afternoon. 

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said the fire was reported at 3:56 p.m. 

The alleged suspect, the daughter of the homeowner, was found nearby and taken into custody by police on a psychiatric hold pending an evaluation of her ability to stand trial, said Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

As of Monday evening, the woman was in custody at the county jail in Santa Rita. 

Orth said the fire was started in the basement of the residence and the flames spread to the bedroom above. The suspect allegedly used a spray mechanical lubricant to ignite the fire, Orth said. 

Bulbed out 

Residents of 171 Brookside Drive learned a hard lesson Friday: Believe those signs telling you what bulbs to use in a light fixture. 

Orth said the call that came in at 24 minutes after midnight started because the residents screwed three 200-watt bulbs into a metal ceiling fixture. 

The large bulbs were touching the fixture’s metal mounting plate, which transferred the heat to the overhead ceiling space, triggering the smoldering flames. 

The damage to the structure was estimated at $20,000, with another $5,000 in damage to contents, said Orth.  

“A single 100-watt bulb can produce 400 degrees of heat,” said Orth. “I’m not sure what a 200-watt bulb can do, but it’s got to be a lot more.”Ã

Several of our valued correspondents, some in this very issue, have written in to complain that the Daily Planet is taking ads from the Church of Scientology. One asks why we’re supporting that organization. Well, first of all, we’re not supporting them, they’re supporting us, in relatively minuscule proportions compared to our costs, it’s true, but still, they’re paying. Another refers to what he considers the harm Scientology might have done, and makes a comparison to cigarette ads, which he assumes we would turn down. We’ve never actually been offered cigarette ads, but yes, we’d probably turn them down. 

What’s the difference? It’s one of grandma’s laws: sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. We don’t know much about the Church of Scientology, shying away as we do from anything with “Church of” in its name, but we think it operates in the realm of ideas and beliefs for the most part. If papers barred from their pages any advertisers who advocated ideas that some might consider foolish or harmful, there would be many fewer papers.  

One more grandma’s law (apologies to the ACLU for any plagiarism): The best remedy for speech you disagree with is more speech. Anyone out there who objects to ideas advanced by any of our advertisers is free—no, is exhorted—to write in and tell our readers why. We’ve been proud of the spirited debate in these pages about the Berkeley Honda strike. Berkeley Honda might once have been an advertiser; they may or may not still be, but we will always appreciate a variety of points of view on the topic. Cigarette advertising, on the other hand, is trying to convince readers to do something that has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to cause them physical harm, unlike scientology or even labor practices. It crosses some invisible line which we see clearly, though some might not. 

While we’re on the subject of religion: We got a press release from something called the Minuteman Project, which quotes its founder Jim Gilchrist complaining about comments made by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney on immigration. 

The release says that “Gilchrist strongly objected to the Cardinal’s threat to ignore laws passed by Congress with which he disagrees: ‘It discredits the church and brings shame to parishioners to say we are not going to follow the laws of the United States—the most accepting nation on earth. What would happen if every church decided to only follow the laws with which they agreed?’” 

Well, let’s just turn that one on its head. What if every church decided not to follow laws with which they disagreed? We might, for example, have avoided the worst aspects of the Holocaust, since a substantial number of Catholic and Protestant church leaders spoke out, though not nearly vigorously enough, against the laws of Nazi Germany with which they disagreed. What if all U.S. Catholic archbishops, not just Roger Mahoney, counseled their flock not to participate in anything which supported capital punishment, with which the international Catholic Church strongly disagrees? When it comes to abortion and other reproductive rights situations, of course, some might see difficulties with such a practice. But on balance, if Catholics were taught with equal vigor to succor immigrants, to stay clear of capital punishment, and not to take part in abortions, it might add up to a net win for justice.  

In a poignant bit of irony, the most sympathetic and lengthy discussion of Cardinal Mahoney’s stance to be found on the Internet at the time of this writing was in the People’s Weekly World, which says of itself, “We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views.” Time was when the Catholic Church and especially its American hierarchy was at the forefront of those who were trying to suppress the views of the CPUSA, and now the two are at the same place at the same point in history.  

Is there a lesson to be learned from this? Both groups in our lifetime have had many bad ideas and a few really good ones, and in so far as they managed to put all their beliefs out there for public debate, the weakest ideas have mostly failed and the fittest ones have mostly survived. That’s why it benefits society to keep the public forum for ideas, including news, columns, opinion sections and advertising space in publications like ours, as open as we can make it.  

We find that we are lately getting a truly incredible number of interesting well-written letters on all topics, including Scientology. We’ve finally reached the point that we’re going to have to do something about it. Starting with today’s issue, we’re going to put all the letters we don’t have room for in the print edition into our web edition. The number of print pages we can afford to print is limited by the number of ads we’ve been able to sell for each issue, but it doesn’t cost us much to put extra letters on the web as bonus pages.  

By the way, if you haven’t seen the Daily Planet on the Internet lately, take a look. We can now put images of the entire print paper—photos, cartoons, ads and all—on the website in very readable Acrobat format. This means that, if you want, you can enjoy the whole Daily Planet experience from the comfort of your home. Just go to www.berkeleydailyplanet.com and click on the button that says “The Full Paper PDF” on the left side of the home page.  

A staple of daily newspaper journalism is an “expose” of the salaries paid to public servants of all kinds. The Contra Costa Times has been dining out for more than a year on salary information it obtained about Oakland employees who make more than $100,000 per year, gleaned from a successful California Public Records Act lawsuit against the city. Oakland’s unions, particularly the police union, fought tooth and nail to keep said information from coming out into the open. Lately, the San Francisco Chronicle has been engaged in a similar struggle to reveal information about compensation packages for top University of California officials, and the results have caught the attention of the state Legislature—both parties—in a big way. Putting such details in the public arena is laudable, and readers are certainly shocked to see it, but in some ways these stories miss their mark.  

It’s true that taxpayers have a right to know how their dollars are being transferred to whom and for what. That should be a matter of public record, and the papers that put it there deserve a good deal of praise. But it’s also important to take a look at where salaries paid to government officials fit into the overall economic picture, and if that’s done the data is not quite as impressive. 

The Chronicle of Higher Education calculated the total compensation paid to UC President Robert Dynes at $423,666, presumably among the highest salaries if not the very highest in the UC system. It’s above average for public university administrators, but still not in the top 20. And five private university presidents earned more than $1 million. Any of these figures add up to a hell of a lot of money by any calculation, especially as compared with the pay of service workers in the same institutions. Dynes himself lands just over the edge in the 99th percentile of pay scales in the United States, even if everyone else who works under him makes less. But an even more shocking story, one that doesn’t get as much ink, is who else is getting that last 1 percent, and how it affects those on the bottom.  

A recent paper by economists Emanuel Saez (of UC Berkeley) and Thomas Piketty shows that the top 1 percent of Americans now corral about 15 percent of all U. S. income, up from about 8 percent just since the 1960s and 1970s. The income share taken by the top 1 percent is again what it was in the Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century. The overall income rise coming from increasing worker productivity is being sucked up by the top one percent. 

Super-hero economist Paul Krugman’s most recent column puts this into perspective with his discussion of another recent paper, this one by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University: “Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year... But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that’s not a misprint.” 

In other words, though public servants like UC administrators and Oakland police officers are doing reasonably well at taking care of themselves, “doing well by doing good” like Tom Lehrer’s Old Dope Peddler, the really big guys are doing much better, and having a more profound and long-lasting effect on the structure of American society. Even in what the bloggers call the MSM, the mainstream media, you can be pretty darn sure that the top executives are taking care of themselves in ways undreamed of by those who merely toil in the public sector. Just for comparison it might be instructive to take a look at the available financial information on executive compensation in the companies which own the Contra Costa Times (Knight-Ridder) and the San Francisco Chronicle (the Hearst Corporation) or even the East Bay Express (New Times, now transmogrified into Village Voice Media). It’s a relatively minor research project, though outside the scope of this space today. It might, in fact, be a good story idea for reporters in any of these organizations, but they might have some trouble getting management approval to do it. Even more, it might be an instructive and fun project for the former employees of such media conglomerates now at loose ends because of the endemic layoffs and buyouts in their industry, engineered to make sure that profits and thus executive pay at the top levels continue to stay high.  

It’s easy (and stylish) to take potshots at public employees, but the real problem with the American economy today is not that public employees on the whole are grossly overpaid. The biggest problem is that taxes are too low to pay for needed public services at any pay level, politicians are too cowardly to raise taxes, and the media let them get away with it. If marginal tax rates, the taxes on the excessive income at the very top of the scale in a progressive tax system, went back to what they were in the Eisenhower administration (90 percent) or even in the Kennedy administration (70 percent) we could go back to a decent level of public services without the looming specter of a deficit for which our children and grandchildren will pay. 

›

The photograph of Charles and Joseph Robinson in the Feb. 28 issue was mistakenly attributed. It was taken by Charles Robinson, even though he is also in the photo.

The headline of the White Elephant Sale article in last Friday's issue mistakenly reported the sale as taking place this past weekend. The sale is actually this coming Saturday and Sunday, March 4 and 5. Check the Oakland Museum website at www.museumca.org for details.O

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

In 2004, Berkeley’s citizens voted overwhemingly—by a 72 percent landslide—to mandate instant runoff voting (IRV), also known as “ranked choice voting,” for all future Berkeley candidate elections. 

On Tuesday, March 7 the Berkeley City Council is scheduled to discuss and act upon this Berkeley voter mandate. A rally in support of IRV will be held on the steps of the City Council Chambers at 6 p.m. (before the council meeting at 7 p.m.). 

It is imperative that the City Council move forward immediately to implement an IRV voting process for the upcoming November 2006 general election.  

If necessary, the Berkeley City Council must consider the option of hand counting IRV ballots. Hand counting of IRV ballots was used successfully in San Francisco during the city’s November 2004 election for Board of Supervisor candidates. This process took about three hours to complete without any glitches or problems. 

San Francisco’s successful 2004 IRV voting process serves as a model for Berkeley and other California cities scheduled to transition to IRV voting. San Francisco’s IRV process is permanent and will be used again during the 2006 elections.  

Ballot hand counting is also used in countries around the world, including Ireland which uses an IRV voting process to elect that nation’s president. Ireland hand counts over a million ballots within 24 hours. 

I urge the Berkeley City Council to act with all deliberate speed and implement an IRV voting process for the November, 2006 election. Berkeley’s voter mandate—72 percent “yes”—for IRV must be acted upon and established without delay. Berkeley’s voters deserve no less. 

Chris Kavanagh 

• 

MONEY AND INFLUENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am puzzled by Becky O’Malley’s editorial of excessive salaries. First, she tries to address the issue of high (albeit often excessive) salaries in the private sector. Then takes strange potshots at fellow journalists to highlight the excessiveness. Wake up, Becky! If you ask most of us, we’ll tell you how we struggled for years on very low salaries, hand-outs (serious thanks to my parents and relatives), and how landing that first, real, regular gig was the hardest time on Earth.  

What’s to point out here is that in a city like Berkeley, which has so much local media, we don’t know if the Planet even pays a living wage to its writers and contributors—or if its freelancers can survive on just the work they’re getting published. Most, if not all managers in newspapers, television and radio earn high salaries because they deserve them. Many having likely worked in their formative years on not much at all. Then again, for the interest of the public and fellow journalists, Becky O’Malley is the editor of the Planet and her husband is the publisher. She told the Daily Californian in 2003 that she could run the newspaper with a monetary loss for up to two years. The couple bought the paper and invested in it using revenue from the 1996 sale of their software company, Berkeley Speech Technologies, for $15.5 million. Being independently wealthy is never a qualification to be the editor of a newspaper. The public and my fellow journalists should also be aware of the fact that of all the family-owned newspapers in California, only the Planet has a family member on its editorial board. Money can buy influence, Becky, but it can’t cover up stupidity. 

John Parman 

• 

EASTSHORE STATE PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m writing in regard to Eastshore State Park at the Berkeley Marina. As some of you may know the land was originally the Berkeley dump and then became a kind of wilderness where quite a few nature-lovers would enjoy exploring, some like myself often painting plein air. True, there was a dog problem, but this could have been solved while keeping it open to the public and making it welcome to shorebirds as well. 

Instead the park system, with considerable cost to taxpayers, has transformed it by clear-cut into what is essentially their private property, and the public is excluded except for an ugly path between wire fences where no one has yet to walk. 

This was planned by a commission of people in Sacramento who neither live in Berkeley nor will visit the area, and yet they have taken over the land and built a kind of zoo for geese and ducks. 

I love birds as much as anyone. I especially loved the flocks of blackbirds and finches that are now gone from the area, as well as all the snakes and rabbits and who knew what else, plus of course all the wild plants. 

Like many others, I’m all for welcoming migratory birds and offering space for those who would like to stay, but this could have been done without such draconian measures. Instead a group of people who care nothing for Berkeley residents have created an abomination of desolation where even bird watchers will have to do their watching through an ugly fence. 

In a society where so much of the land is private property, many of us are grateful for parks where we can enjoy what only the rich could otherwise afford, but those who control these parks are not always mindful of other concerns beside their own. The wild place that had grown from what had been a dump was a place of natural anarchy that such people tend to abhor, since they are the people of fences and locks and a kind of development that has become rampant across the planet. This new park is not a wetland restoration project, but one that was born from a computer many miles away. 

No doubt many of your readers support such a move. It is not enough for them to have the Doubletree motel cover the rest of the area, no, they must control it all and exert their will over it. In the meantime the fence will remain, the ugly black fence with the signs that say, “Keep Out. Restricted Area.” It breaks my heart every time I pass by and remember how open and lush the land was before. 

P. Najarian 

• 

CHECHNYA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a college student in Berkeley. Recently, a troubling subject has come to my attention, and although it has been going on for most of the last decade, I personally have been wrapped up in an environment that places little importance on what happens outside of the immediate community. Now in Berkeley, I hear news all the time, and the only thing that’s been circling my brain for the last several months is the Chechen situation. 

A UCB student says it best in a recent article: 

In the case of Chechnya, we have a population of people that have historically been physically fragmented by deportation and war. Chechnya itself currently exists as a federal subject of Russia despite having declared independence in 1991. To date, no other state has recognized them as independent from Russia. Given their struggle with Russia how the “rest of the world” identifies them is not irrelevant but in fact inextricably tied to their destiny. Without being recognized as a sovereign state by the world, any conflict it experiences with Russia remains, technically, a civil war. 

Essentially, because the rest of the world only sees Chechnya only as a part of Russia instead of an independent country under constant attack, no one thinks twice about the atrocities that go on there year after year. If we were to view Chechnya as its own country, then perhaps powers like the United Nations would become involved, and the Chechen people could make progress toward the societal stability they so desperately need to establish. 

I think that there are many people in this community and other surrounding communities who, like me, have heard little to nothing on this subject. What I get from news sources has a decidedly Russian slant, referring to them as “separatist Chechen guerrillas,” and the fact that the “Russians have dealt with the separatist republic of Chechnya.” 

With all that I’ve learned about Chechnya and its struggles, I’m left with one question: What can I do (as an individual)? Perhaps the answer to that question is to rattle a few cages and become a catalyst to challenge the public’s perception. If there is more public interest, perhaps the powers that be will step in to regulate the situation so that it is not so violently one-sided. 

Diana Sanders 

• 

RELIGION AND ADVERTISING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ask your recent letter-writer how many people have died after receiving psychartric treatment or drugs? 

Should they be banned from advertising? 

What is the source of the writer’s information and did they investigate the circumstances related to the events they claim or was that merely hearsay? 

I’m glad they have the ability to espouse their opinion and they should defend the rights of Scientologists to do the same. A little investigation will show that Scientologists are very careful about what they claim, and by the same token what others may claim about their religion. 

Patrick Luefan 

• 

DISAPPOINTED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wonder if others are as disappointed in the sound system at City Council as I am. Ever since Mayor Bates has become mayor, attendance at City Council meetings has been an exercise in futility. If you want to know what the mayor is saying, you have to strain to read his words on a monitor. You can hear him mumbling, but not what he is saying. 

I wonder if the mayor even wants to be heard by the public. I am positive he makes sure he is heard by those he makes deals with behind the scenes. 

I am especially concerned because there are national issues of privacy at stake in our own local area now. Homeland Security is cultivating positions on a computer server hooking into our city computers. At the Feb. 21 City Council meeting there was a consent item No. 9 passed asking the city manager to report what has happened and what is planned. Unfortunately, there is no deadline for him to get back to the council. This is an urgent matter. Our privacy and our democracy may be at stake. Councilmembers Spring and Wozniak authored the request for the report. City Council may not know what is going on, but I find it hard to believe that the mayor doesn’t know. 

We need our City Council, and our mayor, to protect our privacy. We need them to keep us clearly informed about how Homeland Security is hooked in to our local connections and city networks. We need town hall meetings to discuss what has been done and what is being planned regarding this involvement. 

How about it, Mayor Bates? Can’t you improve your ability to speak up so we can hear you? We need to hear you at council meetings, and we need to hear you are protecting our privacy and our right to know...by holding town hall meetings in several parts of town that are well publicized in advance. 

The assault on our privacy at the library is now being compounded by further erosions of our democracy in our city networks. Will you please speak up so we can hear you?  

Nancy Delaney 

• 

DENSITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Downtown planners embrace density. Sure, togetherness is a wonderful thing but why sit so close to someone else’s table in a restaurant that you can hear all about your neighbor’s latest medical procedure? Berkeley is not New York. 

Planners advocate maximizing space by cutting it up into little spaces. I wonder if density advocates live in little apartments above restaurants, or if they have plenty of space to lay out their plans. How much space can be created by treating our downtown like a California Closet System? 

An apartment with tiny rooms is OK if you don’t want to make noise, have hobbies, play music or let the kids run around. At some point, an apartment becomes a pod. Many people live in their heads already, with electronic equipment to create private space. 

I think that windows should open to let in air and light. Every room should have one. You may think this is not only unrealistic, but insane. After all, cubicles are the norm for office workers, why not for apartment dwellers? 

Packing people together ever more closely doesn’t bring out the best in individuals, or to downtown life. Many Berkeley houses already have new units where the miniature back yards used to be. How much space do people need or deserve? Enough to put on a shirt without scraping one’s knuckles? 

Finer minds than mine debate urban planning. I simply urge the planners to consider maintenance over redevelopment where it is feasible. I realize it’s more glamorous to dedicate an new building than it is to dedicate an upgraded storm drain to the hardworking people who build our town. It’s easier to knock a building down (although some of them are pretty sturdy) that it is to build new ones. The new ones take a staggering amount of resources, so let’s build them sparingly and upgrade some of what we have. 

Many density advocates believe that increased urban density saves farmland from being developed. Even if residents are stacked like cordwood in downtown Berkeley apartments, developers will still build large single family homes in outlying areas. 

I am a citizen for more transparency, air and light. I know I’m already dense enough, I don’t know about you. I may sit eighteen inches away from you in a downtown restaurant and find out. 

Jean Hooker 

• 

BEREKELY HONDA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

First, congratulations to those who said all along that Berkeley Honda doesn’t want to settle with the union. You were right! On Feb. 15, the eight-month anniversary of this labor conflict, Berkeley Honda got a hearing with the National Labor Relations Board, where they sought permission to hold a decertification election to dissolve the union. The shop’s strike-breaking workers signed the petition for decertification, but does anyone doubt that management was behind this action? Especially since the petition was delivered by the Assistant Service Manager? The NLRB will issue a decision within the next month. 

Second, congratulations to Berkeley Honda for taking another giant step towards your real goal of breaking the union, while solemnly swearing for the entire eight months of this strike that you truly want to settle with the union. And thank you for your relentless efforts in the service of lower wages, poorer health care, the displacement of long-time workers, and an insecure, pension-free old age—the fruits of union-busting.  

Third, should the NLRB rule in management’s favor (a strong possibility since the Board is headed by Bush appointees) be assured that nothing will change for the Berkeley Honda Labor and Community Coalition. The shop’s anti-worker agenda is immoral, and we will continue to respond to that, whatever the ruling. So just in case management has forgotten our pledge to them, we now reiterate it yet again: “Berkeley Honda, we will be here one day longer than you.”  

Nat Courtney 

Garry Horrocks 

Jon Rodney 

Harry Brill 

Judy Shelton 

• 

MIDDLE EAST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The erudite virtuoso, Dan Spitzer of Kensington, writing down on KPFA, frames these exquisite words in the Feb. 17 Daily Planets: “Speaking of which [the “ideological simpletons” at KPFA], Hamas spokespeople’s dressing in suits…underscores that attempting democracy in a Palestinian society..is..comparable to attempting cosmetic surface alternations on a sow.” Read that over carefully and I won’t need to say anything more about it. 

To further enhance Mr. Spitzer’s brilliant elaboration of the Zionist position on Palestine, Palestinians, and democracy, (as well as his egalitarianism) we ought compel him to view Steven Spielberg’s film Munich alternating with John Pilger’s film Palestine is Still the Issue for 40 days and 40 nights. A ridiculous proposal, of course, since the problem is mainly that of the U.S. journalism corp which, under scrupulous guidance, knows just about everything (inflect that as nothing) about Palestinian actualities but everything (and really everything) about what ideological frame they get paid to buttress.  

Small facts for the record: Hamas has fairly well upheld a year of suspension of attacks within Israel, while the daily targeted killings by Israel with weekly dozens of innocent Palestinian victims—many of them children—continues unabated. Today, the Israeli cabinet voted to put destitute, homeless Palestine “on a diet” (Israel’s jocular terminology not mine) up to the point of starvation of the general population, cutting off 50 million a month much of it the Palestinian’s own money Israel collects in taxes. The Israelis have never, ever in 50 years suggested they would withdraw from the giant cities they have erected after seizing Palestinian west bank lands (which all sounds amazingly like the Afrikaner Nationalist Party of old).  

This week our U.S. government raised Israel’s poker bet by also withdrawing 50 million of aid per month of its own. This game is called “be subjugated, or die.” They excoriated Arafat; they ridiculed Abbas; they hate Hamas; they hate Palestine, they deny it exists, and wonder why many Palestinians—Hamas in particular--deny Israel’s right to exist. And this is the new American way. Like Iraq, this is the national legacy our children will have to live with: war on the defenseless to take their lives and resources, then call them terror.  

Marc Sapir  

• 

OUT OF TOUCH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Those critics of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who say that the board is out of touch with the average American for passing their impeachment resolution should take a look at the Zogby International poll that was conducted from Jan. 9-12. 

The poll found that 52 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement: “If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.” Since Bush has admitted bypassing the courts to run his surveillance program the Board is in line with the views of the majority of Americans. 

If we also add in all of Bush’s other misdeeds, such as his illegal wars, the deaths of Katrina victims, the condoning of torture, etc. it is clear we can not afford another three years of the Bush regime. 

In addition to the immorality and illegality of Bush’s actions we also have unconscionable monetary costs. The National Priorities Project recently concluded that the war in Iraq has translated into a $40 billion dollar cost to the people of California. The war has cost Berkeley residents $115 million. 

The money being used to kill and maim people in Iraq could be used for health care, housing, education, and so many other priorities. 

I hope that the Berkeley City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors will soon follow the lead of San Francisco by passing similar resolutions. 

For more information on how to oust the Bush regime before it is too late, see worldcantwait.net. 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

EDITOR’S NOTE: We have recently received more than letters than we can possible print. Therefore the following letters appear only on our website. 

Out of Context at  

Berkeley High 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

With all the hoopla and hand-wringing over Muslim response to the Danish cartoons, I wonder if it would bother the Berkeley High School faculty and administration if their students were being encouraged to take Mohammad and the Quran out of context. My guess is that the educators at Berkeley High are very concerned that their students learn NOT to take anything Islamic out of context (as well they should). Yet literally carved into the very building of Berkeley High School is a statement taken greatly out of context and this is, I assume, perfectly OK with the faculty and staff.  

Emblazoned on one of Berkeley High School’s main buildings is the statement: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” It might interest the educators there to know that this statement is originally found in the Bible on the lips of Jesus Christ. And if any of them bothered to check the context of this statement by Jesus, I doubt they would want the statement on their building any longer. The proper context is thus: “Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you remain in My word, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free…If therefore the Son (i.e., Jesus Christ) shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:32, 36). I wonder if Berkeley High School students are taught that the “truth” being referred to in the statement carved into their building is the truth of Jesus Christ’s words in the Bible, not general sociological, anthropological, psychological, chemical, or any other truth? The context makes this clear. I’m sure students are NOT being taught this. So, I guess the Bible can be quoted out of context for whatever educational purpose Berkeley High wants, and who cares if the students don’t know, right? But can anyone imagine a school having a Quranic verse carved into it’s building so blatantly distorted and out of context? I think not. That’s all right, Christians will ‘take it,’ right? So what’s the lesson being taught to Berkeley High students? Precisely this: You may take the Bible and Jesus Christ, who is worshipped by billions of people on this planet, out of context, but don’t dare take other writings (Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, you name it) out of context. Bad example, Berkeley High School!  

Michael Duenes 

Berkeley and Beyond Institute 

• 

WATCH OUT PROFESSOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Theodore Roszak got his only laugh at a January reading from this book at Cody’s when he referred to a New Yorker cartoon in which one bearded hippy assures another that he speaks for the whole human race. Roszak knows that he speaks for a very small number of people and it is no laughing matter. What makes him angry is not just any one of the policies or activities of the Bush administration but their underlying thrust: the extension of an American empire into global dominance that he calls Triumphalism. 

While loaded with wit and topical references what sets this book apart from most other critiques of the Bush administration is the author’s penetration into the underlying presuppositions, policies and people that give that viewpoint such force. Roszak sees three factors that combine for a “perfect storm” historically: Corporations, Neo-con intellectuals and Religious fundamentalists. He shows how they developed, gained power and continue in control of American politics through money and guns and belief.  

There is no easy way out of this storm and Roszak does not forecast any lessening of its force any time soon. But all is not lost. There are soft spots in the Imperial movement and tough resources in its small but growing opposition. Roszak appeals to an international audience to limit and correct American policy through intellectual, diplomatic and economic means. This same appeal is made to Americans with the addition of stress on the religious element in which progressive churches are urged to mount a full-scale critique to the fundamentalist right wing and its politics. While not itself a program the book offers the basis for a systematic alternative. 

Roszak’s work reminds me of Augustine amid the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Both have an historical sense that allows them to participate in their own time and to some extent transcend it while giving directions to it. Augustine wrote from the perspective of faith that saw the City of God enduring even as the City of Man declined. Having Augustine, we need not require Roszak to pass some doctrinal test. We only need him to keep telling the truth as he sees it. However, the fact that he closes the book by quoting Jesus and sees connections between the Jesus People and the Counter Culture that has relevance today should hearten religious leaders. The same week in which he read from his book at Cody‚s the Pacific School of Religion launched a progressive Christian website to www.progressivechristianwitness.org add to the existing www.faithvoices.org. 

In the Doonesbury cartoon of Sunday Jan. 29 Garry Trudeau pictures a small group of soldiers in Iraq questioning those who put them there. One replies that the neo-con architects of this war—Perle, Rice, Wolfowitz—can’t ignore the consequences of their action and in time some will become tragic figures haunted by the bloody history they helped author. He concludes, “Every outfit has someone like me. We’re usually called ‘professor.’” In our case, that includes Professor Roszak. 

David Randolph 

• 

A SIMPLE WAY OUT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is a simple way out of our current national nightmare of being ruled by the illegitimate Bush-Cheney regime. Instead of going through the inevitable coming impeachment, trial, conviction and removal of Cheney and Bush, with all its partisan unpleasantries, it would be much better for all, if they simply resigned and allowed Al Gore and John Edwards to replace them. These changes would restore legitimacy to our federal government.  

First, Bush would pardon himself, Cheney and their administration staff members for all of their thousands of felonies, high crimes and misdemeanors that they have committed since stealing the presidential election in 2000 with the connivance of five partisan Supreme Court justices.  

Second, Bush would ask Vice President Dick Cheney to resign and he would do so. Then Bush would appoint Al Gore as the new vice president and the Senate would then confirm him. Next Bush would resign and return to his horseless and cattleless ranch in Crawford, Texas and resume cutting brush. Then President Al Gore would appoint John Edwards as vice president and he would be confirmed by the Senate. This transition will allow Bush, Cheney, et al to avoid serving long prison terms for their many criminal acts. Letting them all off the legal hook for their crimes is the tradeoff necessary for us to get our democracy back. 

With our American democracy restored, we, the people, and the new Gore-Edwards administration could get on with the enormous task of cleaning up the messes, quagmires, morasses and other assorted problems created over the past five years of the illegitimate, corrupt and incompetent Bush regime.  

First, we will immediately and unconditionally withdraw all of our troops, mercenaries and officials out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to let the Iraqis and Afghanis determine their own destinies without any further American interference. We need to end our war on the poor people of the third world and let them live their own lives without American interference. 

Second, we will rescind all of the absurd tax cuts for the rich enacted by the GOP and Bush in the last five years. We need to get a grip on our federal budget deficits and reduce them to zero as President Clinton did in the 1990s.  

Third, we will create a single-payer federal universal health insurance system that will cover all Americans. It will include health care, dental care, vision care, nursing home care and pharmaceutical drugs for all Americans. This bold and long overdue step will probably immediately cut health care costs by about a third and will also greatly slow down future health care cost increases.  

Fourth, we will immediately return to time-tested traditional hand-counted paper ballots in all of our elections. We will dump all of the electronic computerized voting machines and electronic computerized vote tabulating machines into the nearest bodies of water. Actually, a few of them should be saved as exhibits in Museums of Corporate Greed, which will be established in towns and cities across this great land, to educate present and future generations. These actions will end the practice of the GOP electronically hacking, rigging and stealing of computerized elections in 2002, 2004 and 2005. 

Fifth, all elections will be 100 percent publicly funded. There will be plenty of time for extended debates and discussions made available on our publicly owned airwaves (television and radio). All in person lobbying by special interest groups with campaign donations and gifts will be outlawed. They can write letters to government representatives, just like the rest of us. 

Sixth, we will end all illegal spying and wiretapping and eavesdropping by the NSA, the CIA, the Pentagon and other government organizations. All such wiretaps and surveillance will need to be approved by the FISA court or other courts before being undertaken.  

Seventh, we will break the monopoly grip of a few major corporations on our public airwaves (radio and television) and return the public airwaves to broadcasting by non-profit public interest groups. 

Eighth, we will rewrite our NAFTA, WTO and other international trade agreements to protect our traditional American manufacturing jobs and our new technology jobs from being exported around the world. We will take our manufacturing jobs back from China and we will take our technology jobs back from India. The label, “Made in the USA” used to a point of pride. We can make American shoes for American feet in factories located here in the USA. 

Ninth, we can raise federal corporate tax levels to the traditional rates imposed back in the 1950s. Corporations need to pay their fair share of taxes since they greatly benefit from the sound and secure functioning of our complicated infrastructure. Multinational corporations that sell products to us need to pay taxes that they are currently evading and avoiding by offshoring their headquarters in little Caribbean island nations. Oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, HMOs and credit card banks are all making obscene and growing profits. Credit cards need to have an interest ceiling equal to the current prime interest rate, about 6 percent, not at 12 percent, 18 percent or 27 percent interest rates now being charged. Traditional Muslim culture does not permit the charging of any interest on loans; this may help explain some of the Bush-Cheney Administration’s extreme hostility to Muslim cultures. 

Tenth, we need to establish a federal minimum wage of ten dollars per hour plus an annual four week paid vacation for all workers. This will help allow all Americans to enjoy the American dream. 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

I believe that the real disease, the root causes for the imbalance around the Ashby BART station are two-fold—both due to the design of BART done 50 years ago. The first is the six-lane section of Adeline, like a freeway in the heart of a residential area with the disastrous angled intersection of Adeline and Ashby, which has plagued us for a long time, long before BART, and is all the more intractable because Ashby is a state highway, necessarily involving the State of California. Adeline and this inters ection contribute, more than anything else, to the unfriendly feeling of the area, particularly to pedestrians. The second is the damage incurred when healthy neighborhoods were destroyed for BART parking. There has been no attempt to repair any of that damage.  

Because neighborhood destruction without any mitigation is at the heart of this issue, I feel it is appropriate—actually, necessary—that we create a neighborhood, both to replace the erased neighborhood, and to knit the city fabric back together where it was cut apart. Of course, we must also acknowledge the 40 years of evolving cityscape that is now in place here, and look ahead so what we will build can both evolve with and guide future growth.  

I feel the planning grant gives us a golden, or at least underwritten, opportunity, as a community, to talk about this. In fact, the planning grant is already working, already driving communication around these issues involving all of us. For without some actual money on the table there would never hav e been anything to rally opposition! I have great hope for the process on which we are embarking. What each of us has to say, this is the time and place to say it. We are all the hammers, we need all our fire to forge something worthwhile! 

The planning g rant proposal outlines a mixed-use project of 50 units per acre, with spaces for retail use and performing arts, and other things that are needed to support a neighborhood community. 

Looking at the neighborhoods that surround BART right now, I wondered w hat their density was- and what does 50 living units per acre actually look like? The current acceptable lot size in Berkeley is 5,000 square feet. One house on that lot gets 9 units per acre. In Berkeley this is known as R1 zoning, and is almost non-exis tent. Last year I did a study of my R4 neighborhood, which is Otis Street, and Russell Street between MLK and Milvia. My neighborhood has 25 units per acre, but it feels like less; even long-time residents think it is a neighborhood of single-family home s. One interesting thing about the Otis-Russell Neighborhood is that it is the same physical size as the BART parking lot under discussion! That is, you could make a copy of it and plop it down, streets and all, and it would just fit- you’d have 25 units per acre and a fine working neighborhood. But this would fall short in some ways. 

One important shortcoming is that it would not contribute much to the spaces, especially the Ashby and Adeline streetscapes, that surround the BART parking lot. Those wide wide spaces need buildings with some height to help define them. The best nearby example is the Hudson Antique Building, or Webb Block, the big reddish curved building right across Ashby from the BART parking lot. During its initiation as a Berkeley Land mark, it was often remarked that this building really “held” the corner with its mass and form. The Ashby streetscape sorely needs something of equally striking character on the other side, for balance. The same thing is true for both sides of Adeline. 

T he Webb Block also makes a good study of housing density and mixed use development. All together it has 14 units: 10 apartments and 4 commercial spaces. This works out to 100 units per acre, or if only the apartments are considered, about 72 units per acr e. So if mixed-use buildings were built using this Berkeley landmark as a model, they would be way over the study level of 50 units per acre. 

Another interesting example of mixed use development is the Berkeley Zen Center on Russell Street, which is comp rised of 10 units and a Zendo. Here there are about 48 units per acre, with room for the Zendo and landscaping. This is very close to the 50 units per acre study level. 

A third instructive example is the apartment building at 2923 Otis St., which provides 52 units per acre, as well as parking for 78 cars per acre, perhaps the cars missing from the first two examples. This is also a good example of what drove the formation of the Berkeley Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance in the mid-‘70s, in opposition of development that destroyed existing houses. Here is an opportunity to learn from our mistakes also.  

We do know what makes good neighborhoods. There are tons of studies, and better, there are actual good neighborhoods, right here. There are also good neighborhoods recently built new, from scratch, for us to look at for both their shortcomings and successes.  

Ultimately we have to work with what is here, right in front of us, and what it will take to make it work. For example, if we consider somethin g like the Webb Block, a strong edge of buildings to hold the frontages of Ashby and Adeline Streets, that line of buildings could also contain most of the housing needed on this site, and the third side of the triangle, across Martin Luther King Junior W ay, could mostly be left open. That would make a nice area for recreation, being open to the South and West for lots of sunshine. 

I think MLK is the easiest street to get across of the three that border the BART lot, and would be the most easily modified by controlled crosswalks to encourage free interchange, so that a new recreation area might be used by neighbors on both sides of the street. In this way the existing row of houses on MLK and the new buildings on Ashby and Adeline would surround a park as well as the portion of MLK Way that went through alongside the park. 

The Adeline Corridor and the Ashby/Adeline intersection is a difficult problem; there is a history of failed attempts to tame it. I believe this is an issue that must be met squarely, and that solving it is crucial to the whole area and the BART development in particular. A six or seven lane freeway is grossly out of character in a residential area and in a commercial area. Its presence fosters driving habits and attitudes that are extremely dangerous, as any pedestrian knows, sometimes, unfortunately, to their peril! I hope the City of Berkeley will see the importance of integrating Ashby and Adeline streets into this study.  

So, I say, let’s get to work! 

David Soffa is a Berkeley resident.w

Now that Assemblymember Hancock’s “Fair Elections and Clean Money” legislation (AB 583) has passed the Assembly and is on its way to the Senate, it’s time to get beyond the supporters’ slogans and hype and discuss the actual contents of this bill. 

Up until two weeks before it passed the Assembly, AB 583 had two major components, each with profound impacts on how politics in Sacramento would be financed. 

The first major component of AB 583 was a simple but extremely effective change in the current law. It classified campaign contributions in excess of $500 as “income” for purposed of the Political Reform Act of 1974. As a result of this change, legislators could not vote on and the governor could not veto legislation that would affect their large contributors (i.e. their sources of income), eliminating any influence these donors might have on the legislative process. It cost the taxpayer nothing and I did not oppose it. However, one week before AB 583 was passed by the Assembly, it was amended and this component was deleted. It was independent and separable from this bill’s other provisions, and the only truly effective way of ending the “pay to play” politics in Sacramento that supporters of AB 583 oppose. 

The rest of this legislation establishes and elaborate and expensive taxpayer financed political campaign framework. Hancock estimates its administrative costs alone to be about $3 million a year. 

When fully funded, this framework could cost taxpayers dozens of millions of dollars each election for political propaganda generated by candidates qualifying for and accepting public financing. It is not clear why, when candidates for public office can create websites for only hundreds of dollars, campaign managers should be given the keys to the State Treasury and access to millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money to pay for political advertisements that may be misleading, deceptive, or completely false. 

Contrary to some of their supporters’ claims, AB 583 will not ensure a “level playing field” in political races. Nor will it limit political campaign spending in the aggregate. This is because it does not limit spending by candidates who choose to rely on private voluntary donations, as they do now, instead of publicly financed campaign funds. 

This bill creates the possibility of taxation without representation. For example, if none of the candidates running for Assemblymember Hancock’s seat take tax-subsidies, for their campaigns, taxpayers in her district could end up paying for the campaigns of Assembly candidates in other districts they may oppose but can’t vote against. 

The taxpayer financing provisions of Assemblymember Hancock’s legislation are in direct conflict with provisions of the Political Reform Act of 1974. That law prohibits a candidate from accepting public funds for the purpose of seeking elective office. Because of this conflict, with law enacted by initiative, AB 583 as presently worded, must ultimately be approved or rejected by the voters if it passes the Legislature and the Governor. 

Assemblymember Hancock’s legislation is also in direct conflict with her constituents’ preferences. In the 2004 general election, voters in Berkeley resoundingly rejected public financing of political campaigns at the municipal level. We felt that out taxes were better spent on teachers, public safety, and public works instead of on more politicians. 

There is a simple amendment to Assemblymember Hancock’s legislation that would eliminate any costs to the taxpayer, and prevent the politicians in Sacramento from tapping our wallets for their financial gain. AB 583 establishes a “Clean Money Fund” to finance its implementation. Revenues to this fund may come from voluntary donations and fines levied for breaches to campaign laws and regulations. However, as passed by the Assembly, this bill also allows the legislature to appropriate money collected form taxes, (i.e. from eh General Fund) to this special fund. By simply prohibiting the appropriation of tax-generated revenues to this “Clean Money” fund, Assemblymember Hancock could guarantee us that her proposal would indeed use only “clean” money. 

But don’t take my word on any of this. See for yourself by visiting Assemblymember Hancock’s website for a copy of her legislation and analyses by Assembly committee consultants. If you agree with me, please let Assemblymember Hancock know, before this political gravy train goes much further. 

Keith Winnard is a Berkeley resident. 

PORT DEAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems to me that President Bush is getting his comeuppance on this business of a Dubai company managing our ports. 

Bush has used the politics of fear for some time now—the false weapons-of-mass-destruction justification for Iraq intervention, warrantless wiretaps and Patriot Act excess. Bush, of all people, should not have been surprised by the present public reaction. 

Steve Geller 

• 

CANARY PINES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ron Sullivan’s article on the majesty of Canary Pines brought tears to my eyes. Canary Pines are street trees on two streets in Berkeley. Hillcrest Road is one of those streets. The residents took pride in the trees until PG&E got ahold of them. We understand that Canary Pines have a shallow root system so we can only hope that they can withstand the butcher jobs PG&E requires. We are concerned about all street trees in Berkeley and in California that are subjected to PG&E’s brutality. Hillcrest Road residents have met with the arborist for the City of Berkeley and with the “arborists” for Davey Tree Service. Both say that PG&E supercedes any local regulations and that PG&E refuses to revert to its former practice of esthetically trimmed trees. 

Sally Williams 

• 

SCIENTOLOGY ADS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a faithful reader of the Daily Planet over many years, I was horrified to find a pink brochure tucked inside the Daily Planet, advertising the Church of Scientology. The brochure included 200 questions relating to a person’s personality. The brochure offered a free analysis for those who complete the test. Those who complete the test must supply name and address, phone number, etc., occupation, sex and age, and signature; those under 18 have a parent or guardian sign. 

My impression was that this was just another Scientology scam, inserting their propaganda inside the cover of a respectable newspaper to attract converts. My first decision was to call the paper and alert it that this had happened. But no! Embedded in the paper were three more advertisements. Why did this happen? 

In 2004, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to eliminate the Scientology “Narcanon” drug program from classrooms, stating that it taught pseudoscience, and was in fact a recruitment for vulnerable young people. Many families have been damaged by this pernicious cult. 

I thought better of your newspaper. And I am disappointed. 

Patricia Crossman 

• 

OAKLAND SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing this as a substitute teacher, who has been working for the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) for over three years. It is really difficult to see why the OEA should worry about “scab” strike-breaking substitute teachers crossing picket lines to handle classes which are already difficult to teach.  

Although OUSD has been recruiting additional substitutes to use as a weapon in case of a union job action, it is hard to imagine how OUSD will actually use these scabs. The Subfinder System, which OUSD uses to call in substitutes, is already broken so often that beleaguered teachers and school principals are calling substitutes directly. The OUSD’s automated substitute calling system is already down about as much as it is up. Most of the substitute teachers who used to work with OUSD are now accepting job assignments primarily from other school districts.  

Imagine what is now like to be a substitute teacher, who receives calls from an automated telephone system in which nearly half the job assignments you receive do not even contain job site locations and where the Substitute Help Desk has been abolished. Then, imagine what is like when most of the remaining assignments you are called for by the Subfinder System do not resemble the profile you submitted when you originally signed up for the Subfinder System. Finally, imagine what it will be like if you decide to cross picket lines.  

The chances that there will be a large pool of willing and able substitute teachers eager to cross picket lines is an OUSD pipe dream. 

Joel Monkarsh 

San Leandro 

• 

SMART CANCER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I couldn’t agree more with Ray Kidd (Letters, Feb. 24). The falsely-named “Smart Growth” is the biggest load of useless hooey to come slithering down the pike in a long time. The answer isn’t “Smart Growth” but “no growth.” We have to stabilize our insane level of population growth. And the only way to do that is to cut way back on our insane level of legal immigration (which, by the way, is at a level unprecedented in human history) and eliminate illegal immigration. We’ve been adding three million new people to the U.S. population every year, almost entirely because of recent immigrants and their offspring. Does anybody happen to know where the three million new homes per year are where these people are going to live? I don’t think so. But I can tell you where millions of homeless Americans are: sleeping on the sidewalk. Ric Oberlink of the Sierra Club put it best: “Unrestrained, never-ending growth is a sign of a cancer, not a healthy organism. ‘Smart Growth’ makes about as much sense as ‘Smart Cancer.’”  

Peter Labriola 

• 

BLACKBERRY CREEK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Kohler, in his Feb. 21 letter, related his perception of the opening of Blackberry Creek at Thousand Oaks School 10 years ago as being disharmonious. I would like to point out a few things about how it came about. 

The PTA at the school asked Gary Mason, a landscape architect, if he would help them write a request to the California Department of Water Resources for a grant to open the creek at the school site because the school was seismically unstable and would be replaced. The culverted creek was under where old play equipment was that the city was going to remove, because they were dangerous and not up to code. The city was not going to replace the equipment. At that time the city had no funds to replace play structures in their parks. They were partnering with citizens who could raise funds privately for new equipment that was up to code and the city would contribute its labor for installation. 

The PTA was successful in obtaining a grant for $144,000, which was co-sponsored by BUSD and City of Berkeley. The planning process included participation by a large number of diverse community members. There were indeed, advocates and critics (after all this is Berkeley), all of whom contributed to the process. When the tai chi group asked for the redwood tree (which was in the way of the planned creek channel) to be saved, the design was changed and tree is still there. 

There will always be problems with contaminants getting into streams. The students at Thousand Oaks School were instrumental in getting the city to persevere in searching for the main sources of the contaminants in the creek and successfully putting an end to that problem. It was a great learning experience for the students to learn how to deal constructively with problems both environmental and civic. There is sure to be other contamination, because of the aging infrastructure in the city. And we know that humans have trouble keeping their planet’s air, soil and water clean. The urban environment does have to deal with many man-made stresses, but then even the Sierran streams contain giardia and cryptosporidium bacteria, as well as toxins from mining operations. 

The City Council and the BUSD board of directors unanimously approved the PTA’s project. The BHS student member of the School Board spoke for the board when she remarked that in urban places where so much has been done to destroy the natural environment, that she could not believe that we would not take this opportunity to undo some of that damage to nature. 

Carole Schemmerling 

• 

BERKELEY DECISIONMAKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Feb. 24 article on the adverse effect of unnecessary motorcycle parking on local businesses is maddeningly typical of how important decisions affecting real people are too often made in Berkeley: 

A city department, or an employee, with virtually no accountability to anyone, perceives that there is a problem. No one bothers to check on whether there actually is a problem; the perception suffices. Another employee gets a Bright Idea for solution. With neither the knowledge of nor input from the community, the Transportation Commission or the City Council, the department implements the Bright Idea. After completion it is discovered that not only does the Bright Idea not solve the perceived problem, it has created others both unforeseen and undesirable. Now there is a real problem, though one quite different from the original perception. The law of unintended consequences is alive and well in Berkeley. 

Eventually the issue comes to light, and an irate public demands that the city retreat, reconsider, possibly rebuild. How much this fiasco costs the taxpayers is anyone’s guess. 

Examples of this process abound (Marin Avenue reconfiguration), but are by no means restricted to parking or vehicular traffic issues. Consider the Ashby BART air rights debacle. 

At the conclusion of the article, the chairperson of the Transportation Commission states the commission “does not review every single thing the city does.” Small wonder, since much of the city’s decision making process is beyond public scrutiny. 

Evelyn Giardina 

• 

ASHBY STAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a 30-year resident who lives near Fulton and Ashby, I was a little surprised and puzzled at an omission from Marta Yamamoto’s otherwise interesting piece on South Berkeley in the Feb. 24 edition of the Daily Planet.  

The Ashby Stage is now home to the remarkable Shotgun Players, who also use it to host other itinerant dramatic offerings. Patrick Dooley and his merry band are perfectly positioned both geographically, with BART a stone’s throw from their door, and artistically, with their go-for-broke, cutting edge offerings and stunning quality of acting and direction. They play a big role—you’ll pardon the double entendre—in both my family’s cultural life and in this area’s growing arts district aspirations. 

Which brings me to Joanne Kowalski’s very insightful letter in the same issue of the Planet. She questions what residents who are currently BART users would do during overlapping construction of the Ed Roberts Campus on the east parking lot at Ashby BART and a “transit village” on the west lot. (Never mind what they’ll do once both are built!) 

It is fashionable in some circles to assume that parking is useless, wasteful and “un-ecologically sensitive.” Everyone can just walk, bike, or I suppose arrive by helicopter. God help me, as an inveterate walker and bicyclist I used to feel a bit that way myself. But now that we’re no longer 29 and my husband is partially disabled, in order to use BART—which we do at every opportunity—we need to drive there and park. How will we do that if both parking lots are torn up and eventually gone? 

How does that serve BART’s goal of increasing ridership? 

And what of the impact on our beloved Ashby Stage? Keeping a performing arts venue alive takes tons of talent, bushels of hard work, and, as the old real estate phrase has it, location, location, location. Without parking at Ashby BART, theirs will be just that much less desirable. 

Can we please take these sorts of issues into account in the dialog on the “transit village”? 

And can the Planet do a feature on the Shotgun Players to make up for their omission in Yamamoto’s piece? 

Donna Mickleson 

• 

KRAGEN SITE PROPOSAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ah, if the situation was simply the esthetics of HudsonMcDonald’s modified project for the Kragen site. That the design is more “handsome” than the previous designed (described by ZAB members as resembling a prison or a cheap motel) is something we are grateful for, however a pig in a silk dress is still a pig, just a well-dressed one. 

Mr. Siegel’s wistful tone hoping for “sweetness and light” when the project goes to ZAB and the City Council reminds me of Rodney King’s plea for us to “all get along.” Beyond esthetics, some elements of the “modified” project which preclude neighborhood support include: 

• A project 11 percent (16,882 square feet) larger than the previous project. 

• A project five feet taller where it meets the residential neighborhood. 

• A project 20 units larger than the applicable zoning law and procedures require. 

• A project with severe traffic and parking impacts on residents and anyone who drives downtown or attempts to patronize the existing retail businesses along MLK and University Avenue. 

That the meeting was non-confrontational was by design: Its purpose was to offer a forum for HudsonMcDonald to present their re-designed project to neighbors and other interested citizens, answer questions, and receive comments. If HudsonMcDonald wants neighborhood support and hopes to avoid a lengthy and costly approval process they will implement staff and ZAB recommendations and produce a project no larger or taller than the previous design and offer effective traffic and parking control measures for the inevitable wave of shoppers a Trader Joe’s will draw into our neighborhood from all over Berkeley and surrounding communities. 

HudsonMcDonald has reached into the Planning Department Cookie Jar and chosen the biggest possible cookie—it remains to be seen if they can extract it without breakage. 

Stephen Wollmer 

Neighbors for a Livable  

Berkeley Way 

• 

FAST FOOD TAX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In your coverage of the Oakland City Council vote to tax fast food, liquor stores and convenience markets for littering Oakland streets, I was surprised you repeated the arguments of the Chamber of Commerce without analysis. These commercial establishments, by delivering every serving in throwaway containers, have increased their profits through the elimination of a huge portion of the true costs of doing business by shifting trash-related costs onto the city, the environment and the streets and since most fast food restaurants and coffee shops no longer deal with plates, forks, spoons and cups used by their customers, they no longer hire dishwashers, busboys (and girls), waiters or food servers. Gone are these entry level jobs. They put their product in cardboard and plastic. 

The overwhelming majority of their containers ends up in city-sponsored garbage receptacles, while a small percentage ends up on the street or in the gutter. The Oakland litter tax is a small recompense for the windfall profit they reap by eliminating these food service-related issues. 

These industries will claim “the customer wants the convenience of throwaway containers” or they blame it on the public’s penchant for littering, and threaten lawsuits. Let them squawk. While locals are busted and fined for illegal dumping of “household” or “business-related” garbage, the highest form of illegal dumping is your local McDonald’s franchise that expects the city to provide garbage service for free. These food corporations and restaurants have shifted their waste problem on to the city and the street. Kudos to Jane Brunner for her small attempt to shift the responsibility back where it belongs. 

But, you and I are not off the hook. Every one of us who takes a cardboard cup, a plastic lid, a paper or clamshell food container, whether dumped in the trash can, the garbage slot or the gutter, are complicit in this capitalist enterprise of shifting the costs of our convenience onto the earth, our children, the city and the future. 

Hank Chapot 

• 

MATH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Seven Emirs + 6 Ports = 1 dirty bomb = 1 martial law = 1 dictatorship.  

You do the math. 

James K. Sayre 

• 

RENT CONTROL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Feb. 14, the Daily Planet published an argument by Michael St. John arguing for relaxation of Berkeley’s current ban on condo conversions. On Feb. 17, Chris Kavanagh wrote to say that St. John’s idea “should be considered dead on arrival.” 

Unfortunately, Mr. Kavanagh does not answer St. John’s arguments. Condominiums are the best solution for lots of Berkeley problems. There is a surplus of rental units in Berkeley, where vacancy rates are well in excess of 5 percent. Rents have been falling, and when inflation is considered are even lower than in 1999. There is little incentive for landlords to renovate older, rent-controlled buildings, which are often in disrepair, and undervalued on the city’s tax rolls.  

At the same time there is a grave shortage of opportunities for persons who want to put down roots in the community. At a time when detached, small “starter homes” are selling for $700,000, tenants wanting to own their own homes have no choice but to leave. Condos are the last affordable alternative for firefighters, teachers, and other low– to moderate-income people who want an ownership stake in this city. 

Mr. Kavanagh ignores all of this. Instead he resorts to scare tactics, claiming that condo conversions result in “devastating, mass tenant evictions.” He says nothing about the legal rights Berkeley tenants enjoy: they may not be evicted except for narrowly defined “just causes.” Even where there is a bona fide owner move-in, local law effectively grants a life estate to five-year tenants who are either disabled or over 60 years of age. It also guarantees “relocation assistance” of $7000 per person to all displaced tenants, irrespective of age, income or disability status. These provisions, plus the very substantial costs of conversion, are ample protection against “mass evictions.” 

What Mr. Kavanagh forgets is that there are a lot of people out there who want a chance to own equity in the town where they live. Condo conversions, with reasonable controls, give them this. They would also result in tax relief to existing homeowners, and would rejuvenate neighborhoods, especially in the flatlands, where existing structures languish as a result of policies adopted decades ago, and never re-examined. 

David Wilson 

• 

MORE ON RENT CONTROL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I thank Chris Kavanagh (Feb. 17) for taking the time to reply to my Feb. 7 letter, but he doesn’t appear to have taken the time to actually read my letter. The issues I raised had to do with the enormous cost of the Rent Stabilization Program and with its punitive attitude toward landlords, not with the existence of a rent database. I pointed out that calling this database a “Rent tracking system,” or in his recent letter a “Rent monitoring system” makes it sound more complicated, and expensive than it should be. In “Mr. Mitschang’s world” there would be a database, but it would not cost $3 million. If the Rent Board was serious and honest about monitoring, by the way, it would admit the obvious—that market rents in Berkeley are dropping. 

Mr. Kavanagh, after setting up the straw man of my wanting to eliminate the rent database, fulminates for three paragraphs about my advocating a fearsome “information blackout,” and does not answer any of the specific questions about the actual work the program is doing. Does this remind you of certain national politicians when asked uncomfortable questions? What is needed is an audit of what the program is actually doing and the activities to which staff time is devoted. I think that it is only because the high fees are paid by a narrow segment of the community that they have been tolerated. 

In that regard I have a modest proposal: All 19,000- odd rent-controlled apartments in Berkeley should receive a $13 a month rent reduction. In return, every tenant would be billed the $156 per year that housing providers now pay. Do you think people will want to know what they’re getting for this money? 

Mike Mitschang 

• 

COLLISION COURSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Caribou and butterflies are colliding in my head, vying for attention, asking to be heard. Both ask me to recognize their plight, the danger to their home, their habitat. The porcupine caribou has been heard, at least for now, with the defeat of drilling plans for the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Caribou seem to loom large in our “American” psyche; we envision beautiful herds in an icy land, untouched by the despoiler’s hands. Our ancestral longing for purity and simplicity connect us to the Gwich’in and their ancient dance with the caribou. Collectively we scorn Senator Ted Stevens who described the Refuge as nothing but a “blank, white slate” ( may not be the exact quote). 

Butterflies dance in and out of our psyche, bringing moments of magic. But they can’t capture a place in our imagination. Unlike the caribou, they have no pristine wilderness that calls to mind something pure we may have lost within ourselves. How do we answer the call to save a habitat that more intimately connects with our own? How do we protect their vast habitat for the journey from Mexico to Canada? We seem not willing to protect their home in our backyards or in the “vacant lots” city leaders and developers are so delighted to infill. Because of our desire to civilize the natural world in which we reside, we are quickly destroying the ecosystems which give butterflies their life. No one scorns when an open space is depicted as a vacant lot—an open space filled with milkweed for larvae and nectar for butterflies. 

As I walk down San Pablo Avenue I am haunted by one of the new buildings under construction in the 2500 block—the former home of butterflies, bees and birds who counted on the “weeds” for survival. I don’t know what the new site will sell, but I do know that my soul and my survival do not need its wares, they need butterflies. 

Have we limited our love affair to the Alaska Wildlife National Refuge because it is as removed from our daily lives as we have become from the web of life? It asks nothing of us but a periodic call to our senators and a donation or two. To save the butterflies will require more thought and more change, more action and less romance. 

It won’t be enough to protect the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, the earth needs butterflies, the old growth redwood forest ecosystem and the bears being killed by winegrowers because they eat the grapes that have replaced their habitat. We are on the collision course. Through protection and restraint and change we just might recapture our souls and, in the process, save our web of life. 

L. Darlene Pratt 

?

In her Feb. 24 letter to the editor, Carolyn Sell mentions both the David Brower Center and plans to develop Ashby BART, an interesting combination which, for me, is an invitation to comment on how the city plans for the use of publicly controlled space. 

But first, it’s important to correct a factual error in her letter and to describe what is actually being planned. 

She mistakenly says that the David Brower Center, which will be built on the city’s Oxford parking lot downtown, will be a “nine-story” building. In fact the Brower Center will be a four-story building, an entirely appropriate height for that downtown location. 

The Brower Center is expected to be a “LEED platinum” building, which is to say that it will be built to the highest “green building” standard set by the U.S. Green Building Council. Photovoltaic roof panels will produce electricity for the building. A number of environmental groups which had close ties to David Brower, including the Earth Island Institute, will occupy the offices in the Brower Center. To learn more, visit Earth Island’s website: www.earthisland.org. 

The Brower Center will be a model that other developers of office space should follow. 

In addition, 96 units of affordable housing will be built on the Oxford lot site. This is an excellent example of using public land for public benefit. Private for-profit developers have shown that they cannot meet the city’s need for below-market affordable housing, especially for families. Projects like Oxford Plaza, developed by non-profit developers, are needed to provide some affordable units in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. 

Ms. Sell complains that another project, the Kragen project at University and MLK will not include units for families. This is indeed a problem with much of the housing that has been built downtown recently. While no data on new building occupants exists, anecdotal evidence suggests that a majority of the new units are occupied by students. 

Ms. Sell should be pleased to learn that the Oxford Plaza housing, being built in tandem with the Brower Center on the same site, will contain a large number of family-size units, including some of the few three-bedroom units to be built in Berkeley in recent years. 

To address the issue of public process: Ms. Sell implies that the Brower Center is the outcome of a backroom deal involving the mayor and developers (unnamed, of course). In fact, the Brower Center/Oxford Plaza development comes out of a public planning process conducted by the Planning Commission. This planning process contrasts sharply with the way the city started off the process of planning for Ashby BART. 

As chair of the Planning Commission’s Oxford lot subcommittee, I presided over numerous public meetings at which a range of ideas for developing the Oxford parking lot site were put forward. Many viewpoints were heard. 

After gathering public input, the Planning Commission made recommendations to the City Council about the site and the City Council approved them. An excellent team of developers was chosen on the basis of who could best realize the vision put forward in the recommendations approved by the council. 

I and many others look forward to seeing ground broken this year on the project which is consistent to a substantial degree with the recommendations that came out of the original public planning process. 

Unfortunately, the city got off on the wrong foot with another excellent publicly controlled opportunity site for development, namely Ashby BART. The city’s General Plan has policies regarding the development of housing on the Ashby BART site. In particular, at least 50 percent of the units on the site “should be affordable to low- and very-low-income hosueholds” to the extent that’s feasible. It needs to be understood that it is already city policy to develop the Ashby BART station site. 

The General Plan, itself the result of an extensive public planning process, also includes a “Citizen Participation” element which mandates “Community Involvement in Planning.” And, indeed, the city has a long tradition of involving the public extensively in its planning processes, the most recent example being the Oxford lot process itself. The city’s many area plans and strategic plans, including the West Berkeley Plan, the current Downtown Plan, the South Shattuck Plan, and the draft Southside Plan, all come out of planning processes in which the public had extensive and meaningful involvement. 

What’s needed for Ashby BART is a similar process that will involve all stakeholders and interested members of the public. The starting point for such a process should be the city’s General Plan policies, but no assumptions should be made about the number or specific type of housing units that should be built there. Nor should it be assumed that the flea market has to move. 

There are all kinds of possibilities for how this site can be developed. It is certainly possible to develop housing that will not have a negative impact on adjacent neighborhoods and which could in fact enhance the neighborhood and give a boost to local retail businesses. It’s possible to maintain space for the flea market. It’s not essential to cram as many units as possible on the site or to use the entire site. It’s possible to have multiple developers; it shouldn’t be assumed that a for-profit developer should be the exclusive developer of the site. 

The Ashby BART air rights are public space and, as with the downtown Oxford parking lot, should be developed to provide public benefit rather than to enrich private developers. Possibilities include building housing for the disabled, both those who are physically disabled and those who are developmentally disabled. This could be a good fit with the Ed Roberts Campus which is already planned for the Ashby BART site. 

Ed Roberts was an early advocate of independent living for the disabled. The Ed Roberts Campus will house organizations that work to assist the disabled to live independently. How about some housing units where the disabled can live independently at the same location? 

Other possibilities for the site include senior housing, which will be more in demand as the Baby Boom generation reaches retirement age, especially if the Republican assault on Social Security and retirement benefits continues and achieves some success. Many of the people who rent in Berkeley now, because they can’t afford to pay $700,000 for a two-bedroom bungalow, will find themselves hard-pressed to afford their rent when they reach retirement age and have to get by on less income. They will need affordable housing for their retirement years. 

Housing for families with lower-income breadwinners could work as well if designed with families in mind. Let’s not forget that lots of people in Berkeley work at low-paying jobs and lack the resources to pay a lot of rent, let alone buy a house. Think about how much rent you can afford if you only make $8 or $10 or $12 an hour, or you earn the current pitiful minimum wage of $6.75 an hour. 

The details of what should be built at Ashby BART need to be worked out in an extensive public process, not predetermined. There are many options to be considered. Let’s stand with Berkeley’s tradition of participatory democracy. 

As with the Brower Center/Oxford Plaza project, the city should consider mandating that anything built at Ashby BART be built to meet the highest green building standards. When public sites are developed, I think the city should set high aesthetic and sustainability standards and should not settle for mediocrity or for whatever a for-profit developer might consider to be suitable or compatible with projected profits. Public sites should be developed in accordance with publicly-generated visions and recommendations. 

Looking beyond Ashby BART, there is no reason why the city should not start thinking about what could be done at North Berkeley BART, which is obviously equally suitable for the kind of transit-oriented development that’s needed to ensure Berkeley’s future as a sustainable city. The city should be talking to BART about acquiring the rights to develop North Berkeley BART and should think about initiating a public planning process at some point in the future. 

Rob Wrenn is a member of Berkeley’s Transportation Commission and of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory  

Committee. 



Maintaining a setback of 30 feet makes good sense for Berkeley creeks and anything less is short-sighted for long-term restoration, ecological health, and city maintenance requirements. 

Some particular points are as follows: 

1. All natural creeks have have a relatively predictable pattern, dimension, and profile relative to their “bankfull” discharge. An essential component to natural functioning streams is the dimensions of their bankfull width, and flood-prone width. Bankfull width is the width of the active channel at flows that occur about 1.3 to 1.7 years on average. The flood-prone width is measured at a height that is two times the maximum bankfull depth. This represents the width of the channel that would flood during the more rare, infrequent large floods. The flood-prone width for stable channels can often be greater than 2.2 times the bankfull width. For example, this means that a creek that has a bankfull width of 25 feet and a maximum bankfull depth of three feet, must have a flood-prone width of 55 feet or more at a height of six feet in order to maintain a stable configuration, i.e., not aggrade or degrade its bed. However, it may laterally migrate. 

2. To prevent excessive lateral migration, natural channels typically need a healthy riparian corridor (along with the appropriate flood-prone width). Large roots add to the cohesion of banks, which help the bank resist erosion during large floods. An approximately 30-foot-wide buffer might make better sense for the rooting requirements and canopy sizes of healthy, mature riparian vegetation. Furthermore, if a healthy riparian canopy exists, structures will need to have a setback of 30 feet for clearance purposes to meet the code for fire hazard reduction. 

3. Large mature riparian vegetation will benefit streams not only for stability purposes, but for also adding shade and thereby maintaining cool water temperature for fish. A mature riparian corridor is important for long-term recruitment of large woody debris, essential for increasing diversity and structure of pools for fish habitat and other aquatic organisms. 

4. Many streams in Berkeley are highly entrenched and are eroding their nearly vertical banks. This is often an indication that they are trying to increase their flood-prone width. In our urban setting this is often the picture: a narrow, very deep channel, lined with various concrete walls, sacrete bags, rock riprap, or other types of revetments that are in various stages of disrepair, often collapsing into the channel. One of the restoration techniques available to deal with this kind of instability is to lay back the banks at a more stable angle and create an appropriately wide flood-prone width that permits the growth of riparian vegetation. Inner floodplain benches are often created. In order to apply this kind of restoration strategy that provides for the most natural kinds of stream functions, we need to have an appropriate amount of space available. Reducing the setback width will prevent future restoration efforts from being as successful as possible. Instead they will require expensive artificial retaining structures that will require costly maintenance in perpetuity. 

5. A 30-foot setback width allows access for large equipment along a creek for conducting repairs, maintenance, or restoration. A 10-foot setback limits this capability. 

6. Even in urban settings vegetation exceeds the benefits of concrete or other artificial structures that cause increases in water velocity and thereby increase erosive forces on the channel bed and induce more downcutting. As a result of increased velocity, flood peaks and thus flood risks are increased to the downstream urban setting. Having the future option to widen the flood-prone width of entrenched channels allows us or future generations to reduce the risks of urban flooding and property loss from bank erosion. This future option should not be eliminated by short-sighted planning. If structures are allowed to be built to within 10 feet of the banks, the channels will ultimately require expensive structural solutions that eventually fail and/or require expensive maintenance. Many of Berkeley’s streams are already underground, in storm drains or culverts. We are already dealing (or not dealing) with mistakes of the past. Creating a 10-foot buffer will likely lead to more “undergrounding” of streams that are no longer visible or viable. Natural processes that maintain stream functions are not limited to 10 ft buffers. 

7. Ideally, buffer size should be based upon appropriate flood-prone width and ecological requirements. These are founded in good science not politics. 

Laurel Collins is principal geomorphologist at Watershed Sciences in Berkeley.›

When two U.S. Marine helicopters recently went down off Djibouti, a tiny slice of desert at the entrance to the Red Sea, they exposed a low-profile program that has poured money and troops into a broad swath of northern Africa from the Indian to the Atlantic oceans, which encompasses some nine nations in the region. 

The Bush administration claims the target of this program, called the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative, is the growing presence of al Qaeda-influenced organizations in the region. Critics, however, charge that the enterprise has more to do with oil than with Osama bin Laden, and that stepped-up military aid to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia will most likely end up being used against internal opposition groups in those countries, not “terrorists” hiding out in the desert. 

“As we pursue the global war on terrorism,” says Marine General James L. Jones of European Command, “we’re going to have to go where the terrorists are. And we’re seeing evidence, at least preliminarily, that more and more of these large uncontrolled areas are going to be potential havens for that kind of activity.” 

As part of the initiative, the United States has re-routed satellites and aircraft to monitor “terrorist” groups in the region. “These are groups that are similar to al Qaeda, but not as sophisticated or with the same reach, but the same objectives,” says Air Force General Charles Wald. “They’re bad people, and we need to keep an eye on that.” 

But according to the Brussels-based international Crisis Group, the Sahara is “not a hotbed of terrorism,” and North African governments are only going along with the Initiative because it gives them training and weapons they can use on their own people. 

A case in point is the southern Algerian Salafist Group for Fighting and Preaching, which kidnapped 31 tourists in 2003. Algerian authorities say the group, led by a former Algerian paratrooper, is associated with al Qaeda, and on the basis of this claim, U.S. Special Forces helped track down organization members in neighboring Chad, killing and capturing 43 of them. 

However, according to Jeremy Kennan, a Sahara specialist at Britain’s East Anglia University, the Salafist Group has no links to al Qaeda and was simply after ransom money. And if it wasn’t for the tourist kidnapping—which Kennan argues was hardly cooked up in the caves of Tora Bora—U.S. and Algerian authorities can’t point to “a single act of alleged terrorism in the Sahara.” 

North Africa certainly has terrorists as a 2002 attack on a Tunisian synagogue, and a 2003 bombing attack in Casablanca demonstrated. The 2004 Madrid bombers were associated with the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group, the same organization that carried out the Casablanca attack. But none of the groups have ever been tied to al Qaeda, or do they originate in the Sahara, the main focus of the Initiative. 

Indeed, rather than tamping down terrorism, Kennan says the initiative will instead “generate terrorism, by which I mean to the overall U.S. presence and strategy.” 

There may not be a terrorism problem in the Sahara, but there is plenty of gas and oil. According to a 2002 report by the National Energy Policy Development Group, by 2015 up to a quarter of the United States’ oil will be supplied from West and North Africa. Algeria has nine billion barrels in its reserves, and offshore fields in Mauritania may make that country Africa’s fourth largest oil supplier by 2007. 

The Trans-Sahara Initiative covers not only traditional North African nations like Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, but Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Chad as well. It also parallels a series of basing agreements that go considerably beyond the reach of the great desert, including ones in Uganda, Ghana, Gabon, Namibia and Zambia. . 

While some of these bases are little more than airfields, the United States is seeking to build major facilities as well. According to General Jones, the military is looking for bases than that could host up to a full brigade of 5,000 troops, “ Something that could be robustly used for a significant military presence.” 

So far, the $500 million program has mainly underwritten training, radios, and pickup trucks for local forces. But Special Forces units and the Army’s 173 Airborne Brigade are carrying out joint maneuvers with the Moroccan army. 

The 10 U.S. solders that perished off Djibouti were part of a 1,800 strong task force supposedly controlling “terrorism” in the Horn of Africa. The helicopters flew out of Camp Lemonier, a French military base. 

An operation scheduled for later this year will bring together 5,100 troops from nine Saharan nations, and 700 U.S. Special Forces units—Delta Force, Navy SEALs, Rangers, and Green Berets— for joint maneuvers. 

The Initiative was behind Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s recent visit to Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. When Rumsfeld met with Algerian President Abelaziz Bouteflika, arms sales were on the agenda. The secretary was coy about the specific weapon systems discussed—“They have things they desire, and we have things we can be helpful with,” he said—but according to the New York Times, night-vision equipment and helicopters are on Algeria’s wish list. 

Rumsfeld cast the visit and sales as part of the Bush administration’s worldwide war on terrorism. “It is instructive for us to realize,” he said, “that the struggle we’re in is not unlike the struggle the people of Algeria went through.” 

But the Algerian civil war, a brutal conflict that took up to 200,000 lives, had nothing to do with organizations like al Qaeda. The conflict was touched off in 1992 when the Algerian government canceled elections it would have lost to the Islamic Salvation Front. During the war, both sides engaged in the horrific massacre of civilians. The military still dominates the national government and its opponents are routinely imprisoned and tortured.  

Tunisia also has a poor human rights record, as does the Moroccan monarchy. Following the 2003 Casablanca bombing, Morocco passed a host of draconian security laws making the country even more repressive. 

One worry is that Morocco will use weapons and training from the Initiative to try to resolve its long-running dispute with the Polisario Front over sovereignty for Western Sahara. Morocco seized Western Sahara after Spain withdrew in 1975, and has systemically derailed efforts by the United Nations to hold a referendum of the area’s people. 

The “terrorists” the Trans-Sahara Initiative seems aimed at are domestic opposition groups, albeit some of them strongly Islamic in character. Besides those in Algeria and Morocco, similar groups in Chad, Mali and other countries in the region may soon find themselves labeled “terrorists” and the target of U.S. Special Forces. 

According to the International Crisis Group, many Mauritanians oppose the Initiative because former president Maaoya Sid’Ahmed Ould Taya used the supposed threat of the Salafist Group to harass and jail political opponents. 

“Terrorism” in North Africa is, at most, marginal, and, in the “Trans-Sahara,” largely a phantom. But the gas and oil that lies under the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of Mauritania, and under the blistering rock pans of the deep desert are anything but a mirage.  

That is what the 10 Americans in Djibouti died for Feb. 17. They are unlikely to be the last.

Extremis malis extrema remedia—from the Latin: literally “extreme remedies for extreme ills,” or the more familiar “desperate times call for desperate measures.” 

Whether or not we need to adopt desperate measures, there is no doubt that Oakland is going through some desperate times, at least in the area of street violence. 

On Sunday afternoon, 17-year-old Brian Champaco of San Leandro was shot and killed while riding with his friends in a van near the corner of 77th Avenue and Rudsdale, a location that, if you were familiar with East Oakland, you would know immediately as one of the city’s longstanding sidewalk drug markets, one of the ones that the Oakland Police Department don’t seem to be able to shut down. Don’t know why Mr. Champaco and his friends were riding around in that particular area, but whatever the case, Mr. Champaco became the 19th person murdered in the city of Oakland in the first two months of the year. 

If one adds that 19 in two months to the 33 murders that occurred in the city during the last three months of 2005, you would end up with 125 murders in a year if such a monthly rate continued for 12 months. That would not be quite as high as the ghastly days of the early ‘90s, when the city was averaging a little over 150 murders. But 125 murders—if that trend held—would be the highest rate in Oakland in 10 years, an indication that the situation on many of our streets is getting worse and in danger of spiraling out of control again. 

In 2004, in part because city and police officials insisted that the Oakland Police Department was understaffed and could not stem the rising homicide and violent crime rate, Oakland voters passed Measure Y. Among other things, that measure authorized the funding of 63 new police officer positions for specific violence-prevention activities. Given what we were told by city and police officials during the Measure Y campaign, Oakland citizens expected that after a reasonable time the new police officers would be hired, trained, and put out on the streets, with an immediate impact on violent crime. 

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. 

In an online report on implementation of Measure Y, the “we need more police on the street” citizens group called the Oakland Residents For Peaceful Neighborhoods (www.orpn.org) says that the city actually has significantly fewer police officers than when the measure was passed more than a year ago. According to ORFPN’s report, Oakland had 734 police officers at the time Measure Y was written, but that number had dropped to 703 by the end of February, even though the city has been collecting Measure Y taxes for a year. This drop in the police rolls comes despite the fact, according to the San Francisco Chronicle this week, that rookies entering the Oakland Police Department “earn $62,000 a year, a figure that rises to $89,000 after being on the force three years.” In addition, a generous union contract allows officers to retire at age 50 at 3 percent of their highest base salary for each year they work (meaning that a police officer who works for 25 years, for example, gets 75 percent of his or her best paycheck, every month, as a retirement check). You can’t beat that with a stick. 

So why is Oakland police staffing down when there is more money to pay for new police, and salaries and retirement perks are so generous?  

The Chronicle suggests in its article this week that it’s “not a shortage of money, but a shortage of applicants that is keeping Oakland from hiring more police officers under Measure Y,” and that while police departments across the country are having problems recruiting new police officers, “the problem is exacerbated in Oakland by steep housing prices and intense competition from rival law enforcement agencies and the military.” Oakland City Manager Deborah Edgerly’s recently released 55-page report on the Status of Measure Y also blames the police shortage on the combination of a high failure rate of Oakland recruits at the police academy as well as a high percentage of retirements by current police officers. 

It’s also understood that with its high violent crime rate and tough neighborhoods, Oakland is not as attractive a place for new police officers to work in as, say, Walnut Creek or Palo Alto. 

Ms. Edgerly gives several pages of suggestions as to how to increase the number of Oakland police recruits. She includes what would appear to be the standard thowaway line of “recruitment of minorities and women.” How such recruitment would be different from the present is not spelled out in the 55 pages, but we’ll get to that, in a moment. 

One of Ms. Edgerly’s more detailed suggestions is that the city begin “expansion of the geographical [Oakland Police Department] recruiting area outside of the nine Bay Area counties” to include Southern California, Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona. And the San Francisco Chronicle article reports that “another avenue Oakland is considering is loosening the guidelines dictating where applicants live. Right now, applicants must reside within about a five-mile radius of the city limits. Expanding that zone would enable officers to live in, say, Antioch, where homes are cheaper.” 

“I lift up mine eyes unto the hills,” my pastor used to intone, quoting from Psalm 121:1, “from whence cometh my help.” 

Perhaps we might turn our eyes in a different direction for a path out of these difficulties. Oakland is packed with young people—many of them African-American or Latino—who would dearly like to walk in the door of a new job at $62,000 a year and who would have no trouble meeting the five-mile radius residency clause because, after all, they already live within the city limits. 

But tapping that black and Latino labor pool resource inside Oakland would require more imagination, commitment, and courage than the one-line “recruitment of minorities and women” included in the city manager’s Measure Y report. 

In her report, Ms. Edgerly quotes a December, 2005 New York Times article as saying that “in a generation’s time, the job of an American police officer, previously among the most sought-after by people with little college background, has become one that in many communities now goes begging.” The Times article adds that “those who might be attracted to [police work] are frequently lured instead by aggressive counteroffers from the military.” 

We know, in fact, that the military is frantically seeking out recruits these days in the inner cities—Oakland included, maybe Oakland especially—trolling schools and parks and shopping centers and other locations where young people congregate. You literally have to fight the military recruiters off in some locations. To put a 2006 spin on an old 1960s rhetorical question: If we can trust a kid with a rifle in his hand to patrol Mosul in the uniform of the United States Marine Corp, why can’t that same kid be trusted to carry a handgun and patrol Market Street in the uniform of the Oakland Police Department? But when was the last time you saw a similar aggressive recruitment activity by the Oakland Police Department in the neighborhoods where the kids sag and spit rhymes and tag the walls? 

To recruit in Oakland’s hardcore neighborhoods would require a significant change in the character of the Oakland Police Department. A police-community partnership would have to develop that would have to go beyond the setting up of a few neighborhood watch groups among the folks of my generation (fifties and above). The Oakland Police Department would have to cease giving the appearance of a peacekeeping force in a tropical country, outsiders who mostly roll through our streets in their patrol cars for several hours fighting crime, and then return to their homes beyond the hills when their shifts are over, with little or no contact with our community other than their law-enforcement activities. The Oakland Police Department would have to become something that is more of Oakland rather than merely in Oakland, the truest definition of “community policing.” To many, such a suggested solution to Oakland’s police staffing problem—and Oakland’s violent crime problem—will seem extreme. 

Extremis malis. Extrema remedia. So it is said. 

›

Who’s ready to try something new? Want to track wildlife, plant heirloom potatoes, cast your line in that perfect loop, team up with your favorite llama or discover the culture of the Tuibun Ohlone? Sound compelling? Read on. 

Our East Bay Regional Park District is an amazing resource. On offer are over 95,000-acres encompassing 65 regional parks, recreation areas, wilderness, shorelines and preserves and 1,150 miles of hiking trails. Within is habitat for a wealth of wildlife, a native botanic garden, 235 family campsites and 2,082 picnic tables. Eleven freshwater lakes for water sports and nine interpretive centers. Isn’t this enough? Apparently not. 

With spring weather beginning to tease our senses, the urge to spend time outdoors beckons. We can revisit our favorites and even venture somewhere new. Add to that the opportunity to learn—a new activity, more about our natural surroundings, a new craft—all through the sponsorship of the East Bay Regional Park District. Across all ability levels and all ages, there’s something for everyone. 

Water and fishing have universal appeal. Trout or bass? At Del Valle the Basics of Trout Fishing is offered while at Shadow Cliffs you can hone your fly-casting skills. Bass Basics instructs from rigging to fish behaviors. For aquatics without fish try kayaking, from beginning skills and a full moon kayak to a kayaking tour of Brooks Island. 

Ready to hit the trails? You can join a llama day hike at Redwood Park or a backpacker’s trek in Sunol. Those with appendages other than arms and legs, namely young ones in strollers, can get in shape with Stroller Strides at Temescal Park. If you’re connected by leash to your best friend, a vigorous hike awaits in Peak Meanderings with a Buddy at Mission Peak Park. 

Often the desire exists but needs a little push. Being part of a group hike can be your motivation. Wednesday Walks meets weekly, exploring a new East Bay Park on each hike of two to six miles. Hiking in a wonderful environment among like-minded individuals with the knowledge of an accompanying naturalist is too much to pass up. For women hesitant to hike alone, Women On Common Ground, is a series of multi-park adventures, chasing moonbeams, investigating wildflower lures and discovering dramatic rock-studded terrain. 

Listening, talking, sharing, you’ll take away more than visual memories of the trails you pass. You’ll have fun while learning about California’s native plants, spotting peregrine falcon, improving your nature photography skills, investigating wood-duck habitats or learning to make rope—the choices are rich. 

At our own Tilden Regional Park, 18 activities are scheduled during the next two months. Ilana Peterson, Senior Office Assistant in the Environmental Education Center, spoke of the popularity of Tilden Tots and Tilden Explorers, both outdoor adventure programs for kids. Sushi Basics, where preparation and sampling of seven types of sushi shares the stage with the cultural and natural history of this ancient treat, plays to a full house.  

Most activities here focus on the Little Farm, where the cow barn is nearing completion, and Jewel Lake, home to waterfowl, turtles and amphibians. While some classes are age specific, like Weather Whizzes, where kids make their own weather tools, others are open to all ages. Entire families can enjoy pond collection and identification and morning chores at the farm. 

From the hills to the bay. At Alameda’s Crab Cove, Bethany Facedini, park naturalist, has a mission reflected in the bilingual activities on offer. Her goal is to attract non-traditional groups to the park, starting with the young. School children, sent home with fun, ecological experiences and information bookmarks, often return with their multigenerational families. Only by making use of a natural resource can one learn to value its worth. Vengan a explorar la vida del estuario! 

By exploring animal habitats in mudflats and rocky shore; joining Sea Siblings, Sea Squirts and Sea Explorers; turning over rocks at low tide; and learning about watersheds, the future of our natural environment takes another positive step. 

Sunol Regional Park, south of Pleasanton, is off the beaten track, but well worth the trek. Weekends bring many visitors to this remote wilderness, home to Little Yosemite and high-rising escarpments, and many join drop-in activities. 

While strenuous hikes are on offer, other activities focus on the park’s animal inhabitants like newts, snakes and birds as well as Indian Joe Creek and Cave Rocks. 

Worth planning ahead for is Sunol’s Third Annual Wildflower Festival, set for Saturday, April 8. The Old Green Barn Visitor Center’s Jo Frisch numbered last year’s event at over three hundred participants. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., naturalists and volunteers lead wildflower hikes of varying lengths and present slide shows highlighting the area’s flora and butterflies. Planned crafts like pressed flower bookmarks and painted faces offer take home mementos. A day worthy of a mark on the calendar. 

Resources shouldn’t be wasted, by over-use or under-use. Sample what’s on offer by the East Bay Parks. Take a page from Bethany Facendini’s book—participate and become a steward of nature. 

Regional In Nature Activity Guides are published every two months. Copies can be picked at all park Interpretive Centers. Information is also available on line at www.ebparks.org. Some classes require registration and a fee.  

Rounding the bend from La Loma Avenue onto Le Conte Avenue on Berkeley’s Northside, the eye can’t miss a large brown-shingle structure in mid-block. Crowned by cascades of steep overlapping gables, this quintessentially Arts & Crafts building sports a curious appendage on its southeast corner: an octagonal turret with a domed roof previously covered with mosaics but now bare. 

The story of the house at 2667–69 Le Conte Ave. is full of twists and turns, as is the case with so many other historic houses in the Daley’s Scenic Park tract just north of the UC campus. Built 95 years ago, the house’s fortunes have faithfully mirrored those of the near-century of its existence. 

The house was designed in 1911 as a duplex by the eclectic architect John Hudson Thom as. A student of John Galen Howard’s and Bernard Maybeck’s, Thomas drew inspiration for his idiosyncratic style from early 20th-century European and American avant-garde architecture, and especially from the Glasgow School (Charles Rennie Mackintosh), the Viennese Secession (Otto Wagner), and the Prairie School (Frank Lloyd Wright). 

Thomas’ client was Laura Belle Marsh Kluegel, a widow who had lived in the neighborhood since 1904 and had close ties to the Maybeck-Keeler circle. With Maybeck as their guru and Charles Keeler as their spokesman, the residents of Daley’s Scenic Park were determined to build their homes in harmony with nature. They founded the Hillside Club in 1898 “to protect the hills of Berkeley from unsightly grading and the building of u nsuitable and disfiguring houses; to do all in our power to beautify these hills and above all to create and encourage a decided public opinion on these subjects.” 

The new houses that went up in this district were clad in unpainted shingles, and their steep roofs echoed the contours of the surrounding hills and trees. The style that evolved here is known as the First Bay Region Tradition and is widely considered to be Berkeley’s most significant contribution to architecture. 

The Hillside Club also took charge of surveying and laying out the neighborhood streets with “an artistic treatment of grades and retaining walls, which would take into consideration the preservation of the live-oaks and involve as little alteration as possible of the present topogr aphy.” At the time, several large Coast Live Oaks grew in the center of Le Conte Avenue. When city workers removed one of these oaks in 1919, the neighbors dispatched a stern letter to the City Council, decrying this “high-handed measure” and stressing th at the native trees are “the most prized asset of [the] district and are absolutely invaluable, in that they can never be replaced.” 

Mrs. Kluegel owned an art furnishing and interior design store on Telegraph Avenue and was a longtime member of the Coope r Ornithological Club. The preference for a shingled home was probably hers, since John Hudson Thomas designed primarily in stucco. Of all the original commissions Thomas designed during his solo career (1911–1945), the Kluegel house appears to be the onl y fully shingled one. 

Around 1919, Mrs. Kluegel moved to Carmel, where she was one of the founding members of the Carmel Art Association. A few years later, the great Berkeley Fire of 1923 ravaged Daley’s Scenic Park. The Kluegel house has the distinctio n of being the westernmost house on its block to have survived the fire, which passed between it and the adjacent house. 

Subsequent resident-owners of the duplex rented some of their rooms to students, and during WWII even shipyard workers are reported t o have roomed there. After the war, the two dwellings were owned and occupied by the families of two young professors—Charles Richard Grau and Sigurd Burckhardt—the former a future world expert in avian science and the latter a distinguished literary crit ic. 

From 1950 to 1976, the Kluegel house was a rooming house serving UC co-eds. In 1976, at a time when many American were looking toward East Asia for spiritual renewal, the house was purchased by the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation of Sikh Dharma. For the next twenty years, it was a Sikh ashram, Kundalini yoga center, and residential commune. The Sikhs needed a place to house their religious shrine, and that’s how the domed turret came into being. 

Happily, the building is large enough so that this peculi ar addition (also shingled) does not significantly affect its overall appearance. Sufficient historic fabric and character-defining features remain to convey its historic significance.

Writing this column is going to be harder than usual. It’s no fun. I like talking about how people screw things up and sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s just exasperating but what I have to talk about today is genuinely tragic. Please bear with me because it’s extremely important. 

Kids are getting sick. Lots of them, and it’s something that’s preventable. Lead poisoning has affected over 4,000 kids in Alameda county in the last 14 years and that’s just the ones we know about. In 2004, only 42 percent of the Medi-Cal enrolled children in Alameda County had been screened for lead. That means that there are probably a lot more kids who are being affected than we know about. 

These figures came to me from Julie Twichell of the Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, based in Oakland. Before I go on let me give you their website, www.aclppp.org, because she and her compatriots are here for you. Check out the website. It’s very useful and simple and direct. 

I ended up talking to Julie because of Berkeley’s own Lynda Daily, who coordinates Berkeley’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. She too is available at ldailey@ci.berkeley.ca.us and can help to answer questions and direct you to what can be done. 

Let’s look briefly at what is happening and then we can talk a little about what can be done. 

First, children 6 and under are at the greatest risk. It’s hard to find hard numbers on exactly which sources of lead are greatest for children but it looks like the remnants of lead paint is the primary culprit. We’ll talk later about some other sources you should know about. 

When people prepare to paint and don’t know any better they often scrape and (here the worst one) sand old surfaces that are almost sure to contain lead paint if they are from before 1978. That’s almost every house I see in Berkeley. Yes, we have a few newer homes but 80 percent of the housing in Alameda County fits this description and I think the numbers for Berkeley must be over 90 percent. Many people don’t realize this and when they sand and scrape the old paint off in preparation for painting, they release lead particles that come to rest in the environment. 

Small children are very oral and very manual/oral. In other words, they explore the world with their hands and their mouths and if the house has lead dust and chips (which themselves get broken down to dust), they ingest lead. This may sound hard to achieve but apparently it’s very common.  

There are at least two different ways in which this problem is exacerbated. The first is that lead is sweet and infants who gnaw on lead woodwork, which is another common means of ingestion, may be getting an extra incentive to continue since it tastes good. The Romans apparently used to put lead ethanoate (also called ‘lead acetate’ or ‘sugar of lead’) into their drinks as a sweetener. Holy moley, that sure seems like a bad idea. The madness of Caligula is thought to have been the result of lead poisoning and it may be that much of Rome’s downfall can be linked to this tragic misjudgment. 

There is also what is called Pica behavior, which involves the eating of a range of inappropriate materials including clay for reasons that are generally not obvious. Some scientists believe that this is a confused attempt to obtain some needed nutrient. Clay eating has long been observed and is sanctioned in some cultures. Pica behavior may be the result of malnutrition or possibly an undetected dietary need that the subject may be trying to fill.  

Whatever the reason, children are eating lead. They may not be aware that they are doing it but the consequences are extremely dire. At the low end of the spectrum is attention deficit and other learning and behavioral failings. At the further end is mental retardation, kidney illness and death. Some signs to look for in lead poisoning include: headaches, irritability, vomiting, weight loss, slowed speech and hyperactivity. 

If you live in a house built prior to 1978 and have a child 6 or under and especially if it’s a house from before 1950 please have your child tested for lead. It’s a simple blood test your pediatrician can perform. 

If you’re thinking about painting, just wash the wall and paint over on the inside. If you want a more thorough job, and many of us do, please have a professional do the job and make sure they protect your home and their workers in the process. Ask questions before you start and bring up the L-word. Make sure they know the rules. Make sure that the house is clean of all lead dust when they get done. Talk to the ACLPPP to be sure what you need to know. 

If you own a home in Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville or Oakland, there are some impressive services that the ACLPPP have available to you including free site visits, lead testing of the site and classes for homeowners on how to safely remodel (paint, etc.).  

There are lead testing kits one can obtain and even a special HEPA vacuum for rental if you choose to do some work on your own home. There are also free classes for professionals at various levels of complexity and there are even special services available to landlords. It seems that the community is responding to a serious need in a serious way … so we can have hope. 

A few other things to be aware of that have little to do with construction but may help to prevent a tragedy. Lead is found in Kohl, a popular black eye makeup from Pakistan, India, and Saudi Arabia (as well as other countries in the region). Kohl samples have been found to sometimes contain up to 50 percent lead and this makeup is sometimes used on small children. Vinyl mini-blinds may contain lead as well as some vinyl toys. Apparently, lead is used in the making of vinyl and it can remain accessible to a chewing child. 

Turmeric can contain lead, depending on where it comes as well as the glazes on some ceramics. 

Clearly it’s important to get informed. 

The primary concern is clearly for those things that are in the child’s field of access. What they can grab and chew on, where they play and crawl. 

There are so many things to fear that it’s easy to get freaked out by something like this. It’s also easy for us to feel like we don’t do enough as parents. Here’s my message. Don’t sand the surfaces inside your house and if you have a small child, have them get a blood test for lead. The rest is small stuff and you’re not supposed to sweat that. 



Some of us like plants from all over the world in out gardens. Some of us like native Californians. (Some of us, like me, mix them.) Some of us take that native thing to apparent extremes, and people like that have the perfect place in Berkeley: Native Here Nursery.  

There’s good reason to take the “extreme” road. Many of our native plants are unique, having very small ranges and surviving under peculiar conditions like drought and serpentine soils. They nurture the rest of the native flora and the fauna, and you won’t find anything quite like those systems anywhere else on earth. As much as we might love our ecological surroundings, we don’t know everything about them, and sometimes the gaps in our knowledge turn out to be bigger than we thought.  

Genetic studies keep turning up surprises, like two species we used to think were one because they—to us—look “alike.” A few years ago, studies on two extremely similar waterbirds, Western grebe and Clark’s grebe, showed enough genetic differences to make them basically reproductively isolated from each other, even though they share territories. Evidently they can tell each other apart. Plants can be even more subtle. 

One good mechanism for speciation is geography. Ernst Mayr wrote whole libraries about this, and we can trace fascinating tales of, say, Hawai’ian silverswords and their Californian tarweed ancestors. But it doesn’t take half the Pacific to set up a place for a plant to evolve into something new; California has more microhabitats than most places, and more species.  

So, nature’s doing something here, and we don’t know exactly what. But we do know that when we restore places as best we can, interesting things happen. Animals return, plants buoy each other up; we can stand back and watch in wonder. Locals are adapted to their sites, and they do well and nurture the local butterflies, birds, and other wildlife we’ve elbowed out of the way.  

If you live near wildlands, it’s something between duty and magic to plant natives from your place. So people like Charli Danielsen, Native Here’s founder, take care to know where their plants came from. In the nursery, you don’t just find California natives; you find Wildcat Regional Park, El Cerrito, Albany Hill and such specific natives. Charli and her volunteers go forth and gather seed, track it as they grow it out, and supply plants for home gardens and habitat restoration. 

Native Here also does custom growing, for which you need to plan well ahead: two or three years’ notice is best. Plants set seed at specific times, once a year or even less often, and must be mapped, gathered, and grown out to prosper. Is it worth it? You bet. Plants native to your site will do best with the least fuss, and usually spread and fill in well on their own – or with the help of the wildlife they grew up with, like scrub jays who’ve been planting oaks and ceanothus for millenia. As we replace the lost pieces of our world, magic happens. 

Native Here Nursery 

101 Golf Course Road  

across from the entrance to the Tilden Golf Course. 

(South Park Drive is still closed for the newts’ migration; approach from the Shasta Gate.) 

549-0211 

Fridays: 9 a.m.–noon, Saturdays 10 a.m.-1 p.m. 

“Urge Your City to Adopt Community Control Over Local Energy!” That was the headline on the Sierra Club Environmental Action Alert that recently appeared in my mailbox. The alert was part of the club’s Bay Chapter campaign for Community Choice Aggregation (why do great ideas—single-payer health insurance is another example—have such mind-numbing names?). Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), the leaflet went on to say, is “a form of energy independence that takes the electricity-purchasing decisions out of the hands of huge corporations and gives control to local government.” CCA also promises to deliver electric power that’s greener and cheaper than what we now get from PG&E.  

Liberation from PG&E? Local control of electricity? And cheap, green power besides? It sounds too good to be true. Is it? Maybe, maybe not. What’s clear is that Community Choice Aggregation presents a huge opportunity—and complexity and risk to match.  

The catalyst for CCA was the 2002 passage of California Assembly Bill 117. Assembly Bill 117 gives California cities and counties the right to purchase electricity for power users in their communities. The law provides a public process for a city or county to solicit bids from energy service providers, to set higher goals for green power, and to use revenue bonds to finance new solar, wind, hydrogen and conservation facilities through monthly electric bill payments made by residents and businesses. Hence the term “Aggregation”: local governments get market clout by aggregating local users’ demands for electricity.  

CCA differs from municipal or public power, where a public agency, be it an arm of federal, state or local government, owns wires and/or power plants and wholesales power. Community Choice cities do not own or operate power plants or wire systems and do not form power agencies. Instead, companies called Electric Service Providers compete to deliver power to the Aggregation, from stipulated sources and at rates the community requires. A typical Community Choice contract lasts five to ten years. Millions of customers in Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey and Rhode Island now receive their electricity under CCA laws.  

To date, several dozen local governments in California, including Berkeley’s, have expressed interest in CCA. San Francisco is poised to be the first in the state actually to implement a CCA program, with the enabling legislation calendared on the March 7 agenda of the city’s Finance Committee.  

In Berkeley, Community Choice Aggregation has been a strong interest of the city’s Energy Officer, Neal De Snoo (pronounced Snow), since 1994, when he first went to work here. But until the passage of AB 117, CCA wasn’t a realistic option, says De Snoo, because users had to sign up individually. AB 117 enables local governments to form an opt-out organization: customers are automatically included unless they explicitly choose to stick with an investor-owned utility such as PG&E. Shortly after the law passed, the city invited bids from consultants to analyze the feasibility of a Community Choice program for Berkeley. The job went to Navigant Consulting.  

In April 2005 Navigant delivered a “Base Case Feasibility Evaluation” to Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland. The study recommended that the three municipalities implement CCA by entering into a Joint Powers Agency (JPA). That structure, said the report, would make it possible to reach a workable economy of scale, as well as providing “an appropriate financing vehicle.” Startup costs were estimated at $400,000, and generation investments at $0-128 million, depending on the supply scenario. Navigant listed the advantages of Community Choice Aggregation—among other things, cheaper electricity, stable rates, greener energy generation, lessened dependency on imported natural gas and hence greater energy security, and heightened municipal and regional economic competitiveness resulting from lower and more stable rates.  

But the Navigant study also marked the program’s considerable risks—above all, the possibility that CCA rates would turn out to be higher than comparable prices charged by PG&E, “causing customers to be dissatisfied with the program or attempt to return to PG&E service.” Ironically, “the single greatest obstacle to achieving cost savings through CCA in the next few years” is PG&E’s right to impose so-called “cost responsibility surcharges” on CCA customers, exit fees that are designed “to shield PG&E from any financial losses or cost increases that might result from customers switching to service by the Aggregator.” The cities, acting through the JPA, could impose exit fees on their own departing customers. But as the report observes, “those costs would be paid by the very constituents whose interests [Berkeley] represents.” PG&E customers also “ultimately bear the risks of PG&E’s energy procurement practices, but PG&E is not accountable to its ratepayers to the same degree as is the city.”  

In August 2005, peer reviewers concluded that while Navigant’s overall approach was valid, in numerous respects it had underestimated the risks of establishing CCA for Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville. Navigant is supposed to provide an amended version of its report. The next step would be for the consultants to develop a business plan that, unlike the initial report, which took a generic approach, would address the specifics of an East Bay CCA. According to an item on the Berkeley City Council’s Jan. 17 agenda, a business plan will cost $104,192. The City of Berkeley has already paid Navigant $28,500 for the original and amended versions of the Base Study. The Jan. 17 item states that “the total cost of Navigant’s services [to the three participating cities, the California Energy Commission and the Department of Energy] is $580,031.”  

Noting that a contractor is already working on Phase 2 for Oakland and Berkeley, De Snoo hopes that the council will authorize the business plan at its March 7 meeting. He’s concerned that if the city lags behind, it may not be treated as an equal partner. But a March 7 approval seems unlikely, given that last Tuesday the council approved a request, submitted by Councilmembers Capitelli and Olds, for the city manager to schedule a council work session on CCA on that date. The council usually defers to a later date action on an item that is the subject of a work session. The councilmembers’ memo asked that the work session include a discussion of the Navigant report, its peer review, and “a panel of energy experts—outside of city staff, commission members and hired consultants—to offer a variety of perspectives in response to the report.”  

A council work session on Community Choice Aggregation is a good idea. CCA is a highly technical proposition. For a lay reader, just comprehending the acronyms in the 142-page Base Study—a page near the beginning of the report decodes 38 of them—is a daunting task. And before moving forward, councilmembers need to grasp far more than the acronyms.  

So do their constituents. Unlike most other major environmental initiatives undertaken in Berkeley, the push for Community Choice Aggregation has not been, shall we say, a community choice. Instead, it’s been driven by staff and professional consultants working largely behind closed doors. By contrast, the city’s many pathbreaking recycling programs grew out of vigorous grass-roots campaigns and community-based institutions, most notably, the Ecology Center, Community Conservation Centers and Urban Ore. A project as ambitious and momentous as CCA should be—indeed, already should have been—the object of intense public scrutiny and discourse. To that end, we need a lot more than a council work session, which allows no opportunities for members of the public to engage in dialogue with councilmembers or anybody else. We need a real public forum. Given the Sierra Club’s interest in Community Choice Aggregation, it would be fitting for the club’s Northern Alameda Group to sponsor such an event.  

If it does, one issue that should be high on the agenda is governance. Summarizing the benefits of a Joint Powers Agency, Navigant says: “The JPA may authorize the issuance of low cost bonds by ordinance subject to referendum but without a vote of the electors within the public entities comprising the JPA.” I suspect that many Berkeley citizens would look askance at a governmental agency that could issue bonds in their name but without their consent.  

And who should serve on the JPA? De Snoo’s reply to that question is not elected officials because that would politicize the decisionmaking. I got just the opposite answer from Paul Fenn, the author of both AB 117 and the legislation behind San Francisco’s CCA, and the founder and director of Oakland-based Local Power. (The Local Power website (www.local.org) is chock-full of accessible information about CCA.) Fenn thinks that the JPA should probably consist of the cities’ mayors, because, as he put it, “When they vote, they’re going to be accountable. Otherwise, you risk a backroom deal.” (Berkeley citizens might understandably wonder if putting the city’s current mayor on a JPA wouldn’t effectively guarantee a backroom deal.) I’d like to see De Snoo and Fenn, along with informed others, discuss governance and other CCA issues at a Sierra Club forum. It should be lively.  

My Feb. 6 Public Eye column contained several errors. The size of the Seagate/Arpeggio Building planned for Center Street is 186,000 square feet, not, as I wrote, 149,000 square feet. The correct address of the proposed West Berkeley Bowl is 920 Heinz St. Finally, I referred to the renamed Vista College as both Berkeley City College and Berkeley Community College; the former is correct.  

Friday night I went over to the Women’s Cancer Resource Center to view the art show, SNAP! SNAP! is a satellite exhibit of the larger Art of Living Black 2006 exhibition hosted by the Richmond Art Center through March 19. In addition to the WCRC show, there are satellite exhibits taking place at various locations throughout the Bay Area, and a cyberspace site at www.mesart.com. 

The Women’s Cancer Resource Center, at 5741 Telegraph Ave., provides many services for women with cancer and their supporters. One of its core values is to educate the general community about the disease, and it does so in a number of unique ways, including hosting several art shows throughout the year. The WCRC opens its doors Monday through Friday (9 a.m.-5 p.m.) to the general public in order to share in the celebration of life through art and to nurture awareness of the center’s many resources. SNAP! features the photography of David Johnson, Ron Moultrie Saunders, Saida Hagan Nassirruddin, Michael Johnson, Salongo Lee, Patricia Patterson, Tasin Sabir, and James Weeks.  

I went to the show specifically to see the photos taken by my neighbor, Joseph Robinson, and by father, long-time Berkeley resident Charles Robinson. Joseph, a graduate of Berkeley High School (class of ‘81), Columbia University, and California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s, spending time in the darkroom with his dad. A 1994 trip to Central America rekindled his interest in photography. Since then, he’s been working on a collection of father/child portraits for a book entitled The Path I Walk. About his work, Joseph says, “I’ve been enchanted with images of people who aren’t particularly rich, particularly famous, particularly good singers, or particularly good athletes—just folks who are all particularly talented and do particularly heroic things everyday. The mainstream media don’t do a good job of recognizing these heroes, so my work as a man of color is to shine a light on them.” 

In contrast, Charles has taken thousands of photographs of the famous and soon-to-be famous. As the official photographer for the 1970 and ‘71 Monterey Jazz Festival, Charles shot many musicians as their stars were rising. In the SNAP! show, Charles shares with his viewers black and white images of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Paul Gonsalves, Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown and Percy Heath, to name just a few of his well-known subjects. 

Charles grew up on the eastside of Baltimore and became interested in photography while still a teenager. In 1952 he came to California to attend San Francisco State University, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in biology and a master’s degree in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling. For 33 years he worked for the state of California managing unemployment offices while pursuing his love of photography on the side. He is co-authoring a book with California Poet Laureate, and close friend Al Young. Tentatively titled Jazz Idiom, it contains photographs and interviews and is scheduled for publication by HeyDay Books in 2007.  

“I’ve always been a frustrated musician,” says Charles. “Back in Baltimore there was entertainment everywhere: Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Eubie Blake. Everyone was trying to tap dance and sing. The music was in me but I couldn’t express it through a musical instrument. That’s why I took up photography.” 

Joseph and Charles Robinson are just two of the more than 100 artists participating in the Art of Living Black exhibition. On March 4 and 5, many of them will be available to discuss their work at the Richmond Memorial Auditorium. This is a chance for the public to meet emerging and established artists and to purchase work directly from them. Items for sale will include paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, ceramics, stone carvings, textiles, jewelry, and mixed media work. Lunch is provided by the Gingerbread House, and a raffle will take place with proceeds going to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita and to the Friends of Faith, a cancer relief fund. For more information on this event and others, log onto www.therichmondartcenter.org or call 620-6772. For more on the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, go to www.wcrc.org.›

Ravens are complicated birds. Spend enough time with them and you’ll learn that there’s no such thing as “the raven”—a standard one-size-fits-all set of behavioral traits. They’re as wonderfully various as we are. 

Case in point: Bernd Heinrich, in his classic books Ravens in Winter and Mind of the Raven, talks about how wary and unapproachable the ravens in his Maine woods are. But that’s New England; elsewhere they’re entirely different. In the far north, they hang around native villages and hunting camps; there’s usually a raven or two underfoot in John Straley’s mystery novels, set in Alaska. I’ve been panhandled by ravens at the Grand Canyon and in the Petrified Forest. And last week at Point Reyes I had an unusually close raven encounter. 

We were having lunch at a picnic table at Drake’s Beach after a hike to Chimney Rock when the first raven, sporting a silver band on his left leg, flew in. He (as we inferred later) gave a series of soft grawks, and a second bird joined him. They billed a little, and the unbanded bird started preening the banded one; this was evidently a couple, with a breeding territory nearby. Then they turned their attention to our cars; the presumed male went up and pecked at one of the license plates. All this while we were finishing our sandwiches a couple of yards away and keeping up a running commentary on the action. The ravens seemed unconcerned with our presence. But when my friend wondered out loud if they’d like a carrot and reached for his bag of carrot sticks, one of the birds gave an indignant croak and both of them flew away, toward the visitors’ center. 

I had no idea that ravens were repelled by carrots. They’re not vegetarians, of course; they’ll happily scavenge from carcasses, and I once saw one kill, dismember, and eat a fair-sized pocket gopher. (Heinrich says his northeastern birds avoid roadkill; that’s not at all true of their western cousins). The ravens in the Tower of London eat apples, among other things. Maybe it was just that the carrots were unfamiliar objects, and that these mature birds were more conservative about novelties than they were as adolescents. 

But their tolerance of our proximity up until then was what impressed me. It could just be that the ravens in western parks have learned that no one is going to shoot at them. With their large (for birds) brains and complex social systems, ravens display an almost primate-like behavioral flexibility. They’re what the late biologist Ernst Mayr called “open-program” organisms, modifying their behavior as they learn about their environment.  

Heinrich feels they have what can meaningfully be called culture: shared learned behaviors—dialects, foraging techniques—that differ from group to group. His experiments with captive ravens have proved them capable of solving problems through insight. As far as I know, there’s no evidence of tool use by ravens—but nothing these birds do would surprise me. 

They’re adaptable enough to find homes in our cities. The Bay Area has experienced an urban raven boom in the last couple of decades, along with an even larger influx of crows. Ravens have become a familiar sight in Berkeley, although I don’t know where they’re nesting. There’s no love lost between the ravens and the crows, probably because of both species’ propensity for nest robbing. The local crows have a specific flat, nasal call that appears to mean “Here comes a raven—let’s chase it out of the neighborhood.” 

Given all that, though, there may be something different about California ravens. Ravens occur all through the Northern Hemisphere, south to Nicaragua, India, and North Africa, and all the populations looks pretty much alike, with minor variations in size. But as it turns out, that uniform appearance masks a deep genetic faultline.  

A few years ago, a group of biologists including William Boarman of the U.S. Geological Survey and John Marzluff at the University of Washington compared mitochondrial DNA samples from 72 ravens, collected throughout the species’ range. The specimens sorted into two lineages, or clades: a California clade and a Holarctic clade for the rest of North America, plus Eurasia, with a 5 percent genetic difference between them. “We have found that ravens from Minnesota, Maine, and Alaska are more similar to ravens from Asia and Europe than they are to ravens from California,” said Boarman. He speculated that the split may date back to two million years ago, when the ancestral California population was separated by glaciers from ravens in the rest of the continent. That scenario would be consistent with the evolutionary history of other North American birds, including the California-endemic yellow-billed magpie and the more widespread black-billed magpie. 

Boarman and his colleagues weren’t ready to call the California raven a new species. There’s a wide zone of overlap between the two clades in the Great Basin, from Washington and Idaho down to northeastern California, and it’s not clear whether Holarctic-clade and California-clade ravens are interbreeding there. If so, the two clades may be dissolving into a common gene pool. But if they’re not, that would mean the two groups are acting like distinct species, with some kind of behavioral barrier as an isolating mechanism. Maybe it’s vocal (Holarctic-clade ravens just sound wrong to California-clade birds?), or a subtle difference in habitat preference.  

So the jury is still out on the species issue, pending more research in the contact zone. It’s remarkable how much there still is to learn about this widespread and well-studied bird. Maybe someday science will even be able to account for that fear of carrots. 

'

FRIDAY, MARCH 3 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Master Builder” Wed. through Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through March 12. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep “9 Parts of Desire” about women in war-torn Iraq, at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through March 5. Tickets are $30-$59. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

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

Impact Theatre, “Hamlet” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 18. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

The Marsh Berkeley “Strange Travel Suggestions” monologue by Jeff Greenwald, Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. through March 3, at 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $15-$22. 800-838-3006. www.themarsh.org 

Traveling Jewish Theater “Family Alchemy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through March 12. Tickets are $12-$35. 415-522-0786. www.atjt.com 

UCB Dept. of Theater, “Seven Lears” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun at 2 p.m. at the Zellerchach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-9925. http://theater.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Edward Weston: Masterworks from the Collection” Curator’s talk with Drew Johnson, Curator of Photography, at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Horizon: Uniting Earth and Sky” a group exhibition at ACCI Gallery, 1562 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

“Holgalicious” photography exhibition by Looking Glass co-workers and photographers. Reception at 7 p.m. at Cafe Nefeli, Euclid at Hearst. 548-6888. 

“Overhung 2: Hungover,” Works by over 100 Bay Area artists. Reception at 7 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland.  

“Everyday People - Extraordinary Dreams” opens with a reception at 7 p.m. at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St. Alameda. 523-6957. 

Motorcycle Art and Artwork Reception at 5 p.m. at the Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival Workshop with Christine Choy at 1 p.m. and “Long Story Short” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam Semi-Finals #1 & #2, for youth aged 13-19, Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 210 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $4 for youth under 20, $10 general. 415-255-9035, ext. 22. www.youthspeaks.org  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall , UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Dance Is 2006 at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $5-$10. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

The Pacific Boychoir “American Spirituals” at 7:30 pm at the First Presbyterian Church, 27th and Broadway, Oakland. 452-4722. www.pacificboychoir.org 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$12. 642-9988.  

Good Word at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Flip Tha Script with Kiwi, Golda Supanova, Feenix Solite at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Eddie Marshall’s “No Money Band” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Radiohead Project with Adam Theis, Joe Cohen and Pat Korte at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Bucho and Soul at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$10. 548-1159.  

Gail Dobson Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Moodswing Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Frank Wakefield Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Linh Nguyen and Jamie Jenkins at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

XBXRX, Battleship, Mika Miko, Saboteurs 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. 

Du Uy Quintet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Cas Lucas with Home at Last & Zak Hexum at 8 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 

CHILDREN 

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

EXHIBITIONS 

The Art of Living Black 2006 with the works of over 50 artists on display Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Richmond Convention Center Memorial Auditorium. Sponsored by the Richmond Art Center. 620-6772. 

“Inforestation” an exhibition of drawings, sound, light, and organic materials is being shown at the Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. Opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Exhibition runs to April 24. 981-7546. 

THEATER 

“Dust Storm: Art and Survival in a Time of Paranoia” on the Internement of Japanese Americans during WWII, at 2 and 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $1-$10. 800-838-3006. 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Who Killed Vincent Chin” at 5:30 p.m. and “Confronting What Was” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Joseph Campana and D.A. Powell at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m., at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall , UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Dance Is 2006 at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $5-$10. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

The Real Vocal String Quartet, synthesis of world and roots music with jazz, classical and pop, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St., bet. Durant and Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com  

Jewish Music Festival with the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars at 8 p.m. at the First Congregational Church Oakland. Tickets are $22-$26. 415-276-1511. 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$12. 642-9988.  

Emily Bezar, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $10 at the door. 

The K.T.O. Project at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Tickets are $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

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

Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Gumbo Band, featuring Lady Memfis, vocals, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Rhiannon at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Marley’s Ghost at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian music, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

Sister I-Live and the Remix Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dale Miller and Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Betsy Stern Trio and TC at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Green & Root with Eileen Hazel at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Bryan Girard’s Soul/Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lights Out, Hostile Takeover, Set it Straight 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. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 5 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “I Have Seen...” at 1 p.m. and “Teach Our Children: Works by Christine Choy” at 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBITIONS 

Photography of Brian Hastings Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

A Tribute to Zahra Kazemi & Dr. Hammed Shahidian with the Kavosh Iranian Women’s Group at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Soli Deo Gloria, with guest conductor Chad Runyon, will present Latin Elegance, an a cappella choral concert at 3:30 p.m. at Zion Lutheran, 5201 Park Blvd., Piedmont. Tickets at the door are $15-$20. www.sdgloria.org 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“Alarm Will Sound” works by John Adams at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Chamber Music Sundaes, with members of the San Francisco Symphony and friends at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $9-$21. 415-584-5946. 

Kemo Sabe, The Pickin’ Trix, Val Esway & El Mirage and others in a benefit for Kirk Rundstrom from 2 to 10 p.m at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakland. Tickets are $5-$15. 444-6174. 

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

Art Lande Trio “unstandards” at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Youthquake Performances, school-age band competition, at 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Suzy Thompson, Evie Ladin, and Allegra Yellin, old-time country songs at 11 a.m. at the Temescal Cafe, 4920 Telegraph Ave., near 50th. 595-4102. 

Twang Cafe with Dave Gleason’s Wasted Days at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. All ages show. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Balafo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Elana Fremerman & Her Hot Hot Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, MARCH 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zilber-Muscarella Quartet & Invitational at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble and Combos at at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s, Jack London Square. Tickets are $15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, MARCH 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

Michelle Echenique “New Work: Mixed Media Collage” opens at North Berkeley Frame and Gallery, 1744 Shattuck Ave. Runs through April 29. 549-0428. 

FILM 

Vantage Points: New Documentaries by Women at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Works In Progress” Women’s Open Mic with Jan Steckel at 7:30 p.m. at Montclair Women’s Cultural Center, 1650 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. 276-0379. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gerard Landry & The Lariats at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Barbrara Linn at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

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

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8 

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Youth Arts Festival celebrating the works of Berkeley High School students. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893.  

FILM 

Film 50: History of Cinema “ Victims of Sin” at 3 p.m. and Vidoe: Recent and Strange at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Café Poetry hosted by Kira Allen at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on organ at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Julio Bocca’s Ballet Argentino & Octango at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Zabava! Izvorno and Late Clift at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Berkeley High Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Ned Boynton’s North Beach Django Band at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Julio Bravo & Salsabor at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Kurt Riabak Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

THURSDAY, MARCH 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Still Present Pasts” A collaborative exhibition on Korean Americans and the “Forgotten War” Reception at 6 p.m. at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361. 

FILM 

The Wide Angle Cinema of Michael Brault “Of Whales, the Moon and Men” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Exploring The Adirondacks: An Architectural Tour of A Great Rustic Tradition” with Steven Engelhart, Executive Director, Adirondack Architectural Heritage, at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $8-$12. 843-8982.  

“Art and War at the Achaemenid Persian Court” with Dr. Michael Roaf, Prof. of Near Eastern Archeology at Munich Univ. at 7:30 p.m. at the Archeological Research Facility, 2251 College Building, UC Campus. 415-338-1537. 

Beshara Doumani, Judith Butler Joel Beinin adn Kathleen Frydl look at “Academic Freedom After 9/11” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series with Ronda Lawson and Cynthia Bryant at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Julio Bocca’s Ballet Argentino & Octango at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Hespérion XXI, “La Capella Reial de Catalunya” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $52. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Erike Luckett at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Steve Gannon’s Blue Monday Blues at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Isaac Peña, CD release party at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $16-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jeremy Cohen Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Triskela, harp, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198. ™

He may not look a day over 35 on the foil wrapper of the stale chocolate kugels that pay homage to the greatest musical genius the world has ever known, but Mozart turned 250 on Jan. 27 of this year. More to the point, although the wrapper his music comes in may seem hoary with age, the music wrapped inside has aged like fine wine, becoming fresher, younger and more delicious over the years. 

In his own time and all through the 19th and early 20th centuries, Mozart had a comparatively small, but growing, coterie of fans. Only in the last grand climacteric have we begun to reach an appreciation of his true greatness. 

No matter for, like Whitman, his music says, “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” 

Among the many ensembles honoring him with special programs this year, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s Amadé’s Anniversary stands out with its promise of technical excellence, passionate performance, superior guest artists and inspired programming. San Francisco’s PBO, under the direction of conductor Nicholas McGegan, will perform it at four Bay Area venues over the next two weekends before heading off later in the month to Tucson, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo. for further concerts.  

One of the highlights of the program will be Symphony No. 40 in G minor, whose opening bars, along with those of Symphony No. 39 and his great, final, Jupiter Symphony, No. 41, Mozart entered into his Verzeichnis aller meiner Werke, his autograph thematic catalogue of his compositions, between June 26 and August 10 of 1788. 

In other words, during a six -week period, after the failure of Don Giovanni in Vienna, during the time that his infant daughter died, while composing half a dozen other pieces, he carried these three symphonies around in his head and then wrote them down one after the other in fully orchestrated versions. 

Eric Hoeprich joins the orchestra for the popular Clarinet Concerto in A major, from 1791, the year of Mozart’s death. Hoeprich is a world-famous performer, maker and historian of the clarinet, but for this performance he switches to an instrument he made in 1994. He based it on a 1794 engraving found in a program which featured Mozart’s friend, colleague and Masonic brother Anton Stadler playing on the basset clarinet, an instrument of his own invention. In fact, Mozart actually wrote this piece as well as his Clarinet Quintet for the virtuoso performer to play on the basset clarinet. 

Guest soprano Cyndia Sieden will be featured performing three stand-alone concert arias. The three concert arias were written independently of larger works for Mozart’s sister-in-law, Aloysia Weber.  

The Magic Flute aria was originally written for the oldest Weber sister, Josepha, who created the role of the Queen of the Night. These are demanding pieces, especially the flabbergasting “O zittre nicht,” and Sieden’s recent and highly acclaimed recordings indicate that she is more than a match for the original Weber sisters.  

For all the fascination of biography, gossip, history, speculation, interpretation and musical analysis, in the end we are left facing the music, not wondering what it means, but just being comfortable with the mystery of why this music is still beautiful and necessary to us. As Goethe said, “I beg of you, seek nothing behind the phenomena. They constitute their own lesson.” Few musical aggregations can present that lesson with more power, finesse and passion than the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.  

The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan will perform at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way and at 8 p.m. March 10 at the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. On March 11, they will play at 8 p.m. at the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, 49 Knox Drive, Lafayette. For tickets call (415) 392-4400. For more information, call (415) 252-1288 or see www.philharmonia.org. 

Seven Lears which opens tonight on the campus at Zellerbach Playhouse will close after next weekend.  

For good solid academic reasons, the university’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies customarily limits plays to two week runs, completely irrespective of the production’s success.  

On the other hand, what they’re offering is quite often worth a lot more than they charge. Tickets for large, elaborately costumed productions—such as Seven Lears—run $14 for adults and $8 for seniors. And this play has 20 actors, a number of whom are playing multiple roles.  

Another plus is that the university is in an enviable position to stage some of the more challenging productions, plays that more commercially oriented companies don’t dare attempt. And thus we now have a rare chance to see a play from what the controversial British playwright Howard Barker has dubbed “the theater of catastrophe.”  

Barker, who has established an important name for himself in Europe, has been largely ignored in Great Britain—which might tell you something about the nature of his thought. He may, however, be finding a more accepting venue in the United States. Stanford just completed a production of Barker’s The Castle on Feb. 18, and their director, Daniel Sack, will come to Berkeley to take part in a panel discussion about the playwright on March 7 (free admission).  

In Seven Lears Barker is exploring—and answering—an important question that may not have been significantly addressed in Shakespearean criticism: What happened to King Lear’s daughters’ mother? As Barker says in his Introduction to the play:  

“The Mother is denied existence in King Lear. She is barely quoted even in the depths of rage or pity. She was therefore expunged from memory … She was therefore the subject of an unjust hatred…” 

While some of us might dispute Barker’s conclusion that the only logical explanation for the family’s behavior is “an unjust hatred” of their mother, it still remains an interesting possibility.  

And it does provide a fascinating basis for his own play.  

Barker goes on to provide a biography of Lear through seven stages—from childhood  

to where Shakespeare starts the story we all probably know. Lear, (admirably played by Nicholas Le Provost, who barely leaves the stage throughout the entire production) and his brothers are somehow convincing as children, although fully grown actors. That’s not easy. 

While Lear, of course, dominates the story, the women in his life—some of whom you’ve never met before—are given significant importance.   

Frankly, it’s rather satisfying.  

One of the significant innovations Barker has explored is in the use of language. He has made no effort to re-create an Elizabethan usage, but has developed some significant innovations that are remarkably successful in creating realistic spoken language as we hear it. In more than one instance he has, for example, given the actor abruptly incomplete sentences. They just stop in mid-flight, period.  

It’s startling to read, of course. But it turns out to be extraordinarily realistic when it is heard from an actor. That’s the way we talk: Those attractive so-called “incomplete”  

sentences that trail off so carefully on written pages need to be looked at more carefully.  

In one such detail Barker has challenged a major, commonly accepted, standard of writing.  

No wonder so many of the Brits don’t like him.  

UC Berkeley’s theater department presents Seven Lears at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays at the Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC campus though March 19. Tickets $8-$14. For more information, call 642-9925 or see http://theater.berkeley.edu.n

The Gem of the Ocean, the next-to-last play August Wilson wrote, is finishing a run at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater this coming weekend. 

The play is the first in his cycle of a century of black American life, completed with the premiere of Radio Golf shortly before Wilson died last fall at 60.  

Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who played in the Broadway production, a fine cast from both the co-producing McCarter Theatre at Princeton and ACT’s core troupe acts out a moment early in the last century, in Wilson’s hometown of Pittsburgh, when “you could walk around and find people who were slaves. I find that incredible.” 

Things in Pittsburgh aren’t so good. There’s unrest at the mill where many black people work. Accused of stealing a bucket of nails, a black worker denies it, fleeing into the river, where he dies. Later, at the climactic moment of the play, the mill will be set afire. 

The first half of this long play (Wilson once joked, as he lengthened an early play, “If it’s 90 minutes, no one’ll know it’s mine!”) meanders with the rhythms of old saws and Biblical homilies and pointed phrases. 

These recurring moments become eddies in the stream of dialogue that establishes plot and character, a texture of speech and meaning that give some credence to Wilson’s old claim that he’s first of all a poet. The second act is more ambitious, with the epiphantic ritual and further revelations and confrontations. Eager to teach the moral lessons of the past, Wilson ends up overdetermining the story and characters, constantly pinning down meaning schematically, to the exclusion of irony.  

Yet he leaves much of importance vague, fuzzy rather than ambiguous. 

Theater mimics the repetition of both sacred rituals and daily life, a dramatic action to re-enact origins, or recover personal and social history—in either case, for us to see the genesis of life’s situations in language and action, rather than in a pre-set scheme of things. 

As a late work, Gem of the Ocean shows a strain of resistance to the relentless linearity of plot, with the backwash of folk language and freestanding statement making a rhythm that syncopates the metronomic beat of a progressive history. Little repeated words and moments are more revelatory than monuments and murals; they sensitize an audience to what’s between the words, the paradox of poetry: what can’t be said. 

It all makes Wilson’s untimely loss more sharply felt. He had spoken of going off in new directions, once his epic cycle was complete. Who knows what lyricism of character and dialogue might have been freed from the dense layers of epic? 

ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff remembers August Wilson with the last words of Gem: “So live.” 

ACT presents Gem of the Ocean through March 12 at the Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. For more information, call 415-749-2ACT or see www.act-sf.org.

Over the next few weeks, Pacific Film Archive is presenting two series dedicated to women. 

The 11th annual Women of Color Film Festival runs through Sunday and features a number of films, both long and short, by and about women. Several of the filmmakers will appear in person to discuss their work. 

One of the films showing is Christine Choy’s Academy Award-nominated documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988) The film examines an incident in 1982 Detroit in which Chinese-American Vincent Chin was mistaken for Japanese and beaten to death by white auto workers who had lost their jobs as demand for Japan’s more fuel-efficient cars caused mass layoffs in the American auto industry. The workers were given light sentences, sparking nationwide outrage among Asian Americans. Choy’s film documents the campaign by Vincent Chin’s mother to bring the murderers to justice. 

Christine Choy will discuss her career at 1 p.m. today (Friday); Who Killed Vincent Chin? plays at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.  

Vantage Points, a series of new documentaries by women starts at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday with a screening of Jennifer Montgomery’s Threads of Belonging (2003) and continues the following Tuesday with Lynne Sachs’ States of UnBelonging (2005). After a brief hiatus, the series continues April 4 with Adele Horne’s The Tailenders (2005) and runs through April 18, concluding with Jenni Olson’s The Joy of Life (2005).  

The Joy of Life depicts two forms of falling and their accompanying emotional states. The first is the feeling of falling in love, in which sensory perception seems to increase. The second is the experience of literally falling, in this case from the Golden Gate Bridge, as director Olson takes a look at the bridge’s history of suicides and makes the case for the construction of a suicide barrier. 

For complete schedules of the films in these series, go to www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 

A spate of German-themed films has made and continues to make its way to Berkeley theaters, from last year’s Downfall, about the final days of Adolph Hitler, to current and upcoming releases such as Fateless, about the Nazi occupation of Hungary, Summer Storm, the story of a young German boy’s sexual awakening, and Before the Fall, a coming-of-age film set in one of Hitler’s schools for the elite. (Before the Fall will be reviewed in this space next week.) 

But this week’s offering stands apart from the others, if only because of its subject matter. 

Directed by Dani Levy, Go For Zucker! is the first German-Jewish comedy since World War II and among the first German films of any genre to depict German Jews outside a Holocaust context.  

The film stars Henry Hübchen as Jaecki Zucker (formerly Zuckermann), a man who abandoned his Jewish identity decades ago but must now reconcile with his estranged Orthodox brother in order to acquire an inheritance.  

Go For Zucker!, a huge hit in Germany, has played to Berkeley audiences before, anchoring the East Bay edition of last July’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. It opens today (Friday) at Landmark’s Act 1 & 2.  

Growing up in East Germany, Jaecki Zucker renounced his Jewish faith in his brash, leftist youth. Now in his fifties, his life of high-stakes billiards has drawn a string of creditors while pushing his family further and further away from him. But they are drawn back together when Zucker’s mother’s death brings with it the lure of a great sum of money.  

The will stipulates that Zucker must reconcile with his Orthodox brother and observe the lengthy traditional mourning rituals if he wants to get his inheritance. Zucker’s family, including his wife, played by German star Hannelore Elsner, must therefore struggle to pass as observant when the in-laws come to visit for nine days. The family rabbi is charged with monitoring the process to see that all the family members meet their obligations. 

What follows is a comedy of deceptions, transgressions and regressions as two cultures clash amid old family enmities and grudges.  

The film is essentially a glorified sitcom, full of broad humor and silliness. It is an entirely pleasant experience, though not an entirely satisfying one, for the film’s subject matter suggests such a rich source of both humor and pathos. The confllicts and gags are amusing if predictable, while the resolutions are a bit too facile to be fully convincing.  

It is a groundbreaking film in its treatment of German-Jewish life, but otherwise it is simply too slight to be truly relevant. Levy doesn’t seem to have decided exactly what the film should be; it is not pointed enough to be successful satire, yet it is not funny enough to be successful as mere comedy. 

Images courtesy of First Run Features 

Jaecki Zucker (Henry Hübchen) plays pool on the sly when his Orthodox brother and family come to visit..

Who’s ready to try something new? Want to track wildlife, plant heirloom potatoes, cast your line in that perfect loop, team up with your favorite llama or discover the culture of the Tuibun Ohlone? Sound compelling? Read on. 

Our East Bay Regional Park District is an amazing resource. On offer are over 95,000-acres encompassing 65 regional parks, recreation areas, wilderness, shorelines and preserves and 1,150 miles of hiking trails. Within is habitat for a wealth of wildlife, a native botanic garden, 235 family campsites and 2,082 picnic tables. Eleven freshwater lakes for water sports and nine interpretive centers. Isn’t this enough? Apparently not. 

With spring weather beginning to tease our senses, the urge to spend time outdoors beckons. We can revisit our favorites and even venture somewhere new. Add to that the opportunity to learn—a new activity, more about our natural surroundings, a new craft—all through the sponsorship of the East Bay Regional Park District. Across all ability levels and all ages, there’s something for everyone. 

Water and fishing have universal appeal. Trout or bass? At Del Valle the Basics of Trout Fishing is offered while at Shadow Cliffs you can hone your fly-casting skills. Bass Basics instructs from rigging to fish behaviors. For aquatics without fish try kayaking, from beginning skills and a full moon kayak to a kayaking tour of Brooks Island. 

Ready to hit the trails? You can join a llama day hike at Redwood Park or a backpacker’s trek in Sunol. Those with appendages other than arms and legs, namely young ones in strollers, can get in shape with Stroller Strides at Temescal Park. If you’re connected by leash to your best friend, a vigorous hike awaits in Peak Meanderings with a Buddy at Mission Peak Park. 

Often the desire exists but needs a little push. Being part of a group hike can be your motivation. Wednesday Walks meets weekly, exploring a new East Bay Park on each hike of two to six miles. Hiking in a wonderful environment among like-minded individuals with the knowledge of an accompanying naturalist is too much to pass up. For women hesitant to hike alone, Women On Common Ground, is a series of multi-park adventures, chasing moonbeams, investigating wildflower lures and discovering dramatic rock-studded terrain. 

Listening, talking, sharing, you’ll take away more than visual memories of the trails you pass. You’ll have fun while learning about California’s native plants, spotting peregrine falcon, improving your nature photography skills, investigating wood-duck habitats or learning to make rope—the choices are rich. 

At our own Tilden Regional Park, 18 activities are scheduled during the next two months. Ilana Peterson, Senior Office Assistant in the Environmental Education Center, spoke of the popularity of Tilden Tots and Tilden Explorers, both outdoor adventure programs for kids. Sushi Basics, where preparation and sampling of seven types of sushi shares the stage with the cultural and natural history of this ancient treat, plays to a full house.  

Most activities here focus on the Little Farm, where the cow barn is nearing completion, and Jewel Lake, home to waterfowl, turtles and amphibians. While some classes are age specific, like Weather Whizzes, where kids make their own weather tools, others are open to all ages. Entire families can enjoy pond collection and identification and morning chores at the farm. 

From the hills to the bay. At Alameda’s Crab Cove, Bethany Facedini, park naturalist, has a mission reflected in the bilingual activities on offer. Her goal is to attract non-traditional groups to the park, starting with the young. School children, sent home with fun, ecological experiences and information bookmarks, often return with their multigenerational families. Only by making use of a natural resource can one learn to value its worth. Vengan a explorar la vida del estuario! 

By exploring animal habitats in mudflats and rocky shore; joining Sea Siblings, Sea Squirts and Sea Explorers; turning over rocks at low tide; and learning about watersheds, the future of our natural environment takes another positive step. 

Sunol Regional Park, south of Pleasanton, is off the beaten track, but well worth the trek. Weekends bring many visitors to this remote wilderness, home to Little Yosemite and high-rising escarpments, and many join drop-in activities. 

While strenuous hikes are on offer, other activities focus on the park’s animal inhabitants like newts, snakes and birds as well as Indian Joe Creek and Cave Rocks. 

Worth planning ahead for is Sunol’s Third Annual Wildflower Festival, set for Saturday, April 8. The Old Green Barn Visitor Center’s Jo Frisch numbered last year’s event at over three hundred participants. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., naturalists and volunteers lead wildflower hikes of varying lengths and present slide shows highlighting the area’s flora and butterflies. Planned crafts like pressed flower bookmarks and painted faces offer take home mementos. A day worthy of a mark on the calendar. 

Resources shouldn’t be wasted, by over-use or under-use. Sample what’s on offer by the East Bay Parks. Take a page from Bethany Facendini’s book—participate and become a steward of nature. 

Regional In Nature Activity Guides are published every two months. Copies can be picked at all park Interpretive Centers. Information is also available on line at www.ebparks.org. Some classes require registration and a fee.  

Rounding the bend from La Loma Avenue onto Le Conte Avenue on Berkeley’s Northside, the eye can’t miss a large brown-shingle structure in mid-block. Crowned by cascades of steep overlapping gables, this quintessentially Arts & Crafts building sports a curious appendage on its southeast corner: an octagonal turret with a domed roof previously covered with mosaics but now bare. 

The story of the house at 2667–69 Le Conte Ave. is full of twists and turns, as is the case with so many other historic houses in the Daley’s Scenic Park tract just north of the UC campus. Built 95 years ago, the house’s fortunes have faithfully mirrored those of the near-century of its existence. 

The house was designed in 1911 as a duplex by the eclectic architect John Hudson Thom as. A student of John Galen Howard’s and Bernard Maybeck’s, Thomas drew inspiration for his idiosyncratic style from early 20th-century European and American avant-garde architecture, and especially from the Glasgow School (Charles Rennie Mackintosh), the Viennese Secession (Otto Wagner), and the Prairie School (Frank Lloyd Wright). 

Thomas’ client was Laura Belle Marsh Kluegel, a widow who had lived in the neighborhood since 1904 and had close ties to the Maybeck-Keeler circle. With Maybeck as their guru and Charles Keeler as their spokesman, the residents of Daley’s Scenic Park were determined to build their homes in harmony with nature. They founded the Hillside Club in 1898 “to protect the hills of Berkeley from unsightly grading and the building of u nsuitable and disfiguring houses; to do all in our power to beautify these hills and above all to create and encourage a decided public opinion on these subjects.” 

The new houses that went up in this district were clad in unpainted shingles, and their steep roofs echoed the contours of the surrounding hills and trees. The style that evolved here is known as the First Bay Region Tradition and is widely considered to be Berkeley’s most significant contribution to architecture. 

The Hillside Club also took charge of surveying and laying out the neighborhood streets with “an artistic treatment of grades and retaining walls, which would take into consideration the preservation of the live-oaks and involve as little alteration as possible of the present topogr aphy.” At the time, several large Coast Live Oaks grew in the center of Le Conte Avenue. When city workers removed one of these oaks in 1919, the neighbors dispatched a stern letter to the City Council, decrying this “high-handed measure” and stressing th at the native trees are “the most prized asset of [the] district and are absolutely invaluable, in that they can never be replaced.” 

Mrs. Kluegel owned an art furnishing and interior design store on Telegraph Avenue and was a longtime member of the Coope r Ornithological Club. The preference for a shingled home was probably hers, since John Hudson Thomas designed primarily in stucco. Of all the original commissions Thomas designed during his solo career (1911–1945), the Kluegel house appears to be the onl y fully shingled one. 

Around 1919, Mrs. Kluegel moved to Carmel, where she was one of the founding members of the Carmel Art Association. A few years later, the great Berkeley Fire of 1923 ravaged Daley’s Scenic Park. The Kluegel house has the distinctio n of being the westernmost house on its block to have survived the fire, which passed between it and the adjacent house. 

Subsequent resident-owners of the duplex rented some of their rooms to students, and during WWII even shipyard workers are reported t o have roomed there. After the war, the two dwellings were owned and occupied by the families of two young professors—Charles Richard Grau and Sigurd Burckhardt—the former a future world expert in avian science and the latter a distinguished literary crit ic. 

From 1950 to 1976, the Kluegel house was a rooming house serving UC co-eds. In 1976, at a time when many American were looking toward East Asia for spiritual renewal, the house was purchased by the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation of Sikh Dharma. For the next twenty years, it was a Sikh ashram, Kundalini yoga center, and residential commune. The Sikhs needed a place to house their religious shrine, and that’s how the domed turret came into being. 

Happily, the building is large enough so that this peculi ar addition (also shingled) does not significantly affect its overall appearance. Sufficient historic fabric and character-defining features remain to convey its historic significance.

Writing this column is going to be harder than usual. It’s no fun. I like talking about how people screw things up and sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s just exasperating but what I have to talk about today is genuinely tragic. Please bear with me because it’s extremely important. 

Kids are getting sick. Lots of them, and it’s something that’s preventable. Lead poisoning has affected over 4,000 kids in Alameda county in the last 14 years and that’s just the ones we know about. In 2004, only 42 percent of the Medi-Cal enrolled children in Alameda County had been screened for lead. That means that there are probably a lot more kids who are being affected than we know about. 

These figures came to me from Julie Twichell of the Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, based in Oakland. Before I go on let me give you their website, www.aclppp.org, because she and her compatriots are here for you. Check out the website. It’s very useful and simple and direct. 

I ended up talking to Julie because of Berkeley’s own Lynda Daily, who coordinates Berkeley’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. She too is available at ldailey@ci.berkeley.ca.us and can help to answer questions and direct you to what can be done. 

Let’s look briefly at what is happening and then we can talk a little about what can be done. 

First, children 6 and under are at the greatest risk. It’s hard to find hard numbers on exactly which sources of lead are greatest for children but it looks like the remnants of lead paint is the primary culprit. We’ll talk later about some other sources you should know about. 

When people prepare to paint and don’t know any better they often scrape and (here the worst one) sand old surfaces that are almost sure to contain lead paint if they are from before 1978. That’s almost every house I see in Berkeley. Yes, we have a few newer homes but 80 percent of the housing in Alameda County fits this description and I think the numbers for Berkeley must be over 90 percent. Many people don’t realize this and when they sand and scrape the old paint off in preparation for painting, they release lead particles that come to rest in the environment. 

Small children are very oral and very manual/oral. In other words, they explore the world with their hands and their mouths and if the house has lead dust and chips (which themselves get broken down to dust), they ingest lead. This may sound hard to achieve but apparently it’s very common.  

There are at least two different ways in which this problem is exacerbated. The first is that lead is sweet and infants who gnaw on lead woodwork, which is another common means of ingestion, may be getting an extra incentive to continue since it tastes good. The Romans apparently used to put lead ethanoate (also called ‘lead acetate’ or ‘sugar of lead’) into their drinks as a sweetener. Holy moley, that sure seems like a bad idea. The madness of Caligula is thought to have been the result of lead poisoning and it may be that much of Rome’s downfall can be linked to this tragic misjudgment. 

There is also what is called Pica behavior, which involves the eating of a range of inappropriate materials including clay for reasons that are generally not obvious. Some scientists believe that this is a confused attempt to obtain some needed nutrient. Clay eating has long been observed and is sanctioned in some cultures. Pica behavior may be the result of malnutrition or possibly an undetected dietary need that the subject may be trying to fill.  

Whatever the reason, children are eating lead. They may not be aware that they are doing it but the consequences are extremely dire. At the low end of the spectrum is attention deficit and other learning and behavioral failings. At the further end is mental retardation, kidney illness and death. Some signs to look for in lead poisoning include: headaches, irritability, vomiting, weight loss, slowed speech and hyperactivity. 

If you live in a house built prior to 1978 and have a child 6 or under and especially if it’s a house from before 1950 please have your child tested for lead. It’s a simple blood test your pediatrician can perform. 

If you’re thinking about painting, just wash the wall and paint over on the inside. If you want a more thorough job, and many of us do, please have a professional do the job and make sure they protect your home and their workers in the process. Ask questions before you start and bring up the L-word. Make sure they know the rules. Make sure that the house is clean of all lead dust when they get done. Talk to the ACLPPP to be sure what you need to know. 

If you own a home in Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville or Oakland, there are some impressive services that the ACLPPP have available to you including free site visits, lead testing of the site and classes for homeowners on how to safely remodel (paint, etc.).  

There are lead testing kits one can obtain and even a special HEPA vacuum for rental if you choose to do some work on your own home. There are also free classes for professionals at various levels of complexity and there are even special services available to landlords. It seems that the community is responding to a serious need in a serious way … so we can have hope. 

A few other things to be aware of that have little to do with construction but may help to prevent a tragedy. Lead is found in Kohl, a popular black eye makeup from Pakistan, India, and Saudi Arabia (as well as other countries in the region). Kohl samples have been found to sometimes contain up to 50 percent lead and this makeup is sometimes used on small children. Vinyl mini-blinds may contain lead as well as some vinyl toys. Apparently, lead is used in the making of vinyl and it can remain accessible to a chewing child. 

Turmeric can contain lead, depending on where it comes as well as the glazes on some ceramics. 

Clearly it’s important to get informed. 

The primary concern is clearly for those things that are in the child’s field of access. What they can grab and chew on, where they play and crawl. 

There are so many things to fear that it’s easy to get freaked out by something like this. It’s also easy for us to feel like we don’t do enough as parents. Here’s my message. Don’t sand the surfaces inside your house and if you have a small child, have them get a blood test for lead. The rest is small stuff and you’re not supposed to sweat that. 



Some of us like plants from all over the world in out gardens. Some of us like native Californians. (Some of us, like me, mix them.) Some of us take that native thing to apparent extremes, and people like that have the perfect place in Berkeley: Native Here Nursery.  

There’s good reason to take the “extreme” road. Many of our native plants are unique, having very small ranges and surviving under peculiar conditions like drought and serpentine soils. They nurture the rest of the native flora and the fauna, and you won’t find anything quite like those systems anywhere else on earth. As much as we might love our ecological surroundings, we don’t know everything about them, and sometimes the gaps in our knowledge turn out to be bigger than we thought.  

Genetic studies keep turning up surprises, like two species we used to think were one because they—to us—look “alike.” A few years ago, studies on two extremely similar waterbirds, Western grebe and Clark’s grebe, showed enough genetic differences to make them basically reproductively isolated from each other, even though they share territories. Evidently they can tell each other apart. Plants can be even more subtle. 

One good mechanism for speciation is geography. Ernst Mayr wrote whole libraries about this, and we can trace fascinating tales of, say, Hawai’ian silverswords and their Californian tarweed ancestors. But it doesn’t take half the Pacific to set up a place for a plant to evolve into something new; California has more microhabitats than most places, and more species.  

So, nature’s doing something here, and we don’t know exactly what. But we do know that when we restore places as best we can, interesting things happen. Animals return, plants buoy each other up; we can stand back and watch in wonder. Locals are adapted to their sites, and they do well and nurture the local butterflies, birds, and other wildlife we’ve elbowed out of the way.  

If you live near wildlands, it’s something between duty and magic to plant natives from your place. So people like Charli Danielsen, Native Here’s founder, take care to know where their plants came from. In the nursery, you don’t just find California natives; you find Wildcat Regional Park, El Cerrito, Albany Hill and such specific natives. Charli and her volunteers go forth and gather seed, track it as they grow it out, and supply plants for home gardens and habitat restoration. 

Native Here also does custom growing, for which you need to plan well ahead: two or three years’ notice is best. Plants set seed at specific times, once a year or even less often, and must be mapped, gathered, and grown out to prosper. Is it worth it? You bet. Plants native to your site will do best with the least fuss, and usually spread and fill in well on their own – or with the help of the wildlife they grew up with, like scrub jays who’ve been planting oaks and ceanothus for millenia. As we replace the lost pieces of our world, magic happens. 

Native Here Nursery 

101 Golf Course Road  

across from the entrance to the Tilden Golf Course. 

(South Park Drive is still closed for the newts’ migration; approach from the Shasta Gate.) 

549-0211 

Fridays: 9 a.m.–noon, Saturdays 10 a.m.-1 p.m. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 3 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jonathan Kolieb on “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” 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. 

American Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at MLK Student Union, 5th Floor Tilden Room, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVELIFE.  

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

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. 

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., room 17. 843-0150. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Shabbat Across America Shabbat dinner followed by service at 6:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. 848-3988. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 

“Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” Panel discussion with Richard Bermack author of “Front Lines of Social Change,” and Milt Wolff, Commander of the Lincoln Brigade at 3:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 

“Empowering Women Of Color” conference including panel discussions, workshops and cultural performances in the Lippman Room, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 415-731-5627. http://ewocc.berkeley. 

edu/registration.php 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

7th Annual Seed Swap Meet other local gardeners and trade seed. Bring seed, envelopes and pens or just show up and get seeds with a commitment to bring seed back to the Interchange Library. From 3 to 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

Early Spring Color in the Garden with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Landscape Nursey, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

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.  

Car Safety Seat Check, for infant and child car seats, with the Berkeley Police Dept. from 10 a.m. to noon at the UC Garage on Addison at Oxford in downtown Berkeley. 

“Heal a Woman, Heal a Child, Heal a Nation” Pampering for women, a 10 a.m. at 5272 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. Donation $8 and up. Benefit for Children’s Hospital. 536-5934. 

Honor the Abraham Lincoln Brigade on the 70th anniversary of its participation in the Spanish Civil War with a film and panel discussion at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

White Elephant Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to benefit the Oakland Museum of California, at 333 Lancaster St. at Glascock, Oakland. Free shuttle from the Fruitvale BART Station. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Small Business Seminar on Financial Management at 9 a.m. at Vista College, 2075 Allston Way. Cost is $26. To register see www.peralta.cc.ca.us 

Puppet Theater Workshop, for children ages 8 to 11, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free, no registration required. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Ayurveda & Optimal Wellness A talk with Marc Halpern at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Protest Rally at Berkeley Honda Shattuck and Parker every Thurs. at 4:30 to 6 p.m. and Sat. from 1 to 2 p.m. until the labor dispute is settled.  

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

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. 

Preschool Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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

SUNDAY, MARCH 5 

“Fermenting Berkeley” Lecture and oral history project with Charles Wollenberg and Linda Rosen at 3 p.m. at Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181. 

March Around the Lake Learn about Jewel Lake in spring and who lives there at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park.  

Introduction to Compost with Molly Nakahara from noon to 2 p.m. at 604 56th St. at Shattuck. A Free Skool class. www.barringtoncollective.org 

White Elephant Sale from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to benefit the Oakland Museum of California, at 333 Lancaster St. at Glascock, Oakland. Free shuttle from the Fruitvale BART Station. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the Modern Physical Theory” with Sir Roger Penrose, Prof. of Mathematics, Oxford Univ. at 3 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 642-0143. www.msri.org 

“Are You Good Enough to be Published?” a workshop with Alan Rinzler at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Telegraph Ave. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Diabetes Treatment with Natural Therapies A talk with Bonnie Levine at 11:30 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Ritual Triggers” a demonstration of paratheatre techniques with Antero Alli, Nick Walker and Sylvi Alli at 7:30 p.m. at The Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut, off University Ave. Cost is $5. 464-4640.  

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 

Yoga and Meditation Every Sun. in March from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Tibetan Meditation Practices for Spiritual Awakening” Dharma talk by Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin Caton on “Why Meditate?” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com  

MONDAY, MARCH 6 

National Organization for Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. Luci Tyndall will discuss The Clean Money Bill, a bill which if passed would give candidates for state offices a more level playing field. 287-8948. 

“Power of Progressive Religion” with Ron Buford of the Stillspeaking Initiative at 9 a.m. at PSR Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. 849-8298. 

Parenting Class in Spanish at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

“Castoffs” The Kensington Library Knitting Group meets at 7 p.m. at 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. All levels welcome. Meets the first Monday of the month. 524-3043. 

Sing-A-Long from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Free Business Loan and Business Plan Writing Boot Camp Mon. and Fri. from 9 a.m. to noon at 519 17th St., 2nd Floor, Ste. 200, Oakland, through March 31. 395-6003. 

Beginning Bridge Lessons at 11:10 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $1. 524-9122. 

World Affairs Discussion Group for seniors at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center. Cost is $2.50.  

McGee Avenue Toastmasters meets on the first and third Mondays of the month at 7:30 p.m. at McGee Ave Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St. 501-7005. 

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, MARCH 7 

Rally in Support of IRV Voting at 6 p.m. on th esteps of Old City Hall, before the City Council meeting. www.irv4berkeley.org 

“The Right to Culture as a Human Right: Law in a Multi-cultural World” with Alison Dundes Renteln at 6 p.m. at the Great Hall, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost for dinner is $15. Call for reservations. 642-4128. 

“Quest for the Seven Summits” A slide presentation with mountain climber John Christiana at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

National Nutrition Month Cooking Demonstration with Mary Vance from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK. 548-3333.  

Public Hearing on Sewer Laterals which would establish a fee for certificates of satisfactory condition of homeowners’ sewer laterals upon sale or remodel, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6901.  

Free Quit Smoking Class from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center., 2939 Ellis St. Also on the 21st. Free hypnosis also available. To register call 981-5330. 

Stress Less Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

Berkeley Salon Discussion Group meets to discuss “Unexpected Pleasures” from 7 to 9 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 601-6690. 

“Wild Alaska: Whales, Glaciers and Bears of Wilderness Southeast Alaska” with travel photographer Ronn Patterson at 7 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland.  

Raging Grannies of the East Bay invites new folks to come join us the 2nd and 4th Tues, of each month, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. to sing(any voice will do), help plan our next gig, or write outrageously political lyrics to old familiar tunes, and have fun at Berkeley Gray Panthers office, 1403 Addison St., in Andronico’s mall. 548-9696. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Magic Show with Alex Gonzales at 6:30 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Naturopathic Cancer Support A talk with Marianne Marchese at 7:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

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

Compassion in Action A practical 4-week Buddhist meditation course with ordained nun, Kelsang Choyang, Tues. at 7 p.m. at Dzalandhara Buddhist Center, Berkeley. Cost is $7-$10 per class. Call to register 559-8183. www.meditationinberkeley.org 

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. 

Free Handbuilding Ceramics Class 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Materials and firing charges not included. 525-5497.  

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

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

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8 

“Fashion Resistance to Militarism” a documentary in honor of International Women’s Day, follwed by a discussion with Aimee Alison and Tina Garnanez at 6:30 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. Tickets are $5-$10 sliding scale. Sponsored by Women of Color Resource Center. 444-2700. 

Great Decisions Foreign Policy Association Lecture “The U.S. and Iran” with Dariush Zahedi, at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $40 for the eight lecture series. 526-2925. 

Berkeley Holocaust Remembrance Day Planning Meeting at 4 p.m. in the Redbud Room, 2180 Milvia St. 981-7170. 

East Bay Genealogical Society with Susan Snyder of Bancroft Library on the availability of materials during the remodeling process, at 10 a.m. in the Library Conference Room of the Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. Guests are always welcome. 635-6692.  

Choosing Infant Care at 10 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Babies welcome. To register call 658-7853.  

“Microcurrent Therapy for Pain Relief” at 9:30 a.m. at Alta Bates Summit, Cafeteria Annex B and C, 350 Hawthorne Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5, free for Health Access members. Registration required. 869-6737. 

Poetry Writing Workshop, led by Alison Seevak, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library ,1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“Struggles with Homo- 

sexuality in the Orthodox Jewish Community,” with a screening of the documentary “Keep Not Silent” at noon at the Gender Equity Resources Center, 202 Cesar Chavez Student Center, UC Campus. 

Breema Open House with sample exercise class at 6 p.m. at 6210 Florio St., Oakland. 428-1234.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton 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. 

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.  

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.  

Meditation and Discussion Sessions Wed. evenings at 7 p.m. near the El Cerrito Plaza BART station. No commitment to a particular religious or philosophical viewpoint is required. Free. www.heartawake.com 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MARCH 9 

“Exploring The Adirondacks: An Architectural Tour of A Great Rustic Tradition” with Steven Engelhart, Executive Director, Adirondack Architectural Heritage, at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $8-$12. 843-8982.  

“Refugee Cultures in Transition: From Southeast Asian Mountains and Plains to the Central Valley” at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Rising Tides of White and Christian Supremacy: A Cross Atlantic Comparison of 9/11 and 7/7 with Jaideep Singh at 7 p.m. at the Bade Museum, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 849-8225. 

“Paradise Now” The Oscar-nominated Palestinian film at 7:30 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave. Discussion to follow the film. Suggested donation $10. Benefit for the Middle East Children's Alliance. 548-0542. www.mecaforpeace.org 

“Corporate Responsibility in the Global South” at 7:30 p.m. at the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Sponsored by the Association for India’s Development. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

“The Union Busting Epidemic and How to Fight It” with a screening of “Lockout 484” and “Solidarity Has No Borders” at 7 p.m. at Fellowship of Humainity Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation of $3 requested. 415-867-0628. 

“Bilateral Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific” Panel discussion at 5 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th floor. http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/2006.03.09.html 

Choosing Infant Care at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Babies welcome. To register call 658-7853.  

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers with Bill Carnazzo, a guide who specializes in the Upper Sacramento River, on winter fishing, at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 547-8629. 

American Red Cross Blood Drive from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Metro Center Auditorium, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVELIFE.  

Historical & Current Times Book Group meets on Thurs. at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1249 Marin Ave. 548-4517. 

East Bay Mac Users Group meets at 6 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. Netopia will present Timbuktu 8.5. http://ebmug.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. Mar. 6, at 7 p.m. the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7410.  

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Mar. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5510.  

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

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Mar. 8, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Mar. 8,, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Mar. 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Mar. 8, at 7:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Mar. 8, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 9, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5400.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Tues. Mar. 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 9, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Mar. 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7410. D

TUESDAY, FEB. 28 

FILM 

Alternative Visions “The Digital Film Event” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

POV Bay Area Animation Festival at 9:15 p.m. at Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $5. http://povanimationfestival.blogspot.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jürgen Vsych reads from “The Woman Director” and shows clips from her films at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Bill Merritt describes “Fool’s Gold: A Story of Ancient Spanish Treasure, Two Pounds of Pot, and the Young Lawyer Almost Left Holding the Bag” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Larry Vuckovich, jazz piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Ellen Hoffman Trio and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Chris Potter Underground at 8 and 10 p.m. 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. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Focusing on Photography” Vintage photographs from the Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

“Titled / Untitled” New works by Carol Dalton, Yvette Molina, Emily Payne and Michael Shemchuk opens at Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St., and runs through April 2. 549-1018. www.cecilemoochnek.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

William Fox describes “Terra Antartica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988.  

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on organ at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Boradway. 444-3555. 

Bruce & Lloyd’s Tri Tip Trio at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $18-$20. 525-5054.  

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

3 Strikez at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Orquestra Sensual at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Karen Casey Band, Flook at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Whiskey Brothers, old time and bluegrass, at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 

EXHIBITIONS 

Works by Ahmed Said, Egyptian sculptor at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

THEATER 

Traveling Jewish Theater “Family Alchemy” opens at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets are $12-$35. 415-522-0786.  

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Stepping Out” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free screening. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Stephen De Staebler: The Winged Figure” opening lecture with Dore Ashton at 6 p.m. at the Pacific School of Religion Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. Reception at 5 p.m. at the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. Exhibition runs through May 15. www.gtu.edu 

Richard Tarnas describes “Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Julia Serano, poet, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. 

Trailer Park Rangers Sextet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. 

Magnes Music Salon with guitarist John Scott at 6:30 p.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. 549-6950.  

Kiran Ahluwalia at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Pieta Brown & Bo Ramsey at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Alexa Weber Morales at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$9. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

FRIDAY, MARCH 3 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Master Builder” Wed. through Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through March 12. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep “9 Parts of Desire” about women in war-torn Iraq, at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through March 5. Tickets are $30-$59. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

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

Impact Theatre, “Hamlet” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 18. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

The Marsh Berkeley “Strange Travel Suggestions” monologue by Jeff Greenwald, Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. through March 3, at 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $15-$22. 800-838-3006. www.themarsh.org 

Traveling Jewish Theater “Family Alchemy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through March 12. Tickets are $12-$35. 415-522-0786. www.atjt.com 

UCB Dept. of Theater, “Seven Lears” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun at 2 p.m. at the Zellerchach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-9925. http://theater.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Edward Weston: Masterworks from the Collection” Curator’s talk with Drew Johnson, Curator of Photography, at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Horizon: Uniting Earth and Sky” a group exhibition at ACCI Gallery, 1562 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

“Overhung 2: Hungover,” Works by over 100 Bay Area artists. Reception at 7 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland.  

“Everyday People - Extraordinary Dreams” opens with a reception at 7 p.m. at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St. Alameda. 523-6957. 

Motorcycle Art and Artwork Reception at 5 p.m. at the Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival Workshop with Christine Choy at 1 p.m. and “Long Story Short” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam Semi-Finals #1 & #2, for youth aged 13-19, Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 210 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $4 for youth under 20, $10 general. 415-255-9035, ext. 22. www.youthspeaks.org  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall , UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Dance Is 2006 at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $5-$10. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

The Pacific Boychoir “American Spirituals” at 7:30 pm at the First Presbyterian Church, 27th and Broadway, Oakland. 452-4722. www.pacificboychoir.org 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$12. 642-9988.  

Good Word at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Flip Tha Script with Kiwi, Golda Supanova, Feenix Solite at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Eddie Marshall’s “No Money Band” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Radiohead Project with Adam Theis, Joe Cohen and Pat Korte at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Bucho and Soul at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$10. 548-1159.  

Gail Dobson Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Moodswing Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Frank Wakefield Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Linh Nguyen and Jamie Jenkins at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

XBXRX, Battleship, Mika Miko, Saboteurs 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. 

Cas Lucas with Home at Last & Zak Hexum at 8 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 

CHILDREN 

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

EXHIBITIONS 

The Art of Living Black 2006 with the works of over 50 artists on display Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Richmond Convention Center Memorial Auditorium. Sponsored by the Richmond Art Center. 620-6772. 

“Inforestation” an exhibition of drawings, sound, light, and organic materials is being shown at the Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. Opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Exhibition runs to April 24. 981-7546. 

THEATER 

“Dust Storm: Art and Survival in a Time of Paranoia” on the Internement of Japanese Americans during WWII, at 2 and 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $1-$10. 800-838-3006. 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “Who Killed Vincent Chin” at 5:30 p.m. and “Confronting What Was” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Joseph Campana and D.A. Powell at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m., at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall , UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Dance Is 2006 at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $5-$10. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

The Real Vocal String Quartet, synthesis of world and roots music with jazz, classical and pop, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St., bet. Durant and Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com  

Jewish Music Festival with the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars at 8 p.m. at the First Congregational Church Oakland. Tickets are $22-$26. 415-276-1511. 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$12. 642-9988.  

Emily Bezar, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $10 at the door. 

The K.T.O. Project at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Tickets are $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

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

Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Gumbo Band, featuring Lady Memfis, vocals, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Rhiannon at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Marley’s Ghost at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian music, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

SIster I-Live and the Remix Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dale Miller and Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Betsy Stern Trio and TC at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Green & Root with Eileen Hazel at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Lights Out, Hostile Takeover, Set it Straight 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. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 5 

FILM 

Women of Color Film Festival “I Have Seen...” at 1 p.m. and “Teach Our Children: Works by Christine Choy” at 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBITIONS 

Photography of Brian Hastings Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

A Tribute to Zahra Kazemi & Dr. Hammed Shahidian with the Kavosh Iranian Women’s Group at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Soli Deo Gloria, with guest conductor Chad Runyon, will present Latin Elegance, an a cappella choral concert at 3:30 p.m. at Zion Lutheran, 5201 Park Blvd., Piedmont. Tickets at the door are $15-$20. www.sdgloria.org 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall , UC Campus, through March 5. Tickets are $32-$54. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“Alarm Will Sound” works by John Adams at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Chamber Music Sundaes, with members of the San Francisco Symphony and friends at 3:15 .m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $9-$21. 415-584-5946. 

Kemo Sabe, The Pickin’ Trix, Val Esway & El Mirage and others in a benefit for Kirk Rundstrom from 2 to 10 p.m at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakland. Tickets are $5-$15. 444-6174. 

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

Art Lande Trio “unstandards” at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Youthquake Performances, school-age band competition, at 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Twang Cafe with Dave Gleason’s Wasted Days at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. All ages show. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Balafo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Elana Fremerman & Her Hot Hot Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, MARCH 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zilber-Muscarella Quartet & Invitational at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble and Combos at at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s, Jack London Square. Tickets are $15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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In the middle of the 20th century a happy coincidence made Berkeley home to two poets, Josephine Miles (1911-1985) and Alan Ginsberg, who bore at least a passing resemblance to a pair of their celebrated predecessors, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. 

By common agreement, Emily Dickinson, spinster, and Walt Whitman, roustabout, are the two great American poets of the 19th century. Whitman wrote the grandly expansive Leaves of Grass; Ginsberg roamed the American landscape, protesting loudly against our follies. Emily Dickinson spent her life in a small Massachusetts town, writing short, intense, unpublished poems; Josephine Miles also led what seemed to be a quiet a life here in Berkeley. She too wrote brief, highly chiseled poems. 

When you notice this parallel, it is irresistible, but it is mostly evocative. It breaks down as soon as you look at it in detail. Emily Dickinson did live and die in obscurity, but Josephine Miles had a long and successful career at a major university. She was, in her way, a public figure, and she published a lot of poetry and prose. 

Josephine Miles came to Berkeley from UCLA in 1932 to do graduate work, teach, and write poetry. She taught in the English Department for 38 years, 1940 to 1978, and was the first female professor to receive tenure. During her lifetime her poetry and criticism earned solid respect. When her Collected Poems appeared, she was saluted for the freshness, simplicity, and colloquial quality of her work. 

To achieve this she overcame obstacles even more daunting than the social barriers that confined Emily Dickinson. Afflicted by rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 2, her life was a perpetual struggle against an unrelenting disease. As Thom Gunn wrote, “The unavoidable first fact about Josephine Miles was physical. As a young child she contracted a form of degenerative arthritis so severe that it left her limbs deformed and crippled. As a result, she could not be left alone in a house, she could not handle a [coffee] mug...she could not use a typewriter; and she could neither walk nor operate a wheelchair.” 

Her appearance was shocking, so much so that her secretary tried to protect her from the unguarded reactions of students seeing her for the first time. She was my advisor in the early ‘60s, and when I came for my first meeting with her, the secretary gave me what I suppose were the standard warnings. I’m grateful that she did, even though they didn’t fully prepare me. When I entered her office I encountered a very small person who appeared to be propped up behind her desk. She was rather gray. Her body seemed shrunken. She had a large head, a round face, and notably large eyes. But she had a friendly demeanor, and her conversation was so involving that within minutes she put me at ease, and I ceased to be aware of her physical debilities. 

A sociable person, she enjoyed teaching and the company of students. In a poem called “Retrospective,” she says of her teaching career, “...a quarter-century of Chaucer went very fast.” I think she depended on contact with students for some kinds of knowledge of the world. Once, when Hemingway and Fitzgerald came up in a conversation, she asked me what I thought of Hemingway’s suicide (still a recent event). I replied that it surprised me, and she zeroed in on this, questioning and probing from different angles for the meaning of my surprise. Well, of course, I didn’t know what his death meant, hadn’t thought about it carefully, and had nothing responsible to say. Her questions quickly took me beyond my depth, and my answers must have disappointed her. After awhile, mercifully, she let it go. 

Subsequently it seemed to me that I had been, momentarily, her channel to the world of young people—even to the youth of the nation—and she had given me the responsibility of explaining their point of view on that tragedy. Because conversation was essential to her, she placed enormous value on real communication, and I felt vaguely as though I’d let her down. When I came to read this tough-minded poem, I thought of that occasion: 

The doctor who sits at the bedside of a rat 

Obtains real answers—a paw twitch, 

An ear tremor, a gain or loss of weight. 

No problem as to which 

Is temper and which is true. 

What a rat feels, a rat will do. 

Concomitantly then, the doctor who sits 

At the bedside of a rat Asks real questions, as befits 

The place, like Where did that potassium go, not What  

Do you think of Willie Mays or the weather? 

So rat and doctor may converse together.” 

Were we having a real conversation? Was “what do you think about Hemingway’s suicide” a real question? At that moment she was the doctor (of literature). Was I the rat? How many of us were her rats? Hmmm.  

Some years later, when I was writing an article about Louis Simpson, she gave me a marvelous interview which I count as an instance of her real generosity. Simpson had won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1961, the year he came to Berkeley. He was known to local writers as one of the editors of The New Poets of England and America (1957). This enormously successful anthology seemed likely to give the poets in it a big advantage in audience recognition for decades to come. But there weren’t any Bay Area poets in it (except Thom Gunn, who was grouped with the English)! Local wounds were still bleeding when Simpson arrived; some people felt as though the enemy had occupied the town. He later complained about the clannishness of Bay Area poets, and wrote that he felt isolated in Berkeley. 

But Josephine Miles befriended him. In that wonderful interview, she told me she was surprised to read of his discontent in Berkeley. She spent many pleasant evenings with him and his wife and their friends in spirited discussions of the arts and the issues of the day. But, she said, she saw less and less of him as he became more involved in writing, anthologizing, and publishing. 

Once she went with him to a reading by Robert Duncan, and Simpson asked her, “Where are all the local writers? In New York everybody would treat this as an important event.” “I looked around and saw writers all over the hall,” she said, “It was just that Simpson did not recognize them! But if he had known more people, he might have written less.” Before returning to New York he gave a reading of his own work, and introduced what she remembered as “wonderful, wonderful poems.” “I’m glad,” she said, “those were Berkeley poems.” 

In the 1960s, beginning with the poems in Kinds of Affection, her own writing showed the influence of beat writers. It became less elliptical, more assessable. “Looser and freer in form,” in her own words. She also began to address local public issues, such as the ecology of San Francisco Bay. One of her most widely read poems, “Saving the Bay,” begins: 

When I telephoned a friend, her husband told me 

She’s not here tonight, she’s out saving the Bay. 

She is sitting and listening in committee chambers, 

Maybe speaking, with her light voice From the fourteenth row, about where 

The birds and fish will go if we fill in the Bay.” 

She wrote some of the finest poems inspired by the anti-war protests that engulfed Berkeley for so long. I’ve always thought her decent, loving concern for the well-being of the students, and her apprehension as to the outcome of some protests, was most eloquently expressed in “My Fear in the Crowd:”  

The thousand people stand in the sunlight, 

They are taking in the messages of the speakers 

Deliberately, they are weighing the judgments, 

They are making up their minds...” 

But there are many others equally as vivid, including “Witness,” “Officers,” and “Memorial Day.” 

She left her home to the university for use as a residence for visiting poets and a place for them to conduct informal seminars for student writers. Known as the Berkeley Writers’ Center, it was one of her final gifts to the university she had come to love. 

The editors of California Poetry see Josephine Miles as belonging to a line of poets that started with Emily Dickinson, and continued with Marianne Moore, Stevie Smith and Elizabeth Bishop. They quote Julia Randall’s description of them as “a company of eccentric, independent and unabashedly single ladies.” This seems fair enough, except for the word “eccentric.” It never seemed to me that there was anything odd or erratic about Josephine Miles. In her own anthology, The Poem, she distinguished herself from Emily Dickinson by describing Dickinson’s profession as “recluse.” If she had put any of her own poetry in that book, she would have identified herself as “poet and teacher” or “activist.” 

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The shadowy figure of a ranchero, lightly strumming a guitar and intoning lines in Spanish about leaving home due to poverty and necessity, looms before the screen in the Berkeley City Club on which the tall cactus and stony land of the border are projected, along with an English translation of the song’s mournful words. 

This first, nocturnal image of Central Works’ production of Brian Thorstenson’s new play Shadow Crossing is immediately replaced by bright lights and nervous energy, a photo session in which Martin (John Patrick Moore) is “shooting” his camera-shy schoolteacher friend, Emily (Jan Zvaifler) for a passport, though Emily at first doesn’t seem to be going anywhere outside the country she’s proud of as the daughter of a Jewish refugee. She compares having a passport to owning a formal black dress—the right thing to have, even if seldom used. 

Martin, on the other hand, amid the affectionate banter and mutual teasing that marks their conversations, later lets drop that he’s applied for landed residency in Quebec. As a gay man, he’s convinced the backlash against equal rights has rendered him unwanted in American society. It becomes apparent his partner is dead, and Emily is an emotional mainstay for him in his grief. Emily seems to take his possible departure very personally, as a betrayal both of friendship and of country. 

Earlier, their quick repartee was interrupted by a young man in a baseball cap with a Latino accent, asking if Martin needs his windows washed. Martin tells him to come back later. Emily is edgy, suspicious, telling Martin that paying a possible illegal may be a crime. 

When Rafael (Michael Navarra) does return, an amusing affinity arises between the two men in Emily’s absence. Martin at first tries to tutor Rafael in presentability in business, until it becomes apparent the impish migrant knows the territory very well. 

Martin hires him as a shop assistant. It’s part of Martin’s Canadian pipe dream, having someone to care for the shop. Emily drops by, and is dumbfounded by Rafael holding down the shop while Martin’s on an errand. She confronts Martin about this. Angry remarks escalate; Martin throws his friend out. 

So far, Shadow Crossing is a sharp, dialogue-centered play of three different perspectives meeting, misunderstanding and clashing, or sympathizing at a distance, and admonishing. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the Shop on Main Street, the Jan Kadar film, which showed how social hysteria results from personal disappointments and domestic misunderstandings and accommodations. 

But, after intermission, the playwright throws in a new twist—a ghostly, multicultural photo session, and portentious meetings with those ghosts from the past—Ellis Island and Operation Wetback—both in the familiar brightness of the photo studio and the desert night at the border, with nocturnal songbirds, binoculars and cellphones.  

Brian Thorstenson’s dialogue is sharp, laden with pointed lines and exchanges: “You can’t have an ‘Us’ without a ‘Them,’ simple fact,” Emily snaps at Martin, who’s accused her of an “us vs. them” attitude. Or Rafael saying how his light skin has left him open to gibes from other Latinos about how he can pass for Anglo. “Blending in?” asks Martin; “No,” says Rafael, “it translates more like ‘fading into.’” “Just like an older gay man in San Francisco,” Martin quips dryly. 

The play has the courage to let disagreements play out, not to be blunted by false rapprochement. 

“When did you stop believing in this country,” Emily lashes out at Martin. “When did you?” Martin shoots back. 

Central Works, which really is the local chamber theater for current controversies to be played out “in camera,” in newly-developed works, holds up its usual high production standards, brilliantly exploiting the playing area in the City Club with Gary Graves’ direction and the design of Robert Ted Anderson (lights), Gregory Scharpen (sound), and Tammy Berlin (costumes). The acting is of high quality, all three cast members projecting multiple (and sometimes contradictory) emotions simultaneously, widening the scope of the script. 

There’s a little bit of technical innovation, too, that matches the occasionally fantastic touches of the script, changing the shape of the room in imagination through the use of projections, especially following the flash of Martin’s three-light photo set-up. “I love waiting for that split second, that flicker, when people reveal another side of the self; it’s startling.” 

Taking a loaded topic like immigration, one that has no easy or foreseeable outcome, and playing out a few of its ambiguities in the form of personal consequences, is a well-realized facet of Central Works’ mission. In a society of the descendants of immigrants, it’s difficult—and not encouraged—to look at the past without sentimentalism. 

“Men resemble their contemporaries even more than their progenitors,” Emerson said. To all three of these contemporaries applies the admonition offered by a spectral voice from a buried past: “The whole world is on the move; get used to it!” 

Central Works presents Shadow Crossing at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through March 26. Tickets $9-$25. For more information, call 558-1381 or see www.centralworks.org.›

Public school jazz education began in Berkeley in 1966 when Herb Wong, the principal at Washington Elementary, offered a jazz class to his music students. It wasn’t long before every school in the district had a jazz band. 

When Phil Hardymon, who had worked with Wong at the grade school level, became band director at Berkeley High in 1975, he parlayed all the work that had gone on in the lower grades into the top-rated high school jazz education program in the country.  

Berkeley High jazz bands and members regularly win state and national competitions and scholarships and have performed at the Monterey, Umbria, Montreux and North Sea jazz festivals—and why not when their alumni include such stellar artists as David Murray, Craig Handy, Josh Redman, Benny Green and Peter Apfelbaum? 

In fact, pianist Benny Green and saxophonists Craig Handy and Joshua Redman all paid their dues in Apfelbaum’s 17-piece Hieroglyphic Ensemble, which he founded in 1977 when he was 17. Last year, the Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble began talking to Peter about commissioning a piece from him and in the fall he began writing it. 

For the past week, he has been rehearsing with the band for a March 6 premiere of the composition at Yoshi’s. Even before that, some of Peter’s associates from his Hieroglyphic Ensemble, like percussionist Josh Jones, were working with and tutoring members of the Berkeley High group. What Herb Wong began has become a multi-generational community of teachers, alumni and students which gives the Berkeley jazz community a depth and resonance often lacking elsewhere. 

Peter said that the piece is still untitled, but it will be a 15-minute suite with five written sections, with solos performed within both the composed portions and the looser intervals between the written parts. Peter will sit in with the Ensemble when they perform the piece during both of their sets. 

All composers have to write something beautiful, but the jazz composer’s writing must also be a structure or catalyst which can generate inspired improvisation from the soloist-performer. The jazz composer has to trust that the players can creatively complete the creative act of composition in the creative act of performance. This involves a lot of trust from everyone and is one of the qualities that makes live jazz so exciting, a little like doing a trapeze act without a net. 

Part of that excitement comes from hearing young musicians pushing themselves to the limit playing cutting edge jazz. Eleven of the Ensemble players are seniors, most of whom have been in the band for four years and are now going on to further education at colleges and conservatories, many of them in New York City. Some have won national scholarships and fellowships making this a highly talented and cohesive group.  

The Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble featuring Peter Apfelbaum will present the premiere of a jazz suite by Apfelbaum at Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland, on Monday, March 6, at 8 and 10 p.m. Each set will feature a Berkeley High Jazz Combos as well. Tickets are $15. For more information, call Yoshi’s at 238-9200.

Ravens are complicated birds. Spend enough time with them and you’ll learn that there’s no such thing as “the raven”—a standard one-size-fits-all set of behavioral traits. They’re as wonderfully various as we are. 

Case in point: Bernd Heinrich, in his classic books Ravens in Winter and Mind of the Raven, talks about how wary and unapproachable the ravens in his Maine woods are. But that’s New England; elsewhere they’re entirely different. In the far north, they hang around native villages and hunting camps; there’s usually a raven or two underfoot in John Straley’s mystery novels, set in Alaska. I’ve been panhandled by ravens at the Grand Canyon and in the Petrified Forest. And last week at Point Reyes I had an unusually close raven encounter. 

We were having lunch at a picnic table at Drake’s Beach after a hike to Chimney Rock when the first raven, sporting a silver band on his left leg, flew in. He (as we inferred later) gave a series of soft grawks, and a second bird joined him. They billed a little, and the unbanded bird started preening the banded one; this was evidently a couple, with a breeding territory nearby. Then they turned their attention to our cars; the presumed male went up and pecked at one of the license plates. All this while we were finishing our sandwiches a couple of yards away and keeping up a running commentary on the action. The ravens seemed unconcerned with our presence. But when my friend wondered out loud if they’d like a carrot and reached for his bag of carrot sticks, one of the birds gave an indignant croak and both of them flew away, toward the visitors’ center. 

I had no idea that ravens were repelled by carrots. They’re not vegetarians, of course; they’ll happily scavenge from carcasses, and I once saw one kill, dismember, and eat a fair-sized pocket gopher. (Heinrich says his northeastern birds avoid roadkill; that’s not at all true of their western cousins). The ravens in the Tower of London eat apples, among other things. Maybe it was just that the carrots were unfamiliar objects, and that these mature birds were more conservative about novelties than they were as adolescents. 

But their tolerance of our proximity up until then was what impressed me. It could just be that the ravens in western parks have learned that no one is going to shoot at them. With their large (for birds) brains and complex social systems, ravens display an almost primate-like behavioral flexibility. They’re what the late biologist Ernst Mayr called “open-program” organisms, modifying their behavior as they learn about their environment.  

Heinrich feels they have what can meaningfully be called culture: shared learned behaviors—dialects, foraging techniques—that differ from group to group. His experiments with captive ravens have proved them capable of solving problems through insight. As far as I know, there’s no evidence of tool use by ravens—but nothing these birds do would surprise me. 

They’re adaptable enough to find homes in our cities. The Bay Area has experienced an urban raven boom in the last couple of decades, along with an even larger influx of crows. Ravens have become a familiar sight in Berkeley, although I don’t know where they’re nesting. There’s no love lost between the ravens and the crows, probably because of both species’ propensity for nest robbing. The local crows have a specific flat, nasal call that appears to mean “Here comes a raven—let’s chase it out of the neighborhood.” 

Given all that, though, there may be something different about California ravens. Ravens occur all through the Northern Hemisphere, south to Nicaragua, India, and North Africa, and all the populations looks pretty much alike, with minor variations in size. But as it turns out, that uniform appearance masks a deep genetic faultline.  

A few years ago, a group of biologists including William Boarman of the U.S. Geological Survey and John Marzluff at the University of Washington compared mitochondrial DNA samples from 72 ravens, collected throughout the species’ range. The specimens sorted into two lineages, or clades: a California clade and a Holarctic clade for the rest of North America, plus Eurasia, with a 5 percent genetic difference between them. “We have found that ravens from Minnesota, Maine, and Alaska are more similar to ravens from Asia and Europe than they are to ravens from California,” said Boarman. He speculated that the split may date back to two million years ago, when the ancestral California population was separated by glaciers from ravens in the rest of the continent. That scenario would be consistent with the evolutionary history of other North American birds, including the California-endemic yellow-billed magpie and the more widespread black-billed magpie. 

Boarman and his colleagues weren’t ready to call the California raven a new species. There’s a wide zone of overlap between the two clades in the Great Basin, from Washington and Idaho down to northeastern California, and it’s not clear whether Holarctic-clade and California-clade ravens are interbreeding there. If so, the two clades may be dissolving into a common gene pool. But if they’re not, that would mean the two groups are acting like distinct species, with some kind of behavioral barrier as an isolating mechanism. Maybe it’s vocal (Holarctic-clade ravens just sound wrong to California-clade birds?), or a subtle difference in habitat preference.  

So the jury is still out on the species issue, pending more research in the contact zone. It’s remarkable how much there still is to learn about this widespread and well-studied bird. Maybe someday science will even be able to account for that fear of carrots. 

'

TUESDAY, FEB. 28 

Birdwalk on the MLK Shoreline from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. to see the ducks here for the winter. Beginnners welcome, binoculars available for loan. 525-2233. 

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. This month we’ll visit Sindicich Lagoons. Meet at 10 a.m. at the north entrance to Briones Park on Briones Road. For information and to register call 525-2233.  

BHS Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. at BHS Library to discuss Safety and Attendance Data, Small Schools Data, and Academic Choice update. 525-0124. 

Cragmont Elementary School Afro American Celebration from 6 to 8 p.m. at 830 Regal Rd., with a New Orleans potluck dinner and performances. Free, but donations for Katrina relief welcome. 644-8810. 

“African Roots of Beijing” film screening with director Luke Mines at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

Kalimba Interactive Assembly with Carl Winters on the African thumb piano, in celebration of Black History Month at 7 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave. All ages welcome. 597-5017. 

Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with Scott Williamson at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Balancing Hormones Naturally” with Dr. Jay Sordean at 7 p.m. at Curves, 701 University Ave. Sponsored by the Doctors Speakers Bureau. 849-1176. 

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.  

“Our Spiritual Crisis: Recovering Human Wisdom in a Time of Violence” with peace scholar and activist, Michael Nagler at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

Raging Grannies of the East Bay invites new folks to come join us the 2nd and 4th Tues, of each month, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. to sing (any voice will do), help plan our next gig, or write outrageously political lyrics to old familiar tunes, and have fun at Berkeley Gray Panthers office, 1403 Addison St., in Andronico’s mall. 548-9696. 

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

Yarn Divas Basic Knitting at 7:30 p.m. at Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. Especially, but not exclusively, for women with cancer. Experienced participants are welcome. 420-7900, ext. 111. 

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. In case of questionable weather, call around 8 a.m. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Free Handbuilding Ceramics Class 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Also, Mon. noon to 4 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Materials and firing charges not included. 525-5497. 

Healthy Eating Habits Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland. Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1 

“Explore Santa Fe Right of Way” with the Berkeley Path Wanderers on an easy walk covering the history and future of the Santa Fe Right of Way, from beginnings as a faltering narrow-gauge railway to exciting new community efforts. Meet at the north side of the BART station at 10 a.m. Bring water and a snack. 848-9358. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Berkeley Pedestrian Master Plan Open House to identify specific ways to improve our streets for a safe and comfortable walking experience at 7 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-7062. 

Great Decisions Foreign Policy Association Lecture “UN Reform” with Richard Sklar, former ambassador to the UN at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $40 for the eight lecture series. 526-2925. 

Bookmark Book Group meets to discuss “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” by Thomas L. Friedman at 6:30 p.m. at 721 Washington St., Oakland. The Bookmark is the bookstore for Friends of the Oakland Public Library. 444-0473. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters welcomes curious guests and new members at 7:15 a.m. at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. at Milvia. 435-5863. 

Entrepreneurs Networking at 8 a.m. at A’Cuppa Tea, 3202 College Ave. at Alcatraz. Cost is $5. For more information contact JB, 562-9431.  

Meditation and Discussion at 7 p.m. near the El Cerrito Plaza BART station. No commitment to a particular religious or philosophical viewpoint is required. Free. www.heartawake.com 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 548-9840. 

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.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 

Organic Beekeeping with Les Crowder who maintains over 100 hives without chemicals, contraptions or expense. At 7 p.m. at The Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Meeting on Burrowing Owl Habitat with the City of Albany Waterfront Committee to review a proposal for a burrowing owl habitat at the Albany Plateau. The plan would result in the creation of a protected area (fenced off) comprising about 10 acres of this approximately 20-acre site. At 7:30 p.m. at Albany City Hall, 1000 San Pablo Ave., Albany. 528-5760.  

“Ecological Gardening: Native Plants = Wildlife Magnets” with Corinne Greenberg at the Oakland Bird Club meeting, at 7:30 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave. 444-0355. 

Seed Paper Making at 4 p.m. at 604 56th St at Shattuck. A Free Skool class. www.barringtoncollective.org 

“Considering Program Choices for Berkeley Schools’ Future” at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley High School Library, enter on Allston Way, near Milvia St. We will discuss establishing educational priorities and funding for Berkeley Schools Excellence Project (BSEP) Measure and Measure B (the Bridge Measure) which will end in fall 2006. Child care provided. Spanish language translators available. If you cannot attend the meeting and would like to make a comment, please email publicinfo@berkeley.k12.ca.us or call 644-8549. 

Berkeley Public Library’s Teen Services invite teen readers to come and discuss classic and contemporary science fiction and fantasy titles, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue (at Ashby). We will discuss L. Frank Baum’s Oz books as political allegory, and debate the distinctions between science fiction and fantasy. 981-6133. 

“The Academy Awards Night with Harry Chotiner” at 7:30 pm. at the College Preparatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway. Cost is $5-$10. 339-7726. 

“Buddhism and Environment: The Birth of Flood Control Politics, and Disaster Management in the Battle for the National Sanctum of Tibet” with Per Sorensen, Professor, Institute of Central Asian Studies, University of Leipzig, at 5 p.m. at 341 Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus.  

Historical & Current Times Book Group meets on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1249 Marin Ave. 548-4517. 

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, MARCH 3 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jonathan Kolieb on “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” 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. 

American Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at MLK Student Union, 5th Floor Tilden Room, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVELIFE.  

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

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. 

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., room 17. 843-0150. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Shabbat Across America Shabbat dinner followed by service at 6:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. 848-3988. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 

“Empowering Women Of Color” conference including panel discussions, workshops and cultural performances in the Lippman Room, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 415-731-5627. http://ewocc.berkeley. 

edu/registration.php 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

7th Annual Seed Swap Meet other local gardeners and trade seed. Bring seed, envelopes and pens or just show up and get seeds with a commitment to bring seed back to the Interchange Library. From 3 to 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

Early Spring Color in the Garden with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Landscape Nursey, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

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.  

“Heal a Woman, Heal a Child, Heal a Nation” Pampering for women, a 10 a.m. at 5272 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. Donation $8 and up. Benefit for Children’s Hospital. 536-5934. 

Honor the Abraham Lincoln Brigade on the 70th anniversary of its participation in the Spanish Civil War with a film and panel discussion at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

White Elephant Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to benefit the Oakland Museum of California, at 333 Lancaster St. at Glascock, Oakland. Free shuttle from the Fruitvale BART Station. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Small Business Seminar on Financial Management at 9 a.m. at Vista College, 2075 Allston Way. Cost is $26. To register see www.peralta.cc.ca.us 

Puppet Theater Workshop, for children ages 8 to 11, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free, no registration required. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Ayurveda & Optimal Wellness A talk with Marc Halpern at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Protest Rally at Berkeley Honda Shattuck and Parker every Thurs. at 4:30 to 6 p.m. and Sat. from 1 to 2 p.m. until the labor dispute is settled.  

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

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. 

Preschool Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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

SUNDAY, MARCH 5 

“Fermenting Berkeley” Lecture and oral history project with Charles Wollenberg and Linda Rosen at 3 p.m. at Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181. 

March Around the Lake Learn about Jewel Lake in spring and who lives there at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park.  

Introduction to Compost with Molly Nakahara from noon to 2 p.m. at 604 56th St. at Shattuck. A Free Skool class. www.barringtoncollective.org 

White Elephant Sale from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to benefit the Oakland Museum of California, at 333 Lancaster St. at Glascock, Oakland. Free shuttle from the Fruitvale BART Station. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the Modern Physical Theory” with Sir Roger Penrose, Prof. of Mathematics, Oxford Univ. at 3 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 642-0143. www.msri.org 

“Are You Good Enough to be Published?” a workshop with Alan Rinzler at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Telegraph Ave. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Diabetes Treatment with Natural Therapies A talk with Bonnie Levine at 11:30 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Ritual Triggers” a demonstration of paratheatre techniques with Antero Alli, Nick Walker and Sylvi Alli at 7:30 p.m. at The Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut, off University Ave. Cost is $5. 464-4640.  

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 

Yoga and Meditation Every Sun. in March from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Tibetan Meditation Practices for Spiritual Awakening” Dharma talk by Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin Caton on “Why Meditate?” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com  

MONDAY, MARCH 6 

National Organization for Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. Luci Tyndall will discuss The Clean Money Bill, a bill which if passed would give candidates for state offices a more level playing field. 287-8948. 

Parenting Class in Spanish at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

“Castoffs” The Kensington Library Knitting Group meets at 7 p.m. at 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. All levels welcome. Meets the first Monday of the month. 524-3043. 

Sing-A-Long from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Free Business Loan and Business Plan Writing Boot Camp Mon. and Fri. from 9 a.m. to noon at 519 17th St., 2nd Floor, Ste. 200, Oakland, through March 31. 395-6003. 

Beginning Bridge Lessons at 11:10 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $1. 524-9122. 

World Affairs Discussion Group for seniors at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center. Cost is $2.50.  

McGee Avenue Toastmasters meets on the first and third Mondays of the month at 7:30 p.m. at McGee Ave Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St. 501-7005. 

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. 

ONGOING 

Free Tax Help—United Way’s Earn it! Keep It! Save It! program provides free filing assistance to households that earned less than $38,000 in 2005. To find a free tax site near you, call 800-358-8832 or visit www.EarnitKeepitSaveit.org 

Albany Library Free Drop-in Homework Help for students in third through fifth grades, Mon. - Thurs. from 3 to 5:30 p.m. Emphasis is placed on math and writing skills. No registration is required. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Mar. 1, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Tasha Tervelon, 981-5190. www.ci.berk 

eley.ca.us/commissions/women 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs. Mar. 2, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/environmentaladvisory 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 2, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 2, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/housing 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs. Mar. 2, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/landmarks 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. Mar. 6, at 7 p.m. the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Creeks/default.html 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Mar. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/peaceandjustice