The Berkeley City Councilmember representing the district of embattled Oregon Street homeowner Lenora Moore has sharply criticized the neighbors who brought a lawsuit in Small Claims Court against the 75-year-old grandmother, saying that their action involved a “revenge motive.” 

“I can’t bring myself as an African-American and an elected official, with a knowledge of that community, to declare that Mrs. Moore is a public enemy who needs to be removed from her home,” Councilmember Max Anderson said in a telephone interview. 

Anderson’s comments came a few days after Superior Court Judge Wynne Carvill issued an order upholding judgments for six of Moore’s South Berkeley neighbors. 

Last year, 14 of those neighbors filed nuisance claims against Moore in Small Claims Court in Berkeley, charging that several of her children and grandchildren have been operating a drug dealing gang out of Moore’s home for more than a decade. 

Last January, Alameda County Court Commissioner Jon Rantzman awarded $5,000 apiece to those neighbors. Moore appealed the award of six of those neighbors who lived a block away from her house, saying that they had not proved that the drug dealing and other nuisances they had suffered had originated from Moore’s property. 

Moore has not been charged with drug dealing herself. But her neighbors argued in court that she did not do enough to prevent her offspring from dealing drugs from the property. Moore testified in the earlier Small Claims Court action that she tried to stop the drug dealing, but was powerless to prevent it. 

Several of the plaintiffs said out of court that they were not interested in the $5,000 award called for in their lawsuit, but that their goal was to remove the drug problem in the neighborhood by forcing Moore to move. 

But Moore’s representative in the appeal, Oakland attorney James Anthony, said that even if Moore and her husband leave their Oregon home, “I don’t know if it will get the plaintiffs what they say they want.” 

Anthony noted that testimony in the Superior Court proceedings last month revealed that two of Moore’s offspring accused of involvement in Oregon Street drug activities were not living at Moore’s house, but were living within a block of her residence. 

“I don’t think that forcing [Moore] to move will stop the activities on Oregon Street,” Anthony said. 

The attorney said that he only represented Moore for the Superior Court appeal, and did not know what steps she planned to take in response to the new ruling and the original Small Claims Court verdict against her. 

“But I hope that she will be able to go to the neighbors and work out some sort of settlement, perhaps one in which they will drop the demand for the damages in return for her moving out of the neighborhood,” Anthony said. 

In his ruling on the appeal late last week, Judge Carvill wrote that “for years the drug activity on Oregon Street between Sacramento Street and Martin Luther King Way has been controlled by people operating out of or associated with [the Moore house] … and people related to drug activity travel both ways on Oregon coming to and from [the Moore house].” 

Carvill continued, “People known to ‘hang out’ on the porch, in the driveway and on the sidewalk in front of [the Moore house] travel up and down Oregon, engage in drug transactions up and down Oregon, post look outs as far west as Sacramento and as far east as Grant … and generally treat the entire area of Oregon from Sacramento to MLKW as their ‘turf.’” 

The Judge noted that the six residents who lived a block away from the Moore house on Oregon Street “reasonably view the drive west on Oregon as their natural egress to Sacramento, are subjected to increased auto and foot traffic by users and dealers going between MLK and [the Moore house], have to endure syringes, condoms, baggies and other drug-related paraphernalia on their street and in their yards, and live in constant fear of the drug dealers and users associated with [the Moore house], who have a history of harassing residents who try to stand up to them. All of this and more is ‘specifically injurious’ to these plaintiffs, establishes the necessary nexus between them and the nuisance at [the Moore house], and is a more than adequate foundation for their monetary claims.” 

Carville added that “there is no dispute regarding the fact that [the Moore house] currently is a center of drug activity in the southwest neighborhood of Berkeley and has been for many years.” 

The judge concluded that he hoped Moore would “begin to address the underlying cause of her current predicament: drug trafficking associated with [her home]. She needs to either actively manage the property so as to eliminate the nuisance or sell it. If she does neither, she should not be surprised if she finds herself a defendant in additional lawsuits.” 

According to Councilmember Anderson, however, putting legal pressure on Moore won’t help clean up drug activity in South Berkeley. 

Anderson called Moore a scapegoat. 

“She’s not being charged with any crime herself, and she hasn’t committed any crime, as far as I know,” he said. “Making her and her invalid husband homeless is not going to solve the problem in that neighborhood. What we need to provide in that community is better educational resources and better law enforcement techniques. Certainly, in Berkeley, we can find some alternate solutions to putting a woman out of her house. This action just seems to be aimed at punishing her.” 

Meanwhile, the lead plaintiff in the case, Paul Rauber, said that neighbors had been seeking a face-to-face meeting with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates to help them with the situation. 

While Bates said by telephone that he had not received a request for a meeting with the Oregon Street neighbors, he said he would be “happy to meet with them.” 

Bates added that while the Moore property constituted “a real problem,” he believed that the court verdicts against Moore means that “the situation seems to be in hand” and the city doesn’t plan any independent action. 

“My hats are off to the neighbors,” he said. 

Bates said that Berkeley has been working on what he called “problem properties” in the city for several years. 

“We were one of the first cities in the area, after San Leandro, to pass an ordinance to take action against blighted properties, and it’s worked,” Bates said, adding that the city has had a Problem Property Task Force set up for the past three years that has forced 70 properties to be cleaned up, coordinating their efforts with inspections by the city’s Health and Fire Departments. 

In addition, Bates said that it was “reports by the police department over several years’ time” that allowed the Oregon Street neighbors to build their case against Moore in the Small Claims Court action and the Superior Court appeal. 

But Bates said he was happy to leave civil court action in the hands of Neighborhood Solutions, the Oakland-based group that advised the Oregon Street neighbors in their Small Claims Court lawsuits. Neighborhood Solutions is also advising several other Berkeley residents in similar Small Claims nuisance lawsuits. 

“I don’t think there’s a need for us,” to bring such civil court action, Bates said, adding that Neighborhood Solutions “has been terrific.”  

Berkeley officials have taken the first steps toward moving the city’s popular flea market, the market’s attorney said Monday. 

The Berkeley Flea Market is held every weekend on the western parking lot of the Ashby BART station, the site of a proposed housing and retail complex being urged by Mayor Tom Bates and City Councilmember Max Anderson, who represents South Berkeley. 

Osha Neumann, the South Berkeley lawyer who represents the flea market, said a representative of Korve Engineering contacted Errol Davis, the market’s general manager, on Friday. 

Davis declined to talk to engineer Fred Kelly until he talked to Neumann, the lawyer said. So Neumann talked with Kelly instead. 

“Kelly said he was directed to talk to the flea market by the city,” Neumann said. “He is doing a study of alternative locations for the flea market as one of the mitigations for the project.” 

Assistant City Manager for Transportation Peter Hillier said he had ordered the study, which is being conducted by Korve Engineering, a firm the city has on a $50,000 retainer. 

The firm is charged with looking into moving the market onto the section of Adeline Street between Ashby Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Hillier said. 

Davis has been critical of plans to move the flea market, which has become an East Bay institution at the current site, and he has ridiculed the proposal to hold it on Adeline, saying that merchants along the street probably wouldn’t be thrilled to have the market’s perennial drummer contingent just outside their doors. 

Hillier said he ordered the study to be able to provide answers for the mayor and Councilmember Anderson. 

“I’m responsible for determining whether the flea market could be relocated to occupy a portion of Adeline Street,” he said. “With the proposal to redevelop the westerly parking lot, there is a fundamental question of whether there’s a feasible alternative location for the market. In order to answer it, we need technical work, and it seem like a perfect task to give to our on-call engineering consultant.” 

Neumann is one of a large number of project area neighbors who have raised questions about the proposal. Neumann said he had turned down a nomination to serve on a board that is to outline the preliminary stages of the project. 

The development proposal is moving forward under the aegis of the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation, a nonprofit group that has selected Ed Church as project manager. 

The group is selecting a task force to outline the parameters for the city to use in selecting a developer for the site. 

Neumann said Kelly told him the city had selected his firm because the city is planning a transit village at the site, which allows increased density in the area surrounding the project and can preempt local zoning requirements in the surrounding area. 

Bates has denied that the city is planning a transit village. 

Neumann said he was alarmed that the city has moved forward with hiring consultants even though the task force hasn’t been approved and the state has yet to approve a grant for funding the planning process. 

Neumann said Kelly told him “the city is worried about the flea market merchants, so they want him to develop a report on other options than staying on the site.” 

“I told him it was not a fait accompli,” Neumann said. 

Reached Monday afternoon at his office in San Jose, Kelley said he couldn’t comment on the contract or say who at the city had authorized it. 

“I can’t discuss this issue any further,” he said. “This thing has spun completely out of control. I’m not the one who set this up.””

Former Berkeley Police Officer Sgt. Cary Kent, 53, pleaded guilty Friday to three felony charges: grand theft, possession of heroin, and possession of methamphetamine. 

Kent “stumbled,” said the officer’s attorney, Harry Stern of Rains, Lucia and Wilkinson in Pleasant Hill, describing his client’s actions moments after the plea. 

Stern negotiated with Deputy District Attorney Jim Panetta to give Kent, who had access to the drug evidence vault from September 2003 to January 2006, about five years of probation and no prison time in exchange for the guilty plea. 

Kent will be sentenced May 12 to a possible year in the county jail, Stern said.  

The joint police-district attorney investigation was limited to Kent and is closed. 

That troubles Andrea Pritchett of Berkeley Copwatch who is calling for an independent investigation of all police who had access to the evidence room. 

“The other [four] officers with access to the evidence room were not investigated,” Pritchett said.  

While investigators found 181 bags of evidence scheduled for destruction had been tampered with, Pritchett said investigators should review all the drug evidence that passed through Kent’s hands. One of Kent’s tasks was to check drug evidence into the evidence vault. 

The City Council should take a more proactive role in ascertaining whether the problem goes beyond Kent, she added. 

Calling the council responsibility in this case “pretty limited,” Councilmember Laurie Capitelli said he is satisfied with the council role. 

“This appeared to be an isolated incident,” he said. 

He further noted that the city is bringing in an independent agency—the California Commission on Peace Officers Standard of Training—to audit current police procedures. 

Mayor Tom Bates agreed that the council should play a limited role in investigating personnel matters, but said he wants the Police Review Commission to review “the whole way evidence is handled.” 

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom after Kent pled guilty, Stern, a former Berkeley police officer, emphasized that his client had “scores of commendations,” and that he was now “on the mend.” 

Kent hurt no one but himself, Stern said 

“He took responsibility for a temporary lapse,” he said. “We’re all capable of making mistakes.” 

The almost 20-year Berkeley police officer, who was allowed to retire on March 14 “rather than cooperate with BPD Internal Affairs staff regarding the investigation,” according to a BPD statement, remains out of custody until he is sentenced. 

Panetta said he did not know if Kent would be placed within the regular jail population..

Cultural uses at the Gaia Building, sewer fees, and adopting the barn owl as the city’s official bird are just a few of the issues the City Council will address tonight (Tuesday) after its month-long spring break. 

The council will meet in special session at 5 p.m. to hear a report on health issues in Berkeley, then will meet at 6:20 p.m. as the Housing Authority—along with two community representatives—to look at the agency’s progress in remedying problems with its Housing Authority. The regular meeting begins at 7 p.m. 

During the public comment, library workers plan to present a petition stating the library staff’s “no confidence” in the library director. 

Gaia Building cultural use 

Councilmember Betty Olds put the thorny issue of “cultural uses” at the Gaia Building on the agenda because she said she wanted to give the council an opportunity to thoroughly understand the questions involved. Olds has asked for reports from the planning staff and city attorney to clarify the controversy. 

Further complicating the question, Gaia owner Patrick Ken-nedy has threatened a lawsuit against the city, according to a letter from his attorney, included in the council packet.  

When Kennedy planned the building at 2116 Allston Way, the city gave him permission to build two stories above the height otherwise permitted because he promised to dedicate the ground floor and mezzanine space to cultural uses. Former school board member, singer and entrepreneur Anna de Leon opened a jazz club on the ground floor.  

Kennedy leased other space to a management company, which rents out the space for cultural and other events. These events have included boisterous parties and concerts, which de Leon says interferes with the operation of her club. “That will destroy me,” de Leon told the Daily Planet. 

The city is questioning whether Kennedy’s use of the “cultural” space for private parties and receptions is appropriate. The Zoning Adjustment Board will discuss uses of the cultural space on April 27 and the planning department told Kennedy he is not to use the cultural space until after the ZAB meets. But Kennedy says cultural uses were already defined in writing by a previous planning director and he’s ready to take the city to court over the issue. 

“Given the extreme emergency situation that these city actions have caused, we will seek immediate judicial relief if this matter is not addressed and resolved on April 18th 2006,” Kennedy’s attorney Michael Patrick Durkee of Allen Matkins Leek Gamble & Mallory LLP of San Francisco, wrote to the mayor and council on April 5. 

Sewer fees 

Another issue that may prove controversial is the introduction of fees for inspection of sewer laterals and a mandate for their repair. Many sewers on private property are old and need repair and they overwhelm the treatment facilities, due to water entering cracks and through illegal downspout connections. 

The private laterals are the sewers that run from the structure to near the property line. The city is proposing that when a property is sold or when $100,000 of work is planned (or $50,000 that involves two or more plumbing fixtures), the homeowner must obtain a sanitary sewer lateral certificate. 

The fee for the certificate is $150, which pays to spot check the sewer and review a video of the private lateral—a private plumber will produce the video. If the lateral is judged defective, the homeowner will be required to repair it.  

Reducing stolen vehicles 

Pointing to the fact that 1,300 vehicles were stolen in Berkeley in 2003, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak is proposing an anti-theft plan and he’s asking the council to look at. The city would essentially help vehicle owners buy Geographic Positioning System devices for their cars. 

“Typically, cars equipped with such systems are recovered within 24 hours of their being stolen,” Wozniak says in his report.  

Barn owl honor, sweat free ordinance and more 

Councilmembers Olds and Dona Spring are asking the council to look at adopting the barn owl as the official city bird, which they call: “a graceful glostly bird that nests in palm trees and can locate rodents by sound and catch them in the dark of night.”  

The city may be purchasing a variety of goods made by child labor or people earning less than acceptable wages or working in unacceptable conditions. And so the Peace and Justice Commission and the Labor Commission are asking the City Council to develop a “Sweatfree Berkeley Ordinance. 

Other jurisdictions have adopted them including San Francisco. 

Computers donated by Homeland Security are not spying on people in Berkeley, an informational staff report says. They are intended to share geographical data with those responding to earthquakes or other regional emergencies. 

“No information is shared between City of Berkeley and Homeland Security at any level in connection with these computers, other than data that are available to them as members of the public,” the report notes. 

Two incumbents will vie to maintain their hold on the Berkeley Board of Education, while President Terry Doran says he won’t run again.  

Three of five seats are up for grabs this November, as Doran and Director Shirley Issel finish out their second four-year terms, and Director Nancy Riddle wraps up her first.  

Issel, a clinical social worker, and Riddle, the CFO for Monster Cable Products, have filed candidate statements of intent, City Clerk Sara Cox confirmed. 

No other official candidate statements have been submitted, but Karen Hemphill, the BUSD parent who narrowly lost a bid for school board in 2004, told the Planet Friday she plans to rerun. 

Two years ago, Hemphill ran in tandem with fellow parent Kalima Rose. Both were defeated by incumbents Joaquin Rivera and John Selawsky. Rose said she has no intention of running again, but Hemphill, who was edged out by 609 votes, reenters the political arena ready for battle. 

“There were members who said they would take up a strategic plan for student achievement. They have not,” she said. “I would bring a sense of urgency to the fact that we need an achievement plan: some new energy and vision that comes with my being an active parent for the last 10 years.” 

If elected, Hemphill, who works as the assistant to the city manager in Emeryville, would be Berkeley’s first African-American school board director in years. More than 30 percent of Berkeley’s public school students are African American, yet the district’s chief decision-making body is comprised of four white members and one Latino member. Many believe the board should more accurately represent the make-up of Berkeley student. 

“I have always encouraged and tried to solicit and support African-American candidates, and by having an African American on the school board, I feel the decisions would more closely resemble decisions of the community,” Doran said, while saying he would not support a candidate simply for being African-American.  

Hemphill weighed in on the role of an African-American leader on the board:  

“I think it’s incumbent on every school board member to represent the entire constituency. I don’t think that not being black absolves you of representing the African-American community,” she said. “At the same time, one African American can’t claim to represent the African-American community.” 

Though a relative unknown in the 2004 election, Hemphill earned endorsements from several public officials including Congressmember Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Mayor Tom Bates, seven of nine councilmembers and Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson. Doran supported Hemphill in 2004. His high opinion of her has not changed, he said. 

Another possible candidate is Dan Lindheim, a longtime Berkeley resident who went through the public school system. His children are now following suit.  

Lindheim said he is considering a run, though he hasn’t decided just yet. Once a congressional policymaker for Ron Dellums, Lindheim currently volunteers full-time in various capacities: as a soccer coach, an issues consultant for Dellums’ Oakland mayoral campaign, and chair of the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project (BSEP) Planning and Oversight Committee. Two current directors, Selawsky and Riddle, are past committee chairs, and many deem the position a launch pad for a spot on the school board.  

In the November 2002 election, with three seats up for bid, Riddle raked in 25 percent of the votes, Doran received 21.1 percent and Issel earned 20.5 percent. 

This year, Issel follows the lead of board Vice President Rivera in chancing a third term. Rivera pursued and—with 27.4 percent of the vote—easily won a third term in 2004. The school board does not impose term limits; however, candidates historically have sought just two terms.  

The official nomination period for school board candidates begins this summer..

Warped lane configurations on Telegraph Avenue and a traffic analysis of proposed mixed-use development on University Avenue topped the list of hot button issues on the Transportation Commission’s agenda Thursday. 

The traffic report for a proposed retail and residential project at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and University, where Kragen Auto Parts stands, points to potentially significant car congestion.  

Developers plan to build a 156-unit apartment complex, a 13,515-square-foot Trader Joe’s and 875-square-feet of retail space, plus an underground parking lot at the site. 

The project would usher in potentially significant traffic at MLK and University, said the report, prepared by Oakland-based civil engineering and planning firm Korve Engineering. MLK and Berkeley Way would also suffer heavier gridlock, as shoppers would gain access to the project’s retail arm via a driveway on Berkeley Way.  

However, implementing measures such as adding and changing signals and reconfiguring lanes would reduce congestion, the report concluded. 

Berkeley Way is a residential thoroughfare running parallel to University that some residents say should not endure more car traffic.  

“There are young children on Berkeley Way,” said Steve Wollmer, who lives on the street. “If there is not a barrier on Berkeley Way, we will fight the project to the best of our ability. It is a bottom line, absolute.” 

Alternatives to the proposed configuration have been floated. One would forbid left turns out of the retail driveway on Berkeley Way; the other would close off a portion of the street. 

Wollmer also expressed distaste for the project’s potential impact on parking along MLK between University and Hearst Avenue, which he fears will slash patronage of nearby businesses. 

The development would usher in 1,304 new car trips to the area a day, adding bicycle and pedestrian safety to a list of concerns. Between 1998 and 2002 the second highest number of bicycle and pedestrian collisions in the city took place at University and MLK. In recent years, collisions have dwindled, but the intersection remains cause for alarm because a high percentage of injury accidents still occur. 

Commissioner Rob Wrenn said that’s not reason enough to reject the project, since mitigation measures can be implemented.  

“There’s nothing about the pedestrian and bicycle problem that can’t be fixed,” he said.  

Missing car spaces 

On Thursday, transportation commissioners will consider another contentious issue: the mysterious removal of about 20 car spaces on Telegraph Avenue between Dwight Way and the Oakland border. Spots were replaced with parallel motorcycle parking, and lane stripes were repainted as wavy, “psychedelic” lines. 

Many shopkeepers are up in arms, claiming that the new configuration negatively affects business. 

“Some folks thought they were having flashbacks to an acid trip,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who represents the district, in a correspondence to the council in February. 

The City Council approved a citywide restriping initiative in 2004, and Telegraph was among the streets targeted for work. 

City staff took that opportunity to fix Telegraph’s bike lanes which, at four-feet-wide, were narrower than what state standards deem safe. 

To accommodate wider bike thoroughfares, some parking had to be eliminated and lane lines repainted. The decision was at the discretion of the traffic engineer and did not need the approval of City Council, said Peter Hillier, assistant city manager for transportation. Motorcycle spaces were selected because they fit the available space, he said.  

Worthington insists other alternatives were available, such as shaving off road medians or installing compact parking. Moreover, he rues the covert manner in which the spots were removed. 

“They didn’t have to remove the parking spaces to do the restriping,” he said. “But equally important, no one was told in advance. That’s a horrible way to treat small business people.” 

“No one in the city gave us any notification,” echoed Adam Shoehalter, owner of Zax Tavern on Telegraph, who has yet to see a motorcycle use the (now abundant) parking. “All the merchants there were screwed.” 

The commission will also discuss an upcoming community meeting to examine design plans for the proposed downtown Berkeley BART Plaza and Transit Area, the allocation of $200,000 payments from UC Berkeley for traffic management downtown, and a draft copy of the UC Berkeley Bike Plan. 

The Transportation Commission meets Thursday at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., at 7 p.m..

Despite heavy rains experienced in Berkeley this year, two of the city’s emergency storm shelters have closed and a third has only a few more days of funding. 

The Oakland Army Base winter shelter, which houses 50 people from Oakland and 50 from Berkeley, shut down April 15. Funds ran out last week for the youth hostel that had housed about 40 homeless and transient youth since November. 

The emergency storm shelter at Trinity United Methodist Church, run by Dorothy Day House, has enough funding to last until around April 24, according to coordinator J.C. Orton. 

The city estimates that at any one time there are 836 homeless people in Berkeley of whom 254 are marginally housed..

Faced with a budget crisis, the Contra Costa Health Department has proposed $12.8 million in cuts that would eliminate 88 jobs and reduce some key services. 

The job figures don’t include cutbacks in positions filled by contract workers from private agencies and health care providers. 

The largest cuts—$5.5 million—would come from the department’s enterprise fund, moneys that can be used for a variety of program services. 

Other specific cuts of $2.7 million would come from mental health services, $2 million from public health and $811,853 from alcohol and other drug services programs. 

“The cuts were necessary because of a shortfall in anticipated county revenues,” said county Health Director Dr. William B. Walker. 

“The cuts will hurt, but they’re not a fatal blow. We are not closing any clinics or removing any people from eligibility,” he said, “although the cuts may result in longer waiting lists.” 

Contra Costa County is unique in California in the level of services it provides residents, offering a county health plan with a sliding premium scale that covers families and individuals at up to 300 percent of the official poverty level—or a $58,000 annual income for a family of four. 

“Residents can get care in clinics, hospitals and labs and prescriptions from our pharmacies. We had over 400,000 outpatient visits at our clinics last year,” Walker said. 

While the cuts come from funds allocated through the county’s general fund, the largest share of the department’s $684 million budget comes through mandated programs funded by the state and federal governments. 

The department employs a staff of 3,500. 

Similar cuts have been mandated in all other branches of county government, Walker said. 

County hospital staff positions earmarked for cuts include the Director of Nursing, the symptom control coordinator, the chief of CardioSupport Services, the head of the Clinics Dental, the assistant lab manager, two part-time anesthesiologists, three part-time surgeons, the ambulatory care clinic coordinator and seven hospital security officers (including the assistant chief). The proposal would also slash funds for hiring contract radiologists. 

Mental health cuts include: 

• Two mental health clinical specialists at the West County Children’s Mental Health Outpatient Clinic and three similar positions at the East County clinic. 

• Closure of Summit Center, a facility that provides court-ordered treatment for up to 20 boys with serious emotional disturbances—a measure that could wind up costing the county more through placement in private or state facilities. 

• Reduction in psychiatric services at the Chris Adams Girls’ Center, the Orrin Allen Boys’ Ranch and Juvenile Hall through the elimination of one psychiatrist, the reduction in hours for a second and elimination of a clinical mental health specialist assigned to juvenile probation. 

• Elimination of funds for art therapy and housing coordination services for the mentally ill in the East County. 

• Elimination of the program’s disaster plan coordinator. 

Public health positions and programs slated for cuts include: 

• Elimination of the equivalent of 1.25 public health nurse positions, which would eliminate home visiting services to 141 of the country’s most medically vulnerable infants. 

• Elimination of 2.8 community health worker positions would reduce outreach and enrollment programs for health coverage and cut plans to deliver the services through school districts and churches. 

• Cutbacks in the operation of the Health of Wheels program, a savings of $337,000 that would reduce immunizations, checkup and treatment of minor illnesses and injuries in Western Contra Costa County. 

• Reduction in public health nursing care for foster children and services provided by the Women’s, Infants and Children’s program 

• Elimination of 24 clients from the list of AIDS cases managed by the department and reduced testing for the disease. 

• A $226,000 cut eliminating 1.5 public health nurse positions that will result in decreased monitoring and follow-up of tuberculosis patients. 

• A $125,000 cut to the department’s Homeless Outreach program that would halve the services available to the urban homeless throughout the county and eliminate 2,000 contacts a year. 

Clerical and accounting positions are also slated for cuts. 

The county would also close outpatient pharmacies in Richmond, Pittsburg and Martinez, eliminating 16 positions in the process. Residents will still be able to receive their prescriptions through contracts arranged with private pharmacies, Walker said. 

One of the cuts for alcohol and drug abuse treatment programs is a $35,333 reduction in funds for Neighborhood House, a substance-abuse facility in North Richmond. The department’s substance-abuse program manager would also be eliminated. 

Another $152,000 would be taken from domestic violence programs education and training services. 

“Hopefully, we won’t have do this again next year,” Walker said. “State revenues and property tax funds were not increasing fast enough to meet projections.””

Efforts by Richmond environmental activists are playing a major role in reducing developer opposition to laws tightening regulations at contaminated sites. 

That’s the report delivered Thursday by San Francisco attorney Peter Weiner to members of the Richmond Southeast Shoreline Area Community Advisory Group (CAG). 

Weiner has been donating his services to Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development (BARRD), the group which has led the fight for tighter control at two key south Richmond sites—Campus Bay and UCB Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station (RFS). 

Weiner briefed the CAG of two laws now before the state Assembly, one from East Bay Democrat Loni Hancock and the other from Cindy Montanez, a San Fernando Valley Democrat. 

At the urging or BARRD and other East Bay activists, Hancock and Montanez conducted a Nov. 6, 2004, legislative hearing at RFS that ultimately forced a changeover in regulatory oversight at both Campus Bay and the UCB site. 

The two adjacent sites housed chemical manufacturing plants for over a century which left the soil and water beneath heavily contaminated with deadly toxins. 

Both sites had been under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, an agency that has no toxicologists on staff and does not provide for public participation in formulating cleanup plans. 

Following the hearing, both sites eventually were transferred by the state Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Toxic Substances Control, an agency heavily staffed with toxicologists and other scientists and which provides a public participation process in the form of CAGs. The Richmond CAG was formed after the handover. 

The two bills now pending in the state legislature face a much friendlier climate than similar measures that were stalled in committee last year, and Weiner told CAG members “this has happened because of you and this site.” 

Vapor intrusion 

Hancock’s AB 2092 focuses on sites where hazardous vapors—typically from a class of substances known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—pose a potential threat to people who live or work at a site. 

Now-stalled plans for a 1,331-unit high-rise condominium and apartment complex at Campus Bay called for fans to blow away vapors from spaces beneath the occupied floors of the structure—a proposal that alarmed activists. 

Hancock’s measure calls for the creation of a statewide database listing all sites with potential vapor intrusion problems, followed by formulation of plans to identify other potential problem sites, with orders to follow mandating testing of the sites, said Gayle Eads, legislative aide to the Berkeley assemblymember. 

Eads said that vapor intrusion effects are sometimes overlooked because their health consequences can take time to manifest. 

Existing information about sites is scattered throughout a variety of agencies, including the water boards, the DTSC, the state Integrated Waste Management Board and various city and county agencies. 

Under Hancock’s legislation, the information would be compiled in one data base and posted online under the supervision of the ombudsperson of the state Secretary for Environmental Protection. 

“We felt that would make it much easier to evaluate the extent of the problem,” Eads said. “Then we can figure out how to follow up. If we have all the information at one spot, then we can have all the agencies sit down at the same table and bring all of the different expertise to bear.” 

The information could be of special benefit to poorer counties and cities that lack the resources to evaluate the problem. 

Eads confirmed that the potential vapor problems at Campus Bay had played a major role in Hancock’s decision to draft the proposed legislation. 

Montanez bill 

The Montanez measure—AB 2144—authorizes the regional water boards to establish a public participation process during the formulation of plans to clean up contaminated sites. 

“Last year, the development community vociferously opposed” a similar measure, Weiner said, but because of the attention focused by problems at Campus Bay, opposition has largely dissolved. 

In the interim, he said the state Water Quality Control Board has issued directives to the local boards ordering them to provide the public greater opportunity to comment on proposed cleanup plans before they are adopted. The Montanez measure would formalize the process. 

“Basically, the bill equalizes the public participation process with the DTSC,” said Montanez legislative aide Michael Mendez. 

While current state law doesn’t require public participation in the formulation of cleanup plans and mandates a public comment period only after their adoption, Montanez’s measure mandates a public comment period—along with community notices in appropriate languages—for at least 30 days before a plan is adopted. 

The measure also provides for the formation of advisory groups—like the DTSC’s CAGs—which can be involved for longer periods through the cleanup plan formulation process. 

“CAGs aren’t appropriate for every site,” said Mendez, not does the DTSC form CAGs at every cleanup site. The Richmond group was formed as the result of a petition from community members. 

Weiner hailed the legislation as a major move forward.  

Other business 

CAG members also voted to recruit replacements for four of their members who have resigned, and to reduce their official quorum from 60 percent of members to half because of a shortage of members at recent meetings. 

Sherry Padgett, a CAG member and the leading BARRD member, reported on a recent meeting with UC Berkeley officials at the Richmond Field Station, where she stressed the need for signs along the Bay Trail and other parts of UC property. 

Padgett said she also emphasized to UCB officials the need for a complete survey of the site, which unlike the adjacent Campus Bay property, has never been systematically evaluated for contaminants. 

While the university had originally insisted that its own staff would handle all aspects of the cleanup at the site, the university has retained a consulting firm—Tetra Tech, Inc., based in Pasadena—to prepare a soil management plan for the site. 

Barbara J. Cook, DTSC’s Berkeley-based chief of Northern California coastal cleanup, said the plan will focus on providing guidelines for university employees excavating soil in areas known to harbor contaminants. 

A survey of soil at the West Shores site at Marina Bay, where Toll Brothers plans a condo complex, revealed more antimony into two samples, but only one was above the agency’s screening levels, Cook said. The agency is currently evaluating a new plan prepared to manage soil at the site, she said. 

Cook also said that her agency hasn’t ruled out the possibility that radioactive contaminants might be buried at Meeker Slough between the Field Station and the Marina Bay housing complex. 

A survey conducted earlier this year after CAG member and retired UCB employee Rick Alcaraz reported that he and other works had dumped barrels of possibly radioactive material at the site turned up no evidence of the barrels, but Alcaraz said the dig was too shallow and possibly at the wrong location. 

Cook said she will meet with Alcaraz and see if further work is needed..

The Secretary-Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair of the Alameda County Medical Center Board of Trustees abruptly resigned from the board last week, leaving the board without a key financial expert at a time when the center is facing a fiscal crisis and questions about board oversight of its fiscal management. 

Former Pleasanton mayor Tom Pico, a certified public accountant, said in a telephone interview this week that he resigned “for health and personal reasons. I needed to take a little different direction in my life. My health is not going to allow me to be on any outside boards.” 

Management consultant Stanley M. Schiffman, who Pico succeeded as Board Finance Committee Chair when the board reorganized on the first of the year, will resume the chair duties on a temporary basis. 

Shortly after taking over the chairmanship of the board’s Finance Committee, Pico had asked former trustee Gwen Sykes to join the committee. Sykes had been a frequent critic of the center’s management and hiring practices. She was removed from the ACMC board last March in a disputed voice vote by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. 

The medical center runs several public medical institutions in Alameda County, including Highland Hospital in Oakland and Fairmont Hospital and the John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro. 

Pico’s resignation came one day before ACMC Chief Executive Officer Wright Lassiter told a joint meeting of the ACMC Board and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors that despite increased revenues, the center is still projecting an $11.5 million deficit for the current fiscal year. 

Lassiter called the budget situation a “fiscal crisis” and said his management team is taking immediate steps to close the budget gap. 

A month ago, when Lassiter made the same projection to ACMC trustees, Pico suggested that the budget problems were being underestimated. At that meeting, Pico called the $11.5 million deficit figure “the best possible case. A more realistic assessment is that we will have a deficit of another $2.5 million to $5 million above that unless we get a handle on expenses.” 

At that March meeting, trustee Daniel Boggan Jr. said that there were “major structural problems with this budget” and added that “when I was asked about it by a senior county official after this budget was passed, I thought we were underbudgeted by $1 million per month.” 

Boggan said at the time that while the board “has to give the administration time to fix this problem, we can’t just put a band-aid over it.” 

At Monday’s joint meeting, Lassiter told trustees and supervisors that sales tax revenue is running higher than budgeted figures from several sources, including Measure A, the half-cent transaction and use tax overwhelmingly passed by Alameda County voters in 2004 primarily to aid the medical center. 

But Lassiter said that salaries are busting the budget. With 138 more employees than projected, the center is running $3 million over budget each month on personnel costs, including salary and benefits. Overtime costs are running 40 percent over budget. 

Personnel costs make up 65 percent of the medical center’s budget. 

Asked by supervisors to explain how the center could be so far overbudget on its personnel costs, Lassiter gave one example, saying that misreading of state hospital personnel regulations contributed to the problem. The CEO said that the budget had project a 1-to-6 nurse-patient ratio for the John George Psychiatric Pavilion, but the Pavilion actually had to staff based upon the higher, state-mandated 1-to-5 nurse-patient ratio. 

Public hearings on the fiscal year ‘06-’07 budget by the ACMC Board of Trustees Finance Committee are expected to begin next month.  

Lassiter had no hand in drawing up this year’s medical center budget. That document was developed by Cambio Health Solutions, the Tennessee-based company hired by the medical center in early 2004 to analyze ACMC’s finances. Cambio’s involvement with ACMC ended when Lassiter was hired last September.  

During her two years on the board before being ousted by the supervisors, Sykes often complained that trustees were asked to approve salaries for high-level hires at the center without knowing the full cost of the contracts. 

“The board would be asked to approve a hiring contract based on a one-page summary, without being given the actual contract itself,” Sykes said in an interview with the Planet. “That’s one of the reasons we ended up overbudget.” 

Sykes said that in October of last year, for example, she wrote to ACMC management, asking that the Human Resources Committee, of which she was the co-chair at the time, be provided “with all information…related to the hiring” of a management staff member. “I do not recall receiving a CV, salary offer package nor reference information.” 

Sykes wrote that she had earlier told board members that the employee “was provided an offer outside of the budgeted range, which concerns me in light of our difficulty in managing the existing budget and directive to staff to adhere to the budget determined solely by the board.” 

She said that while nurses and other lower-paid workers got much of the blame for the center’s budget woes, the real problem was in doctors’ salaries. 

“The center was doing a lot of hires that they didn’t need, at costs they couldn’t afford,” she said. “It was irresponsible.” 

At the March meeting in which CEO Lassiter first reported the projected $11.5 million budget deficit, Sykes told trustees that the center needed to impose a moratorium on new high-level hires. 

“We need nurses, and that’s it,” she said. “If it’s not nurses, I don’t think we need to be hiring anybody.” 

Sykes is considering legal action to attempt to restore her position on the board.  

The Public Information Officer for the medical center has been out of the office since last week and was not available for comment.  

In other ACMC news, registered nurses are currently considering a contract offer by the medical center that would boost their salaries 4 percent this year and 4.5 percent the following two years. Voting on the package is scheduled to end this week..

Just when it seemed impossible for relations between the United States and Iran to get any worse, they have deteriorated once again. The rhetoric and counter-rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear program sounds serious and substantive. However, a little reflection reveals this situation for what it is: a continuing piece of high-stakes political theater that principally benefits the leaders of both nations by shoring up their lagging political fortunes. 

It would be easy to dismiss this absurd scenario if the consequences were not potentially so ominous.  

Both the Bush administration and the Iranian clerical regime are reeling from historic low support figures from their constituent populations. United States politicians know that attacking Iran is a sure-fire political winner with the American public. Iran has become America’s all-purpose bogeyman. 

Foolish declarations, such as the State Department assertion that Iran is America’s “greatest security threat” are received uncritically by voters throughout the nation. Similarly in Iran, the United States can be freely demonized without serious question. The leaders of the Islamic republic regularly blame the United States for their own failings in managing economic development, border control and corruption.  

The issue the two sides have seized upon for the last three years is Iran’s nuclear development program. For U.S. politicians, nothing gets the attention of the American public more reliably than the threat of nuclear weapons being deployed against the United States. This frightening prospect was effective in convincing the nation to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Merely suggesting that Iran poses a nuclear danger is enough to convince many Americans that the suggestion is based on fact.  

For Iran, the fact that the United States has led an international campaign to halt its 35-year-old nuclear energy development program—a program started with American blessing—is an affront to national pride. Indeed, the specter of violent military attacks on Iran from the United States or Israel if Iran does not stop uranium enrichment is met by defiance from Iran, where the enrichment program continues unabated. 

As Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Javad Zarif declared before the United Nations Security Council on March 29, “Pressures and threats do not work for Iran. Iran is allergic to pressure and threats and intimidation.” Consistent reports from Iran state that even Iranians who are opposed to their own government support continued nuclear energy development. 

The ominous rhetoric from both sides masks the weakness of both nations’ positions. 

U.S. and British officials when pressed admit there is no hard evidence that an Iranian nuclear weapons development program exists. They also admit that Iran’s nuclear energy development program is their right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran (but not Israel, Pakistan or India) is a signatory. 

Moreover, Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker about U.S. plans for military strikes against Iran, emphasizes that high-raking U.S. military advisors oppose the idea of any kind of military action against Iran’s widespread nuclear development laboratories as impractical, ineffective and likely to create a greater problem than it would solve.  

Iran’s posturing, which included an amusing set of festivities on April 11 with folkloric performers dancing while hoisting vials of enriched uranium against the backdrop of hundreds of flying white doves, conceals the fact that Iran is years away from producing enough nuclear fuel to power a generator, much less in the quantity and purity level that would allow it to construct a nuclear weapon. However, that has not stopped Iran from showing off a new set of conventional weapons designed to counter an American attack.  

This makes American and Iranian assertions and counter-assertions appear rather ridiculous. Indeed, the danger in this situation could be dismissed if there were other leaders in power. However, in both nations the leadership needs this conflict. 

President Bush and the Republican party face defeat in November without an issue to galvanize the voting public behind their assertion that they are best able to protect the United States from attack—the only point on which they have outscored Democrats in recent polls. 

President Ahmadinejad also needs public support for his domestic political agenda —an agenda that is paradoxically opposed by a large number of the ruling clerics in Iran. Every time he makes a defiant assertion against the United States, the public rallies behind him.  

This creates what political scientist Richard Cottam termed a “spiral conflict” in which both parties escalate each other’s extreme positions to new heights. It is entirely possible that Iran could goad President Bush into a disastrous military action, and that action would result in an equally disastrous Iranian reaction.  

The resulting conflagration would likely engulf the region, and then the world.

The following is an excerpt from Richard Schwartz’s Earthquake Exodus, 1906: Berkeley Responds to the San Francisco Refugees. This is the last in a series of four installments from the book. 

In spite of all normal life in Berkeley being suspended by the damage and the flood of earthquake refugees that had covered the town, it was odd how “normal life” kept poking through like blades of grass that had been covered but still found their way to the light in spite of it all. 

Students, though living lives as cadets, guards, food servers, cooks, nurses assistants, etc., still needed to finish their school somehow, someway, sometime.  

Regular life kept reasserting itself, mixed in with this most extraordinary time.  

Graduation Day, 1906  

On April 28, UC Berkeley President Benjamin Ide Wheeler announced that because students and faculty had been helping with the relief effort, exams would be canceled, and students’ final grades would be based on their work during the spring term. 

The seniors may have not mourned the cancellation of exams, but they missed some of the pleasures routinely enjoyed by graduating classes. One of them was a yearbook. The 1906 Blue and Gold was about to be printed at Sunset Press in San Francisco when the earthquake struck. The yearbook burned along with the press’s other publications in the fire. 

Graduation ceremonies for more than four hundred seniors took place at the Greek Theatre on May 16.  

President Wheeler delivered a stirring address that acknowledged recent events: “Class of 1906, I give you my blessing and send you forth. You will never forget these days of vehemence through which you issue into life. It may be you have learned more in them concerning the things that are real than in all your college courses. You have learned the exceeding blessedness of helping others, you women who toiled devotedly in relief and care, and men who faithfully through hours of horror guarded the doors of the unprotected. You saw the things that men counted the real stay and foundation of life vanish to the winds; even the crust of mother earth was no longer firm beneath her feet; but out of the ruin and dismay you saw emerge a surer foundation shapen in the mind of the Eternal Real, and there composed is not land or gold or steel, but the blessed loyalties of human brotherhood and the tender mercies of human love.” 

Sarah Bernhardt Performs Benefit 

People needed a break—an escape from survival and the urgent tasks they were performing on a daily basis, many for very long hours. They needed to forget all that had happened for a bit. 

A month after the earthquake, many Berkeley residents and San Francisco refugees came to the Greek Theatre to be entertained in the grandest style by the grandest lady of the stage.  

On April 26 Sarah Bernhardt performed a concert in a huge tent in Chicago to benefit the San Francisco relief effort. It was a huge success. The next month she came to Oakland and appeared at Ye Liberty Playhouse in Oakland.  

Then, on May 17, she starred in the play Phedre at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater. Admission was $1 or $2 for reserved seats, and 10 percent of the proceeds went to benefit the refugees. By the time the curtain rose at 3 p.m., an audience of 5,000 had packed the theater. They were ready for a respite from the events of the previous month.  

Bernhardt had expressed an interest in performing at the Greek Theater after reading about it. 

“It has always been a dream of mine to play Phedre sometime in the open air,” she told the Oakland Enquirer. 

According to one review, “Her Phedre, though a tragic figure in a tragedy-haunted community, supplied the first big breathing spell that the fire-sufferers had enjoyed.” Bernhardt’s voice “cooed and soothed and sobbed through the lines ... and as she left the amphitheater in an open carriage without a veil, she was cheered enthusiastically by thousands of people who had lingered on the heights among the trees, or along the campus to wave and shout her an enthusiastic farewell.”  

Bernhardt later said, “There in the Greek Theatre of the University of California at Berkeley I played Phedre, as it has never been played before, under blue skies and in a classic theatre of the Greek type. There sat before me 8,000 folk, of whom more than half had been made homeless by the terrible fire of San Francisco, and they forgot—yes, I believe they forgot all.” 

Earthquake Exodus, 1906 is available at local bookstores. See www.richardschwartz.info for speaking dates. 

Today (Tuesday, April 18) at City Council Chambers, the public is invited to a 3:30 p.m. ceremony at which Richard Schwartz will present Mayor Bates with a Certificate of Honor to the citizens of Berkeley from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Also, following the ceremony, BAHA will sponsor a lecture on the 1906 Berkeley Earthquake Relief effort and the book at the Berkeley City Club at 7:30 that night. Contact BAHA for tickets, at 841-2242.

There is a 62 percent chance of an earthquake of a magnitude of 6.7 or greater striking the San Francisco Bay Area before the year 2032, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 

Apart from generating structurally damaging ground motions from the eastern margin of the bay through the East Bay hills, and from Milpitas in the south to as far north as Petaluma, such an earthquake would also cause structural damage in San Francisco’s Financial District, and severe shaking throughout the Santa Clara Valley and eastward into the San Ramon and Livermore valleys. 

According to Jeff Lusk, chief of the Earthquake Program for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, USGS has predicted that a major rupture of the Hayward Fault would probably be the most devastating East Bay event in history because it would occur within the highly developed Interstate 880 corridor.  

According to a July 2004 assessment, an earthquake of magnitude 6.9 on the Hayward Fault with Berkeley as the epicenter could displace between up to 12,000 households, leaving hundreds injured or dead. 

“This quake is long overdue,” Lusk said. “When it occurs, gas, water, transportation, and communication will all be disrupted. If the father works in Albany, the mother teaches at Cal and the kid goes to school somewhere else, there is a chance that they might be separated for days, even weeks. Medical and emergency services will be overwhelmed. In a word, the situation will be extremely chaotic.” 

He added that the one good thing that came out of the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast last year was increased awareness of the potential of natural disasters. 

“Not just Berkeley, but California as a whole is no longer in denial,” he said. “People realize that this is going to be a catastrophic disaster. They realize that government services will not be able to help them for the first 72 to 96 hours. They will have to have adequate food and water stocked up to last for at least five days.” 

Berkeley Assistant Fire Chief Gil Dong said that in the aftermath of a major earthquake in Berkeley, lack of water could become a cause for concern.  

“Residents should store up on a gallon of water per person per day for at least five days,” he said. “We are working with neighborhoods on earthquake preparedness through Community Emergency Response Training classes and Neighborhood Network Discussion programs that will teach neighbors to start a neighborhood network focused on disaster preparedness.”  

Since Hurricane Katrina, the city’s Office of Emergency Services has given disaster preparedness talks to more than 1,500 Berkeley residents.  

Jesse Townley, chair of Berkeley’s Disaster Council, said that his office supported the OES by advocating for proper funding as well as volunteering to teach the training classes, fill emergency caches in the Berkeley schools, and be vocal about the need for residents to be ready to survive on their own for at least five days after the next big quake. 

“We also work on other initiatives and laws to safeguard our city, like working with the Planning Department and the city manager’s office on the unreinforced masonry, soft-story, and seismic retrofit programs,” he said.  

The structures in the city that face the most danger from earthquakes are the unreinforced masonry buildings and soft-story buildings.  

“Embarrassingly enough, one of the few unreinforced masonry buildings left is a city building in the corporation yard that houses the city’s backup radio system,” Townley said.  

Soft-story buildings—usually apartment buildings built over an open parking area on the ground floor—face a higher risk because of their design.  

The implementation of a new city law requires owners of these buildings to retrofit the buildings to make sure that they stand up long enough for people to safely escape when an earthquake occurs.  

According to Townley, because the law does not affect structures with four units or fewer, the next step needs to be tenant and landlord education. 

“Finally,” he said, “much of the Berkeley flatlands are built on landfill which will liquefy in a strong earthquake. If the quake is strong enough, houses will be flattened and it’ll depend on the strength of retrofit work if occupants will be able to exit before the house collapses.” 

Townley also said he wants to install part or all of a curriculum like the Red Cross’ Masters of Disaster program in the public schools. 

Should a large-scale disaster occur, Berkeley will be requesting mutual-aid through the State Mutual Aid System.  

“Through the mutual aid system, all resources including food, water, emergency personnel, building inspectors, etc., can be requested,” said Assistant Fire Chief Gil Dong. “The city is also finalizing a memorandum of understanding with the American Red Cross, Berkeley Unified School District and UC Berkeley that will identify potential shelters in a large scale disaster.”  

Today, on the 100-year anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, UC Berkeley—along with regional partner agencies such as the City of Berkeley, City of Albany, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Alta Bates-Summit Medical Center, Bayer Health Care Corporation and others—plans to carry out a Shockwave Centennial Disaster Training Exercise to simulate the 1906 San Andreas Fault Quake.  

Tom Klatt, manager of Emergency Preparedness at UC Berkeley, said the university has always served as a model for other universities when it came to disaster resistance.  

“In 1999, we became the first disaster resistant campus in the country,” he said. “However, you can never be prepared enough for an earthquake. There is always more to do in terms of updating disaster preparedness procedures.” 

The university carries out one earthquake drill every year and has two satellite phones on campus for use in case of major communication disruption, Klatt said. Although buildings on campus are being strengthened to reduce casualties and damages from a future quake, students are strongly encouraged to be self-sufficient.  

Klatt added, “Since each campus building has a designated evacuation area it is important for students to find out where these Emergency Assembly Areas (EAAs) are for their residence hall and classroom buildings.” 

For further information on earthquake preparedness see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html, www.72hours.org, or call the Office of Emergency Services at 981-5605. 

A tall, heavy-set man claiming to be “God and the messiah” barricaded himself inside his Ocean Gardens home for 20 hours before surrendering without incident early Thursday. 

During the siege, Berkeley Police had evacuated most of the residents of the small housing complex in 1700 block of Fifth Street—though business as usual continued in the shops on Fourth Street. 

Police sealed off sections of Fifth and Sixth streets, and a mobile command post was established in a parking lot off Fifth a block north of the apartments. 

Masked and armored officers armed with military assault rifles prowled the apartment complex while BPD’s Barricaded Subject Hostage Negotiating Team talked to the agitated man through doors and windows. 

“He was armed only with kitchen cutlery,” said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

The incident began at 4:40 a.m., when police received calls about an agitated man running up and down Fifth Street, crying out that he was God and the messiah. 

“We sent a couple of officers, and when they arrived he was in the middle of the street,” Galvan said. 

Seeing the officers, the man—described as a 32-year-old, 300-pound six-footer—got in his car, and appeared ready to drive off. 

“The officers talked to him and asked for his keys. He complied and got out of the car,” Galvan said. “He was sweating heavily and quite agitated.” 

All was going well until the officers tried to handcuff the man. As the officers tried to restrain him, the heavyset suspect bolted, then ran into his apartment and the standoff began. 

Armed with kitchen cutlery, the man kept officers at bay. The hostage team was summoned, and evacuation of the apartment complex began. 

Before the siege ended, Galvan said, an estimated 20 to 25 officers were involved, assisted by officers from the UC Berkeley Police Department and Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies. 

Negotiators were in contact with the distraught suspect throughout the crisis. 

Galvan said he suspects the man’s surrender may have been triggered by a combination of exhaustion and the decision by officers to turn off the utilities in the apartment, leaving him in darkness. 

Following his surrender, the man was taken to the Alameda County Medical Center’s John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro, where he is currently undergoing evaluation, Galvan said. 

Residents were evacuated to the North Berkeley Senior Center, which served as an emergency shelter during the incident. By 10 p.m. only four people remained in the shelter, Galvan said. Most of the others had found alternative places to stay.  

City Manager Phil Kamlarz and City Councilmember Linda Maio visited the scene during the late afternoon. 

Neighbors seemed to take the incident in stride. 

One couple parked in the car in the Restoration Hardware parking lot, hoping they’d be able to return to their home. 

“He broke up with his girlfriend,” said one of the pair. “That’s what we figure set this off.” 

Another car in the same lot was occupied by people one officer identified as relatives of the barricaded man. 

Yet another man complained to a officer that he was losing business and wanted things brought to a conclusion. 

“He’d probably feel different if it was one of his family members,” said Galvan, who said that, “especially in this city, we were going to sit there for a while” and not force the situation. 

“We had no indication he was armed with anything beyond kitchen knives,” said Galvan, adding that after the surrender, no firearms or other types of weapons were found..

Berkeley Police Officer Sgt. Cary Kent has not been charged with a crime, but the district attorney’s warrant allowing officers to search his office, locker and computer ties Kent tightly to drugs missing from the department’s evidence vault. 

In January, Chief Douglas Hambleton put Kent, an Administrative Narcotics Unit sergeant, on paid administrative leave and subsequently allowed him to retire.  

Kent, a Berkeley police officer for about 20 years, had worked in the narcotics unit since September 2003. His annual salary was $109, 431. 

Neither the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, whose job would be to charge Kent with criminal activity, nor the Berkeley Police Department, which would arrest him, would speak about the case, each agency referring the Planet to the other for comment. 

His attorney, Harry Stern, did not return calls for comment. 

Most of the known information in the case is found in Search Warrant No. 2006-0098 filed Feb. 15 with Alameda County Superior Court. The warrant details the findings of investigator Mark Scarlett of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, who, with a Berkeley police officer, led the search of Kent’s locker and office. 

In his statement, Scarlett concludes: “I believe, based on the above facts, that Sgt. Kent #S24, while in his capacity as the Administrative Narcotics Unit sergeant, and while working in an office that adjoins the BPD drug vault, took the opportunity to tamper with, and remove, drug evidence scheduled for a ‘drug burn.’” (A drug burn is where drug evidence no longer needed is destroyed.) 

Further, the report says Scarlett believes that Kent: 

• “intentionally opened sealed BPD’s evidence envelopes and then removed some, if not all, of the drug evidence, and then attempted to reseal these evidence envelopes in a manner that would avoid detection …” 

• “intentionally attempted to remain in the capacity of the Administrative Narcotics Unit sergeant until the ‘drug burn’ scheduled for 12 Jan 06 could be completed and with it, any proof of tampering with sealed evidence envelopes destroyed …” 

• could have used the evidence to “be sold, traded, provided to others, or used by [himself] ...” 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz said investigators have to walk a fine line, giving the employee his rights while carrying out a criminal investigation. He commended the police chief for responding quickly to the problem and said the city is bringing in the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), to review and improve BPD procedures. POST would not play a role in investigating the specific incident, he said.  

In the document, Scarlett detailed Kent’s duties including: “processing, tracking and storing all drug evidence submitted by BPD officers, reviewing drug evidence for in-custody cases, determining which cases should be tested by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department Crime Lab, insuring that any drug evidence needed for court is tested and returned prior to the court date, processing assets that are seized in SEU [Special Enforcement Unit] cases …. [and] maintaining a liaison between the SEU and the District Attorney’s Office….”  

The report indicates that fellow officers were aware that something was wrong with Kent as early as September 2005. At that time Lt. Al Yuen became Kent’s supervisor when he was reassigned to the Special Enforcement Unit, where the Administrative Narcotics Unit is located. 

Scarlett wrote that “[Yuen] said upon his reassignment, he noticed that Sgt. Kent looked unhealthy, had put on a lot of weight, and that his skin often looked gray or pale. He said Sgt. Kent’s personal hygiene was poor and noticed that he was constantly perspiring, causing him to have to change his clothes in the middle of the day due to a reoccurring strong body odor. Other times, Lt. Yuen said Sgt. Kent could be found wearing the same set of clothes to work that he had been wearing the day before. On some occasions, Sgt. Kent would fall asleep at his desk while Lt. Yuen was speaking to him.”  

Moreover, Kent’s work went unfinished; he wasn’t reporting to work as scheduled and “officers subpoenaed for court were unable to obtain their drug evidence from the drug vault in a timely manner.” 

When asked, Kent blamed his problems on a medical condition, lupus.  

Capt. Bobby Miller told Scarlett that police administration concern led them to compel Kent to see a physician. Kent stalled but when he finally was examined on Dec. 28, he refused to give blood or have an EKG performed. 

“As a result of the examination, Sgt. Kent was deemed unfit for duty as a patrol sergeant,” but was permitted to come back on administrative duty to inventory evidence for the drug burn. (He was to rotate into the patrol division.)  

A preliminary audit by the Berkeley police of the drug evidence in early January determined that at least 15 evidence bags had been tampered with. On Jan. 6 Chief Hambleton placed Kent on administrative leave. Before meeting with the chief, the report says telephone records show that Kent made a call to a “known drug dealer in the city of Berkeley who has also worked as an informant for Sgt. Kent.”  

On Jan. 11, a joint county-Berkeley investigation was launched and showed that at least 181 evidence bags had been tampered with. 

While allegations of theft of drug evidence may seem shocking, it is not an isolated occurrence, said Joseph McNamara, retired 15-year San Jose police chief, now a fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.  

“The police property room has been a special problem for a number of years,” McNamara said. “Many departments have suffered the theft of drugs by sworn and non-sworn personnel.” 

This has led to the tightening of procedures in many departments. But still, some officers join drug gangs. And they steal from dealers. In such instances, “the drug dealers can’t go to the nearest police station,” McNamara said. 

There have been instances where honest officers are murdered by criminal police, he said. Police “have a distaste for the officer who blows the whistle.”  

Other evidence is also commonly stolen from property rooms, including firearms, jewelry and cash. “It’s a major management problem,” McNamara said. 

One way investigations are broadened is that when one officer is caught, he is offered a deal: “He goes to prison for 15 years or cooperates, giving evidence against his friends,” McNamara said. 

Some departments test officers for drugs. Some also review officer’s finances, so if an officer bought a $1 million house, for instance, it might look suspicious. 

But “police unions have been pretty successful blocking (drug testing),” McNamara said. “They negotiate working conditions and say that there is no testing of other civil servants.” 

Politics can also play a role, since elected officials want the endorsement of police unions, McNamara said. 

City Manager Kamlarz said the Berkeley City Council rejected drug testing in the ‘80s, though he said federal law mandates drug testing for city employees who drive very large vehicles, such as garbage trucks. 

Citizens spoke out before and during the Wednesday night Police Review Commission meeting at the South Berkeley Senior Center, demanding commissioners investigate allegations that Berkeley Police Sgt. Cary Kent tampered with drug evidence locked in the Berkeley Police Department vault. 

Kent, who has not been charged with a crime, was placed on administrative leave in January and subsequently retired from the department.  

The public learned of the allegations through an East Bay Express report based on Search Warrant No. 2006-0098 filed Feb. 15 in Alameda County Superior Court. 

A March 14 Freedom of Information Act request by the police watchdog group Copwatch for all public documents relevant to the missing drug evidence—police had sent out a press release about the missing drugs in January—was denied in a March 17 letter by Chief Douglas Hambleton. The request was denied on grounds that the investigation was in process, despite the existence of the search warrant, which is a public document. 

“Drugs are a community problem from the halls of the police station to the ghetto,” said attorney Osha Neumann, in an interview before addressing the 25 people rallying outside the South Berkeley Senior Center. 

If the officer “was a black kid in the ghetto, no way would he be walking around not charged,” Neumann said. 

Speaking on the steps of the senior center, Andrea Prichett of Copwatch, who organized the rally, also raised the question of equal justice. 

“Do (the police) get thrown on the ground?” she asked rhetorically, implying that Berkeley police intimidate suspected drug dealers. “Do they get their doors kicked in?” 

She said she wasn’t suggesting harsh retribution for Kent. 

“I feel bad for Sgt. Kent,” she said. “I feel bad for all addicts.” 

Jacob Crawford of Copwatch also spoke. 

“How many other officers patrolling are high on drugs?” he asked, noting, “To this point, Sgt. Kent is yet to be tested.” 

Kent refused a blood test as part of a physical ordered by the department. 

Crawford also pointed out that four other officers had access to the evidence room, but the others were not named in the warrant.  

Inside the PRC meeting room, the public addressed the commissioners directly during the public comment period. Because the issue of the missing drugs was not on the agenda, commissioners could not respond, though they promised to place the issue before the commissioners at the next meeting. 

Karen Hilton was among those addressing the commission. She pointed out that no one knows how long the tampering has been going on. And Jacob Crawford called on the body to investigate whether the drugs are being sold back on the street. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington promised to call on the City Council to restore the commission’s budget cuts, so that in-depth investigations can be funded.  

Janice Schroader asked the commission to use its power of subpoena to look at the case. She reminded commissioners that on police cars it says “serve and protect,” but, she said, “I don’t feel safe.” 

Vacationing in Maine, Mayor Tom Bates said, through his Chief-of-staff Cisco De Vries, that he thought the PRC would be the appropriate venue for a public discussion on how the situation could have occurred and how to avoid similar incidents in the future. 

Photo by Judith Scherr: 

Attorney Osha Neumann condemns police practices that allow alleged drug theft by police and calls on Police Review Commission to investigate at a rally called by Copwatch on Wednesday before the PRC meeting.

Want your anti-war protest to get noticed? Don’t pay your taxes. 

Susan Quinlan’s been doing it for 25 years, and she’s attracted plenty of attention from the Internal Revenue Service, which showed up at her front door one day demanding she pay a portion of her earnings or face imprisonment. 

Quinlan refused to cooperate, the IRS slunk away and, 10 years later, she’s dodging federal tax laws as gamely as ever. 

Quinlan, 47, is an out-and-proud tax resister, a would-be taxpayer who refuses to pony up each April 15—or April 17 this year—in conscientious objection to federal expenditures on war. 

According to the National Priorities Project (NPP), a nonpartisan research group, the war in Iraq costs $272.6 billion and counting. In Berkeley alone, that’s $97.7 million, enough to send almost 13,000 kids to Head Start for a year, hire 1,693 additional teachers or pay for 880 new public housing units. 

About 28.5 percent of personal income taxes fund the military, the NPP says. The War Resisters League, a peace action organization, pegs the figure closer to 50 percent, when taking into account veterans’ benefits and interest on past military spending. 

It is estimated that tens of thousands of Americans refuse to pay dues in some form as protest, be it a 3 percent phone bill charge, a symbolic sum like $9.11 or all personal income.  

Penalties for tax resistance vary, and can include the issuance of notices, fines between 5 to 25 percent of what’s owed, plus interest, property seizures or, in rare cases, criminal action. 

Quinlan, a Berkeley resident, has retooled her life to keep negative consequences to a minimum. She doesn’t own property or maintain much cash in bank accounts and she declines jobs that require she withhold money from her paycheck. 

“My approach was, I don’t want to pay any taxes at all, which means adapting my lifestyle to make that possible,” Quinlan said.  

As a full-time volunteer peace advocate, Quinlan falls beneath the tax line this year and need not pay a dime. In the past, though, when she’s owed money, she’s had to navigate thorny legal territory to ensure her earnings steer clear of federal war coffers. 

One problem facing many aspiring resisters is that taxes are typically taken out of paychecks automatically, thwarting the opportunity to resist. Solutions include self-employment, contract work, or loading up on W-4 allowances that minimize per-paycheck deductions. When April 15 rolls around, many resisters either submit a 1040 then refuse to pay their taxes or eschew filing altogether. 

Quinlan opts for the latter. She hadn’t filed a federal income tax return since 1987, when the IRS came after her wages from a job she held at a nonprofit Latina employment agency. Rather than pay up, she quit, and would do it again, she said. 

“I loved that job, but my commitment to not pay for war came first,” she said. 

Does that mean she pockets the money and heads for the outlets? 

Definitely not, she said. Like many resisters, Quinlan redirects those tax dollars to local charities and community groups. 

“I always calculated what taxes would be owed because I do feel it’s important that I contribute to the community,” she said. “I just don’t want it to go to illegal, immoral, imperialistic wars.” 

Tax resistance as peace activism is nothing new. Examples in the United States date back to colonial times, when Quakers condemned taxation during the American Revolution and the Mexican-American War, saying they wouldn’t pay for killing, the War Resisters League website says. 

Henry David Thoreau famously spent a night in jail in 1846 for spurning a poll tax levied to fund military operations. Other luminaries who’ve said no to war taxes include Joan Baez, Gloria Steinem, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dorothy Day, David Dellinger and Noam Chomsky. 

In 1972, Oakland Mayoral Candidate Ron Dellums, then a congressmember, introduced a bill that would allow taxpayers to declare conscientious objector status. The bill has been reintroduced into each Congress since, last year by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).  

But until it passes—if ever—Quinlan and her tax-bucking ilk will continue to defy the law in the name of peace.  

“I write to Congress, I make phone calls, I march, but to me, this is just a bottom line,” Quinlan said, “I feel if I really want to be clear about standing up for peace, I need to take it to every step of my life.” 

*** 

Tax Day Events 

Bay Area Women in Black, a group of Jewish feminists and allies, will meet for a silent vigil at 35th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, to mourn the cost of war. Call Sandra Butler at 597-1070 or Sharon Dugan at 271-0825 for more information.  

The Oakland-based Northern California War Tax Resistance group will donate more than $8,000 to community groups working for peace, justice and human rights on Monday, April 17, at 1550 Fifth St. in Oakland (around the corner from West Oakland BART), from 6:30 to 8 p.m. From 8:15 to 10 p.m. the group will greet tax filers with an outdoor anti-war slide show and distribute flyers about how federal taxes are used for war at the West Oakland Post Office, 1675 Seventh St. For more information, go to www.nowartax.org/index.html or call 843-9877..

The countdown has begun. If contract negotiations aren’t reached within a week, Oakland teachers will walk out.  

State-appointed school administrator Randolph Ward announced a state of emergency Tuesday, allowing the 42,000-student Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) to hire non-credentialed teachers to replace permanent employees who are scheduled to stage a one-day work action April 20.  

The Oakland Education Association, the union representing 3,200 district employees, has been bargaining with the district for fair contracts for two years.  

The sides are inching toward a compromise and have settled a number of thorny issues including salary, but one item remains unresolved: health care. 

District negotiators last offered to split the cost of future health care cost increases fifty-fifty over three years. Average-income employees would pay nothing the first year, about $20 a month the second year and roughly $54 a month the third year.  

An earlier proposal put forth by the district would have placed a $7,046 a year cap on coverage.  

The union wants members to contribute no more than half a percent of their salaries to health care premiums. A neutral fact-finding report said the district could afford that, a conclusion later disputed by some in the education sector.  

OUSD currently picks up the cost of employees’ medical plans in full, an estimated $39 million a year with annual increases projected at 10 percent. However, it is one of “very few” districts in the Bay Area to do so, the report said. This is due chiefly to the spike in health care premiums nationwide. 

Most Bay Area school districts either cap coverage or grant total compensation packages. Seven of the 17 school districts in Alameda County offer the latter. 

In Berkeley, teachers are mostly covered, but starting next year, they will assume all increases in health care premiums, which could dig into salaries by $50 to $150 a month, said Barry Fike, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. 

Albany Unified, a small, urban school district serving 3,400 students, is among the few to wholly fund employee medical benefits. The district can afford it because, unlike many urban school districts—including Oakland—Albany Unified is growing, said Margaret Romero, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services. Enrollment based on students’ average daily attendance is the primary source of funding for public schools. 

Albany Unified faces skyrocketing medical expenses, nonetheless. This year, the district shouldered an 8 percent hike. Last year, costs went up 21 percent. When contract negotiations come around in 2007, administrators will push for a shared-cost plan, Romero said.  

“It’s always on management’s mind because we have to be able to contain the costs some way,” she said. What Albany Unified has, “is becoming more rare because of the cost of getting medical. The districts can’t afford that.”  

OEA President Ben Visnick warns against drawing comparisons between school districts. With an average pay of about $53,000, Oakland’s teachers are some of the lowest paid in the Bay Area, he said, and affordable medical coverage is the trade-off. 

Healthcare spending nationwide spiked 7.9 percent in 2004, with the amount spent per person coming in at $6,280, a 74 percent increase over the last decade, according to the California Health Care Foundation. Worldwide, the United States ranks first in expenditures and 37th in quality of care. 

“Put your finger on a map, it’s everywhere,” said Marty Hittleman, vice president of the California Federation of Teachers, which represents public and private school employees. “Los Angeles, San Francisco, any school district you go to, they’re having problems with health care.” 

In 2004, the California Public Education Labor-Management Committee formed to find solutions to the health care crisis in California schools.  

“Health care costs are increasing so much for everyone and all our negotiation battles are over health care, [so] we though we’d get together to find out the root of these causes,” said Hittleman, who is a committee member. 

What they’re discovered is that rising prices are largely tied to a dearth of health care providers. Though districts can’t control the industry’s consolidation, they can build regional buying coalitions and educate themselves on how to negotiate with HMOs. 

“Up until now, we’ve just been buyers and pay the price they ask,” Hittleman said. “But if we change that dynamic, we may make some gains.” 

At least 42 candidates have applied to serve on the task force planning the first stages of development at the Ashby BART station. 

Two elected officials have been nominated—Berkeley Unified School District board member John Selawsky and Oakland City Councilmember Jane Brunner—as have neighbors, architects, planners and others. 

Another ten are architects, planners and others with ties to the building and development industry. 

But the question of just how many will be chosen and how they will be selected remains unanswered. 

“We have more qualitative than quantitative guidelines,” project director Ed Church told the Daily Planet last month. “We’re more concerned with representativeness and inclusion.” 

Reached Wednesday, he said decisions about the number and composition will be up to the board of the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Council, the non-profit group nominally in charge of the process. 

Only 12 applicants had been received by April 6, and the remaining 30 flooded in during the final week before last Thursday’s filing deadline. 

“We are hoping to put together a May 3 community meeting where we can talk about the task force and the rest of the process,” Church said, adding that the panel’s membership will have been determined before the meeting. 

In December, the City Council gave what amounted to a retroactive approval of the October application for a $120,000 California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) grant to pave the way for a project that would consist of more than 300 dwelling units and ground floor commercial spaces to be built at the site on the station’s western parking lot. 

Championed by Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Max Anderson—whose district includes the site—the project immediately drew fire from neighbors concerned that the proposed density was too much. 

After checking his calculations, Church later said the 300 figure was actually a maximum rather than a minimum and blamed the area on a misunderstanding of the available building space. 

Lauren Wonder, public information officer for Caltrans’s Oakland regional office, said the officials reviewing the grant applications have yet to reach a decision. 

Church said that should Caltrans deny the grant, that planning might still move forward. 

“We were told at the Feb. 11 City Council meeting that the councilmember and the mayor had asked the city manager to look at paying for part of the process through one-time funds,” he said. “That could be a backup.” 

Controversy 

The selection process has been dogged with controversy. 

“I have been hearing from folks who raised a number of legitimacy issues about the task force,” Church said. 

One of the questions raised concerns whether or not the task force was authorized by the city council at its Dec. 13 meeting. While Church said it was, Lauriston says it wasn’t. 

Lauriston has also criticized Church for going beyond simply setting up a process in which volunteers would apply for positions and actively soliciting specific people—which Church acknowledges. 

“I thought there should be a good cross-section,” Church said. 

Lauriston also charged that task force applicants were required to endorse the project. Not so, said Church, adding that non-endorsement wasn’t a disqualifier, “but it is a salient factor for the SBNDC board to be aware of.” 

“They don’t have to accept 300 units,” he said. “A specific number is off the table—300 is not being considered. It will be whatever the task force comes up with.” 

The actual decisions are up to the City Council, he said. 

Development professionals 

Among the applicants with industry connections are: 

• Jiane Du, of Kappe+Du Architects, a firm with offices in San Rafael and Berkeley.  

• Walter Hood, professor and former chair of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley. 

• Wells M. Lawson, a planner and consultant with Strategic Economics who also serves as a director of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. 

• Erick Mikiten, a Berkeley architect who designed the Satellite Homes Senior Housing project now rising at 1535 University Ave. 

• Mark Sawicki, a real estate finance and asset management consultant who ran as a Green write-in candidate against Betty Olds in the 2004 council race. 

• Larry Rosenthal, executive director of the Goldman School of Public Policy’s Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy at UC Berkeley. 

• Karen Hester, whose Co-housing Consultants specializes in developing small co-housing communities of 10 units or less. Cohousing might best be described as communes with individually owned units. 

• Donald H. Oppenheim, executive director of the Meyers Nave law firm, which is based in Oakland and has offices throughout the state. The firm’s specialties include redevelopment and housing law. 

• David Duncan, principal planner for UC Berkeley’s Capital Projects Department. 

• Samuel Pedicone, a restoration and remodeling contractor. 

Critical applicants  

Among the applicants who have expressed criticism of the project as originally announced are members of Neighbors of Ashby BART (nabart.com):  

• Robert Lauriston, a technical writer who is the organizer of the Neighbors of Ashby BART web site (nabart.com) 

• Jackie DeBose, executive director of the New Light senior lunch program and a former member of the city’s Police Review Commission. 

• Marcy Greenhut, city recycling director. 

• Leslie K. Shipnuck, who has been active in South Berkeley development issues. 

• Osha Neumann, a South Berkeley attorney, civil rights activist and sculptor. 

• Ozzie Vincent, a longtime area resident active in crime control issues. 

• Kenoli Oleari, a community organizing consultant. 

• Robin Wright, a Lorin neighborhood activist and member of the South Berkeley Crime Prevention Council. 

• Dan Bristol, a member of NABART. 

Others 

Other applicants include: 

• Dan Cloak, a civil engineer and environmental consultant. 

• Mike Friedrich, a union activist and member of the Livable Berkeley lobbying group and an advocate of infill development projects such as that proposed at the BART station. 

• Andy DeGiovanni, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Berkeley Structural Genomics Center, who has written critically about the city’s push for the project. 

• Mansour Id-Deen, executive director of Inter-City Services, a non-profit program housed in the 3200 block of Adeline Street that offers GEDs, training in word processing and computer training skills and job placement for young people and adults. 

• Julie Chervin, who is also an activist on public school issues. 

• Dmitri Belser, executive director for the Center for Accessible Technology, which will be housed in the new Ed Roberts Center, which is to be built across Adeline Street from the project on the station’s eastern parking lot. 

• Ashley Berkowitz, a management consultant who also serves as executive director of Epic Arts, a studio and cultural program based at 1923 Ashby Ave. 

• Gabrielle Wilson, who has produced programs for KPFA. 

• Preston Tucker, who is technology integrator at College Preparatory School in Oakland. 

• Dawn Rubin, a project neighbor who serves as a consultant to non-profits. 

• Tony Hill. 

• Jeffrey Jensen. 

• Beatrice Barrigher. 

• George Luna. 

• Maryann Sargent. 

• Toya Groves. 

• Tracey Powers 

• Jaine [CQ] Gilbert 

• Ricardo Charles  

• Allen Myers. 

• Regina Myers. 

Berkeley’s legendary ice-skating rink will stay open—for now. 

A permit that allows Berkeley Iceland to operate expires Saturday, but the City of Berkeley has no intention of closing the rink, a representative from the mayor’s office said Tuesday. 

“We’re going to continue to operate and keep the programs intact,” said Jay Wescott, general manager of East Bay Iceland, Incorporated, which owns Berkeley Iceland and two other rinks.  

Berkeley Iceland’s fate was called into question in February, when owners placed the rink on the market, claiming they could not meet the climbing cost of facility maintenance. Many feared that if the Berkeley Iceland didn’t get new owners by April 15, the permit’s expiration date, the rink would shut down for good. 

Instead, rink operators are seeking to extend the permit through the city’s Planning Department. The Zoning Adjustments Board will rule on granting the extension, a decision that can be appealed to City Council.  

Berkeley Iceland, at 2727 Milivia St., was issued an administrative use permit in 2005 when the Fire Department deemed its permanent ammonia-based cooling system a hazard, and forced the rink to install a temporary system. Ammonia is known to cause serious respiratory problems if released in the air. Wescott maintains that the rink was never a risk to the community. 

The permit was granted under the premise that owners would invest in a new, permanent system. 

But they couldn’t afford the estimated $500,000, Wescott told the Planet in February—and the facility went up for sale Feb. 27. 

Gordon Commercial Real Estate has posted Berkeley Iceland for $6.45 million. So far, there aren’t any takers. 

“It’s still available,” said Ito Ripsteen, an associate with Gordon Commerical. “There have definitely been looks from different types of people, but no offer.” 

He declined to identify interested parties, but said there have been a few who would maintain the site as a rink, and others who would not. Possible uses for the facility include a sports center or an entertainment venue, Ripsteen said. 

“It’s a limited field to find a user to use it as is,” he said. 

And the ice rink business isn’t exactly booming. According to the Ice Skating Institute nationwide survey, median revenues for single-sheet ice rinks decreased from $566,000 to $505,000 in 2002, while the average amount invested in facility improvements shot up from $28,000 to $88,000 between 1998 and 2001. 

Berkeley Iceland is an especially hard sell, because it requires major work to meet city health and safety code, and other refurbishments such as window, roof and exit door replacements, new piping under the ice floor and snow pit improvements. 

Because rinks aren’t moneymakers, many cities offer subsidies or assume owership, said Oakland Ice Center General Manager Dave Fies, who’s been in the rink business for more than 20 years. 

Fies was hired in 1998 after the city of Oakland was forced to assume control of the Ice Center when developers failed to pay back a multimillion-dollar loan for the project. 

The rink just barely stays afloat, Fies said.  

Cisco DeVries, chief of staff for Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, said the city is doing everything in its power to keep Berkeley Iceland an ice-skating rink—looking into state grants and low-income loans, for instance—but it’s not interested in taking over the facility.  

“We do want to look at what ways the city can be helpful at keeping the rink in the current location, but we need to be realistic about the city’s financial resources and expertise,” DeVries said. And “ultimately, any decision is between the owners at Iceland and the potential buyers.” 

Last Thursday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission moved to designate Berkeley Iceland a city landmark. A hearing is slated for June 8.  

Built in 1939, Berkeley Iceland is one of few Olympic-sized skating rinks in the Western United States. It hosted the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships in 1947, 1957 and 1966, and was frequented by Brian Boitano, who earned gold in figure skating in the 1988 Calgary Olympics. The rink attracts 75,000 to 100,000 skaters a year, and is home to six skating clubs, eight hockey teams, including the UC Berkeley hockey team, and an ice-skating school. 

Tom Killilea has a daughter in skating school, and said he practically lives at Berkeley Iceland. 

“I just like the place a lot,” he said. “You don’t see any rinks like it around. It’s a special place and most people feel that way.” 

Killilea’s dream is to see the rink turn into a nonprofit organization and forge a partnership with the city that would allot for additional recreational activities, he said. 

But for now, he’s pleased Berkeley Iceland will stay open while the permit extension is under consideration.  

He said, “If it closed, probably we’d lose the rink forever.” 

—Richard Brenneman contributed to this report..

The oft-embattled flagship Pacifica radio station, KPFA, seems to be cruising into its 57th birthday—tomorrow, April 15—on relatively calm waters, with fundraising goals met, the last beleaguered-short-lived general manager gone, a permanent executive director at the national level in place and, last week, the appointment of Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio. 

Rijio calls her new role “a worthy challenge.”  

Born and raised in Ethiopia, with a B.A. from UC Berkeley, Rijio worked in fundraising for socially-conscious organizations before becoming KPFA’s development director about two years ago. 

She’ll continue her role as development director at the same time she takes on the temporary GM job. 

“It’s hard, but it’s very important. I’m honored to have the job for a few months,” said Rijio, who does not plan to toss her name into the hat for the permanent post. 

“I’m sure there is an older and wiser soul that will take on the job,” she said. 

Rijio was among the 15 women accusing former General Manager Roy Campanella II of gender-biased behavior and calling for his removal.  

The station is “a lot calmer now,” Rijio said. “Staff morale is up and tensions seem to be easing up a bit.” 

Rijio said her main focus will be working with staff to create a more harmonious environment. She said she hopes to be a unifying force that will bring the staff together to educate the community for peace and justice “as the founders intended.” 

It was Executive Director Greg Guma’s job to appoint the interim general manager, which he did with input from board members and staff. 

She is “somebody who already understands KPFA and has the respect of the staff,” he said. “The staff likes her and she seems pretty honest and centered.” 

On the other hand, Guma said he’d like to see a “fresh face” in the position of the permanent general manager.  

Like Rijio, Brian Edwards-Tieker, staff representative to the Local Station Board and board treasurer, said the station climate is calmer. 

“Things seem to have settled down. People can focus on work now, more than six months ago,” he said, underscoring that it is too early to assess the interim general manager. 

With tensions waning, Edwards-Ticker said it is the right time for the Local Station Board to focus on projects such as fundraising and community outreach. 

“This work has fallen by the wayside with factional in-fighting,” he said. 

The next task for the board will be selecting finalists for the permanent general manager position. The Pacifica executive director makes the final call. 

“I want someone with radio administration experience,” Edwards-Ticker said, “someone who understands community radio in particular.” 

The individual should understand new technologies such as podcasting and digital. 

Like the others interviewed, LSB Chair Richard Phelps said things appear calmer at the station. “Everything’s in a holding pattern, while we’re busy looking for a new general manager,” he said. 

A member of the search committee, Phelps said this time he hoped they would select someone with media experience, noting the last two general managers lacked that knowledge. The individual should also be good at conflict resolution and able to establish clear rules, so everyone is on an even playing field, he said.  

As the station enters its 58th year, Guma said he was particularly excited about the network coordinator position recently budgeted by the national board. 

That means “taking local programming national,” he said. And developing new programming, which has not been done in years, he said.  

Edwards-Ticker pointed out that the simple existence of KPFA after 57 years is a triumph. 

Even though the station seems “driven by conflict 365 days a year,” he said, its progressive programming remains “something of an example for the rest of the country.” 

Photo: Lemlem Rijio, KPFA’s new 

interm general manager

Tom Butt thinks he’s found a way to get quick action to start fixing Richmond’s sorely overtaxed sewer system—shut down new connections till the job is done. 

The outspoken city councilmember says he’ll be introducing a resolution calling on the city to do just that when the body meets Tuesday night. 

Fighting a lawsuit by Baykeeper and the West County Toxics Coalition and facing enforcement orders from state regulators, the city’s ailing sewer system is literally under siege, Butt said. 

San Francisco Baykeeper is part of the International Waterkeeper Alliance, an organization based in New York and headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The West County Toxics Coalition is based in Richmond and chaired by Dr. Henry Clark. 

“The city has been dragging its feet, and it’s an indisputable fact that the system can’t handle flows during certain storms,” he said. 

The major culprit is a system of thousands of aging and ailing lateral lines—the lines that take wastewater from buildings on private and public property to the main sewer lines that run under the city streets. 

The laterals, many of them made from leaking clay pipes, take in rainwater from storms which then burdens the sewer lines. 

“During dry weather, the typical flow is five to eight million gallons a day,” Butt said. “The system has a capacity of 20 million gallons. But during wet weather, the flow can reach 40 to 50 million gallons.” 

The overtaxed system then produces backups that send raw sewage flowing backwards into homes and basements. 

In the 2005-2006 fiscal year, the city has paid out more than $1 million in backup damage claims, Butt said. 

“We need a laterals ordinance,” said Butt, “and it’s my understanding an ordinance has been drafted and left to gather dust in the city attorney’s office.” 

Such a law would require property owners to have their lateral lines inspected and repaired before they could sell their homes and businesses. 

Two of the sewage districts that serve the city—Stege and West County—have already adopted a laterals ordinance, but the city hasn’t acted to put a law in place for the Richmond system itself, which serves about 60 percent of the community, Butt said. 

Butt said the city did pass one long-delayed FOG ordinance in at the end of January. FOG stands for fats, oils and grease—which often play key roles in creating sewer system problems. 

The new ordinance allow inspection of restaurants that generate that fats and implements a system for enforcing compliance. 

One of the factors behind Butt’s move is the lawsuit filed Jan. 26 by Baykeeper and the West County Toxics Coalition which charges that the city is in violation of the Clean Water Act. 

Baykeeper Sejal Choksi said the suit was filed in part because Richmond has one of the Bay Area’s highest rates of sewage spills and was failing to report them as required by law. 

“That, coupled with the fact that city has so many other pollution, social and economic problems, was the reason we filed,” Choksi said. “We really thought the situation needed to be remedied as soon as possible.” 

In addition to forcing repairs of the lateral lines, Baykeeper also wants the city to establish a funding program to help homeowners too poor to afford the repairs.  

“The city also needs to fix the collection system by maintaining and repairing the main sewer lines, where clogs have contributed to a majority of the spills,” she said. 

Butt acknowledged that the main lines need repair, citing a report by Veolia—the private contractor the city has hired to run the system—saying that 75 percent of the spills could be eliminated by replacing the main lines along San Pablo Avenue from I-80 to Bissell Avenue and Macdonald Avenue from San Pablo to 33rd Street. That work is planned but has not commenced, he said. 

The city takes the suit seriously, and last week the council voted to allot $100,000 for legal fees to Sacramento law firm Downey Brand to defend them in the action. 

“Without the suit, Richmond probably wouldn’t have moved at all,” Butt said, attributing passage of the FOG regulation to the litigation. 

The city is also under pressure from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which issued a notice of violation to the city on March 15 charging the city with failure to keep adequate records of spills and other incidents. 

Butt said he has introduced the moratorium to force hand of a city caught between conflicting pressures. 

On the one hand is an ancient and clearly inadequate sewer system, while on the other hand is a cash-starved city hungry for the fees and taxes that come with construction of new homes and businesses. 

Butt singled out for criticism the environmental impact reports generated for projects served by the main Richmond district, noting that the reports for two Toll Brothers projects—Marina Bay West Shore and Point Richmond Shores—either ignore sewer capacity (the former) or declare it satisfactory (the latter). 

The councilmember acknowledges that sewer fees are going to have to rise to meet current regulations, and says even stiffer regulations likely in the near future could force rates still higher. 

While Butt said Veolia is doing an excellent job of running the city’s system after decades of poor management by city workers, Choksi said she is alarmed at the already high rates being charged in one of the Bay Area’s poorest cities..

The gathering at St. Joseph the Worker Church Tuesday morning was a send-off of sorts for Sarah Harper and Cheryl Sommers. The two women had called friends and the media to the church where they intended to speak out in public for the last time before they went to jail for three months. 

Convicted of trespassing at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation—better known by its former name, the School of the Americas—the pair was to surrender their liberty at the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin that afternoon. 

The two arrestees were among 37 at a Ft. Benning, Geo., protest that drew 19,000 people last November calling for the closure of the U.S. army combat school that trains Latin American police and military. Opponents of the school say training manuals released publicly in 1996 demonstrate that the school teaches its graduates torture, extortion, blackmail and targets civilian populations. 

Neither Sommers nor Harper can be called lifetime activists.  

Sommers, 67, is a retired Berkeley elementary school teacher. She was sympathetic to the civil rights and free speech protests of the ‘60s. 

At the time, “I didn’t put myself on the line,” she said. “I didn’t get involved, even though I saw people brutalized.” 

The late Father Bill O’Donnell, a priest at St. Joseph the Worker , inspired Sommers to act. She decided to “cross the line” at the School of the Americas in November to honor O’Donnell, who served prison time for his civil disobedience at the School of the Americas, and, she said, “also because of my feeling of about how our government has taken the lives of people and is still doing it so casually that we would just allow this.”  

With tears in her eyes, Sommers talked about a man she met from Guatemala who had been tortured. 

“He didn’t see sunlight for two years,” she said. “Every time they moved him from prison to prison it was American planes with American pilots.” 

Sommers said she hopes by her action to publicize H.R. 1217, which calls on Congress to suspend operations at the School of the Americas. 

Sarah Harper, 37, of Emeryville, was also going to prison in Dublin. Like Sommers, she hasn’t been a longtime activist. In fact, she joined the military in what she calls “the poverty draft” so she could get an education. She served at Oakland’s Oak Knoll Hospital as an X-ray technician and LVN during the Gulf War and cared for some of the injured military returning home. 

Harper opposes teaching soldiers to act brutally, but she is not against the military. 

“I have nothing against the soldiers,” said Harper, now a member of Veterans for Peace. 

Still, the present state of war concerns her: “It seems like the same things are happening that happened in the first Gulf War.”  

Harper searched for her own way to express her dissent and participated in an earlier demonstration at Fort Benning before committing to do civil disobedience as she did last November. 

“Not everyone can be an astronaut,” she said, “But everyone in their own way and their own time can take a step for social justice.””

Despite a recent legal setback, the attorney for ousted Alameda County Medical Center Trustee Gwen Rowe-Lee Sykes said that he is working on continuing legal action against what he calls a “culture of intimidation” at the center “which retaliates, penalizes, and punishes people who point out problems” at the center. 

Last week, Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch dismissed Sykes’ Petition for Writ of Mandate seeking to overturn what the court called “Supervisor Keith Carson’s attempted unilateral removal” of Sykes from the Medical Center Board “on or about February 15, 2006.” 

But in denying Sykes’ petition, the court noted that it was “tak[ing] no position on the validity of the Board of Supervisors’ vote on March 14, 2006,” a notation that Sykes’ attorney calls “significant” in any possible future legal action. 

Oakland-based attorney Hab Siam is representing three individuals—Sykes, ACMC Human Resources Director Bill Maddox, and former ACMC manager of medical services Jackie Leo—with pending grievances against the medical center. Siam said by telephone this week that the three cases are interrelated, all involving people who “are not on the medical center ‘team.’ If you’re on the team, you keep the team’s secrets.” 

Siam said that Sykes, Maddox, and Leo all suffered retaliation “because they chose to speak up about the problems at the center.” 

The publicly-financed Medical Center operates several facilities in Alameda County, including Highland Hospital in Oakland and Fairmount Hospital and the John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro. The center has been embroiled in considerable controversy in recent years, including ongoing budget and labor problems and, most recently, difficulties with its newly-installed Kronos payroll system. 

Siam would not comment on details of the suspension of HR Director Maddox, saying only that “Mr. Maddox categorically denies that the center’s present payroll problems had any basis in his suspension.” 

Siam called the present electronically-based payroll system “a disaster,” and added that “Mr. Maddox had no responsibility for the Kronos system.” Siam said that “it’s not clear to me exactly why” Maddox was suspended, saying that “at this point, it’s a moving target.” 

He added that he is exploring legal options for Maddox, saying that “the law provides remedies for employees for reporting mismanagement, waste, and fraud.” 

Last month, a spokesperson for the medical center would only say that Maddox had been suspended, but could not provide details. 

Sykes was removed from her position as ACMC Board Trustee by a March 14 vote of the Alameda County Board of Trustees. Leo was terminated from her medical services manger position on March 10, and Maddox was placed on administrative leave on March 3. 

Siam has filed a class action suit in California Superior Court in Oakland against the medical center with Leo as the sole named plaintiff. The attorney is considering legal action in the Maddox matter. 

The Public Information Officer for the Medical Center was not in the office this week, and the medical center’s general counsel could not be reached for comment. 

In its response to Sykes’ Petition for Writ of Mandate, the Alameda County general counsel’s office admitted that Carson did not have to power to remove Sykes from the board on his own, stating that “the action of the Board of Supervisors to place [Sykes’] termination as an action item on its March 14, 2006 meeting agenda indicates that as of the date of the issuance of the agenda..., the Board of Supervisors, including President Supervisor Carson, did not recognize Supervisor’s February 16, 2006 [letter to the trustee board announcing Sykes’ removal] to have been effective to remove [Sykes] from the Board of Trustees.” 

But the Alameda County counsel’s office argued—and the court agreed—that the Board of Supervisors’ action in bringing Sykes’ removal up for a vote in March negated Carson’s February action. 

Sykes’ removal from the board has generated controversy in recent weeks, with Carson—who originally nominated her to the board—saying that she had lost her effectiveness as a board member because she had generated considerable opposition among other board members, and Sykes charging that she was removed after raising serious questions about the fiscal management of the medical center. 

A request for Sykes’ removal from the ACMC Board was placed on the consent calendar of the Board of Supervisors’ March 14 agenda. But just prior to the vote on the entire consent calendar, Carson announced that he was “pulling” the Sykes’ item in order to allow two Sykes supporters to speak up for her. 

Meeting observers never heard Carson return the item to the consent calendar, or take it for a separate vote, so it remains unclear whether supervisors ever actually voted to remove Sykes. In addition, because ACMC Board bylaws require a vote of four supervisors to remove an ACMC trustee, Sykes maintains that a vote on her ouster would require a roll-call vote, rather than the voice vote used for the consent calendar. 

In a telephone interview, Siam called the supervisors’ March 14 action “confusing” and “a very sneaky vote. It was done in such a way as to give political cover to the other supervisors. They want to be able to run for office saying that they never actually voted against Gwen Sykes. I think the rest of the supervisors realize that they are playing with fire.” 

In addition, Siam said the March 14 Supervisors action was a “violation of the Brown Act because even people who were present at the meeting did not have an opportunity to know what it was that the supervisors were voting on.” 

Siam said that his office is “looking at every option” to move forward with challenging the board of supervisors’ March 14 action. 

In the meantime, Leo’s class action complaint against the medical center revolves around charges that the center’s payroll system regularly malfunctioned, not crediting workers with the full pay turned in by their supervisors. “ACMC’s disastrous timekeeping system, technology systems and payroll systems have been oftentimes so wildly, incomprehensibly, and unconscionably inaccurate,” Leo’s complaint alleges, “that employees were paid for so little time in proportion to the time they actually worked that those employees’ hourly rates fell below the minimum wage.” 

Medical center officials have publicly acknowledged serious problems with the computerized payroll system, and have been working in recent weeks to correct the difficulties. 

A medical center answer to Leo’s complaint was filed on Thursday, but was not available for public viewing at presstime..

“This is where it all begins,” said Jim Allison, BART spokesperson, as he pointed out the Operations Control Room (OCC) at the Lake Meritt station on Monday morning. 

The OCC was the first stop during the two hour tour of the BART control systems; the second was its headquarters in Oakland. 

On a typical day in the OCC, Ben Williams Jr. and his counterparts are on the “hot seat.” If any of the 669 trains traveling at a average of 36 mph and carrying 326,500 weekday passengers faces a bump, jolt, or threat, the OCC managers in the hot seat try to solve the problem as quickly as possible.  

The train controllers come next. The people who direct technicians to various trains in case of an emergency are referred to as “Tango One.” 

“That’s because each technician in the field has a number designation, as in Tango 24 or Tango 13,” Allison explained. “Tango One” is always in direct radio control with the train operators. 

“Power Control” is in charge of controlling electricity. “Comm Specs” is in charge of traffic, and announcements and “Power and Way” is responsible for delivery of electricity to the third-rail tracks. When the trash fire occurred in the Embarcadero station last month, the electricity was turned off immediately. 

Had there still been 1,000 volts of electricity running through the third-rail track, it would have proved fatal for the hundreds of passengers trying to get out of the train and walk along the tracks. 

“Self evacuation was what made it a really serious situation,” Allison added. 

In case of a minor problem with the train or incidents like shooting, the train is moved to the maintenance yard. Allison said that “when required, everyone inside the OCC turns into problem solvers.” 

With its many flickering lights and symbols, the two main control boards inside the OCC looks like a scene straight out of Star Wars, but the fact of the matter is that both boards serve a far more important purpose—they are BART’s lifeline.  

When a “network switch problem” occurred on March 29 at exactly 5:40 p.m., a third or almost half of the two main boards blacked out and people in the control office had no way of knowing or seeing where the trains were.  

“The network switch, which brings all communications into central, became overloaded with information and shut down,” Allison said. “It was then necessary to bring the trains into ‘road manual’ and bring about a complete service halt. Although the switch is an industrial grade switch and shouldn’t have performed like this, our preliminary analysis indicates that work by BART staff contributed to the overloading and subsequent shutdown of the switch.”  

BART is currently operating on the older version of the software while trying to analyze the cause and correction of the software problems. 

Any pauses in the system for more than five minutes is considered a “delay” at BART. In the last year (April 2005-April 2006) BART has had a total of eight delays out of 200,000 rides.  

More than 3,000 BART employees work around the clock throughout the year to ensure that there are no service delays—given that the whole system is so complex, it’s no easy task. 

Allison acknowledged that funding was one of the main problems BART faced at the moment. 

California is an automobile culture, he said. 

“We at BART are constantly fighting for money,” Allison said. “There are 600 cars that need to be replaced—outlining a plan that will help us get the money for it is not easy.” 

According to Allison, BART funding depends on what its passengers pay more than any other transit system in the country.  

Some of the challenges that BART faces in the future are: 

• Securing the necessary funding to meet the district’s multitude of security needs. 

• Maintaining balanced budgets in an environment of limited revenue growth while facing uncertainties such as future power costs, capital needs, security requirements, and added costs of maintaining a complex and aging system. 

• Developing a comprehensive improvement program and funding strategy for the second generation renovation program, which will likely emerge as the most ambitious, complex and costly capital undertaking by BART since the construction of the original system.  

BART’s 10-year next generation renovation program includes five major areas of focus. Among them is the 10-year $1.6 billion Earthquake Safety Program to seismically reinforce the Transbay Tube, BART’S nearly 200 aerial structures, stations and other critical structures. 

In the event of an earthquake, BART has its own emergency preparedness plan which can be put into action immediately. BART officials will be converting a seismically safe undisclosed subterranean area complete with computers, radios and telephones into a control center. 

“An entire wall will have a board outlining exactly where officials would have to be dispatched,” Allison said. “Planning would be done to assist people for the next twelve hours and engineering crews would be brought in to assist the damage. There will be constant updates to the media.” 

BART also continues to advocate for security funding for detection and prevention, safety enhancements and operational response strategies that would ensure BART’s safety for its riders, he said..

César E. Chávez, the courageous defender of those who work the earth, used to claim that farm workers were an early warning system against environmental destruction. 

Much like miners who used to carry canaries with them to warn of poison gas, “farm workers are society’s canaries,” he stated. “Those who live in the area of grape vineyards are constantly exposed to cancer, birth deformity, miscarriages, sterility, respiratory difficulties and death. You find toxic substances in the fields, streets, soils, air, water, playgrounds, parks, and the poison and killing of children continues unabated.” 

Those were his last public words, spoken on April 15, 1993 in a speech at the Chicago Cultural Center. Eight days later, the noted advocate of non-violent social action died quietly in his sleep in Arizona. He was only 66 but worn out by 40 years of sacrificial dedication to farm workers and the American consumer. 

Over these 40 years, Chavez’ successes include the creation of the first union for farm workers, the signing of the first agricultural worker agreements, and passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. He is the first labor leader and first Latino to be honored with a State holiday. 

While Cesar’s social justice efforts are more known, his commitment, however, to earth stewardship is not. Chávez consistently articulated both an environmental and social justice message. That message was that there is probably no greater connection that we have with the earth than through the food that we eat, and that those who work the earth, those who plant and harvest the food that sustains us, are among the most unappreciated and exploited. 

As early as the 1960’s, concerns about cancers and chemicals were a part of the United Farm Worker Union’s effort. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, in co-founding the first farm worker union, launched the first organization to take on the world center of corporate agriculture—the Central Valley of California. One of their first efforts was to negotiate labor contracts with growers that limited the use of DDT on certain crops.  

By the early 1980’s, the UFW began to aggressively warn the public and elected officials about the ecological dangers of wasteful chemical technology, mechanization, and over-corporatization of farming. That effort defined the broad parameters of Cesar’s environmentalism – small farmers providing healthy food to consumers through fair and healthy labor practices with farm workers.  

In 1984 Chavez initiated a new grape boycott (the most heavily chemicalized crop) in McFarland, CA, also known as “cancer town” for its well documented childhood cancer cluster that was attributed to pesticide spraying and nitrate-containing fertilizers leaching into the water system. The danger is poignantly articulated in a poem “Toxic Shock” by Susan Samuels Drake, a long time Assistant to César Chávez. 

Here is a portion of it: 

Like mammoth steely-grey tarantulas from outer space  

crop-dusters drop low,… 

showering our food with poison… 

Too soon, women and men 

return to work in these fields 

danger seeping through their skin, 

inhaled with each breath 

drunk from water buckets left open in the fields or 

drawn from underground water tables drowning in pesticides. 

What poison rubs off work clothes 

onto a snuggled child? 

Cancer-cluster towns in farmlands tremor 

with wails from mothers of the deformed unborn 

and born… 

In 1988, Cesar tried to refocus the national movement around these concerns by launching a punishing 36-day, water only, “Fast for Life.” After losing 30 pounds and in a dangerously weaken state, he finally yielded to medical warnings and passed the responsibility on to Jesse Jackson and to a series of other committed celebrity activists who pledged to continue the fast for three days each. 

Today, 13 years after Chavez’ death, farm workers are still sounding the canary’s warning. Agriculture remains one of the most hazardous occupations in the U.S. A recent LA Times article revealed that “scientists have amassed evidence that long-term exposure to toxic compounds, especially pesticides, can trigger (Parkinson’s) the neurological disease.”  

The canary metaphor holds for the plight of poor people in general. Bahram Fazeli of Communities for a Better Environment, in acknowledging Chavez as an early environmental justice pioneer, states that “communities of color and lower income neighborhoods are disproportionately affected by cumulative impacts of toxic emissions.”  

Richard Hofrichter in his book Toxic Struggles argues optimistically that the environmental justice movement provides a working model for addressing these issues more inclusively. The environmental justice movement is “led by the people who suffer most from corporate ecological devastation, i.e., people of color, the poor, women, migrant farm workers, and industrial workers who are joining forces with civil rights, peace and local community activists.” Chávez, who wrote one chapter in this book, was certainly a consistent national figure in that effort.  

As we develop our own effort here in Berkeley to honor the legacy of Chávez, it is important that it reflect this balanced approach of social justice and environmental stewardship. The UFW Union, under the leadership of Arturo Rodriguez and Dolores Huerta, has this balance, and their efforts represent a hopeful bridge to an environmental movement that is more representative and inclusive. 

For the last two years the Ecology Center in Berkeley has stepped forward and joined the Chavez Commemoration Planning Committee. As part of the committee’s efforts to plan and support a variety of city, community and school-based service learning opportunities, the Ecology Center offered a workshop on current campaigns to protect workers, their health, and the environment. And at their weekly Farmers’ Markets they developed special informational displays celebrating Chavez’s environmental leadership, the history of the farm workers movement, and current ways to get involved to protect farm workers and the environment. Such supportive efforts are welcome and hopeful. 

Unfortunately, in the environmental movement, as elsewhere, a gulf still seems to pit working class people, who relate much more to the urgency of immediate survival, against more affluent or privileged mainstream folks, who have the time and resources to focus on population growth, global warming, endangered species and the like. These two environmental camps have very different perspectives and priorities that prevent the coming together as a disciplined and unified progressive movement—one that can both protect poor people and the survival of the planet. Hopefully, in the years to come the Berkeley community can reflect this balance by bringing new constituencies together, drawing folks across class, race and environmental priority lines. It is some of the most personally challenging work that has to be done.  

When my own commitment wavers in the face of such challenges, I reach down and grab hold of the memory of César. He was a common man really, who operated on an eighth grade education, yet achieved extraordinary things. He lived a modest material life, never making more than few thousand dollars per year. He was a practicing vegetarian and organic gardener, and fasted for political and spiritual purposes. 

I try to keep in mind that César Chávez was able to maintain his own dedication and sacrifice by drawing on a deep well of virtues. I call on these virtues when I need to replenish my resolve, wishful that a little of what he embodied might take hold in me—the determination to stick with a struggle despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles; the courage to conquer the fear that can immobilize us; the tolerance to deal with our differences with patience, understanding, and nonviolence; and the hope that makes us believe we can transform the present.  

On this Earth Day season, may we all be guided by such virtues. And may Cesar’s inspiration live on in the spirit of ¡Si Se Puede!  

Santiago Casal is the director of the Chávez Memorial Solar Calendar and Education Project, and acting chair of the Chávez “Circle of Service” Commemoration Committee. A list of city-wide Chávez commemorative activities and resources can be found at www.ecologycenter.org/chavez..

Traditional summer school isn’t working. 

Rather than give it the heave-ho—the popular choice of most students—the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) is exploring alternative models.  

According to Neil Smith, district director of educational services, research suggests that standard summer school fails to adequately improve student performance. 

“We’ve been trying to come up with a different method for years,” said district spokesman Mark Coplan. 

The solution was to charge principals with the task of revamping summer school, under the premise that site-specific programs will best address student needs. 

For the pre-elementary school lot, Rosa Parks will offer a five-week bridge program starting July 24. Funded by Alameda County First 5, the program will give literacy exposure and medical screenings to 36 students who have not completed pre-school. Parent training is also included in the program. 

Three elementary schools will extend the school year for continuing students who struggle in reading and math. Cragmont students will undergo a six-week, all-day academic support and enrichment program, and teachers at Thousand Oaks plan to hold an Institute for Special Education students from June 19 to July 14.  

At Rosa Parks, 20 continuing students will take part in a new course that fuses intensive academic intervention with professional development. About 10 teachers will participate in instructional workshops, then practice what they’ve learned in the classroom. 

“We’re trying to provide a high quality intervention environment and do something new with teachers,” said Tom Prince, a literacy intervention teacher at Rosa Parks. “The staff development portion will help with the quality of instruction, and because there are extra teachers, the kids will get more individualized attention.” 

Berkeley’s three middle schools will host four weeks of math and English instruction, four hours a day, to students who have failed those classes, in addition to special education courses. 

Summer school at Berkeley High School won’t change—students who need credits will still take standard courses—but administrators are considering an option for students to attend evening classes starting this fall. 

Summer school programs are estimated to set the district back $350,000; $300,000 will be covered by intervention funds, and the remaining $50,000 will come from school site fundss. 

The Berkeley Board of Education is slated to approve the new batch of summer programs Wednesday..

Last Friday we found ourselves in Oakland at lunch time, in fact in the Old Oakland area near Ninth and Broadway where the Friday Farmers’ Market is held. Every farmers’ market has its own personality.  

The Berkeley ones are all-organic and almost painfully sincere, shrines for those who take food very seriously indeed. The Ferry Plaza market in San Francisco is upscale, with gem-like produce surrounded by luxury accoutrements.  

The Old Oakland market is different, because it’s the closest one to Oakland’s booming Chinatown, which is a real shopping area for locals, not a tourist destination like San Francisco Chinatown. It features uncommon Asian fruits and vegetables, and I’ve even seen live chickens and fish, presumably for shoppers to dispatch at home before cooking. It’s also a showcase for ready-to-eat food prepared by small-time enterprises and at-home cooks, reflecting the scope of the whole international Bay Area population mix. 

Because we were in a hurry, we decided to settle for the first stall on the Broadway end of Ninth Street, especially because it had a substantial though fast-moving line. All Star Tamales, which seems to sell only at farmers’ markets, has the most amazing variety of tamales I’ve ever seen—I have no idea if they’re authentic, but they certainly taste good and are cheap: two for $4.75. Nine or 10 choices, among them green pasilla, chicken mole, picadillo. 

There were a few plastic picnic tables behind the stalls, so we ordered our tamales “for here” and sat down. We shared a table with a group of young women who seemed to be taking a lunch break from an office where they all worked. They looked like they’d just left one of the Eileen Fisher clothing ads in the New Yorker, which feature a variety of cheerful normal-looking multi-ethnic women who aren’t necessarily professional models, a veritable bouquet of fresh faces of many colors. One of them, seemingly Latina, explained to the others how tamales were made in her family for special occasions, and they all then resolved to get together soon for a tamale-making lesson. The supplied salsas were too hot for some and not hot enough for others. (By now the reader is probably wondering if this is an editorial or a restaurant review, but never fear, the moral of the story is coming in due time.)  

When we finished eating, we looked around for a trash can, but what we found instead was a very elderly bent-over Asian lady with a little plastic shopping bag, who took our used plates with a smile in exchange for a bit of small change. All in all, a good lunch and a pleasant experience on a nice day in Oakland. 

And the moral of the story?  

Last week the big boys in Washington thought they were going to settle the immigration question once and for all. They made a deal, divvied up the spoils, and planned to get out of town fast. But the American people had other ideas, and let them know in a hurry. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, many but not all from Spanish-speaking roots, took to the street to let the country know that they won’t stand for having people who have come to this country without proper paperwork turned into felons.  

The first demonstrations in Los Angeles surprised some commentators, but not others, since the Spanish-speaking population of southern California has been vocal and politically active for a long time now. But when demonstrations took place Monday all over the rural South, that was news. The Associated Press reported with some amazement from North Carolina that “more than 200 people walked five miles along a highway in Smithfield, about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh in Johnston County, many carrying American flags and wearing white.” 

The polls this week suggest that demonstrators have pretty good underlying support from about three quarters of all Americans, not just from Spanish-speaking respondents, if the question is whether those who have been in this country for five years and stayed out of trouble should be allowed to stay on. The California Field Poll dispelled a pervasive myth, that African-Americans might be anti-immigrant because they feared competition for low-end jobs. Eighty-two percent of the African-Americans polled by Field were in favor of letting those who are here stay on without being criminalized for undocumented entry. Other more complicated questions produce somewhat different numbers in polls, but over all it’s quite clear that most Americans like having the Latin immigrants here, however they came. 

And why shouldn’t we? After our pleasant farmers’ market lunch we reflected, and not for the first time, that it’s possible to get many of the supposed benefits of world travel without the hassle and expense, almost any day and almost anywhere in the Bay Area. We stay home and the world comes to us. What could be nicer?  

The stereotype is that immigrants do jobs that Americans won’t do, and like many stereotypes there’s some truth in it. The old lady who picks up the lunchtime trash has indeed created a unique niche for herself in a self-service economy, one that I’ve seen in Asia but not in this country before. She gets out of the house into the sunshine, picks up a little pocket money, and the street stays cleaner. What’s not to like?  

There are vexing unsolved questions, to be sure. Under the present situation, there’s a temptation for employers to exploit undocumented workers and exclude native-born workers because they know that people whose immigration status is shaky won’t be able to complain. One good remedy is to remove the temptation and level the playing field by mandating that a living wage must be paid to all workers, native born and immigrants, citizens and non-citizens alike. That’s happening in some places, including Berkeley. Though enforcement could be better, it’s already working pretty well. 

B

Due to a reporting error, remarks made by another source were incorrectly attributed to Robert Lauriston in the April 14 story “Controversy Surrounds Ashby BART Task Force.” 

Lauriston did not criticize project director Ed Church for “actively soliciting specific people” or claim that nominees to the task force were required to endorse the project. 

••• 

In an April 14 story on KPFA’s new interim general manager, Local Station Board Chair Richard Phelps should have been quoted as saying he hoped KPFA would hire a permanent general manager with radio experience.

BERKELEY BOWL WEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to the Auerbach, et al. commentary (“Supporting the Bowl...with Reservations,” April 11-13), Berkeley Bowl is such an obvious asset for West Berkeley that I am ashamed for my city at the delays in getting this wonderful project launched. 

As you know the Bowl will be investing very large amounts of money in a business they know well and to insist that the project be larger or smaller is likely to fatally interfere in a carefully considered plan. 

It’s quite obvious that there will be impacts, and auto traffic for one is not really avoidable. Perhaps this new store will decrease parking pressure on the Shattuck store and this I believe is part of the Bowl’s plan. 

The Bowl has every incentive to create an environment that works for the community which of course includes their customers. We can and should look forward to a wonderful store equal to any in the county or it can go away and we will have a huge office building on the site that certainly won’t serve the local community and maybe won’t even need a land use variance for, say 150,000 square feet of offices. Isn’t this a simple choice? 

Phil Wood 

• 

THE CALL OF DUTY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Like many Berkeley residents, I was outraged when Gordon Wozniak shamelessly voted for the secret, backroom settlement deal that will not only increase traffic in our neighborhoods, but that did not meet the requests and needs of students, UC staff or the neighbors. 

Three members of the City Council have asked the city manager to consider allocating $1 million to the affordable housing trust fund—and I’m outraged once again that Gordon Wozniak recently “pulled” this item from Tuesday’s City Council consent calendar. 

This item is just a referral for the city manager to consider—it doesn’t actually cost the city any money. 

As a resident of District 8, I demand that Mr. Wozniak represent his constituents and rise to the call of duty and support the housing trust fund referral to the budget process. 

Jason Overman 

• 

MOORE HOUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was part of a neighborhood group that sued the Moore family in the 1990s. We won a judgment then, even on appeal. We had evidence of serious criminal activity going back generations to Mrs. Moore’s husband and sons as well as grandchildren (and I imagine now great-grandchildren). This is not some nice, sweet old lady being victimized by out-of-control young people. This family has been a major source of crime in that neighborhood for decades. I was fortunate to be able to move. Many residents there do not have the ability to do that.  

Sharon Toth 

• 

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a now retired for seven years school librarian from both Oakland and Berkeley public schools, I can comment on Berkeley’s public libraries. I came to Washington school in 1967 have seen many changes over almost four decades. My students at Washington School loved to walk up to the Main Library and have storyhours with Martha Shogren in the late ’60s; Mr. Russ Jacobs used to come up from the branch at MLK and Russell to tell stories at (my) Washington School Library, 1967-69. We were a mutual admiration society. Over the years I took my son to North Branch, the same one Ms. Gail Todd complained about in the April. 11 Daily Planet regarding a lack of personal service. Yes, that is sad.  

However when I visited the branch at Benvenue and Ashby last week, I was so pleased with the friendly service of all personnel there at lunchtime with my son who now lives in that neighborhood. Yes, one has to stamp her own books, but that’s fine; my right hand is pretty arthritic due to shelving and stamping thousands of books for three decades and to me self-checkout in itself doesn’t make the library visit any less fun. We know so much more about ergonomics these days and OSHA laws are much better than the federal so-called standards. I remember when the new Main Library opened—what a glorious celebration. Yes, the taxpayers keep funding bond issues for schools and libraries—hooray. I also recall some years ago due to proposed staff cuts, Alameda County public librarians voluntarily cut their own hours in order to save the jobs of their fellow workers. Your cover story tells of Director Jackie Griffin her $131,494 salary plus $66,000 in fringes; once that legal matter is settled I’d hope the next director hired doesn’t make many times as much as the lowest paid librarian who has a MA in librarianship and deserves every dime earned. 

Sylvia P. Scherzer 

Albany 

• 

SPELL CHECK 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

In response to a letter in the April 14 edition, I must point out that my spell check provides no suggestions when I type the name Sulzberger. Perhaps my software is out of date. 

However, it does offer “paranoid” as a substitute for “Edna Spector.” 

Steve Reichner 

North Oakland 

• 

CREEKS TASK FORCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley’s Creek Task Force was convened in response to the outrage of property owners who learned in September 2004 that their property was subject to regulations, initially enacted in 1989, about which they had received no prior notification. These regulations prevented rebuilding in the face of damage or loss of a home and prevented re-modeling if the home was situated within 30 feet of an open creek or an underground culvert. The Berkeley City Council responded to this outrage by amending the 1989 Creeks Ordinance so as to allow re-building under specified circumstances and by establishing a Creeks Task Force whose charge was to develop recommendations for the revision of the city’s existing Creeks Ordinance. 

The Creeks Task Force has now been meeting for over 14 months and has a budget of $100,000, not to mention staff and other city resources devoted to the development of the requested recommendations. This has been an exercise in utter folly. To develop a policy designed to protect creeks in the absence of an overall watershed management policy quite simply puts the cart before the horse. In so doing, the goal of the city and the task force has become manifestly clear. It is to regulate property owners whose homes are near open creeks and/or culverts and to once again establish Berkeley as a front runner in a misguided environmental effort. 

The views of property owners have been overlooked and dismissed as representing narrow monied interests by the task force. The need for a Creeks Ordinance to be placed within an overall watershed management policy that is inclusive of storms drains, culverts as well as open creeks has simply been ignored despite its logical priority. This entire effort has been a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars and leaves Berkeley residents with storm water management issues unresolved. 

The Planning Commission and the City Council should revoke the current Creeks Ordinance, dissolve the Creeks Task Force and establish a new deliberative body whose clear goal is to develop a comprehensive watershed management policy for the city in the context of which creeks and culverts should be considered. 

Genevieve Dreyfus  

• 

HOUSING AUTHORITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Judith Scherr’s recent article about the Berkeley Housing Authority: 

Let me get this straight. The Berkeley Housing Authority could throw a 70-year-old mentally ill man off Section 8 because he got mixed up about reporting his piddly little GA check and/or BHA could throw a granny out in the street if her grandkid had a joint in her pocket (they call it “one strike rule”), but if a guy beats up his wife and she manages to escape, that creep abuser gets to stay there on Section 8?! 

No wonder they’re having problems at BHA; it’s bad karma. 

N. Gagnon 

• 

TRANSIT LOCATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The most important point about the transit location in downtown Berkeley is the distance bus passengers have to walk to get to and from BART. 

In Toronto, bus passengers take about two steps to get to the escalators. 

Here in Berkeley, it’s a block from Allston; it’s 50 yards at North Berkeley; and quite a bit at Rockridge.  

We paid for undergrounding BART through Berkeley and it came in under budget. But it could have been built for far more convenient access. 

Charles Smith 

• 

MARIJUANA LAW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just want to thank the Daily Planet for the article that clarified Berkeley pot law. We are approaching 70 years of the Devil’s Weed being illegal while policies of war, poverty and racism go unabated. It’s reassuring that at one time Berkeley citizenry rallied together to make a (symbolic) stand. What dim knowledge I had of the lowest-priority busting ordinance was puzzling and was not helped by a lack of elders to connect the dots.  

Please continue this line of reporting as well as the nature pieces. The endnote of the article was particularly apt, if not radical. I remember an article you ran a while back that spurred a bunch of pro-police letters. As if no none has ever been maltreated, denigrated or punished (illegally) by the “protectors of the peace.”  

The point is that no one is immune from corruption and should be treated as such, especially if those people earn their bread from keeping a corrupt power structure in place. But I guess the reading public on that one didn’t want to think of the realities past their evening news slant and Cops TV show. For me, I’m watching the streets, and the Planet when it hits the ground. 

Robert Eggplant 

• 

ONLY IN BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The story about the Ward Street house throws up a separate and tantalizing avenue of inquiry. 

The photojournalist who found the graffiti says that “my dog led me to it.” Did the dog recognize the graffiti for what it was and approach its owner with a look of “come and see what I found”? Is this a case of another “only in Berkeley” dog story? 

So many questions. Can we have a few answers? 

Ross Norton 

• 

KRAGEN’S PARKING LOT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Drive into the Kragen’s parking lot at University and MLK. Make a purchase for your car. Then walk across the street and pick up your dry cleaning. Immediately return to your car. All this has taken only a few minutes. You find a boot on your tire. A woman with a key demands $60 cash to release it. She says if you refuse, the car will be towed at a cost of $150. So you pay. This goes on all day. Think of the income.  

To be correct, this is legal. There are warning signs around the lot. This operation is run by American Parking and Patrol Inc. A Berkeley company with an attendant placed quietly on the lot, with no verbal warning, boots the cars.  

The lot is a large holding room for; many cars. Kragen is the only current tenant since the Pet Food Express closed. The lot is never more than a quarter full. Again, it is legal because this is private property, but is this being a good friendly neighborhood business? Or is it pure greed, just another way to make extra income? Evidently the community’s good will is not important and a few lost customers is not important. 

John Aronovic 

While Ed Church and the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation claim that on Dec. 13 the City Council authorized them to organize a task force to make recommendations to the council regarding development of the west parking lot of the Ashby BART station (“Development Corp. Seeks Task Force,” March 24), in fact the council did no such thing. Neither the resolution passed that night nor the Caltrans grant application it endorsed says anything about a task force. The cover memo from Planning Department Director Dan Marks to the City Council said that the SBNDC suggested that Mayor Tom Bates and City Councilmember Max Anderson appoint a task force, but in its discussions the council rejected that proposal, and took no action to endorse any of several proposed alternatives. 

Is the SBNDC an appropriate organization to handle this task? It may not in recent years have been conducting itself as it should. In theory, as I understand it, it is a membership organization with an elected board of directors whose meetings are open to the public. In reality, the board has for some time been a self-selecting group and its meetings are private and unannounced. The SBNDC has sublet its Adeline Street office and has no staff. It does have a phone number with an answering machine, and an e-mail account, but no one has returned my messages asking how to join, where I can see the minutes, time and place of the next board meeting, and so on. 

In the event Caltrans awards the city and SBNDC the $120,000 grant, Ed Church, a professional “smart growth” promoter, will be in charge of spending that money. In theory, the SBNDC would oversee his work, but since he himself recruited two new SBNDC board members and seems to be in charge of its e-mail and new Web site, it seems likely that he would have a completely free hand. 

He certainly seems to have a free hand with the task force nominations. Two of my nominations do not appear on the list; did they decline to serve, were they disqualified, and if so for what reason? When is the SBNDC board going to meet to appoint the task force? What criteria are they going to use? Will that meeting be public? Has it already occurred? If this were the open, transparent process we have repeatedly been promised, I would not have to ask these questions. 

Nevertheless, despite the profound flaws in this arguably illegitimate process, I disagree with those who say we should boycott this task force. Given the nominees (see nabart.com for an annotated list), the SBNDC could appoint a group that includes all stakeholders and points of view. If they do, and if the task force is free to set its own direction, and its meetings are public, and Mayor Bates and Max Anderson stick to their promise that “everything is on the table,” the task force’s report to the City Council should honestly reflect the community’s vision. 

So long as that remains a possibility, I will support the task force, and encourage everyone else to do so—while remaining alert to any attempt to manipulate it into rubber-stamping plans for the kind of massive for-profit condo project described in the 2004 feasibility study. 

Robert Lauriston maintains nabart.com, where you can find all the referenced documents and other relevant information. 

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At a March 15 EIR Scoping Meeting, Oakland City Planning Commissioner Michael Lighty described the recently unveiled plans for yet another transit village—this one at the MacArthur BART station—as “radical.” He wasn’t being strictly dismissive, defending developments at BART stations as “logical.” But even he allowed that this project with “signature” twin towers, one 20 stories, the other 22, abutting Hwy. 24—was a bold move by BART, the City of Oakland redevelopment agency, and a private development company headed by Shea Homes.  

The project contains some 800 units of housing. In addition to the exclusive twin towers of for-sale condos, 20 percent of the housing units will be rental units priced “below market rate” in a separate building. BART would lose half of its 600 parking spaces, but another 1,030 parking spaces for the housing would be created. Thirty thousand square feet of retail is envisioned—fast food outlets are the norm at the prototypical Fruitvale Transit Village.  

As with the Ashby BART project, the hype about the crying need for the project—“The hole must be filled, the original violation caused by BART MUST be fixed”—is cloaked with self-righteous smart-growth rhetoric. Certainly there are reasons to question why the MacArthur/San Pablo/Broadway Redevelopment Area was created in the first place in the early 1990s. with little fuss. It was not, as state law requires, an area “so irredeemably blighted that neither government financing nor private investment could fix the problem.”  

But, since bureaucrats need to bureaucrat and developers must develop, their next move is to really lock in redevelopment by issuing bonds and incurring debt. And what better way to do that than for a massive housing project?  

And what better time to do it with our nation at war over oil, and people quite rightly concerned their flatland home may become beach front property. Lighty’s comments were made at the first stage of the long EIR process, in which the impacts of a proposed project must be identified, and alternatives and mitigations to harmful impacts considered. Shadows cast by the twin towers seven stories higher than the downtown Oakland Federal Buildings, loss of parking, increased traffic, a project that’s oriented to the more upscale Telegraph side and that turns its high rise back to the less gentrified San Pablo side, etc. are some obvious problems.  

But many of the speakers in support, and several commissioners, could only focus upon the oil crunch and the supposed cure-de-jour: density. One speaker said the towers could be even taller “ since over ten stories you didn’t really notice anyway.” Commissioner and attorney Anne Mudge grew positively lathered up over the need for more density because of the gasoline shortages to come. Pro-redevelopment advocate Christopher Waters, the operator of the Nomad Cafe, allowed that a long-term solution needed to be found to cure our dependence upon foreign oil, but that density was the only remedy in the short run. The more the better.  

The starry-eyed density huggers might have at least Googled Shea Homes before leaping into bed with them. Shea Homes is the largest privately owned home builder in the United States. The BART project is a departure from their specialty of single-family and attached homes in “new home neighborhoods” (read “sprawl”) on such areas as wetlands, prairies, ridges, and ranches, concentrating on such Sunbelt areas as Southern California, Arizona, and Colorado.  

Their Shea Parkside project at Huntington Beach close to the border with Mexico is being fought by advocates for restoring the area for coastal wetlands and watershed, as a filter for polluted urban run-off. Their Highlands Ranch—” the largest master-planned community in Colorado”—on former prairie (and eradicated prairie dogs) southeast of Denver, covers 22,000 acres with over 80,000 residents. The July 21, 2003 Denver Business Journal quotes the June/July issue of Denver’s 5280 Magazine describing Highlands Ranch as “Denver’s worst housing development. It’s just plain ugly. Highlands Ranch is the symbol of what’s wrong with sprawl in Colorado.” Shea Homes also touts their McMansions at Adeline’s Farm near Temulca and their 50 gated, “executive ranches” on Hunter’s Ridge in Fontana: “Panorama—the name says it all! Ideally situated atop a ridgeline...occupying the last and best location...”  

There’s no correlation between densifying the urban core to save agricultural or wilderness land and curb sprawl—Shea Homes does it all happily!  

After such a warm embrace of high-rise density, Shea Homes, BART, and the redevelopment agency must be kicking themselves they haven’t asked for even more towers and units. None of the supporters mentioned the additional burdens placed upon the school system in receivership with teachers currently threatening to strike, the controversially understaffed police force, and a bus system that’s already inadequate and doesn’t go to Costco or other places the residents—many of whom have presumably and patriotically given up their cars—might need to go to.  

Colland Jang, an architect member of the Planning Commission, did soberly suggest the EIR must consider other alternatives for the site such as office development but, in reality, the only brake on the project is the market. After all, Oakland Planning Director Claudia Cappio told this writer not that long ago that “Oakland was not in a position to say ‘no’ to projects.” Jerry Brown came into office as mayor fighting the Landing condo project that he considered too close to his “We the People” building at Jack London Square, even arguing the case in court as co-counsel with environmental attorney Susan Brandt-Hawley. He lost that case, The Landing landed, he moved, and in his ongoing reinvention jumped on board the development bandwagon: promoting the “10K” influx of new residents downtown and the flood of condos. Only developer/lender unease about whether the market for condos is already tapped out will put the chill on this BART project.  

But then, in the current climate, buildings pop up like mushrooms after a rain, and disappear without lament as quickly. In 30 years or so, if this latest transit village is built as planned and the market shifts and it becomes an eyesore, well, something else can take it place. And the rhetoric about “smart growth,” “green,” and urban density will likewise have been replaced by other catchwords that well-meaning urban strategists have devised and that developers and profiteers commandeer for their own ends.  

Robert Brokl is a North Oakland resident. 

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Although we live in a dense urban environment, I think we all support conservation. Fortunately, our predecessors did as well. They’ve given us the East Bay Regional Parks—90,000 acres of natural habitat laced with miles of creeks. And here in Berkeley we have access to natural creeks in many public parks and on the UC campus. But these are urban creeks flowing through urban neighborhoods and must be viewed differently from those in natural preserves. 

I enjoy hiking. Over the years I’ve hiked Tilden Park, Briones, Diablo, Sibley, Chabot, and more. To minimize driving in these energy-conscious times, I step out my front door twice a week and hike a few miles around the North Berkeley hills—quiet streets lined with ever-surprising architecture and interconnected by hidden paths. My favorite place is John Hinkle Park where Blackberry Creek forms a natural falls over a stone face, across the trail, and down a ravine—a beautiful secluded spot. Over the years I’ve hiked through that park hundreds of times, but apart from special events when people were gathered for a performance or a picnic, in all those times I’ve seen another person on the trail perhaps three or four times.  

Our creek advocate friends remind us that the creeks are important to our quality of life, and I agree with them—but they should not delude themselves, or try to delude us, into believing that most Berkeley residents are yearning for a glimpse of a creek. When they appeal to us to “save our creeks”—ask them when they last took the time to explore a creek in Berkeley. Most people don’t even know where the creeks are—much less care about riparian habitat, riprap, or a few stray fish. They’re quite content to leave it to those of us who live on the creeks to pick the trash out of them and make sure they don’t threaten our homes or our neighbors’ homes. We’ve been doing it for years. 

And what do we ask in return? Just to make repairs and improvements to an existing structure, as well as reasonable additions, so long as none of these intrude further into a defined creek setback, and to rebuild a structure, when necessary, to its original form.  

It was the issue of rebuilding that provoked a massive confrontation of the City Council by homeowners two years ago and led to the creation of the Creeks Task Force, which is now recommending revisions of the Creeks Ordinance to the Planning Commission and City Council. Since this contention has been widely publicized, I expect that it will continue until it is resolved by a revision of the Zoning Ordinance as well, which also places restrictions on rebuilding. Homeowners will not be content until we have a Municipal Code, including a Creeks Ordinance and a Zoning Ordinance, that asserts that any structure on private property that is damaged or destroyed for any reason may be rebuilt by right (with no Zoning review) to the same height and bulk and on the original footprint.  

Another contentious issue is that of culverted creeks. Many culverts predate any documentation and have been hidden and unknown on private properties through many owners. They are a fact of life that The City must deal with now that they are in decay. Those culverts carry the runoff from the entire watershed and thus serve the entire community, whether they cut through private property or not. The city must accept the responsibility for locating, maintaining, repairing, and, with the property owner’s consent, daylighting those culverts. Since the daylighting process is intrusive and disruptive, it must be done, when desired, at the property owner’s initiative.  

There is debate about whether the issue of culverts should or should not be part of the Creeks Ordinance. That’s the wrong question. Regulations for open creeks and for culverted creeks should be separate and equally important parts of an overall watershed management plan. They pose different problems and involve different authorities, but they are obviously related because culverts and open creeks interface with each other. Addressing them separately under a watershed umbrella will allow cross-referencing of regulations where appropriate. 

It has been suggested that an ordinance for open creeks could be stated in three sentences: 

1. You may not allow trash or pollutants to go into a creek. 

2. No additional culverts will be permitted. 

3. No additional roofed construction or impermeable surfaces will be permitted within 30’ of the centerline of a creek or within 10’ of a culvert.  

That may look too simple, but very little more is needed. The Creeks Task Force was heavily packed with appointees who are closely associated with creek advocacy organizations, and most of the detailed and sometimes arcane language they’ve proposed for the ordinance can be replaced by common sense and reliance on a suggested watershed guidebook—an excellent task force idea. 

Berkeley faces serious and costly problems: collapsing culverts, crumbling streets, loss of commercial revenue, a bloated work force, and a traffic control system fifty years out of date. The real question for the Planning Commission and the City Council is this: Will you allow a small group of creek extremists and their Sierra Club sponsors to pressure you into spending our resources on their obsession? 

Jerry Landis is a Berkeley resident. 

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It was a shame to once again read in the Daily Planet an inaccurate and one-sided account of the proposed revision of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (“Preservationists Vow to Take Landmarks Law to Voters,” April 11).    

To begin with, the opening sentence stated “Mayor Tom Bates’ proposal to weaken the city’s landmarks ordinance” as if that were undisputed fact. But the reality is different. The mayor’s proposal is a balanced one that represents a careful compromise of the different views in the community. Though it does propose some constraints on new structure of merit designations, the proposal also adds significant new protections: a guarantee that for the first time every building over 50 years of age that’s subject to a permit application will be reviewed for potential historic status, a new “request for determination” process that would help focus development interest away from historic properties, and the reduction by half of the number of signatures required for an historic initiation by the public. The resulting ordinance may not make extremists happy, but as an acceptable civic compromise it will net increase the city’s overall ability to protect its historic resources. 

In the story, LPC member Carrie Olson misremembers history by claiming that “at the very last minute he [the mayor] added structures of merit only in historic districts.” The facts are different: this proposed change to structure of merit was included in Mr. Bates’ original LPO proposal dated November 29, 2005, more than two months before the council’s vote, and it has been well discussed ever since, including at the first public hearing. It was a solid council majority, not just the mayor, that voted to return it to the proposal as an amendment. 

We have not yet even seen the markup language of the proposed LPO revision, which is due from city staff in early May. Wouldn’t it be reasonable that the hyper-preservation community look at what the council may actually pass before threatening an initiative to replace it? Or are they simply trying to intimidate the council into not approving the consensus ordinance by making this narcissistic and misguided threat? 

The LPC majority is being cynical and disingenuous in now praising the merits of “the LPC proposal” to revise the LPO, which would be the basis of their initiative. After slowly working on that proposal for more than five years, last June the LPC voted to withdraw it from council consideration because the commission majority could no longer support its recommendations. If it was unworthy of LPC approval last June, why should we consider it worth implementing today?  

We should note that the mayor’s proposal, with some amendments from councilmembers, received a 7-2 approval by the City Council—hardly a sign that Berkeley citizens should consider it extreme or dangerous. The two councilmembers who voted against it—Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington—mostly expressed concern that the new ordinance still focused too much on protecting fancy buildings by renowned architects and not enough on “vernacular” buildings and streetscapes in ordinary flatlands neighborhoods. Councilmember Capitelli’s approved amendment to the proposal, calling for careful study of “neighborhood conservation districts,” would directly address that concern and potentially add additional protections. 

Fortunately, we will soon have a chance to take a close look at the actual language of the proposed new ordinance before it comes before the City Council for a public hearing and vote. All of us involved in this revision know that the devil is in the details, and we do expect that a good deal of further conversation will be needed to ensure that the ordinance meets its objectives without introducing loopholes or adverse unintended consequences. Structure of merit will certainly receive detailed council reconsideration along the way. Helpfully examining and perfecting the final ordinance will require cooperation and a sense of good will across a wide spectrum of the community— good will which the extreme preservationist community seems consistently interested only in poisoning. 

Alan Tobey, a Berkeley resident since 1970, worked for the original passage of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance and has closely followed its proposed revision for the past two years.

CREEK SETBACK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The 30-foot creek setback is both a major component of the revised creek ordinance and potentially a major problem for property owners. Opposition to the ordinance might be muted if there were explicit procedures to a llow construction when the 30-foot setback makes it difficult or impossible. The following are possibilities:  

Consider trade-offs against other restrictions: 1) Relax the property-line setbacks to allow more flexibility as to where the building can be p laced; 2) relax the building height limit to fit the building on a smaller area.  

Move the creek bed to allow room for building. This measure is particularly appropriate when a creek is currently in an underground conduit.  

Trade off mitigation measures against a reduced set-back. Studies show creek health tends to increase as the setback width increases, but 30 feet is not a magic distance. Erman’s study suggests that almost 10 percent of the creeks with setbacks of only 10 feet have as much biodiversi ty as the average creek with a 30-foot setback. The odds decrease rapidly below 10 feet. Setbacks provide habitat, flood plain, and a buffer from fertilizers, excessive run-off, toxins, and so on. This suggest that setbacks should be allowed to be reduced to 10 feet on one side if the lot is otherwise unbuildable and if explicit measures are installed to control run-off and contamination, and provide for storm flows. To maintain habitat availability, the reduced set-back should be limited in length to 40-50 feet, and increased set-backs should be required on the opposite side of the creek if possible. These mitigations should also be considered for existing buildings within the 30 foot setback on change of ownership.  

Robert Clear  

• 

WEST BERKELEY BOWL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading the many letters about the West Berkeley Bowl, I think I see the main problem: The store is too big. 

So I have a proposal: Why not ban all except neighborhood-size stores in Berkeley? The big stores just produce more traffic and more pollution. Or, we could just build them in the heavily poor and minority sections of the city, so that the traffic and congestion doesn’t bother the kind of people who have time and money to complain to City Hall about what does and doesn’t belong in their own neighborhood? Then the complainers could shop at Berkeley Bowl anyway. 

I suppose that would be racist, so we should ban big stores throughout the entire city. Maybe force the existing Berkeley Bowl, and other supermarkets, to leave, too. We should make Berkeley a haven for neighborhood-size stores, which would not be allowed to provide parking, because people should not drive cars but should be taking the bus or riding their bikes or their electric wheelchairs anyway. 

Meantime, we should make sure the car dealers all leave town. Don’t allow them to build near the freeway! We should keep that land zoned for light manufacturing. And since there is hardly any light manufacturing growth in the United States anymore, that land could la y fallow, or be populated by artists. 

The downside of all this, of course, would be reverse economic growth and a declining tax base. We could always hit up property owners, already paying the highest taxes in the region, for more. Maybe we could aim for 50 percent higher taxes than surrounding cities. 

If the property taxpayers balk, and don’t vote in new taxes, because they think taxes are already too high, we won’t be able to fix our sewers, or our streets, and Berkeley will gradually crumble. But it will still have that old-fashioned neighborhood feel, without any big retailers to muck it up, so maybe it’s worth it. 

But if people do agree to raise taxes, maybe we could help out Mayor Bates and the university by subsidizing city services to a greater extent than we are already. We are a university town after all. 

This town is crazy! 

Tom Case 

• 

LIBRARY BLUES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gail Todd (April 11-13) felt sad because no one spoke to her while checked out a book from the library. Boo hoo. Librar ies probably have more people using their services than ever even though it is expensive keeping them open. They have to keep up with everything else changing in the 21st century. 

No one is “hiding our librarians.” If you have a problem or a question, so meone is right there to talk to and they are knowledgeable and helpful and friendly. This isn’t the 1950s, when libraries had so many manual details to keep up and needed many bodies. Using a computer is so much easier and quicker than a card catalog. 

Gail Todd has been in Berkeley 36 years. Well, I have been visiting Berkeley libraries for 59 years. No, Gail, we cannot afford to pay people to stand at a counter to take a book from a little girl to stamp it and hand it back (with a smile and a good word). We pay them for the many other tasks they have to do. 

Bob Kelleher 

• 

HR 543 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) introduced HR 543 last fall, which calls for a full debate and vote on the war. Now we have an excellent chance to get Cong ress to consider substantive measures to end the war quickly!  

Republicans Walter Jones (R-NC), Jim Leach (R-IA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) will sign on to the resolution adding bipartisan momentum to the this. Apparently, contrary to Berkeley mythos, there ARE honest Republicans who think Bush is a bad leader.  

HR 543 can be activated by a “discharge petition.” This means that once it receives the signatures of half the members of the House (218 members), the bill bypasses its committee and is immediately con sidered on the House floor for debate and a vote. This bill guarantees us 17 hours of debate (the war hasn’t been debated at all in Congress until now) and allows amendments. Rep. McGovern (D-MA) plans to introduce his “end the war in Iraq Act”—which cuts off funding for the war—as an amendment. We also expect Rep. Lee (D-CA) to introduce her No Permanent Bases in Iraq resolution as an amendment, and Rep. Murtha, (D-PA) to offer his bill as an amendment.  

Please, everybody, support groups like the CODEP ink ladies (I’m sure they’ll welcome men, also!). Supporting the Troops = Ending The War Now. Thank you in advance.  

This war costs every American household at least $2,442 a month. Sheesh! This cash could go towards college, health care, a vacation, clo thes for the baby, or enough instruments to outfit a garage band! Really good quality instruments! 

Linda Smith 

• 

IMMIGRATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Environmentalists arise! The data are in. Official state estimates from the Department of Finance show that in 2005 there were 500,000 new residents in California. The majority of the increase involved new foreign immigrants and a relatively high birth rate among immigrants. I have personally benefited in the past—my beloved and legally adopted son was born in the Dominican Republic. And, yes, I have also benefited from cheap illegal labor. But now we are all starting to pay the delayed costs of an over-burdened infrastructure resulting in loss of open space, crowded highways, hospitals going out of business, high housing costs, water shortages, and poorer air quality. The governor has proposed a massive $222 billion 10-year bond to address infrastructure problems. Realistic environmental policy must come to terms with the fundamental issue of poorly regulat ed population growth. 

Robert Gable 

• 

POPE IN THE HOUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your reporter quotes Gary Hart as saying, “Preachers said that if he [John F. Kennedy] was [sic] elected, the Pope would be in the White House,” as though the idea were absurd. It may be unfair, but it is not absurd. Kennedy’s two best-remembered foreign policy acts were to intervene militarily on behalf of Catholics in Cuba and South Vietnam. At the time, we inferred that Cardinal Spellman of New York was directing foreign po licy for the White House.  

Mark Tatz 

Oakland 

• 

KEEPING THE CRAZIES IN CHECK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Though she publishes me, Becky O’Malley feels that I am boring her readership because I am a one-issue person. I actually have very many issues of interest in life, but restrict myself here to the Israel/Palestine conflict for good reason. First, these pages are filled with so much venomous nonsense regarding the Middle East, and lies must be refuted lest if left unchallenged they metastasize into the Big Lie.  

As a small typical example, R.G. Davis’ letter in the same issue states that Yasir Arafat was a Christian. He most certainly was not. He was a Muslim, and his wife, who was a Christian, converted to Islam before she could marry him, and thus gain a ccess to the many millions of dollars she stole from the Palestinian government.  

Because O’Malley refuses to do even minimal fact checking before she publishes, somebody in this community needs to keep the crazies honest. The Daily Planet has made itsel f a hotbed of Palestinian propaganda, and O’Malley has even allowed Palestinian activist Henry Norr to report (not comment, but report) from the Middle East, breaking the first tenet of good journalism—namely, that the reporter should be apart from and ab ove the story.  

Second, Israel since 2000, has been faced with the genuine specter of genocide. Imagine, Ms. O’Malley, if rockets rained down on Berkeley every day from next-door Albany, and that the mayor of Albany was elected on a platform of killing e very Berkeleyan. Or imagine that the city across the bay threatened to wipe Berkeley off the map with nuclear weapons. Would you be bored if that is what people wanted to talk about? While feigning boredom with me, O’Malley pleads in the same piece to bri ng a Palestinian propaganda play about Rachel Corrie to Berkeley, and while at it, she wants to bring an anti-Palestinian play as well for balance (I am not sure that such a thing exists, since Israelis aren’t normally given to such excesses).  

Why, Beck y? So that you can amuse yourself further by pretending to be bored, while in fact setting Berkeleyans at each other’s throats for your amusement? So here’s the deal, I’ll stop obsessing in these pages about the Israel/Palestine conflict when you do. 

John Gertz 

• 

THE INDEFENSIBLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How does one justify the indefensible? Judging from Becky O’Malley’s editorial, when it comes to pro-Palestinian apologists I guess the answer is to ignore the elephant in the room: Hamas.  

Let’s say jus t for the sake of argument that the manifestly false allegations Israel-bashers regularly express in these pages were true. Would that obviate holding the Palestinians accountable for electing a regime which advocates Jewish genocide? You can bet your boo ts that any other government whose covenant supported such barbarous intent would have been eviscerated by the likes of such so-called progressives. But apparently not when the intended victims are Jews. 

Of course, rather than recognizing a populace whic h has long supported suicide bombers as simply coming out of the closet to elect the chief architects of anti-Israeli terrorism, O’Malley explains this away by suggesting that “this might have something to do with Israel’s actions.” She sanctimoniously ca lls this absurd equation “an intelligent analysis.” 

O’Malley goes on to imply that the Jews and Arabs should share governance of Jerusalem, forgetting that at Camp David Ehud Barak offered this to Arafat along with a Palestinian state comprising a contig uous 94 percent of what has been called the Palestinian Territories. Given that Arafat’s response was the Second Intifada consisting of better than 80 homicide bombings resulting in hundreds of innocent deaths, the notion of Israel sharing Jerusalem in th e future is as likely as the United States sharing Washington with Al Qaeda. 

In sum, for O’Malley and others who continue to support the Palestinians without calling into question their election of Hamas, I offer the words of the esteemed Joseph Welch in his response to Joe McCarthy: “At long last, have you no semblance of decency?” 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

FAMILY EGO TRIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Well, a big, sloppy “hag sameach” or Happy Holidays back to you as well, Becky, dear! Your best attempt at a goodwill, Holy Week editorial should go a long way to dispelling any preposterous suspicions in the local Jewish community that you are just an embittered, resentful and malignant anti-Semite at heart! 

Lord knows, you have reasons enough to be full of bitterness and hostility to this small but resourceful and accomplished minority who has and continues to wield such enormous influence in the world of politics and media in general and newspapers in particular, a field you had to buy your way into just in order to give away your “product” for free. Just imagine how you could stew over this injustice subconsciously, how it could corrode your heart and mind, were you not such a transcendent paragon of virtue, free from the cancer of prejudice and bigotry.  

In a just world, wouldn’t the Jewish, New York Times-owning Sulzberger family (among other Jewish media mogul families) be reduced to giving away twice per week at a loss their failed “daily” newspaper in a small, whack job college town, while the O’Mal ley newspaper empire was deemed the “paper of record” and feted the world over as the most serious of journalistic enterprises? Don’t you really deserve this acclaim, your birthright, robbed from you by a cabal of shady, Jewish influence mongers and peddl ers? Is it pure coincidence in your mind that spell check thinks the name Sulzberger is a misspelling of “sleazebag”? 

How unjust to you also that even the mayor of this small town could not bring himself to call the Daily Planet a “real newspaper,” let a lone bother to read it. That must have hurt where it counts! In your heart, you might even have blamed some malicious Israeli pressure groups who probably donated to the mayor’s election fund as the reason he felt it necessary to demean your publication s o. I wonder what the mayor meant by that statement? Was he perhaps implying that the Planet is really just a blog in print, one family’s ego trip masquerading as a local “newspaper”? 

Perhaps we Jews should add one more “dayenu” to our Passover Seder this year: If He had limited the Berkeley Daily Planet to the total insignificance it has—Dayenu, it would have been enough. 

Edna Spector 

• 

NUFF SAID 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding your “Next Year in Jerusalem” editorial: Your last three paragraphs are u ninformed, inaccurate, and incorrect. No need to say more. 

Frank Price 

• 

HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is interesting that the United States has recently decided not to run for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Could it be that t he Bush administration which has condoned and practiced torture, has launched two pre-emptive wars which have killed tens of thousands, spies on its own citizens, and generally denies its continued war crimes and other crimes against humanity recognizes t hat sitting on such a body would be hypocritical? Oh I forgot this is the Bush regime where hypocrisy is a virtue. 

The council was created on a U.N. General Assembly vote of 170 to 4. The United States and Israel were two of the four no votes. Israel, wh ich continues to illegally occupy Palestinian territory and violate Palestinian rights, has strong motives to oppose the creation of such an international body. It also makes sense that the Bush administration would be opposed to any organization that cou ld possibly condemn the regime’s consistent violation of human rights both here and abroad. 

The Bush regime’s actions are also consistent with it earlier opposition to the International Criminal Court. It is clear that Bush and his cohorts do not want to be held accountable for any of their actions by the international community. As long as it remains in power we can expect that the regime will continue with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where the body count mounts daily. We can also expect increased repression here at home. 

Bush will not leave office until Jan. 20, 2009. But the world can’t wait another two and a half years. We must drive the Bush regime from power now. For more information on how to oppose the Bush regime, see worldcantwait.net. 

Ke nneth J. Theisen 

Oakland  

• 

TREE PRUNING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ron Sullivan was correct in identifying that PG&E’s pruning program produces some very bizarre results. Sullivan noted that their tree pruning was merciless, but that it use to be worse whe n “line-cleaning pruning crews used to just top a tree—whack it off bluntly, a procedure that usually, gradually kills the tree.” Sullivan noted that PG&E now uses “drop-crotching” instead and notes that “It’ll still probably kill the tree, but more slowl y...” PG&E’s contract workers are supposed to hang notices on doorknobs of residences and businesses where pruning will take place. Sullivan should note that these PG&E hangers show three types of pruning that are in current use: 1) topping; 2) drop-crot ching; and 3) side prunes where all the limbs on one side of a tree are removed. 

All three types of pruning are highly visible on many Berkeley streets and the trees are in danger. Sullivan’s final salvo stating that is “a good idea that arborists and ev en PG&E urge people to choose smaller trees to plant under city power lines in the first place...” is dismissive of one of the finest features of Berkeley, its thousands of stately, mature trees that now are mangled by PG&E each time they prune. It use to be better in the past when PG&E had an program that fostered healthy trees and trimmed them esthetically. The current slashing program is new and I hope Sullivan will consider helping Berkeley to nourish and save it urban forests.  

Sally Williams 

• 

BACK WARD BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A while ago you published two letters from me regarding the filth at the Berkeley High School swimming pool and also the arrogance and incompetence of the Berkeley Public Library computer department. 

The pool is just as filthy as it ever was but the library was impelled to suddenly promise to “have a technician look at it”—they still ignore my e-mails and haven’t done a thing to fix computer problems I have been complaining about for months on end. 

I guess power of the press doesn’t work in “backward Berkeley.” 

Brian C. Waters 

• 

BUSH LEAK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bush OKd leak, former aide says: Impeach the treasonous bastard! Never in the history of the United States has there been a president who so violated truth, justice and the American way. George W. Bush has been a cancer since he was placed in office five years ago. Public elections, the heart of democracy, have been hijacked by private corporations under Bush’s watch. Since his inception Americans have had to endure lie after lie issuing from the White House. And you watch the news, I don’t have to tell you about the war. This is what happens when fraud trumps the Constitution. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley%

Last summer in these pages John Gertz complained that the “old” Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission was “setting Berkeley’s citizens against one another by condemning one side alone.” He reassured us that the “newer members are unlikely to support anti-Israel resolutions. But neither are they inclined to put forth pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian resolutions. [T]hey are waging a peace campaign—they want peace to return to Berkeley on this issue.” (Daily Planet, July 29, 2005) Now he is suggesting that that same commission, as well as the City Council, “should call the Palestinians to task” for electing Hamas.  

With any other Berkeley resident, we might note the apparent change of mind, perhaps snicker, and move on. However, when John Gertz speaks, I think we ought to pay attention. A suggestion from him has something of the quality of a “suggestion” from Don Vito Corleone. Readers may recall that when he disagreed with the “old” Peace and Justice Commission, he fixed the problem by packing it with members of his choosing. When Councilmember Maio displeased him with her vote on Rachel Corrie, he made a credible threat to destroy her chances with a smear campaign should she choose to run for mayor.  

Here’s the issue. If our public officials—our councilmembers and our mayor—agree with Gertz and have followed their hearts with respect to Israel, so be it. We can express our disagreement with them at the polls. If, however, they have appointed Gertz’s picks to the Peace and Justice Commission, backed off on divestment and Rachel Corrie, possibly chosen not to run for mayor, and generally agreed to total silence on a critical issue because they fear the reprisal of Gertz and other members of the Jewish lobby, then our votes are of no avail. A small, unelected group is distorting city policy by exerting undue influence and would do so no matter who was in office. We need to know if this is indeed happening.  

Finally I note that the money John Gertz has at his disposal to spend either for or against any particular candidate, he has made, ironically, by marketing Zorro—that iconic avenger of the oppressed—whose trademark he owns. Lately there has been a veritable Zorro torrent involving many artists, like Culture Clash and Isabelle Allende, who would probably prefer not to finance the occupation of Palestine. If readers of this paper feel the same, one small thing they can do is boycott all things Zorro—and spread the word. 

Joanna Graham is a Berkeley resident.

On April 18 the Berkeley City Council seems set to pass a new sewer lateral ordinance. This ordinance requires the inspection and repair (as necessary) of sewer laterals to private property at the time of sale or in conjunction with a general property improvement valued at $100,000 or more or plumbing-related improvements valued at $50,000 or more. The inspections and repairs will be done privately, but they will be overseen by City of Berkeley staff at a cost to property owners for the oversight and necessary permits of several hundred dollars. Over the next 20 or so years, the value of these required repairs is estimated to be in the range of $1 million. 

Most Berkeley residents are interested in improving our infrastructure and environment and, in general, have supported the city and Berkeley Unified School District’ very high taxes for the sake of improving our community. However, in the case of sewer laterals, Berkeley appears poised to enact an unnecessarily burdensome ordinance with costs for property owners that are way out of line with neighboring jurisdictions. 

Since the city has apparently not undertaken (or publicized) the comparative research as requested, that would provide a context for the proposed measure, I have done so to the best of my ability. If any of my figures are off, I want our city staffers to feel free to undertake independent research and advise of appropriate corrections, if any. Here is what I have learned: 

• Albany: It too has a sewer lateral ordinance but charges no fees for city “oversight.” The property transfer tax in Albany is $11.50 per $1,000 of sale price compared to Berkeley’s $15 per $1,000. 

• El Cerrito: Has a sewer lateral ordinance, but no city “oversight” fees are charged. El Cerrito has no property transfer tax. 

• Kensington: Same as El Cerrito. 

Piedmont: No sewer lateral ordinance. Property transfer tax of $13 per $1,000. 

• San Francisco: No sewer lateral ordinance. Sliding scale property transfer tax of $5 per $1,000 for properties under $250,000, $6.50 per $1,000 for properties from $250,000 to $1million, and $7.50 per $1,000 for properties of $1 million or more. 

Additionally, EBMUD collects sewer service fees on behalf of the cities of Emeryville, Oakland, and Berkeley. Here is how these city fees stack up: 

• Emeryville: Charges a flat rate of $16 (per two-month EBMUD bill) for all properties. 

• Oakland: Charges a flat rate of $32.52 for all properties. 

• Berkeley: As usual, much more complicated and expensive! My own bill, which I will use as an example herein, averages 12 units per billing period in winter (a unit is 748 gallons of water) and about 24 units per billing period in summer (because I water my garden and help keep my property and Berkeley green.) 

Single family: $3.11 per unit, maximum of $83.32 per period. So my own sewer charge during the winter is about $37.32 and during the dry months about $74.64. So even during the period of lowest water use, my bill is more than twice as high as it would be in Emeryville and during the dry season, my bill is almost five times what it would be in Emeryville. In comparison to Oakland, my winter bill is about 15 percent higher and my summer bill is more than twice as high. 

For owners of multiple units and other types of properties, the disparity with Oakland and Emeryville is even more shocking: 

• Duplex: $3.17 per unit, $134.74 maximum. 

• Triplex: $3.38 per unit, $198.60 maximum. 

• Fourplex: $3.33 per unit, $231 maximum. 

• Five units and over: $3.34 per unit, no maximum. 

• Other properties: $3.74 per unit, no maximum. 

The City of Berkeley also has a special assessment for clean storm water, which is part of the extensive list of city special assessments shown on the right hand side of the property tax bill. My clean storm water charge is about $80 per year. Do any other cities have such an extra charge? I have asked the city to research this. According to the article by LA Wood in the Berkeley Daily Planet (“Berkeley’s Stormwater Property Tax: Where’s the Money?”, Oct. 29, 2004), this tax money has been seriously mismanaged and misdirected. I refer you to the city Newscan website or the Planet’s website where you can locate a copy of this article. 

I personally am fed up with the city’s constant whining about lack of money. We have far more money available from all our taxes and fees than almost every other California jurisdiction, and I don’t think that we have that much to show for it. It’s time for our public officials to show moderation, fairness and common sense when dealing with our overburdened and underserved homeowners. With respect to the sewer lateral program in particular, evidence of such good faith would be the elimination of the city “oversight” fees and serious consideration of a property tax or transfer tax rebate for repair work on the sewer laterals, which benefits the entire community. 

Barbara Gilbert was a 2004 City Council candidate in District 5 and is active in  

several Berkeley civic organizations.›

I thought about writing this op-ed last summer when Reverend Pat Robertson said that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez should be “taken out,” but I decided to pass on the opportunity. I figured people were making too big a fuss over that. Surely, being a man of the cloth, Robertson had no malicious intent. He’s a good Christian, so when he talked about “taking out” Hugo Chavez, I’m sure he meant taking him out to dinner or something like that, possibly a movie as well, and walking him home after the movie, and then.... Well, we all know that Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor.” 

Of course, this is the sort of op-ed that anyone can write anytime. The material is a renewable resource. Last month Robertson treated his flock to a tirade against Islam, calling Muslims “crazed fanatics... motivated by demonic power... satanic. Islam is not a religion of peace.... The goal of Islam... is world domination.” 

If this has a ring of familiarity, try this: substitute “Communism” and “Communists” for “Islam” and “Muslims,” and replay the video. Add Donald Rumsfeld’s recent reference to the “Long War” and the convergence of this rhetoric becomes obvious. We have our next ideological war to whip up our anxieties to the point that we’re happy to feed the military-industrial complex for the next 50 years, just like we did throughout the Cold War. 

Another thing you might try is to imagine yourself standing on the walls of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, substitute “Christianity” and “Christians” for “Islam” and “Muslims” and replay the video. That works, too. Or picture yourself standing in front of the Alexandria Library before it was destroyed by a Christian mob, or looking on while priests burned the books of Aztec and Inca science and culture. Where do Christians like Robertson get the idea that they have the right to cast the first stone? 

I get a big kick out of these people who are looking forward to the Second Coming. They wouldn’t recognize Him. Quite the opposite, they would crucify Him again because they haven’t learned a damned thing in two thousand years. 

Of course, Islam vies with Christianity for the world heavyweight title as the most intolerant, violent, and destructive religion. A thousand years ago, it was spread across the Middle East, South Asia, North Africa, and Southern Europe at the point of the sword. In recent times, there has been the 1988 fatwa against Salman Rushdie: write a witty book, get sentenced to death. 

Then there was the Nigerian journalist, Isioma Daniel, who, reporting in 2002 on the Islamic furor over a beauty pageant in her country, posed the question, what would Mohammed do? He would probably want to marry one of the contestants. There were riots, people were killed, and she had to flee Nigeria. Now this was just wrong. As I understand it, the Prophet, peace be unto him, would probably have wanted to marry four of the contestants. OK, now I have a fatwa against me. See how easy that was? 

And for all those who buy into the neocon ideology that we ought to spread democracy and pluralist values across the Islamic world at the point of a depleted uranium shell, consider the recent case of the Afghan who was sentenced to death for converting to Christianity. 

The saving grace of Judaism is that, although just like Christians and Muslims, Jews are cock-sure that they have the One True God and everyone else is wrong, they really don’t mind that everyone else is wrong. It’s one monotheistic religion that isn’t in the habit of terrorizing, torturing, and killing millions of people... except for the Philistines, of course. They’re a special case. There’s just no living with those Philistines, and we all know that. 

The louder someone proclaims his faith in God and what God wants, the more you ought to suspect that a) he doesn’t have a clue, and b) he’s trying to scam somebody... out of his money, out of her freedom, out of his life. One of the remarkable observations to come out of the Enlightenment was Edward Gibbon’s comment in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.” 

Those filthy pagans! How dare they live in peace with one another! Well, monotheism fixed that problem. Worship is even more useful to authority today. The real power of the One True God is wielded by the cleric and the politician to stoke the machinery of death and feed into it the infidel and the faithful alike, each comforted in the belief that they go to a far, far better rest than they have ever known. 

It beats me how all of these religions can have the same truth, each with a somewhat different face, yet so many people don’t seem to notice. What could be simpler than the idea that one should treat people justly and have faith that in the long run one will receive justice? 

I know what beliefs comfort me, but I pretty much keep them to myself. I suppose that’s something of a Jewish attitude. No, I’m not a Jew, but I wouldn’t mind being mistaken for one. Or a Christian. Or a Muslim. Or a Hindu. Or whatever. 

Happy Passover. Happy Easter. Happy Mawlid al-Nabi. Happy Hanuman Jayanti. Make friends and play well with others. 

Thomas Gangale is an aerospace engineer and a former Air Force officer. A resident of San Rafael, California, he is currently the executive director at OPS-Alaska, a think tank based in Petaluma and an international relations scholar at San Francisco State University.  



A few people have told me that they missed reading my column in this beloved rag. I’ve missed writing it. (Thank you, friends, for noticing my absence.) 

I’ve been very busy—a bit overwhelmed, in fact—immersing myself into the brave new world of single motherhood. I am in the process of obtaining a divorce. 

“Oh woe!” The masses proclaim. “I am so sorry!” They cry out. “But you seemed like the perfect couple! The most beautiful of families!” 

Alas. Things are not what they appear to be. I am joining the ranks of single black (white, red, brown and yellow) women with two kids and insubstantial income, hopefully not on the decline into poverty, bitterness and loss of functional faculties.  

Married for over 23 years, I had my doubts even way back when, while taking that tentative, fateful walk down that looming gangplank—er, I mean aisle. I thought to myself, “What the hell are you doing?” 

But, back then, everybody was doing it. I was the last in my group to submit. And that’s what my marriage became: a submission. Uh oh. Let me shut up right now. My soon-to-be-ex certainly has his own perspective on our marital mess and I would certainly hate to see it published here—or elsewhere. (Oh, no! Too late. I can hear him taking pen to pad right now as I speak...) So, let me just hush up about all the dreary details and say: Onward! To a better, healthier, happier life for us all. 

Now, what does all this divorce matter mean exactly? And in particular what does it mean for our children? They now have new identities as well. They are soon to be children of divorce. This is particularly difficult for my 11-year-old son (I was told to never use the possessive “my” in Family Court when speaking of my children but rather, to always say “our.” 

Otherwise, the judges get ticked off ... they assume you’re already trying to leave the other parent out. But, hell, this is my column and I’m writing about my kids. So, in this sacred space they are “mine.”)  

Jason (my son’s favorite fake name) was among the very few in his circle of young, mostly black males who actually had two married parents and his father living in the home. Now he finds himself lumped in with the majority—yet another young brother with no daddy in the home. 

Need it be a sad majority? One in which he feels abandoned or deprived? No, it doesn’t have to be. I am resolutely looking forward to an amicable, co-parenting arrangement with my children’s father—that is, after we get through all the thorny money-resentment-anger stuff. (Which I hope will be soon, dear.) 

My children now have two houses, two sets of stuff, two schedules, two sets of chores, rooms to clean, homework at two different kitchen tables, two sets of dishes, towels, soaps, TVs, Play Stations and one backpack each which sometimes gets forgotten at the other parent’s house. 

And me? What do I have? No one to call if I get a flat tire or a window needs replacing or I’m short with the mortgage, taxes, insurance car payment, kids gotta eat, baby needs new shoes and the junior prom is right around the corner.  

And what about sharing all those wonderful, precious moments when our kids do or say the most witty, insightful, fabulous things? Right now, my soon-to-be-ex and I are just sharing the bad things, the fall-out. Hopefully, we’ll get to a point where we can share those happy events, too.  

In the meantime, I am at mid-life and taking stock. The questions I asked myself during my youth I am re-asking now. Outside of woman, wife and mother, who am I, really? What happened to my dreams, to the person I thought I would become? How much of that dream was suppressed, suffocated while devoting myself to family? Is there anything of the me-dream left? How do I go back there and make it real again? And is that what I really want? 

What am I gaining and at what expense? Will the children be better off in the long run and how long does it run? At this point, all I can hope for is that we are all better off living in two separate households full of peace, love, healthy communication and mutual respect and support.  

“What are you, crazy? Dreaming? On drugs?” Hey, I didn’t say all this would all appear automatically without the passage of time, hard work and a few tears. It’s a process, after all. But I do, oh so gratefully, see the light at the end of this long, winding tunnel. All I can do is to take it one step, one day at a time. Wish me luck. 

h

Last week I received an important letter from the United States Navy. This is what it said: 

Navy. Accelerate your life.™ 

Dear Parker J. Susan. 

I’m thinking your vision of college and success is different than most people’s. Any scholarship will get you through college, but you’re looking for something more. Like a scholarship that will get you through life…starting right now. With the prospect of graduating debt-free—a great way to start your career!  

That’s why I’m letting you know about the Navy Baccalaureate Degree Completion Program (BDCP) that offers money to complete your degree—money sent directly to you! To spend as you see fit, and no military requirements while you’re in school. Just a typical college life, minus the money hassles.  

Picture it. You. With a Navy scholarship. And a job waiting right after graduation. No searching for a position and no waiting to “earn” responsibility. Get extensive training on the world’s most advanced equipment. Plus full Navy benefits and outstanding medical coverage. Enjoy more responsibility early on. After just four years, you’re free to take your skills to the civilian job market—where you’ll have a competitive edge. Or continue your Navy career. Pursue a graduate education—at the Navy’s expense. And there’s much more we’d like to tell you.  

Ready for a short-term commitment with long-term rewards? It’s your call. Discover more about the life you could have through the Navy Baccalaureate Degree Completion Program. Fill out and mail the attached reply card, call us at (800) 345-6289 or e-mail LPT_sanfrancisco@cnrc.navy.mil.  

Now more than ever, let’s make a difference. 

Sincerely, 

Lance S. Sapera 

Commander, U.S. Navy 

What do you want to do? As a Navy Officer, choose from a wide range of career fields—aviation, clergy, health care, engineering, legal, supply and many others. Call us and we’ll tell you more. Shift your career into high gear. Navy. Accelerate your life.™ 

The letter was decorated with color photographs of huge steel-gray battleships plowing confidently through a calm blue sea, and a single Naval officer dressed in white, looking directly at me and saluting.  

At the bottom of Commander Sapera’s communiqué was the postage-paid reply card with some questions for me to answer. The Navy wanted to know if I was a U.S. citizen and if my GPA was 2.0 or higher. “Best Time to Call?” they asked, and then they gave me a choice of “a.m. or p.m. (please circle one).”  

I telephoned my dad and read to him the contents of the letter. 

“They want you bad,” he said when I’d finished. 

“It seems that way.”  

“’No waiting to earn responsibility,’” he said. 

“More responsibility early on,” I added. “And a scholarship that will get me through life.”  

We were silent for a moment as we contemplated a scholarship that could possibly get me out of the responsible life in which I’ve been engaged for the past 54 years, and into something more responsible—like the Navy. 

“I think you should choose a career in Naval clergy,” said Dad. “It might do you some good.” 

“Really? I was thinking I should wait and see what the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard have to offer and then make a decision.” 

“Not a bad idea,” said Dad. “Not a bad idea at all.”

The dawn redwoods don’t mind the soggy weather; they’re leafing out more or less on schedule. I suppose they evolved with wetter weather to begin with, so no surprise there. In other ways, this tree has been full of surprises. 

There are dawn redwoods, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, in several private gardens around Berkeley, and on the UC campus (right around the corner from Trader Vic Bergeron’s oddly squatting sabertooth cat statue, among other places) and in the UC Botanical Garden; there are a couple of young ones beside the Joseph Charles tennis courts on MLK at Oregon. People who’ve moved into properties with established dawn redwoods have been unpleasantly surprised in autumn when the leaves turned russet and fell. Some have—horrors!—had the “dead” trees cut down. But this species, like the Southeastern baldcypress (Taxodium distychum) it resembles and unlike our native coast redwoods, is naturally deciduous.  

Right now its new leaves are tender, pale green feathers against pale red-brown, shreddy bark. The trunk of every one I’ve seen that’s younger than a few hundred years is vertically rippling, muscular, tapering from a broad base to the narrow spire of the tree’s single leader.  

Dawn redwood is one of few living species that was named and classified from fossils alone, long before anyone in the scientific community that uses those Linnean binomials had seen a living individual. In a way, it’s a living fossil, like our coastal Sequoia sempervirens and Sequoiadendron giganteum, their massive relative in the Sierra Nevada. All are relict species, survivors of forests and families that existed over much greater territories in a different world climate several million years ago. Dawn redwood fossils have been found around the northern hemisphere from Spitsbergen through Alaska and our Midwest to Greenland.  

The interests of quite various academics came together to identify and find this relic. In 1941, a Japanese paleobotanist, Shigeru Miki, decided that the Pliocene fossils he was seeing weren’t just another Taxodium after all, in fact weren’t quite like anything else, and named them their species binomial. News like this didn’t travel fast across the battle lines of World War II.  

That same year, a Chinese forester-professor named T. Kan noticed an interesting tree on a roadside in Szechuan. As it was winter and the tree was bare, he couldn’t collect the usual specimens, but he asked a local resident to collect some in spring. The specimens weren’t identified until they’d passed through many hands over several years, and in 1946 reached someone who’d read Miki’s publication, one Dr. H. H. Hu of the Fan Institute in (then) Peiping. He matched the living samples with Miki’s recently named fossils.  

Dr. Hu wrote to Dr. Elmer D. Merrill of Harvard and Dr. Ralph Chaney of UC Berkeley to announce the find and request help in preserving the species. Merrill sent $250, enough to fund a seed-gathering trip by Hu’s colleagues, and the seed was redistributed to interested gardens and arboretums all over the world. Chaney, however, took a different approach. He wanted to meet this living fossil on its home turf. 

UC’s Chaney wanted to meet this old-new tree in the flesh. He’d traveled to China with Roy Chapman Andrews’ famous 1925 Mongolia-Gobi Desert expedition, which had discovered the first Velociraptor fossils—and, in fact, had collected unrecognized dawn redwood fossils. Over 20 years later, Chaney’s health was barely up to the trip; he had to be carried in a rude palanquin for part of the way, through freezing storms on treacherous trails.  

He’d already met the type specimen, the 480-year-old, 112-foot-tall individual whose seeds had been sent out and whose lineaments were used to describe the species. The hard part was a farther trip, to see a whole forest of dawn redwoods.  

He saw there a mixed forest of broadleaf trees—birch, beech, oak, sweetgum, maple, chestnut—in which the dawn redwood was a citizen, as its fossils had suggested was the case through its ancient range. “It’s like a botanical alumni reunion,” he said. “This is what much of the world looked like a million centuries ago.” 

Such a reunion takes place not only in arboretums around the world, but on out city streets, planted with many of those trees now. Continents and climates drift, and humans drift too, just faster. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

A young dawn redwood just starting to leaf out. This one lives beside the tennis courts at Oregon Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in South Berkeley. The muscular trunk is a good fieldmark for the species. 

When India’s Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the government’s budget this past February, he trumpeted the country’s vault into modernity. Economic growth is 8.1 percent and is projected to rise as high as 10 percent next year. India has completed its “Golden Quadrilateral,” a multi-lane highway that links New Delhi in the north, Calcutta in the east, Chennai in the south, and Mumbai in the west. The collective wealth of India’s 311 billionaires jumped 71 percent in the last year. 

“Growth will be our mount,” the minister told the Parliament, “equity will be our companion, and social justice will be our destination.”  

But for India’s rural and urban poor, the chasm between them and the wealthy only got wider and deeper. Last year, India slipped from 124 out of 177 countries to 127, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. Life expectancy is seven years less than in China, and 11 less than in Sri Lanka.  

Mortality for children under 5, according to a United Nations Development Report, is almost three times China’s rate, almost six times Sri Lanka’s, and greater than in Bangladesh and Nepal. 

The divide is best summed up in a searing editorial by Palagummi Sainath, India’s leading independent journalist. In an April 1 opinion piece in The Hindu, Sainath contrasts the two worlds that increasingly make up the second most populous nation on earth. 

“Farm suicides in Vldharbha crossed 400 this week. The Sensex (stock exchange) crossed the 11,000 mark. And Lakme Fashion Week issues over 500 media passes to journalists. All three are firsts. All happened the same week. And each captures in a brilliant if bizarre way a sense of where India’s Brave New World is headed. A powerful measure of disconnect. Of the gap between the haves and the have-mores on the one hand, and the dispossessed and the desperate, on the other.” 

For more than a decade, the Mumbai-based journalist has criss-crossed India by train, bicycle and foot, chronicling the daily lives of the poor. He writes about people like Ganesh Bhimrao Thakre, a small farmer in Vidharbha who struck hard times. His daughter got cholera, his wife had an eye operation, and his son was forced to drop out of college for financial reasons. Desperate and unable to get a loan, he played Bhishi, a sort of Ponzi scheme where farmers pool money to try and win a monthly jackpot. 

He lost.  

So he committed suicide. Most farmers kill themselves by drinking pesticides. Thakre hung himself. 

There are literally thousands like him in the countryside, where in states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar the “average” income is considerably below the national rural poverty line of $650 a year. Stories like the death of Ganesh Thakre do not make Sainath a popular man in the corridors of power where “India Shining” is the slogan. The government is less interested in helping the poor, as it is increasing military spending and building a “blue water” navy. 

India has launched a 30-year program to build a fleet capable of projecting power into the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. It is negotiating to purchase 66 Hawk fighter-bombers for $1.43 billion. The price of a single Hawk could supply a lifetime of clean drinking water to 1.5 million people. 

The new budget is a case study in skewed priorities. 

Under the former right wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, social support networks were systematically dismantled, and social expenditures declined from 22.9 percent to 19.7 percent.  

But the center-left Congress-UPA government’s budget is only marginally better. Social expenditures will rise just 1.2 percent. Education will jump a paltry 0.4 percent, and health funding will go from 4.4 percent to 4.9 percent. According to the finance minister, “Growth is the best antidote to poverty.” 

The “growth” formula is the so-called “Washington Consensus” of open markets and foreign investment, which has accelerated the divide between rich and poor from Terra del Fuego to West Africa.  

In India, “growth” has been restricted to a relatively narrow band of industries, like high tech. In the countryside, where 75 percent of the population lives, living conditions have worsened.  

A World Bank study in 2004 found that while the number of Indian millionaires rose so did the number of poor. According to a U.N. development report, inequality in India has grown faster in the last 15 years than in the last 50 years. 

The report also found that rural poverty alleviation schemes generally ended up being used in the interests of the wealthy. 

In his searing book Everyone Loves a Good Drought, Sainath exposed how the elites manipulate rural aid to enrich themselves and impoverish small farmers. Wealthy landowners used government aid during a drought to dig wells so deep that they drained off the water small farmers were using. In exchange for water, the small farmers had to grow what the wealthy farmers wanted them to grow.  

Most small farmers quickly found themselves squeezed between low prices for their crops and high prices for seed and fertilizer. Many had no choice but to turn to the local sahucar, moneylenders who charge usurious rates of 60 percent or higher.  

“Bank don’t loan money to small farmers,” says Sainath, “although you can get all you want to buy a Mercedes.” 

In 1991, 26 percent of rural households were in debt. By 2003 that had jumped to just under 50 percent, although in some states, like Andhra Pradesh, four-fifths of the farmers were in arrears. Tens of millions of small farmers ended up losing their land, and became landless laborers. If they were lucky and had a union, they made $1 a day. If they were not, they made as little as 33 cents per day. 

In contrast, each of those 311 billionaires takes in about $17.5 million a day. 

The miserly increase in health spending is particularly burdensome to the rural poor. Medical care is the second most common cause of rural debt, and close to the 25 percent of the population do not seek medical care because they cannot afford it. 

As a share of its GDP, India spends less on health care than countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, Togo, Sudan, Guinea and Burundi. 

According to a U.N. human development report, “Some of India’s southern cities may be in the midst of a technological boom, but one in every 11 Indian children dies in the first five years of life from want of low-technology, low-cost interventions.” 

The medical situation is deepened by the food crisis that many Indians endure. A study by Professor Utsa Patnaik found that per person food availability is lower now than it was during the horrendous Bengal famine of 1942-43. 

It is common for rural family members to alternate days when they eat. The result is that 46.7 percent of Indian children are underweight, and 44.9 percent of them are growth stunted. In comparison, China—which also has a wide and growing gap between rich and poor—those figures are 10 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively. 

Urban slum dwellers fare little better. In the same week that the fashion shows and the stock market were doing well, almost 5,000 urban shanties were torn down in Mumbai.  

“In the village we demolish their lives,” writes Sainath, “in the city their homes.” 

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During the last time American political jurisdictions openly maneuvered to keep African-Americans from voting—for you young readers, we’re not talking about Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, but Alabama and Mississippi in the 1950s and early ’60s—there used to be a joke told by black comics about the black fellow who came back home to South Carolina to register to vote after spending many years in New York and Philadelphia, a bachelors degree in American history from Temple and a masters in government from NYU in his pocket. 

In those days, Southern registrars used what they called the “literacy test” to keep black people from registering. A prospective black voter had to read, and then interpret, several government documents to the satisfaction of the registrar, who sometimes could not read the documents himself. 

As the joke went, the registrar pulled out the Declaration Of Independence, asked the black fellow to read a passage, and then said, “What does that mean?” The registrar then got a copy of the Constitution, pointed to an obscure clause, asked the black fellow to read it, and then said, “Now tell me what that means.” Then came an old dog-eared Federalist Papers, a request to read a paragraph out of one of the articles, and then the question: “What does it mean?” The black fellow expounded on each answer for 15 minutes or more, providing citations to various texts he had read on the various subjects. He’d gone to school for this, after all. He was well prepared. 

Finally, the white registrar went into the back of his office, rummaged through some old books, and came back with a copy of Plato’s Republic. “Pick a passage, any passage, and read it,” the registrar said. The black fellow opened the book, leafed through it a moment, and said, “This book’s in Greek. I don’t read Greek.” “That’s OK,” the registrar replied. “Just tell me what it means.” The black fellow thought a moment, closed the book, and handed it back to the registrar. “It means I’m not going to be able to vote,” he said. 

Sometimes, we sadly discover, the results of government policy are pre-ordained, and the various actions leading up to them are merely for the show. 

So it was with the takeover of the Oakland public schools. 

In the first UnderCurrents column for the Berkeley Daily Planet, in April of 2003, I wrote about three separate calls, over the years, for state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District. Each, interestingly enough, involved a different announced reason for the threatened takeover (in 1998 the desire by some state officials to get rid of then-OUSD Superintendent Carol Quan; in 2000, it was over a discrepancy in reported attendance figures; in 2003, the year the Oakland schools were finally seized by the state, it was because of overspending the budget to finance a teacher pay hike). Interestingly enough, too, each of the three calls for a state takeover in the past eight years involved state Sen. Don Perata in some way. 

Despite the fact that this was the largest school seizure in California history, and a complete disenfranchisement of Oakland voters over the running of our school system, the East Bay public still knows almost nothing about how, and why, the State of California came to take over the Oakland schools. 

But at least now, thanks to a recently-published book by local author, educator, and political activist Kitty Kelly Epstein, we have some valuable insight into an earlier attempt by the State of California to take over the Oakland schools, this one ten years before Mr. Perata began making his threats in 1998. 

In 1988, Ms. Epstein writes in A Different View Of Urban Schools; Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory, And Unexplored Realities, the Oakland school district was facing a fiscal crisis and needed to make severe budget cuts in order to balance the budget. Epstein says that a coalition of public officials—including then-state Superintendent of Education Bill Honig, then-state Assemblymember Elihu Harris (at that time a candidate for mayor of Oakland), then-Alameda County School Superintendent William Berck, and Sheila Jordan, the only white member of the Oakland school board—began pushing for state intervention into the Oakland schools, even though the majority-black school board had not sought out a state loan, and the budget was still balanced. Harris went so far as to introduce state trustee legislation in the state assembly. 

But the school board, led by members Sylvester Hodge and Darlene Lawson, arranged the sales of something called “Certificates of Participation,” $10 million in financing that made a state loan—and a state trustee—unnecessary. “Honig declared that he would block the sales of certificates,” Epstein writes, “but Hodges and Lawson had done their homework carefully. Other districts had already used this method of financing, and the board members had carefully worked through the necessary procedures before announcing the plan.” 

Folks who followed the 2003 Oakland school takeover will see some interesting echoes from what happened, or didn’t happen, in 1988. In 2003, in the frantic weeks before the Oakland School Board was stripped of its power and Randolph Ward was sent in to run the Oakland schools, the local board produced a balanced budget that would have ended the need for a state loan, and a state takeover. That balanced budget was based on the temporary transfer of construction bond funds, a transfer that board members said was being done by other school districts around the state. But even though the district’s bond attorneys—the same attorneys that advise the state, by the way—said that the construction bond transfer was legal, the Alameda County Superintendent of Schools held them up, and eventually they were blocked by an “opinion” by state Attorney General Bill Lockyer. And who was the county superintendent who played such an important role in keeping Oakland from bailing itself out in 2003 and retaining home rule? If you guessed that it was the same Sheila Jordan who Epstein says was pushing for state takeover as an Oakland School Board member in 1988, you win the prize as a careful reader. 

As important as Epstein’s account is of the 1988 abortive takeover, her description of what happened immediately after is even more instructive. One year after Oakland resisted state takeover, she writes, “the neighboring Richmond school district … went broke and was forced to accept the $10 million loan originally slated for Oakland. They were also forced to lay off hundreds of teachers and cut the salaries of those teachers who remained. Today, more than a decade later, that district, now called West Contra Costa County, has not yet recovered financially. Interest and fees on the loan were so high that the loan will not be repaid and local control restored until 2018. In contrast, Oakland did not lay off teachers or cut salaries [during the 1988 financial difficulties]. And by the time Sylvester Hodges ended his tenure as chair of the district’s Budget and Finance Committee, the school district had achieved Standard & Poor’s highest bond rating and had accumulated a substantial cushion of reserves.” 

(Ms. Epstein’s book, which concentrates on how the issue of race affects American public education, using Oakland as a prime example, is an essential text for people wishing to understand what’s going on in public schools these days, by the way.) 

The state has made a royal mess of things amongst the Oakland schools, if anyone is watching. With Oakland further in debt than when the state administrator took over, the school district is being slowly dismantled and outside companies coming in and seizing campuses like the European colonial powers once seized African villages and communities. Meanwhile, a potentially devastating teacher strike looming, is there anyone around who will now argue that letting the state take a hand at running the Oakland schools was a good experiment, and Oaklanders couldn’t have done this better, our own selves?  

But as we said, sometimes, the results are pre-ordained, and the various actions leading up to them are merely for the show. For a long time, there have been folks deeply interested in taking over Oakland’s public schools. Now that they’ve finally done it, we may begin to finally understand why. But that’s a subject for another day, and another column. 

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I know you’re out there. You who are easy prey for handywomen and contractors. You who don’t fix things. Yes, I know you’re there. Well come out of the closet and go boldly where your uncle Filbert never went. Where you mother never dared to tread. Today we are going to hang something on the wall. Yes, You CAN do it. 

Hanging shelves or paintings on a wall has reduced the hardiest of men and women to tearing out their hair but I will share some secrets with you that will have you hangin’ with the best of ‘em. 

Hanging things means first mounting an anchoring system in most kinds of walls. Most of us have either drywall (sheetrock to the masses) or plaster (mostly installed over wooden lath although some lath is actually made of drywall).  

Let’s start with plaster over wooden lath, since it’s the trickiest and we’ll save the fun stuff for last. If you have plaster, you’re probably in a house that is at least 50 years old and more likely 60 or 70. Nearly all houses from the ‘40s or earlier were finished in plaster (except for those with wood paneling and that makes things really easy). 

If you have plaster, you can probably see the rough wooden strips from the backside somewhere in the house, usually the basement or possibly through a broken wall section somewhere. Plaster is quite hard and brittle and anyone who ever tried to drive a nail through this material probably found themselves making large running cracks or possibly even breaking off a chunk or two. 

The first thing you want to try to do is to attach whatever you have to somewhere that a wooden upright or “stud” is located. Finding a stud (alright, take a minute and get all the jokes out of your system ... are you done?) isn’t as hard as one might think because the wooden lath strips that the plaster is smooshed into (yes, when it was wet) are nailed to the studs or 2x4 uprights behind the plaster. 

These nails can be found using one of my favorite tools, a magnetic stud-finder. Some people call this a “compass” stud-finder because it’s very much like a compass. It has a magnetic rod mounted at it’s midpoint so that it can spin freely inside of a plastic bubble about 2” in diameter. If you run it along the wall, the rod will dart around and point, like a good bloodhound, right at the nail hidden in the wall. This shows you where the stud is and where you can drill or nail (although nailing has its own tricks). 

I think it’s a very good idea to use the device to locate all of the nails in the region of wall you’re going to be working on using a sharp pencil. You only need a small mark. When you have a lot of marks made, you can run a straight-edge along the vertical lines of nail spots to see if you can approximate the actual middle of the stud. Nails might not be centered on the stud but if you look at a long line of these pencil marks, you can probably guess pretty well where the stud center is and eliminate the odd one that was on an edge. 

Keep in mind that you may have pairs of nails on some studs where the lathing strips meet. The point between the two nails is the stud center, more or less. If this is confusing, just start “mapping” the whole wall this way and you’ll soon figure out what I’m talking about. Some points will have one nail and some will have two about 1” or more apart. 

Once you’ve done this, you can drill a small hole for a screw or a nail using a common drill bit. I keep cheap or old bits for this purpose because plaster and other similar materials will dull the bit. These cheapo bits are perfect for any such dirty job. 

If you’re attaching directly to a stud, the weight bearing is much better and you can use up to very large nails or screws, depending on what’s being attached. This is definitely the way to go for shelving. 

If you want to attach something mid-span between the studs on lath and plaster, be very careful and patient. This stuff loves to crack when hit, or drilled with the wrong bit. Plaster is stiff and the wood lath is springy. When you hit or drill the wooden lath and it springs about, the brittle plaster wants to separate, so you need a slow method and a sharp implement. 

You can start to drill a hole with a dull bit if you like but you should drill through the lath (about 1/4” inward) with the sharpest bit you have so that it will not be grabbed and pulled about the way a dull bit might. You can then attach a toggle bolt or another similar anchor. 

There are several new kinds available but this needs to be something that will compress from the inside to the outside without applying much pressure outward radially from the hole. This, again is to prevent cracking. You’ll really need to use The Force on this one because plaster is very touchy stuff. 

With drywall, life is somewhat easier. Drilling is much more forgiving, although a very dull bit can punch through the paper skin too roughly (yes, I did say paper) or crush the chalky substrate, rather than carving a nice neat hole. Try to use a fairly sharp bit and take your time. 

Again, studs can be found the same way, with a magnetic finder, although I’ll also mention the modern stud-finders (take one of these to a nightclub for laughs sometime and let me know how it works out) that use something akin to radar called radiolocation. They’re very cool but quirky and take some getting use to. 

If you’re attaching something like a sheetrock screw (very narrow) or a nail, no drilling is needed. A large screw should be predrilled. Now the fun stuff. If you’re attaching to drywall between the studs, I very much like the new mega-screws made of plastic or aluminum that just screw themselves into the sheetrock (predrilling a small hole is best). These tighten up as they reach the end of their ability to turn and make a great and reusable point to install a screw of the right size. 

You can buy them in sets with the screws that fit into them if you’re not sure how to match them up. Ask as the store and they’ll fix you up. Although these are my favorites. I’ll also add the old fashioned plastic anchor or “mollie” to the list. These can work in either plaster or drywall if you’re careful to make the right-sized hole and you won’t be hanging anything especially heavy. They also work on concrete and stucco, although you’ll need a masonry bit to drill those holes. 

Funny how a simple thing like hanging a screw in a wall can be such a bear and how a few new ideas can take a lot of anxiety away. O.K., get to work! 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.?

There’s a lively side discussion going on within a California native-plants email list about how to garden with the least impact. 

Part of it hinges on things like the comparative drainage of blue path fines versus gold path fines—“fines” or “quarry waste” are the almost-sand-sized bits of rock you see around some civic trees, for example at the Ashby BART station—when used as inorganic mulch. 

Some native plants do better in “unimproved” soil than in the loamy garden soil that organic mulches eventually make.  

From that point, the topic moved to just how much one is screwing up by importing things over great distances using resources like petroleum. This one reaches into homes, too: Imagine the real cost of hauling a few tons of granite for garden rocks or countertops from China. (Then there’s that interesting trade imbalance that seems to profit a very few Americans, at least in the long run.) But how much more of the Sierra do you want to mine? 

Those of us who live in the flatlands where the native rock is mud might despair of ever having the flag path or planting wall or featured boulder we dream of, if we also want a clear conscience. If you really want to torment yourself, there are a couple of places around the Richmond/Albany/El Cerrito border to do so.  

American Soil is the better known, having been right here in Berkeley for years, at Bancroft between the railroad tracks and Aquatic Park. I took my brand-new pickup down there to baptize it with a cubic yard of Walt Whitman, one of their most useful compost mixes. Here came a guy on a front-loader; he raised it waaaayy up and dropped its load into my truck. “Oof!” said the truck, and then we drove home very slowly because the braking distance was new to me. Lesson: a cubic yard of dirt about fills a six-foot compact pickup bed.  

American Soil, in its new location north of Central Avenue on the frontage road, has amazing big rocks, pavers, amusing sculptures, and a menu of some 15 soil amendments and various mulches and gravels, with swatches in a bin to help you choose. They carry assorted handy supplies like jute netting and rhizome barriers. The inimitable Keeyla Meadows has a display garden there, too.  

On the other side of Central Avenue, on the same frontage road, is the comparative upstart Acapulco Rock & Soil. It has a smaller menu of soil amendments, mulches, rock, sand, cobbles, and fines, but if it has the rock you’re fated to fall in love with, you’re in luck: the prices there are a shade cheaper than American Soil’s. Their quick can-I-help-you works well for those new to gardening or just bewildered.  

Here’s the rub, at any such store. The stated prices are just for the stuff; delivery can cost more than the material. So if you have a good friend with a pickup, you know the time to call in your favors. You can get stuff by the bag, too—more pricey and heavy lifting if you need lots. So call in your favors from the friends with linebackers in the house. And for mercy’s sake, feed them.  

TUESDAY, APRIL 18 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theater Lab: muwumpin presents “Frankie & Johnny” Mon. and Tues. to April 18 at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $10. 841-6500.  

FILM 

Vantage Points: New Documentaries by Women “The Joy of LIfe” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Schwartz introduces “Earthquake Exodus, 1906” at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., followed by a reception at the McCreary-Greer House, 2318 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15. 841-2242. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bruce & Lloyd’s Tri Tip Trio at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 841-JAZZ.  

Trombonga 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. 

Brian Kane Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19 

THEATER 

The Marsh Berkeley “Faulty Intelligence”satirical songs by Roy Zimmerman, Wed.-Thurs. at 7 p.m. at 2118 Allston Way, through April 27. Tickets are $15-$22. www.themarsh.org 

FILM 

Latino Film Festival “Cachimba” at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$6. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Banff Mountain Film Festival Wed. and Thurs. at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $13-$16. 527-4140. 

Film 50: History of Cinema “Cries and Whispers” at 3 p.m. and Video: Recent and Strange at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Mount Fuji: Hidden in Plain Sight” with Christine Guth in conjunction with the exhibit “Hideo Hagiwara - Mount Fuji Woodblock Prints” at 5 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

Ben Ehrenreich reads from his novel “The Suitors” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Noah Eli Gordon and Sara Veglahn, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568.  

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 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with music by Cindy Cox, poetry by John Campion at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. 

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

Jules Broussard at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 841-JAZZ.  

The Dale Ann Bradley Band, Kentucky-based bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Dave Stein Bubhub at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Sheol, Normal Like You, Minus Vince at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Tinariwen, South Saharan rock, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, APRIL 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Under a Rock” recent paintings by Jean Fawver. Reception at 5:30 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

THEATER 

“The Bizarro Baloney Show” with Dan Piraro, comedy, video, songs, cartoons, and more, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$18. 849-2568.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Bancroft Library at 100” Curator’s Talk by Jack von Euw at 5:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum. 642-0808.  

Conversation with Author Isabel Allende in celebration of National Library Week, at 7 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Carole Terwilliger Meyers presents a slide talk on “Weekend Adventures in San Francisco and Northern California” at 7 p.m. at the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512.  

Colin Whitehead reads form his comic novel “Apex Hides the Hurt” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Word Beat Reading Series with John Rowe and Katie McAllaster Weaver at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“I’m A Performer” Concert with Jefferson and Oxford students at 8:30 a.m. at Jefferson Elementary School, 1400 Ada St. 841-2800. 

Michael Chapdelaine, acoustic guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

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

Move, Sin Voz at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Showtime @ 11 Hip Hop at 10 p.m. at the Ivy Room, 585 San Pablo Ave. at Solano. 524-9220.  

Gene Bertoncini, solo jazz guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Omar Sosa Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m.at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

FRIDAY, APRIL 21 

CHILDREN 

“Percussion Discussion” a performance by Ken Bergmann, including making your own instruments, from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $7.50-$9.50. 642-5132. 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “The Devil’s Disciple” by G.B. Shaw, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. through May 6. Tickets are $12. 649-5999.  

Aurora Theatre “Small Tragedy” Wed.-Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 14. Tickets are $38. 843-4822.  

BareStage “The Fantasticks” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., at Cesar Chavez Student Center, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$12. 642-3880.  

Berkeley Rep “The Glass Menagerie” at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $59. Runs through May 31. 647-2949.  

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Animal Crackers” at 8 p.m. Fri and Sat., and Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through May 20. Tickets are $12-$20. 524-9132.  

Impact Theater “Money & Run Episode 4: Go Straight, No Chaser,” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. Cost is $10-$15. Runs through May 27. 464-4468.  

Masquers Playhouse “Relative Values” by Noel Coward. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through May 6. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.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.  

Subterranean Shakespeare “Richard III” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. at Rose in Live Oak Park, through May. 20. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Is It a Crow?” Abstract works by eight Bay Area artists. Reception at 6 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs to May 25. 601-4040, ext. 111. www.wcrc.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John Hideyo Hamamura describes the Japanese-American experience in his novel “The Color of the Sea” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

En Pointe Youth Dance Company “Horizons” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $6-$10. enpointedance@yahoo.com 

Berkeley Dance Project 2006 Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-9925. 

Paufve Dance “The Big Squeeze” at 8 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz at College. Tickets are $$10-$15. Reservations required. 428-9713.  

“Four Choreographers/One Connection” Dance performance Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Mills College, Lisser Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 430-2175. 

Oakland East Bay Symphony with Karla Donehew, violin, Young Artist Competition Winner, at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway. Pre-concert lecture at 7:05 p.m. Tickets are $15-$60. 625-8497.  

The Georges Lammam Ensemble at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. Benefit for the Palestinian youth of Deir Ibzi’a. 849-2568.  

Project Greenfield, Midnight Madness at 9 p.m. at Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5.  

California Bach Society “Monteverdi: Missa in illo tempore” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. 415-262-0272.  

Salvador Santana at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

John Newby & his Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Caribbean Allstars at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

Bittersweet, americana, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Eddie Marshall Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Renee Asteria and Deborah Crooks at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Bart Davenport, Mushroom, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Deadfall, Formaldahyde Junkies, I Object, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

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

Omar Sosa Quartet, featuring Pee Wee Ellis at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 22 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Colibri, songs in English and Spanish, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568.  

Create Your Own Flip Book A free workshop with Roberta Gould from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Earth Day Glass Blowing Demonstration from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Cohn-Stone Studios, 560 South 31st St., near Regatta Blvd exit, Richmond. Also on Sun. 234-9690.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature reads from his memoir “You Must Set Forth at Dawn” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Rhythm & Muse Open Mic Night at 7 p.m. at at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., between Eunice & Rose Sts. Admission free. 644-6893.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Chrysalis” by Clark Suprynowicz and John O’Keefe at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300.  

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Ode to Joy” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant Sts. Tickets are $28-$62. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

En Pointe Youth Dance Company “Horizons” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $6-$10. enpointedance@yahoo.com 

Paufve Dance “The Big Squeeze” at 8 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz at College. Tickets are $$10-$15. Reservations required. 428-9713.  

Berkeley Dance Project 2006 Works by Margaret Jenkins, Reggie Wilson and Ellis Wood at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-9925. 

Trinity Chamber Concerts, The Music of Walter Gieseking, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St.. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Kensington Symphony with Chauncey Aceret, cello, Young Soloist Competition Winner, 8 p.m. Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. Donation $8-$10. 524-9912.  

“Four Choreographers/One Connection” Dance performance at 8 p.m. at Mills College, Lisser Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 430-2175. 

Jai Uttal Kirtan Devotional Music Series at 7 p.m. Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Tickets are $15-$18. 843-2787.  

Jen Spool at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $10-$15, no one turned away. 644-2204. 

Erica Azim, traditional Shona mbira music of Zimbabwe at 8 p.m. at the Mahea Uchiyama Center for International Dance, 729 Heinz Ave. 

Justice, Jazz & Decadent Desserts with Ben Brandzel, of MoveOn.org, George Brooks, jazz sazophonist, and members of Berkeley High School Jazz Band, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $10-$50. 547-2424, ext. 110. www.jycajustice.org  

The Mixers, classic rock and blues at 9:30 p.m. at The Pub at Baltic Square, 135 Park Place, Pt. R ichmond. Cost is $5. 237-4782. 

Carne Cruda, Latin, funk, cumbia, reggae at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$7. 849-2568.  

Jessica Neighbor & her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Wild Catahoulas at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

Sam Misner & Megan Smith at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Kasey Knudsen Sextet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Jennifer Johns, Bumbalo & Sok the Virgo at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Mark Levine Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Eric Swinderman Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Kurt Ribak Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473.  

Don Villa & Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Conspiracy of Beards, The Pillows, Loop Station at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Internal Affairs, Blue Monday, Miles Away, Panic at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Omar Sosa Quartet, featuring Pee Wee Ellis at 8 and 10 p.m., at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

SUNDAY, APRIL 23 

CHILDREN 

Mary Ellen Hill, stories in honor of Earth Day at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054.  

THEATER 

Josh Kornbluth “Ben Franklin Unplugged” at 2 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. Tickets are $50 and up. 848-3988. www.bethelberkeley.org 

FILM 

San Francisco Women’s Film Festival “All is Normal” and “Snowblink” at 5 and 8 p.m. at the Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $8. 814-2400. www.sfwff.com 

Watchword Cartoon Festival and brunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5. 845-0304. www.watchwordpress.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Berkeley Architecture of Bernard Maybeck” with UC Architecture Professor Emeritus Kenneth H. Cardwell at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181.  

“If You Don’t Listen You Don’t Hear” Spoken word, poetry and more by East Bay youth at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dr. Amy Tiemann, author of “Mojo Mom” at 3 p.m. at Play Café, 4400 Keller Ave., Oakland. Cost is $29.95, includes book. Registration required. 632-4433. 

Island Literary Series, jazz and poetry at 3 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $2-$4. 841-JAZZ. 

Poetry Flash with Basil King and Martha King at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Krystian Zimerman, piano, at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus Tickets are $34-$58. 642-9988.  

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Ode to Joy” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church. Tickets are $28-$62. 415-392-4400.  

Berkeley Dance Project 2006 at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-9925. 

Paufve Dance “The Big Squeeze” at 8 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz at College. Tickets are $$10-$15.428-9713.  

“Four Choreographers/One Connection” Dance performance at 2 p.m. at Mills College, Lisser Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 430-2175. 

Bay Area Follies Senior Center dancers at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $10-$15 at the door. 

Vasen, Swedish folk revivalists, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Dave Matthews Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

TrioMetrik New Media Compositions at 8 p.m. at Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, 1750 Arch. Tickets are $10. www.cnmat.berkeley.edu  

Americana Unplugged, bluegrass and oldtime showcase, at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715.  

Ajamu Akinyele with Gemini Soul at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe. 595-5344. 

Wire Graffiti, Compton SF, Dynamite 8 at 3 p.m. at Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5. 444-6174. 

108, Look Back and Laugh, Lights Out Gather at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

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East Bay composer Clark Suprynowicz and San Francisco playwright John O’Keefe have joined forces for the new opera Chrysalis, “a hallucinatory riff on cosmetic surgery and genetic manipulation,” to be premiered by Berkeley Opera, April 22-30, at the Julia Morgan Theatre on College Avenue. 

Jonathan Khuner and Sara Jobin are musical directors for the production and Mark Streshinsky is in charge of stage direction and design. 

If a facelift for contemporary life and art seems a cogent a reading of O’Keefe’s libretto of driven cosmetics magnate Ellen Ermaine (mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggott, with soprano Marnie Breckenridge as Ellen’s doppelganger) and the “twilight zone” of her new ways of transforming the body, Clark Suprynowicz wryly concurs.  

“John’s written this piece about identity and image,” Suprynowicz said. “These are very topical themes, and reflect on the shifting nature of music in my lifetime, the incredible sea-change that’s taken place, the great eclecticism that’s become an integral part of ‘new classical music,’ of the idea people have when I say I’m composing.” 

Not wanting to substitute subtext for text, Suprynowicz reflected on the future of music in a world where “people can be renovated like a building ... What’s traditional in music that’s very recognizable, what you’ve heard before, is being juxtaposed, and presented together with new electronic and synthesized sounds, trying to make sense together with the traditional and the modern ... It’s two worlds in collision; people walking around as they were, and also unrecognizable, as others.” 

Suprynowicz doesn’t think in terms of genre when composing, and describes Chrysalis as a project in musical theater more than as opera in the traditional sense. 

“Not very long ago, the people in the conservatories thought tonality, the major chords were dead. Then others started using all that again; it was like tribal music,” he said. “Trends are hard to predict. Music will seem to settle in different genres, which is very convenient for commercial interests. And it’s easy to slip into composing that way, too, to fit in the right bin at Virgin that the customer’s used to going to. That’s like borrowing a suit of clothes. The composers we admire left a canon, developed strong identities. The only way I know to emulate what they did is to differentiate what I do from what we’re familiar with.” 

Suprynowicz has been composing for the stage for 20 years. Chrysalis is his fourth evening-length piece. His Caliban Dreams, an opera commissioned by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, was performed two years ago at the Magic Theatre, and has been successfully staged outside the Bay Area. 

But he began his career as a jazz bassist, “a gun for hire, learning what I could about that craft,” he said. Moving to the Bay Area from New York in the early ‘80s, Suprynowicz made his living as a bassist, formed the Bay Area Composers Orchestra with Paul Nash, studied at the SF Conservatory—and at the same time got involved in theater with Rinde Eckhardt. 

“It satisfied a lot of what I wanted to be doing, to compose for a dramatic context, words and music,” he said. 

Suprynowicz thinks of Chrysalis ’ premiere as the lucky confluence of the various talents that have collaborated in its making. 

“John O’Keefe is the sort of playwright who’s parsimonious with words. There are spaces between the words in his plays that music could fill; he told me he feels he writes operatically. This is like Beckett, or Pinter—versus other fine playwrights like Shaw, or Tony Kushner, whose dialogue is dense in a way music wouldn’t suit so well.” 

Berkeley Opera presents Chrysalis at 8 p.m. April 22, at 7:30 p.m. April 26, at 8 p.m. April 28 and at 2 p.m. April 30 at the Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College Ave. $10-$40. For more information, call (925) 798-1300 or see www.berkeleyopera.org.

The dawn redwoods don’t mind the soggy weather; they’re leafing out more or less on schedule. I suppose they evolved with wetter weather to begin with, so no surprise there. In other ways, this tree has been full of surprises. 

There are dawn redwoods, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, in several private gardens around Berkeley, and on the UC campus (right around the corner from Trader Vic Bergeron’s oddly squatting sabertooth cat statue, among other places) and in the UC Botanical Garden; there are a couple of young ones beside the Joseph Charles tennis courts on MLK at Oregon. People who’ve moved into properties with established dawn redwoods have been unpleasantly surprised in autumn when the leaves turned russet and fell. Some have—horrors!—had the “dead” trees cut down. But this species, like the Southeastern baldcypress (Taxodium distychum) it resembles and unlike our native coast redwoods, is naturally deciduous.  

Right now its new leaves are tender, pale green feathers against pale red-brown, shreddy bark. The trunk of every one I’ve seen that’s younger than a few hundred years is vertically rippling, muscular, tapering from a broad base to the narrow spire of the tree’s single leader.  

Dawn redwood is one of few living species that was named and classified from fossils alone, long before anyone in the scientific community that uses those Linnean binomials had seen a living individual. In a way, it’s a living fossil, like our coastal Sequoia sempervirens and Sequoiadendron giganteum, their massive relative in the Sierra Nevada. All are relict species, survivors of forests and families that existed over much greater territories in a different world climate several million years ago. Dawn redwood fossils have been found around the northern hemisphere from Spitsbergen through Alaska and our Midwest to Greenland.  

The interests of quite various academics came together to identify and find this relic. In 1941, a Japanese paleobotanist, Shigeru Miki, decided that the Pliocene fossils he was seeing weren’t just another Taxodium after all, in fact weren’t quite like anything else, and named them their species binomial. News like this didn’t travel fast across the battle lines of World War II.  

That same year, a Chinese forester-professor named T. Kan noticed an interesting tree on a roadside in Szechuan. As it was winter and the tree was bare, he couldn’t collect the usual specimens, but he asked a local resident to collect some in spring. The specimens weren’t identified until they’d passed through many hands over several years, and in 1946 reached someone who’d read Miki’s publication, one Dr. H. H. Hu of the Fan Institute in (then) Peiping. He matched the living samples with Miki’s recently named fossils.  

Dr. Hu wrote to Dr. Elmer D. Merrill of Harvard and Dr. Ralph Chaney of UC Berkeley to announce the find and request help in preserving the species. Merrill sent $250, enough to fund a seed-gathering trip by Hu’s colleagues, and the seed was redistributed to interested gardens and arboretums all over the world. Chaney, however, took a different approach. He wanted to meet this living fossil on its home turf. 

UC’s Chaney wanted to meet this old-new tree in the flesh. He’d traveled to China with Roy Chapman Andrews’ famous 1925 Mongolia-Gobi Desert expedition, which had discovered the first Velociraptor fossils—and, in fact, had collected unrecognized dawn redwood fossils. Over 20 years later, Chaney’s health was barely up to the trip; he had to be carried in a rude palanquin for part of the way, through freezing storms on treacherous trails.  

He’d already met the type specimen, the 480-year-old, 112-foot-tall individual whose seeds had been sent out and whose lineaments were used to describe the species. The hard part was a farther trip, to see a whole forest of dawn redwoods.  

He saw there a mixed forest of broadleaf trees—birch, beech, oak, sweetgum, maple, chestnut—in which the dawn redwood was a citizen, as its fossils had suggested was the case through its ancient range. “It’s like a botanical alumni reunion,” he said. “This is what much of the world looked like a million centuries ago.” 

Such a reunion takes place not only in arboretums around the world, but on out city streets, planted with many of those trees now. Continents and climates drift, and humans drift too, just faster. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

A young dawn redwood just starting to leaf out. This one lives beside the tennis courts at Oregon Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in South Berkeley. The muscular trunk is a good fieldmark for the species. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 18 

Berkeley Garden Club Spring Tea and Flower Arranging Demonstration by Najat Nicola, Danville floral designer, at 1 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St., Cost is $8. 527-5641. 

Presentation of Certificate of Honor to the City of Berkeley from the City of San Francisco for Berkeley’s Earthquake relief efforts in 1906, at 3:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 

“Earthquake Exodus 1906: Berkeley Responds to the San Francisco Refugees” Illustrated lecture by author Richard Schwartz at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Followed by a reception at the Mcgreary-Greer House, 2318 Durant Ave. Cost is $15. 841-2242.  

Anniversary of the 1906 Quake from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $7.50-$9.50. 642-5132. 

Volunteer Reading Coach Training for all interested in volunteering with 4th and 5th graders at 1 p.m. at Oxford Elementary School, 1130 Oxford St. To RSVP call 528-2045.  

“Hiking the John Muir Trail” with author Jeff Alt at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

“John Walker Lindh: Constitutional and Human Rights Implications of an Extraordinary Case” with Frank Lindh at 7 p.m. at the College Preparatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway at Brookside, Oakland. 339-7726. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19  

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for signs of spring, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Bring a light-colored plain T-shirt for our craft. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

City of Oakland Earth Expo Learn about energy, waste reduction, urban design, urban nature, transportation, environmental health, and water, from 10 am. to 2 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway. 238-7611. www.oaklandpw.com 

Free Mercury Thermometer Exchange sponsored by East Bay Municipal Utility District from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Bring as many mercury thermometers as you have in original cases or in two zipper bags. One free digital thermometer per household. 287-1651.  

“East Bay Nature Walks Kick-off” An introduction to the 2006-7 series of East Bay talks and nature walks organized by Close to Home. This year’s series is on Living with Wildlife. At 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. at 10th St. Cost is $7. www.close-to-home.org 

Bird Walk on Mt. Wanda led by Park Ranger Cheryl Abel. Meet at 8:30 a.m. at the Park and Ride lot at the corner of Alhabra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. Wear sturdy shoes and bring water and binoculars. Rain cancels. 925-228-8860. 

Great Decisions Foreign Policy Association Lecture with Thomas Aragon, Center for Infectious Diseases, UCB on “Pandemics and Security” at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $5. 526-2925. 

Petroleum Politics, Corporate Accountability, and the Environmental Trial of the Century” with Amazon Watch on the case against Chevron in Ecudor at 6 p.m. in th eSproul Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Donation $5. 415-487-9600. 

“THIRST” A documentary about the world water crisis by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman with discussion, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers Office, 1403 Addison St. Light supper served. 548-9696. 

Celebrate Habitot’s 8th Birthday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Bring a present—a donated toy, new or used—for our Toy Lending Library and receive a free admission guest pass. Habitot is located on 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org  

“Social Justice and the Prophets” with author Rita Nakashima Brock at 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing St. 848-3696. www.fccb.org 

Banff Mountain Film Festival Wed. and Thurs. at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $13-$16. 527-4140. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Lonely Planet Travel Series with Greg Benchwick on Bolivia and South America at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, 124 14th St. 238-3136. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704.  

THURSDAY, APRIL 20 

Preventing Violence Among our Teens A Community and Parent Forum at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Middle School, 1500 Derby St. at Sacramento. Includes a Panel discussion by local experts from Children’s Hospital, Berkeley Police Department, and Berkeley Unified School District, followed by questions and comments. 644-6320. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for signs of spring, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Bring a light-colored plain T-shirt for our craft. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Creepy Crawlies Insect-inspired activities for ages 3-7 from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $7.50-$9.50. 642-5132. 

“The Ecology of Birds’ Songs and Identifying Them by Ear” with avian ecologist Daniel Edelstein at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

“Mexican Americans and the Environment” with Dr. Devon Peña, discussion at noon in the Heller Lounge, M.L. King Bldg., UC Campus, and book-signing at 5:30 p.m. in 30 Stephens Hall, UC Campus. 415- 561-6625 ext. 311. 

“Socially Responsible Network’s Annual Budget Update” Learn about the 2006 fiscal effects on the local, state, and federal level, at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. Cost is $10. RSVP to 272-6060. srnbay@hotmail.com 

Teach-In and Vigil on U.S. Torture Policy, every Thurs. from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. outside the classroom of Prof. John Yoo, Boalt Hall, UC Campus. Weekly speakers. www.bpf.org 

“A Large Pill to Swallow: Navigating the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Coverage Program” with health insurance counselors at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Please bring a list of your medications and dosages with you. 559-1406. 

“The Elections in Palestine and Israel: What Do They Mean Now And For The Future” with Hatem Bazian and Mitchell Plitnick, at 7:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Donation $5-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. 465-1777. www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. in the LeConte School cafeteria, Russell St. entrance. 843-2602, KarlReeh@aol.com  

Ask a Union Mechanic every Thursday from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Parker & 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.  

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, APRIL 21 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Peirre Miege on “Internal Problems in China” 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.  

“Votergate” a film followed by discussion with Jim Soper at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Donation $7. 528-5403.  

“A Large Pill to Swallow: Navigating the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Coverage Program” with health insurance counselors at 1 p.m. at the Center for Independent Living, 2539 Telegraph Ave. Please bring a list of your medications and dosages with you. 559-1406. 

Knit and Crochet Show and Marketplace Fri. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Oakland Marriott City Center. www.KnitandCrochetShow.com 

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. A drop-in, rated scholastic tournament follows from 7 to 8 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. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil at noon at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 22 

Berkeley Earth Day Celebration from noon to 5 p.m. and Civic Center Park. Cultural performances, food, craft and community booths and activities. To volunteer call 654-6346, ext. 2. 

West County Earth Day with crafts, workshops, entertainment and food from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 101 Pittsburg Ave., one block off the Richmond Parkway. 215-3125. 

Earth Day Cleanup of the Berkeley Shoreline from 10 a.m. to noon at the Eastshore State Park in Berkeley. To sign up call 544-2515. 

Earth Day Computer Recycling Drop-off from 10 a.m. Elephant Pharmacy parking lot, 1607 Shattuck Ave.  

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

Earth Day at Habitot from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Celebrate the environment and make hand-made recycled paper, nature collages, and art sculptures at 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111.  

Rhododendron Flower Show and plant sale, by the American Rhododendron Society, with rare and unusual varieties in all colors, Sat. from noon to 5 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Lakeside Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Free. www.calchapterars.org 

Bioforum: Water and California A look at current research on California’s waterways and water uses from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $15-$30. To register call 415-321-8104. 

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour: “Earthquake Relief Efforts on the UC Campus in 1906” led by Bruce Goodell, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc 

“No Toddler Left Behind? The Pros and Cons of California’s Preschool for All Act” with Bruce Fuller, David Kirp and Louis Freedberg, moderator, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Graduate School of Education, Tolman Hall Room 2515, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Creating Your Garden Paradise with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Landscape Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Edith Coliver Festival of Cultures with a focus on Switzerland, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. at Bancoft. Cost is $5-$7. 642-9461. 

“President Bush: Reckless Disregard for the Truth—and the Law” with Elizabeth de la Vega, former Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Home of Truth Center, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Sponsored by the Alameda Public Affairs Forum. Free, donations accepted. www.alamedaforum.org 

“Cancer in Other Words” A series of four writing workshops for women on Sat. through May 13 at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Summit Campus, 450 30th St., Oakland. Registration required. 869-8833. 

Guide Dogs for the Blind A presentation by Jan Robitscher and her dog Christmas at 11 a.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. All ages welcome. 524-3043. 

Emeryville’s Spring Festival with fun for the entire family from noon to 2 p.m. at Bay St., Emeryville. 655-4002.  

Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk orientation meeting at 1 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd floor meeting room, 2090 Kittredge St. The walk will take place in July. Benefits the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. RSVP to coaches@theovernight.org 

Noetic Sciences Earth Day Conference from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Scottish Rite Auditorium, Oakland. Cost is $75. www.noetic.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

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, APRIL 23 

Turtle Time Meet the awakening reptiles from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Draft Registration and Conscientious Objection—What Every Teenager Needs to Know” A workshop from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. Free. 925-274-0900. 

Celebrate People’s Park 37th Anniversary from noon to 7 p.m. with music, dancing, children’s activities, spaekers and food. 390-0830. 

Create a Perennial Border Using California Natives. A workshop with horticulturist Nathan Smith, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $20-$25. Registration required. 643-2755. 

“Berkeley Architecture of Bernard Maybeck” with UC Architecture Professor Emeritus Kenneth H. Cardwell at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181.  

Berkeley Cybersalon meets to discuss “Asperger’s: The Geek Syndrome?” with Steve Silberman, Ellen Ullman, Annette Blackman and Philip Rosedale, at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $15. Please RSVP to 527-0450. 

Dog Park Behavior Training from 10 a.m. to noon in Ohlone Dog Park, Grant St. and Hearst Ave., and on Sun. April 30. Cost for both sessions is $15 and free for ODPA members. People (and dogs) must attend both sessions. 845-4213. ohlonedogpark.org 

Loose leash Walking Workshop at 3 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2128 Cedar St. Cost is $35. Registration required. 849-9323. companyofdogs.com 

“Don’t Be Six Feet Under Without a Plan” Learn about creating a living will, powers of attorney and end of life services at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3207. 

Fashion Fusion 2006 Show Annual charity fashion show at 3 and 7 p.m. in the Pauley Ballroom, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, UC Campus. Tickets are $5-$10. http://fashion.berkeley.edu 

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. 2315 Durant Ave. 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Hands-On Bicycle Clinic on flat repair from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker “Structures of the Ego” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 24 

Holocaust Rememberence Day at noon at City Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Featuring Chana Bloch, Paula Fass, David Joseph-Goteiner, Joseph Rothberg, Ruth Atkin, and Ljuba Davis. Honoring Ben Sieradski and all Survivors present . 981-7170. 

Berkeley High Red & Golden Girls Reunion Luncheon for women graduates of BHS 50 or more years ago, at 11 a.m. at Double Tree Hotel, Berkeley Marina. Cost is $30. For reservations call 524-6877. 

“Perspectives on Berkeley: Past and Present” Chuck Wollenberg’s Berkeley history class at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Meets Mon. evenings through May 22. Free. 981-6150. 

ONGOING 

Poll Workers Needed in Alameda County for June 6 Primary Election. Poll workers must be eligible to register to vote in California, have basic clerical skills. Training classes begin in May. To sign up call 272-6971. 

Public Art Project for the Children’s Fairyland, City of Oakland. Artist Request for Qualifications. Applications are due May 17 and can be found online at www.oaklandculturalarts.org 238-2105. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Housing Authority meets Tues., April 18, at 6:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. ww.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/housingauthority 

City Council meets Tues., April 18, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., April 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., April 19, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/aging 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee meets Wed. April 19, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

planning/landuse/dap/ 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., April 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed. April 19, at 7 p.m. at South Berkeley Senior Center., Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/library  

School Board meets Wed. April 19, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Queen Graham 644-6147 or Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., April 20, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Kristin Tehrani, 981-5356. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/health 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., April 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/designreview  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., April 20, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/transportation 

?

FRIDAY, APRIL 14 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “The Devil’s Disciple” by G.B. Shaw, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through May 6. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “Small Tragedy” Wed.-Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 14. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

BareStage “The Fantasticks” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. April 23 and 30 at 2 p.m., through April 30, at the basement of Cesar Chavez Student Center, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$12. 642-3880. barestage.berkeley.edu 

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. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Berkeley Rep “The Glass Menagerie” at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $59. Runs through May 31. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Animal Crackers” at 8 p.m. Fri and Sat., and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theater, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through May 20. Tickets are $12-$20. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Masquers Playhouse “Relative Values” by Noel Coward. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through May 6. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

“Takashi’s Dream,” the story of Takashi Teanemori, an atomic bomb survivor from Hiroshima, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Remake/Remodel:Rebound” Studies of Transformation with ACCI artists Clayton Bain, Dina Gewing, Kate Kerrigan and Dobee Snowber. Reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527.  

FILM 

Brave Outsiders: The Films of Kim Longinotto “Runaway” at 7 p.m. amd “Divorce Iranian Style” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Antonin Kratochvil, documentary photographer, will speak at 7 p.m. at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, corner of Euclid and Hearst. Cost is $10. www.fotovision.org 

Joel Primack describes “The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chamber Music at noon at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Elephant Hunter, Angel of Thorns, DSEPD, Swamp Donkey at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

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

Odile Lavault & The Baguette Quartette at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Sam Bevan, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Mitch Greenhill & Mayne Smith with Peter Spelman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Glenn Walters Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

DJ and Brook, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Sam Misner & Megan Smith at 8 p.m. at Spuds, 3290 Adeline St. at Alcatraz. Cost is $7-$10. 

Nels Cline Singers at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Funeral Shock, Blown to Bits, Fatality at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Atman Roots, jazz, funk, and afro-cuban soul, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

John Scofield Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 15 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Estela Knott & David Berzonsky, songs from the Americas, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“From the Ground Up” Paintings and installation by Alena Rudolph. Reception at 6 p.m. at Union Art Gallery, 1232 19th St., Oakland. 444-0924.  

“Eclectix” New gallery opening with an ongoing group show of mixed media works by Chris Fortin, Patricia Mitchell, Susan Billings, William Dunton, Karla Bruk and Chuck Mitchell. Reception at 6 p.m. at Eclectix Gallery, 7523 Fairmount Ave. at Colusa Ave., El Cerrito. 364-7216. 

COMEDY 

Final Round of the Bay Area Black Comedy Competition at 8 p.m. at the Oakland Paramount Theatre, 2021 Broadway. www.BlackComedyCompetition.com  

FILM 

Brave Outsiders: The Films of Kim Longinotto “The Day I Will Never Forget” at 6:30 p.m., and “Sisters in Law” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Javanese Music and Dance at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$10.  

Jazz at the Chimes with Melanie O’Reilly at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Donation of $15 requested for the artist. 228-3207. 

Mike Glendinning, jazz guitar, at 1 p.m. at A Cheerfull Noyse, music store, 1228 Solano Ave., Albany. Free. 524-0411. 

John Richardson Band at 9 p.m. at Circus Pub, 389 Colusa Ave., Kensington. Free and all ages. 

Robin Gregory & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Reggae Angels at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Los Boleros, traditional son montuno, son cubano, boleros, cumbia and merengue at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ross Hammond and the Jayn Pettingill/Debbie Poryes Duo at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Lost Weekend, classic western swing band, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Wits End, Sleep in Fame, Maxwell Adams at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Mark Levine Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Steve Heckman & Gini WIlson at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Sam Misner & Megan Smith, modern folk acoustic, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Howdy, The Bittersweets, Dame Satan at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Matt Heulitt Quartet, guitar, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Babyland, 8-Bit, Ninja Academy The Mormons at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 16 

FILM 

A Theater Near You “The Spirit of the Beehive” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Writing Salon Open House Reading and Art Show, with Suzy Parker, Alison Luterman, and Chris Malcomb at 3 p.m. at 1250 Addison St., Suite 204, at the Strawberry Creek Design Center, corner of Addison and Bonar. www.writingsalons.com 

Poetry Flash with The Five Fingers Review contributors Julie Carr, Jaime Robles and Meridith Stricker at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ricardo Piexoto/Mark Little Duo at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged, bluegrass and oldtime music showcase, at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Urban Achievers, The Castrati, Built for the Sea at 5:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Eda Maxym and the Imagination Club with Stephen Kent on didjeridu at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 17 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theater Lab: muwumpin presents “Frankie & Johnny” Mon. and Tues. to April 18 at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $10. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Andrea McLaughlin: Selected Black and White Photography from the Photolab Gallery, 1998-2006” at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., through June 17. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Aurora Theatre “Sinker” a reading of the play by Ron Campbell at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. Free. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Ilya Kaminsky, D.A. Powell, Tessa Rumsey and others read from “Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Juliet Eilperin talks about “Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the U.S. House of Representatives” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com  

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zilberella Monday at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Robert Stewart at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, APRIL 18 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theater Lab: muwumpin presents “Frankie & Johnny” Mon. and Tues. to April 18 at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $10. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Vantage Points: New Documentaries by Women “The Joy of LIfe” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Schwartz introduces “Earthquake Exodus, 1906” at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., followed by a reception at the McCreary-Greer House, 2318 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15. 841-2242. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bruce & Lloyd’s Tri Tip Trio at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Trombonga at 7 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. 

Brian Kane Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19 

THEATER 

The Marsh Berkeley “Faulty Intelligence”satirical songs by Roy Zimmerman, Wed.-Thurs. at 7 p.m. at 2118 Allston Way, through April 27. Tickets are $15-$22. www.themarsh.org 

FILM 

Latino Film Festival “Cachimba” at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$6. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Banff Mountain Film Festival Wed. and Thurs. at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $13-$16. 527-4140. 

Film 50: History of Cinema “Cries and Whispers” at 3 p.m. and Video: Recent and Strange at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Mount Fuji: Hidden in Plain Sight” with Christine Guth in conjunction with the exhibit “Hideo Hagiwara - Mount Fuji Woodblock Prints” at 5 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor. Sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Center for Japanese Studies http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

Ben Ehrenreich reads from his novel “The Suitors” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Noah Eli Gordon and Sara Veglahn, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with music by Cindy Cox, poetry by John Campion at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Whiskey Brothers Old Time and Bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

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

Jules Broussard at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. West Coast Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

The Dale Ann Bradley Band, Kentucky-based bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Dave Stein Bubhub, groove-driven funk at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Sheol, Normal Like You, Minus Vince at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Tinariwen, South Saharan rock, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Under a Rock” recent paintings by Jean Fawver. Reception at 5:30 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

THEATER 

“The Bizarro Baloney Show” with Dan Piraro, comedy, video, songs, cartoons, audience participation and more, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Bancroft Library at 100” Curator’s Talk by Jack von Euw at 5:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Conversation with Author Isabel Allende in celebration of National Library Week, at 7 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Carole Terwilliger Meyers presents a slide talk on the latest edition of her book, “Weekend Adventures in San Francisco and Northern California” at 7 p.m. at the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512.  

Colin Whitehead reads form his comic novel “Apex Hides the Hurt” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series with John Rowe and Katie McAllaster Weaver at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“I’m A Performer” Concert with Jefferson and Oxford students at 8:30 a.m. at Jefferson Elementary School, 1400 Ada St. 841-2800. 

Michael Chapdelaine, acoustic guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Blue Roots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Move, Sin Voz at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Showtime @ 11 Hip Hop at 10 p.m. at the Ivy Room, 585 San Pablo Ave. at Solano. 524-9220. www.ivyroom.com  

Gene Bertoncini, solo jazz guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Omar Sosa Quartet, featuring Pee Wee Ellis at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com™

A match struck in darkness on the “veranda” of a tenement fire escape to light a cigarette is the first illuminating ray in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, at Berkeley Rep, as Williams’ young “double,” would-be poet Tom Wingfield (Erik Lochtefeld) slowly drawls out, in Delta Faulknerian, the introduction to his nostalgic narration of a “memory play.” 

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician,” he says. “He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant guise of illusion.” 

Williams’ first great play, penned in 1944, is set during “that quaint period, the thirties” in St. Louis. “In Spain there was revolution. Here there was only shouting and confusion.” 

The Glass Menagerie is a quiet play, though, a lyrical excursion into a displaced Southern family living vicariously through dreams in otherwise straitened circumstances—and what happens when a long-expected, real-life Lochinvar appears suddenly out of the hazy sunset of those dreams. 

The straitened circumstances aren’t just those of the Depression. Sister Laura (Emily Donohoe) is crippled—though mother Amanda (Rita Moreno) insists that word never be used—with a bad leg and overwhelming self-consciousness. 

And the dreams aren’t equally distributed among the family trio: Tom dreams of escape, adventure—but goes to the movies; Laura plays her Victrola and tends to her “glass collection” of transparent animals; and Amanda fervently hopes for a future for her children, a gentleman caller for Laura, like the 17 she boasts of having received in one day in her girlhood, and struggles to keep the family together, sending Laura off mornings to a business college she’s long stopped attending, and archly cajoling and threatening Tom over his habits and his distractions. 

It’s a little ironic that Ms. Moreno’s genuine star presence finds its vehicle in wannabe-belle Amanda, who first comes on too demure, almost mousy, then gradually digs in with her motherly nagging, her almost-antebellum nostalgic recitals, rising to all-out tirades that dissolve into pleading. Amanda is the first, the test-run, of Williams’ famous monstres sacrées. 

Moreno carefully layers her character, punctuating the overly-artificial and nerve-wracking Southern poses and langeurs with sharp, quick gestures and movements, culminating in her shockingly funny apotheosis, “shaking her girlish ringlets” (as per the playwright’s stage direction) as she enters to greet Jim O’Connor (Terrance Riordan), the gentleman caller she’s dragooned Tom to invite to dinner from the shoe warehouse where both work. She is all dolled up in a “historic, almost” gown she just pulled out of the trunk. It is literally a museum piece, with one drooping flounce hanging from its otherwise perfect, rustling, mothballed finery.  

The exact dress was Moreno’s call, but perfectly fits the direction in which Les Waters’ interpretation leads the play. Williams is too often presented in full “breast-beating” fashion, but on the Rep’s Thrust Stage Waters’ adroit cast brings out the comedy that’s mixed with pathos. A touch of it’s almost Chaplinesque, as when Tom, who jokes and clowns to slough off Amanda’s high-handed routines, flies into a rage on his way out to the movies and tangles himself in his coat, accidently throwing it off onto the glass menagerie, provoking hysterics from Laura.  

It’s a clean, fresh reading of the text that dispenses with the usual half-baked emotional theatrics that luridly color too many productions of Williams’ best plays. But, in a way, it’s a little too clean and straight, like the set by Scott Bradley with its Strindbergian “second proscenium arch” dividing living and dining rooms, where Amanda often poses, all lit up, like memory, by a glow from beneath (Matt Frey’s lighting design). 

It could use a little more shabbiness in the set of this quietly desperate family, just as the action needs a touch of the theatrical that goes beyond the usual emotionalizing, beyond even the excellent comedy. 

At the crucial moment, when “the most realistic character in the play . . . an emissary from a world of reality we were somehow set apart from” enters this cabinet of grotesques (in Sherwood Anderson’s sense), Ms. Moreno takes Amanda to the far reaches of comedy. It is part of Williams’ dramaturgical dichotomy, like the Baudelairean poetry he, like Tom, tried to write: spleen and ideal, the nostalgia of memory and the humor of the present. 

Director Waters’ realism here is in lower case; it has a light, sensitive touch. It may blossom into the strange blooms of Williams’, or Amanda, the jonquil girl’s, imagination as the show runs, so good is the casting. 

Laura is all big eyes, downcast or gazing at life from a remote place, while conflicting thoughts animate her lips; Tom waiting for his life of adventure that proves to be another poem like the one written on a shoebox lid that gets him fired, taking him back, over and over, into what he’s left behind. 

Jim O’Connor, professionally genial and savvy, clumsily spitting out gum because it’s lost its taste, and apologizing, delivers the final word on Amanda’s extravagant antics, so well played by Moreno: “I guess this is what they mean by southern hospitality.” 

Photo By: Ken Friedman 

Rita Moreno as Amanda in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. 

It can be tempting to dismiss violent criminals, to simply lock them up and write them off. The details of their crimes justify it for us, allowing us to make them into monsters, to dehumanize and judge them. 

Shakespeare Behind Bars, opening today (Friday) at Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley, doesn’t offer that luxury. This award-winning documentary goes behind the scenes at Kentucky’s Luther Luckett Correctional Complex to remind us that the world is not so black and white, that men are not merely one thing or another but are complex and ever-evolving. 

Every year, volunteer director Curt Tofteland stages a Shakespeare play at Luckett, visiting the prison twice a week for nine months to work with his cast of convicts. The picture this film presents is disarming, for the movie is not just moving and entertaining, it is genuinely funny; prison would seem an unlikely setting for a movie of such warmth and compassion, humanity and joy. 

For this season, Tofteland has chosen The Tempest. He has selected this play for its themes of forgiveness and redemption, knowing these concepts will resonate with his cast, especially with the veterans who will be up for parole within months of the season’s conclusion. This may sound a bit heavy-handed at first, but we soon see that Tofteland’s relationship with these men is anything but patronizing; there is no condescension in his direction. Indeed, it is readily apparent that the men of Luckett not only enjoy these plays, but might have selected The Tempest themselves, given the choice, and for precisely the same reasons. 

The prisoners we meet are articulate and intelligent and often charismatic. They seem to come from all walks of life. Some are educated, some are not, but all are intellectually curious. Granted, this group is self-selecting; there are hundreds of prisoners at Luckett who have opted not to spend their time rehearsing Shakespeare, so we’re not exactly getting a representative sample. But the men presented here challenge many stereotypes. 

The troupe’s rehearsals are essentially group therapy sessions, with Tofteland in the role of facilitator. The men encourage and critique each other, each offering his own interpretation of character and motivation. And through this process each man gets closer to his own particular truth, gaining a greater understanding of his own character and motivation. It is fascinating to watch. And because it’s Shakespeare, and the dense language is not always easily understood, it gives them occasion to painstakingly deconstruct the play line by line, discovering the ways in which gesture and inflection can alter a scene’s meaning. Eventually the play will settle into something resembling a final form, but what matters to these actors is the process, the collaborative and cathartic act of creating a truthful ensemble performance.  

The insights often come indirectly and the men are often surprised by them. The roles in the play were cast deliberately by the actors themselves, so most of them start off with a certain level of awareness of the parallels between themselves and their characters. But gradually they peel away layers of meaning in Shakespeare’s lines, simultaneously delving deeper into their own thoughts and emotions. And through these revelations they develop greater sympathy and understanding for one another. There is growth here as well as catharsis. 

Big G, a bear of a man who looks more like a linebacker than a Shakespearian actor, offers key insights into the process: “I’ve often thought that a bunch of convicts would make great actors, because they’re used to lying and playing a role, but it’s the opposite of that. Because you have to tell the truth and inhabit a character. And that’s so scary for me and the guys in the group because we’re opening up our inner selves for everyone to see.” 

It is possible that these men would be averse to conventional therapy, that bravado and machismo would not allow such a frank discussion of self. But by staging these plays they are doing something more difficult and brave, opening themselves up and examining their own lives before an audience.  

We are witness to great camaraderie, moral support, friendship and compassion. They yearn for redemption. Some seek to forgive themselves; others find self-forgiveness hollow and instead seek forgiveness from friends and family, as well as from the society which has spurned them.  

Just as it is can be easy to dismiss the incarcerated, it is likewise easy to sentimentalize them, to believe that these men who strut across a prison stage have put their violent impulses behind them. But Shakespeare Behind Bars will not allow us that luxury either. In wracking one-on-one interviews the prisoners open up to the filmmakers, revealing the crimes for which they have been imprisoned as well as their hopes for some kind of closure.  

It can be difficult to rationalize the vibrant, passionate Shakespearians with the images they describe of violence and crime, but we cannot allow ourselves to believe that their sins are in the past merely because they are discussed in the past tense. The path to redemption is a long and arduous one and rehabilitation does not come easily. 

But as much as these men may look forward to the performances for which they are rehearsing, they are really in it for the process, not the final result. For each of these men, like the play itself, is a work in progress, and the act of creation is far more rewarding that any curtain call. 

Photo Courtesy Philomath Films 

Inmates at Kentucky’s Luther Luckett Correctional Complex perform The Tempest in Shakespeare Behind Bars.

Is there really a secret behind the crystal perfume bottle passed down from your grandmother? What about the French landscape you bought at a hotel liquidation sale in Hawaii for $5? Could it be valuable? Join the Appraisal Extravaganza and these mysteries will be solved. 

On April 27 the University Section Club is sponsoring a fundraiser supporting Cal student services—Berkeley’s own Antiques Roadshow with enticing extras. Held at the Clars Auction Gallery, a sponsor of television’s Antiques Roadshow, and one of the largest auction houses in the Western United States, the evening promises to expand your appreciation skills in several artistic venues. Expert appraisers, sophisticated jazz music, a stimulating art lecture, great wine and food will combine to produce—an extravaganza. 

The appraisal clinic will feature experts in four distinct fields: jewelry and timepieces, Asian art, decorative art (china, glass, furniture, collectibles) and fine art. Each admission will cover the verbal appraisal of two items. While you eagerly await the verdict on the Bengal tiger claw jewelry from British India you’ll be tapping your toes to the sparkling sounds of the piano work of Frederick Hodges. 

Trained as a concert pianist, this California native instead chose to perfect the 1920s ragtime sheet music he discovered in his grandmother’s piano bench. As a UC undergraduate he served as pianist and singer with the Royal Jazz Orchestra and later soloed at society parties and Nob Hill hotels. Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Rogers and Hart, hits from the Great American Songbook—Hodges’ lively interpretations will keep your spirits high even as you discover that the stylized Asian sculpture you bought for $1,500 is a reproduction from 1965 and only worth $400. 

Midpoint through the evening Margaret Lovell, professor of art history and director of American studies at UC Berkeley, will speak on “Why Furniture Collectors Need To Know the Trees.” Well known for her book Art in a Season of Revolution: Painters, Artisans and Patrons in Early America, Lovell researched how 18th century life was influenced by art making and purchasing. 

She used the material world as evidence of both aesthetic and ideological concerns in eighteen-century British North America. Exploring the theme of kinship, Lovell used family portraits as primary sources and then expanded the theme to artists and their patrons. Her lecture is certain to appeal to antique hunters and everyone who appreciates a Louis XV Bureau Plat with fire-gilded embellishments or a “Manxman Piano” by M.H. Baillie Scott in the Arts and Crafts style. 

Wine, hors d’oeuvres and lovely floral arrangements will add to the gala atmosphere. To protect those family heirlooms, security guards will be on hand and young men will provide car escort service at the evening’s end. The price of your ticket, aside from guaranteeing a memorable evening, is of value in a different sense as well. 

The University Section Club, sponsoring this event, has been raising funds to support Berkeley students for almost eighty years. Bringing together members of the administration and staff in special interest groups, social cement is laid, offering opportunities for friendship and service. Through aid to individuals, student-support groups, scholarships and foreign student related activities, this organization brings people and students together in common goals, forming one large university family.  

SOS, the Services Offered Students committee, keeps its members busy in a variety of well-appreciated projects. Volunteers can be seen at the Tang Center and Albany Village Nursery School. The Foreign Student Committee works with International House to help with housing, the loan of equipment and sponsors activities to make newcomers feel at home. The Center, weekly meetings for spouses and children at the YWCA, offers social outlets and addresses practical concerns. Orientations are held monthly at International House and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to address immigration matters and discuss campus and community services available to foreign students. 

Funds raised through donations and events go directly to students requiring emergency loans, grants and scholarships. They also provide financial support for Albany Village, the Tang Center and projects for disabled and re-entry students. It’s clear that the proceeds from this grand event will go directly to several worthy causes. 

As to your mystery appraisals, this may be your lucky night. Grandmother’s perfume bottle, from 1912, is a rare Rene Lalique original, valued at between $30,000 and $40,000. Your $5 investment has increased to $40,000. The French Riviera painted by Louis Aston Knight never looked so good.  

Appraisal Extravaganza 

5-8 p.m. Thursday, April 27 at the Clars Auction Gallery, 5644 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Reserve tickets are $30 before April 20; limited tickets at the door are $40. For more information, contact Joan Finnie at 841-7521 or Louise Kaufmann at (925) 253-9292.9

Six major paintings and 10 small landscapes on paper, all in mixed media by Micaela Gardner, are on view through April 30 at Turn of the Century Fine Arts. 

Their collective title, “AutoReflection” hints at the artist’s modesty in regarding herself as essentially an autodidact in painting, although she has received some formal instruction in visual and plastic arts. 

It is worth noting, in addition, that the painter is also a dancer. Overall, this is an exhibition for viewers who respond to color, drama and lyricism. 

Most of Gardner’s paintings would require major commitments of space by any collector: the smallest is 2 x 4 feet and the largest, 4 x 12 feet. Of greater significance, however, are the artist’s choices of palettes for the several works exhibited, her compositions and handling of her pigments, the referential contents evinced by forms and titles and the expressiveness on, beneath and beyond each surface. 

Her consistent use of 2x4-foot Masonite panels, either vertically or horizontally juxtaposed, however, emphasize the works’ reassuring geometric configurations, so that even the most serendipitously lyrical and expansive works, such as Yellow and White Triptych (2 x 12 feet), conform to the artist’s intent. 

These are serious works of art inviting hours of contemplation, not mere decoration. Matters of scale aside, they might not be easy for collectors to live with—unless they fall in love with them, which is the ideal relationship between collectors and works of art anyway.  

Gardner’s color is voluptuous. The vertical diptych Chinese Screen, for example, pairs a plunging ochre form (possibly a fish) in a modulated green environment (possibly an ocean) on the left with a gorgeously, heavily impastoed red field on the right. A suggestion of mystery enhances the work’s seductiveness. The same may be said of UmberSea Sextet (two horizontal by three vertical rows of panels) and of The Hatchet (three horizontally stacked panels). 

The latter is a tour de force of swirling earth tones whose abstract composition is rich with ambiguous suggestions of forms as well as space. Do we discern a hatchet across the top? Is that its handle, which looks like a noose? The beauty of the painting mitigates the ominousness of its title. 

The Jellyfish That Stung Me In San Diego is also puzzling. The most reductive of the paintings in the exhibition, with respect to scale, composition and color, it is one horizontal panel (hence 2 x 4 feet) with two startlingly white forms, loosely resembling yin and yang in relationship to one another, on a bright red field. The work, despite its title, looks more sexy than scary.  

Now in its 16th year of business, Turn of the Century Fine Arts, has been, along with a building that houses not-for-profits, including the Ecology Center and the Sierra Club, to the south on the same block, one of the anchors of a neighborhood in transition. 

Commerce in bodies and drugs has receded as gift and garment boutiques have moved into what is becoming known as Berkeley’s “Left Bank,” that is, the west side of San Pablo Avenue as one moves north. (“Left” refers to political and social attitudes, as well as to style, or bohemian panache.) 

Lewis Meyers, proprietor of Turn of the Century Fine Arts, first opened an exhibition space on the block in 1991 and saw it through various moves and metamorphoses, including a coffee and sandwich shop, along with art. Good Vibrations, a women-owned cooperative purveyor of merchandise that enhances erotic pleasure, is located nearby. Berkeley’s Caffè Trieste, whose model appeared in San Francisco’s North Beach on April 1, 1956, opened on the corner of Dwight Way and San Pablo Avenue last year under the aegis of Hal Braudel, Walter Wright and others. 

Meyers, a master woodworker with an MFA in sculpture from the California College of the Arts, built its interior to harmonize with the character of its antecedent. Musical harmony characterizes Caffè Trieste for both its sound system (Caruso with breakfast!) and because most evenings there are performances by instrumentalists and vocalists. “Papa Gianni” (Giovanni Giotta), creator of the original Caffè Trieste, appears at least once monthly to sing Italian favorites. Sea Salt, an upscale seafood restaurant opened next door to Turn of the Century a few months ago and has quickly become a destination for diners from throughout the Bay Area.  

Turn of the Century Fine Arts, Meyers says, is “my own brand of what I’m doing.” Huh? “Well, it’s kind of like a salon.” 

The merchandise, in addition to works of art, ranges from kitsch and funk to high quality, handcrafted wood furniture—including chairs by Meyers himself. Meyers’s assemblages are also on view, as are lamps (some made from clarinets!) by Helen Holt. Visitors know that they’re in a good place with a statue of Ganesha greeting them at the door. 

Turn of the Century Fine Arts is open Thursday through Sunday from 1-5 p.m. and by appointment. 2510 San Pablo Ave., 849-0950. The Micaela Gardner exhibition continues through Sunday, April 30, when there will be a closing reception honoring the artist from 2-6 p.m. All are welcome. 

Photo: “The Hatchet,” one of the Micaela Gardner paintings in the exhibit at Turn of the Century gallery, is a tour de force of swirling earth tones.Ÿ

I know you’re out there. You who are easy prey for handywomen and contractors. You who don’t fix things. Yes, I know you’re there. Well come out of the closet and go boldly where your uncle Filbert never went. Where you mother never dared to tread. Today we are going to hang something on the wall. Yes, You CAN do it. 

Hanging shelves or paintings on a wall has reduced the hardiest of men and women to tearing out their hair but I will share some secrets with you that will have you hangin’ with the best of ‘em. 

Hanging things means first mounting an anchoring system in most kinds of walls. Most of us have either drywall (sheetrock to the masses) or plaster (mostly installed over wooden lath although some lath is actually made of drywall).  

Let’s start with plaster over wooden lath, since it’s the trickiest and we’ll save the fun stuff for last. If you have plaster, you’re probably in a house that is at least 50 years old and more likely 60 or 70. Nearly all houses from the ‘40s or earlier were finished in plaster (except for those with wood paneling and that makes things really easy). 

If you have plaster, you can probably see the rough wooden strips from the backside somewhere in the house, usually the basement or possibly through a broken wall section somewhere. Plaster is quite hard and brittle and anyone who ever tried to drive a nail through this material probably found themselves making large running cracks or possibly even breaking off a chunk or two. 

The first thing you want to try to do is to attach whatever you have to somewhere that a wooden upright or “stud” is located. Finding a stud (alright, take a minute and get all the jokes out of your system ... are you done?) isn’t as hard as one might think because the wooden lath strips that the plaster is smooshed into (yes, when it was wet) are nailed to the studs or 2x4 uprights behind the plaster. 

These nails can be found using one of my favorite tools, a magnetic stud-finder. Some people call this a “compass” stud-finder because it’s very much like a compass. It has a magnetic rod mounted at it’s midpoint so that it can spin freely inside of a plastic bubble about 2” in diameter. If you run it along the wall, the rod will dart around and point, like a good bloodhound, right at the nail hidden in the wall. This shows you where the stud is and where you can drill or nail (although nailing has its own tricks). 

I think it’s a very good idea to use the device to locate all of the nails in the region of wall you’re going to be working on using a sharp pencil. You only need a small mark. When you have a lot of marks made, you can run a straight-edge along the vertical lines of nail spots to see if you can approximate the actual middle of the stud. Nails might not be centered on the stud but if you look at a long line of these pencil marks, you can probably guess pretty well where the stud center is and eliminate the odd one that was on an edge. 

Keep in mind that you may have pairs of nails on some studs where the lathing strips meet. The point between the two nails is the stud center, more or less. If this is confusing, just start “mapping” the whole wall this way and you’ll soon figure out what I’m talking about. Some points will have one nail and some will have two about 1” or more apart. 

Once you’ve done this, you can drill a small hole for a screw or a nail using a common drill bit. I keep cheap or old bits for this purpose because plaster and other similar materials will dull the bit. These cheapo bits are perfect for any such dirty job. 

If you’re attaching directly to a stud, the weight bearing is much better and you can use up to very large nails or screws, depending on what’s being attached. This is definitely the way to go for shelving. 

If you want to attach something mid-span between the studs on lath and plaster, be very careful and patient. This stuff loves to crack when hit, or drilled with the wrong bit. Plaster is stiff and the wood lath is springy. When you hit or drill the wooden lath and it springs about, the brittle plaster wants to separate, so you need a slow method and a sharp implement. 

You can start to drill a hole with a dull bit if you like but you should drill through the lath (about 1/4” inward) with the sharpest bit you have so that it will not be grabbed and pulled about the way a dull bit might. You can then attach a toggle bolt or another similar anchor. 

There are several new kinds available but this needs to be something that will compress from the inside to the outside without applying much pressure outward radially from the hole. This, again is to prevent cracking. You’ll really need to use The Force on this one because plaster is very touchy stuff. 

With drywall, life is somewhat easier. Drilling is much more forgiving, although a very dull bit can punch through the paper skin too roughly (yes, I did say paper) or crush the chalky substrate, rather than carving a nice neat hole. Try to use a fairly sharp bit and take your time. 

Again, studs can be found the same way, with a magnetic finder, although I’ll also mention the modern stud-finders (take one of these to a nightclub for laughs sometime and let me know how it works out) that use something akin to radar called radiolocation. They’re very cool but quirky and take some getting use to. 

If you’re attaching something like a sheetrock screw (very narrow) or a nail, no drilling is needed. A large screw should be predrilled. Now the fun stuff. If you’re attaching to drywall between the studs, I very much like the new mega-screws made of plastic or aluminum that just screw themselves into the sheetrock (predrilling a small hole is best). These tighten up as they reach the end of their ability to turn and make a great and reusable point to install a screw of the right size. 

You can buy them in sets with the screws that fit into them if you’re not sure how to match them up. Ask as the store and they’ll fix you up. Although these are my favorites. I’ll also add the old fashioned plastic anchor or “mollie” to the list. These can work in either plaster or drywall if you’re careful to make the right-sized hole and you won’t be hanging anything especially heavy. They also work on concrete and stucco, although you’ll need a masonry bit to drill those holes. 

Funny how a simple thing like hanging a screw in a wall can be such a bear and how a few new ideas can take a lot of anxiety away. O.K., get to work! 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.?

There’s a lively side discussion going on within a California native-plants email list about how to garden with the least impact. 

Part of it hinges on things like the comparative drainage of blue path fines versus gold path fines—“fines” or “quarry waste” are the almost-sand-sized bits of rock you see around some civic trees, for example at the Ashby BART station—when used as inorganic mulch. 

Some native plants do better in “unimproved” soil than in the loamy garden soil that organic mulches eventually make.  

From that point, the topic moved to just how much one is screwing up by importing things over great distances using resources like petroleum. This one reaches into homes, too: Imagine the real cost of hauling a few tons of granite for garden rocks or countertops from China. (Then there’s that interesting trade imbalance that seems to profit a very few Americans, at least in the long run.) But how much more of the Sierra do you want to mine? 

Those of us who live in the flatlands where the native rock is mud might despair of ever having the flag path or planting wall or featured boulder we dream of, if we also want a clear conscience. If you really want to torment yourself, there are a couple of places around the Richmond/Albany/El Cerrito border to do so.  

American Soil is the better known, having been right here in Berkeley for years, at Bancroft between the railroad tracks and Aquatic Park. I took my brand-new pickup down there to baptize it with a cubic yard of Walt Whitman, one of their most useful compost mixes. Here came a guy on a front-loader; he raised it waaaayy up and dropped its load into my truck. “Oof!” said the truck, and then we drove home very slowly because the braking distance was new to me. Lesson: a cubic yard of dirt about fills a six-foot compact pickup bed.  

American Soil, in its new location north of Central Avenue on the frontage road, has amazing big rocks, pavers, amusing sculptures, and a menu of some 15 soil amendments and various mulches and gravels, with swatches in a bin to help you choose. They carry assorted handy supplies like jute netting and rhizome barriers. The inimitable Keeyla Meadows has a display garden there, too.  

On the other side of Central Avenue, on the same frontage road, is the comparative upstart Acapulco Rock & Soil. It has a smaller menu of soil amendments, mulches, rock, sand, cobbles, and fines, but if it has the rock you’re fated to fall in love with, you’re in luck: the prices there are a shade cheaper than American Soil’s. Their quick can-I-help-you works well for those new to gardening or just bewildered.  

Here’s the rub, at any such store. The stated prices are just for the stuff; delivery can cost more than the material. So if you have a good friend with a pickup, you know the time to call in your favors. You can get stuff by the bag, too—more pricey and heavy lifting if you need lots. So call in your favors from the friends with linebackers in the house. And for mercy’s sake, feed them.  

FRIDAY, APRIL 14 

Creepy Crawlies Insect-inspired activities fro ages 3-7 from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $7.50-$9.50. 642-5132. 

Clean Up Wildcat Creek Join Verde Elementary School students and the North Richmond community in cleaning up the creek for Earth Day. From 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Verde Elementary. 412-9290, ext. 26. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Ian Mckinlay, architect on “Why the Twin Towers Fell” 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.  

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m.  

Yuri’s Night Celebrate the anniversary of Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s historic first flight into space, from 8 to 11 p.m. at Chabot Space & Science Center Tickets are $0-$15. 336-7373. 

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. A drop-in, rated scholastic tournament follows from 7 to 8 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. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 15 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets at 9:15 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Conference Room, 1st Floor, 2727 College Ave. www.berkeleycna.com 

Bay Area Women in Black Silent tax day and anti-war protest from 11:45 to 1p.m. at 35th Ave. and MacArthur, Oakland. www.bayareawomeninblack.org 

Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute Benefit and tribute to Ann Fagan Ginger at 5 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Donation $15-$30. 848-0599. www.mcli.org 

California NativePlant Sale Explore the garden, and buy some plants to take home. Please bring boxes to carry home your treasures and an umbrella if it rains. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Wildcat Canyon Rd. & South Park Dr., in Tilden Park. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters. Meet at 9 a.m. in the Park and RIde lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. Wear walking shoes and bring water. 925-228-8860. 

Natural Egg Coloring Learn to make dyes from beets, red onions and coffee grounds, at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature CEnter, Tilden Park. Please bring your own hard-boiled eggs. Fee is $3, registration required. 636-1684. 

Restore Marsh and Grassland Habitats in Richmond from 9 a.m. to noon at the West Stege Marsh. To register, and for directions call 665-3689. www.thewatershedproject.org 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society Show and Sale from 1 to 5 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 277-4200. 

Oakland Restoration Project Help remove invasive ice plant and wild radish from 9 a.m. to noon at Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland. Please regiser on line. 452 - 9261. www.savesfbay.org 

Monitor Water Quality at Baxter Creek Learn how to monitor basic water quality using an electronic probe. Help us assess the success of a recent restoration on Baxter Creek by collecting data on the creek’s dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH, temperature and flow. From 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Canyon Trail Park, El Cerrito. Please pre-register. 665-3686. apple@thewatershedproject.org 

From Frybread to Fuel Tank Send-off of a tour to bring bio-diesel to Native America at noon at the Inter-Tribal Friendship House, 523 International Blvd., Oakland. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com 

California Writers Club meets at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square, Oakland, to discuss “Border Country: Erotica or Erotic Romance.” 420-8775.  

Stress Relief Class at 4 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

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. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

SUNDAY, APRIL 16 

Springtime in the Ponds See baby dragonflies, phantom midges and maybe even newts, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m., Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society Show and Sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 277-4200. 

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 Jack Petranker on “World Without Limits” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 17 

“Perspectives on Berkeley: Past and Present” Chuck Wollenberg’s Berkeley history class. John McBride of BAHA and John Steere of Livable Berkeley will speak on “A City of Neighborhoods: Preservation and Development” at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Free. 981-6150. 

Grandmothers Against the War will demonstrate on Income Tax Day to denounce military spending for the Iraq war and to call for an end to the war and occupation, at noon at the IRS/Post Offices, Ron Dellums Federal Building, Clay St., between 12th and 14th Sts., Oakland. 845-3815. 

Tax Day Action & People’s Life Fund Granting Ceremony and Potluck at 6:30 p.m. at 1550 5th St. at Henry St., Oakland, around the corner from West Oakland BART. Outdoor Anti-War Slide Show and leafleting West Oakland Post Office 1675 7th Street, Oakland at 8:15 to 10 p.m. Sponsored by Northern California War Tax Resistance. 843-9877. www.nowartax.org 

Gay Men’s Health Collective 30th Anniversary Gala with entertainment and a reception at 8 p.m. at the Roda Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $25-$150. For reservations visit www.gmhc30.org 

Quakes and Shakes Do some heavy shaking to learn about earthquake engineering at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $7.50-$9.50. 642-5132. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60+ years old meets at Mondays 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave, Albany through June 19th. Cost is $2.50 per week includes refreshments. 524-9122. 

“How to Expand Your Mind- Body Connection with Self Hypnosis” at 5:30 pm. in the Rose Room at Mercy Retirement Center, 3431 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $30 or $120 for the entire series. 534-8547, ext. 666. 

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

TUESDAY, APRIL 18 

Berkeley Garden Club Spring Tea and Flower Arranging Demonstration by Najat Nicola, Danville floral designer, at 1 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St., $8 527-5641. 

Presentation of Certificate of Honor to the City of Berkeley from the City of San Francisco for Berkeley’s Earthquake relief efforts in 1906, at 3:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 

“Earthquake Exodus 1906: Berkeley Responds to the San Francisco Refugees” Illustrated lecture by author Richard Schwartz at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Followed by a reception at the Mcgreary-Greer House, 2318 Durant Ave. Cost is $15. 841-2242. http://berkeleyheritage.com 

Anniversary of the 1906 Quake from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $7.50-$9.50. 642-5132. 

“Hiking the John Muir Trail” with author Jeff Alt at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

“John Walker Lindh: Constitutional and Human Rights Implications of an Extraordinary Case” with Frank Lindh at 7 p.m. at the College Preparatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway at Brookside, Oakland. 339-7726. 

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. 

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, APRIL 19  

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for signs of spring, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Bring a light-colored plain T-shirt for our craft. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Free Mercury Thermometer Exchange sponsored by East Bay Municipal Utility District from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Frank Ogawa Plaza, downtown Oakland. Bring as many mercury thermometers as you have in original cases or in two zipper bags. One free digital thermometer per household. Part of the Oakland Earth Day festivities. 287-1651. www.ebmud.com/cleanbay 

Great Decisions Foreign Policy Association Lecture with Thomas Aragon, Center for Infectious Diseases, UCB on “Pandemics and Security” at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $5. 526-2925. 

Celebrate Habitot’s 8th Birthday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Loveee the Clown will be in the museum from 10 am to 12 pm. Bring a present—a donated toy, new or used—for our Toy Lending Library and receive a free admission guest pass. Habitot is located on 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org  

“Social Justice and the Prophets” with author Rita Nakashima Brock at 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing St. 848-3696. www.fccb.org 

Banff Mountain Film Festival Wed. and Thurs. at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $13-$16. 527-4140. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Lonely Planet Travel Series with Greg Benchwick on Bolivia and South America at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, 124 14th St. 238-3136. 

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. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, APRIL 20 

Preventing Violence Among our Teens A Community and Parent Forum at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Middle School, 1500 Derby St. at Sacramento. Includes a Panel discussion by local experts from Children’s Hospital, Berkeley Police Department, and Berkeley Unified School District, followed by questions and comments. 644-6320. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for signs of spring, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Bring a light-colored plain T-shirt for our craft. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Creepy Crawlies Insect-inspired activities for ages 3-7 from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $7.50-$9.50. 642-5132. 

“The Ecology of Birds’ Songs and Identifying Them by Ear” with avian ecologist Daniel Edelstein at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

Teach-In and Vigil on U.S. Torture Policy, every Thurs. from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. outside the classroom of Prof. John Yoo, Boalt Hall, UC Campus. Weekly speakers. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and other organizations. www.bpf.org 

“A Large Pill to Swallow: Navigating the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Coverage Program” with health insurance counselors at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Please bring a list of your medications and dosages with you. 559-1406. 

“The Elections in Palestine and Israel: What Do They Mean Now And For The Future” with Hatem Bazian and Mitchell Plitnick, at 7:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Donation $5-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. 465-1777. www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. in the LeConte School cafeteria, Russell St. entrance. 843-2602, KarlReeh@aol.com  

Ask a Union Mechanic every Thursday from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Parker & 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. 

ONGOING 

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. 

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. 

Public Art Project for the Children’s Fairyland, City of Oakland. Artist Request for Qualifications. Applications are dues May 17 and can be found online at www.oaklandculturalarts.org 238-2105. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. April 17 at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche, 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. April 17, at 7 p.m. the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Creeks/default.html 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. April 17, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Berkeley Housing Authority meets Tues., April 18, at 6:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. ww.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/housingauthority 

City Council meets Tues., April 18, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., April 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., April 19, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/aging 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee meets Wed. April 19, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

planning/landuse/dap/ 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., April 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed. April 19, at 7 p.m. at South Berkeley Senior Center., Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/library  

School Board meets Wed. April 19, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Queen Graham 644-6147 or Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., April 20, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Kristin Tehrani, 981-5356. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/health 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., April 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/designreview  

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