A Tokyo-based buyer will purchase the two remaining Cody’s Bookstores, according to Pat Cody, former owner of the original Cody’s with her late husband Fred Cody. The purchase is “a good thing,” Cody told the Daily Planet Tuesday morning. 

Current Cody’s owner Andy Ross will announce details of the sale Wednesday at a 9 a.m. press briefing at Cody’s Fourth Street store. Ross made headlines several months ago with the closing of the famed Telegraph Avenue Cody’s. 

The new owner will be either Tokyo-based businessman Hiroshi Kagawa or the company of which he is CEO and President: Yohan, Inc.  

Last year Yohan, a Japanese book distributor founded in 1953, bought Stone Bridge Press, a Berkeley-based publishing company. Yohan owns several retail bookshops in Japan, according to a press release issued at the time Yohan acquired Stone Bridge. 

Stone Bridge Press is an English-language publisher specializing in books about Japan and its pop cultures. 

Yohan, the largest distributor of general foreign books and magazines in Asia, according to a press statement, is capitalized at 525 million yen or $4.5 million, says the company’s web site. 

Kagawa, 51, who resides in Tokyo and New York “has long been active as a journalist and a specialist in international publishing,” according to the Yohan web site. 

It is not clear at this time whether the store on Telegraph Avenue—now used as a Halloween retail outlet—is part of the deal. Ross owns part of the former Cody’s on Telegraph and holds a $20,000-per-month lease on the other part of the former bookstore. 

The Capoeira Arts Cafe has been bringing South American instruments such as Berimbaus, Agogos, Caxixis and the Brazilian martial arts dance Capoeira to Berkeley for the past decade.  

The cafe’s lease is set to expire in December, which puts a question mark on its future at 2026 Addison St. The cafe staff say they are discussing the possibilities of renewing the lease with the non-profit Americana music presenter Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, which owns the property. 

“We have not yet received any communication from them about a lease renewal,” said Freight & Salvage Executive Director Steve Baker, whose performing space is now located on Addison Street near San Pablo Avenue. 

Baker said that even if the Capoeira Arts Cafe agrees to a new lease, the building that houses the cafe, as well as the building at 2020 Addison St., which Freight & Salvage also owns, will be closed for renovation for about a year beginning in the new year. 

“This would lead to the buildings closing down for at least a year. But we are happy to work with people who want to work with us,” said Baker. 

Freight & Salvage is currently waiting for a permit from the city to start renovation on the two buildings. 

Calls to the Capoeira Arts Cafe for comment were not returned by press time. 

Capoeira, which was introduced in the United States 30 years ago, is a Brazilian art form which incorporates music, dance and martial arts movements. Capoeira was originally started by the slaves in Brazil as a form of self-defense against their oppressors during colonial rule. Marked by deft movements that could reach acrobatic dimensions, this “dance-like fight” or “fight-like dance” is always accompanied by music. 

The art form is comprised of two distinct styles. Angola, which is the more traditional one, is slower, lower play. Regional is more acrobatic and involves a lot of technique and strategy. Sweeps, high kicks, headstands and headbutts also feature in both, making this a lot of fun for children. 

“Learning Capoeira at the cafe has been the most amazing and expansive experience of my life as well as my daughter Isabella’s,” said Berkeley resident Jennifer Wright who has been learning Capoeira since May. 

Six-year-old Isabella, who has been taking classes since May, even has her own Capoeira nickname—borboleta—which means “butterfly” in Portuguese. 

“What makes this so different from other dances is the way martial arts is hidden inside the dance. This was done so that the slave owners did not find out that their slaves were practicing fight forms behind their backs. It was even outlawed in Brazil at one point,” said Wright, who is completely taken up by Capoeira’s history. 

Papagio, who has been affiliated with the Capoeira Arts Cafe in various capacities for the last 16 years, spoke to the Planet about the philosophy behind this intriguing dance form: 

“In Capoeira, you don’t try to block a move, you try to get out of the way of conflict. You are constantly looking for new solutions.” 

Papagio added that although Capoeira had been in the United States for almost three decades now, a lot of people didn’t know anything about it.  

“Most people who come in have no knowledge of Portuguese, Brazil or Capoeira itself,” she said. “Take the language for instance. When you go to play Capoeira, everyone is singing something in Portuguese or a particular African dialect. And people join in and gradually pick it up. People get extremely inspired by the whole experience. Some even go on to pursue Brazilian studies at school.” 

Described as a “colorful multi-purpose global village where you can sip a cappuccino to the rhythmic beat of a berimbau,” the cafe is a project of the United Capoeira Association with the world-renowned Masters, Mestre Acordeon and Mestre Rã.  

The only one of its kind in Berkeley, it is affiliated to Capoeira schools in Sacramento, Seattle, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado and has sister schools in Los Angeles and New York.  

Maestro Acordeon, who has been teaching in the Bay Area since 1978, even has a blog dedicated to the topic at www.capoeirabymestreacordeon.blogspot.com, which includes links and information about where Capoeira is taught. 

“You can never stop learning Capoeira,” said Papagio. “There are people who have been leaning Capoeira under Maestro Acordeon since 1978 and are still here.” 

An Alameda Country judge agreed with the city and Measure I opponents, ruling Friday to allow only limited changes to the text of the city attorney’s analysis of the Condominium Conversion ballot measure that will go before voters Nov. 7. 

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque had mistakenly based her written analysis on an early version of the ballot measure rather than a later, modified version. (Each side blamed the other for the mistake.)  

Speaking in Alameda County Superior Court Department 31 for Measure I proponents, attorney William Flynn of Neyhart, Anderson, Freitas, Flynn & Grosbol hoped to go beyond the two changes the two sides had already agreed on—the number of days for the right of first refusal and the entity that would ascertain the level of rental vacancies in the city. 

Flynn called the city attorney’s analysis “false and misleading,” and asserted: “This is the time and place to challenge” other parts of the analysis. 

But Jay Koslofsky, attorney representing Mayor Tom Bates, the lead author of arguments opposing the measure, accused Flynn of “trying to bootstrap-in their (other) arguments.” 

Apparently in agreement, Judge Winifred Smith replied, “The writ of mandate hearing doesn’t open it up for general revue.” 

Giving the attorney a short legal lesson, she continued: “A writ of mandate is an error that needs to be corrected. I don’t believe it opens up the floodgates for the review of everything you want changed.” 

Attorney Kevin Siegel of McDonough Holland & Allen speaking for the city, added, “We don’t want the courts micromanaging.”  

In granting the writ of mandate, the two points the judge approved for change are: 

• Tenants have first rights for 30 days to buy the unit they live in. (An earlier version said 14 days.) 

• The Housing Department will not be responsible for determining the vacancy rate, as the early version stated, but a third impartial party will make the determination. (Up to 500 units can be converted according to the new law—the exact number depends on the vacancy rate.) 

Flynn had hoped to make several other changes, but was unsuccessful. One was to remove the word “discount” from the city attorney analysis, which refers to a “5 percent discount in the purchase price” for tenants buying the units in which they live. Flynn argued that the tenant rather would be paid a sum equal to 5 percent of the sales price, when purchasing the property. 

“It is 5 percent off the purchase price,” Siegel countered. “It’s clearly accurate to say 5 percent discount.”  

The proposed Condominium Conversion law will replace the current Berkeley law and allow the conversion of up to 500 units of housing under certain conditions, rather than limiting the number to 100 as written in the current law.  

Named in the argument supporting Measure I are Eleanor Pepples, Dean Metzger, Jim Smith, Shirley Dean and Doris Maslach. Named in the argument opposing Measure I are Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Rent Board Chair Howard Chong, Mayor Tom Bates, Fr. George Crespin and City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli.  

Helen L. Seaborg passed away on Aug. 29 from pneumonia. Born March 2, 1917, in a Florence Crittenden home in Sioux City, Iowa, she was adopted by George and Iva Griggs. After her father’s death, she and her mother moved to the Santa Ana area of southern California. 

She worked her way through college, receiving an A.A. from Santa Ana Junior College and a B.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley in 1939. 

She was hired as a secretary for the Nobel-prize winning physicist, Ernest O. Lawrence, who was director of what is now the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There she met her husband of 56 years, future Nobel laureate Glenn T. Seaborg. They were married in 1942 on their way to Chicago, where they would live while he was working on the Manhattan Project, the World War II project to build the atomic bomb. Helen provided invaluable administrative assistance to the scientists at the code-named Metallurgical Laboratory. 

Throughout her husband’s renowned career, she provided behind-the-scenes help. Glenn Seaborg often remarked that he could not have managed his many accomplishments without her assistance and advice. Her role as the wife of the chancellor of UC Berkeley and chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (from 1961 to 1971) required a mixture of efficiency and diplomacy that she fulfilled with exceptional grace. 

Her generous nature was reflected in many volunteer jobs. She felt particularly indebted to the YWCA for the services she had received during a childhood of poverty, and among her many positions, she served on the boards of directors of YWCAs in both Berkeley and Washington, D.C. In Washington, the city’s racially segregated past had left it with two YWCA organizations, one white and one black, with predictable friction between the two. Helen’s buoyant and unflappable nature allowed her to act as the mediator between the two organizations during the tense negotiations of their merger. 

During the 1960s in Washington, racial integration of the public schools was often accomplished through a voluntary busing program. Helen was a founder and board member of the INCAP program, a project designed to provide opportunities to elementary school classmates bused from different neighborhoods to continue activities and friendships outside the classroom and during the summer months. 

A supporter of open space and an avid hiker, she and Glenn devoted most of their weekends for a year to scouting a hiking route across the state of California. This route was used in 1980 by a project of the American Hiking Society called HikaNation, in which a group of backpackers hiked coast to coast. Helen and Glenn joined them on much of their journey across California. Much of the route later became a part of today’s coast-to-coast American Discovery Trail. 

In her later years, she made a hobby of tracing the genealogy of her biological and adoptive families. 

She was preceded in death by her husband Glenn, son Peter Seaborg; and Peter’s twin sister Paulette, who died in infancy. 

Helen is survived by daughter Lynne Cobb and her husband William Cobb of St. 

George, Utah; son David Seaborg and his wife Adele Seaborg of Walnut Creek; son Stephen Seaborg of La Mesa; son Eric Seaborg and his wife Ellen Dudley of Charlottesville, Va.; daughter Dianne Seaborg and her partner Tor Neilands of Lafayette; granddaughter Lela Cobb and her fiancé Todd Arthur of Auckland, New Zealand; and granddaughter Molly Cobb of New York City. 

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the YWCA at UC Berkeley, 2600 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704.

With the Labor Day holidays over and summer beginning to wane, public attention now turns to the elections scheduled for the first Tuesday in November. 

Statewide, the major publicity will be generated by the gubernatorial race and possibly by the attorney general’s campaign as well. Locally, the focus will be on the runoff for Oakland City Council District 2, the Berkeley mayoral, City Council, and School Board races, and the campaign for Peralta Community College District Seat 7. 

But the local ballot will have two other contested campaigns as well that are of interest and importance to local voters. Aside from the fact that many of the positions being contested have considerable power over policy and budgets, positions on lesser-followed boards and commissions can often be steppingstones to higher public office. West Oakland resident Nancy Nadel, for example, moved from a seat on the East Bay Municipal Utilities District Board to a longtime seat on the Oakland City Council and, most recently, a run for the mayor of Oakland. 

AC Transit at-large 

For a moment, it looked like this was going to be one of those powerhouse races pitting two incumbents against each other: at-large incumbent Rebecca Kaplan, a Green Party member from Oakland and activist and a labor, tenant, civil rights, and environmental attorney, against Dennis Hyashi, a public interest attorney from Castro Valley who was elected in November 2004 to serve the remainder of a four-year term for the AC Transit District Ward 4. Hyashi initially filed for the at-large seat but then ran for an Alameda County judgeship instead, coming in first in a six-candidate field and winning a spot in a November runoff against Sandra Bean. Instead of Hyashi, Kaplan will face James Muhammad of Oakland, who lost to H.E. Christian Peeples in 2004 for the other at-large AC Transit seat, winning less than 10 percent of the vote. 

AC Transit Ward 3 

This race does promise some excitement, with two candidates running with significant political experience or connections in a district that takes in all of the City of Alameda as well as a portion of the cities of Oakland and San Leandro. With incumbent Dolores Jaquez choosing not to run for re-election, the race pits challengers Elsa Ortiz of Oakland against Alameda County City Councilmember Tony Daysog. Ortiz currently serves as Special Counsel for Indian Affairs for State Senator Don Perata, and previously worked for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer both in the AG’s office as well as when Lockyer was State Senator. Daysog recently ran for the Democratic Party nomination for the 16th Assembly District seat, coming in fourth in the June primary with less than 10 percent of the vote, losing to Sandre Swanson. 

Unopposed 

For a while, it looked like there might be a spirited race for the East Bay Municipal Utilities District Ward 4 seat, with four candidates taking out initial papers. But three dropped out, leaving Berkeley resident Andy Katz unopposed. Katz, a Berkeley Zoning Commissioner, ran unsuccessfully for the District 8 Berkeley City Council seat in 2004, losing to Gordon Wozniak. Wozniak has donated to Katz’s EBMUD race, as has Berkeley City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, and he has also received generous donations from AFSCME locals 444 and 2019. Katz has also been recommended for Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club endorsement by the club’s executive committee. 

Also unopposed in the general election is BART Ward 4 Director Carol Ward-Allen of Oakland. 

What Howard Jarvis started, Howard Rich aims to finish. 

Rich, an elusive New York developer, has been bankrolling initiatives aimed at stripping state and local governments of their power to limit development. 

His California measure, Proposition 90, masks that agenda. It’s portrayed as simply a ban on government eminent domain actions that take private property and hand it over to developers for private use. 

And the strategy seems to be paying off. With comparatively little media coverage to date, the measure has managed to win the support of a strong cross-section of California voters. 

The highly respected Field Poll reported early in August that the measure had attracted strong support from both parties, with favorable/unfavorable ratings of 51/28 for Republicans and 42/32 among Democrats. Surprisingly, support was even stronger among those who rated themselves as “middle of the road” rather than conservative (50/46). 

The poll was based on a survey of 762 voters conducted between July 10 and 23. 

The results should be music to the ears of Rich, a wealthy New York developer and hard core property rights libertarian, who primed the Prop. 90 pump with a $1.5 million donation from his Fund for Democracy. 

The second largest contributor is Howard Ahmanson, the fundamentalist advocate of theocracy who is also the primary bankroll for the so-called Intelligent Design campaign—a movement which seeks to replace Charles Darwin’s theory of “evolution by natural selection” with a divinely ordained process. 

Protecting what? 

Though it’s billed as the “Protect Our Homes Act” and fueled by the controversy over a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, the measure could equally be dubbed the “Unleash the Developers” initiative. 

While the measure does restrict the use of eminent domain, the law’s most far-reaching effects weigh heavily in favor of developers. 

Rich himself has acknowledged that his priority is not eminent domain but the elimination of what he calls “government takings,” actions that impose controls on property development. 

While the measure does limit the seizure of homes by eminent domain to a narrow range of public necessity cases, Proposition 90 would also allow developers to sue any time local governments tried to minimize the size or impact of the projects they planned. 

According to Priority Focus, the newsletter of the League of California Cities, if a voter initiative limited a developer who wanted to build a 2,000-home subdivision to only 500, the developer would be entitled to sue for the value of the 1,500 homes he could build if they were permitted under previous zoning. 

And in the case of eminent domain actions, the former owner would be entitle to payment at value of the land under the new use, even if the use were barred to private owners. 

The initiative would also annul all unpublished court decisions in eminent domain cases, which are often resolved in local Superior Courts, which do not publish decisions. 

It would limit city controls over air space as in building height.  

Under the measure, property owners could sue any time local governments tried to limit their project to anything less than the maximum extent allowed by law. 

Thus, new regulations to reduce zoning, limit height, or otherwise minimize development impacts would provide grounds for costly lawsuits. 

After a similar measure was passed in November 2004, by voters in Oregon—a state with one tenth the population of California—2000 claims seeking more than $3.8 billion were filed, according to news reports.. 

The Jarvis gambit? 

By playing on sympathy for the small homeowner, Rich is following the same line laid out by Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, who used the image of fixed-income homeowners in the inflationary 1970’s to fuel Proposition 13. That measure capped annual property tax increases and barred reassessments until the next property sale. 

The campaign relied heavily on images of elderly folks forced to sell their beloved homes because of rapidly escalating property taxes. 

But the biggest beneficiaries of Proposition 13 have been corporations, who typically sell their property stores, plants, warehouses, apartment Buildings and other facilities far less frequently than individual homeowners. 

The ballot argument prepared by supporters pushes the eminent domain angle in much the same way. 

The cases cited are: 

• The owner of a Mexican restaurant who lost his business through eminent domain so a Mercedes dealer could tear it down and build a parking lot. 

• A luggage store owner whose business was taken to make way for a hotel. 

• A pastor whose church was threatened with an action so a city could sponsor a condo development. 

The arguments mention nothing about potentially litigious developers. 

Cash players 

The measure has drawn heavy criticism from a wide range of organizations, including the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties, the California Housing Coalition, the California Police Chiefs Association, the California Fire Chiefs Association, the Coalition of Mobilehome Owners-California, the Sierra Club, the California School Boards Association, the League of Conservation Voters, the Greenbelt Alliance, the American Farmland Trust and dozens of other groups. 

Lt. Gov. Tom McClintock is a major supporter of Prop. 90, announcing on his campaign website that the measure “prohibits local officials from seizing homes and businesses for the profit of politically well-connected private interests, and requires government to pay you for any damage it does to your property.” 

Another organizational supporter is Americans for Limited Government, which turns out to be one of Rich’s organizations and a supporter of school vouchers. 

Three coalitions have arisen to fund the election campaign, one on the pro side and two against. 

According to the most recent campaign filings, Rich and his allies have raised at least $2,135,000, with the largest single donation, $1.5 million, coming from Rich’s Fund for Democracy on March 10. 

Montanans in Action chipped in $600,000 on May 8. It’s a group Shane Goldmacher at Capitol Weekly News in Sacramento reports is closely allied with Rich. 

Howard Ahmanson’s Fieldstead & Company kicked in $200,000 on April 27. Ahmanson is the primary sponsor of the Discovery Institute, the institutional home base of “Intelligent Design” theory. 

Fieldstead—which is Ahmanson’s middle name—also funds many conservative religious groups. 

Another $10,000 came from the Shelbran Company, a development firm, and $5,000 came from Atel Financial Services, LLC of San Francisco. 

The coalition spent at least $651,236.50 with Arno Political Consultants for gathering the signatures to place the measure on the ballot. 

On the opposing side, a larger coalition of organizations—many from the environmental movement and others representing local governments—managed to raise $855,000. 

The actual figure is lower because some of the funds raised by one group were donated to another. 

The four main opposition coalitions are: No on 90, Conservationists for Taxpayer Protection; Californians for Neighborhood Protection; Californians Against the Taxpayer Trap; and the Coalition to Protect California. 

Donations of $5,000 or more all came from organizations, including the League of California Cities, the California Redevelopment Association, the Sierra Club of California, the National Resources Defense Council Action Fund, Environmental Defense, the Defenders of Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy and the California Conservation Campaign.

Berkeley’s Density Bonus Subcommittee met with city staff last week for the first time since being informed two weeks ago that all the work it had done on development standards for a year would be useless unless put in place before the Nov. 8 elections. 

The reason for the threat was that the election includes a vote on statewide Proposition 90, which if it passes might severely restrict cities in their ability to change zoning. 

Members of the subcommittee said they were alarmed to learn that their work might be invalidated. Berkeley planning staff and subcommittee members worked out a set of compromises on the issues at Wednesday’s meeting and a new report of the subcommittee will be presented for possible adoption at a special meeting on Sept. 6.  

City staff, including Planning Director Dan Marks and Planning Manager Mark Rhoades, presented the joint subcommittee with changes to what the committee had been working on, which staff wanted to recommend to the City Council. 

The joint subcommittee, comprised of members from the Joint Planning Commission, the Zoning Adjustments Board and Housing Advisory Commission, differed with staff on many issues, including on what should be done about development along San Pablo Avenue. 

City staff agreed with standard planning guidelines, which suggest that San Pablo, being a wide street, would benefit from having high-density housing.  

The joint subcommittee argued that building high-density four-story buildings in an underdeveloped area of the city like San Pablo, which predominantly houses single-story buildings, would not be in keeping with the neighborhood’s character. Therefore, they said, they would prefer a slower, less drastic rise in density there. 

The joint subcommittee also recommended that in the San Pablo Avenue commercial district, the construction of a fourth story should require a use permit. Not all the staff members agreed that such a permit should be required.  

In the end it was decided that the issue would be presented to the City Council for a decision. 

It had seemed so easy at the time; sitting in the library computer lab at Berkeley High School, clicking merrily through the many classes I could take next year as an 11th grader. AP Writing and Composition, sure, I’ll sign up for that. AP U.S. History, that’s a must. Politics and Power as my elective (the teacher, Mr. Teel, is leaving after next year, I might as well take it). 

It was so simple to sign up for the classes, and I thought I could bear the workload easily. 

However, now that summer vacation is over, junior year looms over my head like a dark cloud. The reading for my AP Writing and Composition lay untouched until now, but yesterday I decided to pick it up and flip through it. It might as well have been written in Tibetan; Aristotle’s rhetoric theory makes hardly any sense to me. 

As soon as I began to see the $10 words and complicated explanations that were sprinkled across the page, a tightness in my chest started to rise to my throat. It seemed as if junior year wasn’t going to be such a cinch. 

Besides difficult classes, SATs are making me nervous. While flying back from my short vacation on Cape Cod, I struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to me. He informed me that the college board looks at SATs first, and that it is one of the most important things in a college application. 

Thus, the deal was sealed: I had to do as close to perfect as possible on my SATs. Not just because I wanted to go to an Ivy League college, but also because of the pressure building up on me since my sister did a less than satisfactory job on her test. 

So the other day, my mother and I trekked to Barnes & Noble and I bought four books that were supposed to boost my score. An entire section was devoted to preparing for the SATs. While most of my friends were signing up for classes that cost upwards of $1,500 to get them ready for the test, I was spending $20 on books that would hopefully do the exact same thing. 

Fiction novels that use about 15 SAT vocabulary words per page have been written as a quirky alternative to flash cards, so I picked up two of those. Along with a dictionary of 1,000 words most used in the SAT and a mammoth book called, 2,400: Shooting for a Perfect Score, I was set. Purchasing those books made me feel a lot more safe, and, for lack of a more appropriate word, better. 

The cloud above my head was getting smaller, and I felt content with resolve. I could go home, read these books, and build up my test-taking skills and my vocabulary. I could understand Aristotle’s rhetoric if I really sat down and read, rather than just let the words wash over my eyes and remain meaningless as I focus only on the problems junior year will throw at me. I decided to stay positive about next year: perhaps my classes could be fun. 

Maybe. 

Checking out, the woman working at the bookstore chuckled and said, “Preparing for your junior year?” I replied, “Lady, you have no idea.”

Even though summer vacation is over and the school year is here, there are many opportunities for local teenagers to find jobs and volunteer activities. 

In the Bay Area, there are hundreds of organizations offering jobs, internships, volunteer opportunities, and classes, but finding one that is actually enjoyable can seem like a daunting task. However, there are many resources available to help teens find these opportunities. 

For someone who has never worked before, finding a job is made easier by a variety of programs, books, and websites that help teenagers look for jobs, create resumes, and prepare for interviews. The City of Berkeley’s YouthWorks matches Berkeley residents ages 14-20 with jobs. Teens who are interested in YouthWorks can call 981-4970 for more information. For non-Berkeley residents, East Bay Works (www.eastbayworks.org) and Teen 411 (www.teen411.info), which are available to anyone, provide information about job opportunities and job training. 

For teenagers who are nervous about starting a job search, there’s a variety of resources that can help. Websites such as Quintessential Careers (www.quintcareers.com/teen_job_strategies.html) and books such as H. Anthony Medley’s Sweaty Palms: The Neglected Art of Being Interviewed offer detailed advice to help teens overcome their nerves before a job interview. Other books, including Cindy Pervola’s How to Get a Job If You’re a Teenager and Kathryn K. Troutman’s Creating Your High School Resume help teens find jobs and create resumes. 

In addition to working, teens can also choose an organization to volunteer with. Volunteering doesn’t have to be boring—in fact, the best way for teens to find a volunteer job can be to look for organizations that match their interests. Animal lovers can care for animals at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society, while avid readers can help younger children play summer reading games at the library. There are literally hundreds of organizations such as these, and they can be found through websites such as Volunteer Match (www.volunteermatch.org), ServeNet (www.servenet.org), and The Volunteer Center (www.helpnow.org). 

Trying to find a job, internship, or other activity can be a challenging process, but there are a wide variety of resources available for teenagers who want to take the initiative to find them. 

The Berkeley Police Department sent out an urgent request to the community on Friday afternoon to help identify suspects who may be responsible for a number of robberies in Berkeley and possibly other Bay Area cities. 

On Aug. 23, a lone gunman entered the USE Credit Union at around 11 a.m. and, after ordering all persons to the ground, proceeded to rob the business. The suspect is a black male adult in his 20s, 5’9”, 160 pounds with pulled-back braided hair. The suspect could also be associated with a similar credit union robbery in the South Bay, according to Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

Investigators are also looking for a suspect in a Berkeley Wells Fargo Bank robbery at 2 p.m. Aug. 23. The suspect is a black male in his 20s, 5’ 8”, 160 pounds, wearing a black T-shirt and multi-colored baseball cap. He is also believed to be responsible for at least one other Bay Area bank robbery. 

In the third case, victims were beaten up even after they complied with their attackers. On Aug. 25, a group of young males, possibly black or Latino, aged 18 to 22, robbed and beat their victims in the 1200 block of Francisco Street. The suspects have been described as over six feet tall. Berkeley police have said that this group could be responsible for four separate pedestrian robberies in the Northwest Berkeley area. 

Anyone with information about the suspects should contact the Berkeley Police Department Robbery Unit at 981-5742.

Berkeley’s role in radical ideas, movements and programs is often thought to date from the 1960s—that decade of the Free Speech Movement and of assorted demonstrations that led to the town nickname, “plywood city” for the boarded-up broken windows. 

Our city was considered ground-zero in the anti-Vietnam war cause. There was, for instance, the telegram sent from peace movement leaders in Toronto, Canada, to the main Berkeley anti-war office. The Toronto activists were hosting a debate between representatives of North and South Vietnam. The North Vietnam contingent pulled out.  

The Toronto telegram, composed in frantic terse telegramese, told Berkeley to tell North Vietnam to sit down with the South at the Toronto forum. Activists in the Berkeley office were flabbergasted. “Toronto thinks we can order North Vietnam around. Where’d they get that idea?” 

One could say it came from our town’s rep as the place that supported the causes: student freedom, free love, pacifism, ecology, women’s rights, disabled rights, coop living, senior rights, marijuana rights, and, among others, dramatic support for African American struggle—notably the Black Panther Party and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Selma Spector-Vincent recalls from her days as secretary in the office of the East Bay Friends of SNCC that national headquarters informed Berkeley that its office was accounting for one of every three dollars sent in from around the United States. 

When did the activism begin? Apparently, well before our city was officially incorporated in 1878. During the 1850s, Mexicans angry at their land being seized repeatedly burned the homes of the first Anglo settlers. The first movement for a modern cause was in the spirit of our Center for Independent Living. A group of crusaders led by Frances Augusta Clark of San Francisco pushed for the establishment in Berkeley in 1865 of the state School for the Blind and Deaf, an institution the founders emphatically declared was “a school, not an asylum.” The school predated the University of California as a state educational institution in our city.  

Intense political party fights date from the election of Berkeley’s first city council, then called Board of Trustees. The 1878 election was won by the Workingmen’s Party—the proto-socialist party that was a power in those times in many a mine and mill town back East, and in San Francisco (a city where it detoured from class struggle into anti-Asian racism). 

The Berkeley contest featured our eternal split between “flats” and “hills.” The local Advocate newspaper said the victors represented “the working class” Western neighborhoods of the city, while the rival “aristocrat” party represented “the Claremont.” 

According to the Advocate, the Workingmen overcame a late rise in support for the rival Citizen’s Party by what we call today a get-out-the-vote campaign. In this case, the Workingmen “traversed from one end (of the town) to the other with fast horses to obtain every available vote.”  

In 1883 Berkeley became nationally prominent in a move against the mighty railroad companies, then buying up whole towns in monopolistic maneuvers. Anti-corporate militants gathered at the foot of Berkeley’s wharf to break ground for the western terminus of a cross-continental “People’s Railway of America.” 

The idea originated in the Knights of Labor on the East coast. That Berkeley should jump to the then visionary idea is suggestive of our traditions. The P.R.A. died with few miles of track laid.  

Two UC professors were in the first Workingmen’s Party government in Berkeley, their presence reflecting our town’s long tradition of intellectual activism. It may be noted that the Unitarians, those thoughtful agitators, opened Starr King School for Religion in 1906, and a year later the Berkeley Unitarian Club hosted the founding meeting for the city’s government reform movement, which successfully made Berkeley one of the first cities to adopt the commission system, a form of governance which was intended to curtail the power of the “political bosses,” and which swept the nation and was part of “The Progressive Movement.” 

Under the new form of government Berkeley got an openly “socialist” mayor. Jack London wrote sarcastically of Berkeley leftists of this time. In a biographical sketch he describes going from working-class Oakland to Berkeley for the fun of spouting this and that revolutionary slogan that would make the Berkeley “socialists” squirm.  

Between 1913 and 1923 mayors and involved citizens in Berkeley were instrumental in the fight to create a municipal water system, notes William Warren Ferrier in his history of the city. 

Corporations then dreamed of running the local water system in the manner of the gas and electric company today. Strong arguments against the capitalists were needed to push through what came to be the East Bay Municipal Utility District. 

The decade of the Great Depression began with Berkeley’s “hill” crowd in political control, to the extreme that in the 1932 presidential election, while Franklin D. Roosevelt swept most of the nation, Berkeley was one of the only cities in Alameda county to vote for Herbert Hoover.  

Under F.D.R., however, Berkeley politics switched back, notably in the city endorsement of a plan Roosevelt pushed for cities to endorse W.P.A. funding for schooling. Today, Berkeley High School is the only high school in the state primarily built through the W.P.A. and its New Deal successor agencies. Being a poster child for the movement, the grounds came to include our revered Berkeley Community Theater and Florence Schwimly Little Theater. 

The post-World War II years were a boon to higher education and the University of California grew significantly. Then a dark episode interrupted the good spirits. McCarthyism swept the nation. Paranoia over “communists,” “pinkos” and “fellow travelers” infected the trade unions, city governments and the academic community. 

In 1949 UC President Robert Gordon Sproul joined the anti-red crusade. He convinced the Regents to adopt a Loyalty Oath that all UC employees had to sign. Led by brave professors at Berkeley, 31 profs of the UC system refused to sign and were fired. A number sued and ten years later retained their positions. 

Talk about the professors who stood up to the witch hunters continued on UC campuses throughout the 1950s. Distaste grew over the intimidation factor in loyalty oaths (sign and shut up or someone might finger you for that night your date took you to a Communist Party party). 

Distaste turned to revulsion as evidence mounted that the government used paid liars to claim they saw this or that person at such a party. In San Francisco in May of 1960, a meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee was brought to a halt by a gathering of angry young people, including many from Berkeley, and some from the old brown shingle homes along Haste and Dwight that would soon be torn down to create the large vacant lot that, thanks to later struggle, became People’s Park. 

The 1960 San Francisco HUAC protest is often considered the start of our Great Radical Tradition, which we have seen, actually goes back much further. 

The University of California has filed a lawsuit against the city of Santa Cruz in an attempt to stop two growth-restricting ballot measures from taking effect should voters approve them in November. 

In the lawsuit, which was filed in Santa Cruz County Superior Court on Wednesday, the university argues that the city failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act when it placed Measures I and J on the ballot in July. 

The measures would restrict expansion of UC Santa Cruz, which seeks to increase total enrollment by 6,000 to 21,000 students in 2020, unless the university implements and pays for mitigation of the adverse impacts of growth on such things as traffic, water supply capacity and housing costs. 

UC attorney Kelly Drumm insists that the city should have examined the measures’ environmental impact, if any, before sending them to the voters. 

“Instead, the city denied there would be any impacts whatsoever and, further, gave less than the legally required notice of its action to the university and to the general public,” Drumm wrote in a statement. “Not only is the city threatening to withhold contractually obligated water to a UC campus, the city placed the ballot measures on the ballot without a full disclosure to voters of the environmental impacts that could be created by the city’s own measures.” 

The lawsuit states that the city offered a 12-day-long public comment period in July, noticeably shorter than the requirement of no fewer than 30 days under the California Environmental Quality Act.  

The lawsuit also seeks to have Measure J, which would amend the city’s charter to prevent the City Council from expanding water and sewer services outside city limits unless authorized to do so by the people or by the state’s Local Agency Formation Commission, invalidated on federal and state constitutional grounds. 

UC attorneys maintain that the city is contractually obligated to provide water to all parts of the campus, including the North Campus where roughly 35 percent of the growth proposed in the university’s 2005 long-range development plan would take place. The North Campus is located outside city limits and would thus, if Measure J passes, not receive city water and sewer services unless the university has alleviated the impact of that growth to the satisfaction of the people of Santa Cruz. 

UC wants to expand the Santa Cruz campus to accommodate an increased demand for higher education in California over the next 15 years, but supporters of the ballot measures are wary. 

“We need to send a strong and legally enforceable message to the university administration that this community will only support growth that is sustainable,” states the argument in favor of Measure I, which is supported by Santa Cruz Vice Mayor Emily Reilly, among others. “Both the campus and the local community will benefit from requiring UCSC to only grow  

if they can and will mitigate all of the serious impacts of any future expansion.” 

Santa Cruz City Attorney John Barisone said today the lawsuit is unlikely to interfere with the election. 

“I don’t think there is a very good likelihood of the lawsuit being decided before the election,” Barisone said, because the suit was filed too late for a trial to be scheduled before Nov. 7. 

Even if voters pass the measures, the suit asks for a court order to invalidate the growth restrictions on grounds that the city violated the procedural requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act when it neglected to prepare an environmental impact report. 

Barisone said he had not read the suit carefully enough to comment on the likelihood of a court order barring the measures from taking effect retroactively.

A day before Hurricane Katrina hit last year, New Orleans residents Quamrun Zinia, husband Riyad Ferdous and their little kid got into a car. At 11:00 a.m., they set off. They just packed stuff for their kid. Then they drove 400 miles to seek shelter with Zinia’s brother who lived in the Houston suburb of Belleville. It was a category five warning, and evacuation was mandatory. 

She returned about 90 days later, and thankfully, suffered virtually no material loss at all. 

Zinia lived in the Metairie area of New Orleans, whose high elevation kept it protected from the flood waters that devastated this Louisiana metropolis after its levees broke. Yet one year after Katrina, there is an emotional wound that is still raw. 

“After Katrina, the one thing that has not changed at all is that awful feeling of fear,” the Bangladesh-born doctoral student told India-West by phone. “We are always scared. Now that the (hurricane) season has started, there is that constant fear that I will have to evacuate again.” 

Yet, as she is the first person to acknowledge, she is among the lucky ones. “At least I have a brother to go to,” she said ruefully. “Imagine the situation of others in far more precarious situations than mine.” 

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, according to the information resource Wikipedia. “It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest landfalling U.S. hurricane ever recorded,” according to Wikipedia. “Katrina formed in late August during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and devastated much of the north-central Gulf Coast of the United States. Most notable in media coverage were the catastrophic effects on the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, and in coastal Mississippi. Katrina’s sheer size devastated the Gulf Coast over 100 miles (160 km) away from its center.” 

South Asians also suffered considerable loss, but the nature of the loss varied. While professionals often came out unscathed in the longer term, because federal assistance was on hand after they had survived the initial onslaught, students faced greater challenges, and undocumented workers faced terrible hardships, hit as they were by the double-whammy of natural disaster and ineligibility to government assistance, activists told India-West. 

The vast majority of Indian American motel owners are still struggling to open their motels, Anil Patel, gulf director of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, told India-West from Jackson, Miss., in a phone conversation. 

He said there were 19 Indian American-owned hotels in Biloxi. Miss., and Shreveport, La. In New Orleans, Indian Americans owned 20 hotels. “Out of these only five are open, the rest are not open yet,” he said. 

Zinia said while many people she knew got assistance from the much maligned Federal Emergency Management Agency, it was heartbreaking to see the suffering of people, particularly students, who weren’t immigrants, because the federal assistance spigot completely dried up for them. 

“My daughter is an American citizen, and we got a $2,000 voucher,” she said. “Next door to me is a student family just like us, they have a 4-year-old kid, the kid was born in Bangladesh, and they didn’t get it. Some got it, but had to return it. 

“Personally I felt very bad about this. I know a student family who have a green card, their home was in knee-level water and they got $36,000 for the loss of the place, furniture. In another house, another family, I feel so terribly sorry for them, they have two kids, they lost everything too, they got nothing. FEMA rejected their application, because they weren’t immigrants.” 

Partha Banerjee, executive director of the Newark, N.J.-based Immigration Policy Network, got involved with South Asian immigrant issues immediately after Katrina. He said the post-disaster circumstances of Katrina were also a golden opportunity lost by immigrant rights activists and the South Asian community. 

“This was a great opportunity to show the media and the establishment that the traditionally underprivileged part of society, particularly African-Americans, and immigrants face the same problems and challenges. But we blew it because we immigrants don’t want to work with African-Americans.” 

He said the South Asian experience in the aftermath of Katrina depended on where they belonged in the socio-economic ladder. 

“Many South Asians are students, teachers; many were ready,” he said. “The losses were great, but they later got aid. Students were relocated. So after they had weathered the initial hit, they got back on their feet. Those who work, they moved elsewhere. Many moved to Houston. Even in New Jersey and New York I know people who moved permanently.” 

Zinia echoed Banerjee’s views. For the past six years she has been organizing a Pahela Baisakh celebration, bringing together West Bengal and Bangladeshi Bangla-speakers from three states: Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. She said she was really surprised when she went to the Durga Puja celebrations. “The event had half the number of people,” she said. 

“They have arranged for jobs and moved out of state.”  

Students faced an added layer of hassles. “Many people don’t know that foreign students can only go to the specific college referred to in their I-20 forms,” Banerjee said. “Since their academic program was suspended, they had to go through a lot of hassles.” Here again, what one faced depended upon where one was. Mainstream students or privileged students were easily relocated, Banerjee said, while poor and immigrant students did not get that assistance. “These poor students don’t have much money to begin with, some lost everything,” he rued to India-West. “They had to work overtime to take care of this extra hurdle.” 

Even for the affluent, there was no telling how one would be affected. “Some have paid off their homes and they didn’t take flood insurance,” said Zinia. “Now water entered up to roof level, and the entire house was ruined. Since they had no flood insurance, they got nothing. I know a multimillionaire who is now penniless. 

“On the other hand, I know someone who had just bought a house. He had flood insurance and now he has got so much money he is thinking about getting into the real estate business. It’s all very strange.” 

For Banerjee, though, the biggest disappointment was that even a disaster like Katrina could not bring South Asians out of their ethnic cocoons. 

“The saddest part is that local people were unable to build immigrant solidarity,” he laments. 

Zinia agrees. “They are all in their ethnic ghettoes, nothing has changed,” she said. “But maybe this is American culture. I have lived in apartment complexes where a person dies in one apartment and people next door have no idea.” 

Ashfaque Swapan is a reporter for India- West, a member of New American Media. 

For 6-year-old Eli Lebowitz, going to school on Monday evening was exciting because he got to attend a barbecue, meet all his friends before starting school on Wednesday and even receive a brand new backpack full of school supplies. 

“What was even more great about the backpack was that there were Z bars inside it,” said the first-grader from Rosa Parks Elementary School, excitedly. 

Rosa Parks has hosted the Annual New Families Barbecue for 15 years and given away free backpacks and school supplies for the past two years. 

Councilmember Darryl Moore started this initiative with the help of the West Berkeley Business Association and other companies in council district 5. 

“I have worked with Rosa Parks for years, and this just seemed like a special way to get the kindergartners on to a great start for the new school year,” Moore said. 

Moore thanked Rosa Parks Principal Pat Saddler, the PTA, the West Berkeley Business Alliance, the Bayer Corporation, Pacific Steel Casting and other businesses for helping make the event happen.  

“All the businesses in West Berkeley wrote out checks with open arms,” Moore said. 

Rosa Parks, at 920 Allston Way, has 58 percent of its students taking part in the free and reduced lunch program.  

Cody’s Books gave away bilingual (Spanish & English) Dora the Explorer books and Clif Bar distributed free children’s organic bars. Orchard Supplies donated terra-cotta pots for the kids to paint and provided them with earth and saplings. Crayons, pencils, and gluesticks were also distributed among the school supplies. 

“It was a lot of fun,” said PTA president Tracy Hollander. “New students and their families were welcomed and they also got to meet BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence, teachers and other families. Principal Saddler introduced many of the Rosa Parks teachers and staff and explained what parents could expect at Rosa Parks.”  

The PTA enrolled 67 members in the first day itself, Hollander said. 

“I am really proud of being a Rosa Parks parent,” she said. “The school’s commitment to community building is brought forward through events like this.” 

Hollander added that Rosa Parks has six new teachers this year.

When Jackie Tolbert sang “Amazing Grace” at the corner of Twelfth Street and Broadway in downtown Oakland on Tuesday, the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, tears welled in the eyes of several of the listeners from her hometown—New Orleans. 

The Katrina speak-out in front of the Federal Emergency Management Agency offices was called by The World Can’t Wait to chastise the Bush administration for what they said was a slow and inadequate response to the disaster. The New Orleans refugees who spoke shared both their frustration with disaster relief efforts and hope for a new day in the Bay Area. 

Before the hurricane, Tolbert made her living as a gospel singer and had even traveled in Europe to sing. She considers herself among the more fortunate: she owned a car and a cell phone and had a place out of town to take her children to. 

In the days following Katrina, Tolbert used that car and cell phone to try to get some help. “It took four days to get in touch with FEMA and FEMA would direct you to different organizations,” she said.  

Finally she got $2,000 from FEMA, $300 from the Red Cross and $200 from the Salvation Army—and that was all. Tolbert had lost her rented home and all her possessions except the few things she had taken with her when she left. 

“They are supposed to reimburse you for your losses—it never happened,” she said, adding that each time she followed up with papers she had filed, the various agencies would say they had no record of them and she would have to fill out the same forms again. 

Nobody gave her a plane ticket. “I drove from Louisiana to Oakland, California,” she said. She and her family stay in Oakland now with her brother. People along the way helped out with hotel expenses and Tolbert’s brother wired her money for gas. 

“I’m hurt and disappointed with our government,” she said. “I feel like a homeless person, a drifter, not able to find stability.” On the other hand, she said she found a welcome in Oakland. “Thank you, Bay Area,” she said. 

Tolbert has no plans to return to New Orleans. “There’s nothing to go back to,” she said. “If I go back, I need to fight. It’s too much. I want to put it behind me.” 

Denise Rothschild doesn’t want to go back either.  

She told a harrowing story. Without a car, Rothschild was unable to heed the warnings to evacuate. She and her 12-year-old son went to sleep the night of the hurricane—the other two children, age 14 and 15, were at relatives for the night. Rothschild woke up to find the water was several feet deep. She put her son on her back—he doesn’t swim—and she swam to a nearby three-story building. They climbed up the fire escape to the roof. 

“We slept on the roof for three days with no water and no food,” she said. The helicopters would fly over and seem to ignore them. They were finally evacuated by boat to a bridge where they had to wait on long lines, still with no food or water. Buses finally took them to an army base in Oklahoma. 

“We’d wake up in the morning with guns in our faces,” she said.  

During this time she did not know what had happened to her two other children. She was under such stress that she had to be hospitalized. While in the hospital, a nurse helped her find her other two children and obtain funds for bus tickets to the Bay Area. Rothschild has an aunt in Vallejo where she is staying now. She’s found a job cleaning rooms in a San Francisco hotel and her children are in school. 

“If I went back, there would be nothing there. Thank God for a new beginning,” she said.

A freelance journalist who has spent a month in prison was granted release on bail by a federal appeals court in San Francisco today while he appeals a subpoena requiring him to give a videotape of a demonstration to a U.S. grand jury. 

Attorney Dan Siegel said he expects Josh Wolf, 24, to be freed on his own recognizance from the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin either by Friday morning. 

Wolf has been imprisoned since U.S. District Judge William Alsup found him in civil contempt of court on Aug. 1 for refusing to give a grand jury unpublished sections of a videotape he took of an anarchist demonstration in San Francisco on July 8, 2005. 

Chief Judge Mary Schroeder and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a one-page order that the government “has not shown that this appeal is frivolous or taken for purposes of delay.”  

The bail release will be in effect until a different three-judge panel of the appeals court rules on Wolf’s appeal of the contempt finding. 

Siegel said, “I’m very pleased. I’m optimistic the appeal will be resolved in his favor.” 

The grand jury is investigating possible attempted arson to a police car during the demonstration, which was held to protest the Group of Eight summit meeting then taking place in Scotland. 

While California has a state shield law that generally protects news reporters from disclosing materials, there is no federal shield law. 

Wolf contends the federal connection to the case is remote and that the government’s need for the information should be weighed against the harm to his constitutional First Amendment rights. 

Prosecutors say the federal grand jury probe is proper because the San Francisco Police Department receives some federal funds. 

U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Luke Macaulay declined to comment on the bail order, but noted that prosecutors have previously said, “We have an obligation to the community to investigate and gather relevant and material evidence of serious crimes.” 

Wolf is one of four people who have been challenging subpoenas to testify before federal grand juries in San Francisco in recent weeks. 

On Monday, Alsup found Greg Anderson, a personal trainer for San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds, in contempt of court and ordered him jailed for refusing to tell a grand jury whether Bonds used steroid drugs. Anderson, now in prison, is appealing.  

Last month, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White rejected a challenge by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada to a subpoena requiring them to tell a different grand jury their source of leaked grand jury transcripts in a sports steroids probe centered about the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).  

The two reporters are appealing that ruling and could be found in contempt of court and jailed if they lose the appeal.  

The Indiana-based Society of Professional Journalists is paying $31,000 of Wolf’s $60,000 legal fees to fight the subpoena in his case. 

Society President David Carlson said last week, “This case is evidence of a disturbing trend in which federal prosecutors are attempting to turn journalists into arms of law enforcement.” 

If not granted bail, Wolf could have been kept in prison until the grand jury’s term expires next July. If he loses the appeal, he could be returned to prison unless he gives up the videotape. 

The name of its parent foundation is Pacifica. Nonetheless, during the more-than-half-century of progressive radio programming, KPFA has often been home to interpersonal tensions that periodically boil over into public view. 

The most recent clash is between the station’s Program Council and the KPFA Labor Collective. The collective has created ad hoc programming on labor issues for the last several years. 

The Program Council is a body of 14 people, including representatives of the paid staff, the unpaid staff, department heads and listeners. It meets weekly to review programming and to evaluate proposals for new programming.  

Citing “deteriorating relationships with the station staff,” in March the council banned the Labor Collective from offering program proposals for a year. The collective will hold a picket outside the station at 1 p.m. on Labor Day to protest the ban. 

“They say we can’t submit proposals. I’ve never heard of this before,” said Steve Zeltzer, Labor Collective chair. 

The collective has produced numerous shows, including those airing on Labor Day, May Day and International Women’s Day. While continuing to submit proposals for special programming, Zeltzer said his collective were also lobbying the council for a regular labor show.  

Much of the tension at the station over the years has been due to finite limitations in time and resources. Zeltzer pointed out that some people have had their programs for years. 

“They feel the space is their own personal time slot,” he said. 

While the Program Council voted 12-2 to support the ban, the two dissenters, Joe Wanzala and Sepideh Khosrowjah, both of whom represent the Local Station Board on the Program Council, pointed to resource allocation as the underlying factor in the dispute. 

In March they wrote: ”It is our opinion that the expressed concerns about the behavior of the Labor Collective mask a real problem at the station—a failure to re-assess KPFA’s entire programming grid to create more space for new programming and reduce the tensions and frustrations associated with access to airtime which is an artificial scarce resource at KPFA.” 

Program Council facilitator Tracy Rosenberg supports the ban. In a phone interview, Rosenberg accused the Labor Collective of overwhelming the council with work. 

“They submitted 16 to18 proposals in a 12-month period,” she said, noting that the council approved some proposals, modified some and rejected others.  

Furthermore, Rosenberg said that reports came to her of negative interpersonal interactions with station staff. She was more specific in a letter written to the Local Station Board, accusing the collective of “rude and confrontational language.” 

The complaints merited a 12-month “time out” she told the Daily Planet. 

No mediation has occurred, Rosenberg said, noting however: “That might be a good idea.” 

As a volunteer group, the Program Council does not have the time and resources to address interpersonal issues, she said. 

“No doubt had there been a stronger general manager, there would have been leadership on the issue,” she added. After the resignation of embattled General Manager Roy Campanella in January, there were a few months without a general manager; Lemlem Rijio was named acting general manager in April.  

Rijio said she did not want to comment on the Labor Collective situation at this time, but noted “a human resources consultant is looking into it.” 

In their letter to the local station board, dissenters Wanzala and Khosrowjah did not condone the negative behavior of some of the collective members, but said they were signaled out in an unfair way. 

“Many instances of such behavior remain unaddressed by the relevant authorities—making this action by the Program Council appear discriminatory and hypocritical,” they wrote. 

They concluded that rather than taking action to ban proposals, a complaint should have been lodged with KPFA management. 

Adding another layer of complexity to the picture, Acting Program Coordinator Vini Beacham said that, in fact, last week he accepted a proposal from the Labor Collective but returned it for more information, as is common with such proposals. In his role as program coordinator, Beacham said he turns completed proposals over to the Program Council for its consideration. The next step, he said, will be up to the council.

Total Academic Performance Index (API) scores for the Oakland Unified School District rose 19 points from 634 to 653 in scores released this week by the California Department of Education. 

But while there were significant gains of major minority student groups within the district—African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans—both the gains and overall performance scores for those groups lagged behind the district’s white students, a phenomenon known as the “achievement gap.” 

In addition, OUSD’s overall 653 API score this year was well below the state goal of 800, and some district schools did significantly worse. 

“The latest test results show a continued upward trend,” OUSD Interim State Administrator Kimberly Statham said in a statement sent out to district principals. “Challenging our students and ourselves to achieve excellence is working. That’s good news. Still, we all know there is much to do to improve our schools and to ensure that every student in Oakland receives the education he or she deserves.” 

In her statement, Statham noted that “more than half [of OUSD] schools raised their scores enough to meet growth targets, and said that “Oakland’s African American students and economically disadvantaged students made [the federally required] Adequate Yearly Progress [in test scores this year] in English and math.” 

“This year,” Statham said, “Oakland public schools continued to improve at a faster rate than the state as a whole,” with API scores rising 19 points in Oakland to 11 points statewide. 

Even with the faster increase, however, OUSD’s API scores trails the overall state score, 653 to 720. 

In contrast to Oakland’s 19 point jump to a 653 API score, adjoining school districts had smaller API increases but larger base scores, with San Francisco Unified rising 10 points (745 to 755), Berkeley Unified seven points (736 to 743), Emery Unified six points (665 to 671), and San Leandro one point (697 to 698). 

Meanwhile, there were mixed results for Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s two charter schools, the Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) and the Oakland Military Institute (OMI). While the two schools had the highest API scores for secondary schools within the district, both dropped significantly between 2005 and 2006, with OSA’s API dropping 18 points (738 down to 720) and OMI’s dropping 13 points (671 to 658) between 2005 and 2006. 

Brown has made the two charter schools one of the keystones of his two year administration as mayor of Oakland. 

API scores have become increasingly important in recent years in judging schools and school districts. In addition, the scores are used to calculate schools’ Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under federal law, failure to meet AYP over a succession of years leads to the eventual dismantling and reorganization of the school. 

The API scores summarize school districts’ and individual schools’ performance on several state-mandated tests, including the state High School Exit Exam, and are rated on a scale of 200 to 1000. Under California law, schools are expected to show an increasing percentage API gain each year. Under the federal NCLB act, schools are only required to gain at least one point over the previous year’s AYP standing. 

Overall, white students did better on the API throughout the district, gaining 25 points from 859 to 884, with Asian American students jumping 19 (749 to 768), Latinos 17 (592 to 609), and non-Latino African Americans 16 (587 to 603). 

Native Americans and Alaskan Native OUSD student API scores rose 26 (662 to 688), Pacific Islanders rose 3 (594 to 597), and Filipinos rose 2 (729 to 731). 

Socioeconomically disadvantaged student API scores rose 16 points over the past year (611 to 627), English learners 22 points (605 to 627), and students with disabilities 1 point (473 to 474). 

Results from individual district schools were widely varying, showing continued discrepancies in the district. 

At the positive end of the scale, six district secondary schools (University Preparatory Charter Academy, Ralph Bunche, East Oakland School of the Arts, Oakland Unity High Charter, Business and Information Technology High, and Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy), three middle schools (Rudsdale Academy, Oakland Charter Academy, and Madison Middle), and seven elementary schools (Think College Now, Sobrante Park Elementary, Hawthorne Elementary, Monarch Academy, Parker Elementary, Dolores Huerta Learning Academy, and ASCEND) all had API gains this year of 50 points or more. 

At the opposite end, five district secondary schools (East Oakland Community High, Oakland School For The Arts, Oakland Military Institute, LIFE Academy, YES, Youth Empowerment), five middle schools KIPP Bridge College Preparatory, Explorer Middle, Cole Middle, Roosevelt Middle, and Frick Middle), and twenty elementary schools (Grass Valley, Sherman, Highland, Lockwood, Peralta, Lakeview, Education For Change At Cox, Cleveland, Maxwell Park, Stonehurst, Webster, Melrose, Emerson, ACORN Woodland, Joaquin Miller, Hoover, International Community, Sequoia, Redwood Heights, and Martin Luther King Jr.) not only failed to meet the 2006 API growth targets, their API scores dropped between 2005 and 2006. 

A Mercedes Sport Utility Vehicle rammed into a Berkeley school bus stopped at a red light on Sacramento Street Wednesday afternoon. 

The bus was carrying 20 students home from Jefferson Elementary School when it was hit near the Ashby Avenue intersection at 2:05 p.m. None of the students was hurt except for one child who received a small bump on the head.  

Berkeley paramedics and police officers arrived at the site of the accident promptly, according to BUSD superintendent Michele Lawrence. 

The children were picked up by another bus and taken home. The occupants of the SUV were taken to the hospital. 

Lawrence said the children called the incident their “most exciting first day of school so far.”

The question of changes to the law regulating condominium conversion is supposed to go before the voters in November. But Measure I is taking a detour to court today (Friday).  

The case will be heard at 9 a.m. in Dept. 31, Alameda County Superior Court, located at the U.S. Post Office, 201 13th St., Oakland. 

A decision on ballot language changes and subsequent changes in the city attorney’s analysis is time-sensitive, given that the new text must be at the Alameda County election offices by Sept. 7 in order to be printed in the voter handbook. 

Initially, it looked as if the process for putting the measure on the ballot was on track: proponents of the initiative collected the required signatures and the City Council fulfilled its duty by approving the measure for placement on the ballot.  

But it was subsequently discovered that the city attorney’s analysis of the measure and arguments in opposition to it were based on an early iteration of the ballot text and not the one the City Council had approved. 

Proponents and opponents blame each other for the error, opponents saying that the proponents changed the language of the text, while telling the city attorney they were changing only the title and proponents arguing that the changes were known to the city and the error was hers. 

How the problem was created, however, will not be the question before the judge. Rather, it is a correction, changing the old language to the new.  

However, according to Jesse Arreguin of the No on I Campaign, opponents fear proponents will take advantage of the hearing to challenge various aspects of the city attorney’s analysis and some of the language opponents have used. 

According to court documents, one key change that will be heard concerns the timeline for the right of first refusal when a unit is to be sold as a condominium. The original version said the tenant living in the unit would have “no less than 14 days from receipt of the notice to enter into a written agreement to buy such unit as their own principle residence.” 

The tenant would then have 30 days to go through escrow. 

The subsequent version talks about giving the tenant 30 days to enter into the agreement and is silent on escrow. 

Also, in the earlier version, it would be up to the city’s Housing Department to determine the vacancy rate (on which the number of units to be converted would depend). The later version talks about the determination being made by an impartial survey. 

Another question proponents may try to bring up in the court proceedings is the view that the city attorney’s analysis is wrong when she says that affordable housing fees the city will collect will be reduced by 90 percent. Currently the fee is 12.5 percent of the cost of the unit, which is collected when the property is sold. The initiative proposes a flat fee, to be collected at the time the unit is converted—not when it is sold. 

“The flat fee is much lower; it won’t dissuade people from converting,” said Michael Wilson, an attorney working with the proponents, but not representing them in court. 

Wilson further challenged a statement in Assemblymember Loni Hancock’s argument against the measure, which says that 60 percent of the children in Berkeley schools are in renter households. (Hancock’s point is that children will be displaced.)  

Another statement that proponents could challenge is the opponent’s assertion that “The measure won’t help ‘teachers … and blue-collar workers’ purchase homes. Berkeley’s average small condominium costs $500,000 requiring a yearly income of $120,000.” 

Wilson called the statement “preposterous,” saying that many condominiums cost considerably less than that price in Berkeley. 

Measure I’s Arreguin said he hopes the court procedure “will make sure the arguments are as factually correct as possible.”

The Downtown Area Planning Committee (DAPAC) voted on Wednesday to form a subcommittee that would deal specifically with issues related to Center Street and the new hotel planned for the intersection of Shattuck Avenue.  

The subcommittee would report to the main committee in November. 

Dan Marks, planning director, and Will Harper, DAPAC chair, were opposed to the idea and said that it was immature at this point to have a subcommittee. 

The final vote on the issue was 11-7. Helen Burke, DAPAC committee member, made the motion while DAPAC member Linda Gage seconded it. 

“It makes sense to break the committee into a subcommittee. I am very strongly for it,” said DAPAC member Patti Dacey. 

“We have just under a year to give our suggestions to the City Council about the Downtown Preservation Plan and we haven’t got any real work done yet,” she said. “The subcommittee will help to start work on different sections.” 

Rob Wrenn will be facilitating the first DAPAC subcommittee meeting at which guidelines about planning parameters for Center Street and the hotel will be discussed. 

A panel on economic development was also held in which realtor John Gordon spoke about the importance of having a clean and safe downtown.  

Gordon said that in order to improve the economic vitality of the downtown area, the city would need to deal with the dirt, graffiti and behavioral problems of the homeless people.

Green Machines, cleaner sidewalks, brighter lights, bicycle cops, and a brand new website are just some of the changes Berkeley has initiated to kick off the $360,000 Telegraph Avenue revitalization campaign. 

The effort was launched earlier this year by Mayor Tom Bates and councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Gordon Wozniak. 

The latest additions to the campaign are the two state-of-the-art “green machines,” which have already been set to the task of cleaning Telegraph since arriving last weekend.  

“It’s another great tool that the city has added to the effort of improving Telegraph,” said Cisco DeVries, chief-of-staff to Mayor Tom Bates. “The machines are quick, highly maneuverable and easy to get around people. That allows them to be used even during times of heavy pedestrian traffic, which was not possible with the older ones.” 

Manned by staff from the Public Works Department, the machines will clean downtown Berkeley, DeVries said. The machines will be used during early morning and evenings, when there is less traffic on the street. The City Council has increased the budget for Telegraph and downtown street and sidewalk cleaning by $70,000 to pay for staff overtime. 

“When we were putting together this plan with Councilmembers Worthington and Wozniak, city staff, health service providers, we understood that it would be some time before we would start seeing results,” DeVries said. “However, Telegraph is an incredible historic treasure. Most cities would die to have a gem like this; therefore, the city wants to do all it can to embrace its past. At the same time we want to find ways to attract the younger generation too.” 

Storefront improvements and more lenient zoning laws that would reduce red tape for new businesses trying to open in the Telegraph area are also things the mayor’s office is looking at implementing. 

The city staff has submitted zoning changes to the Planning Commission that are currently under review. After the Planning Commission votes on these changes, they could be coming up at the City Council as soon as late September or early October. 

A facade grant program has also been set up that includes $20,000 from the city, $20,000 from the UC Berkeley, and $40,000 from the Telegraph Business Improvement District. 

“Merchants on Telegraph Avenue who want new signage or brighter lights on storefronts which look old and worn can apply for these grants,” said Worthington. 

“This campaign is a way to put back resources that had been cut from Telegraph Avenue over the last three years,” he said. “There used to be two bike cops there and we should have something similar there within the next one year. Officers from the BPD are now training in the police academy so that they are ready to be patrolling the streets on bikes. This is something we’d like to see year round, even after elections get over in November.” 

Officers from the Berkeley Police Department who were previously assigned to desk jobs are being paid overtime to patrol the streets of the Telegraph/ Southside area and talk to merchants and pedestrians. The City Council approved $100,000 in overtime funding for the Berkeley Police. 

The UC Berkeley police have also brought in a new sergeant to assist and coordinate the efforts of five officers assigned to the Southside. 

Undercover drug sting operations which started last Friday have led to 40 arrests in the first couple of days of its operation, according to Worthington. 

“The city staff has also employed two additional social workers who are working on Telegraph at least three days a week to help homeless people and those with mental illness,” Worthington added. 

The City Council has authorized a $30,000 increase in funding for social service and mental health outreach.  

In an effort to improve marketing efforts for Telegraph, the university has also teamed up with avenue merchants and property owners and launched www.telegraphlive.com, a website that promises to be a guide to the culinary and shopping on the popular stretch. 

“I worked with the marketing committee to ensure that the student community got a chance to connect with the merchants electronically,” said councilmember Gordon Wozniak. “The merchants are also giving out blue and gold discounts to Cal students and I feel all this will help to improve the overall business climate on Telegraph.” 

Wozniak added that the recent Caltopia festival hosted by the university had been successful, drawing over 15,000 students to the area. 

“Telegraph and the area around People’s Park has definitely been neglected for awhile, but it’s time to tap into the energy of the place and being back some of the old vitality,” he said. “Cracked sidewalks and empty storefronts will not attract foot traffic. So we need to speed up the process of fixing them.” 

Roland Peterson, president of the Telegraph Improvement District, said that drawing students to Telegraph was one of the main priorities for the merchants. 

“We have been seeing a decline in sales tax in that area because of fewer shoppers and empty stores,” he said. “We want to help turn Telegraph into a place for them to have fun. If you are on campus, that’s the only logical place to hang out. This was the message we along with the UCB marketing folks sent out through brochures, poster/calendars and the new website at Caltopia.” 

The City Council further approved $65,000 to restore some parking on Telegraph. Worthington is also working to reorganize the Telegraph Area Association, which hasn’t met over a year now because of the lack of funds. 

The city plans to review the campaign efforts in six months to evaluate what changes need to be made.

Telegraph Avenue has been our Broadway, our Hollywood and Vine, our street of dreams, our own theater of excess. Is it still? Perhaps for some. Maybe for newcomers. It isn’t for me, not any more, even though I go there every once in awhile. It is where I shop for books or CDs I can’t find anywhere else. For me, the street doesn’t have its old aura. It doesn’t promise exciting developments in the arts or politics. I no longer expect anything of it except new chain stores and trouble.  

This is personal, no doubt, partly due to the changes in attitude that creep over a person with time and age. I remember mulling over the state of Berkeley with Jackie Maybeck once a long time ago (she was in her youthful mid-eighties then) and Telegraph came up. “It used to be a useful street,” she said. “I don’t go there anymore.” She meant Telegraph when it was neat and clean, frequented by students, university staff and high-style (sometimes affluent) bohemians. The restaurants were good and the stores carried excellent merchandise. Ceramics imported directly from Picasso’s pottery shop in France were displayed in a store window without any special protection. Young women could walk home from work after dark without being afraid. These changes speak volumes.  

But it’s not just a question of age. It is undeniable that Telegraph Avenue had a special aura in the early ’60s in the days when I arrived here as a student. I wasn’t alone in sensing it. Jerry Rubin has been quoted as saying our generation thought it could conquer the world from Telegraph Avenue. That’s a political way of speaking, but essentially correct. One of my friends was a poet, another an architect, another a novelist, and yet another a musician. Somehow or other the place cast a spell which made us all expect to be participants in great events and, individually, to accomplish great things. What Rubin expressed as conquest was our universal bond of confidence in the future.  

There was a lot of feeling (I stress feeling) that our generation could really change the world for the better. The passion in the vibrant Berkeley air, being American, had a moral tang. Of course, our ideas of peace and freedom and equality were not very well formed. We were susceptible to the excitement of the Kennedy administration with its emphasis on youth and its eagerness to sign us up for its own purposes. It wanted us to solve problems the older generation had found intractable. So did everyone else. All sorts of causes—some noble, some ignoble—crowded in on us, including the drug mountebanks. Out and out criminals were not far behind. All together, they scarcely left  

us time to define our own agenda.  

What brought Telegraph Avenue to the attention of the folks in Duluth was, more than anything else, the anti-war movement. It really was a question of generational survival. Johnson and Westmoreland, like the politicians and generals of World War I, were endlessly ready to throw living bodies into the fire they started rather than to take a single step back. Vietnam would have been—almost was—our Verdun. It is amazing to think that people who would normally have been content to sip coffee in the Mediterraneum and browse through books at Cody’s did so much to stop a horrible war. It was a marvelous achievement. Really astounding.  

But the anti-war movement was so difficult that even now we can hardly count the cost. We don’t want to consider seriously whether, for example, it had the unintended consequence of helping to elect Ronald Reagan to state and national offices. We’ll never read the splendid books that might have been written by people whose creative energies were deflected into resistance to the war.

Yes, we miss Cody’s on Telegraph. Its closing was like a death in the family. But contrary to the East Bay Express’ predictably snarky cover story, the independent bookstore scene is alive and well in the Bay Area. Bookbuyers are still holding out against the blandishments of Barnes & Noble and Borders, and the online convenience of Amazon. Berkeley is home to a whole constellation of bookstores, generalist and specialist, used and new, with something for just about everyone—and then there’s Oakland and San Francisco. 

Moe’s Books (2476 Telegraph Ave.) alone still justifies a visit to the block where Cody’s used to be. This Berkeley institution, the creation of the late Moe Moskowitz whose cigar-chomping likeness is prominently displayed, remains the used book Mecca. Moe’s prices are reasonable, and the stock is always changing (they often buy personal libraries, and reviewers’ copies of new hardbacks show up regularly). There are new titles downstairs at a discount, rarities and collectables on the fourth floor, and remainders throughout. 

Also worth cruising for used books is Black Oak Books (1491 Shattuck Ave.), although prices are a bit on the high side. And the store has a full schedule of author events. Half Price Books (2036 Shattuck Ave.), part of an Austin-based chain, is a crapshoot, but I’ve found some real bargains there. Pegasus (1855 Solano Ave.), Pegasus Downtown (2349 Shattuck Ave.), and Pendragon (5560 College Ave., in Oakland) make up a local mini-chain; mostly used, with a good stock of remainders and notable first-of-the-year calendar sales. The Friends of the Berkeley Public Library store (one location in the main library at 2090 Kittredge St.; another at 2433 Channing St., hidden in the ground floor of a parking garage off Telegraph) is another place where almost anything may turn up, and astonishingly cheap. 

But if you’re willing to spring for new-book prices, there are lots of options. University Press Books (2430 Bancroft Way) is just what it says it is, with a few titles from non-academic presses. It might be just the place to find that specialized tome on Byzantine hermeneutics. Mrs. Dalloway’s (2904 College Ave.) has strong gardening, poetry, and natural history sections, a choice selection of general titles, and its own author events—as does Diesel (5433 College, Oakland). Builder’s Booksource (1817 4th St.) specializes in architecture and design. And while the Telegraph store is gone, Cody’s Books on Fourth Street is still open. 

Other Berkeley and Oakland stores reflect the East Bay’s cultural diversity: Marcus Books (3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way) for African-American history, culture, and literature; Change Makers (6536 Telegraph Ave., Oakland) for feminist books; Eastwind (2066 University Ave.) for Asian and Asian-American subjects; Afikomen (3042 Claremont Blvd.) for Jewish-interest books. Although not a bookstore per se, The Spanish Table (1814 San Pablo Ave.) sells cookbooks and other works on Iberian and Latin American culture. 

You can buy legal advice in handy book form at the Nolo Press store (950 Parker St.). For jazz aficionados, The Basement @ JazzSchool (2087 Addison St.) purveys books and records. Down Home Music (10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito) has an extensive book section. Mr. Mopps (1405 Martin Luther King Jr. Way) has books for children. And don’t forget genre fiction: for science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery, as well as plush Cthulus and Monty Python action figures, there’s Dark Carnival (3086 Claremont Blvd.) and Other Change of Hobbit (2020 Shattuck Ave.). 

Reflecting a certain ambivalence, Walden Pond (3316 Grand Ave.) calls itself “a Berkeley bookstore in Oakland.” It has one of the East Bay’s best selections of new political/cultural titles, many from independent publishers, in addition to used books. Other Oakland used-book outlets include Spectator (4163 Piedmont Ave.) and Bibliomania (1816 Telegraph Ave.). 

Across the bay, San Francisco’s answer to Moe’s is Green Apple (506 Clement St.), a labyrinthine warren of mostly used books; the new stuff is downstairs. Kerouac and Ginsberg fans will want to make a pilgrimage to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books (261 Columbus). Modern Times (888 Valencia) works the political side of the street. For a Chaplin trifecta, Limelight (1803 Market) specializes in the theater arts. Alexander Books (50 2nd Street) has strong African-American literature and poetry sections. Kinokuniya (1581 Webster, in the Nihonmachi Center) offers Japanese titles in both Japanese and English. In the Mission, Dog Eared Books (900 Valencia) and Needles and Pens (3253 16th) showcase zines and independent publications, and Borderlands (866 Valencia) covers science fiction and related genres. And downtown, there’s Stacey’s (581 Market) and the shiny new San Francisco Cody’s (2 Stockton). 

This just scratches the surface, of course. There are noteworthy independent bookstores on the Peninsula (Kepler’s, back from the grave!), east of the Caldecott Tunnel, and north of the Golden Gate. The obituaries for the non-chain brick-and-mortar bookseller may be premature. But for God’s sake, get out there and buy some books! 

Though summer’s waning, one of its staples of performance spills over into the fall—outdoor theater. Traditionally, September and October feature the best weather of the year for coast and Bayside communities, the summer fog replaced by mellow warmth.  

In Berkeley, local favorite Shotgun Players’ annual plein air outing features an enjoyable original, Ragnarok—The Doom of the Gods, by Conrad Bishop & Elizabeth Fuller, which plays at 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Sept. 10 at John Hinkel Park, site of the old Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, in the hills of Berkeley. 

There you can sit in the terraced hillside amphitheater in a leafy glade, picnic and watch the bawdy, bloody Norse gods and their Mephistophelian trickster sidekick Loki prepare their “national security state” against the coming Last Day onslaught of The (red-nosed) Funny Ones, their primordial Frost Giant foes. Part pageant, part contemporized legend, and part burlesque. Admission’s free, with reserved seating for Shotgun members. There are food concessions.  

• CalShakes, as the California Shakespeare Theater’s popularly known, has an amphitheater tucked into the hills near Orinda, with a shuttle from BART, just the other side of the tunnel (or over Fish Ranch Road) from Berkeley. Through Sept. 3 they’re featuring Daniel Fish’s resetting of The Merchant of Venice into a modern, money-hungry, youthfully fashionable (and somewhat incestuous) international milieu, complete with Shylock bathing himself with play cash in a dumpster, techno-tunes and (at night-time performances) a liberal use of the video screens facing the four directions above the stage like townhall clockfaces. 

The closing show of the year, As You Like It, directed by Jonathan Moscone with music by Gina Leishman, featuring such troupers as Peter Callendar, James Carpenter, Hector Correa and Delia MacDougall. Concessions. Prices vary.  

• Woodminster Amphitheater, in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park, specializing in musicals, is presenting the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast until Sept. 10 (prices vary).  

• Continuing through Sept. 24 (7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday and Labor Day) at the Presidio Parade Ground in San Francisco, San Francisco Shakespeare presents a delightful staging of The Bard’s last great play, The Tempest, with longtime favorite Julian Lopez-Morillas as exiled duke and magician Prospero, who conjures up a storm to wreck his enemies on his desert isle, where they’re enchanted by such spirits Ariel (the sprightly Julia Motyka, also ingenue Miranda), meet the strange half-human monster Caliban (Daveed Diggs, also playing romantic lead Ferdinand), and carouse (the excellent clowning of Brian Herndon and Michael Ray Wisely, who double as the heavies). 

A truly charming collaboration by director Kenneth Kelleher, his cast and designers, making full use of excellent set, costumes, choreography—and music for The Bard’s exquisite songs that waft on the open air. Free admission; concessions. 

• The San Francisco Mime Troupe’s been putting on politically loaded agit-prop comedies in local parks since the ’60s. Their latest vehicle’s an excellent showcase of their various talents: Godfellas, the turgid tale of a passel of shy civics teachers, spurred into action by a referendum backed by an evil Syndicate for prayer in the schools, making their own movement of secular outrage (“Kiss my black heinie!” the battle cry of lead player Velina Brown), which threatens becoming an authoritarian antireligion, addicted to the bright lights of the doting media. 

A swinging band opens and accompanies the show, with many satirical songs, dances and hilarious celebrity impressions. At at various other Northern California venues through Oct 1. Free.  

• A San Francisco tradition takes place at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 10 in Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, as San Francisco Opera presents Opera In The Park, the popular annual free plein air picnic of song, with arias and ensembles sung by local and visiting performers (and opera is truly theatrical performance) with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra conducted by Donald Runnicles. 

• In the North Bay, Marin Shakespeare Company, which for the past 17 seasons under the direction of Robert and Lesley Currier has revived the old Marin Shakespeare Festival of the ’60s and ’70s, follows an estimable King Lear and Alice in Wonderland with The Bard’s Comedy of Errors, Sept. 1-24, helmed by Marin director emeritus James Dunn (who also directs the annual Mountain Play), in the delightful setting of the Forest Meadows Amphitheater of Dominican University, right off Highway 101 (and near the Richmond Bridge), close to central San Rafael. Prices vary (there is a “pay what you will” performance). Concessions.  

• Nearby the Bay Area, critically acclaimed Santa Cruz Shakespeare plays As You Like it, King Lear and Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion in repertory through Sept. 3. And in Monterey/Carmel, Pacific Rep performs the rarely-seen Shakespearean tragedy Timon of Athens, Beauty & The Beast and The Bard’s Measure for Measure in repertory, with closing dates ranging from Labor Day weekend till mid-October (with some shows at the lovely Forest Theatre in Carmel). Prices vary for both Central Coast companies. 

• Outside the Bay Area, two West Coast spots of pilgrimage for outdoor theater lovers, and drama aficionados generally, are Ashland, on Highway 5 in the mountains of southern Oregon, right over the California border north of Mt. Shasta, where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival presents Shakespeare’s Two Gentleman of Verona and The Winter’s Tale on the Elizabethan Stage, as well as a variety of older, modern and contemporary shows on theaters indoor and out, from Oscar Wilde and Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Cyrano and Bus Stop, closing at different dates in October. The Old Globe in San Diego plays Midsummer NIght’s Dream, Othello and Titus Andronicus in repertory, with closing dates in September and October. Various prices for both companies.

Herewith follows today’s lesson: 

Dear Editor: 

In this era of continuing disharmony over wars, elections, free speech, and local development, I find myself longing for the type of letter that once graced the pages of the London Times. 

In that spirit, I submit the following: As summer draws to a close, my stately backyard plum tree has yielded exactly 7,363 small, sloppy, inedible plums. My grateful thanks to Diane Davenport, Eli Joyce, and Jean Haseltine for both maintaining meticulous statistics and for their season-long efforts at ground clearance. 

Your obedient servant  

(another Times memory), 

Sayre Van Young 

This letter, while seeming to memorialize a trivial phenomenon of everyday life, is actually a profound reflection on the meaning of existence. Today, the Tuesday after Labor Day, is the traditional first day of fall, as Labor Day is the traditional last day of summer. It used to be the day before children went back to school, though in today’s accelerated calendar they seem to be going back before Labor Day. From the children’s point of view, this is a shame, though all parents might not agree. In any event, after Labor Day we all know that summer is over.  

By this time, we know for sure that the plum blossoms on trees like Ms. Van Young’s, which seem so pinkly promising in the spring, will never bear tasty fruit. We have a fig tree that’s even more disappointing, since the figs do ripen about one year in five, though the other four years they stay hard and bitter. Disappointment is closely linked to expectation.  

For us older folks, the fall encourages us to take stock of what fruit our efforts have produced. In the words of a poet well-read by my generation of English majors, “Will it have been worth it after all?” Those of us who are lucky enough to have led a variety of lives have more than one tree in our orchard to shake looking for achievements. I’ve been a political activist, a parent, an editor, a campaign manager, a lawyer, an investigative reporter, a high-tech entrepreneur and a grandparent, not necessarily in serial order. Which of these was worth it after all?  

For deep-down satisfaction—and this won’t necessarily please all of my feminist friends—I’d have to say that family has been the most important to me, though I’ve had some success and some fun with other endeavors. A close second would be working on the Planet, trying to bring what goes on in this world out into the sunshine, even though this sometimes requires poking around in dark corners. And sometimes it isn’t much fun. Will it have been worth it after all? 

Another lesson which can be gleaned from Ms. Van Young’s letter: We get by with a little help from our friends (a quote from another favorite poet, of the generation behind mine). She’s lucky to have the aid of the three she names—otherwise she’d be knee-deep in bad plums by now, possibly not even able to get out of her back door.  

In that spirit, we’d like to thank the many old and new friends who have called and written with messages of support for us and our little paper, especially the advertising customers who have told us about the organized pressure they’ve been receiving to cancel their ads. Most advertisers—seemingly almost all of them—are offended by the campaign against the Planet, it turns out, and have no intention of canceling. One even went to the trouble of sending us a copy of the letter he received from someone in the same profession, telling him he had to pull his ad. We’re glad he had the courage to say no. 

We also appreciate the advertiser who thought our editorial decision to publish a controversial letter was dead wrong, but had the courtesy to discuss it with me in a phone call and has followed up with a letter to the editor. His letter will be published a bit later, since we’ve decided we need to have another moratorium on Middle East topics so everyone can cool off. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear from the leaders and the politicians who signed complaining letters. Our offer to meet with them is still open. 

With Oakland Unified School District officials confirming a report that an extension is being considered on a deadline to reach a contract agreement over the sale of OUSD downtown properties, local activists continue to escalate activities to stop the sale altogether. 

OUSD Deputy Director of Communications Alex Katz confirmed a Montclarion newspaper report that California Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and representatives of east coast developers TerraMark and UrbanAmerica are considering extending the deadline past the Sept. 15 date called for in the exclusive negotiating agreement signed last June between the two parties. 

Katz said he was in a meeting in Sacramento last week in which the proposed extension was discussed. 

Katz also said that the superintendent’s office is “paying close attention to events in Oakland. This thing is on their minds. They’re listening.” He would make no prediction as to what action the state superintendent might take, however. 

If no contract agreement is reached by the Sept. 15 deadline and no extension to the deadline is agreed to by the parties, the proposed deal with TerraMark/Urban America would die, and the state superintendent would have the option of pursuing contract negotiations with other developers who submitted proposals, or else drop the sale plans altogether. 

The proposal to sell 8.25 acres of prime Lake Merritt-area OUSD property—including the administration building and five school sites—has drawn a firestorm of criticism from Oakland activists and politicians, including all eight members of the Oakland City Council and six of the seven members of the advisory OUSD Board of Trustees. 

Most of the opposition has centered around the fact that legal authority to sell the land is held by state superintendent O’Connell, not by the local school district, under the terms of the 2003 state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District. 

The Montclarion quoted OUSD School Board President David Kakashiba, a vocal property sale opponent, as throwing cold water on the extension. “Why would we need more time?” Kakashiba was quoted as saying. “Just terminate (the process) and start over.” 

But a key member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Restore Local Control/Governance to Oakland Schools, the citizens coalition that has been leading the fight against the proposed sale, said that “while it would be better to reject the deal out of hand, extending the deadline would be a small victory. Clearly, it would mean that the state superintendent and the developers are trying to make a show of listening to the community.” 

The Ad Hoc Committee representative asked that their name not be used because they had not gotten clearance to speak about the extension proposal from the organization. 

Meanwhile, Ad Hoc Committee members are gearing up for the final public hearing on the proposed sale, scheduled for next Wednesday, Sept. 6, 5:30 p.m., at district’s administration headquarters at 1025 Second Ave. 

At the conclusion of that hearing, trustees are scheduled to vote on Trustee Noel Gallo’s proposal to recommend an educational center for the downtown site, to include a new administration building and a multi-grade school complex in place of the residential high-rise development proposed by the developers. In addition, OUSD staff members have promised a presentation on the fair market value of the OUSD properties, as well as a long-term projection of student attendance in the West Lake/Chinatown area. 

Committee members have been circulating petitions calling for immediate restoration of local control of the Oakland schools, a freeze on any OUSD property sales, and a freeze on the use of the final $35 million borrowed from the state by former State Administrator Randolph Ward in his last days on the job. Members said they plan to send the completed petitions to O’Connell.

In the Aug. 22 story “Bayer Grant Gets Students Working in Biotechnology,” Deborah Bellush, executive director of Biotech Partners, should have been quoted as saying “The grant is indicative of Bayer’s continued support to fund students who are economically disadvantaged” instead of economically backward.

LBNL CONTAMINATION RISKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I love Modi Wetzler’s idea that LBNL’s contamination issues were all the unintentional result of lab employees “who were not aware” of risks that even now are “not fully understood,” followed by the suggestion that criticism by local activists erodes the “trust” between all parties. Honest scientists must be cringing. 

What little dialogue does exist between LBNL and the community, as well as a healthy public relations machine, are the result of years of pressure from the activists being scolded. It’s entertaining, however, to know that UC is still churning out graduate students who have such a Disney-esque sense of trust. 

Carol Denney 

• 

SAVE THE HOUSING AUTHORITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley Housing Authority is under attack and on the verge of collapse. 

Berkeley’s Housing Authority is under attack by the Bush administration and needs your help to keep hope alive for the poor, elderly and disabled in Berkeley. Known as a liberal City of America, if Berkeley loses its Public Housing and Section 8 Programs, there’s nothing to keep the rest of the nation’s housing assistance programs from following in its path. Check out www.PetitionOnline.com/SaveBHA/petition.html to unite with others to sign the petition to save Berkeley’s Housing Authority! 

For more on the BHA crisis, see “An Uncertain Future for Berkeley’s Section 8 Tenants” at www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/08/29/18304395.php. 

Lynda Carson 

• 

OLD NEWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A BUSD board director told me the board “would like to entertain the possibility” of moving the warm pool off the BHS campus (and including demolishing it as it now is, and the gym too), so that a new classroom building could be erected there...because “students need more room.” 

What students, I didn’t ask. Berkeley students, I assumed. 

But recently the Daily Planet reported that students from Oakland attend BHS, maybe hundreds; nobody knows for sure. Yawn. This is old news after all. A BUSD director wrote (letter or article) that maybe they (or their staff) should check identification more closely. Yawn. The superintendent reportedly said about the same; we do get state money for attendance. Yawn. 

Who will pay for the proposed new classroom building at BHS? Oakland taxpayers? Somehow that seems unlikely. State taxpayers? Berkeley taxpayers? A-ha! A multiple-choice quiz! 

And who will be asked to pay for a replacement warm pool, just across the street, maybe? Oakland? California? Berkeley? The Department of Defense? BUSD? 

Terry Cochrell 

• 

BHS STUDENTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The assertion by David Baggins in his letter dated July 18, regarding “The unique BUSD policy of not enforcing legal residency” may appear to have merit. As a parent of a Berkeley High School student for the past four years, I was surprised by the number of students who attend Berkeley High School with false documentation to support legal residency in Berkeley. In fact, this seemingly “accepted” practice by resourceful parents who flagrantly disregard the legal residency requirements by providing BUSD with false addresses, utility bills and checking accounts would seem to be far more widespread than even BUSD is aware. 

Anne Kasdin 

• 

BROWN’S CHARTER SCHOOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read with interest the statistics quoted in the Aug. 22 article by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor concerning Jerry Brown’s charter school. I agree, the scores are disappointing considering the supposed emphasis placed on charter-type schools. I am surprised that the article, by its tone, seems to be directing the blame for the poor student test scores on Jerry Brown rather than on the teaching staff as a whole. 

Teachers seem to be always complaining about salaries, yet never take responsibility for the lack of teaching skills. The poor test scores by the students is a direct reflection of the teachers’ abilities. Teachers need to improve teaching skills. If teachers do a great job, they may warrant a pay raise. 

Ridgway B. Smith 

• 

NEW LIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading Mr. Harry Gans’ item on New Lights’ imminent demise on Sept. 1, we’re compelled to provide information on some of our efforts to keep our ship afloat.  

1. In 2005 we voted to increase our lunch from $2 to $3—after 10 years with no increase—due to inflation. 

2. A monthly raffle at the center of items donated by seniors or their families. 

3. An occasional Ashby Flea Market sale. 

4. A three-times-a-year casino trip. I know, I know, it’s called wagering! Gambling! 

5. In 2006 we added another 25 cents to make it $3.25, again due to inflation. 

What a way to go! This a request from New Light seniors to the citizens of Berkeley and Maudelle Shirek’s peers at City Hall because thousands of you have been the recipients of her generosity and devotion, as well as her tireless efforts to be at your service. 

Need I remind you that Maudelle was the first or second woman of her distinction to serve on the Berkeley City Council. The rest is history. 

Citizens of Berkeley: We need volunteers, suggestions and donations to help us move forward with our organic meals flagship program. Our ship needs an anchor! 

Idella Melton 

Chairman 

• 

WISCONSIN FACTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s July 28 article in the Planet. 

As one who lived and worked in Wisconsin for years, including work with all of the state’s 72 counties, I can assure you that there is no Hennepin County or country in Wisconsin. Across the river in Minnesota, however, Hennepin County takes in the city of Minneapolis, which has the only black population of any size in these parts. 

It matters, even here on the coast, what happens in this particular part of the heartland. Wisconsin, once a beacon of enlightened liberalism, and former domain of Gov. Tommy Thompson, who later became secretary of Health and Human Services in Washington, has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country. It also has one of the most racially imbalanced prison populations and is the home of an atrocious maximum-security prison and an infamous program of labor reminiscent of the southern chain gangs. 

Across the river, Minnesota, with a similar population, as a fraction of the incarceration rate and, relative to Wisconsin, and even smaller prisons budget. 

The Minnesota program described by Mr. Allen-Taylor is important and deserves, I believe, to be widely emulated. The article might have pointed out that the more enlightened policies of Minnesota are making a difference clearly visible, statistically, against the abysmal background of Wisconsin. 

Jane Eiseley 

• 

TO-DO LIST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The American electorate yearns for more than mere incumbency or “name recognition” platforms to merit election to Congress.  

To improve our national life now and in the future—without the use of the constitutional amendment—aspirants to the House and Senate this November should pledge to: 

1. Speedily impeach and remove from office both Bush and Cheney. (Charges and defense are extraneous, when the votes are there!) 

2. Institute a National Universal Health Service. 

3. Join the International Court of Criminal Justice. 

4. Limit to two the Supreme Court justices any president may replace during his term(s) of office, except when disaster eliminates the court at once; then the number to allow is three. 

5. Dismantle the current U.S. wars on drugs and terrorism. The first is maintained by addiction—a medical problem—and the second is a problem best prevented, not by warfare, but by peace officers (as so admirably demonstrated recently in Britain) and by fair, peaceful eternal watch, here and abroad (if welcome). 

6. Give well-deserved punishment, and cautionary warning to all who in the future would copy their self-enriching dishonesties, by outlawing for Bush and Cheney, and if possible, Rumsfeld and other unworthies, all federal pensions, free health care in retirement, secret service protection, and U.S. passports. 

Additionally, the new Congress should give us a Constitutional amendment to institute federal initiative, referendum, and recall, so that as a nation we may have real democracy at last, and as in other countries, vote nationally on issues, not, as at present, only for suits, who often lie to us. 

Judith Segard Hunt 

• 

AN ALTERNATIVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I suggest that the Golden Gate Fields would be a better place to have activities that usually take place in Memorial Stadium. After all, there is plenty of parking that doesn’t bother the neighbors. Access is much better from three directions. People could come by ferry from the west. There are many reasons why this is a better alternative. 

Charles Smith 

Thank you, Steve Meyers, for your thoughtful response to my commentaries on the causes, meaning, and benefits of NIMBYism. I’m glad you found some points worth considering, even if you were put off by my “over-the-top hyperbole.” 

I stand firmly by my statement that many in Berkeley “propose an unpleasant and inhumane urban environment.…” Look around, Mr. Meyers: Is Berkeley becoming more pleasant and humane? Not in my neighborhood!  

One reason is that planners and developers who advocate higher density and less parking have managed to impose their philosophy upon us. So why has this not “improved the urban fabric” as intended? Because the dominant “smart growth” proponents focus on regional goals and not on local quality of life. And therefore no resources have been devoted to assessing or improving the human outcomes of development. And some don’t care about the damage they cause others.  

But apparently you belong to a more sympathetic group, which believes that higher density can actually improve urban life. So it might, if well designed. But the possibility and the reality are two different things. Although your voices are drowned out by the first group, the road to our increasingly unpleasant Berkeley environment is also paved with the good intentions of people like you. But why is this?  

First, because most of them apparently have not lived in high-density neighborhoods long enough to understand their problems. Simply stated, they advocate something they haven’t experienced and don’t understand. But they could fix this by simply moving to such neighborhoods and living there for several decades like me, or intensively interviewing those who live in them about their experiences. Then you could incorporate the reality into the ideal. 

Second and much more difficult, however, is the problem of what happens to our good intentions during the land use process. T.S. Eliot states it best: “Between the idea / And the reality…Between the conception / And the creation…Falls the Shadow.” In Berkeley, our Shadow is a morally bankrupt public process, which turns even good intentions into bad realities. 

You may think this is more “over-the-top hyperbole.” But often someone else’s “over-the-top hyperbole” looks more like reality once you know all the facts, or have experienced reality from their perspective. Eliminating the voices of multiple perspectives from the public process eventually leads to “the Big Lie” and bad concrete results. Listening to all the voices is most likely to lead to decisions that are constructive in the long term.  

In this regard, I note that you have also recently written (letter to the editor, Aug. 29) that a particular opinion should not have been published because it was “outside the bounds of what any given community feels is tolerable.” The common theme here is the elimination of voices, whether in geopolitics or local land use. But how can we make sure that a variety of experiences informs our public decisions? Political correctness and refusing to hear never accomplishes this—which is one reason Berkeley has been making worse and worse land use decisions.  

Your letter did make me wonder about the dividing line between your definition of what is “outside the bounds” and censor-worthy, and what is “over-the-top hyperbole” and merely annoying. But I agree with Ms. O’Malley that it is better for the community to make that decision for itself, in public, than for newspaper editors to make it for the community behind closed doors. The less she uses her truth to censor our truth, the more it leaves room for my truth—and yours. 

Sharon Hudson lives near the UC campus. 

It’s a lazy summer afternoon. I am dozing in my easy chair trying to avoid being woken up by one of the myriad of gizmos in the house that beep, buzz, or chime. But I am also appreciative for the many new tools saving me and others much menial, repetitive work.  

I look at my new watch, but it’s tricky to tell what time it is. It’s not an expensive watch, but its extraordinary complexity is confusing. This little instrument on my wrist gives hours, minutes, and seconds precisely; it’s a stop watch, a calendar, a timer, and an alarm; it can tell the phases of the moon; it has its own illumination; and it’s solar-powered so its battery lasts forever. I reach for the instructions, 72 pages of them, trying to deconstruct the information on the face, just to know the time.  

I reach for instructions more and more frequently, not waiting until “all else has failed.”  

A watch used to just tell time. It had a single stem and you wound it up. If you forgot to wind it, it stopped. If you dropped it, it broke. No one thought to ask for an instruction book for a watch.  

There was a time when life was simple, or at least simpler. But in my lifetime, not very long in historical time, not only watches but every part of every component seems to have gotten more complex. Even opening a package without hurting yourself is a feat, and starting to use a new item before reading all the directions is risky.  

I look around the house, and I see just how complex things have become. At one time, I could fix a typewriter or a bicycle, or even a car. I may not have had the skill to do it, but I understood what needed to be done. The sequence of construction was apparent, and I could determine the quality of the work or repairs.  

Today one cannot do much without detailed guides. I’ve received letters that needed to be opened by tearing the edges in a given sequence. In my office, it’s expected that there are manuals for the computer, printer, and digital telephone/answering system. But now we also need manuals for ergonomically correct desks, chairs, and lamps—and those for kitchen appliances, household gizmos, and garden tools need a place all their own. And then there’s the car, for which you must study how to unlock the doors, fasten your seat belt, read dashboard gauges, open windows, release the brake, and find the defroster.  

Our shrinking globe adds yet another wrinkle. Today a product might be conceived in Paris, manufactured in Chicago, and distributed from Rio, with a user guide written in Bangalore. Such items may not be as transparent as when created by a team from your own milieu. And with instruction booklets in multiple languages—and often mystifying in your native language—assembling and using products can be tricky even if you do read instructions.  

This complexity can interfere with being a good neighbor. Fifty years ago, you could loan a friend a typewriter or a lawnmower—no explanation necessary. It was intuitive—easy to use and even to fix. Today, the sharing of equipment, even a simple tool, becomes burdensome. I can’t just drop the thing off. I’ve got to train my neighbor to use it appropriately.  

It’s chic to complain that things are too complex. But what is hard for me is easy for my daughters. A couple of centuries ago a cell phone would have been strange and magical. Most gadgets that are intuitive today were not even a gleam in Aristotle’s eye.  

Complexity and simplicity ebb and flow. Before long our computer programs will be obsolete, and new things on the horizon will be magical and strange.  

Is all this complexity necessary? It’s unavoidable—if we are to benefit from the new power generated. Each generation owns its own periods of befuddlement, and we do our best to cope without too much exasperation. If we want to retain our pleasure in the simple and the beautiful, we read the instructions, use the features, invent new ones, contemplate, compose, and play. The key is to find a balance and to go with the flow, for tomorrow’s complexities are already calling.  

Harry Weininger is a long-time  

community leader.

What administratively simple state or federal policy change would: 

1) Reduce or eliminate congestion on freeways and streets, 

2) Reduce smog,  

3) Eliminate the need for signing and enforcing car pool/hybrid/HOT lanes while encouraging car pooling and hybrids,  

4) Discourage suburban sprawl and big-box commercial shopping centers, while encouraging smaller, neighborhood commercial establishments,  

5) Increase pedestrian and bicyclist safety, 

6) Encourage the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles without imposing complex regulatory rules, 

7) Probably decrease Exxon Mobil’s record profits,  

8) Significantly decrease the US trade deficit,  

9) Decrease US oil imports from politically unstable regions, such as the Persian Gulf, 

10) Slow global warming, 

11) Leave net tax revenue unchanged and probably have no impact on the state or national budgets, and 

12) Economically benefit most low-income people. 

A hint: this policy has been implemented for decades in countries around the world.  

One more hint: it is never mentioned by either Democrats or Republicans in the United States. If it is mentioned in the U.S. media at all, it is usually qualified by the phrase “politically impossible.”  

Give up? Raise gasoline taxes and decrease other taxes an equivalent amount. At the state level, this tax shift could be accomplished by increasing the state gas tax and decreasing the state sales tax an offsetting amount. How much? Somewhere between $2 and $4 dollars a gallon would probably provide all the benefits stated above. How fast? Shifting the equivalent of one half dollar per gallon would provide time to adjust by buying more efficient cars, demanding housing closer to jobs, and getting serious about public transit.  

Would there be winners and losers? Of course, although the direct overall fiscal impact would, by definition, be neutral, and the benefits cited above would be enjoyed by everyone. Low-income people who don’t own cars or drive much would benefit from the lower sales taxes. Gasoline is a relatively small proportion of consumption for the majority of fixed-income elderly, so they would benefit economically. How about the rich? Consumption taxes are trivial for the wealthy, so they would hardly notice or care. 

Why not rely on Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations to cut oil imports and global warming exhaust? Even if they included Hummers and the MPG requirements were increased, these regulations only influence the efficiency of cars when they are sold. They do nothing to encourage efficient vehicle use after the sale.  

Why not rely on High Occupancy/Toll (HOT) lanes (as proposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), with hybrids tossed in? These schemes are complex, require expensive enforcement, favor those rich enough to pay, and favor specific technologies. Anything this complex can’t be a solution. 

Why not look to the future and embrace the “hydrogen highway”? Fuel cell vehicles cost $250,000 and up, 30 percent of the hydrogen leaks out of current generation tanks while they are sitting in the garage, the hydrogen fueling stations don’t exist, and the best current hydrogen source is natural gas. So let’s look to the future, but in the meantime....  

Is shifting taxes from general sales to gasoline associated with a specific faction on the political spectrum? Environmental groups like the Sierra Club would presumably applaud, although you won’t find this policy mentioned on their websites. Some neocons, fearing U.S. reliance on Middle East oil and looking to decrease the flow of money to hostile regimes, are buying hybrids and advocating conservation. A tax shift would further their goals.  

A tax shift would bring enormous net benefits to society and the planet. The United States currently has the lowest gas tax rate of any major oil-importing country. Yet not only is this simple, timely policy change not being debated by our leaders, it is not even being mentioned.  

Brit Harvey is a Berkeley resident.

BROWER CENTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing in response to several comments from the Aug. 18 Michael Katz op-ed piece regarding the Brower Center. First, speaking for the housing portion of the development (Oxford Plaza), the project is clearly not “too far in the red.” Oxford Plaza is currently within budget, with reasonable construction contingencies, has secured 97 percent of its required funding, and is scheduled to begin construction by the end of 2006. 

It is also wrong to say that the project has lacked serious scrutiny. Actually, it has undergone much greater risk analysis and public airing of potential downside scenarios at City Council meetings than any other city-funded affordable housing project. This is not inappropriate, given the size and complexity of the development. But we should not jump to the conclusion that a challenging project is one that cannot be built, particularly in light of the tremendous progress that has been made moving the Brower Center/Oxford Plaza forward in 2006. 

In February HUD committed a $1.76 million grant for the commercial component of the development. In April, Wells Fargo provided a commitment for $23 million in construction loan financing and $5.5 million of permanent loan financing for the Oxford Plaza Apartments. In June, Oxford Plaza received a loan commitment of $6.6 million from the State of California from its highly competitive Multifamily Housing Program. We recently received several bids from potential investors to provide up to $17 million in equity to the project in exchange for the Low Income Housing Tax Credits it will generate. These funders strictly underwrite both the viability of the project and the capacity of the sponsor to build it, and have many years of experience evaluating the feasibility of affordable housing projects and the strength of their developers. Over $32 million in permanent financing has been committed to the financing of Oxford Plaza by banks, foundations, government, and investors. Each of them will take on different risks and rewards, but all are excited to invest in a development that truly is being seen as a national model. 

Dan Sawislak 

Executive Director 

Resources for Community Development 

• 

BUSD POLICY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky O’Malley’s Aug. 25 editorial on Berkeley for the Berkeleyans is an astonishing defense of the school district’s policy of admitting Oakland students to Berkeley High with little apparent accountability. The numbers she cites suggest that about a fifth of BHS students are African-American kids from Oakland, whose schooling is paid for by Berkeley taxpayers. 

She defends this situation with the absurdly racist suggestion that the education of the Berkeley students would be deficient if they were surrounded by a student body made up of less than a third African-Americans, and were thus unprepared to function in the wider world. She then personalizes this contention by extolling the excellent education her three daughters received at BHS in the 1970s and ’80s. My personal response is that, like her daughters, my son and daughter both acquired an excellent education at BHS in the ’80s and both went on to college degrees. My daughter also received a broken nose from a belligerent African-American girl—which surely broadened her education, and for which I had to pay the cost of corrective surgery. For years it has been common anecdotal knowledge that there are certain corners and corridors at BHS that white students may not venture into without fear of physical abuse. I assume that the failure of the administration to deal with this situation is another aspect of an education broadening policy. 

O’Malley asks School Board candidates to address these issues, and I hope they will. Meanwhile, I offer a suggestion to satisfy her and others who may feel that it is Berkeley’s manifest destiny to educate the world, beginning with Oakland. Let the School Board determine a fair annual cost for attendance at BHS, then establish a policy whereby Berkeley residents, like Ms. O’Malley, can legally become the patrons of out-of-district students and pay their tuition. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

BACK DOOR DRAFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Do you guys know that there’s a “back door draft” going on? Do you guys realize that Bush and the military are having an increasingly difficult time in getting people to join the military? Many of those who have already enlisted, including lots who have already fought in Iraq, are being re-deployed again to Iraq, whether they like it or not! This is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It negatively impacts American families. Lots of veterans come back from Iraq and other battle-torn counties, with severe mental health problems. People who kill, rape, torture, maim, and rudely break into other people’s homes or use guns, bombs, and deadly chemicals to kill and conquer, return to their home with severe mental health issues. They can end up divorced, homeless, hooked on booze and drugs, unemployed, medicated, in a mental hospital, or killing themselves. This is the price of war. Let’s all forgive us for being foolish enough to be talked into a war for no good reason. I wish that everybody had just “known” the truth years ago, before so many went off to fight. Do you realize that many sign up for the military not to kill or rape, but because they believe they will be of service? They are told, “Oh you will just inventory pencils and toilet tissues! You won’t even have to carry a gun! You get a free cell phone and laptop!” Thank God We the People are aware, doing something, and spreading the truth. I hope the military will get rid of the racist, sexist, neo-Nazi skinheads that they are said to have attracted. People who probably dislike Jews, blacks, women, and most of all, themselves. Pray for all of us. Pray for the skinheads and bigots. Pray for me and you. Know that war and suffering are an illusion, but if you’re caught in the middle of it, the illusion feels very intensely real and painful. Only when we substitute the reality of our love and essential unity for the illusion of war and suffering, will we eradicate war from Earth! 

The end of poverty is the beginning of everybody looking out for each other, and not just for yourself or the family and friends. What you and I do, affects the people living on the other side of the planet as much as the other side of the Bay. Our thoughts and feelings likewise affect all of life. Cleanse your thoughts and feelings of all anger, hate, grudges, holding on to old traumas and those who have hurt you. This makes room for new life, new friends, new love, health, prosperity, forgiveness, and fun. 

Linda Smith 

• 

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wonder why people forget their social responsibility for fellow beings. I find sharp pieces of broken glass bottles all over the pavement, especially near bus stops and in front of the stores in Albany and Berkeley (especially in San Pablo). Is this to terrify people who want to enjoy walking or create a barrier for those would love to help others? Is it an expression of violence? I fail to understand why such uncivilized acts are tolerated. These pavements could be not just a walkway for pedestrians but a place to meet and chat for old neighbors and new friends. We must think about how our actions will affect others as we think about their consequences for ourselves. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

• 

SIDESHOWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the Aug. 25 UnderCurrents column titled “‘Sydewayz’ Video Celebrates Sideshow Culture,” I wanted to point out a few points that were made by the author. 

1. The author refers to Spanish culture and how sideshows aren’t part of it. Is he referring to Latino (Mexican, Salvadorian, Guatemalan, etc.) culture? In addition, many Latino students at the high school where I work (in East Oakland) do participate in sideshow activity. 

2. The author refers to African roots of sideshows: rhythmic car maneuvers. Is he serious? What about Monster Truck Shows: pounding truck maneuvers. Perhaps a glimpse of Caucusoid culture? 

3. The author refers to “incredible talent hidden in our midst.” As an educator who works in East Oakland, I believe the debate has very little to do with what happens at sideshows. The debate needs to focus on the astronomical drop-out rate (black and brown) that Oakland is experiencing. Engaging youth in the classroom so that they realize the necessity of an education should be the community priority. Then we can see their true talents. 

David Castillo 

• 

CONSTRUCTIVE OR INFLAMMATORY? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing in response to LA Wood’s Aug. 25 op-ed, “LBNL: 75 Years of Science, 75 Years of Pollution.” I am a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and I work in an LBNL building. Although my perspective is that of a peon in the system, I think at least half the blame for any environmental issues must be shared by people, like La Wood, who use inflammatory language ("self-righteous rhetoric,” “egregiously,” “environmental atrocity,” etc.) that results in a confrontational attitude that does not lead to satisfactory resolution of any issues. 

LA Wood can blame LBNL for the rest of eternity, but Berkeley is a city where the development of a second Berkeley Bowl, a locally owned grocery store championed by the city at large, was held up for so many years that its developer Glen Yasuda decided to give up six months ago (although thankfully he was cajoled back). Who can blame anyone for wanting to bypass that process? 

One significant point LA Wood seems to miss is that many of the environmental issues are “legacy” problems—the result of unintentional contamination 50 years ago or more by people who were not aware of the risks of what they were doing (many of whom died from cancers consequently). That aspect of science in general has changed, and today most risks are well-known and understood, and options exist for dangerous situations even when the exact nature of a hazardous activity may not be fully understood. Thus, inside the scientific enterprise, the nature of safe science is to understand, mitigate, avoid, and contain any hazardous activities. This process critically relies on trust and effective communication between all parties involved. 

From my admittedly low-level view of the system, the (extraordinarily) large safety bureaucracy inside LBNL would be open to dialogue, but La Wood, in my opinion representative of the city at large, seems torn in the op-ed between rational discussion and criticism and a hostile “self-righteous rhetoric” that will lead nowhere. Given the way things (don’t) get done when the city and activists of Berkeley are involved, and the hostile attitudes evinced by them, I am not surprised at all that both the campus and the lab choose to bypass both whenever possible.  

Modi Wetzler 

• 

EXITING IS NOT GRADUATING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Jack O’Connell, Superintendent of Public Instruction, wants my vote in November so that he can close the “achievement gap,” a fissure superbly measured by an exit exam, a number-producing instrument that separates a class of poor, black. Latino and English-learning students from another class not so financially, culturally or linguistically down-classed.  

Twelve years ago I retired after 30 years of teaching and from the sidelines in my recliner chair I watch confusion and idiocy infect managerial levels of the California school system. Administrators who in my day were merely inept have advanced to become cost/effective, tough-minded business managers. They say they can’t manage what they don’t measure and proceed to deploy a variety of standardized tests to track the growth of young minds advancing toward the climactic high school exit exam. 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that the experience of four years in high school is not enhanced, advanced nor measured in a few hours of testing. 

It takes only common sense to appreciate that the high school diploma, like the flag, is a symbol of that for which it stands and, just as the flag is not the nation, a diploma is not an education.  

Every teacher worthy of the name knows that the ratio of right marks to wrong ones on multiple choice questions electronically scored no more encompasses achievement than a book’s illustrations encompass its content.  

Finally, Mr. O’Connell, it’s impossible to assess the efficacy of a system unless you understand it. Teachers, the heart of the system, work to affect the minds of students. Their tests measure the responses to questions, responses that may suggest but in no way measure the content and capability of their students’ minds. 

Marvin Chacere 

San Pablo 

• 

INFLAMMATORY ACCUSATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ms. O’Malley’s equating support of stricter residency requirements at Berkeley High School with racism misses the real issue for Berkeley: how to manage limited resources to provide the best education for Berkeley students of all races.  

In fact, my experience of transfer students from Oakland and Richmond is that white students, whose parents often have move resources to work the system, are overrepresented as students from other districts. For example, many Oakland kids come to BHS to take Latin, which is not offered elsewhere—is this a ruse or a need for these students? Should affluent kids from Rockridge, Montclair and El Cerrito get to come to BHS because they don’t want to attend their local high schools? Does this migration add to the educational experience of all students at BHS? 

O’Malley also opines that much of Berkeley’s renowned diversity is attributable to out-of-city students. However, there is no evidence for this position. Simply because 13 percent of Berkeley’s total population is African-American and the African-American school population is much higher does not support her statement. What percentage of school age children are African American?  

O’Malley should refrain from making race an issue and, instead, investigate the facts that surround this complicated issue. How many students are there from other districts? What is the cost to Berkeley tax payers? What is the effect of the magnet of BHS on students of all races and backgrounds? Is BHS cherry picking the best students of all races from neighboring districts and actually hurting those districts who desperately need committed students and their involved parents?  

O’Malley should base her opinions in facts—rather than speculation—and should certainly not accuse David Baggins of racism without more evidence for such an inflammatory label. 

Paul S. Lecky 

• 

RIGHT ON TARGET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky O’Malley’s editorial comments about demagoguery and racial profiling in Berkeley public schools is right on target. 

It is illustrative to trace how we got to this awful place. Historically most school systems have reciprocal agreements with neighboring districts, i.e. a policy to allow students from near-by areas to attend each other’s schools. The same has been usually true of adjacent library systems. Under this agreement there are many students who live in Berkeley but attend Albany schools, provided that space is available. 

In the late l970s BUSD’s relationship with Oakland students took on a special dimension. At that point the number of Afro-American families in Oakland grew rapidly as they, like many other people before them, pursued the quintessential American dream of moving to California. Unfortunately, when the public schools began to reflect this new reality, the general White reaction was to flee to the suburbs. At this point many of those families who stayed in Oakland started to look to the Berkeley public schools as an educational alternative. Applications to transfer to BUSD climbed and quite a few parents used whatever means it took, legal and illegal, to get their children what they hoped would be a better education. Unlike 2006, there was no outrage about the non-residency of these new students. If anything there was a kind of co-conspiratorial silence, and frequently more than a few offers to allow Berkeley addresses to be used under the table. 

In fact, even today at the close of classes at Berkeley High, we can see many White students lining up for bus 51 or 7 on their return trip to Rockridge.  

Likewise, before the school day begins, many of Berkeley Afro-American students are boarding buses to hill or charter schools in Oakland. 

Incidentally one of the reasons that there are openings in the Berkeley public schools is that about 30 percent of Berkeley families opt to not send their children to Berkeley public schools. If they did, there would be almost no room for just about any out-of-district transfers. 

About three years ago I served as an aide to Councilmember Margaret Breland, for District 2. It’s bounded by Sacramento Avenue, and the bay, from University Avenue to the Oakland border. I became well acquainted with the large number of people from outside Berkeley, non-residents, who chose to use our excellent public recreational facilities. Almost never do we hear threatening outrage about denying them use of our parks and tennis courts because they are not from Berkeley. In some places in Berkeley, e.g. Rosa Parks Field, so many non-Berkeley residents rent the facilities that often the neighborhood people are literally shut out of its usage. Are the people so upset about residency of our BUSD students willing to extend that anger to other non-residents using our community resources that are financed by Berkeley tax payers? 

In summary, it’s time to stop harassing Afro-Americans who are merely doing what so many white predecessors showed them how to do, struggle for a better life for their families. 

Mel Martynn 

• 

VISITING INMATES  

AT SANTA RITA JAIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to describe as briefly as possible what its like to visit an inmate at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. I think someone has to. 

First, there really isn’t a place for visitors to wait. We line up down a long cement entryway with no seats or benches--are not allowed to sit on the grass. This is in front of the building which houses the jail. Yesterday, (Sunday) visiting hours had two shifts: from 12 to 3 and 6 to 9 p.m. At about 4 (for the later shift) the deputies took pity on the scorching people waiting in line all the way down almost to the parking lot and took names sequentially and the unit each person wanted to visit. We were told to be back no later than 5:45, when we would be given numbers and pass forms. We all did so. Visiting hours are from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The deputies did not begin the processing until after 6. The first 11 people get to visit first—each for 20 minutes. I was number 13. I had arrived at Santa Rita at 1:30 p.m. just so I’d get in that day and be out by 9 when the last bus to BART leaves. I was able to get that bus—was at the bus stop at around 8:15. 

So, I—like many others—had arrived 5 hours before visiting was supposed to begin—to sit in the hot sun and either on the cement—searching for shade—or inside the lobby of the jail where there is one bench and lots of floor space upon which to sit—up against the wall. Is this a way to treat a visitor? 

The love and devotion of the crowd which gathers is as evident as the suffering and frustration.  

To spend 20 mins with a loved one, behind a plastic window, talking on the phone—there is hell to pay. 

Is punishment the way to help?  

Name withheld 

• 

TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regime change in these United States is protected by our Constitution, and is mandated when the president oversteps his authority. The Bush administration has not only overstepped its authority in wiretapping innocent civilians for unprincipled data mining over private concerns outside the scope of any possible national security excuses, but has lied the United States into war, itself a high crime, punishable by impeachment. We the people rule this country, not the demagogues of the extreme right wing currently residing in power. We must take back our government, and we must begin now before it is too late! 

Ron Sullivan 

• 

THE LEGWORK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Joanne Kowalski should have done her legwork (“The University of Oakland: An Impossible Dream?” Aug. 29), instead of simply dashing off a commentary about the state of Oakland’s higher education. She would have answered her own question about the state of urban education, bilingual education, child development and public administration in Oakland and discovered there is already Pacific Oaks College, WASC-certified, that answers this call to service. They offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in human development; master’s in marriage, family and child counseling (marriage and family therapy, MFT); MFCC specializations in African American and Latina/o family studies; and a teacher education program. Its marriage, family, and child counseling master’s degree satisfies all of the requirements of the Board of Behavioral Sciences for licensing in marriage and family therapy; and its teacher education program is certified by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) for certification in education specialist credential, mild to moderate disabilities Level I and Level II and preliminary multiple subject English learner teaching credential. 

John Parman 

Berkeley and College Park, MD 

• 

RUMSFELD’S REMARKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Associated Press reported Donald Rumsfeld’s concern that Islamic extremist groups are successful at “actively manipulating the media in this country… (because) they can lie with impunity.” The implication of this remark is that the propaganda of Mr. Rumsfeld and his group is at a disadvantage because U.S. leaders are held accountable to a higher standard when they lie. I surely hope this is true so that we may see Rumsfeld and others behind bars for their lies and crimes against humanity and Americas young recruits. That alone would lower the world burden of terror substantially.  

Marc Sapir 

• 

TICKET INFORMATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My colleagues at work have informed me that your paper ran incorrect information regarding an event on Sept. 19, 2006. I have been told you printed that tickets for this event can be found at the journalism school. This is untrue.  

Tickets will go on sale Sept. 1 at the Cal Performances Box Office: 642- 9988. General admission tickets for this event can be purchased for $10 and UC Berkeley students with ID can pick up tickets for free. http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?ID=327 

Caely Cusick  

Event Coordinator 

Graduate School of Journalism 

• 

JOE EATON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have written to you before, but directed most of my concerns toward the local and world strife and local mismanagement goings on in Berkeley. However this time I wish to commend Mr. Joe Eaton on the excellent columns he has been writing—most frequently seen on the last page of your newspaper—on natural history miscellany, this last commentary was on the paper wasps that live in our area.  

The life habits of these fascinating paper wasps described by Mr. Eaton reminded me of the marvelous writings of Nobel Prize award winners ethnologists Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch on their (respective) discoveries on how and why wasps find their way around and how they build their nests. 

Thank you Mr. Eaton. 

Mark K. Bayless

Local public schools, well supported and integral to the community, are at the heart of the progressive tradition. Perhaps only in Berkeley is this a controversial statement. When I decided just weeks ago to campaign for School Board service I did so with a sense that a whole election season would otherwise go by without discussion of the meaningful issues that affect the schools. 

Berkeley schools are unrepresentative of this diverse, quirky, marvelous place we live. There are many factors to this phenomenon, including birth rates, differing ages of demographic groups, and use rates of private schools. However, a leading factor, and certainly the factor most tied to public policy, is the under-reaction of the district to false registration. 

Berkeley’s is overall a pretty good school system, with some spectacular accomplishments, located between much larger failing districts. If there ever was a district with deep need for a robust system of validation it is in Berkeley. Yet as we compare our city’s residency enforcement protocol, attitude and resources to other districts we are demonstrably anemic. Rampant false registration threatens every aspect of Berkeley’s schools 

Who are the losers of the status quo? The very first group must be Berkeley’s own at-risk population. There is no doubt, based on extensive research, that a leading factor determining whether at-risk students succeed or fail is the accomplishment rate of surrounding students. Berkeley’s extensive placement program is based on this truth. As well-intentioned school leaders have increased the achievement gap through under-enforcement of residency they have jeopardized the population most in need of support. Simply, a one-third underperforming cohort generates more negative force than intervention can hope to alter. Superintendent Michele Laurence stated “almost the entire work we do is to address equity and achievement.” Yet the achievement gap remains. If Berkeley insists on staying the course of non-enforcement it is only likely to reproduce current results.  

The second loser group is of course taxpayers. They have generously supported the schools with the promise that education would become better for Berkeley’s kids. Little did they know the real priority for funding was for out-of-district low performance students. As funding is increasingly raised from local sources, the problem of parents outside the city wanting to access city schools can only increase. 

Third, given the policies that have created the achievement gap, it is difficult to advance all other priorities. As the Superintendent said, almost all energies go to dealing with the achievement gap. What then for average students? Berkeley’s privileged kids, while deserving a fine education and inclusive rights in the schools, will find a way to educate themselves. Average students of Berkeley, however, are under considered in their education needs. Doesn’t every child of the community deserve an education based on the best interest of the child? 

Finally, the community as a whole loses as resources are drained to service the larger East Bay. Schools ought to have the resources to serve as playground, park, and cultural center. Yet as resources are diverted to serving the much larger East Bay, this function is drained.  

So what is to be done? 

First Berkeleyans, congratulate yourselves. The achievement gap, rather than a failure of curriculum, increasingly is the creation of a generosity of spirit. No other community that I know of has given from its tax base so liberally. 

But Director Shirley Issel’s point is well taken, “it is not possible to give a child a successful education if it is based on a lie.” In my experience the kids falsely registered resent the whole mess it causes. Berkeley needs a validation office that ends false registration as a norm. Other districts think the task is perfectly achievable. Teachers must be encouraged to believe that at their own discretion they can contact that office when they know a student to be out of district. If after this the city is committed to high external access, the way to that end is increased valid transfers. But transfer policy should not be used to the disadvantage of local at-risk youths by exacerbating the achievement gap.  

I recommend one further change. The most expensive and difficult level of education is high school. Berkeley High is clearly impacted. We should require re-registration with transition from middle school.  

I began this campaign with the hope of getting the city to focus on the policies that have created the most difficult problems in our public schools. If the city is thinking about this issue, I am satisfied. I must correct two aspects of Becky O’Malley’s editorial. My own analysis does not agree with the claim that without out-of-district infusion African-American composition would fall below 13 percent. Also, she seems to infer that cheating in registration is limited to one ethnic group. My observation is that every demographic group feels entitled to cheat, including of course well-off neighbors in Rockridge and Kensington. Berkeley’s students and tax payers are the losers. Berkeley is best served when Berkeley schools are for Berkeley’s kids. 

Cal State East Bay professor David Baggins is a candidate for the Berkeley School Board.  

Recently, and without much fanfare, the cities of Berkeley and Oakland adopted zero waste policy statements and have begun the long task of designing programs to implement that policy; Palo Alto, about to close its local dump, is a year ahead of them. As these local policies slipped through the decision-making process with little acrimony, it’s appropriate to look at the roots of these actions.  

When the great environmental laws were written in this country (now a generation ago), there was no thought or plan to reduce garbage or, as it’s been called since the 1960s, “solid waste.” The primary concern in 1976 was to bury garbage better so that there would be no open burning, no landfills leaking into ground water, no hazardous materials mixed in with the household garbage, etc. By the mid-1980s, recycling, a grassroots activity after Earth Day 1970 that slowly gained support in local governments, had become sufficiently wide-spread and successful and landfills and waste incinerators (the two other disposal options of our time) were having a tough time in the court of public opinion, so it became time for something new. Many of the various states each adopted so-called “rate and date” laws wherein a state would commit to reducing its garbage a certain amount (the rate) by a certain date (the date). In 1989 California was the ninth state to so enact and promised and planned 25 percent less garbage by 1995 and 50 percent less by the year 2000. Unfortunately, over the next several years, maneuvered by cry-baby cities that didn’t really want to do anything, and led by public works officials who had no confidence that a waste-reduced society could ever be constructed, the California legislature carved up the law to grant enough loop-holes, exemptions, exceptions, etc. so that unachieving local governments became the objects of pity and training rather than enforcement and compliance. The recent declaration that we have reached 50 percent recycling in California is based on many suppositions and extrapolations to have little credibility among informed opinion makers. 

The result of the wobbly-kneed enforcement (blame the legislature, not the enforcers) has been that currently we have ten million more tons of garbage in the state than we did ten years ago (44 million tons now, not 34 as then). (A million tons of garbage, by the way, is a row of sea containers, end to end, stretching 310 miles; California’s annual garbage now would cover a twenty lane highway from Oregon to Mexico.) The purported measurement tool the state developed looks at certain actual numbers and various hypotheticals and concludes significant recycling is taking place. The state actually abandoned measuring recycling in 1991 when local governments complained it was “too hard” to figure out. No one can explain how the hypotheticals yield 50 percent more trash when the population has only increased 15 percent but that’s a side note because most of the elected and appointed officials are more concerned about looking good than doing good; unlike air and water pollution which really hurt all of us directly, too much garbage in the short term simply means more trucks, more landfills probably further away, etc.  

In recent times the old true blue recyclers, now reduced in numbers by age and infirmity and the young people wandering off into other green goodness work (hemp clothing, bioaromatics, endangered species, tall trees, etc.) have realized that the numbers game was lost a few years back and have adopted the zero waste rallying cry. “Zero accidents, zero emissions, zero waste; makes sense to me” said a recent DuPont president. Individuals and some small groups have achieved zero waste or at least 99-plus percent recycling in fact as well as theory but no one yet has applied this model to entire communities. What lurks in the details of zero waste is the question of who will be required to do how much when, and for what ends.  

Our growing appreciation of the negative environmental consequences of 1) placing rottable materials in landfills where they make greenhouse gases that are poorly captured by so-called landfill gas [LFG] collection programs (current science says 20 percent is captured and burned, not the 75 to 80 percent that the landfill apologists tout); 2) the increasing awareness of the truly limited success of existing recycling programs (when you recycle 55 percent of the aluminum cans, it doesn’t mean 55 percent of all cans are preserved forever, it means that 45 percent of the existing cans are lost every 90 days (typical cycle time from brewery dock to retail to frig to consumption to recycling to remanufacturing and back to the brewery dock). If you do the math, you realize that 98 percent of all the cans made 15 months ago are now in the dump (you get to keep 55 percent of 55 percent of 55 percent of 55 percent of 55 percent), and that 99.5 percent of all aluminum cans ever made (it’s been 30 years now) are now at the dump.  

3) Then, of course, there’s the energy wasted by dumping materials rather than recycling them: making paper from wood chips vs. from old paper means more chemicals, more heat/energy, more water, etc. Recent USEPA calculations indicate that if all the recycling done in America today were to stop tonight, we would need 100 regular sized power plants tomorrow to make the electricity that would be required by starting from scratch rather than with post-consumer goods. Despite fifty years of writing reports, no one in Washington has calculated, much less proposed, what the resource savings (water, materials, energy, etc.) would be gained if all materials were forever recycled. The economic benefits of completing high school are well known, the economic benefit of keeping all materials out of the dump has no policy analysts, much less advocates. 

And so, into this new consciousness of some big problems out there, our aging recyclers issue a clarion call for “zero waste.” What they mean by the term varies; some want to focus on the fact that 90 percent of what’s in today’s garbage is materials for which ready recycling markets exist. If the simple answer to AIDS is abstinence, the simple answer to garbage gluts is make those garbage-makers recycle. Others want to look at materials for which markets don’t yet exist (adhesives, foil-paper combinations, lots of plastics, alkaline batteries, etc.) and find a way to keep the cost of recycling on the backs of manufacturers and consumers and not on everybody (variously called “product stewardship” or “producer responsibility”). Still others want to maximize reuse and voluntary simplicity programs so that we all buy less new stuff and reduce and reuse more. (One calculation says for every ton of material in currency in our economy there are 70 tons of mine tailings, tree trimmings, waste pits, etc.) Not inconsiderable portions of the landscape have been denuded or overgrown with industrial residues, see Borax, California or Ajo, Arizona.  

Palo Alto and now, just starting out, cities like Oakland and Berkeley, are designing programs to put these zero waste policies into place, but at this point there’s little uniformity of opinion about how the planned or hoped-for future will be delivered into the present. But a sizable number of our local governments are trying to make it work so the future will indeed be better than the past. 

Oakland resident Arthur Boone ran the North Oakland Recycling Center on  

Telegraph Avenue from 1983 to 1989, and now sits on the Alameda County  

Recycling Board. He can be reached at arboone3@yahoo.com.

Local papers are reporting that Burning Man is addressing its energy usage in a scheme called Cooling Man (coolingman.org) wherein Burners can pay for their energy usage by purchasing “carbon offsets” and reduce the festival’s global warming impacts. A fine idea, but the claim that participants will “offset” their global warming impact “the same way as a large corporations do” by investing in clean energy projects is not exactly correct. It hides the larger problem of current free-market answers to global warming. 

While Burners are being asked to pay for their pollution, today’s increasingly internationalized carbon trading plans reward large corporate polluters with “carbon credits” based on their historical pollution levels, usually in tons, which they can then trade on the open market to other corporate polluters. Trading pollution credits in a market-based system includes the buying of so-called carbon sinks that are supposed to “sequester” CO2 and supporting no-greenhouse gas energy production. In the US, there is even an “acid rain” trading system for sulfur dioxide emissions. 

Unfortunately, this plan financially compensates heavy polluters and only redistributes pollution by giving them credit for polluting in the first place. 

Every American, as citizens of the country that spews more than a third the world’s pollution, is more or less responsible for a portion of the pollution our country produces. So, if we think about pollution trading in a more democratic way, why can’t each and every American, from the president on down to the newborn infant, be given a piece of the pollution market, just like the polluting corporations? We could each take responsibility for our own environmental footprint. By choice or by necessity we would be rewarded for living a low energy lifestyle. 

I walk a lot and ride a bike to work. I haven’t owned a car in three years and haven’t flown in five. I eat low on the food chain and try to avoid products that add to air pollution. I took Al Gore’s test on my yearly CO2 production. The average in the USA is 15,000 pounds. Mine is far below average at about 2,100. In a personalized carbon trading scheme, I would be a rich man. I could sell my credits to my neighbor who drives an SUV and owns a speedboat. But we’d both be rich if we could barter our credits to industry. 

Think this is a dream? Reuters reported in July that there are already proposals in the United Kingdom to do just that. Environment minister David Milband is studying the possibility of issuing consumers a personal energy use card representing a citizen’s portion of the entire pollution output of the UK. The card would be used as a debit card that track’s personal energy use. Use more, you would have to spend you carbon credits and perhaps buy more. Consume less and you could sell or bank your carbon credits, maybe even draw interest. You could trade your credits to a person who wants to travel on energy intensive modes of transport, eat meat, burn gas and oil and dry clothes in a clothes dryer instead of on a clothesline. And you would get healthier and slimmer for all the walking. 

Another plan, similar but less personalized, would be to increase taxes, across the board or selectively based on social needs, on polluting activities while reducing taxes on non-polluting activities and things we want to support, like employment. This is called “true-cost pricing” but it only works if you earmark the funds for reinvestment into alternative energy projects. True-cost pricing would go a long way to rationalizing our insane energy economy where nobody, the corporation or the consumer, pays the costs of our American lifestyle. And for the free-marketeers, true-cost pricing can be seen as another market-force that will drive innovation and improve efficiency. 

Hank Chapot is a Berkeley resident.

Opponents of the Oak to 9th development project in Oakland have made one thing clear—they can make their voices heard (“Can Oakland Re-Think Oak to 9th?” Editorial, Daily Planet, Aug. 18). However, being vocal is not the same thing as being accurate.  

Unfortunately, much of the inaccurate information about the project being put out by opponents made it into Becky O’Malley’s editorial. The Oak to 9th Community Benefits Coalition, an alliance of community-based organizations representing low-income residents near the Oak to 9th site, would like to set the record straight on how this project will benefit the community. 

So what did local residents win for the community? Perhaps the most groundbreaking and precedent-setting affordable housing and local hire programs of any large-scale development project in Oakland. The Oak to 9th project will create a pipeline for 300 Oakland residents to go from low-wage jobs to starting a career in the building trades and create 465 units of affordable housing for families making less than $50,000 a year. 

Yet, some project opponents have publicly criticized the local hire commitment made by the developer. They point out that Oakland’s existing policy requires developers to hire 50 percent Oakland residents for construction of their projects, yet the Oak to 9th commitment is for only 6 percent. 

Bad news? Only if you don’t understand the goals of the community or how Oakland’s local hire policy works. What residents want is an opportunity to start careers in the hard-to-break-into building and construction trades. Based on this goal, what the Oak to 9th coalition negotiated is better than the city’s policy and an innovative model that we hope to replicate with other projects. 

So how does a 6 percent commitment translate into innovation? On most construction sites, one out of every five workers (20 percent) is an apprentice, still learning the trade. The Oak to 9th developer, Oakland Harbor Partners LLC, has committed to reserving nearly one out of three of those apprenticeship jobs for people new to the trades (30 percent). The math works out to 6 percent, or about 300 opportunities for local residents to start a career in the building trades. And, furthermore, the developer’s local hire commitment is backed up by heavy monetary penalties and innovative incentives. 

Contrast this with the city’s local hire policy, which is considered by most a failure in giving Oakland residents a chance to enter the building trades. While a 50 percent local hire requirement seems high, it often results in contractors simply reassigning existing Oakland workers from projects in other cities to meet their local hire obligations. As a result, we may get Oakland residents on construction sites in Oakland, but we get no new construction job opportunities for Oaklanders. 

But that’s not all. Ramping up the skills of local residents, often stuck in low-wage, dead-end jobs, requires training. The residents won a commitment of $1.65 million from the developer for the extra training needed before workers even become apprentices. No other developer in Oakland has provided the training money needed to get new workers into the trades. 

In fact, this comprehensive local hire approach, with money up front for training and hiring only new, local apprentices—may be the best local hire requirement of any project in the East Bay for giving low-income workers a start in the building trades. 

Another argument being made against the project, and reflected in Becky O’Malley’s editorial, is that the affordable housing plans are “sketchy” or will not provide any more affordable housing than is mandated by city policy. 

It is hard to imagine a deal less sketchy than this one. The development agreement, signed between the city and the developer, spells out the requirements in specific, targeted, and legally binding language. The community coalition engaged the developer and the city for two years in negotiations to ensure that the deal was strong, binding, and met the real needs of local residents. 

Eight hundred residents from three organizations in the working class neighborhoods surrounding the Oak to 9th site came together almost three years ago and proposed priorities for affordable housing at the project: 1) affordable housing should prioritize very and extremely low income households, and 2) housing units should have 2-3 bedrooms, or be large enough to accommodate families.  

The final Development Agreement reflects these priorities—for 465 units of mostly family-sized, affordable units for people who make $25,000 to $50,000 for a family of four. The affordable housing must be built as part of the project unless there is other land available and the community coalition gives the city its consent to move units off-site. 

By contrast, state law and city policy doesn’t require that any affordable housing be built as part of this project—only that it be built sometime, somewhere by someone in the redevelopment area over the next decade. And most of those units can be reserved for people making as much as $100,000 per year. Again, there is no comparison between city policy and what was won in this agreement. 

This level of housing affordability and family unit size requirements break new ground for Oakland and for many other cities in the East Bay. These landmark achievements of affordable housing, local hiring, and job training on the Oak to 9th project make it a project well worth moving forward. Thanks for this opportunity to set the record straight. 

Gabriel de Leon is a member of Oakland Community Organizations. Howard Greenwich is research director for the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy.  

UNION CITY—“He got into an accident. That will be our story,” my father said to me. “You can’t tell anyone what really happened. It will shame our family. Your uncle was a coward. He didn’t think of anyone but himself. But he was sick, I suppose. He had to have been to have done what he did.” 

When people asked me how my uncle died, I lied to them. My lies were contradictory and they left many loose ends. People in the tight-knit Afghan community in “Little Kabul,” California, were suspicious. They knew something had happened other than what my family was telling them.  

My uncle lived with bipolar disorder. He lived in a world where his uncontrollable mood swings dictated his life. During his manic periods, he was euphoric. He would work day and night and never feel tired. But then, as quickly as he had climbed to the top of the heavens, he would fall. He would become irritable, confused, and feel enclosed in a prison.  

My uncle never spoke of his illness. None of us did. Often, in the Afghan community, issues that are taboo are swept under the rug. 

My father thought if he hid the way my uncle died, people would talk less. He thought he might be able to sustain my uncle’s pride even in death. He was wrong. People made up their own stories. In some of the rumors, my father’s hands are tainted with my uncle’s blood.  

Suicide is a sin in Islam, and mental illness is taboo in Afghan culture. Often, those who have mental disorders are frowned upon. They are called “daywana,” a foul word for insane. Antidepressants are considered pills that Western doctors give patients to make them crazy. Anxiety attacks are defined as occurrences where evil Jin—spirits—take over the body. 

Because of this attitude, even to this day, I am bound by this secret. That it is why I cannot, for the sake of my family, publish this piece under my real name. 

My uncle’s illness went untreated primarily because his disease was ignored and misunderstood. He was ashamed, as was the rest of my family, to admit to an illness involving the mind. 

I squint my eyes sometimes, mimicking the dazed sensation I had that night when my uncle called. I repeat the deep breaths I took, try to feel the cold of the room, and even make my heart race just as it had when my dad handed me the phone while I was still half-asleep. I want to relive it, so I can understand it.  

I can hear my father’s voice repeating, “Mahtab, your uncle is on the phone. Mahtab, wake up, he’s sick!” I hear my dad saying. 

I had not talked to my uncle in two years. I had so much pent up anger toward him. As my dad handed me the phone, I couldn’t remember what I was angry about.  

The pit of my stomach felt cold and hollow because I missed him, but my pride stood in the way of forgiving him. It is this pride, “ghairat,” at times excessive, that will forever define an Afghan. Ghairat kept my uncle from seeking treatment and my dad from voicing the problem and the truth.  

“I love you, kaka jaan.” I spoke the empty words to try to make things better again. 

“How are you my little, mosecha (bird)?” His voice was soft and hopeless. 

“I miss you kaka jaan.” I felt tears gathering in my throat. 

“I am not good, jaan eh kaka,” he said. 

“Be strong kaka jaan,” I stuttered. 

My uncle was often a pessimist. I never knew him to talk kindly of many people. I do, however, remember his smile, the way he would gaze at me as if he were genuinely happy to see me, and tell me he loved me. Frustrated, I handed the phone to my father. 

My father quivered like a child. His veins were visible in his eyes. My uncle handed the phone to his wife. I could imagine her tall slender figure and dark hair. She was only 23 years old. She had been married to my uncle since she was 17.  

“He has been like this for a week now,” she said rapidly. 

“Why? I don’t understand?” said my father. 

“He lost his job,” she said. 

“People always lose their jobs,” my father said. “Does he have to lose his mind as a result of it?” But now I know my uncle hadn’t lost his mind as a result of losing his job; he had lost his job as a result of his low from his disease.  

My uncle got on the phone one more time that night. “Mahtab, send your dad tomorrow. I am not well. And promise me you will come tomorrow.”  

The next morning I awoke to my uncle’s phone call. “Where is your father?” he asked without salutations. “When are you coming to Florida?” I could not have guessed that would be my last conversation with him.  

He had a plan. He had arranged for my dad to come to Florida so my dad could take care of his wife when he killed himself, and for me to join my father so that I could support him. But my father went alone. 

When my father arrived in Florida he intended to take my uncle to the hospital. Instead, he was fooled. My uncle seemed fine. No one spoke of the conversation from the night before. No one spoke of mental illness or bipolar disease. They went to eat together.  

The next morning, my uncle took the keys to his car and said he was going to the post office. Instead, he jumped off of a five-story building. To this day, my extended family holds on to the story that my uncle died in a car accident, burying his disease along with the truth.

In his recent statements, President Bush made two things clear: He’s not about to withdraw troops from Iraq. And he’s locked into a definition of “terrorist” that’s so general that it’s meaningless and, therefore, dangerous. It’s time to reconsider: Who are the terrorists: Why are we fighting them? How can we defeat them? 

Bush began his “war on terror” with a deliberately vague definition of America’s new enemy: a “terrorist” was any group the administration attached that label to. On Sept. 20, 2001, the president said, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” 

Bush’s “war” initially centered on al Qaeda. The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan. In the September issue of Atlantic Monthly James Fallows persuasively argues that al Qaeda has, for the most part, been defeated. He suggests that it’s time to declare “victory” in the war on terror because the United States has diminished the effectiveness of al Qaeda: “Their command structure is gone, their Afghan sanctuary is gone, their financial and communications networks have been hit hard.” He notes there has been “a shift from a coherent al Qaeda Central to a global proliferation of ‘self-starter’ terrorist groups.” 

Rather than stay focused on al Qaeda, and their malignant offspring, Bush expanded the scope of his “war.” In the 2002 State of the Union address, he denounced Iraq and Syria as state “sponsors” of terrorism. Implied there could be terrorist states. 

Subsequently, the administration convinced Congress and much of the American public that his war on terror necessitated an invasion of Iraq. Bush conflated al Qaeda-trained Iraq-based terrorists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, members of Iraq’s Baath party, any Iraqi who resisted the occupation, “insurgents,” and, ultimately, Sunni Muslims. Bush confused those who fight the United States because we are occupying their country—“resistance” fighters—with those who are operatives of al Qaeda and have pledged to destroy America. In his press conference, Bush referred to them all as “terrorists who are trying to stop the advance of democracy.” Anyone who opposes the occupation is a “terrorist.” 

Fallows’ Atlantic Monthly article argues that the war in Iraq has greatly hampered Bush’s war on terror: “The war in Iraq advanced the jihadist cause because it generates a steady supply of Islamic victims or martyrs; because it seems to prove Osama bin Laden’s contention that America lusts to occupy Islam’s sacred sites, abuse Muslim people, and steal Muslim resources; and because it raises the tantalizing possibility that humble Muslim insurgents, with cheap, primitive weapons, can once more hobble and ultimately destroy a superpower....” 

Nonetheless, Bush stubbornly defends the occupation: “We leave before the mission is done, the terrorists will follow us here.” 

In his 2002 speech, Bush defined “Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jaish-i-Mohammed” as terrorist organizations. Of these, only “Jaish-i-Mohammed” has direct links to al Qaeda. “Islamic Jihad” is an umbrella term used by groups in Egypt, Iran, and Syria among others. Hamas and Hezbollah are resistance groups in Palestine and Lebanon, respectively. Whether they deserve the label “terrorist” is debatable. 

In 1988, the United States deemed Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Nonetheless, the group has little in common with al Qaeda. Professor Stephen Zunes argues that Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite socio-political organization. Where al Qaeda is Sunni and stateless, Hezbollah is part of Lebanese society—holding 14 seats in Lebanon’s National Assembly. Where al Qaeda has repeatedly threatened the United States, Hezbollah has not. Where al Qaeda has a long history of terrorist attacks, Hezbollah does not—Zunes notes that the United States accuses Hezbollah of two bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina, attacks most independent experts do not attribute to Hezbollah. Nonetheless, in his news conference Bush referred to Hezbollah as “terrorists.” Blamed them for the recent war in Lebanon. 

Bush’s muddled definition of “terrorist” has had four chilling consequences: It’s shifted attention away from the eradication of al Qaeda. It’s largely ignored the threat posed by a secondary wave of “self-starter” terrorist groups, those spawned by the ideology of al Qaeda. Bush’s sloppy thinking produced the debacle in Iraq and led to a mindset where the Administration labels any Middle Eastern “resistance fighter” as a terrorist. Finally, the White House’s sweeping, ideological driven definition of terrorist led the administration to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah, lump them with al Qaeda, an action that contributed to Israel’s decision to invade Palestine and South Lebanon. 

American foreign policy needs a fresh start. Rather than continue the Bush approach—define a terrorist group as anyone we don’t like—it makes more sense to be pragmatic. Let’s begin with a more focused definition: A “terrorist” organization is al Qaeda, or any group that adopts al Qaeda’s objectives and advocates attacks on the U.S. mainland or U.S. citizens. The first step towards real security is for America to be clear about who our enemies are. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net 

1966: Jackie-O 

My daddy receives a $14 check from Jackie (then) Kennedy for the purchase of two white mice for Jon Jon. He cashes it. 

1967: Lunch with Billie Jean King 

Picked out of a crowd of teenagers at the Philadelphia Spectrum, a reporter asks me to have lunch with Billie Jean King. I’ve been volleying back an forth with Pancho Gonzales during a high school clinic sponsored by the USTA. I’m not a very good tennis player, but I am, as always, enthusiastic. 

Most likely, the reporter has noticed my V-neck white tennis sweater with the corresponding blue and red stripes, the too-short pleated white tennis skirt with matching ruffled panties underneath, and the white socks and squeaky clean sneakers. I stand out in a crowd; I glow. 

March 27, 1968: The Supremes at the Latin Casino, Cherry Hill New Jersey 

For my 16th birthday my parents take me to see Diana Ross and the Supremes. We sit at a small, round, stage-front table and I drink several Shirley Temples while my parents knock back martinis and chain smoke unfiltered cigarettes. The Supremes change their outfits after every song, but the hair on their heads moves not a single millimeter. 

Fall 1968: Iron Butterfly 

I am at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia watching Iron Butterfly perform “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” I smell marijuana for the first time. 

Spring 1969: Paul & Artie 

I see Simon and Garfunkel at the Philadelphia Civic Center while wearing a purple polyester miniskirt with matching purple top. I resemble a human eggplant. When the concert concludes, I storm the stage and chase Paul and Artie down a long, narrow basement hallway. Paul gets away, but I pin Artie against a wall and demand his autograph. Later, I will lose the precious signature in the orange shag carpet of my bedroom. 

Sunday, July 20, 1969 10:17 p.m. EST: Apollo II moon landing 

On the night Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon, I attend a Smokey Robinson and the Miracles concert at the Seaview Hotel and Golf Resort in Absecon, New Jersey. Smokey is fab-u-lo-so. 

Fall 1969-Fall 1970: Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Canned Heat, Ten Years After, The Moody Blues, and Janis and Dylan 

I see them all, but remember little. 

Winter Break 1971 Part I: Maced for Neil Young 

I hitchhike from Fort Collins to Boulder, Colorado, to attend a Neil Young concert that I don’t have a ticket for. I sneak into the arena and get maced on the way out. 

Winter Break 1971 Part II:  

Seven Days After the Macing I Meet (at a commune) a member of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, or at least this is what he claims. I observe two men French kissing (!). I hitchhike from Santa Cruz to SFO and fly home to New Jersey. I do not return to California for a very long time. 

June 1972: Mick 

I stand outside Mick Jagger’s flat in London for several hours in the rain, but he does not emerge. It is quite possible he is not there, or that it is not actually his place of residence. 

Fall 1980: Bianca J. & Yoko O. 

I glimpse them both during a brief visit to Manhattan. After nine long years of not seeing anyone famous, I think I may have finally become a magnet to the stars, but this sensation quickly passes. 

1985: Jane Hanoi Fonda 

I speak to Jane, via telephone, for less than 30 seconds. 

1994: Reinhold 

I have dinner with Reinhold Messner, but cannot think of a single thing to say to him. However, it does not seem to matter, as Reinhold does all the talking. 

May 1995; November 1996: Superman 

Christopher Reeve breaks his neck and a year later his wife, Dana, publishes a book. I go to her reading hoping to introduce myself as a fellow wife-of-quadriplegic but it becomes painfully clear we have nothing else in common so I return home without buying her book. 

Easter 1997: Archie Bunker 

I sit next to Carroll O’Connor in a bar in Mexico. I say “Hello Archie!” He snubs me. 

1998: Ted and Mary 

Ten Danson and Mary Steenbergen visit the climbing gym where I work and I notice Mary has a rather large derriere for a movie star, and that Ted dyes his hair an unnatural shade of red. 

January 2002: Starting the New Year with Tony Goldwyn 

I have brunch with Tony Goldwyn (the smarmy white guy in Ghost, and grandson to the G in MGM). Tony says he wants to make a movie about my life. He instantly becomes my new best friend, but later he changes his mind and won’t return my e-mails. 

July 2004 A: Edward Abbey shakes my hand 

I shake hands with Ed. He asks me how I’m doing but does not wait for my reply. 

July 2004 B: Ursula 

I chat with Ursula LeGuin and tell her I don’t read fantasies or science fiction. She says she feels sorry for me. 

July 2004 C: Jaws/Strangers in the Night 

Rob Schneider stands next to me at an art show in the Hamptons. His suntan looks bottled and he smells like low tide and Italian leather. We do not speak, but I imagine for a moment exchanging furtive glances. 

July 2004 D: I come full circle in Montauk, New York 

At White’s Pharmacy in Montauk, New York, I wait in line behind Paul Simon. He is much shorter than me, much shorter than when I chased him down that Philadelphia hallway many years ago.  

I consider telling him I am the human eggplant who once stalked him, but then I think better of myself and remain silent, acting like I don’t know it’s him.  

I buy canker sore medicine for my lips which are so sunburned I can hardly think straight, and he buys earwax remover.  

After, in the public parking lot, we ignore one another. 

All over the hills and in many yards, we see the plentiful and familiar Monterey pine. It’s one of the key tree species of our parks and urban hill forest, part of our natural surroundings. 

Except for the “natural” part. Pinus radiata is no more native right here than Eucalyptus globulus—at least in this eon. It’s a species in trouble on its home turf, a small part of the coast south of here approximately from Año Nuevo to Cambria and not very far inland, six or seven miles up the Carmen River valley. Even there, its populations aren’t contiguous, but in three disjunct areas.  

In other epochs, its range was longer though about as narrow, along the coast from the La Brea Tar Pits to Marin County and north, to judge from the locations of fossil cones. To judge by those cones’ ages, though, it seems never to have been widespread at any one time; it just grew in small but varied ranges as climates shifted between glacial periods. 

There are two natural varieties of the species on small Mexican islands: binata on Guadalupe Island, and cedrosensis on Cedros Island. The population on Guadalupe Island is in trouble because feral goats eat all the seedlings. Fewer than 100 individuals remain. 

The base stock is now also threatened by pine pitch canker, an introduced fungus.  

At the same time, it’s one of the most widely distributed and most-planted—by humans—tree species in the world. You’d think a species with such a small and precise original range would be demanding about living conditions, but Monterey pines thrive on timber plantations in Hawai’i, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Spain, the British Isles, and South Africa, and as ornamentals elsewhere.  

Including here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And therein lies the rub, genetically. 

The trees planted as ornamentals are mostly from the stock grown in New Zealand for timber. As they’re planted here, over the years closer and closer to the native foundation stock, they’ve been “cross”-breeding with the homeboys. What long-term effects this genetic sorting and re-mixing will have are a toss-up.  

The timber trees get selected over generations for qualities like fast growth and straight trunks that make easy-to-mill lumber. Whether these characteristics, if they get passed on to new generations in the wild, are good things to have if you’re a tree trying to make a living in the wild along windy coastlines and in coastal soils—good question! 

One might reasonably speculate that fast growth, which usually results in weaker wood and a tendency to drop branches, wouldn’t be so wonderful. Straight trunks, same thing, though that might be more environmentally malleable; it’s easier to be upright in a plantation full of your brethren than on a wind-sleeked shoreline.  

The ornamentals seem just as susceptible to pitch canker as the original stock, and might be a reservoir for the disease. 

In the older population of Monterey pines in our hills, we’ve already noticed their tendency (like many trees’) to self-prune. When a low branch (or even a leaf) is shaded to the point where keeping it is more expensive metabolically than giving up its “income,” a tree will drop it. (This is hardly an exact calculation, of course; it’s just that wood gets weaker when the leaves directly outward/up from it nourish it less.)  

Monterey pines make great big heavy limbs. When they fall, look out! One calm night many years ago, Joe and I noticed the lights flickering, and the power went off completely as we grabbed flashlights and went up the front path to see what was happening. Then, with a memorable and eloquent groan, a low limb bigger than the average Yule tree split off the tree and fell onto the garage.  

The valiant PG&E crew had our power back on within a couple of hours, but it took us and the landlady’s son most of the next day to excavate the undamaged but suddenly verdant garage. The tree’s still there, 20-some years later.  

If you have a Monterey pine and worry about its health, call in a pro—a real ISA-certified arborist, not some clown who advertises “topping” trees. They should be pruned only when the canker’s least virulent, a short window in midwinter, and with care and knowledge.

The Middle East has always been a place where illusion paves the road to disaster. 

In 1095, Pope Urban’s religious mania launched the Crusades, the reverberations of which still echo through the region. In 1915, Winston Churchill’s arrogance led to the World War I bloodbath at Gallipoli. In 2003, George Bush’s hubris ignited a spiral of chaos and civil war in Iraq. Illusion tends to be a deadly business in those parts. 

And once again, illusions threaten to plunge the Middle East into catastrophe. The central hallucination this time is that the war in Lebanon was a “proxy war” with the mullahs in Teheran, what one senior Israeli commander called “Iran’s western front.” 

At the heart of this is what William O. Beeman, a professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Brown University, calls “a longstanding U.S. foreign policy myth that believes terrorism cannot exist without state support.” In short, if Hezbollah exists, it is solely because of Iran. 

This particular illusion, according to a number of journalists, is behind the carte blanche the White House handed the Israelis during the war in Lebanon. 

In an Aug. 21 New Yorker article, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims that, “The Bush administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks,” and that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney saw the assault on Hezbollah as “a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.” 

Former Associated Press and Newsweek ace Robert Perry reports that, not only did Bush push the Israelis to strike Hezbollah, but the U.S. president lobbied Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to include Syria in the attack, an idea the Israelis thought “was nuts.” 

According to Perry, a number of Israeli officials are “privately blaming” Bush for pushing the inexperienced Olmert into “the ill-conceived military adventure,” although one needs to take that statement with a grain of salt. Everyone in Tel Aviv is busy pointing fingers and passing the buck these days to avoid taking the blame for the debacle. 

And debacle it was.  

Olmert’s Kadima Party is almost certainly dead. A Dahaf Institute poll found that 63 percent of Israelis want the prime minister out, and 74 percent want to oust defense minister and Labor Party leader Amir Peretz. The latter is busy trying to shift the blame to Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. General Dan Halutz (54 percent want him to resign) for claiming that Hezbollah could be destroyed from the air. The army is whispering that the politicians held them back, and the politicians are grumbling the army mishandled its budget. 

Olmert is stonewalling a formal inquiry on the war, but almost 70 percent of the population is demanding it, and the reservists are up in arms. After 34 days of war, Hezbollah is intact, and the two soldiers whose capture kicked the whole thing off are still in its hands. And last, but not least, the war knocked 1 percent off Israel’s GNP.  

The war’s outcome is giving some Israelis pause, and there are some interesting straws in the wind. Peretz, for instance, has called for negotiations with the Palestinians and “preparing” for talks with Damascus. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says she is willing to “explore” the idea of talks with Syria. Public Security Minister Avi Dichter has gone even further and says Israel should give up the Golan Heights.  

It is not clear where these discussions are going, but, if nothing else, the war has energized an Israeli peace movement, one rather more inclusive than such movements in the past. 

But for the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies, the ceasefire is just a break between rounds in the president’s war on “Islamofascism.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the United States is “in the early stages of World War III (Norman Podhoretz, editor-at-large of Commentary, says it’s World War IV). William Kristol calls the Lebanon war an “act of Iranian aggression” and suggests the U.S. attack Iranian nuclear sites. Writing in the Los Angeles Times neo-con heavy Max Boot called for a U.S. attack on Syria.  

According to journalist Sidney Blumenthal, the neocons in the administration, specifically Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Agency Middle East Director Elliot Abrams, have been funneling U.S. intelligence intercepts to the Israelis as part of a plan to target Syria and Iran. 

Those intercepts were behind the recent House Intelligence Committee report blasting U.S. spy agencies for being reluctant to say that Hezbollah is nothing more than an extension of Iran, that Tehran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and that Iran poses a clear and present danger to the United States. 

The author of the House report, Frederick Fleitz, was a former special assistant to current U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton was a key figure in gathering the now discredited intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. 

According to Blumenthal, Cheney and his Middle East aide David Wurmster have dusted off a 1996 document called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The study was authored by Wurmster, ex-Pentagon official Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, disgraced former head of the Defense Policy Board. 

The “Break”—originally written for then Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—advocates that the Israelis, with support from the United States, dump the 1992 Oslo Agreement with the Palestinians, target Syria and Iraq, and redesign the Middle East.  

A key ingredient in the document, and one central to current administration thinking, is that since terrorism is state-supported, the war on terrorism can be won by changing regimes. Hence, to defeat Hezbollah, you have to overthrow Syria and Iran. 

However, Beeman argues that Iran has no direct control over Hezbollah. While Iran does provide the organization some $200 million a year, that money “makes up a fraction of Hezbollah’s operating budget.” The major source of the group’s funding is the “sakat,” or tithe required of all Muslims. 

Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman, writing in Foreign Affairs, says that Iran “lacks the means to force significant change in the [Hezbollah] movement and its goals. It [Iran] has no real presence on the ground in Lebanon and a call to disarm or cease resistance would likely cause Hezbollah’s leadership, or at least its most militant elements, to simply sever ties with Tehran’s leadership.” 

If a wider war is to be avoided, argues Christopher Layne of Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, and author of “The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the present,” the U.S. “will have to engage in direct diplomacy with Syria and Iran—both of which have important stakes in the outcome of security issues in the Middle East, including those involving Israel’s relations with the Palestinians and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.” 

Recently a group of 21 former generals, admirals, ambassadors and high ranking security advisors proposed exactly that, calling on the Bush administration to “engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions.” The group warned “an attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security in the region and U.S. forces in Iraq. It would inflame hatred and violence in the Middle East and among Muslims everywhere.”  

Just as Middle East illusions have done for almost a millennium. 

Some years ago, when I lived in South Carolina, two black men reportedly got into a fight on someone’s front porch over who had eaten the largest portion of a watermelon they were supposed to be sharing, the result being that one of the men went into the house and got his pistol and shot the other one to death. This being South Carolina, there were a lot of sniggering comments in some circles about “Well, you know, you can’t mess with a black man’s watermelon,” the incident passing on into story and legend as “the time the man got shot over a watermelon.” 

Of course, nobody actually gets shot over a watermelon. In a courtroom, that is what is called “proximate cause,” sometimes defined in tort law as “the primary or moving cause that produces the injury and without which the incident could not have happened.” The fight over the watermelon is what led directly to the shooting. But that is not what actually caused it. 

The late and astute chronicler of African-American life, August Wilson, once wrote a play—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—in which one musician stabs another musician to death in the last scene. If you walked in on that last scene and missed the rest of the play, you might walk out believing that the stabbing took place because one musician stepped on the other musician’s shoes. If you came for the whole play, you would understand that the stabbing was the culmination of a long series of events, pressures building up in the stabber, almost none of which were caused by or even involved with the musician who ended up getting stabbed. 

Unfortunately, in Oakland, we have too many people who seem to have missed the play, and run in only for the last scene. Even more unfortunately, some of these folks are charged with coming up with solutions to Oakland’s most serious problems. 

This week, the 96th homicide of this murderous year in Oakland occurred when 52-year-old Wakeel Shakir was shot to death outside his 84th Avenue home in East Oakland, allegedly by 43-year-old Vernon Brown. The shooting, we learn from Oakland Police Sgt. Todd Crutchfield through the Tribune, supposedly rose out of a “conflict over $30 worth of cable work” which Mr. Brown was supposed to have done for Mr. Shakir, but which Mr. Shakir is supposed to have then failed to pay. The Tribune explained the murder in a headline entitled “Man Shot Dead Over $30 Bill, Police Say.” 

The day before Mr. Brown was shot dead on 84th Avenue, 24-year-old Nicole Tucker and 36-year-old Corey Keyes were both shot and killed by an unknown assailant near the corner of 78th Avenue and Rudsdale, only a few blocks away. Even though this is one of Oakland’s longtime, ongoing Oakland drug-dealing areas police, this time according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “believe both victims were targeted as a result of a love-triangle dispute.” They became Oakland’s 94th and 95th homicides of 2006, notable in local news accounts because, before August’s end, they pushed the total for this year’s deaths ahead of the total Oakland homicides for all of 2005. 

How are we responding? 

Normally, the police response to a murder would be to identify the suspected murderer, apprehend that person, and try to gather enough evidence to win a conviction in court. Serious attempts at looking at the root causes of the murders—not the proximate causes—are well beyond either the mandate or the ability of the local police. But these are extraordinary times, with homicides for the year nearing the magic number of 100, and Oakland’s top city official-Mayor Jerry Brown-running for the state’s top law enforcement job and being roundly criticized by his law-and-order opponent for not doing “something” about law-and-order in Oakland. Oakland police are, therefore, under considerable pressure from City Hall to “do something” about the murders, or, at least, make some appearance that they are “doing something” more than just walking behind the dead bodies to put down those ghastly yellow numbered cones to mark the bullet casings left in the street. 

And so, last week, we were told in the newspapers and on television news bulletins of the police sweep of Oakland’s open air drug markets, in which they arrested 30 people out of 65 they were seeking on felony arrest warrants for dealing in crack, ecstasy and marijuana. According to the Tribune, Oakland authorities involved in the crackdown said “the drug sweep will help make a dent in the city’s homicide rate since the majority of violent crime is linked in some way to the narcotics trade.” 

Last week’s 65 Felony Warrant Sweep should not be confused with the city’s “Operation Ceasfire” crackdown on what police and city officials call Oakland’s “top 100 offenders.” The Chronicle reported that last week’s 65 Sweep “was unrelated to [the ongoing top 100 offenders Operation Ceasfire] crackdown.” If so, one wonders why not. If Operation Ceasfire was designed to cut down on Oakland’s homicide rate, and if “the majority of violent crime [in Oakland] is linked in some way to the narcotics trade,” wouldn’t you think that at least some portion of the “top 100 offenders” on the city’s Operation Ceasfire list would have felony warrants for dealing in crack, ecstasy, and marijuana? If not, how did they qualify to get on the list of “top 100 offenders?” 

But perhaps that is asking for too much logic in a dog-and-pony show, in which we, the audience, after all, are merely expected to sit and applaud enthusiastically as the little cart goes around the rink. No questions, please. 

Meantime, the targets of last week’s crackdown—the open air drug markets—are an easy target, the reason being that the dealers involved stand out on the corner and sell drugs, sometimes in plain view. Some of the street corner drug dealing locations mentioned in the news accounts of last week’s police actions have been operating for decades, openly and brazenly. Sometimes it gets so brazen that some dealers carry little flashlights that they shine at cars going by so that you know where to stop if you’re looking. Even worse, once, a couple of years ago, I drove down one of these streets after hours and as I reached the corner, I noticed a car had taken off behind me and was honking his horn to get my attention. Since I’m not in the game and it’s not my habit to stop in the middle of strange East Oakland neighborhoods for people I don’t know, I kept on driving. The driver caught up to me after I stopped at a light on International Boulevard, pulled up beside me, rolled down his passenger side window, waving a miniature ziplock plastic baggie at me and giving a questioning look. (For those who don’t know, miniature baggies typically hold crack rocks.) Clearly, this was not a dealer especially in fear of apprehension by the police. 

Given this seeming inattention to covering their tracks by at least some of these dealers, the question is not why Oakland police chose to crack down on these operations last week, but, rather, why so many of operations have been going on in such a manner, at the same, identifiable locations, for so long. That is a subject for another column. Meanwhile, you are free to come up with your own conclusions. 

As for last week’s crackdown, the police—under pressure from Oakland’s top politician—have to crack down on somebody. Because rounding up all the jealous boyfriends and shade tree cable installers is not a feasible plan, the boyz on the corner get rousted. 

Will this new attention to the top 100 and the drug-dealing 65 stop Oakland’s murders, or even slow them down? 

To answer that question, we would have to understand why the murders are taking place. That means doing more than merely accepting the “proximate cause” theory that it was an argument over a watermelon that is causing the carnage, or an unpaid cable installation bill, or a love triangle, or even disputes over the drug trade. It means—first and foremost—a serious, sober, long-range study of the actual causes of Oakland’s violence. We have offered—and will continue to offer—a number of thoughts on the subject. But meanwhile, this is another of the many tasks left by the outgoing mayor for Oakland’s citizens and the incoming mayor to take on. 

Feeling at home in a new location requires time, effort and a little luck. Where to go for quality foods, reasonable eats and outdoor pursuits? To minimize time and effort and maximize pleasure, take the advice of every travel guide writer and look for the locals. Patrons eagerly waiting for doors to open, long lines and a mixed bag of clientele are sure signs that Berkeley’s favorites are poorly kept secrets. 

Berkeley Bowl has been serving its fans since 1977, moving from a former bowling alley to the major space it occupies today. While a full service grocery in every sense of the word, its produce and Asian departments are beyond compare. Choose among organic, pesticide-free and heirloom for stone fruits, cherries and tomatoes. Products abound for Japanese, Chinese and Thai specialties. Harris Ranch meats, Straus Family Creamery, bulk grains—all combine to present the highest quality at the lowest prices. 

For al-fresco marketing experiences you can’t beat Berkeley Farmers Market where strolling the aisles emulates travel through Northern California. Produce from Watsonville’s Happy Boy Farms and Yolo County’s River Dog Farm; Bennett Valley Breads from Santa Rosa and wood fired Morell’s Breads on the Marin Headlands; Cedar Creek Salmon, Highland Hills lamb, Tunitas Creek wildflower honey. Serenaded by music in blue-grass and Andean mode and surrounded by shoppers with bicycles, strollers, backpacks, wagons and wicker baskets attached to luggage carriers. The people watching value equals the quality of the goods. 

The Cheeseboard Collective will draw you like a magnet six days a week, offering specialties you can’t resist. Though only one pizza choice is offered daily—roasted bell-goat cheese, tomato-caper, zucchini-corn—Berkeleyans seem to love them all. The bakery selections are more varied, requiring serious decisions among scones, muffins, sweet rolls and breads. While baguettes, both seeded and plain, are baked daily, Cheese Curry Onion Bread only appears on Tuesday, Sesame Sunflower on Wednesday and Provolone Olive on Saturday. Their selection of cheeses, too numerous to count are sold daily, with samples offered before purchase.  

The need for good food that doesn’t need to be cooked occurs on a regular basis and choices are as numerous as Netflix offerings. Often described as ‘blue-collar comfort food’, Brennan’s Restaurant has been a Berkeley institution since 1959. Dark green walls, wood tables and a long central bar allow long escapes from everyday responsibilities. Sliding your tray past steam table pans of entire turkeys, hams, roast and corned beef, you can order sandwiches, dipped au jus, and plates, enjoying Thanksgiving dinner any day of the year. Soups are hardy, salads fresh, deserts are worthy of their calories and the servings are substantial. Come once for the food and return often for the Irish coffee and the laid-back ambience. 

Neither Tex-Mex, new-Mex nor fresh-Mex, Juan’s Place is family-style Mexican food at its best. A place where you’d expect to see a multi-generational family celebrating ‘feliz cumpleanos’. Though almost always full, the service is efficient and the plates are hot. Many would be happy to make a meal of the freshly made chips, both flour and corn, and the red and green salsa that appear on your table. Try to save room for plate-size burritos, chicken mole enchiladas, chile rellenos and guacamole tostadas. What you can’t finish will make a great lunch. 

To experience the great food and atmosphere of an Indian Bazaar, you can’t beat Viks Chaat Corner. Traditionally a roadside snack served on a leaf, Viks chaat offerings are so good you’ll want to lick your fingers. On weekdays full plate curry meals are offered for vegetarians and meat eaters accompanied by naan and lentil stew. Weekends give center stage to an enticing assortment of chaats—spiced lamb, puffed puris, lentil dumplings, crepes stuffed with potatoes, served with chutney or raita. Since the servings are hearty and the prices low, the two large rooms are usually full. At lunch time, don’t let the lines scare you away; the food and experience are worth the wait. 

Every Sunday the Thai Buddhist Temple puts on a party and everyone’s invited. Prepared by monks and donated by area restaurants, a Thai smorgasbord perfumes the air. Tables are fitted in wherever there’s room, between buildings, under a funky Plexiglas patio roof, around the parking lot. Patrons exchange dollars for tokens and feast on sweet mango rice, coconut milk fried pancakes, spicy green beans and tofu, green, red and yellow curries, pad thai, green papaya salad, fried chicken and more. Curry at 9am may dislodge your timing for the day, but the lines grow as the hours tick toward noon. 

When the need for activity beckons three locations stand out, with enough on board for a multitude of outings. One visit can’t do them justice. The UC Botanical Garden invites you to get lost in the world of plants, literally. With areas devoted to Australasia, Mexico, South America and Eastern North America, your senses can travel miles. Follow pathways to the Garden of Old Roses and look out at the bay, and then wander through monkey puzzle trees, gigantic bromeliads and wild fuchsias from Argentina and Chile. Walk downhill to the California natives bordering Strawberry Creek. Find a bench and contemplate the m’s: manzanita, mahonia, mountain mahogany and mesquite. Seasonal specials will call you back. 

Two expansive recreational facilities border Berkeley on the east and west. In the East Bay Hills lies Tilden Regional Park, encompassing over two thousand acres and endless miles of trails for hiking, horseback riding, bicycling and observing nature. Cool off or cast your line in the waters of Lake Anza; tour the Nature Study Area stopping at the Little Farm, the Environmental Education Center and Jewel Lake; enjoy a family cook-out at Lone Oak or Indian Camp; revisit childhood riding the Hershell Spillman merry-go-round; join the engineers on the miniature Steam Train. 

Hugging the coastline of San Francisco Bay is the Berkeley Marina, home to a cornucopia of water-related activities. At Shorebird Park you can tour the ‘green’ Straw Bale Nature Center, create fantasies at Adventure Playground or join the Cal Sailing Club. Out on the Public Fishing Pier, catch dinner or stroll the length savoring brisk winds and expansive views, wander paved paths admiring water craft, then pop into the Marina Deli for a hot dog. On the northern boundary run your dog and watch the kites soar at Cesar Chavez Park. 

Follow the locals and sample their favorites, make them your own. You may soon find yourself a repeat customer, at home in Berkeley. 

UC Botanical Garden has plants native to different areas of the world. Photograph by Marta Yamamoto. 

Berkeley Bowl 

2020 Oregon St., 843-6929. 

9 a.m.–8 p.m.Monday–Saturday; 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Sunday. 

Berkeley Farmers Market 

Saturdays: 10 a.m.–2 p.m., Center Street above Martin Luther King. 

Tuesdays: 1–7 p.m., Derby at Martin Luther King. 

Thursdays: 3–7 p.m., Shattuck at Rose. 

The Cheeseboard 

1512 Shattuck Ave., 549-3055.  

Open Monday through Saturday. 

Brennan’s Restaurant 

720 University Ave., 841-0960. 

11 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Sunday– 

Wednesday; 11 a.m.–10:30 p.m. Thursday–Saturday. 

Juan’s Place 

941 Carleton St., 845-6904. 

11 a.m.–10 p.m. Monday–Friday; 2–10 p.m. Saturday, Sunday.  

Viks Chaat Corner 

724 Allston Way, 644-4412. 

11 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday–Sunday. 

Thai Buddhist Temple 

1911 Russell St, 849-3419. 

Sunday brunch, 9 a.m.–2 p.m. 

UC Botanical Garden 

200 Centennial Drive, 643-2755. 

Open every day, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu. 

Tilden Regional Park 

Entrances off Wildcat Canyon Road and Grizzly Peak Blvd, 562-PARK. www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden.  

Berkeley Marina  

201 University Ave, 981-6740. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/marina.  

This is a good time of year to take a look at our furnaces. One reason is that that’s true is that servicing can lead to repairs (or, Oh No, replacement) and this can take your furnace off line for some days and it’s better to face such an eventuality when it’s sunny and warm than when you really need the heat. Also, the best service folks (HVAC or Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning technicians) are busy when the winter hits and everyone’s turned on their furnace for the first time only to discover something that’s gone awry. In fact, you’ll have your pick of the best HVAC folks if you get them at this time of year. 

But before we get to professional servicing, let’s see what you can do for yourself. I’ll start with common mid-efficiency forced air heating and then will devote just a little time to small gas heaters before we’re though. 

If you have central gas heat, which is what most of us, on the West Coast have for heat, you probably have a mid-efficiency furnace. This is large box, often found in the basement, garage or under the house. This unit usually has two metal doors on the front face and a set of visible burners somewhere near the middle of the unit. 

These units heat air which is fed to them through large ducts or tubes which are generally between 6 and 14 inches in diameter. One side usually has one very large duct which draws cooler air in from the house and the other end of the unit will have a trunk and branches that lead out to the various extremities of the house. The analogy of a circulatory system, like a bloodstream is apropos. 

If you have this sort of system, there are a number of things you can do yourself to help your forced air heating system to operate well. If you have the gumption to do so, I’d start by examining every part with the layman’s eye. Crawl or walk around so as to see every bit of the ducting that’s not buried in the walls. If a grill can be removed from the floor or wall with ease. Take it off and look inside. Check to make sure that the ducts or tubes aren’t loose from the fittings at either end. 

A good way to check is to turn the furnace on or run the fan-only setting. Some but not all furnaces are wired this way, although nearly all can be wired this way. A nice upgrade is to have your HVAC person upgrade the wiring to allow for the fan to be run without running the furnace. In this way, you’ll gain a secondary cooling and cleaning feature. 

The simple act of running air through the house provides some level of cooling, albeit minimal and the operation of the fan setting also carries air though your filter system, thus providing some cleaning of the air, and thereby the house. This is especially true for those who smoke or have animals. A really good filtration system, such as an electronic air cleaner can reduce the amount of cleaning you have to do inside, although this is not its intended function. 

When you run the fan or furnace, you’ll be inflating the system and it will be easier to see where air blows out of leaking ducts. Don’t be surprised if you crawl under your house and find a duct completely detached and heating the crawlspace (the mice really appreciate it! Be sure to look for the tiny beds and lawn furniture near the open duct). I see detached ducting and partially disconnected ducting all the time. 

Regulations now in force in our state now require most communities to repair any ducting with more than 15% leakage when any other servicing or work is being performed. It’s important that this be done by a professional since improper repairs can result in foreign substances being drawn into the living-space. Half of your furnace system is a vacuum cleaner and half is a blower. 

The vacuum cleaner half may have one or two large ducts running through the crawlspace (most do) and if detached or damaged in this space, can draw damp air, mold, fungus or other wondrous elements into the house. 

This can be happening now if the ducts are damaged, so it’s best to have a professional check for leaks. Nonetheless, many openings can be easily identified by an intrepid explorer with a bright flashlight and guts to examine all side of each duct.  

Next, look inside the registers or grills in the floors or walls or ceilings (most are in floors around here). Many grills simply slip out of the “boot” but some older ones have two or four screws. This is well worth the effort for the small change alone. Maybe you’ll find that missing earring or 53 cents. You will almost certainly find dirt and debris and this is your chance to vacuum out what you can readily see. 

The cold air intake (that’s the big one usually found somewhere near the middle of the house, often in a hallway or dining room floor) is often the main place that you’ll strike it big. You’ll find toys, Monopoly houses, more change and lots of dirt, dog hair and other splendid fortunes. Cleaning this out will help your air supply and the life of the furnace. 

Next it’s time to remove the doors to the furnace and vacuum there. Be careful with the vacuum in all these places, ducts are often quite fragile and it’s not too hard to rip through them with a bare vacuum wand. Don’t be too surprised if you find dead critters in the blower compartment of the furnace. If you note signs of corrosion in the furnace, it’s a very good idea to get it cleaned and examined. 

Make sure the blower (usually a squirrel-cage type fan) moves freely, be sure it’s turned off before you meddle. Older units have bushings along the axle that can be oiled (and should) but most modern ones do not. 

Some furnaces have anti-nitrous oxide rods that are mounted just above the burner (these burners are easily identified when the unit is running because the flames come right out of them just as in your gas oven) and these are often bent or burned through. If you see these pencil sized rods falling down on the burners or burned through, definitely call it to the attention of your HVAC guy or gal. 

Take a look at the flue which comes off your furnace (that’s the very hot pipe that comes off the furnace and heads toward the roof or chimney (usually about 4” in diameter) and make sure that nothing flammable is resting on or very near it. Double wall flues are better in this respect and are usually identified by a mark stamped upon them. They’re called B vents and look fatter than a single tube of metal that was more common 40 years ago. 

The last item we’ll tackle on the FAU (forced air unit) is the filter. If you have a common 1” disposable filter, change it now and often. 

These should be changed at least twice a year, although the cleanliness of the house atmosphere can make this vary quite a lot. A large dog may necessitate replacement 3 or 4 times a year. Filters are cheap and good ones are a bargain. I recommend the school of pleated filters that are usually electrostatically charged. Filtrete is one brand but many hardware stores carry a store brand for much less. 

The $8 filter is will worth it when you consider your lungs. These filters can capture very tiny harbingers of disease including mold spores, virus and pollen. They’re not perfect but they’re a big step above the common $2 filter. If you have a fiberglass mesh “reusable” filter, I’d suggest tossing it. They catch dust bunnies but not too much more. 

If you’re really interested in your health or have a household member who has allergies, consider installing a higher quality filter such as a media filter system (mid-priced upgrade), an electronic air-cleaner (higher priced upgrade-about $800) or a combination system. Some even have negative ion generator built into them designed to precipitate solid matter out of the indoor air. 

No matter what kind of gas heater you have, it’s a darned good idea to have an annual professional examination of the unit. It’s usually less than $200 and well worth it. 

As promised, here are a couple of words on gas wall and floor furnaces. While I’ve written more extensively on this in the past and won’t get deeply into these lower duty heater, I will say that cleaning of the accessible parts of any of these is wise and can reduce burned dander and other particulate in your home. 

If you have a furnace that doesn’t have a thermostat consider an upgrade. A furnace that can be left on full bore with no control related to temperature is unnecessarily dangerous and an upgrade isn’t ridiculously expensive (It’s just expensive). 

Make sure that nothing flammable is kept on or near the wall or floor furnace. I was once inspecting a rental unit with a small wall furnace mounted low on the wall. This was a direct-vent model and, while these are generally safer than most, the tenant had, in all her glorious hippyhood, chosen to burn lots of candles on top of this unit and the inside was coated with paraffin. 

We also had the de rigueur madras just above on the wall and various gods and goddesses arrayed beside said candles. As Harrod Blank’s license plate says “OMYGAWD.” Even Ganesha can’t help everyone. 

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

Flowers are the most obvious way to scent a garden, but they have lots of company. Fragrance in other plant parts is generally a side effect of strategies for things other than reproduction: water conservation, pest protection, even fire resistance.  

Some trees have so much native scent that a single specimen can evoke whole forests. There’s an incense cedar in a yard a few blocks from me that throws me mentally into the deep dark woods every time I walk past. 

California native bay laurel has a musky intriguing scent that works best in the fallen, dried leaves. One of either in a backyard is all it takes to evoke a forest, which is fortunate because that’s all the average yard has room for.  

Large trees’ odors can work against us, of course. Blue gum eucalyptus are camphorish enough most of the time, but they have a distinct aura of cat urine when they bask in the sun.  

Coleonema, “breath-of-heaven” and myrtle—Myrtis communis, the bush, not the groundcover—are shrubs whose leaves reward you with a spicy odor a bit like carnations’ when you rub them. I don’t know why anyone bothers to plant boxwood when these are available. 

Some of our native sages, especially Salvia clevelandii, emit marvelous scent when touched and have good hummingbird flowers too. Sniff before you buy; species and varieties have different scents, and, like cilantro, they can be a matter of individual taste. 

I planted scented geraniums along the narrow part of our driveway. Every time I back out I perfume the truck and I can tell by nose if I’ve steered badly. They’re tough plants, handsome, with varied textures and nice small flowers. And they come in so many scents that there must be something for everyone.  

For scent underfoot, intersperse steppingstones or pavers with groundcovers like the prostrate thymes. They come in flavors labeled as (and somewhat resembling) caraway, lemon, and lime as well as in different leaf colors with variations on the culinary thyme we’re used to. 

They can be used in cooking too, of course. If you have a wetter spot, try prostrate chamomile or Corsican mint.  

Fresh redwood-chip mulch is a most Proustian scent. It sends me right back to my days of gardening for a living, of changing some bit of California landscape by myself, by hand, and finishing the job by spreading mulch like baby-bunting and tucking the new plants in. 

Depending on where you grew up, you might get that same rush from tanbark, pine, even eucalyptus chips—from that last you’ll get a good sinus-clearing too.  

Since I grew up ten miles from Hershey, Pennsylvania there’s another memory-lane mulch for me: cocoa-bean hulls. 

They’re natural, available here too, add fertility, and smell like the hometown of the Hershey Bar. (Yes it does. And yes it has streetlamps shaped like Hershey’s Kisses, alternately silver-“wrapped” and brown. The silver ones have metal weathervane tags.) 

I mulched my mint bed with them once. I’ve since heard they’re toxic to dogs, so confine them to Spot-free spots.  

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in East Bay Home & Real Estate. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 5 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Geographic Premonitions” Group show of fifteen emerging artists opens at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond. Exhibition runs through Nov. 11. 620-6772.  

FILM 

Alternative Visions: Recent Avanat-Garde Films at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Works In Progress” Women’s open mic at 7:30 p.m. at Montclair Women's Cultural Center, 1650 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Donation $5.  

Susan Alcorn talks about “Camino Chronicle: Walking to Santiago” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bert Lams, classical guitar and Tom Griesgraber, Chapman Stick at 7:30 p.m. at A Cheerfull Noyse, 1228 Solano Ave., Albany. Seating is limited. Please bring a folding chair. 524-0411. 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Mal Sharp at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Oscar Peterson at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $85-$100. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 6 

FILM 

2nd Annual International Small Film Festival to Sept. 10 at Berkeley Art Center Gallery, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Cost is $2-$10. 644-6893.  

Pirates and Piracy “The Sea Hawk” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Andrew Lam will discuss ”Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora” at 6:30 p.m. at Bookmark Bookstore, 721 Washington St. Space is limited, please RSVP to 531-3420. 

Robert Fuller will discuss “All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies and the Politics of Dignity” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, faculty recital performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Whiskey Brothers Old Time and Bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Sean Smith, Matt Baldwin, and Adam Snider, acoustic guitars, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Gerard Landry and the Lariats at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Danilo, Orquestra Universal at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 841-JAZZ. 

Chirgilchin, throat singers from Tuva, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Ten Ton Chicken, groove-rock, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lady Soul, Sonny, Mista Kista at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886.  

THURSDAY, SEPT. 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Chroma” works by artists of the Chroma Collective opens with a reception at 5 p.m. at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 1. 848-1228. 

Kala Art Institute Residency Projects Part Two Opening reception at 6 p.m. at 1060 Heinz Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 14. Gallery hours are Tues.-Fri. noon to 5:30 p.m., Sat. noon to 4:30 p.m. 549-2977. 

“Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

Works by Erin McGuiness, ceramicist. Reception at 6 p.m. at Earthworks Clay Co-op, 2547 8th St., at Dwight. 841-9810. 

“2 the Nines” Photography by Stephen Keller. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Lavezzo Designs Studio, 5751 Horton St., Emeryville. 428-2384. 

“Vibration” Sound photographs of Hiroshi Morimoto. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Transmissions Gallery, 1177 San Pablo Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 5. www.transmissions-gallery.com 

THEATER 

“Color Stuck” a one-man show by Donald E. Lacy, Jr. at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Benefit for LoveLife Foundation. Tickets are $50. 663-5683. 

FILM 

The Mechanical Age “The Mechanical Man” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free screening. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Riddle of Tabo: The Origin and Fate of a West Tibetan Manuscript Collection” A colloquium with Paul Harrison, Visiting Professor, Dept of Religious Studies, Stanford at 5 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Flr. 643-6492. 

Annual Berkeley Faculty Reading at 7:30 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. 642-3467. 

Phyllis Stowell, poet at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Leonard Pitt shows slides and talks about “Walks Through Lost Paris” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

John Sumser will introduce his lastest book, “A Land Without Time: A Peace Corps Volunteer in Afghanistan,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Roots, blues, gospel, New Orleans jazz and soul at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Duamuxa & Ricardo Cuevas at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

David Berkeley, alt folk country, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. 

Joe Beck & Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Mitch Landy at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Tom Huebner, Kitty Rose at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Buffalo Field Campaign Road Show with music by 7th Generation Rise at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. 

Glass Candy, The Chromatics, Death of a Party, dance rock, at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7. 451-8100.  

FRIDAY, SEPT. 8 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Foreigner” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St, Alameda, through Oct. 1. Cost is $12-$15. 523-1553.  

Aurora Theatre “Salome” at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. and runs Wed. - Sun. through Oct. 1. Tickets are $38. 843-4822.  

Berkeley High “I Love You, Your’re Perfect, Now Change” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., through Sept. 16 at the Schwimley Little Theater, 1930 Allston Way. Tickets are $6-$20. 

“Color Stuck” a one-man show by Donald E. Lacy, Jr. at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, through Sun. Tickets are $5-$15. 663-5683. 

Encore Theatre Company and Shotgun Players “The Typographer’s Dream” at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Sept. 17. Tickets are $15-$30. 841-6500.  

Masquers Playhouse “Diary of a Scoundrel” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond across from the Hotel Mac. Through Sept. 30. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. 

Their(R)evolution performances by Chileans Inés Villafañe-León and Julia Ahumada Grob at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568.  

FILM 

2nd Annual International Small Film Festival to Sept. 10 at Berkeley Art Center Gallery, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Cost is $2-$10. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Global Lens Film Festival “In the Battlefields” at 2 p.m., “The Night of Truth” at 7 p.m., “Almost Brothers” at 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.globalfilm.org 

A Theater Near You “The Fallen Idol” at 7 p.m. and “The Third Man” at 8:55 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Clifford Chase reads from his new novel, “Winkie” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

Tucker Malarkey reads from her new novel, “Resurrection” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Sing Against the Odds” benefit fundraiser for Breast Cancer Fund with Irina Rivkin, Marca Cassity, Emily Shore, at 8 p.m. at Rose Street House of Music, 1839 Rose St. Donation $5-$50. To RSVP call 594-4000 ext. 687. 

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

Steve Smulian at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

African Roots of Jazz with E.W. Wainwright, clebrating Elvin Jones’ Birthday, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Diamante, Latin fusion, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Bill Monroe Tribute with Butch Waller, Bob Waller, Keith Little, Ed Nef and many others at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Dave Rocha Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

The Nomadics, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Stiff Dead Cat, 77 El Deora, Axton Kincaid at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Sour Mash Hug Band, The Bad Tings, Dandelion Junk Queens at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Albino, afro-beat, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $10. 548-1159.  

Dave Ellis & Guru Garage at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Oscar Peterson at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $85-$100. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 9 

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.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Through The Eye of The Artist” Group art show, mixed media. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. Runs to Sept. 30. 644-4930. 

Veiled Threat: Works by Aaron Joseph Screenprints, digital prints, fiber art and fashion show inspired by the politicsof the 1970’s at 8 p.m. at The Living Room Gallery, 3230 Adeline St. Donation $3. 601-5774. 

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “Global Shorts” at 2 p.m., “Thirst” at 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.globalfilm.org 

The Road to Damascus: Discovering Syrian Cinema “Stars in Broad Daylight” at 6:30 p.m and “Sacrifices” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rockey Jones & Friends with ToRead Ah, D’Jeli Musa, poetry, spoken word and music, at 4 p.m. at The Adeline Artist Lofts, 1132 24th St., off Adeline in West Oakland. Donation $5. 272-9349.  

Michael Gray will talk about “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

Douglas Kent discusses “Firescaping” creating fire-resistant landscapes, at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Temescal Trio at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickes are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Pacific Collegium 9/11 Memorial Benefit Concert at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$30. www.pacificcollegium.org 

Point Richmond Music and Arts Festival with Cruchy Frog, Ron Matthews, Dve Crimmen, Andre Thierry and Lava from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Park Place and Washington Ave. 231-6909. 

Dreaming the Diaspora, with Georges Lammam and His Ensemble at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Maye Cavallero and Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Ras Igel/Razorblade with Binghi Drummers at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Maya Dorn and Marca Cassity at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Trout Fishing in America at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Aphasia, Anaura at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886.  

Dave Bernstein Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649- 3810. 

Wu Li Masters at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Girlfriend Experience, Wire Graffiti, Jayde Blade at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Swoop Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Monster Squad, Whiskey Rebels, The Challenged at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Workers at Ground Zero: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes” on display in the atrium of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Conversation with the artist at 1 p.m., on display from Sept. 10-Sept. 14. 525-0302. 

Helen Krayenhoff Watercolors Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Sweet Adeline Bakeshop, 3350 Adeline St. Exhibition runs through to Oct 13. hkrayenhoff@yahoo.com 

“A Balanced Life” sculptures by Will Furth and “Ma Vie en Rose” paintings by Jennifer L. Jones. Reception at 4 p.m. at the Community Art Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave. through November 10. 204-1667.  

“Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “In the Battlefields” at 7 p.m., “Almost Brothers” at 2 and 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.globalfilm.org 

The Mechanical Age “Charlie Bowers: Dream Machines” at 3 p.m. and “Edward Scissorhands” at 5 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

“Secret Courage: The Walter Suskind Story” followed by discussion at 2 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Quijeremá in a benefit concert for Rafael Manriquez at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Soul at the Chimes” with Ricardo Scales, Simply Toya, Traika Lewis and others at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Benefit for Bay Area Repertory Theater. Tickets are $35. www.brownpapertickets.com 

“Meeting the Man of the Heart” Vocal music from the Baul tradition at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

The Hal Stein Quartet at 3:30 p.m. at the Montclair Jazz and Wine Festival, Montclair Village. 

Jim Hudak at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Ayelet Cohen, an evening of opera at 7:30 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $$14-$18. 848-0237. 

The Medicine Ball Band at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged with Joe Craven, bluegrass and oldtime showcase, at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Atsuko Hashimoto, jazz organ trio, at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Pressure Point, Red Tape, Giving Chase at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 11 

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “The Night of Truth” at noon at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.globalfilm.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jim Wallis on “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” at 6 p.m. in the Sanctuary, First Congregational Church, 2345 Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

Actors Reading Writers “Locomotion” Short Stories by Stephanie Allen, Richard Ford and Dorothy Parker at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave.  

Poetry Express with Marc Hofstadter at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mark Atkinson Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Rafael Manriquez, songs of the poems of Gabriela Mistral at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, Art & Music Room, 5th floor. 981-6100. 

Parlor Tango at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Khalil Shaheed, all ages jam, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Oliver Mtukudzi, African pop, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $24, fundraiser for Zimbabwe AIDS Relief. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Conjurors, prestidigitators, sleight-of-hand mechanics and mentalists will appear tonight (Tuesday), as if by magic, on the stage of Oakland’s Bjornson Hall, home of the Sons of Norway (at MacArthur and Fruitvale), answering the call of the Oakland Magic Circle for their annual invitational magic competition and dinner, doors opening at 6:30 p.m., show at 8 p.m. 

“We invite all the magic clubs—about 15 of them—from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa, and east to Sacramento, to send one contestant each,” said magician and Magic Circle President James Hamilton. “It’s a big, fun event, with all kinds of acts from comic to serious, slick sleight-of-hand to the bizarre. And families come to root for their local club’s favorite. There’s a spaghetti dinner included in the price of admission.” 

The event will be judged by a younger magician who has competed recently, a professional magician and longtime Circle member, and this reviewer. 

(In the interest of total disclosure, the present reviewer must confess his own debut in show business as a boy, performing a show of illusions put together by his father, himself a practitioner of stage magic and younger colleague of founding members of the Circle. This entree to the stage has led the reviewer down other arcane paths of performance as a result, including Noh and Kyogen—not to mention his present para-theatrical mode of expression.) 

The Oakland Circle is the preeminent club in the area—and the oldest west of the Mississippi. Founded in 1925, the club initiated the invitational competition over 25 years ago, at the behest of co-founder Lloyd Jones, proprietor of Oakland’s Magic Ltd., publishers and sellers of magic books. 

Hamilton recalled Jones from his first visit to the Circle over 20 years ago: “I knew Lloyd from magic conventions, and he’d reviewed me in his magazine. I came here in about 1980, but hadn’t performed much locally. A friend asked me to come to the meeting with him, and Lloyd came rushing up to me with his hand outstretched—and a membership application in it!” 

When asked what acts to expect, Hamilton shrugs. “There’s no screening. Everybody might do the same routine—who knows? One year I saw a guy all in leathers, looking like one of those Power Rangers, putting on an act. The kids got all excited.” 

Contestants are judged on appearance, technique, audience appeal and overall effectiveness of their act. 

Above all, stage magic goes over on style. Asked how he’d characterize the recent history of the art, Hamilton opined, “I think it’s come full circle. For awhile, it was out of favor. Then Doug Henning helped ignite the current interest, along with Blackstone, Jr. and Siegfried & Roy—both permanent shows in Vegas, of course. Technology helped, but the way some people modernized it, magic started to devolve into the same thing they complained about. Whether the boxes are black, or it’s chrome luggage, the props end up the same, and it can all look about as weird as the gold table they were all putting down as old-fashioned.” 

He smiled and went on: “The trend is to reach back and modernize. Magic is ancient, from the first time people asked why the leaves are shaking on the tree. It’s one of the things people are always going to want to see; they see a good magician and say, ‘Wow! What is that? That’s Cool!’ It’s the answer to the unknown.” 

All over the hills and in many yards, we see the plentiful and familiar Monterey pine. It’s one of the key tree species of our parks and urban hill forest, part of our natural surroundings. 

Except for the “natural” part. Pinus radiata is no more native right here than Eucalyptus globulus—at least in this eon. It’s a species in trouble on its home turf, a small part of the coast south of here approximately from Año Nuevo to Cambria and not very far inland, six or seven miles up the Carmen River valley. Even there, its populations aren’t contiguous, but in three disjunct areas.  

In other epochs, its range was longer though about as narrow, along the coast from the La Brea Tar Pits to Marin County and north, to judge from the locations of fossil cones. To judge by those cones’ ages, though, it seems never to have been widespread at any one time; it just grew in small but varied ranges as climates shifted between glacial periods. 

There are two natural varieties of the species on small Mexican islands: binata on Guadalupe Island, and cedrosensis on Cedros Island. The population on Guadalupe Island is in trouble because feral goats eat all the seedlings. Fewer than 100 individuals remain. 

The base stock is now also threatened by pine pitch canker, an introduced fungus.  

At the same time, it’s one of the most widely distributed and most-planted—by humans—tree species in the world. You’d think a species with such a small and precise original range would be demanding about living conditions, but Monterey pines thrive on timber plantations in Hawai’i, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Spain, the British Isles, and South Africa, and as ornamentals elsewhere.  

Including here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And therein lies the rub, genetically. 

The trees planted as ornamentals are mostly from the stock grown in New Zealand for timber. As they’re planted here, over the years closer and closer to the native foundation stock, they’ve been “cross”-breeding with the homeboys. What long-term effects this genetic sorting and re-mixing will have are a toss-up.  

The timber trees get selected over generations for qualities like fast growth and straight trunks that make easy-to-mill lumber. Whether these characteristics, if they get passed on to new generations in the wild, are good things to have if you’re a tree trying to make a living in the wild along windy coastlines and in coastal soils—good question! 

One might reasonably speculate that fast growth, which usually results in weaker wood and a tendency to drop branches, wouldn’t be so wonderful. Straight trunks, same thing, though that might be more environmentally malleable; it’s easier to be upright in a plantation full of your brethren than on a wind-sleeked shoreline.  

The ornamentals seem just as susceptible to pitch canker as the original stock, and might be a reservoir for the disease. 

In the older population of Monterey pines in our hills, we’ve already noticed their tendency (like many trees’) to self-prune. When a low branch (or even a leaf) is shaded to the point where keeping it is more expensive metabolically than giving up its “income,” a tree will drop it. (This is hardly an exact calculation, of course; it’s just that wood gets weaker when the leaves directly outward/up from it nourish it less.)  

Monterey pines make great big heavy limbs. When they fall, look out! One calm night many years ago, Joe and I noticed the lights flickering, and the power went off completely as we grabbed flashlights and went up the front path to see what was happening. Then, with a memorable and eloquent groan, a low limb bigger than the average Yule tree split off the tree and fell onto the garage.  

The valiant PG&E crew had our power back on within a couple of hours, but it took us and the landlady’s son most of the next day to excavate the undamaged but suddenly verdant garage. The tree’s still there, 20-some years later.  

If you have a Monterey pine and worry about its health, call in a pro—a real ISA-certified arborist, not some clown who advertises “topping” trees. They should be pruned only when the canker’s least virulent, a short window in midwinter, and with care and knowledge.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 5 

“The Politics of Bones: Dr. Owens Wiwa and the Struggle for Nigeria’s Oil” with J. Tompthy Hunt, Michael Watts, and Anna Zalik at 4 p.m. at 150 University Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Center for African Studies and the Center for Human Rights. 642-0721. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

“Taste of Judaism: Are you Curious?” Explore Jewish spirituality, ethics and community, open to all. Tues. evenings, Sept. 5, 12, 19, in Berkeley. Free but registration required. 839-2900 ext 347. 

Torture Teach-in and Vigil every Tues. at 12:30 p.m. at the fountain on UC Campus, Bancroft at College. 

Discussion Salon on Humor at 7 p.m. at 1414 Walnut.  

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

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

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, SEPT. 6  

Strawberry Creek Greenway Proposal Community discussion on daylighting the creek at the abandonned West Campus Schoolyard, at 6:30 p.m. in the Green Room, City Corporation Yard, 1326 Allston Way. For information call Carole Schemmerling 512 4005.  

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

“The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror” A documentary at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 393-5685. 

Density Bonus Workshop with the Planning Commission, Housing Advisory Commission, Zoning Adjustments Board at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 SIxth St. at Hearst. 981-7490. 

“Homegrown Tomatoes Are Great, Unless They Are Toxic,” with Christopher Harkness of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency at 1 p.m. in Room 315A, Wurster Hall, UC Campus.  

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation at 10 a.m. at the Oakland headquarters. Various East Bay opportunities available. Advanced sign-up is required please call 594-5165.  

East Bay Food Not Bombs Volunteer Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 644-4187. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome. 548-9840. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 7 

Buffalo Field Campaign Road Show discussion the plight of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo, with music by 7th Generation Rise at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. 

9/11 Press for Truth A documentary and Q & A with Co-Executive Producer, Ken Ellis, at 7 and 9 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10. Proceeds benefit Cooperative Research and Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance. 

Full Moon Walk at John Muir National Historic Site See nocturnal animal and plant life and walk the same trail John Muir walked with his daughters. For reservations and details of meeting time and location, call 925-228-8860. 

Street Fair and Farmer’s Market at Fruitvale Village, Fruitvale BART, Oakland, from 5 to 8 p.m. with live music, melon and jicama tastings, and activities for children.  

Poetry Workshop with Donna Davis from 9 to 11:30 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Offered by the Berkeley Adult School. 644-6130. 

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 at 6:45 p.m. at Spud's Pizza, 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 8 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Russell A. Unbraco on “Antique Glass.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

Mad Scientist Surplus Sale and preview of green technologies at 7 p.m. at The Crucible, 1260 7th St., Oakland. Cost is $10. 444-0919. http://thecrucible.org 

Thoughts of A Hangman Film Industry Mixer and Fundraiser at 8 p.m. at Spengers, 1919 Fourth St. Cost is $20.  

“Seeking Jewish Community and Connection” Dinner at 6:30 p.m. at JGate, 409 Liberty Ave., El Cerrito. 559-8140. 

Womensong Circle, participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $15-$20 sliding scale. 525-7082.  

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

SATURDAY, SEPT. 9 

Cerrito Creek Restoration Help Friends of Five Creeks volunteers control erosion and restore habitat on Cerrito Creek at the foot of Albany Hill, from 10 a.m. to noon. Wear clothes that can get dirty and shoes with good traction. Meet at Creekside Park, south end of Santa Clara St., El Cerrito, just north of Albany Hill. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

East Bay AIDS Walk at Lakeside Park, Oakland. Registration begins at 9 a.m., near the Edoff Memorial Bandstand, across from the Lakeside Park Garden Center. The walk around Lake Merritt begins at 10 a.m. 872-0568. http://eastbayaidswalk. 

kintera.org 

Tinkers Workshop Used Bike Sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Drive at Berkeley Aquatic Park. Benefit programs for at-risk youth. www.tinkersworkshop.org 

“How Has the New Medicare Drug Plan Affected You?” A community discussion at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Co-Housing Community Room, 2220 Sacramento St. Presented by OWL, Older Women’s League, 528-3739. 

Senior Safety Forum, from 10 a.m. to noon at McGee Avenue Baptist Church, 1640 Stuart St. Sponsored by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. 665-5821. 

NAACP Berkeley Branch meets at 1 p.m. to discuss voter registration and education for the Nov. 7th election at Church by the Side of the Road, 2108 Russell St. 845-7416. 

“Haiti Today: Occupation and Resistance” A panel discussion with Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, Dr. Paul Farner, and Brian Concannon at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Donation $7-$15, no one turned away. 483-7481. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.  

Point Richmond Music and Arts Festival with live music, orginal art and jewelry, and food from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Park Place and Washington Ave. 231-6909. 

“Living Lightly: Simpler, Slower, Smaller” A day of discussions and resources from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Cost is $15-$20. www.worldcentric.org/ 

septsimplicityconf 

Free Electronic Waste Event Recycle your electronics Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the El Cerrito Department of Motor Vehicles, 6400 Manila Ave. E-waste accepted: computer monitors, computers/computer components, televisions, VCR & DVD players, toner cartridges, printers, fax machines, copiers, telephone equipment, cell phones, MP3 players. NOT accepted are appliances, batteries, microwaves, paints, pesticides, etc. 1-888-832-9839  

Luna Kids Open House & Dance Class from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 644-3629. 

The East Bay Baby Fair from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. www.brjcc.org  

Great War Society, East Bay Chapter meets to discuss Military Development of Weaponry in WWI at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

“Ghandi in his Youth” with Mary K. Earle at Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters at 9 a.m. at 1950 Franklin St. in the Kaiser Bldg., Oakland. 581-8675. 

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

Early Childhood Education Workshop on Nuitrition from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Oakland Asian Cultural Arts Center, 388 Ninth St., Suite 290, Oakland. To register call 639-1361. 

Spiritwalking: Aqua Chi(TM) at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Also Wed. at 3:30 p.m. Cost is $5.50, $3.50 seniors & disabled. Bring your own towels. 526-0312. 

Urban Releaf Tree Tour of Oakland and workshops in urban forestry that teach tree planting, maintenance, GIS/GPS systems, and community advocacy. For information call 601-9062. www.urbanreleaf.org 

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

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

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 10 

Solano Stroll from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A mile-long block party with a “Send in the Clowns Parade at 11 a.m. 527-5358. 

Montclair Village Jazz and Wine Festival from noon to 7 p.m. in Montclair Village, La Salle and Moraga Ave. 339-1000. 

Mercury Thermometer Exchange & Safe Medicine Disposal from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Solano Stroll, under BART tracks at 1270 Solano Ave., Albany. Bring mercury thermometers sealed in two plastic ziplock bags and medicine in original containers with personal information marked out. www.saveSFbay.org 

Breast Cancer Fund Bike Against the Odds from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Lakeside Park, Lake Merritt, Oakland. Cost is $50-$65. 415-346-8223.  

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to do a safety inspection at 10 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Pancake Breakfast on Board The Red Oak Victory Ship from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cost is $6, includes tour of ship. Ship is located at 1337 Canal Blvd., Berth #6, Richmond. 237-2933. 

Self Defense Workshop for men and women from 5 to 8:30 p.m. in Berkeley. Cost is $115, scholarships available. For details call 800-467-6997.  

Nia Jam at 2 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Cost $15. 843-2787. 

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

Kickabout at Codornices Park Soccer for all, skill and talent not required. For more information contact cambour@hotmail.com  

Balinese Dance Class with Tjokorda Istri Putra Padmini at 11 a.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 237-6849. 

Flexible Healing Class for all ages and fitness levels at 1:30 p.m. at Liberty Hill Missionary Baptist Church, 9th St. & University Ave. Free. 390-8644. 

Ancient Tools for Successful Living Workshops in Meditation, the I-Ching, and Qi Gong begin at 5272 Foothill Blvd. Oakland. Cost is $8 per class. 536-5934. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Santosh Philip on “Treasures of Tibetan Yoga” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, SEPT. 11 

Candlelight Vigil for 9/11 Rememberance and Healing at 6 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

Family Day at the Magnes to see the exhibition “My America” at 6:30 p.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950.  

Jim Wallis on “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” at 6 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter, with Deborah Berger, president of the CA Nurses Association, at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. 287-8948. 

“9/11 the Myth and the Reality” A film premier at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Q & A to follow with film maker, Ken Jenkins. Benefit for the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance. Tickets are $10.  

Berkeley Community Chorus rehearsals begin at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant, and meet every Mon. night. No auditions, all are welcome. www.bcco.org 

Albany’s New Police Chief, Mike McQuiston will speak at the Brown Bag Forum at 12:30 p.m. at the Albany Library Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave. 

Nutrition for Optimal Health at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Lead Abatement Repairs Find out about funding for lead hazard repairs for rental properties with low-income tenants, from 4 to 6 p.m. at 2000 Embarcadero, #300, Oakland. 567-8280.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Density Bonus Workshop with the Planning Commission, Housing Advisory Commission, Zoning Adjustments Board at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 SIxth St. at Hearst. 981-7490. 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed. Sept. 6, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Berkeley Unified School Board meets Wed. Sept. 6, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Tasha Tervelon, 981-5190.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs. Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 7, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.  

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. Sept. 11, at 7 p.m. the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7410.  

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Sept. 11, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Salome” at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. and runs Wed. - Sun. through Oct. 1. Tickets are $38. 843-4822.  

California Shakespeare Theater “The Merchant of Venice” 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 Sept. 3. Tickets are $15 and up. 548-9666. 

Encore Theatre Company and Shotgun Players “The Typographer’s Dream” at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Sept. 17. Tickets are $15-$30. 841-6500.  

Masquers Playhouse “Diary of a Scoundrel” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond across from the Hotel Mac. Through Sept. 30. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Jugglers of Color” Works by Albert Hwang, Douglas Light, and Sue Averell opens at Estaban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St. at Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 444-7411. 

“A Balanced Life” sculptures by Will Furth and “Ma Vie en Rose” paintings by Jennifer L. Jones at the Community Art Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave. through Nov. 10. 204-1667.  

Anna W. Edwards Abstract Paintings Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Sept. 30. 465-8928. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Los Rakas, reggae, dancehall and hip hop at 10 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$12. 849-2568.  

Ellen Honert at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston WAy. 841-JAZZ. 

Junior Reid, Everton Blender and The Reggae Angels at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $17-$20. 525-5054.  

The Dave Matthews Blues Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse Bar, at 4th & Webster, Oakland. 451-3161.  

Steve Taylor-Ramirez, acoustic folk-country-blues, at 7 p.m. at A Cuppa Tea, 3200 College Ave. 420-0196.  

J-Soul at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Jon Steiner Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

The Ravines and Gery Tinelenberg at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

D Tox, The Few at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. 

The Hooks, Joel Streeter, Nine Pound Shadow at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Eskapo, Acts of Sedition, Deconditioned at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Dynamic, jazz-funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Bayonics, 40 Watt Hype, latin, fusion, soul, funk at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

The Moanin Dove, jungle jazz rock, at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Elvin Jones Birthday Salute with Delfeayo Marsalis, Dave Liebman, Nicholas Payton, Anthony Wonsey and Jason Marsalis at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 2 

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.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Educate to Liberate: A Retrospective of the Black Panther Community News Service” Exhibition in honor of the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, on diplay in the Oakland History Room at the Oakland Main Library, 125 14th St. 238-3222.  

FILM 

A Theater Near You “Blue Velvet” at 6:30 p.m. and “Notorious” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Art & Soul Oakland Festival Sat. - Mon. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Cost is $5, children under 12 free. www.ArtandSoulOakland.com 

Sam Bevin Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

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

Rachel Effron Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Transbrasil at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

Rebirth of the East Bay Music Scene at 8 p.m., at Historic Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $16.50. Ticketweb.com  

Hip Hop Competition at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Three Apparitions and Theo Hartman at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Tre Hardson, Tracey Amos, Space Monkey Gangsta’s at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. 

Macy Blackman Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Blind Lemon Phillips & the Lemon Squeezers at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Will Bernard Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Hellshock, Wartorn at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 3 

EXHIBITIONS  

“Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

FILM 

The Mechanical Age “Metropolis” at 3 p.m. and “Modern Times” at 6 p.m.at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Twang Cafe with Davis Morreales 2 Wheel Tour and Crooked Roads at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Mauro Correa’s Brazillian Soul at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 841-JAZZ.  

Game Bros at 10 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10-$15. 848-0886. 

Paul H. Taylor & The Montara Mountin Boys at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Americana Unplugged: The Blind Willies at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 4 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Marc Elihu Hofstadter and Eliot Schain at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Art & Soul Oakland Festival from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Cost is $5, children under 12 free.  

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 5 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Geographic Premonitions” Group show of fifteen emerging artists opens at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond. Exhibition runs through Nov. 11. 620-6772.  

FILM 

Alternative Visions: Recent Avanat-Garde Films at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Works In Progress” Women’s open mic at 7:30 p.m. at Montclair Women's Cultural Center, 1650 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Donation $5.  

Susan Alcorn talks about “Camino Chronicle: Walking to Santiago” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bert Lams, classical guitar and Tom Griesgraber, Chapman Stick at 7:30 p.m. at A Cheerfull Noyse, 1228 Solano Ave., Albany. Seating is limited. Please bring a folding chair. 524-0411. 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Mal Sharp at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Oscar Peterson at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $85-$100. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 6 

FILM 

2nd Annual International Small Film Festival to Sept. 10 at Berkeley Art Center Gallery, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Cost is $2-$10. 644-6893.  

Pirates and Piracy “The Sea Hawk” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Andrew Lam will discuss ”Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora” at 6:30 p.m. at Bookmark Bookstore, 721 Washington St. Space is limited, please RSVP to 531-3420. 

Robert Fuller will discuss “All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies and the Politics of Dignity” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, faculty recital performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Whiskey Brothers Old Time and Bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Sean Smith, Matt Baldwin, and Adam Snider, acoustic guitars, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Gerard Landry and the Lariats at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Danilo, Orquestra Universal at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 841-JAZZ. 

Chirgilchin, throat singers from Tuva, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Ten Ton Chicken, groove-rock, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lady Soul, Sonny, Mista Kista at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886.  

THURSDAY, SEPT. 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Chroma” works by artists of the Chroma Collective opens with a reception at 5 p.m. at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 1. 848-1228. 

Kala Art Institute Residency Projects Part Two Opening reception at 6 p.m. at 1060 Heinz Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 14. Gallery hours are Tues.-Fri. noon to 5:30 p.m., Sat. noon to 4:30 p.m. 549-2977. 

“Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

Works by Erin McGuiness, ceramicist. Reception at 6 p.m. at Earthworks Clay Co-op, 2547 8th St., at Dwight. 841-9810. 

“2 the Nines” Photography by Stephen Keller. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Lavezzo Designs Studio, 5751 Horton St., Emeryville. 428-2384. 

“Vibration” Sound photographs of Hiroshi Morimoto and the Japanese calligraphy of Sara Morimoto. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Transmissions Gallery, 1177 San Pablo Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 5. www.transmissions-gallery.com 

THEATER 

“Color Stuck” a one-man show by Donald E. Lacy, Jr. at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Benefit for LoveLife Foundation. Tickets are $50. 663-5683. 

FILM 

The Mechanical Age “The Mechanical Man” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free screening. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Riddle of Tabo: The Origin and Fate of a West Tibetan Manuscript Collection” A colloquium with Paul Harrison, Visiting Professor, Dept of Religious Studies, Stanford at 5 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Flr. 643-6492. 

Phyllis Stowell, poet at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Leonard Pitt shows slides and talks about “Walks Through Lost Paris” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

John Sumser will introduce his lastest book, “A Land Without Time: A Peace Corps Volunteer in Afghanistan,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Roots, blues, gospel, New Orleans jazz and soul at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Duamuxa & Ricardo Cuevas at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

David Berkeley, alt folk country, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Joe Beck & Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Mitch Landy at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Tom Huebner, Kitty Rose at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Buffalo Field Campaign Road Show with music by 7th Generation Rise at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. 

Glass Candy, The Chromatics, Death of a Party, dance rock, at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com

Pacific Film Archive is taking a look back at the mechanical age from the vantage point of the digital age, screening films that in one way or another exemplify cinematic obsessions with machines. The films range from the silent era—including works by Fritz Lang and comedians Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin—to more recent fare such as Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990) and David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996). 

The series ties in with the concurrent “Measure of Time” exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum. 

Lang’s Metropolis starts things off at 3 p.m. Sunday, followed by Chaplin’s Modern Times at 6 p.m. Both films as categorized by PFA as depictions of “machine anxiety.” 

Metropolis, one of the most influential of all science fiction films, is a dystopian nightmare in which the age of machines enables a repressive societal structure in which workers are forced underground to work as slaves, running the machinery that enables the ruling class to thrive above ground. The film is full of typical Langian imagery—stark, symmetric compositions, grand in size and scope—including the iconic moment when the protagonist is bound to a machine that resembles a large clock, trying to keep up with the never-ending task of matching the movement of the machine’s arms to a series of flashing lights. The purpose of the machine is never explained but used merely as an Expressionistic and symbolic device: Mankind enslaved to both time and its own machines. 

Later in the film the mad scientist Rotwang sends his robot down into the workers’ netherworld, disguised as their saintly leader Maria, with the intent of using the machine-woman to spark a revolt. Again, man’s demise is threatened by the specter of his own machines run amok.  

Pairing Metropolis with Chaplin’s Modern Times makes for an interesting double feature. Neither film represents the best work of its creator, but both feature iconic moments that have stood the test of time. One of the most memorable images of Chaplin’s career comes when his beleaguered assembly line worker, in a mad frenzy of widget-tightening glee, hurls himself onto a conveyor belt and gets caught in the machine’s giant gears, only to single-mindedly begin tightening their bolts.  

Other themes in the series include “Mechanical Men,” featuring Edward Scissorhands as well as more silent films such as The Mechanical Man (1921) and the work of animator/comedian Charely Bowers; “Soviet Social Mechanics,” featuring Sergie Eisenstein’s The General Line (1929), and Pandora’s Box, Episode One: The Engineer’s Plot (1992); and “Terminal Machines,” featuring Stanley Kubrick’s experimental masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Cronenberg’s Crash (1996), in which a married couple discovers the thrill of having sex while watching or participating in car accidents.  

Two more silent films turn the camera’s gaze back on itself under the category of “The Mechanics of Cinema.” Dziga Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is a dizzying work which attempts to grant the camera the agility of the human eye. In another inspired double feature, it will be preceded by Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1924), which is not only a brilliant and clever piece of filmmaking, with elaborately choreographed action and comedy sequences, but also a great piece of film criticism, employing innovative special effects techniques in a self-reflexive statement on the nature of film and filmgoing. It’s film-within-a-film structure, in which Buster, a projectionist, leaves the booth and walks onto the screen (a theme which later inspired Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo), sets up a series of masterly cinematic illusions which highlight the gaps in reality that come to light when three-dimensional action is relegated to the flat, two-dimensional surface of a movie screen.  

“The Mechanical Age” runs through Sunday, Oct. 22 at Pacific Film Archive’s theater at 2575 Bancroft Way. For a complete schedule, as well as information on the Berkeley Art Museum’s “Measure of Time” exhibit, see www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 

By Ken Bullock 

An ambitious young man from a ruined family of Russian gentry decides, in the decade after the freeing of the serfs in 1861, that the way to get on in the world is to milk the self-love of those in position, to listen to their inane chatter (everybody knows in Moscow people only talk, they don’t work), and not to speak his own sarcastic mind, just to commit his acid observations to his journal. 

Thus, Diary of a Scoundrel, the classic satire by Alexander Ostrovsky, now onstage at the Masquers Playhouse in Pt. Richmond. 

Aided and abetted by his widowed mother (Joyce Thrift) and their ex-serf manservant (Alex Shafer), Yegor (Ulysses Popple) launches his climb to the top, the first rungs being a government job and a socially advantageous betrothal. 

He begins by tricking the blustery Mamaev (John Hutchinson) into his squalid little apartment so the young man—a second cousin—can humbly ask his “uncle” for advice (with which the fatuous Mamaev’s overflowing) and insinuate himself into “uncle’s” professional life and contacts--as well as into the affections of lonely socialite “Auntie” Kleopatra (Adele Margrave). 

Posing as a pleasant young idiot (as everybody in Moscow knows that only the insipid and lazy are accorded respect), the scheming Yegor’s path upward seems almost too easy, as he finds himself ghostwriting speeches and articles for the doddering Kroutitsky (David J. Suhl) and the affable, opportunistic Gorodoulin (Mark Shepard), and supplants a hussar officer with an enormous shako (Paul J. White as another Yegor) in the affections of not so much the gushing, youthful Mashanka (Heather Morrison) as her superstitiously pious benefactress aunt Sofia with the wild past (Amy Landino), achieving his desirable engagement. 

But then again, there’s that diary with the caustic truth written in it floating around. 

The Masquers make hay with this surgical yet absurd satire, revving up a packed house into explosions of laughter as the Moscow hoi polloi go through the motions of their eccentric rituals, telling anybody who’ll listen (as well as talking to themselves) about their well-considered, off-the-wall “reasons” for their wildly askew way of life. 

Carlene Collier Coury and Marilyn Kamelgarn have co-directed a tight little show that makes use of a fine script and of the Masquers’ small, floor-level proscenium stage and apron/orchestra “pit” to spin out this droll tale of cupidity with an economy rare in community theater. 

They’ve been ably abetted by designers John Hull (set), Adam Fry (lights), Carol Wood (costumes) and Linda Bradshaw (properties--though a manilla envelope containing a suspiciously modern newspaper stands out strangely from the otherwise pleasant period feel of the show). 

The most successful feature is the portrayal of the grotesques that pass for characters. The younger folk are a little bland and flat, and 15-year-old Ulysees Popple, with a good look for the part, isn’t experienced enough vocally or in movement to more than pantomime and intone the mannerisms of a con-man who should syncopate his flagrant but deadpan trickery with peekaboo signs of malice. 

But the older folk he tricks are sharper in their turns and in the case of that fine actor John Hutchinson, delicious. His Mamaev textures the sound and the action with every feline movement and wide-eyed verbal absurdity. Joyce Thrift, Adele Margrave, Mark Shepard, and especially Amy Landino, add to this menagerie of caricatures, and Alex Shafer makes a nice routine of his other role, ostensibly a small one, of a disapproving butler announcing the constant arrival of conniving “holy” mendicants. 

Jo Lusk as an offbeat, drunken seeress, “free from the vanities of this world,” who stumbles in and out of the otherwise clockwork action, and C. Conrad Cady as genial blackmailer Golutvin, “a man without an occupation,” also deserve mention, adding their own flavor to this rich yet piquant borscht of a play. 

One only wishes they’d taken it a little farther. The director’s notes in the program mime surprise at a 19th century Russian comedy, but it all began with Gogol’s gargoyles and the early Dostoyevsky’s strange, funny creatures, who quickly found their way to the stage, culminating in the grotesque, often acrobatic “events” of Meyerhold in the 1920s. 

The complaint of many a Western audience, looking for the much-touted “realism” of Russian theater (and film) is a note of surprise, even shock, at the almost burlesque cartoonishness of the humor the actors bring to their characters. 

A bit more of this would’ve made for an even better ensemble feel to the Masquers’ show, more of a sense of culmination when each of the “wronged” blowhards explodes with outrage when the truth is put to them, and the cool con-man high-handedly dismisses them as hypocrites, himself the single honest man! 

But the Masquers have put together quite an evening of theater, with the true community spirit of contributions from all (a cast of 14 and staff and crew of more than a dozen), as so often, a very pleasant surprise from this little company that began in El Cerrito in 1955, and has been housed in Pt. Richmond for 45 years now, raving up an evening with a mock-serious cry of “Stupidity? That’s nonsense!” 

Diary of a Scoundrel runs through Sept. 30 at the Masquers Playhouse,105 Park Place, Richmond. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2:30 p.m. Tickets $15. For more information, call 232-4031.

Feeling at home in a new location requires time, effort and a little luck. Where to go for quality foods, reasonable eats and outdoor pursuits? To minimize time and effort and maximize pleasure, take the advice of every travel guide writer and look for the locals. Patrons eagerly waiting for doors to open, long lines and a mixed bag of clientele are sure signs that Berkeley’s favorites are poorly kept secrets. 

Berkeley Bowl has been serving its fans since 1977, moving from a former bowling alley to the major space it occupies today. While a full service grocery in every sense of the word, its produce and Asian departments are beyond compare. Choose among organic, pesticide-free and heirloom for stone fruits, cherries and tomatoes. Products abound for Japanese, Chinese and Thai specialties. Harris Ranch meats, Straus Family Creamery, bulk grains—all combine to present the highest quality at the lowest prices. 

For al-fresco marketing experiences you can’t beat Berkeley Farmers Market where strolling the aisles emulates travel through Northern California. Produce from Watsonville’s Happy Boy Farms and Yolo County’s River Dog Farm; Bennett Valley Breads from Santa Rosa and wood fired Morell’s Breads on the Marin Headlands; Cedar Creek Salmon, Highland Hills lamb, Tunitas Creek wildflower honey. Serenaded by music in blue-grass and Andean mode and surrounded by shoppers with bicycles, strollers, backpacks, wagons and wicker baskets attached to luggage carriers. The people watching value equals the quality of the goods. 

The Cheeseboard Collective will draw you like a magnet six days a week, offering specialties you can’t resist. Though only one pizza choice is offered daily—roasted bell-goat cheese, tomato-caper, zucchini-corn—Berkeleyans seem to love them all. The bakery selections are more varied, requiring serious decisions among scones, muffins, sweet rolls and breads. While baguettes, both seeded and plain, are baked daily, Cheese Curry Onion Bread only appears on Tuesday, Sesame Sunflower on Wednesday and Provolone Olive on Saturday. Their selection of cheeses, too numerous to count are sold daily, with samples offered before purchase.  

The need for good food that doesn’t need to be cooked occurs on a regular basis and choices are as numerous as Netflix offerings. Often described as ‘blue-collar comfort food’, Brennan’s Restaurant has been a Berkeley institution since 1959. Dark green walls, wood tables and a long central bar allow long escapes from everyday responsibilities. Sliding your tray past steam table pans of entire turkeys, hams, roast and corned beef, you can order sandwiches, dipped au jus, and plates, enjoying Thanksgiving dinner any day of the year. Soups are hardy, salads fresh, deserts are worthy of their calories and the servings are substantial. Come once for the food and return often for the Irish coffee and the laid-back ambience. 

Neither Tex-Mex, new-Mex nor fresh-Mex, Juan’s Place is family-style Mexican food at its best. A place where you’d expect to see a multi-generational family celebrating ‘feliz cumpleanos’. Though almost always full, the service is efficient and the plates are hot. Many would be happy to make a meal of the freshly made chips, both flour and corn, and the red and green salsa that appear on your table. Try to save room for plate-size burritos, chicken mole enchiladas, chile rellenos and guacamole tostadas. What you can’t finish will make a great lunch. 

To experience the great food and atmosphere of an Indian Bazaar, you can’t beat Viks Chaat Corner. Traditionally a roadside snack served on a leaf, Viks chaat offerings are so good you’ll want to lick your fingers. On weekdays full plate curry meals are offered for vegetarians and meat eaters accompanied by naan and lentil stew. Weekends give center stage to an enticing assortment of chaats—spiced lamb, puffed puris, lentil dumplings, crepes stuffed with potatoes, served with chutney or raita. Since the servings are hearty and the prices low, the two large rooms are usually full. At lunch time, don’t let the lines scare you away; the food and experience are worth the wait. 

Every Sunday the Thai Buddhist Temple puts on a party and everyone’s invited. Prepared by monks and donated by area restaurants, a Thai smorgasbord perfumes the air. Tables are fitted in wherever there’s room, between buildings, under a funky Plexiglas patio roof, around the parking lot. Patrons exchange dollars for tokens and feast on sweet mango rice, coconut milk fried pancakes, spicy green beans and tofu, green, red and yellow curries, pad thai, green papaya salad, fried chicken and more. Curry at 9am may dislodge your timing for the day, but the lines grow as the hours tick toward noon. 

When the need for activity beckons three locations stand out, with enough on board for a multitude of outings. One visit can’t do them justice. The UC Botanical Garden invites you to get lost in the world of plants, literally. With areas devoted to Australasia, Mexico, South America and Eastern North America, your senses can travel miles. Follow pathways to the Garden of Old Roses and look out at the bay, and then wander through monkey puzzle trees, gigantic bromeliads and wild fuchsias from Argentina and Chile. Walk downhill to the California natives bordering Strawberry Creek. Find a bench and contemplate the m’s: manzanita, mahonia, mountain mahogany and mesquite. Seasonal specials will call you back. 

Two expansive recreational facilities border Berkeley on the east and west. In the East Bay Hills lies Tilden Regional Park, encompassing over two thousand acres and endless miles of trails for hiking, horseback riding, bicycling and observing nature. Cool off or cast your line in the waters of Lake Anza; tour the Nature Study Area stopping at the Little Farm, the Environmental Education Center and Jewel Lake; enjoy a family cook-out at Lone Oak or Indian Camp; revisit childhood riding the Hershell Spillman merry-go-round; join the engineers on the miniature Steam Train. 

Hugging the coastline of San Francisco Bay is the Berkeley Marina, home to a cornucopia of water-related activities. At Shorebird Park you can tour the ‘green’ Straw Bale Nature Center, create fantasies at Adventure Playground or join the Cal Sailing Club. Out on the Public Fishing Pier, catch dinner or stroll the length savoring brisk winds and expansive views, wander paved paths admiring water craft, then pop into the Marina Deli for a hot dog. On the northern boundary run your dog and watch the kites soar at Cesar Chavez Park. 

Follow the locals and sample their favorites, make them your own. You may soon find yourself a repeat customer, at home in Berkeley. 

UC Botanical Garden has plants native to different areas of the world. Photograph by Marta Yamamoto. 

Berkeley Bowl 

2020 Oregon St., 843-6929. 

9 a.m.–8 p.m.Monday–Saturday; 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Sunday. 

Berkeley Farmers Market 

Saturdays: 10 a.m.–2 p.m., Center Street above Martin Luther King. 

Tuesdays: 1–7 p.m., Derby at Martin Luther King. 

Thursdays: 3–7 p.m., Shattuck at Rose. 

The Cheeseboard 

1512 Shattuck Ave., 549-3055.  

Open Monday through Saturday. 

Brennan’s Restaurant 

720 University Ave., 841-0960. 

11 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Sunday– 

Wednesday; 11 a.m.–10:30 p.m. Thursday–Saturday. 

Juan’s Place 

941 Carleton St., 845-6904. 

11 a.m.–10 p.m. Monday–Friday; 2–10 p.m. Saturday, Sunday.  

Viks Chaat Corner 

724 Allston Way, 644-4412. 

11 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday–Sunday. 

Thai Buddhist Temple 

1911 Russell St, 849-3419. 

Sunday brunch, 9 a.m.–2 p.m. 

UC Botanical Garden 

200 Centennial Drive, 643-2755. 

Open every day, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu. 

Tilden Regional Park 

Entrances off Wildcat Canyon Road and Grizzly Peak Blvd, 562-PARK. www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden.  

Berkeley Marina  

201 University Ave, 981-6740. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/marina.  

This is a good time of year to take a look at our furnaces. One reason is that that’s true is that servicing can lead to repairs (or, Oh No, replacement) and this can take your furnace off line for some days and it’s better to face such an eventuality when it’s sunny and warm than when you really need the heat. Also, the best service folks (HVAC or Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning technicians) are busy when the winter hits and everyone’s turned on their furnace for the first time only to discover something that’s gone awry. In fact, you’ll have your pick of the best HVAC folks if you get them at this time of year. 

But before we get to professional servicing, let’s see what you can do for yourself. I’ll start with common mid-efficiency forced air heating and then will devote just a little time to small gas heaters before we’re though. 

If you have central gas heat, which is what most of us, on the West Coast have for heat, you probably have a mid-efficiency furnace. This is large box, often found in the basement, garage or under the house. This unit usually has two metal doors on the front face and a set of visible burners somewhere near the middle of the unit. 

These units heat air which is fed to them through large ducts or tubes which are generally between 6 and 14 inches in diameter. One side usually has one very large duct which draws cooler air in from the house and the other end of the unit will have a trunk and branches that lead out to the various extremities of the house. The analogy of a circulatory system, like a bloodstream is apropos. 

If you have this sort of system, there are a number of things you can do yourself to help your forced air heating system to operate well. If you have the gumption to do so, I’d start by examining every part with the layman’s eye. Crawl or walk around so as to see every bit of the ducting that’s not buried in the walls. If a grill can be removed from the floor or wall with ease. Take it off and look inside. Check to make sure that the ducts or tubes aren’t loose from the fittings at either end. 

A good way to check is to turn the furnace on or run the fan-only setting. Some but not all furnaces are wired this way, although nearly all can be wired this way. A nice upgrade is to have your HVAC person upgrade the wiring to allow for the fan to be run without running the furnace. In this way, you’ll gain a secondary cooling and cleaning feature. 

The simple act of running air through the house provides some level of cooling, albeit minimal and the operation of the fan setting also carries air though your filter system, thus providing some cleaning of the air, and thereby the house. This is especially true for those who smoke or have animals. A really good filtration system, such as an electronic air cleaner can reduce the amount of cleaning you have to do inside, although this is not its intended function. 

When you run the fan or furnace, you’ll be inflating the system and it will be easier to see where air blows out of leaking ducts. Don’t be surprised if you crawl under your house and find a duct completely detached and heating the crawlspace (the mice really appreciate it! Be sure to look for the tiny beds and lawn furniture near the open duct). I see detached ducting and partially disconnected ducting all the time. 

Regulations now in force in our state now require most communities to repair any ducting with more than 15% leakage when any other servicing or work is being performed. It’s important that this be done by a professional since improper repairs can result in foreign substances being drawn into the living-space. Half of your furnace system is a vacuum cleaner and half is a blower. 

The vacuum cleaner half may have one or two large ducts running through the crawlspace (most do) and if detached or damaged in this space, can draw damp air, mold, fungus or other wondrous elements into the house. 

This can be happening now if the ducts are damaged, so it’s best to have a professional check for leaks. Nonetheless, many openings can be easily identified by an intrepid explorer with a bright flashlight and guts to examine all side of each duct.  

Next, look inside the registers or grills in the floors or walls or ceilings (most are in floors around here). Many grills simply slip out of the “boot” but some older ones have two or four screws. This is well worth the effort for the small change alone. Maybe you’ll find that missing earring or 53 cents. You will almost certainly find dirt and debris and this is your chance to vacuum out what you can readily see. 

The cold air intake (that’s the big one usually found somewhere near the middle of the house, often in a hallway or dining room floor) is often the main place that you’ll strike it big. You’ll find toys, Monopoly houses, more change and lots of dirt, dog hair and other splendid fortunes. Cleaning this out will help your air supply and the life of the furnace. 

Next it’s time to remove the doors to the furnace and vacuum there. Be careful with the vacuum in all these places, ducts are often quite fragile and it’s not too hard to rip through them with a bare vacuum wand. Don’t be too surprised if you find dead critters in the blower compartment of the furnace. If you note signs of corrosion in the furnace, it’s a very good idea to get it cleaned and examined. 

Make sure the blower (usually a squirrel-cage type fan) moves freely, be sure it’s turned off before you meddle. Older units have bushings along the axle that can be oiled (and should) but most modern ones do not. 

Some furnaces have anti-nitrous oxide rods that are mounted just above the burner (these burners are easily identified when the unit is running because the flames come right out of them just as in your gas oven) and these are often bent or burned through. If you see these pencil sized rods falling down on the burners or burned through, definitely call it to the attention of your HVAC guy or gal. 

Take a look at the flue which comes off your furnace (that’s the very hot pipe that comes off the furnace and heads toward the roof or chimney (usually about 4” in diameter) and make sure that nothing flammable is resting on or very near it. Double wall flues are better in this respect and are usually identified by a mark stamped upon them. They’re called B vents and look fatter than a single tube of metal that was more common 40 years ago. 

The last item we’ll tackle on the FAU (forced air unit) is the filter. If you have a common 1” disposable filter, change it now and often. 

These should be changed at least twice a year, although the cleanliness of the house atmosphere can make this vary quite a lot. A large dog may necessitate replacement 3 or 4 times a year. Filters are cheap and good ones are a bargain. I recommend the school of pleated filters that are usually electrostatically charged. Filtrete is one brand but many hardware stores carry a store brand for much less. 

The $8 filter is will worth it when you consider your lungs. These filters can capture very tiny harbingers of disease including mold spores, virus and pollen. They’re not perfect but they’re a big step above the common $2 filter. If you have a fiberglass mesh “reusable” filter, I’d suggest tossing it. They catch dust bunnies but not too much more. 

If you’re really interested in your health or have a household member who has allergies, consider installing a higher quality filter such as a media filter system (mid-priced upgrade), an electronic air-cleaner (higher priced upgrade-about $800) or a combination system. Some even have negative ion generator built into them designed to precipitate solid matter out of the indoor air. 

No matter what kind of gas heater you have, it’s a darned good idea to have an annual professional examination of the unit. It’s usually less than $200 and well worth it. 

As promised, here are a couple of words on gas wall and floor furnaces. While I’ve written more extensively on this in the past and won’t get deeply into these lower duty heater, I will say that cleaning of the accessible parts of any of these is wise and can reduce burned dander and other particulate in your home. 

If you have a furnace that doesn’t have a thermostat consider an upgrade. A furnace that can be left on full bore with no control related to temperature is unnecessarily dangerous and an upgrade isn’t ridiculously expensive (It’s just expensive). 

Make sure that nothing flammable is kept on or near the wall or floor furnace. I was once inspecting a rental unit with a small wall furnace mounted low on the wall. This was a direct-vent model and, while these are generally safer than most, the tenant had, in all her glorious hippyhood, chosen to burn lots of candles on top of this unit and the inside was coated with paraffin. 

We also had the de rigueur madras just above on the wall and various gods and goddesses arrayed beside said candles. As Harrod Blank’s license plate says “OMYGAWD.” Even Ganesha can’t help everyone. 

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

Flowers are the most obvious way to scent a garden, but they have lots of company. Fragrance in other plant parts is generally a side effect of strategies for things other than reproduction: water conservation, pest protection, even fire resistance.  

Some trees have so much native scent that a single specimen can evoke whole forests. There’s an incense cedar in a yard a few blocks from me that throws me mentally into the deep dark woods every time I walk past. 

California native bay laurel has a musky intriguing scent that works best in the fallen, dried leaves. One of either in a backyard is all it takes to evoke a forest, which is fortunate because that’s all the average yard has room for.  

Large trees’ odors can work against us, of course. Blue gum eucalyptus are camphorish enough most of the time, but they have a distinct aura of cat urine when they bask in the sun.  

Coleonema, “breath-of-heaven” and myrtle—Myrtis communis, the bush, not the groundcover—are shrubs whose leaves reward you with a spicy odor a bit like carnations’ when you rub them. I don’t know why anyone bothers to plant boxwood when these are available. 

Some of our native sages, especially Salvia clevelandii, emit marvelous scent when touched and have good hummingbird flowers too. Sniff before you buy; species and varieties have different scents, and, like cilantro, they can be a matter of individual taste. 

I planted scented geraniums along the narrow part of our driveway. Every time I back out I perfume the truck and I can tell by nose if I’ve steered badly. They’re tough plants, handsome, with varied textures and nice small flowers. And they come in so many scents that there must be something for everyone.  

For scent underfoot, intersperse steppingstones or pavers with groundcovers like the prostrate thymes. They come in flavors labeled as (and somewhat resembling) caraway, lemon, and lime as well as in different leaf colors with variations on the culinary thyme we’re used to. 

They can be used in cooking too, of course. If you have a wetter spot, try prostrate chamomile or Corsican mint.  

Fresh redwood-chip mulch is a most Proustian scent. It sends me right back to my days of gardening for a living, of changing some bit of California landscape by myself, by hand, and finishing the job by spreading mulch like baby-bunting and tucking the new plants in. 

Depending on where you grew up, you might get that same rush from tanbark, pine, even eucalyptus chips—from that last you’ll get a good sinus-clearing too.  

Since I grew up ten miles from Hershey, Pennsylvania there’s another memory-lane mulch for me: cocoa-bean hulls. 

They’re natural, available here too, add fertility, and smell like the hometown of the Hershey Bar. (Yes it does. And yes it has streetlamps shaped like Hershey’s Kisses, alternately silver-“wrapped” and brown. The silver ones have metal weathervane tags.) 

I mulched my mint bed with them once. I’ve since heard they’re toxic to dogs, so confine them to Spot-free spots.  

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in East Bay Home & Real Estate. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 1 

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 

“Engaging a New Generation of Activists” An Anti-Poverty Teach-in and Strategy Forum with speakers, Frank Chong, Van Jones, Sharon Cornu, Hallie Montoya and others, at 6 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Free, but RSVP requested, fightpoverty@youthlaw.org 

Circle Dancing Simple folkdancing, beginners welcome, no partners needed, at 8 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. at University Ave. 528-4253. Donation $5. www.circledancing.com 

“Architects at Play” An opportunity for children to build free-form structures at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $5-$6. 647-1111. 

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

SATURDAY, SEPT. 2 

Art & Soul Oakland Festival from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Mon. at the Frank Ogawa Plaza and City Center. Cost is $5. www.artandsouloakland.com 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

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.  

Spiritwalking: Aqua Chi(TM) at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Also Wed. at 3:30 p.m. Cost is $5.50, $3.50 seniors & disabled. Bring your own towels. 526-0312. 

Yoga for Peace at 9:30 a.m. at Ohlone Park, MLK at Hearst. Bring a yoga mat, warm blanket, and peace sign.  

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

Urban Releaf Tree Tour of Oakland and workshops in urban forestry that teach tree planting, maintenance, GIS/GPS systems, and community advocacy. For information call 601-9062. www.urbanreleaf.org 

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. www.nativeplants.org 

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

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 3 

Gala Convergence of Storytellers from 1 to 4 p.m. at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Jack London Square, 98 Broadway, Oakland. 238-8585. 

East Bay Atheists shows the video,"The Root of All Evil," Part 1, by Richard Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist, at 1:30 p.m. Berkeley's Main Library, 2090 Kittredge Street, 3rd floor. 222-7580. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring change of clothes, windbreaker, sneakers. For ages 5 and up. cal-sailing.org  

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 

Balinese Dance Class with Tjokorda Istri Putra Padmini at 11 a.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 237-6849. 

Kickabout at Codornices Park Soccer for all, skill and talent not required. For more information contact cambour@hotmail.com  

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “Ancient Wisdom; Modern Application” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, SEPT. 4 

Art & Soul Oakland Festival Sat. - Mon. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Cost is $5, children under 12 free. www.ArtandSoulOakland.com 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 5 

“The Politics of Bones: Dr. Owens Wiwa and the Struggle for Nigeria’s Oil” with J. Tompthy Hunt, Michael Watts, and Anna Zalik at 4 p.m. at 150 University Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Center for African Studies and the Center for Human Rights. 642-0721. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

“Taste of Judaism: Are you Curious?” Explore Jewish spirituality, ethics and community, open to all. Tues. evenings, Sept. 5, 12, 19, in Berkeley. Free but registration required. 839-2900 ext 347. 

Torture Teach-in and Vigil every Tues. at 12:30 p.m. at the fountain on UC Campus, Bancroft at College. 

Discussion Salon on Humor at 7 p.m. at 1414 Walnut.  

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 6  

Strawberry Creek Greenway Proposal Community discussion on daylighting the creek at the abandonned West Campus Schoolyard, at 6:30 p.m. in the Green Room, City Corporation Yard, 1326 Allston Way. For information call Carole Schemmerling 512 4005. carole 

schem@hotmail.com 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

“The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror” A documentary at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 393-5685. 

Density Bonus Workshop with the Planning Commission, Housing Advisory Commission, Zoning Adjustments Board at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 SIxth St. at Hearst. 981-7490. 

“Homegrown Tomatoes Are Great, Unless They Are Toxic,” with Christopher Harkness of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency at 1 p.m. in Room 315A, Wurster Hall, UC Campus.  

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation at 10 a.m. at the Oakland headquarters. Various East Bay opportunities available. Advanced sign-up is required please call 594-5165.  

East Bay Food Not Bombs Volunteer Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 644-4187. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

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, SEPT. 7 

Buffalo Field Campaign Road Show discussion the plight of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo, with music by 7th Generation Rise at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220. 

9/11 Press for Truth A documentary and Q & A with Co-Executive Producer, Ken Ellis, at 7 and 9 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10. Proceeds benefit Cooperative Research and Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance. 

Full Moon Walk at John Miur National Historic Site See nocturnal animal and plant life and walk the same trail John Muir walked with his daughters. For reservations and details of meeting time and locations, call 925-228-8860. 

Street Fair and Farmer’s Market at Fruitvale Village, Fruitvale BART, Oakland, from 5 to 8 p.m. with live music, melon and jicama tastings, and activities for children.  

Poetry Workshop with Donna Davis from 9 to 11:30 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Offered by the Berkeley Adult School. 644-6130. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club at 6:45 p.m. at Spud's Pizza, 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed. Sept. 6, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Berkeley Unified School Board meets Wed. Sept. 6, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Tasha Tervelon, 981-5190.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs. Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 7, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. Harvey Turek, 981-5213.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406.  

ONGOING 

Each One Teach One Mentoring Program of the Oakland Unified School District is curbing student absenteeism, decreasing suspensions and increasing student participation with the help of volunteer mentors like you. For more information call 495-4010, 495-4011.  

Berkeley Adult School Register for programs in High School Diploma, GED Preparation, Citizenship and ESL classes, Mon.-Thurs. 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., Fri. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 1701 San Pablo Ave. 644-6130. http://bas.berkeley.net