A group of voting rights activists—including nationally known labor leader Dolores Huerta—filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in San Francisco this week, seeking to halt the use of the Diebold paper trail electronic voting machines in California, but it is uncertain what affect it will have on electronic voting in Alameda County in the November elections and beyond.  

The group’s 24 named plaintiffs are being represented by Berkeley attorney Lowell Finley and the San Francisco litigation law firm of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Candady, Falk & Rabin. The lawsuit names California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson as one of the defendants, along with Acting Alameda County Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold and election officials in other California counties contemplating the use of the new Diebold machine. 

Finley is a member of Voter Action, a not-for-profit organization that the group says “provides legal, research and organizing support to ensure election integrity in the United States.” 

The litigation does not ask for monetary damages, but seeks only to block implementation of the newly-certified Diebold TSx electronic voting machine for the November election. It does not address the use of other similar machines, and would not prevent the use of the new Diebold paper-trail machine in the June primary.  

Explaining her role as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Huerta—who helped found the United Farmworkers of America with Caesar Chavez—said that “voting is sacred,” adding that “we can’t fight for voting rights in other parts of the world if we don’t have it here. One of our biggest national security concerns should be the security of our vote.” 

Speaking at a San Francisco news conference this week, Finley said that while the group “has no intention of walking away from the problems with other electronic voting systems like Sequoia,” the litigation focused on Diebold “because the evidence is so powerful that their machine does not follow California law, and therefore gives us the best opportunity to win an immediate injunction against the use of the machines.” Finley called the Diebold machines “unsafe, unsure, and easily hacked,” and said that the interpretive code used by the machines—the translating code that allows one part of the hardware to communicate with the other—is “particularly vulnerable to hacking. This code can be changed on the fly, after the machines have been certified and tested by the state and the local county agencies. We can’t have trustworthy elections using the Diebold electronic voting machines. And without trustworthy elections, we don’t have a democracy.” 

Last week, after listening to hours of testimony from voting activists seeking an end to electronic voting in the county, a sharply-divided Alameda County Council narrowly approved going forward with negotiations with Diebold and Oakland-based Sequoia Systems for the purchase of electronic voting machines for the November elections. But even supervisors who voted to go forward with the negotiations cautioned that they had reservations about the use of the machines, and said the vote did not necessarily mean that the machines will actually be purchased. 

Supervisors said they would consider other voting system options while the negotiations were taking place. 

Alameda County Council and the Alameda County registrar of voters office had earlier determined that the time was too short to move forward with purchase of new electronic voting machines for the June primary. That election will be conducted on paper ballots that will be scanned by electronic machines at a central location in Oakland on election night. The county has already arranged a loan from San Diego County for electronic voting machines to be located at each precinct for the use of disabled voters and any other voter who asks to use them. 

If use of the Diebold electronic voting machines were to be nullified for the November election by the Superior Court, Alameda County would have the option of negotiating purchase of electronic voting machines from Sequoia and two other voting machine vendors who put up bids. 

California counties faced a twin election crunch this year when new state law went into effect in January, mandating that an auditable paper trail be available for counties using touchscreen electronic voting machines. In the past, touchscreen electronic voting machines—such as the Diebold machines used in recent Alameda County elections—counted the votes internally, and provided no method to manually check if the count went wrong. There have been widespread allegations of fraud in the use of such machines around the country in recent years, most notably in the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. 

In addition, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (nicknamed “HAVA”) requires that every polling place be provided with a system that allows all disabled persons to vote independently, without the assistance of precinct workers. Some election officials have interpreted this to mean that each polling place must be provided with some form of a touchscreen electronic voting machine, but some voting rights and disabled activists have argued that there are other systems available that would meet federal law and the rights of disabled voters. 

At the San Francisco press conference, co-counsel Finley said that the Diebold machines do not meet the HAVA requirements. “By certifying those machines, the secretary of state threw the responsibility to the counties and to Diebold to make certain that the HAVA mandates are followed,” he said. “We think it’s the responsibility of the secretary of state to make sure those standards are met.” 

Finley also said that the paper audit trail provided by the Diebold machines is not what the new California law requires. Instead of an individual ballot printed for each ballot cast, the Diebold machines print the results on a continuous roll. Finley called that a “toilet paper system” that can “break down under heat because the paper is thermal,” and said that the continuous roll nature of the audit paper makes audits or recounting “extremely difficult and time consuming.”›

When Mayor Tom Bates ran for office against former mayor Shirley Dean four years ago, then-Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein stood among his supporters.  

“What we got was not what we expected,” said Bronstein, affirming her intention to challeng e Bates for the office. 

In a Wednesday phone interview, Bronstein said she would submit organizational papers to the city clerk Thursday, allowing her to raise campaign funds. In addition to Bates, she’ll run against community activist Zachary RunningWol f. 

And she could face former mayor Shirley Dean. “All my options are open,” Dean told the Daily Planet on Wednesday. “I’m really concerned about what’s happening in the city.” 

Bronstein, who will formally announce her candidacy at a 4 p.m. Sunday gather ing at the Berkeley Alternative High School, said she had known Bates to be a progressive assemblymember with many years of experience, but he had disappointed her.  

She criticizes Bates for what she calls the “secret vote” to settle a lawsuit between th e city and UC Berkeley over university expansion. Bronstein argues that the public was shut out of the deal and that the city settled for less money than it should have. 

A retired English professor, having taught at UC Santa Barbara, Hayward State, UC Berkeley and San Francisco State, Bronstein served on the Planning Commission from 1997 to 2004 and was chair for her final two years on the commission. She has taken a leave from writing a regular column on local issues for the Daily Planet. She says her campaign theme will be, “It’s our city,” with priorities being “fair and open government, development that benefits the community and the highest quality city services.”  

Active with the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association and the Progressive Alliance, Bronstein said it is too early to publicize the names of her supporters.  

In a phone interview, Dean said Berkeley needs different leadership—herself or someone else. “I want to see what Zelda is all about,” she said. 

Having just watched the re-run of Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting on TV, Dean said she was particularly upset by the city having taken action on an important development issue—$1.5 million funding for the Oxford Plaza project—at a 5:30 p.m. Redevelopment Agency meeting, too early for many members of the public to attend. “That discourages me,” she said. 

Citing the UC–city settlement agreement and a proposed Ashby BART development project, Dean said she had concerns about “the lack of discussion about development.”  

And “I’m very upset about the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance,” she said. 

Candidates can formally file for the November races in mid-July and must have papers in by mid-August, according to City Clerk Sara Cox. Whoever is elected to the mayor’s seat in November will serve only two years because Berkeley voted in 2004 to change its mayoral elections to coincide with presidential elections beginning in 2008. 

Also in November, citizens will cast votes for four City Council seats: District 1, currently represented by Linda Maio; District 4, represented by Dona Spring; District 7, represented by Kriss Worthington; and District 8, represented by Gordon Wozniak. l

Wednesday BART services were disrupted for the second time around in two weeks when a bomb threat on a San Francisco-bound train at the 12th Street Oakland station resulted in services to all East Bay stations being cancelled for over an hour. 

According to Lt. William Schultz, in charge of the Patrol Bureau for Zones 1 and 3, which includes all the Berkeley BART stations, one of the BART patrons overheard two men on a San Francisco-bound train talking about a bomb on the train at the 12th Street station in Oakland around 8 a.m.  

The first suspect was later identified as a 35-year-old Hispanic male weighing 155 pounds with slicked back hair, wearing a navy blue parka and carrying a backpack, while the second suspect was identified as a 35-year-old black male, weighing 160 pounds with short black hair and wearing a putty green parka.  

The patron was said to have followed the two suspects up to the street level after which he reported the incident to the BART agent at the station booth. Although people were taken into custody after the report was filed, the patron was unable to identify anyone at a suspect line-up. 

William (Travis) Gibson, BART patrol commander, told the Planet yesterday that the investigation is ongoing and the police are continuing to look into the video tapes from the incident. 

Lt. William Schultz told the Planet that right after the incident was reported, bomb dogs were brought inside the train but no explosives were found. He added that the SWAT team had not been brought in as they were usually in charge of hostage situations and not experts at bomb deactivation. Had explosives been found hidden on the train or strapped on a person, the bomb squad from UC Berkeley or Alameda County Sheriff’s Department would have been brought in to deactivate it. 

Lt. Schultz also commented that the incident was different from other threats, which usually involved suspicious packages or phone calls. “It is important to realize the seriousness of this particular incident. It’s not a bunch of intoxicated college kids joking about a bomb on the train; it’s two normal people who are completely in their senses. Situations like this need to be controlled immediately,” he said.  

Wednesday’s service disruption however caused a lot of problems for early morning commuters on their way to work or school. Casey and Adam, who were visiting the Bay Area from Manhattan, were stuck at the Trans Bay Terminal in San Francisco for almost half an hour waiting for the F Bus to take them to Berkeley. “I am attending a conference at UC Berkeley today and I’ll probably miss the first half hour,” Adam told the Planet.  

The couple however acknowledged the fact that the alternate transportation being provided to commuters by BART was a big plus. “Had a situation like this occurred on the MTA subway system in New York, we would have had to fend for ourselves,” the couple added.  

However, they also said that it would have been more helpful if the Embarcadero station agents had been more specific about information on the location of the Trans Bay Terminal: “They were very vague and only said it was a couple of blocks down.” 

“As usual I was disappointed,” said Kathleen Meazed, an employee in UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall. “BART didn’t make clear announcements about what was going on. Passengers need clear timely information about what is happening. I have started to carry a flashlight and water as last time the trains stopped working, the lights went out,” she said.  

Jim Allison, BART Public Information Officer told the Planet that “in the case of an emergency, the number one priority is the safety of our passengers. When we hear that there are explosives on a train, we don’t know how long the delay is going to be. In a perfect world, we could have predicted the future and told our passengers that the trains would start working in an hour again. But it doesn’t work that way.” 

Allison also said that the delays that occurred while arranging alternate transportation for BART’s passengers resulted from having to contact the bus services in San Francisco to provide shuttle services. “BART doesn’t have its own shuttle service. We have to depend on external sources.” 

Emily, an architect who works on Dwight St. in Berkeley, said that “it was good that BART refunded our fares from this morning; however, they could have had put up signs directing people to the refunds booth. Most were clueless about it.” she said.

The Willard Park tot lot will be officially reopening today (Friday) after remaining closed for two weeks in order to take care of rat infestation.  

“We have been successful in trapping 13 juvenile rats. Most of them were caught in the first few days and we’ve noticed the numbers going down gradually,” Jim Hynes, assistant to the Berkeley city manager, told the Daily Planet.  

Hynes added that it was safe to assume that the problem was taken care of. The team in charge of controlling the infestation had discovered burrows between the two tennis courts in Willard Park. The dense vegetation around the Willard Pool, as well as around private property near the park, had also been trimmed to control rat harborage.  

“We were specifically on the lookout for sources for the breeders and we were successful in finding them,” he said.  

No poisons or pesticides had been used to get rid of the rats. It was done entirely by trapping. The wooden deck in the tot lot has been taken off and resurfaced with plywood. The city is also looking at gathering funds for permanently resurfacing the deck with a stronger synthetic material which would be slip-proof. The new painted grit surface could be put into place as soon as funds are available at the beginning of the next fiscal year.  

Hynes also acknowedged the fact that the city was looking to hold talks with the Willard Neighborhood Association about introducing owls in Willard Park after a Berkeley resident had suggested the same in a letter to the Planet. “I think it’s a great idea and I will be discussing it this week,” he said. 

“I would also like to remind the public to be careful with food and not to discard leftovers in the park. Although the Parks Department picks up food from the tot lot everyday, the people visiting it should also act responsibly,” he said. 

Manuel Ramirez, manager of environmental health at the city’s Department of Health and Human Services that provided the city with consultation on controling the rat problem, told the Planet that the city had put a lot of effort into getting rid of the rats and cleaning up the tot lot. “In the end it’s always a community effort. Visitors need to remember to put their leftovers from lunch into the trash cans and not the sidewalk,” he said. 

Heather Saloff, a Berkeley resident who lives near the park told the Planet that she was definitely going to go back to the tot lot with her son. “We have observed the work being done from a distance and it’s good to know they have found a source for the problem and fixed it,” she said.

Oakland teachers are one step closer to going on strike. 

Members of the Oakland Education Association (OEA) voted 1,054 to 330 to authorize a strike Wednesday. The vote does not mean teachers will walk out right away, it merely enables union representatives to call a strike or sit-in with 48 hours notice. 

OEA President Ben Visnick anticipates a strike will take place only if contract negotiations fail to move forward.  

The 3,100-member union has been negotiating with the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) over teacher contracts for two years. Talks stalled earlier this year but resumed last week, and both sides agree significant progress has been made. 

The sides are close to consensus over salary, long a bone of contention in a school district where the average teacher pay is $53,000 a year. The district is offering a 5.5 percent raise over three years; the union wants 6.5 percent. 

“But the main issues remain unresolved,” Visnick said Wednesday, namely healthcare and preparation periods.  

The union is demanding that employees pay no more than a half a percent for healthcare premiums. It also wants the district to offer more time for teachers to prepare for classes. 

The district’s latest proposal, officially submitted Tuesday, offers a shared-cost healthcare plan that would require employees to split half the cost of future premium increases. Earlier this month, the district was proposing a cap on healthcare. 

As for their other main concern, OUSD spokesperson Alex Katz said the district doesn’t want to ban prep periods, it just wants to leave them up to school sites.  

At press time, talks were ongoing. 

In the event of a strike, the district plans to keep schools open, Katz said.  

“A strike is the last thing anyone wants, but this is an educational institution so our legal and moral responsibility is to educate our students in the event of a strike,” he said. 

Between 800 and 1,000 substitute teachers have submitted applications to replace potential strikers, he said. They would earn $300 a day. Substitutes typically earn $110 a day. 

Oakland’s classified employees are also battling the district over salary and healthcare. Representatives staged a rally in front of district offices Wednesday to demand fair contracts.

On the agenda at Tuesday’s City Council meeting was a motion to ask the Berkeley School Board to add partial funding for a new warm pool at Berkeley High to the list of projects to be supported by the voters in a November parcel tax ballot measure. At the meeting, however, councilmembers argued that the addition could endanger the passage of the tax. 

The warm pool is used by frail elderly and disabled persons. Funding was authorized under Measure R in 2000 to rehabilitate the pool and the structure that houses it. However, the School Board subsequently decided not to rehabilitate the pool but to move it to the east side of Milvia Street, where tennis courts were once housed. That would cost at least $2 million, more than funds provided by the city and the bond measure. 

Councilmembers decided by a unanimous vote that, instead of asking the School Board to add the funding to the parcel tax, they would ask the city manager to write to the school superintendent, asking if other sources of revenue are available and to discuss the issue further in the “two-by-two” committee, comprised of school board and council members. 

Without it, “people who depend on the pool will be left high and dry,” quipped Councilmember Dona Spring, who has been driving the effort to make sure the new warm pool gets funded. 

Wind turbine 

The proposed installation of a small, experimental electricity-generating wind turbine at the Shorebird Park education center at the Marina drew fire from Councilmember Betty Olds who questioned whether the 40-foot structure would endanger birds, which has been the case at the much-larger, much-higher Altamont Pass wind farm.  

“We’re setting an example,” Olds said. “Maybe people will have them in their yards.” 

The council decided to pass the measure (with Councilmember Gordon Wozniak abstaining and Councilmember Kriss Worthington absent), accepting the installation of the turbine, with the caveat that the Golden Gate Audubon Society would have to give its approval. If the GGAS does not, the issue will be back on the council agenda.  

Funding for the project will come from the developer, but the city is responsible for $12,000 in installation costs. 

And, the council unanimously passed: 

• Funding for the youth shelter through May. 

• The phasing out of tritium exit signs. 

• Changing the name of the Sather Gate Garage to the Telegraph/Channing Garage to give shoppers a better idea of where to find parking. 

While it was not on the council agenda, Berkeley High’s baseball team showed up en masse at the public comment period to ask the council to consider allowing the school to site a regulation-size baseball field on the parcel at Derby Street and Martin Luther King Way. The school board recently approved play fields at the site, but a regulation-size field would entail closing a section of Derby Street, which many neighbors and the Tuesday farmers market vendors oppose..

The group chosen by the city to oversee development at the Ashby BART parking lot wants recruits for a task force panel to recommend projects to the city council. 

Just how many people will serve on the panel remains an open question, said Ed Church, who is project director for the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation (SBNDC),the non-profit organization picked by the city to oversee development at the site. 

“We have more qualitative than quantitative guidelines,” he said. “We’re more concerned with representation and inclusion.” 

The SBNDC has taken to calling the surrounding neighborhood SoBa, for South Berkeley area. 

While the announcement said the task force was mandated by the city council resolution that approved the grant application, it is nowhere mentioned in that document—a point raised at neighborhood activist Robert Lauriston’s Neighbors of Ashby BART website (nabart.com). 

“It was mentioned in the discussion with the city council” during the December meeting, said Church. 

Call for task force members 

In a notice issued to seek members, the non-profit listed three basic assignments for the panel: 

• Define the basic elements of the project, which is expected to include housing built over ground-floor retail space, as well as the qualifications of a project developer. 

• Formulate a written proposal the city council can use to issue a Request for  

Qualifications for selection of a project developer. 

• Assist the council in selecting the developer. 

The project, strongly pushed by City Councilmember Max Anderson and Mayor Tom Bates, ran into strong initial opposition from neighbors alarmed at the announcement that the BART station’s western lot will house a major development with at least 300 units of housing. 

Church, who included the figure in a grant application to seek state funds for the planning process, later said the figure was a mistake, based on a misinterpretation of the site’s area. 

Task Force members are expected to serve and attend night and weekend meetings for the three to six months expected to complete the process. 

The written guidelines said applicants must live or own a business in Berkeley and be familiar with housing, economic, environmental or general issues in South Berkeley. 

But Church said Thursday that one would-be applicant had asked for inclusion of members from north Oakland who live within a half-mile of the site. 

“If sounds like a good idea, so I am forwarding his name to the board” of the nonprofit, Church said. 

The eight-member board is chaired by Jesse Anthony, a teacher who also serves on the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board. 

AC Transit Deputy General Manager Jim Gleich serves as vice-chair. 

Nominations can be sent to Church by email at SoBa@southberkeley.org or by snail mail care of the SBNDC, 1767 Alcatraz Ave., Berkeley 94703. 

Grant alive 

Meanwhile, a City Council-sponsored application for a $120,000 grant to assist in planning the project is still moving forward. 

Laura Wonder, regional public affairs chief for Caltrans, said word on the final status of the request the SBNDC filed in October and the city council endorsed two months later could come as early as mid-April. 

Word is certain by the end of the month, she said. 

If approved, the grant would also require a city contribution of $30,000. 

Announcement that the application had been sought prior to the council’s approval triggered a firestorm of protest from area neighbors, who feared that the resulting project could result in eminent domain property seizures in the surrounding area. 

Anderson and Bates have since promised that the project would not use eminent domain within the project area or seek to classify the project as a transit village under legislation Bates authored during his years in the state Assembly. 

That legislation would have mandated greater density standards in the area..

A $61 million project that will combine housing for the most disadvantaged, an environmental center, retail and underground parking got a set of approvals Tuesday, bringing the Oxford Plaza and David Brower Center proposed for Oxford Street and Allston Way closer to reality. The project was before both the Berkeley Redevelopment Agency and the Berkeley City Council, two bodies composed of the same elected councilmembers.  

Strong objections came not from opponents of the project, but from members of the public, who lambasted city officials for shutting them out of the process, though Councilmember Betty Olds opposed its funding and development in parallel 8-1 Redevelopment Agency and City Council votes.  

At issue at the 5:30 p.m. Redevelopment Agency meeting was adding $1.5 million of funds which the agency administers to the $32 million housing component of the Brower project. When they met later in the evening as the City Council, the body was asked to approve the next step in negotiations with the project developers.  

“Last week was Sunshine Week, but we didn’t have a ray,” said Berkeley resident Merilee Mitchell, speaking during the Redevelopment Agency public comment period. Mitchell was referencing the week of March 13, where open government was honored nationwide.  

Mitchell was decrying the public’s lack of access to the staff report explaining the project’s use of the redevelopment funds, which was posted on the city website only late Monday morning. Councilmembers got copies of the report at about 5 p.m. Friday evening. Other reports to be discussed at the Tuesday evening meeting were distributed to the council and public last Thursday.  

“I believe it should not be slipped through the cracks. It’s a very important issue and needs discussion,” Mitchell said. 

“It’s outrageous not to be able to look at the report more carefully,” added resident Doug Buckwald, also speaking during the comment period.  

The housing funds would come from the West Berkeley Redevelopment Project, which is why the issue had to come first to the Redevelopment Agency. The question before the body was whether funds for the Oxford Plaza housing should come from the WBRP’s housing funds, which by law can be used to pay for low-income housing anywhere in the city. 

The West Berkeley Redevelopment Area is monitored by a committee, whose members said they had been left out of the process. “It should come before the PAC [Project Area Committee] first,” said Susan Libby, a member of the committee, speaking at the public comment portion of the Redevelopment Agency meeting. “It’s a matter of sunshine. People should be informed.” 

Olds agreed: “They say it’s beneficial to the project area. Don’t they have a right to say yea or nay?”  

Housing Director Stephen Barton explained, however, that the project area committee oversees only projects in West Berkeley. 

In a phone interview Thursday, Libby said, speaking for herself, she understood that the city legally is not required to ask the opinion of the West Berkeley Project Area Committee when it spends redevelopment funds for housing. Nevertheless, she said, it would have been good for the city to ask the committee. “We are the arm that gets public input,” she said, noting that she would have preferred that the housing funds be spent closer to the project area. 

Discussing the substance of the project, Mayor Tom Bates complimented Barton on putting together “one of the most incredibly complicated projects” he’d seen. The Oxford Plaza will combine 96 units of extremely low to very low income housing with retail, including a restaurant, meeting space and the David Brower Center, a facility, according to the David Brower Center web site, “designated to inspire and nurture current generations of activists and to build a foundation for future generations.”  

While Councilmember Gordon Wozniak voted in favor of the project, he said he feared that it was so complex, with a  

variety of funders and owners, that it could fall apart or that the price could increase before construction is complete. “Is this too big?” he asked. “It’s like the dinosaur dying on your front lawn. We may have to haul it away.”  

Voting against the project, Olds said she did not want to run the financial risk of such a complex project. “We’re putting too many eggs in one basket,” she said, adding that the housing project, which provides units with one, two and three bedrooms, would not be good for people with children: “They don’t have a good place for kids to play. There’s no shopping,” she said, noting that using the housing funds for this project means that they cannot be used elsewhere.  

Top state, county and city emergency services officials from the State of California and Alameda County met with senior officials from UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Vista College, the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) and Bayer Health care yesterday to discuss emergency preparedness coordination and communication plans in the event of a major disaster in Berkeley. 

Participants included Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, Bekeley Unified School District (BUSD) Superintendent Michelle Lawrence, State Emergency Services Coastal District Administrator Rich Eisner, Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz, Berkeley Police Chief Doug Hambleton and UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. 

Mayor Tom Bates described the session as an “unique opportunity to get an understanding of how the city would operate during a disaster—especially the first four to five days.”  

Speaking to members of the media after the briefing session, the mayor said that in the event of a major disaster the City of Berkeley’s Public Safety Building at 2100 Martin Luther KIng, Jr. Way would be converted into a command center.  

He added that federal and state agencies would be carrying out emergency services throughout Berkeley and jointly making decisions on healthcare and evacuation services. In the event that cell phone services were disrupted, bicycle dispatchers would be sent out to act as messengers between city officials. There is also talk of using ham radios. 

Plans to involve community organizations such as churches and libraries in disaster preparedness methods are also being made by the city. 

A Bay Area earthquake is one of the three major disasters that have been predicted by FEMA—the other two being the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the twin hurricanes in Lousiana, which have already taken place. 

It was estimated from the briefing session that in the event of a major earthquake up to 500 people could be killed in Berkeley and the number could increase if the quake occurred during the day. The mayor, however, acknowledged that the Alameda County coroner’s office could only accommodate 40 bodies and that the possibility of refrigerated trucks to store the deceased had been discussed at the meeting.  

He added that the UC Berkeley gyms and recreation centers, the Lawrence Labs, and BUSD’s earthquake resistant buildings could also be used as shelters. It was estimated that up to 500 fires could also occur in the city during such a disaster.  

Superintendent Michelle Lawrence expressed concern at the fact that although schools in Berkeley were in good shape during the day, there was hardly anyone around in the evening to handle emergency situations. 

The city is also scheduled to carry out an earthquake drill on April 18 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.  

The mayor also said that “Berkeley had always been a leader in emergency services and that it would continue to be so.” He added that it was extremely important for citizens to prepare for a sudden disaster in the best possible way.  

“Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call for us. Everyone should start off by storing water and food for at least a couple of weeks since water is clearly going to be one of the major problems. Families should also have a plan of where to gather after a quake. They need to retrofit their homes in case that has not already been done,” he said. 

Currently 65 percent of houses in Berkeley are retrofitted, as well as all the schools. 

The mayor also stressed the importance of having an out-of-state phone number of a friend or a relative at all times, because of the high possibility of local lines going out of service during a quake. 

Speaking to the Daily Planet, state Emergency Services Coastal District Administrator Rich Eisner said that the event had been a “unique effort to bring the local community and the county together and prepare for one of the worst possible disasters ever.” 

“We were able to bring our ideas to the table not only at the city level but also at the state level. I want everyone to understand that we are all part of this effort. CItizens need to understand that it is up to them to change the outcome of the [potential] disaster. Everyone should be prepared with food and water for at least 72 hours if they don’t want to end up as victims of the earthquake,” he said.  

Berkeley Police Chief Doug Hambleton said that the main focus was on “preservation of life.”  

He added that “communication would definitely pose a problem” and said that although the communication systems between the city’s fire and police departments were not yet integrated, there were plans to do so in the near future.  

He added that although officers in Berkeley could not communicate with their counterparts in Oakland through radio systems, it was very much on the agenda. The infrastructure to set up something like that would cost the city $60 million. 

Mayor Tom Bates also said that there were plans to address pandemics like the avian flu at a meeting in October but stressed the fact that handling emergency preparedness during a natural disaster was the top priority at the moment. 

When it comes to regulating local quarries, the city of Richmond is between a rock and a hard place.  

Unstable slopes and extended fissures at two derelict quarries, both inactive mines, pose a threat to public safety, said the State Board of Mining and Geology (SMGB), but unless Richmond renews its mining ordinance, not much can be done about it. 

According to state board Executive Officer Stephen Testa, the city’s current mining ordinance expired in 1998, leaving most regulatory power to the SMGB, a department of the California Department of Conservation.  

So last month, Richmond City Councilmember Tom Butt drafted an ordinance in an effort to reclaim the city’s authority.  

His motivation? 

“Like most land uses in the city, it’s nice to have local control over these things,” he said. “You never know when state agencies are going to act on these things.” 

The ordinance earned Testa’s stamp of approval. Getting it past Richmond brass, however, has proved more trying. 

At a council meeting in February, City Attorney John Eastman summarily rejected the proposed ordinance on grounds that drafting responsibilities fall exclusively on the city attorney, Butt wrote on his website tombutt.com. According to the website, Eastman further argued that the ordinance must undergo review per the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—which requires decision makers to examine environmental impacts prior to undertaking a project—before council can vote on it.  

Testa said the city attorney is incorrect. 

“I do not perceive it as an issue with CEQA” Testa said. “All the city has to do is approve the ordinance, send it to our office, then the board certifies that ordinance and at that point, the city becomes the lead agency.” 

“[Butt’s] draft ordinance is fine with us,” he said. 

Eastman did not return calls for comment. Earlier this month, he was quoted in the Contra Costa Times saying it was “a complicated legal issue” and that he hadn’t yet “made a determination.” 

In December, the state board issued notices of violation to the Richmond [Chevron] Quarry, located east of the San Rafael Bridge, and the Point Richmond [Canal] Quarry on Canal Boulevard at Seacliff Drive.  

The Richmond Quarry, owned by Chevron and operated predominantly as an asphalt facility by Dutra Materials, was cited for shouldering an unstable cut-slope that could topple down into a tank of neighboring petrol tanks and threaten public safety. The Point Richmond Quarry operator was cited for unstable slopes and fissures extending onto East Bay Regional Park property where people frequently hike. A landscape company uses the site for materials recycling. 

Additionally, both quarries were deemed guilty of breaching revegetation and reclamation mandates under the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (SMRA) of 1975, policies aimed at minimizing the toll mining exacts on the environment. 

The state board gave the sites 60 days from March 9 to comply with its requests. If they fail to do so, the state board could charge owners up to $5,000 a day in fines, retroactively effective Dec. 22, 2005, Testa said.  

“We expect to comply,” said Doug Straus, an attorney for the Bottoms Family Trust, which owns the Point Richmond Quarry. “We’re doing everything we can.” 

A representative from the Richmond (Chevron) Quarry did not return a call for comment. 

Meanwhile, the city can only exercise its power over zoning and perceived nuisances at the quarries, Butt said. For instance, Richmond could penalize the Point Richmond Quarry for operating a recycling facility without proper permitting.  

At a meeting Tuesday, Butt said the city attorney was instructed to take action against the quarries. 

But “so far, the city hasn’t done anything,” he said. 

As for the mining ordinance, Butt fears it’s dead in the water. 

“The City Council has no interest in moving forward with it, and the city has no interest in moving forward with it,” he said, convinced petty council politics were overshadowing the larger issue. 

Butt said, “This is an example of why Richmond has been so dysfunctional for so long.” 

City Councilmembers had not returned calls by press time.

Faiza Al-Araji, a middle-class Iraqi woman, was able to pay her innocent son’s way out of jail last summer. That’s when she understood that she had to leave. With her husband and three sons, she went to Jordan, leaving behind the chaos and misery of the country of her birth.  

“I was lucky. I had money to pay for the release of my son,” Al-Araji said, speaking to a small home gathering in Berkeley on Wednesday evening. Al-Araji’s talk was part of a tour by six Iraqi women organized by San Francisco-based Global Exchange to promote a better understanding of the effects of war on the Iraqi people. It took place in a house owned by Becky and Mike O’Malley, also owners of the Daily Planet. She will speak at three large public events in Oakland, Palo Alto and Santa Cruz this weekend. 

“I have come here to talk about the truth. It’s been three years of pain and suffering,” Al-Araji said. “I hope we can open people’s eyes.”  

An engineer since 1976—taught in part by women professors, she said proudly—the family’s exit follows on the heels of countless Iraqi professionals who have fled. Al-Araji and her husband, who still own a water treatment company in Iraq, have the means to live in Jordan, where life is very expensive.  

But what of the others? “The majority of the people in Iraq now, who are suffering from the horrible conditions and have no way to get out of Iraq, are poor people. They will be the victims of the killings and the chaos,” she said.  

Or, without other means of survival, they will become perpetrators of crime or join the occupation’s police force or army, which causes them to become targets themselves. “This creates a horrible environment,” she said. “That’s why people attack the police.”  

Iraq’s oil wealth is nowhere to be seen, as people line up, sometimes overnight, for gasoline. “Where is the oil of the Iraqi people?” Al-Araji asked.  

Al-Araji does not mince words. She says the chaos in her country is no accident. “It’s to [the occupation’s] benefit to create conflict to stay forever in Iraq, so that the Iraqis will be confused about who is the real enemy. But the real enemy is the occupation.”  

The U.S. began to destabilize the country with the dismissal of the army, and the firing of all government officials and university professors who were members of the Ba’ath Party, Saddam Hussein’s political party, Al-Araji said. “Not all Ba’ath are bad,” she said, explaining that if people wanted to work in the government, teach in a university, or practice medicine in a government hospital under Hussein, they had to join the Ba’ath Party.  

Life is worse today in Iraq than under Hussein, she said: “Nobody would steal a car or kidnap someone. There would be severe punishment.”  

“This is the environment America needs to stay in Iraq forever,” she said.  

Americans have a false picture of Iraq, Al Araji said, hoping to paint a truer picture. “I feel sad for the American people who are looking at TV and believing. The American people believe Iraq is a noble mission.”  

Only in America, and somewhat in England, do people talk about Shi’ia and Sunni Muslims, said Al Araji, who is Shi’ia; her husband is Sunni. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There’s no faith conflict—we are Muslim.”  

The United States is trying to market the conflict by going to the majority Shi’ias and saying: “’You have been oppressed by Saddam and his group of Sunnis,’” she said, arguing that’s not true: Saddam oppressed both Sunnis and Shi’ias.  

The occupation has “planted the culture of revenge, the culture of hatred. They have torn the tissue of our society,” she said.  

Another media myth is that the United States liberated Iraqi women, Al-Araji said. But under Hussein women worked, drove cars, chose their husbands, kept their names, became judges, lawyers and  

doctors, Al-Araji said. The reality is that, with the new Iraqi leadership “now the position of the Iraqi women is very bad.”  

When someone in the audience asked Al-Araji if U.S. troops should pull out all at once, she said they should. It’s up to Iraqis to find their own way, she said. “Leave Iraq for the Iraqis. This is what we want.”  

Faiza Al-Araji will be joined by Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, 7 p.m. March 24, First Unitarian Church, 685 14th St., Oakland. $15 in advance, $20 at the door. On Saturday Al Araji will speak in Palo Alto and Santa Cruz. For details, see www.globalexchange.org..

Though “balance” was the buzzword at Wednesday’s joint meeting between the Creeks Task Force and the Planning Commission, creeks faction wars were as heated as ever. 

The object of the division: Berkeley’s Creeks Ordinance, a 1989 policy, amended in 2002, that forbids additions and rebuilding on property within 30 feet of a creek, whether open or interred. Exceptions are made for structures destroyed by disaster. 

Many homeowners want fewer restrictions on development near creeks, while environmentalists want more stringent policies. 

Charged with drafting suggested amendments to the ordinance, the 15-member Creeks Task Force released preliminary recommendations Wednesday, under the premise of “trying to strike a balance between the needs of property owners and the environment,” said task force member Phil Price. 

The task force is comprised of community members and city council and city commission appointees.  

Recommendations include the following:  

Vertical property expansion within 30 feet of a creek is allowed on a case-by-case basis; expanding up to five feet into the 30-foot setback is permitted with an administrative use permit; more than five feet into the setback and homeowners must seek a variance; rebuilding after loss is allowed and property owners can build new structures within 30 feet of an open creek but only with a variance. 

Further details were spelled out at a task force meeting Monday, such as regulations on non-roofed structures—decks, patios and bridges, for instance—and terms of general watershed management. 

A majority of the task force agreed to the recommendations, which garnered significant, but not unqualified, support from creeks advocates. 

“What I have read sounds pretty good,” said Igor Skaredoff, a Martinez resident and member of the Urban Creeks Council. “. . . You are indeed getting pretty close to that balance.” 

Many homeowners were less enthusiastic. 

“Property owners feel we’ve been tacitly acknowledged and substantively ignored,” said a representative of Neighbors on Urban Creeks, a community group that champions homeowners’ rights.  

A central element of their discontent is perceived limitations on rebuilding existing structures. 

Under the proposed ordinance, homeowners are allowed to repair and renovate their homes in the existing footprint per standard zoning regulations. This includes seeking an administrative use permit if more than half a building is destroyed. 

Many worry that the bureaucratic rigmarole involved in obtaining a use permit will thwart rebuilding efforts all together. However, the same zoning rules apply to all buildings, not just those adjacent to creeks. 

Homeowners expressed concern, nonetheless.  

“The power to grant use permits is the power to deny one,” said former Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean. 

Environmentalists countered that a buffer zone is necessary to protect the city’s natural waterways. 

“I value the creeks of Berkeley exceedingly highly. Private property rights do not trump the creeks,” said Chris Kroll, a Berkeley resident. “Creeks are natural processes which need to be respected. You need to keep development back.” 

But the most hotly contested issue of the evening—still unresolved on the task force—was whether to include creek culverts in the ordinance. 

Berkeley is home to a byzantine system of underground waterways that has been cause for much concern among homeowners, many who aren’t sure whether they live on or near a creek culvert. Others who are aware they live near culverts claim they weren’t enlightened to that fact until after they purchased their homes. They fear that strict regulations dictated by the ordinance diminish their property values.  

“I urge you to exclude culverts from the ordinance,” said Berkeley resident Scott Rosenberg. “It makes no sense, there’s no logic to it, there’s no fairness to it.” 

To Elyce Judith, it’s entirely logical. A creek culvert is eroding her neighbor’s house, she said, and including creek culverts in the ordinance ensures proper watershed management.  

Judith was one of few creekside property owners who expressed support for a strong Creeks Ordinance Wednesday. By and large, homeowners at the public hearing supported a less rigorous ordinance—or no ordinance at all.  

Michael Tripp advocated abolishing the ordinance. “No compromises, no responses, no ordinance,” he said. 

The Creeks Task Force will shore up its recommendations April 3 then pass them off to the Planning Commission. Commissioners will consider ordinance modifications until April 26 to meet a May 1 City Council-imposed deadline. The City Council has final say over amendments..

The latest local public agency to be hit by the automated payroll blues is the Alameda County Medical Center. 

Nurses representing Service Employees International Union Local 616 blasted ACMC’s Kronos automated time reporting system at the last meeting of the medical center’s board of trustees, saying that union officials had received more than 40 recent complaints, and that “some people are missing hours and some people are missing whole pay periods.” The representatives said that the automated system had messed up some workers’ hours so much that “some people have been dropped into part-time status, causing them to lose access to participation in the center’s health care plan.” 

Kronos is a Massachussetts-based workforce management company that was hired to take over operation of the medical center’s payroll system during the administration of since-departed Cambio Health Care Solutions. 

One nurse representative called the payroll problems “criminal” and a “violation of state labor laws.” Using the slang name for a beat-up automobile, the representative asked, “Did we buy a Cadillac system (from Kronos), or did we buy a hooptie?” 

Labor representatives told trustees that workers had been barred from making complaints about payroll problems directly to the center’s finance department.” They said that the problem was centered mainly among nurses working in the center’s John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro. 

ACMC Chief Financial Officer Geoff Dottery admitted “some glitches in implementing” the new payroll system and said that his office was working on the problem, but medical center trustees appeared unimpressed. 

“We’ve heard this report too many times,” Trustee Board President J. Bennett Tate told Dottery and ACMC CEO Wright Lassiter. “This cannot go on. The trustee board cannot be involved with the everyday operations of the medical center, but we can let you know that we find something unacceptable. If it happened to me, I’d be angry, too.” 

Center administrators are expected to report back on efforts to solve the payroll problem at the next trustee meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, March 28. 

A posting on the SEIU Local 616 website in early February headlined “Kronos payroll problems worse than expected” said that “although [human resources] management promised to fix problems plaguing the Kronos payroll systems, problems have gotten worse, not better. . . . SEIU stewards have identified 130 errors at Highland [Hospital] alone.” The SEIU report also noted that “while SEIU stewards were gathering information on payroll errors, HR paced a Local 616 steward on administrative leave for doing her job representing our members. SEIU representatives walked out of a meeting with HR when ACMC refused to reinstate the steward.” 

Vice President of Human Resources Bill Mattox was placed on administrative leave himself by the center on March 3. Mattox was not available for comment, and personnel privacy laws did not permit center officials to comment on whether the action was related to the payroll problems. 

In a prepared statement released this week, CFO Dottery said that the center has “significantly improved our service to employees, expanding walk-in service hours in the payroll department, and making a pledge that any paycheck discrepancies for the current pay period will be rectified within three hours. For previous pay periods, discrepancies will be fixed within three days.” 

In a letter to SEIU representatives earlier this month, Dottery said that he was “now very aware of the technical and service issues that need to be addressed immediately. . . . I am recommending that we continue with the Kronos implementation. However, in order to do this successfully, we will implement several changes . . . to give you confidence that employees will be paid correctly and on time.” 

Among those listed changes was one to create a reception desk in the payroll department for workers to resolve complaints, and to assign payroll clerks to work directly with unit managers to “help resolve Kronos operational issues.” 

But Dottery did not say whether any progress had been made in stopping the payroll glitches themselves. He said he could not comment on specifics of the Kronos payroll implementation because of pending litigation against the medical center by a former employee. That litigation, filed earlier this month in Superior Court in Oakland and not yet answered by the center, involves in part complaints concerning the automated payroll system. 

A spokesperson for Local 616, Director of Communications Brad Cleveland, said that while Cambio originally brought in Kronos, it was the center’s present director, Wright Lassiter, who escalated the problem. 

“The center never had timeclocks before; they always used paper timekeeping,” Cleveland said. “Then they made a decision to move to electronic timekeeping. Last year, we reached an agreement with the medical center to move forward with implementation of the Kronos system that would have used the electronic payroll system and a paper system operating simultaneously,” Cleveland said. “That would allow us to immediately identify any problems in workers’ paychecks.” But Cleveland said that after Lassiter was hired, “he made the unilateral decision to go completely electronic.” Cleveland said that was symptomatic of the medical center “trying to do things on the cheap.” He also blamed the Kronos implementation team, which he said “wasn’t paying attention to problems. Instead, they were just barreling forward with putting the new payroll system into place, figuring that they’d just fix the problems as they came up. Implementation has been a disaster. It’s just a mess.” 

Cleveland said the union is urging the center to return to the original agreed-upon paper trail system. 

He also said that CEO Lassiter is quickly learning about his mistake. 

“Lassiter came to a caucus meeting of the nurses earlier this month to talk about the payroll problems,” Cleveland said. “He got an earful.”

It’s a familiar story in Richmond. A developer wants to build expensive condos on what looks like a prime shoreline spot but there’s one catch. 

There’s nasty stuff in the soil. 

Unlike Campus Bay to the southeast—the site of a stalled 1,331-unit condo and apartment project—the earth on the western side of Marina Bay hasn’t been polluted by a century or more of chemical manufacturing. 

The culprit at the proposed Westshore Marina Project was a Ford Motor Co. plant that turned out cars and trucks before and after World War II and 60,000 tanks and other military vehicles during the war itself. 

If Toll Brothers has their way, the firm will build 269 condos on a unique waterfront site with choice views of San Francisco Bay, a complement to their other developments in Richmond—including Point Richmond Shores, another controversial project at Brickyard Cove. 

While both developments feature condos in mid-rise residential buildings, the builder also creates single-family home subdivisions, such as the Seacliff near Brickyard Cove—where houses are selling in the $800,000-$900,000 range—and the more upscale Norris Canyon Estate in San Ramon, with models priced between $1.8 million and $2.5 million. 

The firm is a powerful enough force in the national economy that a Dec. 8 Toll Brother’s announcement of record profits triggered a decline in the stock market because it was tempered by a statement that said 2006 earnings could be affected by an increasingly soft housing market. 

Westshore 

Opponents have organized against both Westshore and Point Richmond Shores projects, and the city council delayed approval of the Westshore Environmental Impact Report (EIR) after a heated hearing on March 8. 

At that meeting, critics charged that the EIR failed to adequately address a massive amount of contaminated soil found at the project site. 

The state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) detected antimony, a toxic metal, in recent tests at the site. The site was originally cleaned up under DTSC supervision under a plan approved in 1993 and revised in 1997, which allowed for the soil to be treated by bioremediation—microbes—to eliminate petroleum-derived compounds and left on site. 

“We don’t know where the antimony came from,” said Barbara J. Cook, the DTSC’s chief of Northern California coastal cleanup, during a March 9 meeting of the Community Advisory Group, which is working with her agency on contaminated sites in the city. Antimony is used in alloys to harden metals, Cook said, and may have resulted from work at the Ford plant. 

Hot spots contaminated with lead were removed. Separate tests for antimony were not conducted at the time because the two metals are generally found together. At high levels antimony can be lethal, and at lower levels it can result in coughing, abdominal pain and dizziness. 

Cook said high levels were found in only one of the soil samples collected at the site and may have resulted from something as simple as a chip of paint. The DTSC is currently awaiting results on tests conducted after the initial discovery. 

DTSC is in the final stages of approving a cleanup plan, which will include the removal of the contaminated soil to an approved disposal site, Cook said Wednesday. 

The developer may remove additional soil as well to level the site for building, she said.  

The contaminated soil is not located in the area where the condos will be constructed, she said, but in a roadway area. The condo site remediation has been completed and the area has been certified safe for residential development. 

Sherry Padgett, a member of DTSC’s Richmond CAG, said she was concerned by the discovery of the metal, and cited other concerns raised by environmental scientist Matt Hagemann. 

A former Marina Bay resident, Hagemann noted that the project EIR failed to list the antimony findings as well as other samples that including findings of lead. He also noted that while one state document indicated that three underground oil storage tanks buried at the site had reportedly been removed, Contra Costa County records revealed no evidence that the tanks had been removed. 

Cook told the CAG she is checking into that as well. 

Point Richmond Shores 

Toll Brothers plans for Point Richmond Shores—known as Terminal 1 to the regulators at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board—generated strong opposition and resulted in the creation of the Point Richmond/Brickyard Cove Coalition of Concerned Citizens. 

Started in 1915, Terminal One—immediately adjacent to the tip of Ferry Point at the southwestern end of the point Richmond shoreline—served ships until its closure at the end of the 1980s. 

A tank farm was also located at the site, and the combination of petrochemicals and other activity at the site left a toxic legacy of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and lead. Among the hazardous VOCs found at elevated levels in the soil were PCE, TCE, vinyl chloride, cis-1,2 DCE, petroleum hydrocarbons and benzo(a)pyrene (CQ). 

Stephen Hill, an administrative officer with the water board, said remedial work last year was conducted to remove the VOCs from the soil, though the agency hasn’t received a final report on the efforts. That cleanup involved heating the soil to drive off the vapors, which were captured by filtering devices.  

The site still contains quantities of PNAs—polynuclear aromatic chemicals—which are typically removed by excavation, he said. 

Coalition members have been engaged in a running battle with both the city and the developer, who wants to build a project more than twice the height permitted under current zoning and the general plan, said Beverly Galloway, who helped organize the group. 

Galloway’s group has just recruited a new ally in retired California Assemblymember John Knox (D-Richmond). 

Knox told coalition members that the Toll Brothers project was precisely the sort of development the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) was created to avoid. Knox was a strong supporter of the 1965 law that created commission. 

Toll Brothers wants to build an 85-foot-high project with 325 units. Current zoning would allow a maximum height of 35 feet and a maximum density of 289 units. 

The city’s Design Review Board approved a modified version of the builder’s plans in February, and the proposal will go to the planning commission in April. In the interim, Galloway and her coalition members continue to organize. 

Concerned Citizens submitted an alternative plan, which neither the developer nor the city said the were willing to consider, Galloway said. 

The coalition maintains a web site at www.cccpointrichmond.com. 

Calls to Toll Brothers were not returned.

At the school board meeting on Wednesday, Paul Goodwin from Goodwin Simon Strategic Research presented board members and the public with the findings of the voter survey conducted to assess community support for reauthorizing the BSEP and Measure B of 2004 Special taxes which expire at the end of the 2006-07 school year. 

Director Nancy Riddle commended the fact that the ratings for Berkeley schools had gone up in this year’s report and added that this was a very positive sign for teachers in Berkeley. 

Goodwin added that Berkeley residents have been very supportive of these measures in earlier years and are very enthusiastic about them when they hear what these measures are going to be used for.  

Also on the agenda was Planning Assumptions for a Special Tax Measure under consideration to reauthorize Measure B of 1994 (BSEP) and Measure B of 2004. The board has asked for suggestions from the general public on how funds from these taxes can be used towards improvement of the Berkeley schools before they take any further decisions in June. “We are asking input from the public about how the money could be spent,’ said President Terry S. Doran. 

Vice President Joaquin Rivera said that he would like to see a funding model which would clearly state how much money was required for the projects that could not be funded under the current measures. The current increases in the parcel tax would result in a total increase of $19-20 million every year. 

Public Hearing 

Michele Rabken spoke on behalf of promoting arts education in Berkeley schools. “Arts education should be moved from the margin to the core. It is also important to provide development for teachers in the arts,” she said. Radkin also stressed that music programs need to be given wider support and that funding should be provided for full time visual arts programs. She also suggested an increase in the length of middle school days in order to accomodate arts courses. Among the other propositions Radkin spoke about were professional development of teachers, renovation of arts specific access areas, and collection of data on equibility of the arts program and how it can be improved.  

Luarie Polster stressed on the importance of providing quality arts education to every child in Alameda County and pointed out that there was a dire lack of arts education in elementary schools in Berkeley. “It’s amazing to see how a 4th grader’s attention span improves when he is involved in a drawing assignment. It’s rather unfortunate that the current survey does not support anything that would bring in funds to support the arts. We need to get some funding through the Parcel Tax that would boost arts education in schools,” she said. 

Barry Fike, President of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers called for better transparency in the allocation of funds recieved through Parcel Tax measures. “BUSD needs to be more transparent about what the funds are being used for -- be it the arts, libraries, or class sizes,” he said. Fike added that BFT has supported previous Parcel Tax measures and that they were ready to work together with BUSD to discuss new ideas on how to improve Parcel Tax measures. 

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Commuters driving by Martin Luther KIng, Jr. Way and Oregon on Wednesday morning had a chance to smile and wave again, this time not at one pair of hands but thirty. 

At exactly 7:45 a.m. members of Berkeley’s NAACP Youth & College Division and other residents celebrated the late Joseph M. Charles’ 96th birthday by donning bright yellow handgloves and carrying signs saying “have a nice day” and “keep smiling.” 

“A lot of drivers even stopped and shared Mr. Charles stories with us. Those who realized what we were up to broke into big smiles or honked back. It felt wonderful bringing back the cheer and goodwill into that little corner after almost 20 years, “ said Denisha DeLane, advisor to the youth division of NAACP and one of the event organizers. “I am overjoyed at the success of the event. Smiling is such a simple thing to do but so infectious. The moment people started rolling down their windows and saying ‘thank you’ I decided that I would have to do this every year.” 

DeLane added, however, that she did not want this to turn into a political event or to become a symbol for advocating political issues. “This is being done to build a happier neighborhood and to bring joy to the lives of people. He did it for us and we are doing it for him,” she said. 

Sara Bruckmeier, the Berkeley artist who painted Mr. Charles’ mural as part of the South Berkeley Shine mural project said that the event had helped put a lot of positive energy into the locale.  

Pamela Webster, who lives on Blake Street and was one of the first ones to join in the waving, said that a few ladies from the neighborhood were thinking of getting together and doing it on a regular basis. “I think it’s a great way to build neighborhood solidarity. It adds to the color of the place,” she said. l

The Albany City Council declined to tackle the White House Monday. 

Councilmember Robert Lieber introduced a motion calling on his colleagues to direct the city’s Social and Economic Justice Commission to “prepare a resolution calling for the full investigation, impeachment, or resignation of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.” 

But when Lieber moved for adoption, he was unable to get a second. 

“I am very, very disappointed,” Lieber said Thursday. 

Of the ten members of the public who spoke on the issue, five favored the resolution and five opposed. 

“Three council people spoke against it. They said they were for it in principle but felt this wasn’t the proper forum,” Lieber said. “But all politics is local, and if it doesn’t start here, where does it start?” 

Now that the council has voted against asking the commission to prepare a resolution, Lieber said he may draft up one on his own to introduced at a future meeting. 

“It’s very important,” he said. “They are going after our basic freedom, and they’re saying that human and animal rights activists are the most dangerous people in the U.S. It’s ridiculous.”

Cycling bandit 

A pistol-packing bicyclist confronted a 41-year-old pedestrian who was walking along the 3100 block of Woolsey Street about 1:15 a.m. Sunday, pointed his pistol and started demanding things. 

After scooping up his victim’s cash and cell phone, the bandit pedaled away on his green 10-speed. 

Hot prowlers 

Two occupants of a black Mercedes followed a 52-year-old resident of the 2600 Shasta Road into her home Wednesday afternoon, and while one distracted her with conversation, the other darted upstairs, rifled through her belongings and collected some cash, reports Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Steve Rego. 

The loss was estimated at $300. 

UC car clouts 

UC Berkeley police have issued a car clout alert. 

Car clouters—burglars who rob cars—have been busily at work on campus over the past month, reports campus Police Chief Victoria Harrison. 

Between Feb. 21 and March 21, police recorded 13 car clouts on university property, most of them in the southern and eastern parts of the campus. 

Harrison urged drivers to take their valuables with them and to carry extra copies of their insurance forms and registration to show officers investigating the crimes.”

When Councilmember Laurie Capitelli introduced new elements to a draft Landmarks Preservation Ordinance at a council meeting earlier this month with no notice to the public, some community members cried foul. 

Bringing in proposals at the last minute “wo rks against the public’s right to know,” said Berkeley resident Doug Buckwald, citing Capitelli’s last-minute additions to the draft law, considered a proper amendment by the city attorney. Buckwald made his comments from the floor during a question-and-a nswer session at the League of Women Voters countywide forum on open government Friday in San Lorenzo. 

The forum, which included panelists Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque and Berkeley City Clerk Sara Cox as well as representatives from other m unicipalities and experts on “sunshine” ordinances—local laws expanding state guarantees for access to government information and participation—comes just days after Berkeley’s draft sunshine ordinance was made public by Counclmember Kriss Worthington, wh o had sponsored a resolution approved five years ago to create such an ordinance for Berkeley. 

Known worldwide as a free speech leader, Berkeley lags behind Oakland, San Francisco, Contra Costa County, Los Angeles, Benicia and several other jurisdictions that have sunshine ordinances in place. 

However, now that a draft has been written, Worthington is fuming: “It’s worse than having no sunshine ordinance at all,” he said in an interview several days before the LWV event. The draft, prepared by Albuquerque, is a scaled-back version of a stronger ordinance written by former City Clerk Sherry Kelly, acting as a consultant, Worthington said. 

Central to Worthington’s critique is the remedies section of the draft law: those who believe the city has violated its sunshine ordinance would present their complaints to the city manager. If the manager does not validate the complaint, the citizen can appeal to the City Council, but no one can sue under the ordinance. 

“Having to appeal to the city manager is outrageous,” Worthington said, adding that without the right to sue, the ordinance has no teeth. 

Between sessions at the LWV workshop, Albuquerque defended the remedies provision in the draft law, arguing that most citizens would not file suit, as provided by the Brown Act, but might be more likely to go to the city manager for relief. She pointed out that under this plan, the manager would keep records of complaints. “If something is wrong, it will be fixed,” she said. 

Both Oakland and San Francisco sunshine ordinances empower citizens’ commissions to enforce the laws. Dan Purnell, executive director of Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission, speaking on one of the LWV’s panels, said people who believe they’ve been wronged “file a complaint with the Ethics Commi ssion and the Ethics Commission can enforce a remedy.” For example, he said, if a meeting is not properly noticed, the Ethics Commission could have the entire meeting repeated after proper noticing. 

Berkeley resident Carl Friberg queried the panel during a question and answer session about what he called “a secret agreement” between Berkeley and the University of California. He was referring to the settlement agreement between the city and the university last summer, in which attorneys on both sides ente red into a confidentiality agreement, preventing the content of the agreement from being made public until the settlement was finalized. 

Responding from the podium, Albuquerque explained that the Brown Act “allows settlement of lawsuits in closed session,” and that a suit [by Peter Mutnick] claiming violation of open meeting laws in that instance had been rejected in court. Another suit challenging the settlement, in which Friburg is a plaintiff, is still pending. 

In the earlier interview, Worthington n oted: “A good sunshine ordinance would have prevented the ‘secret’ deal having been done in secret.” Such an ordinance would mandate opening agreements to the public for comment before they are finalized, Worthington said, arguing that the draft ordinance is weak in this area. 

Other comments on perceived weaknesses in open government in Berkeley that came to the fore at the LWV forum included these: 

• Agenda item reports sometimes come to the City Council the same day (or hour) the council is asked to v ote on the item. In Oakland, such reports must be available 10 days before council meetings. 

• The city’s lottery system, in which only 10 names are selected for public comment before the meeting starts, prohibits many citizens from addressing the counci l. In Oakland, speakers have the right to address the council for two minutes before each item that the council takes up for action.  

Simply understanding the Brown Act and the Public Records Act as they are now written would be an enormous benefit to the citizens of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville, said Luanne Rogers, a local LWV member who attended the forum and spoke to a reporter as an individual, not representing the LWV.  

Rogers said she had learned much from the panelists and would ask the local LWV to consider preparing written information for citizens to help them understand their rights. “I’m sure the citizens of Berkeley don’t understand all the aspects (of the laws),” she said. 

According to Rogers, the Berkeley, Oakland and Albany LWV have not discussed crafting or supporting local sunshine ordinances. Oakland’s Sunshine Ordinance, approved in 1997, was largely written and supported by the Oakland League of Women Voters. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington will hold a community meeting to discuss a Berkeley sunshine ordinance, 7 p.m., March 27, fifth floor, 2180 Milvia St. . ?e

An agreement between the chief of the Oakland Police Department and the powerful Oakland Police Officers Association union to put more officers on Oakland’s streets at peak crime times delivers considerably fewer officers than first proposed by the chie f, and appears to do so at considerably greater cost.  

The police agreement was announced by OPOA and city officials last week, and helped to avert a proposed “state of emergency” declaration by the Oakland City Council that would have allowed Chief Wayn e G. Tucker to implement the plan without union approval. 

But as of Monday afternoon, many city officials did not have a copy of the agreement, even though it was the subject of widely covered press conferences by both the police officers’ union and city officials last week. Neither Councilmembers Jane Brunner and Desley Brooks had copies, nor did the public information officer for the Oakland Police Department. With the assistance of Brunner’s office, the Daily Planet was able to obtain a copy of the agreement from the office of the personnel director of the City of Oakland.  

It is scheduled to be presented to the Oakland City Council tonight (Tuesday) at the council’s regular meeting at Oakland City Hall beginning at 6 p.m. 

Under the agreement, only 64 on-call patrol officers will be available at peak crime times in the city. That is an increase from the present 35 but is fewer than the original 84 officers proposed by Tucker. 

In addition, while Tucker’s proposal would have sharply curtailed police overtime pay, the newly signed agreement between the chief and the union leaves the existing overtime structure in place. Police overtime costs the City of Oakland millions of dollars a year. 

A separate plan to form a tactical squad to put an additional 24 to 30 officers on Oakland streets during weekend hours was included in the agreement, but plans for the tactical squad formation had been announced by Chief Tucker’s office several weeks ago and had not been contested by the union. 

The Oakland Tribune reported union officials as praising Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and District 1 Councilmember Jane Brunner (North Oakland) for what the newspaper called “helping to broker the deal.” 

Oakland District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks, who first revealed the existence of Tucker’s deployment proposal at a PUEBLO meeting in Oakland earlier this month, criticized the agreement, saying, “I’m not clear why reducing overtime became a less important goal than continuing to give some people m ore money.” Noting that OPOA President Bob Valladon had initially rejected the chief’s proposal, Brooks said, “a week ago, Bob Valladon was saying that the chief’s plan would not work. What happened in a week? Does it work now because they have been promi sed more money?” 

Brooks called the agreement “the Raiders deal all over again.” 

Councilmember Brunner’s office could not be reached later on Monday to comment on Brooks’ statement. Neither Councilmember De La Fuente’s office nor a spokesperson for Mayor Jerry Brown’s office returned telephone calls related to this article. Oakland Police Lt. Pete Sarna, who wrote Chief Tucker’s original deployment plan, was also not available for comment. 

Though the agreement itself was widely reported last week, with press statements issued by the police union on Thursday and a city administration-sponsored press conference held on Friday, city officials would not comment on details as revealed in the text obtained by the Planet. 

Police Public Information Officer Rol and Holmgren said on Monday that “I’m looking for a final copy myself. I’m interested in getting one so that I can inform my officers.” A secretary in the office of City Administrator Deborah Edgerly said that copies of the agreement could only be obtaine d from Press Secretary Karen Boyd, who was “out for the week.” Councilmember Brunner’s office did not have a copy of the agreement either. 

Councilmember Brooks, who had not seen a copy of the agreement herself as of Monday, said that “I received a briefi ng on it on Thursday, but [officials in the city administrator’s office] wouldn’t give us anything in writing. They said they wanted it all to be released together on Friday.” 

The two page agreement itself does not detail the number of police officers to be reassigned to peak crime periods, nor does it mention how those officers would be paid for. 

But Chief Tucker’s original redeployment plan called for realigning the police department’s current three 8 hour shift plan to a series of overlapping shifts that would include some officers working five days a week for eight hours, some working four days a week for 10 hours, and some working three days a week for 12 hours. Under the current schedule, when more officers are needed for high crime times, they ar e allowed to work over their regular eight-hour shifts for overtime pay.  

Chief Tucker’s proposed overlapping shift schedule would have eliminated much of the need for overtime pay. That schedule does not appear in the new chief-police union agreement, a nd thus appears to be a casualty of the negotiations. 

ii

Something’s foul at the Alternative High School. 

During the heavy rains, water seeped into some classrooms, soaking carpets and leaving a moldy stench in its wake, a school health specialist said. The flooding has been recurrent, she said, but only now is the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) doing something about it. 

“It smells very bad,” said Milana Russin, 17, a student at the alternative school. “I remember I had to sit outside the classroom, it was so bad.” 

Russin’s English class accumulates water from both an overhead leak by the blackboard and water creeping up from the ground that leaves one- to three-foot wide puddles, she said.  

“I think there’s some drainage issues outside the classroom, because when it rains, all the water runs toward my classroom and just seeps in,” said Russin’s teacher, Andrea Pritchard. 

Alternative High School Principal Victor Diaz enlightened the district’s facilities department about the water seepage some two weeks ago, said Facilities Director Lew Jones. 

But Joy Moore, who educates students on health issues at the alternative school, claimed flooding has gone on much longer, and both Diaz and the school’s former principal have complained to the district. 

Diaz did not return calls to check that out.  

Jones said it is possible that Director of Maintenance Rhonda Bacot, who resigned a few weeks ago, knew about the high school’s flooding and odor problems. Jones is assuming Bacot’s position until a new maintenance chief is hired. 

Moore fears the flooding affects the well-being of her students, particularly those who are sensitive to allergens. 

“My point is, even if I help them eat better, exercise, get healthy, I send them back into classrooms that could trigger asthma,” she said. 

Pritchard confirmed that a few students have reacted badly to the odor. 

“I have some asthmatic students and there were one or two days when students refused to come into the classroom because of the smell,” she said. She does not, however, have any reason to believe this poses a health hazard, she said.  

The district has not yet conducted an assessment to determine possible health effects. 

The facility was completed in winter of 1999-2000. It comprises about 10 portable classrooms bookended by permanent buildings on Martin Luther King Jr. Way at Ward Street, and plays host to an additional BUSD campus, the Independent Study program. 

Independent Study Coordinator Mary-Louise Newling said water buildup is affecting her buildings, too. 

Though water does not typically infiltrate the program’s classrooms, she said there is some accumulation by the bathrooms. 

“This has been an ongoing problem,” she said. “My concern is there’s a smell at certain times in the bathrooms, and I’m concerned what the water is doing to the [building’s] foundation.” 

Maintenance staff visited the site on Friday, Newling said. Jones expects a full assessment to take place in the next 10 days or so. 

“We’re following up on it,” he said. 

Until then, the exact cause of the leakage remains a mystery.  

Urban legend points to the existence of a buried creek meandering beneath the school, said Ecology Center Executive Director Martin Bourque, which would explain why the site’s soil is perennially muddy. Lime treatments and other preventative measures were ordered up during the planning process to ready the soil for development, Jones said. But it may not have been enough. 

Drains in the area need a revamp, Bourque said. 

“They knew about the drainage issues, they just didn’t do a very good job designing [the school],” Bourque said.  

The lead architect for the project has since retired. Other project developers could not be reached for comment by press time. 

As for a solution, “My understanding is you can either look at where new drains need to be put. That’s the expensive route,” said Bourque. “Then there’s the band-aid solution which is where you can put in sandbags” and other stopgaps. 

Newling said the site is already fortified with water bags, and that a recommendation for new drains and pumping to move water away from district buildings was put forth.  

“I’m hoping we can get this remedied,” she said. “It smells, it’s bad for the foundation and there’s the possibility of mold.”

The Gaia Building, the heart of one of Berkeley’s longest-running political and cultural dramas, is heading back for another look by the same city panel that approved its construction. 

While no formal action is planned for Thursday night’s meeting, a majority of the city’s Zoning Adjustment Board members indicated earlier this month that they’re very unhappy with what’s been happening with the first two floors of the building at 2116 Allston Way. 

The immediate issue is the forbidden use of one of the structure’s two “cultural bonus” floors, for which developer Patrick Kennedy was allowed to add two more floors of apartments above—making the entire structure two floors higher than the five otherwise permitted. 

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB), which approved the construction, will hear a city staff report on the use of the mezzanine Thursday from Deputy Planning Director Wendy Cosin. 

The report outlines a variety of options available to the board, with possible alternative findings that declare that the use of the floors either does or does not conform with policy and past ZAB and staff decisions. 

But City Manager Phil Kamlarz, in a letter dated March 15, written to the City Council in response to concerns from city councilmembers, repeated determinations by city fire and building inspectors that use of the mezzanine floor has been in violation of city permits. 

Kennedy “did not have the required permits and approval to use the second floor of the Gaia Building after December 16, 2005,” wrote Kamlarz. 

Furthermore, he said, the building lacks the required permit to allow occupants to run a catering business there, and no permits were sought for two rooms that were constructed on the mezzanine level. 

In addition, a rock concert held on the ground floor may have violated the area’s maximum capacity limit, which sets legal occupancy levels for public assembly and meeting rooms—and the Fire Department was notified by another tenant that the posted occupant load sign for the ground floor theater space had been changed from 96 to 222 without the department’s approval. 

When ZAB members had their initial look at the flap earlier this month, they were nearly at the point of taking action before they were reminded that no hearing had been scheduled nor had any notice of pending action been circulated. 

Thursday night’s discussion also won’t result in any action, but a board majority indicated earlier this month that they wanted to do something. 

Cultural wars 

The cultural bonus first appeared in the city’s 1990 downtown plan, but because no formal statute was enacted offering a precise definition of the term and the qualifications for its use, application has been more art than science. 

“The Gaia Building was our first application,” said Principal Planner Debra Sanderson, who serves as secretary to ZAB. “We learned a lot from the experience.” 

The tallest structure built in the city center in decades, the Gaia Building was erected only after a political and legal battle waged between developer Patrick Kennedy and preservationists. 

By agreeing to provide a 10,000-square-foot “cultural facility” on the ground floor and the mezzanine above, with the New Age Gaia Bookstore as tenant, Kennedy was allowed to add two additional floors of apartments. 

Opponents argued that the building was simply too massive, and that construction would require demolition of a historic Berkeley building—the old Berkeley Farms creamery. 

When it came time for a demolition hearing before the Zoning Adjustments Board at a Nov. 13, 1997, hearing, Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Chair Robert Kehlmann had sent formal notice that the commission had found by an 8-0-1 vote that Kennedy’s building was too bulky and massive, and would adversely impact on the adjacent Roberts Studio Building, a city landmark built in 1934. 

Future Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O’Malley and Doris E. Willingham, writing as members of the Committee for Neighborhood Preservation, opposed the demolition on the grounds that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act. 

When the demolition was nevertheless approved on May 6, 1997, the LPC acted again, using the provisions of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance on June 1 to declare the former creamery building a “structure of merit,” a landmark designation that takes into account subsequent alterations to the original building. 

Despite an appeal by the LPC and LPC commissioners O’Malley and Burton Edwards, the City Council voted to approve the demolition, which was completed in September. 

But the building’s would-be tenant, the Gaia Bookstore, was already defunct, thanks to New Age book buyers, who had abandoned bricks and mortar stores and transmigrated to the more ethereal World Wide Web. 

Tenants 

One of the central disputes centers on just what is the cultural bonus, and how can a building owner use the space thereby created? 

In approving the cultural use space for the Gaia Building, ZAB had issued a specific finding that “cultural facility” could mean a for-profit business, with the board to determine just who did or did not meet the requirements. 

With the bankruptcy of the bookstore and his would-be renter gone, Kennedy sought other tenants to fill the two empty floors. Two theatrical troupes considered leases but were unable to come up with the hefty sums needed to finish out the interior, a barren expanse of concrete, steel, ducts and coverless walls and ceilings. 

Kennedy was also the landlord to Anna de Leon, who operated Anna’s Jazz Cafe in one of the developer’s earliest buildings, at 1801 University Ave., and he contacted her about moving into his newest building. 

De Leon closed her cafe in early 2003 in anticipation of the move—a wait that was to last two years before she was finally able to open in the Gaia Building in May 2005. 

Another prospective tenant was Glass Onion Catering, a West Berkeley firm. Co-owner Gloria Atherstone emerged as the firm’s public voice before ZAB and in letters to the press. 

During the ZAB meeting earlier this month, both Atherstone and de Leon said they and Kennedy had a tentative agreement about the use of the space. 

But the plans fell apart, and de Leon was left with her restaurant—which finally opened last spring—and Atherstone and her husband Thomas took over the remainder of the space, including most of the ground floor and all of the mezzanine. 

Atherstone has been running private catered events in the building, and as a principal of Gaia Arts Management, has been renting out space for concerts, theatrical performances, fund-raisers and other events. 

De Leon protested to the city after she said crowds from private parties in November 2005 and last January disrupted events at her club, and again during a Feb. 11 six-band rock concert which found more than 100 sometimes rowdy youths on the sidewalk outside, upset because there was no more space inside. 

She, Atherstone and Kennedy all appeared at the March 3 ZAB meeting, where Kennedy and Atherstone depicted the troubles as a business dispute—an argument that seemed to convince a minority of the board, including Robert Allen and Jesse Anthony. 

“I think they can work this out,” said Allen. 

Conflicting visions 

But the larger issues remain and the board majority seemed to agree that something needs to be done about what’s happening in the building. 

“Could we set this for modifying the use permit so that this board sets the performance standard rather than having it be reset by the staff?” asked ZAB Chair Chris Tiedemann. 

As it stands now, city planning staffers, including former Planning Director Carol Barrett and Wendy Cosin, have expressed the opinion that the Gaia Building’s culture space needs to be used only by performance-related activities 30 percent of the time, with the remainder available for whatever permitted use the tenants chose. 

ZAB member Dave Blake said he had understood that the figure meant that 30 percent of the time the floors were in use they would be used for performances, and the rest of the time would be for related activities. 

De Leon said she had come up with the 30 percent figure in a letter to Cosin at Cosin’s request. 

She said it was because Cosin told her that typical performance venues devoted 30 percent of their time to shows and the remainder to preparing for them and related purposes—a significantly different interpretation than has since been applied. 

In a parallel effort, board members, the Civic Arts Commission and others will be taking a longer look at the bonus itself and what it means. Another group that may be looking into the bonus is the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee, which is charged with helping to prepare a new plan for the downtown area—including the arts district—as part of the settlement of the city’s suit against UC Berkeley stemming from the school’s Long Range Development Plan. 

Another edifice 

One of Kennedy’s most prominent supporters during his original fight to get the building built was Susan Medak, managing director of Berkeley Rep, which eight years later would become the largest recipient of “cultural bonus” work and performance space under the same law that enabled Kennedy to raise the Gaia Building above the five-floor downtown maximum. 

Medak called the proposal “an innovative approach to enriching the livability of our community” and “a model of innovation.” 

In approving the nine-story Arpeggio—formerly the Seagate Building—a luxury condo complex planned for 2041-65 Center St., city staffers said the developer was actually entitled to build to 14 stories downtown because of high construction costs, units reserved for moderate-income buyers and a total of 12,067 feet of cultural space. 

Most of the space would be used for rehearsals by Berkeley Rep, which has also agreed to rent out the hall at cost to other community groups for their performances. 

The use permits for the Arpeggio are much more explicit and restrictive, a result, Sanderson said, of the lessons the city is still learning from the Gaia Building.Æ

Berkeley police made the biggest pot bust in the department’s recent history Wednesday, and they wanted people to know.  

“This is huge for Berkeley,” said Public Information Officer Ed Galvan, who came into police headquarters on his day off to talk to the media. “This is the largest sophisticated marijuana-growing operation we’ve had.” 

Special Enforcement Unit (SEU) officers raided a converted West Berkeley warehouse at 809 Allston Way, arresting six suspects, and seizing 2,500 plants in various stages of growth and roughly 100 pounds of dried pot. Police also descended upon related operations in Oakland, Brentwood and Castro Valley, where they confiscated an additional 2,500 plants, cash and assorted firearms. A seventh suspect was captured in Oakland. 

In all, officers seized more than 5,000 plants and $120,000 in cash.  

Suspects face felony charges for cultivation of marijuana for sale and weapons. All will spend time in jail, Galvan said.  

The investigation was five months in the works, and corralled 21 officers from the SEU, Bicycle Detail and the Detective Division. All work was conducted internally.  

The raids were unrelated to a pot-candy bust in Oakland Thursday, Galvan said.  

At police headquarters Friday, a room was set up for media interviews and viewing of several high-resolution photographs mounted on poster board that depicted rows of plants, firearms neatly arranged like a jewelry collection and mug shots of the suspects, all white males between 23 and 34 years old. 

This is the fresh face of public relations at the Berkeley Police Department.  

“My job is to tout what we do well,” Galvan said, and the bust, unique in part because “everything went so smoothly,” is a prime example. 

“Anytime you take drugs and guns off the street, it’s a good thing,” he said.  

But whether Berkeley residents unanimously agree remains to be seen.  

Some would rather see the Police Department hone in on homicides, which claimed the lives of four youths in recent months. Two of those cases remain unsolved. 

In response to criticism, Galvan said: “We put more than 21 officers on both the homicides. There is only so much we can do. We can’t shake the students and say, ‘What did you see? What did you do?’ 

“There’s going to be a large part of the community who complains, ‘Why are you wasting time on drug wars?’” he said. “But a lot of hazards are related to it,” including fires ignited by grow lights, weapon use, robbery and murder. Galvan cited the 2003 murder of a young person in a pot-related incident in the Berkeley hills as evidence that marijuana is not a victimless crime. 

“The general population believes that marijuana is OK to have and to smoke and to grow in this town because historically we have not done a lot proactively, they think,” Galvan said. “But we’ve always been very proactive on marijuana grows. We’re not after one or two plants, but when you start having 200 plants, that’s more than people can use on their own.””

The City Council meets tonight, Tuesday, first at 5:30 p.m. as the Redevelopment Agency, then at 7 p.m., in its regular role. 

Both as Redevelopment Agency and as the City Council, the public officials will be looking at the Oxford Plaza/David Brower Center, slated, as part of the project, to provide 96 units of housing to people designated as extremely low, very low and low income. The city plans to use $1.5 million redevelopment money from the Fourth Street redevelopment area, though redevelopment money generally goes back into redevelopment areas. However, California law requires cities to use 20 percent of redevelopment funds to support low-income housing, so councilmembers will be asked to agree with city staff that the housing will benefit the project area.  

A staff report—released to councilmembers at 5 p.m. on Friday and to the press and public via the city website late Monday morning—says that the project will benefit west Berkeley “by improvement of the supply of housing available at an affordable housing cost to persons who work or live in the Project Area.” 

The delay in releasing the report upset Councilmember Dona Spring, in whose district the project sits. “It makes a controversial issue that much more difficult,” Spring said. “There’s so much money involved that the public needs oversight.”  

Housing Director Stephen Barton said the delay in releasing the report to the public was unavoidable, with various people reviewing the report. “Adding information seems to go on and on,” Barton said. He defended the late distribution to the public by noting that many times reports to the public come in late—sometimes they even come in at the City Council meetings, he said. 

(At the Daily Planet’s deadline Monday, another council item, regarding construction at Alta Bates Hospital, still had no staff report released to the public.) 

Warm Pool before voters? 

If this item is approved, the City Council will ask the School Board to add a $2 million item to the November parcel tax ballot measure to help fund a new warm pool at Berkeley High across the street from the school. The warm pool is used especially by disabled and elderly people. 

Upgrades for $3.8 million to the aging pool were approved by the voters in 2000, but subsequently the pool and the building that houses it were found structurally unsound. The School Board has indicated that it wants to build a new warm pool where the Berkeley High tennis courts had been. This will cost $6-$8 million. The City Council voted to kick in an extra $1 million and needs $2 million from the tax to complete the funding.  

Tritium glow 

Also before the council will be the phasing out of tritium signs in city-owned or leased buildings. These are the glowing exit signs used so that electricity outages won’t prevent people from knowing where building doors are located. 

The signs use tritium, which is the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, according to the city’s staff report. The tritium signs can break, although it is unlikely. Breakage could lead to adverse health effects and costly cleanup, the staff report says. 

Row row? 

The Berkeley High women’s rowing crew wants to practice at the Aquatic Park lagoon during winter months, which is the time of year when there is a great influx of waterbirds, including bufflehead, American coot and scaup. A staff report, citing a study on the winter waterbirds at the lagoon, recommends that the rowers could be restricted to a central lane in the middle of the lake and that vegetation on the sides of the lagoon could be increased to protect the birds. 

In a letter to the Parks and Recreation Commission, Samantha Murray of the Golden Gate Audubon Society, however, said the report was incomplete, having simply looked at the birds and ignored fish and other disturbing factors to the lagoon, such as other year-round paddling, rowing and water-skiing activities.  

“Taking a piecemeal approach to protecting wildlife and habitat is problematic because it acts to consider only one or two factors in a vacuum, independently of countless other interconnected variables,” Murray wrote. 

This item is for the council’s information only. No action will be taken..

Decision time is fast approaching for the hotly debated creeks ordinance, but Creeks Task Force members are still torn over how to regulate the city’s hidden waterways. 

After more than a year of deliberation, the task force has drafted recommendations to amend the 1989 ordinance, revised in 2002, that limits development on and near Berkeley’s creeks. Many questions remain, however, such as whether to consider Berkeley’s interred watercourses as veritable creeks—and therefore subject to regulation—or as storm drains. 

Currently, the ordinance forbids homeowners living within 30 feet of any waterway, open or underground, from rebuilding or adding onto their homes. In 2004, that was clarified to exempt homes destroyed by natural disasters. But for many residents, the ordinance merits a complete overhaul. 

That time has come. 

The task force will hold a joint public hearing with the Planning Commission tomorrow on the following recommendations, agreed upon by at least nine of 15 task force members: 

• Homes within 30 feet of a creek may be expanded vertically on a case-by-case basis.  

• Homeowners who plan to develop as much as 5 feet into the 30-foot setback must obtain an administrative use permit. Expansion beyond five feet requires a variance. 

• Repairs and rebuilding are allowed. Incentives may be offered to encourage rebuilding 30 feet away from a creek or more. 

• No new structures may be built within 30 feet of a creek. 

Daylighting, or the opening of creek culverts, may or may not be considered in the existing ordinance. If addressed, members recommend that all daylighting on private property be voluntary. 

The staff report, dated March 22, also says, “Creek culverts should be treated as storm drains for purposes of safety, access and maintenance.” 

At press time, however, the task force remained split on the issue. Members agree creek culverts should be managed differently; they’re just not sure to what extent. 

Task force representatives, composed of City Council and city commission appointees, in addition to community members, met Monday night to discuss the point and to flesh out additional concerns, such as what type of structure warrants regulation. The existing ordinance refers only to roofed structures. Unroofed buildings, such as patios, decks and bridges are still up for debate. 

Task force members have other demands. They want a city-funded creek coordinator who would provide general assistance to creekside homeowners, a guide on creek-friendly development and a citywide watershed assessment. 

Wednesday’s joint public hearing at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., will give community members an opportunity to express their opinions before the Planning Commission formally considers task force suggestions April 5. 

Commissioners must formulate a decision by April 26 to forward recommendations to the City Council by a May 1 deadline. If the commission is unable to reach a verdict by then, the inclusion of culverts in the ordinance’s definition of a creek will sunset. Creeks Task Force Secretary Erin Dando clarified that this will not occur automatically; the council will have to actually amend the ordinance.

At last Thursday’s Berkeley Transportation Commission meeting, the board unanimously passed a motion asking for a transportation services fee (TSF) to be approved by the City Council at its July 11 meeting. 

A second motion proposed that the fee not be assessed for the first six months after adoption, with one-third of the fee assessed during the following six months and two- thirds of the fee assessed in the next 12 months. After this 30-month adoption period the fee would be assessed in full. 

The TSF as originally proposed by city staff would be assessed on projects that generated new floor area over 1,000 square feet or on changes of use in major commercial districts that require an administrative use permit (AUP) or use permit (UP). The TSF would not be assessed on most changes of use (in which no additional floor area over 1,000 square feet is created) in neighborhood commercial districts, but would be assessed on residential projects if they created additional dwelling units. Affordable housing would be potentially exempted.  

Roland Peterson of Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District spoke against the TSF proposal. He pointed out that Telegraph Avenue currently had a very high level of commercial vacancies, and said that implementing the TSF would harm new businesses that were trying to move in. He gave the example of Blockbuster Video on Durant, which had been turned into a retail store and is currently vacant. 

Berkeley resident Claire Risley spoke in favor of the fee. “Discounts should be offered to people who use alternate forms of transit like bikes or walk. This is not a fantasy idea, a lot of cities are implementing it,” she said. 

Planning Commission Chair Rob Wrenn said that uncertainty about the kind of retail outlet affected could lead to the fee being tweaked. He also said that the fee would not affect stores that went from higher to lower levels of business.  

Transportation staffer Kara Vuicich rejected the idea of collecting fees in installments. They said that even though cities such as San Francisco collect large fees in installments, Berkeley did not have to do the same. “Our main aim is collection; we do not want the city’s resources wasted on collecting fees,” the staff said. 

Board members also stressed the fact that they wanted to make the fee as simple as possible so that business owners would be able to understand it and calculate their own fee without any problems.  

Board member Wendy Alfsen reminded fellow commissioners that a lot of jurisdictions that are more conservative than Berkeley had already implemented a TSF, and so it would not be a revolutionary move.  

UC Berkeley/City of Berkeley Long Range Development Plan Agreement 

Regarding the $200,000 payment that UC Berkeley provides annually to the City of Berkeley as part of a settlement agreement, Commission Chair Rob Wrenn said that there had still not been any decisions on what the TDM (Transportation Development Management) funds would be used for. He said that the exact nature of the use of the funds for the joint UC and city transportation development management and pedestrian improvement programs would be decided by the transportation commission subcommittee at the next meeting. 

Grants and staffing 

The board also voted in favor of the City Council adding a new staff position.  

Matthew Nichols, principal planner at Berkeley’s Office of Transportation, told the Daily Planet that “in view of the extraordinarily high number of grant applications that the Transportation Division of the Department of Public Works had developed, and the fact that these efforts have resulted in almost $9 million in funding to the city in financial year 2005-06, there is an immediate need for someone to take care of this.” Nichols, who is currently responsible for grants in the Office of Transportation, also stressed the need for someone to adequately carry out future fundraising and grant management projects, as well as bicycle, pedestrian, transit, traffic calming and TDM activities. Wendy Alfsen invited suggestions from the public about how this money could be prioritized. 

Traffic Analysis for MLK/University (Trader Joe’s) was taken off the agenda for the evening..

Aficionados of Himalayan cuisine can eat their hearts out tonight (Tuesday), knowing that they’re doing good by eating well. 

The occasion? A benefit at Taste of the Himalayas, the 1700 Shattuck Ave. restaurant owned by Rajen Thapa, a Nepali native who i s raising funds for the school he started in Itahari, a city between Kathmandu and Dharan in the mountain kingdom. 

“I started the Modern Preparatory Secondary Boarding School in a house in 1993,” he explains, with initial funding he had raised in Germany. He began with 125 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. 

Today, the school provides a comprehensive education—in English—for 800 students through the college preparatory level. Of the total, 125 are on full scholarships, many of them untouchab les who would otherwise be unable to obtain an education. 

“We have to raise the money,” Thapa said. “Otherwise the school will be closed down.” 

As it is, Thapa said he sends about $2,000 a month he makes through the popular restaurant back to Nepal to h elp fund the school, which a nephew is now running in his absence. 

Born in India, Thapa’s Nepalese grandparents left their homeland along with many of their compatriots who emigrated to work on the tea plantations of West Bengal. 

“I got a scholarship from the Tea Board,” he said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to school. School exposed me to the wider world, and it was there I decided to become a teacher.” 

Thapa decided to go to his ancestral homeland, settling in Itahari in 1983 at the age of 20 as a teacher of English and history. Within months he had been named first vice-principal and then principal of the school. He started his own school a decade later, and in the years since, more than 300 students have graduated. 

“I want my students to become first-class citizens of the world, outgoing, eloquent and confident. Many of them arrive after not thinking they’d ever be able to go to school,” Thapa said. 

Many Nepalese parents resist the notion of sending their children to school, believing their children should work, Thapa said. “‘Many of them say, ‘It’s always been this way: Why should it be any different.’ Others say they don’t want their children to learn to read and write because they don’t want them writing love letters.” 

Once accepted by the school, all students are provided with clothes, meals, texts and all school supplies, and they have a chance to work with computers. 

Another high-tech touch is provided by the parabolic solar collectors created by students and faculty from Emden University in Germany. The devices are used to provide the heat for cooking student meals, replacing the highly polluting wood stoves previously used. 

Those who attend tonight’s festivities will get to meet some of the graduates of Thapa’s school, including some who will demonstrate traditional dances. 

It was his success that sent Thapa to the Bay Area. In a country riven by political dissent, with traditionalists opposed by Maoist revolutionaries, Thapa’s high profile as a modernist was a ttracting unwanted attention and he was granted political asylum by the United States. 

In Berkeley, where several former students attend the university, he began as an employee of the restaurant, and a year ago he was able to buy it—the occasion of tonight’s celebration. 

Festivities will be held from 5 to 10 p.m., and all are welcome, he said. Customers who arrive at the restaurant tonight won’t be charged for their meals. But voluntary contributions they give will all go toward the school, he said. 

Photo by Richard Brenneman 

Berkeley residents who dine at Rajen Thapa’s Taste of the Himalayas may not realiize that some of their tab is helping to educate children at a Nepalese school founded by the restaurant’s owner. A benefit tonight (Tuesday) is open to all starting at 5 p.m.

More than 75 percent of Berkeley voters would support a renewed school parcel tax, a new survey says. 

Wednesday, the Berkeley Board of Education will hear results from a telephone survey conducted by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research that asked 600 likely voters earlier this month whether they would endorse a new parcel tax and where they would like that money to go. 

The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) wants to place a measure on the November 2006 ballot to succeed the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project and Measure B of 2004, both scheduled to expire at the end of the 2006-2007 school year. 

Combined, the two measures provide BUSD with about $19 million to maintain reduced class sizes, library services, music classes and other programs. 

According to the new study, 78 percent of those surveyed said they would vote in favor of a measure that would replace the existing tax level. Slightly fewer—77 percent—said they would support a $63 tax raise. 

The measure would need a two-thirds majority vote to pass. It would sunset in 10 years.  

A comparable study for Measure B in 2004 found that 75 percent of those surveyed supported the tax. Voters passed Measure B by 72 percent.  

The survey, which was conducted in English and Spanish, also asked respondents to rank school programs they deemed most important for funding.  

Class size reduction, teacher training, academic enrichment for high achievers and academic tutoring topped the list. 

Longer school days and school years, landscaping and free school lunches were branded least important. 

The proposed measure would levy a tax on private properties at approximately 23 cents per square foot and on commercial properties at 34 cents per square foot, yielding a total of $19.5 million. The rate would increase with annual cost-of-living adjustments.  

Low-income seniors would be eligible for exemption.  

The Berkeley Board of Education meets Wednesday at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, at 7:30 p.m., to hear the voter research report and terms of the suggested bond measure..

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2006 which was passed in February 2006 by Congress and signed by President Bush included language that essentially overturned the Rosales v. Thompson decision handed down by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The decision in Rosales broadened the eligibility criteria for federal foster care funding under Title IV-E, which enabled children to be found eligible for Title IV-E.  

The Deficit Reduction Act thus narrowed the eligibility criteria again, meaning that fewer children would be eligible for federal funding. 

Cathy Senderling, senior legislative advocate at the County Welfare Director’s Association of California (CWDA), said that the cuts would be very unfortunate. “For children placed with relatives, the difference could be great. As an example, consider two siblings aged 7 and 10 who are placed with a grandmother who is also needy. Under the Rosales court decision, if those children were found eligible for federal foster care, the family would be able to receive a payment of $1,330 each month using a combination of foster care funds and our CalWORKs cash assistance program (the state’s welfare program). If Rosales no longer applies, this family would lose the foster care payments for the two siblings, and instead get a CalWORKs grant for a family of three. Their new monthly payment is $703—a loss of $607 a month, or $7,284 a year,” she said. 

Senderling added that this was a substantial difference for a low-income family that was trying to make ends meet in the first place. “Our relative caregivers are often needy themselves and are willing to where they have been abused and neglected, but they must be able to feed, clothe, and shelter those children. Relatives are the placement of choice because they keep children connected to their broader families as well as to their friends, schools and communities. If we are not able to find a relative who is willing and able to take in these children, they may be separated from their siblings and moved far away from their communities and schools to live with caregivers they have never met before. We very much value our licensed, non-related foster parents, but both federal and state law—as well as best social work practice— dictate that we look first to the child’s family to find someone they already know who can care for them.” 

If this kind of money is lost by caregivers, placements could be destabilized, making it more difficult for CWDA to find relatives who were willing and able to care for children. This is one of the main reasons why the federal budget cut is such a problem.  

“We believe that the federal government should share in the cost of caring for children who have been abused and neglected and should be helping us find quality caregivers for these children by broadening the criteria for children to be eligible for federal funding—not making it even more difficult than it already is to find good caregivers,” Senderling told the Daily Planet. 

Carol Collins, Assistant Agency Director, Department of Children and Family Services, Social Services Agency of Alameda County, said that the cuts would prove devastating for both children and families alike. “Child foster care is very underfunded in the first place. Any proposed cuts makes us even more fearful of the situation. We are anxiously awaiting to learn how these cuts would affect foster care in Alameda County.” 

Children who go into foster care are usually those who are removed from their immediate family because of abuse or neglect. They are then placed preferably with a blood relative or a temporary parent who if found eligible, receives federal funding for the child’s care until the child can be reunited with his or her parents. Collins said that as a result of these cuts, relatives would find it difficult to provide foster care which would result in the child going into the care of a total stranger.  

Presently, there are legislators and advocates who are lobbying against this new law. “Because of the cuts, we will have to increase the number of county-licensed foster homes. We have put together a massive effort and are working with different faith organizations, churches, faith leaders, and foster parents from congregations to prepare for this,” she said. 

Collins added that although the highest concentration of foster children were in East and West Oakland and South Hayward—all three having the highest numbers of economically deprived families—foster care in Berkeley would also be affected. “It is rather unfortunate that foster child care is not being given a high priority. These are the ones who are abused and neglected and need the most care and protection that they can get. It is sad that they are not seen as an important enough priority by the government.” she told the Daily Planet.  

Alameda County currently has a total of 3,000 foster children. 

The Social Service Agency of Alameda County is responsible for providing foster children in Berkeley with placements in either the city or outside. Children from a different city are also provided foster care placements in Berkeley. The city is responsible for providing only healthcare and other services to those who are already eligible for foster care in Berkeley.  

According to Julie Sinai, senior aide to Mayor Tom Bates, the cuts will impact foster care services in the city as well. Although the exact nature of the cuts is not yet known, the mayor is very supportive of the children who are in the foster care system. Some of the services that are provided to foster kids in Berkeley are MediCal, free lunches in school, and mental health services. “We haven’t got any announcements yet from the Alameda County Social Services Agency about the effects these cuts will have on our ability to care for these kids,” Sinai said.  

Sinai also acknowledged the fact that the foster care system was “seriously underfunded and underresourced,” and that “a budget cut at the federal level would not be doing anyone any good.” She added that the kids who went into foster care at a young age were the same kids who were turned out into the streets with zero resources at age 18. “They become Berkeley’s homeless youth. Currently the city is working on permanent placement programs like Homeless Connect (scheduled to take place on April 3) and reunification projects like Homeless Bound to help these kids out.” ?

Richmond-based robbers 

Police have arrested six Richmond youths in two apparently unrelated Berkeley robberies, one Friday and the second on Sunday. 

In the Friday incident, two strong-arm bandits confronted a 14-year-old Berkeley woman at 1799 Grant St. and robbed her of her iPod. Thanks to a quick response by police, officers were able to find the robbers and recover the stolen music player. The two bandits were taken to Juvenile Hall. 

In the second, and more serious, incident Sunday evening in the 2600 block of Ellsworth Street, a gang of four youths, one armed with a handgun, jumped and pistol-whipped a 22-year-old Berkeley man before robbing him of his wallet and cell phone. 

Though the victim’s glasses were knocked off during the assault, he was able to describe the gang’s getaway car—which an alert officer spotted heading westbound on University Avenue moments later. 

A quick search of the vehicle turned up the stolen property, and after a quick “roll-by” ID by the robbery victim, the four teens were hauled off to Juvenile Hall. 

Their victim was taken to a local emergency room, where he was treated and released later that evening, said Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

Armed heist? 

Two men, one of them professing to have a pistol, convinced a 20-year-old Berkeley man to give up his cash—less than $40—after the pair confronted him at 2429 College Ave. just after 11 a.m. Tuesday. 

Soda heist 

A gang of 10 or so youngsters, possibly students at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, confronted another youth near the corner of University Avenue and Bonar Street and demanded the can of soda he was carrying. 

The youth submitted after one of the gang shoved him, an act that turned a simple act of menacing into a robbery under California law. 

No arrests have been made said Officer Galvan. 

Robbery 

Two men, one possibly in his late teens and the other about 10 years older, shoved a silver handgun at a man near the corner of Bret Harte Road and Keith Avenue at 8:30 Friday night and forced him to hand over his wallet and car keys. 

Officer Galvan said the victim was a Berkeley man in his 30s. 

Car torched 

Somebody torched an abandoned car at 2120 Canyon Drive in Tilden Park just before 10:30 Friday night, said Berkeley’s Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

While Berkeley firefighters responded to the blaze—which was quickly extinguished—the arson investigation is being handled by the East Bay Regional Parks District Fire Department because the blaze occurred within the boundaries of Tilden Park, said Orth. 

Frat shutdown 

Firefighters summoned by police who had responded to a complaint of a noisy party shut down a fraternity’s St. Patrick’s Day party on Piedmont Avenue at 11:42 p.m. Friday. 

Orth said the shutdown was ordered because more than 300 were in attendance and minors were spotted imbibing alcoholic beverages.Â

One of the few jokes I can remember is the one about the drunk who staggers from the bar to his car, only to realize that he’s dropped his keys somewhere. A friend comes across him two hours later, on his hands and knees under the lamppost on the corner. “Why are you still looking here?” the friend asks. “You must have dropped them nearer to the car.” The drunk responds that it’s too dark to see the keys on the ground near the car, which is why he’s still looking under the lamppost, where it’s easier to see. 

I thought of this joke on Monday night, when we came back to our car from an evening enjoying the sensational Sista Kee, aka Kito Gamble, at Yoshi’s.  

Talk about stupid. We’d arrived just before 8, late and in a hurry, too much of a hurry to negotiate the parking structure when there were plenty of places on the street.  

Why were we late? I’d just finished signing off on the Daily Planet for Tuesday, the one which led with Jesse Taylor’s story about how the “increased police presence on Oakland streets” will be less than meets the eye. We knew from reading his previous stories that at present, when it’s near time for police shifts to change at midnight, crime in Oakland goes up because police street presence is down. But we parked on the street anyhow, because we were in a hurry. Big mistake. 

We got back at midnight to find that some jerk had smashed the window of our car and tried to steal the radio. He couldn’t pry it out, though he did destroy it. In the process of trying he managed to rip out most of the stuff in the dashboard, including the heater controls, to the tune of (as we later learned) about 800 bucks. No police anywhere in sight, and we didn’t bother to call them, because why? They wouldn’t do anything.  

Another story in Tuesday’s Planet was the big pot bust in Berkeley. Five months, 21 officers, 5,000 marijuana plants, 100 pounds of dried weed and some arrests. Was it worth it? And the federal raid on marijuana candy sellers in Oakland last week? Are we safer yet? 

Who’s the drunk searching under the lamppost in these incidents?  

You might think we were, foolishly choosing the easy on-street parking place when there was a patrolled garage available, and you’d be right. But how about our law enforcement officials, spending a whole lot of time and money keeping the world safe from marijuana vendors since they’re pretty easy to find, while neglecting much more serious crimes like thefts and murders? These events took place in different jurisdictions, it’s true, but the bottom line is, it’s our tax dollars at work where it’s convenient, and not at work where we need them to be.  

In Oakland, the police chief had proposed a plan for re-structuring shifts for officers which made a lot of sense. It’s too bad the Oakland City Council dropped their big stick and gave their blessing instead to what amounts to expensive cosmetic changes in assignments instead of more officers on call when they are needed. All the taxpayer-funded incentives which have gone into making Jack London Square, where Yoshi’s is located, more attractive for visitors and new residents will be wasted if there aren’t enough police around the area (just a couple of blocks from a police station) to make sure that locked cars are relatively safe on the street most of the time (not to mention pedestrians.) 

And what of the hapless thug who couldn’t even steal our radio successfully? Even if there were more police officers on the street, and even if they arrested more would-be thieves like him, what then? Prison, perhaps?  

A somber New York Times story on Monday detailed the trajectory of a substantial percentage of young black men, like many in Oakland, who haven’t got much going for them as they become adults, and who turn to crime because they have no education and no alternative vision of how to make a living. The story notes that “among black dropouts in their late 20’s, more are in prison on a given day—34 percent—than are working—30 percent—according to an analysis of 2000 census data by Steven Raphael of the University of California, Berkeley.” And incarceration in California does nothing to improve the young men who experience it, except perhaps sharpen their criminal skills, so that when they come out they know better ways to steal car radios, and can go back to prison quickly. Not all thieves are men, and not all are black, but if you’re a young black man you start out with the odds stacked against you, and they don’t get better.  

Someone once chided a Frenchman in my hearing about the high rate of unemployment in the French welfare state. “Ah,” he said, “you have unemployment that’s just as bad as ours. You call it ‘prison’, that’s all.” 

And for that matter, what will become of the young white men who were busted for marijuana cultivation in Berkeley, Brentwood, Castro Valley and other suburban enclaves last week? The kind of sophisticated factories that they were operating cost a pretty penny to set up and produce substantial revenue for investors. Seized cash alone came to $120,000. Typically what happens in situations like this is that well-connected white pot growers manage to avoid doing much time, unlike the black street kids picked up for simpler crimes who don’t have the same economic base and access to lawyers.  

The enormous investment of time and money which it takes to arrest marijuana producers nets little benefit for our society as a whole. The whole equation is skewed. Both the “victim” and the perpetrator of interpersonal crimes like breaking into my car turn out to be victims at the end of the day. If we’d use the vast sums of money spent on prisons and the war on drugs for trying to change the lives of those young men who have been left behind in today’s world, we’d all be safer.  

When it comes to dealing with crime’s causes, effects and cures, our society looks a lot like the drunk searching for his keys under the lamppost, doing what’s easy and not tackling the more important but harder tasks.  

P.S. There were Thursday morning news reports that the Santa Cruz police have been reprimanded by an outside auditor for dressing up like surfers and infiltrating meetings of an artists’ group planning a New Years Eve parade. There’s plenty of crime in Santa Cruz, too, while their police are playing dress-up.  

i

In this space on Friday we talked about how the major newspaper chains have been taken over by the Wall Street investment model, wherein profits must continually be maximized, and where papers and chains of papers have been dumped when profits dip to 19 percent. On Sunday night we attended a forum at the lately resuscitated Hillside Club, where the enterprising Sylvia Paull had convened a panel to discuss this proposition: 

“Bloggers and podcasters are suspicious of elitist big media and view the democratizing force of digital technology positively. In contrast, many traditional journalists regard most blogs, wikis and podcasts as amateurish and narcissistic. We wonder if expertise is, by definition, elitist. And we ask if expertise and elitism might indeed be necessary features of a high-quality media.” 

Panelists for what she calls a “Cybersalon” included New York Times technology reporter and author John Markoff, BlogHer cofounders and bloggers Jory des Jardins and Lisa Stone, blogger/podcaster/digital reporter Steve Gillmor, and Joshua Greenbaum, who writes for trade journals about technical subjects. The audience was heavily populated by geeks whose idea of news is the latest wrinkle in electronic technology, but included a number of members who also have some connection to the real world, including reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle and the Contra Costa Times.  

The first pass through the panel produced the predictable encomiums for the democratization of information which the Internet has produced, tempered a bit by Markoff’s observation that the people have not yet seized the reins of power. He drew on his pre-journalism sociological studies of power structures with the likes of C. Wright Mills and Bill Domhoff to observe that if anything power is more concentrated than it was before. Last to speak was Josh Greenbaum, who aroused the ire of a good part of the audience with his mild and judicious comment that collecting information is costly, and someone has to pay for it—heresy to those who believe that everything is free in cyberspace. He mentioned the dread words copyright and patent, and there were dark mutterings on the floor.  

A lot of time was wasted in a discussion of what it might mean to be elitist, nothing any American would admit to being. The moderator, Andrew Keen, is a Brit, and as such had no problem with avowing elitism, but he was alone in this. The general consensus seemed to be that what is now called “Web 2.0,” the current state of Internet technology, offers a great way of disseminating information, but many were hazy on where the information is supposed to come from in the first place. They seemed not to be aware of newsgathering, the activity still conducted in most depth by newspapers. 

One commentator pointed with approval to the blogger Glen Greenwald, a lawyer who has evidently done a yeoman job of close textual analysis of legal documents about NSA spying on phone conversations. Markoff noted that he himself was raised on the work of I.F. Stone, who managed to find out much of what official Washington was trying to hide by studying documents, and was able to get the word out by mailing his printed newsletter, no Internet needed. He permitted himself a tiny gentlemanly smirk with a light reference to how the NSA documents got out in the first place: obtained by the New York Times. 

The question of who pays for collecting the news never really came up again. Markoff had earlier observed that Craigslist might be creating a drop in classified advertising revenues at the big papers, which might in turn lead to cuts in news staffing, but the topic didn’t interest anyone else in the room, save one questioner who asked about “corporatization” of major media and got little response. 

But this is a central question. Although there’s a lot of good stuff on the Web if you know where to look, much of Blogsville is inhabited by people who haven’t quit their day jobs, and have not much to offer except opinion within a narrow range of experience. Without a few people who are paid to find out what’s going on and to report it clearly, talk radio will continue to be the way most people form their opinions, with predictably bad results when it comes time to vote. Poor Craig Newmark, who’s only trying to do something useful, shouldn’t get all the blame for the decline in newspaper advertising, since advertising of all kinds in print media is shrinking.  

The loyalty that many local businesses used to feel to their local press has declined. Recent letters that the Daily Planet’s advertising sales staff have passed along to the editorial department clearly illustrate that mindset:  

Thanks for thinking of Berkeley Rep. I want to be candid with you and report that Berkeley Rep has no plans to advertise in the Daily Planet now or in the immediate future. We know that many of your readers are Berkeley Rep patrons, but we believe that we are reaching those audiences already through other means—none of which includes local print like the DP, Berkeley Voice, East Bay Monthly or East Bay Express. Sorry to disappoint. 

Our sales staffer asked the writer how he reaches his target audience, and he replied: 

We reach our patrons through direct mail, outbound e-mail and through ads in the major print dailies (primarily the Chron, also the CC Times and Oakland Trib for the moment). We use radio, especially KQED, and some television. Our non-subscriber patrons come usually once or twice a year. They come from all over the Bay Area including Marin, SF, the Peninsula. Less than half our audiences comes from Berkeley. They are, as you can imagine, educated and culturally literate. They are middle class and wealthy, and middle aged or older. Of course we also have a younger audience in their 20s and 30s, and we continually nurture them. Hope this helps.”  

The writer is marketing director for the Berkeley Repertory Theater, a well-regarded cultural institution which has received millions of dollars in subsidies from Berkeley taxpayers. It is regularly reviewed by the Daily Planet and listed in our calendar. Honesty compels us to admit that for a hot minute we were strongly tempted to drop the free calendar listings and reviews, but our editorial loyalty must continue to be to our readers, unaffected by the whims of advertisers.  

And we appreciate his own honesty. His letter helps us come to terms with what a challenge we’re facing in trying to continue to bring a newspaper to a community like Berkeley, where the sense of entitlement is strong, and where noblesse oblige died long ago. But if advertising doesn’t pay for newspapers, and subscriptions haven’t paid for newspapers for more than 20 years, who’s going to? We doubt that it will be, for example, Berkeley taxpayers. In 10 years, Web X.x may be the only source of information, and that won’t be good. 

URBAN LEGEND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the “urban legend” that an underground stream exists near MLK and Ward, one need look no further than the 1878 Alameda County Atlas or the 1884 Oakland/Berkeley map by King/Dingee (real estate of course). 

In 1878 the area was undeveloped, owned probably by F.K. Shattuck.  

In the 1884 map, two streams meet at Shattuck between Derby and Ward. The combined stream runs southwest and crosses Ward between South Milvia (now Milvia) and Dover (now MLK). It runs down Stuart for two blocks past Ralston and Dwynell (now Grant and McGee). 

The 1899 USGS Topo suggests the creek is slightly to the south. The 15 minute USGS Topos from the 1940s show two streams meeting around Ward and Milvia and running to Grove park (where presumably it was culverted). The 7.5 maps from 1949 on don’t show any stream at all so it is possible they were culverted in the late ‘40s. The contours are much smoother than on the early maps, so I’d guess that there was a lot of infill. 

But don’t believe me, go look for yourself: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/histopo. 

John Vinopal 

• 

THE COST OF DAYLIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To daylight the culverted creek that runs underneath my house the city would have to the daylight the curve in Euclid Avenue after Eunice Street and put in a bridge. The city would have to tear down my neighbor’s house, my house, and the next three of my neighbors’ houses. Then they would have to dig up and remove the newly renovated playground and basketball court in Cordornices Park. The city would then need to remove the 60-foot man made embankment that supports Euclid Avenue and separates Cordornices Park from the Rose Garden. The city would then need to build a bridge over Euclid Avenue. Then the city would then need to tear down the Rose Garden and daylight the creek that is culverted beneath it. 

I’ll stop there, but you can imagine the path of destruction and reconstruction that would be needed to get this culverted creek daylighted all the way to the Bay where the state or federal government would need to also daylight Interstate 880. 

It’s time to get real and repeal this ridiculous creek ordinance. 

Scott Alexander 

• 

BOONDOGGLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The city’s Creek Ordinance would affect more than 2,400 homes adjacent to open creeks or located on top of or adjacent to culverted creeks in the city. The Creeks Task Force seems like it will recommend that these homeowners be subject to a series of highly restrictive measures—such as observing 30-foot setbacks on either side of a creek if any work is to be done on the property. This is a huge problem for homeowners, as many lots are completely encompassed in a 30-foot setback, making it close to impossible to get a permit for necessary repairs like replacing a rotten deck or a fallen-in garage.  

There are other serious problems with the ordinance. The city has drawn a map and list of the properties affected by this ordinance based on surveys of where creeks historically existed—many properties on the map and list are not adjacent to a creek while some properties with creeks are not on the list. The city is considering requiring that the property owners pay out of pocket themselves for a costly survey to determine the location of a culverted creek on their property in order for them to be removed from the city’s list. Shouldn’t this be the responsibility of the city, since many families are being notified for the first time that their property is located on top of decades-old culverts. 

The most stunning issue in the ordinance is that the city wants to make property owners financially responsible for repairing creek culverts, even though the open creeks and culverts function as the city’s storm drain system. This is prohibitively expensive—already one Berkeley homeowner has been forced to live in her car because a sinkhole from a collapsed culvert (partially on her property, partially in the street) will cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair. 

Why should this ordinance be thrown out? Because it’s bad public policy—it’s poorly conceived and unfair. It creates two classes of property owners in Berkeley: those without creeks, who can alter, add and repair their properties without the additional expense and time of prohibitive reviews. And those people currently on the creek list—families who lose out. The city will potentially prevent them from repairing a deck, adding a garage or rebuilding their house in case of an earthquake or fire all in the name of zealous environmentalism. The creek ordinance punishes young families and elderly homeowners whose home is their only asset, and it is misguided and divisive. Let’s clean up and attend to the health of our public creeks and leave those who have been good stewards of the environment all these years, and their properties, alone. 

Eric Armstrong 

• 

GAIA BUILDING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gloria Atherstone of the “Gaia Arts Center” accusing Anna De Leon of being manipulative is comic. Every use of the perhaps well-intended “cultural bonus” has depended on some naïve group being at least temporarily roped into the mix to provide cultural cover for pure greed. 

The “cultural bonus” has created so little honest art opportunity for the public, and so much graft, that there is no sensible way to fix it. The “cultural space” in a building ought to be dedicated to public arts amenities, as they were intended, not private groups who bicker over hours and square footage. 

And please, quit calling it the “Gaia Building” now that the bookstore which oiled the monstrosity’s creation is long gone. I suggest the “Gotcha Building,” or perhaps, “Patrick Kennedy’s Keelhaul.” 

Carol Denney 

• 

THE STENCH OF POLITICS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I urge you come November to vote out the incompetence. Linda Maio, Zelda Bronstein, and those on the Zoning Adjustments Board who are pushing the current West Berkeley plan of “saving the last of the industrial jobs.” The City of Berkeley does have the power to make Pacific Steel clean up its act once and for all. Stop trying to pass on the responsibility on to The Bay Area Air Quality Management District. It is called rezoning and shutting Pacific Steel down! Six hundred jobs lost to the thousands of us who also live and work in this neighborhood who breathe in their toxic second hand smoke on a daily basis. We pay taxes as well!  

Pacific Steel will never clean up its act. It is a dinosaur facility that no longer belongs in an urban densely populated environment. Pacific Steel will just drag things along for as long as possible in the name of self preservation. The owners of Pacific Steel are more then likely just laughing at us and thinking to themselves, “We made it through this before, let them throw law suites at us. We can pay a small fine or two, how about another air quality study that will keep them quiet for a little while. Besides we have Ignacio De La Fuente representing us. He will take care the heat and do some good PR work.” According to Ignacio De La Fuente, “That plant has been there 70 years and that plant has done everything to reduce emissions. This is a responsible company that has put in numerous resources to improve the quality of life for workers and for people who live in the community.” What BS! Enough with the Berkeley hypocrisy!  

How can our mayor call it a “green city” when we get smoked out of our backyards on a daily basis?  

Patrick Traynor 

• 

THINK AGAIN ABOUT UC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Think you live far enough away from UC in your quiet neighborhood that the university’s activities don’t have an impact on your daily life? Think again. Have you noticed the growing number of potholes, block-long fractures, and areas of crumbling pavement on many of our main streets? Some people seem to think this is normal wear and tear. Hardly. 

UC Berkeley’s virtually endless construction projects—beginning in the northeast part of campus, followed by the massive Underhill residence halls, and leading up to the latest behemoths of Stanley Hall and the huge Underhill parking structure—have all required significant excavation. Tons and tons of dirt and concrete debris have been hauled away in trailer trucks through our city streets, pounding and pounding our roadways, and severely damaging this important public resource. Other developments have played a small part, too, but UC is by far the biggest cause of this deterioration.  

It might be reasonable to expect UC to pay the cost of repairing some of this damage, or even be responsible for repaving the main arteries that its trucks travel on every day. Reasonable, yes—but not reality. UC uses public resources the old fashioned way: it just takes them. 

Holes in our streets mean holes in our city budget. Berkeley taxpayers pay for street repairs much sooner than would have been required because of UC’s overuse of our roadways. And this means that other important programs don’t get funded. It’s time UC was required to follow the lesson we all learned in kindergarten: clean up after yourself. Regardless of the cultural benefits that UC brings to our city, the university should be required to minimize, repair, or mitigate all of the damage it causes to the Berkeley community. 

Doug Buckwald  

• 

ZERO WASTE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last Saturday night, the folks at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, with the help of their friends, put on their monthly feed for 130 hungry people. Following the dictates of the City of Berkeley’s recently announced policy of “zero waste,” the staff sorted all materials into categories used at the Second and Gilman Street drop-off yard (e.g., aluminum foil, tin cans, bottles, cardboard/brown paper, etc.).  

By following the Oakland practice of mixing dirty paper products (napkins, drinking cups, etc.) with food stuffs, the staff was able to feed all these people with less than one pound of “garbage” which in this case consisted mostly of various types of plastics found in food packaging, cutlery, single serving Tobasco packets, bulk cookie trays, mylar cookie wraps, blister packaging plus some adhesives like name badge labels, and composites like a fiber tube of Parmesan coated with aluminum foil on the inside.  

Almost zero waste isn’t hard; you just have to pay attention.  

Arthur R. Boone 

• 

CALL FOR HELP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This Saturday morning when I went out to my car with my family there was a note on my windshield that said:  

“You let Juan Ramos bleed to death outside your home. 

Question: What kind of doctors would let a teenager die without offering to help? 

Answer: Your kind.” 

I live next door to the home where a young man was stabbed to death at a party that got out of control. I don’t know who wrote this letter. I don’t think they want me to know, because there was no name on it. I assume they meant it to upset me, and my family, and it did. 

The night this young man died I had no idea he was hurt, so I couldn’t help. It was upsetting to have this happen so close to my home. I admit, I assigned some blame at first, too. I was angry that no one who saw the stabbing yelled out for help or called 911. I’ve realized now that those kids who knew what had happened were probably too scared to think. I wish they had called out for help though. 

That night around 11 p.m. we realized there was a party next door. We were watching a movie on the other side of the house before and didn’t even know there was a party. We weren’t sure what you are supposed to do when your neighbor has a loud party. It seemed rude to call the police or go bang on their door. At 11:30 it got louder and I went outside to ask the kids to quiet down and go home. I was reassured by several kids on the sidewalk that everything was OK. They said the party was over and they were all going home. How could I imagine that somebody had been stabbed and nobody was yelling out for help. I still don’t know if they were trying to cover up what happened or just didn’t know themselves. I went back in my home.  

Now I know that a bleeding young man was probably being dragged down the street in the other direction at that time. The next several days I thought a lot about how someone can get stabbed right next door and we didn’t even know. Maybe even if they had yelled out help, maybe even if my husband and I and all the doctors and nurses on my street had been there to help, maybe we couldn’t have saved him. I’m not a surgeon. Even if I had been, I wouldn’t have been able to operate in the middle of the street. I would have called 911. The paramedics would have gotten him to the hospital faster. But I didn’t even know he was hurt. 

Aside from feeling threatened and hurt by the note on my windshield, it makes me worry that one of the lessons that needs to be learned from this hasn’t been realized: If you don’t call out for help, nobody can help you. I hope teenagers do realize that they are part of a community that wants to help them when they are in need. There is a street full of people who wish we had known what was going on, so we could have tried to help. There are paramedics who stay awake all night long hoping to help others. There are surgeons who spend years training so they can try to save people who have been stabbed. But none of us can know that someone is hurt if no one calls out for help. 

Name withheld 

• 

RATS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a native who has lived in the Bay Area most of my life. As such, I know something about the critters that inhabit this area, including rats. I don’t particularly like them but over time I respectfully have learned something about them.  

During this time of year, there is a rat problem everywhere, even in foothills of Berkeley. It happens whenever there is a lot of rain. This year there has been a lot of rain. So, these critters are coming up from the storm drains, and from the swollen creeks. Just like a bilge of a ship that is taking too much water, they are seeking higher and drier land. Contrarily, it’s their nature to stay in the bilge unless they are threatened by drowning.  

Before we spend a lot of money on exterminators, who may or may not pass on this information, look at what else helps to control the rat population. Cats, dogs, snakes, hawks and skunks are their natural enemies. Some of these other critters actually depend on the rats at this time of year to feed their young. And they have to live, too. Without enough of these critters eating rats, there is probably going to be more rats, at least until it stops raining. Remember, most of these creatures were here first, even before our ancestors arrived.  

Maybe we should stop and consider this. Has anyone seen any skunks lately? As I recall, this is the time of the year the skunks search around our garbage. And as soon they are able, they will bring their little broods with them for something to eat. And isn’t that where rats hang out? Sneaking though the ivy and agapanthus to get there, to surreptitiously get their needed staples, our leftovers in the garbage cans?  

Consider this that maybe the rats don’t like us either. Rather than put up with us, they are eating out in dangerous places, than go into extinction without a fight. Thus I think these are smart rats.  

Dea Robertson-Gutierrez 

• 

BAY BRIDGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Now that the bids for the final section of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge are being considered, perhaps we should start a campaign to preserve the existing eastern span, for logistic as well as historical reasons. It would be a backup bridge in the event the new one is a failure and it would be a nice place to walk or ride bicycles and picnic. Saving the old bridge would be a nice homage to the builders of the 1930s and a prudent effort perhaps, considering the problems we’ve had building a new one. 

Hank Chapot 

Oakland 

• 

ILLEGAL POT BUST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent pot bust in Berkeley was not merely a massive waste of police resources—it violated city law. It is against the Berkeley Municipal Code for Berkeley police to make arrests for violations of marijuana laws or to spend money for marijuana-law enforcement (BMC, Sections 12.24.040 and 12.24.050). The marijuana laws are required to be the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority (BMC 12.24.030). It is up to the City Council to ensure that the police follow these laws (BMC, Section 12.24). The council failed to do that in this case.  

Berkeley has real crime problems, from murder to rape to robbery. To these we now must add two others: a police department that disregards the law on marijuana arrests, and a City Council that fails to police the police. 

Martin Putnam  

• 

CREEKS ORDIANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I urge the City Council to strengthen the Berkeley Creek Ordinance. 

Hardscape surfaces built close to creeks accelerate bank erosion, permanently steepening adjacent slopes. By preventing rainfall from soaking into soils for gradual release, they also exacerbate flooding and bank erosion in downstream neighborhoods. New roofed construction should not be permitted within 30 feet of an open creek and a creekside vegetated buffer should be required so other construction such as parking lots are set back from creek banks. 

The city should develop incentives for property owners to daylight culverted creeks and better manage those that are open. It’s clear that armoring creek banks with concrete is damaging over the long term and should be prohibited. 

Please base your ordinance on good science, so that downstream property is protected and wildlife needs are accommodated. 

Mark Liolios 

• 

AIN’T NO SUNSHINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mayor Bates and his City Council buddies don’t have time for sunshine in government. They want to move their agenda with minimum public-right-to know and be off on vacation. 

At the March 21 City Council meeting a number of expedient maneuvers were in place to oil the tracks for the controversial $60 million Oxford Housing/ Brower project, and send it off without credible public process. So the Oxford Housing was first on a special 5:30 p.m. redevelopment meeting, at a special time. Next it appeared as two separate items on the consent calendar of the regular City Council meeting starting at 7:00 p.m. 

You should know the consent calendar allows no discussion. All items (22 this time!) are passed in one motion unless pulled by a councilmember and moved to the action calendar. 

Furthermore, controversial items, especially from Mr. Barton of the Housing Department, are often listed as “to be delivered” (TBD). This means they are not available in time for review and scrutiny, but are generally approved nonetheless. In this case the Oxford Housing item at the 5:30 special (redevelopment) meeting was TBD as was its City Council item number 17 on the consent calendar. Follow that? 

Councilmember Maio had recommended at the March 13 Agenda Committee that the Oxford Housing be put on consent and not on the action calendar (where discussion occurs). Maio has special interests in this issue because the developer, RCD (Resources for Community Development), is an organization she started. This project is considered pork barrel for the City Council majority of seven councilmembers endorsed by the left ideological slate BCA. 

Merrilie Mitchell 

• 

RAISING TAXES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s obvious that the City Council will only do what is politically advantageous to them. Property owners in the City of Berkeley haven’t figured out that they live in a Communist city (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need...). Why is it that every time the city needs money, the only thing that they can think of is to stick it to the property owner in terms of increased parcel taxes? What has the city been doing with the storm drain taxes which property owners have been paying for years? Wasting it on “nice to do” but totally non necessary items like building roundabouts along AllstonWay, setting out holiday decorations, and planting in the median strip along University Avenue? That’s so much easier to do than tacking the aging storm drains.  

I think even the city, once they get their heads out of the dark spot the heads are in, have to admit that the sewer system/storm drain system benefits everyone, not just property owners. So why are only property owners asked to pay for it? Because we’re deep pockets, that’s why. The appropriate way to finance this is by a sales tax, that way every one gets to participate in the cost. It’s my guess that the tree-huggers of the creeks group wouldn’t be nearly so anxious to daylight creeks if they also had to help pay for it.  

Since the city can’t seem to figure out how to get the money, here are some suggestions. Stop spending money on non-essentials as noted above. Get rid of the Berkeley Visitor’s Center, the Berkeley Historical Society, and close the city’s Health Department. The County of Alameda has a perfectly good Health Department which serves the rest of Alameda County. Anyone who reads the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Chronicle Watch” about what is broken in various neighborhoods has to have noticed that a lot of what’s wrong in Berkeley involves Public Works and Claudette Ford. Does everyone know Ford was fired by the City of Oakland?? So of course, the City of Berkeley hires her, right? Ford should be fired for her inability to run Public Works properly.  

All of the above should bring in a few million dollars and the city can use that money for sewers and storm drains. Heck, the city could even use the money they collect from property owners as storm drain money for storm drains—what a novel idea. Even the City of Oakland can do a better job than Berkeley is doing. It appears that Berkeley is the only city which demands that property owners repair any storm drains under their property. If there is another city in the Bay Area which makes this requirement of property owners, it certainly isn’t common knowledge.  

I think the Creeks Ordinance should be totally abolished and property owners should be able to do what they want with the properties they have worked so hard to purchase.  

D. Day 

• 

ENCOURAGE READING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

During my long career as teacher I have noticed that encouragement at the first sign of interest in reading goes a long way. Parents and teachers should be willing to bend rules and change routines so that a child absorbed in words is not disturbed. 

At university in Punjab I was free for five periods a day between the first and seventh periods of literature and philosophy classes. I would go to my nook in our seven-story university library, pull out a pile of books and settle in for reading. I would get so engrossed I would miss my seventh-period class. My department chair learned of my absences. He wrote a note to the librarian permitting me to check out 50 or 60 books if I wanted. I had expected a reprimand; instead I received the strongest encouragement. 

Romila Khanna 

• 

NO REDRESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Tenants suffering even the most obvious but unscrupulous scams at the hands of shyster landlords in Contra Costa County are tragically on their own and can expect no redress or remedies whatever from their local corrupt and self-pardoning officialdom. 

Case-in-point: 

At Civic Plaza Apartments in El Cerrito we exposed the fact that a clause of its rental agreement provides for a monthly flat-rate billing for the “shared allotment” of trash while the property’s billing company, National Water & Power, bills tenants for trash at not only a monthly variable but invariably increasing rate. 

Adding insult to injury the billing company (NW&P) based in southern California fraudulently masquerades as an actual utility company protected by state laws governing utility companies whenever confronted with tenant complaints concerning its supposed prerogative to charge additional punitive fees; to perpetuate its fraudulent prerogatives this billing company invariably resorts to quoting rules and regulations established by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which has absolutely no jurisdiction whatever over this billing company but which has also proved strangely indifferent to the fact that NW&P fraudulently claims CPUC protection as if it were an actual public utility entity (which it’s not). 

Clearly the case calls for civil class action litigation filed on behalf of all adversely affected tenants. 

Most recently though the matter was brought to the attention of James L. Sepulveda, senior deputy district attorney, Special Operations Division for Contra Costa Country. 

Unsurprisingly, Sepulveda disclaimed any jurisdiction over the matter and explained away his disclaiming apology with a long-winded rationalization, equivocating that NW&P misrepresenting itself as a public utility company violates no “criminal” law and that “fraud” in the state of California is not a crime per se but rather just a “civil theory” which he refers to as being “meaningless”—setting off the word “fraud” in quotes for added emphasis not once but three separate times. So Sepulveda asks rhetorically: “Why would we investigate?”   

Oh, silly me! As Sepulveda’s office resides in the fraud unit of the Contra Costa district attorney’s office within the Consumer Protection (civil—not criminal) department, why would he investigate indeed—especially after being duly informed with easily documented evidence that the parent apartment company (also in southern California) in cahoots with the utility billing company execute contradictory contracts (the apartment company’s contract with the utility billing company versus the apartment rental contracts) deliberately designed to bilk tenants of incalculable amounts of money by means of a single hidden fine-print rental contract clause: flat-rate versus variable-rate trash billing! And that said fraud and mis-representation are blatantly occurring in the county whose public interest he’s entrusted to protect. 

So why would he investigate indeed? Apologizing as a public official mooching off the public dole, Sepulveda would impress me even more with his indifferent whitewash of the matter if he could rationalize with equal fervor action over inaction. 

Joseph Covino, Jr. 

El Cerrito 

• 

SEVEN BLOCKS, GREEN MULE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Lately I’ve been working the phones and crashing cafes seeking wisdom from people in all corners of Berkeley politics. Connecting the dots. Cleanaircoalition.net is waiting for Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) to respond by the end of the month to our counter demand letter that requires the ancient foundry to devise toxic chemical and community health testing programs ignored by the infamous December 2005 back-room settlement with play pal BAAQMD.  

Now Linda Maio wants to talk with me? 

We need to keep our citizen band antennas on PSC. PSC’s carbon bed absorption technology for Plant No. 3 has been placed on a “fast track” hearing schedule by the Planning Department. The public has been by-passed before in this arena and needs to know much more before a permit is considered. What emission sources are abated at PSC and which ones are not? What about particulates? Bay Area Air Quality Management District records show that the carbon bed technology currently utilized in Plant #2 has not limited the complaints to that part of PSC’s operations. Those who attended the 1999-2000 Odor Abatement Hearing remember Round One all to well. Let’s get it right this time! Track this process and come ready to ask Planning Dept. staff tough questions. Find a wealth of PSC information at westberkeleyalliance.org.  

There are many other issues in District 1—from our stalled AMTRAK station rehab to toxic playing fields and polluting incinerators; sidewalks filled with day laborerss and term limits; an in-fill and Rapid Bus Transit plan waiting to cruise into San Pablo Avenue. Not to mention Tom Bates’ interest in bringing auto dealers to our choking highway edge and the insidious challenge to overturn current manufacturing zoning areas in the West Berkeley Plan (WBP). One politico just whispered to me that the old WBP will be put out of its misery and re-crafted soon. But to who’s benefit? 

Everybody is bitching and moaning at me about how ungreen Berkeley is—especially as the toxic grunge and back door deals fly through our burnt-pot-handled atmosphere in District 1. “Green Berkeley,” they ask? Yah, I don’t see it either! But through my work with small towns and neighborhoods over the years, I would define green planning and design as an integrated, holistic, participatory process that champions public noticing, long-range schedules, periodic evaluation and rigorous debate from start to finish. Built for the people, by the people; sustainable. Let’s see what “fast track” really means down at the city Planning Department in the days ahead. 

Lots of coffee and egos still to go. 

Willi Paul 

• 

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Voters should contact their political party leaders and members of Congress and urge them to support the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the other senior members of the Bush administration for impeachable high crimes. The president and his cabinet members have launched an illegal and bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq based on reasons that were mistaken at best and lies at worst. They have been criminally negligent in their response (or lack thereof) to Hurricane Katrina and the plight of Katrina survivors. They have conducted illegal domestic spying. They have ordered individuals to be kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured at secret prisons. Finally, they have imprisoned people indefinitely without charge, trial, or conviction, in harsh and inhumane conditions. 

Administration officials have demonstrated utter contempt for checks and balances, public disclosure, human rights, and international law. This is not democracy; it is an imperial administration that uses fear, secrecy, and deception to hide and justify its crimes and erode our freedom, all the while insisting that it seeks to protect us. This will continue until we, the people, demand that this administration be held accountable through impeachment proceedings. 

David Mitchell™

In recent years, academics and consultants have emphasized the critical importance of leadership to the success of government and business enterprises. Leadership conveys an image of military daring, while management has come to be viewed as a technical subject, of interest only to those who have not yet reached positions of leadership. This attitude fits well with the interests of politicians, who are unlikely to have management experience, but may feel well qualified to offer leadership. Moreover, attacks on the failings of government bureaucracy—real or imagined—resonate with voters. 

However, the common wisdom regarding the insignificance of management ignores the reality that government entities at every level are very large enterprises that must be well managed in order to accomplish the goals for which they were established, for which taxpayers spend a great deal of money, and on which everyone depends for critical services. After they are elected, politicians and their appointees sometimes forget that they are responsible for managing the government bureaucracy. Our recent national experience with disaster relief during and after Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the problem with substituting leadership for management. 

During a crisis, leadership is critical. Good leadership motivates people to improve their performance, gives them a sense of purpose, and assures them of moral support. Management is what happens before there is a crisis. Management is the routine, day-to-day organization and development of an enterprise’s capabilities, such as operations, distribution and communications. Without effective management, leadership, however good, is unlikely to be successful. 

The transcript of the Aug. 29 video teleconference organized by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) on the day Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast demonstrates a high level of leadership. The teleconference brought senior government officials, including the president of the United States and the secretary for the Department Homeland Security (DHS), into direct contact with state and national officials. 

In the teleconference, the president expressed sympathy for those affected and appreciation for those working on disaster relief. He assured everyone of the federal government’s full support. The secretary of DHS promised his department’s full support and made himself personally available should there be anything they needed from DHS “that you’re not getting.” The head of FEMA expressed his confidence in the “great team around here that know what they’re doing.” He told the participants that if they felt something needed to be done, just to “go ahead and do it. I’ll figure out some way to justify it.” 

Unfortunately, the transcript also demonstrates a very inadequate level of management. It is filled with comments from participants at all levels suggesting that little of the necessary support was already in place. A senior staffer in Louisiana reported that “we’re spending a lot of time right now making sure that we marry the appropriate state assets and the federal assets.” The director of FEMA said that “at some point we may want to reach out to the broader DHS and ask for . . . putting some men and women down there.” 

Finally, the Secretary of DHS wanted to know whether there were any Department of Defense “assets that might be available.” He asked whether DHS had “made any kind of arrangement in case we need additional help from them.” Given the timing of the teleconference, and the traditional reluctance of the federal government to insert the military into domestic roles, the response by FEMA’s director was not reassuring: “We are having those discussions with them now.” And the meeting was over. 

It is clear from this transcript that several critical elements of good management were lacking. First, no arrangements were in place for coordination among the multiple departments and agencies of the federal and state governments responsible for disaster relief. This was the original mandate of the Department of Homeland Security, and the reason it was created in the first place. 

Second, the federal bureaucracy was viewed as a barrier instead of a resource. This was highlighted when the director of FEMA told everyone, “I don’t want any of these processes in our way.” In essence, he was admitting that leaders at the highest levels of government had not established effective processes for accomplishing their mission. It was as if the CEO of a computer company had admitted to shareholders that the company’s manufacturing processes might get in the way of making computers! 

Third, although much of the meeting was devoted to reports from the field, the concerns identified were not addressed. The leaders in attendance expressed their support and concern, but their words were not operationally connected to an effective organizational response. Lacking an understanding of their role as managers, they did not understand that they were being asked to take action and to solve problems. The meeting ended without an action plan. There was no discussion of critical tasks to be accomplished, with defined deliverables, individuals assigned to accomplish the tasks, and times specified for completion. 

The notion of leadership derives much of its popularity from military mythology, from stories of heroic battles against overwhelming opposition. In this context, it is instructive that many military historians consider Napoleon to have been a better leader than Wellington, and Lee to have been a better leader than Grant. Good leadership, without good management, rarely determines successful outcomes in warfare, or in other large scale organizational endeavors. All organizations, including government agencies, must be well run in order to be well led.  

El Cerrito resident Ken Stanton works in Berkeley as a registered nurse. 

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I have traveled to far-off places just to visit quaint waterfronts where industrial detritus is turned into quirky outdoor art and the artists live in cohesive communities that also welcome strangers and wayfarers. In these funky enclaves, artisans, bohemians, working-class artists, students, and professionals live comfortably on the leftovers of former times-where recycle and reuse come naturally and beautifully. How does this sort of “organic” development grow and can you still find it in Oakland? You’d better look quickly before it is gentrified, calcified, and homogenized away leaving no open spaces, no gathering places, no real studios or workshops-only darkened patches of private yards. 

Have you ever seen those cartoon maps of San Francisco or Manhattan in which outsized buildings are squeezed together onto an small piece of land and loom grotesquely over their surroundings? This, my friends, is what the City Council of Oakland in conjunction with the Oakland School District, aka Randy Ward, are planning for the area from Lake Merritt to the estuary. Is this what Oakland voters demanded when they supported Measure DD to improve the lake ? Did they mean to clean up the estuary by destroying a unique artisan community on the waterfront? Did they want to take an old Oakland building, the Ninth Avenue Terminal, where one can picnic in the sun next to the calm water of the estuary (a scene similar to that at San Francisco’s Ferry Building) and destroy it? 

Whether that was the aim of the measure or not, what happened was that the public investment of monies from DD and rapid gentrification coupled with corruption in City Hall, will result in a completely different city being built. When Oaklanders voted for Jerry Brown and his “elegant density” downtown, did they expect that the waterfront, the lakefront, and the estuary would all succumb to skyscrapers? Did they want to abandon the taxpayer, city and voter-approved study painstakingly put together by a community process called the Estuary Policy Plan? Are we acquiescing because we don’t understand the enormity of the changes planned for our city, because we’ve given up expecting our leaders to listen to us, or because none of our current leaders is capable of articulating a vision for an inclusive Oakland? 

It should also go without saying that we receive public benefits for public land! What a joke local democracy has become when we have to remind our leaders of their basic contract with us. Beyond the necessity of affordable housing and jobs for the surrounding neighborhoods which will be impacted by this bedroom community of garish skyscrapers; who will “preserve” (much less “expand”) the “neighborhood of artists and artisan studios, small businesses, and water dependent activities” (as stated in Item 4.1 of the Estuary Policy Plan) while protecting the remaining industrial spaces in which our entrepreneurial and creative elements not only survive but thrive. Oakland is special because it is a city of neighborhoods, each with its own architecture, celebrations, and dedicated small businesses. 

The Oak to Ninth proposal, along with Randy Ward’s plans for our public school lands, will change our city in ways we have not envisioned nor, I think, in ways we as a city might have chosen if anyone were listening to us. Contact your council members and then work for change! 

Pamela A. Drake is an Oakland resident.

BERKELEY UTOPIA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley has always had a soft spot in its heart for 1930-style socialism. Berkeley’s current system of either buying an expensive home or living in a proletarian rent-controlled unit for the rest of your life has mirrored that “Utopia” in creating Berkeley’s own Privilegencia. Nothing in the middle. Stalin would be proud. 

Nancy Friedberg 

• 

BART BIKE THEFT SOLUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I solved the problem of bike theft after walking home in the rain one night from MacArthur BART. I simply don’t use BART anymore. That’s right, horror of horrors, I drive my car to San Francisco. I save time, money and peace of mind. 

Judi Sierra 

Oakland 

• 

DERBY STREET BALLFIELD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Terry Doran is to be commended for his comments regarding the Derby Street sports field to the effect that the School Board should not be in the business of using resources intended for students to satisfy general community needs (March 17). Here’s hoping he and the majority of the board that he referred to in the same story stay their original course and pursue the full-field option (i.e. closed Derby Street), which includes a regulation baseball diamond. That is the solution that makes the fullest and best use of scarce school district resources for the people it is obligated to serve: its students. 

Phyllis Orrick 

• 

HALLINAN’S MIDDLE EAST ANALYSIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Conn Hallinan makes about as much sense now as he did when he edited and wrote for the Communist Party’s publication, People’s Weekly World. While Hamas, the duly-elected Palestinian governing party, maintains their covenant calling for the destruction of Israel and Jews everywhere, Hallinan somehow can’t seem to comprehend why Israeli politicians refuse to speak with those butchers.  

May I inquire, Mr. Hallinan, what part of genocide do you fail to comprehend? 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

ALBANY WATERFRONT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I support the Albany Waterfront Specific Plan Initiative which allows for a comprehensive plan for the entire shoreline. For me, this issue is not about tax revenues or even about how Albany will or will not benefit from a big retail/condominium development. The bigger issue is the legacy we leave for future generations. Everywhere I go, there is more and more building—homes, shopping centers, big business complexes, with their attendant parking lots. The whole world is being put under cement. Is this what our children should have to live with? We need to preserve whatever open space we still have because we are fast running out of land, anywhere and everywhere. I am at the Albany Shoreline a lot just to enjoy an environment free of commercialism. 

What about thoughtful planned open space? The Caruso plan suggests only a 2.5-acre open area along the shoreline in contrast to the 45 acres he wants to develop with its attendant parking structure. This is not thoughtful nor responsible as it will generate more traffic on I-80, more pollution, more health problems. A few more years of planning isn’t much to ask when compared to the loss of land once a retail complex is built, but it will give Albany residents a chance to consider an alternative to a southern California style mall. 

I urge every Albany resident to support this initiative and sign the petition to put it on the November ballot. Be proud that you helped to preserve our shoreline. 

Diane Ichiyasu 

Albany 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Marcia Lau suggests in her March 14 letter that there is a better bus route for the planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on Telegraph Avenue. Her point is well-taken. There are routes that could be covered, covered more and covered better all over the East Bay, but most transportation funding goes to infrastructure for the automobile. No wonder we can’t get good bus service; we live in a car-dominated world and are left to fight and scramble for every morsel of funding for alternatives available. However, at this point in time, the Major Investment Study has shown the chosen Telegraph route to offer most “access to major employment centers, major educational centers, connections with other transit, and support for transit-oriented development.”  

Marcia says BRT will be redundant with BART, following the same route. This point has been made before. However, if BRT was redundant with BART, it would have to limit stops to only the same stops as BART. It is true that in order to make the bus ride faster there won’t be as many stops as there are on the 43 line, but there will be numerous stops in addition to the BART stations. The BRT will allow riders to access much more along the route that BART does. If a rider is going from BART station-area to BART station-area, then of course, taking BART makes sense! But, if you need to get off at points in between, BART doesn’t work. 

Similarly, if you live far enough east of BART stations to make walking to the BART station too time-consuming, then the BRT would be a more convenient ride for you. The current bus line—as illustrated by the No. 43, by shear numbers of riders, and the numbers of riders getting on and off at stops along the way—the importance of the bus route. To offer bus service that is even more effective (by shortening the travel time between stops) is to attract more riders who may otherwise be compelled to use a car. 

Dedicated travel lanes for buses, traffic signal prioritization for buses and reduced bus stops will all contribute to reduced waiting times at bus stops, more reliable bus service and a more convenient alternative to the single-occupancy vehicle.  

Bus Rapid Transit on Telegraph will offer a real solution to the problem of traffic congestion, air pollution and global warming. AC Transit is part of the solution. Let’s join them. 

Marcy Greenhut 

• 

NIMBYS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I stand in awe of Charles Siegel’s ability to pack so many misrepresentations and misleading statements into one short letter about the Bus Rapid Transit proposal (March 17). Thank heavens that the readers of this paper know from Mr. Siegel’s previous diatribes that he has a strong bias against the use of automobiles in Berkeley. I will comment on one statement in his most recent letter: “As I understand it, a relatively small number of local NIMBYs are against BRT south of Dwight.” That statement is quite misguided, and I am certain it was not based on any research conducted by Mr. Siegel. I have talked with many residents in the Willard, Benvenue, CENA, and LeConte neighborhoods, and have encountered substantial opposition to this drastic and unnecessary proposal. (Rob Wren is the notable exception, of course, who seems to view BRT as a type of fundamentalist religion which must be accepted without question.) 

What’s more, isn’t it time that we conducted discussions about public policy without using the term “NIMBY” to denigrate our fellow citizens? After all, the term NIMBY is nothing but a conscious attempt to marginalize citizens who are fighting to protect their quality of life from imminent threats. Almost any citizen in Berkeley can become a NIMBY overnight due to our current unchecked development mania, and these new projects invariably result in increased noise, pollution, congestion, loss of sunlight, inadequate parking, blocked view corridors, reduction in green space, and loss of public space. It is perfectly understandable for people to try to fight these harmful impacts in order to prevent damage to their health and well-being. Before we criticize any of our fellow citizens who face the prospect of, say, a new four- or six-story building next door, or a huge influx of traffic into their neighborhood, or the loss of the last bit of greenery on their street—or a 50 percent reduction in the traffic capacity of their main thoroughfare—it would be helpful if we actually visited their neighborhood and spent some time talking with them to learn about their experiences and perspectives.  

Yes, let’s put an end to the use of the term NIMBY in our city, and let’s do it in a constructive way. From now on, if you should catch yourself using the term NIMBY, fine yourself $20—and then donate that amount to your favorite charity. You will be helping to eliminate a scurrilous term from our civic discourse, and supporting your favorite cause at the same time. It’s a win-win solution.  

Doug Buckwald  

• 

BRT NOT NECESSARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project has recently become a political football here on the letters page. 

There is already plenty of bus service on Telegraph. The big articulated Van Hool buses on the 40L line have lots of room, and they run frequently. 

But the BRT is supposed to make bus service fun and fast to motivate people to ride the bus instead of drive. The BRT will carry the current riders, plus all those people who used to drive all alone in their car. 

What will provide the motivation for new riders? Those shiny new buses? Faster getting on and off the buses? Maybe AC Transit will use the three doors on the Van Hools to implement some form of pre-paid boarding? Will employers subsidize bus passes? 

Faster trips? Fewer stops? Will the BRT buses get some kind of priority on Telegraph? Will there be bus-only lanes? Will buses have flashing signals telling car drivers to pull over? Will on-street parking on Telegraph be reduced enough to give room to pull over? 

Maybe the shift to BRT-riding will take enough cars off the road so that we get the required space that way. Or is that a chicken and egg problem? 

Is UC Berkeley going to reduce the number of campus parking spaces and offer bus passes to faculty, staff and students? 

I don’t see much of this happening in the near future. 

The bottom line is the question of whether a lot of new people are going to ride the BRT. If this isn’t going to happen, the BRT project really should not be going forward. 

Steve Geller 

• 

ELECTRONIC VOTE THEFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is it time to deal with electronic theft of elections? Hi-tech voter fraud began in Georgia, went on to Minnesota and spread throughout the country in 2004. 

Computer software can be hacked, programmers can alter votes and never be detected, and touchscreen voting machines are manufactured by companies that have close connections with the Bush administration. 

The electronic theft of elections began in Georgia where a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what media called amazing upsets with vote swings of up 16 percent from the last poll results before the election. In Minnesota, Walter Mondale was also defeated in a large last-second vote shift. And in the last presidential election there were last-second vote swings that gave George Bush victories in states that had been voting solidly for John Kerry. 

I bet if you checked, anti-abortion Republicans have won all suspect and disputed elections in 2000, 2002 and 2004. 

Ron Lowe 

Nevada City 

• 

LOVE AND PEACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

By now, we all know that pre-emptive war just doesn’t work, and it makes matters worse. Enough airtime has been used in making up clever insults against Bush and Co. The real cure for war is to think about peace, joy, love; to practice self-love, and kindness towards all humans, and all of life; to meditate and pray everyday, going within to your heart and talking to your Higher Power, God, Goddess, or Creator. This is at the heart of every religion on Earth. Of course, there’s the practical side of doing all the footwork of contacting Congress, showing up at pro-peace rallies. Mother Theresa (or was it me or Jesus?) said, “It’s not enough to be anti-war; we must be pro-peace.” Ma Theresa promised, “The moment there’s a Pro-Peace Rally, I’ll be there.” Posthumously, if necessary. John Lennon has been known to make HIS posthumous appearances. Hee, hee!  

Please turn within to find your power, your love, your beauty. Then you will shine your light before the world. I personally find that if you love yourself and are gentle to yourself and self-nurturing, you’re not going to be cruel or very difficult on other people. I know damn well I can’t force you guys into desiring peace and love, let alone doing the inner work necessary to contact God within you. But I can be the change I want to see, thus effectively embodying Mahatma Ghandhi’s advice. Whatever you do, keep all pro-peace rallies non-violent and be polite. No rude language; it makes them angrier. Yes, it’s tempting to say nasty things about the criminals who stole America, twice! Well, Heaven and Earth and I and the other Lightworkers (saints, shamans, healers, and human angels everywhere) plus all the others who show up to help bring in World Peace Forever, won’t let them get away with it. As Klaus Meines of The Scorpions wrote, “The winds of change are blowing.” Maybe I should sing that song as my personal peace rally. The Scorpion’s “Winds of Change” brought down the Berlin Wall. Come on, guys; the World Wide Peace and Joy and Love Movement will be the next bringing down of the Berlin Wall. This wall isn’t physical, and it ain’t in Berlin. But that won’t stop us. The desire for world peace forever is now the supreme world power, not the darker side of the United States of America. I wish to let the world know, there are many Americans who wish world peace, who want an end to this long and bloody war. We shall prevail. I love you and I forgive you all for not “getting it” sooner and more gracefully. Phew...  

Linda M. Smith 

• 

CIVIL WAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The unfolding civil war in Iraq is eerily similar to the civil strife in India that preceded partition into India and Pakistan, and to the ensuing 60 years of hatred between those states. On the eve of Britain’s retreat from almost a century of colonial domination she encouraged the antagonisms between Hindus and Muslims through discrimination, dispossession, provocation and segregation, presumably so Britain would not appear to leave a united India, disgraced.  

Despite the U.S. government’s hand-ringing about how terrible civil war would be in Iraq, the U.S. may be a main potential beneficiary from chaos and worsening internal warfare. Though the pressure for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq grows, the U.S. intends to keep its several new state of the art permanent military bases there and to control Iraq’s oil. Civil war reduces the chance of Iraq uniting against that agenda although 80 percent of Iraqis want the U.S. out. Civil war shifts the crisis from the destructive and hated occupation to Iraqi sectarianism and the growing murderous strife; it reduces the public relations damage of a U.S. policy defeat. A question: does the U.S. run its own underground killing militia(s) in Iraq?  

Marc Sapir 

• 

CARTOONS AND CHAOS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the somewhat recent publications of the still controversial Danish cartoons, I would just like to express a few of my personal thoughts regarding this ongoing issue.  

For one, if college students, or people in general, do not challenge tradition, then progress as a whole would not be very fruitful. Regardless of whether that tradition is science or religion, as time passes on, and new knowledge is gained, ideas, old and new, must be challenged. Facing a huge wave of criticism should be no reason to cease; if so, then many of the ideas we hold so dear today would not be very well known. For instance, the fact that the planets revolve around the sun, and not vise versa.  

Lastly, instead of getting too caught up in the emotion that is dominating this issue over the rights of free speech and respect for religion, I have taken a different and more productive approach. When I look at this controversy I am constantly drawn into the theory of chaos, where order exists in what appears to be complete disorder. Applying this theory to the Danish cartoon controversy I have been making progress in understanding this vital theory, and have been gaining more understanding about how society functions as a whole, which does not seem too much different than the original attempt to predicate how the weather will be in a given day. To better relate to how I view this, just think about the famous butterfly effect, which states something as small as the flap of a butterfly’s wings can bring a tornado in Texas for example, or consider the fox and the hare. As you know, the fox and the hares are in constant conflict, with one taking on the role of the predator, and the other taking on the role as victim to the predator. But without this chaos, or the illusion of chaos rather, order between the two different groups would not exist, as one would become dominate, and as a result, the natural food chain would evolve.  

So instead of looking at these cartoons as world chaos which brings us closer to the brink of a major war, try looking at them as a normal part of the order that brings us together as people in general.  

Curtis Stone 

• 

CAMPUS CARTOON FLAP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The self-righteous indignation of the Cal Muslim Student Association over the publication of the cartoons would be credible if the media and textbooks in most Muslim countries were not saturated with racist propaganda against Jews and Christians. For instance, Egyptian public television recently aired a multi-part series treating the anti-Semitic tract “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as though it were factual. Articles accusing Jewish doctors of infecting Muslim children with AIDS or of Jews stealing children to harvest their organs, routinely circulate in mainstream media in the Arab world. Muslims commonly compare Jews to apes and pigs in daily speech and in the press. Muslims also refer to Christians as “those who incur Allah’s wrath".  

The Cal Muslim Students should stop complaining about our press and look at their own. They ought to petition their own governments and media outlets to stop publishing racist propaganda, and not stop demanding until the Muslim racism stops. Then they ought to apologize to the Jews, to the Christians, and to the Danes. After they have done those things, they might have some credibility, not before. Until then they ought to shut up. 

Jack Kessler 

El Cerrito  

• 

FACE REALITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So Dick Cheney, in his March 19 appearance on “Face the Nation,” thinks that his statements about the United States being welcomed as liberators after the preemptive invasion of Iraq and that the insurgency is in its last throes “were basically accurate and reflect reality.” Perhaps he thinks throwing grenades at U.S. troops is the same as throwing flowers at them. And how many thousands have died in Iraq since his “last throes” statement?  

The VP also criticizes the media for it failure to report on all the positive progress made in Iraq. Maybe the media has a problem reporting how safe it is when reporters get kidnaped and killed when they go out without security guards. And if they are able to report, what positive progress will they report? Will they describe the lack of electricity, drinking water, basic sewage operations, health care, and other failures of the basic infrastructure? Will they report that the country with the second highest oil reserves has to import oil to meet its basic needs? Will they report on the massive corruption in government contracts in Iraq? Will they highlight the high infant mortality rate due to basic health care failures? Just which of these areas of progress should the media report? 

Cheney’s current view of reality ranks right up there with his beliefs about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. His “beliefs” are illusions and lies.  

Bush, Cheney and company must go now. 

Recently the South Korean Prime Minister was forced to resign because he was playing golf on the day that a national railway strike began. His golf outing set off a scandal in Korea. 

I think that this should encourage President Bush to consider resigning as well. Bush’s actions from lying to the American people to start a pre-emptive war which has led to the Iraqi quagmire to his inactions around hurricane Katrina certainly deserve a similar resignation on his part. Iraq and Katrina are just two of the top problems created by the Bush regime. 

The world can not afford another three years of Bush, Cheney, Rummy and company. 

Kenneth J. Thiesen  

Oakland 

?

The City of Berkeley, members of the city government, Anna De Leon, and Panoramic Interest have spent weeks, months, years, and thousands of your tax dollars debating and clarifying the issues of the Gaia Arts Center. In an attempt to bring controversy about the Gaia Arts Center back to city government, Ms. De Leon is using her status as an attorney, misinterpretation of the facts, and influential friends in the city government to encourage city planning officials and the ZAB to reexamine the Gaia Arts Center and modify zoning. 

In recent letters to the city and published articles, Ms. De Leon indicates she was unaware of the intended use for the space when she decided to relocate her business to the location at 2120 Allston Way. Ms. De Leon was not only aware of the intended use, she drafted over five documents to city zoning officers Carol Barrett, Wendy Cosin and Mark Rhodes, which subsequently allowed for the use modifications that currently allow her for-profit bar, restaurant, and jazz lounge known as Anna’s Jazz Island and the Gaia Arts Center to obtain proper occupancy. For reasons that can best be summarized as “Landlord and Tenant” issues, Ms. De Leon would have the citizens of Berkeley and the City of Berkeley hold public hearings.  

The landlord Patrick Kennedy, and myself, manager of the Gaia Arts Center, are both confused by Ms. De Leon’s motives. Over four years ago the three of us met on multiple occasions to thoroughly discuss and outline the operation of and “the framework” for the Gaia Arts Center. Ms. De Leon was a crucial part of the genesis of the project. Anna’s knowledge of the local arts and music community, her status as an attorney, and her strong and influential ties to various departments of city government allowed us to move forward with our plans to open a multi-use artistic, cultural, and community center. 

The original use permit lists Gaia Arts and Cultural Center as an acceptable user. The original use permits exclude any food service establishment or restaurant such as Anna’s Jazz Island. On Dec. 3, 2002, Ms. De Leon applied for the first of several modifications to the use permit. The modification was granted with a variety of conditions and allowed her to open her for-profit restaurant and bar.  

On March 20, 2003, Ms. De Leon writes to city planners for further modification, she writes: 

Dear Mr. Rhodes, I am writing to confirm our understanding that the above referenced use permit allows us to serve all permitted food and beverage to all entities in the cultural center at 2118-2120 Allston Way, both on the main floor and on the mezzanine. These spaces will not be used for cooking or be a part of the cooking or bar facility in any formal sense, but food and alcoholic beverages may be brought to and consumed in the theatre and mezzanine spaces. 

Ms. De Leon has been adamant in her position that the consumption of food and beverage on the mezzanine was never an intended use. The above statement indicates Ms. De Leon’s knowledge that food and beverage service was intended in the mezzanine and the tone of the letter reflects she is acting as an advocate for these services. 

On April 22, 2003, Ms. De Leon requests further clarification and modification, she writes: 

As you know, we had a lengthy discussion of the cultural uses planned for the Panoramic Arts Center. This discussion was intended to clarify our vision for matters pertaining to the Center. This letter summarizes our understanding of the discussion. The Arts Center is intended to be open to the community for all kinds of cultural uses and events. They will include a wide variety of music concerts, theatre productions, films, lectures, receptions and the enormous variety of cultural and incidental uses that we discussed would be appropriate for a theatre/ concert hall venue. In an effort to keep the theatre/ concert hall in a wide cross section of community use rather than be rented or used by a single arts entity, Patrick Kennedy will retain control over all the space exclusive of that for which I hold the use permit. 

This letter from Ms. De Leon outlines the wide variety of cultural and community uses the Gaia Arts Center was intending to host. Ms. De Leon specifically indicates she was aware that the facility would not only host artistic cultural activities, but would host a variety of community and incidental uses that would be appropriate for the space. Ms. De Leon has now changed her mind. She is asking the city to apply restrictions to the types of community functions that may take place in the facility. Ms. De Leon is also requesting that the city and The ZAB restrict cultural and artistic functions allowing only groups that meet her definition of cultural. Ms. De Leon has written to the city requesting the “non-profit youth music concerts” which were scheduled to take place be banned and has further implied the church congregation that meets at the facility does not qualify as a cultural user and is bad neighbor for her business. 

In the April 22, 2003 letter Ms. De Leon also writes: 

I plan to open a jazz venue. Chris Davis who owns and operates “Lois the Pie Queen” attended the meeting in that he will participate in the food and beverage operation which will service the entire facility. 

This statement is a clear contradiction of recent allegations that her establishment was to be the exclusive food and beverage provider for the entire facility. It is clear from this letter Ms. De Leon never intended to provide the sale of food or beverage to the Arts Center. It is absurd to think that the availability of outside food and beverage to patrons of the Gaia Arts Center is detrimental to her business. 

The Gaia Arts Center wanted to make sure we had the support of the city and had a clarification of an actual “cultural standard” that was to be maintained. On June 6, 2003 Ms. De Leon requests this clarification: 

Our intent is to finish the tenant improvements for the theatre within six months from the date of city approval of the performance standards stated below. We commit to the following performance standards: in the theatre area, we will program performance use on 30 percent of the days of each month on average. In the remainder of the ground floor and mezzanine, we will program arts related activities 15 days per month on average. 

The language Ms. De Leon drafted for this passage was very clear and exact; her previous letters had already clearly defined a “cultural” user. This passage was written for the purpose of ensuring other community groups would be allowed to use the facility when it was not in use by cultural users. 

As reported in a staff report on Feb. 23, 2006, by Deputy Planning Director Wendy Cosin, the Gaia Arts Center has maintained over 48 percent performance standard in the theatre space. The Marsh Theatre Company (whose performance and cultural activities will be lost if Ms. De Leon is able to impose another modification) has found a receptive audience in Berkeley and is proud to call the Gaia Arts Center their East Bay home. The Marsh was willing to program “Theatrical Seasons” and they were eager to get to work on weekly performance as well. To their credit, The Marsh has successfully programmed over 100 live performances since their debut in August. 

I find Ms. De Leon’s inconsistency of opinion to be offensive. I find her ability to “flip-flop” and manipulate the issues and the law to suit her own personal agenda to be a blatant abuse of the city government’s time and our resources. Our local city government should not be used as a tool to carry out a personal agenda, especially when that agenda seems to change daily. There is an old saying: “You can’t have it both ways.” It is ridiculous that Ms. De Leon submits letters and use permit modifications to allow for the operations of the Gaia Arts Center and her own for-profit restaurant and jazz cafe and then after having disputes with the landlord and other tenants request that they be revoked. Ms. De Leon has not been able to resolve her landlord and tenant issues internally; therefore, she is attempting to manipulate the citizens of Berkeley and the city government to resolve them for her. 

Gloria Atherstone is the director of Gaia Arts Management, Inc.

A decade ago we led the successful community effort to rebuild the tot-lot at Thousand Oaks School Park in conjunction with the daylighting of Blackberry Creek. As Glen Kohler has stated (letter to the editor, Feb. 21), the daylighting project was a wrenching experience for our neighborhood. Replying to Kohler, Urban Creeks Council leader Carol Schemmerling (Feb. 28) wrote: “There were indeed, advocates and critics (after all this is Berkeley)…”  

In fact, the major source of acrimony was not some local penchant for contentiousness. Rather, it was poor planning by the Urban Creeks Council, which oversaw the daylighting of the creek. Above all, the UCC disregarded the social aspects of the park. Daylighting the creek meant removing the park’s tot-lot, which was located above the culverted stream. The tot-lot at Thousand Oaks School Park was (and is) the heart of our neighborhood, a center of convivial activity that brings together several generations in convivial activity. The prospect of losing it was extremely dismaying.  

It’s true, as Schemmerling wrote, that the equipment at the old tot-lot needed to be replaced. But it’s not true, as she also wrote, that when the creek daylighting was proposed, the city was “partnering with citizens who could raise funds privately for new equipment that was up to code.” (Situated on land owned by the Berkeley Unified School District, the park was built with City of Berkeley Measure Y funds.) Such a partnership did occur, but only after Thousand Oaks neighbors realized that, despite our appeals, the Urban Creeks Council hadn’t the slightest interest in replacing the tot-lot, either with a portion of the grant from the California Department of Water Resources or with other funds.  

Only after Zelda Bronstein stood up at a BUSD school board meeting just as the daylighting project was about to get final approval and called out (totally out of order), “What about the tot-lot?” did the board direct the UCC to dedicate $25,000 of its grant monies toward a new tot-lot. We went on to raise the additional $40,000 or so that it took to build the new tot-lot, gratefully accepting donations in cash and in kind from the BUSD, the city of Berkeley, local businesses and Thousand Oaks neighbors. With the help of Partners for Parks, Berkeley’s volunteer parks support organization, we formed the Thousand Oaks Parks Society and were able to receive donations. Landscape architect Walter Hood generously shared his talent in the form of a pro bono design that became the basis of the new tot-lot and the reconfigured park. We also benefited from the guidance of Lisa Caronna and Brad Ricard of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, who helped us to determine the site’s final specifications.  

Creek daylighting can be a fine thing. Indeed, we were early supporters of daylighting Blackberry Creek. One of us carried a letter from the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association to the Sierra Club’s Northern Alameda Group asking NAG to endorse the project for the grant application to the state (which it did). Since the creek was opened up, the bird life in our neighborhood has greatly multiplied, much to our delight.  

But the scars from the decade-old history remain. Much of the acrimony could have been avoided if the planning had been truly inclusive, involving all the key stakeholders from the start. (Until the last minute, the park’s tai chi users were also sidelined. They learned that their meditation tree was about to be cut down, not through some community planning process, but quite by happenstance, when they stumbled over the contractor who was preparing to remove it.) Everyone also would have benefited from greater fiscal realism on the part of the Urban Creeks Council, which received only a fraction of the money requested in the grant application to the state but still proceeded with the daylighting project.  

Berkeley’s creeks flow through a dense urban setting, not a wilderness. When we open up our local watercourses on public land—as we should, where it’s appropriate—we need to take into consideration the real, social uses that have grown up around them. Otherwise, we’re going to invite more “strident neighborhood disharmony” of the sort that roiled Thousand Oaks over the daylighting of Blackberry Creek.  

Zelda Bronstein and Christine Swett are neighbors of Thousand Oaks School Park.  

Two weeks ago, some local residents spotted something truly special in Codornices Creek: a pair of adult steelhead trout—a federally listed threatened species—trying to build nests (“redds”) for their eggs. Fortunately, Friends of Five Creeks and the Urban Creeks Council were able to capture these spawning attempts on film for the first time ever on this creek (you can view the video clip at www.urbancreeks.org). 

It’s remarkable and exciting that our urban creeks have the ecological integrity to support rare and endangered species. Let’s grasp this opportunity and do something truly significant for future generations and the environment, by preserving the existing habitat that supports these fish, and restoring more habitat for them and for other wildlif e.  

Right now, one of Berkeley’s key environmental regulations, the Berkeley Creek Ordinance, is under pressure. The outcome will set a precedent for our willingness to stand up for the environment, and to affirm that the environmental regulations that B erkeley pioneered are vital to healthy cities. On March 22, the Berkeley Creeks Task Force and the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing to hear final comments about task force recommendations (7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hea rst Ave.). We hope you’ll come to the meeting and speak out for strong creek and watershed protections! 

Why support strong creek and watershed policies? One reason is that such policies don’t just protect fish, they protect people and property too. Healt hy creeks, and vegetated buffer zones along them, work directly toward protecting property from erosion, improving water quality, preventing floods, and stabilizing banks. Creekside vegetation helps to filter pollutants, while slowing flood pulses from st orms. Natural swales and vegetation not only reduce the pollution and sediments flowing into the creeks that harm water quality and wildlife, but also reduce flooding on streets and into homes, and help to reduce the damage to structures from those floods. 

Even large, heavily urbanized cities like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, are embracing integrated watershed planning and restoration, in an effort to enhance their “green infrastructure” and the use of natural systems to control stormwater runoff and floods. And it just happens that with all of these benefits to us and to our communities, we also benefit the fish, the birds, the trees—the natural world around us.  

Join us and many others in our community in supporting the following policy recommendations, which are a good compromise for addressing property owner concerns while ensuring that we protect and restore critical natural ecosystems: 

• Continue the current policy that prevents new roofed construction within 30 feet of an open cree k. But vertical expansions (i.e. up or down within the same footprint) should be allowed. 

• Continue the current policy that allows rebuilding of existing structures after disaster or loss. 

• Continue the current policy that allows repairs to roofed str uctures that are within 30 feet of a creek. 

• Provide a buffer zone so that parking lots, patios, and other structures cannot be built extremely close to a creek. Healthy creeks need a vegetated buffer zone.  

• Keep culverted (i.e. underground) creek se ctions in the ordinance—creeks are a whole system from top to bottom!—but soften the restrictions on building near culverts by basing them on safety and maintenance access , as other cities do. 

• Identify realistic, feasible daylighting opportunities thr ough an open, public process, and protect those opportunities on public and institutional properties, while encouraging voluntary daylighting on private properties through grant funding and other incentives. (“Daylighting” means restoring culverted creeks to run above-ground again.) 

• Prohibit the construction of new culverts, new armored walls (e.g. “riprap” and “gabion walls”), and other “hardscape” (like concrete) in creek channels. These are detrimental structures that impact everyone. 

• Include strong incentives for property owners to restore creeks and riparian buffer zones. 

• Support the funding of a Watershed & Creeks Coordinator position, and the design and implementation of a comprehensive, integrated watershed protection and management plan for Berkeley. 

Our environment is a community trust; its protection and stewardship should be a city and global priority. Come out to the hearing, write to your city representatives, and celebrate Berkeley’s commitment to a sustainable, healthy planet! 

J uliet Lamont is an environmental consultant and owns property alongside Codornices Creek. Elyce Judith, Alan Gould and Diane Tokugawa are Cordornices creekside property owners, Lisa Owens Viani is an environmental writer/editor, and Jeiwon Deputy is an employee of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

On Tuesday afternoon coming back to the East Bay from San Francisco, the BART train stopped on the tracks just before the West Oakland station, and the driver got on the intercom to let us know that we were being delayed because of an earthquake. 

Not a good feeling, friends, especially since I’d been there before. 

The last time that happened, I had ducked out early from work because the Giants and the A’s were playing in the World Series at Candlestick, my bosses had tickets, and why should I stick around at the office when everyone else was gone? I caught what turned to be the last East Bay train out of the Embarcadero station in San Francisco. When we came out of the tunnel from under the bay—without feeling any more than what everybody thought was the usual bumps and minor jostling—the train stopped just about where it did on Tuesday. Back in ’89, though, we stayed there a while longer—10 minutes, maybe, if I remember—until we finally pulled into the station. The train doors opened and we just sat there, dead in the water, until the operator finally came on the intercom and said something like, “Folks, I know that most of you are used to delays on the system, but this is different. I can’t get anyone on the radio or the telephone.” The operator then told us that he could not move the train until he could contact someone at BART central headquarters to see what was up, and invited us to hang out on the station platform until then. 

After we had been on the platform for a few minutes, wandering around in the unseasonably warm weather and looking at an unusual industrial smoke cloud rising up over West Oakland (it later turned out to be the fire from a truck that had been smashed on the Cypress Expressway, but none of us knew that at the time), someone began saying that they’d just heard on a portable radio that there had been a major earthquake in the Bay Area, one of the freeways had collapsed, and a portion of the Bay Bridge had fallen into the bay. Since you could see the Bay Bridge from the West Oakland BART platform, and it didn’t look like it had fallen anywhere, I remember thinking, “Right, and Godzilla came out of the ocean and ate the Ferry Building.” Nobody else seemed to pay the news much attention at first, although the longer we stayed up there with the train standing open and unmoving, the more uneasy people became. 

We might have been on the platform 20 minutes or so when a BART employee came rushing up the steps saying something like, “There’s been a major earthquake! Everybody needs to evacuate this platform immediately. Please walk down the stairs to the sidewalk. Now!” 

There wasn’t any panic, but people got to the stairs pretty quick, as you can imagine. Like the captain in Jaws, that’s when I got the most frightened, as I stood in the suddenly-long line jamming the stairwell, thinking that I could have easily walked down those stairs anytime I wanted to in the past half hour, but now that I was up there waiting, an aftershock was going to come and topple the platform, and that’s how I was going to die. 

Down on the sidewalk, which was crowded with BART passengers milling around, all order seemed to have vanished. It would have been helpful for BART to assemble all of the passengers together to make some sort of announcement, but if it happened, I must have been one of the many who missed it. Instead, most of us were left out there on our own, with no more information than that a major earthquake had hit the Bay Area. 

Once on the ground, most of my anxiety had vanished, but I noticed that wasn’t the case for some of my white and Asian brothers and sisters. From what I imagine, most of them had never seen West Oakland from anywhere but 880 or the BART tracks rolling by, and weren’t especially interested in a more intimate experience. A couple of busses came by on Seventh Street, but those got filled with so many people so quickly, some hanging out the doors, it wasn’t worth the effort to try to get on. You could begin to feel the sense of panic rising. A group of passengers began to move en masse up Seventh Street towards downtown. When they got to the old 880 onramp just east of the BART station (the onramp has since demolished), some of them blocked off the freeway entrance and began to beg rides south. If BART ever made another announcement or helped get the passengers to their destinations, I had already walked downtown, and missed it. 

Tuesday’s brief delay wasn’t as bad as Loma Prieta, of course—neither was the earthquake—but it seems that BART has learned little in the intervening 16 years about how to get information out to people in an emergency situation. 

I happened to be sitting in the first car on Tuesday, not far from the driver’s compartment, and I could hear the radio messages being relayed to the driver from BART central. The dispatcher told the driver immediately that there had been an earthquake in the East Bay and that all of the BART trains had been put on hold while they did a systemwide track check to make sure there had been no problems. Though it wasn’t very pleasant sitting at a standstill several feet above the ground, I got the impression from the dispatch reports that this was not an emergency, there were no reported problems on the BART system, and the train hold and track check were routine, safety measures. 

But that’s not the impression other passengers must have gotten from the announcement made over the intercom by the driver. 

The first announcement—made after the driver had learned that there had been an earthquake and all BART trains had been halted for a check—was merely something like “we’ll be sitting here for a minute, folks,” maybe an apology for the delay, and nothing else. Some minutes later, after more information came from the dispatcher, the driver got back on the intercom and said something like, “There’s been an earthquake, and we’ll be delayed for a few minutes.” No announcement that there had been no reports of damage, and that the train delay appeared to be nothing more than routine. 

I don’t want to fault the driver in this. The most important job for drivers is to get instructions from BART central, and to operate the train in a safe manner in order to make sure the passengers aren’t put in jeopardy. The driver did that on Tuesday; nothing he did or said appeared to be dangerous to the operation of the train. 

But BART trains—like other public transportation—are not just gears and grease and wheels, they are also the people who ride them. And—like the paleontologists getting out of the car in the middle of the ride in Jurassic Park—people’s unpredictable actions in what they perceive is a crisis can sometimes create a crisis where none previously existed, or make an existing crisis worse. 

That seems to have been the case a couple of weeks ago when a small tunnel fire halted a BART train a few feet from a station in San Francisco. While the driver was walking through the train so that she (or he) could return the train to the previous station, smoke began coming into the cars. The passengers apparently had not been informed what was being done by BART to rectify the problem, and so they panicked, forcing open some of the doors, evacuating the train and getting themselves into the darkened, smoky tunnel on foot, and turning a minor problem into an hours long semi-disaster. 

But given the situation, and the little information they had at the time, you can hardly blame those jittery passengers. 

Operating the BART trains safely to get the passengers out of possible danger is the system’s most important job, but not its only job. Letting the public know the nature of a possible emergency, and what is being done to rectify it, ought to be second on the list. Something for BART to work on. 

?

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely you can always go—downtown.  

In the 1960s Petula Clark sang of the attractions of a downtown neighborhood—neon signs, traffic music, the rhythm of the bossa nova. Times have changed but Berkeley’s Downtown has on offer an eclectic selection of venues to draw your interest. 

Combining the seat of city government with a commercial center, Berkeley has imprinted its distinctive personality on the area surrounding Shattuck Avenue. A vibrant arts and entertainment industry intermixed with over one hundred eateries representing the cuisine of fifteen countries mirrors this ethnically mixed community. Almost 50 percent of Berkeley’s population resides within a one-mile radius of downtown. This population swells with the daily influx of workers and the students at Berkeley High and the university, resulting in high density with divergent needs. 

The downtown area developed with thanks to Francis Shattuck and the railroad. In 1876 Shattuck convinced Central Pacific Railroad to run a spur line through his property and build a station at the intersection of University and Shattuck. Businesses grew, booming in 1903 when Key System electric trains offered additional transport and again, after the 1906 earthquake. 

Today’s skyline reflects the push for additional housing units and modern commercial space, but Berkeley’s past remains. An architectural walk highlights several historic buildings. The Berkeley Historical Society, housed in the Veteran’s Memorial Building, is a good starting point. Their goal is preserving Berkeley’s past and making it available to the public. A museum, library and organized walks don’t let us forget the events and people who forged this city. My recent visit coincided with the exhibit Fermenting Berkeley, using photographs and newspapers articles to contrast Wets vs. Drys, when early liquor laws divided the city. 

Berkeley’s former City Hall, a handsome Beaux-Arts building in columned gray with teal cupola, the Main Post Office, fronted with columns and classic arches, and the Shattuck Plaza Hotel, in multi-colored Mediterranean Renaissance Revival, reflect the styles of the early 1900s. The public library’s Art Deco architecture of the 1930s fronts recent innovations inside. Electric classrooms, the children’s library with crayon carpet and giant stuffed frog and gorilla, the huge windows, high ceilings and well-lit tables explain why lines form outside everyday eagerly awaiting open doors. Art Deco is seen again at the Berkeley Community Theatre, within Berkeley High’s campus. Here and on school buildings white wall-size figured reliefs herald the arts.  

Quieter today than during the turbulent 1960s is downtown’s central MLK Memorial Park, site of many anti-war protests. Expansive lawn, small playground and Peace Wall of over one hundred hand-painted tiles seem strangely empty except during Berkeley High’s open campus lunch break. Twice weekly the park forms the boundary of Berkeley’s Farmers’ Market, a peaceful carnival-like event. Performers here are food artisans offering organic produce, grass-fed meat, cheese, baked goods, and flowers; musicians serenading; and shoppers with wicker baskets and child-laden wagons to carry home their purchases. 

Artisans in entertainment and the arts have carved their own niche in Berkeley’s downtown. Along the length of Addison Street thrive theater, music and poetry. Take your time and keep your eyes on the sidewalk at the curb’s edge. One hundred twenty-eight iron and ceramic panels are engraved with poems selected by Robert Hass to reflect Berkeley’s history. From the Ohlone song, “Hey, fog, go home,” Ishmael Reed’s “Going East,” Margaret Schevill’s Desert Center, to Alfred Arteaga’s “Corrido Blanco”—each echo Berkeley’s voices. 

Theater lovers have two choices merely steps apart. The Berkeley Repertory Theater has metastasized since its origin in a tiny theater on College Avenue. Today patrons from throughout Northern California enjoy productions like the upcoming The Glass Menagerie featuring Rita Moreno. Next door, the Aurora Theater offers a more intimate experience in its theater in the round. 

Jazz in all its forms is performed and taught at the Jazzschool, housed in the historic Kress building since 1997. Heralded as one of the best, this innovative school broadly targets all levels and ages. Downstairs practice rooms share space with the Jazzcafe, a book and record shop and art gallery. You can enjoy the syncopated beat of practice drums along with fresh sandwiches, a golden beet salad with goat cheese or a cappuccino. Seating on warm-colored wood chairs amid walls of rich terra cotta listening to cool jazz among music lovers easily sets the mood for the wealth of classes and concerts on offer. 

From the cool of jazz to the heat of tropical Brazil. Bright, richly painted walls festooned with plants, murals of city and beach scenes, tile roofs, adults and children playing and working beach-side—all set the scene at the Capoeira Arts Cafe. With café in front and classroom at the rear, listening to the rhythmic beat of the berimbau, Afro-Brazilian martial arts is taught and practiced. Involving chanting, kicks, sweeps and handstands, these deceptive dance-like movements tell the story of survival in an unfamiliar land.  

Providing city services amid varied commercial enterprises leaves little room for charm. Those in the know select spaces away from the bustle to relax. Trumpetvine Court with walls formed of brick and covered with—Trumpet vine—is a perfect escape. Cooled by umbrellas in summer, warmed by heaters in winter, yellow picnic tables provide ample seating. For a European flavor, one can enjoy freshly assembled ingredients from The Panini Café. Sandwiches of fresh salmon or vegetarian mushroom, mixed baby greens or pasta salad, hearty homemade soup, all make you want to linger past your lunch hour. 

At La Note Restaurant you’ll feel you’ve finally made it to France. Cool green walls atop darker green wainscoting, Provencal accoutrements like straw hats and ceramic bowls, travel posters and huge white hydrangeas in French metal flower buckets provide ambience. Partake of sandwiches, (baguette a la merquez or thon grille) salades (nicoise or paysanne) and plats de jour (ratatouille). A busy outdoor patio, a lively dining space inside and weekend lines signal this is no well-kept secret. 

On Center Street’s Restaurant Row any group of hungry diners can make individual selections. Good all-American fare shares outdoor tables amid potted greenery with international cuisine. Top Dog, Bongo Burger and Pie In The Sky fill traditional stomachs while Laregal, Raphael, Ajiya and Alborz bring the flavors of Vietnam, Italy, Japan and Persia to adventurous palettes. 

Downtown Berkeley forges the pressures of government services for a diverse community with artistic release and the comfort of good food.  

So maybe I’ll see you there. We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares. Downtown –everything’s waiting for you.  

Berkeley Historical Society: 1931 Center St., 848-0181, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc. 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre: 2025 Addison St., 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. 

Aurora Theatre: 2081 Addison St., 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. 

Jazzschool: 2087 Addison St., 845-5373, www.jazzschool.com. 

Capoeira Arts Café: 2026 Addison St., 666-1255, www.capoeiraarts.com. 

Café Panini: 2115 Allston Way, 849-0405. 

La Note Restaurant: 2377 Shattuck Ave., 843-1535.›

What are those curiously attractive houses whose second floor, contained within a steeply pitched main gable roof, is far larger than the first floor? Why do we see them standing in clusters of two or three in Berkeley and Oakland but rarely elsewhere? 

This unusual style is one of the variants of Colonial Revival and appears to have emerged from the union of Queen Anne and Eastern Shingle Style. In the mid-1890s, this picturesque hybrid evolved in the San Francisco Bay Area into a local Colonial Revival sub-genre that is particularly evident in the East Bay. A middle-class building style, it is typically expressed in a simplified, rectangular mass under a single gable roof with laterally projecting dormers. 

Many high-peaked Colonial Revival houses feature small corner porticos, often supported by a Neoclassical column. The gable frequently boasts a Palladian or a prow window, which is sometimes balustraded. The exterior walls are clad with narrow clapboards or shingles, with a typical arrangement being shingling on the second floor and clapboarding below. 

The earliest known high-peaked Colonial Revival house in the East Bay may be a residence designed by Edgar A. Mathews at 1535 Saint Charles St. in Alameda, which Alameda Museum Curator George Gunn dates from 1894. The earliest known house documented in Edwards’ Trancripts of Records is the H.F. Munson residence designed by Hugo W. Storch (1873–1917) and built in 1895 at 2354 East 23rd St. in Oakland’s Fruitvale District. 

If Hugo Storch was the first to build in this style, the one who popularized it was the prolific Oakland architect Alfred William Smith (1864–1933). Smith’s success with high-peaked Colonial Revival was documented in an Oakland Enquirer article published in June 1899: “One of the mos t distinctive features of recent local building operations is the wonderful popularity suddenly achieved by the style of house known as the Dutch Colonial, whose principal characteristic is a high-peaked roof. The idea in this city originated with J. H. S impson, who since he first began building such structures, has put up 10. However, the style has been adapted and enlarged upon by architect A. W. Smith who since the 10th of January of last year [1898] has put up no less than 27 houses, all on this pecul iar line of architecture. [...] Mr. Smith ascribes the popularity to the growth of the artistic in the building public, which has caused a departure from the strict rules of architecture and given rise to the development of the picturesque style.” 

The st yle became so popular that many builders began imitating it. Between 1900 and 1905, high-peaked Colonial Revival was all the rage. Even “name” architects such as Julia Morgan, Albert Dodge Coplin, and Thomas D. Newsom were commissioned to design residence s in this style. When the houses were constructed on a speculative basis, the builder would typically put up two or three in a row, making sure to give each house distinct detailing to differentiate it from its brethren. Good examples of such clusters may be seen on the 2000 block of Woolsey Street; the 3000 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way; the 2300 block of Webster Street; and the 2100 block of Haste Street. Sometimes identical designs may be found on adjacent streets or even a good distance apart. The trio on MLK Jr. Way exhibits the same design found in a pair on the 2800 block of San Pablo Avenue, which was built by A.W. Smith. Curiously, descendants of the builder Carl Ericsson believe that it was he and not Smith who built the MLK threesome. 

A lthough high-peaked Colonial Revival houses may be seen in various California towns such a Napa and Redding, they usually stand there as lone examples. San Francisco evolved its own variant of high-peaked Colonial Revival row house, with additional floors and a gable that is not fully contained within the roof. 

Berkeley and Oakland are unique in possessing large numbers of these houses. By my estimate, Berkeley alone has close to 200 specimens, which constitute an open-air museum that should be cherished and preserved.e

I was visiting with a client today and got into one of those if/and/or discussions that soon feels like your brain is stuck in either molasses or honey (depending on whether the job will actually pay anything). One possible course of action involved changing a faucet, which would have eliminated a broken component and almost certainly have solved a problem involving the reluctant flow of hot water. The other solution would make someone happy but seemed for all the world like the wrong thing to do.  

The woman’s husband wanted a new sink. Have you ever seen Jim Jarmusch’s extraordinarily inelegant, odd and fall-down-between-the-seats funny film Stranger Than Paradise? One of the main characters is given a dress. She tries wearing it but there’s just something wrong with it. At one point she changes into pants, leaves her building and stuffs the dress in a garbage can stating “This dress bugs me!” There was no need for further explanation.  

The sink bugs this guy. It was a perfectly good sink. It will cost a whole bunch of money to replace it, along with the faucet, drain fittings and maybe a disposer (although retaining it and keeping it from leaking in its new setting will be no small feat in any event). 

See, he just wants a new sink. But nothing’s ever simple and there are always attendant troubles to all these seemingly small changes. The change of sink isn’t a bad idea in and of itself. But the couple is planning on remodeling the kitchen pretty soon, and doing this whole body of work twice is going to cost a lot of extra money and, of course, impact their lives in a very Stranger Than Paradise sort of way. Doing the same job twice is a bit like déjà vu with extra nausea. 

It’s as though there were teams of small demons that come with various home repairs. Some are just annoying, but some will drive you seriously crazy. 

To minimize these visitations, I suggest an overriding strategy. Do things in groups and consider the overall value/desire/need of the entire body of work prior to entering into the venture. Make sure the mayhem is worthwhile. 

The first corollary to this is never fix one part of anything. The second is never fix anything twice when you can fix it once. 

This means that you need a long-range strategy. The idea is to stop responding to any one problem in an immediate or panic-struck fashion.  

The couple with the sink is a good example so let’s work with that. They had an additional problem beyond the fellow’s general disdain for this particular sink. The sink was leaking down below. The trap (that’s the U-shaped drain pipe below the sink) had developed a hole and was leaking pretty badly. Additionally, the faucet was not providing any significant amount of hot water. These are very real problems, especially when two little girls need to have their breakfast dishes washed. 

Here’s how I see the situation: 

The drain needs to be fixed but not in a manner any more complex than is needed to prevent damage to the cabinet over the next few months. The faucet also needs to be made workable so that dishes can be washed. Simple repairs are preferred in this situation and the highest-quality materials and methods are not required. Also, if a new faucet is obtained, they should probably consider re-installing it in the new sink as the kitchen is remodeled. This might make the most sense. It turned out, happily, that the faucet only needed to be meddled with and that it will likely function for a few more months. A new trap didn’t cost much and was installed imperfectly but in a fashion which should serve for a similar duration. 

The rest of the job should be looked at in a similar way. All the things that comprise a new kitchen should be on the counter (as it were) at the same time. This is the time to do everything.  

If one portion is left out, it may be very costly and troublesome to add later on. A good example is a dishwasher. Putting in a dishwasher once the cabinetry is all in place, whether in a old kitchen or a newer one, is a real bear and often results in an obvious butchering of the cabinetry and a misfitting of the appliance. It’s the sort of thing that can leave you kicking yourself. I’m not saying that one needs to possess a dishwasher, a disposer or a trash compactor (I will not be buying the latter item any time soon). I am saying that if you think you might want one of these at any point in the next 10 years, it should be made part of the plan before a drawing is made or bids are obtained. 

Good planning is cheap. Aesthetics are also cheap. In general, design is a bargain. The best designs I see tend to involve inexpensive material and simple methods. The trick is to think it all through before you buy anything. In the case of a kitchen, this might involve deciding to move (or remove) a wall. This can make a world of difference when you finally get done. Another thing I see a lot is an extraneous and outdated stove flue that eats up space between two rooms. If you explore fully before you settle on a plan, the flue might come out and give you a few extra square feet of counter space that turns a so-so kitchen into a great kitchen. 

Advice from designers and contractors is worth gold when it comes to making such plans. These people go through these trials on a daily basis and usually know lots of good tricks. 

If you’ve planned well and drawn (perhaps several times) your kitchen (or bath or deck or master suite), you have the basic resource with which to obtain a satisfactory and economical result. The person who does a job twice, even a rather modest one, could probably have bought themselves a five-star project for the same cost in addition to saving themselves the self-inflicted bruises. 

Take your time, plan one project, save your money, get lots of advice, shop, shop, shop and then have a ball watching it all come together.  

There are, in my personal estimate, few experiences in life more satisfying than a nice little remodeling project. So enjoy. 

We just returned from an excursion to a friend’s new townhouse in Vacaville. I won’t riff on her lament that she can’t find bulk olives or a decent farmers’ market or bookstore there, but I will say that the landscaping scares me a bit. Scared her, too, and then some: The week before closing on the new place, Alamo Creek and its local tributaries flooded her first floor and most of her neighbors’. She got off lightly though and the seller replaced the carpet with the tile she prefers. The block still rings with repair and construction noises, and piles of ruined wallboard and household stuff persist.  

There’s a shallow lawn-covered drainage swale running through the complex, but it didn’t do the job. Most of the creeks up there, as far as I could see, are channelized even if the banks are still green. And there’s more and more paving—streets, parking lots—replacing more absorbent soil and plants upstream and such mass-produced plants as are allowed in the new housing sprawls clearly are maintained by the mow-n-blow guys with motorized clippers. Everything that’s not a rectangle is a ball.  

It’s part of the weird lockstep that I’ll call Generic Gardening. Tidy it up; cut it off at waist height regardless of where its main branches run or how dead-brown the result is; when in doubt, pave it. It’s not even as amusing as topiary. And all this tidiness, straightening, covering-up, and general ignorance in action leave people puzzled when the worst storm in 10 years sends water over the ditch-creek’s banks: What? There’s lots of nature here! Look at all the greenery! Nature’s a bitch, that’s all; we need more paving and control! 

Here in Berkeley some of us are paying for the sins of our forebears, as the culverts they ran creeks through to get them out of the way collapse under our houses and gardens. No matter how much we love creeks, fish, birds, nature, we can’t afford to throw away our lives’ savings or the huge investment that any land, let alone building, here represents.  

And what about property rights? Can a city regulate what we do on our own land? There’s the rub: When it concerns creeks, rivers, water in general, nothing we do on our own land stays there. Building close to a creek’s banks is just asking for subsidence; paving more ground, adding roof area all increase runoff, especially in big storms, and make big trouble for anyone—plant, bird, fish, or human—living downstream. Dirt, plants, and meanders all help blunt the force of floods, and that’s what we remove when we build. 

The Creeks Task Force is, as I write this, wrangling and setting public hearings, trying to make sense and even justice out of this mess we’ve been handed. You might know about buildings—after all, we all live in them—but most of us know little about creeks and water’s behavior. There are local groups working to make creeks work better for us as well as wildlife, removing invasives that choke the channels and turn floating debris into dams, cleaning out that trash, planting natives that function with the land, getting muddy and educated at the same time. Check some out. 

Friends of Five Creeks 

www.fivecreeks.org 

848-9358 

Urban Creeks Council 

www.urbancreeks.org 

1250 Addison Street, # 107C,  

Berkeley, 94702 

540-6669

In the three years I’ve attended San Francisco State as an MFA student, I’ve developed a consuming interest in the theater. Brian Thorstenson, whose play Shadow Crossing is now at the Berkeley City Club, was the first instructor to inspire me in the craft of playwriting. In his course, “Reading and Viewing Plays,” we read and saw half a dozen live performances, and watched several on tape. We analyzed and critiqued, then copied scenes from each play, put them into our own words and voices, and made them our stories. 

The following semester I took a class from Anne Galjour, a local playwright known for her acting and Louisiana-based monologues. I enrolled in a seminar taught by Michelle Carter, whose play Ted Kaczynski Killed People with Bombs has won several international awards, and is now in pre production in London. Last semester I participated in a workshop led by Roy Conboy, a nationally known Chicano playwright who is the chair of SFSU’s Theater Arts Department and head of the graduate playwriting program. 

Before enrolling at San Francisco State I’d attended a few dozen plays. But because of these instructors and their encouragement, I’ve had the pleasure of viewing dozens and dozens of staged productions, both on my own and as required coursework. I’ve been to the Bravo, the Marsh, Berkeley Rep and the Aurora. I’ve attended plays at the Magic, Theatre Rhinoceros, the Artaud and the Geary. I’ve gone to productions staged by A.C.T., the Shotgun Players, Word for Word, Campo Santo, Central Works, and the Red Gate Performance Collective. I’ve gotten to know some actors, directors, and stage managers, dramaturges and costume designers, lighting and sound engineers. I’ve been captivated and enthralled by the collaboration and passion, the hard work and commitment, the talent and generosity required in order to get words off the page and onto the stage. 

Last night I attended Our Lady of 121st Street, a production currently showing at SF Playhouse in San Francisco. Written by New York playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis and directed by Playhouse Artistic Director Bill English, this is a rapidly told, 10-scene, hard-boiled, episodic drama. As English states in the playbill, Our Lady explores the “spiritual needs of humanity: the struggle to find hope in the face of despair, forgiveness in the face of bitterness, faith in the face of doubt, and love in the face of hate.” He forgets to mention that it is also uproariously funny, flip, tender, and emotional. 

Guirgis places his 12 ethnically and socially diverse characters within a funeral home, a bar, and a Catholic church in Harlem, waiting Godot-like for the memorial service to begin for their teacher, friend, co-worker, and relative Sister Rose. But Sister Rose’s body is missing and as they await its recovery, these former friends, current lovers, ex-spouses, siblings, rivals, and strangers are forced to confront their darkest fears, their emptiness, shame, and longing.  

From Brian, Anne, Michelle and Roy, I’ve learned that every protagonist has to take the audience somewhere, and by doing so viewers will journey with them. Along the way the audience should learn about themselves and the human condition. Each of the characters in Our Lady of 121st Street starts in a place they don’t want to be. Their challenge is to change. Some do and some don’t. A few embrace their pain, acknowledge their weaknesses and move on. Others remain where they are and lose hope. Just like real life, like you and me and all of mankind, they have aspirations that are realized and dreams that are crushed. Whipped into a frenzy by quick turns of plot, hilarious juxtapositions, and machinegun-style, Mamet-esque dialogue, I cannot remember when I’ve enjoyed a theatrical performance more. And it was not just me. The small, intimate playhouse erupted in laughter, tears and a standing ovation when the seemingly brief, two-hour production came to a rollicking, soulful conclusion. 

I’m not exaggerating. Go see it for yourself at the SF Playhouse, 536 Sutter (between Powell and Mason). (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. 

Once it’s reached adulthood a Monterey cypress is easy to recognize, though it takes wildly different shapes depending on whether it’s near the ocean shore, its native habitat, or inland even only a few miles. Its native habitat, in fact, is the very small section of coastland between Monterey and Point Lobos. If it were only there, it would be rare—and most likely endangered—just because its range would be so small. But it’s handsome and easy to grow from seed, so it’s in cultivation and part of human-made landscapes all over the world. 

Its best fieldmark, aside from the deep green of its scaled foliage: Small round cones like scaly shooter marbles, and the red bark, becoming silvery and furrowed with age, is the way it holds its leaves in graceful horizontal planes, in shapes like far-away new clouds on a horizon. That habit marks the sisterhood of the fantastically twisted, windblown trees on the coast with their more formally symmetrical, upright siblings—where they have space to assume their own unpruned forms—inland. There’s one at the east end of Golden Gate Park that dominates the area, a gorgeous open graceful giant towering in its stately, imperceptibly slow dance above every tree and structure in sight.  

There are several around Berkeley and on the UC campus—look around Dwinelle Hall and the Earth Sciences building—and once you’ve seen one you’ll know them. But when you think you know what to expect, go look at their home population, famously painted and photographed along the Monterey coastline, the sort of thing on which bonsai artists model their most contorted specimens. They seem at once muscular and ancient, digging their roots into rocky prominences and arguing lifelong with the fierce Pacific winds. 

Those winds nurture them uniquely, though. It’s harder to grow them, or at least to make them last long, in really dry places. They thrive on the moisture the ocean delivers to the atmosphere even during our summer droughts. In turn, they nurture ferns and mosses and understory plants beneath them, sieving the fog from the air and condensing it into drops, a very localized rainstorm to water the island of life that grows on the soil they start to form out of their own shed foliage. To see this happening, and a bit closer to home that Monterey, go out to the lighthouse at Point Reyes and look at the trees on the north shoulder of the paved road you walk on from the parking lot, at the carpet under them, brilliant green even in summer. The air smells different under them.  

Monterey cypresses on the coastline often stay upright long after they’ve died, leaving graceful silvered wood sculptures to mark their passing. The wood is tough and endures well in its untreated state, and I suppose might replace redwood in some outdoor lumber uses except for its decidedly un-lumberlike shape. Even the more upright cypresses planted inland don’t grow in an orderly column like redwoods or pines, but, as I’ve seen them, taper rapidly and bifurcate at every opportunity into a sort of organic candelabra.  

We lost several of them, along with some pines, out on the Berkeley Marina after the storms at the turn of the year. They do grow faster in deeper soils that they do in rock clefts; as a result, they share the unfortunate tendencies of fast-growing trees to overreach their capacities, to grow thick foliage sails that catch the wind and topple them when their roots can’t keep up. City life has its perils for them too, even apparently suburban city life like that in a mini-lawn by a Marina parking lot. Pavement interferes with root growth, and poor drainage can weaken their root systems, as it can with most trees, until they overbalance and topple.  

One terrible instance of this happened a few years ago on Sixth Street, when a beautiful old cypress collapsed suddenly—in, as I recall, calm weather, in the arboreal equivalent of a stroke—and killed a driver at a stop sign under it. Trees do die, as all of us living beings do, and living elbow-to-elbow in a city puts us all in peril as we lean on and overshadow each other. 

Photo by Ron Sullivan 

This 20- or 30-something Monterey cypress on the Berkeley Marina is just beginning to show the windswept flat planes of its adult form. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 24 

THEATER 

Berkeley Rep “Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell” at 8 p.m. in the Roda Theater. Tickets are $45-$59. Runs through April 16. 647-2949.  

Black Repertory Group Theater “Judgement Day” Where Are You Gonna Run? at 6 p.m. Fri. and Sat. at 3201 Adeline. Tickets are $20-$25. 916-613-6165. 

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 

“(The 99 Cent) Miss Saigon” at 7:30 p.m. at Willard Middle School Metalshop Theater, 2425 Stuart St. through Mar. 25. Tickets are $5-$15. 547-8932. 

Opera Piccola’s Reality Tour at 9:30 a.m. at Paul Robeson Visual and Performing Arts High School, on the Fremont Federation Campus, 4610 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. 658-0967. www.opera-piccola.org 

Shotgun Players “Bright Ideas” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. to April 23. Tickets are $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sharon Smith and Phil Gasper discuss “Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the U.S.” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Ada Limón and Kaya Oakes, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Mary Elizabeth Berry introduces “Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zorro Remixed Dance and theater in conjunction with the Berkeley Youth Arts Festival at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. www.berkeleysrtcenter.org 

All Ages Hip Hop Concert with Crank Jai, Blayze McKee, Influence and others at 9 p.m. in the East Pauley Ballroom, UC Campus. Benefit for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Tickets are $10 and available only in advance at http://umca.berkeley.edu/calbattles.html 

Oakland East Bay Symphony performs Elgar, Beethovan and Mozart at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Pre-concert lecture at 7:05 p.m. Tickets are $15-$60. 652-8497. www.oebs.org 

What’s Up!? Aerial Dance Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Studio 12, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10-$15. 587-0770. www.movingout.org  

Son con Trova: A Celebration of Contemporary Latino Songwriters and Music, with Trova sin Traba at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

James Gilman, tenor, and Cara Bradbury, piano, perform Schubert’s “Winterreise” at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12. 848-1228. 

Cesaria Evora, Cape Verdean morna, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Ajamu Akinyele with Gemini Soul at 4:30 p.m. at Borders Books, 5800 Shellmound St., Emeryville, and at 6:30 p.m. at Starbucks,1600 Shattuck Ave. 848-7155. 

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

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

Deborah Levoy, singer/songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Angie Stevens, indie alt country, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

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

Matt Renzi Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Coaster and Roberta Chevrette at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Akimbo, An Albatross, Last Clear Chance at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Girl Fest Bay Area with Ali Wong, Velocity Circus, La Paz and others at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159.  

Angie Stevens at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204. 

Guru Garage at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 25 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Lydia Mills, songs, games and puppets in Spanish, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

East Bay Children’s Theater, “Cinderella’s Glass Slipper” at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m at James Moore Theatre, Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Tickets are $7. 655-7285. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Celebrates “Si Se Puede” in Homage to César Chávez Poster exhibit at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Through March 30. 981-6107. 

“Still Present Pasts” A collaborative exhibition on Korean Americans and the “Forgotten War” Intergenerational discussion at 1 p.m. at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361. 

FILM 

Asian American Film Festival “Café Lumiere” at 4:45 p.m. and Chinese Martial Arts Films at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Brian Fies provides honesty, emotion and humor in his book of cartoons “Mom’s Cancer” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Rhythm & Muse Open Mic at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. 

Justus Ballard, Henry Baum, Laurence Dumortier, Mary Rechner and Carol Treadwell read from their fiction at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cello Recital in conjunction with the Berkeley Youth Arts Festival at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. www.berkeleysrtcenter.org 

Helda Wilking, contemporary recorder music at noon at A Cheerfull Noyse, 1228 Solano Ave., Albany. 524-0411. 

Healing Muses “A Celebration of Robert Burns,“ at 8 p.m. at Parish Hall, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Venue not wheelchair accessible. Tickets are $15-$18. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org  

Pacific Mozart Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Free. 981-6100. 

“Dangerous Beauty” Hip-hop, modern, African and jazz dance, with spoken word and rap performed by Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company at 7:30 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourde Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $6-$20. 597-1619. 

Cesaria Evora, Cape Verdean morna, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Seething Brunswicks at 8 p.m. at the Lucre Lounge, 2086 Allston Way. Cost is $8. Benefit for Berkeley Community Media. 

Anything Goes Chorus 25th Anniversary Concert with jazz, pop, Broadway and world music at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison at 27th St., Oakland. Tickets are $15, children 12 and under $10, at the door.  

What’s Up!? Aerial dance performance at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 3 p.m. at Studio 12, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10-$15, and must be purchased in advance. 587-0770.  

“The Waters of March” folk, jazz and a capella harmonies with Mary Ford and friends at 7:30 p.m. at Pacific School of Religion Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. Suggested donation $10-$25. 704-7729.  

Son con Trova: A Celebration of Contemporary Latino Songwriters and Music, with Son Sabrosón at 9 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568.  

Jamie Davis & Mark Little Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

Girl Fest Bay Area with X-Factor, Rachel Kann, Jennifer Johns and others at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Christina Kowalchuck, Judea Eden and others, indie folk, poprock, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Joshua Eden and The Blank Tapes at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Matt Morrish Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Barbara Higbie at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Unjust, Omissa, Nuclear at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Rhoda Benin at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Sam Bevan Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Alan Smithline, country blues at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

All Shall Perish, Suffocate, The Assailant at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 26 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Now-Time Venezuela: Worker Controlled Factories” A multi-screen projection by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Discussion with the artists at 2 p.m. 642-0808. 

“Dance Anywhere” Photographs and video from 2005 at 2 p.m. at 8th Street Studio, 2525 Eighth St.  

FILM 

The Wide Angle Cinema of Michael Brault “The Times That Are” at 3 p.m. “The River Schooners” at 5:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Son con Trova: A Celebration of Contemporary Latino Songwriters Songwriting Workshop hosted by Lichi Fuentes at 12:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568.  

Poetry Flash with Sandra Stone and Barbara Tomash at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

What’s Up!? Aerial Dance at 3 p.m. at Studio 12, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10-$15. 587-0770. www.movingout.org  

Prometheus Symphony Orchestra, with young cellist Paul Hyun, winner of the Khuner Competition, at 3 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. Admission is free, donations requested. 

Marcelle Dronkers, soprano, Larry London, clarinet at 4 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. A benefit concert for Children’s Hospital. Donation $7-$25. 527-6202. 

Pacific Collegium, works of twentieth-century a cappella choral literature at 3 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $8-$18. 459-2341.  

Chamber Music Sundaes with San Francisco Symphony Principal Cellist Michael Grebanier at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $9-$21. 415-584-5946.  

“Dangerous Beauty” Hip-hop, modern, African and jazz dance, with spoken word and rap performed by Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company at 3 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourde Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $6-$20. 597-1619. 

Steve Seskin, Brian Joseph, Kenny Edwards at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Vadim Repin, violin, and Nikolai Lugansky, piano, at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$58. 642-9988.  

Jewish Music Festival Comunity Music Day with Josh Kornbluth and Ira Levin from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the BRJCC. Tickets are $7-$24. 415-276-1511. 

Mario Correa’s Brazilian Soul Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Celia Malheiros, Brazilian vocalist, at 4:30 at the Jazz 

school. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

Head-Royce School Jazz Combo and Jazz Choir at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Myra Chaney and Kristan Willits at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Funeral Diner, Racebannon, Gospel at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, MARCH 27 

EXHIBITIONS 

Hideo Hagiwara “Mount Fuji Woodblock Prints” opens at the IEAS Lobby, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor, and runs through May 19. Sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Carol Jameson will read from “Trollope in Divine Valley” a contemporary Victorian soap opera, at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Meet the Kellermans: The First Family of Crime Fiction with authors Jonathan Kellerman, Faye Kellerman and first-time author Jesse Kellerman at 6:30 p.m. at Ristorante Raphael, 2132 Center St. Dinner is $75. Benefit for the American Friends of the Israeli Red Cross. 644-9500.  

Poetry Express theme night: Poems About Women, with guest Selah Geissler at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Diana Rowan, 3 harps, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Zilber-Muscarella Quartet and Invitational at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 28 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Tell it on Tuesday” Story- 

telling with Lauren Crux, Kate Frankle, and others at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juliamorgan.org 

Rosalind Wiseman gives parenting advice in “Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Larry Vuckovich, solo 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. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Debra Dean introduces her new novel “The Madonnas of Leningrad” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Berkeley Symphony Orchestra with Garrick Ohlsson, piano, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$54. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

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

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

Blue Roots at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Five & Dime Jazz, The Great Auk at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Orquestra Bakan at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Sol Spectrum at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Tret Fure at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

THURSDAY, MARCH 30 

FILM 

The Enchanting World of Jacques Demy “Lola” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tom Tomorrow introduces his first compilation of cartoons “Hell in a Handbasket: Dispatches From the Country Formerly Known as America” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Betty Lucas, life coach, introduces “Many Roads to Love” at 7 p.m. at A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 La Salle Ave., Oakland, 339-8210.  

Word Beat Reading Series with Phillip Deitch and Susan Birkeland at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Children’s Choral Festival at 12:30 p.m. at Regents’ Theater, Holy Names University. Free. 436-1234. 

Ladysmith Black Mambazo, music of Zulu mine and factory workers, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$46. 642-9988.  

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

Adam Blankman and his Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Travis Jones & Friends at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Michael Bluestein Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Selector with Black Edgars Musicbox at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277.

Berkeley husband-and-wife filmmaking team Cliff Orloff and Olga Shalygin have taken several trips to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, and their most recent visit has resulted in a poignant film about the lives of Afghan women. Cut From Different Cloth: Burqas and Beliefs, a one-hour documentary, will air on PBS at 5 p.m. Sunday and again at 8 p.m. Thursday. 

The filmmakers focus their attention on Hasina, a 27-year-old woman who is, as the film states early on, Afghanistan’s equivalent of a radical feminist. 

The film features interviews with Afghan men and women and government officials, but it is at its best when it centers on Hasina. She is a remarkable woman, walking a delicate line between defiance and devotion. She is intelligent, sensitive, articulate, charming and strong. There is no ill will in her stance toward her culture’s restrictive mores; there is only the desire to be true to herself, to be true to womanhood and women’s rights, to do right by her family even when they think it’s wrong. Hasina is too humble to speak of herself as setting an example, as blazing a path, but that is essentially her role; she and other Afghan women like her are sacrificing a great deal to chip away at the barriers that their culture places before them. 

The filmmakers employ an interesting device: Orloff and Shalygin took their 27-year-old daughter Serena with them, to see the country and its women through her eyes as she lived with Hasina for two months. The approach has its rewards—a genuine friendship seems to take shape, and Serena’s presence does provide a vantage point the average American viewer can probably relate to—but it is hardly necessary. There is no need to set up an east-west conflict, for there is more than enough conflict in Hasina’s heart to carry this film. In a series of painful and poignant moments, Hasina’s brothers and sisters discuss their relationship with her and the ramifications of her lifestyle, revealing the unresolved conflicts between family and society.  

The film portrays much of modern-day Afghanistan’s repressive climate as the result of 25 years of warfare, combined with a backlash against the permissiveness of the country’s mid-century Communist era. In a society of great internal strife, women have essentially become the battleground. It’s as if the country’s men have for so long felt so beset upon by outsiders that they have compensated by exerting control over their women. 

The situation poses a difficult and potentially dangerous dilemma: Women must consent to oppression out of compassion for the oppressors. They do not necessarily walk in fear of outsiders or of the Taliban; they walk in fear of the shame they bring to their fathers and brothers should they step out of line. They obey out of love for the men who control them. Defiance is not a stick in the eye of Islam or the Taliban—it is a swipe at the very family that clothes, houses and feeds them. It takes a strong woman to walk that line, to retain the love of and for her family while setting her own path. And though governments may set more enlightened policies and police may enforce them, it is these acts of defiance and devotion that gradually win hearts and minds.  

What is especially maddening is watching a country in such need of strong, talented people as it ignores, stifles and condemns such a wide swath of its population—among them many of the country’s most potentially valuable leaders. It is painful to see Hasina, a woman of such depth, of such charm, of such intelligence, competence and ambition, go unappreciated by her family, by her culture, by her country. What a waste of potential, what a crime to condemn a person of such talent and grace.  

Cut From Different Cloth paints a picture of an Afghanistan that is regressing, that has been torn asunder and is slipping backward in a retreat from modernity. This a hardly a blueprint for rebuilding the country or healing its wounds, and it leaves the viewer with the impression that it is a nation that has little chance of making itself whole again if it cannot bear to embrace its better half. 

Cut From Different Cloth 

Produced and directed by Olga Shalygin and Cliff Orloff. 

Airs on PBS at 5 p.m. March 26 and at 8 p.m. March 30.?

Brian Jones seems all but forgotten these days, at least outside his native England. He founded the Rolling Stones, but they passed him by, leaving him to gather moss, or at least ingest a great deal of grass.  

Jones essentially created white-boy blues, using his band to bring the sounds of American blues to a British audience at a time when American blues artists were obscure, even in their own country. Stoned, opening today (Friday) at Shattuck Cinemas, depicts Jones’ rise and fall, from his childhood in upper-class Cheltenham to the dizzying heights of rock ‘n’ roll success to his ignominious death at the bottom of his swimming pool.  

The opening credits show the Stones performing at a small club, and the staging of the scene is indicative of Jones’ role in the band: The rest of the Stones are in dark clothes and standing in the shadows while Jones wears a white shirt and is illuminated by the spotlight. This is an exaggerated depiction for the sake of dramatization, but check out virtually any of the band’s Jones-era record covers and you’ll see precisely this sort of composition. Jones is almost always dressed differently and standing apart from or in front of the other band members. He was their leader, their founder, the heart and soul of the group. But not for long.  

Jones was basically a blues purist; if it had been up to him, the Stones might never have done anything other than cover blues and rock ‘n’ roll classics. His decline as leader of the band began once their producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, convinced the band that they must start writing original material if they wanted to have a future.  

The problem for Jones was that he couldn’t write. He was a remarkable musician; he could seemingly pick up any instrument and learn to play it within an hour or two. Anything out of the ordinary on those early Stones albums is more than likely Brian’s doing: marimba, sitar, dulcimer. His talent lay in transforming the raw materials of his bandmates’ work into something quite unique. He was not a songwriter, but an interpreter.  

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards took on the songwriting duties and excelled, turning out a string of blues-based rock and pop classics and catapulting the band to the top of the charts, positioning them as the Beatles’ primary rivals. Stoned hints at this but doesn’t overtly express it, and this is perhaps the film’s most significant flaw: It speaks to the initiated, to those who already know the tale. Those who don’t may find the film’s plot points and timeline confusing and the characters’ motivations a bit vague. 

Along with the creative responsibilities, Jagger and Richards began assuming leadership roles within the band, further alienating Jones. The band was maturing, developing its talents and range, while Jones himself was essentially stagnating, content to wallow in success and excess. His powerful ego, combined with his fragility and insecurity and growing dependence on drugs, quickly made him a liability as his total immersion in the benefits of fame led to increasingly erratic behavior. And it certainly didn’t help matters when Jones’ longtime girlfriend Anita Pallenberg left him for Keith Richards.  

The movie is flawed from the start in that it takes one possible scenario for Jones’ death and plays it through, the scenario being that Jones was murdered. An apparently unsubstantiated 1993 deathbed confession by Jones’ building contractor provides the rough outline of the musician’s demise. A more interesting film could have been made without taking a position on Jones’ death, instead depicting the mystery and intrigue that surrounded the tragedy, and the circumstances that launched a troubled rock star into martyrdom. Biopics often make this mistake, replacing the messiness and ambiguity of life with simple plot resolutions and facile explanations of character and motivation.  

First-time director Woolley makes a few unfortunate rookie mistakes. For whatever reason, there are no Stones songs on the soundtrack, nothing to denote Jones’ actual contribution to the music of the era. Instead we hear plenty of his influences—Robert Jones, Muddy Waters, etc.— and that’s appropriate. But we also hear several current artists performing very modern versions of blues classics, and the juxtaposition can be jarring. It is likely meant to demonstrate Jones’ influence on the blues-based artists who followed him, but it doesn’t quite work. 

There is also a completely moronic sequence, shot like a music video, in which Gregory lip-synchs his way through “Not Fade Away” during a montage sequence of significant moments in the life of Brian. The scene threatens to sink the film with camp and cheek and should have been left on the cutting room floor. 

But for what it is, the movie is quite good. The direction is for the most part effective and the performances are solid. Luke de Woolfson as Jagger, though it’s only a small part, nails the singer’s mannerisms, off stage and on. And Leo Gregory brings out the fierceness and fragility of a man who acquired all the fame and fortune he could have wanted, yet immersed himself in it to the point of drowning.  

Stoned 

Director: Stephen Woolley  

Cast: Leo Gregory, Paddy Considine, David Morrissey, Tuva Novotny, Amelia Warner, Ben Whishaw, Monet Mazur, Luke De Woolfson, James D. White 

Playing: Shattuck Cinemas

In front of an enormous projection of the Bear Flag, alternately in full color and eerie x-ray blue, morphing into the view through the windshield of a fast superhighway, there’s a masked man seated onstage at “The Berkeley Rep of Alta California”—but he bears no resemblance to the masked man of the title, a kind of processed Latino Lone Ranger. This one’s not caped in black with black silk mask and mounted on a saddle. This figure’s in restraints, effaced (while a bitchy burlesque nurse tries to force m eds on him, then goes for the suppositories) mumbling “I’m the Wal-Mart price slasher! ... one man can start a revolution or recall a standing governor ...” And when a couple of Homeland Security-type spooks put him through whatever degree, demanding “Why did you threaten the governor? Who are you really?”, the man in a bind replies, “I’m bi-cultural, bi-curious and bipolar ... My California is now an endless series of strip malls ... I am Zorro! I must be Zorro! A muhajadeen Zorro! I have my own guitar flourish! There was a time when I was a normal Chicano ...” 

So, starting out from the aftermath in a kind of upside-down One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, we enter backwards into an odyssey of high stakes and cultural kitsch, of identities shifting faster than Christopher Acebo’s ultra-mobile sets and Alexander V. Nichols’ dynamic lights and cinema-surround effects, as a Latino writer engaged to write a play about Zorro checks into the El Camino Real, the oldest motel in the world, encountering a phantasm agoria of Old California icons. Routines play out and one-liners fly in Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell.  

It’s post-agit-prop spectacle, as deliberately 2-D as a comic strip, and very amusing in its ricocheting quips that cover the statewide scene and wha t’s thought and said about it, pilloried with the same poses struck by commentators and spectators alike. Richard Montoya of Culture Clash, playing the halfhearted scribbler (“Just because you got no talent don’t mean you can’t write”) is coached and prov oked by the Calamity Jane-like 200 Year Old Woman (a juicily comic Sharon Lockwood) who’s seen (and done) them all, as well as Don Ringo (canny Herbert Siguenza of the Clash), constantly striking a skewed pose and reiterating his battlecry: “I am the firs t Chicano!” There’s also a grisly Bear-a-pist (Clasher Ric Salinas), a kind of Jungian-of-Nature, who advises the bewildered playwright (who has said, “God is dead—I know, because I Googled God!”) that even the Zorro romance, from a cheap 1920s novel, has its place in the scheme of things. “When do myths become real? When people believe in them,” he says. Coming from a bear—the one they named the Bear Republic after?—it’s hard to quibble with.  

Vignettes fly by as the set shifts in and out of clever li ve-action parodies of the big-Z films, bathed in cinematic flicker. One, a silent with swordplay and supertitled intertitles, is somehow reminiscent of Will Rogers’ camera-tricky spoof of yet another Fairbanks Senior swashbuckler, Robin Hood. Another, a talkie, plays off George Hamilton’s Zorro—The Gay Blade, with effeminate Don Diego (Joseph Kamal) and a masher as his beloved old friar. In a post-intermission face-off between a youthful Davey Crockett and a puerile Zorro, a handgun accident delivers the baby Zorro into the arms of a bright white Guy Williams, the Disney Mr. Z, on whose pinions the slain youth will rise to heaven, not California (”that’s hell!”). In another sketch-within-the-program, Joaquin Murrieta is discovered within a private shrine—and later, his severed head mugs in a jar of whiskey, whence it was displayed at fairs. 

The evening is less a play than a program of skits, though it all adds up in its blitzkrieg of images (Siguenza as an Erich Von Stroheim Prussian gubernator, or alte rnately in a Schwarzenegger mask running a mini-Hummer up against Zorro’s defensive rapier) and self-conscious quips (”Now I understand; I’m caught in an SF Mime Troupe play!”)—into a princely sum of its parts, but not much more. It would be interesting t o see how the Mime Troupe, or say the Dell’Arte Players would do with the elaborate and expensive tech set-up and fine artistic support Culture Clash has from The Rep. This production is what it was intended to be: a brisk (and briskly directed by The Re p’s artistic director, Tony Taccone) and gleefully rude political entertainment, not The Marx Bros. but vaudeville with a barcode, so the check-out is faster. 

The litany (or catechism) of California dreams and atrocities rolls along with the outrageous q uips (“I’m dreaming of a White Kwanza” or “My god! I have nothing to wear to the quail hunt!”). But the disheartened Zorro who found himself in the wrong movie discovers his inner action hero in the end, as the Bear Flag goes into hibernation, and the las t villains fade away, one strangely muttering a critic’s begrudging regret: “I hate to waste a single bullet on a playwright!” 

Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell 

plays through April 16 at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater. $45-$59.647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org›e

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely you can always go—downtown.  

In the 1960s Petula Clark sang of the attractions of a downtown neighborhood—neon signs, traffic music, the rhythm of the bossa nova. Times have changed but Berkeley’s Downtown has on offer an eclectic selection of venues to draw your interest. 

Combining the seat of city government with a commercial center, Berkeley has imprinted its distinctive personality on the area surrounding Shattuck Avenue. A vibrant arts and entertainment industry intermixed with over one hundred eateries representing the cuisine of fifteen countries mirrors this ethnically mixed community. Almost 50 percent of Berkeley’s population resides within a one-mile radius of downtown. This population swells with the daily influx of workers and the students at Berkeley High and the university, resulting in high density with divergent needs. 

The downtown area developed with thanks to Francis Shattuck and the railroad. In 1876 Shattuck convinced Central Pacific Railroad to run a spur line through his property and build a station at the intersection of University and Shattuck. Businesses grew, booming in 1903 when Key System electric trains offered additional transport and again, after the 1906 earthquake. 

Today’s skyline reflects the push for additional housing units and modern commercial space, but Berkeley’s past remains. An architectural walk highlights several historic buildings. The Berkeley Historical Society, housed in the Veteran’s Memorial Building, is a good starting point. Their goal is preserving Berkeley’s past and making it available to the public. A museum, library and organized walks don’t let us forget the events and people who forged this city. My recent visit coincided with the exhibit Fermenting Berkeley, using photographs and newspapers articles to contrast Wets vs. Drys, when early liquor laws divided the city. 

Berkeley’s former City Hall, a handsome Beaux-Arts building in columned gray with teal cupola, the Main Post Office, fronted with columns and classic arches, and the Shattuck Plaza Hotel, in multi-colored Mediterranean Renaissance Revival, reflect the styles of the early 1900s. The public library’s Art Deco architecture of the 1930s fronts recent innovations inside. Electric classrooms, the children’s library with crayon carpet and giant stuffed frog and gorilla, the huge windows, high ceilings and well-lit tables explain why lines form outside everyday eagerly awaiting open doors. Art Deco is seen again at the Berkeley Community Theatre, within Berkeley High’s campus. Here and on school buildings white wall-size figured reliefs herald the arts.  

Quieter today than during the turbulent 1960s is downtown’s central MLK Memorial Park, site of many anti-war protests. Expansive lawn, small playground and Peace Wall of over one hundred hand-painted tiles seem strangely empty except during Berkeley High’s open campus lunch break. Twice weekly the park forms the boundary of Berkeley’s Farmers’ Market, a peaceful carnival-like event. Performers here are food artisans offering organic produce, grass-fed meat, cheese, baked goods, and flowers; musicians serenading; and shoppers with wicker baskets and child-laden wagons to carry home their purchases. 

Artisans in entertainment and the arts have carved their own niche in Berkeley’s downtown. Along the length of Addison Street thrive theater, music and poetry. Take your time and keep your eyes on the sidewalk at the curb’s edge. One hundred twenty-eight iron and ceramic panels are engraved with poems selected by Robert Hass to reflect Berkeley’s history. From the Ohlone song, “Hey, fog, go home,” Ishmael Reed’s “Going East,” Margaret Schevill’s Desert Center, to Alfred Arteaga’s “Corrido Blanco”—each echo Berkeley’s voices. 

Theater lovers have two choices merely steps apart. The Berkeley Repertory Theater has metastasized since its origin in a tiny theater on College Avenue. Today patrons from throughout Northern California enjoy productions like the upcoming The Glass Menagerie featuring Rita Moreno. Next door, the Aurora Theater offers a more intimate experience in its theater in the round. 

Jazz in all its forms is performed and taught at the Jazzschool, housed in the historic Kress building since 1997. Heralded as one of the best, this innovative school broadly targets all levels and ages. Downstairs practice rooms share space with the Jazzcafe, a book and record shop and art gallery. You can enjoy the syncopated beat of practice drums along with fresh sandwiches, a golden beet salad with goat cheese or a cappuccino. Seating on warm-colored wood chairs amid walls of rich terra cotta listening to cool jazz among music lovers easily sets the mood for the wealth of classes and concerts on offer. 

From the cool of jazz to the heat of tropical Brazil. Bright, richly painted walls festooned with plants, murals of city and beach scenes, tile roofs, adults and children playing and working beach-side—all set the scene at the Capoeira Arts Cafe. With café in front and classroom at the rear, listening to the rhythmic beat of the berimbau, Afro-Brazilian martial arts is taught and practiced. Involving chanting, kicks, sweeps and handstands, these deceptive dance-like movements tell the story of survival in an unfamiliar land.  

Providing city services amid varied commercial enterprises leaves little room for charm. Those in the know select spaces away from the bustle to relax. Trumpetvine Court with walls formed of brick and covered with—Trumpet vine—is a perfect escape. Cooled by umbrellas in summer, warmed by heaters in winter, yellow picnic tables provide ample seating. For a European flavor, one can enjoy freshly assembled ingredients from The Panini Café. Sandwiches of fresh salmon or vegetarian mushroom, mixed baby greens or pasta salad, hearty homemade soup, all make you want to linger past your lunch hour. 

At La Note Restaurant you’ll feel you’ve finally made it to France. Cool green walls atop darker green wainscoting, Provencal accoutrements like straw hats and ceramic bowls, travel posters and huge white hydrangeas in French metal flower buckets provide ambience. Partake of sandwiches, (baguette a la merquez or thon grille) salades (nicoise or paysanne) and plats de jour (ratatouille). A busy outdoor patio, a lively dining space inside and weekend lines signal this is no well-kept secret. 

On Center Street’s Restaurant Row any group of hungry diners can make individual selections. Good all-American fare shares outdoor tables amid potted greenery with international cuisine. Top Dog, Bongo Burger and Pie In The Sky fill traditional stomachs while Laregal, Raphael, Ajiya and Alborz bring the flavors of Vietnam, Italy, Japan and Persia to adventurous palettes. 

Downtown Berkeley forges the pressures of government services for a diverse community with artistic release and the comfort of good food.  

So maybe I’ll see you there. We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares. Downtown –everything’s waiting for you.  

Berkeley Historical Society: 1931 Center St., 848-0181, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc. 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre: 2025 Addison St., 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. 

Aurora Theatre: 2081 Addison St., 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. 

Jazzschool: 2087 Addison St., 845-5373, www.jazzschool.com. 

Capoeira Arts Café: 2026 Addison St., 666-1255, www.capoeiraarts.com. 

Café Panini: 2115 Allston Way, 849-0405. 

La Note Restaurant: 2377 Shattuck Ave., 843-1535.›

What are those curiously attractive houses whose second floor, contained within a steeply pitched main gable roof, is far larger than the first floor? Why do we see them standing in clusters of two or three in Berkeley and Oakland but rarely elsewhere? 

This unusual style is one of the variants of Colonial Revival and appears to have emerged from the union of Queen Anne and Eastern Shingle Style. In the mid-1890s, this picturesque hybrid evolved in the San Francisco Bay Area into a local Colonial Revival sub-genre that is particularly evident in the East Bay. A middle-class building style, it is typically expressed in a simplified, rectangular mass under a single gable roof with laterally projecting dormers. 

Many high-peaked Colonial Revival houses feature small corner porticos, often supported by a Neoclassical column. The gable frequently boasts a Palladian or a prow window, which is sometimes balustraded. The exterior walls are clad with narrow clapboards or shingles, with a typical arrangement being shingling on the second floor and clapboarding below. 

The earliest known high-peaked Colonial Revival house in the East Bay may be a residence designed by Edgar A. Mathews at 1535 Saint Charles St. in Alameda, which Alameda Museum Curator George Gunn dates from 1894. The earliest known house documented in Edwards’ Trancripts of Records is the H.F. Munson residence designed by Hugo W. Storch (1873–1917) and built in 1895 at 2354 East 23rd St. in Oakland’s Fruitvale District. 

If Hugo Storch was the first to build in this style, the one who popularized it was the prolific Oakland architect Alfred William Smith (1864–1933). Smith’s success with high-peaked Colonial Revival was documented in an Oakland Enquirer article published in June 1899: “One of the mos t distinctive features of recent local building operations is the wonderful popularity suddenly achieved by the style of house known as the Dutch Colonial, whose principal characteristic is a high-peaked roof. The idea in this city originated with J. H. S impson, who since he first began building such structures, has put up 10. However, the style has been adapted and enlarged upon by architect A. W. Smith who since the 10th of January of last year [1898] has put up no less than 27 houses, all on this pecul iar line of architecture. [...] Mr. Smith ascribes the popularity to the growth of the artistic in the building public, which has caused a departure from the strict rules of architecture and given rise to the development of the picturesque style.” 

The st yle became so popular that many builders began imitating it. Between 1900 and 1905, high-peaked Colonial Revival was all the rage. Even “name” architects such as Julia Morgan, Albert Dodge Coplin, and Thomas D. Newsom were commissioned to design residence s in this style. When the houses were constructed on a speculative basis, the builder would typically put up two or three in a row, making sure to give each house distinct detailing to differentiate it from its brethren. Good examples of such clusters may be seen on the 2000 block of Woolsey Street; the 3000 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way; the 2300 block of Webster Street; and the 2100 block of Haste Street. Sometimes identical designs may be found on adjacent streets or even a good distance apart. The trio on MLK Jr. Way exhibits the same design found in a pair on the 2800 block of San Pablo Avenue, which was built by A.W. Smith. Curiously, descendants of the builder Carl Ericsson believe that it was he and not Smith who built the MLK threesome. 

A lthough high-peaked Colonial Revival houses may be seen in various California towns such a Napa and Redding, they usually stand there as lone examples. San Francisco evolved its own variant of high-peaked Colonial Revival row house, with additional floors and a gable that is not fully contained within the roof. 

Berkeley and Oakland are unique in possessing large numbers of these houses. By my estimate, Berkeley alone has close to 200 specimens, which constitute an open-air museum that should be cherished and preserved.e

I was visiting with a client today and got into one of those if/and/or discussions that soon feels like your brain is stuck in either molasses or honey (depending on whether the job will actually pay anything). One possible course of action involved changing a faucet, which would have eliminated a broken component and almost certainly have solved a problem involving the reluctant flow of hot water. The other solution would make someone happy but seemed for all the world like the wrong thing to do.  

The woman’s husband wanted a new sink. Have you ever seen Jim Jarmusch’s extraordinarily inelegant, odd and fall-down-between-the-seats funny film Stranger Than Paradise? One of the main characters is given a dress. She tries wearing it but there’s just something wrong with it. At one point she changes into pants, leaves her building and stuffs the dress in a garbage can stating “This dress bugs me!” There was no need for further explanation.  

The sink bugs this guy. It was a perfectly good sink. It will cost a whole bunch of money to replace it, along with the faucet, drain fittings and maybe a disposer (although retaining it and keeping it from leaking in its new setting will be no small feat in any event). 

See, he just wants a new sink. But nothing’s ever simple and there are always attendant troubles to all these seemingly small changes. The change of sink isn’t a bad idea in and of itself. But the couple is planning on remodeling the kitchen pretty soon, and doing this whole body of work twice is going to cost a lot of extra money and, of course, impact their lives in a very Stranger Than Paradise sort of way. Doing the same job twice is a bit like déjà vu with extra nausea. 

It’s as though there were teams of small demons that come with various home repairs. Some are just annoying, but some will drive you seriously crazy. 

To minimize these visitations, I suggest an overriding strategy. Do things in groups and consider the overall value/desire/need of the entire body of work prior to entering into the venture. Make sure the mayhem is worthwhile. 

The first corollary to this is never fix one part of anything. The second is never fix anything twice when you can fix it once. 

This means that you need a long-range strategy. The idea is to stop responding to any one problem in an immediate or panic-struck fashion.  

The couple with the sink is a good example so let’s work with that. They had an additional problem beyond the fellow’s general disdain for this particular sink. The sink was leaking down below. The trap (that’s the U-shaped drain pipe below the sink) had developed a hole and was leaking pretty badly. Additionally, the faucet was not providing any significant amount of hot water. These are very real problems, especially when two little girls need to have their breakfast dishes washed. 

Here’s how I see the situation: 

The drain needs to be fixed but not in a manner any more complex than is needed to prevent damage to the cabinet over the next few months. The faucet also needs to be made workable so that dishes can be washed. Simple repairs are preferred in this situation and the highest-quality materials and methods are not required. Also, if a new faucet is obtained, they should probably consider re-installing it in the new sink as the kitchen is remodeled. This might make the most sense. It turned out, happily, that the faucet only needed to be meddled with and that it will likely function for a few more months. A new trap didn’t cost much and was installed imperfectly but in a fashion which should serve for a similar duration. 

The rest of the job should be looked at in a similar way. All the things that comprise a new kitchen should be on the counter (as it were) at the same time. This is the time to do everything.  

If one portion is left out, it may be very costly and troublesome to add later on. A good example is a dishwasher. Putting in a dishwasher once the cabinetry is all in place, whether in a old kitchen or a newer one, is a real bear and often results in an obvious butchering of the cabinetry and a misfitting of the appliance. It’s the sort of thing that can leave you kicking yourself. I’m not saying that one needs to possess a dishwasher, a disposer or a trash compactor (I will not be buying the latter item any time soon). I am saying that if you think you might want one of these at any point in the next 10 years, it should be made part of the plan before a drawing is made or bids are obtained. 

Good planning is cheap. Aesthetics are also cheap. In general, design is a bargain. The best designs I see tend to involve inexpensive material and simple methods. The trick is to think it all through before you buy anything. In the case of a kitchen, this might involve deciding to move (or remove) a wall. This can make a world of difference when you finally get done. Another thing I see a lot is an extraneous and outdated stove flue that eats up space between two rooms. If you explore fully before you settle on a plan, the flue might come out and give you a few extra square feet of counter space that turns a so-so kitchen into a great kitchen. 

Advice from designers and contractors is worth gold when it comes to making such plans. These people go through these trials on a daily basis and usually know lots of good tricks. 

If you’ve planned well and drawn (perhaps several times) your kitchen (or bath or deck or master suite), you have the basic resource with which to obtain a satisfactory and economical result. The person who does a job twice, even a rather modest one, could probably have bought themselves a five-star project for the same cost in addition to saving themselves the self-inflicted bruises. 

Take your time, plan one project, save your money, get lots of advice, shop, shop, shop and then have a ball watching it all come together.  

There are, in my personal estimate, few experiences in life more satisfying than a nice little remodeling project. So enjoy. 

We just returned from an excursion to a friend’s new townhouse in Vacaville. I won’t riff on her lament that she can’t find bulk olives or a decent farmers’ market or bookstore there, but I will say that the landscaping scares me a bit. Scared her, too, and then some: The week before closing on the new place, Alamo Creek and its local tributaries flooded her first floor and most of her neighbors’. She got off lightly though and the seller replaced the carpet with the tile she prefers. The block still rings with repair and construction noises, and piles of ruined wallboard and household stuff persist.  

There’s a shallow lawn-covered drainage swale running through the complex, but it didn’t do the job. Most of the creeks up there, as far as I could see, are channelized even if the banks are still green. And there’s more and more paving—streets, parking lots—replacing more absorbent soil and plants upstream and such mass-produced plants as are allowed in the new housing sprawls clearly are maintained by the mow-n-blow guys with motorized clippers. Everything that’s not a rectangle is a ball.  

It’s part of the weird lockstep that I’ll call Generic Gardening. Tidy it up; cut it off at waist height regardless of where its main branches run or how dead-brown the result is; when in doubt, pave it. It’s not even as amusing as topiary. And all this tidiness, straightening, covering-up, and general ignorance in action leave people puzzled when the worst storm in 10 years sends water over the ditch-creek’s banks: What? There’s lots of nature here! Look at all the greenery! Nature’s a bitch, that’s all; we need more paving and control! 

Here in Berkeley some of us are paying for the sins of our forebears, as the culverts they ran creeks through to get them out of the way collapse under our houses and gardens. No matter how much we love creeks, fish, birds, nature, we can’t afford to throw away our lives’ savings or the huge investment that any land, let alone building, here represents.  

And what about property rights? Can a city regulate what we do on our own land? There’s the rub: When it concerns creeks, rivers, water in general, nothing we do on our own land stays there. Building close to a creek’s banks is just asking for subsidence; paving more ground, adding roof area all increase runoff, especially in big storms, and make big trouble for anyone—plant, bird, fish, or human—living downstream. Dirt, plants, and meanders all help blunt the force of floods, and that’s what we remove when we build. 

The Creeks Task Force is, as I write this, wrangling and setting public hearings, trying to make sense and even justice out of this mess we’ve been handed. You might know about buildings—after all, we all live in them—but most of us know little about creeks and water’s behavior. There are local groups working to make creeks work better for us as well as wildlife, removing invasives that choke the channels and turn floating debris into dams, cleaning out that trash, planting natives that function with the land, getting muddy and educated at the same time. Check some out. 

Friends of Five Creeks 

www.fivecreeks.org 

848-9358 

Urban Creeks Council 

www.urbancreeks.org 

1250 Addison Street, # 107C,  

Berkeley, 94702 

540-6669

FRIDAY, MARCH 24 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Marian Diamond on “The Everlasting Gain in Biology” 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.  

“The Real Truth About Iraq” with former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, Iraqi citizen Faiza Al-Araji, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and Medea Benjamin at 7 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-255-7296, ext. 200. www.globalexchange.org 

Activist Series: Faiza Al-Araji, Iraqi Shia woman married to a Sunni will speak at 7 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. Note that this is a change in location. 526-2900. 

Candlelight Vigil to Remember Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyred in El Salvador on March 24, 1980, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker, 1640 Addison. 482-1062. 

American Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente, Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVELIFE. www.BeADonor.com 

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., room 17. 843-0150. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 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 

“Does the Torah Teach Us to Live In Post Modern Society?” at Kol Hadash Humanistic Judaism Shabbat, at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. Free and open to all. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 25 

Make Your Own Rope We will learn about the history of rope-making and make rope from various natural fibrous materials, from 2 to 3:30 p.m at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $3, registration required. 636-1684. 

Creating a Meditation Garden with Peter Bowyer at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Landscape Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Meet Ranger Tad Shay at the “Park and Ride” lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. 925-228-8860. 

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

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

SUNDAY, MARCH 26 

Early Bloomers Find the earliest spring flowers on an easy hike through the canyon. Meet at 1 p.m at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“The Challenge of Global Climate Change” with Suzanne Jones Ph.D and sponsored by Richmond Environmental Fund at 4 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, Martina and W. Richmond Sts., Point Richmond. 234-4669. 

“The Scream Inside: California Women in Prison” A Women’s History Month lecture on the realities of women incarcerated in California at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Venezuela: Worker-Controlled Factories” A multi-screen video installation and talk at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Music for Babies at 9 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Donation of $4 suggested. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

Parent First Aid & Emergency Care for Babies at 4 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Cost is $30, $50 for couples. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Punk Rock Flea Market from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at at 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Yoga and Meditation from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “Awareness, Dream and Self-Image” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com  

MONDAY, MARCH 27 

Community Meeting on a Sunshine Ordinance for Berkeley at 7 p.m. at 2180 Milvia St., 6th floor. 981-7170. 

Fruit Tree Tour encouraging the planting of urban orchards, a caravan of hand-painted veggie oil-powered busses, and African drumming and eco hip-hop program at 10 a.m. at Peralta Elementary, 460 63rd Ave. Oakland. www.CommonVision.org 

World Affairs Discussion Group for seniors at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center. Cost is $2.50. 

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. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Sing-A-Long from10 to 11 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Beginning Bridge Lessons at 11:10 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $1. 524-9122. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 28 

“Circling the Globe-More Than a Dream,” with Bryan and Audrey Gillette at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

National Nutrition Month Cooking Demonstration with Michael Bauce on sautéeing greens, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley High School Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. in the Conference Room. 525-0124. 

Teen Babysitting Class at 4 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

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 PC Users Group meets at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. near Eunice. 

Stress Less Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

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

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 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. 

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

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29  

Great Decisions Foreign Policy Association Lecture “Human Rights in an Age of Terrorism” with Allan Solomonow, Director, American Friends Service Committee, at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $40 for the eight lecture series. 526-2925. 

Total Solar Eclipse A live webcast from Turkey from 1:15 to 3:15 a.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd. Tickets are $5-$8. 336-7373.  

Oakland Unified’s Annual Science Fair from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd. Cost is $9-$13. 336-7300.  

Warriors Basketball Benefit for Habitat for Humanity at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Arena, 7000 Coliseum Way. Discounted tickets available for $25 or $30, with $5 going to support the Habitat affiliate of your choice. 1-800-980-5434. www.bayareahabitat.org 

Early Childhood Education Workshop at 6:30 p.m. at the California Ballroom, 1736 Franklin St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Alameda County Office of Education. Free, but registration requested. 670-3175. 

“Empowering Yourself, Empowering Your Parents” with Donna Robbins at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 848-1960, ext. 246. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “The New Media Monopoly” by Ben H. Bagdikian, at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Coffee Shop, El Cerrito Plaza. 433-2911. 

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. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

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. 

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

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

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 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MARCH 30 

Artists With Heart Fundraiser for the homeless children at the Children’s Learning Center at Ursula Sherman Village. Reception with KQED’s Josh Kornbluth, live music and food donations from the East Bay’s top restaurants and art sale at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $100. 235-6502. 

“Harvest of Shame” Edward R. Murrow’s 1960 documentary on farmerworkers, will be shown in honor of Cesar Chavez Day at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Bring seat cushions and snacks. 548-2220. 

“9/11 The Myth and The Reality” A talk by David Ray Griffin at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10. 496-2700. www.pdeastbay.org/ 

f911MythReality 

The Berkeley Retired Teachers Association, (CRTA Div. 49), holds its annual general meeting at 1 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 841 The Alameda. The featured speaker will be Ms. Peggy Plett, Deputy CEO of the California State Teachers Retirement System, Benefits and Services. 

Living with Threes and Fours at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

Oakland Unified’s Annual Science Fair from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd. Cost is $9-$13. 336-7300.  

Berkeley Public Library’s Teen Readers meets to discuss Douglas Adam’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” at 4 p.m. at the Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue (at Ashby). 

“Understanding Senior Care Options” Learn about residential care facilities and how to find the right one, residents rights when living in a residential care home, and other services, from noon to 2 p.m. at East Oakland Senior Center, 9255 Edes Ave. at 98th St., Oakland. 638-6878, ext. 103. 

Ask a Union Mechanic every Thursday, 4:30 tp 6 p.m. at Parker and Shattuck, until the strike is settled. They will offer advice on all makes of car. 

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 31 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Sally Baker, producer of “Wee Poets” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“Preparing Our Communities for the End of Cheap Oil” A presentation by the Post Carbon Institute at 7:30 p.m. at Laney College Forum, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Cost is $10. Day-long conference on Sat. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. http://bayarea.relocalize.net, www.postcarbo.org 

Arts and Crafts Cooperative of Berkeley Gallery Spring Seconds Sale from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

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. 

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., room 17. 843-0150. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 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 

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 

Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour is seeking volunteers who will spend a morning or afternoon greeting tour participants and answering questions at the free native plant garden tour, featuring sixty-four gardens located throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties on Sunday, May 7, 2006. Volunteers can select the garden they would like to spend time at by visiting the “Preview the 2006 Gardens” section at www.BringingBackTheNatives.net 

Public Art Opportunities Request for Entries The City of Berkeley is looking for artists for the 2006 Civic Center Art Competition and Exhibition. Entries are due April 18. For details contact the Civic Arts Program, 981-7533. 

Artwork for the Corporation Yard Gates Request for Proposals Applications are due April 3. For details call the Civic Arts Program at 981-7533. 

Proposal for a Mural in Tribute to Maudelle Shirek in Old City Hall. Artists are requested to submit proposals by March 31. For details contact the Civic Arts Program, 981-7533. 

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. 

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

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

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Mar. 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Virginia Aiello, 981-5158. ww.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/parksandrecreation 

Solid Waste Management Commission Mon., Mar. 27, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. Tania Levy, 981-6368. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/solidwaste 

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TUESDAY, MARCH 21 

FILM 

Asian American Film Festival “The Burnt Theater” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

James Janko discusses his debut novel, “Buffalo Boy and Geronimo,” of the war in Vietnam, its impact on nature and Vietnamese civilians and a GI, at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512.  

Michael Gordon describes “Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq” at 12:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Simi Linton describes her life as a disabled activist in “My Body Politic” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Joshua Clover introduces “The Totality for Kids” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Redwood Day School Rock Band at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5-$8. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffman with Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 841-JAZZ.  

Samite of Uganda at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Howard Barkan Trio 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 22 

THEATER 

Berkeley Rep “Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell” opens at 8 p.m. in the Roda Theater. Tickets are $45-$59. Runs through April 16. 647-2949.  

FILM 

Asian American Film Festival “Dreaming Lhasa” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Writing Teachers Write Readings by students and teachers at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Danielle Trussoni describes her life with her father, a Vietnam veteran, in “Falling Through the Earth” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

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. 

Bernard Anderson & The Old School Band at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. West Coast Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054.  

La Verdad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

UC Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Chocolate O’Brian at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Bill Evans’ String Summit at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

THURSDAY, MARCH 23 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “Bright Ideas” opens at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. and runs Thurs.-Sun. to April 23. Tickets are $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“(The 99 Cent) Miss Saigon” at 7:30 p.m. at Willard Middle School Metalshop Theater, 2425 Stuart St. through Mar. 25. Tickets are $5-$15. 547-8932. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Swarm Studios Artists New Works by Jonn Herschend, Michael McDermott and Ryan Reynolds. Opening at 6 p.m. at 560 Second St., Jack London Square, Oakland. www.swarmstudios.net 

FILM 

Film and Video Makers at Cal at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Writer in the Digital Age A workshop offered by the National and Local Writers Union at 7 p.m. at the School of Journalism, Northgate Hall, UC Campus. 839-1248. www.writersunion.org 

Michelle Tea reads from her memoirs at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Chris Bachelder introduces his novel of muckraker Upton Sinclair, “U.S.!” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Jason Francisco discusses “Far from Zion: Jews, Diaspora and Memory” at 6:30 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. www.magnes.org 

Word Beat Reading Series with readings from “Living in the Land of the Dead” Vol. 2 at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jewish Music Festival with Yiddish songs by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman at 2 p.m. at the BRJCC. Tickets are $12-$15. 415-276-1511. 

Ooklah the Moc at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Rachel Efron CD Release Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. 

Joe Paquin at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Gary Rowe Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

FRIDAY, MARCH 24 

THEATER 

Berkeley Rep “Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell” at 8 p.m. in the Roda Theater. Tickets are $45-$59. Runs through April 16. 647-2949.  

Black Repertory Group Theater “Judgement Day” Where Are You Gonna Run? at 6 p.m. Fri. and Sat. at 3201 Adeline. Tickets are $20-$25. 916-613-6165. 

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 

“(The 99 Cent) Miss Saigon” at 7:30 p.m. at Willard Middle School Metalshop Theater, 2425 Stuart St. through Mar. 25. Tickets are $5-$15. 547-8932. 

Shotgun Players “Bright Ideas” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. to April 23. Tickets are $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sharon Smith and Phil Gasper discuss “Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the U.S.” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Ada Limón and Kaya Oakes, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Mary Elizabeth Berry introduces “Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zorro Remixed Dance and theater in conjunction with the Berkeley Youth Arts Festival at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. www.berkeleysrtcenter.org 

All Ages Hip Hop Concert with Crank Jai, Blayze McKee, Influence and others at 9 p.m. in the East Pauley Ballroom, UC Campus. Benefit for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Tickets are $10 and available only in advance at http://umca.berkeley.edu/calbattles.html 

Oakland East Bay Symphony performs Elgar, Beethovan and Mozart at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Pre-concert lecture at 7:05 p.m. Tickets are $15-$60. 652-8497. www.oebs.org 

What’s Up!? Aerial Dance Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Studio 12, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10-$15. 587-0770. www.movingout.org  

James Gilman, tenor, and Cara Bradbury, piano, perform Schubert’s “Winterreise” at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12. 848-1228. 

Son con Trova: A Celebration of Contemporary Latino Songwriters and Music, with Trova sin Traba at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Cesaria Evora, Cape Verdean morna, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Ajamu Akinyele with Gemini Soul at 4:30 p.m. at Borders Books, 5800 Shellmound St., Emeryville, and at 6:30 p.m. at Starbucks,1600 Shattuck Ave. 848-7155. 

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

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

Deborah Levoy, singer/songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

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

Matt Renzi Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Coaster and Roberta Chevrette at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Akimbo, An Albatross, Last Clear Chance at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Girl Fest Bay Area with Ali Wong, Velocity Circus, La Paz and others at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159.  

Angie Stevens at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204. 

Guru Garage at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 25 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Lydia Mills, songs, games and puppets in Spanish, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

East Bay Children’s Theater, “Cinderella’s Glass Slipper” at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m at James Moore Theatre, Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Tickets are $7. 655-7285. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Still Present Pasts” A collaborative exhibition on Korean Americans and the “Forgotten War” Intergenerational discussion at 1 p.m. at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361. 

FILM 

Asian American Film Festival “Café Lumiere” at 4:45 p.m. and Chinese Martial Arts Films at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Brian Fies provides honesty, emotion and humor in his book of cartoons “Mom’s Cancer” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Justus Ballard, Henry Baum, Laurence Dumortier, Mary Rechner and Carol Treadwell read from their fiction at 7:30 p.m. at Pegsus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Rhythm & Muse Open Mic at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cello Recital in conjunction with the Berkeley Youth Arts Festival at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. www.berkeleysrtcenter.org 

Helda Wilking, contemporary recorder music at noon at A Cheerfull Noyse, 1228 Solano Ave., Albany. 524-0411. 

Healing Muses “A Celebration of Robert Burns,“ at 8 p.m. at Parish Hall, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Venue not wheelchair accessible. Tickets are $15-$18. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org  

Pacific Mozart Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Free. 981-6100. 

“Dangerous Beauty” Hip-hop, modern, African and jazz dance, with spoken word and rap performed by Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company at 7:30 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourde Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $6-$20. 597-1619. 

Cesaria Evora, Cape Verdean morna, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Seething Brunswicks at 8 p.m. at the Lucre Lounge, 2086 Allston Way. Cost is $8. Benefit for Berkeley Community Media. 

Anything Goes Chorus 25th Anniversary Concert with jazz, pop, Broadway and world music at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison at 27th St., Oakland. Tickets are $15, children 12 and under $10, at the door.  

What’s Up!? Aerial dance performance at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 3 p.m. at Studio 12, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10-$15, and must be purchased in advance. 587-0770.  

“The Waters of March” folk, jazz and a capella harmonies with Mary Ford and freinds at 7:30 p.m. at Pacific School of Religion Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. Suggested donation $10-$25. 704-7729.  

Son con Trova: A Celebration of Contemporary Latino Songwriters and Music, with Son Sabrosón at 9 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568.  

Jamie Davis & Mark Little Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

Girl Fest Bay Area with X-Factor, Rachel Kann, Jennifer Johns and others at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Joshua Eden and The Blank Tapes at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Matt Morrish Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Barbara Higbie at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Unjust, Omissa, Nuclear at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Rhoda Benin at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Sam Bevan Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Alan Smithline, country blues at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

All Shall Perish, Suffocate, The Assailant at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 26 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Now-Time Venezuela: Worker Controlled Factories” A multi-screen projection by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Discussion with the artists at 2 p.m. 642-0808. 

“Dance Anywhere” Photographs and video from 2005 at 2 p.m. at 8th Street Studio, 2525 Eighth St.  

FILM 

The Wide Angle Cinema of Michael Brault “The Times That Are” at 3 p.m. “The River Schooners” at 5:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Son con Trova: A Celebration of Contemporary Latino Songwriters Songwriting Workshop hosted by Lichi Fuentes at 12:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568.  

Poetry Flash with Sandra Stone and Barbara Tomash at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

What’s Up!? Aerial Dance at 3 p.m. at Studio 12, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10-$15. 587-0770. www.movingout.org  

Prometheus Symphony Orchestra, with young cellist Paul Hyun, winner of the Khuner Competition, at 3 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. Admission is free, donations requested. 

Marcelle Dronkers, soprano, Larry London, clarinet at 4 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. A benefit concert for Children’s Hospital. Donation $7-$25. 527-6202. 

Pacific Collegium, works of twentieth-century a cappella choral literature at 3 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $8-$18. 459-2341.  

Chamber Music Sundaes with San Francisco Symphony Principal Cellist Michael Grebanier at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $9-$21. 415-584-5946.  

“Dangerous Beauty” Hip-hop, modern, African and jazz dance, with spoken word and rap performed by Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company at 3 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourde Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $6-$20. 597-1619. 

Steve Seskin, Brian Joseph, Kenny Edwards at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Vadim Repin, violin, and Nikolai Lugansky, piano, at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$58. 642-9988.  

Jewish Music Festival Comunity Music Day with Josh Kornbluth and Ira Levin from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the BRJCC. Tickets are $7-$24. 415-276-1511. 

Mario Correa’s Brazilian Soul Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Celia Malheiros, Brazilian vocalist, at 4:30 at the Jazz 

school. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

Head-Royce School Jazz Combo and Jazz Choir at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Myra Chaney and Kristan Willits at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Funeral Diner, Racebannon, Gospel at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, MARCH 27 

EXHIBITIONS 

Hideo Hagiwara “Mount Fuji Woodblock Prints” opens at the IEAS Lobby, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor, and runs through May 19. Sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Meet the Kellermans: The First Family of Crime Fiction with authors Jonathan Kellerman, Faye Kellerman and first-time author Jesse Kellerman at 6:30 p.m. at Ristorante Raphael, 2132 Center St. Dinner is $75. Benefit for the American Friends of the Israeli Red Cross. 644-9500.  

Poetry Express theme night: Poems About Women, with guest Selah Geissler at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Diana Rowan, 3 harps, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Zilber-Muscarella Quartet and Invitational at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.

Once it’s reached adulthood a Monterey cypress is easy to recognize, though it takes wildly different shapes depending on whether it’s near the ocean shore, its native habitat, or inland even only a few miles. Its native habitat, in fact, is the very small section of coastland between Monterey and Point Lobos. If it were only there, it would be rare—and most likely endangered—just because its range would be so small. But it’s handsome and easy to grow from seed, so it’s in cultivation and part of human-made landscapes all over the world. 

Its best fieldmark, aside from the deep green of its scaled foliage: Small round cones like scaly shooter marbles, and the red bark, becoming silvery and furrowed with age, is the way it holds its leaves in graceful horizontal planes, in shapes like far-away new clouds on a horizon. That habit marks the sisterhood of the fantastically twisted, windblown trees on the coast with their more formally symmetrical, upright siblings—where they have space to assume their own unpruned forms—inland. There’s one at the east end of Golden Gate Park that dominates the area, a gorgeous open graceful giant towering in its stately, imperceptibly slow dance above every tree and structure in sight.  

There are several around Berkeley and on the UC campus—look around Dwinelle Hall and the Earth Sciences building—and once you’ve seen one you’ll know them. But when you think you know what to expect, go look at their home population, famously painted and photographed along the Monterey coastline, the sort of thing on which bonsai artists model their most contorted specimens. They seem at once muscular and ancient, digging their roots into rocky prominences and arguing lifelong with the fierce Pacific winds. 

Those winds nurture them uniquely, though. It’s harder to grow them, or at least to make them last long, in really dry places. They thrive on the moisture the ocean delivers to the atmosphere even during our summer droughts. In turn, they nurture ferns and mosses and understory plants beneath them, sieving the fog from the air and condensing it into drops, a very localized rainstorm to water the island of life that grows on the soil they start to form out of their own shed foliage. To see this happening, and a bit closer to home that Monterey, go out to the lighthouse at Point Reyes and look at the trees on the north shoulder of the paved road you walk on from the parking lot, at the carpet under them, brilliant green even in summer. The air smells different under them.  

Monterey cypresses on the coastline often stay upright long after they’ve died, leaving graceful silvered wood sculptures to mark their passing. The wood is tough and endures well in its untreated state, and I suppose might replace redwood in some outdoor lumber uses except for its decidedly un-lumberlike shape. Even the more upright cypresses planted inland don’t grow in an orderly column like redwoods or pines, but, as I’ve seen them, taper rapidly and bifurcate at every opportunity into a sort of organic candelabra.  

We lost several of them, along with some pines, out on the Berkeley Marina after the storms at the turn of the year. They do grow faster in deeper soils that they do in rock clefts; as a result, they share the unfortunate tendencies of fast-growing trees to overreach their capacities, to grow thick foliage sails that catch the wind and topple them when their roots can’t keep up. City life has its perils for them too, even apparently suburban city life like that in a mini-lawn by a Marina parking lot. Pavement interferes with root growth, and poor drainage can weaken their root systems, as it can with most trees, until they overbalance and topple.  

One terrible instance of this happened a few years ago on Sixth Street, when a beautiful old cypress collapsed suddenly—in, as I recall, calm weather, in the arboreal equivalent of a stroke—and killed a driver at a stop sign under it. Trees do die, as all of us living beings do, and living elbow-to-elbow in a city puts us all in peril as we lean on and overshadow each other. 

Photo by Ron Sullivan 

This 20- or 30-something Monterey cypress on the Berkeley Marina is just beginning to show the windswept flat planes of its adult form. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 21 

Berkeley Garden Club “Native Plants for the Home Garden” with Glenn Keator, author and teacher, at 1 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 527-5641. 

“Mahaleo” A documentary on the Malagasy septet, born out of Madagascar’s 1972 rebellion against its neo-colonial regime, at 6 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Way. 

American Red Cross Blood Services is holding a volunteer orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at its Oakland office.For more information, please call 594-5165.  

American Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at MLK Student Union, 5th Floor Tilden Room, UC Campus, and from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Mary’s College, 1294 Albina Ave. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVELIFE. www.BeADonor.com 

Berkeley Salon Discussion Group meets to discuss “Energy-Personal and Public” from 7 to 9 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 601-6690. 

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. 

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

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

Stress Less Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

“Hinduism: Yoga and Awareness of Divinity” with Swami Vedananda at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley at Bancroft. 848-9788. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

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. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22  

Berkeley’s Waving Man, Anniversary of Joseph Charles, Sr.’s Birthday. Bring your yellow gloves and your smile at 7:45 a.m. at the corner of MLK and Oregon. Sponsored by the Berkeley NAACP. 332-0040. 

Animal Cruelty Exhibit from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. near the Savio Steps, UC Campus. Duscussion at 7 p.m. at 200 Wheeler. www.peta.org/animalliberation 

Great Decisions Foreign Policy Association Lecture “Brazil” at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $40 for the eight lecture series. 526-2925. 

“Gray Panthers on the Prowl: Looking Towards the Future” with Susan Murany, Executive Director of the National Gray Panther Office in Washington DC at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. We will learn about the weather from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“The Diablo Grand Loop” Learn the natural and cultural history of Mt. Diablo, including the rediscovery of Mt. Diablo buckwheat, presumed to be extinct, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Labor Unions and Worker-Managed Factories in Venezuela” with Luis Primo, a member of the Venezuelan National Union of Workers at 1 p.m. at 3335 Dwinelle Hall, office wing, level C, UC Campus. andeanproject@gmail.com 

“9/11 The Road to Tyranny” A documentary by Alex Jones at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5.  

“Rightful Resistance in Rural China” with Kevin J. O’Brien, Professor of Political Science, at 4:30 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

Basic First Aid for Pets at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society, 2700 Ninth St. Donation of $10 requested. RSVP to 845-7735, ext. 22. www.berkeleyhumane.org 

“Sound and Fury” a film on one family’s struggle over whether or not to provide two deaf children with cochlear implants, devices that can stimulate hearing, at 7 p.m. in the Albany High School Library, 603 Key Route Blvd. in Albany. Free. Discussion follows the film. Sponsored by Embracing Diversity Films. 527-1328. embracingdiversityfilms.org 

Mind-Body-Spirit Causes of Chronic Fatigue A talk with Lisa Hartnett at 7:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

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. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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.  

Sing your Way Home A free sing-a-long at 4:30 p.m. every Wed. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MARCH 23 

“Is the Bush Regime Guilty of War Crimes?” with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Cindy Sheehan and Larry Everest at 7 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Way. 355-6915. 

The Writer in the Digital Age A workshop offered by the National and Local Writers Union at 7 p.m. at the School of Journalism, Northgate Hall, UC Campus. 839-1248. www.writersunion.org 

Easy Does It Disability Assistance Board Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center. All welcome. 845-5513. 

Ask a Union Mechanic every Thurs. from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at Parker and Shattuck, until the strike is settled. They will offer advice on all makes of car. 

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 

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. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 24 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Marian Diamond on “The Everlasting Gain in Biology” 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.  

“The Real Truth About Iraq” with former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, Iraqi citizen Faiza Al-Araji, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and Medea Benjamin at 7 p.m. at Firts Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-255-7296, ext. 200. www.globalexchange.org 

Activist Series: Faiza Al-Araji, Iraqi Shia woman married to a Sunni will speak at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. 526-2900. 

Candlelight Vigil to Remember Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyred in El Salvador on March 24, 1980, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker, 1640 Addison. 482-1062. 

American Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente, Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVELIFE. www.BeADonor.com 

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., room 17. 843-0150. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 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 

“Does the Torah Teach Us to Live In Post Modern Society?” at Kol Hadash Humanistic Judaism Shabbat, at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. Free and open to all. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 25 

Make Your Own Rope We will learn about the history of rope-making and make rope from various natural fibrous materials, from 2 to 3:30 p.m at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $3, registration required. 636-1684. 

Creating a Meditation Garden with Peter Bowyer at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Landscape Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Meet Ranger Tad Shay at the “Park and Ride” lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. 925-228-8860. 

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

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

SUNDAY, MARCH 26 

Early Bloomers Find the earliest spring flowers on an easy hike through the canyon. Meet at 1 p.m at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“The Challenge of Global Climate Change” with Suzanne Jones Ph.D and sponsored by Richmond Environmental Fund at 4 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, Martina and W. Richmond Sts., Point Richmond. 234-4669. 

“The Scream Inside: California Women in Prison” A Women’s History Month lecture on the realities of women incarcerated in California at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Venezuela: Worker-Controlled Factories” A multi-screen video installation and talk at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Music for Babies at 9 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Donation of $4 suggested. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

Parent First Aid & Emergency Care for Babies at 4 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Cost is $30, $50 for couples. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Punk Rock Flea Market from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at at 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Yoga and Meditation from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, MARCH 27 

Community Meeting on a Sunshine Ordinance for Berkeley at 7 p.m. at 2180 Milvia St., 6th floor. 981-7170. 

World Affairs Discussion Group for seniors at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center. Cost is $2.50. 

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. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Sing-A-Long from10 to 11 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Beginning Bridge Lessons at 11:10 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $1. 524-9122. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 28 

“Circling the Globe-More Than a Dream,” with Bryan and Audrey Gillette at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

National Nutrition Month Cooking Demonstration with Michael Bauce on sautéeing greens, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Teen Babysitting Class at 4 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7853. www.bananasinc.org  

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. 

Stress Less Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

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

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 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. 

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

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

ONGOING 

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 

Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour is seeking volunteers who will spend a morning or afternoon greeting tour participants and answering questions at the free native plant garden tour, featuring sixty-four gardens located throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties on Sunday, May 7, 2006. Volunteers can select the garden they would like to spend time at by visiting the “Preview the 2006 Gardens” section at www.BringingBackTheNatives.net 

Public Art Opportunities Request for Entries The City of Berkeley is looking for artists for the 2006 Civic Center Art Competition and Exhibition. Entries are due April 18. For details contact the Civic Arts Program, 981-7533. 

Artwork for the Corporation Yard Gates Request for Proposals Applications are due April 3. For details call the Civic Arts Program at 981-7533. 

Proposal for a Mural in Tribute to Maudelle Shirek in Old City Hall. Artists are requested to submit proposals by March 31. For details contact the Civic Arts Program, 981-7533. 

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 

City Council meets Tues., Mar. 21, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Berkeley Housing Authority meets Tues., Mar. 21, at 6:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/housingauthority 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Mar. 22, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/civicarts 

Energy Commission meets Wed., Mar. 22, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy 

Mental Health Commission meets Wed. Mar. 22, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. Harvey Turek, 981-5213. www.ci.erkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/mentalhealth 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Mar. 22, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Mar. 22 , at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview 

School Board meets Wed., March 22 at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Queen Graham 644-6147 or Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Mar. 23, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/zoning   

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Mar. 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Virginia Aiello, 981-5158. ww.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/parksandrecreation 

Solid Waste Management Commission Mon., Mar. 27, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. Tania Levy, 981-6368. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/solidwaste 

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