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New Lab to Rise at Downtown’s Edge
          Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman, right, questions UC Berkeley Principal Planner Kerry O’Banion (opposite) about the planned replacement building for Warren Hall as fellow Commissioner Jim Samuels and city Principal Planner Allan Gatke (with tie) look on. Photo by Richard Brenneman.
New Lab to Rise at Downtown’s Edge Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman, right, questions UC Berkeley Principal Planner Kerry O’Banion (opposite) about the planned replacement building for Warren Hall as fellow Commissioner Jim Samuels and city Principal Planner Allan Gatke (with tie) look on. Photo by Richard Brenneman.
 

News

New Landmarks Law Pulled in Surprise Move

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 28, 2006

In an abrupt reversal, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to table the revised Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) it had passed on first reading July 11. 

An ordinance must be passed on two separate readings before it can become law. 

“We’ll drop it this evening and see what happens with the initiative,” said Mayor Tom Bates, the driving force behind the tabled measure along with Councilmember Laurie Capitelli. 

The citizen-circulated initiative he cited is essentially the same as the city’s existing ordinance, with minor changes proponents say will ensure that it complies with more recent state laws governing building permits and landmarks. Berkeley residents will be voting on it Nov. 7. 

“The council decided not to hold the second reading pending the outcome of the initiative,” city Planning Manager Mark Rhoades told the Planning Commission Wednesday night. “The first reading stands. There’s no time limit as to when they can hold the second reading.” 

Rhoades said councilmembers had weighed placing their own proposal on the ballot as a competing measure, but rejected the idea because “if it failed they would be barred from trying anything similar for a year.” 

Passage of the preservationist-backed initiative would block the council from further action, because an initiative can only be overridden by passage of another initiative. 

David Stoloff, the mayor’s appointee to the Planning Commission, said his understanding was that the council skipped the second vote because of the threat of a referendum. 

Under that process, opponents of an ordinance who gather enough signatures after an ordinance has been passed can stall it until the electorate votes it up or down at the polls. Mayor Bates claimed on Tuesday that this would effectively block enforcement until the 2008 primary. 

 

Rewrites 

The council’s action is sending initiative supporters and opponents back to their word processors. 

“Given the council’s action, we’ll have to rewrite our ballot statements,” said Roger Marquis, one of the initiative’s two principal sponsors. The draft statements they had submitted were focused on comparing the initiative with the now-withdrawn new ordinance. 

Late Wednesday afternoon, Deputy City Attorney Zac Cowan sent initiative supporters a new draft of the city attorney’s office analysis of the initiative, which also had to be revised since City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque had drafted a first version on the presumption that the Bates-Capitelli measure would be the current law by the time of the November election. The ballot question itself (the contents of the box that will appear on the ballot itself asking voters to answer yes or no) must also be rewritten by the city. 

Marquis said initiative backers will have their revised statements ready to submit by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, and the city council has set a meeting for 5 p.m. Tuesday to approve the city attorney’s revisions. 

“Given the errors, factual and otherwise, it hardly appears he’s even read the initiative,” said Marquis of Cowan’s latest draft. “We will be pointing out the errors.” 

That draft says that “If the City is forced to follow time lines in conflict with state processing time lines, it may face uncertain liability. If Proposition 90 passes, the City may face liability for damages if this ordinance is found to result in a diminution in property values.” 

The language is milder than an earlier version which warned that developers and property owners might sue for violations of their civil rights. 

 

Repeal respite 

The council was forced on July 18 to abandon its first vote on the ordinance, taken a week earlier, because the language they had approved was missing the Nov. 1 date they had intended for the law to go into effect. What would have been the second and final reading became a replay of the first instead, setting the stage for this week’s surprise.  

But that problem didn’t affect another critical zoning ordinance change. 

The council did approve on the 18th—with Worthington voting no and Spring abstaining—a second and final reading of an ordinance repealing Chapter 19.20 of the Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC). 

That section was one of two granting the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) authority to review demolitions of commercial buildings over 40 years old. 

However, another code section—Chapter 22.12—was not repealed, and appears to give the LPC the ability to stop demolition of commercial buildings over 40 years old in certain commercial zones outside the downtown core. 

Section 22.12 was added as a result of the 1982 Neighborhood Commercial Preservation Ordinance initiative, passed by voters with the strong support of future Councilmember Linda Maio (then Linda Veneziano) according to Tom Hunt, another sponsor. Voter-passed initiatives cannot be repealed by city council action. 

Patti Dacey (recently ousted from the Landmarks Preservation Commission by Councilmember Darryl Moore and replaced by real estate broker/developer Miriam Ng) raised the issue of the 1982 initiative with the council on July 11, when she also pointed out the problem with the missing date. 

Dacey charged that provisions of the Bates/Capitelli ordinance which allowed for a “safe harbor” period violate both the letter and the spirit of the 1982 law. 

One issue still on the table is how the council’s repeal of BMC Chapter 19.20 affects the similar language in Chapter 22.12. Councilmember Kriss Worthington asked the city attorney’s office on July 11 to report on the apparent conflict, but their report wasn’t ready by the time of last Tuesday’s council meeting. 

Planning Director Dan Marks said that Deputy City Attorney Zac Cowan, who has drafted all versions of the LPO revisions, will reply to Worthington’s questions, “but a quick read suggests 22.12 is no longer in effect.” 

Asked about possible conflicts between the code sections, Cowan said, “We’ve got so many ordinances, but I have no opinion about the conflict. We’ll have to figure out what’s left of it, but it’s essentially redundant in my view.” 

Dacey also said that the city violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by not subjecting the LPO rewrite to an Environmental Impact Review (EIR), a contention supported by Wendy Markle, president of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

A July 18 letter from Markle warned of possible legal action if the council passed the revisions. 

 

Campaign unfolds 

Meanwhile, pollsters hired by initiative opponents continue calling Berkeley residents with questions designed not only to find the most effective arguments to use against the ordinance but also to find who’s supporting whom in the mayoral and city council races. 

One of those called was Neighborhood Commercial Preservation Initiative sponsor Tom Hunt. 

“I expect developers will be spending a lot of money,” said Hunt. “They are the only people who stand to gain” from the initiative’s defeat,” said Marquis. “For them, getting rid of the LPO is a good investment.” 

Rena Rickles, an Oakland attorney who often represents developers in the battles with the LPC, said she hopes the council will come back with an even stronger measure, one that eliminates the Structure of Merit, the landmark category that has been the particular bane of some of her clients.


Movement Grows to Draft Shirley Dean For Mayor Run

By Judith Scherr
Friday July 28, 2006

Former Mayor Shirley Dean didn’t ask anyone to take out election papers in her name. 

But ever since community activist Merrilee Mitchell did it for Dean without consulting her, Dean said her phone has been ringing off the hook with people offering to go out and gather signatures. 

The papers that Mitchell got from the City Clerk’s office are “signature-in-lieu” petitions that candidates can circulate to get 150 valid signatures to avoid paying the $150 fee. This is a voluntary step in the nomination process. 

The city clerk’s office reported Thursday that signatures had been turned in for Dean. They will be validated within 10 days. 

Will she run? 

“I’m really torn,” Dean said Thursday afternoon. “Fifty percent of me says ‘yes’ and 50 percent says ‘no.’ I’m really, really torn.” 

This came at a time when Dean said she had “settled comfortably into the idea of not running.” 

If she changed her mind now, she would have a late start. And it’s only a two-year term, she said. She said she will be thinking very hard about what to do. The nomination period closes Aug. 11.  

Mitchell said: “In Oakland they drafted (Ron) Dellums and he came back and ran. I think Shirley Dean has good character. I don’t want to live in Batesville.” 

Mayor Tom Bates defeated Dean four years ago. Announced challengers include Zelda Bronstein, Zachary Running Wolf, Richard Berkeley and Christian Pecaut. Berkeley, Bronstein and Bates had all turned in signatures-in-lieu by the Thursday deadline. They still must be verified by the city clerk.


Oakland School Board Seeks Delay of Land Sale

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday July 28, 2006

In a sign of the growing opposition in Oakland to the proposed sale of the Oakland Unified School District Administration Building and five adjacent downtown school sites, the Oakland City Councilmembers have called on State Superintendent Jack O’Connell to delay the sale until the terms can be renegotiated and the deal receives school board approval. 

The council position was stated in a proclamation signed by six of the eight City Councilmembers which noted pointedly that “there is no guarantee that the proposed sale of district land would financially benefit the school district, even in the short term.” 

O’Connell has until mid-September to negotiate the sale of the 8.25-acre parcel to east coast developers TerraMark and UrbanAmerica. 

In the meantime, while Mayor-elect Ron Dellums has not taken an official position on the proposed school property sale, OUSD trustee Greg Hodge told a Metropolitan Greater Oakland Democratic Club forum last week that he had talked with the incoming mayor, and that Dellums “told me that he will fully support whatever position on the sale is taken by the elected school board. Ron is in favor of a separation of powers between the mayor’s office, the City Council, and the school board,” Hodge added, “and this is consistent with that position.” 

Hodge is considered to by a close political ally of Dellums.  

Of the seven current members of the trustee board, only trustee Kerry Hamill has supported the sale of the downtown properties under the current TerraMark/ Urban America proposal. 

The OUSD school sale also received opposition from MGO Democratic Club, which sent a letter this week to O’Connell stating that “the MGO Democratic Club writes in strong opposition to the Oakland Unified School District’s proposed sale of the entire OUSD property  

on Lake Merritt … without  

first fully considering the cost of relocating the schools facilities on the site, taking open and competitive bids, and considering the many land use impacts the proposed sale would have. We also urge you to and obtain the approval of the Oakland Board of Education. While you may have the legal authority to act unilaterally, this property nevertheless represents an investment in education made long ago by a previous generation of Oakland residents. … You should, as a matter of wise policy, welcome and respect the judgment of Oakland’s own decision-making body, its school board, before proceeding further.” 

The City Council’s request to Superintendent O’Connell came in a proclamation faxed to O’Connell’s office on Thursday afternoon by Oakland City Councilmember Pat Kernighan. Kernighan represents the 2nd Council District that includes the proposed OUSD sale properties. 

The proclamation was signed by six of the eight-member Council. A spokesperson for Kernighan’s staff said that while Councilmember Desley Brooks was present at the Tuesday night Council meeting where the proclamation was introduced, Brooks “did not want to address the proposal at that time.”  

Council President Ignacio De La Fuente is out of town and was not able to sign the proclamation, but his legislative aid, Alex Pedersen, said that De La Fuente “opposes the land sale. He thinks it is a bad deal for the district, for the school children, and for the parents. He agrees with his colleagues on this.” 

Brooks could be reached by telephone in connection with this article. 

Kernighan’s proclamation said that “land in Oakland is growing more scarce and expensive with each passing year and land for schools will likely be needed in the future as the student population in Oakland grows, particularly in the area surrounding the Second Avenue site, due to recently approved housing development in the area.” 

It also said that the sale to TerraMark/UrbanAmerica should not go through at the present time because a final sale price—which is partly contingent on how many housing units will eventually be approved by the City and other factors—has yet to be determined. 

The council proclamation called on O’Connell to “reject the current land sale proposal from TerraMark/Urban America, and to reconsider other options for use or sale of portions of the District land that would have greater long-term benefits for the Oakland Unified School District, and in particular that any sale or lease would provide for replacement of the schools currently on site and a continuing revenue stream for the district, as well as a lump sum that could be used to repay the State loan.” 

In addition, the proclamation asked that “any future sale of Oakland Unified School District land should be approved by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction only if such sale is also approved by a majority of the elected Directors of the Oakland School Board.” 

Kernighan had originally attempted to introduce the proclamation as a council resolution but because Tuesday’s meeting was a special council session, the city attorney’s office ruled that the resolution could not be added to the agenda as an emergency measure. 

Kernighan’s opponent in a November runoff for the 2nd Council District seat, Aimee Allison, went further, issuing a statement this week calling O’Connell to halt the sale and as well as “immediately return the Oakland schools to local control.” 

“This sale is a big mistake, both for the financial health of the district and for our children,” Allison added. “We need to make sure we’re getting the most out of this deal for the community and our schools, and Jack O'Connell’s rush to sell the district’s most valuable property simply doesn’t do that. Even worse is the fact that this is a complete breakdown of democracy. Parents and community members in Oakland should be making this decision, not someone in Sacramento who isn’t accountable to Oakland residents.” 


West Campus Plans Falter with High Costs

By Suzanne La Barre
Friday July 28, 2006

A construction estimate for new Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) offices has come in at more than double the budget, forcing district officials to head back to the drawing board. 

Development of the northeast corner of West Campus, a 5.77-acre district-owned expanse on University Avenue, between Curtis and Bonar streets, will cost about $19 million—$11.6 million over the amount allocated, according to Lew Jones, BUSD director of facilities. 

“We’re clearly going to have to rethink our approach to the project,” Jones said Tuesday. 

District officials have stressed the need for a hasty move to West Campus, since central office employees currently occupy the seismically unsafe Old City Hall buildings, at 2124 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Representatives of Baker and Vilar, the architecture firm retained by BUSD, revealed West Campus design schemes at a community meeting in May. The plans involved demolishing five structures, refurbishing two existing buildings, constructing a 10,000-foot addition and installing a parking lot. The facilities would accommodate district administration employees and the independent study program, in addition to other student classrooms.  

The Berkeley Board of Education was set to approve the plans at its June 28 meeting before the estimate came in, Jones said. Superintendent Michele Lawrence has emphasized progressing with the project as quickly as possible (and avoiding city review in the process—permissible, she has said, because instructional facilities are exempt from local zoning laws) to remove employees from hazardous buildings by 2009, when the district’s lease on Old City Hall, for a dollar a year, expires. 

School board Director John Selawsky said last week he doubts the district will meet that deadline. Instead, he said, BUSD headquarters may need to temporarily relocate to another building. 

“That (estimate) is so far off the scale, I don’t know how we’re going to build anything,” he said. 

Escalating construction costs brought on by higher global demand—namely from China—are partly at fault, Jones said. Between March 2003 and July 2006, the price of steel nearly doubled, from $340 a ton to $660, according to the American Institute of Steel Construction, Inc., an industry organization. Concrete costs are also on the rise; in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics showed an increase of11 percent over the course of a year. 

An overly ambitious project scope is additionally to blame, Jones said. For instance, the new building, which would accommodate discretionary features like a staff development room, a demonstration classroom and a media lab raised the estimate by $3.3 million. 

“What’s reflected in the design is what everyone wanted,” and some components may need to be reconsidered, Lawrence said.  

Tearing down structures initially slated for renovation is an additional option, she said. Existing plans call for the refurbishment of the University Avenue auditorium, built in 1953, and the Bonar Street administration building, constructed in 1967, but the district never explored the cost effectiveness of starting from scratch, she said. 

Selawsky suggested that the district retrofit Old City Hall and maintain offices there, but renovation costs may be comparably steep to West Campus, he said, though he has not seen actual figures.  

BUSD won’t secure additional project funds, unless it pulls from other sources—which Lawrence said she doesn’t want to do. The total budget for West Campus, through bond measures A and AA, is $9.9 million; BUSD has already spent $636,783 on minor projects, roofing and project planning. 

West Campus, erected in 1913—though little original architecture remains--served as the Adult School for 20 years, before it was vacated in 2004. The following year, the school board hired local planning firm Design Community and Environment (DCE) for a maximum of $200,000, to draft a comprehensive design scheme for the site. On the heels of considerable community outcry, the board rejected that proposal, and opted for a staff-developed plan. 

Despite financial setbacks, Lawrence maintains that central offices will relocate to West Campus—it’s just a matter of how. 

“We can’t nix the idea of moving those individuals out of this building that’s unsafe,” she said. 

The city also has an investment in ensuring the site gets developed. 

“We definitely would like to see that area occupied in one form or another and an administration building would be more eyes on the street,” said Ryan Lau, legislative aide for District 2 City Councilmember Darryl Moore. “Because it’s not occupied, a lot has gone by the wayside. There’s a lot of loitering over there. It’s not a terribly welcoming site.” 

District officials will explore all options and go to the board with new recommendations by fall, Lawrence said. 

“I’m disappointed,” she said, “but not without hope.” 

 


Ashby BART Task Force Asked to Reach Out

By Judith Scherr
Friday July 28, 2006

The Berkeley City Council asked the Ashby BART Station Task Force Tuesday evening to reach out to the South Berkeley community and broaden the vision of what the vast, paved parking lot west of the station might become. 

But critics say they don’t trust the task force to provide an open process. 

The council voted 8-1 to fund the outreach effort for $6,000. Councilmember Kriss Worthington voted in opposition. 

The move to develop the west parking lot at the Ashby Station got off to a difficult start last year, when a planning grant was submitted to Caltrans without community input. The application referenced several hundred housing units and retail development. When BART station neighbors learned planning was going on without them, many were furious.  

Further fueling opposition to the project, in the spring, at the behest of the City Council, the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation put together a task force to lead the project. Some question the criteria on which the task force was chosen.  

Councilmember Max Anderson has been a leader in the effort. While some have praised his work, critics say he has not tried to include the broader community in planning the project. 

In an interview Wednesday, Anderson defended the process, saying meetings were “well-attended” but a greater outreach effort is essential.  

Critics say the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation (SBNDC), asked by the city to appoint the task force, selected only those members who favored housing and retail development on the site. 

The way people were selected and excluded has created a “major problem with the credibility” of the task force, said Osha Neumann, an attorney for the flea market board of directors. (The flea market holds a weekend lease from BART for a portion of the west parking lot.) 

In a letter to the Daily Planet, Neumann said the task force was “appointed in a secretive process by a corporation with vested interest in promoting a widely unpopular development proposal.” The SBNDC did not return calls for comment. 

But Anderson said the task force membership is less important than its task—reinforced by the council vote on Tuesday—which is to act as a conduit for input. 

Anderson defended the project outline—creating “workforce housing and jobs”—which he said is defined in the General Plan and other city planning documents. 

But speaking before the council Tuesday night, South Berkeley business owner Brian MacDonald said that is the heart of the problem: with housing and retail already on the table, the process is not truly open. 

“Decisions have already been made without any visioning,” MacDonald said. 

But Anderson argues that developing the west lot of the station is an opportunity. 

“There have been precious little resources given to South Berkeley,” he said, comparing Adeline Street to Solano Avenue and downtown Berkeley. “I’m here to fight for resources.” 

Project supporter and South Berkeley resident Dan Cloak spoke out at the council meeting, arguing that the process is an open one. Instead of cooperating, opponents prevent free speech by shouting down others at meetings, he said. 

But Neumann, who contends the impact on the flea market is being ignored, said that people wouldn’t shout out if they were part of the process. If a truly open process emerges, he said would participate, but “I can’t say that this is on track to healing the wounds,” he said. 

School Board Member John Selawsky co-chairs the task force. On Wednesday, he said—speaking for himself—that he would be willing to add members to the task force to allow broader participation and to form subcommittees that would bring the community in to work with task force members. 

“It’s up to the task force to outreach with sincerity and integrity,” Selawsky said. “That’s 90 percent of the task.” 

Addressing those who say the project plan has already been written, Selawsky said: “I don’t believe there is a clear consensus about what to do with the property. We don’t have an outcome.” 

The task force will be meeting over the summer to plan the public process; no public meetings are scheduled at this time, Selawsky said. 

The state’s open meeting laws do not apply to the task force. The task force has no telephone number or website.


New Planning Process for West and South Berkeley

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 28, 2006

“This project is not about Ashby BART,” said David Early, the consultant hired to shepherd a new transportation plan for south and west Berkeley. 

“But if community members want to advocate about something, they can certainly talk about it,” he said. 

Early is the founder of Design, Community & Environment, a group Berkeley-based professionals who specialize in formulating plans for local governments. His company and San Francisco-based Nelson Nygaard are working for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency (ACCMA) to develop a transit plan for the lowest-income areas of the city. 

He was addressing his remarks to neighbors and the city’s Transportation Commission July 13 during the first of a series of hearings that will gather information and insights to use in developing the plan. 

The finished product will be one of 25 MTC-sponsored Community Based Transportation Plans targeting communities around the Bay Area. 

The Berkeley plan will include all of West Berkeley west of San Pablo Avenue, including part of South Berkeley, and South Berkeley from San Pablo east along Dwight Way to Fulton Street and south to the Oakland border. 

Planner Therese Knudsen, MTC’s lead representative on the project, said the ideas for the local plan originated during an update of the MTC’s 2001 Transportation Plan. 

“We looked at the entire transportation network of the whole Bay Area, and looked at the gaps. We realized we had to ask community members what their real needs are and came up with an active plan to address them on a broad basis.” 

“It’s really an opportunity to look at the ways various agencies cooperate,” said Early. 

“It’s all about housing and everything else in the community, and it’s kind of odd to say it’s just about transit,” said Kenoli Oleari, one of the more outspoken critics of the city’s handling of proposal to build a major mixed use housing complex at the Ashby BART station. 

Mayoral candidate Zelda Bronstein, a former planning commission chair, called the station project “the elephant in the room.” 

She also faulted the consultants for meeting with major West Berkeley property owners but not the WEBAIC, the organization of West Berkeley Artisans & Industrial Companies. 

But the commissioners and the public focused primarily on transit issues. 

Commissioner Fran Haselsteiner said AC Transit should used some of its newly purchased consignment of smaller low-emission buses to serve the planning area, which an audience member said has the city’s highest rates of air pollution and chronic respiratory ailments. 

Commissioners and the public also called for more and longer BART trains on the Richmond-San Francisco line. 

“The service essentially stops at 7 p.m.,” said Haselsteiner. There’s no direct service from Berkeley to San Francisco after 7.” 

Gut Robert, representing the Ed Roberts Center—which is building a new community center for disability rights and training organizations at the eastern Ashby BART parking lot, called for renovations of sidewalks in South Berkeley, which are often slanted. 

Another criticism focused on sidewalks at the station itself, which become slippery when wet. 

Several commissioners, as well as audience members, said the city needed better bus service to West Berkeley. 

Caleb Dardick, a consultant to the Ed Roberts Center, called for better street lighting on streets near the BART station, singling out Prince Street as especially troublesome. 

Alcatraz Avenue also needs more lights, said commissioner Wendy Alfsen. 

Other concerns included speeders of Adeline Street and stoplights that don’t allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross it on one cycle and lack of car-share access.  

In addition to meetings during Transportation Commission meetings, the planners will also be meeting with community groups and other stakeholders, Early said, with the goal of producing a draft plan by year’s end. 

 

Other business 

Commissioners also voted to forward alternative versions of draft plans for the downtown BART Plaza on to the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission, which is now working on a new plan for the city center. 

The commission also voted to send the city council its recommendation for allocating the $200,000 annual payment from UC Berkeley earmarked to transportation demand management.


Council Addressed Developer Fees, ‘Accidental’ Demolition

By Judith Scherr
Friday July 28, 2006

The Berkeley City Council debated a proposal to initiate transportation service fees Tuesday evening which was touted by some as a tool to stop global warming and condemned by others as a fee that would hurt the business climate 

The council made no decision but voted unanimously to continue the discussion with a workshop Oct. 10. 

Other issues the council considered on its 42-item agenda included the fate of 2104 Sixth St., a grant to Kitchen Democracy and support of workers at the new West Berkeley Bowl. 

 

Transportation fees 

If the tranportation fees are adopted, developers would pay them proportional to the traffic their new business or housing would be expected to bring.  

Speaking at a public hearing in favor of the fee, Transportation Commissioner Nathan Landau said without the fees, taxpayers would bear the cost of new traffic. 

“It’s not a radical anti-business measure,” Landau said, pointing to Contra Costa County, which has regional transportation fees in the Antioch-Pittsburg area and the Richmond-El Cerrito area. 

But Roland Peterson, Telegraph Business Improvement District executive director, said he feared the fee would keep businesses from locating in Berkeley. 

“It’s the wrong fee at the wrong time,” he said.  

Many said the way the fee would be calculated is confusing. And some said some kinds of new development-- such as neighborhood-serving business or people making a short trip to the new Berkeley Trader Joe’s rather than driving to El Cerrito or Emeryville—would actually cut down car trips. 

With some humor, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak opined that people should get a credit when they go out of business and no longer generate traffic. 

“Fund the programs out of the General Fund,” Wozniak said. “Putting it all on the developer is the wrong way to do it.” 

2104 Sixth St.  

The City Council will hold a public hearing in September on a structure under renovation at 2104 Sixth St. in the Ocean View-Sisterna Historic District that was “accidentally” demolished. The council voted 7-2 to hold the hearing with Wozniak and Councilmember Betty Olds voting in opposition. 

“It’s boggling that it happened by accident,” said Councilmember Darryl Moore. “The neighborhood deserves vetting of this.” 

Wozniak argued that no purpose would be served by holding a public hearing, as the developer had offered to restore the building and that the question had already been discussed by the Zoning Adjustments Board and the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  

 

Kitchen Democracy 

Wozniak’s proposed $3,000 gift from his city-funded office account to Kitchen Democracy, a website that polls people on questions related to city policy, drew unusual scrutiny. Such donations must now be approved by the full council, due to a new state law. 

The council approved the donation unanimously after Worthington received assurances from Wozniak and Robert Vogel, Kitchen Democracy founder, that Vogel would use the funds to “help diversify participation” in the site. Worthington had criticized Kitchen Democracy for its heavy focus on the southeast hills, where its founders live in Wozniak’s District 8. 

 

Other matters 

The council also unanimously approved: 

• Support of an “expeditious and open process” regarding unionization of the West Berkeley Bowl; 

• Removing the new motorcycle parking spaces on Telegraph and replacing them with the automobile parking that was there originally at a cost of $65,000.  

• Asking the city manager to report back on the question of citywide wireless Internet.


City Declines to Weigh In On Controversial ASUC Election

By Judith Scherr
Friday July 28, 2006

Faced with some two dozen students calling for “hands off ASUC elections,” the Berkeley City Council Tuesday night nixed a move to intervene in a disputed student vote.  

“What’s at stake is our autonomy,” said Van Nguyen, an Associated Students of the University of California student senator-elect, addressing the council during its public comment period. “We have our own internal processes, our own judicial system. It’s not right to intervene.” 

But, introducing the resolution he authored to support Student Action, the UC Berkeley political party embroiled the election dispute, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak argued, “The council addresses injustices all over the world; here’s one in our backyard.”  

The motion failed 1-5-3, with Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmembers Max Anderson, Dona Spring, Kriss Worthington, and Linda Maio voting in opposition and Councilmembers Darryl Moore, Laurie Capitelli and Betty Olds abstaining. 

Wozniak argued that because Student Action “won overwhelmingly” and that the League of Women Voters had overseen the election, the council should support his resolution which stated: “The City of Berkeley recognizes the results of the 2006 ASUC election and the winning (Student Action) candidates….” 

But Lauren Karasek, who ran for ASUC vice president on the SQUELCH! party ticket, contended that the ASUC judicial apparatus is “healthy and functioning.”  

The ASUC’s Judicial Council ruled that Student Action violated election regulations in April by chalking partisan slogans too close to the polling stations, then lying about the violation. The Judicial Council concluded that Student Action candidates should be disqualified and Student Action appealed the ruling. 

The Judicial Council is yet to rule on the appeal. Student Action tried to have its case heard in Alameda Council Superior Court, but a judge ruled that the student organization must first exhaust its internal options. 

While Wozniak argued the violation was a “minor infraction,” Councilmember Worthington said Wozniak’s resolution is an invitation to the council “to take on the role of the U.S. Supreme Court,” referring to the court’s role in the 2000 elections. 

“It’s not our role to be the judge. Please respect the student process,” he said. 

“Mr. Wozniak is asking the council to take sides in a legal process,” said UC Berkeley student Jason Overman, who is challenging Wozniak for the District 8 City Council seat.  

Councilmember Betty Olds, who abstained on the measure, argued that participation in student government is part of student education. 

“College kids need to learn,” she said, indicating that they should to be allowed to make their own mistakes. “We should stay out of it.”


Massive New UC Lab to Rise at Downtown’s Edge

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 28, 2006

UC Berkeley officials unveiled a scale model of their 200,000-square-foot, replacement for Warren Hall—a $160 million structure that that would rise more than 100 feet near the intersection of Oxford Street and Berkeley Way. 

While the existing 80,000-square-foot building houses the university’s School of Public Health, the new structure will house molecular biology labs focusing on infectious diseases, degenerative diseases of the nervous system and cancer biology. 

“We hope to have a stem cell component, too,” said Kerry O’Banion, a principal planner in the university’s Capital Projects division’s office of Physical and Environmental Planning. 

The building will also house a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) facility for use in human experiments that will be conducted there, O’Banion said. 

While billed to the city as the Warren Hall replacement, university planning documents refer to the facility as the Li Ka-Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, named after the philanthropist who gave the university a $40 million grant to fund the project a year ago. 

A Hong Kong real estate developer, cell phone service provider and container port magnate, Ka-Shing was named the world’s 10th richest person for 2006 by Forbes magazine with an estimated net worth of $18.8 billion. 

O’Banion said the public health school will move to the site of the old state Department of Health Services building further west on Berkeley Way, which the university is now in the process of acquiring. 

Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman noted that the university’s plans include far less parking that the two spaces per thousand sqaure feet required by the city. 

“The university doesn’t stick to a strict building-to-parking ration,” said O’Banion, adding that the university was looking at “a couple of sites downtown” to build additional spaces. 

After looking over the elaborately constructed, laser-cut wooden replica, Poschman added, “I’ve never seen a scale model I didn’t like, and I’ve never seen a building I like.” 

Not that it mattered. 

The university was showing the building to the city as a courtesy, and because of the settlement of a lawsuit filed over the university’s plans for the next 14 years. In the end, it is the gown, not town, with the final say over the structure’s appearance, use and parking spaces. 

 

Telegraph condos 

Commissioners voted unanimously to set a Sept. 13 public hearing on adopting zoning changes the city hopes will encourage business on Telegraph Avenue—though Poschman said that the minor changes would probably have little effect. 

The proposals would reduce the legal and financial hurdles needed both to subdivide existing commercial space and unite previously subdivided spaces. Also eased would be the requirements to switch business types within spaces. 

Another proposal would allow city staff more discretion in easing the now-strict quota system limiting the nature and number of business types on the ailing avenue, where commercial vacancy rates have passed 12 percent, said Planning Manager Mark Rhoades. 

Commissioners also voted unanimous approval of a five-unit condominium project at 1501 Oxford St. after a hearing with no speakers and virtually no discussion.


Proposed Fence Ordinance Hits Wall at Planning Meeting

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 28, 2006

For a time, Wednesday night’s planning meeting turned into a fencing match—with commissioners and the public aiming pointed ripostes at a proposed new fence ordinance drawn up by city staff. 

Planning Manager Mark Rhoades, a strong advocate for new rules to govern the height of fences in the city, eventually threw up his hands—but commissioners relented in part, scheduling another hearing to give the public more time to comment. 

The ordinance was drafted as a result of one of the recommendations by Mayor Tom Bates’s 2003 Advisory Task Force on Permitting and Development. 

“Berkeley’s fence ordinance is primitive,” said Rhoades, and its allowances of six-foot front fences “makes for design and public safety issues.” 

Berkeley police were also concerned about the fences, because fences offer hiding places for criminals and concealment for their crimes. “You can’t see if bad people are there or if bad things are happening,” Rhoades explained. 

“This is a particular issue of mine,” he said, because it’s hard to have a neighborhood when neighbors are walled off from each other. 

Under his proposal, front fence heights would be reduced to a maximum of three-and-a-half feet—six inches less than the task force recommended—while rear and side yard fences could be raised from the current six feet to eight feet—provided the upper two feet had at least 50 percent transparency. 

The first complaint came from Zipporah Collins, who said the city’s notice had been mailed to the person who had been the president of her neighborhood association “two presidents ago.” 

Collins said she received the notice only the day before Wednesday’s hearing, and not in time to get notice out to others in the association. 

“I can imagine there are hundreds of people in my neighborhood alone who would have something to say,” she said. 

Cynthia Fulton, a resident of Park Hills, adjacent to Tilden Park, said she lived on a downslope lot that only allowed her daughter to play in the front yard. There would be no privacy with the lower fence height—nor would it keep out the dogs who are often walked off leash, she said. 

“I’m opposed to any action tonight,” said Willard neighborhood resident Marcia Levinson, who called the ordinance “a stealth thing that came out of nowhere.” 

But Levinson wasn’t opposed to regulating fences, given a neighbor who had concealed an illegal rental unit behind a high fence and a barricade of trees. 

Tricia Buresh, another downsloper, said the fence was necessary both to keep foliage-and-garden-loving deer out “and to keep people from looking in from the street.” 

Commissioner Gene Poschman said the proposal had received less than enthusiastic endorsement from the task force: “At the last meeting, several members said ‘What the hell is this doing on here?’” 

He then reeled off a series of objections, including the proposal to require an administrative use permit to build a fence—mostly because of its $1,364.70 cost. “The cost of the fee could be a lot higher than the cost of the fence,” he said. 

“An eight-foot fence is like a wall,” said Commissioner Susan Wengraf, who has a neighbor’s fence that high within six feet of her house. Still, she said, “a blanket rule would not be a good rule.” 

Commissioner Larry Gurley said six-foot front fences could make for an unfriendly neighborhood, especially in the flats of South Berkeley where he lives. “I would not like to see them all the way down my block,” he said, “but still, there are legitimate questions raised about topography in some sections of the city.” 

“The points raised about privacy and deer are very real,” said Commissioner James Samuels. Colleague Harry Pollack agreed, while acknowledging that he too wasn’t partial to neighborhood walls. 

“If I had to make a decision tonight, my recommendation to the City Council would be to not proceed with this,” said Chair Helen Burke—who also wanted to hear from more of the public. 

At that point, Rhoades said he was ready to sever off a piece of the ordinance that allowed residents to install solar energy by right—a state legal requirement the city has to adopt—and tell the council “thanks, but no thanks” on the fence ordinance. 

But commissioners said they were ready to give it another go, and continued the hearing to Sept. 13.


Ex-Officer Kent Sentenced to Home Detention for Stealing Drug Evidence

By Judith Scherr
Friday July 28, 2006

Cary Kent, a former Berkeley police sergeant, was formally sentenced in Alameda County Superior Court Thursday for theft of drugs from the evidence locker at the Berkeley Police Department.  

He will serve one year in the Contra Costa sheriff’s alternative custody home detention program and wear a leg bracelet, which will monitor his movements during that time, according to Harry Stern, Kent’s attorney. 

Kent will submit quarterly progress reports to the judge, Stern said. He will serve five years probation. 

Berkeley CopWatch, which has been monitoring the case, sent letters to Judge C. Don Clay and District Attorney Tom Orloff requesting that the court delay sentencing until Kent testifies on the record about what happened. 

(By retiring from the police force, he avoided having to answer the police chief’s questions. And by pleading guilty, he also avoided talking about the case.) CopWatch did not receive any response to its letters. 

A subcommittee of the Police Review Commission is reviewing the police-district attorney investigation of the case.


New Governance Possible for City Housing Authority

By Suzanne La Barre
Friday July 28, 2006

The city is in talks with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) over possibly restructuring the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) board. 

Currently ruled by the nine-member Berkeley City Council, plus two residents at large, the Housing Authority could instead fall under the guidance of an appointed board or commission, said City Manager Phil Kamlarz at a meeting of the Housing Authority board Tuesday. 

HUD, which funds the authority with about $27.4 million a year, has designated BHA “troubled” every year since 2003 for an assortment of administrative and managerial deficiencies. The federal agency believes new governance will help stabilize the authority, said Kamlarz.  

“They feel that an independent body can spend more time with the Housing Authority,” he said. 

So far this year, the Housing Authority board has met once a month, for an average of half an hour—not enough time for the council to adequately oversee Housing Authority staff and operations, said Councilmember Dona Spring. 

“The City Council has so many things on its plate,” Spring said in a phone interview Wednesday. “We need people who can devote themselves to one civic duty.” 

The Berkeley Housing Authority locally administers about 1,800 individual Section 8 vouchers and 100 project-based vouchers, owns 75 units of public housing and manages other local housing programs. 

The agency is under pressure to complete, by the end of August, a report detailing its administration of the federal Section 8 program. Problems plaguing the agency have included a backlog of inspections and re-evaluations, housing quality standard issues and management instability, among others. A new manager, the third this year alone, starts July 31.  

If BHA fails to secure satisfactory performance ratings, HUD could turn the authority over to another agency, send it into receivership, dissolve it altogether or restructure from within, Housing Department Director Steve Barton has said. Kamlarz, who was authorized in June to enter into negotiations with HUD, pointed out Thursday that new governance would not necessarily absolve BHA of more draconian consequences. 

Local public housing recipients have responded to the prospect of losing the Housing Authority with considerable panic. More than three-dozen tenants flooded Tuesday’s board meeting. About 15 speakers pressed the council to keep the agency in Berkeley, and some said they were concerned they would lose their Section 8 vouchers if HUD assumes control. Both local and federal housing agencies say such fears are unfounded.  

“We’re looking forward to finding a way to move forward and assuring tenants that these (negotiations with the City Manager) do not put tenants at risk of losing housing,” said HUD spokesperson Larry Bush. 

If the Housing Authority is given new governance, it won’t be the first time. According to Spring, an independent board ruled the authority until the early 1980s when officials determined that City Council was better-equipped to handle the agency, then beset by rampant budget problems. 

Other Bay Area housing authorities display a mix of governance structures. The Oakland Housing Authority, which provides rental assistance to or owns 14,450 units, has a seven-member, mayor-appointed Board of Commissioners. Commissioners sit on the board for a maximum of two, four-year terms. Two members are public housing tenants; they serve for two years.  

The Housing Authority of the County of Alameda assists more than 7,000 low-income households in nine cities and two unincorporated areas. A 12-member commission, comprised of city, area and tenant representatives, governs the authority. 

In Alameda, the City Council and one tenant member oversee the housing authority, which administers 1,700 tenant-based Section 8 vouchers and 475 project-based vouchers. Additionally, an appointed, seven-member Housing Commission sets policy for day-to-day operations. Richmond’s City Council is charged with overseeing the Richmond Housing Authority, an agency that owns 821 units of public housing and administers about 1,500 Section 8 vouchers. 

On Tuesday, Spring motioned for the Berkeley City Council to adopt a resolution in favor of turning the authority over to another body, though councilmembers refrained from taking a vote because the item was not on the agenda. Kamlarz is expected to present a report detailing the possible reorganization at a Housing Authority meeting Sept. 19.


Pool of Candidates Take Out Papers for Rent Board

By Suzanne La Barre
Friday July 28, 2006

The race for seats on the Rent Stabilization Board is underway as potential candidates gear up for a nomination convention Aug. 6. 

The traditional event gathers progressive organizations of all stripes to select a slate for Rent Board, the nine-member body charged with regulating rent increases and protecting tenant rights. 

The slate is characterized by people “whose values are progressive and who generally believe in pro-tenant policies, but also who would be reasonable and balanced,” said Rent Board Member Jason Overman. 

Members are elected to four-year terms and serve a maximum of two terms. They receive a monthly stipend of $500 and typically attend one board meeting a month in addition to committee meetings, said rent stabilization program Executive Director Jay Kelekian. 

This year, five spots are opening up. 

The Committee to Defend Affordable Housing, composed of current Rent Board members and progressive group representatives, conducted a preliminary screening of candidates Sunday. Committee members, as individuals, will present candidate evaluations at the convention, which the Cal Berkeley Democrats, the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Gray Panthers and other local organizations typically attend. 

The top five Rent Board nominees are billed for the ballot when they each receive 60 percent of the vote, through polling rounds. 

Three incumbents—Board Chair Howard Chong, tenant rights’ attorney Bob Evans, and Green Party member and middle school teacher Chris Kavanagh—are vying to maintain a hold on the board. 

Selma Spector vacates her seat due to term limits and Vice Chair Pinkie Payne reportedly does not plan to rerun, though she could not be reached for confirmation.  

New candidates, who have taken out signature in-lieu papers, include: former Rent Board Member Judy Ann Alberti; Zoning Adjustments Board Vice Chair David Blake; Peace and Justice Commissioner Elliot Cohen; Commission on Labor member Edith Monk-Hallberg; local activist Pam Webster; and member of both the Parks and Recreation Commission, and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee Lisa Anne Stephens. 

Candidate Kokavulu Lumukanda, who chairs the Homeless Commission, has not taken out papers but underwent the screening process Sunday, Overman said. 

Pro-tenant members have consistently held court over the Rent Board since 1998. Property owners used to run an opposing slate—at one point, they represented a board majority—but that is no longer the case, said Michael Wilson, president of the Berkeley Property Owners Association. 

His organization will not pitch any candidates this year, he said, because “the rent board is just not that relevant to the world anymore.” 

In 1996, the Costa-Hawkins Act took effect, limiting local governments’ ability to regulate rent for vacant units and single-family dwellings. That coupled with Measure O of 2004, a local, voter-approved initiative that mandates annual rent increases based on the Consumer Price Index, further weakened the board’s authority. 

The board’s primary capacity is quasi-judicial, as a mediator between landlords and tenants. It also provides policy recommendations and engages in outreach.  

In the 2004 election, with four seats up for grabs, just one independent candidate, Seth Morris, submitted a bid. He later withdrew from the race, though he secured 13,685 votes—about 5,000 votes shy of the next lowest-returning candidate. 

No stand-alone candidates have filed nomination or signature in-lieu papers to date. Several candidates have said they do not plan to run independently if they are not selected for the slate. 

The convention meets Sunday, Aug. 6, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. It is open to the public.


Remembering Ernest Landauer, 1928-2006

By Osha Neumann, Special to the Planet
Friday July 28, 2006

Ernest died on Saturday, July 15. He was 78. I hadn’t heard from him for over a week and had begun to worry. I had left two messages and they had not been returned. He had been calling me every two or three days with his latest thoughts about how to fight to preserve the Flea Market from the threat of a multi-story housing project proposed for the parking lot where the market had operated for 41 years. Then his calls stopped. When I called again on Saturday evening his stepson, Talib, told me the news. 

Elvie, Ernest’s wife, had died not two months earlier of pancreatic cancer. Ernest, himself, had been sick for some time, with a somewhat mysterious blood disorder that robbed his marrow of the ability to produce red blood cells. He had minimized his own health problems, choosing to devote himself to caring for Elvie. He wore himself down and it took constant transfusions to keep him alive.  

It was characteristic of Ernest that he put Elvie’s well being above his own. For years he had devoted himself to keeping alive those small underfunded community organizations that actually make a difference in the lives of people. He did so with saintly devotion, without any obvious manifestation of ego. He had been on the Board of Community Services United, which operates the Flea Market, longer than I can remember. 

The board is composed of representatives from community organizations and Ernest represented Commonarts. Ernest and I were among Commonart’s founding members. It began as a community arts organization 29 years ago. The city had given us a house on Acton Street, out of which to run a community arts organization. 

We’d snagged a CETA job development grant from the feds and with the money ran our only little WPA. We hired a slew of amazing artists: The singer and guitarist, Rafael Manriquez, from whom I heard for the first time the achingly beautiful nueva canción of the Chilean popular resistance; the sculptor, Woody Harrison; the drummers Butch Haynes and Juma Santos; Arina Isaacson, the clown; the dancer, story teller, actress and ritualist Luisa Teish; the muralists Brian Thiele, and Ray Patlan and many others. 

No one on the board got paid, and we all stuck it out until the federal money ran out and then we bailed. All of us except Ernest. We had the house, which was potentially a great community resource, and it is characteristic of Ernest that he hung in there, helping to oversee the transformation of the Acton Street house into a daytime drop-in center for homeless women. There was no glory in what he did. There was no money in it.  

As with Commonarts, so with the Flea Market. He was a mainstay, faithful through all the turmoil and changes, attending every board meeting on the second Saturday of the month in the Flea Market’s little threadbare office with its dirty windows facing out onto Ashby Avenue.  

Those Flea Market meetings. It was difficult to sit through a meeting with Ernest, without groaning. Ernest’s mind did not approach any subject by the shortest route. He wanted us to follow his train of thought through branches and tunnels and seeming detours and only then would he get to the point. We would sit there, wondering when the train would arrive at the station. It sometimes seemed that language was to Ernest as a flame is to a moth. Words pulled him in their wake, the sound of one suggesting another. He would pun and pun again, seemingly incapable of turning off the spigot of associations, ruled by rhyme as much as reason, dragged by improbable connections of sound willy-nilly with his coattails flying and all in the middle of a discussion of the budget, or the vacancy rate in Flea Market stalls. 

Ernest’s punning was the link between his poetry and his service to the community. He was a prolific writer and his poems were full of wordplay. Language linked his improbable lives. He was a poet who devoted himself to the mundane, an intellectual who forsook the academy, a white man who married a black woman and worked in organizations that served primarily people of color. 

Ernest and I had made similar choices in our lives. We had similar family histories. Our fathers were German Jewish intellectuals steeped in a continental intellectual tradition that seems to have no counterpart in this raw unfinished country. In a sense we were both exiles, harboring memories of a homeland in that intellectual German accented universe we had both forsaken. He would email me his poems in German and English not willing to believe that my German was essentially non-existent.  

Was Ernest’s hair white when I first met him? I can only remember him as he was in his last years, not a big man but a man with big hair, a shock of white hair on top of his head that on occasion shed conspicuous flakes of dandruff onto his jacket and a large white beard. He peered out at the world from behind his glasses with curiosity but by and large without judgment. He reserved his wrath for pompous self-aggrandizing politicians, too concerned for their own political careers to notice they were screwing the community. And even to those straying liberals he gave the benefit of the doubt. Among his last e-mails me are drafts of letters intended to persuade them of the error of their ways. 

He loved words and believed in power of language, but language could also be a seduction and a snare. In the end, it seems, he was ready to let it go. As he lay dying in his hospital bed he whispered to his daughter, Eda: 

“No more double speak, 

No more double talk” 

And so, in silence, he went gently into that good night.


Fire Department Log

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 28, 2006

Thanks to alert citizens and a prompt response by Berkeley firefighters, a Tilden Park hills fire was extinguished before it could spread Tuesday night. 

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said a Park Hills resident reported a strange flash in the hills at 9:21 p.m., and, using binoculars, firefighters were able to spot a small glow near the ridge top. 

An engine searching the area spotted the scene, which firefighters were able to reach after a third-of-a-mile hike through the brush. 

They found a ground fire spreading slowly beneath a mantle of pines. 

Meanwhile, crews from the California Division of Forestry (CDF), the Moraga-Orinda Fire Department and the Oakland fire departments were responding. 

The fire, which ignited some of the trees, was quickly contained, but CDF crews—including a contingent of prisoners trained in firefighting—remained on the scene along with East Bay Regional Parks District firefighters after the municipal departments left about 1:30 a.m. 

Orth said the blaze, which consumed about an acre, was apparently ignited by a downed power line discovered as crews were battling the blaze.


Police Blotter

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 28, 2006

Terror threat on BART 

Fears of a terrorist attack stopped BART traffic through Berkeley at midday Thursday and closed the downtown BART station. 

Alarmed by the fall of a mysterious white powdery substance that landed near the station agent’s booth, BART officials ordered the shutdown and closure at 12:05 p.m. while BART police investigated. 

By 12:49 they had determined the material in question “was a white powdery substance that wasn’t harmful” that someone had thrown into the station, said transit spokesperson Jim Allison. 

One source said a Berkeley firefighter was overheard to say the material  

in question to be plain old powdered sugar.  

During the shutdown, southbound trains from Richmond were stopped at the North Berkeley BART station and sent back, and northbound trains were stopped at Ashby BART, where they reversed course. 

 

Biking bandits 

A pair of bicycling baddies pulled at least three strongarm robberies on July 19, reports Berkeley police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss.. 

The first heist came at 3:30 p.m. when the pair braced a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student as he was walking near the corner of Dwight Way and Dana Street, headed to class. 

The pair rode up and dismounted, and as one shoved the student the other demanded he show them the contents of his pockets. One of the fellows grabbed his wallet, rifled through the contents, extracted his cash—about $40—and flung the rest on the ground. 

Then the pair jumped on their wheels and pedaled south on Dana. 

Twenty minutes later, a pair of the same description and transport mode pulled a similar caper near the corner of Ellsworth and Parker streets. 

The final call of the day came in as a reported assault near the Berkeley Bowl because the shoved victim was injured when a fall followed the shove. The cash-stripped wallet was similarly discarded before the pair biked away. 

The victim was taken to Summit Alta Bates for emergency room treatment, said Kusmiss. 

 

Board-battered 

A Good Samaritan called police just after 6 p.m. on July 14 to report that he’d just witnessed a guy clobber another fellow over the head with a skateboard. 

The agitated board-batterer then commenced to raise a ruckus with other passers-by, and he was still there when officers arrived moments later, said Sgt. Kusmiss. 

The victim, a 47-year-old homeless man, was sitting on the sidewalk while witnesses identified the suspect, a 28-year-old Berkeley man, who was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. 

 

Stick attack 

Police arrested a 40-year-old Golden Gate Fields employee on July 12 for assault with a deadly weapon after he reportedly beaned a fellow worker with a stick following an argument that had been preceded by a tippling bout. 

The victim, a decade younger, didn’t suffer serious injuries, said Kusmiss. 

 

Tire iron assault 

It was 3:37 on the morning of July 11 when a patrol officer was flagged down by a citizen near the intersection of 10th Street and University Avenue. 

He told the officer one neighbor, 27, had hit another, 44, with a tire iron, injuring the man’s arm. 

The alleged tire-iron-wielder was still at home, and was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon while his alleged victim was taken to an emergency room. 

 

Stickup artists 

Two bandits confronted a 35-year-old Berkeley man outside the Berkeley Public Library branch at 1125 University Ave. on July 8 and decided to check out his wallet and backpack. 

Confronted with the black semi-automatic pistol wielded by one of the pair and the hour being 2 a.m., the pedestrian wisely handed over his valuables and the baddies boogied. 

The pair remains at large, said Kusmiss. 

 

Couple robber 

A couple walking back to their home in the 1100 block of Colusa Avenue about 10:30 p.m. on July 8 had almost reached their goal when a young man with a black revolver stepped up and demanded their wallets. 

A search by officers who arrived moments later led to a car stop and the apprehension of a man matching the description provided by the couple—who identified the 20-year-old Oakland man as the bandit. 

He was given shiny new bracelets and a ride to the city lockup. 

 

Wire-cutter assault 

What began as a reported July 3 broken-bottle slashing turned out to be a wire-cutter stabbing, reports Kusmiss. 

Responding to the 9:08 p.m. call from the area of Bancroft Way and Fulton Street, police found the injured man, who was able to give a description of his attacker. 

Minutes later, patrol officers spotted a likely looking fellow near the corner of Channing Way and Telegraph Avenue and discovered he was still in the possession of the weapon—which turned out to be a pair of wirecutters. 

He was booked on suspicion of violating California Penal Code Section 245, assault with a deadly, as the folks in blue sometimes call it


Flash: Council Kills Landmark Law Revisions Pending Election

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 25, 2006

In an abrupt reversal, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to table the revised Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) it had passed on first reading July 11. 

An ordinance must be passed on two separate readings before it can become law. 

“We’ll drop it this evening and see what happens with the initiative,” said Mayor Tom Bates, the driving force behind the tabled measure. 

The initiative he cited was drafted by proponents of the city’s current ordinance, and makes minor changes to ensure the LPO complies with state laws governing building permits and landmarks. Berkeley residents will be vote on it Nov. 7. 

“Given the council’s action, we’ll have to rewrite our ballot statements,” said Roger Marquis, one of the initiative’s two principal sponsors. 

The draft statements they had submitted were focused on the now-withdrawn Bates-Capitelli legislation. 

The statements prepared by the city face the same problem, since City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque had drafted them on the presumption that the Bates measure, co-sponsored by Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, would be the law by election time. 

Marquis said initiative backers will have their revised statements ready to submit by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, and the city council has set a meeting for 5 p.m. Tuesday to approve the city attorney’s revisions. 


Flash: Fast Action Douses Blaze in Tilden Park

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Thanks to alert citizens and a prompt response by Berkeley firefighters, a Tilden Park hills fire was extinguished before it could spread Tuesday night. 

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said a Park Hills resident reported a strange flash in the hills at 9:21 p.m., and, using binoculars, firefighters were able to spot a small glow near the ridge top. 

An engine searching the area spotted the scene, which firefighters were able to reach after a third-of-a-mile hike through the brush. 

They found a ground fire spreading slowly beneath a mantle of pines. 

Meanwhile, crews from the California Division of Forestry (CDF), the Moraga-Orinda Fire Department and the Oakland fire departments were responding. 

The fire, which ignited some of the trees, was quickly contained, but CDF crews—including a contingent of prisoners trained in firefighting—remained on the scene along with East Bay Regional Parks District firefighters after the municipal departments left about 1:30 a.m. 

Orth said the blaze, which consumed about an acre, was apparently ignited by a downed power line discovered as crews were battling the blaze.


Flash: Movement Begins to Draft Shirley Dean for Mayor

Judith Scherr
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Shirley Dean’s name popped up late Friday on the City Clerk’s list of candidates who have taken out mayoral papers. 

The news, however, came as a surprise to Dean, who told the Daily Planet Monday evening: “I’m floored. I honestly know nothing about this.” 

The person who does know is Merrilee Mitchell, who took out papers for Dean. 

“In Oakland they drafted (Ron) Dellums and he came back and ran,” Mitchell said. “I think Shirley Dean has good character. I don’t want to live in Batesville.” 

The papers Mitchell took out in Dean’s stead were not formal nomination papers, but “signature-in-lieu” petitions. In order to avoid paying a $150 fee to file nomination papers, a candidate can collect 150 signatures. Signatures must be turned in to the City Clerk’s Office by 5 p.m. on Thursday, according to Acting City Clerk Sherry Kelly. 

Were Dean to run, she would have to sign nomination papers herself. 

The ex-Mayor said she won’t rule out a run. 

“I’ll have to find out more about this. I don’t want to offend anyone,” she said, acknowledging that she had told a would-be supporter that she would consider a run if 600 people signed on, a number she said she plucked out of the air. 

Bates defeated the incumbent Dean four years ago and is now running for a two-year term. Announced challengers include Zelda Bronstein, Zachary Running Wolf, Richard Berkeley and Christian Pecaut. 

The formal nomination period opened July 17 and closes Aug. 11. 

 

Richard Brenneman contributed to this report. 


Downtown Plan Panel Revolts Over UC Project

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 25, 2006

The citizens guiding the shape of Berkeley’s new downtown plan staged a second revolt last week—this one focusing on UC Berkeley’s planned hotel complex. 

The impetus came from Planning Commission Chair Helen Burke. 

Overriding the wishes of chair Will Travis and Planning Director Dan Marks, members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) voted 15-2 to hold a discussion and vote on Aug. 30 to create a subcommittee to focus on the project—potentially the largest new downtown building in decades. 

Meeting last month, DAPAC members had voted 18-0-1 to open up the previously closed meetings of the joint city/university committee advising city planning staff on technical issues of planned university development in the downtown. 

Marks said he objected to last week’s proposal because it would pose new demands on a limited staff already fully committed to other aspects of the plan. 

But when it came time for a vote, the only DAPAC opposition came from Travis, appointed by Mayor Tom Bates, and Dorothy Walker, appointed by Councilmember Betty Olds. 

Travis is executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission and Walker is a former UC Berkeley assistant vice chancellor for property development. 

Burke said a subcommittee was needed in part because the hotel proposal could be the centerpiece of a revitalized downtown and because the city had already undertaken an extensive review of the site. 

When she first offered a motion to form the subcommittee at last Wednesday’s meeting, Travis objected, saying DAPAC couldn’t act because the vote proposal hadn’t been included in the public notice distributed before the meeting. 

The motion was reworded to schedule a discussion and vote at the next meeting, scheduled for Aug. 30. 

Carpenter & Company, the firm the university has picked to develop a hotel and conference center at the northeast corner of the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, has already begun to calculate the mass of the building, which could reach 12 stories or more. 

Two other major projects have been proposed for the same intersection—a remodel or move of the downtown BART Plaza and the conversion of Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford Street into a pedestrian mall—possibly including a restored Strawberry Creek. 

“Because there are three different projects planned for area, I felt DAPAC needed to weigh in,” said Burke. 

Burke said she contacted eight other DAPAC members before the meeting and found that all were concerned the task force hadn’t looked at specific aspects of the downtown. 

“At the meeting, I found I had tapped into a feeling of frustration with the pace of things. It’s like we’ve been big sponges, absorbing all this information, but we hadn’t started to develop a consensus. The members felt it was time to get going.” 

Before the meeting, Burke said, she received an email from Dan Marks objecting to her idea as “out of sequence. He said, ‘There aren’t enough resources and Matt Taecker already had too much to do.’” 

Taecker is the planner hired specifically to work on the new downtown plan, which was mandated in the settlement of the city’s lawsuit against UC Berkeley and the way it handled its Long Range Development Plan for expansion through 2020. 

Burke said Marks spoke to her again in the hall outside the meeting room in the North Berkeley Senior Center before the meeting. “He said he wouldn’t have the committee micro-manage the staff,” she said. 

Burke said she suggested that the committee work without staff support. 

“That’s fine by me,” said Marks Monday. “We simply do not have the staff resources to support it.” 

Marks said he had raised objections because Taecker “already has his hands more than full” with a landmarks subcommittee and management of the environmental review process. 

“Our feeling is that we should get into specifics” of the hotel project later, he said. 

“In the normal process, you get the vision down first, the goals and alternatives—the big picture stuff. Then you get down to details. Pulling out one area now seems a little out of sequence,” he said. 

Even with studies of the hotel under way, Marks said, “We don’t expect to hear anything from the developer for two or three more months. There’s plenty of time to work with the developer.” 

Travis said he opposed the motion because “my concern is that this will be a diversion. My role is really keeping the process moving along. Getting into the details of Center Street—something all the members are deeply interested in—will take more energy and divert us from our other tasks. 

Travis said that once the subcommittee finishes its assignment, the panel will report back to the rest of DAPAC, “which will have to go over everything again.” 

“That said, the committee made it clear they wanted this.” 

The university has announced plans to add 800,000 square feet of new projects in the expanded downtown area encompassed by the new plan, along with 1,000 new parking spaces. 

Marks said the university has issued assurances that all the development will occur on land the university already owns in the city center, including the old state Public Health Building north of University Avenue.


Objections To OUSD Land Deal Increase

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday July 25, 2006

The growing battle over Oakland’s valuable waterfront property development sharply escalated this week, with the coalition opposing the sale of the OUSD downtown properties moving their target from the powerless OUSD Board of Trustees to the powerful Oakland City Council and opponents of the massive nearby Oak-to-Ninth development filing a lawsuit against the project as well as launching a petition drive for a ballot measure to block its implementation. 

The Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM) and retired Oakland architect Joyce Roy filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court in Oakland last week, asking the court to set aside Oakland City Council’s recent approval of the 3,100 residential unit Oak To Ninth Project “based on deficiencies in the project Environmental Impact Report and related findings.”  

And on Sunday, members of the newly formed Oak-to-Ninth Referendum Committee—including representatives of the League of Women Voters, the Sierra Club, the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), and the Green Party—met in downtown Oakland to launch a petition drive to put a referendum on the ballot blocking the Oak-to-Ninth Project.  

Meanwhile, opponents of the OUSD downtown property sale were scrambling on Monday afternoon to put a resolution on the agenda for Tuesday’s City Council meeting, expressing the sentiment that the City Council was not in favor of selling the property unless and until the contract was approved by the OUSD Board of Trustees. 

The resolution was co-sponsored by councilmembers Pat Kernighan and Jean Quan and needed city attorney approval as an emergency measure to be included on the agenda. 

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell is currently negotiating a contract with east coast-based developers TerraMark/Urban America for the sale of 8.25 acres of OUSD property adjacent to the Lake Merritt Channel, including the OUSD Paul Robeson Administration Building, two high schools, an elementary school, and two child development centers. O’Connell and TerraMark/UrbanAmerica have until September 13 to reach a deal under the Letter of Intent exclusive negotiating agreement signed by the parties. O’Connell has the legal authority to sell the OUSD property following the 2003 state takeover of the Oakland school district. 

TerraMark/Urban America is proposing building five high-rise luxury condominium towers on the lower Lake Merritt site. While State Superintendent O’Connell can sell the property on his own, the development plans must go through the standard City of Oakland planning process, including approval by the City Council. Among the items subject to Planning Department and council approval would be the design of the high-rise towers, the number of housing units to be allowed (currently proposed for 1,388), and the sale to the developers and blocking off a portion of 2nd Avenue to be used as one of the proposed building sites. 

“We’re hoping that if the developers and the state superintendent know that they will have problems having the development plans approved by City Council, it will either delay or kill the sale completely,” said former Metropolitan Greater Oakland (MGO) Democratic Club President Pam Drake, one of the sale opponents. “We believe that the sale should be either delayed completely until restoration of local control of the Oakland public schools or, at the very least, until the members of the school board sign off on the final terms of the sale.” 

Opposition to the sale has been centered around the Ad Hoc Committee to Restore Local Control/Governance to the Oakland Schools, which includes several board trustees, but the idea for using City Council leverage to help block the OUSD property sale took off last week at a Thursday evening MGO forum on the proposed school properties sale. 

During the forum, councilmember Kernighan, who represents the area on which the OUSD property sits, said, “I’m generally pro-development, but I think this particular proposal is a bad idea.” 

On Monday afternoon, Kerninghan was attempting to get a ruling by Oakland City Attorney John Russo putting a sale moratorium resolution on Tuesday’s council agenda as an emergency item. Because Tuesday is the last meeting before the Oakland City Council’s summer break, it would be the last time councilmembers could officially weigh in on the proposed sale before the Sept. 13 sale deadline. 

Drake said that even if the resolution could not be placed on Tuesday’s agenda, OUSD sale opponents would speak on the issue at the council meeting’s open forum. 

Councilmember Nancy Nadel said by telephone that she would “support such a resolution,” adding that “any development of the [OUSD] property would also have to replace the schools on the site, and the calculations for the cost of replacing those schools have to be included in the price of the land.” That position was echoed by Councilmember Jean Quan, who co-sponsored the proposed council opposition resolution with Kernighan. 

Councilmember Jane Brunner said that while she had not seen the actual TerraMark/Urban America proposal, “If it does not have a guaranteed price for the sale of the property or provisions for the relocation of the schools currently on the property, I don’t believe that it is a good proposal.” 

Brunner said that another sticking point in OUSD’s proposal for the downtown properties is a plan to move the OUSD administrative facilities to the vacated Carter Middle School at 45th and Webster streets in North Oakland. 

Brunner said that OUSD plans to add a 125-space parking facility on the site to accommodate district employees, “but [OUSD trustee] Kerry Hamill and I have already been looking to turn that into open space, with joint use as a practice baseball field for Oakland Tech High School and a neighborhood park.” 

But Brunner was not confident that any proposed City Council opposition would deter the state superintendent from the proposed OUSD sale. 

“I understand that Jack has already made up his mind about this,” Brunner said. “There’s not a lot of love lost between Jack and Oakland.” 

Brunner said she believed O’Connell’s animosity towards Oakland stemmed from a tumultuous 2005 meeting at Oakland Tech in which O’Connell was jeered and booed by a packed audience during the presentation of a multi-year recovery plan for the district. 

The Oakland Tech meeting was the first time O’Connell had appeared in public in Oakland to discuss the Oakland Unified School District situation since the 2003 state takeover of the schools. 

All but one of the seven OUSD trustees have stated outright opposition to the TerraMark/ UrbanAmerica deal as it has been currently presented. 

Trustee Hamill says that while she supports the sale of surplus administrative properties, she believes that the school sites on the downtown property should not be sold. 

The TerraMark/UrbanAmerica deal includes sale of the administrative properties without the sale of the schools, but it is unclear how much money the district would clear from the sale under those circumstances. Because of the state takeover, OUSD trustees do not have a legal voice in the sale of the OUSD properties.


Parking Reversal on Telegraph

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Removing Telegraph Avenue parking last fall to correct substandard bike lanes was a “colossal blunder,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington. 

“It was done without the knowledge of the City Council and the Transportation Commission,” he said. 

Correcting the parking-space error, looking at developer fees for traffic impacts, hearing an appeal from neighbors who object to the demolition of a structure at 2106 Sixth St. are just a few of the 42 items the council will address tonight (Tuesday) before its seven-week recess. 

The council is back in session Sept. 19. 

The Telegraph Avenue correction will be accomplished, with some 22 parking spaces restored—if approved by the City Council tonight—by removing the concrete pedestrian islands in the middle of the street so that the automobile and bike lanes can be reconfigured at the end of a number of blocks between Dwight Way and Ashby Avenue. 

“Apparently someone in the bureaucracy thought [replacing the parking spaces with the narrower motorcycle spaces] was the correct thing to do,” Worthington said. 

If the council approves the Transportation Commission’s recommendation to restore the parking spaces, it will be “a giant victory for common sense,” Worthington said. The error will cost about $65,000 to correct. 

Traffic Engineer Hamid Mostwfi emailed the following response to the Daily Planet: 

“It was not a mistake: (1) The decision to change the configuration was made based on the fact that the previous parking/bike lane was of substandard width (11 feet). We widened that lane to 12 feet, the minimum standard for a shared parking/bike lane. This was done in order to reduce the risk of bicyclists colliding with drivers swinging out their door after parking their vehicle in the parking lane. (2) The reason for removal of some parking spaces: The width of the parking lane could not be widened to 12 feet at some of the intersections along Telegraph due to the concrete partial median. Instead of red-curbing these locations and thus rendering those spaces off-limits to all traffic, it was decided that by allocating those spaces to motorbikes,  

at least some parking use would be made of them.” 

 

Public hearing: transportation services fees 

A public hearing, delayed from two weeks ago, will be held tonight on transportation services fees. The city is proposing to charge developers for the impact of additional automobile trips their projects create. The funds raised would be used to mitigate the impact of the new traffic, especially those facilitating alternatives to automobiles, including new shuttle service. 

 

2104 Sixth Street appeal 

While both the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board approved the de facto demolition of 2104 Sixth St. during what was supposed to be construction of a first-floor addition, the Friends of the Ocean View-Sisterna Historic District are appealing the decision and have collected signatures from 64 Berkeley residents who support the appeal. 

In a June 13 letter San Francisco attorney Jeff Hoffman argued that a full environmental impact report should be done “that fully analyzes the potential significant adverse impacts” of the demolition. 

The council will hear the appeal tonight. 

 

Other matters 

The council will also address: 

• Workers’ right to form a union at the West Berkeley Bowl and the need for fair labor practices at all Berkeley businesses; 

• Appointment of Claudette Ford, acting Public Works director, to the Permanent position at $165,000 annually, with benefits at about $84,000. She will manage a department with 309 full-time positions and a budget of $80.5 million; 

• A contract for $38,000 with Mildred Howard and Daniel Galvez to create a mural of the life of former Councilmember Maudelle Shirek; 

• Opposition to SB 1056 which would pre-empt local governments from regulating seeds and nursery plants; 

• Opposition to Proposition 85, which would require parental notification for abortions and a 48-hour waiting period; 

• A grand jury report criticizing Berkeley’s issuance of citations at parking meters that may be inoperable. The council will be asked to address the city’s response; 

• A work plan for the development of the Ashby BART station; 

• Placement on the ballot of two citizens’ initiatives, one which would amend the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance and another that would address condominium conversion. 

A Housing Authority Meeting at 6 p.m. precedes the 7 p.m. City Council meeting at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way 


Council Looks at UC Student Election

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak says getting the City Council involved in controversial student elections at UC Berkeley is council business as usual, but others say it is an attack on the independence of student government. 

The resolution, on tonight’s (Tuesday) council agenda, “recognizes the election of the four Student Action executive officers … in a free and fair ASUC [Associated Students of the University of California] Election.” (Student Action is a UC Berkeley political party.)  

The April student elections are in dispute. Student Action apparently swept the races for executive offices. However, the party was accused of chalking the names of candidates close to the polls in violation of ASUC rules and then giving false testimony about it. 

It is up to the ASUC Judicial Council to rule on the question—the council ruled in opposition to Student Action; the party appealed the decision July 18. Attempts by Student Action presidential candidate Oren Gabriel to take his case to the Alameda County Superior Court was kicked back to the Judicial Council by the judge. The Judicial Council is now weighing the appeal. 

“We comment all the time about injustices around the world,” Wozniak said, arguing for the propriety of his resolution. “This is a travesty of justice.” 

Allegations against Student Action constitute a “minor infraction” that went before the Judicial Council, Wozniak said. “It was a valid election run by the League of Women Voters.”  

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, however, characterized the council’s proposed involvement as an “affront to independent student government.” And he characterized the resolution as “a cynical manipulative ploy” to pit students against each other in order to win votes in the November election. (Wozniak is running against Jason Overman, a UC Berkeley student and Rent Stabilization Board member.) 

Lauren Karasek of the SQUELCH! Party, who ran against Gabriel for ASUC president, said of the council resolution: “I’m very concerned about the implications for student autonomy. Berkeley’s always prided itself on its independence.”  

Karasek condemned as further erosion of student autonomy the part of the resolution that asks the council to write to the chancellor saying that Student Action had won fairly. The judicial process is continuing, Karasek said. 

Karasek characterized Student Action as a “major party” on campus and said SQUELCH! is more like a “third party,” which critiques the system through humor. She said the party has condemned Student Action for using student government funds to promote their own activities rather than supporting activities of campus organizations. Election results showed Oren Gabriel with 4,014 votes and Karasek with 1,434. 

An editorial by Van S. Nguyen, in-coming ASUC senator from the CalSERVE party, that appeared in Monday’s Daily Cal, also condemned the resolution:  

“With the wave of a pen, one Berkeley politician has potentially wiped out 40 years of the students’ struggle for the protection of our First Amendment right to freedom of speech and press ... The intervention of the city in ASUC elections would not only be an insult to the more than 30,000 students at UC Berkeley, but also a denial of students’ power over their own government.” 

Student Action, Oren Gabriel and Jason Chu, a Student Action candidate for vice president, did not return e-mailed requests for interviews for this story.


News Analysis: Why So Many Public Opinion Polls?

By Marc Sapir, Special to the Planet
Tuesday July 25, 2006

They are everywhere, trying to grab our attention. And they succeed. Public opinion polls claim to adapt statistical research methods to the measuring of beliefs. Scientific? Perhaps, but polling also operates with hidden goals because it is part of the marketplace. 

In 2003 Retro Poll investigated how this works with a poll comparing knowledge and opinions before the invasion of Iraq. The poll found that the media-promoted government misinformation about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction conditioned public responses about going to war. Those who believed the hype that Iraq had WMDs and was linked to Al Qaeda terrorism favored war by 2:1, but 75 percent of people who could see through that charade opposed U.S. aggression.  

Polls are like multiple-choice exams where the student is expected through rote-learning to provide a conclusion based upon memorized course information. The course information is the news that the media markets to the public. 

Surprisingly, sometimes even the polling professionals are unaware of their role in this model. Polls usually (and subtly) limit the range of answers and ways of looking at any problem to what has been in the public’s eye through the corporate media inputs. Given a restricted range of information, opinion research promotes “obvious” opinion answers to a problem without the respondents’ awareness that their choices have been limited.  

An ongoing discussion among members of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) reveals how polls may constrict options in any debate or discussion. Back in late 2003 Retro Poll first asked people’s views on impeachment. When the question was posted on the AAPOR List, some argued that impeachment was not a legitimate issue to ask about because no one in Congress or the media was discussing it.  

Other AAPOR members criticized the question as “leading” because we asked people whether or not “misleading the public and Congress on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” was grounds for impeachment of the President? These polling gurus did not want the factual presentation to go beyond the media parameters at a time when the media was only just beginning to expose the truth. 

So the market-based approach to opinion research leads polling, in general, to reflect the restricted media discourse and to limit the public’s ways of responding—the range of choices. In other words what you see is what you get—in the worst sense when what you see is incomplete. Or “garbage in, garbage out.” 

Parenthetically, Retro Poll was actually surprised that 39+ percent thought misleading Congress and the public on weapons of mass destruction was grounds for impeachment in two separate polls six months apart. If this was true, it shows a very deep strain of anger at the regime’s deception as early as November 2003. 

Yet the public is often puzzled by poll results. People just can’t ignore them,  

especially when they hit topics that are important to us. Reading the polls, some conclude that the public is a herd of passive mindless sheep, uncritical thinkers easily misled by reactionary ideas (call this the “What Happened to Kansas?” camp). Others believe that the polling methods themselves are a fraud (“you can’t tell what millions of people are thinking by asking 568 or 1,000 people”). Both of these views are erroneous.  

To the extent that public views are sheepish it’s often a product of the polling methods which create this mirage by limiting the field of discussion and information. Of course many people do have poorly informed opinions, but polls tend to empower particular strains of misinformation. Think about it. This explains why so much money is today going into polling and why we hear, incessantly, so many poll reports. 

In truth, polls do serve a very specific social function: they tend to disempower legitimate dissent by negating an analytical or fleshed-out discussion or understanding of political realities. They tend to highlight and encourage mindlessness in the poll respondents and inferential “punditry” in the poll audience reading summaries, much as reality TV and product marketing do. 

This process is not driven by “Right-wing” ideology but by behavioral psychology usually used to create audience needs and wants vicariously by linking products to desirable outcomes like youthfulness, sexuality, attractiveness, etc. In polling what is usually suggested is the safety of being part of an implied national consensus, thus supporting an ideology that is implicit rather than explicit.  

Another thing to consider: In general, polls—even in cases when they accurately reflect public opinion and disagree with those in power--have marginal impact upon policy decisions, because there are few costs to policy makers in ignoring the numbers. If consistent public opinion mattered, Congress would not have voted to outlaw abortion many times, the United States would be funding most birth control and HIV treatment worldwide, U.S. troops would no longer be in Iraq, all those displaced by Katrina would have been helped to return to New Orleans and we would all have a national health insurance card in our pockets. 

These are things that people consistently support in polls. But public opinions matter only when they are backed with credible threats to ever more protracted and militant actions. Even then it’s not the numbers that matter but the level of organization and resistance. So polls are less about informing policy makers than they are about putting the public under a magnifying glass and measuring how we respond to stimulae.  

Even though opinion polls are often ignored by policy makers their numbers (and funding) expand faster than the GDP because polls serve to validate the cultural and ideological dominance of the corporate media and solidify the limited scope of alternatives presented in those media. 

In this way, polls tend to moderate popular resistance, as does any virtual reality frame that engages peoples’ attention and emotions. You may feel good when a poll shows people agree with you and cynical when you believe a poll shows people are taken in by propaganda, but in both cases you conclude that you have a better appreciation of something real and in neither case are you impelled to action. Like viewers of reality TV, our relationship is voyeuristic and vicarious, and our participation is emotional and reflexively passive.  

Statistical tests are used by pollsters and media to appear to verify that opinion polls accurately reflect general population opinions. The scientific issue is that truly random samples with fairly small numbers (eg. 1,000) taken from a very large population can reflect the larger population views in a high (greater than 95 percent) proportion of cases. However, because polls are not really random samples the standard error based on the normal distribution is not applicable. Even good scientific work in health care is a human made approximation of randomness, such as choosing every other patient through the door to get a drug or placebo. Yet most polls today can not come close to that standard. Among the problems:  

1. Many people refuse to participate when contacted by random phone calls (sometimes more than 70 percent) and we never know if their views are the same or different from those who do participate. 

2. A growing number of people have only cell-phones and are not reached by standard methods. They are a younger group.  

3. The largest ethnic minorities in the United States (African-Americans and Latinos) consistently participate at lower rates than European Americans.  

4. People who screen their calls and don’t answer the phone may differ in views from others. 

5. Poor people, not to mention the homeless, are less likely to have phones or be reachable. 

That doesn’t mean that any given poll result does not reflect what the larger population would say. It does mean that we can’t say that it reflects public views within a certain range of accuracy. As a result, when you hear on TV that a poll is accurate to plus or minus 3 percent, that’s a misrepresentation of the truth. Election exit polls are one exception because they choose respondents the same way as medical researchers, the responses are factual (eg. who did you vote for?) and a higher proportion agree to participate.  

Still, the more important issue is that “what the general population believes” has actually been fixed before an opinion poll begins by the type of questions, the general context of disinformation, and the outlook of those who summarize and report the data. 

An editorial in the liberal Washington Post July 21, 2006 helps explain why support for Israel, for instance, is stronger in the United States than anywhere in the world. The Post editorialized that a cease fire in Lebanon is problematic because it would give succor to the Hizbollah aggressor, mimicking Israel’s line and totally ignoring Israel’s massive invasion of Gaza—the death and destruction that preceded current events—and that Israel’s attack has destroyed Lebanon’s infrastructure and indiscriminately killed so many civilians. The facts have been distorted to allow for the analysis.  

Unfortunately, “What Happened to Kansas?” is not a “Red State” problem located in the mid-west. The problem is embedded in the market driven approach to public opinion manipulation. Long ago, survey research was founded to ascertain peoples’ (and communities’) needs and aspirations where consensus building can be a positive social function. Today, although survey research still plays that role, the big money is in opinion polling, which--like market research for products--is often fraught with hidden intent, bias and misrepresentations. Let the buyer beware. 

 

Marc Sapir lives in Berkeley, practices medicine part time with Alameda County and directs Retro Poll (www.retropoll.org). Retro Poll seeks volunteers and donations for its upcoming September poll. Marc can be e-mailed at marcsapir@comcast.net.


Kitchen Democracy Donation Draws Scrutiny

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday July 25, 2006

A proposed $3,000 donation on today’s (Tuesday) City Council agenda to Kitchen Democracy from Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s council office budget has provoked questions on the appropriate use of city funds. 

Formerly, councilmembers could donate to charitable causes from their council budgets without going through a public approval process. (The expenditures have been on the public record, however.) Conforming to AB 1234, a new state law, the council now must put these proposed donations from a councilmember’s personal account to a public vote. 

Kitchen Democracy (www.kitchendemocracy.org) is a nonprofit website that polls Berkeley residents on particular concerns generally within the city of Berkeley. Anyone can sign up to vote on questions generated by the founders of the site, Robert Vogel and Simona Carini. 

Wozniak has been a supporter since the project’s inception in March. 

“[It] gets more people to participate,” he said. “They’re not trying to tell people what to do.” 

The opinions reflected on the website inform his council vote, Wozniak said, adding, “I’d like the city’s Planning Department to use it for land-use projects.”  

While Wozniak said he is informed by others’ opinions, he also uses the website to educate the public on his views. 

In the “experts” section of the site—where the public can read various opinions related to the designated topics—Wozniak has expressed himself to his constituents on four out of eight city issues that Kitchen Democracy has addressed: questions of housing above the Elmwood Hardware store, a city investment of $750,000 in a system to locate stolen cars, turning a traffic diverter into a community garden, and the future use of a District 8 gas station. 

Questioning whether the council should approve taxpayer funds for Kitchen Democracy, Councilmember Kriss Worthington contends that the website caters to a narrow segment of the Berkeley population—largely the southeast hills area. 

The city should not “subsidize something limited to a geographic area, economics or ethnicity,” Worthington said  

Vogel and Carini founded Kitchen Democracy especially for people interested in local politics but who can’t get to city meetings to express themselves. Vogel does not dispute the fact that most people who sign on to his website live in the southeast hills area where he lives. 

“It’s not by design,” he said. “That’s where we know people.” 

Vogel said he’s expanding the geographic content. The first District 2 question will be coming on line soon: people will be asked about speeding in the Addison Street-Acton Street area. 

Noting that some of Berkeley’s lower-income residents, many without Internet access, live in this area, the Planet asked how Vogel might get a true sense of what the neighbors want. 

People can respond by mail, he said, further arguing, “Any public process gets skewed results.” For example, only a limited number of people go to City Hall to address the council, he said. 

When asked whether the website might become a support for Wozniak’s re-election campaign, Vogel said it would not. He would be posting comments from all the candidates. 

One question—about whether the Elmwood Hardware store should be allowed to add three housing units to its building—drew 304 votes. All the other questions on the site have drawn fewer than 100. 

Councilmember Dona Spring said Monday that she was still trying to decide if she would support the contribution. The website serves “a very selective group,” she said. “There is a fine line between what is political and what is the public good.”


Embattled Housing Authority To Review Status Update

By Suzanne La Barre
Tuesday July 25, 2006

The Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) board meets tonight (Tuesday) for an update on the status of the troubled local housing agency.  

The board, composed of all nine city councilmembers and two residents at large, is slated to hear a report on an assessment, due to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) at the end of August, that details the Housing Authority’s management of the federal Section 8 program. 

HUD has called out the authority for managerial deficiencies, including miscalculated rents, incomplete inspections and re-evaluations, and issues with housing quality standards. If the assessment shows BHA failed to correct problems by June 30, the authority could undergo major restructuring—a new governing body, for instance—or possible dissolution. The city manager is in the process of negotiating with HUD over the local agency’s future. 

The Berkeley Housing Authority administers about 1,800 Section 8 vouchers, owns 75 units of public housing and manages other local public housing programs. HUD funds the agency with an estimated $27.4 million a year. 

In response to uncertainties surrounding Berkeley’s Housing Authority, a stable of local advocates have mobilized, urging the protection of public housing and Section 8. (Though Housing Department Director Stephen Barton has underscored that, even if the authority is taken over, existing Section 8 recipients will not lose their vouchers.) 

The meeting takes place at 6 p.m., at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.  


Piedmont Avenue Closure Planned

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Major repairs and renovations will keep alternating lanes closed on Piedmont Avenue for the next three weeks, said Kenneth Emeziem, supervising civil engineer for Berkeley’s Public Works Department. 

Crews will work Saturdays to finish the work before students return to UC Berkeley, he said. 

The affected stretch of roadway extends between Bancroft and Dwight ways. An earlier plan to extend the work onto the stretch within the campus was tabled until the university completes its massive expansion and construction planned for the Memorial Stadium area. 

The first two-week closure, beginning this past Saturday, will affect the southbound lane, with the north following. 

The last scheduled Saturday workday is Aug. 12, Emeziem said. 

Piedmont is a landmarked roadway, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect whose most famous creation is New York’s Central Park. 


Selawsky Considers Bid for City Auditor

By Suzanne La Barre
Tuesday July 25, 2006

The race for Berkeley’s city auditor has gone uncontested for eight years. School Board Director John Selawsky wants to change that. 

Selawsky took out signature in-lieu forms for city auditor last Tuesday, though in a phone interview Friday, he said he has not officially decided to run. 

“Partly why I’m doing this is to raise the visibility of this (office),” he said Friday. “And, I have a democratic instinct against someone running unopposed.”  

City Auditor Ann-Marie Hogan, who will seek reelection, has held the position since 1994. 

The city auditor independently oversees the city’s financial and programmatic operations. Candidates are elected to four-year terms; there are no term limits. The position is paid. Hogan earns a base salary of $131,381. 

Selawsky, a writer and editor by profession, was elected to the Berkeley Board of Education in 2000. He sits on the People’s Park Community Advisory Board and co-chairs the Ashby BART Task Force. He also serves on the school district’s audit committee. From 1995 to 2000, he was a member of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission. 

If he runs, Selawsky must file nomination papers with the city clerk’s office by Aug. 11. 


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Humpty Dumpty Language at City Hall

By Becky O’Malley
Friday July 28, 2006

There ought to be a name for that pervasive feature of modern life, wherein whatever something’s called tells you what it’s not. Case in point: “Drug-Free Zone.” What that actually tells you is “we still have a drug problem around here, although we’re working on it.” Naming developments is a well-known example: the Gaia Building has no Gaia bookstore; “Library Gardens” looks to be arid square blocks of wall-to-wall condos, though a small garden might eventually materialize. Congresswoman Barbara Lee is trying with very little help to keep the “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act” meaning what its name says, in view of Bush and the Congressionals (both D and R) singing a different song as they bestow more nukes on India. And of course there’s the now-classic “Healthy Forests” law, aimed at getting rid of more trees.  

Back in the golden days of national Democratic administrations, there used to be something called consumer protection, a term which actually meant what it said. It incorporated such concepts as Truth in Lending and Truth in Packaging, both of which were used to describe legislation which had some teeth in it, protecting the hapless consumer from being sold a bill of goods for worthless products. Much of that legislation has now disappeared.  

There’s been a recent flap over misuse of the term “organic” as applied to food (and no, I don’t want to hear what it means when used in chemistry, so don’t even think about writing that letter.) The federal administration has led the drive to cloud the waters, proposing ever-weaker definitions that outrage the true organic farmers and their customers.  

Even in Berkeley (or sadly, perhaps especially in Berkeley) the old idea of truth-in-packaging has lost significant ground. The developer-dominated city staff and their willing accomplices on the city council conceal their real objectives in the feel-good titles they give their proposals. So, for example, “Off-street parking in Required Yards on Residential Lots,” on last Tuesday’s City Council agenda, achieved its goal of turning yards into parking lots by changing the definition of “yard.” 

The “Word Spy” website calls the phenomenon “Humpty Dumpty language,” defined as “an idiosyncratic or eccentric use of language in which the meaning of particular words is determined by the speaker.” The name derives from this passage in “Through the Looking-Glass”: 

 

“There’s glory for you!” 

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ “Alice said. 

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’” 

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected. 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” 

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” 

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty. “which is to be master—that’s all.” 

 

The Berkeley City Council’s pro-developer majority is now engaged in one of its typical language-bending exercises. Last minute revelations of significant drafting errors forced them to temporarily abandon their effort to ram through a new ordinance with the Humpty-Dumpty title of “Landmarks Preservation Ordinance.” That’s also the name of the existing ordinance, which actually was designed in the innocent past by a group of public-spirited citizens to do what it says: preserve landmarks. The proposed new version, which had been voted in at two successive “first readings” before it succumbed this week to legal flaws, should more properly be titled the “Landmarks Demolition Ordinance,” since its true purpose is to speed up land-clearing for developers.  

The battleground du jour now shifts to whether the Berkeley city attorney’s office will succeed in the HumptyDumptyfication of the legally required ballot description and analysis of the November citizen-sponsored initiative which aims to re-enact the current LPO with small updates to conform to new state laws. The language is being written by Assistant City Attorney Zac Cowan. 

Cowan has been working as a city staffer on the attempt to defang the LPO from the beginning. Some might see that assignment as a conflict of interest, since Cowan is also vice-president and long-time board member of Greenbelt Alliance, which actively promotes its Dumpty version of “Smart Growth” by endorsing infill development projects like those proposed for Berkeley.  

Cowan’s initial draft of the city attorney’s analysis for the November ballot looks like disingenuous gobbledygook at first glance, with what seem to be serious errors of fact. There’s not time or space to analyze it here, and it might change anyhow. The council as of this writing is scheduled to vote to adopt whatever language he ends up with in a special meeting in the City Council chambers next Tuesday, Aug. 1, probably at 5 p.m., though the time was not posted on the city calendar at press time.  

Proponents of the initiative are undoubtedly arguing with Cowan over his choice of language as this is being written, but since Mayor Bates is thought to have the votes in his pocket they probably won’t get very far. Interested citizens should nonetheless come to the public comment period which by law precedes the meeting to make their views known. City Councilmembers in theory still have a chance to show their commitment to old-fashioned truth-in-packaging if they choose. If they don’t have enough backbone to do so, initiative supporters have the option of taking deceptive ballot language to court. 


Mysterious Telephone Poll Targets New Landmarks Law

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Someone is polling Berkeley residents by phone, targeting issues revolving around competing landmark ordinances and the upcoming mayoral election. 

The ordinances in question are Mayor Tom Bates’ recently passed revision of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) and a counterproposal opponents have placed on the November ballot, said Sharon Hudson, one of those called. 

This reporter was also called Sunday evening but declined to participate. 

In both cases, the pollsters began by asking for the recipients by name. 

“About 70 percent of the questions were about the LPO and the rest were about development and politicians,” Hudson said. 

The November ballot initiative was launched after the mayor unveiled the first version of his revision of the LPO, presenting a proposal that won immediate endorsements from the development community and their advocates. 

While Bates relented on one of his most controversial provisions—the effective elimination of the structure of merit, the city’s most controversial landmark category—the version passed by the council includes another equally volatile provision creating the request for determination, or RFD. 

The RFD would allow a property owner to force a finding on whether the site in question merited a landmark designation and would confer a two-year immunity from landmarking if the Landmarks Preservation Commission or citizens failed to initiate the landmark process. 

“There were no questions about the RFD, which struck me as a little unusual,” said Hudson. “It seemed to me they were trying to characterize the LPO as negatively as possible.” 

Austene Hall agreed that the questions seemed designed to find arguments that might be effective in campaigning against the LPO initiative. 

“It seemed to me that it was a push poll,” said Hall, referring to a poll that is designed to influence call recipients rather than simply gather opinions. 

While Hall herself wasn’t called, her son was the recipient of repeated calls until pollsters were finally able to reach him. Calls also went to children of Lesley Emmington and Sally Sachs. 

All three parents are members of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association and supporters of the initiative. 

Pollsters also asked about how favorably—or not—their subjects viewed Mayor Bates and Zelda Bronstein, the former Planning Commission chair who is opposing him in the November election. Questioners asked for favorable/unfavorable ratings of Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Linda Maio, as well as former Mayor Shirley Dean and Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O’Malley. 

Dean has emerged as a significant critic of the mayor’s ordinance, and O’Malley has repeatedly criticized the measure in this paper’s editorial page. 

One of those who hasn’t been called is Mayor Tom Bates. 

“I heard there is a poll going on, but I don’t know anything about it,” Bates said. “All I know is what I read in the Planet.” 

Because of some of the questions being asked, the mayor said he assumed the effort was being funded from West Berkeley. 

Some of those questions included ratings of the new Berkeley Bowl approved for Heinz Avenue and Ninth Street near the intersection of San Pablo and Ashby Avenues. 

Another question targeted the structure of merit bestowed on a “West Berkeley restaurant” that pollsters said had stalled a profitable development—an apparent reference to the designation of the Celia’s Mexican Restaurant building at 2040 Fourth St., the site of a proposed five-story mixed use and condo project. 

That designation was later overturned by the City Council. 

Another question pitted architectural preservation and high property taxes against new economic development in West Berkeley coupled with lower taxes, said the call recipients. 

One name mentioned as a possible sponsor was Don Yost of Norheim and Yost, a West Berkeley real estate brokerage, investment and development firm. Told that this paper had heard he was sponsoring the poll, Yost promised to call back but hadn’t by the paper’s deadline. 

Pollsters identified themselves as employees of Communications Center Incorporated, a 19-year-old polling firm with calling centers in Washington, D.C., Spokane, Wash., and Lakeland Fl. Caller ID identified the calls as coming from the Spokane area code 

Judy Goodrich, operations director for the center, acknowledged they were conducting the poll, but said she couldn’t say who was behind it because she doesn’t know. 

“We are a third party collector which completes surveys other companies write. They don’t provide that information (sponsorship) because they don’t want to bias the outcome,” she said. 


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday July 28, 2006

ELMWOOD POST OFFICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to comments made by Wattie Taylor in the July 21 Daily Planet, I would like to clarify what is happening with the Elmwood Post Office. The District 8 Council Office has been working with the Webster Street residents and the Elmwood Post Office since January 2006, when we hosted a community meeting to discuss maintenance issues and neighbor concerns. We first learned of the lease negotiations in April when we met with the property owner, Earl March. Since then we have been tracking this issue by staying in regular contact with the Post Office staff; we have also asked Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s office to look into the status of the negotiations. The lease does not run out until July 2007, but it is our understanding, based on a recent statement from the Post Office, that they intend to renew the lease. However, they still need to work out the exact terms of the lease and maintenance agreement. Please feel free to e-mail me at gwozniak@ci.berkeley.ca.us if you have any questions or if you would like to be added to our e-mail list for regular updates on this and other issues. 

Gordon Wozniak 

City Councilmember, District 8 

 

• 

FLOOD WALL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is anyone out there concerned that Malcolm X school is building a “flood wall,” not improving the flood drainage at all, and that this wall will undoubtedly cause more houses on Ellis and surrounding streets to be flooded, because the storm drains have been severely overtaxed by development of the uphill properties? (This was a byproduct of the Oakland hill fires; it makes me furious.) Presumably the city gave the school a building permit to do the work, and must have known it would push the water into homes, instead. This is worse that the BART development issue. This will cause a lot of damage here next winter. We are paying through the nose property taxes to support the school, and this is how they spend the money—to push the water over into our homes. 

It’s an utter shame, unless the city was planning to upgrade the storm drains before this October. 

Bonnie Maly 

 

• 

BERKELEY SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you, David Baggins and John Selawsky, for bringing up an issue many Berkeley parents are concerned about. Being the “gatekeeper” of a successful school district sandwiched between two large dysfunctional districts is a difficult task and I commend the people who take on this challenging job. While the procedures may have been tightened up, there is still a significant problem with families lying about their residency instead of getting the required interdistrict permit. 

Berkeley taxpayers have been extremely generous in continuing to fund Measure B which is one reason our schools are so successful. I hope they continue to do so. Voters will be asked to renew the measure in November including stipulated class size. Voters, parents and taxpayers need to feel confident that the scarce resources, Mr. Selwasky referenced in his letter, are helping Berkeley students first, then students from outside of Berkeley can be admitted as resources allow. 

Mr. Selwasky asked for suggestions on how to improve the admission process. The Albany school district requires a lease agreement or house title which would be pretty difficult to forge (FYI: utility companies don’t care whose name is on the bill as long as the bill gets paid). 

Continuing to allow families to skirt the process is a disservice to Berkeley taxpayers and to the many honest families who request interdistrict permits every year so that their children can remain in BUSD. 

Lorraine Mahley 

 

• 

NEED FOR ENROLLMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to thank John Selawsky for responding to my letter. In the years that I and others who observe Berkeley public schools and have noticed that most of the problems have a root cause in the absence of a residency enforcement office, he is the first school official to acknowledge the issue.  

Albany enjoys a 90 percent pass rate in the California exit exam. Berkeley had a 68 percent and 69 percent pass rate (math and English). The crucial difference is that Albany, like Orinda and every other district that significantly taxes its local base to supplement the schools has an active residency validation office. Only in Berkeley will the presentation once of a PG&E and phone bill entitle the bearer to tens of thousand of dollars of taxpayer funds. There is simply no office with the responsibility to validate and enforce residency or other legal right to service. If the district absolutely knows who is crashing they will do nothing about it. Hence every time generous local tax payers raise funds they only increase the incentive to cheat.  

Anyone who wishes to validate the extent of this issue need only take one afternoon in September to stand at the bus stops along Shattuck and wait for Berkeley High to let out. You will witness police deployed to monitor hundreds of students returning daily to other districts. It would seem that Berkeley’s police department has a greater awareness of the schools in this regard than the school-board. 

Some commuting students may have perfect legal rights to BUSD service. Of course they should receive all the resources a generous city can bestow. My point is, in this age of cheap computers surely a city of 100,000 residents can keep an accurate active roster of who legitimately has rights to local service and enforce that list. PG&E should not continue to be used as the substitute validation office. 

I wish John Selawsky well in his bid to become city auditor. I know that he holds strong progressive values. I hope he agrees that responsibility to the tax payer is not incompatible with those values. Berkeley schools simply cannot progress without consideration of this crucial issue. 

David Baggins 

 

• 

MYSTERY POLL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read the story of the “mysterious telephone poll” with interest. I was contacted by a pollster. After I declined to participate, he called me again and again, telling me that I should participate because “we have a job to do.” I wonder if the organization that is behind the poll, whatever it may be, encouraged or authorized this harassment. 

Jenifer Steele 

 

• 

BOOKS, NOT UNIFORMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On June 14 the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board did a very curious thing. The School Board passed a policy that mandated school uniforms for all elementary schools and middle schools in the district. The School Board passed this uniform policy without establishing support from parents, teachers, or school PTAs and against the wishes of many parents.  

Moments before the policy was passed, the president of the Bayside Council of PTAs spoke out against the policy and reminded the School Board of the Bayside Council of PTAs’ resolution against the uniform policy (visit www.baysidepta.org). The president of Kensington Elementary’s PTA informed the Board that 400 or more students would choose to legally opt out of the uniform policy. Madera parents submitted a petition with 280 signatures requesting the School Board to rescind the uniform policy. (Madera Elementary enrollment is 350.)  

I have spoken with numerous parents at Madera, Castro, Fairmont, and Harding Elementary and Portola Middle School. A strong majority of parents are against a mandatory uniform policy for the school district. Here is why. On June 28 the School Board approved the final 2006–2007 School District budget that slashes funding for books and supplies by $1.2 million, reduces instructional materials by 15 percent, and eliminates staff development entirely. Rather than attempting to restore funding to these critical areas, the School Board proposes to reduce funding further by purchasing 2,400 school uniforms instead. Clearly, 2,400 uniforms will not come close to supplying enough uniforms for the 11,351 economically disadvantaged pupils in the District’s elementary and middle schools. 

I propose that parents opt out of the misguided uniform policy and, with the money saved, make a donation to their school’s PTA to restore funding to books, supplies, instructional materials and to enhance music and art programs. 

Robert Fox 

El Cerrito 

 

• 

SUSAN PARKER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Susan Parker’s column is the first thing I turn to in the paper. She is a gifted writer who never takes herself too seriously. I admire how she remade herself in the aftermath of tragedy.  

Polly Strahan 

 

• 

COMPASSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I know a bit what it takes to be a caretaker of a disabled person. It amazes me when people without an ounce of compassion dare to criticize Susan Parker. She has shown a lot of fortitude in her situation. I want to say to her: don’t let the bastards beat you down. Life is hard enough for you and your husband. The two letters in the same issue by Ruby Long and Ashwin Sodhi expand on this note of encouragement to her and respect for her. Thank you, Susan Parker, for doing what you’re doing and giving us the opportunity to see what it is to be a humane, compassionate person.  

Carmel Hara 

 

• 

ROLE MODEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I too have a disabled husband. Mine has recovered greatly from a surgically induced stroke during a brain aneurysm repair, but we have been through hell and he is a different (do not think “worse”!) person that he was before. I too have been changed by his injury—I like to think for the better. All this is to say that Susan Parker’s articles have brightened and lightened my path during the past two and a half years. I was told at the beginning of his lengthy rehab about the high divorce rate that Susan mentions in her most recent column. I inwardly promised my husband and me, “Not us!” and I can honestly say I have never considered leaving him behind to make a separate life for myself. I’ve had help from therapists, but I’ve also had Susan’s role model to buoy me. What I face is so minor, although scary, compared to her daily work! Don’t let those who’ve never been on the journey get you down, Susan. You’re my hero. I love your stories, your compassion, your pragmatism, even the peeks you give us of your deep sorrow for the marriage you might have had. We all need your tales of toughness and tenderness—the ones who nitpick, the most! 

Karen White 

Oakland 

 

• 

CLARA BALLARD HOUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A landmarked building, the Clara Ballard House, was demolished without a demolition permit! A landmarked building in a landmarked historic district was demolished! How does one “inadvertently” demolish a building? Why didn’t the contractor/architect/developer tell the city of this problem? Why didn’t the city inspector notice that this landmarked building was demolished? Why is it necessary for the neighbors to enforce the city’s rules?  

The developer claims that this demolition was “inadvertent.” If that is true, why the elaborate “cover-up” story? And, why is the city Planning Department so willing and eager to believe and promote the lies when the truth is in the city’s files?  

Environmental protection laws and procedures designed to protect historic resources have been ignored in the interests of “progress.” The MND was issued before the LPC had an opportunity to comment on the demolition. An EIR is required in cases where there is a significant impact on a historic resource. It can hardly be argued that demolition is not a significant impact, yet no EIR was prepared.  

A demolition requires an EIR. Did the developer intentionally demolish this landmarked building to avoid the EIR process and the additional demolition permits and fees?  

Demolition of a building without the proper permit is a misdemeanor—a crime. Why wasn’t this case referred to the city attorney’s office for prosecution?  

This developer has violated the terms of the original permit many times with no consequences; noise violations requiring police intervention, destruction and replacement of fences without LPC required approval and city permits, raising the backyard by two feet without proper permits and approval, etc. Demolition of this historic building was just another “minor” violation without consequence to this developer—and, apparently, to the Planning Department.  

Why would the city want to “legalize” an illegal demolition without a proper investigation? 

Does the mayor, the city, the LPC, and ZAB really intend that Landmarked buildings be “rebuilt” to look as if they were old—replacing 80-90 percent of the original building including interior and exterior walls?  

Questions must be asked so that a landmarked building is never again “inadvertently” demolished and replaced with a new “Disney-like” building.  

Those of us who live and work in the Oceanview-Sisterna District take pride that this is the foundation neighborhood to what later became the City of Berkeley. We believe that this working class Oceanview-Sisterna Historic District is a great asset for the entire city—for future generations to enjoy.  

Please ask the tough questions that need answers. A full hearing on this “inadvertent” demolition of a historic landmarked building is required so that this never happens again in this City of Berkeley.  

Jano Bogg 

 

• 

CLARIFICATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am concerned that readers who did not read my initial letter (July 18) may be deceived by Barbara Gilbert’s ludicrous statement that I agree with her point that the Bush-Cheney impeachment measure was not geared to focus attention to important local issues. The debate regarding if Berkeley should speak out on national and international issues, which is at the very heart of point she made is a very important local issue, and is something we strongly disagree about. I believe that Berkeley should continue to help shape Americas national dialogue. She believes we should not support the Bush-Cheney impeachment measure. These are opposite positions. Any suggestion they are not is deceitful. 

Furthermore, I never called Ms. Gilbert names. What my letter said was that the cities bad policies offered “…no justification for Ms. Gilbert’s deplorable and reactionary opposition to the Bush-Cheney impeachment measure.” There is a difference between saying that opposition to a ballot measure is deplorable and reactionary, and labeling a person as such. Ms. Gilbert’s commentaries appears on these pages regularly, and your readers can decide without my help if Ms. Gilbert is deplorable, reactionary, or both. 

As for my own view, just to be clear, it is this: I believe that failing to vote for the Bush-Cheney Impeachment measure that will appear on Novembers ballot as a way to protest any bad policy decisions by the Berkeley City Council is reactionary. I believe failing to vote for a measure that will add Berkeley’s voice to those calling for the impeachment of George Bush is deplorable. I hope my point is clear enough so that no one else comes up with a way of misinterpreting what I have written. 

Elliot Cohen 

 

• 

APPALLED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can no longer stand by and bite my tongue. As a leftist and a Jew, I’m appalled that the most trenchant and accurate commentary of late comes from Pat Buchanan, who recently referred to the U.S. Congress as “Israeli-occupied territory.” 

And for once, the normally incisive and correct (if deadly dull) Noam Chomsky has the cart before the horse. Chomsky has long claimed that the United States uses Israel as in instrument of its geopolitical aims, but quite the opposite seems to be the case. 

David Nebenzahl 

North Oakland 

 

• 

MISINFORMED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What ill-informed alternative universe does Becky O’Malley inhabit? She claims, by right of the Geneva Conventions, that there are few voices in the world that support Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah. Does she not know that the Senate and House of Representatives have just voted in favor of a strong resolution of support for Israel’s actions in Lebanon. The vote was unanimous in the Senate and over 95 percent in the House. Even Barbara Lee, the House’s leading pacifist, did not vote against it. Israel has never enjoyed stronger support internationally for this war of self-defense. Even the Saudis, the Egyptians and the Jordanians have overtly cheered Israel on. The Germans and Brits are strong supporters as well. Outside of the mythical Muslim street, the rest of the world appears highly sympathetic, even if countries without a dog in this fight tend to keep a low profile. 

In facing down Hezbollah, Israel has killed civilians, some 300 or more to date. This is bad, and because “if it bleeds it leads,” we see a lot of it on TV. But the reality is that Israel has flown more than 5,000 bombing sorties against Hezbollah. The number of civilian dead is “only” 300 because of the intense care that Israel takes in targeting a Hezbollah that is deeply embedded among their civilian supporters (Hezbollah enjoyed overwhelming electoral support in Southern Lebanon) while avoiding those civilians. In short, when Israel hits a civilian it is a mistake; when Hezbollah or Hamas hit a civilian it is a triumph of their policy. This war began because their missiles were launched into Israel even though Israel has left every square inch of Gaza and every square inch of Lebanon. This is because both Hamas and Hezbollah, along with their sponsors, Iran and Syria, insist that Israel must be exterminated. We’re talking genocide, Becky. What do your Geneva Conventions say about that? 

John Gertz 

 

• 

ROOT CAUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. B. Nielands’ (Letters, July 25) is to be applauded for engaging in the important inquiry of the “root cause of the strife in the Middle East.” 

For J.B., it’s “the continuing occupation of Palestine by Israel.” 

The root cause of that was the Sept.. 1, 1967 decision by the Arab League to reject Israel’s offer to return captured land in exchange for recognition of Israel’s right to exist. 

The root cause of that was the defeat of the Arab League in its 1967 war against Israel. 

The root cause of that was the defeat of the Arab world’s 1956 war against Israel. 

The root cause of that was Israel’s repelling the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel. 

The root cause of that was the Arab world’s rejection of partition plans in the ’40s and ’30s. 

The root cause of that was the violent rioters in that region around 1936 who carried signs reading “Palestine for Arabs.” 

The root cause of that was the same sentiment that led to the massacre of more than 100 Jews in Hebron in 1929. 

Neilands asks: “{A}m I missing something?” Perhaps the PLO covenant which expressly approves violence as a tactic for the declared strategy of destroying Israel. Perhaps the Hamas covenant which declares all of Israel sacred Muslim land which must be cleansed of infidels. 

But I digress. 

Those who do not search deep and broad enough for roots are left with half-baked, sterile dirt incapable of sustaining life, and susceptible to being tossed into chaos by the nearest random hot wind. 

David Altschul 

 

• 

SPITZER’S INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What a wonderful group of columnists the Daily Planet has assembled for our community’s edification on international issues! Not only are we regularly treated to the wisdom of Conn Hallinan, former editor of the Communist Party’s Peoples Weekly World screed, but most recently the Planet published a refreshingly unbiased commentary by a Teheran based scribe who calls himself “Homayon.” Said commentator understandably writes under a pseudonym as it would embarrass anyone to acknowledge parroting the paranoid line of the Iranian theocracy. Doubtless waiting in the wings to pen the next illuminating op-eds scheduled by this font of international knowledge: David Duke and Kim Jung-il. 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

 

• 

RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In J.B. Neilands’ July 25 note to the editor, I disagree whole-heartedly of his/her opinion: “The root cause of the strife in the Middle-East is the continuing occupation of Palestine by Israel. Or am I missing something?” 

I am not Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, Lebanese, etc. so have no affiliation with any of them—I am just a typical Anglo-Saxon European-based ancestry— who disagrees with the aforementioned comment. Israel gained the territories it currently has from the 1967 war where it was attacked. In war, contraband includes land acquisition. If I am not mistaken, Israel granted Palestine the Gaza Strip for their people/sovereignty—and yet they still bomb Israeli people. The Palestinians, Hezbollah Lebanese, Iraqi government (not people), Iranian government (not people!), Syrian government (not necessarily the people) all promote blowing up Jews. I do not see any Israel bombers anywhere—or any other religious sect of people blowing people up—except the Muslims. 

Personally I am sick and tired of this one-book theocracy seen around the world, whether it be Mohammedans/Muslims/Hezbollahs, Jews, (Evangelical) Christians. As far I am concerned those personages blowing people up (i.e. suicide bombers) are all fanatics, and as we learned in the last World War via kamikaze pilots, the only way to deal with a (religious) zealot is to kill them outright before they kill you. This is why all this “clean war” tactics will never succeed in the Middle East or anywhere else. You must annihilate completely, absolutely, with full measure—as we had to do to Germany and Japan—to eradicate the (religious, socialistic) zealots. And now these two respective countries are our allies, very civilized cultures, and apart of the Earth Society, and not outcast zealots, as apparently these suicide bomber Hezbollah, Mohammedans and on occasion, (Evangelical) Christians are (the latter towards abortion clinics in the United States). That is how I see it, and how it needs to be dealt with. 

So to answer your commentary, it is not Israel who is to blame. It is a bunch of religious zealots who are to blame, not Israel. In this current diatribe, Israel is merely replying en-force, protecting their people—as any country has the right to do. 

Mark K. Bayless 

 

• 

NEVER AN ANSWER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Letter writer J.B. Nielands states that “the root cause of the strife in the Middle East is the continuing occupation of Palestine by Israel” and then asks if he is missing anything  

All that is missing is an explanation for why are there any Jewish-only colonies and roads on land illegally taken by force in 1967 and why American taxpayers are made to vastly subsidize those perpetual provocations to violence. To even ask such questions in public is to receive silence, evasion, or name-calling, but never an answer.  

Gray Brechin 

 

• 

MIDDLE EAST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It would be easier to find gold in garbage than to find restraint, much less reason, in the exchange of violence between Israel and Hezbollah.  

While neighboring countries and distant but influential ones call for a cease-fire, we who are the most involved justify our inaction with illogic.  

Secretary Rice says she will not call for a cease-fire until she can get one that is “lasting, permanent and sustainable.” This sounds like she’ll call for a cease-fire when there’s a cease-fire.  

Of course, Secretary Rice is closer to the problem that I am or want to be but I come from Alabama the same as Rice and down home we had to stop first and only then try to make the stoppage “lasting, permanent and sustainable”. 

Marvin Chachere  

San Pablo 

 

• 

HEAT WAVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Finding beautiful, cooling fog outside my window this morning, I said “Thank God!” Then, picking up the morning paper I turned, as I’ve done all summer, to the weather page, looking for the temperature in Baghdad. Yesterday it reached 120! And my heart sank, thinking of our poor servicemen, burdened with heavy helmets, combat gear, and rifles. I also mourned for the innocent people in Iraq—no air conditioning for them as they’ve been without electricity, not just weeks, but years. Oh, but then, we are bringing them democracy, aren’t we? 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

COOL CATS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

During the past heat wave, my cats would not leave their usual slumber spot, on top of my bed, even though it was in the hottest room in the house and they were all stretched out like furry noodles. So I took several ice packs, wrapped them in plastic, and distributed them under the blanket. The cats had a cool place to hang out, although they did not thank me, and when I got into bed, the sheets were delightfully chilly. 

Anne Wagley 

 

• 

CONCERNED  

ALBANY NEIGHBORS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Since Cheryl Taubenfeld has chosen not to do so in her letters to the Daily Planet (most recently in the July 18 issue), perhaps you should inform your readers that she is married to Albany City Councilmember Robert Lieber, who adamantly opposes any consideration of development on the Albany waterfront other than the nonsensical Sierra Club/CESP/CAS plan. That plan is an unworkable sham that seems designed only to achieve the longer term objective of creating obstruction and delay at any cost. And the cost would be borne by Albany tax payers. 

Ms. Taubenfeld is correct in asserting that Concerned Albany Neighbors was formed with the express purpose of opposing this “Takeover Initiative” and supporting City Council candidates who are similarly opposed. According to analyses by Albany City Staff and independent legal counsel, the initiative conflicts with the Albany City Charter and the California Constitution and other state laws. And there are many other good reasons to oppose it. Putting such a flawed initiative on the Albany ballot assures another divisive battle in our community and its passage would expose the city to expensive legal challenges, which it does not have the resources to defend. Further, its passage would expose the city to expensive consultant and other fees and expenses for which it also does not have adequate resources and for which initiative proponents do not provide in their flawed document. The term “unfunded mandates” comes to mind. And Albany taxpayers will be footing the bill for the entire folly. 

As for those who disagree with her, Ms. Taubenfeld implies that they are fomenting “disinformation.” She suggests, for example, that hosting coffees for Caruso Affiliated suggests approval of its now abandoned plan and promotes disinformation. Seems to me it is anyone’s First Amendment right to meet with anyone in order to gain and disseminate information about a proposed project. I am a person who has hosted such a coffee, but I can also assure you that I have also have given Mr. Caruso an earful on more than one occasion about aspects of his now abandoned plan that I do not like. And should the plan return in the form he has suggested, I will continue to do so. 

Of course, that is not enough for Takeover Initiative advocates such as Ms. Taubenfeld. They simply cannot tolerate the exchange of any information that does not fit their agenda. 

But whether she and her husband like it or not, Concerned Albany Neighbors will be aggressively disseminating information about the flawed provisions of the Takeover Initiative. We are deeply committed to defeating it in November. 

Sally Outis 

Concerned Albany Neighbors 

 

• 

ADIOS CARUSO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Good riddance to Caruso Affiliated, who indicated this week that they were dropping their plans for a huge development along the Albany shoreline. And kudos to the Albany City Council for their decision to deny Caruso Affiliated special favors in voting down their request for an up-front guarantee of an EIR. This request, written by Caruso, would have circumvented the standard city procedures for doing business. They should be held to the same measure as anyone else going through the Albany development process and the council recognized that fact. 

Our precious waterfront should not be developed and I was delighted to see that Caruso is leaving. It should be noted however, that Caruso has used this withdrawal tactic as a weapon to extract concessions from other cities where he wishes to develop. We must be alerted to this tactic and not be swayed. He deserves no more—or less—than the average citizen who wishes to do business in Albany.  

Paul Shain 

 

• 

BERKELEY HONDA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley Honda, on the corner of Shattuck and Carleton Street, is using city sidewalks to display their used cars that are for sale. In recent weeks, they have parked one or two cars on the bulb-out on that corner. One morning, their car was parked so close to the tree planted in the bulb-out, that I couldn’t negotiate my stroller up the wheelchair ramp and between the car and the tree, so I had to wheel the stroller around not only the car, but the tree also. When I pointed this out to one of the Berkeley Honda employees, he insisted that it was the tree that was in the way, and not his used car that was parked on the city sidewalk. 

Since when does the City of Berkeley allow it’s sidewalks to become a used car lot? This is particularly offensive considering all the effort that has gone in to making Berkeley a walk-able and bike-able city. Now I not only have to hope that the speeding cars don’t hit me as I cross Shattuck, but once I get across, I have to navigate through the used cars that are parked on the sidewalk. Berkeley Honda is not being a good neighbor, and the City of Berkeley is not protecting the interests of it’s residents that are trying to make Berkeley a better place by walking, instead of driving.  

Karla James 

 

• 

KENNY BOY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Remember Kenny-Boy Lay and Enron’s fraudulent shenanigans in planning and carrying out their deception? All that happened when Billy-Boy Clinton was president.  

John Locke 

Emeryville 

 

• 

SIDEWALK TRASH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Perhaps a sofa in good shape is a worthwhile find, but when does the torn, stained sofa, missing a cushion become an eyesore and an instance of irresponsible public dumping? How about the stove with the oven door off? Computer monitors? Or the box of Styrofoam peanuts left topless on the corner, with the wind gently scattering the peanuts up the block? Is this recycling or garbage? And how long should it stay out there? Twenty-four hours, five days, three weeks, or until the rainy season? 

Yes, the students have left, and as a long-term resident of South Berkeley, I am tired to seeing my community streets used as dumping grounds. As I ride my bicycle to downtown to go to the library, or to the post office, I grit my teeth seeing piles of contaminated recycling (recycling mixed with garbage or food) which the city refuses to pick up. And as the weeks goes by, the pile grows larger as it gets knocked over, as others conveniently add to this disgusting pile. 

On Wednesday, I reached my limit. Riding up Fulton at the corner of Haste, a pile that had been there for several weeks, had an ominous cloud of flies buzzing over it. As I looked down, someone had graciously added a dead cat on top of the now half empty box of Styrofoam peanuts. 

I have tried calling Public Works. What is the law in Berkeley? Is this type of irresponsibility something we cherish, or should we simply call it what it is, public dumping and garbage. I can see leaving something that is nice, out for 24 hours. But even something nice that’s left on the street for a week becomes an eyesore. 

Once upon a time, the city had city wide clean-up days, where this stuff was picked up during the summer. That program was stopped. I wholly support impeaching Bush, but I would also really, really like for the city to either pick up the garbage, or hold property owners responsible for cleaning up in front of their buildings. 

Yolanda Huang  


Commentary: One Last Visit to Telegraph Avenue’s Cody’s Books

By Anne Blackstone
Friday July 28, 2006

I knew I had to make one last farewell visit to Cody’s Books on Telegraph before it closed. To leisurely browse one last time the new-book tables in the front and wander through the stacks to see what was “new and notable.” And mostly just to drink in the vibe of being in what to me was the heart of Berkeley—the freedom of ideas, the right to challenge entrenched power and thought. 

I didn’t know there would be an “event,” though if I’d given if half a second of thought, of course I’d have known. If I, a single customer closer to the outer fringes of middle America than to the core of leftist Berkeley radicalism, was as shocked, disbelieving, and grieved by the closing of this Berkeley icon, this favorite destination that I just assumed would be there forever and always available should I need a serious book-browsing fix, imagine the feelings of those for whom this was a cultural/political center before and through the 1960s, site of countless poetry readings and book launches by up-to-then unknown writers. Of course there would be an event. 

So I arrived to a crowd of people sitting and standing in the middle of the store where all the cards used to be—cleared away to make room for the chairs—listening to Andy Ross, the store’s manager for the past 29 years, giving the last of his remarks. When it came time to move from reminiscences to actually saying his goodbyes to this historic location, he was simply unable to continue. His wife and partner, Leslie, completed his remarks. There were tears and applause all around as years of memories and associations and sense of loss washed through the crowd. 

The store simply could not make it financially. Sales had steadily drifted downward over the past decade from $10 million to $3 million, and the overhead at this location was just too high to turn things around. The Fourth Street and San Francisco stores are doing better—growing, even—but like all independent bookstores, are still struggling. More than 6,000 independent book stores once belonged to the American Booksellers Association (ABA). Now 1,000 do.  

The chains and Internet are the primary sources of monetary exodus. Andy and Cody’s had been in the forefront of independent booksellers taking publishers to court for unfair practices in granting chains discounts not offered to independent booksellers. There had been successes. Independent stores were not going to go down without a fight. But at this location it had not been enough.  

I can vouch for the problem, with an astonishing number of books purchased through Amazon.com to my name. Since I first heard that Cody’s on Telegraph was closing, I have sworn off Amazon for anything other than what I cannot, for whatever odd reason, order through my local independent book stores. This was just too painful a loss. 

Maxine Hong Kingston emceed the event. Pat Cody, who started the store 50 years ago in 1956 with her husband Fred, recalled memorable events: the start of the speaker’s program, the “low-key” harassment (relative to the later firebombs and pipe bombs surrounding the Salmon Rushdie Satanic Verses reading—one of the holes in the ceiling from that bombing is still there); how publishers used to call Fred to ask what was new, what people were talking and thinking about, what they should be looking for in new writers and manuscripts versus the current practice in which publishers often won’t sign a contract with a writer until they have gotten an okay and an estimate of sales volume from the chains, including Wal-Mart.  

Susan Griffin—feminist writer and poet—spoke. As did many other writers and poets, one of whom made a point of noting that Cody’s always carried the work of local writers, even unbound copies of their work. A letter from Salmon Rushdie expressing sadness about the closing of the store was read. Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates spoke, a Berkeley councilwoman presented a proclamation. A letter from Barbara Lee was read.  

In speaking to the deep attachment to this location, a writer said it best, I thought, when he likened it to the pruning of an aging tree—that sometimes some of the older branches need to be pruned back for the tree itself to live and thrive. One can only hope that this is what it will turn out to be.  

It could also be a harbinger of things to come—the ’60s activists gradually dying, the passing of an era. There are aspects of that era that are probably best left to pass on, but what are we putting in place of that which was good and vital and important? 

We shall see if Cody’s on Fourth can measure up to Cody’s on Telegraph. In some ways the answer is a foregone conclusion: of course it can’t. It just doesn’t have the ambience, the vibe, the history of Telegraph, and it never will. Can the kind of free thought that flourished on Telegraph be sustained in the gentrified environment of Fourth Street? I question the very possibility of it. But will it, on the other hand, morph into something different but still worthy of celebration 50 years from now? Time will tell.  

I know, however, that it won’t have a chance in hell of surviving if people like me, who know that independent book stores are struggling, roll over and decide that it is just too convenient to have Amazon (at bottom, let’s face it, a “big-box retailer” if there ever was one) ship me my books rather than call Cody’s or Pendrangon/Pegasus or Black Oak or Diesel or Moe’s or Walden Pond and ask them to get it for me.  

If I let my favorite stores go under by little more than laziness and maybe saving a few bucks, if by my actions, I “decide” I don’t really need or want a community of local, independently minded store-owners and am happy to have chain stores take over the “heart of the village,” then I guess I deserve what I get and have no right to complain or grieve. 

But on its last day, I just needed to say farewell to my favorite Cody’s on Telegraph book store. It will be so missed. Damn. 

 

Anne Blackstone is an Oakland resident.


Commentary: Imagine a Day Without Hippies

By Winston Burton
Friday July 28, 2006

Some people have told me that the recent developments on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley (the closing of Cody’s Books and decline of business in the area) are indicative of young people’s rejection of a dead culture—Hippies. Well, I for one am still alive and kicking! 

Last week I was driving my 12-year-old son to his music lesson, listening to NPR. It was a beautiful day and all was right with the world, and then he said something, out of the clear blue sky, that chilled me to the bone. “I hate hippies”! “Why,” I said? “They’re losers! They messed up my future with their hippie revolution—sitting around half-naked on blankets flashing that stupid peace sign. We should have dropped the bomb! Then there wouldn’t be any wars and I wouldn’t have to go to Iraq or some other crazy country when I get older,” he said. I told him, “Your solution is simplistic, but accurate—probably not, and though I’ve personally experienced violence I’m not an advocate of war. I’m still a Hippie! I took part in sit-ins, be-ins, demonstrations, marched with, Martin Luther King, and heard Malcolm X speak. I saw Jimi, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin and The Doors—live! Once a hippie always a hippie!” “Wrong,” he said, “You’re not a hippie anymore, you’ve been de-hippiefied. You wear ties to work, have short hair and drive a Volvo station wagon.” I tried to explain to my son that being a hippie was not about how you looked but what you do. “Hippies have values: peace, love, brotherhood. Growing up in a gang-infested neighborhood in West Philadelphia it was the Hippie movement that made us lay down the gun and pick up the peace pipe.” “No matter what you say you can’t change my mind,” he said. “A closed mind is almost worthless,” I responded, getting irritated. “You sound like a Republican!” I wondered where I went wrong. 

One thing my son said that stood out was his reference to the Hippies as a revolution. We did change the world, but we stopped short. We joined the Democrats and organized religion, got paid off and ripped off, and became a part of the status quo—a by-line in history. We should have held out, changed the agenda and started our own party—The Hippie Party! Our platform could’ve reflected values like free speech, non-violence, equal rights, love thy neighbor, free love, music, dance, art, the environment, self medication and enlightenment.  

What would a Hippies political party look like? Think of the endless possibilities! Politicians like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush should join (Bill said he never inhaled and Hippies never exhaled, Bush was a known user). Jimmie Swaggert and Jim Baker who loved multiple partners would join. Who obviously was more against joining the Armed Forces than Rumsfield and Dick Cheney who never served in the military—doves in hawk clothing. The NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball and all other sports franchises—notorious proponents of steroid and drug use would join. Everyone in Hollywood, and the music industry would join. Advocates of healthy eating and the environment like Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey and Alice Waters would join. Who wouldn’t join? The only two people who may not are Jerry Farwell and my son, but he’s only 12! 

To me the Beatles were one of the biggest catalysts for the Hippie revolution. Middle class white kids who decided to grow there hair long, and emulate the Beatles, were ostracized by their parents—thrown out, cut off from the will, only because they wanted to grow their hair long. Sure there were the beatniks and the bohemians, but that was contained to a small segment. But when mainstream America battled their kids over the length of their hair—the fight was on. Young people rebelled, left home, and realized that their parents were wrong about a whole lot of other stuff too—like racism, sexism, classicism. The grip that parents held over their children, honor thy mother and father no matter what, was broken, and millions of kids never returned home! You can be sure if your parents threw you out because of your hair, bringing someone home of a different culture or color would not get you invited to Christmas dinner. When my brother and I brought white kids home to our all black neighborhood it truly tested the strength of family and neighborhood bonds too! But ultimately we won—an integrated world. There can be no progress without tension! 

Let’s bring the peace sign back—flash it, defeat the gang signs, we can win this time!  

San Francisco has long ago past away as the center of the Hippie nation. Today our challenge is to bring together the urban Hippie (Berkeley) and the rural Hippie (Santa Cruz). I didn’t move to Berkeley because of the shopping experience, but the human experiment! In spite of what Rodney King said maybe we can all get along! Shop Telegraph! Buy your books, buy your beads, and buy your bongs there! 

People around the country let’s come out of the closet, we’re fighting each other over dumb stuff! Who can join the East Coast Hippies and the West Coast Hippies? Forget the Blue State, Red State rhetoric there’s plenty of Hippies in the Midwest too. I’ve seen them, I lived there. We need a leader. Who can unite us? Who is qualified to re-invigorate our Hippy revolution? I’d volunteer myself, but my kids have swimming lessons, and I’ve got a mortgage to pay. 

So the next time you see me, if you’re on board, flash the peace sign. A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Our kids need us!  

Peace and power to the people!  

 

Winston Burton is a Berkeley resident. 

 


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday July 25, 2006

BUSD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

David Baggins, in his July 18 letter, cites BUSD’s many Oakland students as one reason for the achievement gap. Much as it would be to my advantage to agree, I must respectfully disagree. Mr. Baggins is relying on out-dated, anecdotal, and inaccurate information in his assertion that Berkeley’s students “are substantially from Oakland.” In the last few years we have tightened procedures for non-Berkeley admission to Berkeley schools, demand at least two current proof-of-residence (utility bill, checking account, drivers license), and the public should know that there are legal, legitimate reasons for non-Berkeley students attending Berkeley schools (such as the state care-giver law).  

I am open to suggestions on how to improve our procedures, but short of spending scarce resources and sending already burdened staff out on “residence checks” that most likely would have limited effect, we have done everything legally possible to ensure that Berkeley schools nurture and instruct Berkeley students and those legally permitted to attend our schools. 

John Selawsky 

Director,  

Berkeley School Board 

 

• 

CARUSO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Caruso has made it appear that he is withdrawing his application for a mall on the Albany shoreline. With two other cities, Glendale and Thousand Oaks, he made similar gestures to obtain reversals of the cities’ positions. The Albany City Council has supported a citizens’ planning process for the shoreline and opposed the Caruso-driven request for special approval of his proposal. The planning for the waterfront should not be developer-driven. This will be a legacy for generations to come and should be planned for thoughtfully by Albany’s citizens. 

Joanne Wile 

Albany 

• 

SUSAN PARKER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank Susan Parker for her column on caring for Ralph. She opened my eyes to a world that was previously unknown to me. As someone who has never had the experience of being disabled or the responsibility of caring for a disabled person, I had not thought much about what that would be like. 

I have heard that disabled people often feel they are invisible—people don’t make eye contact with them, necessary special arrangements at public places aren’t made, accessibility to events isn’t available to them, they are forgotten in our society.  

Suzie has done a lot to destroy that invisibility in her columns for the Planet. After reading about Ralph and her life with him, I can never again look at someone in a wheelchair without considering the courage and determination and preparation that put him or her in a place where we can have a shared experience. 

Yes, Suzie, you go girl. You deserve a lot of credit. Ralph is damned lucky to have you in his life. 

Ruby Long 

 

• 

BRAVE AND POIGNANT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To Susan Parker: I find what you wrote to be a very brave, poignant account. I am inclined to believe that rather than abate the criticisms you’ve been facing as a result of your comment, you will probably see an escalation and another misaimed retort in an inevitable banter of what you should and shouldn’t say.  

So I wanted to share my opinion that your current piece gave most of us readers and unreserved, living, breathing day in the life of someone who is married to someone in a wheelchair. They way in which it was written—a droning laundry list that embodied the daily routine you have been undertaking, which culminates into a bold, erupted statement that serves as a vent for your frustrations—mirrored your emotions brilliantly and truly illuminated what you are experiencing to oblivious and interested readers like myself.  

Thank you for sharing a part of your mind and making your column human, in spite of the inevitable comments from people who always feel like they need to have the last word. 

Ashwin Sodhi 

 

• 

WARM POOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

From one Bay Area working parent to all others: You must support the Berkeley Warm Pool. You care about the elderly and disabled, but you have your own set of problems and retirement is decades away. If it seems unfair to pay for something you don’t plan to use, please consider this: 

Suppose you put down this paper and set off on a walk with your child. Suddenly, it hurts to turn your head. You have joined the world’s chronic pain patients in the search for relief. In the weeks, months, and years that follow, you look the same to your boss, your coworkers, family and friends. But some days you struggle to complete simple tasks your 72 year old father can do with ease, not to mention parenting and all you’re other responsibilities. The drain on your time, finances, and quality of life is enormous. 

You start warm water pool therapy with low expectations. But one afternoon you realize you are feeling no pain: hope at last. However, the pools are in expensive private therapy centers open only during working hours, as if all pain patients were retired or on worker’s comp. Even with sick time and insurance, could you afford to miss six or more hours of work per week? What would it mean to have a warm pool on evenings and weekends, where for a few dollars you could even bring your child? 

I know the answers, because all of this happened to me in my 30s. If you don’t plan to use the warm pool, please remember—neither did I. 

Kim Fogel 

Richmond 

 

• 

OAKLAND VIOLENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am baffled, that in his July 21 column, “Doing ‘Something’ About Violence in Oakland,” J. Douglas Allen-Taylor has not used his valuable platform any better than those whose motives he questions. He rightly speaks of the neglect to “understand the nature and cause” of the problem before seeking a cure, and he asks about the causes of this “bloody violence that is threatening to crush the East Bay.” I agree that “money and votes” are two obvious causes of this stagnation to proper action.  

However, he neglects to inform about at least one major cause of both of those blocks to healing: the billions of dollars that continue to be squandered in our draconian “drug war.” Has he forgotten the true reasons for ignoring this “wasted” money—that the legal-drug-sellers, the illegal-drug sellers, and probably the most powerful stalemate to change, the departments of law-enforcement and punishment, would all be losers if this “war” ended. When we add to this mix, those legislators who fear losing votes, I expect that lack of vital social services, such as treatment and education, will persist. 

There is a great irony, that those who are denied such services will continue to be desperate, and will continue to provide jobs for those who punish them. 

Gerta Farber 

 

• 

THE ARTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I found Robin Henderson’s commentary in the Berkeley Daily Planet’s recent issue “Keeping the Arts in the Public Eye Proves Challenging Every Year” very accurate but omitting an important factor. I worked several years ago at the Berkeley Arts Center serving as a volunteer with Robin, who is the executive director. I found the shows quite elitist and extremely “avant garde.” The center is partially funded by the City of Berkeley but in reality, Berkeley artists have little or no access to the center. At the time of my volunteering the center was governed by a board of directors who did not allow me to attend one of their meetings, even though I was also serving on the Berkeley Arts Commission and the Design Review Committee. If the Berkeley Arts Center truly wants to serve the Berkeley community, it should open their doors to Berkeley artists, allow them to have solo or group shows without a lot of restrictions. This would create a lot of good will , encourage Berkeley artists to show their work in their own city and bring money to the center with sales which these shows would generate. In other words, this would truly keep the arts in the public eye in our own city. 

Andree Leenaers Smith 

 

• 

THE MR. CHARLES HOTEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When I first heard that the new hotel planned for Center Street, in Downtown Berkeley, may be named The Berkeley Charles I was pleasantly surprised. I’m not sure if any other Berkeley buildings, parks or monuments are named after African-Americans, but it would be the first I was aware of. Imagine my surprise when I learned the name was a reference to the Charles Hotel in Boston, and not our internationally known, local celebrity, Mr. Charles, The Waving Man! Boston? The only place in the United States where I have experience more prejudice and bigotry than Boston was the Deep South, but that’s another story. 

We can still save the day, and make the developers from the East Coast and local Berkeley folks happy by naming the hotel the Mr. Charles. What better name for a place that will attract visitors from around the world than to be associated with a man who spent so many years greeting everyone just to make them smile. How many of you would occasionally change your route so you and your kids could wave in the morning? I know some kids that started out in a car seat waving, and eventually were driving on their own, smiling back at Mr. Charles as he said, “Have a nice day.” Hopefully we can locate his famous gloves and put them in a glass case in the lobby! What do you think? 

Winston Burton 

 

• 

ASHBY INTERSECTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems to me that the traffic congestion in the area of Ashby and San Pablo could at least be reduced if there were left-turn-only arrows in all four directions. 

Of course this would probably take City Council’s saying something officially to the state Legislature because Ashby is a state route and traffic on state routes can’t be interfered with without action on the Legislature’s party. That was done not so long ago to the benefit of the Claremont ... surely it could be done to the benefit of the rest of Berkeley. 

And while city and state are on the subject, it would be a good idea to make all the left turns from Ashby signal-controlled: the turns at College, Telegraph, Shattuck and, to a lesser extent, Sacramento, are all messy, and frustrated drivers do stupid, aggravating things (blocking traffic by pulling into the middle of the intersection, starting turns after the light has turned red). 

Joann Lee 

 

• 

NURSES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for insightful editorial by Becky O’Malley on the pending National Labor Relations Board, “Kentucky River” decision. As an RN at Highland Hospital (otherwise known as the Alameda County Medical Center), I have nearly 30 years of experience as a staff nurse and it’s true that nurses are frequently key to the decisions regarding patient care. I’ve acted as charge nurse, supervised LVNs and CNAs, and precepted countless staff nurses on the floor, yet never in my life have I ever been considered “management.” All these duties are routine for any staff nurse. We do not hire or fire. We do not formally evaluate our co-workers. We don’t do shift scheduling. We don’t attend “management” meetings. We have very little input in the many changes that effect our working conditions and job descriptions. At ACMC we are represented by SEIU, Local 616. The union management should be criticized for not joining with CNA to protest the NLRB decision. My co-workers had no idea that there was a rally held in downtown Oakland last week to protest this union busting attempt. Many nurses at ACMC, feel left out of any co-ordinated effort to uphold the union and draw public attention to this issue. Did Arnold’s sneaky little trip to Washington last week have anything to do with the “Kentucky River” cases? Could this possibly be retaliation against those so-called “special interest” groups that defeated Arnold’s special election? Consider nurses to be the canary in the coal mine for the rights of all organized working people. 

Merielle Olson 

 

• 

PROPORTIONAL DAMAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With a population of approximately 3 million people, Lebanon is about one one-hundredth the size of the United States. Therefore, if the United States were being attacked and suffering the same level of devastation as that country, we would currently have 30,000 dead, 140,000 wounded and 50 million displaced. 

George Goth 

 

• 

ROOT CAUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The root cause of the strife in the Middle East is the continuing occupation of Palestine by Israel. Or am I missing something?  

J. B. Neilands 

 


Commentary: From Tehran: Lebanon Bombing Prelude to Iran Action

By Homayon
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Two weeks ago marked the beginning of a new round of Israeli-Palestinian violence due to which a neighboring country, Lebanon, soon became the victim of this confrontation. 

For years now, the Israelis, the Palestinians and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, have played the game of abduct and swap. A routine tactic, to swap prisoners. Just weeks ago in fact they exchanged a few hundred Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli businessman without a drop of bloodshed. This time however, when the Hamas militia took three Israeli soldiers hostage, they were confronted with a severe military attack on Gaza as well as the abduction of some of the Palestinian Hamas cabinet members. As if that was not a swift enough reaction by Israel, Hezbollah a few days later took two Israeli soldiers hostage and spoke of prisoner exchange to Israel. To the entire world’s amazement, Israel almost immediately started bombing Lebanon’s airport and formed a naval blockade at its waters. Since then violence has escalated on both sides to include the Hezbollah rockets into Israel two days after Israel began the systematic bombing of Lebanese infrastructure, pounding its capitol Beirut and other cities. 

In light of these countries past routine tactics of prisoner swap, the question has become: why such a devastating and more importantly disproportionate response by Israel?  

To search for an answer, it is important to go beyond the recent abductions and remember that in the past year and in particular the past several months, the United States has been putting more and more pressure on Iran (through its European allies) to abandon its nuclear energy program claiming that the Islamic regime has hopes of developing nuclear weapons. Just a few months ago Seymour Hersh claimed in an article that the U.S. is preparing a military plan to attack Iran using nuclear weapons. This news (sounding like an intentional leak by the administration) combined with other violent comments by U.S. officials (such as Cheney’s warning Iran of monumental destructions) was perceived to be a strong verbal warning of how far the United States is willing to go. Military actions taken by the United States usually precede by strong verbal warnings. This ignored by the Iranian government and the unfavorable response by the Russians and the Chinese the United States followed by engaging in a diplomatic move. It accepted the Iranian’s gesture for a dialogue and included itself in the European talks with Iran providing them with a so called incentive package while asking for a quick response. The Iranian administration—controlled by its juvenile supreme leader—in turn refused a quick answer and instead set its own date of Aug. 22 as the reply date.  

Almost coinciding with the G8 Summit held in Russia, and instigated amazingly by Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel set its own stage to send a loud and clear message to the Iranian Mullahs. This is followed by the comments made by the World Jewish Counsel on July 17 that the whole world must unite to cripple Iran from obtaining nuclear energy and to force them to become world players.  

In the big picture therefore, the devastating barbaric Israeli bombing of Lebanon is an ultimatum to the Iranian government. The verbal, direct and indirect warnings of the United States and Israel have not been effective with the Iranian regime, thus a preview of what will be happening to them is staged! 

One can not be certain to determine if the Bush administration was a party to this military plan, but it is difficult to imagine that such a large scale and brutal attack on Lebanon would have not been discussed with the neo-cons ahead of time. Even if that were true, only a day after Israel’s engagement in an all out war against Lebanon George Bush gave the Jewish state his blessings by stating that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Secretary Rice’s comments on July 18 in Egypt is perhaps most interesting and self-reveling. When asked if she will go to the region for a possible mediation, she replied: “The time has not come yet!” Twelve hours later the Israeli ground troops rolled into Lebanon. 

The inhumane and barbaric bombings of Lebanon by the Israeli war machine will go on for days to come as so claimed by Tel-Aviv. When this devastation comes to a halt, as an immediate achievement Israel will have broken the Hezbollah’s back as they announced they would. But more significantly Israel and the United States will have put the ball in Iran’s court effectively.  

If the Iranian supreme leader accepts to suspend its nuclear energy program, the United States has achieved its goal through the proxy of Israel and without engaging itself in another military front in the Middle East. Israel will also be rid of the thought of the fundamentalist Iranians going nuclear. In addition it will have occupied parts of Gaza—again—and parts of southern Lebanon again. 

If the answer from the Iranian supreme leader however, will not be favorable, then the bombing of Lebanon is very likely to be a prelude to the bombing of Iran in months to come. 

 

Homayon is the pseudonym of a correspondent writing from Teheran. 


Commentary: Library Director Should Not Act As Trustee Board Secretary

By Shirley Stuart
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Berkeley relies on the Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) to safeguard its library system, and we, the citizens and taxpayers of Berkeley, along with the people who staff our libraries, should have some influence on their decisions. 

The dual appointment of library director as BOLT secretary is a clear conflict of interest. There is a misconception in the community that duties of the BOLT secretary are similar to those of a business or club secretary, but the BOLT secretary has a much more powerful position than that—potentially a role more powerful than any member of the board. Such an exercise of power may explain why it took BOLT so long to understand that it must remove Jackie Griffin as library director. Serving also as board secretary, it was in fact Griffin who set board agendas, decided what materials and information would be presented to BOLT, received and screened all mail and e-mail addressed to BOLT, and in general, maneuvered BOLT’s direction. 

If BOLT was not aware of her mismanagement, perhaps it was because she distorted the effects of what she was doing. Otherwise, how could BOLT not have seen that the library was out of control, that tax dollars were being squandered, that workers who spoke out were being retaliated against? 

Didn’t BOLT know that after half a million dollars was borrowed from the City Council budget to spend on RFID (a system BOLT approved for misrepresented reasons), RFID costs then soared to more than a million dollars? Books were trashed to reduce costs of RFID installation; library  

hours had been drastically cut; new administrative positions were being created while staffing at all levels was depleted; books went unshelved because shelvers were no longer available to do the work. The director seems to have presented BOLT a rubber stamp to just approve anything she chose to do. 

Mismanagement was brought to BOLT’s attention repeatedly at board meetings, in public commentary and by testimony from staff (who were rewarded with punishment for daring to describe what was happening in the library); by demonstrations; and in meetings called to resolve conflicts. You ignored all criticism. For five years, the effects of Griffin’s incompetence went unchecked, and we will be paying the costs of her actions for a very long time. 

Apparently, it required pressure from the City Council to force BOLT to listen to the union and the public, and ultimately to remove Griffin as director. The question now is what are they doing to rectify the situation? 

It is BOLT’s responsibility to learn for themselves how the library operates, what its mission is, how library staff is being treated, and where money should and should not be spent. Otherwise, what is the purpose of having a board? 

It is vital that BOLT does not allow this to happen again. They could begin by appointing their own secretary for BOLT and taking responsibility for controlling the actions of the director. 

 

Shirley Stuart is a Berkeley resident.


Commentary: Declaration of Human Rights Should Be Law

By Jacqueline Sokolinsky
Tuesday July 25, 2006

What exactly is the United States’ position in national and international laws of peace and human rights?  

The framers of the Constitution famously left such questions out altogether, and this oversight was corrected by the appended Bill of Rights. Article 7 of the Bill of Rights says no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” But “due process of law” is nowhere defined. 

Interestingly, Article 13 of the Bill of Rights says that no one shall be subjected to “slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime.” Ratified in 1865, the loophole was never repealed, so this article allows slavery and involuntary servitude of convicted criminals. 

No where in the Bill of Rights are any principles or ethical guidelines established concerning the circumstances under which the United States may declare and wage war. 

At present, the Congress is up in arms because the Supreme Court’s recent decision to hold the president’s administration to the Geneva Conventions. Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, “I don’t think we’re going to pass something that’s going to have our military servicemen subject to some kind of international rules.” 

So what do the Geneva Conventions say? The third establishes standards for the treatment of prisoners of war (“internees”). The fourth establishes standards for the treatment of inhabitants of occupied territories. Article 3 of both documents prohibit torture and a wide range of abuses, from “outrages upon personal dignity” to “murder,” while permitting executions by “regularly constituted courts.” The fourth convention is a bizarre document. For example, safety zones may be established for “children under 15, expectant mothers and mothers of children under 7” but not for men and women generally unless “wounded, sick and aged.” In contrast to the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions permit death sentences. (The texts are on-line at www.globalissuesgroup.com.) 

Unlike the fatally ambiguous Bill of Rights, which makes no human rights provisions in its concept of “due process of law,” and the hawkish Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a beautifully lucid document. In Article 3 it asserts, without conditions, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” In Article 4: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” In Article 5: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” 

Thus, it prohibits capital punishment. Although the 18th-century Bill of Rights permits capital punishment, the subsequently ratified Universal Declaration of Human Rights should have eliminated it. In Article 8 of the Bill of Rights it prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” In the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5, it states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” 

Whether or not the current U.S. government considers itself and its military bound by “some kind of international rules”—the international community ought, in my opinion, to hold it to the international laws of peace, human rights and justice as framed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal (1950).  

The Nuremberg Principles define war crimes. One principle Americans should be familiar with is Principle II, wherein “The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.” 

Thus American torturers, though free from punishment in the Supreme Court decision—which merely ruled that torture is not permissible—should be tried by an international court. Should George W. Bush be tried for such crimes against peace defined in the Nuremberg Principles as planning and waging a war of aggression and spearheading a policy of torture and military tribunals? The Nuremberg Principles (number III) states clearly, “The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.” Should U.S. military personnel be tried for “murder” and “ill-treatment” of “civilian population or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war”? Principle IV states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” 

It is my opinion that the United States should be bound by international law and subject to international tribunals. If it is not—and at present it is not—there is no way to preserve the United States from the path of military domination of the globe and totalitarianism here and abroad. 

 

Jacqueline Sokolinsky is a Berkeley  

resident. 

 


Columns

Column: The View From Here: Another War, Another Place: Same Thing All Over Again

By P.M. Price
Friday July 28, 2006

As I watch CNN’s man-of-the-moment Anderson Cooper looking quite natty in his rugged, styled shirt (his mother is Gloria Vanderbilt, after all) with billowing smoke, raging fires, guns, blood and death smearing the landscape behind him, it occurs to me that if there were not so much real life suffering going on in the Middle East (and elsewhere), I could be watching yet another war movie, this time featuring the handsome hero/journalist who casts all thoughts of danger aside to hurtle himself past bombs and bullets to get hands-on, first-person accounts of the ravages of war. 

Andy is fully immersed in the moment; the modern day Geraldo Rivera, albeit with more class, sophistication, intelligence and seeming sincerity. 

From where I sit, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Andy, Geraldo, Christiane Amanpour or anybody else; whether the bombs are dropped and the blood is shed in the Middle East, Africa, Asia or Europe, all wars look the same. There’s always that blurring of the lines between the good guys and last week’s bad guys. Alliances shift, justification is re-worded, yet the warriors remain the same: young impressionable men, barely past boyhood, directed by much older-not-wiser men, while the victims range from infants to little girls to grieving mothers and widows to the elderly and infirm. So much “collateral damage” to those furiously fighting for more turf, more money and the illusive notion of absolute power. 

Back in the 1980s I produced a series of documentary specials for KQED-TV in San Francisco which were aired nationally on PBS. The idea was to select controversial topics and then find independently produced documentaries pro and con, mix it up with diverse commentary and package these programs into three-hour specials. One of these shows was titled “Flashpoint: Israel and the Palestinians.” 

One day, while I was busy coordinating all of my materials, my executive producer walked over to my viewing booth and told me that a group of Jewish citizens had gotten wind of the show and were coming by to look around and see if everything was kosher. “Don’t worry about them,” she assured me. “No one has any editorial control over this. Just make sure you give both sides equal time.” 

I watched the group watching me as they were given a tour of the station. One woman in particular couldn’t take her eyes off me. She wasn’t smiling. She peered at me intensely probably trying to decipher what ethnicity I was. Afro-American? Seems kind of light complected. Hispanic? Not with that bushy hair. Maybe an Indian? There’s that hair again. Certainly not an Arab? They wouldn’t dare put an Arab on this, would they? Absolutely not! Hmmm. Her name is “Price.” Maybe she’s one of those mulattos. Whatever she is, it’s clear she’s not one of us. I gave my admirer a quizzical once-over of my own and returned to work. 

My first choice to represent the Palestinians was Dr. Edward Said, recently deceased. A distinguished professor at Columbia University, he was widely considered to be the most eloquent authority on the Middle East. Said was unavailable and suggested Professor Rashid Khalidi, who now holds the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia.  

As I began my search for an Israeli representative, the first person to return my call was Benjamin Netanyahu. At the time, Netanyahu, a prominent member of the Likud party and now a former Prime Minister of Israel, was a rising star with big plans. He sounded interested but I got the impression that he didn’t want to risk going up against a Palestinian and “losing.” I tried to convince him that this could be an exciting opportunity for him (my publicist in particular was pushing for him because she thought he was “hot”) but he declined and suggested I try another member of his party and told me how to reach Ehud Olmert. 

After a few days I did reach Olmert, Israel’s current Prime Minister. He had to think about it and when I called him back Olmert agreed to be on the show under one condition: He refused to be interviewed in the same room with Rashid Khalidi. There would be no debate. In order to secure Olmert, I had to arrange for the show’s host, Steve Talbot to travel to New York to interview Dr. Khalidi and then to Washington D.C. to interview Mr. Olmert. I pieced together the footage much like the old James Kilpatrick/ Shana Alexander “Point/ Counterpoint” debate program. I was required to give each side equal time and I did, down to the second.  

Nonetheless, Ehud Olmert wrote me a letter complaining that the show was biased. It may have seemed so, only because the pro-Palestinian film, “Occupied Palestine” may have felt more compelling with its focus on the Palestinians as victims, dispossessed of homes and land which had been in their families for generations; treated like black South Africans under apartheid. The pro-Israel films leaned upon history, religion and the holocaust which then led to their assertion of entitlement to the disputed holy land. I also included a short documentary on the progressive Israeli organization “Peace Now” which advocates for compromise, for a fair division of the land and an end to the bloodshed. Ever heard of them? 

Probably not. Not enough violent or sexy visuals for American media. 

As I write this column, I glance back at CNN and the black clouds are still billowing, the flames rising, the women and children crying, the men killing. A line from the film “The Constant Gardener” comes to mind. A health worker battling the AIDS epidemic in Kenya tells the main character (who is on the verge of discovering a conspiracy between the government and western pharmaceutical companies) that he gives food only to the women because “men make wars, women build homes.”  

When will it end? What will it take? Complete annihilation of the “other side”? Isn’t it eminently clear by now that war is not the solution to anything? That it creates more problems than it solves? The destroyed continue to become the destroyers. Yesterday’s terrorists become today’s democratic leaders-turned-corporate conspirators. What happened to evolution? Is this as far as we humans go? 

Meanwhile, I recently spoke with my 16-year-old daughter who is in Tanzania for four weeks with 10 other Berkeley High School seniors, conducting AIDS education and helping out with young orphans in the small village of Shirati. Liana told me that she took a boat onto Lake Victoria and stood on a large rock, surrounded by the stunning vastness of the brilliant sky and still water. “It really made me think,” she said. “It made me think about my life and who I am and what I want to do.” She told me that when she comes home she is going to go through all of the stuff in her room and mail it to people in her village who can truly use these things. “You should make a list of all their names and what they need,” I suggested. “I don’t have to do that,” Liana responded. “I know all of their names. All I have to do is to look at something and I will know immediately who to send it to.” 

Wow. This is the kind of stretching I had hoped for when my daughter set out on her journey. Her words and the sound of her voice, filled with a new sense of awareness and purpose touched me in a profound way. Liana now views herself in a larger sense, as part of the world community—not just as an isolated middle class Berkeley kid but part of something vast and real and quite personal.  

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all felt that way? If only we knew their names.


Column: Undercurrents: Only Changing Oakland’s Priorities Will Lessen its Troubles

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday July 28, 2006

It was one of those obscure issues you run into in the back-end of the City Council agenda, when the chambers have all but cleared and the stray staff members are packing away their binders and papers and waiting patiently for the adjournment call, and the only ones who seem to be paying attention are the Sanjiv Handas of the world. 

And yet, if you want to understand how Oakland—with its great resources and pretenses of progressive politics—seems often more like a barrel rolling uncontrollably down a hill than an adult city systematically facing its most serious problems, then the recent debate over the proposed contract amendment with the Oakland Zoo is one you would have wanted to watch. Particularly in the midst of this bloody summer, when murders are fast approaching the 80 mark and though many want to get their share of television and print media time, no one seems to actually have the answer as to how to stop the carnage or even appreciably slow it down. 

Two years ago, the city and the East Bay Zoological Society reached an agreement over the operation of the city-owned Knowland Park and Zoo, for which the city supplies a considerable public subsidy. As part of the agreement, the Zoological Society said they would provide one free zoo admission day a month for Oakland residents, with the targeted population being the low-income Oakland young people whose families can’t normally afford the zoo’s admission price. 

Surprised that you live in Oakland and have never heard about the free zoo admission day? Don’t be. It has yet to be implemented. 

Earlier this month, more than a year after the zoo-city agreement was fully executed, the Zoological Society requested an amendment which would implement a different free admission program. In a letter to council requesting the amendment, City Administrator Deborah Edgerly wrote, “Society has not yet implemented the one-free day per month program. Rather, after evaluating the potential impact and logistics of the one free day, Society developed an alternative approach, which it believes could better meet Council’s desires to reach Oakland children and youth and families who might not otherwise have access to the Zoo.” Edgerly recommended Council adoption of the “alternative approach.” 

Council was not pleased. While they did not seem to think the new program was necessarily a bad idea, several members wondered why no implementation of the free day program had taken place in more than a year, with Councilmember Nancy Nadel asking why the normal contract compliance reviews by city staff had not caught the Zoological Society’s failure to provide the free day. 

Details of the zoo’s original, unimplemented proposal are not important to our discussion, or is the new proposal, or reasons why staff let this whole thing go for a year. Let us assume, for the sake of this discussion, that everybody—city staff, Zoological Society members, and city councilmembers—all want to implement some form of free-day-a-month entrance to the zoo that targets low-income Oakland young folks, but have just not yet worked out the proper way to make this work. 

It is not, after all, a city priority, and in the scheme of larger city concerns, it is a small thing indeed. No kid from the Fruitvale or Dogtown, after all, is going to pull a nine mil out of his drawer and walk out and spray bullets at someone on the corner because he can’t go up to the zoo to see the elephants and giraffes. 

The problem is that all of these small things add up, pebble upon pebble, each one with its own logic and its own excuse, until they eventually become an enormous mountain of delay and inaccessibility squatting down upon the flatlands of this city, and over which the young people of these communities find it increasingly harder to climb. And so the city closes down the wildly popular Festival at the Lake. Or announces that hip hop music will no longer be played for recreational skaters at the Oakland Ice Center on the theory that hip hop attracts young people who are prone to violence. In the midst of blistering heat waves the city cracks down on young people opening fire hydrants for relief. But meanwhile Oakland’s once-impressive citywide recreation program is in a shambles since the Harry Edwards days. What happens to these dreams so long deferred? Langston Hughes once wrote a chillingly perceptive poem about that, ending with the verb “explode.” 

My cousin, Betty Reid Soskin of Richmond, writes in her blog this week, “If we can agree that there is much profiling of youth of color in inner cities—largely from inequality rising from abject fear of not only the adult population but of the police as well—then we have a place to stand while we debate the issue.” 

“In a study done in Hennipin County, Wisconsin, a few years ago,” she continues, “it was discovered that the first encounter most young black and brown men had with the justice system was not for drug use and/or possession at all, but through traffic violations … Teens would earn (often legitimately) a speeding ticket or some other offense. They’d be without employment so had no way of paying the fines ... In a few months that fine would double—then triple—and eventually a warrant for their arrest would be issued. … Meanwhile, the seduction of getting a few rocks of cocaine to sell as a way of getting out from under their traffic problem jump-starts their street career. 

“Hennepin Country addressed the problem.” Soskin goes on, “by … [creating] a program of amnesty that would give young people a clean start, would expunge minor violations from their records, to see what might happen. The results were dramatic. Where they’d expected a few hundred to turn up, they were faced with thousands, and a breath of fresh air blew through the country as the percentage of people outside the law was suddenly decreased by a significant number.” 

Soskin concludes by saying such a program would be successful if implemented in Richmond, where murders are close to the half-hundred mark already this year. 

If you wonder why I am so skeptical of State Sen. Don Perata’s sudden Road-To-Damascus conversion to the area’s anti-violence crusader, this is one of the reasons. For several years, Mr. Perata and Mayor Jerry Brown have vied to be the area’s law-and-order leader, with the easy target being participants in the East Oakland sideshows. While the city blocked plans for sideshow alternatives (“It’s not the city’s job to provide recreation for these people,” Councilmember Larry Reid often said), we ended up with Mr. Perata’s U’Kendra Johnson Law, which allowed police to confiscate cars for thirty days solely on the word of the police officers that the driver was participating in a sideshow (this led, most famously, to police towing away the van of a basketball coach who they said was playing his music too loud while taking some his players home after a game to East Oakland, loud music being one of the police “evidences” that a sideshow is taking place). More ominously, the sanction and encouragement of public officials like Mr. Perata and Mr. Brown over the past five to six years has allowed the official and undisguised creation of what Oakland police call “sideshow zones,” areas of the East Oakland flatlands and lower hills where police are allowed and proud to enforce traffic laws more vigorously, and repressively, than is done in other areas of the city. Rather than reporting crimes solved, the police involved in these events post information of the hundreds of cars towed and tickets given out. 

“It was discovered that the first encounter most young black and brown men had with the justice system was … through traffic violations,” the Wisconsin study told us. “Eventually a warrant for their arrest would be issued [and] the seduction of getting a few rocks of cocaine to sell as a way of getting out from under their traffic problem jump- starts their street career.” Is that what is happening in Oakland now? 

I hope that Mr. Perata is successful in his newly-released, highly-publicized, nine-point program to “help combat recent homicides and street violence in Oakland and Richmond,” I truly do. But I think what is needed to accomplish that is more than the adoption of a few new and recycled programs, many of which have good intention, and have been successful in implementation in other areas. What is needed, in Oakland and in Richmond, is a change in our priorities, what we think is important, and what we pay attention to. 

“I’m hoping that we might soon stop looking at the problem,” my cousin concludes in her blog entry, “and start looking at the kids.” Right on, as they used to say, in another time and another context. 

 


Memories of a Paris Vacation: Getting Lost in the Louvre

By Marta Yamamoto, Special to the Planet
Friday July 28, 2006

I was in Paris for just a few days. According to carefully devised calculations I had two hours to tour the Louvre. After two hours I was still there. I tried following “sortie” signs toward the exit but they kept directing me through galleries showcasing illuminating artifacts. Once inside I’d get sucked back into the viewing circuit.  

Getting lost in the Musee du Louvre must be part of some diabolical plot; it’s the only way to view a small portion of the 35,000 works that make up its collection. Like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, not being allowed to leave would go a long way toward getting a grasp on the unmatched artistic history present within these walls. 

Words like maze and labyrinth have been used to describe the configuration of the largest museum in the western world. Seven major departments, from the Art of Islam and the Orient to European Painting and Sculpture, are housed in a U-shaped Palace composed of three wings, Denon, Sully and Richelieu, each made up of four levels, from lower ground to second floor. Some departments, such as Painting and Sculpture, are further divided into collections.  

Departments are color-coded and the works of art are exhibited in numbered rooms; both clearly represented on the excellent Museum Plan available in an amazing variety of languages. Directional signs are posted at intersections. 

Navigation options are as plentiful as the Paris Metro Lines. Travel Guidebooks offer specific strategies for “conquering the Louvre”, directing you to a selected list of Star Attractions. Others recommend following a particular period, department or collection in depth. You can also don headsets or accompany a Museum guide on Introductory Tours.  

This richness of statistics should have made my tour a snap. In truth, it was only post-Louvre that I became such an expert. My perusal of a Paris Guidebook in no way prepared me for my first encounter with the Louvre amidst a summer in Paris. Halfway through my visit I remembered a dream I have periodically. I’m on my way to a college final but can’t find the room or remember ever attending class. I should have been better prepared. 

Leoh Ming Pei’s glass and steel girder Pyramid is the entrance of choice for most visitors. Composed of 793 diamond and triangle-shaped panes that reflect the sky, this arresting 71-foot edifice is cleaned weekly by its own tracked robot.  

To avoid crowds I entered Napoleon Hall underground, through the Carrousel Mall off Rue de Rivoli. My first impression was of lemmings, soaring down escalators and mingling below the Pyramid. I’d arrived early, as advised, but everyone else had read the same book. 

Interested in Egyptian Antiquities I choose the Denon access, following signs to Room A. From this moment I was mesmerized, lost to the wonders of the Louvre, my plan forgotten. In dimly lit cavern-like galleries I wandered, gazing at stone friezes and portraits of funerary art, the coffin of Chenptah and a page from Thebes, plaster masks and tomb accouterments. 

One set of stairs from Lower-Ground to Ground Floor moved time from the 6th century BC Roman Egypt to 16th century Italian sculptures. In the Michelangelo Gallery my eyes kept darting from the rich bronze Mercure Volant and Hercule vainque l’Hydre to the room’s architectural details. Walls, ceiling, floors, windows, lights—each works of art in themselves. 

By now I’d joined the lemmings, heading up to view the Hellenic masterpiece, The Victory of Samothrace, occupying an entire landing. Her marble wings outstretched and clothing flattened, the force of the wind was almost tangible. Here I first encountered Digital Mania, which followed me throughout the morning. Every important work, alone or with travel partner alongside, required documentation.  

The Italian paintings of Botticelli, Fillippino and Fra Diamante lead me through galleries whose gold and green ceiling bore the painters’ names. The Grand Gallery was somber beneath a high glass-domed ceiling, paintings alternating with sculpture-filled niches. In Room 6, behind bulletproof glass and a solid phalanx of gazers, hung the Mona Lisa, so small in comparison to a huge Caliari across the room. Her enigmatic smile seemed to echo my confusion regarding her fame; why was she prized so highly above all the other paintings within these rooms. 

Among mottled brick-colored walls and black trim, French paintings held court. Huge powerful canvasses told of Napoleon’s coronation, Medusa’s raft and the death of Sardanapalus. Ample seats held many experiencing museum fatigue. Every 10 minutes I’d hunt one down, pull out my map and ask, “Where am I” and “Where am I going?” While resting I listened in to a guide, “Every painting tells a story and has a complex history; that of the painter, the times and the reason behind the painting.” 

From Venus de Milo, carved in 100 BC and viewed in the round, I entered the magnificent Apollo Gallery, a model for Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. The amount of gold present rivaling the U.S. Mint. Paintings of 15th century kings, artists and architects who worked on the Louvre hung below a gilded ceiling. Center stage went to cases holding a king’s ransom of jewelry in gold encrusted with precious gems, including a 140-carat diamond and the crown of Louis XV. 

Foot-sore and mind saturated I tried to leave. Heading toward the exit I was waylaid by an Etruscan banquet, a terracotta sarcophagus of a married couple with expressive faces, then found myself again in ancient Egypt. In a small room-size tomb, the mastaba, stonewalls were covered with bas-reliefs depicting scenes from everyday life, like a set of instructions to be followed in the after-life. Sphinxes, the four monkeys from Luxor and sarcophagi in stone and wood—the wealth of artifacts beyond belief. 

After circuiting through an archaeological exhibit on medieval Louvre’s first lives as a fortress and palace, I finally returned to Reception Hall, now home to one-tenth of the world population, and ascended by escalator into the fresh air. Above ground Pei’s Pyramid was center stage, surrounded by what I then realized was the extent of the Louvre, the magnificent three-wing Palace I hadn’t visualized from underground.  

On a sole unoccupied bench I took in the grandeur of the architecture and the sheer volume of space. Referring to my museum plan I realized that my three-hour adventure had taken me mainly through just one wing and only three levels. Surprisingly I wasn’t a bit disappointed with what I’d seen or what I’d missed. I’d given myself up to the Louvre, each artwork and artifact a tile in the giant mosaic of my experience. Now at home, I’m researching how to avoid leaving at closing time. With enough planning I could spend several days there. Well trained and prepared with comfortable shoes and energy-providing fortifications I could make it through the remaining galleries. Maybe. 

 

 

Photograph by Marta Yamamoto  

A Renaissance stone palace, fountained pools and Leoh Ming Pei’s modern glass and steel pyramid create a striking statement outside the Louvre.


East Bay: Then and Now: Landmarking the House That Students Built

By Daniella Thompson
Friday July 28, 2006

In 1974, the Berkeley Daily Gazette published the photo of a “mystery house” on the northwest corner of La Loma Avenue and Ridge Road. 

The accompanying article solicited information about this house, speculating that it might be the work of architect Ernest Coxhead (1863–1933), who designed two landmark buildings a block away—Beta Theta Pi Chapter House, 2607 Hearst Ave. (1893) and Allenoke Manor, 1777 Le Roy (1903). 

These days, the mystery house is no longer a mystery. On June 6, the Landmarks Preservation Commission initiated the Phi Kappa Psi Chapter House and will conduct a public hearing on the designation proposal at its Aug. 3 meeting. 

The Berkeley chapter (California Gamma) of Phi Kappa Psi was founded in 1899. The Alpha chapter had been established at the University of the Pacific in San Jose, but when Stanford University opened its doors in the fall of 1891, 13 members of California Alpha transferred to Stanford and established California Beta, which absorbed the Alpha chapter. 

The Berkeley chapter was organized by Stanford graduate Harris C. Allen (1876–1960), who in 1898 was taking a special course in Berkeley. The same year he also began working for the highly successful San Francisco architectural firm of Percy & Hamilton. 

For the first two years, the chapter rented a house at 2646 Bancroft Way, but the brothers found it unsatisfactory. As they reported in a 1902 issue of their alumni magazine, “The house, although well situated, was not primarily adapted to the needs of a fraternity; it was too small, inconveniently arranged, in a dilapidated condition, not easily kept clean, and high of rent.” 

A search was made for another house, but all houses available were either too far from campus, too high in rent, or unsuitable for the fraternity’s purpose. The brothers then hit upon the idea of finding someone who would agree to build a house on their own plans and rent it to the chapter. 

Such a benefactor was soon found in the person of Elizabeth Adams, a farm-owning widow from Yolo County who had two sons at UC, both Phi Kappa Psi members. 

On the recommendation of UC president Benjamin Ide Wheeler, a site was selected in the Daley’s Scenic Park tract on the Northside, and Harris Allen drew up the house plans. The Berkeley Daily Gazette of May 10, 1901 reported that “It was designed with a particular view for club use. It will be a three-story shingle Queen Anne. The interior will be finished in Oregon pine. The rooms on the lower floor will be so arranged that they may be thrown into one dancing hall sixty feet long and fifteen feet wide. The floors will be of polished hardwood. The house will contain seventeen rooms. Its dimensions will be 40x75 feet.” 

Completed in September 1901, the house never bore the slightest resemblance to a Queen Anne Victorian. In marked contrast with the latter exuberantly ornamental style, the Phi Kappa Psi house is an elegantly spare brown shingle. It the telltale marks of the First Bay Region Tradition—a style that emerged during the final decade of the 19th century, led by Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, and Bernard Maybeck. 

Maybeck himself had built a cluster of seminal brown-shingle houses on the next block to the east beginning in 1895. Of the five Maybeck houses at Ridge Road and Highland Place, only two—the Charles Keeler residence and studio—survive. The other three were demolished in the 1960s and replaced by apartment blocks. 

When the Phi Kappa Psi house went up, the neighborhood to the northeast of the campus was still largely unpopulated, and the Hillside Club was still in its infancy, having been founded a mere three years earlier. Yet the young architect—Harris Allen was all of twenty-four at the time—was remarkably attuned to the Living With Nature and The Simple Home gospel disseminated by the club’s apostles: Keeler, Maybeck, and Margaret Robinson (later Mrs. Oscar Maurer). 

Although this was the first house known to have been designed by Allen, the result was a roaring success. In 1902, the president of the president of the Phi Kappa Psi San Francisco Alumni Association wrote, “it is today the most admired and talked about ‘frat’ house in Berkeley.” 

Harris Allen would go on to become the editor of the influential magazine Pacific Coast Architect, a position he held from 1919 through 1933. In 1915, when the Phi Kappa Psi house could no longer serve the needs of a growing chapter, Harris designed for them a new house at 2625 Hearst Avenue. 

The second chapter house remained in operation until the mid-1960s, when the university, planning to expand beyond the campus boundaries, forced many fraternities and sororities to relocate on the Southside. The second Phi Kappa Psi house was torn down and replaced with UC’s Upper Hearst Parking Structure. 

The original chapter house, located one block to the north, was turned into a boarding house. As late as the 1970s, it was an elegant building with all its original multi-paned windows intact. In the past twenty years, the house has been sadly allowed to run down. Having escaped both the 1923 Berkeley Fire and the wrecking ball, it fell victim to demolition by neglect. 

These days, the house remains as a lone historic survivor at the La Loma-Ridge intersection. On the northeastern corner, the house of famed painter William Keith’s widow, Mary McHenry Keith, stood until the late 1950s. A boxy apartment building stands there now. Newman Hall, which was located at the southwest corner, gave way to a UC parking lot. The southeast corner, vacant for many years, is now occupied by the Foothill student housing complex. 

With the university’s annexation of the blocks facing Hearst Avenue, the entrance to residential Daley’s Scenic Park shifted one block to the north. The former Phi Kappa Psi chapter house marks that entrance, a reminder of this fabled neighborhood’s early days. 

The landmark application for the Phi Kappa Psi chapter house is accessible online at http://daniellathompson.com/pkp/pkp_application.html/. 

 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson  

Now a rooming house, the building has fallen on hard times. 


About The House: It Pays to Pay Attention to a House’s Foundation

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 28, 2006

When I show up with my flashlight, there’s one item that most homeowners are holding their breath about and that’s their foundation. People generally believe that this is: a) the most important system of the house, and b) the most expensive. Well, this is close to the truth in both cases, although I can think of plenty of cases where neither is actually the case.  

Nonetheless, foundations are very important and pretty expensive. Regarding the latter, though, I think it’s important to recognize how cheap they’ve actually become over the last 20 years. 

When I started inspecting houses, many of the houses I saw were valued at roughly $100,000 and the replacement of a foundation was typically about $20,000 or about 20 percent of the total cost of the house. 

At the time, that seemed like such a large amount of money that the notion of acquiring a house that needed a new foundation was often inconceivable for my client. 

I saw quite a few deals fall apart over foundations back in those days and I also saw many a client buy (and keep) the old crumbly foundation with the long-range intent of replacement. Some have done this and many have not.  

Today, a typical house in Berkeley is about $700,000 and the cost of a foundation has risen to about $35,000. In other words, the cost of a foundation replacement has dropped to about 5 percent of the cost of a typical house. Yes, the cost of foundation replacement has risen but it’s risen far less than inflation for a 20 year period. So today, it’s far less excusable to buy a house and keep the crumbly old foundation. Also, the foundation from 1907 (that’s the one I saw today), which was crumbly in 1986 is even crumblier today. 

Beyond that, the standard of care for foundations continues to rise every day. Today, there is a significantly higher percentage of newer, high quality foundations than there were 20 years ago. So we have lots of reasons to want to replace those old foundations now. They’re getting to be a much smaller percentage of the cost of a house, they’re more out of step with current standards and they’re each getting worse as time goes by. 

But what’s wrong with having an old foundation? Why do I want a new one? My old one may have cracks and may be crumbly but it’s still sitting there under my house, right? 

Yes, all that’s true. In the case of most houses, the foundation, even if it’s kind of crumbly or cracked, is bearing the “gravity loads” as my friend, the engineer, Dan Szumsky would say. It’s holding up the house. So that’s not what foundation replacement is about in most case. 

We’re all waiting for an earthquake and, hopefully, getting ready for it. A big part of getting ready for an earthquake is making sure that your house is properly bolted to the foundation so that it won’t slide off during a quake (this actually happens). This is really important and most people know it (even if they’re hiding under the bed avoiding the issue…. Yes, you with the pillow wrapped around your head going ‘LA LA LA LA LA’). 

If the concrete in your foundation is really crumbly, and I see this in a fair number of houses from the early part of the 20th century, the bolts aren’t going to be able to keep the house connected to the foundation. They’ll just shake right through the soft concrete and your house will end up moving to a new address (sans the water service, sewer line….) 

The concrete needs to be at least as strong as the wood otherwise bolting doesn’t work. If you have a foundation that’s soft like this, it’s time to wake up and smell the shear-wall. 

If you’re concerned about the cost of the foundation, there’s a spoonful of sugar I can offer to go with this bitter pill. When you replace the foundation on your house, it’s not going be the same house minus 35 grand. It’s going to be a better house and a more valuable one. 

It might not be worth another $35,000 but it’s going to be substantially more valuable by any measure. Although nobody can say for certain what the actual value adjustment will be, it’s clear that you’re not throwing your money away, even setting aside the seismic issues. 

As houses have grown in value to their wild present heights, the level of scrutiny has certainly risen commensurately 

Twenty years ago, most people didn’t have home inspections and few would argue over an issue like a foundation (and almost never over the presence of bolting and bracing) but today, things are very different.  

With such large amount of money on the table today, most people do a fair amount of investigation into the condition of the house. Many have multiple inspections and issues involving foundation condition and the capability to effectively bolt the house have grown in stature to stand side-by-side with the other issues that buyer’s weigh in the purchase of a house. Things have certainly changed and buying a new foundation just isn’t the dicey financial matter it once was.  

So, how do you know if your foundation is one that should be replaced? Well, deterioration or crumbliness isn’t the only feature one might look at, but with respect to seismic strength, it’s the most important. Foundation strength was something that improved in our houses over the first 40 years of the 20th century and by 1940, most foundations were made of very hard and very long-lasting concrete. 

It’s not about age, it’s about technique. Keep in mind that the Romans built structures in concrete that are still standing today after 2000 years. It’s also not about water, because we built concrete boats and concrete is poured below water for caissons on the bay and the ocean floor.  

If you have a foundation from before 1910, there’s a fair chance that it’s a goner. If it’s from the teens, I’d estimate that there’s about a 20 percent chance that it will need replacement. If it’s from the ‘20s, your changes probably drop to about 10 percent and in the ‘30s they drop to about 5 percent. 

Of course, these are VERY rough numbers and I’ve certainly seen some very good foundations from 1915 (though it’s pretty rare). I should also mention that if your foundation is brick or stone, it should absolutely be replaced. 

You just can’t effectively bolt to these materials without very special and very expensive methods that can’t complete with a simple foundation replacement. 

Some may consider mine an unreinforceable position, but I believe it represents a concrete reality. Of course, you yourself will have to decide if my argument has a solid foundation. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.


Garden Variety: Costly ‘Free’ Mosquitofish Belong in a Barrel

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 28, 2006

It’s high hot summer and the mosquitoes are peaking, along with the rest of the annoying arthropods. 

People are getting nervous about West Nile virus, though the next wave of ordinary flu will doubtless carry off more of us; hey, we’ve heard of flu, but what’s this new thing? 

I get my flu shot every year, myself, but I’m more worried about the crows and jays and the magpies over the hills, all of whom are more susceptible to the virus than we are, even the old and frail among us. (Me, for example.) 

The plague has been playing hob with the magpies in particular—corvids and raptors are even more badly hit than most bird species—and you do know, don’t you? that our yellow-billed magpie species exists nowhere else on Earth. Scary.  

It’s a good idea to kill lots of mosquitoes. The local bats, swifts, and swallows can’t get them all. Even PETA hasn’t yet stood up for them, as far as I know. 

The only reason a mosquito bites is that she—always she—wants to be a mommy and needs a blood meal to make eggs, but I haven’t seen the lacto-ladies or the think-of-the-children groups picketing the vector control office. The quibble I have is the means people use to kill them.  

We’re well past the days of innocents happily disporting themselves in the cooling fog from the DDT spray trucks on the neighborhood streets. I hope. But one bit of official panic can send helicopters over the marshes, killing everything that happens to hatch and have six legs. And the “greener” weapons can be even worse in the long run.  

You’d think we’d remember mongoose invasions in Hawai’i, cane toads in Australia, and such disastrous good ideas before setting another “biological control” loose on a landscape. 

But Gambusia affinis, the cute little mosquitofish that public agencies give away free and dump into public waters, gets an approving pat on its scaly head despite its threat to hard-pressed natives like pupfish, minnows, frogs, newts, and salamanders.  

The species has been introduced worldwide for mosquito control. It’s voracious enough to gobble the young of native fish, amphibians, insects, and other critters that already eat mosquitoes themselves, and they’re not so particular about eating mosquito larvae. 

Peter Moyle, who wrote the authoritative Inland Fishes of California, says there’s no evidence that gambusia control mosquitoes in natural bodies of water where native fish or mosquito-eating invertebrates are already present, and that some native fish, like the endangered pupfish species, can be more effective than mosquitofish in natural situations, and that goldfish and small koi are better control agents in ornamental ponds. 

The only place for those free mosquitofish is in a barrel or artificial pond that has no connection at all with any natural waterbody—even when it overflows. 

And you’d be better off buying a netful of feeder goldfish at the pet shop—they eat just as many mosquitoes and they’re handsomer than gambusia. I’ve never heard of a goldfish invasion in a stream or lake, and if anyone has, I’d appreciate a pointer to the place. Meanwhile, beware of the freebies! 

Thanks to Joe Eaton for material originally published in the late Faultline webzine.  


Column: The Public Eye: Take Me To Our Leader

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday July 25, 2006

It’s a famous cartoon setup: Aliens descend from a space ship, walk up to a human, and demand, “Take me to your leader.” If aliens actually did land in Washington D.C., they’d probably be taken to meet George Bush. After all, he’s the nominally elected president of the United States. Ah, but is he our leader? 

No. Most of us believe that President Bush has failed as a leader. That’s the crux of the problem facing the United States as we gaze into the eye of the Middle East maelstrom: There’s civil war in Iraq; Israel is rampaging in Gaza and Lebanon; Iran grows more belligerent by the hour and seems determined to have nuclear weapons; India and Pakistan are at each other’s throats; and George Bush cannot be counted upon to guide us through this tempest 

Management theory teaches there are two types of leaders: one is a person who occupies a position of authority and the other is a someone who people go to for counsel because of his or her wise decision making. This theory argues that people want to respect their elected officials; that we gain or lose confidence in our leaders based upon two traits: trust and communication. As president, George Bush occupies a position of authority, but he has lost favor with Americans because he has proven to be an unwise decision-maker, untrustworthy public servant, and unreliable communicator. 

Crises cause confidence in our leaders to rise or fall. George Bush has faced four crises during his presidency: The first was 9/11. Bush started out well but then made a series of bad decisions: He failed to unite the nation in common cause, to learn from the mistakes made before 9/11, and to destroy Al Qaeda. The second crisis was Iraq. Whatever we may think of Bush’s stated reason for the invasion, he might have saved the situation with a carefully conceived plan for the occupation, but he didn’t. The third crisis was Hurricane Katrina. Bush failed because he first refused to act beforehand and then had no comprehensive plan for recovery. 

Now America finds itself in the fourth crisis of the Bush administration: For a variety of reasons, some centuries old, but many the result of bad decisions by this White House, the Middle East is spiraling out of control. Once again, the key requirement is leadership. Only America can restrain Israel. Only the United States can prevent Iraq from total collapse. Only American can initiate meaningful dialogue with Syria and Iran. And only the United States can mediate the confrontation between India and Pakistan. 

But based on his past performance, we cannot expect George Bush to provide the leadership that these critical times require. He has proven incapable of the bold steps that these crises demand. As the Middle East deteriorates, Bush will remain a passive observer; our Nero content to fiddle while Rome burns. 

Given the extremity of this crisis, and the dreadful track record of the president, it’s important to ask who else can provide this leadership? Certainly no one else in the administration. It’s useless to pin our hopes on the likes of Don Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. The Republican “leadership” on Capitol Hill seems similarly impaired; a number of terms are used to describe Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, but “respected leader” isn’t one of them.  

That leaves the Democrats. At the moment, there are five front runners for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, and Mark Warner. None of them stands out as someone able to provide the leadership needed in the Middle East. 

However, there is a Democrat who has demonstrated the inspirational leadership the United States needs. A person who occupied high office and became familiar with the complex problems that are, once again, flaring up in the Middle East. An individual who suffered through misfortune and learned from it, whose hubris has long ago been swept away. A senior statesman has who shown extraordinary leadership in two critical areas: Bush’s abuse of presidential power and global climate change. This leader is Al Gore. 

We can all understand Gore’s reluctance to again run for public office. None of us can forget the painful 2000 election—the stolen votes in Florida and other states, and the Supreme Court decision that threw the victory to George Bush. None of us can imagine how painful this must have been for Al Gore, how difficult it was for him to forget a campaign where he was maligned by an American press corps that was having an unsavory love affair with Bush. 

These are perilous times, where America, and the world, teeters on the brink of disaster. In his famous “ask not” phrase, John Kennedy argued that there are occasions when Americans must sweep aside personal considerations and do what is best for our country. This is one of those moments. Al Gore can provide the leadership that the United States needs. He must take control of the Democratic Party and become the voice of sanity that America desperately needs to hear.  

 

Bob Burnett can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net. 


Column: Thank You for the Opportunity

By Susan Parker
Tuesday July 25, 2006

I’m not a spokesperson for anyone, but myself. I once thought I might have some insights to share with and about the disabled community but this has turned out not to be true. When an organization that represents this community was looking for local authors to speak at a fundraising event, I imagined I was the perfect candidate. 

Instead, a woman who wrote a book about California bungalows was selected. The following year I was passed over for a Marin County housewife who is married to a world-renowned rock star. She wrote a memoir about who she slept with during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Obviously, she’s a lot more interesting than me.  

I assumed I might be a good person to represent my North Oakland hood in print, but several neighbors have told me my columns make our block seem dangerous. “It’s a nice place,” they say. “Try to make it sound that way.” I agree with them. I love where I live despite car thefts, drug busts, and a recent graffiti plague. Houses here regularly sell for over half a million dollars.  

Surely, I must be a voice for the often silent, overworked, underpaid, and sometimes ignored caregiving community. But given the nature of this occupation, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for extracurricular activities such as reading or contacting others. I have met a few women who are caregivers for their disabled husbands. What I have found, (and this is backed up by statistics), is that there is a high rate of divorce among couples in which one member has acquired a catastrophic disability.  

Sometimes I write about my relationship with the people who live in our house and help with my husband’s care. I record the activities of a little girl from Hunters Point, now a teenager, who stays with us every summer. These columns haven’t always been well received.  

I even got a complaint letter after publishing an article about my dog.  

Nonetheless, I write because I think I’ve got something to say that may be of interest to someone, somewhere, in some way. Mostly, I try to explain the physical and emotional terrain Ralph and I navigate daily so that readers can better understand our situation and the lifestyle of those in similar circumstances. Despite the Bay Area being a tolerant, progressive place, I have witnessed behavior that has left me perplexed and disappointed.  

For example, we’ve arrived at nearby movie theaters and found the disabled seats occupied by people who are not disabled. When we’ve asked them to move, we’ve sometimes encountered indignation, including the common complaint, “You should’ve gotten here earlier.” My lame response is, “We would’ve if we could’ve.”  

Once, while in Trader Joe’s, a woman ran a shopping cart over Ralph’s feet and kept going.  

Four years ago Ralph and I went to dinner with a young woman who is a high-level quadriplegic. I sat between them, and alternated giving each bites of sandwiches and sips of drinks. She told me she had interviewed a man we knew for an attendant position.  

“It won’t work,” she said.  

“Why not?” I asked. “He’s helped us for years, and he’s very good.”  

“I don’t think he’d be comfortable inserting or removing a tampon,” she said.  

I had to put her sandwich down and catch my breath. I’d been married to a C-4 quadriplegic for over eight years and it had never occurred to me that this was the kind of help she, and others like her, needed.  

This is why I write. It’s not always easy or fun, but it’s experiences like this, and the people I have met since my husband’s accident, that inspire me. Before Ralph became paralyzed I had a nice life. But we can’t go back. I’m grateful for what we have, and for the opportunity to share it with you.


Mockingbird Jazz: The Evolutionary Roots of Bird Song

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday July 25, 2006

I just finished a book called Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions, which despite the title is not another pop-psychology tract about gender differences. The author, Richard Francis, is an evolutionary neurobiologist, and the book is a rousing polemic against the sociobiologists and their intellectual heirs, the evolutionary psychologists: scientists who believe that just about every aspect of human behavior is an adaptation to something or other. 

Francis, on the other hand, is in the tradition of the late Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that some traits—physical and behavioral—are just byproducts of the evolutionary process, things that happened to be linked to other things that were targets of natural selection. Gould thought the bodies of all organisms were marked by “senseless signs of history”—like the “thumb” of the giant panda, jury-rigged from a wristbone. 

Francis does wind up with a discussion of alleged male-female differences in spatial orientation and related brain structure. But before he gets there, he introduces other creatures whose behavior or anatomy challenges the everything-is-adaptive model: sex-changing clownfish, parthenogenic whiptail lizards, Berkeley’s own spotted hyenas. 

(Yes, there’s a research colony of these very odd beasts in Strawberry Canyon. That’s a story in itself.) Along the way to humanity, he poses an interesting question: why does the mockingbird mock? 

On the face of it, the vocal performance of mockingbirds (there are several species, in the West Indies, South America, and the Galapagos Islands; ours is the northern mockingbird, Mimus polyglottus, the “many-tongued mimic”) looks like a straightforward case of Darwinian sexual selection. That’s the process in which the evolution of a trait, usually in male animals, is driven by some mixture of male competition and female choice. The classic example is the tail of the peacock: it’s not at all functional—it may, in fact, reduce its owner’s chances of evading predators—but the hens like it. 

Bird song has long been considered the audio equivalent of the peacock’s tail. Males sing to attract mates, and females somehow evaluate the quality of a prospective mate (good genes? low parasite loads?) by characteristics of the song. One characteristic supposedly selected by female choice is repertoire size. 

Was it Mae West who said: “I like a man with a big….vocabulary?” In birds like the marsh wren, there does seem to be a correlation between the number of song types in a male’s repertoire and his reproductive success. 

Marsh wrens are polygynous, though, like peacocks. Mockingbirds are monogamous. Why would a male mockingbird need his huge assortment of phrases, many borrowed from other birds, nonavian animals, and mechanical objects? (One tropical mockingbird is said to have learned the Brazilian national anthem.) 

Isn’t he a bit overdesigned? 

But, says Francis, what if the mockingbird’s repertoire is an evolutionary accident, one of Gould’s “senseless signs?” He explains that a typical songbird—a white-crowned sparrow, say—goes through three distinct phases in its song development. First, the bird produces a wide assortment of random sounds. Donald Kroodsma, a birdsong scholar, calls this “babbling”, analogous to what happens in human infants. Francis calls it the John Cage stage. 

Then comes “plastic song”: there’s some structure, but the song is still continuous and has an improvised quality. This is Francis’ Keith Jarrett stage. Finally, distinct songs crystallize out of the sonic mix: a single song type for the white-crowned sparrow, over 200 for the marsh wren. The bird sings that song, or songs—the “final song”—over and over for the rest of his life. In Francis’ typology, he has reached the Philip Glass stage. 

The songs of adult mockingbirds—and their near kin, catbirds and thrashers, and somewhat more distant relatives, starlings and mynahs—have all the hallmarks of plastic song. A few years back Rebecca Irwin, now at the University of Tennessee at Martin, studied bird song in terms of ontogeny (development) and phylogeny (evolutionary relationships). She suggested that the mockingbird’s song might not be an end product of sexual selection, but a quirk of the song-development process. If their ancestors were songbirds that went through all three stages, mockers may stop at Keith Jarrett.  

In support of that possibility, Irwin noted that other songbirds incorporate the notes of other species into their plastic songs. But these elements don’t survive into the final song. Mimicry may be part of the normal songbird learning process: although a certain amount is hardwired, birds need to be exposed to a model—a “song tutor,” either a father or a holder of neighboring territory—to get it exactly right. Mockingbirds, unlike white-crowned sparrows, are lifelong learners. Instead of settling on a final song they just keep noodling away, adding some new elements and dropping old ones. 

Those of you who were around in the ‘50s will no doubt remember Mad Magazine’s fascination with axolotls. In real life, the axolotl is a Mexican salamander that reaches sexual maturity while retaining its larval shape, including feathery red gills. Its relatives, though, grow up to be normal gill-less air-breathing salamanders. What happens to the axolotl is called paedomorphosis—and Irwin suggests that mockingbird song may be a paedomorphic behavior. 

Francis’s point in bringing up Irwin’s 1988 paper—which no one else seems to have followed up on—is that we can’t construct what Gould called evolutionary just-so stories for every trait. Evolution is about chance and necessity, and sometimes chance prevails. We are all, men and mockingbirds alike, the victims—and the beneficiaries—of a series of accidents.


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday July 28, 2006

FRIDAY, JULY 28 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Night of the Iguana” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Aug. 12. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “Permanent Collection” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through JAug. 5. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatere.org 

California Shakespeare Theater “Restoration Comedy” 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 July 30. Tickets are $15 and up. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Central Works “The Inspector General” a new comedy, Thurs., Fri., and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 30. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Footloose” the musical based on the 1984 film at 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat., and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theater, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through August 5. Tickets are $12-$20. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Encore Theatre Comapny and Shotgun Players “The Typographer’s Dream” at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Sept. 3. Tickets are $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Impact Theatre “House of Lucky” Written and performed by Frank Wortham, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Aug. 26. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Stage Door Conservatory Children’s Musical Theatre “Gypsy” at 7:30 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$20, children and seniors $10. www.juliamorgan.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Event Horizon” Installation and sculpture exploring the industry of the human conciousness. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Transmissions Gallery , 1177 San Pablo Ave. 558-4084. www.transmissions-gallery.com 

FILM 

Janet Gaynor: A Centennial Celebration “State Fair” at 7 p.m. and “Adorable” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John Dean on “Conservatives Without Conscience” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. 559-9500. 

Multicultural Institute’s Youth Writing Festival Reading at 6:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Celebrate Peruvian Independence Day with Lalo Izquirdo & Marina Lavalle at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Kodály Summer Institute Choir performs Fauré Requiem, at 7:30 p.m. at McLean Chapel, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Admission is free. 

Summer Youth Program Concert at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. 845-5373.  

Kenny Washington & his Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums with Ms. Carmen Getit at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

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

Bluegrass Intentions at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Ben Stolorow, jazz piano, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dave Lionelli and Jamie Jenkins singer-songwriters, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Shimshai, part of the Kirtan devotional music series, at 8 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Cost is $15-$18. 843-2787. 

Fuzzy Cousins, Brian Kenney Fresno, Death By Stork at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Proudflesh at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

The I Grade Showcase, reggae, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15. 548-1159.  

Sol Spectrum at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Paige, Alexis Harte Band at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Kenny Burrell, 75th Birthday celebration at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $26-$30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

Takahiko Hayashi “Paintings and Color Etchings” Reception with the artist at 6 p.m. at The Schurman-Scriptum Gallery, 1659 San Pablo Ave. Exhibition runs to Aug. 31. Gallery hours are Wed.-Sat., noon to 6 p.m. and Sun. noon to 5 p.m. 524-0623. 

“New Visions: Introductions” Artist talk at 1 p.m. at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361. 

THEATER 

Everyday Theatre “Dreaming in a Firestorm” by Tim Barsky at 8 p.m. at 2232 MLK, Oakland. Tickets are $12-$20. 644-2204. www.everdaytheatre.org 

Shotgun Players “Ragnarok: The Doom of the Gods” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkle Park, through Sept. 10. Free, with pass the hat donation after the show. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Stage Door Conservatory Children’s Musical Theatre “Gypsy” at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$20, children and seniors $10. www.juliamorgan.org 

FILM 

Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum “The Lighthouse by the Sea” at 7:30 p.m. at 37417 Niles Blvd., Fremont. Cost $5. 494-1411. www.nilesfilmmuseum.org 

“The Nth Commandment” with Judith Rosenberg on piano, at 6:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Fandango, Searching for the White Monkey” at 11:30 a.m. at the Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak St. Encentro music and dance performances at 1 and 2:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10.  

Jewish Film Festival From noon to 10 p.m. at the Roda Theater, through Aug. 5. For complete listings of films see www.sfjff.org. Tickets are $10 and up. 925-275-9490. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sandra M. Gilbert and Phyllis Stowell read from their books on death and grief at 3 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

“Preserving America’s World War II Home Front: Richmond” A tour with The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cost is $30-$40. For details call 233-6151. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Joe Vasconcellos at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$25. 849-2568.  

Walter Savage Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Hamsa Lila, world groove at 10 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Drum circle at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Dezarie, Ikahba, Luna Angel at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $17-$20. 548-1159.  

Paul Sprawl & Jonathan Best, avant blues and boogie woogie at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204. 

Evelie Posch and Steve Taylor, singer-songwriters, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Regina Pontillo at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

House Jacks at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Red Elvises, The Kehoe Nation at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10-$15. 848-0886.  

Hamir Atwal Trio and guests at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Rhonda Benin Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Brightblack Morning Light, Daniel Higgs, Mariee Sioux at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Acts of Sedition, Parallax, Shortchanged at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 30 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Bay Area Landscapes from Trillium Press” opens at Oakland City Center, 500 12th St., Oakland. 238-6836.  

FILM 

Janet Gaynor: A Centennial Celebration “Servants’ Entrance” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Keats in conversation with Vitaly Koma on conceptual art, collaborative process and Jewish culture at 2 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6450.  

Poetry Flash with Terry Hauptman & Sharon Doubiago at 3 p.m. at Diesel, 5433 College Ave. 653-9965. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Midsummer Mozart Festival Program 2, at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Tickets are $30-$60. 415-627-9145. www.midsummermozart.org 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies perform Greek and Russian vocal music, at 8 p.m. at the Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $15, children under 16 $2. 526-9146. 

Oakland Lyric Opera’s “Italian Holiday” at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Donation $18-$20, includes post performance reception. Reservations requested. 836-6772.  

Dimensions Dance Theater Rites of Passage Youth Dance Festival at 3 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $13-$16. 465-3363.  

San Francisco Renaissance Voices at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Alameda, 2001 Santa Clara at Chestnut, Alameda. Suggested donation $10-$15, children under 13 free. 522-1477. 

Gearóid Ó Hallmhuráin & Barbara Magone at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Bandworks at 2:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Brazilian Soul at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: Squirrelly String Band at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Joe Vasconcellos at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$25. 849-2568.  

Soltré at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MONDAY, JULY 31 

CHILDREN 

Puppet Art Theater “Little Red Riding Hood” at 7 p.m. at the Temescal Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 5205 Telegraph Ave. 597-5049. 

Opera Piccola “Hansel & Gretel” at 7 p.m. at the Piedmont Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 1160 41st St. 597-5011. 

Rafa Cano, Spanish sing-along for children, at 10:30 a.m. at PriPri Cafe, 1309 Solano Ave., Albany. Free. 528-7002. 

Puppet Art Theater “Tommy’s Pirate Adventure” at 3 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 6833 International Blvd. 615-5728. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Revisions” Jonathon Keats: The First Intergalactic Art Exposition opens at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., and runs to Jan. 14. 549-6450.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mal Warwick describes “Values-Driven Business” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St.  

Poetry Express open mic theme night on “fantasy” at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Monday Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

TUESDAY, AUGUST 1 

CHILDREN 

Magician Norman Ng at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Gary Laplow sing-along at 7 p.m. at the Dimond Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 3565 Fruitvale Ave. 482-7844. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Paul Robeson: The Tallest Tree in Our Forest” Tues.-Sat., noon to 5:30 p.m. at The African-American Museum, 659 14th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Aug. 26. 637-0199. 

“2006 Digital Printmaking” Exhibition of large format digital prints by the Berkeley City College Multimedia Dept. at Addison Street Windows, 2018 Addison St, through Aug. 31. 525-8247. 

“Form and Light” Photographs by Eric Nurse on display at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park, Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. though Aug. 27. 525-2233. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival From noon to 10 p.m. at the Roda Theater, through Aug. 5. For complete listings of films see www.sfjff.org. Tickets are $10 and up. 925-275-9490. 

Screenagers “Chain Camera” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

George Lakoff will talk about “Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Open Mic with Austin Vice featuring Anthoney Pulsipher, at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zizoo at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Sonny Fortune and Rashied Ali at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2 

FILM 

“Metropolis” German 1927 film on class differentiations in the future, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. 

Janet Gaynor “The Farmer Takes a Wife” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dustin Long reads from “Icelander” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

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 

Roy Zimmerman in “Faulty Intelligence” An evening of satirical songs, Wed.-Fri. at 8 p.m. at The Marsh Berkeley, 2118 Allston Way, through Aug. 24. 800-838-3006. www.themarsh.org  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Ektaa, Indian Classical music and dance, at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Curse of the Zero, Empathy, Hippe Grenade at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886.  

Akosua, Ghanaian-American vocalist, guitarist, composer at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Michael Coleman Trio Jazz Jam at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Sonny Fortune and Rashied Ali at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“2006 Digital Printmaking” Exhibition of large format digital prints by the Berkeley City College Multimedia Dept. Sidewalk reception at 6 p.m. at Addison Street Windows, 2018 Addison St. Exhibition runs through Aug. 31. 525-8247. 

“An American Social Landscape” Paintings by Patricia Schaefer. Reception at 4 p.m. at MetroCenter, 101 Eighth St., Third floor, Oakland. 817-5773. 

Paintings by Vivian Prinsloo, South African artists. Reception at 5 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibition runs to Aug. 13. 848-1228. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival From noon to 10 p.m. at the Roda Theater, through Aug. 5. For complete listings of films see www.sfjff.org. Tickets are $10 and up. 925-275-9490. 

Frank Borzage “The River” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free screening. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“My America: Mid-century Photography” with Drew Johnson at 6:30 p.m. at The Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8.  

Joe Quirk reads from “Sperm Are from Men, Eggs Are from Women: The Real Reason Men and Women Are Different” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Larry Everest discusses “Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda” at 7:30 p.m. at Revolution Books in Berkeley, 2425 Channing Way, at Telegraph, under the Sather Gate parking lot. 848-1196. 

Word Beat Reading Series with H.D. Moe, Marsha Campbell and Eli Elijah Le Lys 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert with Sara and Swingtime at the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Free.  

Mo’Rockin’ Project, Amam & Friends at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054.  

“Past Present Future” Students of the Ailey Camp perform at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Free, but reservations suggested. 642-9988.  

Keola Beamer, slack-key guitar and vocals from Hawai’i at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

The B-Cups, Placenta at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Jonathan Richman and Los Nadies at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20. 849-2568.  

Fear of the Outdoors at 8 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Mose Allison at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s. Cost is $10-$20. 238-9200.  

 

 

 


The Stage Door Conservatory Presents ‘Gypsy’

By Rio Bauce, Special to the Planet
Friday July 28, 2006

Are your kids gone at summer camp? Are you in need of some fulfillment from young people? 

For the next three nights, under the direction of Heather Raines, the Stage Door Conservatory’s 17- member cast of the Teens Onstage Program, will present Gypsy, a theatrical musical first produced by David Merrick in 1959, at the Julia Morgan Center in Berkeley. 

Right after school got out, when most students were going off to foreign countries, summer camp or summer jobs, these kids were doing theater. Teens Onstage began camp on June 19 and have been tirelessly working to produce a stellar, final product. 

“There were no auditions for the play,” remarks Raines. “We take students on a first-come, first-serve basis ... we pride ourselves on the learning that goes on as much as the final product.” 

During the first two days of camp, Raines gave the kids the opportunity to look over the play, study it, and even do some outside research. Then, they performed before Raines, who decided on a cast list. 

Ashley Swihart, 16, who plays Louise, said, “Before we do a scene, Heather tells us to interpret the scene the way we think it is supposed to be and then she guides us through it. She gives us feedback and takes a lot of our suggestions.” 

At camp, which ran from Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., many different things go on. Kids participate in drama sessions, art sessions, dance sessions, and music sessions. The kids make all their own scenery as well. But most important of all, the self-described “close cast” learn to bond and work together. 

Daniela Debergue, 16, plays the leading role of Mama Rose. Mama Rose is portrayed as a “typical stage mom” who has two daughters named June and Louise. She concentrates all her efforts on her favored daughter June and wants to make June famous on the stage. 

“She’s very desperate for everything,” says Debergue. “She’s obsessed with June, because she didn’t get famous when she was younger. She’s living through her children.” 

The story continues as June and Louise are included in the picture. June is a “ditzy, annoyingly perky blonde” who is very intelligent. Her sister, Louise, played by Swihart is a child, scarred by neglect. 

Swihart says of her role, “Her mother is mean and ignores her. It is not until the end of the play that Louise is happy.” 

The Stage Door Conservatory is a theatrical program that Debbie Grossman and Gina Scher founded in 1999. It was originally located at the Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center. 

“It’s a real ensemble group,” mentioned Simon Kaplan, camp director. “We give each kid a chance to shine. We really believe that everyone is important and that everyone has something to contribute.” 

Performances are at the Julia Morgan Theater at 2640 College Ave., between Derby and Parker Streets. The showtimes this weekend are Friday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 5 p.m. Tickets range from $15-20 for adults and are $10 for children, students, and seniors. The box office is open 30 minutes prior to the show.


Moving Pictures: Deconstructing Leonard

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday July 28, 2006

What better way to appreciate and pay tribute to the songs of Leonard Cohen than to watch and listen as a cast of his less talented idolaters walk on stage and butcher them? 

This appears to be the premise of Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, a documentary that just completed its second week at the Albany Twin. 

I had read several reviews beforehand and had some idea what I was in for. I knew, for instance, that the film consists primarily of footage from a 2005 concert in which musicians, famous and otherwise, performed Cohen’s music; I knew that interviews with Cohen would be interspersed throughout, and that the man himself would not step before the mic until the film’s final moments; and I knew that among those paying tribute to Cohen in interviews would be U2’s Bono, a man who, I’ll admit, inspires in me a wholly irrational degree of hostility. But still, I thought, it’s Leonard Cohen, his words, his music, his life … how bad could it be?  

Ay caramba.  

The musicians involved are apparently incapable of appreciating just exactly what makes Cohen’s music unique. They pay homage to his words, which are indeed the most crucial element of his art, but give not a moment’s thought to how exactly those words work, how they should be delivered to accord them the respect they deserve, or how and why they have endured for decades.  

The performance of those words is an art that these lesser talents have yet to grasp. To put those words across means focusing on them, uttering them, cleanly and crisply, with delicacy but with authority. This is poetry after all, and the words speak for themselves. But these singers and musicians instead do Cohen and us a great disservice by cluttering their performances with affectation: they tremble, they squint, they gesture, they wallow, they quaver, they fidget, they clutch at their hearts. They do not so much feel the words and music as put a great deal of sound and fury into the act of convincing us that they feel the words and music. It’s as if they don’t trust each song to convey to us its greatness, but rather proclaim themselves the arbiters of that greatness, and seek to convince us less enlightened souls that, no, really, this is good stuff and you should pay attention. On the other hand, the film did succeed in sending me right home to listen to Cohen’s original records, if only to purge myself of the memory of these overwrought cover versions.  

The only exceptions are the performances of Rufus Wainwright, whose gleefully silly rendition of “Everybody Knows” demonstrates what every other figure in the film, save Cohen himself, utterly lacks: a sense of humor. Wainwright plays up the campy aspects of the song, emphasizing the wit while also taking great pleasure in letting flow the swirling stream of the song’s dizzying and decadent lyrics.  

Cohen’s humor is on display often in the film’s interview segments as he offers insightful tales and self-deprecating remarks about his life and career. Director Lian Lunson, however, is intent on presenting Cohen with the same sort of hyperbolic grandiosity with which the rest of the cast presents him, even using the absurd device of an echo to repeat some of the singer’s more resonant asides.  

When the dapper minimalist finally takes up the microphone, he puts the musicians and the filmmakers to shame, delivering a perfectly dry, perfectly dignified performance of “Tower of Song.” It’s a welcome sight: the aged man in immaculate suit, holding his glasses in his hand as he stand still and distinguished before a glittering, red curtain. Ah, this is the real deal, this is what we paid for. But then the camera pulls back for one last indignity, revealing the backing band: U2. Yes, Bono, the world’s most prolifically sanctimonious and self-aggrandizing showman, has managed yet again to stamp his wrap-around-shade-clad face on another cultural icon. It’s not enough to testify before the United Nations; not enough to stamp his maudlin mug on the Sept. 11 tribute concert; not enough to contribute a cliché-ridden celebratory montage to the finale of last month’s World Cup. Now he’s got to stake his claim to the legacy of Leonard Cohen.  

But Cohen’s music stands alone. It has endured for decades, despite the man’s infrequent releases and even more infrequent performances. It has withstood the test of time, and it can surely withstand this silly movie, just as surely as it can withstand Bono. 

 

LEONARD COHEN: I’M YOUR MAN 

Directed by Lian Lunson. Featuring Leonard Cohen, U2, Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, Linda Thompson and others. 115 minutes.  

 

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man stems from a 2005 tribute concert in which a cast of Cohen idolaters covers some of his best-known songs.


Roda Theatre Hosts Jewish Film Festival

Friday July 28, 2006

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the world’s largest and oldest, returns to the Roda Theatre Saturday for a week-long engagement. It ran last week at San Francisco’s Castro Theater and will move on to San Rafael after the Berkeley engagement.  

The festival features more than 40 films in a variety of genres celebrating the spirit of independent Jewish cinema: from documentaries to short subjects, from weepy dramas to heart-warming tales of hope. As usual, the festival has an international bent, with films and filmmakers hailing from Israel, the United States and even the former Soviet Union. 

The festival kicks off at noon Saturday with Belzec, a new documentary about a virtually forgotten Nazi concentration camp in which more than 60,000 Polish Jews lost their lives. 

Also showing in the next week are three works by Amos Gitai, this year’s recipient of the festival’s Freedom of Expression Award. Free Zone, featuring Natalie Portman, screens at 6:30 p.m. July 31; House, one of Gitai’s early documentaries, screens at 5 p.m. Aug. 5; and News From Home/News From House, an as-yet-unreleased documentary, screens at 4:15 p.m. July 31. 

 

 

26th ANNUAL  

JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 

Saturday July 29 through Saturday Aug. 5 at the Roda Theatre. $11 per screening. www.sjfjj.org. (925) 275-9490.


Paul Robeson Exhibit Extended

Friday July 28, 2006

The exhibit “Paul Robeson: The Tallest Tree in Our Forest,” has been extended through Aug. 26. at the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, 659 14th St., Oakland. 

The exhibit honors the contributions and legacy of Paul Robeson, scholar, singer, actor, athlete, and human rights activist. The multimedia exhibit features photographs, original art, documents on loan from the collection of the Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, as well as video and audio presentations about Robeson’s early life, his careers on stage and in film, and his political awakening. 

Born the son of a former slave in 1898, Robeson rose to fame as a powerful actor and singer, but his career suffered when he became an outspoken critic of inequality and racism.  

“Standing steadfast to his convictions, he drew the wrath of many, becoming the target of a state-sponsored effort to erase his very being, ridicule his faith, and deny his right as an American citizen to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness,” Chief Curator Rick Moss said. “The exhibit’s modest examination of this complex man cannot begin to reveal all that he was, or the extent to which his sacrifices paved the way for the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1950s and ‘60s social and political movements that radically altered the fabric of our nation.”  

Robeson died in 1976.  

The display opened April 8 and was initially scheduled to close July 8 before being extended. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5:30 p.m. Free admission; wheelchair accessible.


Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday July 28, 2006

Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, San Francisco native and a favorite among supporters of the Philharmonia Baroque, with which she sang during the 1980s and ’90s in Berkeley, died July 3 at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

“She was the most passionate singer I have ever heard,” said Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque Artistic Director and conductor. “I am just amazed that she could transform the simple notes on the page into such ravishing and heartfelt music. It took one’s breath away!” 

Tributes to Hunt Lieberson began to accumulate in music journals and on the Internet after her death was announced in a New York Times obituary on July 5. The news spread quickly through the classical music community by e-mail, messages that expressed shock as well as sadness. According to Alec C. Treuhaft, senior vice president of IMG Artists, who announced the death on behalf of composer Peter Lieberson, the singer’s husband, not even close associates had known how ill she was. The cause of death was not announced, only that the singer had died “after a long illness.”  

For more than a year, Hunt Lieberson had canceled engagements frequently, citing ongoing difficulties from a back injury. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, shortly before the death from breast cancer of her younger sister, Alexis. Hunt Lieberson dedicated her 2002 Lincoln Center performances of Bach’s Cantatas, conducted by Craig Smith and staged in a monodrama by Peter Sellars, to the memory of her sister. Singing Cantata no. 82, “Ich Habe Genug” (“I Have Enough”), she wore a hospital gown, at one point pulling medical tubes from her arms, eliciting both praise and protest at her explicit portrayal. 

“Aside from the wondrous beauty of her voice, there was an intensity of emotion that I have almost never heard from any other singer before or since,” recalled McGegan of the first time he heard Hunt Lieberson sing in Peter Sellars’ production of Handel’s Gulio Cesare in the 1985 Pepsico Summerfare Festival in Purchase, N.Y. Even though in a supporting role as Pompey’s vengeful son Sesto, conceived by Sellars as an Uzi-packing terrorist, Hunt’s talent was recognized in what was to be her breakthrough performance. 

It had been a long road to recognition for a violist who did not concentrate on singing until she was 26. 

She was born Lorraine Hunt on March 1, 1954, to a music teacher/opera conductor father, and a mother who sang contralto. “Old timers will remember her at the theater with Randy and Marsha,” said an email circulating among The Lamplighters, San Francisco’s celebrated operetta company that specializes in Gilbert and Sullivan. 

Beginning on piano and violin, “at about 12” she switched to viola, going to high school at first in Orinda, then transferring to Berkeley High School in her junior year, singing solos in Mozart’s C-Minor Mass and as Golde in Fiddler on the Roof. “They had an amazing music program,” she said of her time at Berkeley High, “an orchestra and three choirs.” 

After a double major in viola and voice at San Jose State, during which, in demand as a freelance violist, she dropped her vocal studies, Hunt Lieberson played and sang pop standards with a boyfriend in a guitar-viola duo lounge act in Los Gatos, and co-founded a string quartet specializing in contemporary music, whose Esperanto name, Novaj Kordoj (“New Strings”) was suggested by composer Lou Harrison.  

In the late ’70s, Hunt Lieberson was principal violist for the Berkeley Free Orchestra, under Kent Nagano’s baton. Moving to Boston, she studied in the opera program at Boston Conservatory and played viola with the Emmanuel Church orchestra in the Back Bay neighborhood, conducted by Craig Smith, who later recommended her to Sellars. 

Hunt Lieberson went on to collaborate many times with Sellars, with director Stephen Wadsworth, and with McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque, most notably for a series of Handel oratorio performances and Harmonia Mundi recordings. 

“We lost our ‘Messiah virginity’ at the St. Louis Symphony in 1986,” recalled McGegan. “It was wonderful to watch an orchestra be totally transfixed by her artistry ... her singing of the title role in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas [with Philharmonia Baroque] was so moving that the entire audience was reduced to tears by the end of the Lament ... I feel so lucky to have known her, been her friend and to have stood by her while she sang so gloriously, night after night. Her passing like Ferrier’s is a tragic loss to the world of music.” 

Hunt Lieberson met her future husband in 1996, when she sang the part of Triraksha in his first opera, Ashoka’s Dream, at Santa Fe Opera. They were married in 1999, and she continued to debut his vocal pieces. Her performances of his “Neruda Songs” with the Boston Symphony under James Levine at Carnegie Hall last November were her last New York City performances. 

Praised for her depth of characterization and emotion, her “ability to communicate” (according to one Bay Area teacher of musical theater), her “uncompromising integrity,” her particular quality of spontaneous song, and a kind of humility, of being part of a performance, not just its star was expressed by Craig Smith, in Charles Michener’s laudatory profile of Hunt Lieberson in the January 5, 2004 New Yorker. 

He wrote: “A viola is a middle voice—it has to be alert to everything around it. There’s something viola-like in the rich graininess of her singing, about her ability to sound a tone from nothing.” 

The writer of that piece recalled their first meeting, after Hunt Lieberson sang at a benefit evening in Leonard Bernstein’s apartment in 1992: “I went up to her and said, ‘You have one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. Who are you?’ ‘I’m a violist,’ she replied, with the trace of a smile.” 

 

 


Julian White

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday July 28, 2006

Julian White, pianist, composer, speaker on music and the humanities, and piano teacher extraordinaire, who died at his Kensington home on June 23, will be celebrated in a memorial gathering this Sunday, July 30, 4-6 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Road in Kensington. 

The memorial will include some vocal compositions of White’s and an invitation for those present to share a brief vignette, up to three minutes. Written vignettes of any length are welcomed at mwgallagher@comcast.net. 

Julian White was born in Chicago in 1930, and began studying piano at 5, giving his first recital at 6 and beginning to compose at 8. He graduated from the Julliard School of Music, settling in Berkeley in 1958, where he quickly established himself as a performer, teacher, lecturer and composer. 

White hosted music programs on KPFA-fm in the 1960s, and gave many lectures and seminars on music as self-knowledge, often sponsored by the Association of Humanistic Psychology and the C.G. Jung Institute, sometimes sharing the stage with Joseph Campbell, James Hillman and Robert Bly. 

His more formal teaching was at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, UC Berkeley, Cal State Hayward, Dominican College in San Rafael and Mills College in Oakland—and through master classes, seminars and private piano lessons. 

White’s compositions include two piano concertos and many works for solo piano, voice and piano, and chamber ensemble. They have been premiered in major American cities, including his “Piano Toccata” at Carnegie Hall. He composed ballets, including ballets for children: The Man Who Died (the title from D. H. Lawrence) was commissioned and performed by Berkeley Ballet Co. in 1985. Other pieces having a Berkeley premiere are “Parables for Chorus and Orchestra” (1992) and “The Children’s Hour,” a setting of seven texts for chorus, orchestra and mezzo-soprano (2001). 

His most recent commissioned work, “She Walks in Beauty,” Byron’s poem set for a cappella chamber singers, will be performed by the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra in December. 

Of his playing, Charles Shere noted in the Oakland Tribune that White’s idiosyncratic treatment of the score had “something of the manner [in which] Mahler handles his themes, probing, extending, collapsing the metrical structure if it gets him to a more interesting part ... His audiences allow him every leeway because he has earned his own way ... But beyond this, White is a humanist. His playing suggests luminosity and power; his knowledge of the composition, and of the composer, and of the humanity the music participates in, is profound.” 

His influence on several generations of piano students has been a great one. Himself the student of several notable musicians, he singled out Egon Petri as his true mentor, speaking of him as his “healing teacher,” describing him in words similar to how his own students referred to his ability to liberate their instincts and artistry: “He basically said, without actually putting it into words, ‘You could use me in a pinch, but you have the capacity to figure all this stuff out yourself.’” 

But White did put it all into words as well, and strove to make his endeavors true collaborations, changing the traditional relationship between musician and listener, student and teacher, lecturer and auditor. 

“I am more and more turned off from those instances when the audience and the performer are deliberately set apart from each other with no exchange beyond applause and a fee,” he said. “The mystique of the 19th century concert setting is a totally unnatural way to enjoy music.” 

About the improvisational nature of creating, he said, “There’s a little match for a second. You don’t need a huge explosion to get the thing going. The tiniest little flicker is enough.” 

And on modern music: “Music, any art form, any metaphor, has to be bite-sized.” 

Catherine Framm, who now teaches and plays in Berlin, studied with White during the ’70s and ’80s, said: “I think of his teaching as ‘The Zen of Piano Playing.’ He had a way of making the really difficult simple. I’ve internalized that a lot, so, when I’m approaching a piece, I’m always asking myself, ‘Is this me? Is this Julian?’” 

Framm emphasized White’s teaching “being right there for each note, not striving forward for the next” and that “if a student could only play a piece at one speed, they could still make it an artwork.”  

Aaron Percefull, a student over the past two years, recalled his last lesson, about two weeks before White’s death: “He was using oxygen and very frail, but his mind was fine. He asked me to bring Chopin’s Etudes; I wasn’t anticipating that! Julian showed me very precisely the technique for three of them, then gestured towards the score and said, ‘One day you’ll say you play the piano and somebody will ask you to play ... they’ll be expecting ‘Elise’—and you’ll play this. Won’t they be surprised?’” 

White leaves his wife, Laurie Bates White of Kensington, nieces Margo Gallagher of Petaluma and Sarah Riccabona of Santa Cruz, nephews Matthew, Douglas and Joel White of Mill Valley and Petaluma, respectively, and eight grandnieces and nephews. 


Memories of a Paris Vacation: Getting Lost in the Louvre

By Marta Yamamoto, Special to the Planet
Friday July 28, 2006

I was in Paris for just a few days. According to carefully devised calculations I had two hours to tour the Louvre. After two hours I was still there. I tried following “sortie” signs toward the exit but they kept directing me through galleries showcasing illuminating artifacts. Once inside I’d get sucked back into the viewing circuit.  

Getting lost in the Musee du Louvre must be part of some diabolical plot; it’s the only way to view a small portion of the 35,000 works that make up its collection. Like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, not being allowed to leave would go a long way toward getting a grasp on the unmatched artistic history present within these walls. 

Words like maze and labyrinth have been used to describe the configuration of the largest museum in the western world. Seven major departments, from the Art of Islam and the Orient to European Painting and Sculpture, are housed in a U-shaped Palace composed of three wings, Denon, Sully and Richelieu, each made up of four levels, from lower ground to second floor. Some departments, such as Painting and Sculpture, are further divided into collections.  

Departments are color-coded and the works of art are exhibited in numbered rooms; both clearly represented on the excellent Museum Plan available in an amazing variety of languages. Directional signs are posted at intersections. 

Navigation options are as plentiful as the Paris Metro Lines. Travel Guidebooks offer specific strategies for “conquering the Louvre”, directing you to a selected list of Star Attractions. Others recommend following a particular period, department or collection in depth. You can also don headsets or accompany a Museum guide on Introductory Tours.  

This richness of statistics should have made my tour a snap. In truth, it was only post-Louvre that I became such an expert. My perusal of a Paris Guidebook in no way prepared me for my first encounter with the Louvre amidst a summer in Paris. Halfway through my visit I remembered a dream I have periodically. I’m on my way to a college final but can’t find the room or remember ever attending class. I should have been better prepared. 

Leoh Ming Pei’s glass and steel girder Pyramid is the entrance of choice for most visitors. Composed of 793 diamond and triangle-shaped panes that reflect the sky, this arresting 71-foot edifice is cleaned weekly by its own tracked robot.  

To avoid crowds I entered Napoleon Hall underground, through the Carrousel Mall off Rue de Rivoli. My first impression was of lemmings, soaring down escalators and mingling below the Pyramid. I’d arrived early, as advised, but everyone else had read the same book. 

Interested in Egyptian Antiquities I choose the Denon access, following signs to Room A. From this moment I was mesmerized, lost to the wonders of the Louvre, my plan forgotten. In dimly lit cavern-like galleries I wandered, gazing at stone friezes and portraits of funerary art, the coffin of Chenptah and a page from Thebes, plaster masks and tomb accouterments. 

One set of stairs from Lower-Ground to Ground Floor moved time from the 6th century BC Roman Egypt to 16th century Italian sculptures. In the Michelangelo Gallery my eyes kept darting from the rich bronze Mercure Volant and Hercule vainque l’Hydre to the room’s architectural details. Walls, ceiling, floors, windows, lights—each works of art in themselves. 

By now I’d joined the lemmings, heading up to view the Hellenic masterpiece, The Victory of Samothrace, occupying an entire landing. Her marble wings outstretched and clothing flattened, the force of the wind was almost tangible. Here I first encountered Digital Mania, which followed me throughout the morning. Every important work, alone or with travel partner alongside, required documentation.  

The Italian paintings of Botticelli, Fillippino and Fra Diamante lead me through galleries whose gold and green ceiling bore the painters’ names. The Grand Gallery was somber beneath a high glass-domed ceiling, paintings alternating with sculpture-filled niches. In Room 6, behind bulletproof glass and a solid phalanx of gazers, hung the Mona Lisa, so small in comparison to a huge Caliari across the room. Her enigmatic smile seemed to echo my confusion regarding her fame; why was she prized so highly above all the other paintings within these rooms. 

Among mottled brick-colored walls and black trim, French paintings held court. Huge powerful canvasses told of Napoleon’s coronation, Medusa’s raft and the death of Sardanapalus. Ample seats held many experiencing museum fatigue. Every 10 minutes I’d hunt one down, pull out my map and ask, “Where am I” and “Where am I going?” While resting I listened in to a guide, “Every painting tells a story and has a complex history; that of the painter, the times and the reason behind the painting.” 

From Venus de Milo, carved in 100 BC and viewed in the round, I entered the magnificent Apollo Gallery, a model for Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. The amount of gold present rivaling the U.S. Mint. Paintings of 15th century kings, artists and architects who worked on the Louvre hung below a gilded ceiling. Center stage went to cases holding a king’s ransom of jewelry in gold encrusted with precious gems, including a 140-carat diamond and the crown of Louis XV. 

Foot-sore and mind saturated I tried to leave. Heading toward the exit I was waylaid by an Etruscan banquet, a terracotta sarcophagus of a married couple with expressive faces, then found myself again in ancient Egypt. In a small room-size tomb, the mastaba, stonewalls were covered with bas-reliefs depicting scenes from everyday life, like a set of instructions to be followed in the after-life. Sphinxes, the four monkeys from Luxor and sarcophagi in stone and wood—the wealth of artifacts beyond belief. 

After circuiting through an archaeological exhibit on medieval Louvre’s first lives as a fortress and palace, I finally returned to Reception Hall, now home to one-tenth of the world population, and ascended by escalator into the fresh air. Above ground Pei’s Pyramid was center stage, surrounded by what I then realized was the extent of the Louvre, the magnificent three-wing Palace I hadn’t visualized from underground.  

On a sole unoccupied bench I took in the grandeur of the architecture and the sheer volume of space. Referring to my museum plan I realized that my three-hour adventure had taken me mainly through just one wing and only three levels. Surprisingly I wasn’t a bit disappointed with what I’d seen or what I’d missed. I’d given myself up to the Louvre, each artwork and artifact a tile in the giant mosaic of my experience. Now at home, I’m researching how to avoid leaving at closing time. With enough planning I could spend several days there. Well trained and prepared with comfortable shoes and energy-providing fortifications I could make it through the remaining galleries. Maybe. 

 

 

Photograph by Marta Yamamoto  

A Renaissance stone palace, fountained pools and Leoh Ming Pei’s modern glass and steel pyramid create a striking statement outside the Louvre.


East Bay: Then and Now: Landmarking the House That Students Built

By Daniella Thompson
Friday July 28, 2006

In 1974, the Berkeley Daily Gazette published the photo of a “mystery house” on the northwest corner of La Loma Avenue and Ridge Road. 

The accompanying article solicited information about this house, speculating that it might be the work of architect Ernest Coxhead (1863–1933), who designed two landmark buildings a block away—Beta Theta Pi Chapter House, 2607 Hearst Ave. (1893) and Allenoke Manor, 1777 Le Roy (1903). 

These days, the mystery house is no longer a mystery. On June 6, the Landmarks Preservation Commission initiated the Phi Kappa Psi Chapter House and will conduct a public hearing on the designation proposal at its Aug. 3 meeting. 

The Berkeley chapter (California Gamma) of Phi Kappa Psi was founded in 1899. The Alpha chapter had been established at the University of the Pacific in San Jose, but when Stanford University opened its doors in the fall of 1891, 13 members of California Alpha transferred to Stanford and established California Beta, which absorbed the Alpha chapter. 

The Berkeley chapter was organized by Stanford graduate Harris C. Allen (1876–1960), who in 1898 was taking a special course in Berkeley. The same year he also began working for the highly successful San Francisco architectural firm of Percy & Hamilton. 

For the first two years, the chapter rented a house at 2646 Bancroft Way, but the brothers found it unsatisfactory. As they reported in a 1902 issue of their alumni magazine, “The house, although well situated, was not primarily adapted to the needs of a fraternity; it was too small, inconveniently arranged, in a dilapidated condition, not easily kept clean, and high of rent.” 

A search was made for another house, but all houses available were either too far from campus, too high in rent, or unsuitable for the fraternity’s purpose. The brothers then hit upon the idea of finding someone who would agree to build a house on their own plans and rent it to the chapter. 

Such a benefactor was soon found in the person of Elizabeth Adams, a farm-owning widow from Yolo County who had two sons at UC, both Phi Kappa Psi members. 

On the recommendation of UC president Benjamin Ide Wheeler, a site was selected in the Daley’s Scenic Park tract on the Northside, and Harris Allen drew up the house plans. The Berkeley Daily Gazette of May 10, 1901 reported that “It was designed with a particular view for club use. It will be a three-story shingle Queen Anne. The interior will be finished in Oregon pine. The rooms on the lower floor will be so arranged that they may be thrown into one dancing hall sixty feet long and fifteen feet wide. The floors will be of polished hardwood. The house will contain seventeen rooms. Its dimensions will be 40x75 feet.” 

Completed in September 1901, the house never bore the slightest resemblance to a Queen Anne Victorian. In marked contrast with the latter exuberantly ornamental style, the Phi Kappa Psi house is an elegantly spare brown shingle. It the telltale marks of the First Bay Region Tradition—a style that emerged during the final decade of the 19th century, led by Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, and Bernard Maybeck. 

Maybeck himself had built a cluster of seminal brown-shingle houses on the next block to the east beginning in 1895. Of the five Maybeck houses at Ridge Road and Highland Place, only two—the Charles Keeler residence and studio—survive. The other three were demolished in the 1960s and replaced by apartment blocks. 

When the Phi Kappa Psi house went up, the neighborhood to the northeast of the campus was still largely unpopulated, and the Hillside Club was still in its infancy, having been founded a mere three years earlier. Yet the young architect—Harris Allen was all of twenty-four at the time—was remarkably attuned to the Living With Nature and The Simple Home gospel disseminated by the club’s apostles: Keeler, Maybeck, and Margaret Robinson (later Mrs. Oscar Maurer). 

Although this was the first house known to have been designed by Allen, the result was a roaring success. In 1902, the president of the president of the Phi Kappa Psi San Francisco Alumni Association wrote, “it is today the most admired and talked about ‘frat’ house in Berkeley.” 

Harris Allen would go on to become the editor of the influential magazine Pacific Coast Architect, a position he held from 1919 through 1933. In 1915, when the Phi Kappa Psi house could no longer serve the needs of a growing chapter, Harris designed for them a new house at 2625 Hearst Avenue. 

The second chapter house remained in operation until the mid-1960s, when the university, planning to expand beyond the campus boundaries, forced many fraternities and sororities to relocate on the Southside. The second Phi Kappa Psi house was torn down and replaced with UC’s Upper Hearst Parking Structure. 

The original chapter house, located one block to the north, was turned into a boarding house. As late as the 1970s, it was an elegant building with all its original multi-paned windows intact. In the past twenty years, the house has been sadly allowed to run down. Having escaped both the 1923 Berkeley Fire and the wrecking ball, it fell victim to demolition by neglect. 

These days, the house remains as a lone historic survivor at the La Loma-Ridge intersection. On the northeastern corner, the house of famed painter William Keith’s widow, Mary McHenry Keith, stood until the late 1950s. A boxy apartment building stands there now. Newman Hall, which was located at the southwest corner, gave way to a UC parking lot. The southeast corner, vacant for many years, is now occupied by the Foothill student housing complex. 

With the university’s annexation of the blocks facing Hearst Avenue, the entrance to residential Daley’s Scenic Park shifted one block to the north. The former Phi Kappa Psi chapter house marks that entrance, a reminder of this fabled neighborhood’s early days. 

The landmark application for the Phi Kappa Psi chapter house is accessible online at http://daniellathompson.com/pkp/pkp_application.html/. 

 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson  

Now a rooming house, the building has fallen on hard times. 


About The House: It Pays to Pay Attention to a House’s Foundation

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 28, 2006

When I show up with my flashlight, there’s one item that most homeowners are holding their breath about and that’s their foundation. People generally believe that this is: a) the most important system of the house, and b) the most expensive. Well, this is close to the truth in both cases, although I can think of plenty of cases where neither is actually the case.  

Nonetheless, foundations are very important and pretty expensive. Regarding the latter, though, I think it’s important to recognize how cheap they’ve actually become over the last 20 years. 

When I started inspecting houses, many of the houses I saw were valued at roughly $100,000 and the replacement of a foundation was typically about $20,000 or about 20 percent of the total cost of the house. 

At the time, that seemed like such a large amount of money that the notion of acquiring a house that needed a new foundation was often inconceivable for my client. 

I saw quite a few deals fall apart over foundations back in those days and I also saw many a client buy (and keep) the old crumbly foundation with the long-range intent of replacement. Some have done this and many have not.  

Today, a typical house in Berkeley is about $700,000 and the cost of a foundation has risen to about $35,000. In other words, the cost of a foundation replacement has dropped to about 5 percent of the cost of a typical house. Yes, the cost of foundation replacement has risen but it’s risen far less than inflation for a 20 year period. So today, it’s far less excusable to buy a house and keep the crumbly old foundation. Also, the foundation from 1907 (that’s the one I saw today), which was crumbly in 1986 is even crumblier today. 

Beyond that, the standard of care for foundations continues to rise every day. Today, there is a significantly higher percentage of newer, high quality foundations than there were 20 years ago. So we have lots of reasons to want to replace those old foundations now. They’re getting to be a much smaller percentage of the cost of a house, they’re more out of step with current standards and they’re each getting worse as time goes by. 

But what’s wrong with having an old foundation? Why do I want a new one? My old one may have cracks and may be crumbly but it’s still sitting there under my house, right? 

Yes, all that’s true. In the case of most houses, the foundation, even if it’s kind of crumbly or cracked, is bearing the “gravity loads” as my friend, the engineer, Dan Szumsky would say. It’s holding up the house. So that’s not what foundation replacement is about in most case. 

We’re all waiting for an earthquake and, hopefully, getting ready for it. A big part of getting ready for an earthquake is making sure that your house is properly bolted to the foundation so that it won’t slide off during a quake (this actually happens). This is really important and most people know it (even if they’re hiding under the bed avoiding the issue…. Yes, you with the pillow wrapped around your head going ‘LA LA LA LA LA’). 

If the concrete in your foundation is really crumbly, and I see this in a fair number of houses from the early part of the 20th century, the bolts aren’t going to be able to keep the house connected to the foundation. They’ll just shake right through the soft concrete and your house will end up moving to a new address (sans the water service, sewer line….) 

The concrete needs to be at least as strong as the wood otherwise bolting doesn’t work. If you have a foundation that’s soft like this, it’s time to wake up and smell the shear-wall. 

If you’re concerned about the cost of the foundation, there’s a spoonful of sugar I can offer to go with this bitter pill. When you replace the foundation on your house, it’s not going be the same house minus 35 grand. It’s going to be a better house and a more valuable one. 

It might not be worth another $35,000 but it’s going to be substantially more valuable by any measure. Although nobody can say for certain what the actual value adjustment will be, it’s clear that you’re not throwing your money away, even setting aside the seismic issues. 

As houses have grown in value to their wild present heights, the level of scrutiny has certainly risen commensurately 

Twenty years ago, most people didn’t have home inspections and few would argue over an issue like a foundation (and almost never over the presence of bolting and bracing) but today, things are very different.  

With such large amount of money on the table today, most people do a fair amount of investigation into the condition of the house. Many have multiple inspections and issues involving foundation condition and the capability to effectively bolt the house have grown in stature to stand side-by-side with the other issues that buyer’s weigh in the purchase of a house. Things have certainly changed and buying a new foundation just isn’t the dicey financial matter it once was.  

So, how do you know if your foundation is one that should be replaced? Well, deterioration or crumbliness isn’t the only feature one might look at, but with respect to seismic strength, it’s the most important. Foundation strength was something that improved in our houses over the first 40 years of the 20th century and by 1940, most foundations were made of very hard and very long-lasting concrete. 

It’s not about age, it’s about technique. Keep in mind that the Romans built structures in concrete that are still standing today after 2000 years. It’s also not about water, because we built concrete boats and concrete is poured below water for caissons on the bay and the ocean floor.  

If you have a foundation from before 1910, there’s a fair chance that it’s a goner. If it’s from the teens, I’d estimate that there’s about a 20 percent chance that it will need replacement. If it’s from the ‘20s, your changes probably drop to about 10 percent and in the ‘30s they drop to about 5 percent. 

Of course, these are VERY rough numbers and I’ve certainly seen some very good foundations from 1915 (though it’s pretty rare). I should also mention that if your foundation is brick or stone, it should absolutely be replaced. 

You just can’t effectively bolt to these materials without very special and very expensive methods that can’t complete with a simple foundation replacement. 

Some may consider mine an unreinforceable position, but I believe it represents a concrete reality. Of course, you yourself will have to decide if my argument has a solid foundation. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.


Garden Variety: Costly ‘Free’ Mosquitofish Belong in a Barrel

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 28, 2006

It’s high hot summer and the mosquitoes are peaking, along with the rest of the annoying arthropods. 

People are getting nervous about West Nile virus, though the next wave of ordinary flu will doubtless carry off more of us; hey, we’ve heard of flu, but what’s this new thing? 

I get my flu shot every year, myself, but I’m more worried about the crows and jays and the magpies over the hills, all of whom are more susceptible to the virus than we are, even the old and frail among us. (Me, for example.) 

The plague has been playing hob with the magpies in particular—corvids and raptors are even more badly hit than most bird species—and you do know, don’t you? that our yellow-billed magpie species exists nowhere else on Earth. Scary.  

It’s a good idea to kill lots of mosquitoes. The local bats, swifts, and swallows can’t get them all. Even PETA hasn’t yet stood up for them, as far as I know. 

The only reason a mosquito bites is that she—always she—wants to be a mommy and needs a blood meal to make eggs, but I haven’t seen the lacto-ladies or the think-of-the-children groups picketing the vector control office. The quibble I have is the means people use to kill them.  

We’re well past the days of innocents happily disporting themselves in the cooling fog from the DDT spray trucks on the neighborhood streets. I hope. But one bit of official panic can send helicopters over the marshes, killing everything that happens to hatch and have six legs. And the “greener” weapons can be even worse in the long run.  

You’d think we’d remember mongoose invasions in Hawai’i, cane toads in Australia, and such disastrous good ideas before setting another “biological control” loose on a landscape. 

But Gambusia affinis, the cute little mosquitofish that public agencies give away free and dump into public waters, gets an approving pat on its scaly head despite its threat to hard-pressed natives like pupfish, minnows, frogs, newts, and salamanders.  

The species has been introduced worldwide for mosquito control. It’s voracious enough to gobble the young of native fish, amphibians, insects, and other critters that already eat mosquitoes themselves, and they’re not so particular about eating mosquito larvae. 

Peter Moyle, who wrote the authoritative Inland Fishes of California, says there’s no evidence that gambusia control mosquitoes in natural bodies of water where native fish or mosquito-eating invertebrates are already present, and that some native fish, like the endangered pupfish species, can be more effective than mosquitofish in natural situations, and that goldfish and small koi are better control agents in ornamental ponds. 

The only place for those free mosquitofish is in a barrel or artificial pond that has no connection at all with any natural waterbody—even when it overflows. 

And you’d be better off buying a netful of feeder goldfish at the pet shop—they eat just as many mosquitoes and they’re handsomer than gambusia. I’ve never heard of a goldfish invasion in a stream or lake, and if anyone has, I’d appreciate a pointer to the place. Meanwhile, beware of the freebies! 

Thanks to Joe Eaton for material originally published in the late Faultline webzine.  


Berkeley This Week

Friday July 28, 2006

FRIDAY, JULY 28 

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 

Activist Series featuring Fred Jackson of the Richmond Neighborhood House and Carolyna Marks who founded the Peace Empowerment Project at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donations welcome. 528-5403.  

“Flowers and People: Auspicious Encounters” Ikebana with Scott Job at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Shambala Center, 2288 Fulton St. Cost is $15. Ikebana workshop on Sat. for $45 or $175 for series of workshops. Pre-registration encouraged. banner@pogodesign.com 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente, Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To make an appointment call 652-6188.  

Berkeley Folk Dancers Community Classes and Teacher Workshop, ages 8 and up, Fridays through Aug. 18 at 7:45 p.m. at Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$15 for five classes, $5 drop-in.  

Bookburning Comedy Showcase featuring Brent Weinbach, Moshe Kasher, Kevin Camia, & Ali Wong at 7 p.m. at the AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd. St., Oakland. Cost is $8. 208-1700. 

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. 

Kol Hadash Humanistic Shabbat at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. Free and open to all.  

SATURDAY, JULY 29 

Tilden’s Treasures An easy nature walk for the entire family to discover some of the park’s residents, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Multicultural Storytelling Tent opens at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St., with programs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 647-1111.  

“Preserving America’s World War II Home Front: Richmond” A tour sponsored by The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cost is $30-$40. For details call 233-6151. david_blackburn@nps.gov.  

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. 

Oakland Heritage Walking Tour of Temescal from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Meet in front of Genova Delicatessen, 5905 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

“Spirit of Moncada” A day-long commemoration of the Cuban Revolution from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Casa Cuba Resource Center, 6501 Telegraph Ave., near Alcatraz Ave., Oakland. Book sale at 10 a.m. BBQ at 1 p.m. with music, salsa dance lessons, readings and more. Music by Annie and theVets and Folk This, a poetry reading by Jack Hirschman, from 6 to 9 p.m. Donation $5-$15, no one turned away. 658-3984. casacuba@california.com 

“Come Spot, Come” Teach your dog to come when called, no matter what the distraction, from noon to 1 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2128 Cedar St. Cost is $35. Registration required. 849-9323. 

“Earth Medicine” on using the healing power of nature at 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Spiritwalking: Aqua Chi(TM) at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $5.50, $3.50 seniors & disabled. Bring your own towels. 526-0312. 

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 

SUNDAY, JULY 30 

Two Lakes in a Day Explore the natural wonders of two of Tilden’s lakes on this 4 mile hike. Bring water and a snack to share. Meet at 9 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Oakland Heritage Walking Tour of Glenview from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cost is $5-$15. Call for meeting place. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Annual Classic Taste of Italy Live auction and dinner from 4 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. Tickets are $15, $8 for children under 12. Sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Berkeley. 644-1969. 

“Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity” Planetarium show at 4 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center. Tickets are $9-$13. 336-7373. 

Parenting Class on Child Behavior at 10 a.m. to noon at Studio Grow, 1235 10th St. Childcare provided if you call ahead. Sliding scale $10-$30 donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. 415-312-1830. www.awakeparent.com 

Summer Sunday Forum: The Tenderloin in San Francisco with Ben Ames at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Hugh Joswick and Santosh Philip on “Knowing Mind, East and West” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. 

MONDAY, JULY 31 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60+ years old at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $3. 524-9122. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Stress Less Seminar at 7 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland. Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

Bible School Day Camp from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through Aug. 4, at Church on the Corner, 1319 Solano Ave., Albany. Free, but registration required. 526-6632. 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 1 

Tuesday is for the Birds A tranquil early morning walk through Claremont Canyon. Meet at 7 a.m. at 7173 Norfolk Rd., Oakland. Wear long pants and bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. 525-2233. 

“Obsessed with the Nose: Climbing El Capitan” with Hans Florine at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Watershed Wildlife: From Macroinvertebrates to Mammals” A workshop to explore animal life in and out of a creek, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Arroyo Viejo Recreation Center, 7701 Krause Ave., Oakland. Cost is $25. Pre-registration required. 665-3546 

Adoption and Foster Care Information Workshop from 7 to 9 p.m. at Alta Bates Hospital. Free, but reservations required. 553-1748, ext. 12. 

Discussion Salon The U.S. and World Economies at 7 p.m. at 1414 Walnut by Rose. 

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. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2 

“Be Wise: Prevent Scams, Fraud and Identity Theft” with Elder Financial Protection Network and SAIF and Assemblymember Loni Hancock at 10:30 a..m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. RSVP if you would like to attend. 559-1406. 

Wild Animals of the Bay Area Meet the animals at 3 p.m. at the Melrose Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 4805 Foothill Blvd. 535-5623. 

Family Lawn Bowling Lessons from 5 p.m. to dusk at Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club, 2270 Acton St. 841-2174. 

“New to DVD Series” will screen “Transamerica” at 7 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon in Oakland. For more information, phone Anne at 594-5165.  

“Metropolis” German 1927 film on class differentiations in the future, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction 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. 

JumpStart Networking Share infromation with other entrepreneurs at 8 p.m. at A’Cuppa Tea, 3202 College Ave. at Alcatraz. Cos tis $10. 652-4532. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 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 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 3 

East Bay Vivarium An introduction to insects, lizards, amphibians and reptiles at 11 a.m. at the Brookfield Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 9255 Edes Ave. 615-5725. 

Alameda County Community Food Bank Celebration and Information from 1 to 4 p.m. at First Baptist Church 534 22nd street, Oakland. 635-3663, ext. 354. 

“Surfing for Life” A documentary on active surfers in their 70s, 80s and 90s, at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave.526-3720. 

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.  

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud's Pizza, 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. jstansby@yahoo.com 

ONGOING 

Energy Saving Program for Residents CYES is running its 7th annual summer program, providing direct-installation of CFLs, retractable clotheslines, showerheads, and more. Services available in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond. Free. 665-1501. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Aug. 1 at 5 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

 

Child Care Food Program is available without charge to all children enrolled in the BUSD Early Childhood Education progam, based on income eligibility guidelines. Please call for details 644-6358.


Correction

Friday July 28, 2006

A photo caption on the front page of the July 14 issue misidentified the woman in the photograph. The woman is Clara Johnston.


Arts Calendar

Tuesday July 25, 2006

TUESDAY, JULY 25 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Paul Robeson: The Tallest Tree in Our Forest” Tues.-Sat., noon to 5:30 p.m. at The African-American Museum, 659 14th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Aug. 26. 637-0199. 

FILM 

Screenagers: Documents from the Teenage Years “Our Song” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Story Quilters with tandem storytellers Cynthia Restivo and B.Z. Smith at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, at 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Shelly Jackson reads from her novel of conjoined twins “Half Life” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Charles Burack will discuss D. H. Lawrence’s “Language of Sacred Experience: The Transfiguration of the Reader” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Creole Belles with Andrew Carriere at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Jazz Jam with Michael Coleman Trio at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Free, bring your instrument. 451-8100.  

Randy Craig Trio at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Los Mocosos at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazz- 

school at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 26 

FILM 

Donde acaban los caminos at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

International Working Class Film & Video Festival at 7 p.m. at Fellowship of Humanity Hall, 370 27th St. near Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $5. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Starling Lawrence introduces “The Lightning Keeper” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts, 2904 College Ave. www.mrsdalloways.com 

“Writing Teachers Write” student/teacher readings at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

David Skibbens will read from his tarot mystery “High Priestess” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Barry Barkan on “The Way of the Champion: A Live Oak Learner’s Journal” at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, benefits The Aquarian Minyan. 465-3935. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Roy Zimmerman in “Faulty Intelligence” An evening of satirical songs, Wed. and Thurs. at 8 p.m. at The Marsh Berkeley, 2118 Allston Way. 800-838-3006. www.themarsh.org  

Roger Sears Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Jules Broussard, west coast swing, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Emote Jargin, Wordsmith, Aral at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886.  

Deep Hello at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Matt Heulitt at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Orquestra America, salsa, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Edgardo & Candela, salsa dance celebration at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 27 

FILM 

Beyond Bollywood “Throne of Death” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

Kristin Luker on “When Sex Goes to School” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts, 2904 College Ave. www.mrsdalloways.com 

Ry Beville, translator, discusses Japanese poet Nakahara Chûya at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Chris Ballard describes “The Butterfly Hunter: Adventures of People Who Found Their True Calling Way Off the Beaten Path” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Justine Shapiro, filmmaker, will discuss her film “Promises” and her Globe Trekker television series, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert with Patricio Angulo Latin Trio at the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Free. www.downtownberkeley.org 

Bill Tapia, ‘ukulele jazz improvisation, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Las Muchachas at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Earthquake Weather, Leopold and his Fiction at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Los Pinguos at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. 

Pheeze Phee, Poach Stevens, Usual Suspects at 10 p.m. at The Ivy Room, 858 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $7. 524-9220. www.ivyroom.com 

Kenny Burrell, 75th Birthday celebration at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $26-$30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector: Subnautic at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, JULY 28 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Night of the Iguana” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Aug. 12. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “Permanent Collection” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through July 30. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatere.org 

California Shakespeare Theater “Restoration Comedy” 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 July 30. Tickets are $15 and up. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Central Works “The Inspector General” a new comedy, Thurs., Fri., and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 30. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Footloose” the musical based on the 1984 film at 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat., and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theater, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through August 5. Tickets are $12-$20. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Encore Theatre Comapny and Shotgun Players “The Typographer’s Dream” at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Sept. 3. Tickets are $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Impact Theatre “House of Lucky” Written and performed by Frank Wortham, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Aug. 26. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Stage Door Conservatory Children’s Musical Theatre “Gypsy” at 7:30 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$20, children and seniors $10. www.juliamorgan.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Event Horizon” Installation and sculpture exploring the industry of the human conciousness. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Transmissions Gallery , 1177 San Pablo Ave. 558-4084. www.transmissions-gallery.com 

FILM 

Janet Gaynor: A Centennial Celebration “State Fair” at 7 p.m. and “Adorable” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John Dean on “Conservatives Without Conscience” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. 559-9500. 

Multicultural Institute’s Youth Writing Festival Reading at 6:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Celebrate Peruvian Independence Day with Lalo Izquirdo & Marina Lavalle at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Kodály Summer Institute Choir performs Fauré Requiem, at 7:30 p.m. at McLean Chapel, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Admission is free. 

Summer Youth Program Concert at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. 845-5373.  

Kenny Washington & his Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums with Ms. Carmen Getit at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

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

Bluegrass Intentions at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Ben Stolorow, jazz piano, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dave Lionelli and Jamie Jenkins singer-songwriters, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Shimshai, part of the Kirtan devotional music series, at 8 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Cost is $15-$18. 843-2787. 

Fuzzy Cousins, Brian Kenney Fresno, Death By Stork at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Proudflesh at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

The I Grade Showcase, reggae, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15. 548-1159.  

Sol Spectrum at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Paige, Alexis Harte Band at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Kenny Burrell, 75th Birthday celebration at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $26-$30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

Takahiko Hayashi “Paintings and Color Etchings” Reception with the artist at 6 p.m. at The Schurman-Scriptum Gallery, 1659 San Pablo Ave. Exhibition runs to Aug. 31. Gallery hours are Wed.-Sat., noon to 6 p.m. and Sun. noon to 5 p.m. 524-0623. 

“New Visions: Introductions” Artist talk at 1 p.m. at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361. 

THEATER 

Everyday Theatre “Dreaming in a Firestorm” by Tim Barsky at 8 p.m. at 2232 MLK, Oakland. Tickets are $12-$20. 644-2204. www.everdaytheatre.org 

Shotgun Players “Ragnarok: The Doom of the Gods” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkle Park, through Sept. 10. Free, with pass the hat donation after the show. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Stage Door Conservatory Children’s Musical Theatre “Gypsy” at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$20, children and seniors $10. www.juliamorgan.org 

FILM 

Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum “The Lighthouse by the Sea” at 7:30 p.m. at 37417 Niles Blvd., Fremont. Cost $5. 494-1411. www.nilesfilmmuseum.org 

“The Nth Commandment” with Judith Rosenberg on piano, at 6:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Fandango, Searching for the White Monkey” at 11:30 a.m. at the Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak St. Encentro music and dance performances at 1 and 2:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10.  

Jewish Film Festival From noon to 10 p.m. at the Roda Theater, through Aug. 5. For complete listings of films see www.sfjff.org. Tickets are $10 and up. 925-275-9490. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sandra M. Gilbert and Phyllis Stowell read from their books on death and grief at 3 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

“Preserving America’s World War II Home Front: Richmond” A tour with The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cost is $30-$40. For details call 233-6151. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Joe Vasconcellos at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$25. 849-2568.  

Walter Savage Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island.Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Hamsa Lila, workd groove at 10 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Drum circle at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Dezarie, Ikahba, Luna Angel at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $17-$20. 548-1159.  

Paul Sprawl & Jonathan Best, avant blues and boogie woogie at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204. 

Evelie Posch and Steve Taylor, singer-songwriters, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Regina Pontillo at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

House Jacks at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Red Elvises, The Kehoe Nation at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10-$15. 848-0886.  

Hamir Atwal Trio and guests at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Rhonda Benin Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Brightblack Morning Light, Daniel Higgs, Mariee Sioux at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Acts of Sedition, Parallax, Shortchanged at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 30 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Bay Area Landscapes from Trillium Press” opens at Oakland City Center, 500 12th St., Oakland. 238-6836.  

FILM 

Janet Gaynor: A Centennial Celebration “Servants’ Entrance” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Keats in conversation with Vitaly Koma on conceptual art, collaborative process and Jewish culture at 2 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6450.  

Poetry Flash with Terry Hauptman & Sharon Doubiago at 3 p.m. at Diesel, 5433 College Ave. 653-9965. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Midsummer Mozart Festival Program 2, at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Tickets are $30-$60. 415-627-9145. www.midsummermozart.org 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies perform Greek and Russian vocal music, at 8 p.m. at the Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $15, children under 16 $2. 526-9146. 

Oakland Lyric Opera’s “Italian Holiday” at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Donation $18-$20, includes post performance reception. Reservations requested. 836-6772.  

Dimensions Dance Theater Rites of Passage Youth Dance Festival at 3 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alcie St., Oakland. Tickets are $13-$16. 465-3363.  

San Francisco Renaissance Voices at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Alameda, 2001 Santa Clara at Chestnut, Alameda. Suggested donation $10-$15, children under 13 free. 522-1477. 

Gearóid Ó Hallmhuráin & Barbara Magone at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Bandworks at 2:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Brazilian Soul at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: Squirrelly String Band at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Joe Vasconcellos at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$25. 849-2568.  

Soltré at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MONDAY, JULY 31 

CHILDREN 

Puppet Art Theater “Little Red Riding Hood” at 7 p.m. at the Temescal Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 5205 Telegraph Ave. 597-5049. 

Opera Piccola “Hansel & Gretel” at 7 p.m. at the Piedmont Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 1160 41st St. 597-5011. 

Rafa Cano, Spanish sing-along for children, at 10:30 a.m. at PriPri Cafe, 1309 Solano Ave., Albany. Free. 528-7002. 

Puppet Art Theater “Tommy’s Pirate Adventure” at 3 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 6833 International Blvd. 615-5728. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Revisions” Jonathon Keats: The First Intergalactic Art Exposition opens at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., and runs to Jan. 14. 549-6450.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mal Warwick describes “Values-Driven Business” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St.  

Poetry Express open mic theme night on “fantasy” at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Monday Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

 

 

 

 

 


Books: Max Brand: The Agatha Christie of the B Western

By Phil McArdle, Special to the Planet
Tuesday July 25, 2006

Max Brand was the pseudonym of Frederick Faust, a pulp writer who had ambitions as a serious poet. Or as he preferred, a serious poet whose day job was spinning cowboy yarns.  

Born in 1892, Faust grew up in Modesto, where he was orphaned at 13 and trapped in grinding poverty. Some of the work he did as he eked out a living on farms and cattle ranches was so hard it damaged his heart. He changed schools frequently. School yard fights left scars on his face and a chip on his shoulder. Faust showed genuine literary talent at Modesto High School and, in 1911, when his teachers offered to help him enroll at the University of California, he accepted instantly. He had an overwhelming desire to put ranch life as far behind him as possible.  

 

Berkeley  

Faust was happy in Berkeley. Responding to campus life with zest, he contributed a flood of poems, stories and articles to The Occident, The Pelican, and the Daily Californian. He met Dorothy Schillig, his future wife, and he made many friends (including one on whom he later based his famous character, Dr. Kildare.) Professor Leonard Bacon, himself a poet, recognized Faust as a promising writer. Bacon’s seminar on mythology and epic poetry had a profound effect on Faust, permanently influencing his poetry and fiction, and they became lifelong friends.  

But campus authorities eventually noticed the riotous side of Faust’s life—his heavy drinking, public brawling, and casual violations of university rules. Despite pleas from Bacon and others, he was expelled in his senior year. It was a devastating blow. But he made his way to New York City and took the first steps toward establishing himself as a writer.  

For Faust, 1917 was truly a miraculous year. His professional literary career commenced with the sale of a poem to the Century Magazine. Dealing with the death of his father, it opened powerfully:  

 

They drew the blinds down, and the house was old  

With shadows, and so cold — 

Filled up with shuddery silence like held breath;  

And when I asked, they told  

Me only that the quietness was death.  

 

His fiction appeared regularly in such magazines as the All-Story Weekly and Argosy. His long association with Hollywood began when one of his stories was filmed. He decided to write poetry under his own name and use pseudonyms for everything else. A western story he wrote as Max Brand was well received and he soon found himself specializing in that genre. He was very well paid, and he was able to marry his Berkeley sweetheart.  

During his career he published three volumes of poetry—The Village Street, Dionysius in Hades, and The Thunderer. These had mixed reviews and small sales. His real success was in the field of commercial fiction, where he produced 125 novels—most of them westerns—and hundreds of short stories. At least 60 movies were based on his work. He is said to have published between 25 and 30 million words. This amazing productivity made him a wealthy man.  

 

Destry Rides Again  

Faust wrote Destry Rides Again in 1930 at his villa in Italy—a long way from Modesto. Leonard Bacon and Aldous Huxley and their families lived nearby. Bacon’s daughter Martha wrote an affectionate description of Faust in those days:  

“He is a huge man, over six foot three; he is in his late thirties and the look of his youth has left him, the hair is thinning on his massive head. His cold blue eyes are at war with the heated modeling of the jaw and lips. He is Michelangelo’s man, the shoulders big, the limbs well cut, the hands heavy with stub fingers ... He lives like a medieval prince in his Florentine villa.”  

But, she added, he keeps a killing schedule, writing poetry in the mornings and popular fiction in the afternoons, “in clean serviceable prose that whips a story from the gate to the finish line without a pause and that adds up to a count of twelve novels a year.”  

Destry Rides Again is a pulp western, a genre that relied on melodramatic plots set against a western background. Realistic local color made these stories distinctively regional, and gave them a certain authenticity. Its characters spoke in the dialects of the Southwest. They were often stereotypes, reflecting the attitudes and beliefs of the region, including the casual racial prejudices of the time.  

Faust wrote fiction, including Destry, in a trance-like state of reverie. This technique allowed him to draw on his experience and his emotions over and over again, without using them up; it was not a technique for healing self-analysis or therapy. As Grace Flandrau put it, fiction poured out of him “like automatic writing, the material of a dream.” She speculated that it drew on “some disassociated fragment of youthful personality.”  

We are introduced to Harrison Destry as a man who takes pride in being the chief brawler of the dusty little town of Wham:  

 

...he had fought in the vacant lots; and many a house and store was built over some scenes of his grandeur. For the one star in the crown of Harry Destry, the one jewel in his purse, the one song in his story, was that he fought; and when he battled, he was never conquered.  

 

We soon see that author and character both feel like outsiders. The story unfolds like a daydream in which details shift and change unpredictably at the dreamer’s will. Some changes are simple rearrangements that keep the hero’s actions legal. Others are due to carelessness; as when “The Last Chance Saloon” becomes “Donovan’s saloon” a few pages after it is first mentioned. Expertise is acquired without effort; we are told Destry eschews pistols, only to learn that he’s a dead shot. Major dramatic events erupt without warning.  

But Destry is not simply an autobiographical fragment. He is also Edmond Dantes, the protagonist of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Like Dumas’ novel, Destry Rides Again is a story of revenge. Dantes and Destry are innocent men who punish those who wronged them.  

Destry and Chester Bent are rivals for the hand of Charlotte Dangerfield, the daughter of the richest man in Wham. But Bent frames Destry for robbery. Not knowing this, Destry vows to avenge himself on the jury.  

After his release from prison, Destry rides back to Wham and methodically disposes of two members of the jury in a gunfight at the Last Chance Saloon, killing one and maiming the other. He chases another out of town and ruins one more by stealing a compromising letter and giving it to a newspaper. Others are done in just as quickly.  

But halfway through the story, Faust tired of retelling The Count of Monte Cristo. The daydream floats off in another direction, and the surviving jurors are never mentioned again. Now he begins to tell of Destry’s moral rejuvenation, setting the stage for the climax in which Bent almost kills Destry. As Destry tells Charlotte afterward, he’s going to swear off violence for the rest of his life:  

 

“I’ve met my master,” said he. “I’ve met my peer. He beat me to the draw; he beat me with guns and he beat me hand to hand. I killed him with luck and not with skill. I’ve throwed the gun away, Charlie. I’m an old man, and finished and done for. A Chinaman could laugh in my face, now, and I’d take it!”  

 

In the happy ending that completes the story, Destry marries Charlotte. Destry and Faust have triumphed over the wrongs they suffered.  

 

Destry as a Film  

Faust sold Destry to Universal Studios in 1932, where it was adapted as a B-western for Tom Mix. In 1939 it was filmed again, becoming a wonderful film classic starring Marlene Deitrich and Jimmy Stewart.  

In this second version, the screenwriters—Gertrude Purcell, Felix Jackson and Henry Meyers—dumped almost everything in the novel except the title, the hero’s unarmed arrival in Wham, and his rejection of violence. Melodrama gave way to vibrant comedy with a distinctly New Deal atmosphere, a story of civic responsibility and renewal. Wham became Bottleneck, an obstacle to progress: a town where a splendidly crooked mayor governed from a table in the saloon. Stewart played Thomas Jefferson Destry, and Deitrich played Frenchy—a sexy “saloon girl of the old west” with a robust sense of humor. She sang “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have,” and Stewart gave a startling preview of his performance as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey.  

A decade after writing Destry Faust described his fiction as “an escape from reality. There was perhaps too much reading and too much actual pain in my childhood. It made me build daydreams, bubbles into which I could escape and find a bright and blue and golden world all for me. I denied pain. So in my stories men may start bad but they must wind up good. Woman are angels and men are heroes.”  

With the approach of World War II he felt a need to write fiction as honestly as he had written poetry. He began a serious novel but set it aside to work as a war correspondent. Accompanying troops into battle near Santa Maria Infante in his beloved Italy, he was killed in action.


Mockingbird Jazz: The Evolutionary Roots of Bird Song

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday July 25, 2006

I just finished a book called Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions, which despite the title is not another pop-psychology tract about gender differences. The author, Richard Francis, is an evolutionary neurobiologist, and the book is a rousing polemic against the sociobiologists and their intellectual heirs, the evolutionary psychologists: scientists who believe that just about every aspect of human behavior is an adaptation to something or other. 

Francis, on the other hand, is in the tradition of the late Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that some traits—physical and behavioral—are just byproducts of the evolutionary process, things that happened to be linked to other things that were targets of natural selection. Gould thought the bodies of all organisms were marked by “senseless signs of history”—like the “thumb” of the giant panda, jury-rigged from a wristbone. 

Francis does wind up with a discussion of alleged male-female differences in spatial orientation and related brain structure. But before he gets there, he introduces other creatures whose behavior or anatomy challenges the everything-is-adaptive model: sex-changing clownfish, parthenogenic whiptail lizards, Berkeley’s own spotted hyenas. 

(Yes, there’s a research colony of these very odd beasts in Strawberry Canyon. That’s a story in itself.) Along the way to humanity, he poses an interesting question: why does the mockingbird mock? 

On the face of it, the vocal performance of mockingbirds (there are several species, in the West Indies, South America, and the Galapagos Islands; ours is the northern mockingbird, Mimus polyglottus, the “many-tongued mimic”) looks like a straightforward case of Darwinian sexual selection. That’s the process in which the evolution of a trait, usually in male animals, is driven by some mixture of male competition and female choice. The classic example is the tail of the peacock: it’s not at all functional—it may, in fact, reduce its owner’s chances of evading predators—but the hens like it. 

Bird song has long been considered the audio equivalent of the peacock’s tail. Males sing to attract mates, and females somehow evaluate the quality of a prospective mate (good genes? low parasite loads?) by characteristics of the song. One characteristic supposedly selected by female choice is repertoire size. 

Was it Mae West who said: “I like a man with a big….vocabulary?” In birds like the marsh wren, there does seem to be a correlation between the number of song types in a male’s repertoire and his reproductive success. 

Marsh wrens are polygynous, though, like peacocks. Mockingbirds are monogamous. Why would a male mockingbird need his huge assortment of phrases, many borrowed from other birds, nonavian animals, and mechanical objects? (One tropical mockingbird is said to have learned the Brazilian national anthem.) 

Isn’t he a bit overdesigned? 

But, says Francis, what if the mockingbird’s repertoire is an evolutionary accident, one of Gould’s “senseless signs?” He explains that a typical songbird—a white-crowned sparrow, say—goes through three distinct phases in its song development. First, the bird produces a wide assortment of random sounds. Donald Kroodsma, a birdsong scholar, calls this “babbling”, analogous to what happens in human infants. Francis calls it the John Cage stage. 

Then comes “plastic song”: there’s some structure, but the song is still continuous and has an improvised quality. This is Francis’ Keith Jarrett stage. Finally, distinct songs crystallize out of the sonic mix: a single song type for the white-crowned sparrow, over 200 for the marsh wren. The bird sings that song, or songs—the “final song”—over and over for the rest of his life. In Francis’ typology, he has reached the Philip Glass stage. 

The songs of adult mockingbirds—and their near kin, catbirds and thrashers, and somewhat more distant relatives, starlings and mynahs—have all the hallmarks of plastic song. A few years back Rebecca Irwin, now at the University of Tennessee at Martin, studied bird song in terms of ontogeny (development) and phylogeny (evolutionary relationships). She suggested that the mockingbird’s song might not be an end product of sexual selection, but a quirk of the song-development process. If their ancestors were songbirds that went through all three stages, mockers may stop at Keith Jarrett.  

In support of that possibility, Irwin noted that other songbirds incorporate the notes of other species into their plastic songs. But these elements don’t survive into the final song. Mimicry may be part of the normal songbird learning process: although a certain amount is hardwired, birds need to be exposed to a model—a “song tutor,” either a father or a holder of neighboring territory—to get it exactly right. Mockingbirds, unlike white-crowned sparrows, are lifelong learners. Instead of settling on a final song they just keep noodling away, adding some new elements and dropping old ones. 

Those of you who were around in the ‘50s will no doubt remember Mad Magazine’s fascination with axolotls. In real life, the axolotl is a Mexican salamander that reaches sexual maturity while retaining its larval shape, including feathery red gills. Its relatives, though, grow up to be normal gill-less air-breathing salamanders. What happens to the axolotl is called paedomorphosis—and Irwin suggests that mockingbird song may be a paedomorphic behavior. 

Francis’s point in bringing up Irwin’s 1988 paper—which no one else seems to have followed up on—is that we can’t construct what Gould called evolutionary just-so stories for every trait. Evolution is about chance and necessity, and sometimes chance prevails. We are all, men and mockingbirds alike, the victims—and the beneficiaries—of a series of accidents.


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday July 25, 2006

TUESDAY, JULY 25 

Tuesdays for the Birds Enjoy the early morning birding at Arrowhead Marsh, Martin Luther King Shoreline. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. Call for meeting location or to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Peach Tastings from 2 to 7 p.m at the Tuesday Berkeley Farmer’s Market, Derby St., at MLK, Jr. Way. 548-3333. 

Cycle Touring: Tips for Paring Down Your Load at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Rally to Save the Berkeley Housing Authority at 5:45 p.m. at Old City Hall, 2134 MLK, 843-6591. 

Berkeley PC Users Group meets at 7 p.m.at 1145 Walnut St. near the corner of Eunice.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Leapfrog, 6401 Hollis St., Emeryville. To make an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE.  

Raging Grannies of the East Bay invites new folks to join us from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Berkeley Gray Panthers office, 1403 Addison St. 548-9696. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 26 

Four Short Films on Housing, Jobs and Unions at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations $5. 

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” A documentary about the failed coup against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Sponsored by the Berkeley Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. For reservations call 238-3234. ww.oaklandnet.com/ 

walkingtours 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “Godless” by Ann Coulter 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 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. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704.  

Sleep Seminar at 7 p.m. at 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland. Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

Breema Clinic Open House from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6201 Florio St., Oakland. 428-1234.  

THURSDAY, JULY 27 

Berkeley Mayoral Candidate Debate with Tom Bates and Zelda Bronstein at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 290 27th between Broadway and Telegraph. Candidates for Peralta Board of Trustees will also be debating. Sponsored by the Wellston Democratic Club, open to the public. 

Cee Cee Weeks Day Tree Planting and Potluck from noon to 3 p.m. at Ohlone Park on Hearst Avenue by the McGee Play area. Join us to plant a tree in honor and memory of Cee Cee Weeks, the Disability and Indian Rights activist and share a potluck lunch. 482-8284. 

“Introduction to Community Organizing” Learn how grassroots community power wins campaigns, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. RSVP to 848-0800 ext. 307. 

Teen Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Club will discuss “The Blue Girl” at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6133. 

Healthy Sun Practices with Dr. Lani Simpson at 7 p.m. at Teleosis Institute, Upstairs Unit B, 1521B 5th St. 558-7285. 

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.  

FRIDAY, JULY 28 

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 

“Flowers and People: Auspicious Encounters” Ikebana with Scott Job at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Shambala Center, 2288 Fulton St. Cost is $15. Ikebana workshop on Sat. for $45 or $175 for series of workshops. Pre-registration encouraged. banner@pogodesign.com 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente, Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To make an appointment call 652-6188.  

Berkeley Folk Dancers Community Classes and Teacher Workshop, ages 8 and up, Fridays through Aug. 18 at 7:45 p.m. at Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$15 for five classes, $5 drop-in.  

Bookburning Comedy Showcase featuring Brent Weinbach, Moshe Kasher, Kevin Camia, & Ali Wong at 7 p.m. at the AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd. St., Oakland. Cost is $8. 208-1700. 

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. 

Kol Hadash Humanistic Shabbat at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. Free and open to all.  

SATURDAY, JULY 29 

Tilden’s Treasures An easy nature walk for the entire family to discover some of the park’s residents, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Multicultural Storytelling Tent opens at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St., with programs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 647-1111.  

“Preserving America’s World War II Home Front: Richmond” A tour sponsored by The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cost is $30-$40. For details call 233-6151. david_blackburn@nps.gov.  

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. 

Oakland Heritage Walking Tour of Temescal from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Meet in front of Genova Delicatessen, 5905 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

“Spirit of Moncada” A day-long commemoration of the Cuban Revolution from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Casa Cuba Resource Center, 6501 Telegraph Ave., near Alcatraz Ave., Oakland. Book sale at 10 a.m. BBQ at 1 p.m. with music, salsa dance lessons, readings and more. Music by Annie and theVets and Folk This, a poetry reading by Jack Hirschman, from 6 to 9 p.m. Donation $5-$15, no one turned away. 658-3984. casacuba@california.com 

“Come Spot, Come” Teach your dog to come when called, no matter what the distraction, from noon to 1 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2128 Cedar St. Cost is $35. Registration required. 849-9323. 

“Earth Medicine” on using the healing power of nature at 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Spiritwalking: Aqua Chi(TM) at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $5.50, $3.50 seniors & disabled. Bring your own towels. 526-0312. 

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 

SUNDAY, JULY 30 

Two Lakes in a Day Explore the natural wonders of two of Tilden’s lakes on this 4 mile hike. Bring water and a snack to share. Meet at 9 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Oakland Heritage Walking Tour of Glenview from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cost is $5-$15. Call for meeting place. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Annual Classic Taste of Italy Live auction and dinner from 4 p.m. on at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. Tickets are $15, $8 for children under 12. Sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Berkeley. 644-1969. 

“Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity” Planetarium show at 4 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center. Tickets are $9-$13. 336-7373. 

Parenting Class on Child Behavior at 10 a.m. to noon at Studio Grow, 1235 10th St. Childcare provided if you call ahead. Sliding scale $10-$30 donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. 415-312-1830. www.awakeparent.com 

Summer Sunday Forum: The Tenderloin in San Francisco with Ben Ames at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Hugh Joswick and Santosh Philip on “Knowing Mind, East and West” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, JULY 31 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60+ years old at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $3. 524-9122. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Stress Less Seminar at 7 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland. Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

Bible School Day Camp from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through Aug. 4, at Church on the Corner, 1319 Solano Ave., Albany. Free, but registration required. 526-6632. 

ONGOING 

Energy Saving Program for Residents CYES is running its 7th annual summer program, providing direct-installation of CFLs, retractable clotheslines, showerheads, and more. Services available in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond. Free. 665-1501. 

Child Care Food Program is available without charge to all children enrolled in the BUSD Early Childhood Education progam, based on income eligibility guidelines. Please call for details 644-6358. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., July 25, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900.  

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., July 26, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., July 26, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., July 26, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5434.  

Mental Health Commission meets Wed., July 26, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., July 26, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., July 26 , at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., July 27, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. 

School Board meets Wed. June 28 at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. 644-6320.