City Planning Director Dan Marks has issued a stinging rebuke of UC Berkeley’s key environmental document covering its massive expansion plans for Memorial Stadium and its surroundings. 

In a 54-page critique, he describes a university so intent on raising funds that it is willing to ignore serious risks to the lives of its students, as well as those of parents and others who attend events at the stadium. 

In the document presented to the Planning Commission Wednesday night, Marks slams the university for its “dismissive attitude toward the City of Berkeley and its citizens” and assails a document he said is full of critical flaws and factual errors. 

The target of his criticism is the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) prepared by Design, Community & Environment, a Berkeley planning firm headed by David E. Early—the same firm that drafted the university’s 2020 Long Range Development Plan. 

“It appears that the university has prepared a DEIR that seeks to justify actions it had already determined to take before the DEIR was prepared, without sufficient environmental effects or alternatives,” wrote Marks. 

Marks called the document legally inadequate, and chided the university for failing to offer the real alternatives required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for the quarter-billion-dollar complex of buildings reviewed by the DEIR.  

“We respond to comments in the final EIR,” said Jennifer Lawrence McDougall, a principal planner for the university. “We don’t have any other comments about the city’s letter.” 

A call to David Early wasn’t returned by deadline. 

Marks said “fund-raising considerations and concerns of alumni” rather than compliance with CEQA seemed to be driving the process, starting with a conceptual design for the 132,500-square-foot Student Athlete High Performance Center that were sketched out two years ago—well before the start of the EIR process. 

Had the university’s concern been the safety of students, officials would have begun by retrofitting the seismically unsafe stadium—a building constructed directly over the Hayward Fault. 

“But it is our understanding that Phase II of the project that includes the Stadium retrofit remains unfunded, while fundraising proceeds on Phase I, construction of a new fitness center attached to the crumbling and dangerous stadium,” Marks wrote. 

Noting that the DEIR declares that even with a seismic retrofit, the risk of injury and death from earthquakes at the stadium can be reduced “to less than significant levels,” Marks said “it is essential that the Campus seriously consider and analyze the option of relocating the stadium to other sites.” 

One possibility he suggested was the Oakland Coliseum after the A’s lease expires. 

Underestimated 

“The skimpy information that the DEIR includes is difficult to find, inconsistent and frequently underestimates the magnitude of projects,” offering only “snippets of information” about crucial details, Marks wrote. 

One example he cited was the parking lot planned for a site northwest of the stadium beneath Maxwell Family Field. 

The DEIR “does not indicate the specific size of the Maxwell Field parking structure, which will probably be more than 325,000 square feet,” he wrote. 

One snippet related to the mammoth garage is a fleeting mention of a 12- to 15-foot-high wall around three sides of the structure that would be out of character with its historic surroundings, including the recently landmarked Memorial Stadium. 

“Other critical information is simply omitted,” he wrote, including the ”extraordinary amount of excavation” needed to construct four underground parking levels, as well any analysis of its environmental impact—including the high volume of truck traffic that would accompany the dig and subsequent construction. 

In addition to the training center parking structure and eventual stadium retrofit, the project includes construction of a 186,000-square-foot building that would join offices and functions of the university’s law and business schools. 

Marks wrote that the document is also notable for what it doesn’t include, such as the cumulative impacts of the projects when added to other nearby and pending projects, including major renovations at Bowles Hall, just across from the parking structure, and the planned demolition of the Bevatron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a short drive up the hill from the stadium complex. 

Other failures 

Other failures Marks cited include: 

• Use of inappropriate analytical methods and standards of significance in evaluating impacts: 

• Lack of accurate descriptions of the document’s regulatory framework; 

• Omission of any evidence that the university is carrying out mitigation measures promised in the EIR for the Long Range Development Plan. 

• The absence of discussion of how the university has “followed its own adopted policies as they apply to the project.” 

• Lack of accurate descriptions of how city General Plan policies and regulations would apply were the project within municipal jurisdiction; 

The document is “so fundamentally flawed,” he wrote, “that the only way to fully rectify these shortcomings is to substantially revise and recirculate the document.” 

The usually phlegmatic Marks laced his report with stark adjectives as he worked his way through a critique of each of the sections of the two-volume DEIR. 

UC Berkeley’s environmental review of the stadium area expansion has been freighted with controversy from start. 

After attending a Dec. 8, 2005 scoping session held by the university to gather input on the scope of the review, Marks told the Landmarks Preservation Commission four days that that he had been distressed to learned the university was already working on building designs before the review began. 

Because an EIR is supposed to consider alternatives to projects under consideration, the fact that the university had already committed money to plans was a sign that any alternatives raised would be little more than symbolic. 

“By the time it’s in schematics, it’s done,” Marks told the commission. 

The university is planning to use private contributions to fund the major projects. The university has been cagey with information from the beginning, starting with the initial press conference called to unveil the project. 

When a reporter asked if the second level tier to be added above the stadium rim included luxury sky boxes—premium seating for wealthy fans and corporations—Birgeneau professed ignorance, as did other officials. 

The acknowledgment of a fact that seemed self evident to journalists would only come later. 

The City Council will hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. today (Tuesday) to hash out the wording describing the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance that voters will see when they vote in November. 

City staff provides the ballot wording itself—the description of the measure that appears in the box next to the “yes” and “no” boxes—as well as the city attorney’s analysis for the election booklet sent to all voters. 

Laurie Bright, one of the two principal sponsors of the initiative, and other initiative backers have criticized the proposed analysis language drafted by Deputy City Attorney Zac Cowan. 

They are proposing an alternative, which Bright said will be in the city’s hands this morning. 

Bright said he and fellow advocates of the initiative “will attend the meeting and we will be protesting in the boldest possible manner the very unfair advantage the Cowan is taking of his opportunity to do an analysis that is supposed to inform the public.” 

In response to the initiative, the council last week voted unanimously to delay a second reading of rival legislation sponsored by Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Laurie Capitelli that contains major revisions of the landmarks law. 

By tabling a second vote on the mayor’s ordinance, the council avoided the threat of a referendum—a petition drive that would block enforcement of the new law until the electorate had a chance to vote it up or down. 

The initiative that voters will face in November is effectively the ordinance now in effect with minor changes to make it conform to the state’s Permit Streamlining Act, which sets deadlines for action on building permit applications. 

In a memorandum to the council, Acting City Clerk Sherry M. Kelly said her office had verified 2,863 of the 3,253 signatures on petitions for the ordinance, well in excess of the 2,007 required. 

City costs for the election will amount to about $10,000, she wrote. 

If voters pass the initiative, the Bates/Capitelli ordinance would become moot, and only another initiative could overturn or modify the resulting law. 

Marks weighs in 

In a separate memorandum Berkeley Director of Planning and Development Dan Marks wrote that staff could find no significant impacts in the initiative beyond those already contained in the current ordinance, “and no further mitigations are warranted.” 

But that doesn’t mean the measure couldn’t produce costs arising from litigation in three areas, he said: 

• lawsuits that required the city to defend the initiative; 

• suits filed by developers based on claims that delays in processing their applications violated their civil rights; 

• claims that could result from possible reductions in property values, if Proposition 90 passes in the November statewide election. 

“The process allowed under the initiative would clearly continue to conflict with the PSA, in violation of State laws passed to protect the rights of applicants,” Marks wrote. 

“That’s ridiculous,” said Bright. “First, it conflicts with every other credible legal person we’ve talked to who say just the opposite, and second, the initiative itself subordinates all timelines to state permit streamlining laws. I don’t know why they keep bringing that up because it can’t happen. It’s not relevant.” 

Bright said the initiative’s only revisions of the existing law were suggested by the state’s office of historic preservation (SHPO) in two letters issued when the city was considering the changes that were subsequently embodied in the Bates/Capitelli ordinance. 

“The initiative is basically the current ordinance with the updates suggested by SHPO. There is nothing in it that contravenes state laws,” Bright said. 

Bright called the Prop. 90 argument “just silly,” and said “all the statistics you can look at say that historic preservation in a community raises property values.” 

Even without the impacts of possible litigation, Marks wrote, the initiative “would likely continue the existing ordinance’s negative impact on the provision of housing and affordable housing, due to the long and unpredictable process for development action and review permitted by the existing ordinance.” 

Similarly, he wrote, the initiative would “continue the negative impact on business retention and revitalization” because of long processing times for applications when compared to other jurisdictions. 

Because an initiative can only be modified by another initiative, Marks wrote that amending the ordinance to comply with the law would result in further costs from the electoral process. 

Proposition 90 

Billed as an anti-eminent domain measure, Proposition 90 would not only bar government seizure of private property for use by private developers but would also allow owners to sue any time legislation not directly related to public health and safety exerted a negative impact on property values. 

The measure has roused the strong opposition of the League of California Cities, the California Fire Chiefs and Police Chiefs association and the American Farmland Trust, among others. 

Billed as the Protect Our Homes Initiative, the effects of the measure exert a far broader reach than simply protecting homeowners from losing their properties to development. 

Under provisions of the initiative, anything that limited the ability to develop property to anything less than the maximum extent allowed by existing law could result in litigation against the agency that attempts to moderate the project. 

Opposition to eminent domain has united an unusual coalition of progressives and property libertarians, sparked in part by their reaction to the widely publicized June 23, 2005, U.S. Supreme Court Kelo v. City of New London decision that held local governments could seize property for private development even if the project’s economic success wasn’t assured. 

Circulation of the Proposition 90 initiative petitions was bankrolled by a March 10 $1.5 million donation from the New York-based Fund for Democracy, the creation of libertarian developer Howard Rich. According to a July 13 story in Capitol Weekly, Rich has funded similar measures in Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Oklahoma and Montana. 

Rich is a major backer of Reason magazine, chairs Americans for Limited Government and sits on the board of the Cato Institute, which drafted the economic program for President Ronald Reagan’s first term. He is also a funder of term limit campaigns across the country.

A poster to promote Berkeley’s libraries shows Michele Lawrence smiling in a white turtleneck and red blazer, pearls in her ears and an open novel in her hands. She looks kind and composed, every bit the spokesperson for a wholesome public service announcement—but for the novel.  

The novel she cradles—a novel she holds dear, a novel she herself selected for the photo shoot—is D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. 

“It was the first book I received from my English teacher [ex] husband,” she explained earlier this month. “When I read the book I realized he was not after my mind.” 

Lawrence is not best known, at least not publicly, for innuendo. 

The 59-year-old superintendent of Berkeley schools is better recognized as an unyielding administrator—as respected for restoring stability to the district as she is criticized for exercising a top-down management style. 

On July 16, she marked five years as the chief of the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD)—no small feat given that the position has been, by her own admission, the hardest job she’s ever held.  

Lawrence entered the district in 2001 on the eve of a multimillion-dollar deficit and a crisis in central administration. The school board, whose members were known, on occasion, to take opposing viewpoints simply to contradict one another, was in need of leadership. The high school was in shambles. 

Prior to moving to Berkeley, she had never lived outside a 25-mile radius in Southern California. After a decade as superintendent of the Paramount Unified School District in Southern California, Lawrence, a former art teacher, counselor and principal, was prepared for new challenges, but not to this extent, she said. 

“I knew the district had financial problems, but I never imagined they were as serious and as tenuous as when I walked in,” she said. “Berkeley, as a community, has always had such a reputation and a cachet for public education that I made the assumption that the district was stable and had good infrastructure. I discovered that was not the case.” 

Lawrence, BUSD’s first Latina superintendent who, began chipping away at the budget deficit with a three-year fiscal recovery plan. She reorganized departmental offices to repair the district’s tattered internal structure, and filled top administrative positions with people she trusted, including Jim Slemp, whom she hired as principal of Berkeley High. Lawrence credits Slemp, now entering his fourth year at the school, with anchoring the school. 

By 2004, BUSD had slashed more than $14 million from the budget. To compensate, Lawrence and the board pushed for the emergency ballot Measure B of 2004, which passed--and was the only local tax to do so that year. 

This year, for the first time since before Lawrence assumed control of the district, the county Office of Education considers the district solvent. By several accounts, central offices are running smoothly, the high school is at a lull and the school board gets along (so well, in fact, detractors label it a “rubber-stamp board.”) 

“We needed someone who said, ‘This is what we need to do and we’re going to do it,’” said school board Director John Selawsky. “Michele at the helm steered us out of trouble.” 

There is still work to be done, though, Lawrence says: passing a new measure, ironing out details of the district’s school lunch initiative and shoring up curricula at the middle school level, among other plans. Lawrence’s contract, under which she earns about $195,000, is up in 2008, but she plans to stick around “’till they bury me,” she said. 

That is not great news for the district’s employee unions. Both the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) and the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees characterize relations with Lawrence as “not … what I consider to be positive,” said BFT President Barry Fike. Employee layoffs during budget cuts and a bitter labor battle last year between the teachers’ union and the district heightened animosity toward Lawrence. 

“The superintendent has by and large chosen to not take the approach that we [BFT] would prefer, an approach that calls on teachers to work together with administration in a partnership towards the vital education goals before us,” said Fike, in an e-mail. “Instead, her approach has been largely top-down.” 

Of late, Lawrence has fielded criticism for the district’s failure to narrow the achievement gap—disparities in academic performance between Berkeley’s white and African-American students are larger than in any school district in Alameda County, according to state Department of Education data. 

Lawrence said she “absolutely and resolutely denies” ignoring the achievement gap. Still, organizations like United In Action, a local, minority student advocacy group, and Parents of Children of African Descent have said the district, under Lawrence’s guidance, hasn’t done enough to address inequity. 

“I think she sees what needs to be done, and she will try to get from Point A to Point B to do that. I think that has a lot of effectiveness. But I think it’s less effective when you’re dealing with softer issues, more complex issues … like addressing why students are failing,” said Karen Hemphill, a candidate for school board, whose children attend Berkeley schools. “These are the types of things where that style is not going to work, especially in Berkeley.” 

Lawrence has taken additional heat from the wider Berkeley community, particularly in cases where the district path crosses with city interests. District officials have repeatedly grumbled about the lengthy city review processes that hold up important projects, like the BUSD bus yard, which remains unused while the city processes permit applications. Meanwhile, the district begrudgingly leases temporary facilities at $400,000 a year.  

At a neighborhood meeting in May, Lawrence submitted to verbal volley with resident John McBride, who challenged her to send West Campus development plans to a city design committee. When McBride’s comments sufficiently grated on her patience, Lawrence shot back: “Why is it every time I see you, I want to slap you?” 

The comment was playful—mostly. (McBride said he found it “comic but unnecessary.”) Lawrence is anxious to relocate district headquarters, currently housed in the seismically unsafe Old City Hall building, to West Campus posthaste, and won’t capitulate to any protractions--a stance often at odds with the democratic ways Berkeley citizens so highly regard. (A recent construction estimate came in well over initial projections, calling into question the very viability of the project.) 

“The participation, the democratic process is both magnificent and cumbersome,” Lawrence said. “We tend to want to have all voices heard … (and) it completely slows down the process. I’ve come to understand and appreciate that, but it still slows down the process.” 

Retired BUSD teacher Rick Ayers, who said he has “had his differences” with Lawrence when Berkeley High School was first broken up into small schools, sympathized. 

“Berkeley is so split and divided. She’s got to live the political compromises of the culture,” he said. “It’s a job I wouldn’t want.” 

Lawrence conceded she hasn’t had an easy ride. “Berkeley is the toughest place I’ve ever worked,” she said. “I feel very proud that I’m upright and happy.” 

As Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) officials gear up for the second parcel tax campaign in two years, some citizens question whether district administrators have done enough to ensure that school resources stay with Berkeley students. 

Illegal interdistrict transfers, where parents provide fake residency documents to get their children secure spots in desirable schools, are a given in many high-performing Bay Area school districts. But in Berkeley, the problem is exacerbated, critics say, because school district policy is far too lax.  

“There’s a very loosy-goosy attitude about it,” said Oakland resident Anne Kasdin, whose daughter attended Berkeley High as a legal transfer. “Parents lie to get their kids into schools. Everyone knows it’s happening, but nobody wants to talk about it … It’s been going on for years in Berkeley. I even know of families who ask (friends) if they can use their Berkeley address, and they say, ‘no, it’s not ethical.”  

To prove Berkeley residency, parents or guardians must show three documents, including at least one utility bill. But as Lorraine Mahley pointed out in a letter to the editor in the Planet, “Utility companies don’t care whose name is on the bill as long as the bill gets paid.”  

Other districts, like Alameda, Castro Valley and Livermore Valley unified school districts, additionally require lease agreements or escrow papers. Mahley suggests BUSD adopt a similar mandate. 

“I think it’s a good idea,” said school board Director John Selawsky. “I’m going to ask the school district to do that … I know there are people who give false documentation and we have nothing in place to regulate that, so we could tighten that up.” 

Based on information gathered at a meeting of local superintendents, Superintendent Michele Lawrence insists BUSD policy mirrors that of other school districts. 

“Our school district isn’t any more strict or any less strict,” she said. 

Each year, the 9,100-student school BUSD grants students legal interdistrict transfer permits on a space-available basis, contingent on students’ academic standing, attendance and discipline records. For the 2006-2007 school year, the district accepted 354 of 552 applications, which accounts for 3.8 percent of the student population. The vast majority hails from Oakland and Richmond.  

Those figures do not include all non-Berkeley students, since the district cannot account for illicit transfers. (The district does make house calls to verify residency, however, Lawrence said.) 

Illegal interdistrict transfers are “a highly known thing,” said retired Berkeley High School teacher Rick Ayers. “There are the wealthy kids from the Oakland hills, whose parents want to position them in an urban school so they can say, ‘Oh, look where we went to school,’ and then there are the poor kids who want to get in. …It’s not that Berkeley is that great. It’s just a testament to how bad schools are in Oakland and Richmond.” 

BUSD, under former Superintendent Jack McLaughlin, encouraged students from out of town, under the premise that robust enrollment spells more state money. In 2001, BUSD had 673 legal transfers. 

But that philosophy has changed under Lawrence who does not believe it is judicious to increase enrollment for the sake of funding, particularly since state funds have steadily dwindled over the years. 

BUSD now relies on parcel taxes for about 20 percent of the budget, which means the cost to educate Berkeley students—whether they’re legal or not—increasingly falls on Berkeley residents. 

Two years ago, the district passed emergency Measure B. This year, the district is asking Berkeley voters to renew that measure in addition to the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project, which combined with Measure B, will provide the district with about $19.6 million a year for 10 years.  

“Voters, parents and taxpayers need to feel confident that the scarce resources … are helping Berkeley students first, then students from outside of Berkeley can be admitted as resources allow,” Mahley wrote. 

But even if the district adopts new protocol, parents will still find a way to circumvent the system, Selawsky said. 

“If people go to that length to forge utility bills, they’ll go to the same lengths with lease agreements,” he said. “I suspect it’s not going to solve the problem entirely.”

The Alameda City Council approved construction bids for the development of a controversial theater project in downtown Alameda Wednesday, dealing a blow to opponents who insist the project is out of scale with the area.  

Councilmembers awarded $9.1 million and $8.8 million contracts to Overaa Construction Inc., a Richmond company, to respectively develop a parking garage and restore a defunct Art Deco theater at the corner of Central Avenue and Oak Street, in the heart of downtown. 

The project also includes a seven-screen cineplex, whose construction costs will fall to private developer Alameda Entertainment Associates. Construction for all three components is slated to begin by the end of September, said Jennifer Ott, city development manager. 

The vote spells trouble for the opposition, Citizens for a Megaplex-free Alameda (CMFA), an ad-hoc group that has consistently spoken out against the project. The group filed a lawsuit against the city for allegedly failing to conduct appropriate environmental review prior to approving the project. An Alameda Superior Court judge rejected the case June 30. The group plans to appeal that decision and will seek an injunction against construction, CMFA member Ani Dimusheva said Monday. 

“We’re hoping we still have a case for environmental impacts,” she said. “We’re seeking an environmental report because we believe the project is too big and it’s going to have adverse impacts.” 

The complex will include a two-story, 54-foot-tall cineplex, a 350-space parking garage and the restoration of the Historic Alameda Theater. The project, budgeted at $30.2 million, also includes 6,100-square feet of retail space. 

Construction should be complete by fall 2007, Ott said. 

Mayor Beverly Johnson, Vice Mayor Marie Gilmore and Councilmember Frank Matarrese voted in favor of the contracts. Councilmembers Tony Daysog and Doug deHaan voted no. Both Matarrese and Johnson have filed papers seeking reelection this November, and Daysog has filed papers for mayor, according to the city clerk’s office.

Faced with threats of a lawsuit, the City Council has begun to explore ways to increase both the number of people allowed to speak directly to the council at its meetings and the variety of topics the public can address.  

“I want it discussed at a time when the public is present,” said Gene Bernardi of SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense), referring to the fact that discussions about the matter are now taking place at the Agenda Committee, which meets at 2:30 p.m., when most working people find it difficult to attend. 

Until recently, the council limited to 10 the number of speakers—chosen by lottery—at the public comment session; each was permitted to speak for up to three minutes on whatever topic the person wished. 

The problem, SuperBOLD said, was that when more than 10 people want to address the council, some are not heard. Moreover, some council issues the public might want to address are not heard at all. 

“The public comment lottery system improperly denies willing speakers the right to address the council and [library] board at public meetings, and it improperly prevents certain agenda items from receiving public comment,” wrote Sophia Cope, attorney with the Oakland-based First Amendment Project, in a letter to the city attorney. 

If adequate public comment is not provided, the First Amendment Project plans “possible litigation” on behalf of SuperBOLD, Cope wrote in April. 

Over the last month or so, Mayor Tom Bates has been experimenting with public comment procedures. Fifteen people have been chosen to speak for two minutes each. At the close of the 30-minute public comment period, he has then called upon those whose issue—or whose side of the issue—has not been addressed. 

“We’re trying out different ideas,” Bates said in a phone interview Monday. “We’re experimenting with it.” 

Bates defended the decision to discuss public comment at the daytime Agenda Committee meetings, noting the public can give input in writing and that most of the council chooses to attend the meetings, even though only four are members. 

In a phone interview Friday, Councilmember Kriss Worthington applauded the changes, but called for more. 

“In the past months, more members of the public have been allowed to comment. That is a step forward,” he said, noting, however, the rules changes have been confusing. “Rules one week are different from the next. We need a system where we know what the rules are.” 

Worthington is working on a sunshine ordinance, which he says will address public comment rules as well as other open meeting procedures. 

Addressing the changes he would like to see, Worthington said he wants to continue to hear the random 15 speakers at the beginning of the meeting. But he would like to add an opportunity for others to speak just before their items of interest are heard. Many cities, including Oakland, Millbrae, Sunnyvale, Walnut Creek and Richmond, allow comment just before an item on the agenda.  

But Bates said he thinks that would not work in Berkeley. “Some people would speak on 20 items,” he said. 

Scheduling public comment is a “real balancing act,” said Councilmember Linda Maio, noting that she’s gotten valuable information from public comment. Maio suggested that large groups that come to address the council could be given 10 minutes to speak. 

Public comment cannot be “open-ended,” she said. 

If everyone were allowed to speak, council meetings could go “too late to get business done,” Maio said. 

The remedy for late-night council meetings is not to limit speakers, but to adjust meetings so that special meetings are held for public hearings, which tend to be long and well attended, Worthington said. 

Bates said he’s not opposed to additional meetings. 

He pointed out that on July 25, the public comment period extended to more than hour, causing the meeting to end after midnight. 

“The later the council meets, the more irrational the discussion gets,” Bates said. 

Not everyone thinks drastic change is necessary. Sherry Smith, past president of the League of Women Voters, argued that “very few people have been excluded from speaking.” 

Still, Smith congratulated Bates on trying to make sure that “no one point of view has been excluded” by calling on people to share opposing views. 

But Bernardi pointed out that calling on people from the “other” side of an issue is not always valid.  

“Some people say that they were not pro or con [on an issue], but they have something to say about it,” she said. 

Contending that the council is “dragging its feet” in making change, Bernardi said new rules should already have been written. “They knew [summer] recess was coming up. Tom Bates wants to look like he’s doing something.” 

But Bates said the agenda committee will finalize its proposals in September, then send them to the full council. “It’s not like it’s going to be chiseled in stone,” Bates said, explaining there will be room to fine-tune new rules.

Federal government “anti-terror” activities have penetrated a number of Northern and Central California cities including Berkeley, according to an ACLU report released last week: “The State of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of Political Activity in Northern and Central California.” 

“The monitoring of political groups and free-speech protest activities should come as no surprise in light of the vast resources committed to intelligence gathering post 9/11 and the gutting of regulations protecting political and religious activity from unwarranted government surveillance,” says the report, which describes spy activities directed toward peaceful demonstrations in Fresno, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. 

The local incident featured in the report was an April 2005 demonstration at UC Berkeley, sponsored by Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, aimed at military recruitment on campus. 

The incident was described in an April 21, 2005, Department of Defense Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) report released to the ACLU by the Department of Defense following a freedom of information request and subsequent lawsuit. 

The information released describes the demonstration—the “incident type”—as “specific threats,” and describes the subject as “direct action planned against recruiters at University of California at Berkeley.” 

The source, whose name has been redacted from the released report, is described as “a special agent of the Federal Protective Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”  

“Are we turning into a police state?” Matthew Taylor, a member of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, asked in a phone interview Monday. “What we have here is that the administration has conducted an illegal war [and is] conducting other illegal actions to cover up.” 

Documents released thus far do not reveal how or the extent to which the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition has been monitored by federal government agencies, said Mark Schlosberg, Police Practices Policy Director of the ACLU-Northern California.  

Students first learned through an NBC news report that the April 2005 protest had been reported in the TALON database. Subsequently the ACLU pursued documents related to the report. 

It is unknown how an email describing plans for the protest got into the TALON database. It was through an agent, but it is not known whether the Stop the War group was infiltrated, if emails were appropriated, or if they got to TALON via another method. 

To get answers to these questions, Schlosberg said, “We have to go to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). It’s like a treasure hunt.” (The FBI conducts anti-terrorism investigations with other law enforcement agencies through the JTTF, according to the ACLU report.) 

“Homeland Security was created to protect the American people from terrorist activities—not monitor political dissent on college campuses,” Schlosberg said in a July 18 press release. 

The ACLU is calling on cities to institute measures to safeguard the right to protest. 

“Although this right exists as a legal principle in California, there is little regulation in place to enforce it,” the report says. Although the report noted that Attorney General Bill Lockyer wrote a document known as the Lockyer Manual that requires “that law enforcement must have reasonable suspicion of a crime to engage in surveillance of political activity,” an ACLU survey of 94 police departments found that “not one department of the 94 respondents had policy or training materials that referenced the Lockyer Manual.” 

“Berkeley does not have a policy that restricts the police department from monitoring groups,” Schlosberg noted.  

Both Schlosberg and Mayor Tom Bates said they thought the Police Review Commission had a subcommittee that was examining agreements made between the department and federal anti-terrorism agencies. However, Sharon Kidd, acting PRC chair, said that no such subcommittee exists. 

“I don’t want these people running roughshod over our population,” Bates said. “I want to be sure policies are in place.” 

The complete ACLU report can be found at http://www.aclunc.org/.

The California Supreme Court ruled today that the trustees of California State University must prepare a new environmental impact report on a planned expansion of a campus in Monterey County. 

The campus, known as CSU Monterey Bay, occupies 1,370 acres of the 27,000 acres of the former Fort Ord Army base. 

The campus was established in 1994 after the Army left the base and opened the following year with 663 students. Plans are now under way to expand the college into a major institution enrolling 25,000 students. 

The high court said the trustees must redo their environmental report to include a plan for alleviating impacts on infrastructure such as roads and fire protection outside the campus but within the base. 

The court’s unanimous ruling was issued in San Francisco in a lawsuit filed by the Fort Ord Reuse Authority, a state agency set up by the Legislature to plan for financing and construction of infrastructure improvements on the former base. 

The court said the mitigation plans in the revised report could be either actions taken within the campus, such as reducing automobile use, or a plan to reimburse the reuse authority for a share of infrastructure improvements. 

The trustees had agreed to pay for part of drainage, water supply and wastewater management and none for roadway and fire protection improvements needed outside the campus boundaries. 

They argued unsuccessfully that agreeing to payments to the reuse agency would be an unconstitutional gift of public funds because state property is exempt from taxation. 

But Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote in the court’s ruling that voluntary payments would be only one option for mitigation and could not be considered a tax. 

Werdegar wrote, “The plain language of the California Constitution does not support the trustees’ position that voluntary mitigation payments are impermissible.” 

California State University is the largest university system in the nation, with 23 campuses and 405,000 students statewide.

Will the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Bevatron building and Iceland become the city’s newest landmarks? And will the Drayage fall to the wrecking ball? 

All are up for consideration Thursday night, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) meets at 7:30 p.m., in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Lab officials oppose landmarking the Bevatron building in the hills above campus, which housed the massive particle accelerator that was the site of Nobel Prize-winning experiments. 

The landmarking effort began as a last-ditch effort by critics who fear the demolition and subsequent caravans of waste-filled trucks down Berkeley streets would result in citizen exposures to a variety of toxic substances, including radioactive dust and asbestos particles. 

Iceland, a skating rink at 2727 Milvia St., has been embroiled in a dispute with city officials who want the owners to replace the current cooling system which uses ammonia, a hazardous substance. 

The owners have asked the LPC to continue the hearing until November. 

Commissioners will also consider a request to demolish the Drayage, a former warehouse at 651 Addison St., which had become an artists’ colony, featuring spaces converted into live/work units by the artists who lived there. 

City officials ordered them out because the conversions had never been approved by the city and were judged dangerous by fire inspectors. 

Because the structure is more than 40 years old, the demolition was referred to the LPC for review by city planning staff. 

Other items on the agenda include a hearing to landmark 1770 La Loma Ave. and to declare 2411 Fifth St. a structure of merit, a landmark designation for structures that have undergone significant alterations since they were first built.

Californians knew global warming was real even before temperatures soared past 110 degrees in many regions for days and killed at least 75 people statewide, according to a survey released by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). 

Conducted before July’s record-breaking heat wave, the PPIC survey also revealed a marked increase in concern about climate change. Six years ago, in another PPIC survey that asked Californians to identify the state’s single most important environmental issue, zero percent of respondents picked global warming. In the latest survey, released July 26, 8 percent chose it. 

“Public opinion is finally starting to move on this topic,” said PPIC survey director Mark Baldassare. Californians, he said, “are so concerned (with global warming) that two-thirds actually want the state to address this issue—completely independent of the federal government.” 

In the liberal Bay Area, where Al Gore’s film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, can make white people talk back to the movie screen, a full 12 percent of PPIC respondents cited global warming as their top environmental concern. 

Eight in 10 Californians called global warming “very serious” or “somewhat serious.” Blacks and Latinos were more likely than whites and Asians to call global warming “a very serious threat to California’s economy and quality of life.” 

Republicans, on the other hand, remain unclear on the concept—only one in four called global warming “very serious.” 

Despite most Californians’ new awareness of climate change, the top environmental concern for state residents across all regions and races remains the air they breathe. One in four Californians chose air pollution as their top environmental concern.  

Most concerned about air quality were residents of Los Angeles and the rapidly growing Inland Empire and Central Valley. Thirty-one percent of Inland Empire residents named air pollution as their top issue, the highest of all regions surveyed. Riverside county is the fourth most polluted region in the world behind Jakarta, Calcutta and Bangkok.  

There were significant differences across racial and ethnic lines, however, in perceptions of how serious a health threat regional air pollution posed. Blacks (38 percent) and Latinos (31 percent) called air pollution “very serious” in their areas, while whites (18 percent) and Asians (13 percent) were less worried about breathing dirty air. 

“Environmental issues are often referred to as white, middle class issues,” Baldassare said. “That is no longer the case in our state.” 

The PPIC has watched the percentage of Californians reporting asthma as a condition afflicting themselves or a family member inch upward, from 37 percent in July 2003 to 41 percent today. The proportion reporting asthma as a problem was highest in the Central Valley (52 percent) and Inland Empire (50 percent). Children in the Central Valley suffer asthma rates higher than anywhere else in the state, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. 

Who or what is to blame for all this bad air? Californians overall finger emissions from personal vehicles (26 percent). Broken down regionally, Central Valley respondents seemed unsure who the culprit was. More than any other area, Central Valley residents split the blame among personal vehicles (19 percent), commercial vehicles (14 percent), population growth and development (14 percent), industry and agriculture (16 percent) and pollution from outside the area (18 percent). 

When it comes to Californians’ favorite manifestation of power—horsepower, in the form of an internal combustion engine mounted on four wheels—residents want the government to pressure auto makers to make cleaner cars. Majorities of voters across political lines and regions surveyed by the PPIC supported tougher air pollution standards on vehicles. Even 56 percent of Republicans were willing to see tougher standards on new cars, trucks and SUVs—and even if it drove up the purchase price. Whites (83 percent) and blacks (70 percent) were most likely to support such policies; smaller majorities of Latinos (63 percent) and Asians (62 percent) agreed. 

California’s Republicans may support curbing auto pollution, but they also want more oil. Seven in 10 Republicans surveyed said they support more drilling off the California coast, oil-soaked birds and otters be damned. But a majority of Californians (56 percent) still opposes drilling, a percentage that Baldassare says hasn’t budged in the past few years, even with skyrocketing fuel costs. 

Those higher gas prices affect different races disproportionately, the survey found. Whites (47 percent) were significantly less likely to report cutting back on their driving, compared to blacks (64 percent), Asians (63 percent) and Latinos (62 percent), who felt pinched at the pump. 

A full 81 percent of Californians favor more government spending to find alternative sources of fuel for automobiles, with little difference between Democrats (87 percent), Republicans (82 percent) and Independents (85 percent). Solar and wind power are popular with Californians, though a slight majority (52 percent) still says no to new nuclear power plants. Not so for Republicans, who support more nuclear plants (58 percent). 

A large majority of respondents said they’ll take their concerns about the environment into the voting booth. Eight-five percent said candidates’ positions on air pollution, global warming and energy policy will be somewhat or very important in determining their vote in this November’s gubernatorial election. 

The PPIC’s findings are based on a telephone survey of 2,501 California adult residents conducted from July 5 to July 18. Interviews were conducted in English, Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese). 

The PPIC is a private, nonprofit public policy research organization based in San Francisco. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation funded the poll, whose sampling error is plus or minus 2 percent. 

1. Where were you born and where did you grow up, and how does that affect how you regard the issues in Berkeley and in your district?  

I was born in Charleston, S.C. Lived for a couple of years in Evanston, IL. Then essentially spent the next 18 years in Dubuque, Iowa. I came to Cal as a graduate student in 1966. It was an interesting community in the sense that at that time Iowa was Republican dominated by the lower parts of the state, and the county I grew up in was 80 percent Democratic and was Catholic. The four-lane road used to stop at the border of the county because we were a Democratic county in a Republican state.  

There are some similar problems [between Berkeley and Iowa]. Problems finding kids things to do in the summertime. We had flooding problems on a major scale. The big difference is that it was an isolated urban area surrounded by—for 50 or 60 miles—farmland. Another difference was that there were very few job opportunities for anybody with an advanced degree. So typically, my high school class, most of the people either went into the military or went away to college. Most of the good jobs were at John Deere. We had a really big John Deere plant. And a meat-packing plant. Those were the good blue-collar jobs. The meat packing plant went belly up and John Deere had cutbacks. 

2. What is your educational background, and how did that help prepare you for being a councilmember? 

I earned my undergraduate degree in chemistry with a minor in physics and math. I came to Cal as a graduate student and got a Ph.D. in chemistry and worked for 30 years as a research scientist, primarily doing what people call nuclear physics. Basic research. I’m not a real people person. I worked in a laboratory. I worked with equipment. I also did a fair amount of administration, so I understand how big organizations work. The university is bigger than the city. 

The Lawrence Berkeley Lab is not so different, with about 3,500 employees. I think what helps me with the city is I’m comfortable with numbers. I like to understand things. Land use is a whole different thing. It’s kind of crazy. 

Many of the issues—particularly around the budget—I’m comfortable with because I understand numbers. I’m also a scientist. I’m curious to know how something really works. I like the idea of making structural reforms rather than dealing case by case, putting out fires. That gives me a certain kind of perspective. 

I also came to Cal as a graduate student, so I was a student for a number of years. During five or six years I must have lived in seven different places. I got married. We bought a house. I’m a long term resident; I went through a whole stage of living around, so I think I have some feel for what students face in the city. And as a homeowner, I lived for a long time on the edge of the college, at Dwight Way and Piedmont. I have some feel for the different parts of town because I lived there as a student.  

3. What are the top three most pressing issues facing your district (8)? 

Two of the biggest ones are traffic and crime. The third is basic services. Traffic is because two of the biggest streets in Berkeley—Ashby, which handles about 30,000 cars a day, and the Derby corner that runs into the University, which handles about 30,000 cars a day as well—run through my district. College Avenue has a fair amount of traffic as well. 

Between 4 and 6 in the afternoon one mother and her children were at John Muir school. It took her about a half an hour to return home during commute traffic because College was so crowded. So there’s a lot of frustration around traffic. 

There’s a lot of concern about the Caldecott Tunnel. If people had a magic wand they would like to move that traffic somewhere else, but nobody else wants it either. It seems the East Bay was designed to run north/south, not east/west. But yet, the most recent population growth has been to the east to the Walnut Creek area. 

The other problem with that, which makes it worse, is when I started working for Lawrence Lab 30 years ago I would guess that 75 percent of my colleagues lived in Berkeley. With the recent long range development plan, a smaller percentage of university staff and faculty don’t live in Berkeley. It’s down to about 25 percent. In the meantime the university has gotten bigger; the difference is most of the faculty and staff live further away and commute. So I think what we really need to do is: the university has been building a lot of student housing. They’ve been bringing the students closer and 90 percent of them walk or use mass transit. 

But for most of the faculty and staff there’s no ownership housing for them. We could do more by building some condominiums. The university could help more by subsidizing initial loans in buying housing so that faculty and staff can live closer and not have these long commutes. That’s one big problem that has no easy answers. 

The second issue is crime. My district is a very diverse district because it goes from north campus all the way to the Oakland border and then into the Berkeley hills. The Berkeley hills are fairly different, and you get close to campus and you have lots of students. So you get a big range from 100 percent renters to 100 percent homeowners with huge economic differences. Long-term residents stay here for four years and then move on to jobs in other places.  

The biggest crime problems are actually closer to campus. We have this huge property crime spike down in the south campus area. Here’s some recent data in the south campus area. The rate of all break-ins for the month doubles in late August and early September when the students come back. Even in the homeowners’ area we have a fair amount of crime. We get a lot of complaints about car break-ins. Cars stolen. People breaking into garages. Some burglaries. Stuff like that. 

The third issue is city services. Half of the district is students. The other half is homeowners who have just bought new homes and are paying $20,000 in property taxes. They really have high expectations of services. We’ve cut city staff 10 percent over the last three years. We get a lot of complaints on all types of things: “Why are my streets not cleaned?”  

We also have problems when people move out. Students have accumulated all these old beds and furniture that they just dump on the sidewalk. We need to make sure we have lots of dumpsters. You don’t need that level of services all year long. The Greeks (fraternities and sororities) do a cleanup. So we are trying to get the community more involved. 

4. Do you agree with the direction the city is heading? Why or why not? 

That assumes that the city is a ship. The city is more chaotic. I support Mayor Bates in getting some things done. He’s trying to get the council focused and get to the issues and try and move on. I think the city 1) has tremendous inertia and 2) there is no simple game plan. The council responds to pressures from the constituents. The biggest problem we had in the last three years was the budget crisis. We had to deal with that and we’re now coming out of that. We can’t print money like the feds. 

5. What is your opinion of the proposal to develop a new downtown plan and the settlement with the University of California over its LRDP? 

I supported the settlement agreement. Berkeley, like most university towns, has a town/gown problem because you have this big independent entity and then you have the city. In many ways we’re co-equals, but we’re not entirely co-equals. We’re a state agency and we’re a municipality. I think it’s important that we work out some sort of working relationship. We’re going to fight for our interests but I don’t think you can fight all the time. If you have a total adversarial relationship with the university you’re just fighting. Then you have much less of a chance of influencing them. 

So I think it’s important that Berkeley, at this point, has a working relationship to get things done. If you don’t do that the city will have problems and the university will have problems also. The university is a national treasure. 

The problem is that most of the employees don’t live in Berkeley. We get a lot of the problems from the traffic and their expansion. We only get some small piece of the benefit.  

A lot of critics say, “Gee, the university causes more problems than benefits.” I think the way you have to deal with that is to go to the state and say look, the state should really give some mitigation fees for us having the university to help counteract some of the negative impacts it has rather than just saying were going to fight it. We also have a lot of really bright people over there, and if we can get them engaged in trying to adopt some of the solutions, I see Berkeley can act as a test bed. We can really be a model city in some ways. 

I think it’s important that we stand up for our rights but we have a good working relationship. I really give the mayor and the new chancellor credit. They meet regularly and they’re working things out. It’s not perfect but I think we’re making some progress.  

I think the downtown area plan is an area that we can do some joint planning. For one thing, look at the university parking garages. They use them during the day and in the evening they are mostly empty. Downtown, we’ve basically been destroying parking because we’ve been putting buildings up on parking lots. We have a need in the evening for parking spaces. Rather than the city build more parking garages and the university build more parking garages, it would be nice in some ways to build a common one. They use it during the day and we use it at night. 

Also, I think one of the ways to revitalize Telegraph is to get University staff and faculty to shop more on Telegraph. 

6. How do you think the mayor is doing at his position? Are you considering running for mayor, and if so, what changes would you try to make? 

I think Mayor Bates is doing a good job. He’s accessible. He comes down to your office. He will chat with you. You can walk into his office and chat with him. If you disagree with him on an issue he will work with you on the next issue. Personalities don’t get involved. I like his vision—in what he’s trying to do for the city. And I’m not planning on running for mayor. 

7. Has Berkeley’s recent development boom been beneficial for the city? What new direction, if any, should the city’s development take over the next decade?  

I think the development boom has been beneficial. Berkeley’s population has been constant for the last 30 years. One of the reasons is from the ’70s to 2000 we built almost no new housing. So some of it was catching up from that. I’m a little concerned now that we’ve been building so much rental housing that we have kind of a rental housing glut. 

Rents have been flat for the last four years. We have rent stabilization. What we really have a problem with is that ownership housing costs have been dramatically going up. I think we could encourage more condominiums. In the past four years 80 percent of the units have been rentals. Now the new projects are more 50/50. 

I think we also have a problem where people object a lot to the scale and the mass of these new projects. And I have some problems with that as well. The problem with these is we’re kind of caught between local city ordinances and the state. Berkeley has an ordinance where you say you have to have 20 percent of your units to be affordable. But as soon as you do that, the state says you have to give the developer 35 percent density. So a three-story building ends up being four. 

8. How would you characterize the political climate in Berkeley these days? 

Berkeley has just an incredible number of energetic people engaged on everything from local issues to national issues. The political climate is always bubbling, I would say. It peaks around election cycles. In November of 2004 was the presidential election and I think, in some degree, the city was lost in that titanic struggle between the forces of light and darkness. Berkeley was only one of three cities that voted 90 percent for Kerry. 

We’re an unusual town in that way. The budget looks better and we should have more money to put into services and start some new programs. We need to invest in our youth which is going to be our future. I’m optimistic. 

9. What is your favorite thing about Berkeley? 

The tree-lined streets. And the neighborhood commercial areas. I live about a half a mile from the Elmwood shopping district. We have dinner and browse at the bookstore and then walk back home. It’s one of the things that is really spectacular. 

10. What is your least favorite thing about Berkeley? 

Traffic. I think of the one vacant lot on Haste and Telegraph. It would be nice for something to happen there. Sometimes the cynicism of people of Berkeley. It’s popular sometimes to be cynical. You have to be an optimist.

Paintballs redux 

Berkeley’s phantom paintballer has been at it again, reports police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

On July 20, the mysterious pigment blaster nailed a 23-year-old Berkeley resident as she walked along the 1700 block of University Avenue at about 7:30 p.m. 

Within moments of that attack, police received a second call, with the victim in that case a 15-year-old who was hit on her lip as she walked along San Pablo Avenue near the Cedar Street intersection. 

Earlier in the day, publicity about the rash of attacks had triggered another call, this one reporting an incident that had happened on July 12. In that case, a 12-year-old boy was struck in the back as he walked along University Avenue near Acton Street. 

None of the victims saw their attacker—nor did any of the other folks who have been hit in the recent rash of attacks. 

The mysterious shooter could face some serious jail time if caught, since police are looking at each incident as a case of assault with a deadly weapon. 

Trash arsons 

Someone is setting Berkeley’s trash afire, reports Officer Galvan. 

Police are investigating three separate incidents in which persons unknown have ignited the contents of waste receptacles. 

Police found the first blaze at 1:17 a.m. last Monday when they responded to a report about noisy skateboarders near the Shattuck Avenue/Channing Way intersection. Once on scene, they found a trash can ablaze, but no sign of the fire bug. 

The next call came 84 minutes later, this time reporting that the contents of a city trash can were ablaze on Telegraph Avenue near the corner of Dowling Way. 

The next call, which came in at 8:40 p.m. on Tuesday evening, came from staff at the North Berkeley Senior Center, reporting on a trash can blaze a week earlier that had charred a wooden bench outside the 1901 Hearst Ave. center. 

Another mysterious fire was reported on July 21, when firefighters who responded to a parked car fire in the 2700 block of Sojourner Truth Way were unable to find a non-suspicious reason why the vehicle burst into flames. 

Marina shooting 

A 20-year-old Richmond man was shot in the Hs Lordship’s parking lot in the Berkeley Marina about 2:30 on the morning of July 22, reports Officer Galvan. 

Summoned by a report of gunshots heard in the Marina, Berkeley Police arrived as two cars were leaving the Marina. In the parking lot they found the victim, suffering from a non-life-threatening gunshot wound and unwilling to give his name. 

With a little encouragement, the fellow finally identified himself, and said his attackers were fellow Richmond folk. 

He was taken to Highland Hospital for treatment of his injury. 

SUV attack 

The driver of a black Yukon SUV drove her vehicle into a pedestrian after she and her friends had tried and failed to crash a party in the 1300 block of Alcatraz Avenue about 10 p.m. on July 22. 

The victim wasn’t seriously hurt, and the Yukon was gone by the time police arrived. 

Blanketed bandit 

A tall man wrapped in a blanket walked into the Marina Lodge at 975 University Ave. about 9 p.m. on July 20 and—after telling the clerk he had a gun concealed beneath his wrap—demanded the contents of the till. 

The bandit departed after the clerk complied. 

Intimidators busted 

Three young fellows braced an 18-year-old Oakland man as he walked along the 2400 block of Telegraph Avenue just before midnight on the 20th, then demanded his money. 

The man complied, then promptly called police, offering descriptions of the trio. A prowl car soon found a group that matched the particulars, and after an ID session, busted two of them, both juveniles. 

Shoe assault 

Police arrested a 24-year-old Emeryville man after he allegedly attacked his Berkeley girlfriend with her own footwear. 

Police responded to the woman’s call at 9:03 a.m. on July 23, and arrived at her residence in the 2200 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way in time to name the suspect, who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, battery on a partner and making a criminal threat. 

Sexual assaults 

Police have few leads in two reported sexual assaults. 

While the first was reported on July 20, the incident took place 11 months earlier in the parking lot of a Berkeley cannabis club—just which one the caller couldn’t say. 

The caller was a relative of the victim, underage at the time of the incident. The young woman herself was unwilling to cooperate with investigators, Galvan said. 

Both the caller and the victim are Redwood City residents, said Galvan. 

In the second incident, which occurred last Monday, the victim said she was beaten and raped by a man she only knew by his street name. 

The case has been referred to investigators, Officer Galvan said.

Arab Culture’s Genius To Communicate Beyond Itself 

Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world. For over three millennia, it served as the terminus for the ancient Silk Route that linked traders from East Asia to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Its durability offers testimony to an Arab genius for communicating with cultures beyond its own. 

Today that same Arab genius is manifesting itself in Lebanon where fierce Israeli bombing has been unable to pulverize a population where literally everyone, whether urbanite, suburbanite or villager, has a cellular phone. 

Military analysts interviewed by the New York Times credit Hezbollah’s surprising success against one of the most disciplined and well-equipped armies in the world to its practice of “net war”—”small, agile, units... operating with flattened command structures that are ... computer literate, propaganda and Internet savvy, and capable of firing complicated weapons to great effect.” 

Yet even if Hezbollah had not perfected this new style of 21st century combat, the cell phone would have equalized aggressor with aggressed by ensuring that no act of destruction remains invisible. On the global media stage, the most ephemeral images—Israeli teenage girls writing love notes on artillery shells, Lebanese toddlers huddled in an apartment building about to be blown apart by smart bombs—are now immortalized by the Internet’s long tail. Cell phones can alert sophisticated tracking systems to the whereabouts of a suspected target, but when everyone has a cell phone, whom do the aggressors target?  

The people of the Middle East—indeed the entire world—watch the images as a “failed” state is being burned at a medieval stake. That country is Lebanon, which is much smaller than Israel, which in turn is much smaller than Syria, whose capitol is Damascus. 

The White House and the Pentagon have finally intervened to evacuate predominantly middle-class people—pillars of what the U.S. defines as Lebanon's “democratic” state. Left behind are the poor, as happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina last year. And the poor in South Beirut will want revenge, as do the people of the Gaza Strip. 

Middle Eastern history reminds us that the scandal of destruction does not preclude durability. Those who are destroyed can project themselves onto successor generations. Revenge is evil because it can never be erased—having a soul means you carry evil beyond your death. But sacrifice in the name of love has had an even more lasting impact. 

Jesus was put to a horrible death by the Romans. Despite quarrels over the meaning of his crucifixion, many people began emulating his sacrifice. Within three or four centuries, many Europeans were converting to Christianity. Two or three centuries after that, Christianity was being preached in China. 

Then a new religion, Islam, burst onto the West Asian scene, coinciding with a new era of peace and prosperity in China under the Tang dynasty. Long before he fled Mecca for Medina, the Prophet Muhammad was a merchant who made frequent trips to Damascus. By then Arab and Persian merchants were already ensconced in the huge metropolis of Canton. Today, Canton is home to one of the oldest mosques in the world. 

No culture in the world has been so successful at internationalizing itself—whether through its merchants or its prophets—as has the Arab culture, a culture of the desert. If Lebanon is the new Damascus, the key to its survival rests on this genius, now harnessing itself to the cell phone. 

Franz Schurmann is professor emeritus of UC Berkeley, and cofounder of Pacific News Service.

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.

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.

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.” 

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.” 

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.

“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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

One of the most heart-rending dialogues in English literature is a short scene in Macbeth.  

A messenger tells Macduff,  

“Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes 

Savagely slaughter’d.” 

“My children too?” Macduff asks, unbelieving.  

“Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief,” says his colleague Malcolm. But revenge against the childless Macbeth won’t cure Macduff’s pain:  

“He has no children. All my pretty ones? 

Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? 

What, all my pretty chickens and their dam 

At one fell swoop?” 

“Dispute it like a man,” says Malcolm. 

Macduff replies: 

“I shall do so;  

But I must also feel it as a man:  

I cannot but remember such things were, 

That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, 

And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,  

They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, 

Not for their own demerits, but for mine, 

Fell slaughter on their souls.” 

Reports of events in Lebanon over last weekend were poignantly reminiscent of this scene. A web search on the words “dead children” brings up many different accounts, one more painful than the next, of the death of 37 little ones in a refugee house in Qana. “There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men,” the U.N. humanitarian chief said, calling for a cease fire. His estimate was that a third of 600 dead in Lebanon were children. Both sides in the conflict have repeatedly looked to heaven to take their part, as did Macduff, but as he recognized, the slaughter of the innocents was not because of their own faults, but was caused by the warring adults on both sides.  

The Israelis at first seemed to announce a 48-hour ceasefire in order to let the blood settle, but what they gave with one hand they took away with the other. NPR “Morning Edition” host Renee Montagne did a stellar job on Monday of nailing Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, who told her that Israel is not under “a full suspension” of aerial bombing but will target only “immediate threats,” including Hezbollah missile launchers and command-and-control headquarters. “Excuse me, then, that sounds like no suspension at all,” said Renee: “Has the air campaign so far not been about getting Hezbollah? Surely you’re not intentionally targeting civilians? So what’s the difference?...Given that Hezbollah hides behind civilians… how can Israel continue to pursue a military strategy when so many civilian deaths are inevitably part of it?” she asked. The general’s responses were mostly double-talk, ending with a suggestion that no army before had ever hidden behind civilians. “You see, we’re fighting a war—a horrible war—against an enemy that has no divisions, has no tanks, has no war plans,” he said.  

During the American revolution the revolutionary army hid among civilians, but the British army didn’t retaliate by shelling cities.  

As we learn from Macbeth however, deliberately killing the families of the enemy does have a long history in warfare. Renee’s question still hangs in the air: what’s the difference between intentionally killing civilians and inevitably killing civilians? 

Relentless syndicated cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall last Thursday tracked the history of collective punishment of civilians from the time of Nazi Germany (50 civilians executed for each German soldier killed) to the present day. He estimated that as of the time he wrote (July 20) more than 500 Lebanese civilians had been killed by Israeli bombs, while 15 Israeli civilians had died in Hezbollah rocket attacks and 14 Israeli soldiers had died in combat. Last weekend’s death toll probably changed the numbers but not the ratio of Lebanese civilian deaths to Israeli deaths, about 30 to 1, by Rall’s estimate. Are these deaths inevitable or intentional, and is there a moral difference? 

One of the handful of correspondents who periodically accuse this paper of anti-Semitism suggests that our editorial opinions are formed by listening to KPFA. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but we rarely listen to KPFA. We do listen to the BBC on KALW in the middle of the night, and we sample the world press and radio in English and French on the Internet from time to time. But when KPFA (which my correspondent must listen to avidly) seems to be converging with world opinion from many different sources, with the exception of the usually tame and cowardly U.S. media, intelligent people should recognize that something new is going on.  

We don’t have to go farther than our local newsstand to see how the invasion of Lebanon is playing out around the world. The headline on Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle was “Israel Pauses Air Strikes After 37 Children Killed.” Well, no. The strongly pro-Israel Chronicle only wished that had happened, but as Renee Montagne’s interview with General Nehushtan Monday morning revealed, Israeli leaders didn’t end up displaying such good sense after all.  

Many Israelis are aware of the perilous path their leaders are placing them on, but are powerless to stop them. There are many eager Malcolms urging Israelis and Arabs to “dispute it like a man,” but there are also many sensible voices around the world, Jewish and non-Jewish, saying that the blood of slaughtered Lebanese children will be the seed of future Islamic martyrs.  

What genuine support of Israel means could be summed up by the public service ad cliché, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” Real friends don’t let friends jump lemming-like off cliffs, in pursuit of the “medicine of great revenge” ostensibly for two captured soldiers. Sooner or later Israel and its neighbors will have to come to terms. 

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. 

LEAGUE OF  

WOMEN VOTERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wish to correct a serious misimpression left by a quote attributed to Councilmember Gordon Wozniak in the story “Council Looks at UC Election” that appeared in your July 25 edition. 

Mr. Wozniak is quoted as having said that “It was a valid election [the ASUC student body election held in April] run by the League of Women Voters.” 

Had Mr. Wozniak (and the Daily Planet) checked with us, we could have told him and you that the League does not “run” the ASUC election. Since 1979, we have offered our services as consultants on fair election process, and served as poll-watchers. When we have seen election rule infractions, we have pointed them out to the Elections Council, with whom we have our contract for services. The Elections Council then proceeds to try to cure or bring sanctions against those responsible, and the final arbiter of all election controversies is the ASUC Judicial Council. 

The bottom line is that the ASUC Elections Council “runs” the ASUC election, and under their by-laws and elections rules, the Judicial Council has the final say about sanctions against rule violators. 

Thank you for letting us clear up this serious misunderstanding of the role of the League of Women Voters in the ASUC elections process. 

Sherry Smith 

ASUC Elections Committee,  

League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville 

• 

UNDER WATER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

About the ongoing concern expressed by the Friends of the Ocean View-Sisterna Historic District over an old house on Sixth Street: Given that by the end of the century all the houses in that area will be under water, along with the entire bay shoreline, let me suggest that you consider turning your attention to more serious matters. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

WRONG NAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In your July 28 story, “Massive New UC Lab to Rise at Downtown’s Edge,” you mention Hong Kong business man Li Ka-Shing. I believe that you incorrectly refer to his last name as Ka-Shing, when in fact “Li” is his last/family name, and Ka-Shing is his first/given name. 

John Hanley 

Oakland 

• 

SIDEWALK DISPLAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am adding my voice to the complaint of Karla James in the July 28 Daily Planet, regarding the habit of Berkeley Honda on Shattuck and Carleton, parking display cars on the city side walk. Not only do they obstruct foot traffic in this way, they also follow another practice, which obstructs auto traffic, sometimes parking cars at right angles to the curb, jutting out into the much used turnout exit from Reel Video. I first noticed this while trying to walk home through this obstacle course three weeks ago. When I reached home, I telephoned the police. The officer I spoke to said that was the problem of the Traffic Department (or some title like that) and gave me the telephone number. I immediately called the number. A machine answered, stating business hours for that office (I WAS calling within the business hours) but I was told to leave a message and my phone number; I would be called, and the problem, whatever it was, would be dealt with during business hours. Three weeks. Nothing has changed. No one has called me back. 

Dorothy Bryant 

• 

TOWER OF SONG 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Justin DeFreitas’ review of the film Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man was pretty much right on. The film’s one saving grace was, as DeFreitas pointed out, Rufus Wainwright.  

The ultimate sacrilege in the film was to have a female vocalist massacre Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” This is one of the more beautiful expressions of male sexuality ever put to music and lyric. To hear it sung with the sensitivity and intensity with which Cohen wrote it, listen to any of Jeff Buckley’s interpretations, from for example, the album Live a L’Olympia, or the EP Live from the Bataclan. These and the versions from the remastered Grace album are available as CDs at Amazon.com, or you can stream them, with much less fidelity, from the Peyote Radio Theater media player at www.jeffbuckley.com. “Hallelujah” is also on the DVD Jeff Buckley Live in Chicago setlist. In the process you will hear some incredible solo guitar playing. 

If the film introduced some to Cohen’s music and wordplay, it was not a total loss. 

Richard Holmquist 

Richmond 

• 

OAKLAND POLICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is outrageous that the Oakland police have wasted their time and our tax dollars with their spying on and infiltrating the local anti-Iraq war movement some three years ago. If the aim of the police was to “prevent violence,” perhaps they should have instead infiltrated and investigated the Oakland Police Department, since there was a police riot with the firing of many rubber bullets on May 12, 2003 at the peaceful protestors sitting-in at the Port of Oakland. These two officers and all their superiors who approved this attack on our civil liberties and our freedoms should be fired immediately. Don’t we have enough real crime in Oakland with murders, armed robberies, assaults and burglaries for the police to deal with? 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

• 

CITY AUDITOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can only guess that John Selawsky is looking for a fatter paycheck when announcing that he is considering a run for the city auditor position. Selawsky as School Board director and member of the school’s audit committee has failed and refused to implement at the school district even the most basic and minimum auditing requirements recommended by the the Government Accountability Office.  

Furthermore, Selawsky has failed to be an independent board member and does not provide oversight over the school administration. He failed to vote against a single pay increase for administrators. Yet, where was he when the teachers’ contract was being negotiated? 

Several years ago, school board members asked for a 30 percent raise, telling us among other justifications, that they would pool this money to hire staff to assist the board to develop an independent oversight function. That has not happened. Instead, the board is wholly dependent upon the superintendent for all its information, for all its data. The board performs no independent evaluation of whether the data is valid, whether the analysis is correct, and whether other points of view have been omitted. This is why so many of us consider the School Board a rubber stamp. 

Of course, the School Board and administraiton, as a single voice will tell you that all is well with the schools. But given the high level of administrative secrecy under which the school system operates, the true situation at the schools often remain hidden from public view. Even simple actions to encourage democracy are not taken. For example the school district’s audit committee’s meeting times and agendas aren’t even posted on their website. 

John Selawsky is totally inappropriate to be our city auditor. 

Sandra Horne 

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ENROLLMENT POLICY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank Lorraine Mahley and David Baggins for their constructive, civil letters regarding BUSD’s out-of-district student enrollment policy and my own letter of last week. I want them both to know, and the residents and taxpayers of Berkeley, that I will encourage our staff to implement a procedure similar to the one used in Albany that requires a lease agreement or house title as proof of residency to ensure that Berkeley students and only those students legally permitted within the Berkeley schools are the recipients of Berkeley’s continued largesse. Once again, thank you for the suggestions and your comments. 

John Selawsky 

Director, Berkeley School Board 

• 

FORE ERNEST—WITH GROANERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How fortunate for our town and times we had such a prophet for non-profits as our beloved Ernest Landauer—a poet, first and coremost.  

Two other devotions of Ernest need remembering: his there-at-the-creation when the Ecology Center opened at College and Derby around 1980, and his last gig as director of the Bay Area Funeral Society; how much financial heartbreak he saved folks in passing. 

In delightful memory, puns are weaving my heart and soul, and I say, dear friend: You shall be mist, and we shall feel your great spirit on Pacific winds, where I believe you have gone to rest—and jest.  

Also, all my best to the loved of Thunder, Julian White and Floyd Dixon.  

Arnie Passman 

• 

IN PRAISE OF ERNEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to join Osha Neumann (Planet, July 28) in saluting the life of Ernst Landauer, my first professor of Sociology at UC Riverside in 1963. Ernst Landauer did indeed love words, so much so that he wanted his students to come to understand the meaning of the most potent on their own. For example, he refused to define Durkheim’s term, “moral density.” He wanted us to “figure it out.” I also recall that he was responsible for bringing to the campus the filmmaker, Jean Renoir. And, I remember him telling us “public schooling has taught you not to think.” 

As an educator and sociologist I am very grateful to have been taught by Ernst Landauer, a sui generis teacher, indeed. I mourn his passing. 

Molly Freeman 

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SIDEWALK TRASH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I absolutely agree with Yolanda Huang’s message, especially its last sentence. The property managers (North Berkeley Properties) of the apartment building I live in won’t address root causes. They could give new tenants guidance in not creating seething piles of fly- and rat-attracting garbage on the sidewalk in front of our building, but the suggestion has gone continually unheeded. They don’t have to walk through this unhealthful mess every day, and neither do the people in the group of investors who own the building. 

Sandy Rothman 

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TWO NUMBERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Apropos Yolanda Huang’s letter concerning sidewalk trash, it may be helpful to inform readers of these two numbers. 

1. City of Berkeley Public Works Customer Service: 644-6620. It is my understanding that the city will come to pick up illegal dumping. 

2. Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC): 528-4052. They are located in Berkeley on EastShore Freeway. ACCRC recycles computer hardware for nominal fee and, to my understanding, CRT monitor drop off is now free. 

J. Herbert 

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CONCERNED IN ALBANY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading a mailing from Concerned Albany Neighbors I read several things that concerned me. The letter called the initiative a “takeover attempt by special interest groups.” It troubling to see environmental concerns often labeled as special interests groups while we are all deeply connected to the earth and depend upon it for our very existence. Our environment needs special safeguards to protect it from interests for profit. Environmental concerns should not be considered special interests, but the interests of all of us. Unfortunately, that is not always the case so we need the watch guard groups to safeguard us and remind us of our responsibilities. Financial gains can drive us to make decisions without the proper consideration for the environment and our future. It seems to me that in this situation the special interests that we need to be aware of are Golden Gate Fields and Ladbroke. I have concerns about letting the groups who are poised to profit do the majority of the planning even if we are given the choice to refuse in the end. 

I am also confused when the people supporting the initiative are considered “dominated by people who do not live in Albany” according to the correspondence from CAN. It seems very clear to me that Golden Gate Fields and Ladbroke are the groups that are dominated by people from out of town. 

Susan Adame 

Albany 

• 

THE FACTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In “Kitchen Democracy Donation Draws Scrutiny,” you state that Wozniak’s $3,000 donation provoked questions on the appropriate use of city funds. At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, the concern was reiterated that we cater to a narrow segment of the Berkeley population. 

Let’s look at the facts. Our community of nearly 750 Kitchen Democracy citizens spans all eight Berkeley districts. They have cast more than 1,000 votes on city-wide issues and on local issues covering six of the eight districts. 

It is true that District 8 is disproportionately represented in our community—but there is nothing devious here. We live in district 8; that’s where we know people; that’s where KD started just last March. 

Look behind the vote tally on our home page and you’ll find a diverse community thriving with articulate perspectives. Many are written by busy citizens using KD to participate for the first time in local government. What could be more inclusive than that? 

We’re thankful that City Council eventually approved the donation—it will help us continue to provide this public service. The next time you have five minutes on a connected computer, come to KitchenDemocracy.org, read what the experts and your neighbors are saying, then speak your mind and and help us build a better Berkeley. 

Robert Vogel and Simona Carini 

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LIBRARY METHODS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The library requires staff in the branches to perform an activity that can have no apparently useful purpose—and which has the undesirable result of delaying the availability of periodicals to the public. 

Namely the requirement that periodicals must be “logged in” before they can be put out on the shelf. This logging in often gets backed up in performance, with the result that the periodicals are sitting in the “to do” stack rather than being available for the patrons. 

Recently a further wrinkle has been added. Now the periodicals are delivered as usual to the branches. The branches then send them to the central library for “processing.” When this eventually occurs, the periodicals are sent back to the branches. 

This system makes no sense: 

1. What can be learned from “logging in” magazines? 

2. Why cannot this be done at the branch, if it must be done? 

Someone could learn something by observing the procedure at Oakland branches. The magazines are mailed to the branches; and the staff puts them out on the floor without further wasted and delaying effort. 

Bill McIntyre 

• 

THE JEWISH SOUL  

IN TODAY’S WORLD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Hebrew priniciples of Tzedaka (Concern for the Well Being of Others) and Tikkun Ollum (Responsibility for Mending the World) are inherent traditions of Jewish heritage that have lifted up the human race. 

Now, progressive Jews criticize Israel’s contemporary behaviors and uphold these traditions of empathy and caring about the outcome of the world. They are the ones who tend the Jewish soul while modern Israel is an empty shell of material acquisition and militarism. 

N C Delaney 

• 

BUSH / CHENEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How can you trust and have sympathy for George W. Bush and his allies who have stolen two straight presidential elections? You don’t have to bash Bush but it is the duty of every conscious citizen to point out the egregious, and yes criminal activities that the GOP and religious conservatives have fostered over the past five years.  

Conspiracy against democracy, lying the United States into war, call it what you will, Bush/Cheney have done it to America.  

Never in my 63 years have I witnessed anything like this group of deceivers. Whether a Democrat, liberal, progressive, Green, Independent, it is our duty to stand up to this dark and malignant force that has cast its shadow on America. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley

The Bush administration’s foreign policy—whatever it is—is in ruins. Iraq and neglected Afghanistan are sinking into macabre violence. Israel has launched a bloody regional war, with conspicuous support from a diplomatically isolated United States. India is recovering from a major terrorist atrocity. Terror plots against North America are an apparent growth industry. 

Meanwhile, North Korea has developed nukes (with help from our very good friend Pakistan) and now a missile that may someday reach U.S. territory. Should this, or anything else, emerge as a genuine threat to American security, don’t expect our military to respond. It’s far too bogged down in an Iraqi quagmire that this nation imposed on itself for no real reason. 

How again did we get into this mess? 

A few upper-crust Yalies—all notably successful in staying far away from their own generation’s war in Vietnam—got the keys to the White House in 2001. And after a deceptively easy game of capture-the-flag in Kabul, they thought it would be fun to play at war. 

Yalie-in-Chief George W. Bush thought it would be keen-o to settle his daddy’s old score with Saddam Hussein. He beheld the power and courage of the U.S. armed forces and saw toy soldiers at his disposal—playthings, the way medieval boy nobles saw their private armies.  

W. had never seen an actual war, of course. He’d spent his Vietnam draft-eligible years in (and AWOL from) a safe, coveted spot in the Air National Guard “Champagne Corps.” 

Vice Yalie Richard Cheney, who’d dropped in and out of New Haven twice as prologue to his epic “academic” draft deferment, was happy to order up a second Iraq war for the Bush family. He’d messed up the first one, and he could mess up a second. Either way, it would benefit Halliburton—whose $20 million severance gift was a lifelong reminder that what was good for Halliburton was good for Richard Cheney. 

Eager to concoct an intellectual justification for this fool’s errand was Cheney’s old Pentagon protégé, former Yale nutty professor Paul Wolfowitz. Channeling Dr. Strangelove, Wolfowitz solemnly informed us that reigniting the Bush/Hussein clan pissing match would somehow “transform” and “democratize” the Middle East, and that Iraqis would “greet us as liberators.” 

In assuming that any civilization would willingly transform itself at swordpoint, Wolfowitz and fellow neoconservatives remarkably mirrored a mad tenet of the extremist Wahabbi sect of Islam that rules Saudi Arabia. Wahabbism is what incubated Osama bin Laden. The Wahabbi notion of conversion through killing continues to fuel lethal Sunni Muslim violence against Shiites. 

Strategic acumen like Wolfowitz’s isn’t won easily. During Vietnam, the future warlord fought valiantly on the battlefields of the University of Chicago’s graduate school, earning the Purple Onion for irony.  

Cheney’s longtime Yalie consigliere, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, handled backroom jobs like promoting fabricated claims about Saddam’s alleged arsenals—and retaliating against truth-telling debunkers like Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Libby now awaits a perjury trial. 

But it’s not like four guys from Yale can run, or wreck, a country alone. It takes a virtual residential college. Stephen Hadley, a Yale Law School graduate now making us less secure as Bush’s National “security” [sic] advisor, helped Cheney and Libby spread fabrications linking Saddam to a 9/11 plotter and to African uranium. 

Fellow Yale Law graduate John Yoo cooked up the Bush administration’s judicial rationales for torture. He’s now teaching Constitutional Law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall. (Lovely thought.) Another far-right product of Yale Law, Samuel Alito, is dismantling our civil liberties as Bush’s latest Supreme Court appointee. 

Shredding American goodwill at the United Nations is U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, a Yale twofer (he sat out Vietnam at Yale College and then Yale Law). Bolton once famously declared: “If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” 

Destroying the CIA from within—Al Qaeda, just drool—was Spy Kid Yalie Porter Goss. Until his recent forced resignation as agency director, Goss shoved out knowledgeable veteran spooks, replacing them with incompetent, often shady cronies. 

Black Bag Yalie John Negroponte, the new director of national “intelligence” [sic], will keep enforcing mistaken espionage groupthink. It’s all in the club, actually: Negroponte and Goss have been friends since Yale’s Class of 1960, where they were even fraternity brothers. Talk about casting the widest possible net for talent! 

So there you have it. A bunch of cosseted ruling-class pips who’d made damn sure they’d never seen a real war—Cheney once said he’d “had other priorities” than serving in Vietnam—decided that, by Jove, it would be princely fun to throw one. So they sent our nation’s steerage class off on a desert suicide mission. 

The cost so far: some 2,570 of our little people dead, and counting; untold tens of thousands of Iraqis killed; and our nation’s international reputation shattered. 

Now in tracing these old school ties, I don’t mean to suggest some occult Old Blue agenda behind this self-selecting group of red-state-oriented ghouls. Nor do I mean to slam Yale itself, one of the world’s great universities. Its students are whip-smart and unusually hard-working. Under today’s more meritocratic admissions standards, W. or Cheney probably wouldn’t get in, let alone out. 

Yale is hardly the only distinguished university to have led the nation astray. Harvard’s “best and brightest” in the Kennedy cabinet marched us into the Vietnam quagmire. The University of Chicago originally miseducated neocons like Wolfowitz. 

But there’s something spookily efficient about the Old Blue pipeline to power. Besides the pack around W., other big dogs who attended Yale College and/or Yale Law School include Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Joseph Lieberman, Clarence Thomas, and Anita Hill. 

A Yale graduate has occupied the president’s and/or vice president’s office throughout the last generation. A Yalie has been at either the top or bottom of the last two Democratic presidential tickets. 

It’s not that Yale has distinctively failed to endow its graduates with moral character befitting public service. It’s failed at a distinctively high level, because its old-boy network is so strong. 

I’ll confess that even the little backwoods Ivy League college I attended (Dartmouth) could challenge Yale in promoting the pursuit of power unbound by moral considerations. Dartmouth’s public-affairs office busily celebrated any student or grad who scored a plumb D.C. internship or job. But I remember far less discussion of the ends to which power was put.  

Fortunately for the nation and its sobriety, the highest office a Dartmouth graduate has ever held is the ceremonial vice presidency (Nelson Rockefeller, 1974-77). But I can only assume that Yale students get simmered in a similar sense of privilege and entitlement to “lead.” 

Many have been genuine leaders. When America faced real threats not of our own making, Yalies heroically rushed to serve, rather than sending the uncredentialed to fight their battles. (See Marc Wortman’s recent book The Millionaires’ Unit for stunning World War I examples.) At home, Yale students have struggled prominently for peace in Vietnam, civil rights, and justice for janitors. 

But given who runs the country, let’s just hope that by next fall, the spreading disaster in the Middle East is recognized as a “teachable moment” in New Haven’s classrooms. 

Michael Katz may actually be a Skull and Bonesman, writing under an elaborate disguise to divert attention from an unimaginably darker conspiracy.

Suzanne La Barre wrote an interesting report on the July 25 City Council meeting pertaining to the crisis of the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA). While the governing body of BHA (the nine City Council members and only two appointed members at large), assumes the posture that it just now recognizes that new governance is essential to the stability of the agency, the cry of “Shocked! Shocked!” sounds a bit hollow given the history. Let’s see if we can round up the usual suspects! 

In the early 1980s, the governing body of BHA went from an independent board to the City Council. On the third Tuesday of the month they meet for about half an hour before the council meeting. Did it take 20 some-odd years for the members of the board to conclude that it “had too much on its plate ... to adequately oversee Housing Authority staff and operations”? Then, since 2003, HUD designated BHA a “troubled” agency, for various administrative and managerial inadequacies, including a backlog of inspections and re-evaluations, and housing quality issues. In the past three years what part of “troubled” did they not understand? Is it that HUD funds BHA for $27.4 million a year and is now threatening to take its money elsewhere? Is it that the plight of poor people is generally underrated, especially when those doing the rating do not have to worry about having a roof over their head? 

Last Tuesday, according to Daily Planet reporter Suzanne La Barre, more than three-dozen tenants “flooded” the City Council meeting. That public response to the housing crisis was stimulated by an ad hoc handful of people from the community who had the courage to make an appearance and get media attention. I submit that it also got the City Council’s attention. Councilmember Spring submitted a two part motion: that the council adopt a resolution in favor of turning the authority over to another body, and secondly that an announcement be sent out to all Section 8 and Public Housing tenants from BHA inviting people to a public meeting for 2 p.m. Aug. 26 at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Ms. La Barre correctly reports that the council did not vote on the resolution because it was not on the agenda, but she did not cover the fact that they unanimously adopted the motion to send out notices and have a public meeting of tenants. 

The aforementioned citizens who now call themselves the Committee to Save Berkeley Housing Authority, with Councilmember Spring, initiated that meeting. Committee members worked on the wording for the notice and began to secure speakers and arrange an agenda for the Aug. 26 meeting, the intended purpose of which is to activate Section 8 and public housing tenants to act in their own behalf by petitioning their Federal representatives and demanding that HUD protect affordable housing. Housing Director Steve Barton seems to have a different viewpoint on the scope of this meeting. He sees the meeting as “informational,” having the new BHA manager describe, “what is going on.” Would it be too rude to ask how she or he will know “what's going on” being appointed only as of July 31, having the job for less than a month that has seen three new directors since the beginning of the year? 

Mr. Barton also proposes “the Section 8 tenants … can (be) invited to a meeting with the Section 8 Resident Advisory Board.” What Mr. Barton did not say is that the Section 8 Resident Advisory Board (RAB) does not exist in any sort of meaningful way; it does not have elected board members, and it lacks four out of the five board members needed to constitute an official body, and it has not officially met for two years. It is not the intention of the people who activated this grassroots campaign to turn the public meeting over to a non-existent, bureaucratic-front organization. We expect that when the dust settles the public meeting will take place in the manner and with the intention with which it was proposed and voted on by the City Council. 

Eleanor Walden is a member of the Rent Stabilization Board.

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  

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.

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. 

The recent heat wave has been difficult for my husband, Ralph. He is often bedridden, and because he can’t move or perspire properly, he is prone to overheating. Ralph doesn’t know he’s too hot until it’s too late.  

We keep him unclothed. We point fans in his direction, and wipe him down with cold washcloths. Unfortunately, these ministrations are not enough to prevent discomfort. We need to change his position often, but when he’s lying on his side, he can’t use his computer. Ralph without his computer is a man trapped watching endless hours of TV. This makes him very unhappy, which means all of us who help take care of him are, by association, unhappy too.  

During one of the hottest days I thought it prudent to get Ralph up, into his wheelchair, and into an air-conditioned building. His attendant, Andrea, and I could then air out his bed and replace the damp sheets with clean, dry linens. While we waited for the outside temperatures to go down, Ralph and I could see a movie.  

Andrea and I dressed Ralph, hoisted him up, and placed him in his wheelchair. We combed his hair, strapped on his foot protectors, and assisted him into the van. I drove us to Emeryville, a ten-minute drive that took 30 minutes due to traffic and poor planning. It wasn’t poor planning on our part as we left our house 50 minutes before the start of the movie. No, the blame can be placed on the city of Emeryville and everyone involved with the multiple traffic lights on 40th and Shellmound streets, and to all the people who chose, like us, to beat the heat by hiding inside the AMC theaters at Bay Street.  

By the time we finally arrived at the parking garage, I was hot. Not hot as in sweaty, although I was that too, but hot because of the time it took to get there, and because there were no handicapped parking spaces available. Ralph drove himself backwards down the ramp and out of the van. I left him by the elevator while I found a place to park. I returned, pressed the button for the lift, helped him squeeze inside, and then we got stuck. After a lot of pushing and pulling, grunting and cursing, we emerged onto the fourth floor. During the excitement in the elevator one of the wheelchair’s footrests fell off. I had to figure out a way to temporarily reattach it. We wheeled inside the theater just as the opening credits for The Devil Wears Prada rolled across the screen.  

And then the incident that clinched my crankiness occurred. All the seats set aside for the handicapped and their companions were taken except for one. The empty seat was occupied by a purse. The purse belonged to the woman who sat in the seat next to it. When I asked her if she was saving the spot for someone, she said no. She removed the purse and put it on her lap.  

Ralph maneuvered his wheelchair into the space beside the now unoccupied seat. I sat down, and the movie started. Ralph immediately fell asleep. I watched Meryl Streep treat everyone around her with calm, calculated cruelty. It was a silly, vapid film, but I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Streep’s ice queen performance as Miranda Priestly. I wish I could be more like her character so that the next time I go to the theater and discover a purse occupying the seat that rightfully belongs to a handicapped person or his or her companion, I can act like Ms. Priestly. Thanks to the movie, I now recognize Hollywood’s interpretation of bad taste. With snake-like hooded eyes and nostrils flaring, I’ll let the person who owns the purse know what I think of her Prada knock-off and her selfish, inconsiderate behavior.  

In some ways, we humans are educating ourselves about the planet that sustains us the way the owner of a cranky old car educates herself about how cars work: We learn about systems and parts when they break down and we’re forced to figure out why. Partly that’s a matter of perceived urgency that gets grants written and funding done—“pure” research is a delicious notion, but it’s rare that anyone can get the time, facilities, and support to study a matter just because we all get intrigued by it.  

Studies aside, there’s the matter of which things get the attention of the broader public. That attention eventually drives some funding, of course, from foundations with close oversight from nonspecialists. And sometimes several foci come together, and something pops up that nobody had imagined. Sometimes that something is the importance of a known fact or substance, importance that is greater than anyone had assumed. 

Lately there’s been media handwaving and even actual information about carbon sequestration. Five, 10 years ago, how many of us had ever heard the phrase, let alone known what it is or why it matters? It matters because carbon in the air, combined with oxygen as carbon dioxide, is a “greenhouse gas”; that is, when there’s lots of it in the upper atmosphere, it helps create that greenhouse effect that’s destabilizing the weather systems we’ve had for a long time, making the world’s air a bit warmer by trapping solar heat that used to escape. It doesn’t take much, just a few degrees, to get glaciers and polar ice caps melting and ocean temperatures rising and currents changing, including upwellings that feed sea life (and then us) and surface changes that make storms stronger.  

Carbon sequestration is an ecosystem service (another new term: the life-support the world gives us) that helps put the brakes on this career. Plants, in particular, make themselves out of elements including carbon. Remember that thing about how they “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen? They keep that carbon atom and make it into their flesh. 

As long as they live, they keep the carbon they accumulate out of the air. Imagine how much carbon is in a hundred-foot tree, or an acre of grassland or chaparral. When they die and decay, or burn, that carbon goes back up in real or virtual smoke. When trees are cut down, they stop working, even if the carbon in the lumber stays there for (optimistically) a few centuries. The waste, the sawdust, the trampled understory, starts decaying then and there. 

But there’s more to the forest than the trees.  

Under all that green stuff, way down in the dirt, there’s serious and complicated action going on. Roots are growing, absorbing nutrients from the soil, engaging in the dark half of that great dance of making. Roots are permeable, and so is the whole substance of the forest, or the field, or wherever plants grow.  

Trees and many other plants, when we look closely, aren’t isolated, aren’t independent, aren’t even quite separate entities. They absorb what they need from the soil with the help of the mycorrhizal network, the web of fungi under the surface that lives in symbiosis with many plants. People who garden with native plants and who keep bonsai are finding that a bit of soil from a plant’s original home might inoculate its new one with the right organisms to help the plant flourish.  

Mycorrhizae are performing another ecosystem service that has only recently come to light. The USDA published a report by Don Comis on work by Sara F. Wright and Kristine A. Nichols that suggests that a substance called glomalin, discovered by Wright in 1996, does indeed glom onto quite a lot of carbon—27 percent of the carbon in soil. It binds organic matter to mineral particles in soil. It also forms soil clumps—aggregates—that improve soil structure and keep other soil carbon from escaping. 

Glomalin is produced by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (order Glomales, hence the name) on plants’ roots, from carbon they trade for other nutrients and water. The fungi produce glomalin, apparently to seal themselves and gain enough rigidity to carry the stuff across the air spaces between soil particles. The fungi grow only on the newest root tips; the glomalin sloughs off the dissolving older hyphae and stays in the soil for seven to 42 years.  

There are ways like no-till farming to encourage glomalin production, but keeping a piece of ecosystem intact in its original form seems to keep the stuff in the soil in greatest amounts. Yet another reason to keep our collective hands off, to avoid breaking what we don’t understand well enough to fix.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

See the forest for the trees? A lot of “ecosystem services” take place underground, out of sight.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.  

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. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200.  

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.  

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 artist. 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, 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.  

FRIDAY, AUGUST 4 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Night of the Iguana” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. through Aug. 12. Tickets are $12. 649-5999.  

Aurora Theatre “Permanent Collection” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Aug. 5. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatere.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Footloose” 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.  

Impact Theatre “House of Lucky” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Aug. 26. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Shotgun Players “Ragnarok: 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.  

Woodminster Summer Musicals “The King and I” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m., through Aug 13 at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. TIckets are $21.50-$35.50. 531-9597. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Ball & Chain” Pre-marital show for Gretchen Grasshoff and Jordan Mello, reception at 7 p.m. at Boontling Galery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Show runs to Aug. 27. www.boontlinggallery.com 

“Catching Ripples” Paintings and sculptures by Eric Helsley and “Those Bucolic Places” paintings by Carol Paquet. Reception at 5 p.m. at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411. 

“Sound and Vison II” A group show of works influenced by music. Reception at 7 p.m. at Auto3321 Gallery, 3321 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Show runs to Aug. 13. www.auto3321.com 

“Mercury Rising” A group show of new works by 15 Bay Area artists. Reception at 5 p.m. at Robert Tomlinson Studio, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Aug. 31. 866-8808. 

FILM 

“Atenco: Rompiendo el Cerco/ Breaking the Silence” with music by Francisco Herrera at 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free. 581-7963. 

“Cartography of Ashes” A documentary on the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org.  

“Shaken Not Stirred: Martinis, Music and Mayhem” at 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

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. 

Janet Gaynor “Small Town Girl” at 7:30 p.m. at “Ladies in Love” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jimbo Trout and the Fish People with Birdlegg and the Tightfit Blues Band outdoor concert at 5:30 p.m. at Park Place and Washington Ave., Pt. Richmond. 237-9375.  

Bay Area Blues Society Concert at 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

Bolokasa Conde & Les Percussion Malinke concert and doundounda dance party at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$20. 849-2568.  

Sage, The Nomad, Two Seconds, The Moanin Dove at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Charles Ferguson Latin Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Wylie & the Wild West at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Scott Amendola Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

AJ Roach and Adam Benjamine at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Ten Ton Chicken, Cosmic Mercy at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Set it Straight, Lifelong Tragedy, Deadfall at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Translator, Uptones, Penelope Houston and others at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $20-$25. 451-8100.  

Mose Allison at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $10-$20. 238-9200. w 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 5 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “Ragnarok: 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.  

FILM 

Frank Borzage “Lazy Bones” at 6:30 p.m. and Janet Gaynor “A Star is Born” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds a memorial for the poet Maggi H. Meyer followed by an open poetry reading, 3 to 5 p.m., at Strawberry Creek Lodge Dining Hall, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Coterie Dance Company “My Soul Moves” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $13 children, $15 adults. 925-798-1300. 

UC Berkeley Summer Symphony at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall UC Campus, Donation $5. 717-2126. 

Larry Stefl Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. 

Motor Dude Zydeco at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Ba-Tu-Ke at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12. 849-2568.  

Ken Mahru & David Serotkin at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

The David Thom Band, traditional bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Displace at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Mark Little Duo at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

The Blue Roots, Naked Barbies at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Verse, Have Heart, Shipwreck, Hostile Takeover at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 6 

FILM 

Janet Gaynor “Delicious” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

UC Berkeley Summer Symphony at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall UC Campus, Donation $5. 717-2126. 

Twang Cafe with Dave Gleason’s Wasted Days and Pickin’ Trix at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. All ages welcome. 644-2204.  

Sharon Knight at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Frederick Hodge, international café music at 2 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054. 

Irene Chigamba & Erica Azim, mbira music from Zimbabwe, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

This is my Fist, One Reason, Hot New Mexicans at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, AUGUST 7 

CHILDREN 

Gary Laplow sing-along at 7 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 5366 College Ave. 597-5017. 

Rafa Cano, Spanish sing-along for children, at 10:30 a.m. at PriPri Cafe, 1309 Solano Ave., Albany. Free. 528-7002. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Last Word Poetry Series with Mary Rudge and Lenore Weiss at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 843-7439. 

Michael Rothenberg and Marat Nemet-Nejat read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Margaret Emerson reads from “Eyes in the Mirror” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express features Jan Steckel, followed by an open mic at 7 p.m. at Priya Indian Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Monday Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Sophie Milman at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

An orchestra of marimbas playing “Down in Mexico, Joyous Mexico” ... Drinking Rum Cocos on the verandah of the Hotel Costa Verde, while below, the patrona’s nightswimming with the local boys, and that big lizard’s chafing at the end of his rope, and a hurricane’s brewing up ... 

It’s the scene for Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, put on by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley in Live Oak Theatre. 

It’s tough being the Reverend Shannon—and he’d be the first to admit it—chased by the freshly widowed patrona, chased by the “child musical prodigy” along for the ride with the Texas Baptist schoolmarms on the tour bus he’s guiding, chased by Miss Fellows, implacable ombudswoman for the vacationing ladies ... and chased by “the spooks,” or Blue Meanies or whatever, the personal Eumenides that have tracked this ex- minister since he was locked out of his Virginia church on a false charge of “atheistical sermons.” Who ever had it like this? And all in a tropical paradise? Not since Gauguin ... 

Mexico as the gringo’s devil in paradise spawned a few other literary mementos of the same vintage as Tennessee’s, which is set in 1940 near Acapulco, but was first staged in the early ‘60s. Williams’ original is practically the only stage rendition of note that comes to mind, capturing a lingering note from The Summer House, sole play by Jane Bowles, wife of Paul. 

At the Costa Verde, Shannon’s the Alpha—or is it Omega?—male, fending off all female comers. The other men are factotums, mere tourists, other tour guides, or the vague, conversational ghost of his old friend, the sport fisherman who owned the hotel, and listened to the erstwhile holy man’s tales of woe when the mood hit, while maintaining a menage of silence with his wife. “Why do you always come here to crack up?” queries the reasonable widow. “It’s the hammock, Maxine, the hammock by the rain forest.” 

But trundling out of the blue, shoving a wheelchair, comes Shannon’s match in the spinsterish shape of the globetrotting granddaughter of “the oldest living practicing poet,” who doesn’t pursue him, but tells him of small acts of love, instead, like the evening in a sampan with the fat, bald and fetishistic shy Australian woman’s undergarment salesman. 

Most of these creatures are at that end of their tether, just like the iguana—except the tourists. At least, they say as much—and admit they’re hustlers. 

Laura Jane Bailey plays Maxine coarse, loud and down-to-earth. Miss Fellows (who’s at the end of her patience, not tether) is the no-nonsense schoolmarm non plus ultra in Virginia Handley’s characterization. Handley also seems to have some real fun alternating as one of the German tourist gargoyles-in-shades, strutting and singing Nature and imperialist songs, or listening, anachronistically, to the Fuhrer’s Reichstag speech on a transistor radio. 

This goes especially ditto for her complement, Richard Dorn, splendidly overbearing as the boisterous Nazi holidayer, but all business when playing Jake, who comes to replace Shannon at the helm of the tour bus. Katie Krueger is a frantic child music prodigy, frank and precocious in her approach to the collarless minister. 

The best turn of all is Margery Bailey as Hannah, Shannon’s “stand-up Buddha,” a self-possessed, prepossessing performance, like the one her character puts in, arriving penniless, with a declaiming, “97-year-young” moribund poet (ably played, or posed, recited—and whined, by Lewis Campbell). Having to act as foil, or counterfoil, to all these over-the-top monsters of ego and want is a tough job, and Bailey does it with poise and characterization as finely shaded as Hannah’s charcoal sketch portraits, hawked to the tourists.  

Jeff Bell cuts a fine figure as bedevilled Shannon, and communicates the irrepressible seediness of a minister-on-the-skids at moments, but doesn’t convey the necessary gravity with the skid that makes Hannah exclaim, “when somebody I respect acts like a small, cruel boy ...” or another remark, “You’re still indulging yourself in your Passion Play performance ... another bit of voluptuous self-crucifixion!” This makes him seem to saw the air, getting loud a bit too often like a frantic Lear trying to outshout the storm.  

Others rush the lines, too, and some of the blocking (and the tussle between Shannon and Maxine) comes off awkwardly. It’s a long play and a temptation to speed it up might be present, but director Eddie Kurtz, an artistic assistant at The Rep, may be responsible for some of these slips, which lose Williams’ syncopated rhythms that slip on a comic banana peel as the masks fall off of even the most seemingly dignified. 

Rose Anne Raphael’s set places the action well, if maybe a little less crumby than the casa should be—a recurrent fault in recent Williams revivals. Tennessee’s is still a great play to go see, unless you’re booked in for Puerto Vallarta or Cabo ... after the show, you may just rush home to cancel. 

NIGHT OF THE IGUANA 

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Aug. 12. $12. Live Oak Theatre,  

1301 Shattuck Ave. 649-5999.  

www.aeofberkeley.org.

In some ways, we humans are educating ourselves about the planet that sustains us the way the owner of a cranky old car educates herself about how cars work: We learn about systems and parts when they break down and we’re forced to figure out why. Partly that’s a matter of perceived urgency that gets grants written and funding done—“pure” research is a delicious notion, but it’s rare that anyone can get the time, facilities, and support to study a matter just because we all get intrigued by it.  

Studies aside, there’s the matter of which things get the attention of the broader public. That attention eventually drives some funding, of course, from foundations with close oversight from nonspecialists. And sometimes several foci come together, and something pops up that nobody had imagined. Sometimes that something is the importance of a known fact or substance, importance that is greater than anyone had assumed. 

Lately there’s been media handwaving and even actual information about carbon sequestration. Five, 10 years ago, how many of us had ever heard the phrase, let alone known what it is or why it matters? It matters because carbon in the air, combined with oxygen as carbon dioxide, is a “greenhouse gas”; that is, when there’s lots of it in the upper atmosphere, it helps create that greenhouse effect that’s destabilizing the weather systems we’ve had for a long time, making the world’s air a bit warmer by trapping solar heat that used to escape. It doesn’t take much, just a few degrees, to get glaciers and polar ice caps melting and ocean temperatures rising and currents changing, including upwellings that feed sea life (and then us) and surface changes that make storms stronger.  

Carbon sequestration is an ecosystem service (another new term: the life-support the world gives us) that helps put the brakes on this career. Plants, in particular, make themselves out of elements including carbon. Remember that thing about how they “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen? They keep that carbon atom and make it into their flesh. 

As long as they live, they keep the carbon they accumulate out of the air. Imagine how much carbon is in a hundred-foot tree, or an acre of grassland or chaparral. When they die and decay, or burn, that carbon goes back up in real or virtual smoke. When trees are cut down, they stop working, even if the carbon in the lumber stays there for (optimistically) a few centuries. The waste, the sawdust, the trampled understory, starts decaying then and there. 

But there’s more to the forest than the trees.  

Under all that green stuff, way down in the dirt, there’s serious and complicated action going on. Roots are growing, absorbing nutrients from the soil, engaging in the dark half of that great dance of making. Roots are permeable, and so is the whole substance of the forest, or the field, or wherever plants grow.  

Trees and many other plants, when we look closely, aren’t isolated, aren’t independent, aren’t even quite separate entities. They absorb what they need from the soil with the help of the mycorrhizal network, the web of fungi under the surface that lives in symbiosis with many plants. People who garden with native plants and who keep bonsai are finding that a bit of soil from a plant’s original home might inoculate its new one with the right organisms to help the plant flourish.  

Mycorrhizae are performing another ecosystem service that has only recently come to light. The USDA published a report by Don Comis on work by Sara F. Wright and Kristine A. Nichols that suggests that a substance called glomalin, discovered by Wright in 1996, does indeed glom onto quite a lot of carbon—27 percent of the carbon in soil. It binds organic matter to mineral particles in soil. It also forms soil clumps—aggregates—that improve soil structure and keep other soil carbon from escaping. 

Glomalin is produced by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (order Glomales, hence the name) on plants’ roots, from carbon they trade for other nutrients and water. The fungi produce glomalin, apparently to seal themselves and gain enough rigidity to carry the stuff across the air spaces between soil particles. The fungi grow only on the newest root tips; the glomalin sloughs off the dissolving older hyphae and stays in the soil for seven to 42 years.  

There are ways like no-till farming to encourage glomalin production, but keeping a piece of ecosystem intact in its original form seems to keep the stuff in the soil in greatest amounts. Yet another reason to keep our collective hands off, to avoid breaking what we don’t understand well enough to fix.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

See the forest for the trees? A lot of “ecosystem services” take place underground, out of sight.

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. 

National Night Out A community discussion on the drugs and violence that plague our community,From 6 to 9 p.m. at McGee Ave Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St. 843-1774. 

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 meets at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm. 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Explore Berkeley’s would-be state capitol. Meet at 10 am at Northbrae Church, Los Angeles and The Alameda. www.berkeleypaths.org  

“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 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 4 

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 

Ballroom Dancing every Friday at 8 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial Building, 200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Live band and refreshments. Cost is $10. 925-934-9129. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310, 845-1143. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 5 

Victorian House Tour on Angel Island Open just one weekend a year, Sat. and Sun. Tickets are $7-$15. 415-435-3522. www.angelisland.org 

A Vision for Creek Restoration Plans with local officials, environmental groups and community members to promote community-based planning from 1 to 4 p.m. at Parchester Village Community Center, 900 Williams Dr., Parchester Village, Richmond. 415-693-3000, ext 109. 

Farm Stories and Songs Come clap your hands, your paws, or anything you got! Hear some fun songs and stories, then meet the animals at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“To Bee or Not to Bee” An educational puppet show on the complex society of the honey bee, at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Kids Garden Club for children ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening. We plant, harvest, build, make crafts, cook, and get dirty. From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Registration is required. Cost is $6-$8. 636-1684.  

Sick Plant Clinic UC plant pathologist Dr. Robert Raabe, UC entomologist Dr. Nick Mills, and their team of experts will diagnose what ails your plants from 9 a.m. to noon at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755.  

Oakland Heritage Walking Tour of Earthquake Impacts of the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes from 10 a.m. to noon. Meet at the Fire Alarm Building on Lakeside Drive, opposite the Main Library. Cost is $5-$15. 763-9218.  

Robot Workshop using recycled materials, for children age 5 and up from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Lakeview branch of the Oakland Public Library, 550 El Embarcadero. Reservations required. 238-7344. 

Learn About Pets with Maggie Yates, Human Education Coordinator for the Berkeley Humane Society at 2 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Yoga for Peace Sat. from 9:30 to 11:00 at Olone Park, MLK and Hearst St. North Berkeley. Bring a yoga mat, warm blanket, and a peace sign.  

Adult Fast Pitch Softball every Sat at noon. For location call 204-9500.  

SUNDAY, AUGUST 6 

East Bay Peace Lantern Ceremony from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the north end of Aquatic Park. Decorate lantern shades, fold paper cranes, hear Japanese flute and drum music, watch the lanterns float on the lagoon at sunset. 595-4626. www.progressiveportal.org/lanterns 

Natural History Field Sketching with Tara Reinertson, naturalist, from 9 to 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Bring your pencils and sketchbook. 525-2233. 

Make A Felt Doll Meet our flock of Black Welsh Mountain Sheep, then learn how to turn their wool into a fun felt project. For ages 8 and up. Cost is $7-$12. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Oakland Heritage Walking Tour on Oakland’s Streetcar Heritage from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$15. Reservations required. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to keep your bike in excellent working condition through safety inspections, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Summer Sunday Forum with Stephen Zunes on current policies of the U.S. at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, AUGUST 7 

Talk on Aquatic Park Restoration Learn about the WPA-built lagoons at Berkeley’s Aquatic Park and the egrets, herons, shorebirds, and waterfowl, at 7 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker will be Mandy Benson, CA NOW, who will discuss Proposition 85, the far right’s latest attempt to restrict reproductive rights. 287-8948. 

“Delaying (or Accelerating) the Degenerative Disease of Aging” with Bruce Ames at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5. www.hillsideclub.org  

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m to 1 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente, 901 Nevin Ave., Richmond. Call for appointment 307-2721. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60+ years old meets at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $3. 524-9122.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Stress Less Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland. Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

McGee Avenue Toastmasters meets at 7:30 p.m. at McGee Ave Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St. 

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 Berkeley Unified School District, Early Childhood Education progam, based on income eligibility guidelines. Please call for details 644-6358. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Aug. 1 at 5 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.  

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.

A photo caption on the front page of the July 14 issue misidentified the woman in the photograph. The woman is Clara Johnston.