Stop that initiative or we’ll sue, an attorney for Golden Gate Fields has warned Albany officials. Citizens for the Albany Shoreline (CAS) filed the initiative in question, an attempt to stop shoreline development, with Albany City Clerk Jacqueline Bucholz on May 16. 

What’s behind the threat: charges that the initiative’s proponents didn’t publish notice of their intent to circulate petitions in a legally qualified newspaper. The notice appeared in The West County Times, one of several area papers currently being sold by Knight-Ridder to MediaNews, but allegedly not one approved by the court for legal notices for Albany. It’s a subsidiary of the Contra Costa Times, published out of Contra Costa County.  

In her May 25 letter to Albany City Attorney Robert Zweben, track attorney Marguerite Mary Leoni charged that the West County Times “is adjudicated neither for the City of Albany nor for the County of Alameda,” thus invalidating the initiative. 

A representative of the advertising staff of the paper said Thursday that the West County Times wasn’t adjudicated for Albany, though the Berkeley Voice/El Cerrito Journal, a local weekly also part of the Knight-Ridder package, was. 

Tom Newton, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA), said the publication requirements are set in state statutes, and require a court finding before a paper can accept legal notices. 

“The laws were an attempt by the legislature to make sure the newspaper is established in the community and is one which residents will look to for important public notices,” he said.  

The measure would call a halt to all shoreline development—including a mall which Los Angeles super-mall developer Rick Caruso is planning with the racetrack’s parent corporation, Magna Entertainment. 

Their plan calls for an upscale open air mall on the track’s northwestern parking lot, within the zone where development would be banned by the CAS initiative. 

Under the initiative, waterfront development outside the immediate coastal strip would be suspended until a formal planning process is developed.  

Leoni cited a Sept. 21, 1989, opinion by the state Court of Appeals Third Appellate District holding that signatures collected before the legal notice requirement had been fulfilled “should not be counted because they were gathered outside the legal time period for circulating the petition.” 

CAS turned in 2,446 signatures for the intiative—nearly three times the required 950. If approved, the measure would go on the November general election ballot. 

High stakes 

The battle carries high stakes on both sides. 

In one corner is an ailing racing company seeking to revive itself through development deals and holding out promises of big tax and other benefits to the city. 

They are paired with a major developer with deep pockets and a demonstrated willingness to bankroll seven-figure election campaigns. 

In the other corner is a collection of environmentalists and local businesses who see the project as a threat to both the biological and the local commercial environments. 

Robert Cheasty, a former mayor and an environmentalist who runs his legal business out of a Solano Avenue office, is one of the initiative’s most outspoken backers. 

“We used the process the city uses for publication of all its notices,” said Cheasty. 

The City of Albany also publishes notices in the West County Times, raising possible issues for the city as well. Calls placed to City Attorney Zweben were not returned. 

Cheasty said the CAS had certainly fulfilled the intent of the publication ordinance. 

“There were stories in all the local publications and coverage by the television stations. We also posted the initiative on our web site,” he said. 

Another proof that the initiative was widely available is the fact that a fourth of the city’s voters signed it, Cheasty said. “We went out in good faith.” 

Cheasty said the decision cited by Leoni was only one of several cases related to the issue. “The authority on this issue is split,” he said. 

As for the attempt to kill the initiative, Cheasty said, “This is like Goliath telling David, ‘No slingshots.’” 

Even if the track suceeds in killing the initiative, their mall proposal would still have to go before voters under the provisions of Measure C, a 1990 initiative that called for public votes on all waterfront projects.

The City of Berkeley will not get a Caltrans Community-based Transit Planning Grant to plan a large condo development for the west parking lot of the Ashby BART station. Winning cities were posted on the Caltrans web site late Friday afternoon, and Berkeley was not among them. 

The application, which referenced a 300-plus-unit project, was sponsored by Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Max Anderson and spearheaded by development specialist Ed Church, using the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation as the community agency sponsor. 

Neighbors and flea market vendors had greeted the proposal with reactions ranging from skepticism to hostility, which they communicated vigorously to the Caltrans decisonmakers. 

See next Friday’s Daily Planet Weekend Issue for further developments.  

As a teacher for a GED program in San Francisco, Victor Diaz floated a novel notion: He would prepare students to earn high school diplomas. 

“The principal looked at me like I was fucking crazy,” he said last week, over iced tea and a half-eaten bagel. 

Diaz said the students in the program were treated as the pariahs of public education; they were juvenile delinquents, academic failures and miscreants. There were students who had spent three years at the school with little to no instruction, and not one had received a high school equivalency certificate let alone a diploma.  

Diaz forged ahead, enlisting students who expressed interest in graduating and an additional instructor to teach math and sciences. By the end of the year, nine of the 12 students left the school with San Francisco Unified School District diplomas. 

“It was a monumental moment in my professional career,” he said. “It was so moving to see those kids—we had a graduation at City College [of San Francisco], we had caps and gowns. It was the first time they’d had any of that.” 

Diaz, 39, has found a new incubator in the Berkeley Alternative High School, where he is finishing his first year as principal. 

Administrators, educators and others have long complained that the school is due for reform. Test scores are low—the school earned a 370 on a scale of 200 to 1,000, in which 800 is the goal on a state academic performance measure in 2005—and attendance is abysmal. The student population is 69 percent African-American, 21 percent Latino, and more than half the students participate in the free or reduced lunch program.  

Last week, the Berkeley Board of Education overwhelmingly approved a school overhaul. Under the new name Berkeley Technology Academy, or B-Tech, students will choose among three options to graduate: CSU- and UC-standard coursework, vocation preparation or independent study. Partnerships with community programs, new staff and a new student population, partly composed of kids who attend involuntarily, are additional features of the model. 

The latter is the upshot of a settlement agreement between the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) and a group of students that accused the district of unfair school transfers between 2002 and 2004. But the rest is of Diaz’s making. Administrators, parents and some students have expressed significant support for Diaz and his program, a fact he plays down.  

“I’m not some deep philosopher that has this new theory that’s going to be coined after me,” he said. “There are people who have done this work for years … and the heart of it is high expectations, relationships, academic rigor.” 

None of which he had growing up. 

A self-described “angry teenager,” Diaz drifted in and out of schools in East San Jose, before getting kicked out permanently at 16, when he physically attacked a female teacher. It was his sixth high school. 

Diaz fit the classic profile of a troubled teenage boy. His mother, a teen when she got pregnant, raised Diaz and his two sisters alone in a working-class neighborhood. The school district was about 80 percent Mexican, though instructors were nearly all white and punished students for speaking Spanish, he said. 

“There was a real push to acculturate us, there were no cultural studies,” he said. “I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but what they were doing wasn’t working for me. … I was completely discouraged and disgusted by the public school system.” 

Diaz wandered aimlessly for seven years. At 23, he was without an education, job skills or a future. 

That year, a community college coach in San Diego saw Diaz running and recruited him to join the track team. Diaz enrolled in classes, but it became immediately evident that he was at a loss as to how to “do school.” For a paper on a muralist, he submitted photocopied paintings from a textbook. “It was apparent that I couldn’t write,” he said.  

At the same time, Diaz started working with high school students, and found the experience rewarding. He decided then that if he was going to help young people learn, he had better get an education. 

Diaz went on to obtain multiple degrees, including a bachelor’s degree from UCLA, a J.D. from the New College in San Francisco, a master’s in education technology from University of San Francisco and a principal certificate from California State University Sacramento. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in superintendent training from UC Berkeley. He has taught alternative education in Oakland and San Francisco, and worked as the headmaster for a continuation program in Boston, Ma.  

Today, Diaz is self-possessed, sharp and well read—his office bookshelf includes “The Cornel West Reader,” Jonathan Kozol’s “The Shame of the Nation” and “Clockers.” Traces of the defiant teenager still emerge, though. He peppers an impressive vocabulary with old favorites like “shit” and “fuck”—earning him instant street cred among students—and releases a steady stream of outrage when discussing the failures of alternative education. 

“If people don’t think there’s a correlation between the number of kids in juvenile hall and the number of grown men in prisons with these unsuccessful programs, I don’t know what other fucking correlation you can make,” he said. “So I feel like I have an obligation to say, ‘I’ve got to try everything possible to retain the kids.’” 

That attitude has gotten him into trouble at the alternative school, where some teachers say he is too quick to befriend students and too light on discipline. Under his tenure, the school has earned the nickname “Hotel Berkeley,” because students come and go as they please. During the last recorded attendance cycle, Alternative High School 10th- to 12th-graders were absent 32 percent of the time, compared with about 20 percent for the same period in 2005 and 12 percent for the comprehensive school this year. 

Diaz has attracted further criticism for what some perceive as sheer effrontery because he walked into the school, overhauled the existing program and garnered little input from staff. It doesn’t help that only about half the teachers are returning next year. 

But Diaz is confident he knows what’s best for his students; after all, he lived it.  

“My fear is that I’ll be the administrator that I confronted in school or that I’ll have teachers who are like the teachers I confronted in school,” he said. “And that shit is unacceptable.” 

The Nexus Institute, a prominent West Berkeley artists’ collective, faces eviction from its home of 20 years when their lease expires Thursday. 

That much is certain. Beyond that, endless questions arise. 

“My understanding is that we’ll stay while we negotiate with them,” said Carolyn Newborg, a co-president of the collective. 

“Their lease is up on the 31st, and we’re not renewing. We notified them of that in October,” said Mim Carlson, executive director of the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society, the collective’s landlord. 

A co-op with a long and distinguished history in West Berkeley, Nexus currently resides in buildings at 2701-2721 Eighth St. 

The largest structure is the distinctive brick building at the southeast corner of Eighth and Carleton streets built in 1924 for Standard Die & Specialty by the Austin Building Co.—the firm that also built the distinctive H.J. Heinz Co. factory at San Pablo and Ashby avenues. 

Of the two other buildings, clad in sheet metal, one was used as a factory to make the World War II progenitor of today’s cluster bombs. 

Only the brick building is landmarked. The problem Nexus faces is that the Humane Society needs to sell the property to raise money to build a new facility at their headquarters, located on the same block at 2700 Ninth St. 

“Our realtor hasn’t brought us any buyers yet,” said Carlson. 

But Gregory Harper, an Emeryville attorney and artist who represents Nexus, said that’s not the case. 

“Somebody should let them know that we accepted their offer to sell to us,” he said. 

Harper said the Human Society broke off talks while Nexus was seeking answers to key questions about the property. For one thing, he said, the property the society is selling doesn’t legally exist yet. 

The Humane Society’s property is currently all one parcel, and would have to be split before it could be sold, he said. 

Other questions had to do with the site’s long history of industrial use. 

“There were underground storage tanks that we understand were removed,” Harper said, leading to more questions about possible residual contamination. 

Before such questions were answered, Harper said, “they abruptly said ‘No, that’s it. You’ve had long enough.’ We said we didn’t have enough information.” 

Asked about the offer, Carlson said, “You’ll have to talk to our attorney, Brian Smith.” A San Francisco attorney, Smith was unavailable for comment by the paper’s deadline. 

Any buyer would face an additional complication in the legal requirement to provide new space for the evicted artists. 

According to a July 23, 2004, memorandum from then-Assistant to the City Manager Jim Hynes, the Humane Society “is required to replace 75 percent of whatever the Nexus tenants currently have,” either at the current site or at another one within the West Berkeley district. 

Yet another complication arises from the landmarked building, which is an unreinforced masonry structure which requires a seismic retrofit. 

“We offered to do the retrofit if they renewed our lease,” said Bob Brockl, one of the Nexus artists. 

The collective includes 25 artists who operate a community gallery in the landmarked building. Classes are given as well. 

Before Nexus, the site was home to another Berkeley institution, Ohmega Salvage. 

“I hope we can resolve this,” said Newborg. “It’s a shame to have two nonprofits in conflict. Otherwise, our interests aren’t in conflict. We have artists who are animal rescuers and they have animal rescuers who are artists.”

“All these years I’ve been speaking about the Landmarks Demolitions Ordinance, and here it is,” said Carrie Olson. 

A veteran of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), Olson led the panel’s critique Thursday night of the city planning staff’s proposed environmental review of the proposed new landmarks ordinance based on proposals by Mayor Tom Bates and City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli. 

The commission’s meeting was a special session called just to consider their response to the proposed negative declaration submitted by city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks on May 1. 

A negative declaration is the least restrictive document possible under the California Environmental Quality Act, a finding that a proposed project—in this case, a municipal ordinance—carries no adverse impacts. 

While Marks wrote that “the city has found no substantial evidence ... that the project (the ordinance) may have a significant impact on the environment,” commissioners clearly disagreed. 

A source of particular concern was a provision that allows for demolition of a landmark to make way for a project “necessary to achieve an important public policy” where “the expected benefit” to the public “substantially outweighs the detriment” of demolition. 

At the very least, said commissioner Steven Winkel, any such demolition would require an environmental impact report under state law. 

No language in the proposed declaration “exposes the gravest threat in this ordinance to historic resources,” said Olson. 

Winkel said the provision “is significant enough that you could focus an EIR on that single issue.” 

Olson traced the origin of the provision to Deputy City Attorney Zac Cowan, “who said we should be able to demolish historic resources to build affordable housing.” When the LPC didn’t include the provision in their proposed revisions of the current ordinance, he said, ‘Don’t worry, staff will bring that back in its own draft.’” 

Because of the city holidays on Friday and Monday, Cowan was unavailable for comment. 

Another provision would effectively permit demolition of structures of merit—the city’s category for landmarks that have been altered over the years—when the value of preservation is “outweighed by the project’s public benefits in relation to General Plan policies.” 

At Winkel’s suggestion, commissioners agreed to call for a focused EIR on the proposed ordinance, one that would examine in depth the proposals’ potential impacts on the city’s aesthetic and cultural resources and on existing land use policies. 

Only three members of the public spoke at the meeting—preservationists John English and John McBride and Alan Tobey of Livable Berkeley, a group of infill development proponents whose members often find themselves at odds with ardent preservationists. 

English said the demolition-for-public-benefit provisions, “whatever that may mean ... would assign an unwonted, unwanted role of having to weigh the merits of new projects” against the value of landmarks. 

“It poses such a threat to Berkeley’s landmarks that an environmental impact report is needed,” he said. 

Commission Patti Dacey said the provision was especially ominous in light of sympathy for landmark demolitions she had heard from members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee, the group appointed by the city council and planning commission to provide city staff guidance on preparing a new downtown plan mandated in the settlement of the city’s suit against UC Berkeley’s 2020 Long Range Development Plan. 

“One DAPAC member even said we should pull down landmarks to build a park,” Dacey said. 

English said other provisions of the proposed ordinance, including a mandatory review of all building permits, “even to nondescript buildings” over 50 years of age, would swamp the commission with busywork at the expense of fulfilling their charge to preserve the city’s significant landmarks. 

”I agree with John English’s comments,” said Tobey. 

Tobey said the while it was easy to find faults with the mayor’s proposal, “I challenge you to do what the (city) council asked you to do, to work on a policy direction and not simply list what’s wrong with the proposal but work on a compromise the council could pass.” 

McBride said the public benefit language “is clearly for the City Council’s benefit,” and not for a commission which is specifically charged with preservation. 

Olson said she was also concerned with another provision that would increase the age of buildings eligible for landmark status from 40 years to 50—a measure that would exclude, at least for several years, buildings of significance built in the era of the Free Speech Movement and the antiwar movement of the early 60s which now fall under the LPC’s purview. 

Commissioners delegated the responsibility for drafting the official response to the city, which has to be submitted by June 8. Olson will consult with two or three other commission members, then submit the final draft for inclusion on the consent calendar for Thursday night’s meeting.

Development of a portion of a defunct Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) campus will move forward without city review, whether city officials and community members like it or not.  

Plans to relocate the district’s central offices to West Campus, an abandoned BUSD-owned site at University Avenue between Curtis and Bonar streets, will not slog through the public process required for most building projects in Berkeley, said Superintendent Michele Lawrence Thursday. 

District headquarters are currently housed in Old City Hall, a seismically unsafe building at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way that the district leases from the city, a lease set for expiration in 2009. 

Those two factors combine to necessitate a speedy move to West Campus, Lawrence says, and the city’s notoriously slow review procedures will only serve as a hindrance. (An existing BUSD project to erect a transportation yard between Sixth and Seventh streets, near Gilman, is stalled in the zoning process and is costing the district about $400,000 a year.) 

The proposed project, slated for the northeast corner of the 5.77-acre West Campus property, would involve refurbishing two buildings at University Avenue and Bonar Street, constructing a 10,000-square-foot addition along University, and demolishing several buildings north of Addison Street and east of a playing field at University and Curtis Street.  

Though most of the space is earmarked for district offices, the third floor of the Bonar Street building would accommodate classrooms for independent study students and alternative educational facilities. Experimental classrooms for middle and elementary school students are also in the works. 

Because California school districts are exempt from city zoning laws at sites where instruction takes place, BUSD staff insists plans for West Campus can circumvent the review process.  

“We’ve got the law on our side,” said Lawrence, claiming that the district has the backing of three attorneys. District Spokesperson Mark Coplan could not identity those lawyers, because they are still in talks with the city, he said. 

The city of Berkeley has not yet formed a legal opinion on the matter, Assistant City Attorney Zach Cowan told the Daily Planet last week.  

At a public meeting held Thursday to examine architectural renderings of the proposed project, community member John McBride insisted the district was navigating dicey legal territory, and called Lawrence’s dismissal of the public process “appalling.” 

McBride and others suggested that the district submit plans to the Design Review Committee (DRC), a sub-division of the Zoning Adjustments Board charged with reviewing design proposals in non-residential districts. 

District 2 City Councilmember Darryl Moore agreed it’s worth a shot. 

“I understand the superintendent’s need to expedite the process, it does take a long time to go through the permitting process,” he said. “But I do think a courtesy visit to Design Review Committee wouldn’t hurt.” 

After some prodding, Lawrence said she would consider going before the DRC as a matter of courtesy, but resolutely rejected a longer review. 

“Absolutely I will fight getting this thing into a process so it’s delayed,” she said. “I won’t do it.” 

The approval process was just one issue raised by community members, including West Campus neighbors, parents of independent study students and other project stakeholders, at Thursday’s meeting. 

Neighbors expressed distaste for the design scheme, particularly the frontage on University, which, as a flat façade with few windows, McBride found “really, really stark.” Another resident called it “horrible.” Architect Jose Vilar was open to suggestions, including adding a canopy on the eastern edge of the University structure that would serve the dual purpose of a bus shelter and an aesthetic enhancer. 

The independent study community was more concerned with the logistics of moving students from their existing locale on the Alternative High School campus at 2701 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

“I don’t see this location as kid-friendly,” said Gia Johnson, who has a child at independent study. “To me it just doesn’t look like it’s going to be a great fit. The location where they’re at right now is a good fit.” 

The existing campus is small, full of garden space and just blocks away from Berkeley High School, where independent students take occasional classes. Some parents say the new site, atop district offices, is too far away from Berkeley High and won’t offer students a cohesive school identity.  

“It feels to me like you’re squeezing a school into an office building, it doesn’t feel like a school, it feels like a community college,” said Meredith Gold, whose ninth-grader attends independent study. 

Independent study students are being relocated to West Campus because it is a larger space, and will give the program room to expand, said Lawrence. 

As for the school’s identity, “Those are kid decisions that ought to come later on down the road,” Lawrence said.  

Members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) will hold a joint meeting Wednesday night on the future of historic preservation in the city center. 

Following the session, DAPAC members will conduct their own meeting to offer comments on UC Berkeley’s massive building campaign at and near Memorial Stadium. 

The commission will meet again the following evening, this time to handle more routine items. 

Both meetings begin at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Wednesday night, following an introduction by LPC Chair Robert Johnson and DAPAC Chair Will Travis, the panels will hear from a series of speakers, starting with Austene Hall of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

Two speakers from Architectural Resources Group, a San Francisco firm specializing in projects involving historical resources, will speak on economic development and preservation and the assessment of historic resources in the downtown area. 

That firm has been hired by the city to conduct a survey of historical buildings and other resources in the expanded downtown planning area. 

Donlyn Lyndon, a UC Berkeley architecture professor and editor of PLACES magazine, will speak on contextual design. 

Following a joint discussion by members of the two city panels, the LPC will adjourn and DAPAC members will provide their comments on the draft Environmental Impact Report on the university’s southeast quadrant projects as they may impact the downtown. 

Besides a massive retrofit and remodel of the stadium, the university is planning a major athletic training center abutting the stadium, an underground parking lot and a new office and meeting facility to unite functions of its law and business schools. 

Thursday meeting 

Commissioners will face a full agenda Thursday night, including landmarking proposals for two threatened buildings at UC and Berkeley’s equally threatened Iceland. 

The campus structures are Memorial Stadium—which is the subject of a planned major renovation that would gut the interior and add an above-the-rim structure with luxury skyboxes and press rooms—and the Bevatron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

Among the other items on the agenda is a hearing on the draft environmental impact report for the proposed block-square, five-story condominium-over-commercial complex planned for 700 University Ave.

Billed as a wake-up call to management, some 80 DoubleTree Hotel workers and their supporters held a 6:30 a.m. rally Friday, circling the hotel at the Marina with chants and drums, in an attempt to advance what their union, Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees 2850, says are “stalled” contract negotiations. 

DoubleTree General Manager George Rogers said that while the demonstration took him by surprise, “they have the right to speak their mind and raise their concerns.” 

Management is bargaining in good faith and, like the union members, is looking forward to signing a new contract, he said, adding, “I feel like we’re making great progress.”  

“Negotiations were moving along fine, but stalled when it got to health care and other big money issues,” said David Miller, who has worked in the hotel’s banquet division for 16 years. 

At issue for all the 160 unionized DoubleTree workers are the steep health care costs that management is asking employees to bear. Long-term workers would pay $206 per month for family medical and those who have worked less than three years would pay as much as $406. 

Currently, the hotel pays 95 percent of the costs for workers on the job for more than three years and 65 percent for those working three years or less. 

“Health care benefits are based on rates in Nebraska, not the Bay Area,” said Candice Nguyen, a gift shop worker. 

While the question of the cost of health benefits is common to all the DoubleTree Workers, employees in each division have particular concerns.  

A housekeeper at the DoubleTree, Carmalita Cotlen wants to decrease her daily workload. She is asked to clean 16 rooms, which she said includes making up a double bed with a heavy mattress and three sheets in every room. 

“If I finish early, they give me more or send me home” with fewer hours, Cotlen said.  

In addition to health-care issues, gift shop workers are calling for a redefinition of their jobs. Coffee shop operations have been added to the workers’ regular retail sales tasks. 

“We have no tip jar and no pay raise [for the added work],” Nguyen said.  

Banquet-room workers also have specific demands. “All hotels charge a service fee of 18-20 percent [for banquets],” Miller explained. 

DoubleTree recently began to charge 20 percent, but only 11.2 percent goes to the workers. Customers think the service fee all goes to the staff, said Miller. Banquet staff is asking for a larger percentage of these fees. 

As the noisy early morning pickets circled the hotel, one woman, who declined to be named, came out on her balcony to wave and cheer them on. She said she had talked to the workers about the health care issues. 

“I know personally that it’s an important issue,” she said.  

Workers at the hotel, then the Radisson, lobbied and demonstrated for a union, which they won in 2000. The contract they signed in December 2000 expired in December of last year.

Workers at the downtown Shattuck Cinemas, owned by Landmark Theaters, who earn just above minimum wage with no health benefits, will have their say about whether they form a union. 

The National Labor Relations Board has scheduled a vote for June 16, according to Harjit Singh Gill, organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. 

Twenty-two of the 28 workers petitioned the NLRB for the election. 

Winning the vote “means the workers will be able to sit down at the negotiating table and make demands," Gill said, noting that the right to form a union is just the beginning and that negotiating a contract will be the hard part.  

The only other unionized Landmarks Theater is Kendell Square, in Cambridge, Mass. The workers there have been in negotiations since July, Gill said. 

In addition to fair wages, Gill said the workers want a contract with a grievance procedure, which they do not have now. Landmarks Theaters did not return requests for comment.

The state-appointed administrator of the Oakland Unified School District has postponed a meeting with OUSD Advisory Trustees, leaving trustees in the dark as to the future of nearly 10 acres of valuable midtown district properties, including the district administration headquarters. 

School Board President David Kakashiba said that he was contacted by State Administrator Randolph Ward’s office saying that the meeting had been canceled, with no reason given and no new date set. 

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell is currently considering bids from developers for either the sale or long-term lease of the properties. 

The sites include several school sites, among them La Escuelita Elementary, Dewey High School, Met West High School, and the Yuk Yau Child Development Center. A request for proposals was issued for the sale or lease early last year. 

The state superintendent has been operating the Oakland Unified School District through Ward following a state takeover of the district in 2003. The school board has no power to set policy or approve or deny the proposed sale or lease of the properties. 

The Daily Planet reported earlier this month that the state superintendent’s office had narrowed the bidding to one developer, but an official in O’Connell’s office said last week that this was incorrect, and the superintendent was still considering bids from three developers. 

The next meeting of the OUSD Board of Directors is scheduled for Wednesday.

The Police Review Commission on Wednesday established a subcommittee to review police policies related to the case of convicted felon Sgt. Cary Kent, who stole drugs from the police evidence vault of which he was in charge. 

At the same meeting the commission voted not to hear a complaint by CopWatch leader Andrea Pritchett, who asked the commission to broaden the investigation into the stolen drug evidence by looking at the four other officers who had access to the drug evidence during the same period as Kent. 

Prichett’s complaint was turned down (6–0–1, with Commissioner Annie Chung abstaining and Commissioners Sherry Smith and Danny Herrera absent) because the commission said Prichett was a third party, not directly injured by the offense she wanted investigated.  

However, Prichett’s complaint sparked discussion on the commission that resulted in the establishment of a subcommittee to review the Kent investigation with the goal of proposing new police policies. 

Commission staff Dan Silva argued it was premature to set up the subcommittee, contending the commission should wait until the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) had completed its study of the Berkeley Police Department and made its recommendations based on policy questions arising from the Cary Kent case. 

The commission, however, overruled Silva, voting 5–1, with Jack Radisch in opposition, in favor of setting up the subcommittee. 

“I feel we need to do more investigating. One month ago a lot of people at the meeting were seeking answers,” said Commission Chair Annie Chung, arguing in favor of setting up the subcommittee. “It’s really important to show we have taken active steps to look into this further. Others in the public want us to do something about it, rather than let things be as they are.” 

Commissioner William White agreed. “We want to make sure this issue is not swept under the rug silently,” he said. 

White pointed out that similar crimes happen in other police departments throughout the country. “We want Berkeley to be forthcoming,” he said. We want policies to avoid this behavior in the future.” 

“This case was a wake-up call,” added Commissioner Sharon Kidd. “We need to move forward so that it doesn’t happen again.” 

The POST review of police operations and policies that may have permitted the drug evidence theft has already begun, said Police Chief Doug Hambleton in a phone interview Thursday. 

POST has visited the department twice and will likely come one more time before making its recommendations, he said. Once POST releases its proposals, the chief said, he would work with his staff internally and then work with the PRC on policy recommendations. 

The police investigation into the Kent case is available for public review at the police department records division.

The last two times Alameda County voters have gone to the polls, they were inundated with ballot measures (eight state propositions along with local measures in Albany and Emeryville in the off-year election in November 2005; 16 state propositions along with 13 Berkeley, one Albany, two Emeryville, and two Oakland measures, as well as special measures for BART, AC Transit, and the East Bay Regional Park District in the general election of November 2004).  

For the June 6, 2006, election, the number of ballot measures is considerably trimmed down, with only two statewide propositions and a handful of local measures. 

Proposition 81: California Reading and Literacy Improvement and Public Library Construction and Renovation Bond Act 

This measure would authorize $600 million in bonds to provide grants to local agencies for the construction, renovation and expansion of local library facilities. Eligible agencies would be city, county, joint city and county, or special district applicants. The bond money would pay for 65 percent of the proposed local library projects; the remaining 35 percent would have to be paid by the applicants themselves. 

A seven-member state board (composed of the State Librarian Treasurer and Director of Finance, one Assemblymember and one State Senator, and two gubernatorial appointees) would adopt policies for bond money distribution and decide which agencies would receive grants. 

Support for Prop 81 includes members of the California Business Roundtable, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, and Children Now. Opposition to the measure includes the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Placed on the ballot by the state legislature. 

Proposition 82: Preschool Education 

The brainchild of actor-director Rob Reiner, this measure would raise $2.5 billion per year to set up a new state-operated pre-school program for 4-year-old children to enter prior to kindergarten. 

The money would be spent to run the pre-school program, pay for facilities, train teachers, and provide an operating reserve. Attendance at the new pre-schools would be voluntary, and the program would be funded by a 1.7 percent state income tax addition for individuals making $400,000 a year or more, and couples making $800,000 a year or more. 

The pre-schools would be administered by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the various county school superintendents (significantly, the local school districts are not included as administrators of the pre-school program in this measure). Placed on the ballot by petition signatures. 

Measure A Bonds: Peralta Community College District 

In 2000, close to 80 percent of local voters approved the $153 million Measure E, the last construction bond sought by the Peralta Community College District. The hurdle for passing Measure E was high: two-thirds of the voters. 

Due to new state law, the hurdle for this year’s Measure A is much lower: 55 percent. In addition, Measure A is more a facilities bond than a construction bond since it includes the ability to purchase classroom equipment not allowed under Measure E. 

Measure A would raise $390 million in bond money to pay for repairs, renovations, construction, and classroom equipment for facilities of the four Peralta Community Colleges (Laney, Merritt, College of Alameda, and Berkeley City [formerly Vista]). The tax rate would rise an estimated $25 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. 

Projects funded by the bond money would be limited to those listed within the bond measure, and oversight would be provided by a mandated citizen oversight committee. Measure A has compiled an impressive list of officeholder supporters, including Congressmember Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), State Assemblymember Wilma Chan (D-Oakland), and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. 

No organized opposition to the measure has surfaced. All voters within the cities served by the Peralta Community College District (Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and Piedmont). 

Measure B Bonds: Oakland Unified School District 

In March of 2000, close to 85 percent of Oakland voters approved Measure A, the $303 million bond measure authorizing the first new school construction in the city in years. But this was in the days when Oaklanders ran their own schools, and support for the bond measure from the area’s major political players—Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and State Senator Don Perata in particular—as well as the influential Oakland Education Association union was a significant factor in its passage. 

Since 2000 the Oakland schools have been threatened with bankruptcy and were seized by the State of California (currently they are being run by a state-appointed administrator). There has been a flurry of school closings across the district. A divided teacher’s union is currently voting on a divisive new contract and public support for the Oakland public schools is at a historic low. 

In its text, Measure B would authorize $435 million in bonds for repair and modernization of existing city schools. In fact, it may be a referendum on what voters think about the current state of the Oakland public schools and their administration. The measure would add $35 in taxes per $100,000 in assessed property valuation. For passage, 55 percent voter approval is needed.

The race for the Democratic nomination for California attorney general has become something of a referendum on Oakland, with candidates Rocky Delgadillo and Jerry Brown debating over how good a job Brown has done in his two terms as Oakland mayor. 

Oakland may play a similar role in the race for California superintendent of public instruction. Incumbent Jack O’Connell is facing four challengers in this non-partisan campaign. 

With the Oakland Unified School District taken over by the state in 2003 by legislative action, O’Connell is currently running the Oakland public schools through his appointed administrator, Randolph Ward. 

Ward has had a tumultuous tenure in Oakland, but O’Connell himself was able to stay in the background until the spring of last year, when demonstrators sat in at his office—and were eventually arrested—demanding a direct dialogue with the state superintendent over the operation of Oakland’s schools. O’Connell eventually made a much-publicized visit to Oakland to publicly announce a recovery plan allowing eventual return of the running of Oakland schools to Oakland citizens. 

Political observers may be watching O’Connell’s vote in Oakland to see if he suffers any political punishment over the takeover. If O’Connell gets a low vote in Oakland, future state superintendents may be less likely to support state takeovers of local districts. If O’Connell does well in Oakland, however, the political equation will be less of a factor in decisions to take over schools. 

Another issue in the superintendent’s race will be over the state exit exam. The current law, which O’Connell wrote while serving in the California State Senate, mandates that students cannot receive a diploma without passing the exit test. Voters unhappy with the exit exam—and there are a lot of them—may decide to take their feelings out by voting against O’Connell in the superintendent’s race.  

None of O’Connell’s opponents, however, has established anything close to statewide name recognition prior to this election. 

The superintendent is being opposed by: 

• Dan Bunting, a Cloverdale School District trustee and retired school superintendent. 

• San Juan Unified School District teacher Grant McMicken, who is campaigning on what he calls the “Four KNOWS of Education” (“No Child Left Behind, No Family Left Behind, No School Left Behind, and No Community Left Behind”). 

• Orange County English and world history teacher Diane Lenning. 

• Youth Opportunities Unlimited Alternative High School (Los Angeles) teacher and International Socialist Organization member Sarah Knopp. 

Secretary of State 

A race that is expected to be more competitive is the campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for secretary of state. The incumbent, Bruce McPherson, is running unopposed in the Republican primary. He has served in his position since early 2005, appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger after Kevin Shelley resigned. 

With rising concern over California’s switchover to electronic voting systems, both the June primary and the November general election in the secretary of state’s race may turn out to be a running referendum of the future of California voting. The secretary of state’s office holds enormous power in that area, and there was speculation that it was Shelley’s criticism of electronic voting machines that led his political enemies to uncover the scandals that eventually drove him out of office. 

Last February, McPherson granted conditional certification to Diebold optical scan voting machines for use in 2006 elections in California. Diebold is easily the most controversial of the electronic voting machine makers in both California and the country and has been a target for voting activists. 

Competing in the Democratic primary for the right to challenge McPherson in the fall are two state senators, Debra Bowen and Deborah Ortiz. 

Bowen is making opposition to Diebold one of the centerpieces of her campaign. The first item in the news articles listed on her website—usually the spot for personal plugs—is a recent Oakland Tribune article entitled “Scientists Call Diebold Security Flaw 'Worst Ever'” that never even mentions Bowen. And the Bay Guardian’s endorsement of Bowen also highlights her opposition to Diebold, noting that “As chair of the Senate's elections committee, Bowen has gone after the makers of high-tech voting machines, particularly Diebold. She's made the accuracy and reliability of those machines a central part of her campaign.” 

In contrast, Bowen’s opponent, state Sen. Deborah Ortiz, does not yet appear to have fleshed out her position on electronic voting, stating simply on the League of Women Voter’s Smartvoter website that two of her three goals if elected are to “Inspire public's confidence in the integrity of our electoral system” and “Ensure security and accuracy of our voting systems.” 

Instead, Ortiz’ position papers released to Smartvoter are education, health, and support for seniors, all important issues, but not necessarily ones that are part of the secretary of state’s job description. 

The Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday centered on two main issues. 

The first was whether Helen Burke should represent the Creeks Task Force at the Berkeley City Council hearing on the creeks on Tuesday. 

The second was UC Berkeley’s Southeast Campus Integrated Projects (SCIP) draft environmental impact report, especially the California Memorial Stadium parking issue.  

Commission member Harry Pollack asked whether current Planning Commission Chair and Creeks Task Force Chair Helen Burke would represent the Planning Commission majority. 

Burke retorted that she would be representing the Creeks Task Force at the City Council and David Stoloff, Planning Commission Vice Chair, would be representing the Planning Commission. Helen Burke has been chair of the Creeks Task Force since its initiation. 

“It is not the business of the Planning Commission to tell the Creeks Task Force who or what should represent them,” she said. “This is an unwarranted attack on my ability as chair of the Creeks Task Force to represent their ideas at the City Council. If my opinion is asked, I plan to indicate how the Planning Commission recommendations can fit with the Creeks Task Force recommendations.” 

Memorial Stadium 

Commission member Susan Wengraf asked what the impact of the UC Berkeley’s SCIP would be on the city of Berkeley. 

Jennifer Lawrence, a planner with UC Berkeley, and Richard Randall, who was in charge of the CMS Project, were at the meeting.  

“I can’t even imagine what a nightmare parking would become especially during the weekends, when there are games or shows going on there,” Wengraf said. “There is bound to be at least 900 people using cars alone. How are people going to come in and out of there?” 

Stoloff commented that residents tend to feel trapped during major activities at the stadium and that there ought to be a way for the university to address this additional impact on neighborhood traffic.  

A member of the Panoramic Hill Neighborhood Association had sent a letter to the board saying that there needed to be a second emergency road for fire truck access on Panoramic Hill. 

Fredrica Drotos, another member of the association, told the commission the parking garage for the stadium needed to be located away from the residential part of the city.

Calling the looming closure of Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue a “wake-up call,” Councilmember Kriss Worthington has announced a community rally to save the celebrated bookstore and support Telegraph Avenue area businesses. 

The event, which he is calling “a wake-up, not a wake,” will be held at 7 p.m. June 8, at Trinity United Methodist Church, Bancroft Way and Dana Street. 

Pat Cody, who founded the original Cody’s Books with her husband Fred Cody, is helping to organize the event and will speak. Andy Ross, owner and president of Cody’s, will attend. 

May 13 

A 50-year-old Berkeley man called police to report that someone shot at him while he was driving in the 2100 block of Eighth Street at 12:16 a.m, said Berkeley police spokesperson Ed Galvan. The man, who received minor injuries from flying glass, said he had no idea who shot at him or why. 

A resident of Hearst Avenue called police at 10:35 p.m. to report that a man was swinging a club at passersby in Ohlone Park near the corner of Hearst and Sacramento Street. 

Police found one man who had been struck but not seriously injured, and another woman who had been attacked. They also found the bat-man, a 25-year-old man with serious mental problems. He was taken away for psychiatric observation. 

May 17 

An 18-year-old Berkeley woman called police to report that the night before, she had been confronted by a menacing man uttering threats who convinced her to hand over her purse after he approached her near the corner of Durant and Telegraph avenues. 

At 5:41 p.m., a pharmacist at United Pharmacy at 2929 Telegraph Ave. called officers to report that a gunman had just left the store, making off with narcotics the clerk had handed over after the gunman threatened to pistol-whip him. 

A 54-year-old Berkeley man called police at 6:27 p.m., moments after one of three young would-be carjackers who confronted him in the 1600 block of Woolsey Street struck him with a pistol and tried to make off with his car. 

The man kept his wheels, and a prompt response by police resulted in the arrest of a 19-year-old Berkeley man, identified as the ringleader, on suspicion of attempted carjacking. 

May 18 

After hearing shouts and spotting a fight occurring nearby, callers told police at 8:35 p.m. that a fight was breaking out in the 2500 block of McGee Avenue. 

Officers arrived to find that a group of young men had approached a couple as they were walking and grabbed the man’s wallet. He set out in pursuit and managed to recover his wallet. Officers found the suspects during a canvass of the area, but the robbed man, having recovered his wallet, declined to press charges against the youths. 

A 24-year-old woman called police at 10:28 p.m. to report that a man professing to be packing a pistol had demanded her hot pink purse as she was walking near the corner of Durant Avenue and Ellsworth Street. 

A search of the area turned up the purse, with most—but not all—of her belongings intact. 

May 22 

A Berkeley woman called police at 8:45 p.m. to report that her 16-year-old daughter had just been sexually assaulted. Police are looking for the suspect, who has been identified. 

An 18-year old Oakland woman reported that a pair of strong-arm bandits had stolen her purse as she was walking near the corner of Russell Street and Telegraph Avenue about 1:40 a.m. The pair departed in a white Honda Civic. 

Three young bandits, ages about 13, robbed a 10-year-old of his belongings by landing a punch or two and threatening to add more, shortly after 3:30 p.m. near the corner of Francisco Street and Franklin Avenue. 

A gang of four women in their late teens beat a La Honda woman and stole her belongings near the corner of Regent and Russell streets just before 7:30 p.m. The four were last seen fleeing in a green Toyota four-door. Their victim declined medical aid. 

May 23 

Two men in their 20s came up behind a Berkeley woman as she walked in the 2500 block of Ninth Street and demanded her purse at 12:45 a.m. 

Their mission accomplished, the pair fled and was last seen running from the scene on Dwight Way.

The City of Berkeley will not get a Caltrans Community-based Transit Planning Grant to plan a large condo development for the west parking lot of the Ashby BART station. Winning cities were posted on the Caltrans web site late Friday afternoon, and Berkeley was not among them. 

The application, which referenced a 300-plus-unit project, was sponsored by Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Max Anderson and spearheaded by development specialist Ed Church, using the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation as the community agency sponsor. 

Neighbors and flea market vendors had greeted the proposal with reactions ranging from skepticism to hostility, which they communicated vigorously to the Caltrans decisonmakers. 

See next Friday’s Daily Planet Weekend Issue for further developments.

Responding to a package of proposals aimed at shoring up struggling businesses on Telegraph Avenue—more police, social services, better marketing, upgraded facades, brighter lighting, faster permitting and a new green machine to scrub the sidewalks—Marc Weinstein, owner of Amoeba Music, shared a unique perspective on the Avenue’s economic downturn at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. 

Like other businesses on Telegraph, Weinstein said Amoeba Music is suffering, having lost 15 percent of revenue each year for the last two years. 

Weinstein told the council he has two similar yet thriving stores, one on Haight Street in San Francisco and another in Hollywood in Los Angeles. Their superior performance, he said, shows that the decline in local business cannot be attributed to chain or Internet competition, a factor in the announced closing of Cody’s Books on Telegraph. 

The 11 percent commercial vacancy on Telegraph, a result of “ridiculously high” rents, hurts the businesses that stay, Weinstein said, blaming the situation on landlords who “only care about getting as much money out of the property as they can.” 

He pointed specifically to Gordon Commercial Real Estate Services as a property management company that keeps Telegraph area properties vacant. 

“Absolutely not,” John Gordon responded, when reached by phone Wednesday. Keeping property vacant “would be stupid.” 

It’s true, he said, that closer to campus higher rents are charged. “We don’t set the rates,” he said. “It’s just a matter of supply and demand.” 

Still, he said, “We would hold a space to get a good tenant,” rather than a tattoo parlor, for example. “We want a tenant that can do the volume to pay that kind of rent,” he said. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who presented the package of projects to the council along with Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, noted in a telephone interview on Thursday, that the doubling and tripling of rents has forced some businesses out of the area. 

Gordon said a major factor causing vacancies is the city’s cumbersome permitting process. For example, his company owns a building on Telegraph Ave. and Dwight Way, where Peet’s plans to open a coffee shop. However, getting permits to change from the former use—a copy center—to a coffee shop will take about six months, he said. 

Still, facilitating a property’s change in use should not open the flood gates to chain stores, said Councilmember Dona Spring, speaking to the possibility that a Walgreens might come into the Telegraph district. 

“We need to encourage small, local, unique businesses,” she said. 

Some said the decline in revenue on Telegraph Avenue—which, nevertheless, brings in $98 million per year, according to Bates—is due to the many panhandlers and people with mental health needs who populate the avenue. For that reason, “a lot of people are not comfortable shopping on Telegraph,” Bates said. 

“Problematic behavior [on Telegraph] has gotten worse,” Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District Executive Director Roland Peterson told the council. 

But Weinstein disagreed: “Telegraph is not that much worse,” but the scene may not be tolerated by the new generation of university students. Councilmember Laurie Capitelli said a higher income level among students might be at play. 

Weinstein added that he sees open drug dealing near his store. He’s not only calling on the council to bring in more police, but he wants better policing methods. In the past, merchants had pager numbers for beat police and the mental health team, which would respond rapidly, he said. On the other hand, “The UC Police have never tried to make a connection,” he said. 

Councilmember Linda Maio said the now-defunct Telegraph Area Association tried to link merchants, landlords and residents, but lost city funding to budget cuts several years ago. 

The business improvement district has not filled the void, Weinstein said: “The BID represents interests of property owners.” 

Some measures to help the area are under way: the city is working with UC Berkeley so that students can use their university debit cards with local merchants. 

The question of adding two bike cops and a mental health team for the area will be part of next month’s budget decisions. The city is in the process of purchasing a “green machine” to clean Telegraph Avenue sidewalks. 

By unanimous vote, councilmembers asked the city manager to report to them before the summer recess that begins mid-July on enhanced lighting, façade improvements and streamlining the permit process. 

Photograph by Stephan Babujak.

Tempers flared and jeers erupted Monday night at the first public meeting of the task force outlining the scope of a major private development on public land. 

The occasion was the first public meeting of the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation’s (SBNDC) Ashby BART Task Force, the group charged by the city with setting the parameters for development on the station’s main parking lot. 

The City Council endorsed a grant to fund the first stages of development of a mixed use housing and retail complex at the site in December, a move that has sparked anxiety in the nearby neighborhood. 

The loudest opposition Monday—expressed in frequent yells and one drawn-out chant—came primarily from those who occupy the site, at least for two days a week, Berkeley Flea Market vendors and their supporters. 

They, and some neighbors, said they were concerned that they’d been shut out of a process they suspected was careening towards a predetermined goal. 

Once inside, they found little to reassure themselves. 

The key participants were seated with their backs to the public, a point not lost on Osha Neumann, a civil rights attorney who is both an immediate neighbor of the project and the flea market’s legal representative. 

“These people had their backs to us when we came in,” Neumann said during a comment period. “That is very strange.” 

Ed Church, the professional development specialist hired to oversee the development, left the chairing duties to Taj Johns, a neighborhood liaison with the city manager’s office. 

Earlier rally  

Spectators were primed by the time they walked into the meeting, fired up during a rally outside the South Berkeley Senior Center that started a half hour before the task force’s scheduled 7 p.m. meeting inside. 

Colorful signs adorned the sidewalk, and speaker after speaker rose either to defend the flea market or to denounce Mayor Tom Bates and City Councilmember Max Anderson—or both. 

Two of the speakers, former Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein and Zachary RunningWolf, have announced their candidacies for mayor, and both had harsh things to say about the incumbent. 

“We’ve lost control of city government,” said Bronstein. “It’s as if we don’t exist.” 

“We really need to put the brakes on this,” said RunningWolf, predicting the proposed project would doom the political careers of Bates and Anderson. 

Andrea Pritchett of Copwatch and Community Services United, the umbrella group of local nonprofits that sponsors the popular weekend market, acted as chair of the rally. 

The event even featured a song, with singer and guitarist Mas-Allah belting out his “Flea Market Blues.” 

Nancy Threatt, a neighbor, said she was concerned about the makeup of the task force. “It should be folks from census tract 4240—right over there,” she said. “I have trouble with people from all over.” 

“We’re going to end up like Emeryville,” said Dean Smith, an artist and project neighbor. “Development has run amok, and it is happening here, with Mayor Bates and our councilman, Max Anderson, who is basically selling down the river.” 

Election 

Another board move raised more questions, with the Johns announcement that a group of task force members had meet in private Saturday to design the shape of Monday night’s meeting. 

“Why weren’t we told?” yelled one member of the audience, a question immediately taken up by others. 

Then came the election of officers—co-chairs as it turned out—in action that ended almost as soon as it began with Berkeley Unified School District board member John Selawsky nominating himself and proposing that co-chairs be installed, at least initially. 

Selawsky reeled off a list of his qualifications as chair and member of various civic bodies, to be followed to the microphone by Toya Groves, who said she had no leadership experience, proposing herself as co-chair. 

A resident of Blake Street in West Berkeley, Selawsky isn’t a project neighbor. Groves, however, is. 

“I nominate Osha Neumann,” came a yell from the audience, winning immediate cheers from others in the boisterous crowd, who were still facing the backs of the task force. 

“I accept,” said Neumann. 

“How many want Osha Neumann to be chair?” yelled Kenoli Oleari, a critic of the project from its inception. 

More cheers followed. 

But, as Neumann later told the audience, the would-be candidate had declined to serve on the task force “because I wouldn’t sign a loyalty oath” saying he endorsed the process, which had been formalized at a December City Council meeting. 

“The volunteers should be co-chairs,” said task force member Dan Cloak. 

And with that, Selawsky and Groves were installed—though Johns continued to run the meeting, the new officers to take effect at the group’s next session. 

More chaos 

Johns then charged into first of the two items listed on the meeting’s half-sheet agenda—setting ground rules and a talk by a BART official. 

She added one more topic: “topics from the audience” for the task force to address, which would be discussed in subgroups and then reported on at the group’s regular meetings. 

“Why didn’t we have any input?” yelled Oleari. “We want to talk about the process,” yelled another audience member. 

“We can’t do this like this,” responded Johns, only to be greeted by another cacophony of yells, followed by the prolonged chanting of “Open it up and shut it down!” 

An elderly woman from the audience picked up the microphone and declared, “I want to hear both sides.” With a little more prompting, and an assist from another woman in the audience, she managed to quiet the crowd, at least for a moment. 

Johns then opened the mics to the audience, giving speakers a minute each to offer suggested rules. But most comments were criticisms of the project, and on Johns herself—with Pritchett accusing her of lying at one point, and earning the response, “I walked with integrity in this world. I am not lying.” 

Robert Lauriston, a neighborhood land use activist and creator of the Nabart.com website which features more up-to-date project information than the SBNDC’s Southberkeley.org site (where the last posting was March 17 as of Wednesday evening), called on the task force to sever ties with the SBNDC. 

“No organization or profession should be privileged,” Lauriston said. 

Comments 

While many said they wanted nothing new at the site, others said they supported a project on the station’s main parking lot—provided many of the units are reserved for those with low incomes. 

Any project should have space for the flea market, any housing built should have a large proportion permanently reserved for low-income people, and the project should include areas available for community use, said John Warren, director of Unconditional Theatre and a member of the AshbyArts District. 

Steve Gold of the LeConte Neighborhood association seconded Warren’s suggestion, “but we really need to do it right.” 

Karen Hilton was more skeptical, declaring—as would others—that the project should be move out of a racially mixed neighborhood, where it would only result in further gentrification, and be placed instead at the North Berkeley BART station. 

Marge Wilkinson agreed, saying she had moved to South Berkeley to live in an integrated working class neighborhood. 

“The task force here hasn’t been on the up-and-up,” said Erica Cleary, a Prince Street neighborhood activist. “The task force has a chance of doing something good, but the only way is if they separate from the SBNDC and the project manager and take the reins. Wouldn’t that be wonderful.” 

Near the end, Johns literally pulled the plug on Oleari after he ignored her “time is up” admonitions and she reached down and disconnected his microphone. 

BART’s agenda 

Jeffrey Ordway, BART’s manager of project development, almost didn’t get to speak, until the audience critics reluctantly agreed to suspend the comment period following a show of hands vote that Johns said “looks like a tie to me.” 

In the 1960s, Ordway said, BART isolated its stations by surrounding them with asphalt parking lots “on the assumption that you only got to them by auto.” 

The agency is now trying to reverse the practice, both to integrate all its stations into their communities and to raise more funds for the agency so it can reduce public subsidies. 

He said BART is returning to a strategy adopted by railroads in the 19th Century, when they created developments around their stations. 

An added benefit for local governments is that by allowing private development, BART puts the property back on the tax rolls. By encouraging housing and retail uses, additional car trips are reduced and alternative transportation use is encouraged. 

After a shouted question from the audience, however, he acknowledged that some questions remain about the air rights over the Ashby BART lot, an issue Johns promised to explore with the city. 

Those rights, claimed by the city, control development at heights more than 10 feet over the lot. 

Another comment period followed, with little new said, but lots of it. 

Future meets 

Selawsky and Groves are scheduled to take the helm for the next task force meeting, scheduled for June 5. Another session has been booked for the 19th, and more will be scheduled later, according to a flyer distributed before the meeting. 

A group of Laney College students received an unpleasant surprise in the mail earlier this month: a notice that because of budget problems, the Laney College Children’s Center was closing its infant and toddler day care program effective the end of this school year. 

On Tuesday night, anguished student-parents crowded the Peralta Community College Board of Trustees meeting, complaining about the last-minute nature of the notice, and several saying that without day care facilities for their children they would probably have to drop out of college themselves. 

Taisha Jefferson, a full-time Laney College single-parent student with a 22-month-old daughter at the Laney Children’s Center, told trustees, “My academic progress wouldn’t have been possible” without the center. 

And Maha Allen, whose infant will not be able to attend the center next year because of the closing, said, “The timing of the notification letter was particularly bad,” coming as it did in the middle of finals. 

She added that “this was a really stressful week for us.” 

And Mahasin Moon, a San Francisco State student whose children began attending the children’s center when Moon was attending Laney College, called the services at the center “incredibly important to the community. The community college is eliminating our community.”  

Moon and several of the other parents are members of the Children’s Center Parent Advisory Committee, an independent group which Moon later said has raises between $800 and $1,200 a year to support center activities, including sponsoring graduation ceremonies and cultural celebrations. 

Several of the parents praised the operations at the center itself, one of them saying that “my child never cries when I take her to the center. She only cries when I come there to take her home. She’s having so much fun. The activities and the programs there are fantastic.” 

Because the item was not on the trustees agenda Tuesday night, trustees could not discuss the matter, or even ask Peralta administrators for clarification. 

On Thursday morning, Peralta officials were meeting with a group of the affected student-parents to try to work out a solution. Peralta officials admitted that they have been working on the potential closures for a year, and said that the failure to notify the affected parents until a few weeks before the end of the semester was a “mistake.” 

Linda Mitchell, who has directed the Laney College Children’s Center for 13 years, said that while she knew that the infant program was scheduled to be closed at the end of this year and had informed parents, she was not informed of the toddler closing herself until “a month and a half ago.” 

The Laney College Children’s Center is located on East 10th Street next door to the Laney College Football Stadium and across the street from the Oakland Unified School District Administration Building, in the suddenly-hot potential commercial-residential development zone bordering the Lake Merritt Channel that connects the lake to the estuary. 

It currently serves 48 children between 3 and 5 years old, 16 toddlers between 2 and 3 years old, and 11 infants under 2 years old. While the parents of many of the center’s children are Laney College students, the center is open to the general public for enrollment. 

The 3-5 year old portion of the center’s activities will not be affected by the proposed toddler and infant closures. 

Although the center is not exclusively a low-income facility, many of its programs are geared towards that section of the community, and several of the parents said they were receiving state subsidies in order to keep their children in the program. 

In her notification to parents, Peralta Children’s Center Site Manager Danielle Waite said that the ongoing 3-5 year old program at the centers “has spaces with our Child Development Contract for low-income families, which remains free or low cost … We are going to prioritize student families over working families beginning Fall 2006, not the lowest income.” 

Shortly after parents received the notification letter of the closings on May 11, the Parent Advisory Committee sent out an email to parents and Peralta trustees, saying in part that “low-income families are the most vulnerable of Laney’s population. It would be a travesty to remove a working program that has changed so many lives, and aided in the access of higher education and upward mobility for so many families over the years.” 

Advisory Committee member Moon said in a telephone interview that committee members later met with Peralta Trustee Alona Clifton, who “said she had no idea that the cuts were going on.” 

Peralta Vice Chancellor Margaret Haig told trustees Tuesday night that the closures were necessary because of mounting deficits of Peralta’s three children’s centers, including Laney, College of Alameda, and Merritt College. Haig said that the centers lost $100,000 in fiscal year 2003, $200,000 in fiscal year 2004, and were projecting a $400,000 deficit in the current fiscal year. 

During the meeting with student-parents on Thursday morning, she blamed the mounting deficits on a mandatory state-required student-teacher ratio that did not allow the centers to cut costs by cutting staff, as well as the demand by Service Employees International Union 790 to get rid of Peralta’s hourly worker program, including workers at the child care centers. 

Haig explained that Peralta did not have to pay health care costs for the hourly workers, but with those workers becoming permanent employees, she said that health care costs at the child care centers are skyrocketing. 

Haig also said that the child care centers were under a mandate from the Peralta Board of Trustees to make the child care centers pay for themselves out of fees and direct state subsidies, without money coming out of the Peralta district budget. 

Haig also promised that center and district officials would work with individual parents to get state day care subsidies and to have their children placed in other child care facilities. 

Despite that promise, Haig and Danielle Waite, site manager for the district’s three children’s centers, came under withering criticism from participants at Thursday morning’s meeting, including Laney Academic Senate President Evelyn Lord. 

Saying that “Laney College has been shut out of this process until now” and that “I am highly offended that I wasn’t brought into this issue earlier,” Lord said that “if you had brought Laney College in on this problem from the beginning, I believe we would have come up with a solution by now.” 

She also criticized district and college priorities, saying “why do we have a college football team while we are closing down parts of our child care center? Why are we hiring more people in the district headquarters when we say we don’t have enough money to hire day care teachers? It doesn’t make sense.” Lord suggested that the Peralta Foundation be approached to “keep the infants and toddlers program floating for a while until we can come up with a permanent solution.”  

With Lord and the parents stating that they wanted to work on finding alternate funding to supplement the center’s activities, Haig and Waite agreed to hold a followup meeting in July, with Haig promising to include SEIU Local 790 officials as well as Peralta Chief Financial Officer Tom Smith. 

Andrew Martinez’s funeral was Thursday, but a memorial will be held Saturday at 1 p.m. in People’s Park. 

As news of his suicide in his Santa Clara County jail cell last week spread, the one image that kept coming up in the minds of those who knew him best was Martinez, known as The Naked Guy, dancing to the tune of “Break on Through to the Other Side!” on his handheld tape player at the 1992 September Nude In at Sproul Hall. 

“There were 10,000 people cheering him that day, cheering what he stood for —a society sans racism, sans greed, sans oppression,” said Debbie Moore, friend and co-director of Berkeley’s psychedelic performance troupe Explicit Players. 

“There was such a sense of calm, of control in Andy,” she said. “It’s shocking to see how society moved him to a deeper and deeper level of isolation.” 

Moore remembers Martinez wanting to renounce living in tiny cell-like rooms, pollution, cars and “concrete eating up the world” of plants. 

“He pitched a tent and took on the daily task of demolishing the concrete driveway at The Chateau—the Berkeley housing co-op he lived in at one point—with a sledge hammer and pick ax so that it could return to a garden,” she said. 

Moore said that it was actions like these and many more which led Andrew to be labeled as crazy. 

“I used to have conversations with him even after he left Berkeley to go back to Cupertino to live with his family,” she said. “In his voice I heard frustration, I heard agony for the endless psychiatric sessions he had to go through, the social norms he had to follow.” 

Betsy Putnam, housing supervisor for the University Students Cooperative Association in Berkeley, remembers Andrew as a “perfectly nice person” when he lived there in 1996. 

“I saw no problem in him in the year and a summer that he lived here,” she said. “He paid rent naked and kept his wallet in his backpack. But then, how can you possibly tell, we have 1,200 students living here at the same time.” 

Dan McMullan, a Berkeley activist for the Disabled People Outside project, recalled Martinez as a principled person with definite ideas. 

“He had an expression of freedom that nobody had seen in Berkeley for a long time,” he said. “People from all over the world come to Berkeley to see interesting people, and Andrew Martinez was one of those people.” 

McMullan himself was jailed in solitary confinement in Santa Rita Jail for four months. “It was hell,” he says. “I cannot imagine Andy with his mental condition having to go through solitary confinement. All I did in that cell was pace around all day. I even started to hear voices. Frankly, if I had a plastic bag like Andy had had I too wouldn’t be here today.” 

A private criminal attorney in Santa Clara County, who did not want to be named and who currently has a client in maximum security solitary confinement at the Santa Clara County Main Jail, described solitary confinement conditions as “simply horrible.” 

The attorney said that the other county jail in Elmwood was where all the “well-behaved” criminals were taken. In the “farmlike” atmosphere of Elmwood which is lower in security, inmates can be closer to the outside world.  

“The rest, mentally ill or not, end up in the main jail. If you have someone who is not behaving properly, the corrections people can make it really difficult for them. I don’t think it is a good place for the mentally ill. No one can prove these problems because there are no witnesses. Although mental patients are kept separately on the second floor which is devoted to the medical care, it is not good to be mentally ill and be in jail. Our justice system is just not equipped for it,” she said. 

Nancy Brewer, spoksperson for Santa Clara County’s Public Defender’s office, declined to comment on Andrew Martinez’s case but spoke about cases similar to Martinez in general.  

“It all depends on how mentally ill the person is,” she said. “Sometimes the person is taken to EPS—a special unit for severely mentally ill people—or to a mental institution. And if they recover and are found to be competent enough they are brought back for trial. But mental illness and competency are two very different things. If a person is mentally ill and competent to testify, he will be kept in the main jail.” 

Jennifer Bodollo, public defender for Martinez in Santa Clara County, declined comment on her client out of respect for Martinez’s family. 

Ann Kring, professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, told the Planet that there has been a rising trend over the past ten to twenty years for more and more mentally ill people to land up in jail instead of mental institutions.  

“Often homeless people end up in jail regardless of whether or not they have committed a crime,” she said. “Being mentally ill and a criminal is a tricky situation. In the case that you are mentally ill and are kept in solitary confinement while awaiting trial, the illness can grow. Very few jails in the U.S. are adequately equipped for mental care. They are understaffed and underfacilitated and it is difficult to understand when an inmate will commit suicide. It is not even a good idea to have something like a plastic bag in a cell room which is housing a mentally ill patient.” 

Kring added that as a society we needed to do a much better job of taking care of mental patients who end up in jail. “Unless society is willing to step up there will be more cases like Andrew Martinez. It is sad that in the year 2006, the best we can do for our mentally ill prisoners is simply put them in jail.”

Students are set to vote in the Berkeley High School elections Wednesday, but a communications snafu is casting a shadow over the democratic process. 

Several students who submitted late applications are running as write-in candidates and must receive a two-thirds majority vote to win, though they were led to believe a deadline extension meant they would qualify for the ballot. 

Members of the Associated Student Body (ASB), composed of the schoolwide president, vice president, the student school board representative and a handful of other student officials, voted to allow students who missed an April 21 deadline to submit applications as late as May 5, but only as write-in candidates. 

The idea was to allow for a larger candidate pool, said ASB President Amy Yoshitsu, but Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) English and communications teacher Phil Halpern fears that rule excludes some students, students who may not feel comfortable standing up for themselves. 

“My role is as an adult advocate for students who want involvement in the political process,” he said. “Power can feel exclusive and participation doesn’t come easily.” 

Now, he is incurring the wrath of student government representatives who say their autonomy to conduct student elections under attack. 

“[The teacher] does not have the authority to change the elections,” said student school board director Teal Miller, who is in charge of running elections. “It’s a student decision.” 

The ASB decision affects a handful of students (five to eight by Miller’s count), many who attend CAS, a small school within the comprehensive high school that does not enjoy the same student government representation as the larger school.  

Halpern has interacted very little with the students—they are all juniors, and he teaches ninth, 10th and 12th-graders—but he is slated to become co-lead teacher of CAS next year, and sees himself as a champion for kids at CAS. 

The students are running for spots on School Site Council, the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project (BSEP) Committee and the Berkeley Board of Education, seats generally considered more powerful than ASB or grade-level positions, because they deal with larger school and district policies. 

Olivia Cueva, a junior, is running for student school board director, but doesn’t foresee victory, because her odds of receiving a two-thirds majority vote as a write-in are slim. 

“I don’t think it’s fair to extend the deadline and then put us on a write-ins,” she said. “I really wanted to do this, because CAS isn’t represented in student leadership.” 

ASB members modeled the extension after general state elections, Miller said. 

Halpern wants to hold a meeting today (Friday) with all students involved, in a last ditch effort to get kids on the ballot, but it may be too late. The ballots were already drawn up, Miller said. 

“We welcome suggestions on how to run a better election. However, for this year, things are in place and we can’t make changes now,” she said. 

Mateo Aceves, a contender for student board director, whose name will appear on the ballot, contests the ASB decision, but on different grounds from his opponent Cueva. He thinks the deadline shouldn’t have been extended at all.  

“To me, the process seems like a sham,” he said. “If you guys want political legitimacy, you can’t just change the rules.”

More than 200 Spanish-speaking parents and students received calls from Berkeley schools late last month, urging students to attend school May 1 or suffer consequences.  

Parents of students at both high schools and two middle schools received the automated calls the weekend before May 1, when millions flooded the streets in a nationwide boycott to honor immigrants’ rights. The calls were conducted in Spanish and exclusively honed in on Latino families. 

Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) spokesperson Mark Coplan denied that the district office had any involvement in the calls. He said the calls originated at Longfellow and King middle schools and the Berkeley Alternative High School (BAHS). Some students at Berkeley High also received calls because they have siblings at those schools, Coplan said. 

Neither King Principal Kit Pappenheimer nor Longfellow Principal Rebecca Cheung returned calls for comment. One of the BAHS guidance counselors apparently initiated the calls to about 10 Alternative High families, Coplan said.  

The message told parents that school administrators understood students wanted to participate in the boycott, but that the school would not condone such behavior. Parents were urged to discuss May Day events with their children, and told that teachers would hold similar discussions in school. The message also said there would be consequences for students who leave school. 

The same message went out to all the Spanish-speaking families, said BUSD Admissions and Attendance Manager Francisco Martinez. 

Liliana Zazueta, who has children at Berkeley High and Longfellow, claims she received two disparate messages. The one from Longfellow was neutral, she said; it acknowledged that parents might want to pull their children out of school, but that the school did not think it was a good idea. 

The Berkeley High School message was more ominous, Zazueta said. It threatened to lower her son’s grades if he missed school. Her son, a 10th-grader, skipped school, anyway. Recently he received a poor progress report, though Zazueta doesn’t know if it’s linked to his absence May 1.  

One ninth-grader at Berkeley High, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said his father received a call that said if his son went to school May 1 then left, there would be serious consequences. The student attended school, even though most of his friends did not, because “I was afraid of what might happen if I went to a protest,” he said.  

Miguel, another Berkeley High School student who did not want to release his full name because of potential repercussions, claims the message he received said he would not graduate, walk the stage or participate in prom if he missed school May 1. 

Martinez resolutely denies that any other messages went out. He keeps a log of all messages, through the district’s time-based notification system, the NTI Group, Inc., which allows school site administrators to record messages and distribute them to specific groups, like parents who might vote in PTA elections or attend a Back to School Night.  

Some contend that calls which targeted Spanish-speaking families and not other immigrants—even though the boycott honored all immigrants—were discriminatory.  

“Isolating one part of the population, that sounds like discrimination,” said Berkeley High School history teacher Jody Sokolower. “If that’s not racism, I don’t know what is.” 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence would not comment on the specific incidents, but said, “It may well have been something that, if you’re going to inform kids, you need to inform all kids,” though she added that the principals were probably looking out for the safety of their students. 

The news comes on the heels of reports that the school district docked the pay of teachers who attended rallies May 1, prompting some to accuse the district of fostering an atmosphere of intimidation against immigrants. 

“It’s kind of paternalistic,” said Marcela Taylor, a Spanish, history and English language learner teacher who heads up Berkeley High’s La Raza club. “I’m not surprised that there are students and parents who feel threatened.” 

Public financing of election campaigns is one way to shield public officials from the influence of big money. But when the question of placing a measure on Berkeley’s November ballot calling for public financing for all local elected offices came before the City Council Tuesday, councilmembers hesitated. 

In a 7-0-2 vote, with Councilmembers Linda Maio and Max Anderson abstaining, the council decided not to take immediate action, but recommended to the city’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission a ballot measure that would allow candidates for the mayor’s job—and not other posts—to voluntarily participate in a publicly-funded campaign. 

The FCPC will address the issue at its June meeting and report back to the council, which then could vote to put a “clean money” measure on the ballot. 

Much of the hesitation comes from the experience of the election two years ago in which a similar proposal lost, winning only 41 percent of the vote. Some councilmembers said it was too soon to try again. 

“The voters gave us a message,” Councilmember Laurie Capitelli said. 

Saying that she was worried about “voter fatigue,” Councilmember Linda Maio, said she supports the measure in principle, but that this year’s November ballot is too packed to include this one. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, however, argued that it is timely to support a ballot measure that would affect all local candidates: Jack Abramoff’s corruption has been well publicized; a state-wide “clean money” initiative will likely be on the November ballot, and the local League of Women Voters is backing the measure. (The organization did not participate two years ago because they thought the measure would be lost among the many local bond issues on the ballot.) 

Councilmember Darryl Moore said public financing is important “for many of us, people of modest means.” It allows “participation of people of color [and] begins to level the playing field,” he said. “Let our voters in Berkeley decide.” 

Capitelli said he was most concerned about the cost, estimated by proponents at $300,000 to $450,000 per year, using funds that could otherwise be spent on projects such as a youth center or affordable housing. (The proposal to fund only the mayor’s race would cost the city considerably less.) 

Besides, Capitelli said “We don’t have any Jack Abramoffs in Berkeley.” 

Councilmember Betty Olds agreed: “There isn’t any corruption in Berkeley.” 

Rebuilding after disaster 

The council also decided to ask the Planning Commission to write an ordinance by November, allowing people to rebuild “habitable structures” after a disaster exactly where the destroyed structure had been. The new building would not exceed the height and square-footage of the former structure. 

“These provisions should apply to everyone in Berkeley, including properties with open creeks,” said former Mayor Shirley Dean, speaking at the public comment period before the council meeting. 

Councilmember Dona Spring, who would have preferred an ordinance that causes people to rebuild away from creeks, said in a phone interview Thursday that “unfortunately,” the proposed law would not include exceptions to preserve creeks. 

Rebuilding structures close to creeks will be permitted, unless modern-day engineering standards cannot be met, she said. 

Both Spring and Councilmember Kriss Worthington called on the council to support the recommendation as it had been originally written—specifying its application only to homes. 

Their motion was defeated and the council voted 8-1, with Worthington in opposition, to support rebuilding in place for all “habitable structures.” 

Energy choice 

Saying it was premature, the City Council turned down a proposal to put an advisory measure on the November ballot supporting Community Choice Aggregation, through which several cities would get together to run their own energy company. 

The council is still waiting for a complete report on CCA feasibility, which will not be ready until February or March of next year. 

Urging the council to move forward with CCA, environmentalist Tom Kelly wrote the council: “As a Community Choice District, we can help to make that transition from dirty, polluting sources of energy to sources that are clean and healthy.” 

The vote against putting CCA on the November ballot was 8-1-1, with Councilmember Dona Spring abstaining and Councilmember Kriss Worthington voting in opposition. 

Bikes on sidewalks 

By unanimous vote, the council lowered the fine for bike riders riding on sidewalks from $278 to $53, changing the violation from a misdemeanor to an infraction. 

A recent Stanford grad, Christian Pecaut, 25, is ready to change the world. He wants to start as Berkeley’s next mayor.  

In fact, Pecaut moved to Berkeley from San Francisco a couple of weeks ago with the express purpose of running for office. He joins a growing field of challengers to Mayor Tom Bates that includes former Planning Commissioner Zelda Bronstein, Zachary Runningwolf and Richard Berkeley. 

Pecaut says he’ll take out organizational papers for mayor as soon as he gets confirmation of his new Berkeley voter registration from the Registrar of Voters office. 

One of the top issues in Pecaut’s campaign will be the eradication of homelessness. He says he’s putting together a plan focused on attacking the heart of the problem—getting the Republicans out of office—as well as improving services for homeless in the short term. 

Pecaut has been to Homeless Commission meetings and says he has friends among the homeless community. He points to “various indignities inflicted” on that population, including being offered “unsanitary showers.”  

Calling program directors “profiteers of poverty,” Pecaut notes that in the proposed 2006-2007 budget, nonprofit organizations that fund services for the homeless using city funds will receive a 3 percent augmentation without a review of services delivered.  

Asked questions about potholes, library management and the storm drain system, Pecaut concedes that he is a novice to the nuts and bolts of city governance. 

“I don’t have the exact details of why the potholes are not fixed,” he said, noting, however, “I’m learning very quickly.”  

Local needs can be met, he said: “All the problems seem to be manageable.”  

While Pecaut plans to learn more about the details of city governance, he says the real problem is government “unresponsiveness.” Pointing to developers, he said: “The citizens know what the problems are. City government seems to cozy up to [developer] interests.”  

Pecaut says he is not employed at present. Instead of working, he will concentrate on running his campaign. Most recently he has managed the campaign of Green Party hopeful Carol Brouillet for the 14th Congressional District on the Peninsula. He says he will continue to consult for Brouillet. 

Local problems can be resolved by addressing national issues, especially getting rid of the Republican administration, he said. The problem is the “constant threat of terror” being put forward by the Republicans, he said. 

“It’s almost all false, but people are so terrified they can’t focus on other issues,” Pecaut said, adding that he is heartened by the City Council’s recent resolution in favor of impeaching the president and vice-president. 

“I will permanently remove the Republican Party from power in the United States for setting up 9/11,” Pecaut says on his website, www.berkeleymayor.org. 

Photograph by Judith Scherr

Willa Klug Baum, an internationally respected oral historian, passed away on May 18, 2006, following back surgery. Her pioneering work in oral history methodology and interview techniques served as the foundation for the establishment and growth of oral history as a unique academic discipline. 

Born in Chicago on Oct. 4, 1926, Willa’s unconventional childhood included schooling in Germany and Switzerland before settling in Ramona, a small town in southern California. Her youthful interests included tap dance performances with her sister Gretchen and contributing to the local newspaper as a social reporter. 

She attended Whittier College, studying history under Professor Paul Smith, who once made the galling (to her) comment that Willa was his second-best student ever, after Richard Nixon. 

Willa paid for college by working as a telephone operator during the summer, and by winning an annual academic scholarship as the department’s top student. Upon graduation Willa received a scholarship offer from Mills College in Oakland to study history. After obtaining a master’s degree from Mills, Willa accepted a scholarship from UC Berkeley to pursue a Ph.D. in U.S. history, one of only two women in the program at the time. 

In her second year of graduate school, Willa married Paul Baum, a fellow Berkeley Ph.D. student and they settled in Berkeley. After the births of the first two of their children, Paul became ill so Willa began working full-time to support the family, teaching English as a second language to adults and transcribing interviews. 

Around this time, Professor James D. Hart, who later became the director of the Bancroft Library, began using Hubert Howe Bancroft’s dictations of interviews that had been conducted in the 1860s and 1870s. Dr. Hart asked UC Berkeley’s president, Robert Gordon Sproul, why the university was not capturing the stories of those living today who had been a part of history. 

President Sproul agreed to allocate money to do so and the oral history project at UC Berkeley was born, becoming the second major university program in oral history at the time, the first being Allan Nevins’ project at Columbia. 

Corrine Lathrop Gilb, a fellow graduate student of Willa’s, was hired to set up the program in 1954 and she in turn hired Willa. The goal was to set up something like what Hubert Howe Bancroft had done long ago, when he sent out interviewers to record in longhand the accounts of pioneers, silver kings, and others who shaped the West. 

Starting as a transcriber and research assistant, Willa was officially appointed in 1955 as an interviewer and editor specializing in the fields of agriculture and water development. When Gilb left in 1958, Willa became the director of the project, a position she held until her retirement in 2000. 

By 1966, Willa and Paul had five children and Willa was employed full-time at the Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) as it was now called. Willa loved being involved in oral history, not only because the work was important, but because it allowed her to meet people of the highest caliber and interview them about the events and issues they felt most passionately about. 

Through her interviews at ROHO, Willa got to know Earl Warren, Golda Meir, and Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, David Brower and many others. She prided herself on being clever enough to hire a group of top notch women interviewers, each an expert in her field, who “wanted something intelligent to do.” 

During the 1960s and much of the 1970s, Willa and Paul were well known in Berkeley circles for having both a large (ultimately six children) and an intact family. In the Who’s Who of American Women, Willa’s avocation is listed as “childrearing.” 

In addition to working full-time and raising six children, Willa also taught English to adult foreign-born students, and she could often be found leading a classroom of Chinese and Japanese immigrants in a silly English song. 

After she and Paul divorced in 1980, Willa began a tradition of weekly dinners at her North Berkeley Julia Morgan-designed home, at which one could always find an eclectic variety of academic and cultural luminaries engaged in stimulating conversation and dining. 

She also rented out spare bedrooms to foreign students who had come to Berkeley to study English, rendering her large home an ethnic and social melting pot in the classic Berkeley tradition. Fundraisers and solicitors, particularly those pursuing environmental causes, knew Willa as a “soft touch,” always willing to make a donation.  

Willa was also instrumental in establishing oral history as an accepted discipline by working with colleagues from around the country to develop professional standards and methodologies. She was a founding member of the Oral History Association, and although Willa published numerous books and anthologies on the topic of oral history, her 1969 publication titled Oral History for the Local Historical Society, is still considered a fundamental primer on establishing an oral history program. 

In her typical self-deprecating style, Willa often remarked that she only wrote the book because she was tired of being asked to give the same speech again and again.  

Under Willa’s directorship, ROHO amassed over 1,600 oral histories, filled with first-hand accounts of the participants in significant historical events primarily in California and the West. These permanent eyewitness accounts of history are on deposit at over 800 libraries worldwide, and stand as an invaluable resource to researchers worldwide. 

ROHO established a reputation of being ahead-of-the-curve in identifying and documenting historical movements; for example, ROHO’s Suffragists and Women in Politics series began in the early 1970’s before most campuses had women’s studies programs. Similarly, ROHO’s early documentation of the disability rights movement now provides primary research materials for the new disability studies program at UC Berkeley. 

Ongoing ROHO projects include oral histories of the wine industry, mining, the environmental movement, the Disability Rights Movement, the Free Speech movement, anthropology, UC history, engineering, science, biotechnology, music, architecture, and the arts. ROHO’s largest projects document California government from the Earl Warren Era to the present. 

Upon her retirement, Willa was bestowed the Berkeley Citation for her service to UC Berkeley, the President’s Citation for her contributions to the University of California, and the Hubert Howe Bancroft Award for her leadership of ROHO. 

Willa is survived by her sister, Gretchen Klug of Oakland, five children, Marc Baum of San Francisco, Eric Baum of Santa Monica, Rachel Baum Bogard of Nevada, Brandon Baum of Palo Alto and Anya Davis of Los Angeles, seven grandchildren, and her beloved housekeeper and companion, Shirley Williams of Berkeley. She was preceded in death by her son Noah and her former husband, Paul. 

A memorial is planned for June 4, 2006 at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. at 2:00 p.m. (call 845-8725 for more information). Donations can be sent to the Willa K. Baum endowment for oral history, care of the Regional Oral History Office.

Power outage 

A power surge swept through the East Bay Tuesday, knocking out electrical service to 21,000 customers in Berkeley, Albany, Kensington, El Cerrito and Richmond and leaving one hapless Berkeley resident trapped in an elevator. 

Deputy Fire Chief David Orth said the surge kept Berkeley emergency responders busy after the pulse hit the city moments before 4 p.m. 

“It blacked out the north end of the city from Cedar Street north and the hills up to Spruce Street,” Orth said. 

A resident of the apartment building at 2747 Haste St. was trapped in an elevator by the surge, prompting a call to the Fire Department. Power was not knocked out to the area, but the surge stalled the lift, and firefighters reset the system, enabling the trapped resident to complete their ride. 

“PG&E still doesn’t know what caused the outage,” said Orth. 

It also triggered numerous alarm systems. 

The outage’s impacts were worse in El Cerrito and Richmond, he said. The surge knocked out power to a key computer system at the El Cerrito emergency dispatch system, and the California Highway Patrol was receiving emergency calls via cell phone. 

Most customers had their power restored by 9:30 p.m., he said. 

Cottage fire 

Careless handling of his smokes by a homeless person was the apparent cause of the early morning fire that caused $5,000 in damage to a vacant cottage at the rear of a similarly vacant home at 1839 Berkeley Way Thursday, Orth said. 

A caller reported smoke at the property at 4:23 a.m.; a call of flames followed within minutes. 

Fire fighters arrived to find flames burning the floor of the dwelling, with the homeless squatter still in residence. 

The flames were quickly extinguished and the illegal occupant was taken into custody by police on suspicion of trespassing, Orth said.

May 5 

Berkeley police were called to UC Berkeley Tang Center, where a young woman had been admitted reporting that she had been sexually assaulted. 

When officers sought more information, the woman refused to talk to them, said Berkeley police spokesperson Ed Galvan. 

Because the incident happened on university property, the investigation was handed over to university police, he said. 

May 6 

Four young men, at least one of them armed with a pistol, robbed a 19-year-old of his backpack and cell phone as he was walking near the corner of Sacramento and Prince streets moments after midnight. 

Two young men, ages 10 to 15, staged the strong-arm robbery of another youth, age 15, in the 300 block of Deakin Street just after 10 p.m. 

The two bandits departed with the other youngster’s wallet. 

May 7 

A Berkeley woman called police at 11:49 p.m. to report that she had just been robbed by a gunman in his 20’s who piled his black pistol on her as she was walking in the 2400 block of Durant Avenue. 

Seven minutes later, a 23-year-old man called to report that two young men in a silver Pontiac Trans Am had pulled a gun on him as he was walking in the 1900 block of Stuart Street and stolen a black book that contained his personal identification papers. 

May 8 

Police were summoned to the U-Haul officer at 2100 San Pablo at 5:49 p.m. after two women went postal inside the store, throwing things about and hurling a stapler at the clerk. 

The pair was last seen running northbound on San Pablo. 

Police have identified one of the pair as an Oakland woman, but no arrests have been made, said Officer Galvan. 

May 9 

Two bandits grabbed a 19-year-old UC Berkeley student from behind and threw her to the ground as she was standing at the bus stop at the corner of Dana and Haste Streets ay 2:37 a.m. 

The robbers made off with a backpack containing her laptop computer and several textbooks. 

May 10 

At 10:21 a.m., Berkeley police were called to the sidewalk outside the Walgreen’s Drugs at 2187 Shattuck Ave., where a Willard Middle School student reported that another youngster had punched him in the head during an aborted robbery attempt. 

The young bandit had high-tailed it before officers arrived. 

At 3:31 p.m., police rushed to the corner of Ellis and Fairview streets after an 18-year-old woman was struck in the head with a tire iron allegedly wielded by a 20-year-old Union City woman. 

The injured woman then grabbed a pair of knives and ran after her attacked, but dropped the knives—which the suspect picked up and carried off as she fled. 

The injured woman was taken to an emergency room for treatment. No arrests have been made, said Officer Galvan. 

May 13 

A 50-year-old Berkeley man called police to report that someone shot at him as he was driving in the 2100 block of Eighth Street at 12:16 a.m. 

The man, who received minor injuries from flying glass, said he had no idea who shot at him or why. 

Resident of Hearst Avenue called police at 10:35 p.m. to report that a man was swinging a club at passersby in Ohlone Park near the corner of Hearst and Sacramento Street. 

Police found one man who had been struck but not seriously injured, and another woman who had been attacked. 

They also found the bat-man, a 25-year-old man with serious mental problems. He was taken away for psychiatric observation. 

May 15 

Police arrested a 29-year-old homeless man for attacking another homeless man, age 52, with a cane in the 1900 block of Center Street, just a short walk from the city lockup. 

May 17 

An 18-year-old Berkeley woman called police to report that the night before, she had been confronted by a menacing man uttering threats who convinced her to hand over her purse after he approached her near the corner of Durant and Telegraph Avenues. 

At 5:41 p.m., a pharmacist at United Pharmacy at 2929 Telegraph Ave. called officers to report that a gunman had just left the store, making off with narcotics the clerk had handed over after the gunman threatened to pistol-whip him. 

A 54-year-old Berkeley man called police at 6:27 p.m., moments one of three young would-be carjackers who confronted him in the 1600 block of Woolsey Street, struck him with a pistol and tried to make off with his car. 

The man kept his wheels, and a prompted response by police resident in the arrest of a 19-year-old Berkeley man, identified as the ringleader, on suspicion of attempted carjacking. 

May 18 

After hearing shouts and spotting a fight occurring nearby, callers told police at 8:35 p.m. that a fight was breaking out in the 2500 block of McGee Avenue. 

Officers arrived to find that a group of young men had approached a couple as they were walking and grabbed the man’s wallet. He set out in pursuit, and managed to recover his wallet. 

Officers found the suspects during a canvass of the area, but the robbed man, having recovered his wallet, declined to press charges against the youths. 

A 24-year-old woman called police at 10:28 p.m. to report that a man professing to be packing a pistol had demanded her hot pink purse as she was walking near the corner of Durant Avenue and Ellsworth Street. 

A search of the area turned up the purse, with most—but not all—of her belongings intact. 

May 21 

A 30-year-old Berkeley man was robbed of his c ash by a menacing teenager near the corner of Fairview and King Streets moments before 3 p.m. 

May 22 

A Berkeley woman called police at 8:45 p.m. to report that her 16-year-old daughter had just been sexually assaulted. 

The young woman was rushed to an emergency room for treatment and examination, and police are looking for the suspect, who has been identified. 

An 18-year old Oakland woman reported that a pair of strong-arm bandits had stolen her purse as she was walking near the corner of Russell Street and Telegraph Avenue about 1:40 a.m. 

The pair departed in a white Honda Civic. 

Three young bandits, ages about 13, robbed a 10-year-old of his belongings by landing a punch or two and threatening to add more shortly after 3:30 p.m. near the corner of Francisco Street and Franklin Avenue. 

Offered medical aid, the young man decided to tough it out. 

A gang of four women in their late teens beat a La Honda, CA, woman and stole her belongings near the corner of Regent and Russell streets just before 7:30 p.m. 

The four were last seen fleeing in a green Toyota four-door. Their victim declined medical aid. 

May 23 

Two men in their 20s came up behind a Berkeley woman as she walked in the 2500 block of Ninth Street and demanded her purse at 12:45 a.m. 

Their mission accomplished, he pair fled and was last seen running from the scene on Dwight Way.

The Berkeley Downtown YMCA rescinded the membership of Berkeley resident Scott Prosterman last week for inappropriate behavior on the organization’s premises over a period of time. 

Prosterman said that he has been the victim of a campaign by YMCA administrators to discredit him for complaining about safety and hygiene problems at the facility. 

Although YMCA Executive Director Peter Chong said he could not comment on the reasons why Prosterman’s membership had been rescinded, he said that YMCA members had to abide by certain rules and decorum, and if they failed to do so, membership privileges could be taken away. 

“Our members are treated equally and fairly,” Chong said. “The safety and comfort of all our members come first. The YMCA has certain standards and certain policies that have to be maintained and if a certain member fails to do so, we have to act accordingly.” 

Prosterman is appealing his loss of membership. He said his dismissal was retribution for the dozens of complaints he has sent YMCA administrators about the problems with the swimming pools and locker rooms over the past year and a half. He said he was encouraged to submit the complaints by staff, but never received any response. 

“I have repeatedly complained about the Y’s reluctance to discipline badly behaving children in the pool, locker room, and throughout the building,” Prosterman said. “I have also repeatedly complained about the atmosphere in the men’s locker room and shower area, in which gay men feel free to openly solicit non-gay men.” 

Prosterman said his complaints were sent to Chong and Aquatics Director Aaron Dence, but nothing ever became of them.  

“I was humored with a position on the Health and Fitness Committee, which proved to be a useless indulgence and waste of time,” he said. “My repeated requests to make a presentation to the Y’s Board of Members was denied and ignored.”  

Jon Crowder, a YMCA member and a Berkeley resident, who was at the meeting where Prosterman was informed of his loss of membership, echoed some of Prosterman’s concerns. 

“I think part of the problem has to do with the lack of understanding between the management and Scott,” Crowder said. “Although Scott is the messenger who is being shot, I don’t think any of this is exactly intentional. However, I think that the hearing lacked fairness because it wasn’t up for discussion whether he would be staying. The management had already decided and they presented Scott with a check.” 

Crowder also mentioned that he had been harassed in the men’s locker room by a man on April 8, 2006, and had reported it. 

Chong said the Berkeley YMCA was in compliance with every regulation the City of Berkeley requires. He said the city Department of Health inspected the facilities on May 18.  

Manuel Ramirez, city health director, told the Planet that the May 18 inspection had been unannounced, as is standard procedure, but was prompted by a complaint filed by Prosterman on May 12.  

“At the time we were there, it was found that the pools were in compliance for the most part,” Ramirez said. “There have been earlier cases when either the free chlorine standard or the pH balance was not in compliance with our standards and were later rectified, but in this case it was in compliance.” 

Complaints against the Downtown YMCA, however, continue. Krassimir Stoykov, a former Olympic swimmer and teacher, was designated as the on-call lifeguard at the YMCA whenever someone didn’t show up or couldn’t complete a shift. Because of conflicts with his schedule Krassimir resigned in April.  

“I think they were trying to get rid of me because they thought I was trying to build a union,” he said in a telephone interview from Florida, where he now lives. “I had a good relationship with the members, and I liked my job, but the management was trying to make it into a private club. I couldn’t get the days I wanted off, couldn’t meet people when I wanted to, it was very frustrating. As for Mr. Prosterman, I never experienced any problems with him. There is a serious lack of direction at the Y.” 

A current employee, who did not want to be named, said that another ongoing complaint was about the aqua bikes. 

“The Y spent more than $10,000 to buy them and they are almost never used. One or two are usually left in the walking lane of the lap pool, which limits the walking/exercise space” she said. “Pool users frequently complain to the lifeguards about how the money could have been better spent.” 

According to the same employee, in March of 2005, “The lap pool began experiencing serious problems with air quality caused by diesel fumes from the construction of the Vista College building on Center Street directly north of the Y. The air quality problem persisted through the summer, and the Y’s solution was to turn off the ventilation system and open the pool doors. This created problems for the lifeguards, who sit in the direct path of the cold breeze from one of the open doors. There were many complaints, and at one point a swimmer who works for the Berkeley Building Department said that it was illegal to have our air intake system shut down.” 

Kate Bernd Barnett, a disabled member at the YMCA, who wanted to form a committee with other disabled members to help resolve issues faced by them, was told by the YMCA management that “they could make suggestions, but that they could not be an official committee.” 

“I have been with the YMCA for four years and in all those years I have faced tremendous difficulty to change clothes in the cramped confines of the women’s locker rooms,” she said. “There are kids running around and mothers have to change diapers on the filthy floors. It took us eight years, a couple of injuries, and a petition with 200 signatures to finally get a button for automatic access for the disabled. I would suggest an oversight committee to evaluate how disabled members at the Y are being served. What we have at the Downtown YMCA right not is definitely not a community-building situation.”

When I was a child, Memorial Day was called Decoration Day. It functioned as a paler Midwestern version of Mexico’s colorful Dia de Los Muertos, a day for the dead. We went out to a big cemetery where several deceased family members were buried—our family plot included the grave of my uncle who had died not long before in World War II—and actually decorated the graves, or at least straightened them up. We helped clear away the weeds which had accumulated since the last winter, ran around a bit, and thought as much as children can about what it means to be dead.  

Decoration Day began around 1870 as the day for tending the burial sites of the Civil War dead, in number about 560,000, a sizable percentage of the population at the time. It was observed at first on different days in different places, but eventually the date of May 30 became standard throughout the country. In more recent years the name Memorial Day has become accepted, and the date has shifted to the last Monday in May. The inevitable effect of Monday-izing holidays is that the three-day weekend creates a focus on recreation which dilutes the original meaning of the day—the same thing happened with Armistice Day, now Veterans’ Day.  

For most of us, Memorial Day now means barbecues, baseball games and garage sales. Even so, it would be wise to set aside just a few moments to reflect on the original meaning of the day, and its relevance to what’s going on now.  

As it was at the time of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in 1863, our country is now “engaged in a great civil war.” The problem is that it’s not our civil war this time, it’s Iraq’s. And it’s a civil war that our country created, but now seems powerless to stop. No matter what flavor of lie is currently being pushed by the national administration, even Republicans are becoming aware that the situation has deteriorated to a point where it’s mostly gang warfare with religious overtones—with U.S. forces no more able to stop it than the cops in Richmond are able to stop the violence there.  

And it isn’t even a civil war that the Iraqi people started, or that most of them even understand. The current thumbnail history of this endeavor is that the war was launched on the basis of justifications that were complete lies, swallowed whole by Congress and press alike. What was actually going on in Iraq at the time had nothing to do with it.  

Lincoln wanted Americans thinking about the deaths at Gettysburg to “resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” Perhaps if we still maintained the custom of visiting the graves of our war dead once a year, we might be more sympathetic to the suffering this country is inflicting on people like us in Iraq. 

The Iraq war has now gone on, in this round, three years, just one less that the American Civil War. The death toll for Iraqis and foreigners of all kinds, combatants and non-combatants, is estimated at several hundred thousand, though exact figures are impossible to obtain, but it’s a significant percentage of the population. It’s easy to think of the Iraqi war dead as statistics, and to forget that each grave in Iraq holds someone’s uncle, someone’s mother, someone’s child, just like our own graves.  

The goal now seems to be to establish permanent well-fortified military bases in the Middle East which are as much like the United States as possible inside their walls. These bases will control an endless lake of oil, to be tapped ad infinitum by multi-national corporations. Iran may be next. 

And who cares what happens to the locals outside such walls? Some of us do, others don’t. It’s not really red vs. blue, as the TV folks would have you believe.  

It’s almost like the United States has split into three countries these days: our new “American civil war.” At the top of the heap is the war profiteers, also known as the government, who live to line their pockets. The “average Americans” are stuck at the bottom of the heap, though they mostly don’t realize it. Their real income is steadily shrinking, but they’re distracted by baseball and barbecues and don’t know or don’t care what’s being done in Iraq in their name. And then there’s the rest of us, those who understand how the U.S. economy is being destroyed and that the Iraqi people are dying in a civil war they never wanted.  

There’s some hope in the poll numbers which tell us that only 29 percent of Americans now think that George Bush is doing a good job. Will the other 71 percent progress from that point to understanding how to stop what’s going wrong? That’s not clear, since even some of the more intelligent pundits haven’t yet accepted what seems self-evident to the rest of us: that the United States will have to get out of Iraq all together if the fighting there is ever to stop. The November election will tell the tale. 

CALTRANS GRANT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The City Council should withdraw the Caltrans grant application and rescind the SBNDC contract. This is the only responsible action based on what we heard last week from BART official Jeff Ordway. At last week’s meeting we learned that the Flea Market lease agreement is binding until such time that BART requires the west lot for a transit purpose. Without support for the project from the Flea Market there is no basis for discussion with the larger community. The task force and the community should recognize this and respect the Flea Market rights. We have no business considering potential development until such an agreement is made between the project director and the SOBA with the Flea Market board of directors. This is a futile and fraudulent process with the very real potential of damaging an already fragmented community. 

The only question left to answer is why is SOBA, the South Berkeley area (SBNDC, Ed Church, Max Anderson and the city) pushing this project? 

The City Council acted prematurely on misinformation from the grant applicants. Council members stated their support was contingent on the Flea Market considering relocating and alleged changes to BART replacement parking policy. Neither is true. 

In the city’s planning department initial report, the alternative to the SOBA partnership was for the city to work with the community on a vision and  

apply for the grant next year. With such a reasonable alternative available, what will it take to put a stop to this train wreck? 

Laura Menard 

• 

BERKELEY  

HIGH SCHOOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to call the attention of your readers to some recent developments at Berkeley High School. A few weeks ago, one of my young neighbors was assaulted by a large group of teenagers in downtown Berkeley. I have since found out that this was not an isolated incident and that there have been a number of unprovoked and random attacks taking place in and around the Berkeley High campus. My heart sank when I learned of these incidents. 

In the late 1960s, my children were brutalized by just such attacks at Berkeley High. Finding it impossible to get protection, or in fact any action at all from school authorities, we transferred our daughters to private schools. Two sons opted to stick it out at Berkeley High, out of concern about private school costs. Years later they confided that they felt sick with fear at some point every day. They became adept at finding safe routes through the school, they learned to walk with friends; in short, they learned how to survive. We breathed a sigh of relief when they finished high school. 

Now, thirty-five years later, I learn that the violence continues, and that the response of school officials is much the same as it was in the 1960s. Like that earlier time, children who are hurt are afraid to come forward with names of their attackers (as was pointed out in an article in the most recent issue of the Berkeley High PTSA Newsletter). 

The current policy by high school administrators not to talk about these incidents is not the answer. The school claims that violence numbers are down each of the past several years, but refuses to discuss them. In fact, several of the mothers of the children who have been assaulted recently had a surprisingly difficult time even getting the school to agree to meet with them. 

The police need to break up the gangs milling around the Shattuck BART station and around the perimeter of the BHS campus and stop minimizing the severity of the attacks that go on every week. 

On a positive note, my grandson attends an elementary school with a no-violence policy. What has happened in Berkeley that this policy does not extend to older children, whose risks are greater, and whose injuries are much more serious, even life-threatening? 

Let’s insist on a viable alternative for these troubled youngsters, away from the students that they have been preying on, that will attend to their critical needs and help them to succeed. 

Gloria Pihl 

• 

WHAT WE CAN DO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We face many problems, personal, social, ecological. Our careless and wasteful way of life is using up resources that cannot be replaced. Here in the United States we use far more than our share of the world’s resources—yet even here many are very poor and elsewhere there is great poverty and suffering. Many of us are lonely, anxious, despairing, often seeking distractions to avoid these frustrations. 

We need extensive change, both personal and social, to develop a more satisfying way of life that would include economic security for all, meaningful work, real community, real action to protect and restore our environment. However, we don’t have to wait for large-scale social change—we can begin by making changes in our own lives and situations, seeking companions who share our concerns We can live simply and frugally, sharing whatever we can. We can educate ourselves and one another about social and ecological problems and possible solutions. We can develop support groups, co-ops, and intentional communities. We can help each other develop an open-hearted, adventurous, loving way of life. Such personal and small-scale changes can be satisfying and valuable in themselves and can contribute greatly to wider social change. 

I hope for response. You can e-mail me at arthurgladstone@hotmail.com. 

Arthur Gladstone 

• 

A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A “smart growth” advocate is best defined as someone who:  

a) Favors the construction of small, cramped housing units that they themselves would never consider living in.  

b) Is against allowing urban residents to have views of sky or trees or open space.  

c) Drives a car, but doesn’t want anybody else to own or drive one.  

d) Thinks city planning works best when citizens are excluded from the planning process.  

e) Continues to claim that infill development leads to a decrease in the amount of housing built in the suburbs—even though statistics show this is not true. (In fact, 90 percent of all new housing is still built in the suburbs.)  

f) All of the above.  

Please e-mail your answer to Mayor Tom Bates at mayorbates@ci.berkeley.ca.us. I’m sure he will want to compile the results and report back to us in his next “Bates Update.”  

Doug Buckwald 

• 

CREEKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We have a solid and effective foundation for protecting riparian areas in the Berkeley Creeks Task Force recommendations and these recommendations should be approved by the City Council on Tuesday, May 30.  

It is obvious by the mistakes made in the past that channelizing, rocking, culverting and building up to the edge of creeks are not a safe or logical means of controlling flooding and erosion on our creeks— rather, they exacerbate problems when homes sink into decaying culverts and foundations crack because they are built on creekbeds. 

This is no way to manage a precious natural resource, much less a resource populated by a threatened species. It is also no way to protect the residents of our city, who are frightened and angry because they can no longer be assured that their most valuable possesions—their homes—are safe. 

This city needs adequate protections and riparian buffers so that our riparian corridors can flourish and our homeowners will someday not have to worry about erosion and flooding. Do not allow structures to be built in the floodplains of creeks, and there will be no flood damage. Do not allow structures to be built on top of culverts, and there will be no lawsuits.  

We cannot erase what mistakes have already been made. But we can prevent them from happening and allow homeowners already in the unfortunate situation of being too close to a creek or on top of a culvert to have the same rights as any other homeowner, with the exception of building into the creek corridor. There is a balance, and it is the city’s responsibility to be the voice of reason and enforce that balance with integrity and equity. Otherwise, Berkeley will be nothing but another city full of crumbling infrastructure, that had the opportunity to protect its creeks and its people, and instead did nothing. 

I ask the mayor and City Council to please support the Creek Task Force’s recommendations in full. 

Kristen Van Dam 

• 

A CONTRARY  

VIEWPOINT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Contrary to Conn Hallinan’s opinion, the United States and Britain were quite right to provide modern armaments to the Nepalese army in its fight against Maoist guerrillas. The Maoists are reminiscent of the Sendero Luminoso rebels of Peru. Similar to the Shining Path, the Nepalese Maoists have murdered both village headmen and school teachers in their attempt to purge “Western class degradation” from the peasantry. And given the rate of illiteracy and true poverty in the Nepalese countryside, the Maoists’ violence and indoctrination have resulted in considerable support from a rural populace vulnerable to pie-in the-sky socialist rhetoric because they have so little.  

The Nepalese peasantry who support the guerrillas may not realize the horrific straits they are inviting. But most of the Nepalese intelligentsia does. Having rightfully deposed from absolute power an inept and avaricious monarch, the Nepalese democratic movement is—thanks to the aforementioned armaments provided by the West—now in a position to rid the countryside of the Maoist scourge. 

As for Iran, I’m surprised that old Marxist comrade Conn would justify a dangerous theocracy’s development of nuclear weaponry. Well, I guess when it comes to lefties like Hallinan, any regime which castigates the United States is worth defending, no matter how odious the tyranny. 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

TRUE — UNTIL THE  

LAST LINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The May 26 editorial “Remembering the Cost of War” was incisive and true—until the last sentence. 

The easy thing would be to leave it to the political process that has served to keep the plutocrats in power. Since the 2000 election, it should be clear that those in power won’t yield power; as far as they are concerned, they are the only legitimate rulers here, and the rest of the world must bow down to them, too. Don’t expect them to honor—or even allow—any election that might depose them. Whatever it takes—crooked voting machines, insufficient voting machines, purging voter rolls, or canceling elections—they’ll help “God” keep them in power.  

The Democrats are pretty slavish in their support of the Republican agenda; witness its leadership’s reluctance to discuss impeachment, though it’s a popular idea; witness www.davidswanson.org. 

What it will take is a movement in the streets that forces the administration to step down.  

Robert Gruber 

• 

HEATMAIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kris Martinsen’s May 16 anti-Israel heatmail provides perfect proof of the old adage that those who don’t read are no better off than those who can’t. 

Kris clearly hasn’t read Yitschak Ben Gad’s Politics, Lies and Videotape, which details: the nine-decade violent opposition of Arabs to the presence of Jews in what is now Israel; the seven-decade rejection by Arabs of proposals for peaceful co-existence with a Jewish Israel; the non-existence of “Palestinians” prior to the Arab defeat in the 1967 war; and the virulent anti-Jewish foundation of the PLO covenant. 

Kris also is obviously uninterested in reading the Arab media posting available by free subscription at www.memri.org, which as recently posted the Hamas covenant declaring all of Israel to be sacred Muslim land that no infidel has a right to; and an interview with a Hamas official supporting that view. 

It’s clear, too, that Kris has read things I have not. Given that Israel has the best record in the Middle East on free speech, women’s rights, freedom of worship, environmental issues, and medical aid to Africa, perhaps Kris can explain why, if not for anti-Jewish rage, so many leftwingers fulminate against the Jewish state of Israel. 

David Altschul 

• 

MORE ON THE CREEKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a longtime Berkeley resident (since 1989) who owns a rental property (my former residence) beside Strawberry Creek in Berkeley, at 1435 Allston Way. I am the founder and former president of Friends of Strawberry Creek, and have served on the Board of Directors of Greenbelt Alliance since 2002. Please note that I speak for myself and not these organizations. 

I am writing to express my strong support for the recommendations of the Berkeley Creeks Task Force. I ask the mayor, City Council, Planning Commission, etc., to please accept these as is and not accept any amendments that would undermine the integrity of the task force’s effort. I think they are a reasonable compromise that balances the needs of creekside property owners with efforts to restore and improve our local watershed resources. 

I am especially interested in seeing the city finally fund and hire a citywide watershed coordinator.  

Janet Byron

One afternoon this past March, after several consecutive days of rain, the clouds cleared and I walked the length of upper Cerritos Creek in north Berkeley. This humble creek—and likely many others—fails to conform to the impassioned rhetoric and vision of the creek ordinance hawks. Such creeks should not be governed by any of the “one-size-fits-all” creek ordinance amendments proposed. Allow me to introduce to you upper Cerritos Creek as it appeared that March afternoon so you can understand why. 

Cerritos Creek begins 220 feet below Spruce Street, downhill from the slide and sandbox at Dorothy M. Bolte Park. The creek is wholly within Berkeley for only 2,300 feet; this segment is upper Cerritos Creek. Two-thirds of this creek is open. The remainder is underground in 18-26-inch corrugated, fiberglass or concrete pipes.  

For the first 400 feet of upper Cerritos Creek the ground is damp but there is no moving water. In the next 300 feet, before it enters an 18-inch corrugated pipe just above Florida Avenue, the creek width generally varies from one to two feet and contains less than two inches of trickling water. A storm drain from Northampton Avenue discharges into this section, but there is no significant flow now. This 300-foot segment runs across backyards, under fences and a wooden sundeck and within 30 feet of residences, including within five feet of one home. Natural vegetation covers or grows along the banks of almost all of the first 700 feet.  

Some creek water flows under the culvert inlet above Florida and into the aggregate base beneath the street, repeatedly causing premature failure of the asphalt pavement. Beginning 175 feet further downstream, the corrugated pipe under the Florida-Boynton intersection is loaded with gravel and cannot contain creek water because its underside is corroded. The underground culvert continues for 450 feet, beneath the corner house and in backyards within 30 feet of the next six homes along Boynton. It then discharges into the open creek bed. For the next 600 feet, until it enters the 26-inch culvert just above Arlington, the open creek is one to three feet wide and two to three inches deep as it passes less than 30 feet from all but one of the next 10 residences. Storm drainage from five streets is piped into this segment, but little flow is occurring this afternoon. The creek flow at the Arlington culvert is 1.5-2 cu.ft./min. West of Arlington the water cascades from the culvert to the open channel more than 10 feet below. 

Nearly all lots on Boynton through which the creek or culverts pass are relatively small, typically 50 feet by 100 feet. Few if any structural improvements along upper Cerritos Creek equal or exceed the 40 percent development area allowed.  

Neighbors living along upper Cerritos Creek are mystified that any of the proposed creek ordinance amendments could be thought reasonably to apply to such creeks. All proposals, except that of Neighbors on Urban Creeks (NUC), would impose straightjacket regulatory approaches to discrete, non-uniform situations. Although NUC presents a more rational regulatory approach than others, it is overbroad as applied to upper Cerritos Creek. 

Regulatory proponents, from inside and outside Berkeley, have lectured us with rhetoric, romantic images and, at times, a textbook knowledge of streams generally. They use Strawberry and Codornices creeks in their examples but give no evidence they know anything about upper Cerritos Creek or how ill-fitting their cookie-cutter experiment is for this modest creek and its neighborhood. Their rhetoric and images do not meet the reality of this creek.  

By stepping back, it becomes clear Berkeleyans have lost sight of or never knew the problem(s) this regulatory effort is intended to solve. Consequently, we have numerous, complex and overarching bureaucratic solutions madly circulating in search of problems yet to be defined and agreed upon.  

• No one would argue construction activities along creeks should be allowed to degrade the quality of the creek bed or water. In fact, state and local environmental regulations already prohibit such degradation.  

• No one would argue construction over or near a creek or culvert should not be engineered carefully by licensed professionals. In fact, adequate building, engineering and safety standards already apply.  

• Fish will never swim upper Cerritos Creek. They would never find adequate water depth or food and would be washed away by major storms.  

• The general public will never walk along open segments of upper Cerritos Creek. Except for Bolte Park, the creek is wholly within private property. Deer occasionally wander the creek bed, but they are never confused for burglars.  

• Some advocate treatment of storm sewer discharges to creeks, but none of the ordinance amendments proposes treatment.  

• Expensive disputes over discretionary review and lawsuits are minimized if the creek ordinance covers only major creeks included by broad consensus.  

• The continuing dispute over who is liable for culvert failures—the elephant in the room no one can talk about—does not justify cramming all creeks into a uniform ordinance designed for Strawberry and Codornices creeks.  

There is no reasonable basis to include upper Cerritos Creek and its adjacent properties in Berkeley’s creek ordinance. Further, what is true for unexamined upper Cerritos Creek is undoubtedly true for other creek segments.  

After all the community effort spent on amending the creek ordinance, the City Council will do something. For some in our society, it is an inconvenient fact of good governance that for laws to be good they should be tailored to fit the circumstances they are intended to address or correct. So, what reasonably can be done to get the square pegs in square holes and the round pegs in round holes? The council should amend the ordinance following the NUC principles but limited to major creek segments within public lands and along private lands where there is broad consensus. Thereafter, other creeks can be considered for possible inclusion. The Planning Commission should prepare a list of such creeks, grouped in order of priority and importance.  

One size does not fit all. Ask any 10-year old kid with an older sibling. 

Patrick Finley is a Berkeley resident.

There’s a popular saying in the Bay Area: “A better world is possible.” According to Aimee Allison, a young, dynamic candidate for the Oakland City Council, “A better world begins in Oakland.” For her it begins in District 2, where she’s waging a grass-roots campaign against the Brown–De La Fuente machine. Pat Kernighan, her opponent, is one of the Oakland insiders. She votes consistently with De La Fuente. In her first election, Kernighan raised $86,000, a lot of money for a small district. Some say she just bought the election. In contrast, Allison accepts no corporate donations. 

City Council contests rarely attract attention. But the outcome of the Allison groundswell may well change the tone and direction of Oakland’s City Council, an administration that does not even run its own schools, and is currently paralyzed by a wave of crime and murder. If Allison, who has an audacious plan to attack the roots of crime, wins a seat, she becomes a swing vote, and the corporate backers of De La Fuente may just meet their match.  

Crime in Oakland is the biggest issue on voters’ minds today. Under Brown, De La Fuente and Kernighan, Oakland presently has the highest murder rate of any city in the country, according to the L.A.Times. That fact alone requires a change of leadership. In the context of Oakland’s failure to protect the safety of its own citizens, the Allison campaign against crime takes on special significance. Only a few weeks ago, the manager of the Bangkok Palace restaurant was gunned down near Allison’s campaign office on Grand Lake. 

“That night of the shooting,” Allison told me, “took me through the trauma of violence in Oakland. As the police hauled the manager out on a stretcher, I saw the victim with a bullet in his head. He was a real person, not just number 46. His co-worker was sobbing, and I sat with him through police questioning. The whole experience touched me, and I realized that City Council policies are not working. Our leaders have failed to grasp the magnitude of violence in Oakland. That’s why I am calling for a new, bold policy to end the crime wave, to dig into the roots of crime.”  

Last week I walked with Ms. Allison through her precinct, door-to-door. Every person who opened a door agreed the City Council has failed to do its job. Allison took time to explain the dynamics of crime in Oakland. “There are 10,000 parolees in Oakland on any given day,” she said, quoting the police chief. “They are the products of a city without jobs, decent education. When they get out of prison, they’re dumped on Oakland streets like empty cans. The city provides no jobs, no skills, no training programs, no drug rehabilitation. Inevitably many fall back into a life of crime. 

“We not only need more cops, we need a new structure that prevents crime. Our city officials lack the political will to enforce Measure Y, which provides some money for prevention. After the Riders settlement, when police corruption was exposed, the judge ordered internal changes. But the city fails to hold the police accountable.” Allison stressed the themes of community police, accountability, and programs of social uplift for youth. 

Crime, or course, is an economic as well as legal issue. Allison is often asked: How do you fund programs of social uplift when our city is so poor? 

Her answer is refreshing. Oakland, she says, is not really poor. Oakland has the fourth largest port in the United States. World commerce now depends on our unique waterways—the Oakland estuary and harbor. Oakland is the source of billions of dollars in profit for multi-national corporations. All the motors at the Toyota plant in Fremont pass through the Port of Oakland. Airport commerce rose ten percent at the Oakland Airport last year. In short, Oakland as a city is rich in resources. Its land, its tax breaks and services for developers, its vibrant labor force, its beautiful climate lure corporations from around the world.  

While the port depends on the generosity of Oakland, the port pays no taxes. It’s autonomous. It does not even attempt to discharge its responsibilities to the community that sustains it. All the board members of the port are appointed by the mayor. Allison intends to change the submissive relationship between the public sector and corporate power. She wants a partnership with business, not serfdom. 

Raising revenue from the port is the centerpiece of her economic plan. Her revenue-sharing approach offers a sharp contrast to the focus of Brown and De La Fuente and Kernighan: bringing Yuppies to downtown Oakland. Gentrification does not address the poverty or crime, Allison insists. 

Corporations are standing in line to get access to Oakland’s water, land and climate. Allison intends to leverage our wealth to improve our quality of life. 

Whatever happens June 6, one thing is clear. With her determination and charisma, Aimee Allison is a rising star in Oakland’s time of darkness. 

Paul Rockwell is a columnist for Common Dreams and In Motion Magazine.

The 2006 California Democratic Party convention was a far cry from that in 2005. Whereas progressives were trying to get organized and recognized (as the Progressive Caucus) in 2005, in 2006 we showed that we are a real force in the CDP. The 2006 convention was a “platform convention” in which the CDP adopts its platform for the next two years and endorses candidates for the Democratic nomination for partisan offices.  

Commencing several months before the convention, the CDP platform committee traveled around the state, holding hearings on what should be in the platform, and came out with a draft platform. Progressives (read the Progressive Caucus of the CDP and the progressives in various Assembly Districts around the state) read the platform and found it singularly lacking in a progressive vision. As a consequence we commenced lobbying the platform committee for changes in four areas: poverty, clean money, Iraq and single-payer health care. 

We continued our lobbying efforts at the convention, packing the platform committee with supporters and experts on the various subjects. The results? The platform was enhanced in the following particulars never before seen in the CDP platform: 

1. On poverty: Many changes, including support for living wage legislation and COLA’s in SSI/SSP payments. 

2. On public financing of elections and election reform: “California Democrats believe that a healthy democracy is based on clean elections: public financing of political campaigns at all levels of government, campaign spending limits, restoration of the fairness doctrine and a strong role for political parties.” Then, as a bullet point, “Support and implement clean money legislation.” 

3. On single-payer health care: “California should lead the nation in providing comprehensive quality health care to all our people by transitioning to a single-payer public health care system.” 

4. And on Iraq, the following language: “We call upon the Bush administration and Congress to bring our troops home starting now. . . . We must turn Iraq over to the Iraqis starting immediately, end the wrongful occupation of Iraq and re-establish a commitment to the rule of international law and human rights; provide for the financial security of the Iraqi people during Iraq’s transition toward self-governance; return the national territory of Iraq to the sovereign control of the people of Iraq with no permanent U.S. bases in that country; support international diplomatic efforts to assist in peaceful reconciliation among the Iraqi people; and contribute financial resources to rebuild Iraq’s physical and economic infrastructure.” 

Perhaps equally meaningfully, this convention saw the surge of impeachment sentiment expressed, and the CDP went on record Saturday morning as follows: 

“The California Democratic Party calls for the immediate investigation of the President and Vice President of the United States for committing the following alleged acts: 

“Misleading Congress and the American public about an unproven and unrealized threat to national security by Iraq in order to justify war thereby violating the federal anti-conspiracy statute and the False Statement Accountability Act. 

“Ordering the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance of American citizens without seeking warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review as required by law. 

“Violating the Federal Torture Act Title 18 United States Code, Section 113C and the UN Torture Convention and the Geneva Convention, which are U.S. law under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. 

“Ordering indefinite detention of accused persons without access to legal counsel, without charge, and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, all in violation of U.S. law and the Bill of Rights. 

“Sufficient questions have been raised in public discourse, in the press, and on the floor of Congress to warrant an investigation of these and other alleged crimes, misdemeanors, and acts of misfeasance and malfeasance, and to merit an investigation into the propriety of impeachment.” 

On the Saturday night of the convention, almost a thousand people jammed a theater in Sacramento to attend a forum on impeachment sponsored by the Progressive Caucus and several other organizations (including the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club and East Bay for Democracy) to hear Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Assemblyman Paul Koretz, Bob Fertik, Elizabeth De La Vega and Shayana Kadidal discuss the topic of impeachment, moderated by Air America’s Mike Malloy. Tim Goodrich delivered an inspiring and heartfelt opening, reminding the crowd about the devastating effects the Bush Administration has had on our country.  

On Saturday the convention voted to endorse for office in the June primaries Phil Angelides for governor and Debra Bowen for Secretary of State, in each case picking the best progressive for the job. Additionally, the CDP voted to endorse Sandre Swanson for Assembly (16th AD) and Jerry McNerney for Congress (11th CD), again picking progressives for office. 

All in all, it was a far better convention than 2005. 

Mal Burstein is a Berkeley attorney and Democrat.

Do I have a reasonable point? 

Why have the media not focused or reported on the real problem—the lack of labor law enforcement and the ineptitude of the departments of labor and of elected lawmakers in general, as well as state labor agencies to enforce existing laws that prevent illegal labor practices. There are labor laws that make it illegal and would thereby have prevented hiring illegal migrants. Also, wouldn’t enforcing fair business practices have forced businesses to provide legal and fair working wages and conditions to those Americans “who refuse to work those types of jobs.” 

Now it’s an “illegal immigrant” problem. Not a corrupt business and labor practice problem. Not an inept and corrupt government obligation unfulfilled. (And, why can’t the media name who is in charge or responsible to the voter and the citizen to enforce these laws?) Now it is an epidemic of immigrant’s human rights. But what about the rights of American citizens to fair wages and benefits for all jobs? 

It is really a problem caused by those in charge ignoring the “rules of law”—when and where they count. Thanks to our elected law makers and labor law enforcement officials and agencies, illegal aliens are determining the basic labor standard. 

If law enforcement and law makers had long ago enforced the labor laws regarding illegal hiring practices (and fined or jailed businessmen!) or enforced labor practice laws that created fair working wages and conditions, then this illegal immigrant epidemic would not exist. If law makers cared about preventing social ills and solving social problems, these government officials would not have ignored the truth that a fair minimum wage and benefits do not exist in the workforce at base-level jobs. 

Just because you can run a business and make a profit, doesn’t make that business legal or ethical or good for the marketplace or society. If labor laws demanded decent pay and basic benefits from employers, then the native work force—the students, the unemployed, the undereducated, the unskilled and the welfare-dependent would find that menial and manual and base-level jobs are attractive and beneficial toward the real cost of living—allowing them to invest in the future (to job advancement or to further education or to home ownership) instead of forcing them to live day-to-day and hand-to-mouth or to join underground economies. 

With a decent living wage and fair employment practices and enforcement of these by our government officials, then the incentive to hire and exploit illegal immigrant workers would not flourish in the business world. Illegal workers would be discouraged by honest employers or encouraged to find legal routes to join our workforce. Or they might even become desperate enough to fight for their own worker rights in their own exploitive and corrupt countries. Instead, it is easier to illegally undercut labor practices in our country, thanks to our inept government officials and greedy and corrupt employers. 

But now this “illegal migrants and workers” problem has become an epidemic, also thanks to the greed of businesses and the ineffectiveness of law makers to do their jobs—to provide legal guidelines to prevent social problems, to enforce laws that provide social solutions, and to serve the entire spectrum of our society and not just the moneyed special interest of business. 

Good and fair labor laws and labor practices would help all employers and employees to be good, productive, law-biding citizens. But now illegal immigrants will determine how to lower the value of human service and prove that it is OK and “legal “ to exploit anyone for the cause of business profiteering. 

Greed, corruption, and apathy, the American way—and welcome to the third world. 

Adolfo Cabral is a Berkeley resident.

Readers of the May 5-9 issue of the Daily Planet risk having some serious misperceptions of the Berkeley Unified School District’s Maintenance Department. I know that bad news is generally more exciting than good or okay news, but when a news article presents a misleading picture, those who know the true picture need to speak up. Since I was one of the persons quoted and since, after working here for almost four years, I know the department pretty well, I’d like to set the record straight.  

Let me say first that the Maintenance Department is working: maintenance is getting done, repairs are getting made. Four years ago, I, too, heard that this department was “in disarray,” only to find when I began working here that this was not the case. Moreover, the department improved, slowly and surely, under Director of Maintenance Rhonda Bacot, who was also new at that time and who brought a wealth of knowledge and experience in maintenance as well as a friendly, can-do, service-oriented outlook. I credit her organization and training of staff for the fact that the department did not collapse when our a.m. shift supervisor died unexpectedly at the beginning of December, when our p.m. supervisor retired at the end of December, and when we lost Rhonda herself to another school district at the beginning of March. 

I also give great credit to Pedro Reynosa, our acting supervisor for both a.m. and p.m. shifts—also a very capable and can-do person. The weight of seeing that work actually gets done has fallen on his shoulders. He is the busiest man I know. Credit is also due to other capable and hard-working maintenance employees—too many to list here. 

Now for a few specifics:  

• The work order system. Work orders come in from the schools and district offices through a user-friendly system and are immediately assigned. While some workers are much better than others at completing work, work orders are not left incomplete. They are dealt with in various ways and closed out electronically. Could the system be improved? Most certainly. It has the potential to be used in additional ways and to provide all kinds of reports. Additional office help would provide this. 

• Rent. Rent due to the district is being collected, thanks to my colleague Sally Reed, who has taken on what used to be a full-time job—property management, along with most of another formerly full-time job—that of Custodial Supervisor, along with her regular work in the Maintenance Department. Needless to say, Sally does not have much time to chase after deadbeats, so yes, there are a few rental payments slow to come in. Additional office help would benefit this situation. 

• Contract work. Under Rhonda Bacot’s administration, employees were trained and encouraged to develop their talents and interests, with the effect that contracted work was cut back considerably. I personally witnessed a reduction in payments (which had been large!) to companies repairing heating systems, security and fire systems and play yard equipment—to name a few. 

To sum up: The Maintenance Department is working! In 1990 Berkeley taxpayers very generously voted $4 million to ensure decent maintenance in the BUSD. This funding enabled the district to hire additional workers and to, at long last, have enough money to purchase much-needed equipment and supplies. As one there in the thick of it all, I’d like to let people know: your tax dollars are being spent as you intended!  

Ann Aoyagi is Administrative Coordinator, Maintenance Department in the Berkeley Unified School District.

SAVE ICELAND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank everyone who has expressed support for registering Berkeley Iceland as a Berkeley Landmark. This is the first step in saving the rink and skating in Berkeley. The hearing on the application before the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission will be on Thursday, June 1 at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst St., from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Please join us to show the community support for saving Iceland. 

Tom Killilea 

SaveBerkeleyIceland.com 

• 

ANOTHER RELIGIOUS WAR? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What is the sense of trying to authenticate any religion, since it has been written and rewritten throughout the ages? The myths handed down are simply guidelines and can be beautiful. That is, if spiritually were incorporated with love and acceptance in their lives. Idealists and fanatics sanction their own beliefs only, creating retaliation, eventually wars. Is history merely repeating itself?  

Joy A. Flaherty 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On May 11, I attended a meeting at Willard Middle school on Bus Rapid Transit. According to information I learned there, AC Transit thinks this system, running through San Leandro, Oakland and Berkeley, will be a success because of the great numbers of people living and working near the route. However, at the meeting, I noted a tremendous amount of animosity because the reduction of car lanes on Telegraph Avenue is likely to push traffic into residential neighborhoods adjacent to the route. I would suggest to AC Transit that it is not a good idea to antagonize potential customers. Perhaps they can find a way to protect side streets from additional traffic. 

In addition, I think it is important to have some kind of incentive program. For instance, UC Berkeley charges for parking and offers discounted public transit tickets to employees. AC Transit could offer free rides the first month or 25 cent rides in the middle of the day when few people are on the bus. I’m sure that someone familiar with marketing could come up with far more ideas than I could. 

It will take some finesse to balance the needs of drivers, public transit users and residents, and I hope AC Transit will handle the project with grace. 

Sally Levinson 

• 

DAILY KOS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks to the Daily Planet and Richard Brenneman for the article on Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas. Though I spend lots of time on my computer I don’t do the blog scene, so it was very interesting to learn about the major impact of people like Kos. I will admit some envy that a young man half my age can say that up to a million people a day read and interact with his efforts. It’s quite an achievement. As an absurd comparison, our Retro Poll alternative public opinion research group’s website (www.retropoll.org) has received a paltry 20,000 hits in three years and the satiric novel I published (though available on the Internet as well as from Berkeley local booksellers Black Oaks and Cody’s) has sold about 50 copies. How foppish.  

On the other hand, Markos shows wisdom beyond his years when he projects phasing out of blogging into some other life pursuit in about five years. What I think (or hope) he intuits from his work—or we may intuit from the efforts of MoveOn.org, Working Assets’ Act for Change, Air America and others—is that regardless of the web’s popularity it will probably remain a force heavily restricted to operating within the market culture rather than a force organizing within institutions and geographic locales against that culture. The virtuality of the web “community” isn’t important to product marketeers but, for Kos and others who hope to effect substantive political and cultural change, it is an inherently co-opting factor, even when dealing with exciting ideas.  

Not at all meaning to denigrate the value of the marvelous experiment that blogging reflects I think it important to recognize this limitation: that the vast majority of people—those growing ranks relegated to the bottom of a collapsing society—who need to be energized to believe in their own power and self-organized to fight for justice and democracy live most of their lives in a different world, their interaction with the market (be it the market of commodities or ideas) programmed to the role of consuming objects. That majority, in the United States as anywhere, is marvelously approachable within the realm of real life—within its institutions, cultural organizations and communities.  

Marc Sapir 

• 

TIRED OF THE LEFTISTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Margot Smith may be well-intentioned, but she is woefully ignorant of realities. She wonders why our working class doesn’t have the skills of illegal immigrants, buying into Bush’s notion that “illegals are doing jobs that Americans won’t do.” The truth is that undocumented people are working for slave wages which, understandably, don’t appeal to American workers who can garner more from unemployment insurance or welfare, along with medical care. Of course unemployed members of our working class would take such jobs if elite businessmen offered minimal living wages; but why should businessmen pay decent salaries when they can exploit illegal immigrants for next-to-nothing? In sum, undocumented workers have taken a terrible economic toll on minority workers with U.S. citizenship and hurt the middle and lower economic class as well with the enormous cost of social services oriented toward migrants. 

Of course, Smith is one of the new breed of misguided Sandalistas—“revolution tourists” who believe they have found the next socialist paradise in Venezuela. People like Smith are all too ready to embrace the growth of literacy while ignoring the burgeoning suppression of expression in Venezuela. This is so typical, after all locals like Global Exchange are still ready to close their eyes to the tyranny of 47 years of one-man rule in Cuba.  

And of course, the subject of Venezuela brings us to Chris Gilbert, who just resigned as curator of the Berkeley Art Museum. Petulant ideologue that he is, Gilbert just couldn’t understand that art should stand for itself and not be accompanied by didactic rhetoric. 

Speaking of leftist swill, Israel-basher supreme, cartoonist Kalil Bendib, said at a meeting of local “progressives” that he would like more non-European art taught in Berkeley schools. Just what Berkeley needs, more dumbing down of its students with allegedly “great” Third World creations superseding the teaching of truly magnificent Western literature and art! Don’t we already have enough of such bilgewater shortchanging our students? 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

CODY’S BOOKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is too soon to accept the closing of Cody’s as inevitable. Berkeley stands to lose too much if this fine bookstore should close its doors after 50 years of service to the community and university. Those interested in developing solutions to the challenge of making it once again financially viable will meet on June 8, venue to be announced soon. In the meantime, both the city and the university need to hear from Berkeley residents, students, faculty, all those who value this fine independent bookstore, a pillar of Berkeley cultural life, that they need to play an active role in keeping Cody’s open. 

Charlene M. Woodcock 

• 

YMCA EXPERIENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was born and raised in Berkeley and went to all Berkeley public schools and now attend Berkeley City College (formerly Vista). I love reading the Daily Planet but have never written to you guys. But today I write to you because I am upset about a policy that has been put upon our youth in our very own downtown Berkeley.  

I would like to inform you about a situation that happened in our own community of downtown Berkeley. On the night of Wednesday May 24, I arrived at the YMCA at 6:30 p.m. with my family. My family meaning my three young children ages 6, 3 and 1, my brother (15), and myself. As we were entering a staff member asked my brother how old he was, he replied 15. He was then told that he could not come in because teenagers were not allowed in after 6 p.m, Monday through Thursday. It is their policy. I asked if this was because they caused trouble. The staff member told me that it was because they tended to hang out. I explained to them that he wasn’t coming to hang out but to help me with my children and enjoy time together as a family. They refused. I explained to them that I was practically his guardian and made myself responsible for him. They still refused, I asked to speak to someone else. I asked this new staff member if the YMCA promoted family and community. He replied yes. So why weren’t they supporting this family? They still refused, his final words were, “If I let this one in I gotta let the next one in and then the one after that.”  

Of course you can imagine the frustration I felt. Of course this is not the reason why I am writing to you. I am not trying to be a “tattle-tale,” I totally love the YMCA, but it is upsetting that the Young Mens Christian Association would not let the only young man there enter.  

So are they telling young men and women to go hang out in the streets? They are discriminating against age and not promoting family or community. It was impossible to believe that they would not make an exception, or have an exception in their policy that a teenager can come in after 6 with his/her family. I think it’s great that they support and try to help the youth by letting them sell things at the snack cart they have, but what time are they giving them with their families? A youngster gets out of school at about 3, great if he wants to go work out and hang with his friends at the Y. But there are other family situations like mine, where my youngster has to wait for me to get off of work around 5; come home, gets things together to go out again and have fun as a family. All this to avoid him straying, to avoid him having to go to the street to look for what he can’t find at home. And then they tell me he can’t come in with his family.  

The YMCA has a designated “Family night” on Fridays from 7-9 which we have gone to. Unfortunately Fridays are somewhat unpleasant because the facility is so crowded, and on occasions my work schedule does not permit me to make it on Fridays. I don’t know if this is a story to follow or what. Maybe you can tell me if I am over exaggerating or doing the right thing. I am not usually a complainer. But do stand up for what I believe in. I just feel hurt that a place like the YMCA, which I love so much, would make all youth pay for the acts of others, and go against there own goal of bringing family and community together. 

Carmen Navarro 

• 

CORRECTING CHRIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Kavanagh accuses John Blankenship of operating “in tandem” with Michael St. John and the Berkeley Property Owners Association in a “carefully calibrated campaign” to relax Berkeley’s rules against condo conversions.  

As the person who has spoken the most for BPOA on this issue, I’d like to set the record straight. Mr. Blankenship is not a member of BPOA and his efforts against the current rule were unknown to me before last week. Indeed I never even met the man until after we had both spoken to the City Council on May16. Mr. St John, of course, is a member of the Housing Advisory Commission and so is known to everyone on all sides of the question.  

There are wide differences between our respective approaches. It appeared to me on May 23 that Mr. Blankenship thinks smaller buildings should be exempt from the current rules. Mr. St. John says that the 12.5 percent fee ought to be calculated on capital gains on sale of a converted unit rather than on the gross sales price. BPOA’s position, which has been submitted to HAC and to the council, is that the cap on conversions should be raised so long as rental vacancies remain high, and that a reduced fee should be charged up front so that the city gets immediate income for its housing trust fund.  

The petition now being circulated takes a fourth approach, in that much of the fee, instead of going to the city, would be paid to tenants wanting to own their own homes .  

These suggestions are all different from each other, and don’t indicate the sort of conspiracy alleged by Mr. Kavanagh. What they do indicate is that a lot of people do agree on one thing: The current law severely restricts affordable home ownership in Berkeley, and ought to be changed.  

David M. Wilson  

• 

CONDO RESPONSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you very much for publishing my May 16 commentary on the Condominium Conversion Ordinance. “Condo Conversion Taxes Unfair to Duplex Homeowners” would have been more accurate.  

1. The new conversion assessment (fee) amounts to a sales “tax“  

2. My duplex is my home, and I cannot have it without the rental.  

As I said in my commentary, I and others like me, do not see ourselves as “landlords.” We live in duplexes or triplexes because of our desire to be citizens of Berkeley, our desire to have some control over our own destiny through home ownership, our pride in ownership, our joy in working with buildings (me, as an architect), but most of all because we do not have the means to own a single family house in Berkeley. In order to afford the astronomical costs of purchase, maintenance and repair, but especially Berkeley taxation, we have been forced to subsidize our costs with a rental. 

Mr. Chris Kavanagh, who I have never met, and whose name I had not previously recognized, was unable to step back to admire the individual trees in the forest. This is especially distressing because he has a position on the Rent Stabilization Board. I do not have the available word count to nit pick my way through the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in Mr. Kavanagh’s May 23 letter to the editor. I also do not know from whom the man is getting his information , but he should “out” his source who is leading him astray:  

1. I do not belong to the Berkeley Property Owners Association (BPOA). I have never gone to one of their meetings. I have not read their ballot initiative, although I have since this letter, gotten a copy. I have intentionally not associated myself with BPOA because my perception, rightly or wrongly, has been that they are owners of multiple large properties and have a different approach to their work than me. My business is architecture; my rental is a part of my home, and I treat it as such.  

2. My “carefully calibrated campaign”? “Working in tandem with BPOA”? Is Mr. Kavanagh a conspiracy theorist? Is he trying to demonize people who don’t agree with him in the manner of Joe McCarthy? 

3. Mr. St. John is on the Housing Advisory Board and as such I have contacted him and others on the commission to discuss issues raised relative to the Condominium Conversion Ordinance. Not all have returned my calls, but Mr. St. John has. I don’t always agree with Mr. St. John’s approach, nor what he has to says, and he has not picked up on many of my ideas, but he happens to be one of several thinkers on the HAC who dares bring up an original thought and is not just the voice of his city councilmember.  

4. I have called and met with almost every councilmember with regard to the Condominium Conversion Ordinance, all but one of whom has returned my calls. Maybe Mr. Kavanagh can come up some with some “carefully calibrated campaign” from my council contacts as well. 

5. I hope his letter does not accurately reflect his inability to see the truth behind personal statement which he must be called upon to do often in his position on the Rent Stabilization Board. 

John Blankenship 

On May 15 the City Council voted in favor of a “Del Norte Marijuana Dispensary Zone,” without a public hearing or local presence. Oakland’s “Oaksterdam” district and Richmond’s Pot Shops have shown how hard it is to help chronic pain sufferers while evading potential damage to “society.” Top quality cannabis can cost more than gold. If legalized, it could be grown as easily as, say, basil. The sick clamor for “at cost” medical use attracts idealists, profiteers and attorneys. Drug companies devise new methods for medical “inhaling.” Tobacco and liquor interests ponder ways on how not to be cut out of potential profits. The State and federal legal standoff is unlikely to be resolved soon. The broader pros and cons of legalization are well beyond being a local matter. 

California’s 1996 “Compassionate Use Act” has spawned a new breed of lawyers “doing well by doing good.” Our cities scramble in a variety of ways. Some opt for restrictive zoning and operational rules. Albany, with an elected city attorney, i.e. “responsible to voters rather than council,” plans an “Advisory Referendum.” Dublin wants a ban, claiming that “allowing dispensaries to operate and then placing such stringent rules on them so that they could barely operate would be hypocritical.” 

Janet Coleson, El Cerrito’s city attorney, produced a “confidential” memo on this topic. In a “public” report she argues, convincingly, that the city impose a “restrictive ordinance.” She had two years in which to prepare while she tripled our legal costs over the cost of her predecessor. Did she dilly-dally? Is she now railroading the council into a “least risky option,” to find at least one suitable potential “pot zone” location? The planning department has ignored all public input and discussion, and hit upon “Del Norte.” The Planning Commission is next in line to be stampeded, so a proposed ordinance can pass its final (second) reading, before the current marijuana moratorium runs out on July 19. 

Checking the dates of confidential and other memos and related invoices should reveal whether the blame is mainly our attorney’s, or if it should be shared with other staff and/or councilmembers. If it is the former, a good case can be made that the city take its time to proceed properly and prudently. In case of a lawsuit, we could demand legal protection from the attorney’s firm, at no cost. Otherwise, do some fast footwork, make up for lost time, try to evade the pot-holes, and, mainly, bring affected residents, i.e. everybody, into the decision loop. A bad ordinance puts us, in all respects, at greater risk than no ordinance. Here are the things to consider:  

1. Is our historically most problematic area the best site for this latest problem? Del Norte has consumed the bulk of our redevelopment money, some $50 million to date before current obligations are paid off. What was achieved? “We got rid of the Bay Bridge motel prostitutes” is the claim. But there’s another motel close by, and dozens of casual day laborers flag down job prospects en route to Home Depot. The “Baxter Creek/Gateway Park” which we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on, is right across the street. 

2. Del Norte remains a major redevelopment site. The “Olson” (Mayfair) condo plans need to be addressed; BART hopes to develop its parking lots; other sites in El Cerrito and Richmond, toward the San Pablo and MacDonald intersection, are to be developed soon, presumably with housing. Neighboring cities, that pioneered pot clubs, found out they require a lot of police attention. If El Cerrito is to have such a place, shouldn’t it be as close as possible to our police and medical emergency services? 

3. “Keep the dispensary away from schools, residences, parks” sounds right. Yet the planners have managed to pick a site that, although zoned “commercial” on paper, has in its middle eleven “very low income housing units” at 5124 Wall Ave., Richmond, and a pleasant detached family home with a “children at play sign” at 5222 Wall Ave.. Will staff ever decide to first ask us locals? Consider the reality on ground rather than just from maps? 

The Del Norte BART location is substantially more problem prone than 19th Street BART “Oaksterdam.” If we’re going to do this at all, it should not be done by underhanded, wimpy, manipulative railroading. Forget the “first reading” ordinance approval, it was disgraceful. Let us hear from all interested and potentially affected residents first. 

My suggestion: One of the empty “Mill & Lumber” storefronts is the perfect site for a controllable, above board medical cannabis clinic, under close daily supervision of police, city hall, and “village town center” officials, to serve legitimate local users. It may even be a money-generator rather than a troublemaker, for “El Cerrito the City that Gives a Damn.”  

“Blow winds, and crack your cheeks!” Nowhere else in Shakespeare are the elemental forces of nature so much in sync with primal human passions as in this tragedy of two dysfunctional families and a kingdom coming apart at the seams. 

Lear and Gloucester, two hapless fathers, wander aimlessly in the clutches of a ferocious storm worthy of Katrina’s catastrophic implication: “Hurricanoes spout!” 

King Lear is also one of the most difficult plays to stage successfully for qualitative reasons. Some things about the driving forces of the play—the dialectic between incident and overall perspective, cause and effect, and what’s said versus what’s performed—are such that almost imperceptible things can go awry and put the production off-course. 

I’ve seen celebrated British companies present fine characterizations in interesting production plans spun out into exciting staging, and yet, somehow the show hopelessly bogs down into a string of more-or-less good and bad scenes with no real unity by the opening of the first storm scene. No wonder there are those who hold that Lear should be regarded as a reading play, for voice only, heard but not seen. 

The Shotgun Players production, now up at the Ashby Stage, has two well thought-out assets: solid casting in the case of the two errant fathers (longtime associate Richard Louis James as Lear, and John Mercer as Gloucester) and an economical, fluid blocking, underpinned by brisk action and scene changes which let the plot unfold freely, the story fluently tell itself. 

Co-directors Patrick Dooley and Joanie McBrien deserve credit for laying these foundations. The set by Alf Pollard—a stolid court setting of stone that can seem warm or cool, depending on the lighting (David Robertson), with an unobtrusive screen that reflects the crepuscular light of passing days or the flashes of lightning that punctuate the great, frightful exchanges during the storm to Chris Paulina’s thunderclaps—adds to the flexibility of the action spread out over various locales. 

The tangle of complications, whereby a king disowns his favorite daughter and freely gives over the reins of his kingdom into the treacherous hands of a pair of jealous “evil sisters,” thereby finding himself literally out in the cold and out of his head while all parties gird up for apocalyptic battle, is presented with the simple, shocking clarity of a Grimms’ fairytale or a bad dream. 

As in any good storytelling, the psychology is unstated but straightforward, the ambiguities of Shakespeare’s mannerism only opening up more perspectives as the action shifts and chaos expands. 

Lear is easy prey to the sycophancy of his deceiving daughters because he is used to the flatteries of life at court, which revolves around his person. In his vanity—and here James’s portrayal is particularly good—the waspish king thinks it’s all due to his charm, his kingly aura and diplomatic mien, the sure sign of a tyrant who’s lost his grip, becoming subject to his toadies’ and his own extravagances. 

In the case of Gloucester, tricked into accusing his loyal son Edgar (Dave Maier) by his scheming bastard Edmund (Benjamin Privett), the roots of his susceptibility are again transparently clear. He’s a courtier who considers himself so conventionally good, he cannot conceive of being tricked in his distraction, blustering (and Mercer’s a worthy blusterer) before his secret foes over the loss of what he held sacred, that which was lost unawares long before.  

Disasters mount up, and the aggregate becomes ever more shocking in its barefaced depiction of snowballing degeneracy as seen by a crazed, self-deposed monarch, its whole far exceeding any of the grisly details of eyes plucked out, feral couplings, or disguises that overpower the character of those who put them on. 

It also can fray nerves. Shakespeare’s always flirting with melodrama: if the overtones are to sound tragic, they must ring out clear; if strange, they cannot echo the tumult of the catastrophe or the storm. 

It’s here that uneven casting and those almost-imperceptibles come into play to hobble what would proceed from clarity of the presentation. The cast of 15 works hard, and some with fair success, like Lear’s daughters (demure Zehra Berkman, Fontana Butterfield with deceptive grand manner, and especially simmering Trish Mulholland) or an acting-out female Fool (Katja Rivera). 

But untrained, unorchestrated voices in particular become cloying or grating with one or another failure of mismatched diction, be it overly vernacular delivery or too much Shakes Festival-ese. The distress over what’s portrayed doesn’t attain escape velocity to reach the sublime orbit where parallel lines of perspective intersect, and the Bard’s elusive Truth flashes into view for an instant, as Melville once said, like a white deer fleeing, from tree to tree, through the woodlands. 

KING LEAR 

Presented by the Shotgun Players at 8 p.m. Thursday—Sunday through June 11 at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. 841-6500. 

www.shotgunplayers.org.

As the general election for Oakland mayor approaches, the San Francisco Chronicle is working hard to elect Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente and to defeat his chief rival, former Congressmember Ron Dellums.  

The Chronicle endorsed De La Fuente on April 30, nearly six weeks before the June 6 election. The paper argued that De La Fuente “had the best feel for the pulse of the city,” and better understood the limitations of government. 

In contrast, the Chronicle criticized Dellums for “pushing a utopian vision,” specifically his support for inclusionary housing and his commitment to “ bringing universal health care to his ‘model city.’” 

The Chronicle concluded that Dellums would be qualified to be a “college president, secretary of state, or Washington lobbyist” but that De La Fuente is the “type of fully engaged, roll-up-the sleeves, answer-your–calls, prod-the-bureaucracy, pitch-the-city” mayor that Oakland needs. 

Chronicle news stories that day and subsequently have been careful to mirror the identically (false) contrasts between De La Fuente and Dellums first announced by the paper’s editors. 

In Christopher Heredia’s April 30 story (“Oakland Mayor Rivals Each Woo Voters in Own Particular Ways”), the candidates’ strengths are contrasted between “Dellums’ ability to inspire a crowd” and “De La Fuente’s nuts-and-bolts municipal know-how.”  

The story then repeats the editorial’s view that Dellums is standoffish and utopian, saying “early on, Dellums recoiled at reporter’s questions, preferring to describe from podiums his vision of Oakland as a model city.” 

Here’s some other excerpts from the Chronicle’s “news” story: 

“While some have wondered whether Dellums really wants the job . . . there’s no doubt that De La Fuente wants to be mayor.” 

“That plays well with some voters who aren’t convinced that Dellums’ experience in Congress means he knows how to run a city.” 

“De La Fuente’s candor stands in contrast to Dellums . . .” 

Two weeks later, Chronicle columnists Matier & Ross joined the Dellums-bashing. Their May 1 column, “Brooks’ city funds helped spur Dellums run,” implied that Oakland taxpayer dollars had been illegally used to benefit the Dellums campaign. 

The truth is that Brooks funded a series of concerts in an Oakland Park, and at these public events members of the Oakland Black Caucus staffed a “Draft Ron Dellums” table. Brooks can be criticized for how she spends her office accounts, but Ron Dellums name has been injected into the story solely to taint his candidacy. 

Last week, the Chronicle and reporter Heredia further escalated their biased news coverage (“20 days left, mayor’s race still a close call, May 17”). The article again links Dellums to having a vision of a “model city,” and says that listeners “roar” when he speaks “because he often says what they want to hear.” 

While the Chronicle describes Dellums as pandering to crowds, it views De La Fuente’s follow-up to Dellums speech as “puny though heartfelt, underscoring his nuts-and–bolts style of governing.” The paper’s “objective” coverage then continues: “Whereas the former congressman offers sweeping visions of what could be, De La Fuente remains pragmatic and talks about what is.” 

If this is not bad enough, Heredia then uses the old trick of finding a seemingly objective authority figure to say what the reporter (and his Chronicle editors) want. In this case the Chronicle trots out little-known Cal State Sacramento government professor Michael Selmer, who uses his “expertise” to make the following unsubstantiated comments: “Dellums to some degree expected to be anointed without a fight. I suspect he is somewhat surprised that it hasn’t occurred that way . . . His (Dellums’) campaign is showing some cracks. Dellums has shown he lacks municipal government experience, but it’s clear De La Fuente and Nadel know how to get things done and have offered detailed plans for doing so . . . He (Dellums) has a belief that a lot of the issues in Oakland can be solved with more money, and he has no idea where that money is going to come from.” 

I tried to ask Michael Selmer what the basis was for his strong anti-Dellums conclusions, but he was unavailable at his campus number. Reporter Heredia told me via e-mail that he used Selmer as an expert on Oakland politics because he was a “poli sci professor who lives in Alameda and is watching the race.” 

And it’s just a coincidence that the professor chosen as the Chronicle’s political expert on the Oakland mayor’s race views Ron Dellums with the same hostility as the paper’s editorial Board.  

Right. 

It’s time the San Francisco Chronicle to stopped manipulating the news to elect its favored candidates. 

Clean is a film about picking up the pieces and putting them back together, about kicking a drug habit, about winning back the love of one’s child, about forgiveness and compassion, and almost every other road-to-redemption cliché you can think of. And yet somehow it succeeds.  

Other films have portrayed the shattered lives of drug addicts to much greater effect, and many films, as well as countless TV specials, have followed the efforts of down-and-out mothers to regain custody of their children. Clean does not add much to the genre. But what makes it worth the ticket price, quite simply, is the cast. Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte manage to take a tired tale and infuse it with dignity and humanity. 

Cheung plays Emily, a recovering drug addict trying to rebuild her life so that one day she might be able to take care of her young son. Nolte, along with Martha Henry in another excellent performance, play the parents of Emily’s lover, an obscure musician whose overdose leaves their child permanently in the care of his grandparents.  

The film was written and directed by Cheung’s husband Olivier Assayas, who created the role specifically for her. And though Assayas is to be commended for his casting instincts, much of his direction leaves something to be desired.  

There is no individual scene that is particularly compelling, no moment where the film sinks its hooks into you. In fact, the pace is somewhat slow, at times plodding, taking far too much time in getting where we already know it’s going. It’s meant to be a simple film about a woman’s everyday life, and life is not exactly chock-full of dramatic moments, but still the film can be a bit tedious. The appeal of the movie grows steadily, however, as the characters become more sympathetic and more convincing. 

What Clean does well is track the progress and the setbacks Emily experiences as she makes a series of good and bad decisions en route to an uncertain future. The film does not use the same approach as the graphic drug movies of recent memory, like Trainspotting or Requiem For a Dream, with gruesome scenes of drug ingestion and physical decay; drug use is not really the subject matter here. Rather, Assayas takes a simpler, more accessible route, showing the step-by-painful-step process a woman must undergo in order to piece her life back together—a process that is not full of momentous catastrophes, but instead consists of small measures of success amid a series of events that gradually chip away at her resolve. Friends shun her; former acquaintances demonstrate a lack of faith in her; opportunities seem to vanish as quickly as they appear. At a time when she is most in need of a helping hand, she finds that she has alienated virtually everyone who could lend one. 

Some of Assayas’ directorial techniques are a bit threadbare. Jump cuts and handheld cameras have their place, but they’re all too common these days. There are a couple of scenes where these devices are very effective—as a panicked Emily searches through a crowd, for instance—but for the most part they’ve become a simple and uninspired method by which indie filmmakers declare their indieness. In this case, the strategy often backfires, with the constantly moving camera and disjointed editing only distracting us from the compelling performances of Nolte and Cheung. 

The soundtrack too relies heavily on current trends, using much of the same sort of moody electronica that was featured in—thought not pioneered by—such recent semi-indie films as Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

However, the simplicity and humanity of the movie manages to overcome the obstacles created by these somewhat trite aesthetic flourishes. It is an optimistic film, and one that bears a hopeful and unfortunately necessary message: that given a chance and a bit of compassion, people can change, and that a small act of kindness can go a long way in alleviating the pain of making one’s way through an indifferent world. 

CLEAN 

Written and directed by Olivier Assayas. 

Starring Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar,  

Martha Henry, James Johnston, James Dennis, Rémi Martin, Laetitia Spigarelli. 

Playing at Shattuck Cinemas.

After a year and a half of listening to many perspectives and extensive deliberations, the Creeks Task Force (CTF) has carefully crafted a set of recommendations to revise the Creeks Ordinance that respects private property owners’ interests and protects the natural environment. (See www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ planning/landuse/creeks). The CTF Recommendations are now before the City Council. 

The original Creeks Ordinance, passed by the council in 1989, established a 30-foot setback requirement from the centerline of an open creek for new roofed structures. The ordinance also banned further culverting of creeks and encouraged daylighting of creeks. A subsequent city attorney opinion found that culverted creeks were also covered by the ordinance. The city attorney’s position is that culverted creeks are the responsibility of property owners. Neither the original ordinance nor subsequent opinions were communicated adequately to affected property owners. The original creeks ordinance provided for the rebuilding of homes more than 50 percent lost or destroyed built within a 30-foot setback if a variance was obtained. At a city council meeting in September 2004, the City Council voted to change this to rebuild by right within existing zoning ordinance provisions. 

Based on input from creek property owners, creek protection advocates, scientists, and other jurisdictions, the CTF agreed to 13 statements that can be summarized as follows: importance of creeks as an inter-connected drainage system; need to treat underground creek culverts differently than open creeks; encouraging creek daylighting on a voluntary basis; 30-foot from a creek centerline is an area of interest; people should be able to rebuild destroyed or damaged buildings; existing structures within the 30-foot setback area may be repaired, renovated and maintained within the current footprint. 

These statements of agreement translate into the following regulatory revisions: 

• Keep the 30-foot setback requirement from the creek centerline for new roofed structures. 

• Although still in the Creeks Ordinance, culverted creeks would be treated similarly to storm drains for purposes of setbacks for safety, access and maintenance and handled administratively by engineering staff in Public Works Department. Any setbacks for culverted creeks would be determined on a case-by-case basis. The 30-foot setback would apply only to open creeks.  

• Allow vertical expansions of structures within 30 feet of the creek centerline with an environmental analysis showing that the expansion will not adversely affect the creek. Horizontal expansions of buildings within 25 feet of the creek centerline would not be allowed without a variance, but building out between 25-30 feet would be allowed with an administrative use permit (AUP) and environmental analysis.  

• New decks, currently not regulated, would not be allowed within 10 feet of the creek centerline, but new decks and replacement or rebuilt decks would be allowed within 10-30 feet of the creek centerline with environmental analysis. 

• Only paving for footpaths and bridges is allowed within 10 feet of a creek centerline. However, pervious or permeable surfaces within 10-30 feet of a creek centerline would be allowed. Impervious surfaces would not be allowed within 30 feet of the creek centerline at all. Bridges would be built with a clear span necessary to pass a one-in-100-year storm event. 

These proposed regulatory revisions represent a delicate balance between private property owners’ interests and the need to protect creeks in a densely populated urban area. On the one hand, private property owners would have the flexibility to build up or down if their house were within the 30-foot setback as well as building up to five-foot out into the setback area with appropriate procedures. Furthermore, those living in a house over a culverted creek would no longer be subject to the 30-foot setback requirement for open creeks but would be subject to engineering staff review in the Public Works Department. On the other hand, a new setback requirement for bridges and decks as well as for pervious-only pavement within the setback area would be established. 

In arriving at these recommendations, the CTF discussed several issues in depth. First, the CTF decided to keep the current 30-foot-from-the-centerline setback requirement rather than adopting a case-by-case approach because they thought the latter would be more confusing to the public and more difficult to administer. Furthermore, a case-by-case approach could be inconsistent and might result in inadequate riparian protection. 

Second, the CTF supported the property owners’ ability to rebuild damaged or destroyed homes within the setback area; however, the CTF felt that property owners should be subject to the same requirement for a Use Permit from the Zoning Adjustments Board as any other (legally) nonconforming structure. The council this week sent this issue to the Planning Commission.  

Third, the CTF debated the issue of whether culverted creeks should continue to be regulated under the Creeks Ordinance or taken out altogether. Two reasons why the CTF decided to leave culverted creeks in the ordinance: 1) transition zones—where culverted creeks enter an open creek—need to be regulated by the Creeks Ordinance; and 2) culverted creeks are all part of an interconnected drainage system, e.g. the watershed. The bottom line is that CTF recommendations would treat culverted creeks as storm drains and the 30-foot setback requirement would not apply. In essence, the CTF is recommending that the city return to the original creeks ordinance that applied only to open creeks. 

Another issue the CTF addressed was that of adequate notice. In reviewing the history of the Creeks Ordinance, the original ordinance and subsequent interpretations were not adequately communicated to affected property owners. The CTF therefore recommends that the City of Berkeley notify all affected property owners as identified by the city of the approved changes to the Creeks Ordinance as well as advance notice of any future proposed changes.  

Although the CTF was specifically prohibited from dealing with the issue of financial liability for failing culverts due to on-going litigation, they agreed that the city should be looking for other sources of funding. One possibility—and this is my own opinion—is for the city to consider a possible ballot measure to improve both failing culverts AND inadequate storm drains which have led to flooding this winter in parts of the city. The culverts and storm drains are all part of the city’s overall antiquated drainage system and need to be repaired over time.  

Thousands of volunteer, staff and consultant hours as well as extensive input from the public and lengthy deliberations have gone into the CTF recommendations. They represent a delicate and hard-won compromise between property owners‚ interests and creek protection values. When the City Council takes this matter up on May 30, they should support in full the CTF recommendations to revise an outmoded creeks ordinance to meet today’s realities.  

Helen Burke is the chair of the Creeks Task Force. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Creeks Task Force.

Pacific Film Archive’s “A Theater Near You” series is a showcase for films that don’t make it to your local megaplex. This week PFA is featuring an encore screening of Baby Face, the notorious 1933 Pre-Code film that for decades was only seen in a heavily censored version. A negative of the original version was discovered in 2004 and the restored film has been circulating for about a year in advance of its upcoming DVD release.  

Seeing the complete version is a revelation, for not only is it just as salacious as it was long rumored to be, it is also a truly great film. It made the rounds of Bay Area theaters last year, playing at the Castro Theater and the Balboa Theater as well as PFA. But the seats filled up so quickly at the PFA screening that they’ve brought it back for another engagement. 

The film shows at 7 p.m. Friday and again at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Though it will be available on home video soon enough, this funny, cynical melodrama deserves to be seen with an audience.  

Hollywood began enforcing the Production Code in early 1930s, establishing strict rules of morality on motion pictures in an attempt to put an end to the perceived hedonism that had run rampant during the silent era and during the first few years of talkies. 

Pre-Code usually refers to films made and released before the enforcement of the Production Code, movies that generally contain a great deal more sex, crime and assorted vice than the censored films that followed. But Baby Face is among a rather unique class of Pre-Code films in that it was created before the Code, yet released during the Code’s enforcement. Therefore the film, made under the old rules, was subjected to the new rules before it could be released.  

The result was that the censors took an uncompromising and sordid tale and sanitized it as much as possible. Shots were removed; scenes were toned down; new dialogue was recorded; a new ending was tacked on; and one character’s identity and purpose were entirely reconfigured. 

The new print also features a coda in which the closing credits are followed by a few of the censors’ edits. Seen in context, these changes are particularly hilarious and poorly conceived, transforming a dark and interesting film into run-of-the-mill Hollywood tripe.  

The story concerns one Lily Powers, played by Barbara Stanwyck. Her father runs a speakeasy that caters to steel workers and he makes a little extra money on the side as his daughter’s pimp. Previously excised shots from these early scenes show the father pocketing cash from a local politician in exchange for time alone with Lily, as well as a point-of-view shot as the politician ogles her, the camera moving slowly up the length of her body, lingering at particular points of interest before settling on her jaded and weary face.  

Desperate to escape this bleak existence, Lily seeks guidance from a local cobbler who offers ruthless advice, quoting Nietzsche and encouraging her to use and exploit men in pursuit of her desires. 

Eventually she makes her way to the big city and does just that, taking a job in the mail room of a bank. She starts on the first floor and begins methodically seducing and destroying men who can further her interests. Each conquest is followed by a pan up the side of the building, pulling back from a window on one floor and pushing toward a window on a higher floor, illustrating Lily’s rise up the corporate ladder. Nothing subtle here: Lily’s sleeping her way to the top. 

These are just a few examples of the sort of gleeful frankness Baby Face evinces, treating shady topics with wry cynicism. The crucial ingredient is Stanwyck. Her Lily is smart, cynical and cruel, a hard-luck dame brimming with ambition and a smoldering and dangerous sexuality. The powerful men she sets her eyes on have no chance against her; her withering glances and callous manipulation leave them stammering and defenseless. A young John Wayne even makes an appearance—several years before cementing his reputation as a swaggering tough guy—as a diffident office boy who makes an inept attempt to get a second date with Lily after she has already exhausted his usefulness.  

The irony of the film is that the censors really didn’t need to alter the ending. Though the movie is full of sex and cruelty, Lily Powers really does learn something at the end, demonstrating her humanity and compassion, even without the Code’s prodding.  

But apparently that wasn’t enough; they added an extra scene to further delineate her fate, and the inclusion of this scene after the closing credits in the new print brings the misogyny of the Code quickly into focus for modern audiences: Stay home girls, or somebody’s gonna get hurt. 

BABY FACE (1933) 

Directed by Alfred E. Green.  

Starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Alfonse Ethier, Henry Kolker, Theresa Harris.  

Playing at 7 p.m. Friday and 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Pacific Film Archive, 2626 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 

Photograph: The cobbler (Alfonse Ethier) treats Lily (Barbara Stanwyck) to a few passages from Nietzsche, “the greatest philosopher of all time!” 

The “David Brower Center and Oxford Plaza,” intended to replace the city-owned parking lot at Oxford Street and Allston Way, recently received a key City Council endorsement. That’s noteworthy because this six-story development embodies admirable environmental and housing-equity goals.  

Also, because you’ll be paying for it for a long, long time.  

This Brower Center project’s cost has skyrocketed over budget faster than a Pentagon contract. Subsidizing it has already eaten up much of the city’s housing funds—displacing more practical proposals.  

And because this misconceived prestige project’s nonprofit developers have no collateral, the funder of last resort for future cost overruns is: us. Taxpayers. So let’s take a look at this folly, and the many layers of irony that underlie it. It’s a rare case study of how everything that can go wrong in Berkeley planning, sometimes does. 

Irony No. 1 is the Brower Center’s origins. Back in the 1990s, Berkeley’s most vigorous private developer—and some smaller imitators—figured out a sure formula for tricking city officials into approving buildings that were misplaced, too large for their surrounding zoning, and too skimpy on parking (therefore cheap to build). 

First, give the building a pseudo-ecological name memorializing whatever wild spirit it offended. (Much as exurban developers name their subdivisions “Deer Creek” after they’ve destroyed deer habitat and creeks.) Second, “greenwash” the structure by making exaggerated claims about its alleged environmental benefits. Finally, throw in a dollop of affordable housing, to help offset the city’s bungling of state authority for comprehensive rent stabilization. (Everyone likes to pay low rent.) 

After getting tricked into approving several of these oversized developments, city councilmembers and commissioners began to hate themselves. They realized they could stop being tricked by private developers. 

They could just use the same formula to trick themselves. 

Thus, they cooked up the “Brower Center.” It would be named after Berkeley native David Brower—the giant “Archdruid” of modern environmentalism who rebuilt the Sierra Club, then founded at least three other significant environmental groups.  

It would offer subsidized office space to green groups, whose officers were happy to endorse it. (They were tired of commuting to San Francisco. Plus, everyone likes to pay low rent.)  

It would provide more than a dollop of affordable housing. And it would displace one of downtown Berkeley’s last surface parking lots—a sight that the car-haters behind this project couldn’t abide. 

Irony No. 2 was naming this behemoth development after David Brower. As a longtime Sierra Club member, I finally got my first (and last) chance to hear the Archdruid speak a few months before his death in 2000. His speech included the reflection, “My life has been one giant fight against developers.”  

Brower’s other lectures regularly included a more pointed epigram: “I’d like to declare open season on developers. Not kill them, just tranquilize them.” If the Archdruid were alive to see what Berkeley is doing for developers in his name, he’d spin in his grave like a wind turbine. 

Irony No. 3 is what we’ll lose by building the Brower Center. Some of the last breathing room beside the UC campus will be replaced by yet another tall structure. A friend calls this progressive hemming-in of the campus’ remaining green space “like building medieval ramparts.” 

Although parking lots might not win environmental certifications, they are a form of open space. And building on the Oxford Lot will kill several graceful, mature eucalyptus trees. The great urban-planning theorist Joni Mitchell anticipated these losses in her 1970 musical dissertation “Big Yellow Taxi” (lyrics slightly altered): Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone / We paved Paradise / And gave up a parking lot 

Taxpayers will indeed give up this public land to developers—for free—in return for a promise to restore the public parking underground. We’ll also forfeit parking revenue for an estimated “two years” of construction (which is likely to mean much longer). 

Irony No. 4 is one Berkeley invention that won’t win a Nobel Prize: the car-free parking lot. When told that their new office/cultural and housing/retail complex would generate many new vehicle trips per day, the Brower Center’s car-hating authors were adamant about replacing only the Oxford Lot’s current 105 or so parking spaces. 

Downtown merchants pleaded for a second underground parking level, with an equal number of new spaces. They said that downtown had lost some 600-800 parking spaces since 1995. But they got nowhere. 

Irony No. 5 is how the city’s “Transportation” Commission responded a year ago to bad news about that car-free parking lot. Consultants estimated that the new buildings would generate up to 97 additional vehicle trips per day. The commission responded by reaffirming the one-level limit. (This commission’s name always belongs in quotes, because Berkeley has a “Transportation” Commission the way Orwell’s Airstrip One had a Ministry of “Truth.”) 

One level of underground parking is what six city councilmembers endorsed this May 16. Adult supervision by staff did at least add 41 new surface parking spaces to serve the 97 new units of housing. Meaning that everyone loses: the car-haters will have killed only a net 64 of the surface spaces they despise. 

Irony No. 6 is how our City Council made this project’s two proposed buildings—rising six stories and four stories, respectively—conform to existing zoning that limited them to three stories. Inspired by David Brower, did they fearlessly force developers to bend to the popular will? 

Nah. They just changed the zoning. 

Irony No. 7 is who will end up occupying this monument to city groupthink: city staff reported on May 16 that to help fill in the project’s bottomless cost overruns, the office tower’s tenants might not be subsidized environmental nonprofits at all. They might be for-profit businesses that can claim some tenuous link to environmentalism or “social equity,” plus UC departments. And every square foot leased to UC goes off the tax rolls, costing taxpayers even more. 

Any questions?  

The “David Brower Center” may yet be canceled as its financial improbability becomes more obvious. But if it is built, it will serve the same function as those “Deer Creek” subdivisions: It will forever exile the Archdruid’s pesky, uncompromising spirit from his birthplace. 

Michael Katz is a Berkeley civic watchdog.

Columnist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor is to be commended for devoting attention to the situation in the Oakland schools. It is unfortunate that he did not take the trouble to check his facts and ask for comments from the people directly involved before committing his thoughts to print. His grand conspiracy theory, in which the Oakland schools crisis was just a pretext for an alleged land grab, would not have survived performance of these basic journalistic obligations.  

Perhaps I should be flattered by Allen-Taylor’s scenario, in which I play the role of evil mastermind, engineering a vast statewide fiscal crisis, manipulating the governor to cut school budgets, pulling the strings in the mayor’s office to have my opponents appointed to the school board, and cunningly remote-controlling the Oakland district to take a path of fiscal irresponsibility and ruin, all for the purpose of helping an unknown developer to realize a speculative profit on the sale of district real estate nearly 20 years later. I never realized I had so much power or foresight.  

The reality is much less glamorous. The Oakland district has had serious administrative problems for many decades. The statewide fiscal crisis and the governor’s Prop. 98 budget cuts stressed every school district in the state, and none more so than in the high-cost Bay Area. (Four out of the seven district bankruptcies in the state occurred in the Bay Area.) Oakland’s response to the crisis was politically seductive but economically perilous. The Oakland district undertook a series of expensive reforms without asking where the money would come from to pay for them.  

Instead of frankly disclosing the resulting budgetary problems, as it was required to do by law, the Oakland administration chose to paper them over. It submitted budget documents to the county office that appeared to comply with all requirements. Under then existing state law, as the Oakland administration knew, the county office had no power to override local control so long as the papers looked proper. 

A key battle during this period was the Oakland administration’s effort to divert school construction bond money, authorized by the voters for repairing and building schools, to patch its operating deficit. The state Attorney General ruled that school construction money could not lawfully be used for operating expenses. If the Oakland administration had got its way and diverted that money, no school construction bond measure could ever again win the confidence of voters.  

In the fall of 2002, the house of cards that the Oakland administration had built finally collapsed. The district stood in immediate danger of not being able to meet its payroll. At that point, state law permitted the county office to step in. The rest is history. The district’s real budget was so deeply in the red that it would have bankrupted the whole county. Only the state had the resources to bail the Oakland school district out. 

An independent audit of Oakland’s books, completed two years later, found that the district had misrepresented the true financial position of its general fund; hidden a $31 million deficit; made unrealistic projections for savings in personnel expenditures four to five times the average amount in previous years; failed to provide documentation for this estimate; falsely affirmed to its board and to the county office that it had balanced its budget and was financially solvent; had inadequate internal controls over many of its operations creating an environment ripe for fraud or other inappropriate activities; illegally transferred $14 million in building funds to the general fund to reduce the deficit; and improperly used a portion of the interest of $15 million bond fund for general maintenance operations contrary to the purpose of the bond measure – among other improprieties. 

Currently on the table, if news reports are to be believed, is a proposal to sell or lease a portion of Oakland Unified School District real estate in order to pay down the state loan and speed up Oakland’s return to local control. The county office has no jurisdiction over this matter, has not been consulted, and plays no role in deciding it. I have lived in Oakland for 30 years; I have been an Oakland City Council member and a member of the School Board. I am strongly in favor of a return to local control, but only if the transition is made via an open, public process.  

Oakland is too large and dynamic a community to remain long under state administration. Oakland will find a way, perhaps very soon, to return to local control. However, in order to get there, Oakland will have to turn its back on the coterie of frustrated politicos who imagine themselves the victims of fantastic conspiracies, and who have nothing to offer but reruns of the tired old blame game.  

Berkeley Unified School District and the supportive Berkeley community modeled the importance of focusing on solutions in order to move forward. When BUSD was grappling with its own fiscal challenges, there was honest dialog over policies, issues, and ideas to improve education for all students. Although BUSD board members often embrace opposing viewpoints, they are in agreement that a sound budget is critical to a stable district. They keep their constituents informed and garner the public support necessary to make difficult decisions. Board members and Superintendent have worked consistently and collaboratively with ACOE business staff and the fiscal advisor I appointed and currently have a fiscally sound budget.  

Much can be learned from Berkeley’s example. Instead of scripting B-grade movie plots, Allen-Taylor could help all of us by turning his powerful imagination to visualizing creative and realistic scenarios for Oakland’s recovery.  

Sheila Jordan is the Alameda County superintendent of schools.

The bad news is that Berkeley’s downtown retail district is sick, and Telegraph Avenue is catching the disease. 

The worse news is that planners are working hard to make all of this worse. 

Do most Berkeley residents and business owners want Shattuck Avenue downtown to lose travel lanes and parking spaces? Want left turns prohibited from Shattuck onto Center Street? Want downtown streets permanently choked down to narrow lanes or completely blocked to cross traffic?  

Does any reasonable person really believe that downtown Berkeley needs to become even more congested? If not, pay close attention to the city’s “Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza and Transit Area Design Plan.” This little-noticed planning effort could become an even bigger fiasco than the Ashby BART lot’s redevelopment-by-stealth. 

At an April 29 Downtown Plaza “public workshop” that I attended, the presiding city staff and most of their consultants were competent and courteous. And the plan’s original, limited goal of making the BART “drum” and brick plaza more attractive initially seemed worth considering. (Although I increasingly agree with participants who said to leave the structures alone —just add some cafe seating to help tame the space.) Disturbingly, though, this project’s scope has crept far beyond that basic goal in at least three unwelcome directions.  

First, all four “design options” that the consultants sketched out would facilitate AC Transit’s proposed “Bus Rapid Transit” (BRT) boondoggle by significantly changing the downtown core: They would convert mixed-use lanes to bus-only lanes. They would remove parking on both sides of Shattuck Square or elsewhere. And they would prohibit left turns onto Center. 

One particularly wretched option would replace Shattuck Avenue’s grassy median with an ugly, paved bus plaza—extending into a gray moonscape that would completely block Center Street to cross traffic at Shattuck. That ought to kill the city’s young “Arts District” in its crib by making it impossible for patrons to get to parking, let alone events. (Two major parking garages have entrances on Center west of Shattuck.) 

Significantly, Berkeley’s City Council has never approved cooperating with AC Transit’s controversial proposal for “exclusive” bus lanes. It may never do so: Judging from the thousands of signatures on petitions opposing it and from past discussion on these pages, that proposal is wildly unpopular. Faster buses are a great idea—on routes where they’d provide a real alternative, not right near BART. 

San Leandro officials have already flatly refused to surrender mixed-use lanes along that city’s portion of AC Transit’s proposed route. While Berkeley officials dither, San Leandro was perhaps inspired by Berkeley’s heritage of rebelliousness and free speech. 

Why did Berkeley’s Transportation Division spend $15,000 hiring consultants to plan for this unapproved and unpopular scheme? A staff member’s answer was convincing, if not exactly satisfactory: A regional agency contributed even more, contingent on the plan’s including BRT elements. 

Even so, did our City Council and city manager really intend to authorize Berkeley’s transportation manager to light a fuse leading to this bus-only lanes powder keg? 

Second, all four of the displayed options would narrow or close streets in unhelpful, if not dangerous, ways. They would choke down every Shattuck Avenue intersection with “curb extensions,” the sidewalk tumors that are spreading like an epidemic among Berkeley’s corners. 

As a bicyclist, I can tell you that these things are an obstruction and a hazard to cyclists. But they’ve become a fad with planners, just like designing around the automobile’s needs was dogma in the 1950s. Today’s planners assume that curb extensions improve pedestrian safety. But in nine years of asking, I haven’t found one planner who could identify any evidence for this.  

Worse, one of the sketches would arc a big new curb barrier right into cyclists’ path on Shattuck’s east side. Others would narrow Shattuck Square’s east branch, or Center Street east of Shattuck, down to tiny traffic lanes that would leave hardly any room for motor vehicles, let alone bikes. 

Again, does anyone really think downtown Berkeley isn’t already congested enough? If you oppose these notions, now is the time to ask our mayor and City Council to take a firm stand against them. 

Finally, the consultants devoted considerable effort to above-ground alternatives for the “bikestation” (bike-parking facility) that a cycling group currently operates inside the BART station. All this effort was basically wasted.  

The nearby Civic Center Garage already provides secure, attended bicycle parking above ground. Several city-owned bikes park there, as does mine. This garage is open much longer hours than the BART facility. It’s also just steps from the former Berkeley TRIP transit storefront, which could and should be reopened. 

But the consultants offered no plans for preserving or expanding this great facility. They hadn’t even heard of it. Why such blindsided, redundant planning? 

A guess: Last time I checked, about half of Berkeley’s “Transportation” [sic] Commission was directly or indirectly affiliated with the bike group, known as BFBC, that runs the BART bikestation. This gives those commissioners an inherent conflict of interest when steering initiatives like this one. In fact, the city attorney has ordered the commission to rescind at least one vote over this issue. Much of the other goofiness presented on April 29 may have been encouraged by this commission. 

Reality check: Handouts justified this whole overreaching planning effort as largely intended to facilitate transfers among buses and BART. That’s nonsense. Those transfers work fine now—although they’d work better if they were free. Any real navigation problems that transit riders experience could be solved with a simple signboard at the BART station. 

The complaints I hear most frequently about downtown Berkeley aren’t about making bus transfers. They’re that traffic is too congested and parking too scarce. Blocks of empty storefronts and closed movie theaters are mute testimony to the many people who believe this. They’re staying away in droves, with a nasty impact on the city’s tax base and vitality. 

And believe me, reserving whole lanes and removing scarce parking, for buses that run only every 10-20 minutes will simply make more people stay away. It boggles the mind that transportation officials are paying consultants to examine how to worsen these problems on blocks that still function, sort of. This approach has even worse implications for Telegraph Avenue’s economic health—something I’ll discuss in a future column. 

Michael Katz uses trains, buses, bikes, and automobiles to patronize cool businesses until they decay into Berkeley-standard empty storefronts. 

Editor’s Note: Since we’ve lost Zelda Bronstein to the mayoral race, we’ve opened up her former space in the Public Eye Column to other active participants who can write good essays of about 1,000 words on local politics.

She’s Got the Paddle and We’re Up the Creek,” screamed last week’s headlines in a local weekly. 

The front page featured an unflattering sketch of Sheila Jordan holding a wooden paddle, much like the one I had in my Virginia classroom when I was an elementary school teacher 32 years ago. The subtitle said: “As Alameda County’s schools endured record financial woes, Superintendent Sheila Jordan often seemed more interested in spanking employees who questioned her judgment or her alleged illegal behavior.” 

Something about the picture and the accompanying headlines triggered a reaction in me. It brought back miserable memories of teaching science to 6th- and 7th-graders at Lylburn Downing Elementary School in Lexington, Virginia. 

I could believe that Sheila Jordan might paddle someone. After all, I whacked some of my students in 1974—even after swearing I never would and hiding the instrument of destruction in the back of my classroom closet. 

But that was before Sally Martin threw a chair at me, Clyde Walker broke the wall clock, and William Tinsley poked the eyes out of the spotted lizard that lived quietly alone in a glass aquarium on the windowsill by the radiator. 

I read the article. Sheila Jordan hasn’t actually spanked any of her employees, but according to the writer she has done a lot of questionable things. Being the superintendent of schools for Alameda County is a big job, much bigger than keeping order in an overenrolled, undersupplied classroom in the backwaters of Virginia. But that’s not to say my job wasn’t important or hard. It was. And I almost didn’t live to tell about it. 

I grew up in the genteel suburbs of Philadelphia where corporal punishment in the public schools had been banned long before I reached kindergarten. I don’t remember kids misbehaving in 1957 at Wenonah Elementary School. With the exception of Ricky Hinman, who had some anger issues, we were a quiet group of five-year-olds, anxious to please our teacher, Mrs. Rosenberg, and to learn how to tie our shoes, count to ten, and recite the ABCs. 

Nothing in my life prepared me for Sally, Clyde or William, or for Clyde’s cousin Venus, or William’s twin sister Wilma, or Sally’s half-brother Boo. 

I’d taken all the required courses, observed in a multitude of classrooms, student-taught for half a year, and graduated with honors with a degree in elementary education from a college that specialized in training teachers. 

But I didn’t know the first thing about discipline or how to keep students engaged and interested. Sally, Clyde, William, Wilma, Venus, and Boo were all about teaching me the fundamentals. 

Two months into the school year, after I’d run out of options, I took out the paddle and put it to use: first on Clyde, and then William; later on Sally, Wilma, Venus and Boo. I couldn’t send offenders to the front office anymore because Mr. Thompson, the principal, sent them back to me a few minutes later. I couldn’t call Clyde’s mother because she hung up whenever she heard my voice. 

I didn’t want to call Mrs. Tinsley because she scared me. She had told me if anyone messed with William, she’d given him permission to “pick up a brick and beat the shit out of them.” Sally stayed with foster parents. Venus resided in a phoneless house. Wilma lived with William, and Boo bounced back and forth between foster care and an elderly, overwhelmed grandmother. 

When the school year ended, I enrolled in a National Science Foundation seminar that taught teachers how to use a hands-on approach. The following September I concentrated on conducting simple experiments, growing plants and tiny animals, and looking closely at little things in order to understand the bigger world outside our classroom. I didn’t need a paddle. 

Oh sure, there were occasions when I wanted to smack someone on the bottom, send them to the principal’s office, or call their mother or grandmother. But the paddle stayed in the closet and after awhile I forgot about it. 

Until last week, that is, when I read about Sheila Jordan. That’s when I wanted to get out my old paddle and teach her a few lessons.

Hollywood juniper—Juniperus chinensis “torulosa” or J. chinensis “Kai-zuka”—is one of those trees you know even if you’ve never heard of it. It’s all over the place, one of those Sunset magazine California place markers, the twisty green thing waving its arms outside half the apartment buildings on the West Coast. It’s a city feature like pigeons, and like pigeons you hardly ever see a dead one.  

The Hollywood part of its name is apt: left to its own devices, the thing has a distinct tendency towards the dramatic. (I confess I think of it as Juniperus histrionicus; I suppose I’m analogizing from Histrionicus histrionicus, the harlequin duck, gaudily dressed and often sounding disproportionately alarmed.) It flings its branches about in showstopping gestures like Polly Pureheart fleeing the nefarious villain; the only organized thing about its shape is that most of those branches head off in roughly the same direction. This generally has something to do with the prevailing winds at its site, but I wouldn’t count on that for a compass either.  

It’s hard to get past the ubiquity of this tree—or shrub, by some reckonings—to convince myself of its interesting qualities. It’s so tough and easy to find that it’s become a “gas-station plant,” one of those landscape stalwarts you see almost everywhere because they can survive almost everywhere. So it’s a bit of a shock when I see it praised, especially as “unique,” in tree and garden publications and websites. 

Taken on its own, the cultivar does have certain charms. Those drama-queen branches can be shaped easily enough to more subtle, or subtly dramatic, bonsai-like styles. In fact, Hollywood junipers have been made into good bonsai by accomplished artists and are also good material for beginning bonsai students. Their commonness makes them inexpensive and easily available, and also means that someone looking for a change from the mass garden look might have one to give away for the work of digging it up. Then all you have to do is spend a few years reducing it, and you have a head start on a nice thick aged-looking trunk. 

Part of the Hollywood juniper’s appeal for bonsai and in a garden lies in the trunks’ and major limbs’ shapes. In a tree more than a few years old, these have a rippled, sinuous, muscular quality like a dawn redwood’s. It’s all very Charles Atlas except when it isn’t: there’s a Hollywood juniper near McCone Hall on the UC Berkeley campus that gets called “Squidward” by, well, I’m not sure who owns up to watching that much Spongebob Squarepants but that’s where the eponymous character shows up. I think it looks more like some larval Ent, myself.  

Another unheralded virtue of our gas-station tree lies in the fact that the cultivar is (by most accounts) a clone of a female plant. That means it doesn’t pollinate. That means it isn’t allergenic—unless you get up close and personal, pruning it or otherwise making skin contact. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s as itchy as any other juniper then; arborists talk about the 24-hour rash we get, generally on hands and forearms, from pruning junipers as just a fact of life.  

That also means they bear berries, and I can witness about that too: birds love them. Watch, especially in winter, for flocks of robins or cedar waxwings or both in your juniper. The robins whinny and holler and fly in and out in their barroom-brawl fashion; the waxwings are more genteel, if no less active, sometimes passing berries around to each other like dessert at a potluck. If you have to prune and your tree has berries, wait till spring, when the mobs have dispersed to breed. 

Pruning is one grudge arborists and landscapers have against Hollywood juniper, despite its reliability. If you have to make serious cuts in the thing, you need a chainsaw. The wood’s tough and dense and thick beyond all reason in such a relatively fast grower. If you have one that’s out of bounds and you don’t use a chainsaw yourself at least weekly, call in a pro. The results can be amazing, and you’ll spare some limbs, including your own.

Anyone who thinks the Bush administration is too far down in the polls to even contemplate attacking Iran should consider the following developments: 

First, the reason British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was dumped was not because of a “cabinet shuffle” following the recent shellacking the Labor Party took in local elections. The real reason was that Washington demanded his head following a statement by Straw that an attack on Iran “was not on the agenda,” would be a violation of international law, and that any talk of using nuclear weapons against Teheran was “nuts.” 

According to David Clark, special advisor to former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, Prime Minister Tony Blair sacked Cook back in 2001 because Washington thought he was wishy washy on using military force. Writing in the Guardian, Cook argues that Straw’s lack of enthusiasm for a military solution to the Iran crisis doomed him. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Bush Administration played an important role in persuading Tony Blair to sack his foreign minister,” writes Clark. 

The new Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, voted against the Iraq war, but her nickname—The Great Survivor—suggests that she will do whatever Blair wants her to. And according to Ewan MacAskill of the Guardian, Tony is actually more hawkish on Iran than Bush. 

Second, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s recent broadside at Russia over using gas and oil as “tools of intimidation and blackmail,” and for the Kremlin’s anti-democratic turn, seemed almost designed to torpedo any United States-Russian cooperation in the U.N. Security Council on Iran. 

While some of Cheney’s attack was aimed at trying to undermine Russian and Chinese interests in Central Asian oil by re-routing Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan hydrocarbons through Turkey, the tone was reminiscent of the 1950s. Indeed, the Moscow press called it a “new Cold War,” and one paper even compared it to Winston Churchill’s 1946 Fulton, Missouri speech that launched the last one. 

The White House is unhappy about the recent $100 billion gas deal between Iran and China and is fearful that, in the scramble for Central Asian oil, Washington is losing out. Last month Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia were asked the join the Shanghai Cooperation Group, an intergovernmental formation launched back in 2001 by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mohammadi said that the Group would “make the world more fair,” and allow Russia and Iran to build a “gas and oil arc” and coordinate their activities. 

All of which argues that the White House doesn’t think there is a snowball’s chance in the Kara Kum desert that China and Russia will vote to declare Iran in violation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which would declare Iran a threat to international peace and security, and almost guarantee a war by September. 

So why would the administration turn its designated berserker loose at this delicate time? To launch a new Cold War on Russia and China, sideline the UN and, damn the torpedoes, on to Teheran. 

Third was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s coup against the CIA. All intelligence will now be controlled by the military, the same people that cooked the information that launched the war on Iraq. 

Fourth: Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, is organizing a “front” of Iranian ex-patriots to overthrow the present regime in Teheran. 

And fifth, The Herald (Scotland) reported May 16 that the Pentagon is ramping up two plans for bombing Iran.  

Plan No. 1 calls for a five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets, including 24 nuclear related sites, 14 military airfields, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters. Attackers would use GBU-28 bunker-busters on underground targets. Tomahawk cruise missiles and aircraft carrier-launched fighter-bombers would whack radar and anti-aircraft sites. 

Plan No. 2 calls for “demonstration” bombing raids on the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the hexafluoride plant at Isfahan. 

No one is talking about sending in ground troops. Not even the White House is that crazy. 

Former Army intelligence analyst William Arkin, the man who first blew the whistle on the possible use of nuclear weapons on Iran, recently commented in the Washington Post, “The United States military is really, really getting ready, building war plans and options, studying maps, shifting its thinking.” 

So the pieces are in place: a complacent ally, a provocative VP, the military in charge, a plan, and Ahmed Chalabi—sorry, Reza Pahlavi—ready to gather in the rose petals. 

If the Nepalese parliament ever gets around to examining the role played by other nations in fueling the civil war that has claimed some 13,000 lives over the past decade, there are going to be some red faces in Washington, London and New Delhi.  

The British gave combat helicopters to the Royal Nepal Army, and India supplied FN submachine guns and advisors. The United States, however, bears most of the blame for not only encouraging the Nepalese monarchy to seek a military victory over the Communist party of Nepal-Maoist (CPNM), but also providing over 8,000 M-16 assault rifles, night fighting equipment, and military advisors.  

Former U.S. Ambassador, Michael R. Malinowski—an old Pakistan and Afghanistan hand—compared CPNM leader Baburam Bhattarai to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and said that the insurgents “literally have to be bent back to the table.” King Gyanendra took that advice, dissolved parliament and went on the offensive. The outcome was predictable: a massive jump in deaths and disappearances and the eventual collapse of the throne’s attempt to rule by decree and “win” the civil war. 

For the time being, Parliament is back in charge, but the Royal Nepal Army is 72,000 strong and, thanks to the United States, British, and Indians, very well armed. The situation is still extremely dangerous. 

The United States will also have some answering to do in Somalia, where it is backing a coalition of warlords who call themselves the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism.” Add those two last words to your title and the U.S. turns on the money spigot.  

The Bush Administration is mum on the charge, but the government of President Abdullahi Yusuf has been quite forthright. 

“The U.S. funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is not doubt about that,” Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told Reuters May 4. “The warlords, though U.S. support, have caused so many deaths of innocent civilians … it only fuels civil war.” 

Washington has long had its eye on Somalia because of its proximity to the Gulf of Aden, gateway to the Red Sea. The United States presently has 1,600 troops north of Somalia in Djibouti, and has scattered bases and Special Forces all across North Africa, supposedly because the region is rife with terrorists. With the possible exception of Morocco and Southern Algeria, there is no evidence for this.  

The ostensible reason for backing the Somalian warlords is a rumored al Qaeda presence. But even a Pentagon study found no sign of the group (which is, in any case, more a point of view than an organization). It is no coincidence that “terrorism” always seems to crop up in places that have lots of oil and gas, or happen to be located in critical choke points like the Gulf of Aden. 

At least 160 people have been killed in the Mogadishu fighting, the vast majority of them civilians caught in the crossfire.  

Transportation—the stepchild of public issues—has suddenly resurfaced as a concern in certain Oakland political circles. 

I know, I know. It’s not a glamorous issue, like crime or the schools or downtown development. It’s simply the issue that ties all of the rest of the issues together, and so deserves more attention than we’re giving it. 

On Tuesday, county supervisors passed a resolution—introduced by Board of Supervisors President Keith Carson—“supporting equitable financial support of AC Transit by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for the benefit of its passengers.” 

If you walked down the aisle of one of the buses running the 82 line along International and handed that out in a leaflet and asked any of the passengers what it meant, you most certainly would get back mostly blank stares, at best. What it meant, if you had the time to take off work and attend Tuesday morning’s meeting, or if you read about it in Wednesday’s Oakland Tribune, was that supervisors voted 3-1 to chastise the regional transportation commission for putting the lion’s share of its money into BART, while letting AC Transit slowly waste away, even though AC Transit is a transportation lifeline to many county residents. 

On the same day as the supervisors meeting, Grand Lake area community activist Caroline Kim raised a similar point in her “Neighborhood News” e-mail newsletter. “The Monday, April 17 Tribune had a glowing article about the BART monorail connector,” Ms. Kim wrote. “Of course, the article had no detailed financial analysis. The project is now expected to cost over $400 million. … The fares from the Coliseum BART Station to the airport are estimated to range from $3.75 to $5.50 per trip. (It’s now $2 on their connector bus.) This cost would be in addition to the fare to the Coliseum Station. They think they will get 13,500 riders a day but they’re not considering a main problem: BART does not serve most of the neighborhoods in Oakland.” 

Ms. Kim goes on to note that “the City of Oakland is one of the agencies pushing the development. This month, the council will vote on whether to give BART a $725,000 in-kind contribution for the project.” She concludes by saying “think what $400 million would mean for bus transit for this city—fast service for all the neighborhoods rather than expensive service for those near a BART line.” 

If and when it is finished, the BART monorail connector Ms. Kim referred to will provide rail transportation from the Coliseum BART Station to the Oakland International Airport, a trip you can now take on a special connector bus. 

Driving Oakland’s streets and highways, or riding on the two major public transit systems available here—AC Transit and BART—it is hard to see how the airport monorail rates $400 million in overall funds ($725,000 coming out of the Oakland budget) over other transportation needs. 

Consider this little bit of lunacy. 

I live near International Boulevard just south of 73rd Avenue. Once a few months ago, when my car was out of commission, I had to take the bus to attend to some business on a location on MacArthur between 35th Avenue and Fruitvale. To do so, I had to take an International bus to 35th, transfer to a crosstown route, and then transfer again to a MacArthur Avenue bus to get to my destination. It’s all one trip, all in the same direction, and logic would seem to indicate that it would cost one adult fare: $1.75. That’s steep enough in itself, but it isn’t all. AC Transit charges an extra 25 cents to get a transfer. Not a lot, but, then, you don’t get a lot for it, because the transfer is only good for one use. This may have some logic if the rider wants to return the way they came, but not so much when you’re continuing along on the same trip. When I got to 35th and MacArthur, I either had to pay a second full fare to continue on the same trip, with the same bus service, or walk. Figuring that $3.75 was more than one should have to pay to catch a bus within the city, I chose to walk. 

Is there any wonder why people abandon AC Transit as soon as they can? 

In voting against Supervisor Carson’s resolution calling for more MTC money for AC Transit this week, the Tribune quoted Supervisor Scott Haggerty as telling fellow supervisors to “take the argument to the AC Board. Take this to them and ask them why they’re cutting the routes in the flatlands. Ask them why they’re cutting service on the flatland.” 

It is tempting, of course, to blame AC Transit for the AC Transit problems, and many have done so. But AC Transit is charged with balancing its budget, and when that budget is not balanced, it must either make service cuts or introduce fare hikes. In either case, that makes the system less popular, leading to more people abandoning the buses, leading to less money coming into the system, and so to more service cuts and fare hikes—a sort of downward death spiral that will eventually lead to a skeleton public bus service in the East Bay if it is not halted. 

One answer might be to make the Metropolitan Transportation Commission an actual transit system, running all of the public transportation within its jurisdiction rather than doling out money to competing systems. In that way, someone could be looking at overall public transit needs in the East Bay, instead of refereeing fights over funds. 

A Metropolitan Transportation Commission running both BART and AC Transit might come to the conclusion that in some parts of Oakland, neither system fully serves the public, and some sort of in-between transit line is needed. On International Boulevard between the lake and the San Leandro border, for example, that might mean putting in a light rail line, similar to what is operating so successfully in San Jose. It’s cheaper to build than BART, and has the added bonus that it would serve more people traveling within Oakland, rather than simply passing through to their jobs or a baseball game. 

To accomplish that goal, however, East Bay citizens would have to stop seeing public transit expenses as a “subsidy”—something our conservative friends have successfully turned into a bad word—and see it once again as a public service. More than that, a public necessity, as much as police and fire. 

The discussion on transportation ought to be going hand-in-hand with the public debate over Oakland’s commercial future. 

We’ve said it before in this column: Mayor Jerry Brown and his supporters on the City Council have focused in recent years on rebuilding Oakland’s downtown commercial core. Mr. Brown’s plan was to move 10,000 new residents into the downtown area, in hopes that the department stores would follow. But even if that ever ends up working—and so far, there is no evidence that it will—it would still leave the downtown area as difficult to reach for non-downtown residents as before. 880 seems to be on semi-permanent lockdown mode most days, weekends included, and except for Sundays, the downtown area is not a parking-friendly environment. So even if J.C. Penney’s and Nordstrom’s eventually flock to Mr. Brown’s new downtown, a circumstance that would jam the area’s streets and parking lots even more, how does it benefit most of Oakland’s shoppers? 

The same is true for Oakland’s various already-successful neighborhood commercial districts—Lakeshore/Grand, the Fruitvale, College Avenue, the Laurel District, Chinatown, and so forth. These districts could expand—attracting more customers from both Oakland and beyond—but the lack of parking and/or adequate public transportation, along with Oakland’s strangled transportation arteries, blocks them from doing so. 

In such a circumstance, why are we spending $400 million—some $725,000 of it projected to be from Oakland—on a monorail between the Coliseum BART Station and the Oakland International Airport instead of putting more money to use on solving more pressing transportation problems? 

This is an area in which leadership and community vision are sorely needed and, so far, have been sorely lacking. Another job left undone by the current mayor, to be put on the desk of whoever takes his place. 

It’s not at all strange for a bus half-filled with important local officials to roll through the streets of a California city, pointing out tracts and plots and buildings along the way. It is unusual when the other half of the bus is filled with longtime city residents and community activists, and the purpose of the tour is not so much to plot the city’s future as it is to make sure its past is understood. 

On Saturday, Richmond’s Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park held its fourth such tour of the city’s World War II era sites, with participants who lived through the era encouraged to add their commentary to the park service’s tour guide. 

The result was an exercise in living history. 

In one of Richmond’s Latino sections, the bus passed the Mexican Baptist Church near the Atchison Village housing projects, with tour guide Naomi Torres of the National Park Service talking about how the village was once an open field where Mexican-American farmers grazed their livestock and then was built as housing for Kaiser shipyard workers who flocked to Richmond during the war years. 

When Torres was finished, Contra Costa Grand Jury Foreman Antonio Medrano, who grew up in Richmond, pointed to the Mexican Baptist Church and said, “I bet you thought all Mexicans were Catholic,” which began his telling of the history of Mexico’s evangelical Protestant movement that later migrated north into the United States. 

At the Winters Building off of MacDonald Avenue, which served as both a dance hall and an air raid shelter during the war and which now houses the East Bay Center for The Performing Arts, another Park Ranger asked if anyone on the bus remembered attending any dances there. 

“That place was for white folks,” one of the older black participants pointed out. “You have to remember who was welcome and who wasn’t welcome on MacDonald Avenue in those days.” There followed stories of Richmond’s deeply segregated days when young white drivers cruised the city’s main street with impunity but black drivers were cited and arrested by police. 

And at a stop along the wharf next to the enormous closed Ford Assembly Plant, some five football fields long, which once housed a tank production factory and is now being prepared for commercial and housing redevelopment by the City of Richmond, one longtime Parchester Village resident recalled how she and her neighbors could see the lights from munitions loading accident explosions on the docks from their windows. 

Rosie the Riveter National Park community liaison Betty Reid Soskin, who conceived and designed the tours and works on them jointly with National Park Service Outreach Specialist Naomi Torres, calls them “resoundingly successful,” and says they came out of a desire to “raise the awareness in the City of Richmond that they are in the middle of a national park. There is a misconception that the park is just down by the shoreline but the heart of it is in the Iron Triangle, which is one of the most troubled parts of the city. We’re hoping that the tours can help Richmond form a new identity of itself. We have such a rich history here.” 

Soskin says she has resisted suggestions to simply have officials take the tours by themselves, without the longtime residents. “Without the residents telling their stories,” Soskin said, “we’d simply be passing by building sites that we pass by every day, without knowing their historic significance.”  

Included on the tours was the Galileo Club on South 23rd Street, where Richmond’s largest single ethnic group before World War II—Italians—had a social club (one of the participants explained that because of Richmond’s sensitive wartime industries, only American citizens could live in the city, and many Italian families were broken up when the elders who were non-citizen immigrants were forced to move out). 

Other areas visited were the Pullman District, which includes the still-standing, New Orleans-style hotel where Pullman porters stayed between runs as well as buildings where Pullman passenger cars were repaired and restored; the Park Florist on MacDonald, which was once owned by a Japanese family who were forced to sell the business when they were relocated to an internment camp; and the Kaiser Field Hospital, one of the first structures shipbuilding magnate Henry J. Kaiser used as part of his health care system for his shipyard workers, a system that eventually grew into Kaiser Permanente.  

The tours start at the headquarters of the Rosie the Riveter park at Richmond City Hall, where participants view some of the historic memorabilia. Among them are ID badges, ration stamps, welder’s guns, and a welder’s mask used by a Japanese-American welder “until the day he went into an internment camp,” according to park officials. 

The photo I.D. badges are especially poignant, giving a human face to an era that is close to us in time, but often forgotten. Housed on a single table in the back of the City Hall complex, the items are being collected for a permanent park museum. While the location for the museum has yet to be determined, park officials say that some of the memorabilia in the park’s projected new Visitors Center at the Ford Assembly Plant. 

A park official explained that the park is both a collection of World War II-era historical cites as well as a documentation of activities on what was called “the home front” during the war. 

“And we’re using home front in its broadest possible term,” he said. “We’re referring to anything that happened domestically during the war years. Whatever people were doing at that time was affected by the war, or had an effect on the war.” 

The official said that while the Rosie the Riveter Park was headquartered in Richmond, the park is a collection of all the west coast wartime history, from Washington State to Southern California.  

The fifth and final tour is scheduled for later this summer, but Soskin says the park is seeking more funding to extend the events. The tours have been funded by a grant from PG&E. Slots for the fifth tour are already filled, but at a feedback session following Saturday’s tour, park officials said they were open to suggestions to expand the tours and make them available to more community residents, groups, and officials. 

Contributed photo  

Richmond City Clerk Diane Holmes (left) and Richmond community activist Ethel Dotson view Rosie the Riveter Memorial during Saturday's Richmond historical tour.

It’s a warm, breezy spring day. I’m sitting in the courtyard at Espresso Roma, lunching on a terrific spinach-mushroom frittata and watching the world of Elmwood pass by. Inside laptops silently hum while lattes are sipped. Though my meter is ticking I’m in no hurry to move. Once here, why would I want to leave? 

Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood invites lingering and strolling. Stretching along College Avenue from the University to the Oakland border, on gentle terrain past village-like shops and classic architecture, the neighborhood gives you the feeling that of having effortlessly arrived at a long-desired location. On a miniature scale, Elmwood offers something for everyone. A stable neighborhood structure, tree-lined streets, friendly neighborhood shops, global cuisine and cultural venues explain my dilemma, my desire to linger despite a parking meter. 

After the Gold Rush and the founding of the University of California, newcomers to Berkeley sought quality homes with proximity to campus and nearby Telegraph Avenue businesses. Aided by Key streetcars along College Avenue, Elmwood Park, named after shade-providing elms, began to expand with both residential and commercial entities. One hundred years later, much of its original small-town charm remains. 

The business district of any neighborhood reflects the needs of its populace; the residential areas reflect its heart. Recognizing pride in ownership, I happily strolled along Benvenue and Hillegass Avenues and Russell Street admiring classic brown shingles, craftsman and storybook tutor homes. Even the public library made me pause. Handsome brick and timbers with peaked roof, sunlight filtered through and glancing off ancient leafy elms, benches outside and comfortable seating indoors begged for time spent with a good book. 

Admiring architecture doesn’t require a degree in styles or movements. You don’t need to know what it is to know what you like. Two- and three-story brown shingles trimmed in forest-green, gentian-blue or brick-red with limpet like purple wisteria coating one side; a broad front porch with Adirondack chairs awaiting your repose or a bedroom balcony for that first cup of morning coffee. A pale-green Queen Anne with small multi-paned windows, another stately home fronted by massive white columns. Gardens to drool over: flower-filled with roses and rhododendrons, framed by years-old pines, palms and oaks, alive with birdsong. Homes to treasure. 

Elmwood’s business district radiates from a hub at College and Ashby, limited in size but limitless in choices. There’s something for every taste. Start with food. In the mood for something Eastern? You can sample the tastes of Pakistan and India at Naan ’N’ Curry or enter the cool, elegant rooms of King Yen, where large open windows shaded beneath eggplant awnings beckon you in for a gracious meal. When you’re in a hurry, pop into Manpuku and grab a delicious assortment of pre-packed combination sushi. Study the illustrated menu to get a preview of their bento and ramen offerings. 

Red wine, olive oil and al dente pasta call up the tastes of Italy. Trattoria La Siciliana announces Bon Appetito along with a special board listing offerings of antipasti, primi and secondi dishes. Inside the ocher-washed walls and tiled floors and tables invoke the spirit of a secret Italian café. Stop at A.G. Ferrari Foods to bring Italy home. Tapenade di olive and asiago fresco before ravioli con spinaci e ricotta under ragu alla Bolognese washed down with Belvedere Umbria—worthy of a meal from the finest Italian villa! 

Gordo’s Taqueria and La Cascada Taqueria can satisfy your taste for over the border while the Holy Land Restaurant offers kosher and vegetarian choices. La Mediterranée’s sidewalk tables waft the aromas of hummus and baba ghanous. Cold cucumber soup or warm filled fillos, the wonderful blend of spices will entice you in. 

All that food made me feel sluggish, ready to work it all off. Bolfing’s Elmwood Hardware has supplies for whatever project you’ve been putting off, like putting up a Shaker peg rack, perusing the decorator’s palette for just the right shade of goldenrod or picking up a new LED flashlight for your earthquake supplies. 

Thinking about your garden, or lack of one? Inside Mrs. Dalloway’s I was inspired to landscape and plant. Yellow Gloveables, fine Felco clippers and Renee’s Garden seeds could get me started. A lovely space, as airy and fresh as a spring garden, displaying a wonderful assortment of books, potted plants, garden-related accoutrements and a red wicker chair made it hard for me to leave. 

Too quiet around your house? Enter Your Basic Bird and your heart will lift. An incredible assortment of winged friends greeted me with caws, chirps and coos, both raucous and subtle. Parrots of amazing colors, one an electric green with red, blue and purple feathers and bright orange beak, seemed too beautiful to be real. Tiny finches, intricately patterned, amazed me. I counted eight distinct sections and colors on one three-inch beauty. 

Indulgence is easy along College Avenue. Jeremy’s discounted prices allow shopping without guilt. I spotted flowered sequined skirts, light-as-air sundresses and a striped cream sweater that mimicked a tropical spree. The turquoise and silver jewelry at Bill’s Trading Post would be the perfect accent. And who wouldn’t covet a finely crafted Pomo feather basket or an obsidian dream catcher? 

Far Leaves satisfies the taste for tea in an attractive, peaceful setting. Patrons are encouraged to try new blends and brew their choice of black, oolong, green, herbal infusion or rare tea in-house for optimum enjoyment. Take home a lovely ceramic tea set to prolong the pleasure. 

When that yen for something sweet beckons, choices abound. Dream Fluff Donuts displays its glistening, Homer-size treats in the front window. Ozzie’s old-fashioned soda fountain still serves milkshakes and egg creams at the vintage counter. At Nabalom’s cinnamon twists and puck-sized cookies tempt the eye and taste buds. 

Cultural venues are easy walking distance from Elmwood’s hub. The Elmwood Theater is a Berkeley landmark, surviving since 1914 and saved by the Friends of the Theater in 1994. Touted as a family theater in its prime, today’s offerings cater to a broader family but better reflect the interests of the community. 

A National Historic Landmark, the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts is reminiscent of a rustic National Park lodge. Dark brown exposed framing with redwood rafters and small wall lamps set the scene for theater, dance and music performances, Lego and Mad Science summer camps and classes for all ages. 

My final stop was at the Judah L. Magnes Museum housed in a handsome four-story cinder brick mansion in a secluded park-like setting. Within, distinctly painted galleries exhibit art reflecting the global Jewish experience, seeking to promote understanding and commonalities. I greatly enjoyed Larry Adamson’s diorama “Searching for the Ideal City.” His miniature Jerusalem of candelabra, spice boxes and Torah crowns contrasts the ideal with the actual. 

Meter satisfied, I ambled back to my sidewalk perch for another cappuccino and just a while longer in the village of Elmwood. Embodying the sense of having attained Berkeley-style achievement, Elmwood may be small in size but its essence looms large.  

Photograph by Marta Yamamoto 

Choices for excellent international cuisine are close at hand along College Avenue in the Elmwood District.

In the 1880s and ‘90s, few East Bay architects were as fashionable as Alfred Washington Pattiani (1855–1935). Italian name notwithstanding, Pattiani, who was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, was descended from a well-to-do German family. His paternal grandfather, Alois Fahrnbacher of Landshut, Bavaria, was a tobacco manufacturer, commercial court assessor, and a member of the Bavarian parliament. 

His mother, Elisabeth von Bergen, came from the Baltic port city of Stettin and studied music—perhaps in Weimar, for she is said to have been a student of Franz Liszt, who taught piano there beginning in 1848. Possibly also in Weimar, Elisabeth met Christian Alfred Fahrnbacher. 

Like many German students of their generation, the two were apparently involved in the 1848 revolution. They ended up marrying and fleeing to the United States, where they changed their name to Pattiani. 

She became a published composer under the name Eliza Pattiani or simply Madame Pattiani and is known for marches she composed for Northwestern University and the California State Normal School (now San Jose State University). Her husband was a daguerreotype photographer in Cincinnati and Chicago. 

In 1870, after having lived in St. Louis, Chicago, and Evanston, Ill., the family moved to San Jose for health reasons. Son Alfred began his architectural apprenticeship at age 15 while completing his schooling at the Business College of San Jose. 

For two years he studied architecture under Theodore Lenzen, San Jose’s preeminent architect. When his father died in 1873, Alfred began working as a draftsman for various Bay Area architects. In 1879, he built himself a house in Alameda, where he established a building firm in 1882. 

Billing himself as Real Estate Broker and Builder, Pattiani catered to the affluent class, designing and building hundreds of residences in Alameda, Oakland, and Berkeley. His styles included Stick-Eastlake, Queen Anne, Shingle, and Colonial Revival. Although a number of his Berkeley houses are extant—including a row of six cottages on the 2100 block of Ward St. and two elegant Queen Annes at Blake and Fulton—many that were built near the UC campus fell victim to university expansion. In 1973, the razing of a Pattiani house on a prominent corner in Alameda was the impetus that led to the passage of Proposition A, which saved much of that city’s Victorian residential character. 

In 1889, Pattiani built his 185th house on the southwest corner of Ward and Fulton streets. This large Queen Anne sported a generous polygonal turret crowned by a bell-shaped cupola and displayed a full complement of gingerbread ornamentation. The client who paid $3,500 for the house was San Francisco wine merchant Samuel B. Stanley. Unaccountably, Stanley preferred the charms of San Jose to those of Berkeley. In February 1891, he sold the house and two additional lots to the Sadler family. 

Caleb and Lydia Sadler were English immigrants who owned a San Francisco fancy goods and notions business. Their second son, Frank E. Sadler, would eventually own the Sadler’s store at Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, selling books, stationery, photographic supplies, and sporting goods. Sadler’s also carried a distinctive line of picture postcards, always displaying the photo in an oval vignette. 

The Sadlers spent only a few years in the house. In 1894, they sold it to Mary E. and Charles E. Finney and moved to the Northside. A mechanical engineer, Finney was an enterprising man. In 1899 he built three houses directly to the south of his house. These were announced as the first in the area to contain indoor plumbing. Ten years later, Finney moved his house, which had sat in the center of a triple lot at 2154 Ward Street, to the northeast corner of the lot, changing the address to 2156 Ward St. 

Shortly thereafter, Finney expanded his house to the rear and converted it to two flats. He also built a second house next door at 2154 Ward St. During World War II, a subsequent owner of 2156 Ward subdivided the second-floor flat into two apartments and added a fourth unit in the enlarged third floor. With every successive remodel, the roofline was altered, rooms assumed new functions, and kitchens and bathrooms sprouted in any available space. 

In 1979, Stephen Johnson bought the house as income property. Five years later, he and Erna Andre decided to make it their home. The first floor still retained many original features, including the twin parlor fireplaces, ceiling rosettes, moldings and wainscoting. However, there was little clue as to many rooms’ original function. 

The couple sought guidance from their neighbor, architect Ron Bogley, with whom they visited several Pattiani houses in Alameda. Anthony Bruce of BAHA introduced them to Pattiani expert Paul Roberts, who explained how the rooms would have been laid out by the architect (Pattiani usually arranged the front and back parlors along one side of the hallway, with the dining room on the other side toward the rear). 

In 1985, after exhaustive research in several libraries, Bogley prepared drawings representing the house’s external elevations and floor plans as they would have been in 1889, 1910, and 1946, as well as a set of working drawings. During this first phase of the restoration, the Johnsons reclaimed the original bedrooms and bathroom out of the front second-floor apartment. Wood moldings were hand-stripped. Period brass hardware and antique light fixtures were installed. Bradbury & Bradbury Victorian wallpapers were put up. When authentic items weren’t to be found, replicas were made to order, as was the case with the master-bedroom doors, second-floor ceiling rosettes, and twenty corner blocks for the door frames. 

In 1994, the front steps were rebuilt, receiving new railings and newel posts. A few years later, the Johnsons reinstated the house as a single-family home by creating an internal stairwell in the 1910 rear addition. They relocated the dining room from the back parlor to its original space across the hall, remodeled the kitchen, and created a large “antique” bathroom in the second-floor space previously occupied by the rear apartment’s kitchen. 

Four years ago, it was time to attack the exterior, which not only looked haphazard but was seriously dilapidated. Contractor Christopher Osborn re-established cohesiveness, shingling the second- and third stories to set them apart from the channel rustic siding on the ground floor. The turret finial was taken down and repaired, and the turret was clad with scalloped copper shingles. The octagonal porthole in the turret’s dome illuminates a most unusual vaulted space that currently serves as an aerie bed chamber. 

In the final phase, begun last year, the Johnsons renovated the first-floor rooms and interior staircase. Newel post replicas were made to replace the missing original ones, the wainscoting was taken down, cleaned, and reassembled, and the parlors and hallway were painted. 

In 2004, the house was featured in BAHA’s “Berkeley 1890” house tour, and this week it was one of only two houses to receive BAHA’s preservation award for both exterior and interior restoration. 

For homeowners who are contemplating historic restoration, Steve Johnson has some words of advice: “The original builder did it his way for a reason—try to understand it before you change things. Do the work to last; don’t take shortcuts, or you’ll be redoing it in a few years. Lastly, there is no financial reward for this kind of restoration. Your reward will come from the joy of living in a grand old house.” 

The writer is indebted to Paul Roberts for information on A.W. Pattiani’s life.

A friend of mine has a bassist living upstairs who is still working out the chords to In a Gadda Da Vida after living there for about 12 years. My friend is a patient person but she’s begun to exhibit something of a tick and often looks dolefully into space for long periods of time, returning from her reverie only when the music has stopped for some short spell. 

I don’t thing that’s she’s given to thoughts of homicide normally but she’s recently begun asking a lot of unwholesome questions about firearms and those CIA poisoning tricks they used to talk about in the sixties (probably while “In a Gadda Da Vida” was playing in the background). 

I have begun to suggest that she might want to try some sound control techniques in the building before moving on to anything more rash. She has agreed and we’ll see how things work out. These problems can be complex and changes in buildings which are designed to reduce sound can be expensive, but if that cute little freckly kid from next door has grown into a 17-year-old drummer in a band called Trama, you might also benefit from some of these notions. So here goes. 

If your problem is between the floors of a building, one of the best techniques is to use what is called Resilient Channel (sometimes called sound channel). This requires replacement of the sheetrock ceilings or the addition of another layer to the ceiling. If you have plenty of ceiling height, it’s fine to leave the first layer of sheetrock, although testing by National Research Council Canada suggests that this is not a good technique. First let me explain resilient channel. 

This is a Z-shaped piece of metal that comes in 10’ lengths and is screwed onto the bare rafters of a ceiling before sheetrock is applied. The channel is run perpendicular to the floor joists so that it runs across the bottom edge of many joists. Once you’ve run them every 16” from one wall to the other, you hang your sheetrock ceiling to the channel, not to the joists. The shape of the channel is such that the sheetrock has a bit of bounce to it and rather than being firmly mounted to the floor above it sort of hangs and is, therefore, much less able to transmit sound through the floor.  

The resilient metal allows the sound to get lost between the floor framing and the sheetrock.  

You can also add some other things to this methodology if you like:  

• You can insulate the space between the joists, in the floor thickness using common insulation. You can also install Sound Board, which is essentially a fibrous cellulose matting that’s 1/2” thick.  

• You can also install this material across the bottom of the joists prior to installing the Rezi-channel but remember that you’ll need longer screws. It’s a good idea to use 5/8” sheetrock on the ceiling if you want to really kill those bad vibes. 

For the really serious isolationist, cement tile-backer can be used as a part of such an assembly, although this is probably better for high frequencies than for low ones. You’ll want to remember to bring the launch codes with you when you lock down for the night. 

For walls between living spaces you can use sound channel and insulation or additional layers of sheetrock but the best method in my opinion involves building one of two types of party walls: 

My favorite works like this and you’ll actually be rebuilding the wall between the two spaces (unless this is a new project): You build a wall with two sets of studs (upright 2x4’s) on a 2x6 bottom and top member. One set of 2x4’s is built to one edge of the 2x6 facing one room. The other set is built to the other edge facing the other room. 

They sort of stagger across the length of the wall. Each 2x4 occupies most of the wall space but none of them touch the sheetrock of both sides. Each one touches and attaches to just one. So when you hit the wall on one side (or strike a power chord), one set of 2x4’s will vibrate but none of the other 2x4’s or the other layer of sheetrock will. 

I used this technique in a duplex in Richmond many years ago and when we were done, we could holler on one side and hear virtually nothing on the other. Great for marital disputes or privacy during intimate moments. 

The second type of party wall is simply a second wall built almost against the first with one or two layers of sheetrock in between. This eats up another few inches of room space and seems less efficient than the staggered technique. Nonetheless, it is simple and can be added to an existing wall. 

I should also mention that carpeting with thick padding is a great sound absorber and requires no significant alteration to the building. 

For sounds next door (like Trama’s weekly band practice), there’s nothing quite like double-glazed windows. It’s impressive how well these advents of modern building science perform at sound inhibition. About 12 year ago, I was inspecting a small house built right beside the 580 freeway. 

It was up a small hill so that you looked right over onto the freeway and the hill acted like an amphitheater capturing and funneling the sound right toward the house. Outside, for our best efforts, we could not converse but when we walked into the house, recently fitted with these new-fangled windows, the sound was little more than a distant hum. It was striking. 

This works equally well for neighbors that fight, dogs that bark all night or whatever drives you to and beyond distraction. If you work nights and sleep days, it might just keep you sane. 

I’ll add one last measure for the band members. If you live at Mom’s house or the police have now been at your house more than 4 times, you might try the following technique. 

Drum kits can be placed on a floating floor or in a hanging room. You can build a floor that sits above the primary floor in the room and either place it on isolation bumpers or hung from the ceiling. bumpers can be found at Granger’s (or another industrial supply house).  

I suggested these bumpers when my osteopath-friend Catherine was being assaulted by the vibration created by a restaurant ventilation system in her building. They can be used on motors or anything that creates vibration or noise. You can also hang a floor from the ceiling by use of cables or threaded rod. 

The secondary floor need only hang a fraction of an inch above the floor to prevent transmission of the vibration from a drum kit. The hangers (rods or cables) can employ isolation devices like the one mentioned above where they connect to the ceiling above. 

If you build a room instead of just a floor and hang it from above, you can really isolate the sound. There are certainly more techniques and high tech materials one can buy if you want to take this further but hopefully, this will get you started on the road to serenity. 

So if the person you’re sharing the duplex with starts a Herman’s Hermits cover band, don’t get mad, don’t get even, just get resilient. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

I rarely venture into my garden with constructive intent but without my Felco pruners and my hori-hori. Most of the time those hand tools are enough because I have a very small garden. Sometimes, though, I need to do something that requires two hands and a bigger tool, and I have my favorites among those too.  

You know how the favorite recipes get spotted with flying sauces? Sometimes you can tell which are a gardener’s favorite tools, because they bear a similar patina; they’re polished by soil and the chrism of skin oils. I think it increases their value. 

I actually spent $50 on a spade—some years back, when $50 was an even more significant investment than now. I’d looked at several trenching spades, but Smith & Hawken’s “poacher’s spade” won my heart when I picked it up. 

I did postpone my gratification until after S&H changed its always overheated catalogue prose about the item; it just bugged me too much to read about the poacher sneaking around the estate, “dog at bay,” until he found a rabbit, cut its warren with the spade, and let the dog catch it. A dog at bay is anything but quiet.  

Fortunately the spade is better then the copy. It’s a D-handled tool, which I generally dislike, but it works well in our heavy clay. The blade is long and narrow and fixed well onto its handle. It has enough footspace to use one’s whole weight on, and the leverage to make it count.  

My other, longer-handled spade is a “lady shovel,” or “flower shovel.” I’m not that ladylike but I do know the advantage of a small-bladed spade in that clay, and of making two small loads to lift instead of one big one. 

I recommend lady shovels for anyone who is older than 20 and/or smaller than a linebacker, for gardening here.  

If I were really ambitious, I’d use a bastard file to sharpen the blade ends of both spades. This is kinder to the plants whose roots I bother when I dig, and indispensable for root-pruning plants to keep their spread in bounds.  

The other tool-maintenance secret I learned in school (Remember, I’m someone who had to go to post-grad classes to learn “lefty loosey, righty tighty.”) is the Bucket of Oily Sand. 

This is what it sounds like: a sound bucket, wide enough for the business ends of every soil-contact tool you have, filled with sand over which you’ve poured oil. What kind of oil? Something nonflammable, please, and nontoxic or inert. 

If you remember to wipe it off after use, motor oil is OK. Keep it where you store your tools.  

When you finish digging, take your mud-encrusted tool, scrape off the worst, and pump the blade up and down in the bucket, a la butter churn. Cleans, polishes, and protects against moisture all in seconds.  

For more specialized tasks I have some more esoteric tools, and next week I’ll tell you where to look for the niftiest. 

What’s Under Your Bed? 

If a major quake hits while you’re in bed, you’ll be thanking yourself if you have a: 

1. Flashlight: Your power will almost assuredly be out. 

2. Pair of shoes: Many post-quake injuries are feet cut by walking on broken glass and mirrors. 

3. Crow bar: If your house has sustained damage, some doors may not open and will have to be pried open. 

Still not secured? If you know what furniture is ready to injure you: Secure it! It’s cheap, whether you do it yourself, or hire someone. 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service in the East Bay. 

www.quakeprepare.com  

TUESDAY, MAY 30 

FILM 

A Theater Near You “Mouchette” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Terri Jentz reads from “Strange Piece of Paradise” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Telegraph. 845-7852.  

Tell it on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Unconditional Theatre’s Political Dialogues Dramatic reading of ballot measures at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Zoyres Eastern European Wild Ferment at 7 p.m. at Mama Buzz Cafe, 2318 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $3-$7. 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $5. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

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

Jeff Gauthier Goatette, Nels Cline at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, MAY 31 

FILM 

Arab Women Film Festival “Souha Surviving Hell” at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568.  

A Theater Near You “The Weeping Meadow” at 7 p.m at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Scott Anderson reads from his novel of expats and diplomats, “Moonlight Hotel” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Telegraph. 845-7852.  

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit for Memorial Day at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Loose Wig Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Aphrodesia” at 7:30 p.m. at The Marsh, 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $20-$50. 800-838-3006. 

justGO! Concert Music and cultural smorgasbord at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 540-8136.  

David M’Ore Band, blues, rock, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Gorilla Math, 2 Cape May, Earthquake Weather at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Orquestra Sensual at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Sol Spectrum at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Other, Lebowski at 8 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Steve Baughman, Alec Stone Sweet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Fareed Haque Group at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. 

THURSDAY, JUNE 1 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Expect Respect: The Power, Joy, and Dignity of Being a Woman” Group show opens at Prescott-Joseph Center for Community Enhancement, 920 Peralta St, Oakland. 835-8683.  

FILM 

7th Annual Berkeley High School Film Festival at 6 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, on Allston between Milvia and MLK. Tickets are $8 adults, $5 students The festival will feature documentary, fiction, and experimental works from students at Berkeley High School.  

Against Indifference: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski Kieslowski’s First Films at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free first Thursday screening. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES.  

Frederick Crews reads from “Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Word Beat Reading Series with Buford Buntin and Priscilla Caretto at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Potentials and the MLK, Jr. Middle School Band at 7:30 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School Auditorium, 1781 Rose St. Contributions appreciated. Fundraiser for the King Jazz Band. 644-6280. 

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Aphrodesia” at 7:30 p.m. at The Marsh, 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $20-$50. 800-838-3006. 

Eve Decker at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

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

JL Stiles, Lindsay Mac at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

New West Guitar Quartet at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

This Charming Band: The Smiths Tribute at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100.  

Bill Frisell New Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16-$26. 238-9200.  

FRIDAY, JUNE 2 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” at 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. 1409 High St., Alameda, through June 11. Tickets are $12-$15. 523-1553.  

Berkeley Rep “The Glass Menagerie” at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $59. Runs through June 18. 647-2949.  

Berkeley Rep “The Miser” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $53. Runs through June 25. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

East Bay Improv at 8 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 597-0795.  

Shotgun Players “King Lear” Thurs.-Sun at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. to June 18. Tickets are $15-$30, reservations suggested. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

Janine Brown & Lucy Traber 2005 Members’ Showcase Winners. Reception at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. 

New Work by Chris Russell and Kari Morris Reception at 7 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 

“Possibilities” Paintings by Donna Mendes, “Disassembly” figurative paintings by Marty McCorkle, and “Celebrating the Body Through Art” work by Nancy Ballard at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., at Telegraph. www.estebansaber.com 

FILM 

Against Indifference: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski “Decalogue 3 and 4” at 7 p.m. “Decalogue 5 and 6” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mona Lee will show slides and talk about her book “Humbler Than Dust: A Retired Couple Visits the Real India by Tandem Bicycle” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Eduardo Galeano shares his new book, “Voices of Time: A Life in Stories” at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison, at 27th St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$12. 415-255-7296, ext.253.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Opera “X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro Opera House, 201 Broadway. Tickets are $32-$36. 763-1146. 

Ruth Botchan Dance Company and Shahrzad Dance Company “Bridges: A Concert Bridging Jewish and Persian Cultures” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m at Western Sky, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $15-$18. 848-4878.  

Harry Best and Shabang and Tom Rigney and Flambeau at 5:30 p.m. at Park Place and Washington Ave., Pt. Richmond. 237-9375.  

Los Nadies & Tere Estrada at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Sony Holland and her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Eve Decker at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

The Ravines and Ronnie Cato, singer-songwriters, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Matthew Sperry Memorial Festival with Daniel Popsickle, Black Cat Duo and Dot Dot Dot at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Look Back and Laugh, This is my Fist, Army of Jesus at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

L.A.E., Ranch Hand Brown at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Bill Frisell New Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16-$26. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, JUNE 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

East Bay Open Studios Sat. and Sun. For maps and times see www.proartsgallery.org 

“Duane Cramer Works, 10 years in the making” Black and white photography. Reception at 6 p.m. at FLOAT 1091, Calcot Place, Unit#116, Oakland. 535-1702.  

Photography by Russ Greene at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. Exhibition runs through June. 595-5344.  

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater “The Merry Wives of Windsor” at the Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda. Tues.-Thurs., 7:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m. through June 25. Tickets are $15 and up. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

FILM 

Superfest International Disability Film Festival from 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. For schedule and access accomodations call 845-5575. 849-2568.  

Against Indifference: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski “Decalogue 7 and 8” at 6:30 p.m. “Decalogue 9 and 10” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Heather Lende introduces “If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Telegraph. 845-7852.  

Bay Area Poets Coalition Open Poetry Reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, dining hall, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. Free. 527-9905, poetalk@aol.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley World Music Festival featuring African, Latin American, Celtic, Indian music from noon to 9 p.m. Sat. and Sun. along Telegraph Avenue. www.telegraphberkeley.com 

Oakland Opera “X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro Opera House, 201 Broadway. Tickets are $32-$36. 763-1146. 

“A Special Evening of Harp Music” with Bay Area Youth Harp Ensemble, Pleiades Harp Ensemble, and Triskela Harp Trio at 8 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 North Berryman St. Tickets are $7-$15. 548-3326. 

Donna Lerew, violin, and Lynn Schugren, piano, at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. Tickets are $15-$20. 848-4088. 

The Moon Town Schmatts Bassoon Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets aare $8-$12. 549-3864  

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Aphrodesia” at 7:30 p.m. at The Marsh, 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $20-$50. 800-838-3006. 

GTS, Ojada at 8 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100.  

Alice Stuart & the Formerlys at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Los Mapaches at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568.  

Dangerous Rhythm, Tim Fox at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Snake Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Greg Pratt at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7 per family. 558-0881. 

Karen Blixt at 8 p.m. at the Jazz 

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

Fred Randolph Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Mayim and Katherine Peck, singer-songwriters, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Chantigs, Everest, Fainting Goats at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Second Opinion, The Helm, Hit Me Back, Robot Eyes at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tilden and Beyond” Paintings by Mary Robinson. Reception at 2 p.m. at Tilden Park Environmental Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233.  

“My America: Art from The Jewish Museum Collection 1900-1955” opens at at 2 p.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. 

FILM 

Superfest International Disability Film Festival from 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. Reception at 6 p.m. For schedule and access accomodations call 845-5575. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“The Cosmology of Words ... The Journey from Griot to Rapper” A documentary by Christina Abram-Davis at 6 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Fundraiser for the Jamaica Study Abroad program July 2006 of the Merritt College Ethnic Studies Department. Donation $10. nefetertinaproductions@yahoo.com 

Against Indifference: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski “Decalogue 1 and 2” at 1:30 p.m. “Decalogue 3 and 4” at 3:45 p.m. and “Decalogue 5 and 6” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alameda Architectural Society 2006 Preservation Awards with Woody Minor on “The History of Measure A” at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, corner of Santa Clara Ave. and Chestnut St., Alameda. 986-9232. 

Julie Gamberg reads from her book of poems “The Museum of Natural History” at 4:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Maxine Rose Schur reads from “Places in Time: Reflection on a Journey” at 1 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Robert Greenfield will present “Timothy Leary: A Biography” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley World Music Festival featuring African, Latin American, Celtic, Indian music from noon to 9 p.m. Sat. and Sun. along Telegraph Avenue. www.telegraphberkeley.com 

Oakland Civic Orchestra “An Afternoon in Vienna” at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., near Lake Merritt, Oakland. Admission is free. www.oaklandnet.com/parks/programs/civicorchestra 

Piedmont Choirs Spring Sing at 3 p.m. at Farnsworth Theater, Skyline High School, Oakland. 547-4441. 

Oakland Opera “X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro Opera House, 201 Broadway. Tickets are $32-$36. 763-1146. 

Galax Quartet Adagios and other movements at 7 p.m. at Loper Chapel, Dana at Durant. Tickets are $10. 601-1370.  

Twang Cafe with The Whoreshoes, early honky tonk country and Kemo Sabe, modern camp fire songs at 7:30 p.m. at at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10.  

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Aphrodesia” at 4 p.m. at The Marsh, 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $20-$50. 800-838-3006. 

Falso Baiano Choro Band at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Marc Cary’s Focus Trio at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373.  

Peter Mulvey at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Sam Misner & Megan Smith at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Verse, Crime in Stereo, Guns Up at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, JUNE 5 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Judy Jones reads from “Bones of the Homeless” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Actors Reading Writers “English Eccentrics,” stories by Alan Bennett and P.G. Wodehouse at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave.  

Poetry Express with Avotcja and Ramon Pinero at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave.  

Christopher Robin and JC read their poems at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Bookstore, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 

Leonard Pitt talks about “Walks Through Lost Paris: A Journey Into the Heart of Historic Paris” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Peter Hallifax and Julie Jeffrey, viols. The Complete Published Works of Forqueray, one suite each morning for five days, through Fri. at 11 a.m. at Loper Chapel, Dana at Durant. TIckets are $7-$10, $25-$35 for the series. 220-1195. 

The Sitka Trio at 1 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana. Tickets are $15. 559-4670. 

Longy School of Music at 4 p.m. at St. Joseph of Arimathea Chapel, 2316 Bowditch Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. 978-853-2700. 

Coro Ciconia “What is a Motet?” Learn as you sing at 5:30 p.m. at Loper Chapel, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $12. 843-0450.  

La Foolia “The History of Western Music” at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. Tickets are $15. 601-9631.  

DeLaMuse Songs of Dowland, Sances, Monteverdi & Caccini at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $10-$15. 831-566-3207.  

Blue Monday Jam, NC Connection at 8 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Yoshida Brothers at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. 

Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski made The Decalogue, a series of 10 one-hour films based on the Ten Commandments, for Polish television in 1988. Since that time it has rarely been screened commercially, other than in a handful of film festivals. 

Pacific Film Archive is providing a rare opportunity to see these great films on the big screen, and over a series of just a few days, which is essential for retaining the mood of the work as a whole. The screenings are part of a larger career retrospective spanning the late Kieslowski’s impressive career.  

Each film in The Decalogue is a separate and distinct creation, though they are all of a piece, united by theme and tone. It can be seen as a novel in the form of a series of short stories, like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio; each film can be appreciated individually, yet together they create a unique and self-contained world, with shared locations and characters establishing each drama as part of a larger framework, as part of the larger drama of humanity.  

The notion of a series of films based on the Ten Commandments may sound tedious, suggesting an overly intellectual and theoretical approach to the medium. Like Kieslowski’s Colors Trilogy—Blue, White and Red, each film deriving its theme from the symbolism of the French flag—it may give the impression that the director is more interested in themes than characters. But Kieslowski is not that sort of director and The Decalogue is not that sort of project. 

This not an intellectual exercise; these are not merely illustrations of the Commandments. Rather, Kieslowski uses the Commandments as a springboard, a starting point for an examination of universal themes and crises.  

Each film in the series is like a finely crafted short story, containing in one hour a remarkably efficient and emotional narrative with fully realized characters and relationships. Each has a plot but the focus is on the people and on the complex web of decisions and relationships that constitutes each life. Much of the action takes place without dialogue. Kieslowski trusts his script, his actors, his cinematographers (a different one for each film), and he trusts his own skills as a director, allowing this collaboration of talents to convey the necessary information with subtlety and grace. Together they find the telling details, those crucial moments and actions that bring a character sharply into focus for the audience and make clear the conflicting emotions that cloud each moral dilemma. 

Decalogue 1, for example, features a professor addressing his class from behind a vast lectern while his young son sits among the students. A point-of-view shot demonstrates the feelings of the son as he watches his dad from behind the framework of a projector, catching glimpses of his father as a sort of God-like being holding forth on the rules of the universe. Later, when the grieving father walks into a church and destroys an altar, Kieslowski does not overplay the visual parallel between the altar and the lectern, but rather keeps his camera focused on the man and his emotions. The juxtaposition is there for those who wish to see it and it adds a layer of meaning to the story, but Kieslowski does not belabor the point, for it is not necessary in the comprehension and appreciation of the film.  

In Decalogue 2 a woman is shown destroying a house plant and breaking a drinking glass out of what seems like sheer perversity. Kieslowski does not explain her actions, but the suggestion seems to be that she is girding herself for the destructive act of having an abortion. 

Decalogue 3 features a woman reestablishing contact with her former lover. They are both married and have recently ended their illicit affair, but she draws him out on a mad search for her phantom husband, visiting jail cells and empty subterranean parking garages in the middle of the night. The staging again suggests something deeper at work, as though the man is being forced to venture into the netherworld of his guilty conscience before declaring to his wife, in the closing shot, that he will not be venturing out at night anymore. 

Decalogue 5 takes a darker turn with a story of murder and capital punishment. A young man senselessly attacks an older man and a young defense attorney is later assigned the case. Much of the film is shot in a dark sepia tone, while the perimeter of the frame is often shrouded in a murky haze, suggesting the nebulous morality of state-sanctioned execution and the vague boundaries that distinguish it from murder.  

Another example of Kieslowki’s technique is in Decalogue 9, where a man learns of his infertility and returns home to break the news to his wife. As they ride together in an elevator, they are engulfed in darkness, with shafts of light briefly illuminating one and then the other. Kieslowski has subtly shown us the rift between them; they are individuals now, not a couple, alone in darkness and unified only by her hand reaching through the blackness to touch his face, to establish contact across the gulf that is widening between them. 

It’s not all darkness and brooding however. Decalogue 10 concludes the series on a more humorous note, as two brothers are reunited by their estranged father’s death and find themselves becoming obsessed by his stamp collection. This film is not without its serious themes and moments of suspense and anxiety, but is leavened with a dark humor not seen in the previous pictures. 

And all throughout these films run two more unifying threads, one conspicuous and one quite subtle. The first is the recurring appearance of a mysterious young man with a piercing gaze who observes the action but never takes part. He seems to play the role of a sort of mute Greek chorus, offering a silent commentary on the tragedy and absurdity of the dramas playing out before us. The other is the recurring sound of barking dogs, usually somewhere off in the distance and often at crucial moments—a lonely but portentous refrain, suggesting that damnation looms beyond each moral quandary. 

There was a time when camera technique meant something, when acute angles or a shaky handheld camera signified something about character or plot. But the language of cinema has become diluted of late, with directors using every flourish and every gimmick imaginable, like a sort of pyrotechnic display: all flash and spectacle but with little substance. in contrast, Kieslowski subjugates his technique to the film, keeping the camera always at the service of the story.  

Orson Welles once said that a movie should not reveal all its secrets in a single viewing. We view paintings more than once; we read stories and novels more than once; we listen to a piece of music over and over again throughout our lives. Why should movies not be the same way? Kieslowski seems to adhere to this maxim, creating small but dense portraits of people at crucial turning points in their lives. His films can be seen once and enjoyed, but a second and third viewing reveals the rich, textured layers of his creations, films that lay rooted in modern reality but speak eloquently and timelessly of universal truths. 

THE DECALOGUE (1988) 

Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. 

Written by Krzysztof Piesiewicz and Kieslowski. 

Playing June 1-3 and repeated June 4-11 at at Pacific Film Archive. Discounted tickets for the entire series are available. 2626 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

In June of 1945, General George S. Patton, Jr. returned from Germany to his native Southern California for a triumphant homecoming. Patton’s welcome included a parade and a movie star-studded celebration at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Never known to shy away from the limelight, he exulted in playing the war hero to the cheering crowds. 

Yet, despite his love of publicity, Patton was exceptionally discreet about one stop on his itinerary. On June 11, he paid a visit to the Huntington estate in San Marino and presented for safekeeping in the Huntington Library a packet of documents he had brought from Germany. 

The documents Patton gave to the library were originals of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, bearing the signature of the Fuehrer himself, Adolf Hitler. The most infamous section of this Nazi legislation, named the “Blood Law,” prohibited marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and “pure-blooded” Germans. Jews were further forbidden to employ in their household “pure-blooded” German females under the age of 45. 

The “Blood Law” may appear relatively mild compared to later Nazi atrocities. However, since it legally decreed Jews to be an inferior race, historians consider it a critical initial step on the hellish road to the Holocaust. 

Before the year was over, Patton was dead. Back in Germany, he was fatally injured in a freak auto accident, succumbing Dec. 21, 1945. Disregarding the obvious historical importance of the Nuremberg originals handed to them by Patton, the Huntington waited 54 years until they publicly divulged the existence of the documents in their possession. 

Why were the Nuremberg Laws secreted in the Huntington vaults for more than a half-century? Anthony M. Platt’s book, Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, from Patton’s Trophy to Public Memorial, published earlier this year, focuses on the quest for the answer to this question. 

I won’t spoil the book for prospective readers by giving that answer here. But I will reveal that the hunt by Tony Platt, a Sacramento State professor since 1977, and his co-researcher, Cecilia E. O’Leary, to unravel the Huntington-Nuremberg mystery is a fascinating account covering much unexpected ground. 

Describing the origins of the “Blood Law,” Platt reviews the disgraceful record of eugenic sterilization in California in the early 1900s. And he examines the close ties between California’s pre-WWII eugenics advocates and their German counterparts, who furnished the Nazis with the intellectual rationalization for their racial policies. 

Among the California eugenicists, Platt and O’Leary discovered, were quite a number of Huntington Foundation trustees, perhaps the most prominent being Nobel laureate and Caltech leader, Robert Millikan. Platt additionally provides evidence of George Patton’s extreme racist and, in particular, anti-Semitic views. 

Bloodlines also tells the story of the three American soldiers who located the Nuremberg originals in a small town German bank safe. And it details the saga of Henry Edwards Huntington , who, for all his faults, gave us as a legacy a magnificent library, museum and garden. 

There’s Platt’s personal tale as well. Raised in a secular Jewish home in Manchester, England, he felt his greatest kinship as an adult in the left activist community. And Platt, a controversial criminology professor at UC Berkeley in the early 1970s, notes that what prejudice he’s directly experienced in life was primarily related to his politics. Nonetheless, he discloses, in the process of researching and writing Bloodlines, surprising emotions connected to his own Jewish heritage surfaced. 

In 1999, when the Huntington finally informed the world they held originals of the Nuremberg Laws, they also announced they would entrust the documents on permanent loan to the Skirball Cultural Center. About four miles north of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Skirball has as its primary mission the recounting of the “Jewish people’s journey, culminating with their history in the United States.” Appropriately, the Nuremberg Laws are now there on display, as part of its core exhibit: “Visions and Values: Jewish Life from Antiquity to America.”  

Reading Tony Platt’s book, I promised myself I’d visit both the Huntington complex and the Skirball Center on my next trip down south. That trip recently took place. En route to the Huntington with a friend, I pulled off the freeway for a brief tour of Old Pasadena, the city’s historic district. 

When we returned to our rental car, to our dismay, a rear tire was totally flat. The cause soon became apparent. Weirdly, a huge nail was spiked straight through the tire’s inside wall. Visions of crazed Pasadena eugenicists fresh in my mind from Platt’s Bloodlines, I joked to my friend that some lunatic anti-Semite must have hammered the nail into our tire. 

“He spotted us together,” I told her, “and since I clearly look Jewish and you clearly do not, he decided to send me a little message.” 

Standing in front of the “Blood Law” the following day at the Skirball and staring at Hitler’s signature, my joke didn’t seem funny anymore. 

BLOODLINES: RECOVERING HITLER’S NUREMBERG LAWS, FROM PATTON’S TROPHY TO PUBLIC MEMORIAL 

By Anthony M. Platt with Cecilia E. O’Leary 

Paradigm Publishers, 240 pages, $18.95 (paper; hardcover also available)

Somewhere between writing and producing, Stephanie Weisman and her performance piece, Aphrodisia, ended up in The Marsh. 

This is where the tale gets sticky. Because the marsh is, first of all, a real one in Delaware; then, it’s also The Marsh, “a breeding ground for new performance,” the project Weisman founded in 1989 for theatrical development and showcasing solo performances that have blossomed into Marshes in San Francisco, Berkeley and affiliates in the North Bay—and also refers to the poem and resulting performance piece finally receiving its premiere at the Berkeley Marsh on June 1 that Weisman first wrote almost 20 years ago about her experience on that Delaware marsh ... that led to her founding of The Marsh. 

Weisman, who originally hails from Newburgh, N.Y., was trained as a singer until the age of twelve. She attended the State University of New York at Buffalo as both undergrad and graduate student, teaching small press publication and editing the Black Mountain 2 poetry review, with poet Robert Creeley (who died last year) as advisor. 

“He was my mentor,” Weisman said. “We met weekly for three years, and he taught me everything I needed to know about the creative process. I didn’t really have a theatrical background, but teaching small press publishing—providing the tools and venue, showing that everybody can publish, setting up collaboration—gave me what I needed to be a producer.” 

But Weisman’s own work was always on hold. 

“I was not much into sending my own work out,” she said. “Joan Murray, a poet friend of mine, finally came to my house and took the manuscript of Dancemasters to the Buffalo Literary Center—and I got a State Council Award. I made it into a performance, and produced it myself, did the posters and postcards, got the people and filled the house. I felt I was a natural producer, but had no experience. ... Someone said, in advance of the performance, ‘So what’re you doing about lights?’ and I said, ‘What?’ Turned out she liked to do the lights.” 

After 11 years at Buffalo came Weisman’s illuminating experience—three months living on the marsh. 

“It was the first time in my life when I could just sit and do nothing but write,” she said. “I was living with an artist who saw technique and aesthetics on the same level, and was interested in life cycles, which we had all around us on the marsh, and always talked about. The house was up on stilts, and the water came up underneath when there were storms. It was fall, nobody was around. After an urban life, I was so affected by the elements, the migration of birds—yet out on the beach I’d see military jets flying overhead from Dover, and really saw that planes came from people watching birds.” 

After moving to Berkeley in 1988, and having another peak experience “getting my voice back” with the Roy Hart Theatre in France, Weisman founded The Marsh and her own creative plans went on hold. 

Then, not long ago, she found herself singing the text to Aphrodisia. Composer Ellen Hoffman worked with her to annotate and arrange the melody into a choral piece with chamber music for cello, bassoon, violin and clarinet. The finished piece is performed by Deborah Gwinn, with Ellen Webb’s choreography danced by Damara Vita Ganley, and sung by Voci women’s vocal ensemble, conducted by Jude Navari, with lights by Joan Arhelgar. 

Another triumph of collaboration, like the many that Weisman has guided through The Marsh. 

“Even my husband, Richard DiLeo, built the sets,” she said. “I needed a landscape architect—it’s a marsh, right? And the show’s been put together from an original that was only 12 minutes long. The first act is a set of women’s choral pieces throughout history. It’s a vision of the whole process—from coal to diamonds. Coming from an Eastern European Jewish background, the future is the hardest thing to conceive of. What I came to understand from the experiences Aphrodisia is all about is that time really is a continuum. And that’s what The Marsh is all about: it might be the best idea in the world, but how do you do it? What does it take?” 

APHRODISIA 

7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays through June 10 at The Marsh Berkeley in the Gaia Arts Center, 2118 Allston Way. For more information see www.themarsh.org or call (415) 826-5750.

Hollywood juniper—Juniperus chinensis “torulosa” or J. chinensis “Kai-zuka”—is one of those trees you know even if you’ve never heard of it. It’s all over the place, one of those Sunset magazine California place markers, the twisty green thing waving its arms outside half the apartment buildings on the West Coast. It’s a city feature like pigeons, and like pigeons you hardly ever see a dead one.  

The Hollywood part of its name is apt: left to its own devices, the thing has a distinct tendency towards the dramatic. (I confess I think of it as Juniperus histrionicus; I suppose I’m analogizing from Histrionicus histrionicus, the harlequin duck, gaudily dressed and often sounding disproportionately alarmed.) It flings its branches about in showstopping gestures like Polly Pureheart fleeing the nefarious villain; the only organized thing about its shape is that most of those branches head off in roughly the same direction. This generally has something to do with the prevailing winds at its site, but I wouldn’t count on that for a compass either.  

It’s hard to get past the ubiquity of this tree—or shrub, by some reckonings—to convince myself of its interesting qualities. It’s so tough and easy to find that it’s become a “gas-station plant,” one of those landscape stalwarts you see almost everywhere because they can survive almost everywhere. So it’s a bit of a shock when I see it praised, especially as “unique,” in tree and garden publications and websites. 

Taken on its own, the cultivar does have certain charms. Those drama-queen branches can be shaped easily enough to more subtle, or subtly dramatic, bonsai-like styles. In fact, Hollywood junipers have been made into good bonsai by accomplished artists and are also good material for beginning bonsai students. Their commonness makes them inexpensive and easily available, and also means that someone looking for a change from the mass garden look might have one to give away for the work of digging it up. Then all you have to do is spend a few years reducing it, and you have a head start on a nice thick aged-looking trunk. 

Part of the Hollywood juniper’s appeal for bonsai and in a garden lies in the trunks’ and major limbs’ shapes. In a tree more than a few years old, these have a rippled, sinuous, muscular quality like a dawn redwood’s. It’s all very Charles Atlas except when it isn’t: there’s a Hollywood juniper near McCone Hall on the UC Berkeley campus that gets called “Squidward” by, well, I’m not sure who owns up to watching that much Spongebob Squarepants but that’s where the eponymous character shows up. I think it looks more like some larval Ent, myself.  

Another unheralded virtue of our gas-station tree lies in the fact that the cultivar is (by most accounts) a clone of a female plant. That means it doesn’t pollinate. That means it isn’t allergenic—unless you get up close and personal, pruning it or otherwise making skin contact. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s as itchy as any other juniper then; arborists talk about the 24-hour rash we get, generally on hands and forearms, from pruning junipers as just a fact of life.  

That also means they bear berries, and I can witness about that too: birds love them. Watch, especially in winter, for flocks of robins or cedar waxwings or both in your juniper. The robins whinny and holler and fly in and out in their barroom-brawl fashion; the waxwings are more genteel, if no less active, sometimes passing berries around to each other like dessert at a potluck. If you have to prune and your tree has berries, wait till spring, when the mobs have dispersed to breed. 

Pruning is one grudge arborists and landscapers have against Hollywood juniper, despite its reliability. If you have to make serious cuts in the thing, you need a chainsaw. The wood’s tough and dense and thick beyond all reason in such a relatively fast grower. If you have one that’s out of bounds and you don’t use a chainsaw yourself at least weekly, call in a pro. The results can be amazing, and you’ll spare some limbs, including your own.

TUESDAY, MAY 30 

Public Hearing on Creeks Ordinance at 6 p.m. at Longfellow School Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. 981-6900. 

A Year of Greening Albany An afternoon mixer celebrating Albany’s environmental movement at 3:30 p.m. at Albany City Hall, 1000 San Pablo Ave. 

City and County Resources for Older Adults at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

National Senior Health & Fitness Day with speakers, information booths on massage therapy, fitness testing, arthritis prevention, dentistry, and more, plus entertainment from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. Free. 534-3637.  

Raging Grannies of the East Bay invites new folks to come join us the 2nd and 4th Tues, of each month, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. to sing (any voice will do), help plan our next gig, or write outrageously political lyrics to old familiar tunes, and have fun at Berkeley Gray Panthers office, 1403 Addison St., in Andronico’s mall. 548-9696. 

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

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Free Handbuilding Ceramics Class 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Also, Mon. noon to 4 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Materials and firing charges not included. 525-5497. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

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

WEDNESDAY, MAY 31 

“Palestinian Lesbians Speak Out from the Occupation” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. at Cedar. Donation $10-$20. Sponsored by Bay Area Women in Black. www.bayareawomeninblack.org 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“American Dictators” A documentary by Alex Jones on the election of 2004 and the degeneration of our political process at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations of $5 accepted. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “American Theocracy” by Kevin Phillips at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito. Also organizing meeting to become a Democratic Central Committee Chartered Club. 433-2911. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

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, JUNE 1 

“Remembering Faith Fancher” A benefit for the Breast Health Center at Alta Bates Summit at 6 p.m. at Scott’s Seafood Restaurant in Jack London Square. For ticket information and reservations call 204-1667. 

“Cat Training & Behavior: Yes You Can!” A lecture at 7:30 p.m. at Borders Books in Emeryville. 644-0729. www.openpaw.org 

Helmet Safety Day Decorate helmets and compete in a toddler rodeo from 5 to 7 p.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $5-$6. 647-1111. 

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

FRIDAY, JUNE 2 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Kim Marienthal Realtor and Board Member of “Liveable Berkeley.” 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.  

“Postcard from Cuba” A report-back from the Berkeley Palma Soriano Sister City delegation on their recent trip to Cuba at 7 p.m. at the Neibyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Donation $5-$20. 717-9663. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Tilden Room, MLK Student Union, 5rd floor, UC Campus. To make an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. www.BeADonor.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. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310, 845-1143. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 3 

Spring Faire at Washington Elementary School with face painting, boat races, obstacle course, Indian floor art, book exchange, food and performan- 

ces, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 2300 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, enter on McKinley. 486-1742.  

National Trails Service Day with REI from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Park. Children 14 and older welcome, but must be accompanied by an adult if under 18. Pre-registration required. 527-4140. 

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour: “The Lorin: Kindred Spirit or Conquest?” led by Dale Smith, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0181.  

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market’s Family Fun Festival from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Civic Center Park, Center St. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Performances, information and activity booths. 548-2220, ext. 227. 

Emergency Preparedness Class on Disaster First Aid from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St. Free, but registration required. 981-5506.  

Report-Back from Berkeley’s Sister City in Cuba at 7 p.m. at Casa Cuba, Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$20. 717-9663. 

E-Waste Recycling Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the main parking lot of the El Cerrito City Hall. Accepted items: computers/computer components, televisions, VCR & DVD players, toner cartridges, printers, fax machines, copiers, telephone equipment, cell phones and MP3 players. Not accepted are: appliances, batteries, paints, pesticides, etc. 1-888-832-9839.  

Youth Empowerment Day to stop “Pushouts” from School into Prison with community leaders and entertainment at 6 p.m. at McClymonds Educational Complex, 2607 Myrtle St., West Oakland. 225-8491. 

Social Responsibility Summit & Community Microbusiness Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at International Community School, 2825 International Blvd. at 29th St., Oakland. 540-7785, ext. 314. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

Toddler Nature Walk for toddlers and their grown-up friends to look for reptiles, at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 636-1684. 

Summer Pond Exploration to capture and release dragonfly nymphs, mayfly niads and other aquatic wonders, from 2 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area. 636-1684. 

East Bay Atheists with a video of Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Professor of Evolutionary Biology, on ways to address the arguments of Creationists against evolution, at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580.  

California Writers Club with winners of the Fifth Grade Writing Contest at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120.  

“Making Gardens Works of Art” at 3 p.m at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Adult Learning Festival with information on learning opportunities, performances and author readings and fun for the whole family, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Lakeside Park, Lake Merritt, Oakland. 879-8131. www.AdultLearningFestival.com 

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

“In Service to the World” A talk with Peace Corps Volunteers at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, West Auditorium, 125 14th St. 238-3134. 

Pre-School Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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, JUNE 4 

“A Taste of Albany” tastes from menus at over 20 different restaurants on Solano Ave. in Albany, music by 20 Jazz Groups, Cable Car rides, children’s entertainment, and Arts & Crafts, from 1 to 6 p.m. Sponsored by the Albany Chamber of Commerce. 525-1771. tasteofalbany.com  

Informational Forum on Immigration from 1 to 3 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson St. Sponsored by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. www.berkeleyboca.org 

Beginning Biological Art and Illustration for Youth, ages 9 and older from 2 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Reservations required. 238-3818. 

Welcome Home the Butterflies Help weed and plant the Butterfly Garden in Tilden Park from 1 to 3 p.m. Dress to get dirty and bring garden gloves if you have them. 525-2233. 

Build It Green Home Tour of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tour book costs $15. 845-0472.  

Alameda Architectural Society 2006 Preservation Awards with Woody Minor on “The History of Measure A” at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, corner of Santa Clara Ave. and Chestnut St., Alameda. 986-9232. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to keep your bike in excellent working condition through safety inspections, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Sunday Summer Forum: Towards a More Just World with Dr. Lola Vollen on her work with exonerated prisoners at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “The Art of Happiness” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, JUNE 5 

Public Hearing on UC Berkeley’s Building Plans for the 451,000 gross square foot Southeast Campus Integrated Projects at 7 p.m. in the Anderson Auditorium, Haas School of Business, UC Campus. 642-7720. www.cp.berkeley.edu 

Art Making at Schoolhouse Creek Join Friends of Five Creeks and environmental artist Zach Pine to make ephemeral art using found materials at the mouth of Schoolhouse Creek, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Photographs of works will be exhibited as part of “Art to Action on Berkeley Creeks.” Free, but enrollment limited; register 708-5528. zpine@aol.com 

Kensington Library Knitting Club, the “Castoffs” meets at 7 p.m. at 61 Arlington Ave. All ages and levels of experience welcome. 524-3043. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60+ years old meets at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $2.50. 524-9122. 

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, JUNE 6 

Remember to Vote Today 

“Pack Light, Pack Right” Tips for comfort on the trail at 7 p.m. at from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

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. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Berkeley Discussion Salon on “Travel and Favorite Vacations” at 7 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. at Rose. Please bring snacks to share, no peanuts please. 

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, JUNE 7 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Earthlings” a documentary on the industries which rely on animals for profit at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations of $5 accepted. 

“Girl, I’ve Been Through A Lot ...” Poetry workshop for girls age 13 to 17 at 4 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Room 219, 125 14th St. 238-3134. 

Classes in English and Citizenship offered by the Oakland Adult Education program Mon.-Fri. from 6 to 9 p.m. Free. Register at Lincoln Elementary School, 225 11th St., room 205. 879-8131. 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation at 10 a.m. in Oakland. We need your help with blood drives all over the East Bay. For more information, please call 594-5165.  

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Oakland State Building, 2nd floor, 1515 Clay St. To make an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. www.BeADonor.com  

Swami Khecaranatha Kundalini Yoga Talk at 7 p.m. at Sacred Space Yoga Sanctuary, 816 Bancroft at 6th. Free. 486-8700.  

“Organizing Your Time and Energy” at 6 p.m. at The Breema Clinic, 6201 Florio St., Oakland. 428-1234.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

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.  

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council Special Meeting Public Hearing on Creeks Ordinance, Tues., May 30, at 6 p.m. at Longfellow School Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. 981-6900. 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., June 1, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/housing 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs. June 1, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/landmarks 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., June 1, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. June 5, 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. June 5, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., June 5, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/peaceandjustice

It’s not at all strange for a bus half-filled with important local officials to roll through the streets of a California city, pointing out tracts and plots and buildings along the way. It is unusual when the other half of the bus is filled with longtime city residents and community activists, and the purpose of the tour is not so much to plot the city’s future as it is to make sure its past is understood. 

On Saturday, Richmond’s Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park held its fourth such tour of the city’s World War II era sites, with participants who lived through the era encouraged to add their commentary to the park service’s tour guide. 

The result was an exercise in living history. 

In one of Richmond’s Latino sections, the bus passed the Mexican Baptist Church near the Atchison Village housing projects, with tour guide Naomi Torres of the National Park Service talking about how the village was once an open field where Mexican-American farmers grazed their livestock and then was built as housing for Kaiser shipyard workers who flocked to Richmond during the war years. 

When Torres was finished, Contra Costa Grand Jury Foreman Antonio Medrano, who grew up in Richmond, pointed to the Mexican Baptist Church and said, “I bet you thought all Mexicans were Catholic,” which began his telling of the history of Mexico’s evangelical Protestant movement that later migrated north into the United States. 

At the Winters Building off of MacDonald Avenue, which served as both a dance hall and an air raid shelter during the war and which now houses the East Bay Center for The Performing Arts, another Park Ranger asked if anyone on the bus remembered attending any dances there. 

“That place was for white folks,” one of the older black participants pointed out. “You have to remember who was welcome and who wasn’t welcome on MacDonald Avenue in those days.” There followed stories of Richmond’s deeply segregated days when young white drivers cruised the city’s main street with impunity but black drivers were cited and arrested by police. 

And at a stop along the wharf next to the enormous closed Ford Assembly Plant, some five football fields long, which once housed a tank production factory and is now being prepared for commercial and housing redevelopment by the City of Richmond, one longtime Parchester Village resident recalled how she and her neighbors could see the lights from munitions loading accident explosions on the docks from their windows. 

Rosie the Riveter National Park community liaison Betty Reid Soskin, who conceived and designed the tours and works on them jointly with National Park Service Outreach Specialist Naomi Torres, calls them “resoundingly successful,” and says they came out of a desire to “raise the awareness in the City of Richmond that they are in the middle of a national park. There is a misconception that the park is just down by the shoreline but the heart of it is in the Iron Triangle, which is one of the most troubled parts of the city. We’re hoping that the tours can help Richmond form a new identity of itself. We have such a rich history here.” 

Soskin says she has resisted suggestions to simply have officials take the tours by themselves, without the longtime residents. “Without the residents telling their stories,” Soskin said, “we’d simply be passing by building sites that we pass by every day, without knowing their historic significance.”  

Included on the tours was the Galileo Club on South 23rd Street, where Richmond’s largest single ethnic group before World War II—Italians—had a social club (one of the participants explained that because of Richmond’s sensitive wartime industries, only American citizens could live in the city, and many Italian families were broken up when the elders who were non-citizen immigrants were forced to move out). 

Other areas visited were the Pullman District, which includes the still-standing, New Orleans-style hotel where Pullman porters stayed between runs as well as buildings where Pullman passenger cars were repaired and restored; the Park Florist on MacDonald, which was once owned by a Japanese family who were forced to sell the business when they were relocated to an internment camp; and the Kaiser Field Hospital, one of the first structures shipbuilding magnate Henry J. Kaiser used as part of his health care system for his shipyard workers, a system that eventually grew into Kaiser Permanente.  

The tours start at the headquarters of the Rosie the Riveter park at Richmond City Hall, where participants view some of the historic memorabilia. Among them are ID badges, ration stamps, welder’s guns, and a welder’s mask used by a Japanese-American welder “until the day he went into an internment camp,” according to park officials. 

The photo I.D. badges are especially poignant, giving a human face to an era that is close to us in time, but often forgotten. Housed on a single table in the back of the City Hall complex, the items are being collected for a permanent park museum. While the location for the museum has yet to be determined, park officials say that some of the memorabilia in the park’s projected new Visitors Center at the Ford Assembly Plant. 

A park official explained that the park is both a collection of World War II-era historical cites as well as a documentation of activities on what was called “the home front” during the war. 

“And we’re using home front in its broadest possible term,” he said. “We’re referring to anything that happened domestically during the war years. Whatever people were doing at that time was affected by the war, or had an effect on the war.” 

The official said that while the Rosie the Riveter Park was headquartered in Richmond, the park is a collection of all the west coast wartime history, from Washington State to Southern California.  

The fifth and final tour is scheduled for later this summer, but Soskin says the park is seeking more funding to extend the events. The tours have been funded by a grant from PG&E. Slots for the fifth tour are already filled, but at a feedback session following Saturday’s tour, park officials said they were open to suggestions to expand the tours and make them available to more community residents, groups, and officials. 

Contributed photo  

Richmond City Clerk Diane Holmes (left) and Richmond community activist Ethel Dotson view Rosie the Riveter Memorial during Saturday's Richmond historical tour.

It’s a warm, breezy spring day. I’m sitting in the courtyard at Espresso Roma, lunching on a terrific spinach-mushroom frittata and watching the world of Elmwood pass by. Inside laptops silently hum while lattes are sipped. Though my meter is ticking I’m in no hurry to move. Once here, why would I want to leave? 

Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood invites lingering and strolling. Stretching along College Avenue from the University to the Oakland border, on gentle terrain past village-like shops and classic architecture, the neighborhood gives you the feeling that of having effortlessly arrived at a long-desired location. On a miniature scale, Elmwood offers something for everyone. A stable neighborhood structure, tree-lined streets, friendly neighborhood shops, global cuisine and cultural venues explain my dilemma, my desire to linger despite a parking meter. 

After the Gold Rush and the founding of the University of California, newcomers to Berkeley sought quality homes with proximity to campus and nearby Telegraph Avenue businesses. Aided by Key streetcars along College Avenue, Elmwood Park, named after shade-providing elms, began to expand with both residential and commercial entities. One hundred years later, much of its original small-town charm remains. 

The business district of any neighborhood reflects the needs of its populace; the residential areas reflect its heart. Recognizing pride in ownership, I happily strolled along Benvenue and Hillegass Avenues and Russell Street admiring classic brown shingles, craftsman and storybook tutor homes. Even the public library made me pause. Handsome brick and timbers with peaked roof, sunlight filtered through and glancing off ancient leafy elms, benches outside and comfortable seating indoors begged for time spent with a good book. 

Admiring architecture doesn’t require a degree in styles or movements. You don’t need to know what it is to know what you like. Two- and three-story brown shingles trimmed in forest-green, gentian-blue or brick-red with limpet like purple wisteria coating one side; a broad front porch with Adirondack chairs awaiting your repose or a bedroom balcony for that first cup of morning coffee. A pale-green Queen Anne with small multi-paned windows, another stately home fronted by massive white columns. Gardens to drool over: flower-filled with roses and rhododendrons, framed by years-old pines, palms and oaks, alive with birdsong. Homes to treasure. 

Elmwood’s business district radiates from a hub at College and Ashby, limited in size but limitless in choices. There’s something for every taste. Start with food. In the mood for something Eastern? You can sample the tastes of Pakistan and India at Naan ’N’ Curry or enter the cool, elegant rooms of King Yen, where large open windows shaded beneath eggplant awnings beckon you in for a gracious meal. When you’re in a hurry, pop into Manpuku and grab a delicious assortment of pre-packed combination sushi. Study the illustrated menu to get a preview of their bento and ramen offerings. 

Red wine, olive oil and al dente pasta call up the tastes of Italy. Trattoria La Siciliana announces Bon Appetito along with a special board listing offerings of antipasti, primi and secondi dishes. Inside the ocher-washed walls and tiled floors and tables invoke the spirit of a secret Italian café. Stop at A.G. Ferrari Foods to bring Italy home. Tapenade di olive and asiago fresco before ravioli con spinaci e ricotta under ragu alla Bolognese washed down with Belvedere Umbria—worthy of a meal from the finest Italian villa! 

Gordo’s Taqueria and La Cascada Taqueria can satisfy your taste for over the border while the Holy Land Restaurant offers kosher and vegetarian choices. La Mediterranée’s sidewalk tables waft the aromas of hummus and baba ghanous. Cold cucumber soup or warm filled fillos, the wonderful blend of spices will entice you in. 

All that food made me feel sluggish, ready to work it all off. Bolfing’s Elmwood Hardware has supplies for whatever project you’ve been putting off, like putting up a Shaker peg rack, perusing the decorator’s palette for just the right shade of goldenrod or picking up a new LED flashlight for your earthquake supplies. 

Thinking about your garden, or lack of one? Inside Mrs. Dalloway’s I was inspired to landscape and plant. Yellow Gloveables, fine Felco clippers and Renee’s Garden seeds could get me started. A lovely space, as airy and fresh as a spring garden, displaying a wonderful assortment of books, potted plants, garden-related accoutrements and a red wicker chair made it hard for me to leave. 

Too quiet around your house? Enter Your Basic Bird and your heart will lift. An incredible assortment of winged friends greeted me with caws, chirps and coos, both raucous and subtle. Parrots of amazing colors, one an electric green with red, blue and purple feathers and bright orange beak, seemed too beautiful to be real. Tiny finches, intricately patterned, amazed me. I counted eight distinct sections and colors on one three-inch beauty. 

Indulgence is easy along College Avenue. Jeremy’s discounted prices allow shopping without guilt. I spotted flowered sequined skirts, light-as-air sundresses and a striped cream sweater that mimicked a tropical spree. The turquoise and silver jewelry at Bill’s Trading Post would be the perfect accent. And who wouldn’t covet a finely crafted Pomo feather basket or an obsidian dream catcher? 

Far Leaves satisfies the taste for tea in an attractive, peaceful setting. Patrons are encouraged to try new blends and brew their choice of black, oolong, green, herbal infusion or rare tea in-house for optimum enjoyment. Take home a lovely ceramic tea set to prolong the pleasure. 

When that yen for something sweet beckons, choices abound. Dream Fluff Donuts displays its glistening, Homer-size treats in the front window. Ozzie’s old-fashioned soda fountain still serves milkshakes and egg creams at the vintage counter. At Nabalom’s cinnamon twists and puck-sized cookies tempt the eye and taste buds. 

Cultural venues are easy walking distance from Elmwood’s hub. The Elmwood Theater is a Berkeley landmark, surviving since 1914 and saved by the Friends of the Theater in 1994. Touted as a family theater in its prime, today’s offerings cater to a broader family but better reflect the interests of the community. 

A National Historic Landmark, the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts is reminiscent of a rustic National Park lodge. Dark brown exposed framing with redwood rafters and small wall lamps set the scene for theater, dance and music performances, Lego and Mad Science summer camps and classes for all ages. 

My final stop was at the Judah L. Magnes Museum housed in a handsome four-story cinder brick mansion in a secluded park-like setting. Within, distinctly painted galleries exhibit art reflecting the global Jewish experience, seeking to promote understanding and commonalities. I greatly enjoyed Larry Adamson’s diorama “Searching for the Ideal City.” His miniature Jerusalem of candelabra, spice boxes and Torah crowns contrasts the ideal with the actual. 

Meter satisfied, I ambled back to my sidewalk perch for another cappuccino and just a while longer in the village of Elmwood. Embodying the sense of having attained Berkeley-style achievement, Elmwood may be small in size but its essence looms large.  

Photograph by Marta Yamamoto 

Choices for excellent international cuisine are close at hand along College Avenue in the Elmwood District.

In the 1880s and ‘90s, few East Bay architects were as fashionable as Alfred Washington Pattiani (1855–1935). Italian name notwithstanding, Pattiani, who was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, was descended from a well-to-do German family. His paternal grandfather, Alois Fahrnbacher of Landshut, Bavaria, was a tobacco manufacturer, commercial court assessor, and a member of the Bavarian parliament. 

His mother, Elisabeth von Bergen, came from the Baltic port city of Stettin and studied music—perhaps in Weimar, for she is said to have been a student of Franz Liszt, who taught piano there beginning in 1848. Possibly also in Weimar, Elisabeth met Christian Alfred Fahrnbacher. 

Like many German students of their generation, the two were apparently involved in the 1848 revolution. They ended up marrying and fleeing to the United States, where they changed their name to Pattiani. 

She became a published composer under the name Eliza Pattiani or simply Madame Pattiani and is known for marches she composed for Northwestern University and the California State Normal School (now San Jose State University). Her husband was a daguerreotype photographer in Cincinnati and Chicago. 

In 1870, after having lived in St. Louis, Chicago, and Evanston, Ill., the family moved to San Jose for health reasons. Son Alfred began his architectural apprenticeship at age 15 while completing his schooling at the Business College of San Jose. 

For two years he studied architecture under Theodore Lenzen, San Jose’s preeminent architect. When his father died in 1873, Alfred began working as a draftsman for various Bay Area architects. In 1879, he built himself a house in Alameda, where he established a building firm in 1882. 

Billing himself as Real Estate Broker and Builder, Pattiani catered to the affluent class, designing and building hundreds of residences in Alameda, Oakland, and Berkeley. His styles included Stick-Eastlake, Queen Anne, Shingle, and Colonial Revival. Although a number of his Berkeley houses are extant—including a row of six cottages on the 2100 block of Ward St. and two elegant Queen Annes at Blake and Fulton—many that were built near the UC campus fell victim to university expansion. In 1973, the razing of a Pattiani house on a prominent corner in Alameda was the impetus that led to the passage of Proposition A, which saved much of that city’s Victorian residential character. 

In 1889, Pattiani built his 185th house on the southwest corner of Ward and Fulton streets. This large Queen Anne sported a generous polygonal turret crowned by a bell-shaped cupola and displayed a full complement of gingerbread ornamentation. The client who paid $3,500 for the house was San Francisco wine merchant Samuel B. Stanley. Unaccountably, Stanley preferred the charms of San Jose to those of Berkeley. In February 1891, he sold the house and two additional lots to the Sadler family. 

Caleb and Lydia Sadler were English immigrants who owned a San Francisco fancy goods and notions business. Their second son, Frank E. Sadler, would eventually own the Sadler’s store at Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, selling books, stationery, photographic supplies, and sporting goods. Sadler’s also carried a distinctive line of picture postcards, always displaying the photo in an oval vignette. 

The Sadlers spent only a few years in the house. In 1894, they sold it to Mary E. and Charles E. Finney and moved to the Northside. A mechanical engineer, Finney was an enterprising man. In 1899 he built three houses directly to the south of his house. These were announced as the first in the area to contain indoor plumbing. Ten years later, Finney moved his house, which had sat in the center of a triple lot at 2154 Ward Street, to the northeast corner of the lot, changing the address to 2156 Ward St. 

Shortly thereafter, Finney expanded his house to the rear and converted it to two flats. He also built a second house next door at 2154 Ward St. During World War II, a subsequent owner of 2156 Ward subdivided the second-floor flat into two apartments and added a fourth unit in the enlarged third floor. With every successive remodel, the roofline was altered, rooms assumed new functions, and kitchens and bathrooms sprouted in any available space. 

In 1979, Stephen Johnson bought the house as income property. Five years later, he and Erna Andre decided to make it their home. The first floor still retained many original features, including the twin parlor fireplaces, ceiling rosettes, moldings and wainscoting. However, there was little clue as to many rooms’ original function. 

The couple sought guidance from their neighbor, architect Ron Bogley, with whom they visited several Pattiani houses in Alameda. Anthony Bruce of BAHA introduced them to Pattiani expert Paul Roberts, who explained how the rooms would have been laid out by the architect (Pattiani usually arranged the front and back parlors along one side of the hallway, with the dining room on the other side toward the rear). 

In 1985, after exhaustive research in several libraries, Bogley prepared drawings representing the house’s external elevations and floor plans as they would have been in 1889, 1910, and 1946, as well as a set of working drawings. During this first phase of the restoration, the Johnsons reclaimed the original bedrooms and bathroom out of the front second-floor apartment. Wood moldings were hand-stripped. Period brass hardware and antique light fixtures were installed. Bradbury & Bradbury Victorian wallpapers were put up. When authentic items weren’t to be found, replicas were made to order, as was the case with the master-bedroom doors, second-floor ceiling rosettes, and twenty corner blocks for the door frames. 

In 1994, the front steps were rebuilt, receiving new railings and newel posts. A few years later, the Johnsons reinstated the house as a single-family home by creating an internal stairwell in the 1910 rear addition. They relocated the dining room from the back parlor to its original space across the hall, remodeled the kitchen, and created a large “antique” bathroom in the second-floor space previously occupied by the rear apartment’s kitchen. 

Four years ago, it was time to attack the exterior, which not only looked haphazard but was seriously dilapidated. Contractor Christopher Osborn re-established cohesiveness, shingling the second- and third stories to set them apart from the channel rustic siding on the ground floor. The turret finial was taken down and repaired, and the turret was clad with scalloped copper shingles. The octagonal porthole in the turret’s dome illuminates a most unusual vaulted space that currently serves as an aerie bed chamber. 

In the final phase, begun last year, the Johnsons renovated the first-floor rooms and interior staircase. Newel post replicas were made to replace the missing original ones, the wainscoting was taken down, cleaned, and reassembled, and the parlors and hallway were painted. 

In 2004, the house was featured in BAHA’s “Berkeley 1890” house tour, and this week it was one of only two houses to receive BAHA’s preservation award for both exterior and interior restoration. 

For homeowners who are contemplating historic restoration, Steve Johnson has some words of advice: “The original builder did it his way for a reason—try to understand it before you change things. Do the work to last; don’t take shortcuts, or you’ll be redoing it in a few years. Lastly, there is no financial reward for this kind of restoration. Your reward will come from the joy of living in a grand old house.” 

The writer is indebted to Paul Roberts for information on A.W. Pattiani’s life.

A friend of mine has a bassist living upstairs who is still working out the chords to In a Gadda Da Vida after living there for about 12 years. My friend is a patient person but she’s begun to exhibit something of a tick and often looks dolefully into space for long periods of time, returning from her reverie only when the music has stopped for some short spell. 

I don’t thing that’s she’s given to thoughts of homicide normally but she’s recently begun asking a lot of unwholesome questions about firearms and those CIA poisoning tricks they used to talk about in the sixties (probably while “In a Gadda Da Vida” was playing in the background). 

I have begun to suggest that she might want to try some sound control techniques in the building before moving on to anything more rash. She has agreed and we’ll see how things work out. These problems can be complex and changes in buildings which are designed to reduce sound can be expensive, but if that cute little freckly kid from next door has grown into a 17-year-old drummer in a band called Trama, you might also benefit from some of these notions. So here goes. 

If your problem is between the floors of a building, one of the best techniques is to use what is called Resilient Channel (sometimes called sound channel). This requires replacement of the sheetrock ceilings or the addition of another layer to the ceiling. If you have plenty of ceiling height, it’s fine to leave the first layer of sheetrock, although testing by National Research Council Canada suggests that this is not a good technique. First let me explain resilient channel. 

This is a Z-shaped piece of metal that comes in 10’ lengths and is screwed onto the bare rafters of a ceiling before sheetrock is applied. The channel is run perpendicular to the floor joists so that it runs across the bottom edge of many joists. Once you’ve run them every 16” from one wall to the other, you hang your sheetrock ceiling to the channel, not to the joists. The shape of the channel is such that the sheetrock has a bit of bounce to it and rather than being firmly mounted to the floor above it sort of hangs and is, therefore, much less able to transmit sound through the floor.  

The resilient metal allows the sound to get lost between the floor framing and the sheetrock.  

You can also add some other things to this methodology if you like:  

• You can insulate the space between the joists, in the floor thickness using common insulation. You can also install Sound Board, which is essentially a fibrous cellulose matting that’s 1/2” thick.  

• You can also install this material across the bottom of the joists prior to installing the Rezi-channel but remember that you’ll need longer screws. It’s a good idea to use 5/8” sheetrock on the ceiling if you want to really kill those bad vibes. 

For the really serious isolationist, cement tile-backer can be used as a part of such an assembly, although this is probably better for high frequencies than for low ones. You’ll want to remember to bring the launch codes with you when you lock down for the night. 

For walls between living spaces you can use sound channel and insulation or additional layers of sheetrock but the best method in my opinion involves building one of two types of party walls: 

My favorite works like this and you’ll actually be rebuilding the wall between the two spaces (unless this is a new project): You build a wall with two sets of studs (upright 2x4’s) on a 2x6 bottom and top member. One set of 2x4’s is built to one edge of the 2x6 facing one room. The other set is built to the other edge facing the other room. 

They sort of stagger across the length of the wall. Each 2x4 occupies most of the wall space but none of them touch the sheetrock of both sides. Each one touches and attaches to just one. So when you hit the wall on one side (or strike a power chord), one set of 2x4’s will vibrate but none of the other 2x4’s or the other layer of sheetrock will. 

I used this technique in a duplex in Richmond many years ago and when we were done, we could holler on one side and hear virtually nothing on the other. Great for marital disputes or privacy during intimate moments. 

The second type of party wall is simply a second wall built almost against the first with one or two layers of sheetrock in between. This eats up another few inches of room space and seems less efficient than the staggered technique. Nonetheless, it is simple and can be added to an existing wall. 

I should also mention that carpeting with thick padding is a great sound absorber and requires no significant alteration to the building. 

For sounds next door (like Trama’s weekly band practice), there’s nothing quite like double-glazed windows. It’s impressive how well these advents of modern building science perform at sound inhibition. About 12 year ago, I was inspecting a small house built right beside the 580 freeway. 

It was up a small hill so that you looked right over onto the freeway and the hill acted like an amphitheater capturing and funneling the sound right toward the house. Outside, for our best efforts, we could not converse but when we walked into the house, recently fitted with these new-fangled windows, the sound was little more than a distant hum. It was striking. 

This works equally well for neighbors that fight, dogs that bark all night or whatever drives you to and beyond distraction. If you work nights and sleep days, it might just keep you sane. 

I’ll add one last measure for the band members. If you live at Mom’s house or the police have now been at your house more than 4 times, you might try the following technique. 

Drum kits can be placed on a floating floor or in a hanging room. You can build a floor that sits above the primary floor in the room and either place it on isolation bumpers or hung from the ceiling. bumpers can be found at Granger’s (or another industrial supply house).  

I suggested these bumpers when my osteopath-friend Catherine was being assaulted by the vibration created by a restaurant ventilation system in her building. They can be used on motors or anything that creates vibration or noise. You can also hang a floor from the ceiling by use of cables or threaded rod. 

The secondary floor need only hang a fraction of an inch above the floor to prevent transmission of the vibration from a drum kit. The hangers (rods or cables) can employ isolation devices like the one mentioned above where they connect to the ceiling above. 

If you build a room instead of just a floor and hang it from above, you can really isolate the sound. There are certainly more techniques and high tech materials one can buy if you want to take this further but hopefully, this will get you started on the road to serenity. 

So if the person you’re sharing the duplex with starts a Herman’s Hermits cover band, don’t get mad, don’t get even, just get resilient. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

I rarely venture into my garden with constructive intent but without my Felco pruners and my hori-hori. Most of the time those hand tools are enough because I have a very small garden. Sometimes, though, I need to do something that requires two hands and a bigger tool, and I have my favorites among those too.  

You know how the favorite recipes get spotted with flying sauces? Sometimes you can tell which are a gardener’s favorite tools, because they bear a similar patina; they’re polished by soil and the chrism of skin oils. I think it increases their value. 

I actually spent $50 on a spade—some years back, when $50 was an even more significant investment than now. I’d looked at several trenching spades, but Smith & Hawken’s “poacher’s spade” won my heart when I picked it up. 

I did postpone my gratification until after S&H changed its always overheated catalogue prose about the item; it just bugged me too much to read about the poacher sneaking around the estate, “dog at bay,” until he found a rabbit, cut its warren with the spade, and let the dog catch it. A dog at bay is anything but quiet.  

Fortunately the spade is better then the copy. It’s a D-handled tool, which I generally dislike, but it works well in our heavy clay. The blade is long and narrow and fixed well onto its handle. It has enough footspace to use one’s whole weight on, and the leverage to make it count.  

My other, longer-handled spade is a “lady shovel,” or “flower shovel.” I’m not that ladylike but I do know the advantage of a small-bladed spade in that clay, and of making two small loads to lift instead of one big one. 

I recommend lady shovels for anyone who is older than 20 and/or smaller than a linebacker, for gardening here.  

If I were really ambitious, I’d use a bastard file to sharpen the blade ends of both spades. This is kinder to the plants whose roots I bother when I dig, and indispensable for root-pruning plants to keep their spread in bounds.  

The other tool-maintenance secret I learned in school (Remember, I’m someone who had to go to post-grad classes to learn “lefty loosey, righty tighty.”) is the Bucket of Oily Sand. 

This is what it sounds like: a sound bucket, wide enough for the business ends of every soil-contact tool you have, filled with sand over which you’ve poured oil. What kind of oil? Something nonflammable, please, and nontoxic or inert. 

If you remember to wipe it off after use, motor oil is OK. Keep it where you store your tools.  

When you finish digging, take your mud-encrusted tool, scrape off the worst, and pump the blade up and down in the bucket, a la butter churn. Cleans, polishes, and protects against moisture all in seconds.  

For more specialized tasks I have some more esoteric tools, and next week I’ll tell you where to look for the niftiest. 

What’s Under Your Bed? 

If a major quake hits while you’re in bed, you’ll be thanking yourself if you have a: 

1. Flashlight: Your power will almost assuredly be out. 

2. Pair of shoes: Many post-quake injuries are feet cut by walking on broken glass and mirrors. 

3. Crow bar: If your house has sustained damage, some doors may not open and will have to be pried open. 

Still not secured? If you know what furniture is ready to injure you: Secure it! It’s cheap, whether you do it yourself, or hire someone. 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service in the East Bay. 

www.quakeprepare.com  

FRIDAY, MAY 26 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Gordon Graham on “Vietnam & Cambodia: History, Culture and Travel” 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.  

“Can We Stop the US Attack on Iran?” with Jeanette Hassberg of the War and Law League and Ali Mirardal of the Iranian-American Community of Northern California at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $10. 528-5403.  

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, MAY 27 

Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival on sidewalks along the entire length of Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Register early for the chalk drawing contest at 1561 Solano Peralta Park; 1850 Solano at Andronico’s Market; and 1127 Solano at Royal Ground Coffee. Artists chalk is available for a fee. Judging at 4 p.m. 527-5358. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Association North Berkeley Walk Meet at 10 a.m. at the entrance to the Berkeley Rose Garden, west side of Euclid Avenue between Bayview Place and Eunice. Bring water, snack, and sun protection. The pace will be moderate, with some steep stairways. 526-7609. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Family Day at Union Point Park with an Aztec Run/Walk for Education, at 8:30 a.m., dedication of “Wave Oculus” the new public art insatallation at 11 a.m. and kite flying at 11:30 a.m. at 2311 Embarcadero East, Oakland. 

Brooks Island Voyage Paddle the rising tide across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Brooks Island from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. For experienced boaters who can provide their own canoe or kayak and safety gear. For ages 14 and up with parent participation. Cost is $20-$22. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/ 

walkingtours 

“Our Oil and Other Tales” A documentary on the Venezuelan oil and coal industries at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. Coat is $5-$20 sliding scale. Benefit for Copwatch. 208-1700. 

Podcasting Class In two days, public radio professionals teach you interview skills, writing for the ear, editing tricks and much more. Sat. and Sun. from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at KQED Studios, 2601 Mariposa St., SF. For information call 415-335-0500. contentcrashcourse@audioluxe.org  

Sanskrit Chanting Workshop for the whole family at 7 p.m. at Sacred Space Yoga Sanctuary, 816 Bancroft Way at 6th. Cost is$15-$35. 496-6047. 

Healing Energy Workshop from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. Cost is $80. www.tibetanqigong.org 

Pre-School Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., through June 22. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

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

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, MAY 28 

Natural Science Illustration Field Study with Malissa Garden Streblow. Learn basic visual fundamentals of drawing, sharpen your observation skills and learn about the ecological relationshid of the region’s inhabitants. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 16 and up. Cost is $30-$34. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Nature Drawing for Youth, ages 8-15. Learn field drawing skills through fun exercises, while learning about the plants and animals of the area. From 2:30 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $15-$17. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

The Joy of Rats Meet the adoptable rats and learn about feeding, habitat, grooming and healthcare from 2 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEARS, 303 Arlington Ave. behind ACE Hardware, Kensington. Suggested donation $15. 525-6155. 

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 Mark Henderson on “The Birth of Shayamuni Buddha” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MAY 29 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

Memorial Day Open House at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Vist our resident critters, make nature crafts and learn about the park, from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 525-2233. 

“Great Hikes in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park” with Andrew Dean Nystrom, winner of the 2005 National Outdoor Book Award, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60+ years old meets at 10:15 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., through June 19th. Cost is $2.50 per week includes refreshments. 524-9122. 

Breathexperience?Classes “Oh, My Aching Back!” 12-1 p.m, $10; “Restoring Viitality” 5:30-6:45 p.m. $10; “The Experience of Breath” 7-8:15 p.m.$12, at MIBE, 830 Bancroft Way, #104. 981-1710. 

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

TUESDAY, MAY 30 

Public Hearing on Creeks Ordinance at 6 p.m. at Longfellow School Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. 981-6900. 

A Year of Greening Albany An afternoon mixer celebrating Albany’s environmental movement at 3:30 p.m. at Albany City Hall, 1000 San Pablo Ave. 

City and County Resources for Older Adults at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

National Senior Health & Fitness Day with speakers, information booths on massage therapy, fitness testing, arthritis prevention, dentistry, and more, plus entertainment from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. Free. 534-3637. www.eldercarealliance.org 

Raging Grannies of the East Bay invites new folks to come join us the 2nd and 4th Tues, of each month, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. to sing (any voice will do), help plan our next gig, or write outrageously political lyrics to old familiar tunes, and have fun at Berkeley Gray Panthers office, 1403 Addison St., in Andronico’s mall. 548-9696. 

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

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Free Handbuilding Ceramics Class 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Also, Mon. noon to 4 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Materials and firing charges not included. 525-5497. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

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

WEDNESDAY, MAY 31 

“Palestinian Lesbians Speak Out from the Occupation” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. at Cedar. Donation $10-$20. Sponsored by Bay Area Women in Black. www.bayareawomeninblack.org 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“American Dictators” A documentary by Alex Jones on the election of 2004 and the degeneration of our political process at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations of $5 accepted. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “American Theocracy” by Kevin Phillips at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito. Also organizing meeting to become a Democratic Central Committee Chartered Club. 433-2911. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 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. www.ecologycenter.org 

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, JUNE 1 

“Remembering Faith Fancher” A benefit for the Breast Health Center at Alta Bates Summit at 6 p.m. at Scott’s Seafood Restaurant in Jack London Square. For ticket information and reservations call 204-1667. 

“Cat Training & Behavior: Yes You Can!” A lecture at 7:30 p.m. at Borders Books in Emeryville. 644-0729. www.openpaw.org 

Helmet Safety Day Decorate helmets and compete in a toddler rodeo from 5 to 7 p.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $5-$6. 647-1111. 

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

FRIDAY, JUNE 2 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Kim Marienthal Realtor and Board Member of “Liveable Berkeley.” 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 or 665-9020.  

“Postcard from Cuba” A report-back from the Berkeley Palma Soriano Sister City delegation on their recent trip to Cuba at 7 p.m. at the Neibyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Donation $5-$20. 717-9663. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Tilden Room, MLK Student Union, 5rd floor, UC Campus. To make an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. www.BeADonor.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. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310, 845-1143. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 3 

Spring Faire at Washington Elementary School with face painting, boat races, obstacle course, Indian floor art, book exchange, food and performances, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 2300 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, enter on McKinley. 486-1742.  

National Trails Service Day with REI from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Park. Children 14 and older welcome, but must be accompanied by an adult if under 18. Pre-registration required. 527-4140. 

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour: “The Lorin: Kindred Spirit or Conquest?” led by Dale Smith, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market’s Family Fun Festival from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Civic Center Park, Center St. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Peroromances, infromation and activity booths. 548-2220, ext. 227. 

Emergency Preparedness Class on Disaster First Aid from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St. Free, but registration required. 981-5506. 

Report-Back from Berkeley’s Sister City in Cuba at 7 p.m. at Casa Cuba, Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$20. 717-9663. 

E-Waste Recycling Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the main parking lot of the El Cerrito City Hall. Accepted items: computers/computer components, televisions, VCR & DVD players, toner cartridges, printers, fax machines, copiers, telephone equipment, cell phones and MP3 players. Not accepted are: appliances, batteries, paints, pesticides, etc. 1-888-832-9839.  

“In Service to the World” A talk with Peace Corps Volunteers at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, West Auditorium, 125 14th St. 238-3134. 

Youth Empowerment Day to stop “Pushouts” from School into Prison with community leaders and entertainment at 6 p.m. at McClymonds Educational Complex, 2607 Myrtle St., West Oakland. 225-8491. 

Social Responsibility Summit & Community Microbusiness Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at International Community School, 2825 International Blvd. at 29th St., Oakland. 540-7785, ext. 314. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

Toddler Nature Walk for toddlers and their grown-up friends to explore the nature area and look for reptiles, at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 636-1684. 

Summer Pond Exploration to capture and release dragonfly nymphs, mayfly niads and other aquatic wonders, from 2 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 636-1684. 

East Bay Atheists with a video of Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Professor of Evolutionary Biology, on ways to address the arguments of Creationists against evolution, at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580.  

California Writers Club with winners of the Fifth Grade Writing Contest at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120.  

Adult Learning Festival with information on learning opportunities, performances and author readings and fun for the whole family, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Lakeside Park, Lake Merritt, Oakland. 879-8131. www.AdultLearningFestival.com 

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

Pre-School Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council Special Meeting Public Hearing on Creeks Ordinance, Tues. May 30, at 6 p.m. at Longfellow School Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. 981-6900. 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., June 1, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs. June 1, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., June 1, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406.