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A nearly century-old black acacia tree in Live Oak Park, for years home to a family of Cooper’s hawks, was chopped down Saturday. Photograph by David Gelles.
A nearly century-old black acacia tree in Live Oak Park, for years home to a family of Cooper’s hawks, was chopped down Saturday. Photograph by David Gelles.
 

News

Hawk Habitat Destroyed

By David Gelles, Special to the Planet
Tuesday September 12, 2006

A black acacia tree in Live Oak Park, nearly 100 years old and for years home to a family of Cooper’s hawks, was removed Saturday as neighbors looked on. 

“Park users liked to come watch the hawks,” said William Clark, who has lived across the street from the tree for 20 years, and watched as it came down. “It was a real attraction.” 

The 80-foot-tall tree shaded the northwest corner of the park, its branches extending over Shattuck Avenue. The tree had been dead for more than a year, and scheduled for removal since the spring. 

“We were concerned about it structurally,” said Jerry Koch, senior forestry supervisor for the City of Berkeley, who estimated the tree’s age. “It had a lot of internal decay.”  

But city officials postponed removing it to allow the Cooper’s hawks time to nest in the tree one last time. When the fledglings left in August, the city scheduled Saturday’s work. 

Allen Fish, director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, had monitored the hawks for three seasons, but said residents reported seeing the birds there for as many as ten years. Clark said the birds had nested there for at least seven years.  

“Neighbors often know more than biologists,” said Fish. 

Cooper’s hawks, which are common in the area and native only to North America, typically do not return to the same tree to nest. “They’ll often build a nest in the same territory, but not in the same tree,” said Fish. “It’s a mystery why they kept coming back to this tree.” 

But according to Fish, the acacia was an ideal habitat. “If I were gardening for Cooper’s hawks in Berkeley,” he said, “I would create a place that looks a lot like Live Oak Park.”  

Berkeley has the highest density of Cooper’s hawks ever recorded, said Fish. Cooper’s hawks also nest in oaks, elms, sequoias and redwoods, all of which are found nearby. 

On Saturday, a crew of three from West Coast Arborists spent most of the day removing the tree. From the basket of a boom-truck, one worker sawed away the limbs and secured them in the grip of a 25-ton crane, which lowered them to the street. There, a chipper truck ground the tree down to sawdust. 

During the removal, part of one lane of traffic was blocked on Shattuck Avenue between Eunice and Berryman. Zach Campbell, the crane operator, said the job proceeded without incident. 

Workers recovered the hawks’ nest, a tangle of small twigs and grasses. It will go to the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory for use in an educational display. 

“When we talk about urban trees, it’s a continual process,” said Koch. “We remove dead trees all the time, and plant at least as many every year.” 

But the city doesn’t plant acacias, which are among the most problematic urban trees, said Koch. Their shallow root structure, he said, makes them prone to collapse.  

A few years ago, Clark said he watched as another acacia in the park fell into Shattuck Avenue, crushing two cars. “Since this one’s dead,” he said, “It’s a good thing they’re taking it out.”  

Live Oak Park covers five and a half acres of north Berkeley between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street. Cordonices Creek runs through the park, and large stands of evergreens surround a grassy field. The tallest tree in the park, according to Koch, is a multi-trunk cypress nearby the removed acacia. 

Fish said he expects the hawks to return to the area between January and March. “I believe we’ll see next year’s Cooper’s hawks somewhere near Codornices Creek,” he said. 

Clark also expressed hope that the hawks will return. “They could nest in the deodara cedar behind my house,” he said. 

 


Oak to Ninth Opponents Plan Legal Challenge To Petition Denial

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday September 12, 2006

A member of the Oakland coalition that sought a citizen referendum on the controversial Oak to Ninth project says that the group “is, of course, planning a legal challenge” to an Oakland city attorney’s ruling throwing out referendum petitions. 

Oakland preservationist Joyce Roy, who represents the executive committee of the Northern Alameda County Group of the Sierra Club on the Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee, said details of the legal challenge will be released in the near future. 

Roy is a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit already challenging the proposed development under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). In addition, a second, related lawsuit has been filed by the Oakland Heritage Alliance in an attempt to save the Ninth Avenue Terminal Building which would be all but destroyed in the proposed Oak to Ninth development. 

Oakland City Council approved an agreement last June and July with developer Oakland Harbor Partners for a 3,100-residential unit, 200,000-square-foot commercial space development on the 64-acre parcel of land on Oakland’s estuary south of Jack London Square. 

Last month, Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee members submitted more than 25,000 signatures on petitions calling for a referendum on the development proposal. 

Last week, however, Oakland City Attorney John Russo threw out the petitions, saying, in part, that the development agreement that petition signers were asked to approve or disapprove was not the final agreement voted on by City Council. 

“The California Elections Code requires that the referendum contain the ‘text of the ordinance … that is the subject of the referendum,’” Russo wrote in his denial letter. “A cursory review of the Oak to Ninth petition reveals that the wrong draft of the ordinance was attached. Petition supporters attached an outdated version of the ordinance.” 

Russo added that “the error [of the petition] is underscored by the nature of some of the information not included with the petition,” including two maps attached to the final ordinance that showed the amount of public access to the open space in the project. 

“Without these maps,” Russo wrote, “a prospective signer who was interested in the actual amount of public access in the plan area would have had great difficulty in making a fully informed decision on whether to sign the petition.” 

Russo’s ruling came in response to Harbor Partners’ appeal of the petitions. 

The problem, according to Roy, is that the copy of the ordinance included with the petitions was given to the referendum committee by the Oakland City Clerk’s office as the official version of the ordinance. 

“By law, someone challenging a city ordinance only has 30 days to submit a petition once the ordinance is passed,” Roy said. “We went to the City Clerk’s office the day after the final vote [on July 18] to get a copy of the ordinance, but the clerk told us that all of the amendments had not yet been put into the final version.” 

Roy said that after referendum committee member James Vann went to the city clerk’s office on Friday, July 21, “the clerk downloaded the ordinance from her computer, and that’s what was used in the petitions.” 

The Oakland City Clerk’s office could not be contacted by press time to verify this account. The final version of the document was still not readily visible on the city’s website as of Monday. 

The front page of the official City of Oakland website has an “Oak to Ninth” link that connects to a page operated by the Planning and Zoning Division of the Oakland Department of Community and Economic Development. The page contains dates of various city actions on the project, along with links to related documents, concluding on June 20, under the heading of the City Council/Redevelopment Agency. The 118-page development agreement between the city and Harbor Partners linked to this page is still listed as “City Council Draft of 6/8/06.” No final draft is yet available on the Internet. 

 

 


Safety, Housing at Center of District 7 City Council Race

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday September 12, 2006

Both Telegraph Avenue area candidates, incumbent Kriss Worthington and challenger George Beier, wrap themselves in the “progressive” mantle, but the two are distinguished by their support within the community and by their approaches to issues affecting students, particularly public safety and housing. 

While 11-year District 7 incumbent Worthington puts public safety on a par with housing and student representation, Beier, president of the Willard Neighborhood Association and a waterfront commissioner, says housing and representation are important, but public safety takes precedence. 

Students comprise about 50 percent of registered voters in District 7, according to both candidates, although they tend to vote less than others in the district. 

 

Public safety 

The Telegraph Avenue area’s high rate of property crime compared to the rest of the city and the impact of crime on student life and on the commercial strip, whose revenue at $98 million has declined over the last decade, thrusts the question of public safety into the election spotlight. 

Both incumbent and challenger say additional services for homeless people, more lighting and more policing are key. 

Beier focuses on changes in People’s Park he says is a haven for drug dealers and users. “They’ve found 1,000 needles in People’s Park in the last eight months,” he said. 

A member of UC Berkeley’s People’s Park Advisory Board—the university owns the park—Beier chairs its Usage Committee and points to his success in getting the university to put $100,000 into a redesign study for the park.  

Consultants will determine the redesign. Beier said he hopes it will include more open space, as in Willard Park, and putting a café at one end of the site. 

“The key is usage,” Beier says. “We need people in and out.” 

In an earlier interview, Beier advocated installing cameras in the park to catch drug dealers, but has had second thoughts. “That remains to be seen,” he said. 

Worthington’s platform has called not only for more police—reinstatement of those lost to budget cuts—but for better, more targeted policing.  

“I led the fight against taking the police and social workers off of Telegraph Avenue” when there were budget cuts a few years ago, Worthington said. He also led the charge to put the police and mental health services back on the avenue, for which he got full cooperation from the council after the closing of Cody’s Books pointed up the need. 

Worthington is also calling for better use of police. They should prioritize arrests, he said. People found with small amounts of marijuana should be left to themselves, but those dealing hard drugs should be prosecuted.  

“There’s a fine line, a balancing act—how do you stop the hard drug dealing, without cracking down on every single student who ever tried a joint?” he asked. 

Pedestrian lighting is part of the package of Telegraph Avenue improvements passed by the council in the spring—not more street lighting, Worthington explained, but lighting that illuminates sidewalks. Beier is also calling for more lighting, but it should be on side streets as well as Telegraph, he says. While Worthington says that is a good idea, he says the expense makes it prohibitive. 

Worthington would like to initiate a 24-hour-a-day pager service for the use of students, businesses and residents with problems. The person on duty who responds to the page would decide whether a social worker, a police officer or someone from public works was needed. The city should fund the service, Worthington said. 

“The business district has nearly $98 million in sales per year. Can’t we afford the cost of a pager and a person?” Worthington asked. He said he won’t introduce the plan to council until he has a sense that his colleagues will pass it. 

Beier is calling for additional emergency call boxes near campus. 

Student housing 

Worthington says his record shows strong advocacy for student housing—working both for more units and for better quality.  

After a fire in which a student died, Worthington went to the city Housing Advisory Commission with students and got a rental housing safety inspection program created, a coordinated effort between the city of Berkeley’s planning and housing departments, he said. 

And in 2000, Worthington says he wrote letters, rallied with students, and even camped out as part of student protests pressuring the university to build 900 new units of housing. 

Beier also says habitability is high on his list of priorities. In his role as Willard Park Association president, he’s called for CAL Housing (ASUC City Affairs Lobby and Housing Commission) to fund a website where students can “rate the landlord.” Does he empty the dumpster? Does he have a manager on site? Has he tried to evict a tenant without good cause? 

“Hopefully we’ll get that done in the spring,” he said. 

Worthington points up his housing credentials with his support for pro-tenant slates for the Rent Stabilization Board as opposed to landlord-backed slates. He says contributions to Beier’s campaign show that he’s supported by landlords, citing Beier contributors Ed Munger, who Worthington said fought to wipe out commercial rent control, and Michael Wilson, president of the landlord group Berkeley Property Owners Association. 

Beier would also like to see more housing for long-term residents on Telegraph itself, with quality apartments or “workforce” condominiums, especially for people in careers such as teaching who could not otherwise afford to own their home.  

“We need more eyes on Telegraph,” he said.


Governor Signs Bill Establishing Fines for Stealing Free Newspapers

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday September 12, 2006

Just because you don’t plunk down 50 cents for your Daily Planet or your Daily Cal, that doesn’t mean free newspapers are without value. That’s the basis of AB 2612, authored by George Plescia (R-San Diego) and signed by the governor. 

If you pick up more than 25 copies of a free newspaper, you’ll face a $250 fine; and you could get a $500 fine on the second offense and 10 days in jail. 

The bill, sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association, primarily targets thieves who pick up the newspapers to sell for recycling, according to Morgan Crinklaw, spokesperson for Plescia.  

But it also has First Amendment implications, Crinklaw said. 

In Berkeley, four years ago, Mayor Tom Bates, then a candidate for mayor, trashed some 1,000 copies of the Nov. 4 Daily Cal because he was unhappy with the paper’s editorial position supporting rival then-mayor Shirley Dean. 

The City of Berkeley passed a similar local ordinance after the incident. 

“I’m very happy to see it pass,” Bates told the Daily Planet on Monday. “It was an irrational action on my part—the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” 

San Francisco also has a comparable ordinance, passed in 1992 after Police Chief Richard Hongisto was accused of ordering the theft of 2,000 San Francisco Bay Times newspapers. Hongisto was fired after the incident. 

The bill was necessary because “law enforcement did not have the tools to prosecute offenders,” Crinklaw said. 

 


Oakland School Property Sale Negotiations Extended

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday September 12, 2006

Negotiations over the sale of 8.25 acres of Lake Merritt area Oakland Unified School District property will be extended for another 90 days, according to a representative of the East Coast developers involved in the negotiations. 

TerraMark principal Reggie Livingston said in a telephone interview today that the TerraMark/UrbanAmerica partnership and the office of California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell “have agreed to at least a 90-day extension” in the negotiations, pushing the deadline to mid-December. 

Under the original Letter of Intent between the developers and O’Connell, TerraMark/UrbanAmerica’s exclusive negotiating rights to purchase the property would have expired on or around Sept. 15. 

Livingston stressed the “at least” portion of the agreement, and said that negotiations could conceivably extend beyond the mid-December date. 

State Superintendent O’Connell’s public information officer said this week that “we are reviewing the developer’s request for a 90-day extension of the contract negotiations. We don’t have any firm objections to an extension. But we have not yet reached a final agreement on the timetable.” 

Word of the negotiation extension first appeared late last week on the Oakland/Berkeley NovoMetro blog. 

Last week, elected members of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Trustees—an advisory body only since the 2003 state takeover of OUSD—rejected a resolution by Trustee Kerry Hamill calling for a 60-day extension of the negotiations, with trustee Dan Siegel saying, “I don’t think we need further time to say no to this project.” 

Trustee Greg Hodge, who voted with Hamill for the extension, said, “I don’t think it hurts us to get 60 more days to get more information.” However, Hodge later sided with five other trustees to support trustee Noel Gallo’s motion to put an education/administration center on the property site instead of selling it to the developers.  

At the same meeting in which trustees took that vote, Interim OUSD State Administrator Kimberly Statham announced that she was recommending a 60-day extension. 

At least one other trustee indicated at last week’s meeting that at least as far as trustees had a voice, the development proposal should not be a done deal. 

“The deal that has been presented to us is not a good deal,” trustee Alice Spearman said. “But I’m not opposed to selling off a part of the land. I’m willing to listen.” While voting against the 60-day delay herself, Spearman said that she “was encouraging Statham to seek a 60-day extension and see what comes up.” 

Meanwhile, with incoming Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums not scheduled to return to the city until mid-October, there is no word yet whether he will join the chorus of Oakland officials opposing the proposed sale. 

Last July, OUSD trustee Greg Hodge told a Metropolitan Greater Oakland Democratic Club forum that he had talked with the incoming mayor, and that Dellums “told me that he will fully support whatever position on the sale is taken by the elected school board.” 

When it was announced by Henry Hitz of the Ad Hoc Committee to Restore Local Control/Governance to Oakland Schools at last week’s school board meeting that a press conference on the proposed sale would be held the next day at Oakland City Hall “to include elected representatives,” it was widely speculated that Dellums would release his anticipated public statement at that time. 

However, the ad hoc committee canceled the Thursday press conference, saying only that the cancellation was “due to some errors in communication within our ad hoc coalition.” 

In addition to six of the seven members of the OUSD trustee board supporting an education center on the property instead of high-rise residential development, all eight members of the Oakland City Council have called for a halt to the property negotiations. 

TerraMark/UrbanAmerica is proposing putting five high-rise luxury condominiums on the OUSD site, which currently houses the OUSD Paul Robeson Administration Building, one elementary school, two specialty high schools, and two early childhood learning centers. The developers originally proposed purchasing the entire property, with the administration building and schools to be relocated to other sites. 

After widespread complaints from parents and staff from the five education institutions on the site, TerraMark/UrbanAmerica modified their proposal to include two of the schools—La Escuelita Elementary and MetWest High School—on a one-acre site on the property.  


Pacific Steel Emission Reports Turned Over to Air District

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday September 12, 2006

Pacific Steel Casting handed over their emissions inventory report to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District early last week, according to PSC spokesperson Elizabeth Jewell. 

The recently released emissions inventory report contains raw data from in and around Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) which is being reviewed by the air district, she said. The report was prepared by environmental scientists on behalf of Pacific Steel. 

“Pacific Steel is very pleased that the report has gone to the air district and has complete faith in its findings,” said Jewell, a partner of Aroner, Jewell and Ellis. 

The report however is not complete, according to officials at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Data for June and July was not provided as required by the district. 

PSC was sued by the air district on Aug. 14 for “failure to meet statutory deadlines for reporting air emissions, and for violating the schedule contained in a recent settlement agreement designed to resolve an ongoing series of air quality complaints.”  

“PSC has submitted their test reports to the air district for review and approval,” confirmed Brian Bateman, director of the engineering division of the air district. “The emissions inventory report is however missing source testing reports for June and July which need to be there for the test reports to be complete.” 

Bateman said that when the district receives the complete emission report from Pacific Steel it will make it available to the public. 

“We will also be running a parallel review ourselves,” he said. “Only after the complete emissions inventory report has been finalized will the heath risk assessment report be prepared.” 

Bateman added that PSC was in the process of putting together the remaining source testing reports which would be submitted soon. Pacific Steel will be getting together with the air district today (Tuesday) to discuss the report and other relevant matters. 

The report measures toxic substances that leave the factory unfiltered. 

“These are the actual raw toxic materials. Some of the materials that were found were Chromium 6, Antimony, Lead, and Cadmium,” Jewell said, adding that the amounts shown for each are infinitely small. 

“The amounts of the toxic substances that were found present do not violate the limits established in PSC’s permit to operate which was granted to them by the air district,” she said. “In reality, if you are driving a car you are emitting the same amount of these toxic substances.” 

Jewell said that it was difficult to draw any conclusions about the possible health effects with the current raw data. 

“It is important to consider PSC’s immediate environment,” Jewell said. “It has a refuse center, Berkeley Asphalt, railroad traffic and eight lanes of very congested freeway traffic with diesel exhaust. All in all PSC is located in a densely industrial area.” 

Pacific Steel has agreed to come back to the City of Berkeley for independent review. The city has hired the private firm TetraTech to review the emissions inventory report. 

Jewell also lauded the progress report on the Carbon Absorption Unit which would be constructed on PSC’s Plant 3. 

“The Carbon Absorption Unit will significantly reduce odor,” she said. “We have received the building permit for this from the City of Berkeley and will be starting to build as soon as possible. We are hoping to complete it within 30 days.” 

The lawsuit filed by BAAQMD against Pacific Steel alleges that PSC violated the settlement agreement by not building the Carbon Absorption Unit in time. Jewell said that the delay in building was due to the city withholding the building permit for more time than had been expected by PSC. 

“When we first came up with the idea of the carbon absorption unit, we were not even aware that we were required to have a building permit for it. So we were not expecting any delays,” she said. 

Jewell added that PSC would be responding to the lawsuit within the 30-day time period it had to do so.  

The hearing for the Communities for Better Environment lawsuit against PSC will come up on Sept. 20 in San Francisco federal court. The lawsuit alleges that PSC violated the air district’s permit with respect to the amount of emissions from the steel foundry in Berkeley. 

“We are looking for a denial from the judge on the basis of the findings in the Emissions Inventory Report which clearly show that the emissions are well within the allowed limits,” Jewell said.


To Live and Let Live in South Los Angeles

By Rene P. Ciria-Cruz, New American Media
Tuesday September 12, 2006

“Day to day we all get along,” assures community leader Arturo Ybarra, unintentionally alluding to Rodney King’s famous post-riot plea, “Can we all get along?” 

Ybarra, a gentle, dark-complexioned man in his early 60s, is president of the Watts/Century Latino Organization (WCLO), the most visible Latino association in Watts.  

He has lived in his neighborhood since 1969 and seen changes that have unnerved the thousands of black residents who have moved out to the calmer suburbs.  

If Ybarra can’t help sounding slightly apprehensive it’s because the bitter national quarrel over immigration has struck a discordant note in Latino and African American relations, and he lives in a neighborhood shared, sometimes warily, by both communities.  

“There are problems,” Ybarra admits, “but we’re not always at each other’s throats like the general impression.” 

Columnists and radio and television commentators have grimly warned of impending conflicts between the two communities, ever since U.S. Census data declared Latinos to be the nation’s new largest minority. Forty million Latinos now make up 14.5 percent of the population. African Americans make up 12.8 percent. 

With the fierce debate on immigration being framed as what to do with the 12 million mostly Latino undocumented immigrants and how to control the flow of newcomers, black-brown friction has become an undercurrent in the national debate. Pundits both black and white charge that the huge pro-immigration marches last spring were preempting blacks’ struggle for equality and social justice. 

South Los Angeles, formerly known as South Central, has been an obvious locus for news reports that mine current black-brown relations for cautionary themes.  

Last July, a triple killing shook a South L.A. neighborhood when two gunmen described as blacks shot three Latinos, including a 10-year-old boy, on a sidewalk.  

A month later, four members of a Latino gang in northeast L.A. were convicted of federal hate crimes for a spree of racial assaults and killings, from 1995 to 2001, aimed at pushing blacks out of a predominantly Latino neighborhood. This marked the first conviction of a Latino gang under hate crime laws usually employed against white supremacist groups like the Klu Klux Klan.  

These narratives of urban distress, however, often underestimate the voices and experiences of people like Ybarra, who has stayed put in his Watts neighborhood, reconciled with both the frictions and promises that rapid demographic change brings.  

There are many like him, African American and Latino community leaders in South L.A. and all over the country, who insist that ethnic harmony is possible.  

But are these organizers strong enough to serve as shock absorbers and bridges of communication while group interests bump up against each other?  

A look at their experience shows how old-fashioned community organizing can be an antidote to communal conflict in places that have been suddenly altered by immigration, like South Los Angeles. Nationwide, the work and influence of such largely self-designated community stewards will be crucial in bolstering Americans’ ability to get along. 

 

Microcosm of urban America 

South Los Angeles, a 22-square-mile district of Los Angeles, is urban America writ small.  

What happens here won’t stay here, especially as the country—from coast to coast, from North Carolina to Illinois—is swept by what the Brookings Institution’s study of the 2000 Census calls “an explosion of diversity” through immigration. 

South L.A. also occupies a unique place in America’s pantheon of social unrest as the site of the Rodney King riots, or uprising, or unconventional shopping spree, depending on who’s talking. 

Once synonymous with the black inner city memorialized by gang-genre movies like Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society, today, South L.A.’s 383,166 residents are predominantly Latino—62 percent; blacks are 33 percent. This is a startling change from 1980, when blacks were 64 percent of residents. The transition hasn’t been smooth, as Arturo Ybarra tells anyone who asks. 

An influx of Mexican and Central American immigrants dislocated by economic globalization or fleeing political violence coincided with the deep recession of the 1970s and ’80s and with corresponding cuts in government social spending.  

The end of the Cold War shrank the once-mighty aerospace industry. Heavy manufacturing plants, oil, tire and car parts production moved abroad. South Los Angeles lost an estimated 75,000 jobs between 1970 and 1980 alone.  

Along with deindustrialization, the crack epidemic and gang wars of the ’80s and ’90s triggered the exodus of middle-class blacks. Latino immigrants took their place, drawn by low-paying manufacturing jobs in apparel, textiles, food processing and furniture work, or in the burgeoning service sector.  

These enterprises replaced the heavy industries that once created the district’s middle class. They are similar to the jobs that are now drawing immigrants to cities and towns in the American Midwest and the South. 

Arturo Ybarra and many South L.A. activists have persistently navigated these rough waters, condemned inept or unjust official policies, challenged parochial political agendas and jealousies and created alternatives to the nihilistic culture of the mean streets. 

Some of these activists were schooled in the politics of the Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements of the ’60s and ’70s, or have imbibed lessons and values from that past. 

The visions they carried over from earlier decades-including the recognition of African Americans’ and Latinos’ shared status as society’s underdogs—have helped preserve oases of interethnic solidarity in neighborhoods that could have been torn apart. 

Cynics inside and outside their communities often dismiss them as “politically correct” dreamers for being forever loyal to the grand vision of a strategic Latino-African American unity and for rejecting the inevitability of ethnic balkanization. 

 

Next Part: It’s Not a Zero-Sum Game  

 

Rene P. Ciria-Cruz, a NAM editor, wrote this story as a Racial Justice Fellow of the USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism.  

 

 


Berkeley Cooperative Grocery

Tuesday September 12, 2006

Many readers requested contact information for the Berkeley Cooperative Grocery, following the article in the Sept. 8 issue. The website for the co-op is www.berkeleycog.org.


Genetically Modified Food Bill Dies in State Legislature

By Rio Bauce, Special to the Planet
Tuesday September 12, 2006

Sept. 1 was a day of victory for environmentalists, organic farmers, and local government around the state, as a bill that would have barred cities and counties from passing laws that restrict genetically modified foods (GMOs) did not come to a vote in the State Senate, effectively killing the bill. 

“In the absence of statewide safeguards, local governments have stepped up to the plate and taken the precaution of restricting GE crops,” said Lisa Bunin, a member of the Santa Cruz County Public Health Commission GE Subcommittee. “With the passage of local GE-free laws, these governments have sent a clear message that the state needs to act not only to protect the state’s diverse agriculture, but also public health and the environment.” 

The bill, SB 1056, authored by Senator Dean Florez (D-Shafter) and backed by Monsanto, a major producer of GMO seeds, would have prohibited cities or counties from instituting local limitations on GMO production. 

“This one piece of legislation has probably received more calls and emails than any bill I’ve ever carried,” Florez said. 

In September 2005, the Berkeley City Council passed a unanimous resolution calling on local representatives, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) and State Senator Don Perata, to oppose the bill. The bill was co-sponsored by Councilmember Dona Spring and Councilmember Kriss Worthington. 

“It’s not a massive, gigantic victory because these companies are going to come back and try to restrict local control,” said Worthington. “However, it’s a good sign that the Legislature was not willing to give in so easily. If more cities or counties adopt restrictions, it will create momentum for positive state law, instead of a negative state law.” 

On Aug. 24, SB 1056 passed the Assembly floor by a vote of 51-24. Assemblyman Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez voted in favor of the bill, while Hancock and Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) voted in opposition. 

The Daily Planet could not reach Monsanto or the California Seed Association, the proponents of the measure, for comment. 

“By not even bringing SB 1056 to a vote, the Senate sent a clear message that enacting pre-emption before state legislation is bad policy,” said Renata Brillinger, Director of Californians for GE-Free Agriculture. “We commend Senate leadership, and look forward to moving ahead with discussions on effective state laws to address the problems associated with genetic engineering of crops and food.”


Berkeley High Beat: Start-of-the-Year Worries at BHS

By Rio Bauce
Tuesday September 12, 2006

Could you imagine being a student who didn’t have a math class for five days? Could you imagine being a student desperately trying to switch out of a class of 50 students? Could you imagine being a student who signed up for Latin 5/6, but ended up in Spanish 1/2? 

These questions that have been posed have become reality for many Berkeley High School (BHS) students. While students have been frantically trying to meet with their counselors to change their schedules, the counselors have not been as helpful as they could be. 

They closed the doors to the counseling office and put parent volunteers out to guard the doors at the main office. The administration’s response is that schedule changes will be handled as quickly as possible, but that priority to meet with counselors is given to new students. This is understandable. Students who don’t yet have schedules, which was at around 180, should get first priority. 

School started on Aug. 13. However, many students had to wait around in their classes against their own wishes, hoping for a schedule change in the near future. 

Just last Thursday, the administration finally allowed students to make appointments, which was a big relief. 

A large number of students are requesting schedule changes. However, it is ridiculous that more than a week after school had started, the wishes of students had not been honored. 

Countless numbers of students have been going through this dilemma. They just sat in the classes they got, not paying attention, because they thought that they could switch out of them. High school isn’t supposed to be this stressful. Students have enough to deal with through classes, parents, extra-curriculars, social issues, et cetera. To laden the students with so much more stress is unthinkable and wrong. 

BHS seems to have a lack of counseling staff to deal with schedule change requests. Perhaps they should hire more counselors so that students can be served better. At any rate, BHS should come up with a better solution to schedule changes, so that students next year won’t have to deal with the same dysfunctional system that students have had to deal with this year. 

This year has been by far the slowest in processing schedule changes since this writer came to Berkeley High School in 2004. Usually, the turn-around is a couple of days. Sweeping change is needed and it’s needed fast. 

 

 


Japanese Buyer Vows To Strenghten Cody’s

By Judith Scherr
Friday September 08, 2006

Three generations of Cody’s Books owners—Pat Cody, Andy Ross and Hiroshi Kagawa—sat around a small table Thursday morning at the Fourth Street store. 

The three were all smiles as they chatted with reporters about the sale of the two remaining Cody’s stores to Yohan, Inc, the Tokyo-based company of which Kagawa is CEO. 

Pat Cody and her late husband Fred Cody opened their first store in 1956; Ross took it over in 1977, later adding the second store in Berkeley and a new one in San Francisco. In July he closed the flagship store on Telegraph Avenue. 

Cody’s will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yohan. Ross will remain president and his wife, Leslie Berkler, will become vice-president.  

Changes will only mean the stores get better, Ross said, adding that the new investor’s cash infusion will mean that customers will find the shelves restocked—especially with those books that don’t fly off the shelves, for which Cody’s is known. 

“Within two months this store and the San Francisco store will be bulging with books,” Ross said, cautioning, “We’re not a library. We can’t have books that don’t sell. We want to carry books that sell once or twice a year, because it makes the bookstore interesting.”  

“Like the OED,” Cody interjected, referring to the $995 Oxford English Dictionary. “Fred (Cody) said, I don’t care if it only sells once a year, it makes me feel good that we have a bookstore with the OED.” 

The authors’ events will continue. The children’s section will grow larger. And customers will begin to see some new titles, especially some arts books from Japan, Kagawa said. 

Cody’s will be able to take advantage of Yohan’s role as a book distributor—it is the largest distributor of general foreign books and magazines in Asia, according to a press statement.  

“Yohan’s is the English distributor to the Japanese market. We buy lots and lots of books from U.S. publishers. So we can be a good negotiator,” Kagawa said. 

Ross was quick to point out, however, that while Yohan is bigger than Cody’s it is much smaller than Barnes and Noble, and the real advantage will be the investment capital rather than discounted prices. Yohan is capitalized at $4.5 million, according to its website. 

They also hope to build new and stronger relationships with small presses, Berkler said. That includes Berkeley-based Stone Bridge Press, which Yohan bought last year.  

And the same sales staff—with the same union, SEIU 790—will serve the customers, with, perhaps, the addition of new staff who are experts in Japanese titles. 

And, no—the Telegraph store won’t be revived, even though it was that store that originally attracted Kagawa to Cody’s when he first saw it in 1983 when he was sent to the United States by the Japanese publisher he was working for at the time. It was losing too much money, Ross said. 

“We did have some discussion—but it really was declining in sales so much. I just don’t see it as being possible. There are too many things that have happened,” Ross said, noting that someone had called the Telegraph Avenue store’s demise, “death by 1,000 knives,” with the combination of factors that went into the business decline. 

But Kagawa said he sees the changes in Cody’s as renovations but not changes, keeping the same foundation or “gene” of the store on Telegraph he so admired. 

“That gene is really important,” he said. “If you destroy that gene, people will fight.” 

Ross joked that his new job as Cody’s president will be a big change. 

“I’ve been in business 35 years and I’ve never worked for anyone else,” he said. “But Hiroshi’s first instruction to me was: keep raising hell.” 

More seriously, Ross said he thanked the community that has stayed faithful to the store and added that the new ownership will allow Cody’s to become the store he had hoped for. 

“This is a very happy day for me,” he said.


New Food Co-op in the Works

By Melissa Mixon
Friday September 08, 2006

The city of Berkeley could have a full retail food co-op as early as next year if all goes as planned for a group of residents from Berkeley and Oakland, who are launching the prospective grocery.  

Organizers of the food co-op, the Berkeley Cooperative Grocery, say its purpose is to provide Bay Area residents with quality and sustainable products that are affordable.  

Planning for the intended food co-op is still at beginning stages. No location has been found and organizers are in the process of applying for a grant that they hope will help start up the nonprofit grocery.  

Elisa Edwards, one of the founders of the Berkeley Cooperative Grocery, said the food co-op will start out as a non-perishable food online ordering shop that will have two pickup times at a point centrally located in Berkeley. 

Most of the food will come from Northern California or other local vendors. After the first year she said members hope to convert the food co-op into a full retail grocery cooperative that will focus on selling cheap, sustainable, healthy, local and organic foods and products.  

This would not be the first time Berkeley has had a food co-op. Starting in the post World War II era, the Consumer’s Cooperative of Berkeley opened and later became one of the area’s main groceries until financial hardships forced the stores to close in the late 1980s.  

Edwards, who moved here with her family in January 2005, said she was surprised to find out Berkeley did not have a food co-op.  

She and her husband moved to Berkeley from Brooklyn, New York, where they were members of the Park Slope Food Co-op, the nation’s largest fully member owned and operated food co-op.  

After the move, Edwards said she started to notice and be bothered by how much more money and time she and her family were putting towards groceries. For months, Edwards said she and her husband would complain to friends.  

“It would come up in conversation about how much money we had just spent on groceries, and then at some point that shifted,” she said. “We decided, well, instead of complaining about it, we should do it ourselves.” 

To avoid problems of the previous Berkeley food co-op, Edwards said Berkeley Cooperative Grocery will be based on a model used at Park Slope, which allows only members of the food co-op to shop at the grocery store. More important, she said members are required to work two and a half hours each month so that the store can reduce grocery prices to 20 percent over wholesale cost, whereas at traditional grocery stores she said the markup is typically 70 percent in order to cover the expenses of paying employees.  

Joe Holtz, one of the founders and currently the general manager at Park Slope, said the model works because “people can’t feel money but they can feel work.”  

“Hopefully, through working, you can feel the ownership and you care about something more,” he said.  

Members of Berkeley Cooperative Grocery also have to pay a one-time $25 fee and make a $100 refundable investment in the co-op. A catch is that the work is applied to all adult members of a household, such as housemates, because otherwise more food will be going out and there will be fewer members to help work, said Julia Carpenter, one of the founding members of the coop.  

In the beginning, when the co-op is online only, she said it will be hard for some people because of convenience and time.  

“One thing people have less of than money is time,” she said. “That could rule out a lot of people.”  

But the reaction she and other members have received since they went public with the idea has been positive, she said. They started with four members and two weeks later they had 70 members and 200 people on their mailing list. 

Carpenter said they are aiming for 100 members by this month, in order to be eligible for a matching $10,000 grant from the Food Co-op 500 Program. The program’s mission is to support the development of food coops in the United States and to increase the number of them nationwide from 300 to 500 by 2015.  

With the cost of living in the Bay Area and the high costs of most healthy and organic foods and products, Carpenter said, “people are starving for” a food co-op with reduced prices. 

Founding member Michael Weiler said the most important part of the coop is bringing down the costs of organic, local, and healthy foods so that eating healthily is not “elitist.”  

“Healthy food should not be for profit. Period,” he said. “Everybody should have the same access.” 

The group plans to list menus of food and products on pamphlets and have members working a phone to take orders for people without Internet access, Weiler said.  

Dave Fogarty, community development project coordinator for the city of Berkeley, said it’s hard to say what kind of impact the food co-op would have on other grocery stores in the area because the city doesn’t have details on the size or location of the store.  

“In general, the situation in Berkeley is that we have a market that’s dominated by higher priced kind of gourmet grocery stores, Andronico’s and Whole Foods,” which, he said, didn’t exist when the original coop was built.  

He said unless the food co-op is a full-sized grocery, 20,000 square feet or more, “it probably won’t have much of an impact” on would-be competitors in Berkeley that mostly operate at that same size.  

Fogarty said, “There is a lot of sentiment here for a coop grocery.” 

Edwards said she knows there is some worry out there that the Berkeley Food Cooperative will become just a “fond memory” like the old food co-op, but that the changes in how the new one will be operated are positive. 

“I feel like this is a model that’s been proved successful and is one that will stay, “ she said.


OUSD Trustees Reject Property Sale

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday September 08, 2006

Oakland Unified School District trustees passed a resolution Wednesday calling for a multi-grade education center to replace the high-rise condominium tower development being considered for the district’s downtown administration building site. 

At the same time, trustees defeated a proposal by Trustee Kerry Hamill for a 60-day extension of the negotiations between state Superintendent Jack O’Connell and east coast developers Terra Mark and Urban America over sale of the property. 

Under the Letter of Intent authorizing contract negotiations between O’Connell and the Terra Mark/Urban America group, the two parties have until mid-September to sign a contract before the development group loses their exclusive negotiating rights. However, both O’Connell and representatives of the developers earlier indicated that they would be open to extending the deadline. 

Under the terms of the 2003 state takeover of OUSD, trustees have no legal authority to stop the sale, but can only advise the state superintendent. 

The OUSD votes on the proposal came at the end of the third and final hearing on the proposed sale of 8.25 acres of OUSD Lake Merritt area property, a hearing so packed that latecomers were crowded into the hallway outside the trustee boardroom, and could only hear the proceedings through the open doors. 

The votes followed an emotional speech by Trustee Noel Gallo, who sponsored the education center resolution, in which Gallo alternately disdainfully tossed papers onto the floor, called out State Superintendent O’Connell, and berated district staff members “for basically being the agents of O’Connell. They’re giving us back only what he wants us to give him.” 

Calling the Terra Mark/Urban America proposal “a bad financial deal” that he was “insulted by” from first reading it, Gallo said that “this land belongs to Oakland. We don’t need to beg. I don’t need anybody’s permission to build on it or to tell me what I build on it should look like.” 

Referring to the 2003 state legislation that authorized both the state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District and the sale of district property to help pay off money loaned to the district by the state, Gallo said that “SB39 says you may sell property to help pay off the loan. It doesn’t say that the property has to be on Second Avenue.” 

Following the meeting, Hamill said that the decision over the sale “is out of our hands. It’s now up to Jack O’Connell.” 

Hamill accused fellow board members of “not wanting to make the hard choices. There is no new money to build a new education center on the site. And if we use bond money that is earmarked for other projects, which projects are they going to bump off the list? We’re fooling ourselves.” 

Hamill said that she sent out a survey letter to constituents a year ago, asking them to rate various options to rectify OUSD’s financial problems, from closing schools to firing teachers to selling school property. 

“To a person, they all said to look to the property sale first,” Hamill said. 

Before the vote, OUSD interim state administrator Kimberly Ann Statham said that she was recommending an extension of the contract negotiations to Superintendent O’Connell. 

“The public process has resulted in substantial, productive changes in the proposal and I think further improvements can be made by further negotiations,” Statham said. 

But only trustee Greg Hodge supported Statham’s call and Hamill’s motion for a 60-day continuance. Trustees voted then voted 6-1 to reject the proposed developer contract and to support an educational/administrative center on the property, with only Hamill opposed. 

And though he supported a 60-day extension, Hodge himself took after O’Connell, stating, “I don’t think Jack O’Connell cares about the children of Oakland. He only came here one time during the three year takeover, and that was when he was forced to. That’s criminal. That’s negligent, at the very least.” 

And trustee Alice Spearman also took a swipe at operation of the Oakland schools since the state takeover, saying that “some of the things that have happened in the past two to three years have been just as egregious as what got us into state receivership in the first place.” 

Several trustees criticized the fact that even though Terra Mark and Urban America have modified their plans to include some of the schools on the property, trustees said they have seen no details of those school construction proposals. In addition, trustees said that they know of no available replacement sites within one mile of the downtown properties for any schools displaced by the proposed sale. 

A demographer hired by the district told trustees Wednesday night that she estimated that new home construction in the West Lake/Chinatown area would bring in 1,200 new students to the schools in the area to be affected by the proposed sale. 

During the hearing itself, a parade of citizens spoke against the proposed sale. 

Henry Hitz, one of the leaders of the Ad Hoc Committee seeking to restore local control to the Oakland schools, took a swipe at State Superintendent O’Connell’s reported 2010 gubernatorial ambitions, saying, “If you want to be governor, you need to listen to Oakland. We are saying no to any development of school district property without input from the citizens of Oakland. The road to the governor’s office does not lead through a rebellion in Oakland.” 

Another speaker, Oakland attorney Anne Weilles, said, “I feel like I have been colonized by the state.” 

Calling the proposed property sale “stealing,” Weilles said, “We can stop this sale by any means, including sitting in and stopping the bulldozers when they come.” 

Weilles was part of a group of citizens who were arrested during a sit-in in former state administrator Randolph Ward’s office in 2005, leading directly to O’Connell’s only public visit to Oakland during the state takeover to address citizen concerns about the schools. 

Representatives of Alameda County’s early childhood program spoke, saying that the two child care centers on the property were needed, and relocation would be devastating to the programs. 

John Rose, a 5th-grade teacher at La Escuelita Elementary, one of the schools on the downtown property, spoke in favor of Gallo’s educational center plan for the site. Citing the proximity to the main branch of the library, the Lake Merritt science center, and the museum “all within walking distance for student field trips,” Rose called the downtown site “an ideal location for education.” 

Only one speaker expressed limited support for further contract negotiations. Barry Luboviski, Secretary-Treasurer of the Alameda County Building Trades Council, said that there was “some logic to paying off the loan early.” 

But Luboviski added that “I’ve seen few public construction projects that have gone through a process that has been so stunted. 40 years ago, my predecessor in this position would have said build it at any cost. But that era is gone. Speaking for the building trades unions, there has to be a process that has the light of day, and has the support of both the board and the community. We need to hear more information from the developers.” 

The proposed sale of the property holding the OUSD administration building, three schools, and two early education centers has sparked one of the largest political controversies in recent Oakland memory. 

State Senator Don Perata (D-Oakland), the author of the legislation that authorized the property sale, said that the property sale provisions came at the request of the school board when it passed a resolution in 2003 requesting the state bailout loan. 

But during Wednesday night’s hearing, Board President David Kakashiba said, “We have to stop this myth that the board wanted to sell the property. That’s not what we asked for.” 

Kakashiba added, “If we were serious about settling the debt, we would be doing a survey of all the surplus property in the district to see what could be sold to help our financial situation. Instead, we have only been asked to considered the sale of this particular piece of property.” 

Following the meeting, trustee Dan Siegel cleared up one bit of confusion about how the property sale provisions got into the board request for the state loan in 2003. 

“I talked with [former OUSD Superintendent Dennis] Chaconas,” Siegel said, “and he said that it was put in the board resolution at his request.” 

The 2003 request called for a state trustee rather than the state administrator eventually instituted by SB39. Under a state trustee, the board would have retained much of its power, and the district superintendent would have remained in place. 

Siegel said at the time Chaconas put in the property provisions, Chaconas thought he would continue to be OUSD superintendent even after the loan, and so would have some influence over any potential property sale or lease. 

Chaconas has since said that he was opposed to the sale of the administration building property. 

 

 


Berkeley Rally Adds to Call for Immigrant Rights

By Judith Scherr
Friday September 08, 2006

“We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” chanted more than 150 people who rallied for immigrant and workers’ rights on Labor Day at St. Joseph the Worker Church.  

Before the marchers walked to the Downtown BART station to join the larger San Francisco march and rally, Fr. George Crespin offered a blessing and speakers called for justice for all immigrants. 

“This is a civil rights movement, a human rights movement and a labor rights movement,” said Carlos Muñoz, emeritus professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, speaking from the church steps. “We march for the rights of all immigrant workers ... This is a powerful movement that we are part of today because we are America.”  

Condemning both the Republican and Democratic parties for not standing up for justice for the immigrant worker, Muñoz said: “The Democrats need to become a real party of opposition.”  

Attorney David Lunas took the opportunity to remind those in the crowd without documents not to trust people who would take their money while falsely claiming they could regularize their immigration status. 

“There is no amnesty out there,” he said 

Representing Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action, Procesa Gorrestieta said she came to the United States without papers. She talked about how hard immigrants work at their jobs and volunteer their labor in their children’s schools but still have no medical coverage for their children.  

“We suffer every day from fear that the ‘migra’ will come and take us and be deported,” she said. “I don’t know why people say we are criminals. We just come to this country to work and work really hard to take care of your children and take care of your houses. We love doing it, but we want respect and support.” 

After the speeches, marchers, some waving Mexican and American flags, moved briskly up University Avenue. Among the signs they carried in English and Spanish were those that read: “no human is illegal,” and “no more criminalization of immigrants.” 

No uniformed police accompanied the march that drew honks and cheers from passersby.


Cops: No Leads Yet in Case of Dead Man at Sorority House

By Judith Scherr
Friday September 08, 2006

Police continue to investigate the murder of Wayne Drummond, 23, who died of a gunshot wound to the torso in the early hours of Sept. 4. No suspects have been arrested. 

At around 2:30 a.m., Drummond knocked on the door of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority at 2311 Prospect St., which may have been familiar to him, because “he may have had a friend who worked there in some capacity,” said Ed Galvan, Berkeley Police Department spokesperson. 

He died shortly thereafter. 

Between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., a verbal argument between Drummond and another individual reportedly occurred outside of Larry Blake’s club at 2367 Telegraph Ave., according to Galvan. No shots, however, were reported to police at that time. 

It was not known at press time whether the victim walked or was driven to the sorority house. There was no indication that he bled if he walked the half-mile between where he was presumably shot and the house where he died. 

“In theory, if he ran there should be blood spots along the way,” Galvan said, noting, however, that he could have died from internal bleeding. Police have not yet seen the coroner’s report, he said. 

Asked if robbery may have been a motive, Galvan said, following a journalist’s report, the police were looking into the possibility. He said he could not, however, divulge whether the victim’s wallet had been taken, as that is part of the investigation. 

This is the fourth Berkeley murder this year. On Feb. 10, Juan Carlos Ramos, a Contra Costa College student, was stabbed to death at a teen house party on Contra Costa Avenue in the North Berkeley hills. No arrests have been made.  

Also in February, 24-year-old Keith Stephens, featured in Meredith Maran’s “Class Dismissed,” was shot and killed on Carrison Street. No arrests have been made. 

In March, Aderian “Dre” Gaines, 36, was shot and killed while hosting a teen party at his Prince Street home. Police arrested two suspects. 

Galvan called for people with any knowledge of the incident to call Berkeley Police at 981-5900, even if they think police already have the information.


Judge Rejects Challenge To Measure J Language

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday September 08, 2006

A Superior Court judge struck down the citizen challenge to Berkeley’s Measure J ballot language following an hour-long hearing on Tuesday, meaning that the legal analysis proposed by the Berkeley City Attorney’s office and approved by City Council on a divided vote will appear on the November ballot. 

Asked if the ruling by Judge Frank Roesch vindicates the city attorney’s position on the ballot statement, Deputy City Attorney Zack Cowan said “it was challenged. The court said the language was okay. That sounds like a vindication to me. We’re certainly happy. We think the ruling was correct.” 

Co-sponsored by Berkeley residents Laurie Bright and Roger Marquis, Measure J seeks to amend Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance and Demolition Permit Application for Non-Residential Buildings Ordinance. Bright and Marquis requested the Superior Court to overturn the descriptive language that will appear on the November ballot after the Berkeley City Council approved the language on a 6-3 vote at the Aug. 1 City Council meeting. 

Bright represented the appellants in the hearing while the City of Berkeley was represented by outside counsel, former Berkeley and Napa city attorney Tom Brown. The hearing was held on an expedited basis with the approval of both sides, because ballot language for the November election had to be approved by Sept. 7. 

In their appeal, Bright and Marquis charged that the ballot measure language drafted by the city attorney’s office misrepresented the measure in several instances, making it more likely that voters would cast their ballots against the measure. 

Among other things, the city attorney’s ballot language says that Measure J “would have the voters adopt, and in some cases lengthen, some City timelines to process permits that the City Attorney has advised can cause the City to violate state processing deadlines” and “would grant the Landmarks Preservation Commission authority to disapprove permits to demolish historic resources, and significantly limit the City’s ability to permit such demolitions, regardless of competing public interests.” 

Berkeley Landmarks Commissioner Lesley Emmington, who attended the hearing in support of the appeal, said that in Bright’s argument to the court, he said that analysis language “cherrypicked” certain aspects of the ordinance, “inducing the voter to reject the initiative, making it an argument against the initiative.” 

But Emmington said, “The judge ruled he could not honestly reach the point to say that the ballot language was misleading. He said that people really look at who endorses a ballot measure, rather than the ballot language itself. Some read it, but some don’t.” 

Emmington said that the judge was “deferential. He scheduled this as the last hearing of the day, so he could give it enough time.” 

She also praised Bright for “putting up a valiant effort at the appeal hearing.”


Haiti Delegation to Present Views of UN Aggression

By Judith Scherr
Friday September 08, 2006

Just returned from Haiti, participants in a conference of Haitian progressives and international supporters in Port-au-Prince will share their experiences meeting with political prisoners just released from jail and their eyewitness account of a U.N. military operation in a poor neighborhood. 

Delegates will speak on a panel Saturday that will include former political prisoner Fr. Gérard Jean-Juste and noted physician Dr. Paul Farmer. The program, called “Haiti Today—Occupation and Resistance”—is at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 7 p.m., 1640 Addison St. 

A highlight of the trip for conference participants Jacques Depelchin, visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, and Pauline Wynter, ecologist for 30 years in southern Africa, was a visit to the home of activist-folk singer So Anne. 

Depelchin and Wynter knew So Anne was a leader in Lavalas, the movement of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They had read that U.S. Marines blasted open the front gate to her home May 10, 2004, shot her dogs, terrified her family members, including a 5-year old grandchild and then arrested the activist, who was locked up for two years. 

Neither Wynter nor Depelchin had anticipated the power of the presence of So Anne —“a large, beautiful spirit,” as Wynter called her. 

Author of Silences in African History and other works, Depelchin was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Wynter is originally from the Eastern Caribbean. They attended the conference representing the Berkeley-based Ota Benga Alliance, dedicated, according to Depelchin, “to peace, healing, and dignity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the USA and of course everywhere.” 

Depelchin said his understanding of Haiti grew deeper while listening to the freed political prisoner. “So Anne began to talk about what jail was,” he said, quoting the former prisoner: “‘They can put the bars as high as they want, we will be like the wind, which will be so strong that we will remove the obstacles.’  

“Basically, she would never submit,” Depelchin added. 

Why why was So Anne arrested? The early accusations were bizarre—she crushed a baby to death with a mortar and pestle; she collaborated with terrorists from a local mosque; she was plotting against the U.S. Marines. In the end, no charges stuck—but it took two years of her life to get free. 

Wynter discounted the charges: “She was arrested because of her spirit and her presence in the world,” she said.  

Depelchin compared the effort to break a spirit like So Anne’s to the Haitian revolution of 1804. Like Napoleon’s armies in 1804, which were unable to vanquish the Haitian people, the jailing of political activists such as So Anne, cannot crush their spirits, he said. (Haiti’s enslaved population revolted against the French colonialists gaining independence in 1804.)  

“They had to be squashed. Two hundred years—that is what is going on,” Depelchin said, explaining the role of the United States and France in Haiti. “The system has never forgiven the slaves.” 

While many in the delegation said their visit with So Anne was the high point of their trip, the low point turned out to be a visit to the impoverished neighborhood of Simon-Pelé. Several delegates to the conference, including Wynter, labor activist Dave Welsh of Berkeley and San Francisco writer Ben Terrall visited that community to investigate reports that U.N. troops had recently attacked and killed people there. 

Today there are about 9,000 U.N. troops in Haiti. The U.N. military was deployed in June 2004 to replace U.S. Marines, who policed the country after the United States ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. (The State Department contends Aristide asked the U.S. to fly him out of Haiti.) 

Studies such as the one written in 2004 for the University of Miami by Thomas Griffin and recent reports by Haitian and foreign observers have charged the U.N. with passively allowing police to commit violent crimes and directly committing violence themselves.  

Delegates said they came to understand that the violence of the U.N. occupation under the U.S.-backed interim government—February 2004 to April 2006—continues today despite the election of President René Préval. 

The delegation had just begun interviewing people in Simon-Pelé when they saw four UN armored personnel carriers approaching. “Two went down one street and two came down the street we were on,” Welsh said noting there were many people on the streets, including children. 

Accompanying the APCs, manned by Brazilian soldiers, was a U.N. bulldozer and a U.N. dump truck filled with dirt. The dirt was dumped in a roadway “apparently to block an escape route from the neighborhood,” Terrall said in a phone interview from Haiti. 

Then the troops started firing. “They were shooting down the street and into houses,” said Welsh, describing the shots as repeated and fired indiscriminately. Both Welsh and Terrall said they heard two pops coming from the direction of the houses, which they said could have been return fire from a small caliber weapon. 

The U.N. soldiers ignored the delegation, which filmed and photographed the incident. One of the group asked the soldiers why they were shooting; the soldiers’ response was that they were looking for a criminal. (U.N. spokesperson in Haiti David Wimhurst did not respond to phone calls or e-mailed questions about the incident.) 

The delegation left the area as soon as it was safe to do so, but Terrall returned to Simon-Pelé several days later to talk to witnesses. He interviewed the mother of Wildert Samedy, 19, who had been shot and killed by the U.N. that day while he was fixing a radio antenna on the roof of his home. 

Wynter said she saw something that she wished not to remember. “But I couldn’t help but notice it,” she said. “I don’t think I saw any U.N. troops who were not brown or black. As someone from the Caribbean, and from the African diaspora, it’s distressing that we’ve gotten to the point where the UN uses black or brown troops to put down people of color.” 

The violence of the U.N. military made a profound impression on Wynter, particularly because of the place the Haitian revolution of 1804 holds for her. 

“To have the very source of inspiration and courage on the receiving end of such military force should be of extreme importance to everyone in that diaspora,” she said.


Three Arrests in Pot Cookie Incident at Cloyne Court

Bay City News
Friday September 08, 2006

UC Berkeley police arrested three people on felony drug charges today following an incident in which about a dozen students were briefly hospitalized after consuming what are suspected to be marijuana-laced cookies. 

University officials said the suspects, two of whom are current UC Berkeley students, are believed to have been involved with the preparation and distribution of the cookies served Wednesday night at Cloyne Court, an independent student-run housing co-op at 2600 Ridge Road near the campus. 

UC police went to the co-op after receiving a call about 8 p.m. Wednesday from a student who said she was feeling ill and very anxious. 

Police said they soon learned that about 15 others at the co-op were experiencing similar symptoms, including numbness to feet and hands, shortness of breath and minor hallucinations. 

Of those 15, a dozen were sent to local hospitals, where they were treated and released by this morning. Four were treated on the scene by paramedics, according to university officials. 

Campus police said that based on interviews with the students, they executed search warrants that led to the arrest of the three individuals. 

Michael Tobias, 24, a UC Berkeley student, was arrested on suspicion of furnishing marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale. 

Carmen Anderson, 21, also a UC Berkeley student, was arrested for possession of more than an ounce of marijuana and possession of psilocybin, a hallucinogenic drug present in some mushrooms. 

Christopher Portka, 23, was arrested for possession of more than an ounce of marijuana and possession of psilocybin. 

University officials said Anderson is believed to be the only one out of the three suspects who lives in Cloyne Court. 

In addition to the criminal case, Tobias and Anderson could face code of conduct charges for violation of campus policies. 

University officials said the University Students Cooperative Association is an independent group that offers affordable student housing and oversees 20 properties around the UC-Berkeley campus.  

Cloyne Court, the largest co-op, is among four properties owned by the University of California regents and leased to the association. It has 149 residents. 

Residents living at co-ops on UC property must be enrolled at UC Berkeley. However, they may continue to live at the co-op for an additional semester after they graduate.


Hit and Run Propels Car into Royal Grounds Cafe

By Susa Lim, Special to the Planet
Friday September 08, 2006

Royal Grounds coffee house, underneath the university-owned Manville Apartments for graduate students, was the scene of a hit-and-run accident on Sunday. 

Carol Chen, 27, and Ryo Kawaoka, 25, were heading home, eastbound on Channing Way, when an unidentified driver of a white sedan heading north on Shattuck Avenue ran a red light and clipped the back of Chen’s 1995 black Nissan Sentra. 

Her vehicle crashed into the left side windows of Royal Grounds at 10:48 p.m., strewing broken glass all over the café and knocking over wooden tables and chairs. 

Cafe workers pulled both Chen, a second-year doctoral student from UCSF, and passenger Kawaoka, a Berkeley resident, out of the wreckage. They were both uninjured. The white car had fled the scene. 

“I heard Ryo say watch out and then the impact,” Chen said. “I had no time to try to watch out. I just slammed on my brakes.” 

According to witnesses, two women sitting about six feet from the site of the impact at Royal Grounds, suffered minor injuries; they received care from paramedics and were released. 

“Nobody was sitting where the car rammed into,” says Kawaoka. “I’m relieved that no one got seriously injured.” 

Police officers declined to comment because of their ongoing investigation into the accident.


DAPAC Talks Parking Issues

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday September 08, 2006

At Wednesday’s joint meeting of the Transportation Commission and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee, board members discussed and debated downtown parking in Berkeley. 

DAPAC members also rejected a short-term plan for the Downtown Berkeley BART plaza and transit area. 

An overview of the parking situation downtown was presented by David McCrossan of the IBI Group, the consultants who were appointed in July. McCrossan presented existing conditions on parking, baseline traffic conditions and an analysis of transportation-land use options. 

Board member Rob Wrenn suggested that IBI include origin-destination studies with respect to the downtown in their report to know how people who work in Berkeley get to Berkeley. 

Other board members said the UC Berkeley parking facility between Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue should be part of any evaluation of downtown Berkeley and asked the IBI Group to include it in their report. 

 

McCrossan informed those present that a lot more data was required to fill in the gaps in the report before IBI could make a comment on the utilization of parking space in the downtown area. He said that the firm was hopeful of getting more done in the next seven or eight months.  

Betty Deakin, current director of the UC Berkeley Transportation Center and the first chair of the Transportation Commission, held a panel discussion on parking along with Donald Shoup, professor of urban planning at UCLA. 

“I am pleased with Berkeley’s innovation of managing parking,” said Deakin, adding that more active participation was required to make it even better. “We want to have a community where people come to work, shop, and recreate. We are always in Berkeley looking for balance and dynamic land use changes. We need to think more effectively of how we can make use of our parking, of how we can make it cost-effective and environment friendly.” 

Shoup compared parking conditions in and around the UCLA, but acknowledged that parking in downtown Berkeley was much worse because of fewer spaces. 

He pointed out that one factor that was common in both cities was that there was more traffic on the street when people were looking for parking space. 

“Cruising for parking interferes with pedestrian traffic and leads to congestion and excess vehicle travel, especially during competition for curb space,” he said. 

Describing the current 24-minute parking signs in Berkeley as “more Mickey Mouse than anything else,” Shoup discussed bringing about a change in the parking meters and also talked about in-vehicle parking payments, which allow vehicle users to pay for every minute used with wireless devices. Parking occupancy sensors which wirelessly communicated to City Hall about on-street parking occupancy were also discussed as a possible option.  

Shoup also talked about adapting certain ideas from the Redwood City Parking Ordinance. 

He added that having different prices for different times of the day could be useful. “Sometimes when there is a boost in traffic, tweaking up the prices helps a bit,” he said. 

Rob Wrenn brought up the topic of sprucing up the downtown parking garages so that more people would start using them. 

“Although there’s no data to back it up, there’s a common perception that a lot of women don’t feel comfortable using them at night.” he said. “We would definitely want to discuss our capacity to build new parking garages.” 

The joint committee voted to have the city staff come back with a report on the Redwood City parking principals at the next meeting on Sept. 21. 

 

BART PLAZA DESIGN 

CD+A, the consulting firm hired by the City of Berkeley to develop a concept plan for the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza and Transit Area, presented DAPAC with a number of transportation and urban design issues, including the incorporation of dedicated bus lanes in the study area and redesign and programming of open space areas.  

DAPAC member Lisa Stephens commented that unless there was an equivalent replacement of green space in the proposed BART plaza, she would not endorse the short term plan. Board members Jesse Arreguin and Patti Dacey agreed with her.  

The board turned down the motion to endorse the short term plan with seven members voting for, seven against and Wrenn abstaining. 

 


The Best $5 Meals Around Campus

By Jacob Horn, Special to the Planet
Friday September 08, 2006

Are you a student? Do you need all those extra dimes and nickels to pay your tuition? But, you still need to eat, right? Here are a few restaurants around campus that can keep your stomach and wallet full. 

 

Cancún Taqueria 

2134 Allston Way, 549-0964 

Located in downtown Berkeley between Shattuck and Allston, Cancún is one of the better taquerias in the East Bay for a value meal that won’t hurt the wallet. When going there, be sure to order the savory Chicken Lime or Tortilla soup. Each soup comes with a basket full of freshly made tortilla chips, and there is a great salsa bar where you can choose at least 20 different kinds of salsa. The soup and chips will set you back $3.80 and should satisfy most anybody. This restaurant is a good option for health conscious eaters. 

Mon.-Thurs., 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday 10 a.m.-10 p.m. 

 

Fred’s Deli 

1929 University Ave. 548-2294 

Fred’s has been known for years for its delicious piroshki-style sandwiches, made with grilled meat, grilled onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and mayonnaise. Each sandwich can be made with or without cheese, but if you haven’t had one before, make sure you order it with cheese. Always go for the chicken as the flavor of beef never blends as well as its white meat counterpart. Top off this meal with an Arizona drink: it’ll cost you $5.50 and it’ll be totally worth it. 

 

Top Dog 

2160 Center St. 849-0176 

2534 Durant Ave. 843-5967 

2503 Hearst Ave. 843-1241 

A Berkeley favorite since 1966, this great hot dog stand has been serving the same famous great tasting dogs for over 40 years. If you come from New York, don’t say anything until you have tried the real thing, right here in Berkeley. For a meal without the bill, go ahead and try the Top Dog Doggie Bag, which includes the famous dog as well as chips and a drink. You get all this for a measly $4.75, and trust me, your stomach will thank you. 

Mon.-Fri. 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. 

 

Arinell’s 

2119 Shattuck Ave. 841-4035 

Welcome to another Berkeley classic. Arinell’s pizza opened in the ’70s and was one of the first places to offer pizza by the slice in Berkeley. It used to be located in a hole-in-the wall, until it moved next door. They still serve the same great New York-style pizza as they did decades ago. Don’t expect this to be a thick-crust, massive pizza. Rather, it’s a more working class thin-slice pizza that’s cooked to perfection. For $3.50, you can get a soda and a slice of this classic pizza. Hey, it may be a little more than other places, but it sure will keep you happy for the rest of the day.


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Unlearning Anti-Semitism: A Few Pointers

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday September 12, 2006

The Planet has received a second commentary (opinion essay) from Kurosh (Cyrus) Arianpour, a student who is Iranian by nationality, Zoroasterian by religion, used to live in Berkeley and is currently studying physics in Bombay and learning English. Publication of his first letter upset many Planet readers and others who saw it quoted elsewhere. Since his second letter is substantially similar to the first one, we will not print it in full. In summary: he says he’s outraged by Israel’s actions in Lebanon and in Gaza, and that many others throughout the world are also angry. He thinks critics of the Planet’s printing his first letter should instead be condemning Israel because of the civilian deaths in Lebanon. He quotes a writer who believes that Zionists are controlling Americans. He repeats the charges from his first letter: that Israel’s current policies are characteristic of the behavior of what he calls “Jews/Zionists” throughout history and around the world, and as such are the cause of anti-Semitism. We’d like to take the opportunity now to set him straight about a few of his most egregious misconceptions: 

 

Dear Kurosh, 

As you might know from reading the Planet on the Internet, we have indeed gotten a lot of criticism for printing your first letter, as you suggest in your latest commentary. There’s a big campaign underway to persuade our advertisers to cancel their ads. It threatens to shut down the paper.  

Nevertheless, we still believe in the American principle of freedom of speech and the press, as guaranteed in the First Amendment to our Constitution, and in the right of citizens to hear all points of view. We’re not going to print your second commentary, since it’s substantially the same as your first one. But I think this is a good opportunity for me and our readers to tell you and people like you that blind hatred of all Jews, commonly called “anti-Semitism,” is the wrong response to disliking Israel’s policies. Please read all of the comments our readers have written about this in the last month so that you can see what they think you’ve gone wrong.  

Since you’ve told me that you’re still a student of the English language, I can see one obvious thing I think is wrong with what you say in your letters. You are confusing a lot of different terms, combining them into one category, perhaps because you genuinely don’t understand how they’re used in American English.  

First, you should never use the term “Jews/Zionists” because all Jews are not Zionists, and all Zionists are not Jews. The very term “Jews/Zionists” is an insult to the memory of Rachel Corrie, who was a Jew and perhaps even a believer in the existence of the state of Israel in some form, yet opposed the current policies of the current government of Israel.  

Name-calling is never rational argument. Someone can even be a Jewish/Zionist/Israeli and still oppose some policies of the state of Israel. We have a saying in this country: “two Jews, three opinions,” because American Jews are famous for their lively disagreements with each other about politics and other things. And not all Israelis support the present policies of their government—a growing number, including many Jews, are vocal dissenters. If you want to learn more about the dissent in Israel, you can read the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on the Internet.  

Here are some more explanations of the meaning of the English words you use incorrectly: 

”Jews” are people who follow the religion of Judaism or whose ancestors did, though there’s a lot of discussion over who qualifies to be “a Jew.” Some Jews do not support the existence of the modern state of Israel; many others do.  

“Zionists” are people who do support the existence of the state of Israel (even some who are not Jewish). “Zionist” is a political term, and does not describe religion, or citizenship. A person can be a Zionist and still think that the government of Israel is doing everything wrong at the moment.  

“Israelis” are citizens of Israel. Most Israelis are Jewish, but some are Christians or Muslims or Druze, and some are not religious at all.  

What has made many of our Jewish readers and others extremely unhappy is the way you keep trying to blame all Jews or even all Israelis for the actions of the government of Israel which you don’t like. That’s called “anti-Semitism”—the name that is given to the practice of blaming all Jews for the deeds or opinions of some individuals. People like me, even though we believe in free speech, hate anti-Semitism because it’s unfair and inaccurate, and was used as the excuse for the Nazis’ mass killings of Jews in the 20th century.  

There’s no such thing as any whole group throughout history being guilty of anything—that’s a category error, and if you’re really a physics student you should be too smart to make that kind of mistake. And by the way, anti-Semitism isn’t the only example of a category error. In the United States, we’re even more likely to hear untrue blanket categorizations of African-Americans or Muslims, and they’re always wrong by definition. 

Your statement that “Jews/Zionists” have been the most hated throughout history is just nonsense. You need to spend more time studying history. Hatred between groups is part of the history of the whole human race, unfortunately—it’s not a special problem about Jews. Christian sects in Europe had bloody wars against one another for centuries. Jews had nothing to do with the recent bloody conflict between groups in ex-Yugoslavia, or with the genocide in Ruanda. I don’t know much about the history of Iran/Persia, but I do know that various religious groups there, including Zoroasterians, have had conflicts throughout history too. Many people from the Bahai faith came to California in the twentieth century because they were persecuted in Iran, and the problem continues. I also know that Jews lived peacefully in Iran for centuries even while they were being persecuted by Christians in Europe.  

I’m glad you’ve learned to appreciate a free press. I hope that you try to make sure that whatever country you end up living in has a free press. India has a lively one which I read on the Internet. I don’t think Iran has a free press at this time, though since I don’t read Farsi I can’t be sure. One of the countries with a very free press is—surprise—Israel. If you are lucky enough to have access to getting your opinions published in a free press, you have a special responsibility for making sure that what you write is fair and accurate.  

As a young person and citizen of the world, you have an opportunity to change the pattern of groups hating groups. You can unlearn your anti-Semitism by getting to know some real Jewish people. You can learn—now—that humans are humans, and they can learn to get along with one another regardless of historical disputes among their ancestors or their governments. Please try.


Editorial: Singing the Blues About Cal Dems

By Becky O’Malley
Friday September 08, 2006

Among the many depressing news items in a discouraging week was this one, as headlined in the San Jose Mercury News: 

“Prison guards’ endorsement could revive Angelides campaign.” 

Oh, swell. Phil Angelides, whose primary campaign was somewhat tainted by not-totally-untrue allegations that he’s always been bankrolled by a cavalier Sacramento developer, has now been endorsed, to the tune of perhaps $10 million, by the only force in California politics that’s even seamier than the big building industry. He could, of course, turn down their millions, but will he? Don’t bet on it.  

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention, it’s all too easy to find examples of how the prison guards’ union does its best to make the living hell which is the California prison system even worse. For just one example, an excellent article by Vicki Haddock in the San Francisco Chronicle described attempts to reform the treatment of mothers with small children, and noted that the guards’ union was the biggest opponent of a Schwarzenegger-backed proposal to place mothers in community-based units where they could be closer to their families.  

The state of California has the highest expenditures in the nation for prison spending, but ranks 43rd in funding for education. This is substantially the result of political efforts by the union, formally known as the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA). Its membership has grown nearly 12-fold, to more than 31,000 members, in the last 25 years or so. It spends more political dollars than any other state organization, perhaps $29 million dollars per year. The prison guards don’t just push for higher wages for themselves, although that’s certainly part of their goal. Many of their favored candidates have backed draconian counter-productive schemes like Three Strikes and You’re Out.  

Federal Judge Thelton Henderson, a Berkeley resident, has been working for years to clean up the mess that’s the California prison system. He’s appointed a  

special master, who recently asked for authority to investigate whether Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cooperation with the reform agenda has faltered since his acquisition of quasi-Democrat Susan Kennedy, former hatchetperson for the odious Gray Davis, famous for being the errand-boy of the CCPOA. 

So it’s the good news that the guards are backing Angelides? No, it’s not, for anyone who had any hopes for the Democratic Party in California. It’s a move that puts him right up there with the Gobernator, who thus doesn’t look so bad after all.  

But what’s even worse—after all, the guards do come bearing big bucks—is that Angelides has refused to endorse Sheila Kuehl’s single-payer health insurance bill, which passed both houses of the Legislature last week, even though Schwarzenegger has announced that he’ll veto it. Is there any explanation for Angelides’ wishy-washy behavior except cowardice?  

Despite the fact that this is an overwhelmingly blue state, once again it looks like we’re on the way to electing a Republican governor. If the state’s official Democrats continue to demonstrate that they have no particular principles, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see Arnold win again. Or even, really, much of a disappointment. 

We see the same kind of problems on the local level, where creative, bright officeholders like Nancy Nadel in Oakland and Kriss Worthington in Berkeley are squelched by the Perata-Bates machine in favor of hacks like Ignacio de la Fuente, who are not even liberal, let alone progressive. When the Democratic Party has become nothing more than a self-referential closed system for distributing patronage, why bother to vote? 

The excellent online alternative paper Beyond Chron this week has a scathing indictment of the Bates regime and what it represents by Berkeley resident and San Francisco affordable housing activist Randy Shaw, headlined “Berkeley Mayor’s Race Reflects a City in Twilight.” If you’re online, you can read Shaw’s piece today at www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3649#more. 

We hope to get permission to reprint it for our print-only readers in the near future. Just one stinging quote for now: “There is no better evidence of Berkeley’s political decline than the current mayor’s race, where incumbent Tom Bates is assured of re-election despite maintaining a record that would have him on the political ropes elsewhere.” 

From here, it doesn’t look quite like Bates is a shoo-in yet. Zelda Bronstein is waging a lively underdog campaign bringing up some real issues, and the other two candidates have made some points too. But tracking the interlocking directorates of Berkeley cross-endorsements, which Shaw doesn’t discuss, is a stomach-turning experience for any progressive voter. Just one instance: Councilmember Gordon Wozniak endorsed Bates early, but is also sharing headquarters with Kriss Worthington’s challenger from the right. Will Bates now endorse Wozniak, who after all does have a progressive student opponent, Jason Overman? Stay tuned. It’s all very cozy, and, as at the state level, principles have nothing to do with it.  


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Tuesday September 12, 2006

PARKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Having just returned from Donald Shoup’s parking seminar delivered to an overflow crowd of transportation graduate students and faculty at the Bechtel Engineering Building, I was glad to see the Planet had covered his Wednesday night presentation to the Berkeley Transportation Commission (“DAPAC Talks Parking Issues,” Sept. 8). Shoup’s message is simple: As long as on-street parking is priced too low, people will find it worth their while to cruise for spaces, and parkers will overstay, creating congestion, pollution and the impression that a downtown shopping district is inhospitable and inconvenient. Just to show how far we need to go before people fully grasp the logic behind Shoup’s theory, in that same issue, a letter ran from Caribbean Cove owner David Howard blaming higher meter rates on his lack of business. Clearly, we need Shoup to make several return trips to spread the word further. 

Phyllis Orrick 

 

• 

COMMEMORATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Why commemorate 9-11? That was the day we were sucker-punched, flat-footed, after our president spent a month vacationing in Texas instead of heeding intelligence warnings about Osama Bin Laden. Instead, let us remember that glorious day in May when our president’s jet landed on an aircraft carrier and out he popped, bedecked in his flight suit, to announce “Mission Accomplished.” Mission Accomplished Day! On that day, more than 90 percent of our solders who have since died in Iraq were still alive. On that day, we were proud to be American! 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

 

• 

SCHOOL ADMISSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I feel obliged to answer the anonymous letter from an Oakland resident justifying false registration into Berkeley schools. Everyone makes choices and I’m in no position to judge yours. However when so many people reproduce your choice and recognize Berkeley schools as uniquely unguarded and better, can you understand that this becomes a matter of public policy? Berkeley taxpayers have heavily given and expect service that false enrollment precludes. 

It is not good progressive politics for Berkeley to ignore millions of dollars of fraud against its residents. The original progressives stood devoutly for honest government. We must work together for a different system that rebuilds Oakland’s schools. Berkeley for its part gives a disproportionate share of its seats as valid transfers as compared to other successful districts. Please consider applying for such a slot. While however you are cheating the system, please at least try to make sure that your kids do not contribute to the at-risk rate by doing all you can to oversee their homework and actively parenting them to pass all the state tests. If out-of-district students were not exacerbating the achievement gap the consequences of running an invalid registration system would be far less. 

David Baggins 

Candidate for School Board  

 

• 

THE MACHINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I find it hard to believe that even Ms. O’Malley seriously believes there is a Perata-Bates machine. It is my recollection that Tom Bates endorsed Ron Dellums, who will shortly become the next mayor of Oakland, a fact that Ms. O’Malley has obviously and conveniently overlooked.  

It also seems her vendetta against Mayor Bates continues with praise for shop-worn, opinionated so-called progressives (better name would be “tiresome political hack aspirants for attention”). It is an unfortunate tradition in Berkeley that this kind of squeaky wheels get a lot of attention. In the present case, Ms O’Malley’s support of this negativism and the lack of regard for workable and progressive solutions is truly sad. While I now live in Albany, I still love Berkeley and wish better for this lovely city. 

Nancy Snow 

Albany 

 

• 

NEW WRINKLE IN THE SILLY CYCLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The silly season has returned but will end mercifully with nationwide mid-term elections on Nov. 7.  

Candidates of both parties, following their leaders’ strategy, have decided that they’re not going to talk about things that interest the voters but they’re going to get the voters interested in the things they want to talk about.  

Forget hostility abroad, torture of prisoners, illegal wire taps, immigration reform, global warming, corporate malfeasance, campaign finance, deficits, Katrina distress, gasoline prices, etc. Forget the death toll, scores of thousands permanently deformed. Forget the young, the infirm and the elderly. Forget the forty million unable to obtain medical care…and the poor.  

It’s the war on terror we have to talk about; we must defeat an ancient tactic resurrected as an evil enemy, Islamic fascism. No matter the cost, government must prevent another terrorist attack on the homeland… plus, of course, spread freedom and democracy.  

Because slaughter in the Middle East reinvigorates man’s inhumanity to man, recent silly seasons have delivered tears rather than laughter.  

This one, however, opens with a new beat. The administration demands that Congress make lawful things the world regards as unlawful. As a “nation of laws” the president must obey the Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down special military commissions. Accordingly, his attention fixed on the war on terror and with assurances by his lawyers that he has inherent authority to use any measures he deems necessary to deal with this “new kind of enemy,” Mr. Bush demands new legislation. They attack us unfettered by law so we must defend ourselves in like manner. Therefore, Congress must make it legal—a cynical extrapolation of the bible’s “eye for an eye” injunction. 

When the silly season ends there’ll be very few new members in the House and Senate and with few new members will come few new ideas. Will Congress then make wrong actions lawful?  

What worries me most is not the prospect of no new ideas but the evident demise of an old one, the one that holds an action to be wrong (or right), not because the gods (in this instance lawmakers) make it so, but the gods say it is right (or wrong) because it is.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

 

• 

WEST CAMPUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For years now, I have been disgusted by the conditions of filth and deterioration at the BUSD West Campus property. Along with broken windows and a junk-piled interior, the disgustingly dirty, sticky, smelly, and stained entryways and sidewalks around it are an insult to those of us who live in the neighborhood. I can’t imagine any other university town, much less one that attracts visitors from around the world, allowing such appalling conditions to remain completely unabated for so many years—especially since it takes up a full block along University Avenue, the main entryway to Berkeley! As it is, passers-by get to see long-standing urban blight surrounded by knee-high weeds and strewn with garbage! There was a time when someone mowed the sports field every now and then, but even that small attention hasn’t been given to the property lately. At the very least, while the building’s future is still being planned, we need the place cleaned up. I estimate that it would be one day’s work for someone to get out there with a weed whacker, pick up the garbage, trim the bushes, and run a mower around the sports field. After that, the entryways and surrounding sidewalks need to be power-washed. Simply doing that would show a little self-respect as well as some respect for the local community and those who visit us.  

Nicola Bourne 

 

• 

WRONG HEADLINE! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I must make a correction to the heading the Planet gave to my recent letter, “High Density is Bad for Urban Fabric” In fact, in numerous writings, including the letter in question, I have stated almost the opposite. I believe high density, or at least moderately high density (in Berkeley we don't have high density like the skyscrapers in parts of many cities, and I have not thought extensively on how to handle that circumstance) can most likely be fine and good in parts of Berkeley, if done right. My whole point is that Berkeley is not doing it right, and until we change our approach, added density will continue to be bad. 

Sharon Hudson 

 

• 

NEW COOP IN THE WORKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Having participated in the demise of the previous Berkeley Consumers Coop, I am pleased but also concerned by the news that a new food cooperative is in the works.  

Berkeley Community Development Project Coordinator Dave Fogarty is quoted as saying: “In general, the situation in Berkeley is that we have a market that’s dominated by higher-priced kind of gourmet grocery stores, Andronico’s and Whole Foods.” That is a strange view: If Berkeley Bowl is not a dominant force Berkeley, what are those mobs of customers doing there? Any new food coop will have to provide some advantages over Berkeley Bowl and the farmer’s markets—unless they intend to only serve the high end consumers.  

Maybe serving the wealthy is the answer to founding a viable new food coop, but I doubt it. I think coops started in the days of company towns where workers had to buy from high-priced company owned stores. Their purpose was clear. What will be the purpose of a coop competing against the very reasonable prices of Berkeley Bowl and no-middle-man farmer’s markets? 

At this time, I do not see a clear sense of purpose. However, a very real need for cooperative food purchasing is likely to arise in the near future due to three trends: 

1. Oil prices will skyrocket as China and India compete with the United States for the shrinking, non-replaceable supply of petroleum. One of the major effects will be to make American large scale farming prohibitively expensive. This farming is done with petroleum-based chemicals and heavy machinery, and the product has to be shipped out in large trucks. A coop could develop the purchasing power to contract with small farms for reliable, low-cost produce. 

2. A major U.S. export is American jobs. An increasing population of unemployed and under-employed people will need help reorganizing their eating habits and methods of purchasing to maximize the efficacy of their spending.  

3. All the deregulated non-military aspects of our lives are subject to sudden unpleasant changes—e.g., home foreclosures have suddenly jumped. Informed cooperation could be a bulwark against the shock and awe of rampant capitalism. A cooperative movement that called on our finest thinkers to develop workable new strategies could become indispensable.  

Rev. Pondurenga Das  

 

• 

FIVE YEARS AGO 

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letter appeared five years ago in the Daily Planet: 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We all have the power and responsibility in our hands to stop the perpetuation of the cycles of violence and the economics of exploitation that create unspeakable suffering or we can continue on with the politics and economics that lessen and cheapen our human condition. Our political agenda from local to global, must move from provocation and the hubris that our fast track corporate globalization is the way to go with its extracting the energy and even blood of many to keep an economic machine going that few are actually benefiting from. Too many are being pushed to the edge along with the very ecosystems of life that support us. Financially and emotionally there is suffering as people have to keep cutting back—financially and in time we spend in building a supportive community while corporate profits obscenely rise.  

We here in the industrialized north live a lifestyle that has become the anomaly in a world where three quarters of the world’s population do not get enough to eat. We live in a world where corporate dream schemes are forcing people off their land and have the gall to patent the genes of plants, seeds and life itself.  

I still hold the vision that we can turn this around peacefully and not fall into the divisions caused by blaming and hate that comes after tragedy. I deeply hold the hope that we do not go along with the fear that is being generated to continue down the same path of bullying be it with words, economic or with nuclear threats. I hold a prayer that we can each look deeply into our own hearts, whether we are a governmental employee or work in the trades, whether we are a bus driver, a deli clerk, student or in scientific research—no matter what we do for a living – and ask what are we willing to do to take the higher ground, and to use our precious words to speak and teach a new vision that holds the value of the humans spirit and the earth as a sacred trust and not a commodity of economic profit schemes. How can we bring honor back to our daily relationships with each other?  

Instead of taking part in speculations about today’s horrible tragedy (where terrorism is daily life for many around the world) I found a quiet space and turned to some readings that I found solace from including:  

“The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate from. You can’t teach peace with a barrel of a gun.” As Gandhi said an eye for an eye and we all become blind. Gandhi also said “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”  

Redwood Mary  

Co-Founder, Co-Director, 

Women’s Global Green Action Network 

 

• 

OCT. 5 PROTEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently on “Meet the Press,” Sen. Santorum (R-Pa) and his Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. engaged in a “debate” that allegedly outlined the differences between Republicans and Democrats vying for Congressional seats in November.  

While Santorum defended Bush and Casey attacked the president, on fundamental issues of keeping troops in Iraq and rejecting a troop withdrawal deadline, as well as targeting Iran with brutal sanctions in advance of war, there was basic agreement. And while they differed on the recent FDA decision to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B, they both oppose legal abortion in most instances. 

With candidates such as these two, no matter who wins in November the people will lose unless there is a drastic shift in the whole political discourse. We must change the terms of debate from which candidate and party will be the most resolute in pursuing empire under the guise of the “war on terror” and curtailing basic rights at home to halting this course that more and more people recognize is a disaster. This can only be done by mass political protest in the streets. 

Groups such as The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime! are building just such protests. This group and others are calling for a day of mass protest on Oct. 5.  

There are millions who are deeply distressed over the direction in which the Bush regime is dragging the world. People are outraged over the way this regime is arrogantly seeking to bludgeon into submission people in the Middle East, and throughout the world, while trampling on the rights of the people in the U.S. Millions care about the future and recognize the many ways in which the regime is increasingly posing a dire threat to the very survival of humanity and the planet. There are people who are stirred with a profound restlessness by these feelings but are held back by the fear that they are alone. Many say that they wish something could be done to reverse this whole disastrous course, but nothing will make a difference. Others hope that somehow the Democrats will do something to change this but everyday it becomes clearer that they will not. 

The Santorum-Casey exchange was just one indication of what’s in store if we do not act on Oct. 5. It is more urgent than ever to drive out the Bush regime. See worldcantwait.org for more information. 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

 

• 

HOUSING AUTHORITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The members of Save Berkeley Housing Authority (Save BHA) offer our gratitude and thanks to the Berkeley Daily Planet for covering the issue of the troubled Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA). 

Through the years there has been no accountability placed on BHA director Steve Barton during the four years of failure while the BHA has been listed as a troubled agency, and it may be time to call for his resignation. 

It’s as though city officials have turned a blind eye to this disaster thats been taking place. We can do better! 

The disabled and elderly community in Berkeley have been getting the short end of the stick when it comes to budget funding policies of the City of Berkeley, and this has all been lurking under the radar screen of peoples awareness for some time. 

The budget cuts made to the camp for the disabled, compared to the millions being lavishly spent for budget policies regarding bicycles, has shed light on the priorities of Berkeley’s city officials. 

The resignation of BHA Director Steve Barton would go a long way to show that the City of Berkeley has become somewhat more responsible to housing it’s disabled and elderly community in the BHA’s housing assistance programs, and could make way for a new and better future to save the BHA. 

Community members will be appearing at the next 6 p.m. City Council meeting on Sept. 19, at the Old Berkeley City Hall, and the subject of Barton’s resignation will be on the minds of many. 

Lynda Carson 

Oakland 

 

• 

LEGALIZED BRIBERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky O’Malley’s depressing overview of California Democrats (“Singing the Blues about Cal Dems,” Sept. 8) evidences the underlying weakness—on all levels—of a political system founded upon legalized bribery. It is insane to suppose that politicians are not influenced by political contributions, yet demanding this human impossibility is what we do—unless voters come to their senses and back Proposition 89 which will free politicians on a state-wide level from donors, and make them responsible solely to their constituents (who, under the current system, contribute an average of only 1 percent of the money politicians use to get elected). 

Tom Miller 

Oakland 

 

• 

SCHOOLS FOR DEAF AND BLIND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A few decades ago, under pressure from UC Berkeley, the Caifornia Schools for the Blind and Deaf were moved from what is now the Clark Kerr Campus of UC to Fremont. 

At the time there was a good deal of opposition on the grounds that there was a large support system for the schools nearby, including UC volunteers and interns. 

The online earthquake hazard and shaking maps set up by ABAG now seem to show us that the schools were moved from one of the safest places in the East Bay to one of the most hazardous. It would be interesting to have the commentary of one of the UC seismic experts on this fact, which may or may not have been known at the time. 

Susan Tripp 

 

• 

REACTIONARIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The political atmosphere for the last six years has been rife with labels and name calling. This particularly on the part of Republicans. The administration calls itself “conservative” when it, and its cohorts, are really reactionaries. It doesn’t sound as good. but truth is good. 

My understanding is that a conservative wants to keep things as they are. This would include the environment, Medicare, Social Security, etc. Reactionaries want to turn the clock back and get rid of the programs that are not in their particular interest. 

We have been dealing with a reactionary administration, Congress, and Supreme Court. 

Harry Gans


Commentary: Campaign for Universal Health Coverage

By Kay Eisenhower and Robert Lieber
Tuesday September 12, 2006

History was made in the California State Legislature last month when it sent SB 840 to the governor’s desk! Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s single payer health care bill would extend coverage to all California residents for less than what is spent collectively now by employers, consumers and local, state and federal government. Patients would choose their own doctors or providers, pre-existing conditions would be covered, all needed services, drugs, hospital stays, therapies and medical equipment would be covered, and there would be no co-pays or deductibles for at least the first two years.  

How can universal health insurance cost less than what is being spent now on health care in California? Single insurer systems spend far less on administrative costs than do insurance companies — for example, Medicare, a single insurer system, keeps administrative costs under 5 percent. The Veteran’s Administration is another single insurer.  

Kaiser uses a single insurer plan to cover its members. SB 840 costs are also projected at under 5 percent, in contrast to the 25-30 percent administrative costs of the insurance industry.  

Single insurer systems use their purchasing power to cut prescription drug and medical equipment costs—SB 840 is projected to save the state as much as $5 billion per year. By taking the profit out of health care coverage, it is possible to extend complete benefits to all state residents at no additional cost.  

A single payer system would actually improve the business climate by controlling health care costs and leveling the playing field. With SB 840 all employers will pay an affordable health insurance premium and all employees would contribute their fair share (labor agreements specifying no or minimal employee contributions would stay in place).  

This arrangement should end the current race to the bottom that occurs when large employers reduce health coverage for their workers in order to stay competitive with employers that don’t offer such benefits.  

However, the governor has announced that he won’t sign SB 840! Even if he did, the insurance industry would mount a huge fight against implementation, perhaps going to the initiative process to overturn it, as they did with Burton’s SB2. That’s where the OneCareNow 365-City Campaign comes in. We are building a grassroots movement up and down the state in support of universal health coverage to defend ourselves against the special interests who profit from the current inequitable system. Community action teams in more than 365 California cities are conducting grassroots educational and public awareness events—one event per day, in a different city, for one year - to demand passage of landmark legislation that would transform our wasteful, costly and unjust health care system.  

 

What can you do to help?  

Join the OneCareNow 365-City Campaign, which started Aug. 12 in Morro Bay. Sept. 8 was Albany’s day! The Albany City Council passed a resolution last week endorsing SB 840, and last Friday activists tabled in the afternoon in front of the Albany Library with a petition and leaflets in support of the bill to bring attention to Albany’s efforts to support a better health care system. Albany is the first of 14 cities and towns in Alameda County in which OneCareNow events are being organized; the next local event will be in San Lorenzo, Oct. 23. The 365-City campaign will close with the Los Angeles event, with a huge rally planned for Sacramento a week later next August, 2007.  

This campaign is very ambitious with local committees forming throughout the state to plan events, get signatures on petitions, and enlist the support of local government bodies and grassroots organizations. In the Bay Area Albany has joined Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and Alameda County, along with the Central Labor Councils of Alameda, Santa Clara and San Francisco Counties as endorsers of SB 840. The California Nurses Association, SEIU and other statewide unions are sponsors of SB 840, which has also been endorsed by the California Federation of Labor and the League of Women Voters (for a complete list of endorsers check the OneCareNow.org website).  

The OneCareNow campaign is being sponsored by Health Care for All-California, the League of Women Voters, Health Access, the California Association of Retired Americans, and others. At the local level, the SB 840 East Bay Coalition includes Vote Health, the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, California Physicians Alliance, the Oakland LOWV, Hayward Demos, and several unions. Our next big event is a benefit Oct. 5 at the Grand Lake Theatre screening a new film, “The Healthcare Solution: California OneCare” to raise funds for the OneCareNow campaign.  

To join in the campaign, check the OneCareNow.org website to find the contact persons for your area! Or call Vote Health for further information at 832-8683.  

 

Kay Eisenhower is the chair of Vote Health and the SB 840 East Bay Coalition. Robert Lieber, RN, is an Albany City Councilmember.


Commentary: An Invitation

By Laurence Schechtman
Tuesday September 12, 2006

This is Berkeley’s season for political endorsements. But there is only one group which is actively inviting all progressives to attend, to debate and to vote, and that is the Berkeley Progressive Coalition. All are invited to the candidates convention from 2-5:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16 at Washington School at MLK and Bancroft. 

We are going to be endorsing candidates for mayor, four for City Council, up to three for School Board, and we are going to make recommendations on Berkeley measures and state initiatives. 

If you agree with our mission statement that “We seek to promote a more equitable economic and social life in our city, and to enhance social justice, ecological sustainability and democratic co-operation on every level,” then you are welcome. 

To start our convention, we will consider one state initiative and two Berkeley Measures. State Proposition 89, public financing for elections, is already part of our “Platform and Principles,” voted on in May and June. (If you want to read the entire 19 pages, go to www.createpeaceathome.org, or pick up a hard copy at the convention.) We have also frontloaded Berkeley Measure H to impeach Bush and Cheney (that should get the blood moving) and Measure I, which will, “increase annual condominium conversions from 100 to 500 units and increase the ability to evict tenants of converted units,” according to the Voter Handbook. 

Measure I has already been opposed by 120 people at the convention of the Committee to Defend Affordable Housing, which has also nominated our Rent Board candidates. If the Berkeley Property Owners’ Association succeeds in passing Measure I this November, thousands of Berkeley tenants will be priced out of town, and we will lose most of the diversity which has defined our city. Measure I, and related housing issues, therefore, may be one of the questions which you may want to put to candidates. You might also want to ask about Measure A, school parcel tax consolidation; Measure F, greenhouse gas reduction, or Measure J, the landmarks preservation measure. Or you might want to talk about the Downtown Plan agreement with the university. It’s up to you. Except for the recommendations of the Committee to Defend Affordable Housing, our organizing committee has no official preferences. We do hope, however, that our questioning will be economical and disciplined, so that we will have some time at the end to begin to build campaign structures. 

When you come to this convention you will be voting not only for candidates and propositions, but for the future of a progressive community in Berkeley which is both open and united. In keeping with the spirit of the California Constitution, which declares city elections to be non-partisan, we welcome candidates from any and all parties. If, as is now the case, there are endorsement meetings from many organizations, there is always the danger that progressive candidates will defeat each other, although this year there is probably more clarity than there has been in the past. With your help, we hope not only to field a winning slate of candidates this year, but to build ever greater progressive co-ordination and unity. An ongoing project, but worth the effort. 

Hope to see you on Saturday. 

 

Laurence Schechtman is a member of the Organizing Committee of the Berkeley Progressive Coalition.


Commentary: De-Gassing Our 78,000 Commuters

By Alan Tobey
Tuesday September 12, 2006

A recent regional study by the Bay Area Council contains some eye-opening statistics about Berkeley working and commuting patterns. According to the BAC, of Berkeley’s 71,172 jobs in 2005, only a third (33.1 percent) were held by Berkeley residents, meaning two-thirds commuted to work here, while more than half of the city’s 54,421 employed citizens (56.7 percent) commuted to jobs out of town. Taken together, this means that nearly 78,500 workers—not counting students—commute into or out of Berkeley every workday. And the large majority of them still do so by private automobile. 

As we look forward to passing our feel-good greenhouse gases initiative in November, let’s keep in mind that these commuters are by far the largest single category of contributors to the greenhouse gases we are pledging to reduce. There are only three things to do:  

1. Press for less-polluting, energy-efficient vehicles and more responsive public transit. 

2. Encourage Berkeley employers to hire Berkeley residents and pay them a Berkeley-livable wage. 

3. Increase our housing stock, especially in transit-friendly locations, until we decrease upward market pressures on housing prices and rents. 

Only the third of those tasks is controversial, because of some citizens’ perception that we’re already building “too much new housing.” The BAC data illuminates that contention: in 1999-2005, when residential construction was more active than in any other period since the 1960s, Berkeley added exactly 1220 new residential units, an average of 175 per year, many of which are housing students. At that rate, we were increasing housing stock and population at the fearsome rate of 0.4 percent a year. From being so “excessive,” Berkeley’s population would actually double—by about the year 2180.  

For housing affordable by the average worker we did far worse: Only 374 of our new housing units (31 percent, or 53 a year) were classed as affordable. In other words, for seven years we have been giving one in-commuting worker a week a chance to move into a new affordable place in town, out of the 47,000 who might like to. How much more “excessive” could we get? 

So before you vote to feel good about being green, think of what we are committing to get done in years to come: drastically change an embedded pattern of un-green commuting in favor of a “village Berkeley” model that takes care of our own in a more proactive and responsible way. 

The Bay Area Council’s interesting report is at http://tinyurl.com/nvn7y. 

 

Alan Tobey is a retired technologist and has lived in Berkeley since 1970.


Letters to the Editor

Friday September 08, 2006

BERKELEY HIGH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was surprised when reading today’s Daily Planet by the lack of response to Jerry Landis’ letter in the Sept. 1 edition. He claims that it is “common anecdotal knowledge that there are certain corners and corridors at BHS that white students may not venture into without fear of physical abuse.” Landis notes that his children attended Berkeley High in the 80s, so perhaps his anecdotes are out of date.  

I am a white girl who has grown up attending Berkeley public schools. I went to Washington Elementary and to Longfellow for middle school. I have never been the victim of or witness to any racial violence. In my four years at Berkeley High, I never once felt unsafe. I have passed plenty of time in the park across the street, been into every bathroom and down every hallway, and wandered through the campus both early in the morning and into the night. My younger sister, a recent Willard graduate, has just begun her second year at BHS, and her experiences have been similar to mine. In one way, my experience has been similar to that of Landis’ son and daughter: I, too, received an excellent education at Berkeley High and am on my way to a college degree.  

Elisabeth Newton 

BHS Class of 200 

 

• 

OAKLAND CHILDREN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to thank Executive Editor Becky O’Malley for her free speech policy. I’m one of to those parents that lives in Oakland and is sending the child we are raising to a Berkeley school. Everyone knows the present problems here in Oakland with the schools. A while ago he looked up at me and asks how or where will he work or live? Children of the future will not have the same future that some of us have had! Getting into and finishing a four year collage is his only chance. US imperialism is on the decline today. Our unions are not the 37% of the work force that they were. Our wages have been cut by 60-70 percent. Because of the many hurdles in our lives, we will not have any wealth to pass down to him. He will not be able to buy a home like some of my friends in the ’60s did, (with a little help from their parents) for $25,000 and sell it last year for $600,000. What would you do School Board candidate David Baggins, if you were us? You speak from your class position in our society. Mr. Baggins, I must ask you if started life from humble beginnings, if so this is the time to remember where you came from. Don’t forget the struggle your parents faced to make life better for you.  

Name withheld 

 

• 

“ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS” 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It might be useful in thinking about the recent debate on out-of-district students illegally attending Berkeley schools to draw an analogy with the U.S. immigration issue. In both cases, people seeking a better life are crossing borders illegally, either to work or attend school.  

While studies have been done on the impact to the U.S. of illegal immigration from Mexico and other countries, recent coverage of Berkeley schools’ “illegal immigration” in the San Francisco Chronicle (“Give Oakland students a real choice,” Aug. 27) and the Berkeley Daily Planet have presented little factual basis for discerning the impact of these students on Berkeley schools. While most economists believe that there is zero impact on average U.S. wages and a minor negative impact on lower-wage workers (“Cost of Illegal Immigration Meets Less than Meets the Eye,” New York Times, April 16), the coverage on the Berkeley schools issue offers only opinions which range from the negative— poorly prepared, out-of-district students will soak up scarce resources for tutoring other services and drive down school-wide test scores—to the more positive—well prepared out-of-district students from Rockridge and other areas will add to the learning environment and raise test scores. 

Some of the same solutions proposed for the U.S. immigration issue are surfacing in the discussion over Berkeley schools’ illegal immigration, including more rigorous documentation efforts and “schoolplace” (as opposed to workplace) enforcement.  

As with U.S. illegal workers, illegal students are mostly using faked documentation. While workers must purchase social security numbers, green cards and other documents in the black market, out-of-district families have an easier time with the more informal documentation required to establish district residency. For this reason it may be even harder to stop. 

Another similarity to the U.S. immigration debate is the recent proposal by a current school board candidate in a recent Daily Planet column that Berkeley teachers be recruited to turn in suspected illegal students. While this kind of law for illegal workers was passed in Arizona—social workers and others are required to turn in suspected law breakers or face prosecution—Berkeley teachers may balk at such a role. 

And here is where the two issues—illegal immigration of workers and illegal out-of-district students in Berkeley—may converge. Students suspected of illegally attending Berkeley schools may turn out to be illegal immigrants from Mexico and other countries, as well. Will Berkeley citizens be as willing to return a student to his native country as to his native district?  

While the U.S. immigration issue breaks down along party lines, with emphasis being on some form of guest-worker or other amnesty program for Democrats and strict enforcement for Republicans, the politics of illegal out-of-district students in Berkeley schools may not be so well-defined. While Berkeley citizens overwhelmingly align with Democratic positions, many may find themselves on the other side of the “illegal immigration” debate when it comes to the perceived welfare of their children in Berkeley schools. 

Chris Gilbert 

Berkeley 

 

• 

GROSSLY UNFAIR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read with great interest and disgust about the millions of dollars UC Berkeley is spending on perks and bonuses to the wealthiest of professors and administrators. I also read about the protests on campus from employees and students who find that their parking fees have doubled or tripled recently. Now to add to the injury, the Transportation Department of UC Berkeley is imposing huge parking fees at the Strawberry Pool which is largely used by students and community which includes a great number of seniors on low income. Even though UC claims it is “ a separate department” it is still part of the UC system. It seems that the university is continuing to lavish large amounts of money to the “fat cats” at the expense of students and community. It is grossly unfair and should be stopped. 

Andree Leenaers Smith 

 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Merrilie Mitchell may be “a political gadfly” but her entrance into the Berkeley City Council District 1 race against Linda Maio is welcome by those of us who are sick of Councilmember Maio’s lackluster, self-satisfied approach to her position. If Mitchell is willing to tackle the tough issues facing our community—something Maio seems incapable of doing—she could very well hand the BCA powers-that-be an upset in November. 

The ongoing struggle of the community against Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) is the perfect example of why Linda Maio needs to go. In the article on Mitchell’s candidacy, I was stunned to read that Councilmember Maio, according to her chief of staff Brad Smith, has “rejected” the position that PSC, the major public health problem in our community, might have to close if it fails to address its pollution problems. How can Maio have rejected ANY position except the unacceptable status quo in this ongoing struggle for community right to know and an end to toxic air pollution? 

This privately owned company has steadfastly stonewalled West Berkeley residents for generations, fighting any modernization of its operations and any accountability to the public. Today, the company is in violation of its agreement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and has failed to provide basic information about the chemicals its operations send into the community every day. PSC has let a legal deadline pass without providing the information it committed to providing and it has also failed to pay the fines it incurred from its illegal pollution during July’s heatwave. Linda Maio has been missing in action—she has never spoken up publicly to demand the company be a good neighbor. She has never used her position to get the company to the table in good faith; instead, she chants the old Berkeley mantra: clean environment and industrial jobs. She cannot grasp that while Berkeley does indeed have industrial jobs, much of her district has a toxic environment that will not be cleaned up until the company deals in good faith. Something that will not happen until she and the rest of the city’s power structure stand with the community, and not with PSC. 

Only after we know what PSC is sending into the air every day and what the health effects of those potential poisons are, can the process of figuring out how the company might substitute new greener chemicals and processes for the ones it uses now begin. And if PSC’s emissions are causing health problems, then the plant must be forced to adopt new technologies and materials if it wants to stay in our community. And if it refuses to clean up, it should not stay in our community. 

Once again, Councilmember Maio has demonstrated her total lack of understanding of the seriousness of the conditions under which many of her constituents live and her lack of concern for any party in this struggle except Pacific Steel. If Merrilie Mitchell will actually work with the community to make the reality of life in Berkeley the “green” paradise Linda Maio, Mayor Bates and the rest of the city’s powers-that-be claim it is, she has my vote and the vote of thousands of other District 1 residents who are fed up. 

Catherine Lerza 

 

• 

RACE AND THE SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last Friday, after a long week of professionally facilitating enrollment and inter-district transfers for a neighboring school district and personally grappling with my own support and participation in my home school district, I sat down to retreat from it all by reading the Daily Planet. Initially, I was thoroughly disheartened and dismayed by the tone, sentiments and perspectives of letters addressing the issues in our schools related to non-resident students, the tax measure, and race. Now, after extended consideration, I am buoyed by the opportunity that such debate presents for Berkeley citizens and schools. 

Race lies at the core of what defines and divides Berkeley—especially in our schools. And, in this season of political campaigning, we are finally beginning to talk openly and honestly about it! Here’s to hoping that the talk continues and that everyone from every perspective will engage and participate in the dialogue. Rather than hearing from only the far left and right fringes, let us hear and read the opinions of the full spectrum of our community—from "those Oakland kids” and their parents; from “those private school people” who don’t choose BUSD schools; from African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and others; from teachers and students; from the “hills” and the “flats”; from everyone. Truthful dialogue and well-rounded debate about our issues can lead us to authentic healing and reform of how we in Berkeley do education. 

Wanda Stewart 

 

• 

LIBELOUS LETTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A teacher I admire advised that before I write or speak about what I think, I subject the thought to three tests: Is it true? Is it necessary? Does it cause no harm? 

Steve Reichner’s libel against me in the 8/29 Planet fails on all counts. 

After naming me, he writes: “All I ever see...are...letters...attacking ruthlessly, all the while accusing the Planet of not representing {the writers’} views.” 

My letters of Aug. 5, 2005; Aug. 16, 2005; Sept. 6, 2005; Sept. 16, 2005; Nov. 22, 2005; May 30, 2006 and July 28, 2006 never asked your newspaper to “represent” me, and never “accused” you of anything. 

The characterization of my lists of historical fact as “attacking ruthlessly” communicates a lot about Mr. Reichner. 

I appreciate his inviting me to comment on Lebanon. He apparently believes that Lebanese history began 18 months ago when Israel starting planning militray action. 

Since 1968, PLO operatives in Lebanon have ignored Lebanese government directives, assassinated Lebanese leaders, and turned southern Lebanon into a boot camp for terrorists. 

After 1970s “Black September,” Lebanon was the only country where the PLO could secure a military, political, and logistical base. 

In 1975, more than 100,000 Lebanese were killed in PLO-provoked battles against the country’s Christians. 

On March 11, 1978, PLO goons intercepted two busloads of Israeli civilians, slaughtering 35 and wounding 80. 

There’s more, of course. On a daily basis, Israel has ample reason to expect that forces from Lebanon will engage in acts of war (like soldier-kidnapping) against Israel. 

Reichner seems upset that Israel was prepared. 

Again, I thank him for his invitation. 

If he shares the Jewish belief that God judges us at this time of year, I invite him to write the Planet apologizing for lying, asking my (and your readership’s) forgiveness, and promising to confine his future communications to the truth. 

David Altschul 

 

• 

TELEGRAPH AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Phil McArdle’s fine letter lamenting the loss of the Telegraph of Old reflects my own sadness for the loss of Shattuck Avenue of old. Strolling along that street yesterday I noted with regret all the empty store fronts. Then, passing the site of the old Hink’s Department Store, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia! How we all loved that store. There was such an air of graciousness and gentility the minute one walked in. I recall a saleslady with black, black air and heavy blue eye shadow at the cosmetic department, carefully sifting face powder to match the skin tone of her customer. Then there was the glove department, where one would prop their elbow up on the counter while a sales woman gently eased our fingers into the fine leather glove. Admittedly the women’s apparel department left something to be desired, but I still have the cotton duster I bought just before the store closed. The basement was a delight, too. There was a homey sewing and knitting class, fine dishes and wonderful yardage. Oh, yes, there was that great gift wrapping department for courtesy wrapping. Two or three times a year, Mr. Hink would send his charge customers lovely gifts—a box of pears from his orchard, leather address books, note paper, etc. Then, lest we forget, just across the street was that palace of sinful delights—Edy’s Candies and Ice Cream Store. How many times did friends and I settle into one of its comfortable booths, after shopping or a movie, and shamelessly consume gargantuan banana splits or hot fudge sundaes, lingering for hours! Where does one go now for such sinful pleasures? For sure, Shattuck Avenue has lost its charm of old! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

GREEN MACHINES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Riya Bhattacharjee’s Sept. 1 story on ‘Green Machines” to clean up Telegraph Avenue is good and upbeat, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.  

Parking meter rates were raised on Telegraph Avenue to help pay for all the new services. I suspect many other restaurants on lower Telegraph are like ours – in addition to the student population, we have an out-of-town audience that would bring money, and tax revenue, to Berkeley, if only they could find a place to park when they get here. 

Increased parking meter rates and lack of a parking garage on lower Telegraph Ave. continue to hinder the success of many small businesses and restaurants in the area. We certainly welcome and appreciate the student business, but for every “student special” or “blue and gold” discount, we need full-rate paying customers from our ethnic community to sustain ourselves.  

Will candidates for District 7 attempt to address this come November? 

David Howard 

The Caribbean Cove 

 

• 

TRASH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

First off let me start with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews.” Also, if you want to be truly informed I recommend people look at this website for some more information on the “Pro- Israel Media Bias”: www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.aspl. 

Also, I read the Berkeley Daily Planet for my weekly dose of Uber-Liberal Anti-Semitism; then I put it back where it belongs—in the trash! 

Tahoe Kamman 

P.S.: I know people may dispute the validity of the Dr. King quote, I’ve seen the counter arguments myself. On white supremacist websites! 

 

• 

GUILT TRIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Though I live in San Francisco now, I’m a former Berkeley resident (14 years). I just read that piece by Chronicle writer Chip whatsisname. Please don’t let that get to you. I hope you will totally stand your ground about the article that you presented. The Zionist propaganda machine used to get away with guilting people into believing that criticizing Zionism is “anti-Semitic” or “anti-Jewish.” Fewer and fewer people are choosing to stay brainwashed by that guilt-trip. 

Sam Price 

San Francisco 

 

• 

DAMNED IRISH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is the Irish peoples fault that potato’s failed to grow during the great potato famine. It is also all their fault that they were enslaved to work on the railroads of the United States. Those Irish...it’s all their fault. 

Adam Ruho 

 

• 

PARSING ARIANPOUR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kurosh Arianpour is certainly racist when he attributes to Jews some innate fault dating back thousands of years. However, it appears to me that the enormous flood of letters in the Planet against him is that he couples centuries old traditional anti-Jewish slogans with a litany of modern Israeli atrocities.  

Arianpour horrifies those who realize he is dead right when he states that millions around the world are coming to agree with him that Israel is an oppressor state, and that Israeli attacks in Lebanon were monstrous. “Have you not seen the photos of dead toddlers some with their pacifiers around their necks?” Such passion for an oppressed people easily wins coverts. And while Jewish suffering in the Holocaust and from suicide bombers on Israeli buses continues to win sympathy, the sympathy factor is tipping away from the Jewish state. The immense disparity in fire power used in the Lebanon war is a factor, and so is the cold blooded murder via airplanes that blast homes and automobiles of singled-out Palestinians in Gaza, and thereby test out U.S. neo-con plans for political control of the planet via space weapons launched to anywhere at the push of the emperor’s button. 

It is hoped that Israel stops playing the role of U.S. punk hoodlum for the Middle East. It only feeds the racist argument of Arianpour that Jews are self-centered opportunists. 

Ted Vincent 

 

• 

SHAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The article by the Iranian student is a disgrace to anyone who would publish it. Publishing it is a disgrace to journalism. Why don’t you keep your day job and just parade in a Nazi uniform for recreation? We Jews don’t deserve this kind of abuse, have not earned it and are offended by its dissemination, especially by a commonly read news source. 

Shame on you! 

Richard Kaplan 

 

• 

GIVE IT BACK? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When Pancho Villa raided an American town, we sent the army to invade and pursue. .....Hezbollah and Israel. 

In the war with Mexico the United States took Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. 

If Mexicans were Muslim, shouldn’t we give the territory back? 

Has any other country beside Israel ever given war-won areas back to the defeated? 

Harry Gans 

 

• 

OCCUPIED LAND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Though it is not known as such, most of us here in North America go about our fanciful, fairly comfortable lives living on occupied land. Essentially, we obliterated the opposition, with force, to enable this occupation many years ago. So the next time you hear the anti-Israeli lobby screaming bloody murder, remember that our comfort and safety has been ensured and established by just such means. Actually, the Israelis have an historical connection to their contested land that goes thousands of years beyond any moral claim that the large majority of Americans have to the terra firma we now stand upon. We have been able to survive upon the blood of the Native Americans and the Mexicans. If they somehow developed an armed militia with the intent of taking it all back, firing indiscriminately at our homes, would we just give it up, and become refugees in the name of peace? I don’t think so. 

Marc Winokur 

Oakland 

 

• 

THRE REAL THREAT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Half of the people in this country think that the biggest threats here are Islamic terrorists. That is a lie. Personally, the biggest threats in this country are right-wing Christian fundamentalists forcing their own moralities onto others. I am seeing their actions exposed on TV. For example, their involvement in the Terry Salvo case and pushing the president and the Congress for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. 

People should understand that these right-wing Christian fundamentalists learned from their ancestors about controlling people in the name of Christianity. Their ancestors forced their moralities in a brutal fashion against American Indians in this country several centuries ago. 

For example, in New England in the 1600s, the Pequot people were massacred by these same Christian fundamentalists because they refuse to convert to Christianity. Back then, these Christian fundamentalists attacked the Indians’ religion by claiming it was “the duty of good Christians to exterminate them.” 

This kind of thinking is what I’m seeing today by these right-wing Christian fundamentalists. Their madness needs to stop at once. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

 


Commentary: Sunshine is the Best Antidote for Bigotry

By Zoia Horn
Friday September 08, 2006

My profound respect and admiration for Executive Editor Becky O’Malley for opening wide a door for so many people to speak up, write letters, discuss important controversial subjects some of which rarely are touched upon, let alone, discussed. She has shown her commitment to the First Amendment of the Constitution and its protection of freedom of speech and the press.  

Criticism and dissent are essential elements of those freedoms. They provide opinions, facts and analyses on difficult, often, sensitive, uncomfortable subjects. In the 8/8–10/06 edition of the Planet, two letters appeared next to each other: one lambasted Editor Becky O’Malley for publishing an editorial that was critical of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, a second one, a vituperative letter against “Zionist crimes in Lebanon.” Both were angry and nasty. 

Howard Glickman vented his anger against O’Malley, accusing her of being “viciously slanted” toward “murderers and terrorists” who would “destroy a sovereign state and its inhabitants.” In his estimation she has joined the “Arab-European ‘blame Israel first’ school of journalism.”  

It is difficult to accept the boundless defense of Israel as an innocent, when that country has the fourth most powerful military in the world, is a nuclear power, and has now invaded and occupied part of Lebanon for the second time, the first time for 18 years before it “pulled out” because of a UN Resolution #1559. The comparative numbers of Israelis and Lebanese killed and wounded also show the enormous disparity of military power. But the issue the letter seems to limit itself to is O’Malley’s editorial criticizing Israel. Information, criticism and discussion/debate is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society. Although Mr. Glickman does not use the anti-Semite epithet in his letter, others have in the letters that followed thus making criticism of Israel an anti-Semitic act. No nation should have that kind of immunity. 

Mr.Kurosh Arianpour’s target for his anger is much larger in scope. He decries the meager reporting of the protests and demonstrations against the “genocide of civilians and children ... committed in Lebanon,” He believes that the U.S. has been complicit in Israel’s actions, having supplied military aid and voted “full support of the Zionist regime and killing of more Lebanese civilians” (his words). He then blames Jewish people for their history as victims of dicrimination, enslavement, genocide because of their claim to be the “Chosen people.” That for him explains the anti-Semitism that followed whether from actions or attitudes. 

Arianpour’s letter was like a dive into ice-cold water. He was baldly arguing his historical explanation and justification for anti-Semitism! I suddenly realized with shock that this was the first time I had read such a viewpoint in the press. There are many people who harbor such attitudes, but after the horrors of the Holocaust, the pogroms and other milder discriminations, the world has denounced such vicious, unreasonable behavior. But, why this hatred? Unless we understand the “why’s” of such behavior and explore its sources we will continue to walk the treadmill.  

I question and decry the rationale offered by Arianpour, but, as a librarian committed to people’s right to know, to read, to speak, to discuss and to ask “Why” as well as “What” in all subjects, I commend Editor O’Malley for providing the opportunity to read a straight “in your face” piece on a subject that is deplored, but not explored 

 

Zoia Horn is an Oakland resident.


Commentary: Hatred Begets Hatred

By Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
Friday September 08, 2006

Catching up on my summer reading, I was shocked to read an editorial by Kurosh Arianpour titled “Commentary: Zionist Crimes in Lebanon” in the Aug. 8 edition of the Berkeley Daily Planet. While people of good will can debate vigorously over the conflicts between Israel and her neighbors, there is no place for the sickening level of anti-Semitic discourse in Mr. Arianpour’s writing. The commentary in question is a classic example of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have left a stain on the conscience of the world and sadly continue to have life today. Mr. Arianpour seeks to pin the blame of the problems of Jewish people on the Jews themselves, calling them not the “Chosen People” but the “Chosen Murderers.” The hateful and theologically and historically mistaken depictions of the Jewish people Mr. Arianpour presents is a classic expression of the most virulent, and destructive brands of anti-Semitic ideology. His claims for a far-reaching, even global, conspiracy in service of Jewish interests are direct descendents of the blueprint for modern anti-Semitism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Despite having been conclusively identified as a forgery, The Protocols have inspired both popular and state sanctioned violence and murder against Jews in Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. Sadly, the influence of The Protocols is found in anti-Semitic organizations and publications around the globe, from America to South Africa to Egypt, and apparently even to India, from where Mr. Arianpour hails. Although Mr. Arianpour has the right to express his views, I am deeply distressed that the editors of the Berkeley Daily Planet lacked the common sense to refuse to publish what was a patently anti-Semitic diatribe. I seriously question the decisionmaking skills of the editors and their priorities. 

The language Mr. Arianpour uses and the discourses he engages in only can lead to hate and violence and death. We all have had enough of the destruction of life on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and we need no more fuel added to that pyre. As a progressive Christian and a professor at a seminary in Berkeley, I cannot allow the words of Mr. Arianpour to go by without comment. I refuse to participate in the silence that has too often accompanied attacks on the Jewish people. I condemn in the strongest terms the sentiments Mr. Arianpour aimed at the Jewish people. I urge instead concerted efforts by all people and nations to work together for a just and equitable world both in the Middle East and elsewhere.  

 

Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski is assistant professor of church history at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley.


Commentary: Don’t Shoot the Messenger

By Alexander Mac Donald
Friday September 08, 2006

As I live in San Francisco, I rarely read the Daily Planet, but an article in the Chronicle last week sent me scurrying to google your web page and read in the Aug. 8 issue the simplistic idiocies of Kurosh Arianpour in his diatribe against the Jews of all times and places. I wanted to be certain that they are as ill-informed, hateful, and stupid as the critics of the Daily Planet allege—they are—but no more hateful and stupid than the demands that Ms. O’Malley apologize for having published his ignorant nonsense, even as she published theirs.  

It does seem to me that criticism should be directed against the message rather than the messenger, even in these parlous times. We know where punishing the messengers leads, but for those too young to know, Bush and Cheney and the media whores of the radical and sectarian right give instructive lessons. It is a pity that friends and partisans of Israel take the bait, fell into the trap, and attempt to intimidate a media outlet with their justly outraged fulminations. The world is full of Arianpours. They persuade only themselves, for their hatred is largely self-referential. Publishing their diatribes and slanders only exposes them. Silencing them dignifies them and may even make some of us forget that they are around and active.  

O’Malley is to be praised for holding her nose and letting us look the enemy in the face. Her critics, at least those who demand an apology for her audacity, should be ashamed, for they expose themselves as censorious authoritarians who arrogate to themselves the power to control what the rest of us may say and read, or not. It is good, then, that O’Malley published them, too.  

 

Alexander Mac Donald is a San Francisco resident.


Commentary: Panhandlers — Not Aggressive Enough

By Carol Denney
Friday September 08, 2006

The more articles I read about Cody’s bookstore on Telegraph in Berkeley closing its doors, with all the usual finger-pointing at panhandlers and street artists as the culprits responsible, the more peculiar the story seems. 

Each article briefly mentions owner Andy Ross’s having started up two new Cody’s bookstores, one in San Francisco and one on fashionable Fourth Street in Berkeley, despite supposedly losing money on the Telegraph store, without actually cracking open the financial books and explaining how such a miracle took place. 

Each article assumes it’s inevitable that the Telegraph bookstore should be the one to close, despite Ross’s admission that the Telegraph store makes more money than the others. Ross explains that the Telegraph store has more “overhead” costs, and the politicians don’t miss a beat fawning over the store closing as though somebody had died, loudly lamenting its loss, but never raising a question about what the word “overhead” in this context means. 

I’m just reading through the lines, but doesn’t it mean he took the longest-lived store, with the legendary origin but also the highest labor costs, and booted those jobs in favor of the cheaper labor in his new, legend-free enterprises across town? I could be wrong, but how do you manage to secure loans or make enough money to expand your business if it is really failing? And I haven’t seen the financial books, but who would stay in the business of bookstores, opening two additional stores, if they really had no financial faith whatsoever that they could make some money? 

The literary and free speech mantle so easily coupled with a bookstore sits uneasily on the shoulders of the man who inherited wealth enough to buy, and then eliminate, Cody’s flagship location. Andy Ross wholeheartedly supported the mean-spirited, unconstitutional efforts of Berkeley’s City Council to silence panhandling, an ordinance which was overturned by the courts, and his employees could at times be seen (and were photographed) turning hoses on anyone in a sleeping bag near his property at dawn. 

But reporters wouldn’t know these things unless they took more time with the story. Politicians wouldn’t ask these things unless they were willing to run the risk of annoying a rich and powerful man. And nobody would hear about the homeless people getting sprayed with freezing water unless it had happened to their friends or to them, and they’d had to spend a cold, foggy morning stuffing their last quarters into the dryer at a laundromat, hoping to have dry bedding by sundown. I know the local newspapers would have me see something heroic in Andy Ross for inexplicably closing his Telegraph store. But I remember the bewilderment in the eyes of the people whose precious few drawings or books were ruined by getting hosed while doing nothing more threatening than sleeping. My heroes are the patient, weary souls who gathered their soaked belongings, and simply walked away. In my eyes, they are not aggressive enough. 

Intelligent readers will note the absence of the larger story, the story of landlords’ skyrocketing rents in commercial districts so that respected businesses of decades’ duration are kicked to the curb like the panhandlers and craftspeople were near Cody’s. The fluffy stories about Andy Ross’s tear-stained lament for his own bank account do nothing to reveal greed of the property owners who impose huge burdens on small businesses, caring nothing about the careful composition of businesses it takes to keep a commercial district healthy. 

Andy Ross and his wealthy circle of mourners will continue to nod in the direction of People’s Park or nearby homeless services and homeless service users as somehow burdening businesses, because the press and the public love to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It doesn’t matter how tired the menu or how absent the foundation, blaming the poor always finds a seat at the table. 

 

Carol Denney is a local musician and activist.


Columns

Column: Waiting for the Creative Mousse On Dover Street

By Susan Parker
Tuesday September 12, 2006

The phone rang, as it always does on Sunday afternoon. “Susan,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “this is your mother.”  

“I know that,” I said.  

“Just calling to check in,” she said.  

“I know that, too,” I answered. “But I can’t talk now. I’m trying to write a column.”  

“What about?” she asked.  

“That’s the problem. I don’t have a theme yet. I want to write something profound about—”  

“Don’t try to be profound,” advised Mom. “It doesn’t work. No one in our family has ever been profound regarding anything.”  

“Yeah” I said, “but—”  

“Why don’t you write about Mr. Peanut?”  

“Mr. Peanut?”  

“Yes,” she said. “In July a statue of Mr. Peanut, delivered by the Nutmobile, was installed on the Atlantic City boardwalk. A few days later someone vandalized him.”  

“You’re kidding,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.  

“I’m not,” said Mom. “They removed the small finger on his right hand. He’s been sent away for repairs.”  

“That’s a shame,” I said. “But not profound.”  

“Of course it’s not profound, but I thought it might interest you.” 

“Yeah, well—”  

“Remember when you danced with Mr. Peanut in front of Planter’s Peanut Shop?” said Mom. “You must have been three or four years old and—”  

“Mom,” I said. “I gotta go.”  

“Wait, you’re father wants to speak with you.”  

Before I could stop her she put the phone down. “Dewey” I heard her shout, “it’s your daughter and she’s trying to be profound.”  

“You’re trying to be profound?” asked Dad when he picked up the receiver. “Don’t bother. Nobody in this family is—”  

“I know, Dad, but I’ve got to come up with a topic and—”  

“How about that moron judge who put the thing-a-ma-jig on his you-know-where and was doing you-know-what under his desk while presiding over trials? What about that for a column?”  

“I don’t think so,” I said.  

“Did you hear about Mr. Peanut?”  

“Yes,” I said. “Mom just told me.”  

“Big news around here. Some son of a you-know-who ripped the poor bastard’s pinkie off. They’ve gotta ship him back to the factory and solder the damn thing on. Can you believe it?”  

After we said good-by, I googled the past week’s news headlines searching for weighty subject matter, but nothing inspired me—not Paris Hilton’s DUI, or Lindsay Lohan’s lost designer pocketbook, or the rumors that Baby Suri was wearing a toupee during her Vanity Fair photo shoot.  

My housemate Andrea offered advice. “Why don’t you write about how Noonie lost her house and all her furniture was stolen by the landlord?”  

I tried to reply, but Andrea was on a roll.  

“Write about Curtis’s car breakin’ down again and the police stoppin’ him and sendin’ him back to jail cause Noonie put some of her stuff in his trunk and he didn’t know about it and—”  

“I—”  

“Why don’t you write about how my feet are all swelled up and I’m always tired and—”  

“I—”  

“Write about Ralph. People are always complainin’ you don’t write enough about him and you’re always sayin’ you gotta write what you know, and—”  

“Okay” I said. “I get your point. Leave me alone so I can let the creative muse gel.”  

“You need to put some of that creative muse on your head and comb that hair of yours,” she sniffed as she left my room. “No wonder you can’t think of nothin’ to write about.”  

I went downstairs to talk with Ralph. He was in his hospital bed, staring at the computer monitor. Above him, a television screen showed Annika Sorenson missing a long putt.  

“Got any ideas for a column?” I asked.  

I waited while he placed his mouth stick into a small tube on the hospital tray in front of him. I watched him struggle, but I didn’t offer to help. Ralph likes to do things for himself.  

When the stick was finally in place he turned his head and looked at me. His blue eyes were clear and bright. He smiled.  

“The A’s won again!” he shouted. “I’m a happy man.”


A Vireo of Your Own: The Immortality of William Hutton

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday September 12, 2006

By Joe Eaton 

Special to the Planet 

 

It’s an odd kind of distinction, having your name attached to a plant or animal. Cartoonist Gary Larson says he considered it an extreme honor when a new species of louse was christened Strigiphilus garylarsoni—a reaction I can understand perfectly. 

Long after his work has been forgotten, his name will endure--at least among a small subset of entomologists who specialize in the parasites of owls. Who remembers Poinsett, Dahl, Zinn, Forsyth, or Wistar? But botanists and gardeners invoke them all the time. 

I recently picked up a wonderful book called Audubon to Xantus, by Barbara and Richard Mearns: a series of short biographies of the men and women for whom North American birds were named.  

Audubon everybody knows: he got an oriole, a shearwater, and a warbler (the last now considered just a subspecies of the yellow-rumped warbler). Xantus was a Hungarian exile and compulsive fabulator who collected birds at Fort Tejon and Cabo San Lucas in the 1850s. A murrelet and a hummingbird bear his name. 

Somewhere between Audubon and Xantus comes William Hutton, of Hutton’s vireo. Hutton’s vireo is one of our more obscure songbirds: common in California oak woodlands (C. C. Van Fleet called it “the spirit of the live oak tree”), but inconspicuous in appearance and retiring in habit. And I suspect even a lot of birders misidentify these birds as ruby-crowned kinglets. 

Both are small greenish-gray birds with white wingbars and nervous, twitchy demeanors. But the vireo has a heavier bill and slightly different facial and wing patterns, and it doesn’t twitch quite as much as the kinglet. Its call is also quite different: a whining, raspy “rheeee,” as opposed to the kinglet’s “che-dit.” 

Vireos are a strictly New World family, related, according to genetic studies, to the corvids (crows, jays, magpies) and shrikes. They’re feisty as small birds go. Birding maven Rich Stallcup says you can always tell whether the bird you’ve trapped in a mist net is a vireo or a warbler by its attitude. Warblers go limp; vireos will try to bite you. 

Most vireos are some shade of green, with white accents: eyestripes, spectacles, wingbars. Their vocal performances tend toward the monotonous. 

The song of the eastern red-eyed vireo—the “preacher bird”—has been represented as “First on the one hand, then on the other,” repeated indefinitely. With one partial exception, all the North American forms are migratory. That exception is the Hutton’s, or at least the California population of the Hutton’s; some interior populations do move south for the winter. 

Hutton’s has other quirks. For nest construction, it favors the hanging lichens—lace lichen, beard lichen—that festoon California oak trees. In winter, both California residents and those that winter in western Mexico join mixed foraging flocks: bands of chickadees, kinglets, warblers, and woodpeckers that roam the woods, apparently taking advantage of additional eyes to spot predators. The Mexican flocks may be composed of 18 or more species, but they almost always include a Hutton’s vireo or two.  

There’s a lot ornithologists still don’t know about this bird: its territorial behavior, whether it’s single- or double-brooded, its migratory movements. The most recent studies of nesting in California were published in 1919. 

And since the vireo’s nesting season begins early, it tends to be overlooked in breeding bird surveys. But we know a great deal more about Hutton’s vireo than we know about William Hutton. The Mearnses, who appear to be dogged researchers, were unable to determine when or where he was born, or when or where he died.  

We know that he collected the vireo near Monterey in 1847 and sent its remains back east, where it came into the hands of John Cassin (Cassin’s auklet, finch, kingbird, sparrow, vireo), then working on a book about western birds. Hutton may have been a friend or protégé of Spencer Fullerton Baird (Baird’s sandpiper and sparrow) at the Smithsonian Institution, who asked Cassin to name the new species for him. Cassin was unenthusiastic: “This kind of thing is bad enough at best, but to name a bird after a person utterly unknown is worse than that,” he wrote to Baird. But he eventually gave in. 

Correspondence between Cassin and Baird suggests Hutton was in the San Diego area around 1851. Then the flow of specimens stopped. Hutton may have been abandoned bird-hunting for gold-hunting; he may have returned east in time to be killed in the Civil War; he may have disappeared into Mexico, like Ambrose Bierce. It’s anyone’s guess. 

An obscure bird with an even more obscure namesake, and even that tenuous claim to fame may soon be gone. The California and interior populations of Hutton’s vireo, separated by miles of desert, turn out to be genetically distinct. 

Each may deserve separate species status. If the species is split, it’s likely that the old name will be dropped and each of the new forms will be rechristened, as happened when the plain titmouse was separated into oak titmouse and juniper titmouse.  

William Hutton, whoever he was, will be consigned to taxonomic limbo. That’s immortality for you. 

 


Column: The View From Here: Forget Derby Street — Do Something About MLK

By P.M. Price
Friday September 08, 2006

And what is my view from here? As I look out on my street, Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, I hear more than see it. The rumble of trucks, the screeching of bad brakes as another pedestrian barely escapes the peril of crossing MLK at Stuart Street. I smell it, too. The toxic exhaust from far too many cars streaming through this residential neighborhood, cutting it in half, covering what used to be delicious, edible frontyard blackberries and plums with scary brown dust.  

Without any consideration for what this neighborhood used to be, perhaps the most ethnically and financially diverse community in this fair town—our city managers chose to turn the southern part of MLK into a mini-highway so that those who do not live nearby can more easily race to and from the freeway. 

My children have suffered from headaches since they were toddlers. The constant outside noise makes it difficult to sleep without some sort of numbing inside noise—a fan, soft music or one of those sound machines pretending to be ocean waves or soft rain or whatever it takes to cocoon you to sleep. Open the front door and dust particles fly through the air, covering window sills, sneaking into the hallway, the dusty din drowning out whatever conversation you were trying to hold on your front porch.  

For years, I have been talking up the idea of turning MLK between Dwight and Ashby into what it used to be, a single lane each way street with a green median strip down the middle where a streetcar used to run. Traffic can be diverted onto Adeline and Shattuck—business streets—instead. My neighbors and I have requested relief in the form of additional slow streets, signage warning of children and pedestrians crossing, lighted crosswalks like they have on College and Solano and signs doubling fines for not yielding to pedestrians, like they have up on northern MLK, just before it magically turns into The Alameda.  

Hundreds of children cross MLK at Stuart every day on their way to and from Willard Middle School, Longfellow Elementary School and Berkeley High School and most drivers do not stop for them. Most drivers do not seem to care if you are elderly, pregnant, a child or an adult—they do not stop. More than one person has been struck in this intersection and barely a month goes by without a car accident. Still, there is only one poorly demarcated, unlit crosswalk at MLK and Stuart and no signage warning of pedestrians or fines at all. 

What we don’t need is additional traffic brought into our neighborhood to play and watch baseball.  

If you were to look at an aerial view of Berkeley, it would be easy to see where the abundance of trees, parks and open space lies. It ain’t around here. Before it was fenced in, the Derby Street field gave us some breathing room, a place where neighbors could meet, with and without their dogs, and play catch with their children, read a book or even fly a kite. A bench or a tree would have been nice but even without that, we enjoyed the space. It was a focal point in a community lacking open space, just as the Derby Street Farmer’s Market and the Ashby Flea Market are both focal points and are both now threatened by a city government not in touch with this community. 

Sure it would be nice if the BHS baseball team had a field nearby they could walk to—would they actually be walking or would they be driven to this field? And what about other BHS athletes without adequate playing space? Do they want to share this field as well? And what about the needs of the taxpayers who support BHS—not the parents who live elsewhere, but the parents who live right here, all set to be bombarded by the night lights, cheers, screams, cursing, traffic and garbage bound to pile up in the game’s wake. What about our families, our sensibilities, our needs?  

This community has already tolerated being turned into a highway for the convenience of others. We have plenty of liquor stores but no bookstores. We have plenty of access to unhealthy fast foods but there ain’t no “gourmet” in this ghetto. (With the notable exceptions of the Berkeley Bowl—which is always so crowded we neighbors can barely make it in the door, much less the parking lot—and the delicious new addition of Sweet Adeline, our very own community bakery.)  

The other day as I stepped into a clearly marked crosswalk (not at MLK and Stuart) a guy with thick black hair driving a fancy black car almost ran me over. I glared at him as I walked around his ride.  

“Ya wouldn’t have that problem if ya was drivin’!” he yelled at me in a thick New Jersey accent.  

I kid you not. And therein lies the problem. We don’t make things our problems until they are actually our problems. And by then, it’s usually too late. 

 

 

 


Column: Undercurrents: Using Music to Unite a Community

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday September 08, 2006

In the autumn of my 19th year, I was living with a group of friends in a row house in the northwest section of D.C. These were poverty times—on days I could put together a solid dollar bill in my pocket, I felt fabulous. I went out looking for a job each day, with no luck. Finally, embarrassed that I was the only one in the house not bringing anything home for meals, I went into a supermarket and tried to shoplift a steak. Bad idea, like our governor used to say in his movies. I made it as far as the doorway past the checkout stands—after that, it was a fairly short drive down to the D.C. Detention Center and then a visit with the night court judge for arraignment. 

This was my lucky night, however. Even before the public defender had a chance to say anything, the judge set me free on one of those famous legal technicalities—the one that says you have to actually leave the store before you can be convicted of taking something from the store. Anyway, following my release, the public defender handed me a card from some sort of special city employment program, telling me to take it down to the Employment Office and they’d take care of me. Must have been some magic runes written on that card because even though several experienced workers ahead of me were told that there was no work that day, as soon as I walked up and handed the employment clerk the card, I got a referral to a job in a department store stock room. 

I’ve continued to believe it was one of life’s odd ironies, getting a job at a department store not in spite of the fact that I’d been caught shoplifting but because of it. But there was another lesson. So long as I was just another young black man wandering the streets of a city full of young black men, who cared about me? But at the point I decided to take the radical step of stealing, they sat up and paid attention, and I got what I had been looking for all along—a job—without even having to ask for it. 

If it is only the squeaky wheels that get the grease, my guess is you will end up with more squeaking rather than less, an unintended consequence that Oakland should pay attention to in the midst of this bloody year. 

Sometimes even elaborate youth programs are not necessary. Though these are certainly helpful, it can often be enough that the adults of this city let the too-often-outcast youth know that we welcome their presence and honor their spirit, and that we will fight and take chances to make certain a place at Oakland’s table is always laid out for them. 

On Labor Day Sunday, for one example, the East Bay Dragons Motorcycle Club blocked off 88th Avenue between International Boulevard and A Street in East Oakland for their annual end-of-the-summer block party. That portion of International is one of the roughest areas of the city, but the Dragons built their reputations in the rough days of the 60’s and the 70’s, and though they have mellowed out and now have grandchildren to think of—or, maybe, because they have mellowed out and now have grandchildren to think of—they get their respect, and so their gatherings tend not to get out of hand. 

I stopped by early to buy a plate of barbecue from one of the vendors, and to watch the little children’s hyphy dance competition on a flatbed truck the Dragons had set up in the street as a stage, the participants ranging from between 5 to 10 years of age, the kids getting recognition from the entire community—not just their peers—for their accomplishments. The kids, and the adults, loved it. 

Hyphy is a music/dance form that is difficult for outsiders to describe or interpret—the important thing is that it is the new wave of national hip hop, with acknowledged roots on the Oakland streets. A city more in tune with its own culture—and less automatically antagonistic to too many of its youth—might figure out a way for all of us to benefit from such things. 

Meanwhile, Oakland District Six Councilmember Desley Brooks is putting on her second year of free concerts at East Oakland’s Arroyo Viejo Park with a cautious inclusion of hyphy/hip hop that is attracting more young people to the events. A year ago, the concerts were pointedly old school, emphasizing 70’s acts like Tower Of Power and Rose Royce, with perhaps one rap group each time. While the headliner for last year’s final concert was locally-born, nationally-known hip hop performer and producer D’Wayne Wiggins, he puts out decidedly un-gangsta sounds, the emphasis being on melody, impressive harmony, and sharp and energetic guitar licks over the infectious hip hop beat. Gangsta is not hyphy, but because they both get the young folks excited, old folks like myself sometimes get them confused, even though gangsta often celebrates the thug life and violence, but hyphy is aimed more towards good time celebrating. 

Anyways, at Brooks’ Arroyo series’ first concert last month, the producers included a whole section of hyphy, with the deejay exhorting the young people to “get up and show the old people how it’s done.” Coming shortly after the OG’s (or old folks) beat down the lawn grass with the electric slide, it was a fascinating moment, the first time in many years I had seen African-American youth and elders party together at roughly the same time. Such bridging of the generational gap in social gatherings—weddings and festivals and the like where older and younger dance the same dances to the same music—is common in almost every culture around the world, but got broken down and torn apart in the American consumer culture, which needs to isolate different “markets” so that they can be sold to with greater precision. That may be good for the business of music, but it is bad for the social health of our communities, since it serves to remove young people from the presence and influence of their elders during social gatherings. 

Councilmember Brooks is taking an enormous chance here by attracting more young people to East Oakland gatherings, and she knows it. She is the Barry Bonds of Oakland politics—decidedly unloved by most of the local press—and if any problems break out at the concerts with the young participants, many reporters and columnists will almost certainly jump on her feet first. That would be a shame, because there is something special being built here in the heart of East Oakland. The Arroyo concerts are being patrolled in part by members of the Nation of Islam’s Fruit of Islam security contingent—who tend to treat African-Americans with great respect and therefore tend to get respect in return, similar to what happens with the East Bay Dragons.  

Security duty at the Arroyo concerts is also shared with Oakland police officers. But either because they picked the right officers or gave the right orders, the OPD officers at the Arroyo concerts are acting different than they do at most gatherings in Oakland’s deep hoods. At last month’s concert they mingled with the crowd, smiling and talking with people as they walked through, acting as if we were all part of the same community and were there to protect the gatherers, not to eyeball them suspiciously, looking for every minor transgression. Some of the police stood on the edge of the crowd and played catch football with a group of the youngsters, the game going on for a half hour or so. Acting this way, the police did not create tension by their presence as they too often do around young African-Americans. It was a learning experience all-around, a lesson to be remembered when one realizes that it was clashes between Oakland police and young African-Americans that ended two of Oakland’s most successful annual festivals, the Festival At The Lake and Carijama. Some people believe those clashes were inevitable. But others think they could have been avoided by a different attitude from the police. 

Meanwhile, I notice that the Berkeley Community Theatre is hosting a hip hop concert this weekend, part of something called the 2K Sports Bounce Tour and featuring a Tribe Called Quest. While Oakland actively discourages rap and hip hop concerts because of the potential for violence, Berkeley continues to quietly hold them, drawing audiences from the African-American communities of neighboring Oakland and Richmond as well, the events going on so well that no one outside the hip hop community even notices. What is Berkeley doing that Oakland is not? 

I don’t have a ready answer for that. But maybe, with so much emphasis on Oakland’s violence almost to the exclusion of everything else at times, we are missing some important things happening, and some ways to heal our community and bring it back together. 

 


Strolling Down Solano Avenue

By Marta Yamamoto, Special to the Planet
Friday September 08, 2006

Ever dream about living in a neighborhood where spreading trees shade well-tended bungalows? Strong neighborhood school, small attractive parks and retail choices just down the street. Enough variety to satisfy every whim so a day can be enjoyed without requiring a car. Wake up on Saturday morning, feed the pets, throw on some clothes and stroll down the street for coffee and pastries or a full breakfast. 

Dreams become reality in Thousand Oaks. 

Not far removed from Main Street, U.S.A., Thousand Oaks lies along both sides of Solano Avenue from the Arlington to the Albany border. Resembling a split personality, four blocks of Solano are divided down the center, between Albany and Berkeley. Regardless of city, it’s all a charming, eclectic mixture of ethnic businesses, antiques, used books, coffeehouses and specialty shops perhaps not present on the Kansas plains. 

No one seeks to benefit from natural disasters but the fire and earthquake of 1906 resettled many San Franciscans in Berkeley’s burgeoning neighborhoods. John Hopkins Spring, vast landowner, is credited with starting the business end of Solano. Gone now, but adding spice to Thousand Oaks’ history were commuter trains that once traversed light rail through the Solano Tunnel. 

Perhaps the first Berkeley activists were the women of Thousand Oaks, armed with two shotguns and a rifle, holding off garbage trucks that rolled down Solano on the way to Albany Hill dumping grounds. 

Along with attractive neighborhood homes and varied commercial choices Thousand Oaks is home to four small public parks. Between the Arlington and the Alameda, two “stone” parks offer sweeping bay views and climbing practice. Neighbors gather at Great Stoneface Park to turf-run their dogs and children, picnic and try new handholds on the massive bolder. At Contra Costa Rock Park carved steps lead the way to impressive Bay-wide views. 

Thousand Oaks School Park is a magnet for tots and their caregivers, occupying the lush lawn and brightly colored play equipment. Toddler-size slide, swings and sandlot echo with gleeful sounds, while picnic tables under towering conifers beckon for a peaceful snack. Solano-Peralta Park could easily be missed. Resembling a mini urban plaza, the small enclosed playground and sidewalk benches are ideally placed for people watching. 

Thousand Oaks’ main artery is Solano Avenue where the shopping is varied and interesting. A pleasing harmony of historic buildings and recent additions blend easily into an enticing retail district. Offerings run the gamut from attire and gifts to delicacies. 

Women searching for fall wardrobes need look no further than Persimmon and By Hand where lovely outfits grace the front windows. Fall floral skirt, lime green corduroy vest, brick knit jacket and multi-strand beaded necklace preview the coming season. For matching shoes, Ideas 4 Elements will keep you fashionable without pinching your toes. 

A Child’s Place seems to specialize in pint-size comfort-clothes – Skivy Doodles soft P.J.’s in both truck and ballerina themes as well as fuzzy hooded terry towels and bath-time ducks and frogs. For that first haircut there’s Snippety Crickets, its wall of fame photos and toy-laden shelves rewards for not crying. 

Ready to pursue a new hobby? Stash’s wall of boldly beautiful wool yarns from Uruguay will have you imagining a warm ocher scarf or azure sweater. At New Pieces, color again greets the eye; quilting fabrics are arranged in prints, stripes, plaids and solids from yellow and orange to blue and green. A good selection of instruction books and wall-hung quilts serve as inspiration. Any trouble with a trusty sewing machine can be easily remedied at Jim’s Sewing Machine Center, the oldest Singer outlet in the United States. 

Need to stock up on gifts? Pegasus carries new and used books and CDs, across the board in terms of subjects. The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Hockney’s People or Forest of the Pigmies – take your pick. Soap Sisters’ scented soaps from France and Moroccan Mint body wash will vicariously send you across the seas. Silver and turquoise jewelry and pottery from Santo Domingo and Zuni Pueblos reside at Gathering Tribes, also offering intriguing Hopi Ant Pots. Fill them with honey and slowly move the ants away from your home. The Bone Room is in a class by itself stocking Nile crocodile skulls, scorpion paper weights, bug bracelets and human artifacts. Have an unoccupied corner awaiting a complete skeleton or just an empty jar for carpals, phalanges or teeth? 

Peet’s and Starbucks fill the need for java. Scharffen Berger Chocolate Mocha Freddos, Ethiopia and Las Hermanas coffee beans and Ancient Trees tea perfume the air at Peet’s. Fall offerings at Starbuck’s center around pumpkin, from spiced lattes to scones and cream cheese muffins. For exceptional bakery treats, La Farine will tingle your taste buds for hours. A morning bun, wheat levain bread for lunch and gateau au citron for afternoon coffee—these barely break the surface. 

All varieties of Solano eateries lure customers with their open-door policy, allowing delicious aromas to waft out the door. Comfort food is the ticket at Barney’s Gourmet Hamburgers, home to teriyaki and Russian burgers and spicy curly fries. Walker’s Restaurant and Pie Shop satisfies at breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as anytime you’re in the mood for fresh apple or coconut cream pie. 

When the Far East beckons, choices abound. Boran and Sweet Basil Thai Restaurants serve red, green and yellow curries, satay, Tom Yum Soup and the well-loved pad Thai. King Tsin Restaurant offers dim sum on top of twice cooked pork, lemon chicken and spicy prawns. Miyuki Japanese Restaurant does brisk business with sushi combos, udon, donburi and sashimi. 

Potato tikki, chicken briyani and lamb aloo perfume the air at Khana Peena Indian Cuisine. Humus, tabouleh, babaganoush and tahini await at Jerusalem’s Organic Kitchen. For pizza lovers Zachary’s Chicago Pizza satisfies both thin crust and stuffed aficionados; Cugini’s lures in those favoring pizza from a wood burning oven. 

You can’t go wrong with a good taqueria. Cactus is always crowded and with good reason, their complete menu makes decisions difficult. No less popular, Gordo can seldom contain its customers; the line usually snakes down the sidewalk. 

To experience Thousand Oaks at its most exuberant, join the celebration this Sunday, Sept. 10, for the 32nd Solano Stroll, the biggest block party in the Bay Area. In a few hours you can sample 50 cuisines, listen to 50 bands, watch 100 entertainers, admire juried crafts and find out what 200 community organizations are doing. Learn circus arts, envy the fun in Kid Town and cool off in the dunk tank. 

Thousand Oaks serves as a welcoming home and favored foray. Without pretense it offers a relaxed atmosphere to play, peruse and partake. Sample life in Thousand Oaks, it may figure in your dreams.  

 

 

 


East Bay Then and Now: Shipping Magnate’s Mansion Is Rare Survivor on Oxford Street

By Daniella Thompson
Friday September 08, 2006

One of the most imposing Victorian-era homes in Berkeley, the Boudrow House at Sea Captain Corner was constructed in 1889, when Berkeley, whose population then numbered about 12,000, was a favorite retirement spot for mariners. 

The house was built for Charles C. Boudrow (c. 1830–1918), a Massachusetts-born master mariner who for many years was a shipping magnate in San Francisco. On June 8, 1918, the Oakland Tribune published his obituary, stating: 

“Captain Charles Boudrow died suddenly at his home in Berkeley last night. He passed his 88th birthday a few months ago and was then well and hearty. Boudrow was connected with the firm of Migeul [correct spelling: Mighell] & Boudrow, which owned many large square-riggers out of this port, later forming the California Shipping Company and purchasing many eastern craft, which are owned by the Alaska Salmon companies. He retired from active service a few years ago, but made regular visits to the Merchants’ Exchange to talk ‘ship’ with his old-time friends. For over 60 years Boudrow had been established in the marine business in this port.” 

Among the many ships owned by Captain Boudrow or by the California Shipping Company were the Star of Italy; the cannery tender Jabez Howes; the bark May Flint; the Abner Coburn; the A.J. Fuller; the Saint Frances; and the Joseph B. Thomas. 

Captain Boudrow’s office was located near the port of San Francisco, at 38–40 Market Street. His residence was not far from there, at 1933 Stevenson Street. Living near him (but never with him) both in San Francisco and in Berkeley was his nephew Charles E. Boudrow, a ship chandler and dealer in ship material born in Massachusetts in 1858. 

The nephew’s major claim to fame was his purchase of the decommissioned sloop-of-war Marion from the U.S. Navy in July 1907. He moved to Berkeley at about the same time as his uncle and first appeared in the 1891 directory living on Spruce Street between Vine and Rose.  

Beginning with the 1893 directory, the younger Boudrow’s residence was 1432 Arch Street, where he remained for many years. In 1894 and 1895 he lived with Miss Louisa F. Boudrow. 

Captain Charles C. Boudrow outlived two wives. The second, Christina (1852–1914), was German-born and 22 years his junior. Curiously, Charles E. Boudrow also married a German woman, Katharina Diehl (1857–1941), who in the 1920 census claimed to be eleven years younger than she actually was, but as a widow in 1930 owned up to her real age. 

The Boudrow house on Oxford Street was designed in the Queen Anne-Eastlake style by the noted San Francisco architect Julius E. Krafft (1855–1937), who was responsible for many stately Pacific Heights residences. Born in Germany, Krafft immigrated to the U.S. in 1872 and came to San Francisco two years later. He worked as a draftsman for Palace Hotel architect John P. Gaynor and later for Thomas J. Welsh, designer of 16 Catholic churches in San Francisco, of which the three survivors are St. Agnes, Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, and Sacred Heart Church in the Western Addition. 

Krafft was in charge of Welsh’s drafting department for twelve years before opening his own office in 1888. One of his most celebrated buildings was the Gothic Revival St. Paulus Lutheran Church (1893), whose design was based on Cathedral of Chartres. The church was destroyed by fire in 1995. Still intact are 31–33 Liberty Street (1892) in the West Mission district and an opulent 1902 Classical Revival residence at 2601 Broadway commissioned by bank president Isaias Warren Hellman as a wedding gift for his daughter. 

Two of Krafft’s children, the twin sons Elmer Jerome (1880–1944) and Alfred Julius (1880–1950), joined their father’s business. Having begun as draftsmen, Elmer became an architect and Alfred a structural engineer. In 1933, the firm of Julius Krafft & Sons would design an Art Deco wholesale grocery warehouse for Wellman-Peck & Company in what is now the Warehouse Thematic Historic District of San Diego. This building was recently converted to an office condominium & retail complex. 

Captain Boudrow’s house was one of the early buildings in the Antisell Villa Lots, a tract comprising eight blocks bounded by Rose St. to the north, Shattuck Ave. to the west, Cedar St. to the south, and Arch St. to the east. Thomas M. Antisell was an attorney and real-estate agent with an office at 1069 Broadway in Oakland. In 1874, just after the U.C. campus moved from Oakland to Berkeley, Antisell began selling lots in the tract bearing his name. The subdivision map he issued advertised the upcoming auction sale “on liberal credit” of 260 lots, to take place on November 6, 1874. 

Thomas M. Antisell himself lived across the street from the future Boudrow property. At the time, Oxford St. was called Pine. Between 1876 and 1883, Antisell was listed in the Berkeley directory as residing variously at “Vine nr Pine,” “Pine nr Vine,” “E s Oxford bet Cedar and Vine,” and “Cedar.” He also was a piano manufacturer and dealer in San Francisco, and on November 15, 1887 received a patent for a wrest plank for his pianos, which were advertised as “the leading instrument of the world.” In numerous newspaper ads, Antisell offered his pianos on a $10 monthly installment plan and admonished readers to “buy only from the largest manufactory in the world.” 

Sometime in the 1880s, the Antisell house was purchased by Captain Boudrow’s partner, William E. Mighell, who made his first appearance in the Berkeley directory in 1889. The Berkeley Daily Advocate Holiday Number of 1892 included the house in an article on opulent residences in town: 

Captain Mighell purchased some years ago the then very handsome home of T.M. Antisell on the east side of Oxford Street, north of Vine [sic]. Since then he has spared neither time nor expense in making it one of the finest homes in town. Situated on a knoll, the views from his windows are superb. 

The same holiday issue also described the Boudrow house: 

Captain Budrow [sic] purchased a large lot on the corner of Oxford and Cedar streets, upon which he has erected one of the largest and finest dwelling houses in town. From every window the view is a panoramic scene of mountain, sea, and valley. 

The entire Boudrow house is constructed of redwood. Multiple gables and bays, floral and geometric friezes, plaster reliefs, and scalloped shingles ornament its façades. A balustraded flight of 15 steps leads up to a front porch whose gable roof is supported by turned columns linked by trelliswork arches. A round turret crowned with a witch’s hat rises four stories on the southeastern corner. The central gable features a balconette surmounted by a sunburst.  

There were seven rooms on the main floor and four rooms below. The main floor was famed for its 12-foot ceilings. The house boasted no fewer than six fireplaces. 

The Mighell and Boudrow houses were both situated on oversized lots—each the equivalent of five standard lots—and surrounded by large gardens. As Berkeley grew, the lots shrank. By 1929, the block was fully built. Further development occurred in the 1960s, when large apartment buildings were erected on this block. Many of the original houses, including the Mighell residence, are long gone. Apartment buildings are currently the predominant element along the 1500 block of Oxford Street. 

In 1922, Captain Boudrow’s heirs sold the house to mining engineer Roscoe Wheeler and his wife Erminie. According to the U.S. census, the Wheelers had previously resided in Oakland, but not always together. In 1920, Mrs. Wheeler and daughters Erminie (16) and Helen (14) were living in the home of the Misses Ellen and Cecilia Neylan on Wickson Avenue, while Mr. Wheeler was residing as a boarder on nearby Walker Avenue. 

The Wheelers are said to have had in their yard four 100-pound boulders that had served as ballast aboard the clipper ship Rattler. 

Helen Wheeler married the future colonel Robert Beard and owned the Boudrow house until 1970, when she had to let go of it. The house was in danger of being demolished until it was purchased by Dr. Paul F. Hocking and his wife Ann, who divided it into ten apartments. It was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark on June 21, 1976. 

The house changed hands again in 1994. The current owners restored it, rebuilding the front staircase and painting the exterior in more than ten colors. They received a BAHA Preservation Award in May 2006. 

 


Why I Hate Norm Abrams

By Matt Cantor
Friday September 08, 2006

I don’t actually hate Norm, I sort of like the guy. It’s nice to see someone on TV that would never have made it on his headshot and a screen-test. Those other folks on Hometime, now them I hate. They’re all cute and American looking and blond. Kachunk, Blam, Kachunk, Blam. Ah, that’s better. There’s nothing like large caliber gunfire to sooth the chakras. 

I do genuinely hate these shows. Hometime, This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop and I hate them for one simple reason. They make most people feel like idiots. 

They’re a lot of fun if you have accepted the popularly promulgated notion that you, as a homeowner or stock broker or bank clerk, know nothing about houses or furniture or nails and that you’ll never stand a chance of doing more than hanging a picture on the wall.  

Even the shows that try to show you how to build a chest of drawers do such a lousy job of preparing the average Joe or Joan for the job that they become nothing more than boutique shopping and showing off. 

Let’s take This Old House. Kuchunk, Blam. The thing I hate about TOH is that they don’t show you how bad things often get. I have yet to see an episode of this show in which you see a red faced homeowner screaming bloody murder at Steve and Norm and don’t tell me that it’s never happened. I don’t care how good a contractor is. 

When you’ve been working on someone’s house for 10 weeks, there is absolutely no way that 10 percent of the clientele aren’t going to be going into anaphylaxis. It’s well known in the industry that some people just can’t take it, even under the best of circumstances and I am certain that those videos are hiding in a vault somewhere at PBS central, waiting for the day that Steve or Norm step over the line. 

Again, the show doesn’t show the mistakes, the overages and the heartache often involved in home remodeling. They make everything look easy. You never see a subcontractor show up drunk. You never see a guy going to the emergency room because he stepped on a nail and you never see a job sitting incomplete for 18 months because the couple is getting a divorce or went into bankruptcy. 

The camera cleans up all the messes. I’m also quite sure that PBS has footed the bill more than a few times to get the job completed so that they could get everything in the can. 

On shows like this and Hometime, the jobs are made to look so darned easy. This is the problem with cooking shows as well. The kitchen is clean when they start. (How does your kitchen look? I usually can’t find a clear counter to work on.) All the materials are waiting for assembly and nothing is spoiled, the wrong type or missing. 

Dean and Robin’s air gun never misfires and the compressor never needs to be drained (yes, you have to drain compressors daily because they fill up with water and will rust out if you don’t do so). 

That’s another point. There are so many small details that fill a contractor’s day (or your day when you play contractor) and, just like the cooking show, they’re neatly edited out. Just pop the raw one in the oven and Voila, the new freshly baked one comes right out of the other oven. 

Now, how educational does this end up being? The average viewer of these shows isn’t sure which nail to use to fix the trim on the side of the house, so it’s a little high-handed to try to show, even over 3 episodes, how to rehabilitate an 1860 farm house into a three-bedroom, two-bathroom suite with an office in the basement. 

Can the viewer replicate any of these actions or is it simply a fashion show designed to make you salivate, believing falsely that you could do all this yourself if only you had just a wee bit more free time? 

Not that I don’t think that people can learn this stuff but it’s just a tad more complex and definitely more hairy than they make it look.  

I DID once see one of those extreme remodeling shows in which we got to see the workers freak out, fight and loose their cool but it’s still a little like watching brain surgery on TV. 

It’s not like you’re going to turn to your wife and say, “Hey Honey, I’ll bet I can remove that tumor for you right here on the kitchen table.” 

By the way, if you’re husband gets that Jack Nicholson/Shining look while watching the Home Neuroscience channel, best to go stay with Mom for a few days until the cable company can come downgrade you from the Gold package to regular broadcast TV. 

I have, on occasion, watched Norm do his New Yankee Workshop thing and my complaints with that show are essentially the same as the aforementioned, although I’ll add one major complaint. Actually, this complaint applies to the previous shows but it’s never so apparent to me as when I’m watching Norm build a Georgian breakfront. Norm has really, really nice tools. 

His tools are sharp and clean and new and they’re all hanging on the wall in exactly the right place courtesy of the sponsor, Stanley tools. He has attachments for routers and drill presses that I’ve never seen. I’m not saying that most of these are not to be found in the average cabinet maker’s shop but I’ll bet even they would say that the quality and completeness of his assembly of tools far exceeds theirs. 

So when Norm starts to build his breakfront and you start to build yours, (assuming you’re retired, moderately wealthy and sufficiently well-adjusted) you’re going to have a lot to emotionally contend with as nothing that you do comes out quite as well and certainly as fast as the one that Norm does on screen. You’ve been set up. 

Here’s what I’d like to see in place off all these shows (if there are any TV producers reading, I’m waiting for my close-up C.B.):  

An episode would go something like this. Mrs. Jones’s faucet is leaking (maybe we have a few other small repairs too) and she calls the handyman to come fix things. The “handyman” (me) arrives with no tools and has to rely upon what Mrs. Jones has in the tool-drawer in the kitchen. 

Then he and Mrs. Jones go to Ace Hardware, buy the tools they need, the parts they need and proceed to struggle through all the steps in fixing the leak including trying to find things at the hardware store. This will, of course, require a second, and possibly, third trip to the store and will all end with cheers of joy and turkey sandwiches eaten on the kitchen floor in sopping jeans once the drip has finally been tackled. 

Now that’s what I would call Reality TV. 


An Interesting Nursery Close to Lake Merritt

By Ron Sullivan
Friday September 08, 2006

If you find yourself over by Lake Merritt, there’s a nursery tucked into Jean Street on Grand Avenue that’s worth a visit.  

It’s getting close to the season to bird Lake Merritt. The place is great for wintering ducks and the odd vagrant waterbird, and even more odd hybrids: a hooded merganser X bufflehead drake has been showing up near the lake’s Bay outlet for the past two years. He’s a striking bird, like a black-and-white photograph of some natty figment of the imagination. 

I’ve seen tufted ducks who should’ve been in southeast Asia there, and just last year a Franklin’s gull, still in that ineffable blush of rosy breeding plumage, posed for a couple of weeks along the inland end.  

There’s Walden Pond Books in the neighborhood too, and restaurants galore. And I think I recall a sort of warehouse-club purveyor of coffins, so there’s something for everybody. What are you waiting for? 

So while you’re there, do drop in at the Ace Hardware store’s garden center, a few doors lakeward on Grand from the hardware store itself. (The intervening doors are occupied by Ace’s new “patio shop” and storage. Hardware stores have a tendency to do that, take up storefronts with backroom stuff. Odd. Kind of butch, I guess.) The parking lot is teeny, but you’re on the easier-parking end of the neighborhood anyway.  

The nursery shop has remained, since I first visited about ten years ago, focused on stuff for urban small gardens. 

This doesn’t mean teensy plants; there are things like tree ferns and magnolias that will get big, and make good focal points. Fruit trees, too, and one thing I’d never heard of, a golden-foliaged cultivar of dawn redwood.  

I find that’s the advantage of visiting small neighborhood nurseries: Because they’re local and individually run, they’re good for idiosyncratic finds. Someone gets a jones for red foliage or obscure mints, and the game is on. Ace has a better than usual set of these because it has a lot of Annie’s Annuals four-inchers, and you know how Annie’s is about weird and wonderful plants.  

Other useful stuff for small gardens here: vines and vertical plants, tall skinny cultivars, and hey, you can always espalier those fruit trees. 

There’s a good sampling of shade plants for the understory, including silvery ferns and those bright-foliaged heucheras and tiarellas that are in vogue lately. Also, there are some begonias I hadn’t met before, of all things. 

Like many of the nurseries I like, the place is full of pleasant bugs, like butterflies. 

These might have trekked in from nearby yards or even the Oakland Rose Garden at the terminus of Jean Street, but there were several species chasing each other around and the big ones, the red admiral for example, looked fresh and newly hatched. 

You don’t get butterflies (or honeybees or katydids or the dragonflies who chase them) when you douse the place in pesticides for appearances’ sake, so I take them as a good sign. 

This is a good place for Felco pruning shears—try them on; find your best model—and basic bonsai tools, too. The indoor shop has a nice collection of Japanese-style baskets. 

Bulbs are starting to show up, too; I scored some rhizomes of “Batik” iris, my favorite. 

I have mine. Go get yours.  

 

Ace Garden Center 

4001 Grand Avenue, Oakland 

652-9143 

Monday–Friday 8:30 a.m.–6 p.m.  

Saturday 9 a.m.–6 p.m.  

Sunday 10 a.m.–4 p.m.  

 

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.


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday September 08, 2006

Gas Shut-off Valve – Is It Worth It?  

 

An automatic gas shut-off valve is a mechanism that can be installed on the house side of your gas meter. 

It is designed to cut the flow of gas to your home in the event of an earthquake. In previous quakes in California, gas lines to appliances snapped, gas built up in the house, and the resulting fire destroyed many homes.  

There are plenty of people who have decided against having one installed, thinking that, if they smell gas after a serious quake, they can just turn off the gas themselves at the main shut-off valve near their meter. 

No problem—if you can guarantee somebody will be home at the time of the quake. However, if the quake hits when everyone’s at work, or on an outing, or just gone from home, you may regret not having one.  

It’s true that a moderate-sized quake can activate the valve, but the ones I’ve used are easy to re-set, and, in my opinion, the protection is worth the potential inconvenience.  

 

 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing and kit supply service. Contact him at 558-3299 or see www.quakeprepare.com to receive semi-monthly e-mails and safety reports.


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday September 12, 2006

TUESDAY, SEPT. 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Flowers and Foliage” watercolors by Joanna Katz on display at Back in Action Chiropractic Center, 2500 Martin Luther King Jr Way, to Oct. 13.  

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “The Night of Truth” at noon, “In the Battlefields” at 2 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland.  

Alternative Visions: “Lunch with Fela” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Myra MacPherson on her biography of I. F. Stone, “All Governments Lie,” at 5:30 p.m. at North Gate Library, Hearst at Euclid Ave., UC Campus. 643-3840. 

Michael Chorost reads from “Rebuilt: How Becomming Part Computer Made me More Human” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. 

“Writers on Reading” with Jon Carroll, Maxine Hong Kingston and April Sinclair, in celebration of Rockridge Library’s 10th Anniversary at 7 p.m. at 5366 College Ave.  

Joan Roughgarden discusses “Evolution and Christian Faith” at 7:30 p.m. in the Large Assembly Room, First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10. 559-9500. 

“True Admissions” College essays by Berkeley High Students at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Old Blind Dogs, Scottish acoustic, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Ellen Hoffman Trio and Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

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.  

Debbie Poryes & Friends at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

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

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 13 

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater “As You Like It” 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 Oct. 15. Tickets are $15 and up. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “Max and Mona” at 7 p.m., “Almost Brothers” at 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland.  

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Words Upon the Waters” A Poetic Response to Hurricane Katrina at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Fundraiser for Biloxi, MS. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568. 

Michael Pollan discusses “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler celebrate “BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the pages of BITCH Magazine” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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, clarinet concertos at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

“The Art of Fugue” in math, music, and art, a concert and discussion with harpsichordist Davitt Moroney, printmaker Elizabeth Harington, and mathematician Robert Osserman at 5:30 p.m. in Chern Hall’s Simons Auditorium, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, 17 Gauss Way, near the intersection of Centennial Drive and Grizzly Peak Blvd. www.msri.org 

Christy Dana Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ.  

Walter Strauss, blues, folk, rock, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Vission Latina at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Rachel Efron at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Old Blind Dogs, Scottish acoustic, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Peter Barshay Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Oliver Mtukudzi, African pop, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s. Cost is $24, fundraiser for Zimbabwe AIDS Relief. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, SEPT. 14 

EXHIBITIONS 

“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. 

FILM 

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

Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice Conversation with the filmmaker at 5:30 p.m. “Shooting Indians” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Hillside Club Arts and Crafts Lecture “Arts and Crafts Furniture Design” A lecture by Debey Zito at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. www.hillsideclub.org 

“Signature Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area” with author Dave Weinstein, at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 763-9218.  

Amy Goodman and David Goodman talk with Pratap Chatterjee and Michael Shenoda about “STATIC: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Tickets are $10-$15 at Cody’s. 559-9500. 

Cecil Brown, musicologist and historian of African-American culture reads from “I Stagolee: A Novel” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert with Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Free.  

Charming Hostess music salon at 6:30 p.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950.  

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Ginny Hawker, Jody Stechner & Hank Bradley at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

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

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

Stigma 13, Year of the Wildcat, Charlie Roman and the Teenage Werewolves at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

Uncle Buzzy’s Hometown Variety Show at 8 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline.  

Larry Harlow and the Latin Legends at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

May Pole, Dora Flood, The Waxfire, indie rock, at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

FRIDAY, SEPT. 15 

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. www.altarena.org 

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

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. 

California Shakespeare Theater “As You Like It” 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 Oct. 15. Tickets are $15 and up. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

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. www.shotgunplayers.org 

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 

“The Face of Poetry” Photographs by Margaretta Mitchell on dispaly at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., through Oct. 30. 981-6100. 

“Looking for Hope” Photograhs by Matt O’Brien with text by students in the Oakland Public Schools opens at the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park Museum Gallery, 2465 34th Ave. Artist talk at 6 p.m. Gallery open Thurs.-Fri. 4 to 6 p.m. and Sun. noon to 4 p.m. 532-9142. www.peraltahacienda.org 

“Textures of Space” new paintings by Michael Shemchuck and Mel Davis. Reception at 6 p.m. at Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St. Exhibition runs through Oct. 29. 549-1018.  

“Educate to Liberate: A Retrospective of the Black Panther Community News Service” Exhibition in honor of the 4)th 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. www.oaklandlibrary.org 

Trent Burkett “New Work in Salt and Wood” Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Trax Ceramics Gallery, 1812 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to Oct. 15. 540-8729. www.traxgallery.com 

“Horses in the Trees” works by Mark P. Fisher at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave. #4. Exhibition runs to Oct. 7. 421-1255. 

FILM 

Arab Film Festival with 45 films from 12 countries, through Sun. at the California Theater, 2113 Kittredge St.TIckets are $8-$10, festival pass $60-$100. 415-564-1100. www.aff.org 

Friends of African Film “One Evening in July” by Raja Amari, Tunisia, and “Riches” by Ingrid Sinclair, Zimbabwe, at 7:30 p.m. at 464 Van Buren, at Euclid. friendsofafricanfilm 

@yahoo.com 

Global Lens Film Festival “Stolen Life” at 7 p.m., “Thirst” at 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.globalfilm.org 

Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice “Runaway Grooms” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Susan Page discusses “Why Talking is Not Enough: Eight Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Los Utrera in a celebration of Mexican Independence at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Suzhou Kun Opera Theater of Jiangsu “The Peony Pavilion” Fri,. and Sat. at 7 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$86. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with new Lost City Ramblers, Stairwell Sisters at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage. Cost is $25.50-$26.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Pigeon John, hip hop at noon at Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Campus. 

Upsurge Jazz & Poetry Sextet, in a benefit for library literacy programs, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Aphrodesia and guests from Ghana, Kusun Ensemble, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance workshop at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Tesse Loehwing, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ned Boynton Quintet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Jaia Suri and Fernando Tarango at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Sorrow Town Choir, Trailer Park Rangers, Lansdale Station at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Risky Business, Wake Up Call at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Shotgun Wedding Quintet, Dynamic at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

Human No Longer at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Larry Harlow and the Latin Legends at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 16 

CHILDREN  

Madeline Dunphy introduces children to the planet’s major ecosystems and the interdependence of wildlife in her books, at 11 a.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Chroma” works by artists of the Chroma Collective. Reception at 2 p.m. at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 1. 848-1228. 

“Gods and Aeroplanes” mixed media by Sally Rodriguez. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Art Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit # 116, in the front of the historic cotton mill studios, Oakland. 535-1702. www.thefloatcenter.com 

FILM 

Arab Film Festival with 45 films from 12 countries, through Sun. at the California Theater, 2113 Kittredge St. Tickets are $8-$10, festival pass $60-$100. 415-564-1100. www.aff.org 

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

Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice “Continuous Journey” at 6:30 p.m. and “Narmada: A Valley Rises” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing” with Daniel Alarcón, Adam Mansbach and T Cooper at 2 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, 125 14th St. 238-3134.  

Tom Hartman introduces “Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class” at 6 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

“Aging Artfully” reading with Amy Gorman at 2 p.m. at Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave. 527-4977. 

“Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” Panel discussion at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Benefit Concert to Restore the 1909 Steinway at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, with rock and folk favorites at 6 p.m. at 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $5. 841-4824. 

Zorina London, Huntley Brown and Heavenly Melody Choir at 7:30 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15. 562-2120. 

Araucaria, traditional Chilean music and dance, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Robin Gregory and her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention Square Dance with Squirrelly String Band, Uncle Wiggley, Adam Rose Band, at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

John Richardson Band with Hudson Bunce and John Shinnick at 9 p.m. at the Circus Pub, 389 Colusa Ave, Kensington. 

Ellen Honert and TC at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Slapshaw’s Latin Tryout at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Neydavood Ensemble, classical Persian music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Sick, Insolence, Re Ignition at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Ben Goldberg Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Josh Workman Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

George Cotsirilos Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

John Howland Trio, Peter Maybarduk, Steve Taylor at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Shinoubu, The Queers, Groovie Ghoulies at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 17 

EXHIBITIONS 

New Works by Kazuyo Sato-Leue, abstract expressionist. Reception at 2 p.m. at Westside Barkery Cafe, 250 Ninth St., and runs through Dec. 31. www.studiokazuyo.com 

“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 

Arab Film Festival with 45 films from 12 countries, at the California Theater, 2113 Kittredge St.TIckets are $8-$10, festival pass $60-$100. 415-564-1100. www.aff.org 

Global Lens Film Festival “Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures” at 2 p.m., “Global Shorts” at 7 p.m., “Stolen Life” at 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.globalfilm.org 

The Unsilent Film: “The Sentimaental Bloke” at 5 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Creative Aging Film Fest at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 848-0237. 

 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Folk and Fine Arts Flux in India Today” Gallery talk with Joanna Williams at 3 p.m. at at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808 

“Building a Jewish Collection” with Alla Efimova, Karen Levitov and George Krevsky at 2 p.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950.  

S. Beth Atkin talks about “Gunstories: Life-Changing Experiences with Guns” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Robin Morgan and Helen Zia discuss “Fighting Words” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Novello Quartet performs works of Haydn and Mozart at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $9-$10. 644-6893. berkeleyartcenter.org 

Jazz at the Chimes with Stephanie Bruce “Peace: An Invocation” at 2 p.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $10, includes reception. 288-3207.  

Zorina London, Huntley Brown and Heavenly Melody Choir at 4:30 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15. 562-2120. 

Bearfoot Bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Nuccia Focile, soprano at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Americana Unplugged: Old-Time Cabaret from 3 to 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Peter Apfelbaum, The New York Hieroglyphics and Abdoulaye Diabate at 8 and 10 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ricardo Peixoto & Marcos Silva Duo, Brazilian classics, at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Jason Armstrong & Joe Kenny at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Lethal Agression, Security Threat, Ill Content at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 18 

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “Stolen Life” at 7 p.m. at “In the Battlefields” at 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.globalfilm.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sunnylyn Thibodeaux and Julien Poirier at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Brian Copeland presents the book version of the one-man show he took to Broadway “Not a Genuine Black Man” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Anthony Horowitz, children’s fiction author, at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Jannie Dresser at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

Mary Gaitskill reads from her new novel “Veronica” set in Paris and Manhattan in the 1980s at 7 p.m. at Cody’s on Fourth St.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Khalil Shaheed, all ages jam, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Aaron Goldberg Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  

 


The Theater: Oscar Wilde’s ‘Salome’ Takes the Stage at the Aurora

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday September 12, 2006

By Ken Bullock 

Special to the Planet 

 

“Bring to me, on a silver charger ...” The story of Salome is familiar enough. From a few terse words in two of the Gospels, in which an unnamed step-daughter of Herod, the Tetrarch of Judea, pleases him with her dancing—and as reward, asks for the head of John the Baptist—the image of Salome as temptress, lovelorn pagan, searching soul in the midst of archaic social decadence, has inspired religious and profane art for centuries. 

The Aurora Theatre’s currently producing Oscar Wilde’s Belle Epoch stage play of the legend, “slightly adapted” and directed by Mark Jackson, whose Death of Meyerhold, which he wrote and directed, was a great success for Shotgun a few years back. 

Probably Wilde’s Salome is more familiar to current audiences through the Richard Strauss opera and the pre-Expressionist, pre-Surrealist, extravagantly stylized illustrations to the book by Aubrey Beardsley. 

Wilde wrote the play in French; it was originally translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas (there’s no translation credit in the Aurora program), the “Bosie” whose relations with Wilde would lead to the notorious libel suit against Bosie’s father, the Marquis of Queensbury, then Wilde’s trial shortly after Salome’s publication which resulted in Wilde’s imprisonment, the ruin of his career and his legend as a kind of “Poet Maudit” of England, homosexually debauched, artistically effete and grandiosely self-regarding.  

The real intent of Wilde’s writings for both page and stage is another story. But unfortunately director Jackson chooses to confabulate Wilde’s myth with contemporary preoccupations and abandon the dramaturgy of Wilde’s work. 

Wilde’s mother was an ardent Irish nationalist. In his university days and after, he never forgot he was something of an exotic dinner guest at the imperial British table, and he played the part to the hilt. Like a court jester, he wittily impugned the corruption he saw around him, most memorably in bon mots tossed off as if careless, carefree witticisms. They pepper his plays and other writings, besides being a staple of his act of man-about-town, of-the-world. 

Salome seems like an anomaly to all of this. Sometimes dismissed as an over-the-top wallowing in purple verse, it harkens back to Wilde’s close reading of the classics and of scripture at Oxford. Victorian society was much taken up with the notion of its origins in the two opposing traditions of the Greek and the Hebraic—Athens and Jerusalem. 

Thomas Hardy, among others, worked up this opposition of Grecian Beauty versus Judaic Morality into full-blown (and censured) attacks on the hypocrisy and repression of British society and its cultural and moral pretensions. Salome wasn’t produced in Wilde’s lifetime due to a prohibition on plays with biblical personae, not because of its sexual implications  

Wilde’s play takes the story of Palestine under Roman rule, rife with rebels and prophets, and puts it together for the stage in the form of a Greek tragedy, with its chorus opening the play quietly (here more declamatory), gossiping about events already unfolding and about “the Quality” (Herod and his family), utilizing a broad dynamic of voice registers. The chorus of servants and functionaries (Joel Rainwater, Beth Wilmurt, Deontay Wilson, Trish Mulholland) comes from all across the Empire in what should be a range of social mannerism in Tragic speech ignored by most modern translators and adapters, Ezra Pound a notable exception.  

The action develops as Salome (Miranda Calderon) enters, peeling off from a banquet, complaining that Herod keeps looking at her and asks to see Iokannan (John, played by Mark Anderson Phillips) the prophet, whose prophetic outcries from the dungeon fill the palace. She confronts that “voice crying in the wilderness,” makes advances on him--and is spurned. 

Herod (Ron Campbell) and his consort (who is Salome’s mother by Herod’s brother), Herodias (Julia Brothers—splendid throughout), enter, with Herod later requesting for Salome to dance (Herodias protesting). Then comes the dance—and Salome’s own, ghastly request in return (with Herodias, taking Iokanaan’s prophecies of doom as personal libel, approving, to Herod’s dismay), her revenge on the one man who wouldn’t look at her. 

Herod’s offer of all the jewels in his treasury, if Salome will relinquish her grisly request, glitters with their names. Wilde here (and elsewhere) poses the erotically poetic language of the Old Testament’s “Song of Songs” (which became an anthem to European nationalism when translated into the vernaculars) against the stark, spare New Testament admonitions of Iokanaan. Ron Campbell, a talented if problematic comic actor, fiddles so much with gestural and vocal schtick (sometimes palletizing and nasalizing from a whisper up to a scream) that the audience loses the hypnotic language, and the meaning and direction, of the text.  

Wilde’s original is a seductively subversive attack on the English dysfunctional family, via this caricaturish Roman “royal” family of a colonial viceroy and his menage, sunk in decadent and corrupt luxury, strangely fascinated by their “fundamentalist” prisoner, who prophecies of the coming of a new order, of redemption—and judgment. 

With all the recent crop of movies, in particular, that use the Middle American dysfunctional family to criticize the national sense of mission to democratize the world, it’s hard to see how a production of Wilde’s very theatrical rhetoric against the crown of that Empire “on which the sun never set” couldn’t be posed so as to find a contemporary voice, at least vibrate some resonance. 

But Jackson’s sense of Salome as a “coming out” play, a tale of “paedophilia” (though Salome seems to be of marriagable age, if still young), makes this show an awkward manifestation of tabloid aestheticism, taking Wilde’s disguise(s) for the substance of his art. 

The production, with its tiled and marble set, with a metal cage like a lift suspended above (designed by Mikiko Uesugi), and sumptuous costumery (Callie Floor) is irrelevantly relocated to Art Deco New York. And there’s none of the dreamlike grotesquery or strange timelessness of the Aubrey Beardsley figures, just a parody of pantomime instead of stylization, gestures with locked musculature that look like neo-Reichian exercises. 

Salome’s dance itself turns out to be the best thing in the show, choreographed by Chris Black, with Calderon as a kind of Electra of the Discos (Wilde’s Salome reminds one alternately of Electra and of Hamlet with their incestuous familial predicaments), doing a wild combo of Mideastern and Interpretive Dance (and Campbell’s lascivious onlooking finally hits the mark). But lights and sound, even here, are Disneyish illustrations of the action, the stage bathed in red when “blood” is mentioned, wind whistling when Herod alone hears a breeze—and much over-projection by the cast in a small auditorium. 

Sadly, Oscar Wilde’s reputation is built on mostly cheap sensationalism. This production passes up the chance to explore a seldom-produced work, to reveal the face of the artist—and its true expression—behind the rather louche grimace of his mask. 

 

 

 

Salome 

Through Oct. 1 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org.


A Vireo of Your Own: The Immortality of William Hutton

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday September 12, 2006

By Joe Eaton 

Special to the Planet 

 

It’s an odd kind of distinction, having your name attached to a plant or animal. Cartoonist Gary Larson says he considered it an extreme honor when a new species of louse was christened Strigiphilus garylarsoni—a reaction I can understand perfectly. 

Long after his work has been forgotten, his name will endure--at least among a small subset of entomologists who specialize in the parasites of owls. Who remembers Poinsett, Dahl, Zinn, Forsyth, or Wistar? But botanists and gardeners invoke them all the time. 

I recently picked up a wonderful book called Audubon to Xantus, by Barbara and Richard Mearns: a series of short biographies of the men and women for whom North American birds were named.  

Audubon everybody knows: he got an oriole, a shearwater, and a warbler (the last now considered just a subspecies of the yellow-rumped warbler). Xantus was a Hungarian exile and compulsive fabulator who collected birds at Fort Tejon and Cabo San Lucas in the 1850s. A murrelet and a hummingbird bear his name. 

Somewhere between Audubon and Xantus comes William Hutton, of Hutton’s vireo. Hutton’s vireo is one of our more obscure songbirds: common in California oak woodlands (C. C. Van Fleet called it “the spirit of the live oak tree”), but inconspicuous in appearance and retiring in habit. And I suspect even a lot of birders misidentify these birds as ruby-crowned kinglets. 

Both are small greenish-gray birds with white wingbars and nervous, twitchy demeanors. But the vireo has a heavier bill and slightly different facial and wing patterns, and it doesn’t twitch quite as much as the kinglet. Its call is also quite different: a whining, raspy “rheeee,” as opposed to the kinglet’s “che-dit.” 

Vireos are a strictly New World family, related, according to genetic studies, to the corvids (crows, jays, magpies) and shrikes. They’re feisty as small birds go. Birding maven Rich Stallcup says you can always tell whether the bird you’ve trapped in a mist net is a vireo or a warbler by its attitude. Warblers go limp; vireos will try to bite you. 

Most vireos are some shade of green, with white accents: eyestripes, spectacles, wingbars. Their vocal performances tend toward the monotonous. 

The song of the eastern red-eyed vireo—the “preacher bird”—has been represented as “First on the one hand, then on the other,” repeated indefinitely. With one partial exception, all the North American forms are migratory. That exception is the Hutton’s, or at least the California population of the Hutton’s; some interior populations do move south for the winter. 

Hutton’s has other quirks. For nest construction, it favors the hanging lichens—lace lichen, beard lichen—that festoon California oak trees. In winter, both California residents and those that winter in western Mexico join mixed foraging flocks: bands of chickadees, kinglets, warblers, and woodpeckers that roam the woods, apparently taking advantage of additional eyes to spot predators. The Mexican flocks may be composed of 18 or more species, but they almost always include a Hutton’s vireo or two.  

There’s a lot ornithologists still don’t know about this bird: its territorial behavior, whether it’s single- or double-brooded, its migratory movements. The most recent studies of nesting in California were published in 1919. 

And since the vireo’s nesting season begins early, it tends to be overlooked in breeding bird surveys. But we know a great deal more about Hutton’s vireo than we know about William Hutton. The Mearnses, who appear to be dogged researchers, were unable to determine when or where he was born, or when or where he died.  

We know that he collected the vireo near Monterey in 1847 and sent its remains back east, where it came into the hands of John Cassin (Cassin’s auklet, finch, kingbird, sparrow, vireo), then working on a book about western birds. Hutton may have been a friend or protégé of Spencer Fullerton Baird (Baird’s sandpiper and sparrow) at the Smithsonian Institution, who asked Cassin to name the new species for him. Cassin was unenthusiastic: “This kind of thing is bad enough at best, but to name a bird after a person utterly unknown is worse than that,” he wrote to Baird. But he eventually gave in. 

Correspondence between Cassin and Baird suggests Hutton was in the San Diego area around 1851. Then the flow of specimens stopped. Hutton may have been abandoned bird-hunting for gold-hunting; he may have returned east in time to be killed in the Civil War; he may have disappeared into Mexico, like Ambrose Bierce. It’s anyone’s guess. 

An obscure bird with an even more obscure namesake, and even that tenuous claim to fame may soon be gone. The California and interior populations of Hutton’s vireo, separated by miles of desert, turn out to be genetically distinct. 

Each may deserve separate species status. If the species is split, it’s likely that the old name will be dropped and each of the new forms will be rechristened, as happened when the plain titmouse was separated into oak titmouse and juniper titmouse.  

William Hutton, whoever he was, will be consigned to taxonomic limbo. That’s immortality for you. 

 


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday September 12, 2006

TUESDAY, SEPT. 12 

“All Governments Lie” with Myra MacPherson, journalist and author, who will discuss her new biography of I. F. Stone, at 5:30 p.m. at North Gate Library, Grad. School of Journalism, Hearst at Euclid Ave., UC Campus. 643-3840. 

WriterCoach Connection seeks volunteers to help students inmprove their writing and critical thinking skills. Training session from noon to 3 p.m. in Berkeley. For information call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Docent Training at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden Learn about native plants and then give something back to the community by leading tours. Twenty sessions on Tues. through Feb. from 9 a.m. to noon at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park. Course fee is $125. To register call 527-9802. gkeator@aol.com  

“New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina: Lessons for California’s Levees” with Ray Seed, Prof. Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCB, at 5:30 p.m. at 250 Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Campus. 642-2666. 

Discover Northern Arizona’s Redrock Country A slide presentation with geologist Jim Scheihing at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Elderhostel: Adventures in Lifelong Learning” a video and talk by Margaret Hankle at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 526-7512. 

Free Quit Smoking Classes on six Tues. evenings from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. Optional free acupuncture provided. Registration required. 981-5330. quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Torture Teach-in and Vigil every Tues. at 12:30 p.m. at the fountain on UC Campus, Bancroft at College. 

Handbuilding Ceramics Class from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Also Mon. from noon to 4 p.m. and Wed. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ashby at Ellis Sts. Free, except for materials and firing charges. For information call 525-5497. 

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.  

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. 13  

Lorin District Traffic Calming A community meeting at 7 p.m. at Spud’s Meeting Room, 3290 Adeline. 981-7130. 

Katrina Update Fundraiser at 7 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Donation $5-$20, no one turned away.  

“National Security and Intellectual Freedom” Panel discussion at 6:30 p.m. at the Free Speech Movement Cafe at Moffitt Undergraduate Library, UC Campus.  

Healthy Aging Fair, with information on services and resources and health screenings, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Centennial Hall, 22292 Foothill Blvd., Hayward. Sponsored by the Alameda County Commission on Aging. 636-0347. 

“The End of Suburbia” a documetary on oil depletion and the collapse of the American Dream at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

East Bay Genealogical Society with Nancy Simons Peterson of the California Genealogical Society discussing her book, “Raking the Ashes: Genealogical Strategies for Pre-1906 San Francisco Research” at 10 a.m. in the Library Conference Room of the Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave. Oakland. Guests are always welcome. 635-6692.  

Poetry Writing Workshop, led by Alison Seevak, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

New to DVD: “Cache” at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $3-$5. 848-0237. 

Current Events Discussion Group meets on Wed. at 7 p.m. at the Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. 597-4972. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 14 

Amy Goodman and David Goodman talk with Pratap Chatterjee and Michael Shenoda about “STATIC: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Tickets are $10-$15 at Cody’s. Benefit for KPFA and CorpWatch. 559-9500. 

Richmond Southeast Shoreline Community Advisory Group meets at 6:30 p.m. at the Bermuda Room, Richmond Convention Center, 403 Civic Center Plaza, at Nevin and 25th Sts, Richmond. 367-5379. 

Financial Management Information for Seniors at 10:30 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190. 

Natural Baby Care with pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene at 7:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Estate Planning Seminar for You and Your Pets with attorney Timothy H. Smallsreed at 7 p.m. at Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, 2700 Ninth St. at Carleton. Free but RSVP requested, 845-7735, ext. 19. 

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. 

East Bay Macintosh Users Group, meets to discuss Concept Draw V, at 6 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. Free, all welcome. www.ebmug.org  

FRIDAY, SEPT. 15 

Gary Hart “The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats” at 12:30 p.m. at The African American Museum & Library at Oakland, 659 Fourteenth St. Free, but please RSVP to 637-0200.  

“Building Peace” A panel discussion with Blue Star Mom Laura Monroe, Brigadier General Ralph Marinaro, General Paul Monroe, Gold Star Mom Nadia McCaffrey and Peoples Lobby Executive Director Dwayne Hunn at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. $20 donation requested, students, low-income $5. 528-5403. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Benjamin Griffin, Editor, The Mark Twain Collection. Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

“Berkeley in the 60s” film showing, with Liberation News Service shorts from the 1960s, followed by a discussion about Berkeley's radical history at 7:30 p.m. at Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Friends of African Film “One Evening in July” by Raja Amari, Tunisia, and “Riches” by Ingrid Sinclair, Zimbabwe, at 7:30 p.m. at 464 Van Buren, at Euclid, Oakland. friendsofafricanfilm@yahoo.com 

Movies that Matter “The Whale Rider” at 6:30 p.m., followed by discussion of the spiritual aspects of the film. Call for location 451-3009. 

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. 16 

Annual California Coastal Cleanup Day Meet at 9 a.m. behind the Seabreeze Market at the corner of University and Frontage Rd. to sign waivers, get trash/recycle bags, pencils, tally cards and a map of the areas we need to clean. 981-6720. 

The Natural History of Garbage Coastal Clean-up Day at Point Pinole from 9 a.m. to noon with Tara Reinertson, Naturalist. For information and meeting place call Tilden Nature Center, 525-2233. 

Creek to Bay Day in Oakland Volunteers needed at 9 a.m. at several creek sites to help remove litter and non-native invasive plants. Sites include Glen Echo Creek, Monta Vista Ave. at Piedmont Ave., Lake Merritt Boating Center, 568 Bellevue Ave., Oakland Estuary at Arrowhead Marsh, at the end of Swan Rd off Doolittle Rd., Temescal Creek at the Claremont DMV. For other locations call 238-7611. 

Richmond Coastal Cleanup Day Meet at 9 a.m. at Shimada Friendship Park, at the end of Marina Bay Pkwy. Free BBQ at noon. Sponsored by the Watershed Project. 665-3689. 

String Band Contest and Crafts Fair from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at MLK, Jr. Way. 548-3333. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“Megafollies: A Brief History of Bay Area HyperDevelop- 

ment Stopped by Citizen Activism” With Prof Gray Brechin, UCB, at 7 p.m. at the Home of Truth Center, 1300 Grand Street, Alameda. Sponsored by the Alameda Public Affairs Forum. www.alamedaforum.org  

Geology Rocks A short nature hike to discover the layers of our planet, for ages 9-12, at 10 a.m., at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7. 525-2233. 

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour “The New Berkeley City College” led by Charles Wollenberg and Shirley Fogarino at 10:30 a.m. Cost is $8-$10. for infromation call 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc/  

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Mills College Campus Meet at 2 p.m. in front of Mills Hall. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Berkeley Progresssive Coalition Candidates Convention at 2 p.m. at Washington School Auditorium, Bancroft between MLK & McKinley. Vote for Mayor, City Council candidates and Berkeley Measures. 540-1975. 

Benefit for the Hillside Club with plein air paintings on sale from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., at 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. All sales will benefit local artists and the Hillside Club, which is making renovations.  

“A Union Man: The Life and Work of Julius Margolin” Film showing with folk music concert afterwards at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Bonita at Cedar. Donation $5-$10.  

Vintage, Rare and Collectibles Book Sale, also record sets, comic books and a Silent Auction, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany, 526-3720. 

Friends of the El Cerrito Library Book Sale Books on all subjects, books for children and large collections of books about quilting and cooking, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sun. from noon to 5 p.m. in the El Cerrito Library parking lot and basement, 6510 Stockton Ave. El Cerrito. www.ccclib.org/libinfo/branch.html  

New Spirit Community Church 6th Anniversary Gala with auction, clowns and jugglers, buffet and a dance, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Parson’s Hall, 2450 LeConte Ave. Tickets are $36-$46. 704-7729. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class: Demystifying Tofu and Tempeh from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45 plus $5 food/materials fee. Registration required. 531-COOK.  

Ceremony for Healing & Peace at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center, Yoga Room, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $25. Sposored by the Hayehwatha Institute. 415-435-2255 

Gourd Crafting Techniques and Open House from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at The Caning Shop, 926 Gilman at 8th St. 1-800-544-3373.  

Painting Pots, a workshop with Keeyla Meadows at 3 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Piedmont Choir Placement Auditions New singers ages 6 to 10 welcome, no experience necessary. To schedule an appointment for Piedmont or Alameda call 547-4441. www.piedmontchoirs.org 

California Writers Club meets to discuss humor writing with Mary Hanna of the San Mateo County Times at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120. 

Oakland Outdoor Cinema will screen “The Bourne Identity” at dusk on Ninth St., between Broadway and Washington. Limited seating, bring your own chair and blanket. 238-4734.  

Non-Anesthetic Teeth Cleaning for Pets from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave. Call for appointment 525-6155.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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

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.  

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.  

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. 17 

How Berkeley? Parade up University Ave. at 11 a.m. followed by festival in Civic Center Park to 5 p.m. 644-2204, ext. 12. www.howberkeleycanyoube.com 

Sunday Morning Meditation Walk at 9 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Third Annual Fr. Bill O’Donnell BOCA Benefit with guest of honor and recognition of immigration rights attorney Mark Silverman from noon to 4 p.m. at Saint Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. 665-5821. berkeleyboca.org  

Incorporating Carnivorous Plants into the Garden with Stephen Davis, president of the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society and Judith Finn, horticulturist from 10 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $25-$35, registration required 643-2755. 

Family Day at the Magnes to see the exhibition “My America” at 11 a.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950.  

Bike Tour of Oakland Explore Oakland and learn about the incredible history of Oakland and its visionaries and scoundrels. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrace of the Oakland Museum of CA, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. Participants must be over twelve years old and provide their own bikes, helmets and repair kits. Free. 238-3514. www.museumca.org 

Solo Sierrans Emeryville to Berkeley Waterfront Bike Ride An easy 4 mile round trip with no car traffic. Meet at 4 p.m. in front of the Watergate Clipper Club, 6 Captain Drive, Emeryville. RSVP requested 923-1094. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby & Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. 526-7377. 

The Misty Redwood Run A 10 K fun run through the redwoods in Redwood Regional Park at 8:30 a.m. at Redwood Gate entrance, 7867 Redwood Rd., Oakland. Cost is $20-$25. Register online at www.theschedule.com/eventinfo.cfm?eventID+10675 

Spinning a Yarn Watch the spinning wheel turn, try your hand carding wool and learn how to use a drop spindle at 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

10-year Anniversary Party for the Westbrae Neighborhood Commons from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Peralta Community Garden, on Peralta between Hopkins St. and Gilman St.Food music, tile painting and more. Wheelchair accessible. 527-6443. 

“There’s No Place Like Home: Exploring Animal Habitats” Take a discovery hike through the Natural Sciences Gallery and learn how animals meet their needs for food, shelter, water, and protection. From 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of CA, 1000 Oak St., at 10th St., Oakland. Free with Admission. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

The Albany Library will be open on Sundays from 1-5 p.m. starting on Sept. 17 thanks to the successful passage of Measure G. Celebrate with a ribbon-cutting at 1 p.m. followed by music and refreshments, at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Sycamore Japanese Church Bazaar from noon to 5 p.m. at 1111 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Japanese music, food, handcrafts and games for children. 525-0727. 

Mad Hatter Jam ‘n’ Tea Party from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Kensington Farmers’ Market, 303 Arlington Ave. kensingtonfm@yahoo.com  

Queer Contra Dance with Mavis McGaugh calling to Band du Jour at 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Everyone welcome. Cost is $10 or pay what you can. 430-2833. 

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 

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. 

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. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Ken McKeon and Tom Morse on “Freedom from Knowledge” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

 

MONDAY, SEPT. 18  

Lead Abatement Repairs Find out about funding for lead hazard repairs for rental properties with low-income tenants or vacant units in Oakland, Berkeley or Emeryville, from 4 to 6 p.m. at 2000 Embarcadero, #300, Oakland. Sponsored by Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. 567-8280. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people aged 60 and over meets at 9:45 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Donation $3. 524-9122. 

Zen Buddhist Meditation for Everyday Life An introduction at 6:45 p.m. at Bay Zen Center, 315 Alcatraz near College Ave. Suggested donation $10, no one turned away. Register in advance. 596-3087. www.bayzen.org 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Unified School District Board meets Wed. Sept. 13, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Sept. 13, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Don Brown, 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti, 981-6740.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs. Sept. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 14, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356. 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 14, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. Sept. 18, at 7 p.m. the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410.  

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Sept. 18, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. Sept. 18, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche, 644-6128 ext. 113.


Arts Calendar

Friday September 08, 2006

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.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Abstraction and Design” 2-D and 3-D abstract works in all media opens at 6 p.m. at ACCI Galery, 1652 Shattuck Ave., and runs through Oct. 2. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

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 

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

“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. 

Open Mic at the Marina with poetry, music and spoken word at 7:30 p.m. at Cal Adventures. Sponsored by the 886 Collective. 439-9777. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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 

The Temescal Trio at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickes are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

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. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Ras Igel/Razorblade with Binghi Drummers at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

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. 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. Tickets are $35. 

“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, 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. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

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.  

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. 

Patrick Dunagan and Mark Litton read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph. 849-2087.  

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.  

Rafael Manriquez, songs of the poems of Gabriela Mistral at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 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. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

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.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 12 

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “The Night of Truth” at noon, “In the Battlefields” at 2 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland.  

Alternative Visions: “Lunch with Fela” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Myra MacPherson on her biography of I. F. Stone, “All Governments Lie,” at 5:30 p.m. at North Gate Library,Hearst at Euclid Ave., UC Campus. 643-3840. 

Michael Chorost reads from “Rebuilt: How Becomming Part Computer Made me More Human” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. 

“Writers on Reading” with Jon Carroll, Maxine Hong Kingston and April Sinclair, in celebration of Rockridge Library’s 10th Anniversary at 7 p.m. at 5366 College Ave.  

Joan Roughgarden discusses “Evolution and Christian Faith” at 7:30 p.m. in the Large Assembly Room, First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10. 559-9500. 

“True Admissions” College essays by Berkeley High Students at 2 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Old Blind Dogs, Scottish acoustic, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Ellen Hoffman Trio and Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

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.  

Debbie Poryes & Friends at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

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

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 13 

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater “As You Like It” 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 Oct. 15. Tickets are $15 and up. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

FILM 

Global Lens Film Festival “Max and Mona” at 7 p.m., “Almost Brothers” at 9:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland.  

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Words Upon the Waters” A Poetic Response to Hurricane Katrina at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Fundraiser for Biloxi, MS. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568. 

Michael Pollan discusses “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler celebrate “BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the pages of BITCH Magazine” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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, clarinet concertos at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Christy Dana Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ.  

Walter Strauss, blues, folk, rock, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Vission Latina at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Rachel Efron at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Old Blind Dogs, Scottish acoustic, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Peter Barshay Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Oliver Mtukudzi, African pop, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s. Cost is $24, fundraiser for Zimbabwe AIDS Relief. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, SEPT. 14 

EXHIBITIONS 

“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. 

FILM 

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

Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice Conversation with the filmmaker at 5:30 p.m. “Shooting Indians” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Hillside Club Arts and Crafts Lecture “Arts and Crafts Furniture Design” A lecture by Debey Zito at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. www.hillsideclub.org 

“Signature Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area” with author Dave Weinstein, at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 763-9218.  

Amy Goodman and David Goodman talk with Pratap Chatterjee and Michael Shenoda about “STATIC: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Tickets are $10-$15 at Cody’s. 559-9500. 

Cecil Brown, musicologist and historian of African-American culture reads from “I Stagolee: A Novel” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert with Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Free.  

Charming Hostess music salon at 6:30 p.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950.  

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Ginny Hawker, Jody Stechner & Hank Bradley at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

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

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

Stigma 13, Year of the Wildcat, Charlie Roman and the Teenage Werewolves at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

Uncle Buzzy’s Hometown Variety Show at 8 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline.  

Larry Harlow and the Latin Legends at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

May Pole, Dora Flood, The Waxfire, indie rock, at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  


Arts: Monterey Jazz Promises Ideal Excusion for Next Weekend

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday September 08, 2006

A couple hours south of Berkeley by car, the West Coast’s longest-running jazz festival—at 49, the longest-running in the same location in the world—is gearing up to swing the weekend of Sept. 15-17, on the Monterey County Fairgrounds. 

The county fair aspect of the Monterey Jazz Festival is often a surprise to first-time attendees, especially those used to the auditorium or coliseum setting for music festivals. It’s enhanced by the more than half dozen clubs and open-air stages outside the Arena, where the succesion of headliners are featured, as well as simulcasting of the shows from the Arena stage. 

And the Grounds Pass, for as little as $30 a day—all afternoon and evening on Saturday and Sunday—is a remarkable deal for those who’d prefer to stroll from venue to venue and dig the mix of the scene and the range of music in an atmosphere more festive than the more traditional (and expensive) Arena, and the site for appearances by names and talents as big as those headlined within. 

But the Arena shows often prove to be one time only events, like this year’s Sunday night show promises to be. Dave Brubeck, 85, who went from growing up on a Central Valley ranch to becoming one of the most popular jazz artists ever (and that due in great part to the response of university students to his hit album, Take Five), will preside at the ivories as his Quartet premieres his “Cannery Row Suite,” commissioned by the Jazz Festival. 

Besides being a role model to countless jazz pianists and composers, Brubeck’s literally a patriarch of the music: his sons frequently accompany him, and one of them—Chris Brubeck—will bring his own group, Triple Play, to the Garden Stage on the Grounds Sunday afternoon. 

Following the Dave Brubeck Quartet to wrap up the Arena program will be the great Oscar Peterson, who many consider the most accomplished jazz pianist after Art Tatum. His set will cap a weekend that will also see John Coltrane’s pianist, McCoy Tyner, lead a trio with stellar Bobby Hutcherson (a Bay Area resident) on vibes and trumpeter Roy Hargrove—a ubiquitous presence in the Arena and n the Grounds all weekend; the 40th anniversary of saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s “Forest Flower” performance (and smash hit recording) on this very stage. 

Also appearing are singer Dianne Reeves, popular scat and straight-ahead singer Kurt Elling, with a variety of orchestral complements; acclaimed choir Shout Gospel From Harlem, and smooth jazz-turned-straight-ahead star Chris Botti. Bonnie Raitt shares the stage with Keb’ Mo on Saturday afternoon.  

The stages on the grounds spill over with a wide range of talent, including Hank Jones (of the Jones brothers, Elvin and Thad), one of the greatest living jazz pianists at 86, who has played with Bird and just about everybody else, holding forth Sunday night (after Dave Brubeck’s simulcast) in Dizzy’s Den. Hubert Sumlin, the 75-year-old master Chicago Blues guitar stylist from the great Chess Howlin’ Wolf sessions playing with Duke Robillard, co-founder of Roomful of Blues, and Duke’s band, also plays, followed by a set by Shout Gospel From Harlem, the masterful drumming of Babatunde Lea and his Quartet, popular vocalist Hiromi, various appearances by Jeff Hamilton, Robben Ford and Dan Ouellette, The Open World Octet from Russia, and a Hammond B-3 blow-out, featuring Dr. Lonnie Smith. 

Peter Apfelbaum, an early alumnus of the Berkeley schools jazz programs and long a Bay Area favorite, will bring his New York edition of The Hieroglyphics to the Garden Stage Saturday night, joined by very special guest Abdoulaye Diabate from Benin. The next afternnon, Dizzy’s Den features the winning bands from the Next Generation Festival, including the Jazz School Student All-Stars and the Berkeley High School Sextet play out the shape of jazz to come. 

Just blocks from Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf and the historic districts of California’s original capital, not far from John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and the famous Aquarium, and a few miles from the gorgeous sunset viewing from the beach at Asilomar, the 17-Mile Drive, Mission Carmel and the natural splendors of Point Lobos and Big Sur, where ocean, cliff, redwood forest and mountain meld together in a unique synaesthesia, the Monterey Jazz Festival is a profusion of great musical talent in a setting of great natural and man-made wonder.


Moving Pictures: Carol Reed’s ‘Fallen Idol’ Finally Comes to Berkeley

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday September 08, 2006

In May, the Daily Planet reviewed the theatrical re-release of Carol Reed’s 1948 classic The Fallen Idol, which had opened in San Francisco and was scheduled to open in Berkeley the following week. However, the day the review was published, we were informed that the East Bay engagement had been canceled due to poor attendance at the San Francisco screenings. A few readers were a bit annoyed.  

Well, if you’d like to catch it on the big screen before it heads to DVD (Criterion plans to release a two-disc edition in November), you have exactly one chance: tonight (Friday) at Pacific Film Archive. The film is showing as part of a double feature with another Reed masterpiece, The Third Man (1949) as part of PFA’s “A Theater Near You” series. 

The Fallen Idol is a noirish tale of a boy and his relationship with the family butler. The boy’s father, an ambassador, is frequently away, leaving Baines, the butler, played by Sir Ralph Richardson, to fill the void. When Baines is accused of murdering his wife, the boy, Phil, gets lost in the adult world of passion, lies, deceit, concealed motivations and situational ethics, a world he cannot even begin to understand. Various adults ask him to tell the truth, each with his own motives and notions of what the truth is, leading to series of events in which Phil alternately serves as the means of Baines’ salvation and downfall. 

The film, based on a short story by Graham Greene, demonstrates a masterful use of interiors, from the great, echoing hall and grand staircase of the ambassador’s mansion, which serve to highlight the growing distance between Baines and his wife, to the cramped basement where suppressed hostilities come to the fore, to the checkered tile floor which suggests a chessboard on which Baines and the police trade tense, strategic moves. 

The Fallen Idol will be followed by Reed’s most famous film, The Third Man, another Greene adaptation. Joseph Cotton plays Holly Martins, a naïve American in post-World War II Vienna, looking to join his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in business. In Vienna, Martins learns that Lime is dead, while the local police, headed up by Calloway (Trevor Howard), inform him of Lime’s criminal record.  

Though Welles is on screen for just 20 minutes or so, he became forever associated with the role of Lime, later starring in a British radio series based on the character. The theme song also stuck with Welles throughout his life. House musicians would strike the familiar chords every time Welles entered a restaurant. 

The score for the film is almost as famous as the movie itself, consisting entirely of one man playing one instrument. “Anton Karos will have you in a dither with his zither!” ran the original trailers for the film, and indeed he does, though the value of that fact depends on whether you consider a dither a positive or negative experience. Many are put off by the score, but it adds greatly to the atmosphere of the film. Karas was playing in a Vienna nightclub where Reed heard him and recruited him. The Harry Lime theme became a top ten hit in its day. 

The film builds toward a climactic chase through the sewers of Vienna, a sequence of brilliant direction, editing, sound design and photography. Taught action shots are juxtaposed with quiet shots of the tense faces of policemen in wait, of empty passageways with glistening cobblestones and dripping water, of probing flashlights piercing the underground darkness. Take any moment in the last 20 minutes of this film and freeze the frame and you’ll find a beautiful still photograph.  

The Fallen Idol shows at 7 p.m. and The Third Man shows at 8:55 p.m. at PFA’s theater at 2575 Bancroft Ave. 

 

 

Photograph: Sir Ralph Richardson stars as Baines in Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol.


Moving Pictures: Global Lens Film Series at Grand Lake

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday September 08, 2006

The Global Lens Film Series starts today at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater. Now in its third year, the festival’s mission is to “promote cross-cultural understanding through cinema” by screening narrative films of merit that have been overlooked by U.S. distributors. 

This year’s offerings include seven feature-length films as well as a program of short films, running through Wednesday, Sept. 20, at the Grand Lake. The films can also be seen in other Bay Area venues, including the Balboa Theater in San Francisco, Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose, the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, and the San Francisco Art Institute. 

One of the movies showing this year is Lucia Murat’s Almost Brothers (2004), a Brazillian film written by Murat and Paulo Lins which won many awards in film festivals in Brazil, Cuba and France. The story concerns two childhood friends who later encounter each other in the 1970s in the Ilha Grande prison on an island off the coast of Brazil where political prisoners are locked away. The group organizes a collective to bargain with prison officials for better treatment and operates by a strict code of conduct. Later, non-political prisoners are brought to the island and tensions arise between the two factions, with the two friends, Miguel and Jorge, often finding themselves on opposite sides of the divide.  

Years later the two meet again, when Miguel is a prominent politician and Jorge an imprisoned gang leader running his criminal activities from jail via cell phone. Miguel seeks Jorge’s support for community projects in the neighborhoods controlled by Jorge’s gang, but the distance between the two friends only increases as they discuss the troubles of the past and the politics of the present. 

Murat and editor Mair Tavares do an excellent job of juggling the three timeframes, tracing the relationship between the two men from the innocence of childhood to the idealism of youth to the resignation and bitterness of their jaded adulthood. And the characters, played in their young adulthood by Caco Ciocler and Flavio Bauraqui and later by Wenrer Schuneman and Antonio Pompeo, never seem anything less than real. 

Early scenes of the the two boys dancing together as their fathers play samba music together establish a theme of racial divides conquered by culture, music, passion and simple naivete. Later scenes in the island prison feature a similar vibe, with the collective’s members playing music together, battling the prison administration together, and voting together on the collective’s conduct and bylaws. 

When trouble arises between the two groups of prisoners, the anger and violence of the situation is made all the more heartbreaking when juxtaposed with images of the two boys dancing together before politics and race could intervene, and the growing rift is made concrete by the construction of a wall to separate the warring factions. 

And the scenes of the two grown men, facing each other across a table in a prison visitation room later in life, each entrenched in his position and wary of the other, brings the film to a gentle and disturbing coda, with ancient rivalries dashing any hope of reconciliation.  

For a complete schedule, see www.globalfilm.org. 

 

 

Photograph: Caco Ciocler and Flavio Bauraqui play childhood friends torn apart by politics and ideology in Lucia Murat’s Almost Brothers (Brazil, 2004).


Strolling Down Solano Avenue

By Marta Yamamoto, Special to the Planet
Friday September 08, 2006

Ever dream about living in a neighborhood where spreading trees shade well-tended bungalows? Strong neighborhood school, small attractive parks and retail choices just down the street. Enough variety to satisfy every whim so a day can be enjoyed without requiring a car. Wake up on Saturday morning, feed the pets, throw on some clothes and stroll down the street for coffee and pastries or a full breakfast. 

Dreams become reality in Thousand Oaks. 

Not far removed from Main Street, U.S.A., Thousand Oaks lies along both sides of Solano Avenue from the Arlington to the Albany border. Resembling a split personality, four blocks of Solano are divided down the center, between Albany and Berkeley. Regardless of city, it’s all a charming, eclectic mixture of ethnic businesses, antiques, used books, coffeehouses and specialty shops perhaps not present on the Kansas plains. 

No one seeks to benefit from natural disasters but the fire and earthquake of 1906 resettled many San Franciscans in Berkeley’s burgeoning neighborhoods. John Hopkins Spring, vast landowner, is credited with starting the business end of Solano. Gone now, but adding spice to Thousand Oaks’ history were commuter trains that once traversed light rail through the Solano Tunnel. 

Perhaps the first Berkeley activists were the women of Thousand Oaks, armed with two shotguns and a rifle, holding off garbage trucks that rolled down Solano on the way to Albany Hill dumping grounds. 

Along with attractive neighborhood homes and varied commercial choices Thousand Oaks is home to four small public parks. Between the Arlington and the Alameda, two “stone” parks offer sweeping bay views and climbing practice. Neighbors gather at Great Stoneface Park to turf-run their dogs and children, picnic and try new handholds on the massive bolder. At Contra Costa Rock Park carved steps lead the way to impressive Bay-wide views. 

Thousand Oaks School Park is a magnet for tots and their caregivers, occupying the lush lawn and brightly colored play equipment. Toddler-size slide, swings and sandlot echo with gleeful sounds, while picnic tables under towering conifers beckon for a peaceful snack. Solano-Peralta Park could easily be missed. Resembling a mini urban plaza, the small enclosed playground and sidewalk benches are ideally placed for people watching. 

Thousand Oaks’ main artery is Solano Avenue where the shopping is varied and interesting. A pleasing harmony of historic buildings and recent additions blend easily into an enticing retail district. Offerings run the gamut from attire and gifts to delicacies. 

Women searching for fall wardrobes need look no further than Persimmon and By Hand where lovely outfits grace the front windows. Fall floral skirt, lime green corduroy vest, brick knit jacket and multi-strand beaded necklace preview the coming season. For matching shoes, Ideas 4 Elements will keep you fashionable without pinching your toes. 

A Child’s Place seems to specialize in pint-size comfort-clothes – Skivy Doodles soft P.J.’s in both truck and ballerina themes as well as fuzzy hooded terry towels and bath-time ducks and frogs. For that first haircut there’s Snippety Crickets, its wall of fame photos and toy-laden shelves rewards for not crying. 

Ready to pursue a new hobby? Stash’s wall of boldly beautiful wool yarns from Uruguay will have you imagining a warm ocher scarf or azure sweater. At New Pieces, color again greets the eye; quilting fabrics are arranged in prints, stripes, plaids and solids from yellow and orange to blue and green. A good selection of instruction books and wall-hung quilts serve as inspiration. Any trouble with a trusty sewing machine can be easily remedied at Jim’s Sewing Machine Center, the oldest Singer outlet in the United States. 

Need to stock up on gifts? Pegasus carries new and used books and CDs, across the board in terms of subjects. The Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Hockney’s People or Forest of the Pigmies – take your pick. Soap Sisters’ scented soaps from France and Moroccan Mint body wash will vicariously send you across the seas. Silver and turquoise jewelry and pottery from Santo Domingo and Zuni Pueblos reside at Gathering Tribes, also offering intriguing Hopi Ant Pots. Fill them with honey and slowly move the ants away from your home. The Bone Room is in a class by itself stocking Nile crocodile skulls, scorpion paper weights, bug bracelets and human artifacts. Have an unoccupied corner awaiting a complete skeleton or just an empty jar for carpals, phalanges or teeth? 

Peet’s and Starbucks fill the need for java. Scharffen Berger Chocolate Mocha Freddos, Ethiopia and Las Hermanas coffee beans and Ancient Trees tea perfume the air at Peet’s. Fall offerings at Starbuck’s center around pumpkin, from spiced lattes to scones and cream cheese muffins. For exceptional bakery treats, La Farine will tingle your taste buds for hours. A morning bun, wheat levain bread for lunch and gateau au citron for afternoon coffee—these barely break the surface. 

All varieties of Solano eateries lure customers with their open-door policy, allowing delicious aromas to waft out the door. Comfort food is the ticket at Barney’s Gourmet Hamburgers, home to teriyaki and Russian burgers and spicy curly fries. Walker’s Restaurant and Pie Shop satisfies at breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as anytime you’re in the mood for fresh apple or coconut cream pie. 

When the Far East beckons, choices abound. Boran and Sweet Basil Thai Restaurants serve red, green and yellow curries, satay, Tom Yum Soup and the well-loved pad Thai. King Tsin Restaurant offers dim sum on top of twice cooked pork, lemon chicken and spicy prawns. Miyuki Japanese Restaurant does brisk business with sushi combos, udon, donburi and sashimi. 

Potato tikki, chicken briyani and lamb aloo perfume the air at Khana Peena Indian Cuisine. Humus, tabouleh, babaganoush and tahini await at Jerusalem’s Organic Kitchen. For pizza lovers Zachary’s Chicago Pizza satisfies both thin crust and stuffed aficionados; Cugini’s lures in those favoring pizza from a wood burning oven. 

You can’t go wrong with a good taqueria. Cactus is always crowded and with good reason, their complete menu makes decisions difficult. No less popular, Gordo can seldom contain its customers; the line usually snakes down the sidewalk. 

To experience Thousand Oaks at its most exuberant, join the celebration this Sunday, Sept. 10, for the 32nd Solano Stroll, the biggest block party in the Bay Area. In a few hours you can sample 50 cuisines, listen to 50 bands, watch 100 entertainers, admire juried crafts and find out what 200 community organizations are doing. Learn circus arts, envy the fun in Kid Town and cool off in the dunk tank. 

Thousand Oaks serves as a welcoming home and favored foray. Without pretense it offers a relaxed atmosphere to play, peruse and partake. Sample life in Thousand Oaks, it may figure in your dreams.  

 

 

 


East Bay Then and Now: Shipping Magnate’s Mansion Is Rare Survivor on Oxford Street

By Daniella Thompson
Friday September 08, 2006

One of the most imposing Victorian-era homes in Berkeley, the Boudrow House at Sea Captain Corner was constructed in 1889, when Berkeley, whose population then numbered about 12,000, was a favorite retirement spot for mariners. 

The house was built for Charles C. Boudrow (c. 1830–1918), a Massachusetts-born master mariner who for many years was a shipping magnate in San Francisco. On June 8, 1918, the Oakland Tribune published his obituary, stating: 

“Captain Charles Boudrow died suddenly at his home in Berkeley last night. He passed his 88th birthday a few months ago and was then well and hearty. Boudrow was connected with the firm of Migeul [correct spelling: Mighell] & Boudrow, which owned many large square-riggers out of this port, later forming the California Shipping Company and purchasing many eastern craft, which are owned by the Alaska Salmon companies. He retired from active service a few years ago, but made regular visits to the Merchants’ Exchange to talk ‘ship’ with his old-time friends. For over 60 years Boudrow had been established in the marine business in this port.” 

Among the many ships owned by Captain Boudrow or by the California Shipping Company were the Star of Italy; the cannery tender Jabez Howes; the bark May Flint; the Abner Coburn; the A.J. Fuller; the Saint Frances; and the Joseph B. Thomas. 

Captain Boudrow’s office was located near the port of San Francisco, at 38–40 Market Street. His residence was not far from there, at 1933 Stevenson Street. Living near him (but never with him) both in San Francisco and in Berkeley was his nephew Charles E. Boudrow, a ship chandler and dealer in ship material born in Massachusetts in 1858. 

The nephew’s major claim to fame was his purchase of the decommissioned sloop-of-war Marion from the U.S. Navy in July 1907. He moved to Berkeley at about the same time as his uncle and first appeared in the 1891 directory living on Spruce Street between Vine and Rose.  

Beginning with the 1893 directory, the younger Boudrow’s residence was 1432 Arch Street, where he remained for many years. In 1894 and 1895 he lived with Miss Louisa F. Boudrow. 

Captain Charles C. Boudrow outlived two wives. The second, Christina (1852–1914), was German-born and 22 years his junior. Curiously, Charles E. Boudrow also married a German woman, Katharina Diehl (1857–1941), who in the 1920 census claimed to be eleven years younger than she actually was, but as a widow in 1930 owned up to her real age. 

The Boudrow house on Oxford Street was designed in the Queen Anne-Eastlake style by the noted San Francisco architect Julius E. Krafft (1855–1937), who was responsible for many stately Pacific Heights residences. Born in Germany, Krafft immigrated to the U.S. in 1872 and came to San Francisco two years later. He worked as a draftsman for Palace Hotel architect John P. Gaynor and later for Thomas J. Welsh, designer of 16 Catholic churches in San Francisco, of which the three survivors are St. Agnes, Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, and Sacred Heart Church in the Western Addition. 

Krafft was in charge of Welsh’s drafting department for twelve years before opening his own office in 1888. One of his most celebrated buildings was the Gothic Revival St. Paulus Lutheran Church (1893), whose design was based on Cathedral of Chartres. The church was destroyed by fire in 1995. Still intact are 31–33 Liberty Street (1892) in the West Mission district and an opulent 1902 Classical Revival residence at 2601 Broadway commissioned by bank president Isaias Warren Hellman as a wedding gift for his daughter. 

Two of Krafft’s children, the twin sons Elmer Jerome (1880–1944) and Alfred Julius (1880–1950), joined their father’s business. Having begun as draftsmen, Elmer became an architect and Alfred a structural engineer. In 1933, the firm of Julius Krafft & Sons would design an Art Deco wholesale grocery warehouse for Wellman-Peck & Company in what is now the Warehouse Thematic Historic District of San Diego. This building was recently converted to an office condominium & retail complex. 

Captain Boudrow’s house was one of the early buildings in the Antisell Villa Lots, a tract comprising eight blocks bounded by Rose St. to the north, Shattuck Ave. to the west, Cedar St. to the south, and Arch St. to the east. Thomas M. Antisell was an attorney and real-estate agent with an office at 1069 Broadway in Oakland. In 1874, just after the U.C. campus moved from Oakland to Berkeley, Antisell began selling lots in the tract bearing his name. The subdivision map he issued advertised the upcoming auction sale “on liberal credit” of 260 lots, to take place on November 6, 1874. 

Thomas M. Antisell himself lived across the street from the future Boudrow property. At the time, Oxford St. was called Pine. Between 1876 and 1883, Antisell was listed in the Berkeley directory as residing variously at “Vine nr Pine,” “Pine nr Vine,” “E s Oxford bet Cedar and Vine,” and “Cedar.” He also was a piano manufacturer and dealer in San Francisco, and on November 15, 1887 received a patent for a wrest plank for his pianos, which were advertised as “the leading instrument of the world.” In numerous newspaper ads, Antisell offered his pianos on a $10 monthly installment plan and admonished readers to “buy only from the largest manufactory in the world.” 

Sometime in the 1880s, the Antisell house was purchased by Captain Boudrow’s partner, William E. Mighell, who made his first appearance in the Berkeley directory in 1889. The Berkeley Daily Advocate Holiday Number of 1892 included the house in an article on opulent residences in town: 

Captain Mighell purchased some years ago the then very handsome home of T.M. Antisell on the east side of Oxford Street, north of Vine [sic]. Since then he has spared neither time nor expense in making it one of the finest homes in town. Situated on a knoll, the views from his windows are superb. 

The same holiday issue also described the Boudrow house: 

Captain Budrow [sic] purchased a large lot on the corner of Oxford and Cedar streets, upon which he has erected one of the largest and finest dwelling houses in town. From every window the view is a panoramic scene of mountain, sea, and valley. 

The entire Boudrow house is constructed of redwood. Multiple gables and bays, floral and geometric friezes, plaster reliefs, and scalloped shingles ornament its façades. A balustraded flight of 15 steps leads up to a front porch whose gable roof is supported by turned columns linked by trelliswork arches. A round turret crowned with a witch’s hat rises four stories on the southeastern corner. The central gable features a balconette surmounted by a sunburst.  

There were seven rooms on the main floor and four rooms below. The main floor was famed for its 12-foot ceilings. The house boasted no fewer than six fireplaces. 

The Mighell and Boudrow houses were both situated on oversized lots—each the equivalent of five standard lots—and surrounded by large gardens. As Berkeley grew, the lots shrank. By 1929, the block was fully built. Further development occurred in the 1960s, when large apartment buildings were erected on this block. Many of the original houses, including the Mighell residence, are long gone. Apartment buildings are currently the predominant element along the 1500 block of Oxford Street. 

In 1922, Captain Boudrow’s heirs sold the house to mining engineer Roscoe Wheeler and his wife Erminie. According to the U.S. census, the Wheelers had previously resided in Oakland, but not always together. In 1920, Mrs. Wheeler and daughters Erminie (16) and Helen (14) were living in the home of the Misses Ellen and Cecilia Neylan on Wickson Avenue, while Mr. Wheeler was residing as a boarder on nearby Walker Avenue. 

The Wheelers are said to have had in their yard four 100-pound boulders that had served as ballast aboard the clipper ship Rattler. 

Helen Wheeler married the future colonel Robert Beard and owned the Boudrow house until 1970, when she had to let go of it. The house was in danger of being demolished until it was purchased by Dr. Paul F. Hocking and his wife Ann, who divided it into ten apartments. It was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark on June 21, 1976. 

The house changed hands again in 1994. The current owners restored it, rebuilding the front staircase and painting the exterior in more than ten colors. They received a BAHA Preservation Award in May 2006. 

 


Why I Hate Norm Abrams

By Matt Cantor
Friday September 08, 2006

I don’t actually hate Norm, I sort of like the guy. It’s nice to see someone on TV that would never have made it on his headshot and a screen-test. Those other folks on Hometime, now them I hate. They’re all cute and American looking and blond. Kachunk, Blam, Kachunk, Blam. Ah, that’s better. There’s nothing like large caliber gunfire to sooth the chakras. 

I do genuinely hate these shows. Hometime, This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop and I hate them for one simple reason. They make most people feel like idiots. 

They’re a lot of fun if you have accepted the popularly promulgated notion that you, as a homeowner or stock broker or bank clerk, know nothing about houses or furniture or nails and that you’ll never stand a chance of doing more than hanging a picture on the wall.  

Even the shows that try to show you how to build a chest of drawers do such a lousy job of preparing the average Joe or Joan for the job that they become nothing more than boutique shopping and showing off. 

Let’s take This Old House. Kuchunk, Blam. The thing I hate about TOH is that they don’t show you how bad things often get. I have yet to see an episode of this show in which you see a red faced homeowner screaming bloody murder at Steve and Norm and don’t tell me that it’s never happened. I don’t care how good a contractor is. 

When you’ve been working on someone’s house for 10 weeks, there is absolutely no way that 10 percent of the clientele aren’t going to be going into anaphylaxis. It’s well known in the industry that some people just can’t take it, even under the best of circumstances and I am certain that those videos are hiding in a vault somewhere at PBS central, waiting for the day that Steve or Norm step over the line. 

Again, the show doesn’t show the mistakes, the overages and the heartache often involved in home remodeling. They make everything look easy. You never see a subcontractor show up drunk. You never see a guy going to the emergency room because he stepped on a nail and you never see a job sitting incomplete for 18 months because the couple is getting a divorce or went into bankruptcy. 

The camera cleans up all the messes. I’m also quite sure that PBS has footed the bill more than a few times to get the job completed so that they could get everything in the can. 

On shows like this and Hometime, the jobs are made to look so darned easy. This is the problem with cooking shows as well. The kitchen is clean when they start. (How does your kitchen look? I usually can’t find a clear counter to work on.) All the materials are waiting for assembly and nothing is spoiled, the wrong type or missing. 

Dean and Robin’s air gun never misfires and the compressor never needs to be drained (yes, you have to drain compressors daily because they fill up with water and will rust out if you don’t do so). 

That’s another point. There are so many small details that fill a contractor’s day (or your day when you play contractor) and, just like the cooking show, they’re neatly edited out. Just pop the raw one in the oven and Voila, the new freshly baked one comes right out of the other oven. 

Now, how educational does this end up being? The average viewer of these shows isn’t sure which nail to use to fix the trim on the side of the house, so it’s a little high-handed to try to show, even over 3 episodes, how to rehabilitate an 1860 farm house into a three-bedroom, two-bathroom suite with an office in the basement. 

Can the viewer replicate any of these actions or is it simply a fashion show designed to make you salivate, believing falsely that you could do all this yourself if only you had just a wee bit more free time? 

Not that I don’t think that people can learn this stuff but it’s just a tad more complex and definitely more hairy than they make it look.  

I DID once see one of those extreme remodeling shows in which we got to see the workers freak out, fight and loose their cool but it’s still a little like watching brain surgery on TV. 

It’s not like you’re going to turn to your wife and say, “Hey Honey, I’ll bet I can remove that tumor for you right here on the kitchen table.” 

By the way, if you’re husband gets that Jack Nicholson/Shining look while watching the Home Neuroscience channel, best to go stay with Mom for a few days until the cable company can come downgrade you from the Gold package to regular broadcast TV. 

I have, on occasion, watched Norm do his New Yankee Workshop thing and my complaints with that show are essentially the same as the aforementioned, although I’ll add one major complaint. Actually, this complaint applies to the previous shows but it’s never so apparent to me as when I’m watching Norm build a Georgian breakfront. Norm has really, really nice tools. 

His tools are sharp and clean and new and they’re all hanging on the wall in exactly the right place courtesy of the sponsor, Stanley tools. He has attachments for routers and drill presses that I’ve never seen. I’m not saying that most of these are not to be found in the average cabinet maker’s shop but I’ll bet even they would say that the quality and completeness of his assembly of tools far exceeds theirs. 

So when Norm starts to build his breakfront and you start to build yours, (assuming you’re retired, moderately wealthy and sufficiently well-adjusted) you’re going to have a lot to emotionally contend with as nothing that you do comes out quite as well and certainly as fast as the one that Norm does on screen. You’ve been set up. 

Here’s what I’d like to see in place off all these shows (if there are any TV producers reading, I’m waiting for my close-up C.B.):  

An episode would go something like this. Mrs. Jones’s faucet is leaking (maybe we have a few other small repairs too) and she calls the handyman to come fix things. The “handyman” (me) arrives with no tools and has to rely upon what Mrs. Jones has in the tool-drawer in the kitchen. 

Then he and Mrs. Jones go to Ace Hardware, buy the tools they need, the parts they need and proceed to struggle through all the steps in fixing the leak including trying to find things at the hardware store. This will, of course, require a second, and possibly, third trip to the store and will all end with cheers of joy and turkey sandwiches eaten on the kitchen floor in sopping jeans once the drip has finally been tackled. 

Now that’s what I would call Reality TV. 


An Interesting Nursery Close to Lake Merritt

By Ron Sullivan
Friday September 08, 2006

If you find yourself over by Lake Merritt, there’s a nursery tucked into Jean Street on Grand Avenue that’s worth a visit.  

It’s getting close to the season to bird Lake Merritt. The place is great for wintering ducks and the odd vagrant waterbird, and even more odd hybrids: a hooded merganser X bufflehead drake has been showing up near the lake’s Bay outlet for the past two years. He’s a striking bird, like a black-and-white photograph of some natty figment of the imagination. 

I’ve seen tufted ducks who should’ve been in southeast Asia there, and just last year a Franklin’s gull, still in that ineffable blush of rosy breeding plumage, posed for a couple of weeks along the inland end.  

There’s Walden Pond Books in the neighborhood too, and restaurants galore. And I think I recall a sort of warehouse-club purveyor of coffins, so there’s something for everybody. What are you waiting for? 

So while you’re there, do drop in at the Ace Hardware store’s garden center, a few doors lakeward on Grand from the hardware store itself. (The intervening doors are occupied by Ace’s new “patio shop” and storage. Hardware stores have a tendency to do that, take up storefronts with backroom stuff. Odd. Kind of butch, I guess.) The parking lot is teeny, but you’re on the easier-parking end of the neighborhood anyway.  

The nursery shop has remained, since I first visited about ten years ago, focused on stuff for urban small gardens. 

This doesn’t mean teensy plants; there are things like tree ferns and magnolias that will get big, and make good focal points. Fruit trees, too, and one thing I’d never heard of, a golden-foliaged cultivar of dawn redwood.  

I find that’s the advantage of visiting small neighborhood nurseries: Because they’re local and individually run, they’re good for idiosyncratic finds. Someone gets a jones for red foliage or obscure mints, and the game is on. Ace has a better than usual set of these because it has a lot of Annie’s Annuals four-inchers, and you know how Annie’s is about weird and wonderful plants.  

Other useful stuff for small gardens here: vines and vertical plants, tall skinny cultivars, and hey, you can always espalier those fruit trees. 

There’s a good sampling of shade plants for the understory, including silvery ferns and those bright-foliaged heucheras and tiarellas that are in vogue lately. Also, there are some begonias I hadn’t met before, of all things. 

Like many of the nurseries I like, the place is full of pleasant bugs, like butterflies. 

These might have trekked in from nearby yards or even the Oakland Rose Garden at the terminus of Jean Street, but there were several species chasing each other around and the big ones, the red admiral for example, looked fresh and newly hatched. 

You don’t get butterflies (or honeybees or katydids or the dragonflies who chase them) when you douse the place in pesticides for appearances’ sake, so I take them as a good sign. 

This is a good place for Felco pruning shears—try them on; find your best model—and basic bonsai tools, too. The indoor shop has a nice collection of Japanese-style baskets. 

Bulbs are starting to show up, too; I scored some rhizomes of “Batik” iris, my favorite. 

I have mine. Go get yours.  

 

Ace Garden Center 

4001 Grand Avenue, Oakland 

652-9143 

Monday–Friday 8:30 a.m.–6 p.m.  

Saturday 9 a.m.–6 p.m.  

Sunday 10 a.m.–4 p.m.  

 

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.


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday September 08, 2006

Gas Shut-off Valve – Is It Worth It?  

 

An automatic gas shut-off valve is a mechanism that can be installed on the house side of your gas meter. 

It is designed to cut the flow of gas to your home in the event of an earthquake. In previous quakes in California, gas lines to appliances snapped, gas built up in the house, and the resulting fire destroyed many homes.  

There are plenty of people who have decided against having one installed, thinking that, if they smell gas after a serious quake, they can just turn off the gas themselves at the main shut-off valve near their meter. 

No problem—if you can guarantee somebody will be home at the time of the quake. However, if the quake hits when everyone’s at work, or on an outing, or just gone from home, you may regret not having one.  

It’s true that a moderate-sized quake can activate the valve, but the ones I’ve used are easy to re-set, and, in my opinion, the protection is worth the potential inconvenience.  

 

 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing and kit supply service. Contact him at 558-3299 or see www.quakeprepare.com to receive semi-monthly e-mails and safety reports.


Berkeley This Week

Friday September 08, 2006

FRIDAY, SEPT. 8 

Got E-Waste? Free public disposal and recycling event for electronic waster from noon to 5 p.m. and Sat. from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Oakland Coliseum, Parking lot D,7000 Coliseum Way, off 66th Avenue at the North Mall Area. Please no microwave ovens or household appliances. 866-335-3373. www.noewaste.com 

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.  

Circle Dancing, simple folkdancing, beginners welcome, no partners needed. From 8 to 10 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. at University Ave. Donation $5. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

“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 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Plunge Into Ponds A family pond exploration to find tadpoles, dragonflies, frog and snail from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“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. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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 

Wildcat Peak Hike Enjoy a three-mile hike through diverse habitats, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Bring water, sunscreen, layered clothing and a snack. Call for meeting place. 525-2233. 

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. 

Guitar Workshop with Muriel Anderson, National Fingerpicking Guitar Champion, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Berkeley. Cost is $30 in advance, $35 at door. For reservations call 912-1260. 

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. 

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, 2345 Channing Way. 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. 

“Ghandi” the film starring Ben Kingsley, on the 100th anniversay of Ghandi’s non-violent movement, at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 528-5403. 

“9/11 the Myth and the Reality” Film 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. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people aged 60 and over meets at 9:45 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Donation $3. 524-9122. 

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.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 12 

“All Governments Lie” with Myra MacPherson, journalist and author, who will discuss her new biography of I. F. Stone, at 5:30 p.m. at North Gate Library, Grad. School of Journalism, Hearst at Euclid Ave., UC Campus. 643-3840. 

Docent Training at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden Learn about native plants and then give something back to the community by leading tours. Twenty sessions on Tues. through Feb. from 9 a.m. to noon at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park. Course fee is $125. To register call 527-9802. gkeator@aol.com  

“New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina: Lessons for California’s Levees” with Ray Seed, Prof. Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCB, at 5:30 p.m. at 250 Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Campus. 642-2666. 

Discover Northern Arizona’s Redrock Country A slide presentation with geologist Jim Scheihing at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Elderhostel: Adventures in Lifelong Learning” a video and talk by Margaret Hankle at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 526-7512. 

Free Quit Smoking Classes on six Tues. evenings from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. Optional free acupuncture provided. Registration required. 981-5330. quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Torture Teach-in and Vigil every Tues. at 12:30 p.m. at the fountain on UC Campus, Bancroft at College. 

Handbuilding Ceramics Class from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Also Mon. from noon to 4 p.m. and Wed. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ashby at Ellis Sts. Free, except for materials and firing charges. For information call 525-5497. 

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.  

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. 13  

Lorin District Traffic Calming A community meeting at 7 p.m. at Spud’s Meeting Room, 3290 Adeline. 981-7130. 

Katrina Update Fundraiser at 7 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Donation $5-$20, no one turned away.  

“National Security and Intellectual Freedom” Panel discussion at 6:30 p.m. at the Free Speech Movement Cafe at Moffitt Undergraduate Library, UC Campus.  

Healthy Aging Fair, with information on services and resources and health screenings, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Centennial Hall, 22292 Foothill Blvd., Hayward. Sponsored by the Alameda County Commission on Aging. 636-0347. 

“The End of Suburbia” a documetary on oil depletion and the collapse of the American Dream at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

East Bay Genealogical Society with Nancy Simons Peterson of the California Genealogical Society discussing her book, “Raking the Ashes: Genealogical Strategies for Pre-1906 San Francisco Research” at 10 a.m. in the Library Conference Room of the Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave. Oakland. Guests are always welcome. 635-6692.  

Poetry Writing Workshop, led by Alison Seevak, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

New to DVD: “Cache” at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $3-$5. 848-0237. 

Current Events Discussion Group meets on Wed. at 7 p.m. at the Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. 597-4972. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 14 

Amy Goodman and David Goodman talk with Pratap Chatterjee and Michael Shenoda about “STATIC: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Tickets are $10-$15 at Cody’s. Benefit for KPFA and CorpWatch. 559-9500. 

Richmond Southeast Shoreline Community Advisory Group meets at 6:30 p.m. at the Bermuda Room, Richmond Convention Center, 403 Civic Center Plaza, at Nevin and 25th Sts, Richmond. 367-5379. 

Financial Management Information for Seniors at 10:30 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190. 

Natural Baby Care with pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene at 7:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Estate Planning Seminar for You and Your Pets with attorney Timothy H. Smallsreed at 7 p.m. at Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, 2700 Ninth St. at Carleton. Free but RSVP requested, 845-7735, ext. 19. 

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. 

East Bay Macintosh Users Group, meets to discuss Concept Draw V, at 6 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. Free, all welcome. www.ebmug.org  

CITY MEETINGS 

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. 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Sept. 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510.  

Youth Commission meets Mon., Sept. 11, at 6:30 p.m., at 1730 Oregon St. 981-6670.  

Berkeley Unified School District Board meets Wed. Sept. 13, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Sept. 13, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Don Brown, 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti, 981-6740.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs. Sept. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 14, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356. 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 14, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.