Al Gore need not advertise his recently released documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, in Berkeley—a group of high school students are doing it for him. -more-
Two conflicting revisions of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) made significant advances last week—the first an ordinance from Mayor Tom Bates and the second an initiative for the November ballot. -more-
Critics of the city’s handling of proposed development at the Ashby BART station have launched an effort to start their own planning process. -more-
In Berkeley, it seems most everyone wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stop global warming, but few want to stop driving, eating refrigerated food, reading by electric lights and watching TV. -more-
Despite opposition by those who believe lockers for the homeless are a nuisance, Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS) opened its new locker service for the homeless on Friday. -more-
After 15 years as lead administrator for Berkeley Arts Magnet Elementary School (BAM), longtime educator Lorna Skantze-Niell has retired. -more-
Out of the 124 workers projected to be eliminated at the Alameda County Medical Center in the $419 million budget approved this week by trustees, Service Employees International Union Local 616 representative Brad Cleveland estimates that some 90 positions belong to SEIU bargaining units -more-
With construction winding up on the $65 million Berkeley City College new facility and with $519 million in voter-approved facilities bond money in its pocket, the Peralta Community College District moved quickly last week to plan for its next round of facilities maintenance and construction action. -more-
A 22-year-old Hayward man died late Friday night after he was gunned down in the parking lot of an apartment building in the 1100 block of 62nd Street. -more-
Three men were arrested and 152 marijuana plants seized when a major growing operation was discovered in a remote section of the Berkeley hills. -more-
An Oakland man was critically injured in an I-580 car crash as he tried to evade a gunman firing at his car from a Richmond freeway overpass minutes before midnight Sunday. -more-
The first foray into kindergarten can feel overwhelming for many children who have not previously attended preschool. From socializing with others to learning to hold a writing implement, youngsters with no prior schooling may struggle where their peers forge ahead. -more-
The Housing Authority Board convened for an extended meeting Tuesday to face the bitter reality that the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) is a troubled agency. -more-
The future of the administration of the Oakland Unified School District—as well as the future of OUSD’s downtown administrative properties—fell into considerable confusion this week with the decision by the San Diego County Board of Education to hire state administrator Randy Ward as their administrator. -more-
The former Berkeley police sergeant convicted of grand theft and felony possession of heroin and methamphetamine was not formally sentenced to home detention Tuesday, as was expected, due to a paperwork snafu. -more-
Excoriating George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney for defiling the constitution, the Berkeley City Council spoke out with one voice Tuesday night, voting unanimously to place a referendum on the November ballot to poll Berkeley citizens on the question of impeaching the president and vice president. -more-
Ignoring commission advice, the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday not to place public financing of local elections before the voters in November. The Fair Campaign Practices Commission had voted 7-1 last week to support putting “clean money” on the local ballot. -more-
Berkeley planning commissioners Tuesday voted to urge the City Council to adopt a new in-lieu fee for condo developers designed to create more affordable housing for the city’s poorer residents. -more-
The union representing about 370 paraprofessionals and other classified employees is accusing the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) of failing to avert layoffs in the face of newly effective No Child Left Behind mandates. -more-
A handful of students from the Berkeley Alternative High School claim they were denied participation in unofficial graduation festivities earlier this month. -more-
Berkeley experienced an unusual rash of drive-by assaults during a four-day period from June 13-19, starting with paintballs, escalating to a lemon and culminating in a drive-by shooting that left a Brentwood man with a leg wound. Another shooting, this one with no injuries, followed. -more-
OK, the basics on the flap: the New York Times discovered that the administration has been trying to figure out how suspected terrorists move their money around, running something called the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. The title may be just wishful thinking, but the fact is that government snoops have been looking into all kinds of banking transactions, which might include yours and mine, in their attempt to find something fishy. After a reasonable amount of checking facts followed by a large dose of introspection, the Times printed the story. Whammo! The Republicans in Congress, egged on by the right flank of the Blogsville flamers, came down on them like a ton of bricks. On Thursday the House passed a resolution condemning news organizations for outing the program because it had “placed the lives of Americans in danger.” The vote was 227-183, along party lines for the most part. Some Republicans started hollering treason. Clearly, as Nancy Pelosi charged, the Repugs are trying to turn this one into a campaign issue. -more-
Over the weekend I got an e-mail petition asking me to add my name to this letter and pass it on: -more-
Hi, I’m Christian “The Kid” Pecaut. At Stanford University in 2003, I created a class called “The Science of Social Problem Solving.” The main lecturer was Neil Robert Miller, a San Francisco public high school teacher, who passed away early in 2005. In late 1984, he and a team of dedicated student researchers completed the Paradigm from California, www.imaginenine.com, a full-scale scientific understanding that describes why things have gone so badly for 10,000 years, what a world-going-well looks like, and how to put things right, world-wide and forever. Since he died, I have been working tirelessly to share this discovery with the leadership of the Democratic Party, particularly the Clintons, who received exclusive ownership of the copyrights in accord with Neil’s explicit last wishes. -more-
The Planning Commission and City Council will soon be considering recommendations regarding revisions to the Creeks Ordinance. I am writing about what I believe is a core issue, the right to rebuild, affecting everyone in our city, but especially residents of properties with open creeks. -more-
On June 25, the Women’s Employment Resources Corporation (WERC), located at 3356 Adeline St., turned 22 years old. With a very small budget, this agency has consistently and successfully served and placed into jobs, thousands of single parent families, individuals (male and female), and youth from the Berkeley community. With an emphasis on South Berkeley, where it has operated since 1989, it is a beacon of light for the most oppressed members of our beautiful city. -more-
“True power lies not with those who cast the votes, but rather with those who count the vote.” -more-
In August 1999, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) began the Route 24/Caldecott Tunnel Corridor Study, for which I served on the Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) as an alternate representing BART. I attended most of the numerous meetings held. The Final Summary Report was presented on November 2000. It was never accepted by the Policy Advisory Committee, and MTC basically threw up its hands and did not pursue the report’s conclusions. -more-
As a neighbor of the Hillside School since 1968, as a parent of children who attended Hillside and as a school volunteer, I knew the school as a jewel in the crown of the Berkeley Unified School District. And then in 1983, sadly it was closed. For almost a quarter century, like all the neighbors, like the endless parade of tenants, like the weekend basketball players and the recreation programs, like the children swinging on the play structures or learning to ride their bikes, I have watched the surfaces of this gracious Tudor building quietly rot. -more-
Sitting in a local theater a few weeks ago and watching the audience listen to a political comedy I wondered why some people were laughing at things I thought were rehashed slaps at the Bushites. A giggling older man I watched was bouncing up and down on his chair. I thought that must be fun—the jiggling, not the giggling. There is after all, an important function to jiggling while giggling or just jiggling the body. More oxygen, the blood flows and the body is alert—all to the good. The problem is that current political comedy theater is not capable of digging deep enough into the malaise to face a number of reactionary factors. -more-
“It was a shock,” Tom Bates told the New York Times, “that an institution like Cody’s was closing.” What’s really shocking is the mayor’s surprise at this turn of events. Since Mr. Bates took office in December 2002, the precarious state of independent bookstores and the deterioration of Telegraph Avenue have been obvious to anyone who cared to look. Tom Bates simply hasn’t paid attention. It’s a safe bet that if Andy Ross hadn’t announced in May that Cody’s flagship would close in July, and if the mayor weren’t up for re-election in four and a half months, Mr. Bates would still be ignoring both Telly and its struggling merchants, just as he’s ignored the city’s other neighborhood shopping districts and small businesses—when he hasn’t actually harmed them. -more-
There’s a new sheriff in town and he has called for new ideas to help make Oakland a better city. -more-
On Tuesday evening, June 20, I went to the City Council meeting to offer my support for the Berkeley Warm Pool. I arrived at the old City Hall building at 6:30 and left after midnight, depressed after what I’d witnessed. The members of the council sat in a semi-circle, each leafing through stacks of paper as speakers took their two-minute turns at the microphone. I asked the guy next to me how come they weren’t paying attention. “It’s called “multi-tasking,” he said. -more-
Saturday afternoon after a quiet sabbath at home, I found myself talking about the spate of educational bond measures, now defeated in the polls. One was what I considered a “construction boondoggle”—for Vista, Berkeley’s community college, to build brand-new facilities with state-of-the-art new equipment. Why shouldn’t the community college continue its already established relationship with UC Berkeley, sharing the facilities and equipment of the UC Berkeley campus? -more-
Before the 2004 election for City Council representative for District 3 I knew little about Max Anderson. I knew he had powerful friends among the city’s leadership. I had heard he was into development for South Berkeley. I asked friends of mine whose opinions I valued, if they thought Anderson could be trusted to represent all the voices in South Berkeley, equably and honestly. The comments and observations of these friends were discouraging. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary appears only on our website. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary appears only on our website. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letters appear only on our website. -more-
Years ago I took a writing class from Adair Lara, a former columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of several books, including Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, a memoir about her relationship with her teenage daughter, Morgan. -more-
Last summer, shortly after reviewing the wonderful water-saving gardening book published by EBMUD, Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates, I felt a complete hypocrite dragging my garden hose from shrub to shrub, so much so that I decided then and there to stop watering everything except the vegetable plot and the raspberries. -more-
We’re fortunate to have rather a large number of Hawaiians living in the Bay Area. I’ve visited the Islands only a couple of times, but I fall in love fast (if selectively) and it wasn’t just the climate, the heartstopping beauty of the place, or even the beautiful, increasingly elusive native flora and fauna that won my flinty, suspicious old heart. -more-
My daughter beat me to Africa. On Monday morning, “Liana” (her pseudonym in this sometimes embarrassing column), along with 10 other students and two teachers from Berkeley High School, arrived in Shirati, a small village in the East African country of Tanzania. -more-
One afternoon, some years after the election of Jerry Brown to succeed Elihu Harris as mayor of Oakland, I saw Mr. Harris walking with some friends and former aides along “government street” between City Hall and the federal and state office buildings that were the centerpiece of the Harris administration’s downtown revival after the devastation of Loma Prieta. I had once described the Harris administration as “dismal” and “drifting” in a column for the old Urban View newspaper, and I had to stop and confess to him that the more I saw of his replacement, Mr. Brown, the better Mr. Harris had come to look. -more-
Last September, on a spectacularly scenic car trip to Las Vegas, I spent a night by Mono Lake, another by June Lake, and another in Death Valley. We drove through the Tioga Pass in Yosemite, which is open only a few months each year—usually May through September (it is closed in winter due to heavy snowfall). -more-
Your washing machine is following you. O.K., so I’m being a bit dramatic but it’s true. Your washing machine is trying to get into your bedroom. -more-
You buy a tree or shrub and dig a hole and put the plant into it and fill it up and that’s pretty much it, right? Well, not exactly. It’s usually not a technical challenge, but there are right ways and wrong ways to plant a plant. -more-
Somewhere, across the river from ... somewhere else ... there’s a cyber-cafe with two strange young women peering in, in hysterics over what they see and trying to get inside. -more-
We’re fortunate to have rather a large number of Hawaiians living in the Bay Area. I’ve visited the Islands only a couple of times, but I fall in love fast (if selectively) and it wasn’t just the climate, the heartstopping beauty of the place, or even the beautiful, increasingly elusive native flora and fauna that won my flinty, suspicious old heart. -more-
“Put yourself in my place,” says the well-dressed African American man (L. Peter Callendar as Sterling North), surrounded by canvases of early Modern art that are punctuated by an occasional African mask—as he delivers a careful, frank but controlled account of how he was pulled over by a suburban cop for “no apparent reason” and asked for the registration for his new Jaguar, the first morning he drove to his new job as director of the prestigious (if eccentric) galleries of the Morris Foundation. -more-
If you’ve seen or intend to see The Road to Guantanamo, reviewed in this space last week, it might be a good time to revisit Peter Watkins’ 1971 Punishment Park. The two films, 35 years apart, provide perspectives on the abuse of power that are both complementary and contradictory. -more-
Last September, on a spectacularly scenic car trip to Las Vegas, I spent a night by Mono Lake, another by June Lake, and another in Death Valley. We drove through the Tioga Pass in Yosemite, which is open only a few months each year—usually May through September (it is closed in winter due to heavy snowfall). -more-
Your washing machine is following you. O.K., so I’m being a bit dramatic but it’s true. Your washing machine is trying to get into your bedroom. -more-
You buy a tree or shrub and dig a hole and put the plant into it and fill it up and that’s pretty much it, right? Well, not exactly. It’s usually not a technical challenge, but there are right ways and wrong ways to plant a plant. -more-
