A blaze triggered by a faulty water heater demolished a $1.3 million home in the Berkeley Hills early Tuesday morning, reports Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

"The building was completely destroyed," he said, and the loss of contents added another $150,000 to the cost of the fire, first reported at 3:30 a.m. 

When firefighters arrived at the home at 98 Avenida just below Grizzly Peak Boulevard, the whole structure was ablaze. 

"The owner said he tried to call three times on his cell phone, but the call was dropped each time," Orth said. "The house is located in a very bad area for cell phone coverage." 

By the time another caller got through, the flames had spread throughout the structure. 

About 25 firefighters using five engines and two trucks battled the flames, but they were unable to save the residence. 

"It was very impressive fire," Orth said. "There was a lot of fire and a lot of fuel. The upper two floors collapsed into the basement, and all that’s left are parts of a couple of walls." 

While the flames ignited some of the surrounding vegetation, the trees surrounding the home were redwoods and didn’t catch. 

Unlike pines, which often "flash" in moments into flames which engulf all of the needles, redwoods are much are harder to ignite, he said. 

The fire did minor damage to a deck and hot tub of the neighboring home at 100 Avenida, he said. 

There were no injuries. 

Photograph by Berkeley Firefighters Association.

A developer unveiled Friday plans for a 5.5-acre, two-block corporate, retail, condo and artists’ development for West Berkeley. 

The project, which could take 30 years to complete, was presented to an unusual afternoon meeting of the Civic Arts Commission held at the old Peerless Lighting plant at 2246 Fifth St., the project’s hub. 

The plans unveiled by development consultant Darrell de Tienne and property owner Doug Herst, the former Peerless owner, were far more expansive, calling for condos, a “signature biotech building,” ”incubator buildings” for new businesses, as well as live/work units for artists that could feature a storefront gallery space and workshops. 

“The idea is to turn this part of Berkeley into a new type of artists’ community,” said de Tienne, who said city Housing Director Steve Barton had given the proposal an enthusiastic reception. 

Reactions 

“This is a great opportunity,” said Civic Arts Commission chair David Snippen. 

“The Civic Arts Commission is really excited,” said commissioner Jos Sances, a sculptor. “We’ve been looking at artists’ spaces in West Berkeley for several years.” 

“This project linking the arts with economic development and housing is really compelling,” said Michael Caplan, City Manager Phil Kamlarz’s Neighborhood Services Liaison for West Berkeley. 

But the co-chair of a West Berkeley organization deeply involved in land use issue remains skeptical. 

“I won’t automatically say it’s a bad thing, but I want to see exactly what they’re proposing,” said John Curl, co-chair of West Berkeley Artists and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC). “The bigger issue is whether they want to use the project to change zoning in West Berkeley in ways that have much larger implications.” 

The project would call for rezoning of the property, for lifting height requirements and reducing minimum property sizes—each requiring variances from current zoning and the West Berkeley Plan. 

The project would also require changing the definition of the arts embodied in the plan and in city code. 

As envisioned by Herst and de Tienne, much of the project would consist of buildings with four floors built over a ground level podium that could include parking and other uses. 

The total of five stories would require a height greater than the 45 feet now allowed in West Berkeley, de Tienne said, because ceiling heights in residential buildings would be 11 feet, and 16 feet in studio spaces. 

But Curl said he is worried that the project could be used to push far-reaching zoning changes which, at their worst, “could gentrify West Berkeley overnight. 

“There are those who want to develop all of West Berkeley and who attempt to use a particular site like the Berkeley Bowl to change zoning in a way that will have much broader implications,” Curl said. “That’s the issue that concerns me.” 

Whatever happens, Curl said, he would like to see the site developed for industrial uses. Live/work spaces are allowed in one of the two zones that divide the property, but not in the other—and a change in zoning that allowed housing in both zones, if applied to all of West Berkeley, would have profound consequences, he said. 

As a tradeoff for the code, zoning and plan changes, de Tienne said, the project would include guaranteed “inclusionary” live/work spaces for artists earning well below the area median income. 

Sances said most of the existing live/work spaces in West Berkeley were created out of similar arrangements. 

Project site 

The project would include most of the two blocks between Fifth Street on the east and the Union Pacific tracks on the west between Allston and Bancroft ways. 

More than half the property is currently unoccupied or covered by parking lots. 

The impetus for the project came in January, when Peerless Lighting closed down its manufacturing operations in Berkeley and relocated to in January to Mexico and Indiana. 

“The company looked at the financials and plant costs in Berkeley and moved everything out because costs here were 50 percent higher” than in the new locations, Herst said. 

As projected in the new development plans, the Peerless plant would be expanded into a five-story laboratory and manufacturing facility for a new tenant. 

Peerless had been founded in Chicago in 1892 by three brothers, one of them Herst’s grandfather. 

He sold the privately held company, while retaining ownership of the property, and in 1999 the firm became part of Acuity Lighting Group. Herst remained with the new firm as vice president and general manager of the company’s Peerless division. 

The developer said his company’s philosophy had always been “to really make it beautiful, to marry art and design with optics and energy, creating lighting that is efficient and beautiful.” 

His own love of the arts is evident in walking through the Peerless building, where sculptures and graphics abound, a legacy in part of the art courses he took as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. 

Incubator spaces 

In looking for new uses for his property, Herst said he began looking at the notion of creating so-called incubator spaces for businesses in the early stages of development. 

“Across the street there are the large buildings that under the current zoning you can’t cut up, but I started thinking about using them for incubator spaces,” he said. 

An incubator space is housing for a new business in its development stages, typically before it begins to turn a profit and start generating tax revenues. 

“The idea is to change over time, creating spaces of 4,500 square feet, 2,000 and 1,000,” Herst said. “And what if an artist could live on this side of the street and have a studio on the other side? And what if you had spaces for sculpture, for a yoga studio, and things that are connected back and forth, some retail and food? You could have one side where people could work all night and live on the other side of the block.” 

But to make it work, de Tienne said, the city would have to change the definition of the arts. Under the current regime, a photographer who uses film is an artist, but a photographer who uses digital cameras isn’t. 

Similarly, he said, artists who create their graphics with computers don’t qualify—and the definition should be changed to allow software companies, he said. 

Rob Reiter, a photographer who has his studio just across Fifth Street from the former Peerless plant, hailed the project. 

“I came up through the live/work venue standard with a darkroom in my basement,” he said. “I’ve been in live/work space for 20 years. Incubator spaces with lower rents really work, and what I hear sounds just great. I would like to see inclusion of an actual gallery with display space.” 

“It has to be a place with rotating exhibits, a shared exhibition space,” said artist Jerry Landis, who urged the city to rethink the existing West Berkeley zoning, which is primarily reserved to industrial and light manufacturing. 

Unlisted meeting 

The meeting was not posted in the calendar listings on the city’s website nor on the commission’s own web page. A faxed copy of the agenda received by the Daily Planet simply listed the meeting’s topic as live/work space for artists in West Berkeley. 

Berkeley officials are planning another lawsuit against UC Berkeley’s development plans—this time challenging the quarter-billion-dollar complex planned for the Memorial Stadium area. 

City councilmembers will meet behind closed doors with representatives of the city attorney’s office to discuss the a legal challenge to what the university has called the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects—or SCIP for short.  

“Because it’s a legal issue, we can’t talk a lot until after meeting,” said Cisco DeVries, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bates. “But I think it’s pretty clear: If the city wants to reserve its rights to challenge the projects, it needs to move fairly early to bring the issues into the open.” 

The council will consider the issue when its closed session begins at 5 p.m. today (Tuesday) in the 6th floor conference room at City Hall, 2180 Milvia St. 

UC Berkeley Director of Community Relations Irene Hegarty said the final environmental impact report (EIR) on the projects will be released at least 10 days before the Nov. 15-16 meeting of the UC Board of Regents, at which the document will be presented for certification. 

Once the EIR is certified, Hegarty said, the city has 30 days to file a challenge. “That’s when the city would make its decision whether or not to sue,” she said. 

Grounds for action 

According to the agenda, grounds for legal action could include violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the Alquist-Priolo Act—which governs building on sites near seismic faults—“and other laws.”  

Planning Director Dan Marks has taken the lead in the city’s criticism of the university’s handling of the project’s state-mandated environmental review, carried out under the provisions of CEQA. 

In two blistering letters, one written as the university was gathering comments to be addressed in preparing an EIR on the project and the second after the draft EIR had been submitted, Marks laid into the university. 

Marks sent the first letter last December, totaling 19 pages, to Jennifer Lawrence (now McDougall), the university’s Principal Planner for Capital Projects/Facilities Services. 

His target was the Notice of Preparation (NOP) issued by the university a month earlier, a document which he said “offers vague descriptions of the projects the EIR will evaluate and their potential environmental impacts, raising serious questions about the adequacy of the assessment to follow.” 

Because the NOP lacked “even conceptual plans for the proposed projects, is unclear about the key aspects of several of the projects, and provides little or no detail as to the specific scope of the development,” and failed to supply adequate details typically supplied in an NOP, preparing comments was extremely difficult. 

He then cited a long list of specific failings covering a broad range of issues, ranging from construction and traffic impacts to effects that redound through nearby neighborhoods. 

When the university released the draft EIR in July, Marks fired back with a 54-page critique, describing a university so eager to raise funds that it was willing to ignore serious risks to the lives of students, parents and others who attend events in a stadium directly located atop a major seismic fault. 

Charging that the university displayed “a dismissive attitude toward the City of Berkeley and its citizens,” Marks said the EIR was a flawed document, filled with factual errors. 

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

Hegarty said the final EIR will highlight changes made from the draft document and include a numbered list of responses to the criticisms and questions raised about the draft. 

Massive project 

The addition of more than 300,000 square feet of classroom, office and athletic training space, plus a 325-000-square foot multi-level underground parking lot, pose major environmental impacts both on and off campus during and after construction, Marks charged. 

Of particular concern is the fact that Memorial Stadium sits directly astride the Hayward Fault, the fissure federal geologists declare is the most likely to produce a major temblor during the immediate decades ahead. 

Another structure which could be at issue is the 132,500-square-foot Student Athlete High Performance Center, projected as a heavily used facility immediately adjacent to the stadium’s western wall. 

The underground lot is directly adjacent to the fault, and both structures could be subject to the provisions of the Alquist-Priolo Special Studies Zone Act. 

That law was enacted in 1972, 13 months after a devastating earthquake that caused 65 deaths and leveled a Veterans Administration hospital in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. 

The law bans developments and structures that are occupied more than 2,000 hours a year within 50 feet of active faults. 

Another issue raised by Marks is the failure of the document and the SCIP project to include another major project tentatively planned immediately north of the project zone. 

Also missing from the DEIR were the potential cumulative impacts from the planned demolition of the Bevatron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—a project that could burden city streets with debris-laden trucks at the same time heavy truck traffic is being generated by the SCIP projects. 

Earlier suit  

If a suit is filed, it would be the city’s second in recent years challenging university development plans. 

The first suit, filed in February 2005, challenged the university’s Long Range Development Plan outlining proposed new projects through the year 2020. 

A controversial settlement, reached three months later, produced yet other lawsuits, including one still pending that was filed by Daily Planet Arts and Calendar Editor Anne Wagley and other residents. 

Aimee Allison is hoping that the third time is the charm. Pat Kernighan is hoping that history keeps repeating itself. 

For the third time in a little over a year, the two women are squaring off against each other for the right to represent Oakland’s Council District Two. 

The district surrounds Lake Merritt to the north, east, and south almost like a cupped hand, taking in the Grand Avenue/Lakeshore communities, Trestle Glen, Park Boulevard up to MacArthur, Foothill and International almost to Fruitvale, and the Chinatown section. 

With large white, African-American, Latino, Chinese-American, and Southeast Asian-American communities, it is arguably the most diverse district of one of the most diverse cities in the country, with some of Oakland’s most moderate-to-conservative as well as progressive-liberal pockets. 

The last two councilmembers to represent that district, Danny Wan and John Russo, now Oakland City Attorney, were both able to win by crafting coalitions that bridged the gap between both sides. 

The race has taken on added citywide significance with the election last June of Ron Dellums as mayor of Oakland over the current City Council president, Ignacio De La Fuente. Dellums is scheduled to take office in January, along with whoever wins the District Two council race. 

Under Oakland’s strong mayor form of government, the mayor is the chief executive officer of the city, with enormous influence over the direction of city policy. But city policy itself—as well as city ordinance-writing and control over the budget—is in the hands of the City Council, and a City Council either in open opposition to Dellums or in an intense rivalry could significantly change or outright prevent many of Dellums’ proposals. 

Although Desley Brooks was the only Oakland City Councilmember to endorse Dellums’ candidacy, with several supporting their council colleague De La Fuente and one other councilmember, Nancy Nadel, running for mayor herself, at least some councilmembers are now expected to break off and form a pro-Dellums council coalition. 

That could mean everything from providing the new mayor with a working majority on the council against Council President De La Fuente to challenging De La Fuente for the council presidency itself. In those upcoming council battles, Kernighan is expected to support her main council backer—De La Fuente—while Allison would most likely be solidly in the Dellums camp. With several councilmembers reportedly on the fence between Dellums and De La Fuente, the outcome of the District Two council race could well determine which one of those two men runs Oakland in the next four years. 

Meanwhile, Kernighan and Allison are on familiar ground—running against each other. And while Kernighan has always been considered the front-runner in the races, Allison has gone from a virtual unknown in the spring of 2005 to a credible, serious challenger. 

In May 2005, Kernighan succeeded Danny Wan in the District Two seat, winning 28.8 percent of the vote over eight opponents in a special election called after Wan resigned his seat in mid-term. Allison came in fourth with 14.2 percent of the vote behind Oakland Unified School District President David Kakishiba and community activist Shirley Gee in that race. Because this was a special election, a majority of the votes was not needed, and no runoff was necessary.  

Because the 2005 special election was only for the final year of Wan’s four-year term, Kernighan had to immediately turn around and run for re-election in 2006.  

Last June, Kernighan beat Allison again in a three-person race, but this time by a much smaller margin, 46.1 percent to 39.3 percent. Gee came in a distant third. That set up the third election between Kernighan and Allison, a runoff on Nov. 7. 

Other than the fact that Kernighan is now the incumbent and Allison is no longer the unknown insurgent, this third race is essentially an extension of the first two, with Kernighan running as the nuts-and-bolts moderate insider, and Allison running as the progressive outsider. 

Kernighan, who served as Danny Wan’s chief of staff before the former councilmember’s resignation, lists three major issues as her re-election campaign platform: safety, children and parks, and neighborhood-serving retail. 

Allison, a Gulf War veteran who later became a conscientious objector and an outspoken antiwar advocate, lists several issues in her platform, including attacking the HIV/AIDS pandemic, support for Instant Runoff Voting, and supporting economic development, affordable housing and tenants rights, use of the port revenue for city purposes, advocacy for schools and youth, and fighting crime. 

The issue of safety is a growing concern in District Two with a series of street robberies and car burglaries and two well-publicized Grand Avenue murders last spring: the March 17 shooting death of Mark Kharmats in his insurance office and the April 24 robbery murder of Sonethavy Phomsouvandara at the Bangkok Palace Thai Restaurant. 

Both candidates take similar positions on the issue, with Kernighan calling for “increased police presence to deter street assaults and robberies in District Two neighborhoods” and filling the community policing positions mandated by Oakland’s anti-violence Measure Y, and Allison, in addition to calling for additional police, asking for more money in the city budget for crime prevention and intervention services. 

It is on development issues that the two candidates have clashed most sharply. Kernighan has been given credit for pulling together the compromise between developers and some environmentalist and affordable housing critics that led to the council’s passage last June and July of the massive and controversial Oak To Ninth development project. 

“We have arrived at a balance,” Kernighan said at the time of the council vote. “There are good things for everyone. Today, this site is a contaminated industrial site with no public access. What this project offers is to create a true regional waterfront attraction.” 

Allison opposed that compromise vote, telling councilmembers that night, “There are several excellent reasons not to rush forward. There is still time to change the project and support the Estuary Policy plan. [It’s] a vision that took five years of public input and resulted in a very balanced thoughtful plan ... I’m recommending that this council delay the final decision until some of the issues we heard tonight can be addressed.” 

There were no surprises at the Berkeley Citizens Action Endorsement convention Sunday afternoon, with the 30-year-old group that once was Berkeley’s progressive electoral powerhouse endorsing longtime members Mayor Tom Bates, and City Councilmembers Dona Spring, Kriss Worthington and Linda Maio. 

The club also chose UC Berkeley student Jason Overman for District 8 City Council, whom they supported in his successful Rent Board run in 2004, and endorsed School Board incumbent Nancy Riddle and candidate Karen Hemphill. 

Candidates needed 60 percent of the votes to snag the club endorsement, which carries with it newspaper advertising and a spot on the BCA doorhanger. 

More than 80 people came to the North Berkeley Senior Center event. Voters had to belong to BCA—this was in contrast to the previous week’s Progressive Coalition Convention, where any Berkeley resident attending could cast a ballot. Both conventions used instant runoff voting for races with more than two candidates. 

Mayor 

All four mayoral candidates spoke briefly. While Bates was clearly the favorite, BCA did not give him a free ride, finally recording him as getting 67 percent of the vote as determined by the instant runoff voting method, in which voters may list second and third choices for tabulation if their first choice loses.  

The IRV process itself, however, became a bone of contention. Some said that the procedure by which the IRV votes were counted—the way that “no endorsement” votes were considered—gave Bates an unfair advantage. 

“It wasn’t done properly,” Elliot Cohen, a BCA member, said, pointing out that the person who oversaw the vote, Rent Board Chair Howard Chong, is endorsing Bates. 

“I can understand there are some concerns and I am going to look into it,” said John Selawsky, a BCA member and Berkeley school board member. 

BCA Steering Committee member John Curl, who advocated no endorsement for the mayor’s race, said, however, that he accepted the way the vote was conducted. As the Daily Planet went to press, no candidate had contested the results. 

The mayor faced a barrage of criticism, both from challenger Zelda Bronstein and from BCA members. 

West Berkeley artisan Curl attacked Bates for his support of the West Berkeley Bowl project and other development. 

“Mayor Bates, how can you expect progressives to endorse you when you’ve made it a policy to promote gentrification, pushing people out of town?” he asked. “When you have stated that land use needs to be regulated on the free market, when you’ve been handing over the city to the university and private developers?” 

Bates responded that the West Berkeley Bowl would be “a great asset for our community,” slamming Curl and candidate Bronstein for their opposition, to which Bronstein, former Planning Commission chair, answered that she had not opposed the market, but supported a smaller version of it. 

Bates touted the transit village concept (housing at BART stations), and pointed out that the development he supports is on traffic corridors, “not in the neighborhoods.”  

The incumbent touted his endorsements—Rep. Barbara Lee, the Alameda County Central Democratic Committee, Ron Dellums and more—but Bronstein pointed out that 27 percent of his contributions (in the July reporting) came from developers. 

When Laurence Schechtman asked Bates about his endorsement of District 8 incumbent (and Overman’s opponent) Gordon Wozniak, given Wozniak’s refusal to endorse against Measure I, the condominium conversion measure, Bates responded that he clearly opposes Measure I but supports Wozniak, who has supported him on the council. 

Bronstein promised to build “real affordable housing,” to reopen negotiations with the university over fees it pays to the city for sewers and other services and to pass a sunshine ordinance. She said she strongly opposes the condominium conversion ordinance.  

Addressing a question about youth programs, Bronstein criticized Bates “for not knowing how the money (for youth programs) is being used.”  

Community activist Zachary Runningwolf, running for mayor, touted his support for small business and opposition to the city-university agreement. Responding to a question on mental health, Runningwolf criticized the policy that brings in the police as first responders to “5150” (mental health) calls.  

Recent Stanford graduate Christian Pecaut, also challenging Bates for mayor, addressed the need to know when people in power—locally and nationally—are lying. Pecaut, whose flyers say “Vote for the kid,” said that despite his age, he understands the answers to the city’s problems. 

City Council 

Candidates Spring, Worthington, Overman and Merrilie Mitchell spoke briefly and responded to questions. Their opponents had all called in “out of town.”  

Reminding the audience that she was a “strong voice for the anti-war movement,” and that “we still need social justice,” Spring addressed the need to save the warm water pool. She touted Measure J, the Landmarks Preservation ballot measure, contending it would prevent speculators from buying single-family houses “to develop three-plexes, lot line to lot line.” 

Worthington spoke of bringing police and social workers back to Telegraph Avenue and the need for truly affordable housing, for those who earn $20,000 or $30,000 per year. The homeless need housing and a network of services, he said.  

Overman echoed Worthington’s call for affordable housing and told the audience that he is “running to defend progressive values” with which the incumbent Wozniak is “out of step.”  

Mitchell called for prioritizing the retrofitting of “soft-story” apartment buildings and making Berkeley “a model green city.” 

School Board 

Although there are three seats open, the convention endorsed only Hemphill and Riddle for school board.  

From the audience, Councilmember Darryl Moore asked candidates about the Jefferson School name-change controversy: “Parents and teachers voted overwhelmingly to change the name, but the school board did not,” he said. 

“The board missed the point,” Hemphill responded. “The community at Jefferson banded together, reached out” and worked through the problem to come to a solution. “It was about empowering the community.” 

Incumbent Shirley Issel said the controversy was an “agonizing” two-year process. “I thought the learning environment at the school was eroded by this,” she said stressing the importance of learning form history, not “eradicating” it. 

David Baggins said he would have allowed the school to debate, then accept the vote of the school.  

The focus of Hemphill’s campaign is bridging the achievement gap between whites and minorities. “Berkeley is doing a worse job than the rest of the county,” she said.  

But Shirley Issel argued that schools can’t close the gap. Other jurisdictions should provide income assistance, child care and other services so that all children enter school at the same level, she said. 

On the achievement gap, Baggins asked “why do we look like Oakland rather than Berkeley?” and answered his question, saying it is because of illegal out-of-district students. 

Candidate Norma Harrison said both the state and schools should “wither away.” 

Oakland’s massive Oak-to-Ninth development project entered familiar territory this week with another citizen lawsuit filed in Superior Court against the controversial project. 

On Monday morning, members of the Oak-to-Ninth Referendum Committee filed a complaint with the Superior Court in Oakland challenging Oakland City Attorney John Russo’s Sept. 6 invalidation of the petitions that would have placed the development agreement before the voters. 

“After mounting an enormous and successful effort to alert the public and collect signatures, the Referendum Committee faces an impossible situation,” president of the League of Women Voters of Oakland Helen Hutchison said in a prepared statement announcing the lawsuit. “The city gave us the authorized documents several days into the brief 30-day signature gathering period. Then when we turned in the signatures, they said, ‘we supplied the wrong documents so the referendum petition is invalid.’ Invalidating our petition for this reason completely undermines the right to petition for referendum on a city action.” 

The Oakland League of Women Voters is one of several members of the Oak-to-Ninth Referendum Committee that turned in more than 25,000 signatures on petitions calling for a citizen referendum on the development project. 

The public information officer for the city attorney’s office, Erica Harrold, said in a telephone interview that while it was “unfortunate” that the referendum committee has “chosen to go this route with a lawsuit,” she sympathized with their position. 

“We’re up against a draconian state law,” Harrold said, that mandates that a petition for a referendum overturning a city ordinance must be turned in no later than 30 days after the final passage of the ordinance and must include that final version in the text of the signed petitions. State law, however, is silent on the availability of that final version of the law to the public. 

“We need to rework the state law so that the 30-day clock doesn’t start ticking until there is publicly available a stamped, final version of the ordinance,” Harrold said. 

Until that law is changed, Harrold added, “our hands are tied. What else can we do? The City Attorney’s Office believes we were on solid ground” in throwing out the petitions, she said. “State law is crystal clear on this.” 

Last July, Oakland City Council approved an agreement with developer Signature Properties 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. The property includes the historic Ninth Avenue Terminal building. 

The Oak-to-Ninth project has been the subject of considerable community opposition since it was first proposed. However, some of that community opposition ended when Oakland City Councilmember Pat Kernighan crafted a compromise between the developers and some members of the environmental and affordable housing communities. 

In its first vote on the project last June, the council approved the development agreement on a 6-0 vote, with Councilmember Jean Quan abstaining because the project lacked new school facilities, and Councilmember Desley Brooks abstaining because it did not provide enough open space. 

Following the final council vote in July, two lawsuits were immediately filed against the proposed project, one by Oakland environmental advocate Joyce Roy and the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM) on grounds that the project violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and the second by the Oakland Heritage Alliance calling for the saving of the Ninth Avenue Terminal. Under the agreement, the terminal would be virtually destroyed. 

Last week, Roy and CALM amended their petition, adding a new cause of action calling for the invalidation of the council vote because the council may not have had the final version of the development agreement in front of it when it took its final vote. 

Oak-to-Ninth Referendum Committee member James Vann said in a prepared statement that in drafting its petition, “we used exactly what the Council adopted” on its final vote as the text of the ordinance. “If the agreement was substantially revised after the Council’s vote, then something fishy is going on and City Attorney Russo will have to explain it.”  

City attorney information officer Harrold said she had not yet seen a copy of the new lawsuit, and city attorney staff had not yet filed an answer on behalf of the city to the amended complaint in the Roy/CALM lawsuit. The city attorney’s office has 30 days to answer both the new lawsuit and the amended complaint. 

For neighbors of UC Storage at Ward Street and Shattuck Avenue, approval of placing 18 antennas atop the four-story building is the last straw. 

They say the business brings heavy traffic that clogs residential streets and blocks the sidewalks, and now it wants to add telecommunications devices which might affect the health of nearby neighbors. 

Tonight (Tuesday) the Berkeley City Council will address an appeal by the Ward Street Neighbors of the May Zoning Adjustments Board’s approval of the project at 2721 Shattuck Ave. 

The council will also look at an appeal of ZAB’s approval of a partial demolition at 2104 Sixth St. which neighbors have said is illegal, and will consider a request to fund a campus watch group. 

In addition to the 18 antennas, the ZAB approvals for UC Storage include an emergency backup generator and an air conditioner. There are two applicants for the antennas: Nextel and Verizon. 

Neighbors are calling for a public hearing to air the problem. 

“There’s no seismic analysis,” Ellen McGovern of Ward Street Neighbors told the Planet. “What if there’s an earthquake and an antenna falls off the roof?” 

And there’s been no study of the noise pollution it will generate, she said. 

Moreover, McGovern said, “They take Verizon’s and Nextel’s analysis of the ‘need’ to put the antennas up,” arguing that the city should hire an independent engineer to verify the need. 

Nextel, however, says the site fills a “hole” in its system. 

In a Sept. 18 response to McGovern’s request for review by a third party, Paul Albritton, attorney for Verizon, contends: “We do not believe the very high cost, estimated at approximately $7,000, of a third-party engineering review is supported under either the evidence presented, or under the code.” 

Further arguing in favor of the project, Albritton said in the Sept. 18 memo that Verizon had submitted coverage maps and reports “supporting the need for the improved coverage in the area surrounding the proposed site, for both business and home-coverage purposes.”  

He went on to point out the public benefit of the antennas, which he said would provide emergency 911 “pin-pointing” coverage for police and fire. 

The Federal Telecommunications Act precludes communities from using health concerns for turning down telecommunications devices. Still, at the May ZAB meeting, according to unofficial minutes, Pam Spike pointed to the “precautionary principle,” saying that if there’s the possibility that people can be harmed by the project, it should not be done.  

Councilmember Max Anderson, in whose district UC Storage sits, said this week that in such cases the precautionary principle should be applied. 

In addition to the antennas, Ward Street neighbors complain of trucks blocking the street and vehicles using the Ward Street entrance to the facility, adjacent to homes, rather than a Shattuck Avenue entrance on the commercial street. 

The council will also address: 

• An appeal of the Zoning Adjustments Board’s decision to accept a partial demolition of a historic building at 2104 Sixth St. The decision mandates that the remaining historic features of the building be preserved and that the historic features that the staff report says were “inadvertently removed” be reconstructed. 

• A request for $7,500 to add to the UC Berkeley fund for a Cal Campus Neighborhood Watch Program.  

• A request by Planning Department staff to send a project proposed for 2817 Eighth St. back to the Zoning Adjustments Board. In July ZAB approved a project that would demolish a single-family house and replace it with four condominiums, but did not address the requirement that the developer provide “inclusionary” (lower-income) units or an in-lieu fee. Staff wants the ZAB to reconsider the project in light of this requirement. 

Planning commissioners face two action items on the agenda Wednesday. 

First up will be a discussion of recommendations for revisions to the city’s Creeks Ordinance, with commissioners scheduled to decide on a public hearing date for a vote on amendments to provisions to allow rebuilding in the event of a fire or other disaster. 

The other item is a discussion of zoning changes proposed for the Telegraph Avenue Economic Development Assistance Package, with a continuance of the public hearing to the commission’s Oct. 11 meeting. 

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., at Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

Creation of a major new UC Berkeley museum complex on Center Street inched a step closer Monday with the close of applications for the position of project architect. 

Meanwhile, museum officials are scheduled to meet today (Tuesday) with a select group of community members, including representatives of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA). 

The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. at the Jazz Cafe, 2087 Addison St. 

The university’s architectural and public relations moves come as a subcommittee of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) is studying the future of Center Street. The new DAPAC subcommittee will hold its first meeting Oct. 5 starting at 7 p.m. in the second floor of the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

Rob Wrenn, a former Planning Commission chair who now sits on the Transportation Commission, will serve as chair for the first meeting. 

The Center Street Subcommittee, formed at Planning Commission Chair Helen Burke’s urging over the objections of DAPAC Chair Will Travis, is also considering the impact of a second major university-backed development planned for the one block stretch of Center between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue. 

The project, commonly called the UC Hotel, was the subject of a lengthy study by a special city subcommittee appointed to consider the impact of the construction of a high-rise hotel at the northeast corner of the intersection of Center and Shattuck. 

The university has selected Boston-based developer Carpenter and Company, which presented a general project overview to DAPAC in June. 

It was after that meeting that Burke called for the creation of what is now known as the Center Street Subcommittee. DAPAC members voted overwhelmingly in support, with only Travis and former UC Berkeley administrator Dorothy Walker in opposition. 

The university’s plans for the hotel complex had earlier spurred the creation of the Hotel Task Force, created by the City Council in December 2003. Both Burke and Wrenn had served on the panel, with Burke then representing the Sierra Club. 

That panel, drawing from the Planning Commission, the Zoning Adjustments Board, the Design Review Committee, the Civic Arts Commission and a variety of community organizations, completed its study the following April. 

Among the panel’s recommendations was a call for closing Center Street to traffic between Oxford and Shattuck, transforming the streetscape into a pedestrian plaza—possibly including an excavated and daylighted Strawberry Creek. 

That waterway now flows through a buried culvert beneath the street. 

The museums would rise at the eastern end of Center Street on the sites now occupied by the landmarked University Press Building. 

The building, a 1939 New Deal Moderne structure where the original copies of the United Nations Charter were printed in 1945 for the signatures of delegates gathered in San Francisco for the U.N.’s founding, was declared a city landmark in June 2004. 

That structure would be demolished to make way for the complex, which will house the Berkeley Art Museum, the Pacific Film Archive, the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology and exhibits from the Berkeley Natural History Museums. 

Plans call for a total of 71,650 square feet of gallery, theater, classroom and other display areas, according to the Request for Proposals issued by the university. 

Burke said she had heard that museum officials are accompanying their presentations on the projects with solicitations of funds. As with most of the university’s new building programs, most if not all of the funding is expected to come from private and corporate donors.

Two 19-year-old men were convicted today of second-degree murder for beating and kicking a 100-pound homeless woman to death in Berkeley last year. 

Jurors deliberated for parts of three days before delivering their verdict against Jarrell Maurice Johnson of San Leandro and Derrell Lamont Morgan of Berkeley for the attack on 49-year-old Maria King on Feb. 8, 2005. 

King died at a hospital 12 days after a confrontation with the men behind a second-hand clothing store near University Avenue and California Street. 

Johnson and Morgan are scheduled to be sentenced by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Horner on Nov. 17. They each face 15 years to life in state prison. 

In his closing argument last week, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Ben Beltramo said Johnson and Morgan both should be convicted of first-degree murder because they knew that King was vulnerable and that by throwing her to the ground and kicking her multiple times they would kill her. 

Beltramo said King was “motionless, soundless and defenseless” after being knocked to the ground, but instead of helping King or just walking away, Morgan and Johnson kicked her in her vital organs at least three times each. 

“They had a choice and they chose death,” Beltramo said. 

He said the manager of an apartment building across the street who saw part of the incident from his window said the two men were kicking something as if they were kicking a soccer ball as hard as they could. 

Beltramo told jurors, “It wasn’t a soccer ball, it was a woman’s head.” 

The prosecutor said Morgan and Johnson kicked King with “an incredible amount of force” and she suffered at least seven facial fractures, a skull fracture, swelling and lacerations to both eyes and hemorrhaging and swelling to her brain. 

Johnson’s lawyer, Ray Plumhoff, admitted to jurors that Johnson participated in the attack but said he should be convicted of something less than murder. 

Morgan’s lawyer, Walter Pyle, said Morgan wasn’t involved in the brutal attack. 

Berkeley’s City Club and the First Church of Christ, Scientist are among 25 Bay Area architectural and historic treasures competing this fall for one million dollars in grant funding from the American Express Foundation through the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

Anyone can enroll online to vote for his or her favorite project. Individuals can vote over and over—up to once a day—through Oct. 31.  

It may not be “American Idol”, but the project winning the popular vote is guaranteed at least a portion of the million dollars.  

Voters can log on at www.partnersinpreservation.com, complete a simple registration page and, once registered, return regularly to cast ballots (e-mail address and selection of a “nickname” and password are needed, but real name, address or phone number are not required). 

Voting is also possible through electronic kiosks at some Peet’s Coffee locations. 

Supporters of both Berkeley buildings are hoping for a decisive voting turnout from their admirers. 

The Berkeley City Club—sometimes called architect Julia Morgan’s “Little Castle” in contrast to her Hearst Castle mansion for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon—is looking to the program to continue a series of renovation and restoration projects at the seven-story Durant Avenue building. 

The building was constructed in the late 1920s as a central meeting and activity location for a coalition of Berkeley’s women’s clubs.  

Membership is now open to both sexes and much of the ornate structure is used for event rentals, meetings, dramatic and musical performances, weddings, and other ceremonies. Guestrooms are available in the tower.  

Upstairs in a cramped third floor bedroom converted to an office, the non-profit Landmark Heritage Foundation, led by energetic President Mary Breunig, marshals volunteers, prepares grant applications and organizes fundraising for the building project. 

Tables and desks are covered with piles of papers, newsletters, flyers, City Club historic paraphernalia, and renovation project documents. 

An extensive and expensive project to repair and refurbish many of the ornate leaded glass windows in the building has largely been completed.  

If the American Express grant money comes through, Breunig says, attention can turn to a façade restoration project.  

The money would “spruce up the front, which needs it terribly,” she says. “The decorative features are deteriorating; there are a lot of windows that need to be tended to.” 

The south-facing Durant Avenue façade is embellished with windows, terraces, and ornaments in a synthesis of Moorish and Gothic styles. 

The American Express money requires no exhausting effort to raise matching funds. “That’s what’s so darned wonderful about this”, Breunig says. 

“If the Landmark Heritage Foundation receives this grant, that will take us even closer to becoming a National Trust historic hotel,” she adds. Historic hotel status would yield increased publicity for the building and, Breunig hopes, bring more travelers and “heritage tourists” to Berkeley. 

Over at Dwight and Bowditch in Berkeley’s 96-year-old First Church of Christ, Scientist building—one of only two National Historic Landmarks in the city—there’s also evidence of repairs and renovations underway. 

Construction fencing has just gone up along Bowditch Street in preparation for a combined seismic strengthening and re-roofing project planned by Architectural Resources Group and Degenkolb Engineers.  

Fred Porta from the non-profit Friends of First Church is, like Breunig, hopeful and thankful about the grant opportunity. “We are excited … Hip, Hip, Hooray!” he exclaims. “I think the National Trust and American Express really get a gold star.” 

The roof repairs and seismic work on the main, original, building—which includes the structure’s primary auditorium—are partially supported with a $550,000 grant through the Save America’s Treasures program. The Friends are still raising matching funds. “We’re charging ahead”, Porta says. 

Meanwhile, seismic and other work remains to be done on a lesser known, but equally interesting, portion of the building. 

The Sunday School wing of the Church is tucked along Dwight Way. Added in 1929, it was a collaboration between an aging Bernard Maybeck and Henry Gutterson. “The floorplan and elevations were from Maybeck’s hand,” Porta notes, while Gutterson was the architect of record. 

Within the tranquil, narrow, high-roofed structure that looks a bit like an ancient monastic chapel and is complete with its own Oliver Organ, manufactured in Berkeley, the main weakness is the end wall on the south, currently without the “shear strength” required to resist a major earthquake.  

Engineering plans call for the replacement of the wood-frame wall with solid concrete, and replication of the original surface finishes. That’s where the Friends of First Church would direct any American Express grant money from the contest, Porta says. 

Although they yearn for local residents to vote their projects to the top of the list, both Breunig and Porta are also quick to encourage voters to consider the other Berkeley-area project competing for the funding, restoration of the venerable 1911 Carousel in Tilden Park.  

There are also Richmond, Oakland, San Francisco and other Bay Area projects in the running. 

The grant program is a “win, win, win”, for the whole range of preservation efforts in the Bay Area, Porta adds. Regardless of the primary winner, a million dollars will flow into local restoration work. 

An interactive map on the website provides photos and vignettes of all 25 projects. 

For more information on the grant program and to vote, see www.partnersinpreservation.com. Voting ends Oct. 31; you may vote once a day. 

For information on the City Club, see www.berkeleycityclub.com or contact the Landmark Heritage Foundation at 883-9710, or lhfjmorgan@earthlink.net  

There are free tours of the building at 2315 Durant Ave. on the fourth Sunday of each month (except December), on the half-hour from 1-4p.m. 

For information on the First Church of Christ, Scientist, see www.friendsoffirstchurch.org or write to info@friendsoffirstchurch.org  

Free tours of the Church interior are offered at 12:15 p.m. on the first Sunday of every month. Gather at the church entrance on Dwight, just east of Bowditch. 

Photo courtesy of Friends of First Church: 

The interior of the modestly named Sunday School room at the First Church of Christ, Scientist is in need of earthquake reinforcement, which could be undertaken with the American Express funding.

Reorganization of the Nutrition Services Department, a progress report from the B-Tech, and a presentation by the Life Academy at Berkeley High School were highlights of the BUSD Board meeting on Wednesday. 

Ann Cooper, the Director of Nutritional Services, BUSD, who was hired and funded by a three year financial grant from the Chez Panisse Foundation in October 2005, presented a staffing plan and a budget model to restructure the Nutrition Services Department that would better serve the Wellness/Nutrition Policy. 

Cooper informed the board that since she was not likely to remain a long term director, it was important to approve the reorganization of the Nutrition Services Department at this point in order for her to have time to hire or train new staff so that they continued to meet the new standards the BUSD was bringing to school lunches.  

Cooper stressed that the modifications to the structure would help to bring about better evaluation and supervisory relationships. “Currently, the Director and the Nutrition Services Manager evaluate and supervise more than 55 employees who are working at 16 different sites. This relationship makes the oversight, training and development of staff very difficult and limits accountability,” she said. 

Six new positions were recommended which included an executive chef, three sous chefs, an accountant and an administrative assistant. 

The executive chef would be responsible for overseeing district wide daily food production and would also open and oversee the King Dining Commons. Housed at the Central Kitchen, the high school and Nutrition Services Warehouse respectively, the sous chefs would help to meet the demand of the current menu of fresh foods.  

“Since we are now using whole fresh foods, it requires knowledge of not only specific cooking techniques, but of purchasing, receiving and distribution models, as well as food safety protocols,” Cooper said. 

Director Nancy Riddle and Board V.P. Joaquin Rivera asked Cooper to provide more detail about the dollar value of each of these positions.  

According to the current report, by collapsing five vacant positions the department will save $133,000. The increased revenues from the Meals for Needy cost of living increas and the increase in food sales, all of which are reflected in the current budget, would also make up the difference needed to cover the increase in payroll costs of approximately $187,000. 

Cooper stressed the fact that this reorganization would bring about no impact to the general fund. “We have created these positions keeping in mind the lowest salary levels. The accountant position would be funded equally by the CNN Grant and Nutrition Services,” she said. 

Rivera commented that the budget that was allocated for the cafeteria had already encroached on the general fund. 

“If we are going to have the good quality food that we are giving our kids right now, provide them with fresh food, organic food, then it is going to be expensive,” said BUSD Superintendent Michelle Lawrence. “The board has approved the budget each year that has indicated these encroachments,” she said, adding that it was important to monitor these encroachment dollars at the same time. 

Board director John Selawski said that it was not entirely realistic to expect that these six positions would come in at the lowest salary level.  

Cooper replied that while making the recommendations they had kept in mind more of a middle range figure. “I’ll do what I need to do to not ask for more money,” she said. 

“The program is trying to move us in the right direction,” said Director Shirley Issel. “We have had very good reviews and it is not just because we increased prices. The students and their parents are very excited about the work being done in the nutrition services.” 

BUSD President Terry Doran echoed her words and said that even if the reorganization meant an increase of $187,000 it would not be a problem. “The cafeteria budget is not an encroachment on the general fund, it is part of the general fund. I for one am thoroughly convinced that better nutrition is an important part of improving the school district. The state funds are not enough for this. It will only get our children ketchup and fatty foods.” Doran added that it was important to keep in mind sustainability and to be cost-effective at the same time. 

“Given the current financial position, the addition of any new position is always a matter of concern for us,” said Riddle. “When we were passing the budget we knew that we were spending several hundred thousand dollars more than other school districts do on their cafeterias. It would really help to have the details on the cost of individual positions so that we can watch the budget carefully.” 

In the end the amendment was approved by the board with the amendment that BUSD would be provided with a spreadsheet containing the budget break-down for the individual positions. Director Rivera voted in opposition. 

B-Tech Report 

Principal Victor Diaz of Berkeley Technology Academy presented board members with an informational report on the school. Diaz informed the board that B-Tech’s Acedemic Performance Index (API) had increased from 370 in 2005 to 532 in 2006. “We have had a 162 point API growth, the second highest in the county.’ he said.  

B-Tech’s CAHSEE pass rate has also improved from 18 percent to 40 percent in Math and 255 to 47 percent in English Language Arts during the same year. The school has currently set a goal of 100 percent pass rate on CAHSEE for all 11th and 12th graders 

Diaz also spoke about “Relationships, rigor, and relevance,” the new three R’s for B-Tech.  

“We are expecting to increase enrollment compared to last year and our attendance levels are already improving. Students are taking an active interest in classes such as gender studies and there is an awareness about language usage and behavior on campus,” he said.  

Diaz added that community building was an important focus for the school. “The students are also talking about lunch-time movies that would help keep students inside school during recess. We have also started after-school dance classes and a student store and student government body are in the works. However we feel the need for parent involvement and vocational educational options. More physical activities, and after school programs such as music and art are also required to help change the culture of the school,” 

Life Academy 

Teachers and students of the Life Academy at BHS gave the board a presentation of their program that has met with tremendous success since its inception last September. 

“Life Academy’s average attendance and average G.P.A. is higher than that of other Berkeley High 9th graders,” said BHS Principal Jim Slemp. 

Life Academy helps students transition to high school and is dedicated to bringing about academic success through rigorous and engaging teaching standards.  

The program includes interdisciplinary teaching and has a project-based curriculum. The classrooms have a total of 17 students instead of the 28 students in the other BHS classrooms, which students said helped them concentrate and spend more time with teachers. 

Since 1973, the Berkeley community has been able to air complaints in public against its police officers and compel them to respond. But a recent California Supreme Court decision may have knocked the teeth out of the ordinance that created Berkeley’s Police Review Commission. 

Earlier this week, City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque directed the Police Review Commission to cancel all complaint hearings through the end of October. The commission was scheduled to meet in closed session yesterday (Thursday) evening to discuss ramifications of the court decision. Oakland and San Francisco have similarly canceled their citizen’s review board hearings on police complaints. (Albuquerque was out of town and unavailable to comment. Other city attorneys did not return Daily Planet calls for comment.) 

The decision, Copley Press v. San Diego County, says that a state law that keeps disciplinary records of law enforcement officers confidential also applies to proceedings before local boards. 

Oakland City Attorney John Russo called the ruling “breath-takingly broad,” and said that perhaps the only way public police review hearings can resume is through new legislation. 

Russo said the key will be: “Can we show that the review board doesn’t meet the definition of an employing agency?” He says his staff is continuing to review that question. 

The legal case addressed by the court has to do with a newspaper’s request for records kept by an agency that employed a law enforcement officer; this agency both heard the officers’ appeals and meted out discipline.  

Berkeley attorney Osha Neumann, a PRC commissioner for many years, argues that Berkeley’s PRC, unlike the San Diego commission in the case reviewed by the court, is independent of the employer. It investigates and rules on complaints, but does not have disciplinary rights, as an employing agency would. 

Neumann, who connects the court decision to a “right-wing push by police unions challenging police review,” said he urges the PRC to continue its hearings, even if they must be temporarily closed to the public. “My concern is that the PRC exercise courage and advocate for continuing what the voters voted for – oversight of the police.” 

PRC Chair Sharon Kidd said open public police review hearings are critical. “It is the right of the community to come and observe what is going on [in the hearings],” she said. 

The Berkeley Police Officers Association did not return a call for comment before deadline. 

Prakash Stephen Pinto wants the deserted glass-strewn lot at San Pablo Avenue and Harrison Street near his Stannage Avenue home replaced by shops and new housing, but he told the City Council Tuesday night that the project before them “is a serious detriment to the neighborhood.”  

“From the point of view of the neighborhood, the (proposed) scale and density is disproportionate,” Pinto said. 

The meeting was the first after the council’s long summer break and included discussion of several land-use issues and city-wide street sweeping. 

Pinto was among more than a dozen neighbors, who had come to the council meeting to appeal an April Zoning Adjustments Board decision approving the proposed five-story 30-unit condominium project, with six “affordable” units built above commercial space. 

Having received the developer’s modifications to the project just before the meeting, the council voted unanimously to delay a decision until next week. 

“I have a question—what project are we considering?” Capitelli asked not without sarcasm, referring to the various iterations of the proposal strewn on the desk before him.  

“I just got this at 5 p.m. today,” added Councilmember Linda Maio, in whose district the project is proposed. “People need to know what’s going on.” 

The modifications included moving the fourth floor farther from neighboring residences, while adding height to the fifth floor, adding 18 parking spaces bringing the total to 56 and creating a more equal distribution of lower-income units. 

Project neighbors said they had told the developer they would accept a compromise proposal, a design that would include building three stories near existing residences and five stories on San Pablo Avenue. This solution was rejected by developer Jim Hart. It would make three levels of bridges between the units and three levels of stairs, project architect Don Mill told the council. 

Touting the benefits of the development, Hart said the units would be priced as “starter housing” at $300,000 to $500,000. Bringing more people to the area, “it will provide security on San Pablo,” Hart said, noting, moreover, that he had agreed to hire 50 Berkeley residents from the Berkeley First employment program. 

Build up, talk to your neighbor 

Harriet Berg’s neighbors built a large addition to their home in the Berkeley hills. “It’s offensive; it blocks my view of the bay” she said, urging the council to modify the city’s zoning ordinance governing major residential additions.  

“It’s reasonable to have limits on height,” she said. “It should be the subject of review.” 

In an effort to ease neighborhood tensions—especially with respect to what a letter from hill resident Margaretta Mitchell called “Intrusive second additions”—the body approved the revision 7-2, with Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Max Anderson, who represent flatland districts, voting in opposition.  

Now, additions of up to 499 square feet can be built “by right,” that is, with an easily-obtained across-the-counter permit. 

The new rules will permit people to build larger additions—up to 600 square feet or 15 percent of the lot area—but height restrictions that vary according to residential district have been added. 

Not everyone agreed the proposed changes are beneficial. Councilmember Moore pointed out that remodel costs will be raised significantly. “There need to be shadow studies, solar analyses and property-line surveys,” said Planning Manager Mark Rhoades. 

“For some people the choice is building up or getting out,” Moore said. 

The council added a sunset clause to the revised ordinance: if Proposition 90 passes, the ordinance will sunset in one year. According to the legislative analyst, Proposition 90 would “require government to pay property owners for substantial economic losses resulting from some new laws and rules.” 

City-wide street sweeping—maybe 

Moore was a member of the Public Works Commission nine years ago when the City Council approved the commission’s proposal to stop allowing neighborhoods to opt out of the city’s street-sweeping program. But the neighborhoods which previously opted out still have not been brought into the monthly program that keeps debris—some of it toxic—out of the storm water system. 

“It’s a question of equity,” Moore said, calling for city-wide inclusion in the program. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz said he would tackle the problem—which includes finding funding for additional personnel and machinery—and report back to council in a couple of months. 

Governing the housing authority 

Deemed a “troubled” agency by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the BHA is looking at various new governance structures, such as oversight by a commission that could spend more time working with the agency than the council can do at present, when it sits as the BHA. 

“There are so many things on the agenda, it’s hard (for the council) to focus,” said City Manager Phil Kamlarz  

Public housing recipients came to the BHA meeting, which preceded the council meeting, worried that the agency would be taken out of Berkeley hands if it does not show improvement.  

“Our first goal is to keep the Housing Authority in the city of Berkeley,” Kamlarz said..

With the specter of Proposition 90 lurking in the wings, Berkeley’s City Council Tuesday passed a conditional new law governing the sizes of apartment and condominium buildings. It attempts to reconcile conflicts between size bonuses offered by the state of California and the City of Berkeley as a reward for the provision of affordable housing. 

The new ordinance will be valid for only two weeks if California voters reject Prop. 90, but will remain in force if they pass it. 

While billed as a measure restricting the eminent domain powers of state and local government, the proposition, which takes effect immediately after the election, strips governments of almost all regulatory powers over land use. 

The measure’s key consequence doesn’t involve eminent domain, a practice in which governments take land from owners for new public and private uses, which it would also limit. Its real impact comes from provisions that allow owners to sue for any potential loss of revenues from any new legislation that in any way restricts the use of their property from what was allowed at the time of the measure’s passage. 

Opponents say they fear governments would be reluctant to impose any tightening of zoning or other restrictions on land use. Passage, Mayor Tom Bates told the council, “would be terrible. It would limit our ability to make any changes. To limit height or density would become extremely costly.” 

As a result, the council wanted something in place before the election, but just what was open to question. 

Members had their choice of two ordinances, one drafted by a joint subcommittee of the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) and the Planning and Housing Advisory commissions and a rival measure prepared by city planning staff. 

In the end, the council opted for the staff version—part of nearly 1,000 pages of documentation—without hearing from either members of the joint commission subcommittee or from the staff. 

The decision 

Betty Olds moved approval of the citizen subcommittee’s proposal, winning a second from Linda Maio. 

Before the vote, Spring said she was concerned that passing a measure that contained a provision to terminate the legislation if Prop. 90 failed could result in a legal challenge if the ballot measure passes. 

Wozniak said he was reluctant to vote on a measure for which he had just received “a thousand pages” of supporting materials the day before. “I don’t think the council has had time to absorb this,” he said. 

Maio said the subcommittee recommendations were “a good starting point, but I don’t feel comfortable” adopting them for the long term without more of a public process. 

Planning commissioners had agreed with Maio’s critique in rejecting the subcommittee proposals, while ZAB members had voted to approve. 

“We have had a public process,” said Olds, who then moved adoption of the citizen panel’s proposal, with Maio offering a second and joined by Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington in support. 

Bates and Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Laurie Capitelli voted no, while Max Anderson and Gordon Wozniak abstained, dooming the measure, since five votes were needed to pass. 

Wozniak then moved adoption of the rival staff ordinance, with Capitelli offering a second. Olds opposed, Worthington and Anderson abstained and the remaining councilmembers voted in support.  

If adopted at its second reading at next Tuesday’s council meeting, the ordinance would become effective Oct. 25. If Prop. 90 failed in the Nov. 7 election, the ordinance would die the following day. 

Avenue impacts 

The main difference between the two versions will be felt along San Pablo Avenue, where the planning staff’s version as passed by the council would effectively allow five story buildings. 

The rival version, drafted by the joint citizen subcommittee, would have kept the structures a story shorter. 

“There was no need to sacrifice the city’s poorest homeowners to the planning staff’s True Belief in Smart Growth,” said Steve Wollmer of PlanBerkeley.org. 

Wollmer’s group focuses on developments along the University and San Pablo Avenue corridors, and has been sharply critical of five story projects abutting residential streets immediately parallel to major arteries. 

Wollmer criticized the council for failing to hear testimony from the subcommittee, which has spent a year-and-a-half formulating the proposal rejected by the council. 

“The staff are sellouts,” said David Blake, a ZAB member who served on the subcommittee, who agreed that the new ordinance’s greatest impacts would be on the CW zones along San Pablo Avenue and on Ashby and University avenues west of San Pablo. “CW zoning is also found along Telegraph Avenue, but there are far fewer project sites available there, so south of campus impacts should be relatively limited,” Blake said. 

Another key difference between the rival ordinances is the degree to which developers can provide mandatory open space on building rooftops and terraces rather than as ground-floor courtyards and yards.  

While the subcommittee wanted a maximum of one third of the mandatory yard space to be permissible atop project roofs, the staff proposal allows up to three-quarters of the total to be allotted above the ground floor. 

Density bonus 

The underlying issue is the so-called density bonus, an incentive which allows developers to exceed the sizes of buildings otherwise allowed by zoning ordinances and city codes in exchange for reserving 20 percent of their units for lower income tenants/buyers. 

Such units are mandatory for all projects of five or more dwellings. 

Half of the qualifying units must be affordable to those making 50 percent of the area median income and the other half for those earning no more than 80 percent. 

As compensation, builders are allowed to add units for rent or sale at market rates to recoup losses incurred in providing the mandated units—although under another measure adopted earlier this year developers can now pay fees in lieu of offering below-market units, with the funds going for building new affordable housing projects elsewhere, or rehabilitating existing structures. 

It is the additional density bonus spaces that would allow four-story “base” buildings in CW zones to rise to five floors under the staff ordinance once the compensatory units are included. 

The three-floor alternative under the subcommittee measure would have allowed for a total of four floors.

In an effort to bring public awareness to the issues involved in critical contract talks between the City of Oakland and the powerful Oakland Police Officers Association, members of the Black Elected Officials of the East Bay sponsored a public forum Wednesday night on the contract negotiations. 

Representatives of the city showed up. Representatives of the Police Officers Association did not. 

In their absence, a packed City Council chambers heard presentations from Oakland Chief Wayne Tucker and federal court monitors about the state of Oakland’s police department, as well as statements and questions about police and crime conditions in the city from audience members. City Administrator Deborah Edgerly also answered audience questions. 

The current City of Oakland/OPOA contract expired in June. 

The OPOA could not be reached for comment for this article. 

“It is imperative that we change the existing police contract,” Councilmember Desley Brooks said following the meeting. “The contract has a direct impact on the services that the police department can give to residents. If we don’t change both the management structure of the department and the way in which our officers are deployed, we are always going to be behind the ball.” Brooks, a member of the Black Elected Officials group, was one of the major organizers of Wednesday night’s meeting. 

Waving a copy of Chief Tucker’s March, 2006 “Vision And Plan Of Action To Reduce Crime And Improve Accountability,” Alameda County Board of Supervisors Keith Carson, the chair of the Black Elected Officials organization, said “We’re in a pivotal time in Oakland’s history. If we think that the current setup with the police department is all right, then it’s our duty to let the City Council know this. As for me, I embrace the chief’s plan for changing the department. And from what I’ve heard him say during the mayoral campaign, our mayor-elect (Ron Dellums) supports it, too. Others who feel the same way should let their Oakland elected officials know that they want the chief’s plan to be a model for the way the department operates.” 

One of the major components of Tucker’s plan is a change in the redeployment of the Oakland Police Department. Under the current deployment plan, Oakland police operate in four- day, 10-hour shifts, a deployment the chief called “one of the least efficient,” and under which, Tucker said, “we are spending millions of dollars on overtime as a standard practice, more than is healthy. We’re managing the department on an overtime basis, but you can’t run a police department on overtime. It doesn’t make good fiscal sense. It doesn’t make good administrative sense. And it isn’t good for the citizens we are serving.” 

Tucker said that 265 officers are needed to run the current 10 hour shifts, while only 200 would be needed if the shifts were set at 8 hours, and 178 if the shifts were set at 12 hours. With longer shifts, he said, a smaller number of officers is needed to be on duty each shift to patrol the city, even though the actual number of officers on patrol remains the same. 

Tucker said OPD regularly schedules 180 overtime shifts every three weeks, which “we would all but eliminate if we took more efficient deployment.” The savings in overtime that would come from adopting a 12 hour deployment plan, he said, could be used either to enhance police operations or be returned to the city’s general fund. 

Following the meeting, Brooks said that almost every other police department in Alameda County operates under the 12 hour shift. “The OPOA says that we can’t do it here,” she said. “If so, why are they able to do it in other cities?” 

Tucker also complained that a clause in the current contract that allows the OPOA to call for immediate dispute resolution a maximum of five times a year, suspending any policy the OPOA doesn’t like, “essentially paralyzes me from making an unpopular decision.” The chief said that clause, and another which automatically includes in the contract terms any “past district practices that have been beneficial to union members,” has “tied us to a management practice that does not allow us flexibility.” He says that because of the restraints in the current union contract, “we are restricted to mostly patrol services and responses to 9-1-1 calls. We’re not doing timely follow up investigations. We’re not working on youth and family services. We’re not doing a good job in following up on property crimes.” 

The chief said because of the confidentiality clause of the negotiations, he could not speak directly about what issues were dividing the union and the city. 

One of the most dramatic moments of the meeting came in an exchange between Tucker and Minister Keith Muhammad of the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Mosque 26 in Oakland. 

Praising Tucker for his actions since becoming chief of Oakland’s police department 20 months ago, Muhammad said that there was still a crisis of violence in the city. “Some of us may feel that martial law is the solution,” he said, referring to an earlier speaker who suggested the National Guard be brought in to deal with Oakland’s violent crime wave. “But that was not the solution to the problem in Iraq, putting more guns on the street. It won’t work in Oakland, where there is an atmosphere of fearlessness against the police among some people in our city.” 

Staring directly across at Muhammad from the Council podium, Tucker admitted that there were problems in the police department, but said that “the department is changing. I know we still have a lot of warts and carbuncles that inflame the community. But we’re going to get there.” Tucker said that the Oakland Police Department “has lost the capacity to connect to young people. That’s a huge hole in the department we have to fix. We don’t know the community very well. That only happens when you’re out in the community and learning the community, and when you’re reflective of the people in the community. That’s what we have to do.” 

Other presentations at the meeting were made by Kelli Evans and Charles Gruber, members of the federal court-appointed monitoring team overseeing the negotiated settlement in the landmark Allen v. Oakland police misconduct case. 

Gruber said that “cultural changes” were needed in the way Oakland police do business, saying that such cultural changes meant “the department has to have all of its policies updated consistent with modern police practices and upholding constitutional rights. Many of the members of the police department have embraced these cultural changes. Those who have not will be dealt with over time.” 

Gruber praised OPD’s reforms instituted in the 20 months since Tucker became chief. “We’ve seen remarkable progress in those 20 months,” he said, adding that “there’s still more to do, however.” 

Evans, an Oakland resident, said that the reforms being initiated by the settlement agreement will lead to an improved law enforcement climate in the city. “The most effective policing has to be constitutional policing,” she said. “These reforms will improve the crime-fighting ability of the Oakland Police Department.” 

Berkeley should be ready to boost downtown parking prices for a host of reasons, declared members of the panel charged with developing a new plan for downtown Berkeley Wednesday night. 

Following up on a joint meeting earlier this month with the city Transportation Commission, members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) endorsed recommendations by a UCLA professor and added a few of their own. 

UCLA planning Professor Donald Shoup recommended setting higher on-street meter parking prices to discourage cruising for parking spots, as well as adopting flexible parking rates that would change at different times of the day. 

Additional revenues raised could be used to fund improvements in the city center (possibly through the Downtown Berkeley Association), to provide incentives for walking, bicycling and using public transit, and to discourage shoppers form parking in surrounding residential neighborhoods. 

Other suggestions included: 

• Pricing eight-hour parking at least 20 percent higher than the most distant round trip BART fare to Berkeley; 

• Eliminating monthly parking permits at the Center Street garage to free up more spaces for short-term parking; 

• Keeping meter prices at least as high as rates for garage parking; 

• Implementation of discount transit pass programs for employees of downtown businesses; 

• Adding new payment technology, including a system to discourage meter-feeding by downtown employees. 

The vote was non-binding, what one member described as a straw poll. 

“I’m really asking to give downtown stakeholders, the business district, a say in how the parking revenues are spent,” said former City Councilmember Mim Hawley. 

“I would support that if a portion went to transportation services,” said Wendy Alfsen. 

Transportation Commissioner Rob Wrenn said that despite frequent complaints, there is always plenty of parking available downtown—and he offered to accompany any skeptical DAPAC members at peak hours to prove his case. 

Emerging vision 

As DAPAC nears the end of its first year, a vague outline of the shape of the new plan is starting to emerge—though the devil remains in details yet to be articulated. 

The committee was formed as a condition of the settlement of a suit the city filed challenging UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan through 2020. 

The settlement spelled out a downtown area enlarged beyond the boundaries of the city’s existing downtown plan.  

Members spent most of Wednesday night’s meeting discussing a compilation of their own visions for the downtown, defining areas of both agreement and tension. 

Matt Taecker, the planner hired to help draft the plan, asked DAPAC members to submit statements of their visions for the downtown, and 12 of the group’s 21 City Council and Planning Commission appointees and UC Berkeley’s three ex officio members and two official representatives complied. 

Working with the statements, Planning Director Marks and Taecker drafted a 19 page report, distilling the results into a one-paragraph consensus statement: 

“An economically vital ‘green downtown’ that is the heart of the city, is based on sustainable development practices, celebrates and conserves its historic roots, is oriented towards pedestrians with plazas, tree-lined streets and other amenities and is accessible to all segments of the community. Downtown is also a high-density residential neighborhood in its own right, with a highly diverse housing stock serving all segments of the community, with safe streets and supporting services.” 

Planning Commission Chair Helen Burke faulted the document for failing to include a recommendation by her commission’s Hotel Task Force to create a pedestrian plaza along Center Street between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue. 

Environmentalist Juliet Lamont said the report should give environmental sustainability at least as much weight as economic viability. 

Retired UC Berkeley administrator Dorothy Walker said there’d be no money for environmental programs without increased economic vitality.  

“We can’t have a green downtown unless we have economic development,” said Hawley. 

Berkeley High School Safety Officer Billy Keys said more emphasis was needed on diversity, and attracting people of all backgrounds to participate in the downtown. 

“Transit is missing as a clear cut goal,” said Wrenn. 

Patti Dacey said the document needed to emphasize that there is no inherent conflict between the goals of sustainable development and protection of the area’s historic buildings. 

Steve Weissman said the report failed to stress the need to create a sense of place, a quality that attracts people to the downtown and makes them want to spend time there. 

Themes and scenarios will continue to dominate the committee’s agenda, with a session on preliminary scenarios scheduled for Oct. 4, and a revisit to themes and scenarios on Nov. 1. 

A preliminary draft of the plan is still months away, with a final draft due to the City Council in November, 2007. 

The full report as well as other documents generated in the planning process are available on DAPAC’s web site at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/dap/reports.htm 

Some library activists have been watching the search process for a new library head and say they don’t like what they see. 

“It’s very exclusive,” said Jim Fisher, a member of SuperBOLD, Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense. To date, the library board chair has hired a professional “head hunter” and established an ad hoc committee of library directors to begin the search.  

While Fisher says the community is being left out of the mix, Board of Library Trustees Chair Susan Kupfer counters that such fears are unfounded. 

“There will be lots of input from the community,” Kupfer told the Daily Planet. “The community can interview the candidates and rate the candidates very early in the process.”  

The ad hoc committee that Kupfer has put together consists of current and former library managers and includes directors from Oakland and San Francisco and the interim Berkeley director. “The purpose of using the expertise of library directors is that they are people who have run libraries,” Kupfer said. 

The ad hoc committee will help in the recruiting process, as will the search firm Kupfer has hired, Dubberly Garcia Associates, Inc. of Atlanta. 

In addition to concerns expressed by Fisher and SuperBOLD, the library union, Service Employees International Union 535, has concerns, particularly because the union was often at odds with former embattled director Jackie Griffin. 

“The brochure [announcing the job] should say something about working collaboratively with labor unions and line staff,” said Andrea Segall, SEIU 535 shop steward. 

The brochure announcing the position, posted on the Dubberly-Garcia website, does not address “collaboration,” but says: “The ideal candidate…has the ability to work effectively in a collective bargaining environment.” It goes on to say that the director is responsible for “supervising and evaluating the activities of professional and support staff.” 

The brochure speaks to the importance of working collaboratively with the library board, the Friends of the Library and the Berkeley Library Foundation. 

The city’s Human Resource Department has not yet advertised the position, which, according to the Dubberly-Garcia website, closes on Oct. 18. 

Charged with creating a community process, Library Trustee Ying Lee said that at the Tuesday trustee’s meeting she will propose an inclusive process for interviewing the finalists. According to her plan, there would be four interview panels: one would consist of the library professionals group already functioning; one would be made up of library staff; a third would be a panel of community leaders including representation from SuperBOLD, the Friends of the Library, the Berkeley Library Foundation, the Berkeley School Bboard and others. The fourth panel would be made up of the Board of Library Trustees, which would make the final decision.  

(As mandated by the City Charter, the Board of Trustees consists of five people, four of whom are appointed by the board itself, with confirmation by the City Council, and one—Darryl Moore—who is a councilmember appointed by the council.) 

The individual selected “should be able to work with shelvers to supervisors,” said Lee, underscoring the importance of director-staff relations. “A happy staff is vested in sustaining the library. A lot is riding on the new director.”  

The next meeting of the library board will be Sept. 26 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Hearst Avenue. 

A Federal Court in San Francisco denied a request by Oakland-based environmental nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) on Wednesday for a preliminary injunction against Berkeley-based Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) citing insufficient evidence that CBE would prevail on the merits of its arguments.  

The CBE lawsuit alleges that West Berkeley-based PSC violated the Air District’s permit with respect to the amount of emissions from the steel foundry in Berkeley. 

In an eight-page order denying preliminary injunction, Federal Magistrate Bernard Zimmerman wrote: “I cannot conclude that plaintiff demonstrates a likelihood of success in proving a permit violation.”  

With respect to CBE’s claim of serious health effects attributable to PSC emissions, Zimmerman wrote that although CBE establishes a potential for some harm to the community if an injunction is not granted, “the harm is not the type that would normally impel a court to grant the plaintiff’s request.” 

The judge further stated that although CBE alleges a link between defendant’s emissions and potentially serious health risks to those in the surrounding community, there was “little evidence to suggest that the consequences attributed by plaintiff to defendant’s emissions have materialized.” 

The judge also wrote that with respect to the complaint about odors from PSC’s operations, there was nothing to establish that the odorous emissions posed an “immediate threat to the environment to warrant a preliminary injunction likely to change the status quo.” 

Both parties were instructed by the magistrate to prepare for an “expedited” trial that he said could take place before the end of the year. 

Alan Ramo, an attorney with the Golden Gate University School of Law Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, representing CBE, said that although the court had not been ready to grant the injunction, it had spoken favorably for CBE. 

“The judge will be holding a status conference in a week’s time and we will get to know more about the trial then,” Ramo said. 

Pacific Steel spokesperson Elisabeth Jewell, of Aroner, Jewell and Ellis Partners, said that PSC had a union workforce of over 500 employees, 200 of whose jobs would have been eliminated had CBE prevailed. Jewell also said that based on what CBE had requested in its proposed order, PSC would have been forced to close down Plant 3 immediately. 

“Our workers and their families are relieved that the judge clearly saw they had no facts to back up their claims,” stated PSC Vice President Joe Emmerich in a statement. 

“Notwithstanding this significant victory, Pacific Steel is moving forward to install the carbon adsorption filter at Plant 3 as quickly as possible,” he said. 

Environmental groups such as cleanaircoalition.net, however continue to support CBE’s endeavors. 

“We have read the Court's decision, and while the immediate shut-down of Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) was denied, the Court agrees that the health and manufacturing issues in this matter are valid. We were there at the start of this suit and will continue to support CBE as they go to trial - with the watchful eyes and solid support of many citizens in Berkeley, El Cerrito and Albany,” commented cleanaircoalition.net founder Willi Paul, adding that watchdog groups were getting together for a mass protest and educational event against PSC in a few weeks. 

Environmental activist Steven Ingraham spoke about continued community support on the issue. “The community has several strategic organizational aspects to its plan to bring Pacific Steel Casting Co. to full compliance with all regulations. We are continuing to meet with and be advised by Bradley Angel of Greenaction. I also had a phone conference with Jack Broadbent of the Air District and we are awaiting the details on the community air testing funding.” 

Opponents of Oakland’s massive Oak to Ninth development project have amended their California Superior Court complaint against the project, asking that the court invalidate the City Council’s approval of the project because the final version of the project agreement was never available to the council or the public at the time of the council vote. 

The Oakland City Council voted to approve an agreement earlier this summer 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. 

The approval sparked several responses from opponents, including two lawsuits, one on alleged California Environmental Quality Act violations and one to attempt to preserve the historic Ninth Avenue Terminal Building, which would be all but destroyed in the proposed Oak to Ninth development.  

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

Shortly afterwards, Oakland City Attorney John Russo directed the Oakland city clerk to invalidate petitions calling for a referendum on the massive Oak to Ninth project, stating that “the Referendum Committee omitted maps that would have disclosed to voters the public access in the project and attached the wrong ordinance to the petition. Under California Elections Code, these actions automatically disqualified the petition.” 

But according to local preservation activist Joyce Roy, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits and one of the organizers of the petition drive, the ordinance included with the petitions came from a city website link provided by the Oakland city clerk’s office (an earlier Daily Planet article erroneously said that the clerk provided the petitioners with a copy of the ordinance). 

This week, Roy and attorneys for plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits, the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), added amendments to their original lawsuit alleging that the absence of a final version of the ordinance invalidated Council approval of the Oak To Ninth development agreement. 

“The adoption of the ordinance for the development agreement between the city and Oakland Harbor Partners is invalid and must be set aside [because] two readings are required before an ordinance can be adopted,” Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee members said in a press release following the filing of the amendments. The committee said that the agreement voted on by councilmembers at the July council meeting was substantially different from the one approved in the June meeting, even though Oakland’s City Charter requires that substantial amendments cannot be made after the first reading of an ordinance. In addition, the referendum committee members said, “since [the] July 18 [Council approval vote], the development agreement has been materially altered numerous times without going back to the City Council for approval as required by the City Charter.” 

Roy and CALM are being represented by the law offices of Brian Gaffney. 

The Oakland city attorney’s office has not yet filed an answer to the amended complaint.

A 15-year-old Berkeley High School student was assaulted Tuesday afternoon near Planet Juice in downtown Berkeley. 

The attack happened at 1:50 p.m. at 2200 Shattuck Ave., when the youth was battered by several unknown suspects, according to Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Ed Galvan.  

“From the report we can say that the attack was non-life threatening and therefore the Berkeley Fire Department was not called [to provide emergency medical assistance],” Officer Galvan said. 

The report was made by the victim on Tuesday at Berkeley High but no suspects have been identified so far or taken into custody. 

Galvan commented that attacks such as this are quite common in Berkeley.  

“Some are handled by school resource officers and some by counselors. It depends on how badly the person has been hurt. Sometimes the victim himself does not want anything done and the case remains unsolved. In the case that the attacker is identified and is 14 or 15 years old, the worst that can happen to him is probation. Or he might just be asked to explain his behavior and get away with an apology.” 

Galvan also said that if fights take place between Berkeley High School students, it is not difficult for the victim to go back to school, open a high school yearbook and identify the victim.  

“But in most cases they are too scared to do so. Some of these cases never get solved because we never get cooperation,” he said. 

Reporting incidents of youth violence was identified as a top priority by the police and school district at a recent meeting between the city and the district. Efforts have begun to distribute literature about how to report crimes to students and parents at Berkeley High School. 

The case is still open and is being handled by the Berkeley High School resource officer. 

Berkeley police are offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the killer of a 23-year-old Oakland man who was shot in Berkeley Sept. 4. 

The body of Wayne Drummond Jr. was found at the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority house, 2311 Prospect St., following a 911 call at 1:40 a.m. 

Officers believe he was shot at another location and either walked or was driven to the sorority. 

Drummond had been seen shortly before on Telegraph engaged in a low key argument with another man, the last sighting before his body was discovered. 

“We’ve talked to lots of people, but so far no one’s been able to provide the information we need,” said police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

The officer asked anyone with information to call homicide investigators at 981-5900. Callers may remain anonymous, he said. 

The plight of artists seeking to live and work in West Berkeley is the subject of a special meeting to be held this afternoon (Friday). 

Called by the city’s Civic Arts Commission, the meeting will host an open forum from 1 to 2 p.m. on the plight of the artists seeking live-in studios in the most affordable part of a gentrifying city. 

The meeting comes in the wake of last month’s eviction of the Nexus collective and the eviction last year of the artists who lived and worked in the Drayage. 

Both structures housed an eclectic gathering of painters, sculptors, woodworkers and other arts and crafts folk. 

The meeting will be held in the conference room of the old Peerless Lighting building at 2246 Fifth Street. 

Upside the head 

A Sept. 5 dispute between a 57-year-old Berkeley man and a house guest who’d overstayed his welcome ended in arrests for both, reports Officer Galvan. 

When the resident’s rhetorical powers proved inadequate to induce his 59-year-old visitor to leave his abode in the 3200 block of Ellis Street, he resorted to the proverbial blunt instrument—in this case, a skillet. 

Police were summoned at 7 a.m., and promptly clapped cuffs on the pan-wielder, busting him on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. But a quick computer check ended in an arrest for the victim as well, who turned out to be the subject of a plethora of arrest warrants. 

Son bashes dad 

A 62-year-old Berkeley man was hospitalized on the 5th after he was beaten by a young man armed with a section of pipe. 

A caller who reported seeing “a man covered in blood” summoned police to the 1300 block of Hearst Avenue at 7:05 p.m. 

Officer Galvan said the man had been apparently been attacked by his 18-year-old son, who fled the scene in a white sedan. 

The victim was taken to an emergency room for treatment of his injuries. 

Robbery bust 

An 18-year-old Berkeley man was booked on suspicion of robbery after he purportedly strong-armed a small amount of cash from a 32-year-old San Francisco man in the 2100 block of Shattuck about 30 minutes after the pipe attack. 

Heist by punch 

An early morning pedestrian received an unpleasant surprise as he was walking near the corner of Derby and Fulton streets minutes after 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 9—a punch in the eye . 

The blow was inflicted by a woman who had just sprung out of her car before striking the 25-year-old Santa Barbara man. 

She then robbed him of his wallet, cell phone and keys before driving off. 

Rat pack heist 

A gang of four or five young men, each clad in a hoodie, forced an 18-year-old UC Berkeley student to hand over his wallet when they strong-armed him as he walked near the corner of Durant Street and Dana Avenue just before 2:30 a.m. on the 9th.  

Pushy bandit 

A 68-year-old Berkeley woman was shoved to the ground by a woman who then absconded with her purse. 

The incident happened on Addison Street near the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way about 2:30 p.m. on the 10th. 

The woman was taken to an emergency room for treatment of minor injuries sustained in the attack. 

At knife point 

A 49-year-old homeless was man was robbed by a knife-brandishing 30-something bandit clad in jeans and a white T-shirt outside the Shattuck Cinemas about 3:50 p.m. on the 11th, said Officer Galvan. 

Rat packers again 

Another rat pack crew, this one consisting of four fellows ages 14 and 15, stole the purse of a 55-year-old Berkeley woman as she walked along the 500 block of Hazel Street at midnight on the 13th. 

The woman said two of the crew were clad in the inevitable hoodies. 

Cried for help 

Alarmed to hear a woman calling for help, a citizen called police a minute after midnight on the 14th. 

Moment later, officers found a 19-year-old Berkeley woman who had just been relieved of her wallet and cell phone by a strong-arm robber. 

A quick search turned up not only a suspect—a 47-year-old Richmond man—but the young woman’s missing property as well. 

The suspect was cuffed and carted off to contemplate his sins in the city lockup. 

Campus carjacking 

A pair of carjackers packing at least one pistol robbed two UC Berkeley students parked behind Memorial Stadium Tuesday night, then made off with their car. 

According to a crime alert issued by UC Berkeley Police Chief Victoria L. Harrison, the couple—a 20-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman—were sitting in the car about 11:30 p.m. when the bandits appeared on either side of the car. One pointed a pistol at the man, who was sitting behind the wheel, and ordered him out of the car, then demanded his valuables while the second bandit, sans pistol, did the same with the young woman. Valuables in hand, the pistol-packer told the pair to start walking down the hill. Both suspects were clad in hoodies.

The record-breaking, triple-digit heat wave that rolled through California this summer did untold harm to the state’s $31.8 billion agricultural industry—cooking walnuts in their shells, killing dairy cows and wilting tender greens in the field. 

But for the small-scale farmers at the Saturday farmers’ market in downtown Berkeley, the blistering temperatures caused more sunburns and headaches than crop damage.  

“I hated the heat wave with a passion,” said Didar Khalsa, from behind crates of green table grapes, black mission figs and yellow peaches. “Not for any specific damage it did to the fruit but because I had to work out in it.” 

A tall, lean man with a full beard, Khalsa is the owner and primary laborer on the 13-plus-acre Guru Ram Das Orchards in Esparto, northeast of Sacramento.  

Governor Schwarzenegger has estimated crop damage at “more than a billion dollars” and on Aug. 1 made a request for federal disaster assistance from the USDA for the most impacted Central Valley counties of Fresno, San Joaquin, Kern, Kings, Tulare, Stanislaus, Merced and Madera. 

At the Berkeley market most of the vendors rise before dawn to drive several hours into the Bay Area from outlying counties. Though most of the farms represented are not from the state’s most heat-damaged agricultural regions, they all spoke of record-breaking temperatures.  

“I actually think the citrus liked the heat,” said Khalsa who is looking forward to continued bounty throughout the winter with grapefruit, lemons, limes, hachiya and fuyu persimmons, blood and Valencia oranges. 

Just down the street Abel Estrella placed deep purple pluots and Gala apples on the scale for a customer. For Smit Orchards in Linden, a small town in the foothills of San Joaquin county, fall brings in the money crops, Fuji and Pink Lady apples, selling for between $2.50 and $3 a pound. This year the heat wave spurred the harvesting season.  

“Everything is two weeks early,” said Estrella, “and honestly, I’m not sure the flavor on the apples is quite as good.” 

Watery apples and slightly higher prices did not appear to hamper the hoards of shoppers who arrived with their strollers, cloth grocery bags and coffee drinks to wander through the stands, to sample yellow and white nectarines, buy flowers and stock up on fresh produce for the week. 

Marga Snipes was in town from Spokane, Washington, to take classes on a Zimbabwean instrument called a mbira, also known as a thumb piano, and just happened upon the market. 

“I love it! There is just such a wonderful variety and all the vendors are so knowledgeable. I bought figs, peaches and I am going to try a cactus pear for the first time,” she said, pointing to the de-spined, red colored fruit. 

Shoppers leaned down to savor the fragrant, multicolored roses at Robin Gammons’ stall. Based in Aromas, east of Watsonville, the Four Sisters farm specializes in cut flowers and organic specialty greens like sorrel and purslane. Picked young and tender, the greens don’t do well in extreme heat. 

“During July nothing looked good,” said Gammons. “Everything was wilting, especially the water cress.”  

Much of the fruit displayed at Saturday’s market depends on bees for pollination and when it gets hot bees stop pollinating, cease honey production and start collecting and depositing water droplets in the hive where they continuously flap their wings to circulate cool air. 

The National Honey Board ranks California as the second highest honey-producing state in the nation, generating more than $25 million in 2005. With all the bee’s energy focused on staying cool, the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture estimates a 35 percent decrease in honey production this year. 

Market vendor and beekeeper Tom von Tersch of Half Moon Bay stood behind a sizeable display of honey in variously sized clear glass jars. Sticky fingered children reached for the tiny paper cups filled with chunks of honeycomb he offered as samplers. 

“During the heat wave I didn’t worry about my bees. A good strong hive takes care of itself,” said Tersch. Tersch had hoped the Toyon, a native California shrub, would bloom longer but the scorching days in July cut short the blooming season for many wildflowers and plants. 

For a beekeeper, a heat wave means driving bees around the state in search of sufficient blooms. It’s not always easy or lucrative but Tersch is grateful he doesn’t have to worry about labor issues. 

“As a beekeeper I get to abuse my employees terribly,” he said. “After all, it’s just me and the bees.” 

We have had many inquiries about whether or not the Planet will endorse candidates for the November election. Election day is a little over six weeks away, and mail-in ballots (formerly known as absentees) will be out in little more than a week. More and more voters are going to be voting by mail, so the campaign is winding up right now. Last-chance political efforts, sponsored by MoveOn.org and others, are underway across the nation and in this area.  

So it’s time for us to present our first endorsement. We strongly support Jerry McNerny for Congress. And no, most of you won’t be able to vote for him. Jerry is the candidate in California’s 11th Congressional District, a roughly C-shaped area carved out of non-coastal Northern California that goes east beyond Manteca and south beyond Morgan Hill. It’s now one of the few usually-Republican districts in the Bay Area, and it’s currently represented by the execrable Richard Pombo, who never met an environmental protection law he didn’t try to destroy.  

It’s possible—barely—that Jerry McNerny can beat Pombo this time. Jerry McNerney is his own man, and we don’t just like him because he’s a hard-headed Irishman. He’s also an environmental engineer who first ran for Congress in 2004 because his son, who joined the Air Force after 9-11, told him it was his duty to change the country’s direction. He got 39 percent of the vote in that election without any support from the sluggish state or national Democratic Party.  

But the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, late to the party as usual, has just named Jerry one of their “emerging candidates,” which means that their polls show that he’s close enough to winning that they’ll deign to send money. This is, of course, after they wasted a lot of bucks supporting a more tractable candidate against him in the primary, who lost two-to-one.  

Evidently the Repugs and their pollsters think McNerney’s doing well too, because they’ve already spent over a quarter of a million dollars on fancy mailers against him, with much more to come. Here’s what his campaign manager, A.J. Carrillo, says on his website about the influx of national Republican dollars: “Lots of money. Little impact. With Pombo’s internal poll numbers in apparent free-fall and his astroturf field campaign virtually dead, Pombo is now pulling a very risky rabbit out of his cowboy hat—a fancy fundraiser with George W. Bush on Oct. 3 in Stockton.” This should be fun. The McNerney people plan to spend their much-less-abundant money trying to tie Pombo as close to Bush’s falling star as possible, which shouldn’t be hard since he voted with Dubya at least 83 percent of the time.  

If we here in the Urban East Bay can’t vote for McNerney, what can we do?  

1. Send money. Details are on his excellent website: jerrymcnerney.org. You can use your credit card onsite. Or mail a check made out to “McNerney for Congress” to: McNerney for Congress, P.O. Box 12022, Pleasanton, CA 94588. Include your phone number so they can call you for reporting details. 

2. Volunteer. Local feuds stop at the district’s edge, so an amazing assemblage of people who ordinarily glare at one another got together in Berkeley last Saturday for a fundraiser and pep rally, where you could sign up to go out to the 11th District (just an hour or two away) and work precincts, or to telephone from home. Again, check the website for details, or call the Dublin campaign office at (925) 833-0643.  

This one’s a no-brainer. But what about Planet endorsements in other races? Well, here’s what we’re doing for starters. There will be one day for each contested race when candidates will be allotted a generous amount of space in the Planet’s opinion section to say whatever they want the voters to know. No-shows will be indicated by a blank. We’ll run shorter rebuttals and reader comments on a space-available basis, with some attempt to be fair and overflow on the website. Several candidates have already had comments printed, but that won’t be counted against them for the future. (There will also be days for contested ballot proposals.) 

After candidates have had a chance to speak for themselves, and their friends have had a chance to speak for them, we at the Planet may or may not add our heavy thumb to the scale if we feel strongly about a particular race or proposal. Actually, and this should come as no surprise to anyone, the executive editor will exercise her executive privilege right now to tell Berkeleyans that they’d be crazy not to vote for Measure J, to re-enact our Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, which has for more than 20 years worked well to preserve our beautiful urban environment.  

They used to say in Chicago, “Vote Early and Often,” but “Vote Early” is a better choice these days. One good thing about voting early is that you use a paper ballot, since many are suspicious of the voting machine alternative. 

But don’t wait for us to tell you what to think. Read our opinion pages and the news pages as well, make up your own mind, and just vote. Just do it.

POPE FAUX PAUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for printing Rosemary Ruether’s excellent commentary (Sept. 19) on the pope’s recent faux pas in Regensburg. I think her comments were judicious, perceptive, and generally right on target. Let’s hope Papa Bene reads the Berkeley Daily Planet! Of course, the rest of us could still heed her advice, even if Papa doesn’t. 

Keith Barton 

• 

BOOKSELLERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I very much liked the Aug. 29 article by Dorothy Bryant about independent bookstores in Berkeley: “Hangouts for booklovers who come to buy books or just to browse and maybe schmooze with the busy people who work there.” Most often these booksellers have a college degree and came from another, often book-related career. What do they want to call their job? “Sellers” is too commercial, “book clerk” too stuffy. All this reminds me of a bookstore hangout in the German city of Darmstadt where I lived from 1938 to 1952. 

It was called “The Darmstadter Bucherstube” (Book Room or Book Parlor) and was a meeting place for young and old people who wanted to read more than the Nazis permitted. To work in a bookstore in Germany you started as an apprentice and after having learned the trade for years you became a “Buchhandler” (book trader for dealer) recognized as a profession, like maybe a librarian. There were book dealers and publishers associations where lectures were given about new publications, authors, etc. During the Nazi years the Darmstadter Bucherstube did a great and often dangerous job of giving people a place to speak freely, for exchanging and obtaining forbidden or disappeared books and to teach young people about another world possible. 

Marianne d’Hooghe and her husband Robert who both worked in a Berlin bookstore bought the Darmstadt one in 1937 from its Jewish owner, Alfred Bodenheimer whose business had been dying out for lack of customers who defied the Nazi boycott and without access to supplies. He was happy to find a buyer in the Berliner couple, so he could emigrate to America before the worst persecution of the Jews had begun. The first year in Darmstadt was hard for the d’Hooghes: Some people shunned them because they believed the new owners had robbed the Jew Bodenheimer whom they had loved and supported, and others stayed away as they had before because of whatever “Jewish connections.” But gradually, as resistance against the Nazis and then against the war, increased, the Bucherstube became a rare refuge for many people who found there life-long friends (which also happened to me). The Bucherstube helped to save us from hopelessness and despair in those terrible years, even when Darmstadt was almost totally destroyed by Allied bombs (mostly on Sept. 11, 1944). The Bucherstube was also severely damaged, but reopened at a new location in the rebuilt city after the was. As far as I know it is still there, with new owners, as Robert and Marianne died a few years ago. 

Blessed be independent bookstore! 

Lenore Veltfort 

• 

THINGS I WISH  

I’D NEVER NOT SAID 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley’s application of state density bonus law is so contorted that only a lawyer could love it. (In fact, the developer who came up with it and sold us on it four years ago, Patrick Kennedy, is indeed a member of the bar.) Every person on our fair Joint Density Bonus Subcommittee, however, has a good enough grasp of the law that none of us (especially me, who represented the committee before the City Council) could ever have said any of the quotes attributed to me in the Planet’s weekend issue. The new ordinance won’t be having its main intensifying effect in the San Pablo district, because the ordinance doesn’t intensify a bit (quite the opposite, it gives the ZAB and council more discretion over the ultimate shape of buildings); CW zoning does not apply in the Telegraph area, since it applies specifically to West Berkeley (hence the W in CW); we never looked into opportunity site differences between CW and CT areas (CT, that’s the real name of the Telegraph district), so none of us would have cited such a difference to suggest that the new ordinance won’t affect Telegraph much (the article’s fundamental misunderstanding that the new ordinance intensifies zoning is at fault for this error too). 

In fact I privately thanked Planning Director Dan Marks after the council decision for working so hard to make sure the council enacted the protections it did last Tuesday, and I know Dan will tell you that my thanks were unmistakably sincere. I hope your readers also will understand, despite the imposing quotation marks in the article, that I never called staff “sell-outs,” or anything remotely like that. (Were I to call someone a sell-out, I hope I would at least say something about how they were selling out. which was totally missing from my supposed quote. I am an editor, and I like my words, insulting or not, to mean something.) 

It could have been worse, I suppose. The lead article in the Berkeley Voice covering the same subject this week carefully informed their readers that all the changes applied only to downtown, the only commercial area in the city totally unaffected by the ordinance. 

Dave Blake 

• 

LIARS AND KILLERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The only “flu” that will plague us and the rest of the world, is the one created by the public and private biology laboratories right here in Berkeley, and at Stanford and the rest of the UC system. And yes, it has been deliberately designed to terrorize and murder. 

One of the “academics” at the sham 9/11 forum where I was arrested for speaking the truth is the director of the university’s very own Homeland Security Project, which just happens to provide “accelerated vaccine development.” He’s not alone, unfortunately. You can listen to any high-level Republican politician drool over the “possibly” approaching pandemic flu lockdown—just turn on the TV.  

Given that the supposed “Avian flu” does not “yet” spread between humans, how can there already be vaccines waiting to be injected into us? “Well, you just never can tell with that Hostile Mother Nature. She’s always getting ready to kill us off with mutations,” the anti-scientists so idiotically and psychopathically claim. 

For those who still cannot believe that such calculated and malicious liars and killers are here amongst us (the human species), I would recommend they read Robert Jay Lifton’s “Nazi Doctors” and compare the current bio-medical establishment with Germany in the early 1940s. 

And for everyone else, who can think on their own, and speaks about the subject in public, well, they’ll just be discredited as “raving” or throwing a “tantrum” or “mentally unstable.” The only way to “prove” atrocious lies such as 9/11 and Bird Flu, is to attack and discredit the person who dares expose or even question their legitimacy or motive. 

And thanks to the recent expansion in “mental health” services—you can be sure they’ll make the slander stick, one way or the other. It indeed is depressing to get forced into designing ways to kill people under threat of failure, character assassination, and worse. 

Christian Pecaut 

• 

YOUTH GETTING INVOLVED IN DEMOCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Every year high school students in California volunteer to work at the polls at elections. In order to work at the polls they have to miss a day of school. As a result the school's ADA (average daily attendance) drops and they loose hundreds of dollars of funding. 

Working at the polls at elections is a very unique experience. Students get to have a hands on participation in democracy, which is easily as valuable or more valuable than teacher's lecture or reading a chapter out of a text book. Students at schools that cannot afford to loose the funding loose this important educational experience. 

In 2004 a group of students at Acalanes high school in Lafayette took the initiative to write and advocate a bill (AB 1944 (Hancock)) that would allow students to miss a day of school to work at the polls without the school's ADA being affected. The bill passed through senate and legislature and got to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk. The governor vetoed the bill. 

Last year some more students decided to give this bill another shot. They found a senator to write and fund it and got it all the way through senate and legislature, and now it is again on the governor's desk waiting for him to sign it into law or veto it. Unfortunately this bill has turned into something of a partisan issue even though it should be a matter of education not politics. 

Hannah Keegan 

Acalanes High School, Lafayette 

• 

MISSED THE POINT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Riya Bhattacharjee’s Sept. 19 report on the Zoning Adjustments Board hearing regarding the Milo Foundation pet adoption store on Solano Avenue misses the point in exactly the same way that most members of the ZAB missed the point: 

Zoning does not exist to approve or disapprove of the morality of the goals of businesses. 

Testimony in favor of Milo Foundation’s continued operation of a dog and cat pound on Solano Avenue focused on the nobility of their mission to find homes for abandoned animals. 

This is completely irrelevant. Do we issue permits to real estate brokers or antique shops or haberdashers because we approve of their “goals"? Do we allow them to continue operation - despite zoning and health and municipal code violations - because their businesses make us feel warm and fuzzy? 

The Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC Section 10.04.130) says that housing more than four dogs requires a kennel (to be approved by the Health Department)—and that the kennel not be within 25 feet of a human residence. Milo Foundation is in violation of this law. 

Furthermore, the Solano Avenue business district prohibits kennels, so Milo is clearly out of compliance. Not incidentally or accidentally or unknowingly but by the nature of their business. 

The ZAB should (in fairness to other businesses governed by zoning laws) revoke Milo’s permit because they are in violation of zoning and BMC regulations. Instead, the ZAB hearing morphed into a conversation about how much the neighbors do or don’t mind Milo’s dogs crapping on their lawns - and about how much Milo’s volunteers enjoy walking the dogs. This is absurd. 

Until two days before the ZAB hearing, Milo daily flushed a stream of raw animal sewage down their driveway, across a public sidewalk, and directly into a storm drain on Capistrano Ave. which empties (untreated) into the bay. As the neighborhood had been complaining about this for months (with no result), one can only conclude that the timing of the cessation of this disgusting and unsanitary medieval sewage disposal technique was not merely coincidental. 

Zoning exists to ensure some minimum level of civility between neighbors. Businesses whose practices don’t meet these minimal tests are not allowed to operate, no matter the purity of their souls. That the ZAB should think its job is to evaluate the loftiness of a business’s mission statement - rather than to enforce zoning laws by which the rest of us have to abide—is a sad display of malfeasance and should not be represented in the Daily Planet as just an amusing “he said/she said” story. 

George Mattingly 

Pope Benedict XVI may be too old and conservative for what is best for the Catholic Church. However, the undeserved bad media coverage and misinterpretation of his out of context comments are appalling. Most of the media is sound-biting the controversy into a wider spreading of unfortunately horrible publicity that does not present the facts of the situation, only furthering the damage. Peace is what the world needs more of, not inflaming violence and those who want to escalate it.  

The pope is a good and honorable man of peace and brotherly love. He was speaking of the dangerous dichotomy within the Muslim world, between the teachings of peace and those extremists who take jihadist stance in opposition to the true beliefs of mainstream Muslims. In making his points regarding the use of violence under the guise of religion he quoted from a 14th-century conversation on the truths, perceived at the time, of Christianity and Islam. The pope neither agreed nor repudiated the comments. It was merely illustrative of the centuries old debate regarding values and positions held by dissenting, radical factions, particularly within, but not limited to one religion. Violence is the antithesis of religion and the two cannot coexist. Self-defense and aggression are not the same thing.  

The pope does not harbor anti-Muslim sentiments. He was addressing the issue, that the Muslim religion, like all major religions, has been at times, misused by misguided adherents who have chosen to spread their beliefs through aggression and violence. His speech and statements were intended as a historic, timeless and timely cautionary warning that some extremists are currently engaging in violent, aggressive and criminal behaviors that in themselves are causing great harm and are antithetical to the strongly held beliefs of peace and love held by most moderate Muslims and thinking people of all walks of life.  

It appears that extremist Islamists are eager to search out and use anything to further their agenda. The Catholic Church and the pope make a delicious target for these extremists who want very much to cast all other religions and nonbelievers as infidels and their enemy. They self-righteously take comments out of context that will further their intolerant agenda of inflaming and turning all Muslims against all other religions and people who are not willing to convert and adhere to their narrow interpretations of Islam. The power these extremist wield is increasing as seems apparent by the intimidating effect they use so skillfully to silence most moderate Muslims who fear retribution for speaking freely against the extremists.  

The extremist jihadists do not believe in any science or education that contradicts their limited vision for humanity and promotion of their version of Islam. Since many of their adherents have limited education and experience outside of their rigid belief system, they are easy prey to being inflamed and incited to overreaction to misconstrued information with the intended results, furthering the agenda of the extremists.  

Fair and rational minded people of all religions and secular beliefs must see the folly of media and religious overreaction to misrepresented facts that can only fuel the tinder box of fundamentalist fostered violence and terrorism.  

Carol Gesbeck DeWitt is a Berkeley  

resident.  

Opinions expressed in Daily Planet commentary and letters to the editor are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Daily Planet or its staff.  

I greatly appreciate the forum you have provided for airing viewpoints on a very contentious set of issues, and the effort you made in a recent editorial with regard to anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, difficult problems remain that must be brought to light. Before I go further: My own background is a left-wing, non-Zionist Jew. 

A number of years ago, the majority of nations in the world voted to call Zionism a form of racism. While Jews and Israel accused them all of anti-Semitism, it’s important to understand the thinking here. Zionism is founded on the idea that Jews, pursuant to a covenant with God, have an entitlement to a particular piece of real estate, known in terms of religious eschatology as Zion, or the Promised Land, and in mundane terms as Israel. Greater Israel encompasses much or all of the land also known as Palestine. Unique among nations and peoples of the world, a religious belief has been translated into modern political-economic terms.  

The founding of a Jewish state was based upon two historical experiences of the Jewish people: this alleged covenant with God, and the Holocaust. At the time, it was said that a “people without a land” were being given a “land without people.” It’s not hard to see that, from the point of view of the non-Jewish people already inhabiting this land, there are a few problems here. Firstly, does a claim of a covenant with God have legal status in the modern world? Secondly, if Jews as a people are deserving of a homeland due to the Holocaust, why not carve one out of a choice piece of German real estate? This could have been done legally following the war when Germany was dismembered and occupied, forcing Germans to leave their villages and cities, rather than Palestinians. 

We all know deep in our hearts why this didn’t happen: You don’t ask white people to do this. You’d never say that a certain state of Germany was a “land without people,” even in light of the crimes these very people may have committed. Therefore, the very founding of the state of Israel is based on two notions which have racism at their core: 1) Jews have some sort of covenant with God not enjoyed by others; 2) white, European Jews are more “people” than darker skinned Arabs. Germans, despite their crimes, could never be forced to evacuate their land because they are white. Rather than force Germans to pay the price of the Holocaust, Palestinians were made to pay. When push comes to shove, Israel will invoke these foundations as justification for its existence and policies. 

In other words, Israel, and the great majority of Jews who support it, do not and cannot distinguish between the history and needs of Jews, Zionism and the political state of Israel, and in fact, freely mix the three together. It is nonsensical to speak of a non-Zionist who is a supporter of the state of Israel, since this state is fully an outcome of Zionist ambitions and based on Zionist precepts. (The fact that the United States and Great Britain, in pushing for the founding of Israel, had many other motivations having nothing to do with the well-being of the Jewish people, is another issue altogether). Therefore, asking non-Jews, and in particular Arabs, to distinguish between Jews, Zionism and the policies of the state of Israel, is asking them to have more sophistication and show greater discernment on this issue than many Jews have themselves.  

While there was an outcry about the anti-Semitism of the Arab author of the original controversial commentary in the Daily Planet, nothing was said about the racism inherent in the position of the Jewish author. In addition to what I’ve outlined above, again, a position agreed upon by UN representatives of a majority of the world’s nations, there is the racism inherent in the whole notion of “terrorists.” We all know they’re swarthy, dark-skinned people, unlike reasonable Caucasians who wear suits and uniforms while they commit their mayhem. Reducing and dismissing legitimate aspirations and resistance of occupied and suppressed peoples as “terrorism” is racism pure and simple, being simply an update for earlier appelations such as “savages.” The Jewish author indulged in this quite freely as do most Jews who support the existence of an apartheid state and its aggressive policies. 

Carl Shames is a Berkeley resident. 

Opinions expressed in Daily Planet commentary and letters to the editor are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Daily Planet or its staff.

Randy Shaw’s long attack on the record of Mayor Bates was a study in strange contradictions and outright errors. I’ll just take a few moments to point out a few of them. 

First, Randy bemoans the fact that Berkeley appears to be uniting in favor of Tom from all across the political spectrum and that he is assured of re-election. Most of us view Tom’s record as a strong leader willing to work across the old political divisions as a sign that Berkeley may finally be growing up and acting as the progressive leader that it can be rather than wallowing in small disputes that keep the Council in session until 3 a.m.  

Second, Randy criticizes Tom for allowing the university to decide the fate of a hotel in downtown Berkeley. In fact, after UC proposed the much-needed hotel and conference center as a university project, the mayor loudly insisted that it be a private project and that it come entirely through the city’s approval process. Thanks to the mayor’s intervention, UC changed its position and the hotel is now entirely in the city’s hands.  

Third, Randy seems to ignore his own postings. He complained that under Tom, Berkeley is losing its position of progressive leadership. But just a couple months ago, he wrote a long article praising Berkeley’s leadership in adjusting its inclusionary ordinance to maximize affordable housing. Randy writes, “the City of Berkeley moved toward revising its inclusionary law—long more stringent than San Francisco’s—in a way that is so smart that one wonders why San Francisco does not follow its lead.” Apparently Tom’s strong support for these changes and his help getting them approved got lost in the last couple months. Randy must also have lost track of the fact that Berkeley was recently ranked the third most “sustainable” city in the country or that it was one of the few to be given an ‘A’ for meeting its state required “fair share” of affordable housing. 

Lastly, I was struck that Randy criticized Tom for Clif Bar’s decision to move to Alameda. He ignores the owners of Clif Bar who wrote in the Berkeley Voice and elsewhere that the mayor was a tremendous advocate for keeping Clif Bar in town. The owners wrote, “at all times during our facility search process, we were very impressed by [Mayor Tom] Bates’ and [Councilmember Linda] Maio’s advocacy for Berkeley, their pragmatic and creative approach to solving problems, and their support for Clif Bar.” He also must have lost track of the fact that many other businesses have opened or expanded in Berkeley. For example, the mayor helped preside over the announcement that Bayer Healthcare was moving its international headquarters for Biological Products to Berkeley with more than a hundred jobs and millions in capital investment.  

No one agrees with an elected official 100 percent of the time, but let’s look at the record honestly here. Mayor Bates has been leading this city with civility and fairness. He has pushed hard for Berkeley to be a progressive leader by carefully developing good policy and building strong support for it. He has earned the broad support he is receiving and I look forward to his re-election and continued leadership. 

Don Jelinek is a former candidate for mayor of Berkeley. 

Opinions expressed in Daily Planet commentary and letters to the editor are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Daily Planet or its staff.

By ROBERT CHEASTY 

Albany environmentalists seek your support. Toronto-based Magna Entertainment Corporation is planning to add casino gambling and a large development to Golden Gate Fields Racetrack on Albany’s waterfront – all this smack in the middle of the Eastshore State Park.  

As part of its plan to shore up the dying horsetrack betting industry, Magna plans to add casino gambling plus mall development (calling them “racinos”) to all its racetracks. (Oakland Tribune) Magna needs to lure a new generation into betting on horse races and other forms of gambling.  

Just how serious is Magna about racetrack casinos/malls (“racinos”)? Magna:  

• Bankrolled the horsetrack gambling initiative in the 2004 California election (Prop 68; campaign reports); Magna spokesman says they will keep at it until they get casino gaming at racetracks. (L. A. Business Journal)  

• Backed the 2006 horsetrack slot machine legislation in Sacramento (San Francisco Chronicle). 

• Trademarked the term “Racinos” (Corporate Report). 

• Is installing a mixed mall/casino addition to its Miami horsetrack (Miami Herald). 

• Entered into casino discussions with Native American Tribes (Daily Planet). 

• Threatened to close down Pimlico Track in Maryland if slot machines were not approved (Baltimore Sun). 

• Pushed through slot machines for its track in Pennsylvania (Baltimore Sun). 

• Is currently trying to push through slot machines for its Ohio track (PR Newswire). 

• Spent approximately $4 million (Magna with its mall developer) pushing its development plans in Albany and in southern California at Santa Anita Racetrack. 

• In Albany (with its developer) hired a team of political lobbyists, consultants, lawyers, political organizers, an Albany resident; made various promises to as many “influential people” as they could sway; profiled every voter in Albany; deluged voters with phone calls and mailings. 

Albany has never witnessed political spending of this magnitude – Magna/Caruso outspent their environmental opponents probably one thousand to one. 

Despite the Magna/developer millions, environmentalists are confident that Albany residents will still support waterfront open space, especially when they learn the facts.  

Traffic nightmare, downtown ghost town 

Magna engaged southern California mall builder Rick Caruso to build the development. Caruso is a heavy hitter who uses political influence. Known for raising millions for Republican candidates, he wields money and influence to push his plans through city halls. (Wall St. Journal; San Francisco Chronicle; West County Times) 

Preliminary designs show a mixed-use mall plus the racetrack. This mixed mall, with added parking structures, covers about forty-five acres of development with a minimal amount of privatized open space. 

The development plus the racetrack would virtually fill the Albany waterfront. 

Caruso recently announced that he is pulling out of Albany, but shortly thereafter Magna told its shareholders that Caruso is doing the development. (El Cerrito-Albany Journal; West County Times) Regardless, of whether this is a Caruso tactic or whether Magna will use another developer, Magna states it is doing the development. (West County Times) 

The casino/mall proposal brings a host of problems.  

Installing a mall on the water’s edge would sap the economic vitality of Albany’s central business district. Solano Avenue and San Pablo Avenue business losses will likely offset much of the promised income from a Magna development.  

Regionally, it will damage neighboring business districts, taking from them to survive.  

It will saddle the community with a traffic nightmare at Gilman Street, at Buchanan Street and on I-80.  

It places development (a “racino”) on the shoreline thereby precluding shoreline open space, and it expands casino gambling to the Bay Area. 

Magna’s development ideas represent the worst of urban planning. 

Racetrack likely to close? 

The weight of evidence points to the track closing without the casino/mall complex. 

Although Magna has stated it has no plans to close the track in Albany, that denial is expected from a publicly traded corporation. Drastic future changes are routinely concealed until the last minute. Albany will be the last to know. 

The evidence: Tracks are going out of business.  

•In Southern California, the Hollywood Park Race Track owner announced it was giving up after the defeat of Prop 68, stating that unless California approves casino gambling, the horse racing industry cannot stay afloat. (L.A. Times; Hollywood Park Racetrack publication; new owner says will close without expanded gaming (San Francisco Chronicle). 

•Bay Meadows Racetrack in San Mateo has announced it is closing and the land will be turned over to developers (Chronicle). 

•Magna has lost millions steadily over the last four years and is selling 4 of its own 9 racetracks. It seeks to reduce its continued losses (Toronto Globe & Mail). 

Magna arrived on the scene in the United States in the late 1990s, buying up nine racetracks suggesting it would save the horse betting industry. Instead, the industry has continued its steady decline. Magna itself faced a revolt and a lawsuit from its shareholders over the steady losses from its own tracks and it recently reported it was close to going broke in its quarterly report. (Toronto Globe & Mail)  

Albany needs to plan for a future that may not include the track. 

If the racetrack leaves, Albany would not suffer economically 

Albany would not be economically hurt if the track decided to leave. Actually the track does not produce that much revenue for the size of its footprint.  

Environmentally sensitive development could be built on the east side of the lot, nearer the freeway and away from the wetlands.  

A Development Agreement could be worked out with the owner. In return for changing the zoning to permit some development to replace the track, a deal could be fashioned that could allow the purchase or gifting of the bulk of the land for open space uses.  

This gives significant value to both the land owner and the community. 

Most of the land could, for example, be added to the Eastshore State Park. Albany would get a world-class shoreline park and expanded beach without having to pay out of its own coffers.  

Any replacement development would benefit greatly from having this excellent park at its doorstep and would easily provide greater revenue to Albany than the track currently does. 

Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP), the Sierra Club, Citizens for the Albany Shoreline (CAS), Audubon and others have proposed such a modest development concept - a hotel/conference center (perhaps including a wellness center).  

This would bring in more tax revenue to Albany (both City and school district) than the current track operation including the property tax revenue.  

Equally important, a hotel/conference center would enhance, not sap, surrounding business centers.  

What if the track stays? 

The racetrack can choose to stay. 

However, it should not be allowed new development alongside the racetrack. Magna bought a racetrack, not the rights to develop a mall on the Albany shore. Magna’s plans for a casino/mall complex are not legal under current zoning. 

The Park District can offer to buy any unused racetrack property, using state and regional park bonds, for inclusion in the shoreline park, just as was successfully done for the ballfields currently being completed at Gilman Street. 

Keep protective zoning—start community planning 

In no event should Albany unilaterally change its current waterfront zoning of waterfront recreation. This is what the Magna/Caruso supporters seek.  

That would only dramatically increase the property value for the landowner without getting anything in return.  

Park opponents who support a zoning change know this. Vastly increased property value will likely prevent the purchase of this waterfront property for open space uses or inclusion in the shoreline park – forever. Once it is developed we can’t reclaim it.  

Albany must keep the present zoning unless and until there is some agreement guaranteeing real shoreline open space, and not just the hints of open space contained in Magna’s development plans.  

We urge the City of Albany to commence an open planning process for the future of the Albany Waterfront. We urge everyone to participate and to respectfully share ideas for the Albany shoreline.  

Spectacular open spaces—a wonderful legacy 

Albany’s charm includes a unique setting of unparalleled beauty by San Francisco Bay. As racetracks in California are closing, Albany has a miraculous second chance to rethink its entire perspective on its shoreline. Let’s not be rushed into destructive development and an expansion of gambling that would forever preclude recovering our waterfront for the entire community and for generations to come after us. 

Please help us protect the shoreline. www.eastshorepark.org  

Robert Cheasty is president of Citizens for East Shore Parks and the former mayor  

of Albany. 

Image courtesy of CAP, CESP, the Sierra Club 

An artist’s rendering of the Albany shoreline converted to open space. 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for your excellent coverage of Albany Waterfront issues. Given your fairness, we are confident you will print our response to a recent attack on the Sierra Club in your letters.  

The Sierra Club is the largest and oldest, democratic, grassroots, public-interest environmental organization in the world. We don’t expect all of our members to agree with all of our actions.  

However, the author of a recent letter attacking both the Sierra Club and the Albany residents who want to protect their waterfront from a rich developer’s dreams of wealth at Albany’s expense attempted to mislead your readers.  

The campaign against a waterfront mall is clearly in line with Sierra Club’s mission. For over 40 years the Sierra Club has worked to create a great public park along the East Bay Shoreline, and we will continue working with our over 600 Albany members to further that goal. 

We sincerely regret that the Albany Shoreline Protection Initiative that so many residents worked so hard to circulate, and 2,400 voters signed, is not going to be on the ballot. In addition to the Sierra Club, Save the Bay, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Greenbelt Alliance, Citizens for East Shore Parks, Citizens for the Albany Shoreline, Sustainable Albany, and Sylvia McLaughlin, Co-founder of Save the Bay all endorsed and supported the initiative.  

As a non-profit, volunteer-run organization that relies on pro-bono legal work, we know that the high-powered attorneys of Southern California developers will sometimes find unintended errors in even our best efforts. And keep in mind that the Sierra Club’s attorneys in the suit, Ann Winters and myself, did our work for the Sierra Club on a completely pro bono, i.e., free basis. 

Sierra Club’s vision for the Albany Shoreline reflects its goals for Albany which are to preserve Albany’s small-town character, ensure the long term vitality of Solano Avenue as Albany’s Main Street, and to develop the Albany waterfront with a plan that protects the shoreline as public open space, gets us the maximum amount of land for park and recreational uses like ball fields, and provides for the kind of commercial development that provides revenue to the city and school district and complements Solano Avenue.  

The Sierra Club has shown that a very small amount of development on just a small portion of the race track site could provide far more revenue than Albany receives now from the track while allowing us to add the rest of the land into the East Shore State Park  

There are two candidates for Albany City Council who share that vision for Albany. The Sierra Club has endorsed Marge Atkinson and Joanne Wile for Albany City Council. So has Sylvia McLaughlin, Co-Founder of Save the Bay. If you support protection of the waterfront, vote for Marge Atkinson and Joanne Wile, it’s that simple.  

Norman La Force, Chair 

East Bay Public Lands Committee

SUNSHINE ORDINANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley needs a comprehensive and effective Sunshine Ordinance to promote openness in government and participation of all members of the public. Many other Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond, already have such legislation on the books. Mayor Tom Bates has promised that a Sunshine Ordinance will be a reality. 

Currently, there is a danger that the city council may adopt a weak, watered-down draft ordinance, authored by the city attorney. Councilmember Kriss Worthington has dubbed it the “Twilight Ordinance.” A truly effective Sunshine Ordinance would, among other things, require disclosure of settlement agreements prior to vote by the council. Such disclosure would have made the City’s secret deal with University of California impossible. 

Other benefits would be to: 

(1) Move public meetings to larger venues to accommodate citizens otherwise shut out by the police or by lack of access for the disabled. 

(2) Increase opportunities for public comment so that parents, working people, the disabled, and other members of the public may participate. It shows lack of respect for those who attend these meetings at considerable time, trouble, and expense if they cannot be heard. 

(3) Make copies of last-minute submittals of documents at public meetings available to the general public. 

Now is the time for the citizens of Berkeley to demand a Sunshine Ordinance that lives up to the name. Under the “Twilight” version, complaints have no remedy, and there is no provision for enforcement of the ordinance. We encourage everyone concerned with a genuine Sunshine Ordinance for Berkeley to attend the Sept. 26 City Council meeting, Old City Hall, at 7 p.m. 

Please sign up (prior to 7:00) to speak out for open government and full public participation. 

Gene Bernardi, Jim Fisher,  

Helen Wynne and Jane Welford 

for SuperBOLD 

• 

SCHOOL LUNCHES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Although Becky O’Malley seems interested in Berkeley students getting a better lunch at their schools, I’m afraid she doesn’t have enough information on which to judge what is happening with Food Services at BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District). Her editorial was probably motivated by the Sept. 4 New Yorker article by Burkhard Bilger, in which Ann Cooper, head of food services at BUSD, was described as working hard to change the meals to what our school district’s food policy says should be “fresh, organic whenever possible, and locally grown” (August, 1999). As a member of BUSD’s “Child Nutrition Advisory Committee” for eight long years, I want to tell you that our children ARE different from when your kids went to school with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and here’s why it matters so much. 

First, about half of the elementary school children get a free or reduced lunch at their school every day, which is terrific if a family is trying to make ends meet in this expensive Berkeley world in which we live. They always have a vegetarian choice on the menu if the entree has meat in it, fruit and milk. They need this lunch even more when you realize many kids come to school with no breakfast at all (or, possibly a bag of chips and a coke! some nutritious start to the day!). It was appalling to many of us on the Committee that none of the food was ever cooked at the Central Kitchen; it was only taken from one frozen container and put in another metal, small container that was then heated up for each student. Ann Cooper has changed that. She is actually cooking real meals like meat loaf (with Allan Lyman, the cook at Central Kitchen), and ordering real, whole wheat bread and organic lettuce for the salad bars (now at all 15 BUSD schools). Please take a break and go have lunch at your nearest elementary school, Longfellow or Willard middle schools, or the High School, to judge for yourself: the meals are so much better than a year ago, and in particular, I think, the salad bars are delicious, with at least 9 choices to put on your lettuce! 

Second, it is not “a bit silly” to be caring about the food that our children eat at school. We have an obesity crisis in this country that cannot be ignored. (Millions of dollars are spent in our state alone to deal with this.) Daily, there is direct pressure from the fast food industry to persuade our children to have at least one meal a day from their high fat, high sodium, high in calories restaurants. (And if you talk to the students as I have, as all our teachers have, you will conclude this industry is winning.) But Berkeley children are now learning in their garden and cooking/nutrition classes (thanks to the California Nutrition Network grant monies that BUSD receives from Sacramento) how to eat and live a healthier life. I like to say, “If they grow it, if they cook it, they will eat it!” We want our children to learn how to sustain themselves better, as well as learn that sustainable agriculture is important to the health of our planet. 

Beebo Turman 

Project Director, Berkeley Community  

Gardening Collaborative 

• 

NEW CO-OP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing in response to the article that was run in the Daily Planet earlier this month about the prospects of the new food co-op opening up in Berkeley. I am curious as to why there is no interest in bringing this co-op to our neighbors in West Oakland where 35,000 people reside, 70 percent of whom are below the poverty level, and there is only one major grocery store. While Berkeley is saturated with “gourmet grocery stores,” residents of West Oakland are hard pressed to find anything short of a liquor store to purchase their vittles. If the founders of the Co-Op are sincere in their statements about not making healthy food “elitist” and increasing access to affordable health food, they would consider offering this promising cooperative and community-based business to an underserved community in the Bay Area.  

Shamir Chauhan 

Oakland 

• 

BERKELEY AND SANTA ROSA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was in Santa Rosa last week, and got a chance to stroll around the downtown area. I was pleased and surprised to discover a fine transit mall. Yes, it can be done. Santa Rosa has a beautiful and lively downtown with a central park. Downtown looked like a destination. In the park there is a statue of Charlie Brown. On a park bench, a sign showed the presence of an Internet hot spot. 

I saw one guy sleeping on a park bench, and getting gently hassled by a local cop. I didn’t get panhandled while I was there. The Santa Rosa transit mall is a single street, about like Center between Oxford and Shattuck, or Telegraph between Durant and Bancroft. The whole street was dedicated bus lanes. Buses entered from a major arterial, similar to Shattuck. 

Multiple bus lines serve the mall. Besides the local Santa Rosa City Bus (I saw signs for 16 lines) there is Golden Gate Transit and Sonoma County Transit. 

There were several bus shelters and signs identifying which buses come to what stops. There was even a nice public toilet, part of one of the buildings. 

I rode Golden Gate Transit No. 80 to make my trip. On the way back south, the bus passed through Petaluma. A beautiful creek runs through it, with a river-walk. 

Steve Geller 

• 

THE POPE’S COMMENTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Having read the entire text of the pope’s recent speech, I found myself trying to understand why he made any reference to Islam at all. The words the pope quoted had little, if anything, to do with the main thrust of the pope’s speech. If the pope truly wants to foment “dialogue” between Christians and Muslims, then he should start by putting some universally acknowledged facts on the table. In my opinion, the pope’s speech should have more or less said the following: “In the great central tradition of Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, Jesus has been and continues to be worshipped as the one and only Son of God. Jesus, as revealed in the Bible, is indeed God Himself, who became a fully human man, lived a sinless life, died on a cross to pay the penalty of God’s holy wrath against sinful humanity, and rose from the dead. Jesus is Lord of all and reigns over all the earth at the right hand of God. This is central to Christian revelation, to a Christian understanding of history, and to the nature of Christ himself.  

In the great central tradition of Islam, whether Sunni or Shiite, Jesus is generally held in high esteem as a great prophet, and yet is not held in the same esteem as Muhammad, the last and greatest prophet of Allah. Muslims do not even consider the possibility of actually worshipping Jesus, and they most certainly do not believe that Jesus was or is God incarnate; for God would never condescend to become a man as far as Islamic teaching is concerned. For Muslims, Jesus is not the Savior of the world, nor is he Lord over all creation, as in Christianity. Whether Islam is, at present, a violent religion is an altogether separate discussion (though one worth having, if people are truly interested in truth). But again, the main point is clear and must be dealt with: Christianity and Islam may share many things, but on the most important matter, namely, the nature of Christ and of God’s revelation to humankind, we are talking about two radically different faiths. All ‘dialogue’ must start here.”  

This is the message the pope should have made clear, whether it would be well received or not. Truth will out! 

Michael Duenes 

• 

HEIGHT OF HYPOCRISY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Robert Lieber and Brian Parker were the only two candidates in the 2004 City Council election who chose not to abide by Albany’s voluntary limit on campaign spending. Backed by The Sierra Club, Citizens for an Eastshore State Park (CESP) and Citizens for the Albany Shoreline (CAS), they exponentially outspent their opposition. Lieber won a seat on the council while Parker—who spent an astronomical $10,350 or so if memory serves—did not. While it is routinely asserted by Sierra Club, CESP and CAS spokespersons like Parker that Albany must be protected from corruption by “pro-development” dollars, nothing in fact could be further from the truth. Albany has already been corrupted by mega-spending “environmentalists.” 

This hypocrisy reached new heights at the Sept. 18 council meeting when Lieber—the sole councilmember who has failed to put his money where his mouth is in local elections!—asked the council to support Proposition 89, the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act. While this proposition may in fact make good law, it’s rather silly of the council to involve itself in such matters, and downright laughable that Lieber suggested it. 

In the current race for City Council, only Caryl O’Keefe has had the courage to agree to abide by Albany’s spending limit, and to accept contributions exclusively from Albany individuals. One can only wonder, by contrast, where the “Save Our Shoreline Team” of council candidates—Joanne Wile and Marge Atkinson—are getting their campaign dollars. The catchy tagline makes their priorities clear, and their endorsement by Lieber and Parker speaks volumes on the campaign financing issue. 

Paul Klein 

Albany 

• 

VIOLENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rosemary Reuther criticized the pope for implying that the penchant for Islamic violence voiced by a 14th century Byzantine leader was still with us today. But while Jews and Christians are villified daily by religious letters throughout the Islamic world, you don’t see the targets of their wrath responding as Muslims have to the pope’s commentary. After the pope’s statement, the world has seen bullets and firebombs violating five non-Catholic churches in the West Bank and Gaza by those fine, tolerant champions of the Berkeley left, the Palestinians, a 70-year-old nun was murdered in Somalia, and Islamic religious leaders calling for assaults on non-Muslims throughout the world. 

Gee Ms. Reuther, I guess the pope was indeed inaccurate in his assessment of the continuum of historic violence springing from Islam, wasn’t he? 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

BEIER CAMPAIGN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is a shame that Cynthia Johnson’s letter of support for Kriss Worthington just can’t help trashing George Beier. George is running a positive, hopeful campaign with a real vision of what People’s Park, Telegraph, and the entire district can become. Frankly, after 10 years in office, I have yet to hear Worthington’s vision. Instead of a different future for what People’s Park can become, Ms. Johnson claims the past conflicts over the use of the park have been “healing and improving”—suggesting that the status quo is desired. This will certainly be contested by the neighbors, businesses, and crime victims (many of them students and the homeless) who live and work in the area. Johnson mentions Worthington’s work on restoring police to Telegraph, but I have yet to hear what he envisions for the future of the Telegraph Avenue district. It seems to me that this is a reasonable expectation from the voters, and I believe George has done an outstanding job of spelling out his vision, which is available for review on his website: www.georgebeier.com  

Here’s a novel idea—how about we find out the real visions and ideas both candidates have about Telegraph Avenue, People’s Park, development, crime, student representation, and other issues instead of supporting “our candidate” by trashing the “other candidate”? That would be a unique campaign in Berkeley politics! I hope George Beier’s supporters will continue to follow his lead and join him in his positive campaign for the future of District 7, and Berkeley as a whole.  

Gregory S. Murphy 

Willard Neighborhood Resident 

• 

MEASURE A 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ms. Corcos and others questioning the tax consequences of Measure A have only to refer to the campaign literature: $0.228 per square foot of residential property. Her school tax of $1440.50 suggests that she lives in a rather grand 6315-square-foot house. May I suggest she probably benefits from a generous federal Schedule A deduction bringing her net liability to approximately $100 a month (a nice dinner out for two with wine?). Other than a good meal, what do BSEP funds represent? For starts, support for a respected school district that contributes to high property values. More important, it provides an excellent education for our children. Without Measure A funds, deteriorating pedagogic quality would find concerned parents pondering private school tuition. I believe most would agree that BSEP is a bargain! 

As for the short-sighted suggestion the tax be renewed every four years, since a third of the funds go to class size reduction, imagine the insecurity and potential havoc of rearranging classrooms and hiring/firing teachers every four years, depending on what funds would be available with the fate of each measure.  

No Ms. Corcos and your BeSMaart short-thinkers flunk; the correct answer to this problem is Yes on Measure A. 

Tedi Crawford 

• 

FOOD POLITICS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems the author of the Sept. 15 editorial has little respect for the good work of Alice Waters or of the fine journalists Gladwell and Pollan and that she actually has a vendetta against them. Her anger would be better vented on the industrial agribusiness than on people making a difference in the quality of food available to all. And while organic foods cost more, I rather think of pesticide-ridden foods as costing less—with good reason—they are shown in numerous studies to be worth less nutritionally. In her position, Ms. O’Malley’s could help see to it that everyone gets clean food, not just those who can afford it, as well as helping them to understand the difference that noncontaminated food can make. 

I wish it were true that merely washing produce removes the pesticides. But the synthetic chemicals used in industrial agribusiness actually affect the way the whole plant grows at the genetic level. It’s a great mistake to think that a little soap and water will make everything OK again after being drenched in poison, or even worse, being genetically engineered. 

Pesticide residues on crops exist at levels that have measurable affects on the human endocrine system. And while people eating this food don’t normally get sick immediately, there are ample data highlighting the possibilities such as steadily increasing rates of cancers; increasing problems with conceiving a child; rampant mental disabilities and developmental problems that are among a very long list of ailments that become evident long after the hit of poison. In general, the viability of the human species is diminishing at an observable rate with disorders in every area of the body on the rise. Many nonprofits with stated goals of curing said diseases have ties to the very industries that cause those same diseases.  

The cold hard fact is that diseases such as cancers will remain uncured until the poisons that cause them are removed from our lives. Pointing at one of them as “The Cause” is a mistake because they all act together in ways that humans will never fully understand. This is not to diminish the value of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers as causes of diseases because they play major roles in the list of characters that are bringing us to our knees.  

Paul Goettlich 

• 

PARKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Charles Siegel misses the point in his Sept. 19 letter about parking in downtown Berkeley. He cites Elizabeth Deakin’s figures showing (among other things) that only 20 percent drove to their shopping destination. No wonder the number is low—it’s caused by the percentage of people who chose not to come to downtown Berkeley at all!  

Revan Tranter 

• 

PRAISE FOR RUETHER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kudos to the Daily Planet for the great commentary by Rosemary Radford Ruether, “What the Pope Should Have Said to the Islamic World.” As a practicing Catholic I would like to humbly apologize to my Islamic brothers and sisters for the disrespect to their beliefs voiced, by the titular head of my church, not because I have any idea of why he chose such an offensive quote, but because I believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. To paraphrase my sainted grandmother, “If you (supposed Christians) had provided a better example, perhaps you might not have this problem now.” 

Mary Vivian Zelaya 

• 

GANDHI 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The White House issued a message acknowledging the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi starting satyagraha, the non-violent movement in South Africa. It was dated Aug. 11, and was devoted moreto the 59th anniversary of India’s independence and its democracy. 

Nowhere was the Gandhian 9/11 mentioned.  

On that day, hundreds of millions celebrated, including Gandhi’s grandson, Arun, who has the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis. He commemorated the day at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.! With Representative John Lewis (D. Ga.), among others. 

To the best of my knowing, it was not reported in the Washington Post or New York Times, or even on Democracy Now, who interviewed Arun the week before but failed to note the Lincoln Memorial assembly, or report of it. If you like, the White House message can be seen by going to Gandhi Foundation USA. 

In the ongoing celebrations of the 100th anniversary of satyagraha, nonviolent soul force, Peace for Keeps will hold the first annual Gandhi Birthday (Oct. 2, 1869) Poems and Performances for Peace, Sunday, Oct. 1, 1-6 p..m., at the Gandhi statue behind the south end of the San Francisco Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. Come one, come awe!  

Arnie Passman 

• 

SOLANO AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It was disappointing to see the Daily Planet giving such prominent first-page coverage to the grumblings of a few folks on North Solano. You know, I don’t live within hearing distance of Milo, but there’s some awfully barky dogs on my block, too. A pair on each side, actually and sometimes they drive me nuts. Is this really the most important thing when 500-plus creatures have been saved from untimely death, hundreds of people have brought new pet friends into their lives, and every week dozens more families volunteer together, visit together and build community?  

If you haven’t visited this place on a weekend afternoon, you should. You’ll see people coming to Solano Avenue in vast numbers from other parts of the Bay Area and more foot traffic than in stores three times its size. Yes, it is challenging to transform a facility from a pet supplies store to an animal shelter, and fundraising to make changes to the facility takes time, because there isn’t any profit margin caring for homeless animals. But isn’t this Berkeley, where we’ve made a decision that we value community-building and public service over Walnut Creek-style pristine isolation, where we meet only in the wide aisles of air-conditioned chain stores? How Berkeley can you be? Not very, apparently. Let’s try to assert our civic values here, instead of putting profit margins on $750,000 bungalows above all.  

Tracy Rosenberg 

Albany 

• 

MORE ON REUTHER, POPE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rosemary Radford Reuther, in a commentary carried in the Sept. 19 Daily Planet, chides the pope for his characterization of Islam as a warlike religion, and reminds us of Christian warfare through the crusades. She says, “... tendencies to war are deeply aggravated when religion and the name of God are wrongly used to foment violence and hatred between peoples. God desires peace and love, not war...” 

Setting aside the fact that neither she, nor the pope, nor all the priests and mullahs can possibly know what “God desires” (they can’t even know that “God” exists), she turns the nature of religion on its head by repeating a notion widely voiced by good liberals of many religious stripes—that religion is distorted or perverted whenever it promotes violence or warfare. In fact, our distant ancestors formed from their dark primal fear and mysticism the idea of a powerful force or supreme being that singled out their tribe to be the subject of its concern and protection. This idea evolved precisely as a stimulus to violence and warfare to preserve the integrity of the tribe from attack by outsiders, just as it does today. 

The persistence of this idea despite the lessons of history is attributable to the fact that it universally embraces another concept—that this force or being also watches over the individual person, protecting him/her not only through the vicissitudes of life, but beyond it. The human ego slavishly seizes on this monumental lie. The deep congenital flaw in the human psyche is the pathological refusal to accept the great centering, liberating and obvious truth of our existence: we live a while in the sun, then we die. After that... nothing!—no angels with harps, no virgins with sexual favors, no loved ones with welcoming arms... mere oblivion. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

MEASURE Y 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your report, “Oakland Grapples with Measure Y Police Deployments,” went into a controversy over “how the police department will allocate the 63 additional police officers authorized and funded by Measure Y.” Readers should know that Oakland has not added even one of the 63 police authorized by Measure Y. When the measure was on the November 2004 ballot, councilmembers and other supporters of the proposal promised there was a floor—the 739 officers that the City almost had at the time. Citing this figure in the text of Measure Y, they insisted that the 63 officers paid by Measure Y would add to the roster, not substitute for general fund hirings. 

In fact, Measure Y money is being spent on officers while the city has 698 officers (as of Sept. 4). The city has hovered under 700 officers since April 2005. Measure Y revenues, collected as a regressive parcel tax, are simply being used in place of general fund money while the city is unable or unwilling to hire enough police. Instead, officers are so overworked because of understaffing that the quit rate is rising. For more information, see the website of our organization at www.orpn.org. 

Charles Pine 

Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods 

• 

GUIDING YOUNG CHILDREN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Children need guiding from their youngest years. Parents and early childhood teachers have a great responsibility towards the newest citizens of the nation. It is important for children to receive the best from their family members and their teachers. 

Somehow, this does not happen every time. Many children hear abusive language and incorporate it in their own speech. Roughness and coarseness become habits. We know that young children try to imitate their parents and teachers. We know children are deeply affected by the media or environment around them. We may not be able to control what the media offers children but as parents and teachers we can practice restraint in our own lives. If we are conscious that our slackness will travel down generations we may choose polite language and civilized behavior over acting it out. 

Let our message to our children be: Do as I do. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

• 

OAKLAND COVERAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As an introduction, I would like to admit that I have not been a reader of your Daily Planet paper, and have only stumbled upon your skewed articles thanks to a recent news search which prompted me to peruse your archives. While there are many issues that I’d love to discuss, I will limit myself to only a couple.  

It’s obvious to me that your reporter J. Douglas Allen-Taylor writes his derogatory articles to pertain only to Oakland, perhaps, for lack of more positive local city news—after all, you are the Berkeley Daily Planet, correct? There is an underlying negative tone in particular when he mentions Jerry Brown and anything whatsoever pertaining to him. Additionally, Mr. Allen-Taylor reports on the Oakland crime situation, and the police in a very derogatory tone. I guess I must ask—is he specifically assigned to Oakland? and the bashing of Oakland? I would recommend that you look to your own backyard, and the insidious crimes within your own town. As a lifelong resident of Oakland, I resent your condescending opinions of the state of our city, and what we are doing to correct the problems. I have personally heard from my own boss, a Berkeley resident, of some particularly appalling crimes of assault and worse that happen quite frequently. Additionally—perhaps in the name of community fraternal concern—you might loan some of your police to assist us in our times of trouble, lest they migrate to your Emerald City. 

Cara Kopowski 

Having just gone through the process of accepting that Cody’s on Telegraph would be no more, I found the sale of Cody’s Fourth Street and San Francisco stores to a Japanese buyer something of a further shock. As well as an important reality check. Let us never forget, I thought to myself when I learned of the sale, that business is about money.  

A recent visit to the 4th St. store had shown just how real the money issue still was. I expressed surprise to the staff about the continuing lack of inventory. I had thought the distribution of the Telegraph inventory would have bulked up the Fourth Street shelves. I was told that the store had been in arrears with many of its publishers and distributors, and these financial problems were still very apparent. I was appreciatively thanked for my purchase and my continued support, and I left hoping for the best for the store.  

But now this sale to a Japanese buyer. The fiscal realities, responsibilities, and available options weren’t mine to wrestle with, so I am in no position to second-guess the choices and decisions owner Andy Ross and his partner Leslie Berkler have made. But to say I wasn’t disconcerted by this latest turn of events would be untrue.  

Now we have a former local store—a local icon, even—financially directed and controlled by a company based an ocean away with a CEO reportedly jet-setting between Tokyo and New York. True, Yohan, Inc. CEO Kagawa’s words to Andy Ross — “Keep raising hell” — sounded promising enough given that raising hell when hell needs to be raised is certainly a Berkeley trademark. According to the Chronicle, “Yohan, Inc. is a privately held firm with 120 employees and $80 million in revenue. The firm’s primary business is distributing English-language books and magazines in Japan.” Yohan’s coterie of businesses also includes “a Japanese publisher of books teaching English; Stone Bridge Press, which specializes in books about Japan; and 18 bookstores, including several that focus on works in English.” Like Ross, Kagawa is a book lover who also loved Cody’s when he first visited the Telegraph store more than 20 years ago. 

Still, there are issues. Most important, assuming there are profits, where do those profits go? Do they stay in the community or do they go to Japan? Same problem as with chains—where does the money go? Where are the decisions made? And based on what criteria? Statistics show vast differences in the amount of community investment between locally-owned and non-locally-owned businesses. From the standpoint of community strength and development, independent bookselling is not one and the same with locally owned independent bookselling. And that puts this new iteration of Cody’s in a different category from other San Francisco and East Bay independent booksellers where both finances and decision-making remain in local hands. I suppose that’s what bothered me about this news. It automatically shifted one of my favorite A-list locally-owned stores into a different B-list non-locally-owned category.  

Further, Japanese and U.S. cultures represent nearly opposite ends of a long pole, with the Japanese reconsidering aspects of their intense focus on group and communal values and the United States just beginning to reconsider its long-standing hyper-individualism. Kagawa’s desire to “consciously break with the narrow national focus of most other Japanese publishing companies” fits right in with efforts to re-balance Japanese cultural leanings, but is it what is needed here at the other end of that cultural pole?  

Even Andy Ross is talking about being able to go global now. It’s not entirely clear what that means. However popular or successful international selling may currently be, just the shipping issues alone are a problem—dependence on oil and externalized environmental costs entailed in worldwide shipping matter. Like many other book buyers, even when I do order a (used) book online, I now make every effort to purchase from a California seller even if the price is a little higher, just to cut down on the transportation distance.  

The fact that the “little guys”—whether small-business owners or individual customers—contribute but a drop in the bucket to environmental problems compared to the big boys doesn’t make any of it less serious. The quickly increasing awareness of these issues, however, creates an opportunity for a nascent venture such as this one to consider creative alternatives to the climate-changing global bandwagon even if cash makes such an option possible.  

Consumer choice is one of the few areas in which buyers and customers have an opportunity to “vote” economically. What goes into those choices increasingly includes not just loyalty to individuals like Andy and Leslie, great inventory and programs, price, service, etc., but a conscious “vote” for businesses that recognize their participation—desired or not—in a global economic paradigm that is environmentally bankrupt and largely rootless and that therefore take bold steps to counter its effects. Shortening supply chains and concerted community investment are two of those essential steps. For customers, it’s like choosing to pay a bit more for locally-grown organic produce, going a little out of the way to support local farmers, or shopping at locally-owned stores. 

Becoming a non-locally owned bookseller is obviously a done deal in this instance. Because I believe that strengthening locally based economies worldwide is one of the most promising options we have to counter the serious environmental- and community-busting effects of globetrotting, free-floating capital, the fact that Cody’s is no longer locally-owned will indeed affect my decisions about where to shop and order books.  

Nevertheless, I still hope that Andy Ross and Hiroshi Kagawa will find ways to do something different with their international cash—perhaps going “regional” instead of “global,” or following some of the many other ideas expounded, for example, in Michael Shuman’s new book (which they might find on their own shelves!), The Small-Mart Revolution. With the amount of press they have received, they would have a chance to make a significant difference by using their current flush of excitement and creativity to become leaders in the kind of environmentally-aware and community-building economic thinking that is intensely globally sophisticated but rooted in concrete local and regional solutions.  

Anne Blackstone is an Oakland resident. 

Opinions expressed in Daily Planet commentary and letters to the editor are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Daily Planet or its staff.

As a BUSD parent who has been working on improving the food that the district serves for the past 10 years, I think that there is basic level on which Ms. O’Malley misses the point about the food project at the Berkeley schools. 

Ms. O’Malley admits that she has never tried the food at the schools. I have. I imagine that Ms. O’Malley’s concept of school lunches is based on her own experience, or that of her now grown children, which consisted of the “lunch ladies” making spaghetti or meat loaf every day and serving it on those famous hospital trays. Those days are long gone. 

When I started out, the issue was not a choice between good and varied food and the plain but adequate food advocated in the editorial. The choice was between really bad food and no food at all. The food served in the schools consisted of “grilled cheese sandwiches” that were made in a factory, put in little plastic bags, frozen for months, and then heated in a steamer. Mushy and rubbery. The “peanut butter and jelly sandwiches” were some sort of cracker with a little peanut butter and jelly that was handed out like really bad snack bars. “French toast” was french toast sticks. Imagine french toast turned into a chicken tender. Then imagine the whole dreary mess served on a cardboard box with a “spork” (spoon/fork combo) that breaks under the slightest pressure.  

This is not my refined Berkeley food sensibilities speaking either. Much of this “food” went straight to the garbage after a few disappointed bites. Beebo Turman, was the BUSD’s recycling coordinator at the time. She conducted a survey of the garbage generated in the cafeterias to see what the recycling needs were and was appalled to find that 40 percent of the food served went straight to the garbage. She came to the next food committee meeting. The struggle all along has been to develop a menu that children like, is good for them and that they will actually eat.  

There is a strong social justice component to this effort. More than 40 per cent of the children in the Berkeley Schools are entitled to free breakfast and lunch. In 1946, the federal government promised disadvantaged families that it would provide their children with nutritious food at school. During the Reagan administration, the government ceased funding the programs at an adequate level and the result has been a 25-year slide to where were are today. We think that the government should keep its promise and fund the program adequately for the benefit of our children. Ann Cooper, the food service director, calculates that the current reimbursement of $2.50 per day (ever try to eat on that?) could be raised $1 per day for each child in the program across the county for about $5 billion per year. That’s two to three days of the ongoing cost of the war in Iraq. 

Ms. O’Malley is right to be concerned about the cost of Berkeley’s project. However, a few points of clarification are in order. When I started working, the then BUSD officials responded to our concerns by telling us that they knew the food was bad but that at least the Nutrition Services Department was solvent and had even built up a surplus of $1 million. I am not an accountant, but I looked at the books out of curiosity before the now—not so new—superintendent arrived. It only took me two hours to figure out that the books were so incompetently kept that it was impossible to know the actual financial condition of the department. I wrote a detailed report that I presented to the School Board alerting it to that fact. Once the current superintendent arrived, FCMAT confirmed my rough guess and found that the department was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and there was no “surplus.” In the past five years, the department has introduced an accurate and current bookkeeping system that accurately reflects the true cost of the food program, a necessary first step to financial sustainability. 

Although much press attention has focused on the “organic” part of the Berkeley food policy, those who actually read the policy note that goal number two provides that “The board will ensure that an economically sustainable meal program that provides a healthy nutritious lunch is available to every student at every school so that students are prepared to learn to their fullest potential.” As taxpayers, the members of our committee have always balanced the ideal of organic food with the brutal reality of the inadequate funding the government provides the district. We want to create a program that any school district in the country can follow. We know that a “boutique” program will not be adopted elsewhere.  

Will the Food Service ever break even in the absence of an increase in federal/state funding? Probably not unless the District goes back to selling high profit items such as candy, chips and sodas. Was it breaking even before the new effort? Absolutely not. But the current deficit can be greatly reduced if participation increases. However, as every successful businesswoman knows, if you want to increase your sales you first have to invest in developing a high quality product. Moreover, it is ultimately cheaper to feed kids food they actually eat that costs a bit more than to feed them cheaper food that goes straight to the garbage. 

The Food Service has a long way to go but it has also come a long way. Ms. O’Malley, if you want to go for lunch at a public school and see for yourself what we are trying to do, just let me know. I will be glad to meet you there. 

Eric Weaver is the former chair of the Child Nutrition Advisory Committee. 

Opinions expressed in Daily Planet commentary and letters to the editor are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Daily Planet or its staff.

Several years ago, my husband Ralph returned home from a stay in Oakland’s Kaiser hospital and insisted he’d been kidnapped by aliens. He e-mailed an acquaintance in Wisconsin and told her she was the only witness to his abduction. He asked her to write down everything she had seen for a lawsuit he planned to pursue. I called a Kaiser doctor to discuss Ralph’s mental state.  

“You’d think you were abducted by aliens, too, if you spent as much time in the hospital as your husband does,” said the doctor.  

“I do spend almost as much time in the hospital as my husband,” I said. “But I’m a visitor, not a patient.”  

“Then you know what I’m talking about,” said the doc. “It can feel like an otherworldly place.”  

“Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”  

So here we are in limbo again. Ralph is back in ICU, but this time he’s at Alta Bates because the paramedics who rushed to our home on Wednesday thought it best to take him as quickly as possible to the nearest hospital. His blood pressure had dipped dangerously low and his lungs were clogged with mucus.  

Although I’ve spent more time at Kaiser than at Alta Bates, I am familiar with the place. I took our former roommate Jerry there while he was in the midst of a heart attack. When our friend Leroy was diagnosed with lung cancer, I visited him in the oncology department. I saw our neighbor Mrs. Scott in ICU for the very last time before her heart stopped beating. Nine years ago, Ralph was there on his birthday after he crashed his wheelchair into a curb on the corner of Alcatraz and Telegraph avenues. Not long ago I sat with Ralph’s attendant Andrea in the waiting room of ER as she struggled to take shallow, asthmatic breaths. Ironically, this past Wednesday I was visiting a friend on the east wing of Alta Bates’s ICU just a few hours before Ralph arrived there by ambulance.  

Alta Bates is different from Kaiser, but both feel unworldly when you are stuck inside them. The ER waiting rooms are cramped, depressing and void of any comforts. Patients slouch and curl in plastic chairs, line up against walls, smoke and talk on cell phones or to themselves outside, just beyond the front doors.  

I have heard the occupants of ICU cry and scream late at night, seen plenty of bloody bandages, smelled many unusual odors, and viewed too many unsuspecting naked backsides. I’ve witnessed disoriented and defiant patients, and distraught and frustrated family members. It is not a fun place to be.  

On Wednesday night, my friend who was in the ICU room next to Ralph’s was transferred to another floor of the hospital. It was 11 p.m. and I was slumped in an uncomfortable chair beside Ralph’s bed. I looked up from a catnap to see her, in her hospital bed, glide past the sliding glass doors. She was lying down, covered in white sheets. A person in green scrubs pushed, while another balanced IV equipment next to her head. There was no noise save the sound of Ralph’s labored breathing and the ding of the machine that recorded his vital signs. I went back to sleep. Four hours later I awoke and drove home. The sidewalks along Telegraph Avenue were empty. Our house was dark and silent. I fell into a coma-like trance.  

In the morning what I remembered was my friend sailing past Ralph’s room, her bed pulled by regal white horses. She was sitting perfectly erect, as if she were a queen. As she passed by she smiled and gave me a dignified wave. Her crown was slightly askew, but other than that, she looked just fine.  

I rushed to the hospital to make sure she was all right. She was. Then I went up to the sixth floor to check on Ralph. He was there, struggling to breathe, fighting to keep the aliens from taking him away.

I’d like to be able to make some kind of Berkeley connection with the California Academy of Sciences’ new exhibit, “Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries.” But geology is against me. There was no there here during the dinosaur era: the coast of North America ended about where the Sierra Nevada is now. Westward, there were volcanic island arcs, ancient equivalents of Japan or the Philippines, then open ocean. 

“People ask where the California dinosaurs are,” says Peter Roopnarine, Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology, who studies prehistoric mass extinctions. “We’ve only found bits of 12 individuals.” 

Their fragmentary remains had been washed into the Jurassic or Cretaceous seas, entombed in marine deposits that make up the bedrock of the Central Valley and the Coast Ranges.  

Giant reptiles of other kinds abounded in those warm waters, feeding on fish, squidlike creatures, and each other: fish-shaped ichthyosaurs, lizardlike mosasaurs, long-necked plesiosaurs (the classic Loch Ness Monster types), and enormous sea turtles. But those beasts just don’t have that dinosaur charisma. So the Academy’s exhibit, a collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History and Chicago’s Field Museum, focuses on the land-dwelling saurians we all know and love. 

It’s an effective mixture of old bones (or their replicas) and state-of-the-art technology. 

“The exhibit was designed to highlight new aspects of dinosaur paleontology,” Roopnarine explains. “There have been changes in the way we think about dinosaurs. They were faster and more powerful than we thought, and their behavior was more complex.”  

So there’s an emphasis on biomechanics that was lacking in older exhibits. Along with the obligatory Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, there’s a one-seventh scale model that demonstrates how T. rex would have walked. The life-sized fiberglass-and-steel Apatosaurus (the dinosaur formerly known as Brontosaurus) skeleton was generated from a digital model; on the wall behind it, computer animation builds the behemoth’s neck, from the vertebrae through the layers of muscle. 

As for behavior, the trophy wall of horned-dinosaur skulls frames a discussion of what those nose spikes and neck shields were for: protection against predators, or competition within the species as in modern horned mammals? Roopnarine speculates it was a bit of both. 

The section on trace fossils spotlights a replica of a fossil trackway from Davenport Ranch in Texas: a herd of sauropods, adults and young traveling together, left their footprints on an ancient floodplain, as did the bipedal carnivores that stalked them. 

Surprisingly, there’s not much in the exhibit about the evidence that some dinosaurs—like the duckbill Maiasaura, the “good mother lizard”—cared for their young, as living alligators, crocodiles, and birds do. And I didn’t see any coprolites: fossilized dino dung can be very informative. 

Less spectacular than the monstrous bones, but fascinating to any dinosaur aficionado, is a slice of grayish rock from New Jersey that includes a layer marking the slice of geological time when the dinosaurs, and a host of other species, went extinct: the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.  

Here, come to think of it, is the Berkeley connection: it was UC’s Luis and Walter Alvarez who first made the case for an extraterrestrial impact as the agent of extinction. There’s compelling physical evidence for this, but massive volcanic eruptions and changes in sea level may also have played a part; the exhibit explains the competing hypotheses. Roopnarine says scientists disagree as to whether dinosaurs were already in decline when the asteroid or comet struck, but that recent research supports continued diversity right up to the end. 

My personal favorite, though, was the lovingly detailed reconstruction of a swampy forest in what is now China’s Liaoning Province about 130 million years ago. It’s an old-fashioned diorama, with reconstructions of flora (ginkgo trees, horsetails, giant fernlike plants) and fauna (insects, frogs and salamanders, unprepossessing early mammals, the largest about badger-sized). 

And of course dinosaurs, and birds. It would be reasonable to say and/or birds: “Modern birds are firmly nested within the dinosaurs,” says Roopnarine.  

Birds are the only dinosaur lineage that survived the Great Dying. Feathers apparently evolved some 150 million years ago, long before flight: they may have functioned as insulation or in courtship displays. Even T. rex may have been downy in its youth. The avian dinosaurs of Liaoning were weird and wonderful creatures: four-winged gliders, terrestrial insect-catchers, a long-clawed planteater that had evolved from carnivorous ancestors (as, millions of years later, did the giant panda).  

There’s something here to appeal to dinophiles of any age. The exhibit, at the Academy’s temporary quarters at 875 Howard St. in San Francisco, runs through Feb. 4, 2007. 

For information, visit the Academy’s website: http://calacademy.org. The American Museum of Natural History’s site (www.naturalhistory.com) has much more detail, including interviews with Mark Norrell (who has done field work in Liaoning), Niles Eldredge (of punctuated equilibrium fame), and other paleontological luminaries. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan  

A scale model in the exhibit at the Academy of Sciences demonstrates the tyrannosaur’s gait.

A little over 10 years ago, just after the explosive launch of the Internet information age, I wrote a feature-essay for Metro newspaper in San Jose called “W.W.W.—World Without Wisdom.” (The essay was all mine; the idea for turning the “world-wide-web” initials into “world without wisdom,” however, was the Metro editors’—I’d always wished I’d thought of that.) 

In the essay, I wrote about a 1994 book called The Gutenberg Elegies by American essayist Sven Birkerts, which talked of the problems involving the blossoming revolution in electronic/digital communication—most especially, the loss of wisdom in all this clutter of information. 

"Wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering or organizing of facts--this is basic," Mr. Birkerts wrote. "Wisdom is a seeing through facts, a penetration to the underlying laws and patterns. It relates the immediate to something larger… To see through data, one must have something to see through to. One must believe in the possibility of a comprehensible whole. ... And this assumption of ends is what we have lost. It is one thing to absorb a fact, to situate it alongside other facts in a configuration, and quite another to contemplate that fact at leisure, allowing it to declare its connection with other facts, its thematic destiny, its resonance." 

What is missing in the modern information age, Mr. Birkerts lamented, was not information, but context within which to put it. In the avalanche of facts, understanding of those facts often gets buried, putting us at the mercy of the latest spin. 

Thus, when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stands on the dais at the United States a day after United States President George Bush, crosses himself, and says, "the devil came here yesterday. He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world. It still smells of sulphur today," even the most vigorous of American Bush critics were left momentarily speechless, while our conservative brethren were quick to the attack Chavez’ words as unbecoming clownishness.  

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John R. Bolton called it a "comic-strip approach to international affairs" and Fox News’ Neil Cavuto opened an interview with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe by asking "Do you think Hugo Chavez is a nut?" 

But if calling George Bush the devil is nutty, then what must we think when George Bush informs us that he gets his political instructions from God, or invokes the identical diabolical imagery in describing countries he considers to be America’s enemies? (Where do you think the concept of evil—as in “the Axis of Evil”—is linked? If you can’t figure it out, just add a “d” to the beginning and that will be a nice clue.) 

Putting it in this context, the only difference in what Mr. Chavez and Mr. Bush has said lies in which of them you believe has the best insight into the nature of the universe and the mind of God. 

But at least on a national and international level, we have—thank God—commentators and analysts like Keith Olbermann and Noam Chomsky and Jon Stewart to give us a pot in which to stew this bewilderment of facts and events and information. 

Closer to home, we often just get lost for lack of a guide. 

In the California Progress Report, a daily online review which bills itself as “the water cooler around which progressive Californians gather daily for news, politics, policy, and progressive action,” blogger Frank D. Russo (an Oakland attorney and Democratic Party activist) writes recently about the California Attorney General’s race between Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and Republican State Senator Chuck Poochigian.  

“The state AG is an office touted as being the ‘top cop,’ for the state and [Mr. Poochigian] is trying to find a hook with the voters by playing one note: their fear of crime and the fact that his well known opponent, Jerry Brown, is from Oakland, a city that has crime problems,” Mr. Russo says. “It doesn’t matter that in the 8 years Brown has been Mayor, crime has been down from the level it was before he took office. Details get lost in campaigns.” 

Details sometimes get lost in blogs and political columns, as well. 

The “crime is down under Jerry Brown” note is a common theme in the Brown campaign, a way to convince voters that even though Oakland’s soaring murder rate seems horrendous and almost out of control, it is actually better than it has been. 

Details of the Brown defense were spelled out in a September 11 USA Today article “Veteran Calif. Politician eyes ‘top cop’ post,” by reporter John Ritter, in which Mr. Ritter explains that “Brown says the average annual murder count since he took office in 1999 is down 30% from the eight years of his predecessor, Elihu Harris, the most violent period in the city's history. In 1992, a record 165 were killed.” 

But to understand the significance of these numbers to Mr. Harris and Mr. Brown, you must first understand the difference between the Harris and Brown eras in Oakland. In 1992, we were operating under the weak-mayor/strong-city manager form of government. Mr. Harris, unlike Mr. Brown, was only the symbolic leader of Oakland, with little more power in the Council than any other councilmember, and with no independent control of the police department. One of the major difficulties of those years was that both the city manager and the police department responded to the needs and requests of individual councilmembers, leading to police action and policies in different parts of the city that often seemed at cross-purposes with itself. It was under this system that we institutionalized the idea that open air drug dealing would be unofficially tolerated in some areas of the city, while fiercely pursued and eradicated in others, a policy that left large, festering pockets out of which Oakland’s current violence is flowing, overspilling now into the rest of the city. If Mr. Harris is to blame for that, he shares the blame with eight other Council colleagues. 

Mr. Brown has no such excuse. He came into office in January of 1999 with full control of the police department, and the power to set its citywide direction. Mr. Brown squandered that authority, appointing the personable, popular, but wholly ineffective Richard Word as chief of police, who meandered for several years before he was replaced, once, oddly and famously, seeing the banning of citizen street shrines for murder victims as a method for preventing more murders. 

It’s only in the selection of Wayne Tucker to replace Mr. Word that we have begun to see some direction at the upper levels of the Oakland Police Department, and a sense that the department is beginning to understand the nature of Oakland, crime in Oakland, and its own abilities and inabilities. Mr. Brown’s choice of Mr. Tucker was a good one. The problem is, he took so long to do it. 

Meanwhile, as if we needed confirmation, we learn from the USA Today article that Mr. Brown puts Oakland’s crime problem on Oakland itself, not on his lack of leadership and use of the strong mayor powers we entrusted him with eight years ago. Mr. Ritter writes that “violence is endemic in Oakland, Brown says, the product of a thriving illegal drug trade, lack of opportunities for poor black and Latino youth and the easy availability of guns.” 

I didn’t go to all the various schools that Mr. Brown attended. But I learn through the Webster’s New World College Dictionary that something which is “endemic” is either “native to a particular country, nation, or region” or that it is “constantly present in a particular region.” Violence, Mr. Brown tells the world with a throwing up of his hands, is in Oakland’s blood. He has done the best he could. It’s now time for him to move on to other challenges, leaving Oaklanders with the job of cleaning up behind our own mess. And the world, not understanding the context, tends to believe him. 

There is much to the administration of Jerry Brown in Oakland that is similar to the administration of George W. Bush in Washington. Both are highly secretive, guarding their activities jealously, even though the business they are conducting is actually the public’s business. Both tend to blame problems on nameless, faceless enemies who are easy targets with no public sympathy and little ability to come forward and defend themselves. In Mr. Bush’s case it is the “terrorists.” In Mr. Brown’s case, it’s the “poor black and Latino youth” in Oakland as he identifies them in the USA Today article. Mr. Brown knew enough not to use such direct phrases while speaking to media that would be printed or broadcast in Oakland; in those cases, he resorted to euphemisms, going after the sideshow participants, for example, in a series of crackdowns that have left portions of our city void of the normal Constitutional guarantees. In the absence of the drumbeat of context that tells us when Republicans attack Constitutional rights it is wrong, Oakland acquiesces, thinking that no-one will notice that the shine on our progressive mantle has been left soiled, and the mess left to be cleaned up is that much larger. 

Scare the hell out of the American people. That, in a nutshell, is the Republicans’ fall congressional campaign strategy. If you doubt it, consider the following: George W. Bush launched a propaganda offensive in the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary with a speech in which he called Islamic terrorists “successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century”; Donald Rumsfeld in turn likened administration critics (read Democrats) to those who appeased Nazi Germany in the 1930s; Dick Cheney, appearing on Meet the Press, accused opponents of the war of inviting more violence; Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in August released a hyped report on the supposedly grave threat to US national security posed by Iran—one strikingly similar to the hyped intelligence documents the administration used to build its case for war in Iraq. 

I could go on, but you get the idea: The GOP is dusting off a strategy that’s worked wonders for them these past five years—one single-mindedly and cynically designed to increase public fear of terrorism. 

Republicans running for the House and Senate in marginal districts and swing states have a problem. They’re just like Tony Blair, fatally weakened in Britain and derided in Europe as “Bush’s poodle” for rolling over for the US president’s every policy demand. Republicans in Congress, however much they may try now to distance themselves from a deeply unpopular president, are in trouble for having stood on their hind legs and jumped through hoops every time the White House has fed them a new policy biscuit. Thus, the policies of George Bush and his administration are—and well should be—the defining issue of this campaign. 

No wonder the White House and Congressional Republicans are so desperate and have gone on the offensive: they read the August opinion polls, which demonstrated that the American people had finally come to believe that Mr. Bush’s war of choice—which has killed nearly 2,700 Americans, wounded and maimed many more, cost our national treasury over $420 billion, killed or wounded tens of thousands of Iraqis, and seems to degenerate each day—might just be a mistake, and one to be corrected at the voting booth. 

In fact, in the mid-August polls, just prior to the Bush administration’s spin offensive, 53 percent of Americans were convinced that “going to war was a mistake,” 62 percent believed that “events were going badly in Iraq,” and 58 percent “disapproved of [Bush’s] handling of the economy.” 

Republicans will do almost anything to keep control of Congress. And no wonder. As long as they hold a thin majority in the House, they have the absolute power of chairing all committees, power they’ve used to freeze out the Democrats. The Republican chairs hire staff, set legislative priorities, issue subpoenas, decide on the issues, and determine when to hold investigations, press conferences, and hearings. The White House wants to keep it that way. Hoekstra, for example, would no more undertake a serious investigation of the White House’s manipulation of flawed intelligence since the run-up to the Iraq war than he would turn down a fat corporate campaign contribution. 

Legislative oversight and accountability under GOP leadership has become a wink, a nod, and a whitewash. Hoekstra happens to represent a safe district, but he knows only too well, as does the president, that if Republicans lose the House he will lose his chairmanship to a Democrat. There will be hearings and investigations of executive policies, just as there will be by other committees: Armed Services, Homeland Security, Financial Services, Government Reform, and Judiciary. This is downright scary to an administration that has turned executive secrecy and abuse of power into an art form, with the collusion of a cover-up Congress. 

Bush, the Republican leadership, and Karl Rove are convinced that fear of terrorism is their best—indeed their only—trump card. It won the midyear elections for them in 2002 and the White House in 2004. They’re counting on using it to win again. What else do they have to run on? Not their handling of Hurricane Katrina, not health care, not education, not urban policy, not Social Security, not energy policy, not the environment, and certainly not jobs and economic security. 

The political prospects 

From now until Nov. 7, the American people can count on a high-stakes and brutal battle for control of Congress. This is undoubtedly the most important midterm election in a generation. If the Republicans win and maintain control of Congress, the nation will be faced with another two years of Bush’s policies. If the Democrats win the House, the Senate, or both, these policies will come under serious scrutiny and some might well be reversed. 

In the Senate, the Republicans now have a 55-44 advantage, with one Independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Though the odds favor the Republicans retaining control of the Senate—18 Republican-held seats, 15 Democratic-held seats, and one open seat are up for re-election—Democrats have a long shot at gaining control. They have a good chance of winning seats in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Montana, and Ohio. They then have to pick up two additional seats in tougher races in Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri or Arizona to gain a majority. 

The House is where the Democrats have the best shot at winning. Democrats must pick up 15 additional seats to win control of the House, where all 435 seats are up for grabs. At present, the composition of the House is 231 Republicans, 201 Democrats, one Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and two vacancies. 

In the upcoming election, only about 40 House seats are in play. Because of recent redistricting, most incumbents have safe seats. If the election were held today, of the 40 contested seats, the Democrats would likely pick up 28—mostly in the Northeast and Midwest—and the Republicans 12. That would give the Democrats a razor-thin two-vote majority. But it would be enough to change the dynamics of national politics and put the White House on the defensive. 

It comes down to this: If the Democrats keep the election focused on the Iraq debacle and economic insecurity, they will win. If unforeseen events occur and the Republicans can frame the debate nationally around terror and/or the hot-button issue of immigration, the outcome could change. 

The issues 

For the past five and a half years, the president and his party have cooked up the ultimate recipe for keeping political power. A nation in a constant state of anxiety—over the threat of terrorism, or at war—is a nation off balance. And that insecurity is the perfect cover to divert public attention from the country’s serious domestic problems and the administration’s reactionary political agenda. 

The “Bush doctrine” opens the door to a series of preemptive wars against “evil” regimes. The ostensible goal is to protect the United States and bring security, stability, safety, and democracy to the citizens of Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang, as the president claims to be doing in Baghdad and Kabul. Meanwhile, the administration and Republican congressional leaders show little or no concern for the security, stability, and safety of the citizens of New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York City, Cleveland, or thousands of other cities and small towns across America, who are facing enormous economic and social difficulties. 

Just like in The Wizard of Oz, when we finally get to see who is operating the smoke-puffing machine, we find a consummate pitchman. In Bush’s case, the man behind the screen is a flag-waving, antiterrorist smear- and fear-monger who labels his opponents anti-patriotic. Bush has done a clever job of manipulating the mass media, but in reality his smooth imagery and down-home personality are severely undermining America’s values. While he composes hymns to patriotism, individualism, Sunday piety, trickle-down economics, “staying the course,” and family values, he is trying to gut every program providing for social, economic, and environmental justice. America’s families need less pious rhetoric, and more policies geared toward a healthy economy, secure jobs, decent health care, affordable housing, quality public education, renewable energy, and a sustainable environment. Bush seems unable, or unwilling, to grasp that the government has an important leadership role in this. In fact, providing tax giveaways for the rich and for corporate America is the only policy that seems to energize Bush and the Republicans in Congress. 

At present, an air of suspended belief hangs over the radical changes of the past five and a half years. That is because Bush’s economic policy has been obscured by the events of September 11, the nation’s focus on terrorist alerts—which seem to occur whenever Bush takes a nosedive in the polls—and the Iraq war. But layoffs, shutdowns, cutbacks, outsourcing, gas prices, local tax hikes, and reduced paychecks are taking a huge toll. Bush’s economic policy, which in turn determines social policy, is much like the iceberg waiting in the path of a steaming Titanic. 

Bush does not seem to understand that, while it is not a sin to be born to privilege, it is a sin to spend your life defending it. John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that. They knew the narrowness privilege can breed. This administration, despite its early pledges of “compassionate conservatism,” has in fact adopted policies that amount to a war against the poor and the middle class. 

The Bush tax and budget cuts were not made in order to jump-start the economy or balance the budget; they were simply massive cash transfers. Social programs are being slashed to pay for the war in Iraq, tax giveaways for the wealthy, and new defense contracts for arms makers who just happen to be big Republican campaign contributors. 

Moreover, the administration has not provided the American people with a strategic vision as to how the war in Iraq and this excessive and bloated arms buildup fits into our larger defense, antiterrorist, and foreign policy. Is it in the national interest to relegate our most precious assets—our human, natural, and financial resources—to the junk pile? Is it in the national interest to throw more lives and money into the quagmire in Iraq? To increase the pace of an arms race where overkill has long been achieved and is useless, militarily, in land wars? 

Thomas Jefferson warned us that we could be free or ignorant, but not both. We have not taken that warning to heart. We have not had a serious national debate about the Bush administration’s policies, because the Republican leadership in Congress has engaged in a massive cover-up and the mass media have treated politics—as well as economic and social policy—as entertainment: a combination of hype and palliative. The moral, political, and economic life of this country has suffered. As a consequence, we have lost our moral compass, as well as our intuitive sense of what is significant in both our national and public institutions. 

Foreign policy: the Iraq war and national security 

Since Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush want to invoke history, let’s look at real-world history, instead of the mindless drivel they are peddling. The Bush spinmeisters desperately want to undermine the simple truth that most Democrats understand history and complexity, particularly in regard to the most important decision a president can make: that of taking our country to war, with all its drastic consequences in terms of human lives and the expenditure of national treasure. 

Bush does not seem to understand that those who do not learn from history are condemned to make the same mistakes. Both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, in leading the victorious WWII allies in the war against fascism, understood the suffering, the human costs, and the scourge of war. (Note that Bush kicked off his propaganda offensive with a speech at an American Legion convention. One wonders if there were any Vietnam vets in the audience who thought to themselves, “Oh yeah, this guy has a lot of experience in fighting for freedom. While I was getting shot at and dragging my sorry ass through the muck and mire of Vietnam jungles, he was doing drugs, getting drunk, and practicing his golf swing at Houston country clubs. Ditto for that freedom-fighting draft-dodger Cheney.”) Roosevelt and Churchill understood only too well the need for international cooperation, both diplomatic and military. They understood the critical need for the exchange of intelligence and multinational action by and among traditional allies. They understood the need for strategic alliances that every single president since then, Republican and Democrat, has understood, with the glaring exception of Bush. That’s why he is dangerous and why we need a Democratic Congress to hold him accountable. 

Roosevelt, before his death, was quite clear. He said that the United Nations was the place to go not to end wars, but to end the beginnings of wars. And Churchill was just as explicit when he warned us, “The United Nations is an imperfect institution that is a reflection of an imperfect world. Its purpose is not to lead us into an ascent to heaven but to prevent us from going into a descent to hell.” Those words are just as true and prescient today as they were in the aftermath of WWII. The Democrats understand what they mean. Bush either isn’t interested, or he’s too arrogant to grasp their meaning. 

Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant, but overthrowing him and invading Iraq did not lessen the threat of terror; it increased it. It did not strengthen American military capability; it weakened it. It did not make Americans at home or abroad safer; it had the opposite effect of increasing recruitment and support for Al Qaeda and other anti-American militant groups throughout the world. Invading Iraq did not increase international cooperation for antiterrorist efforts or the respect for America’s diplomatic leadership that is indispensable to the war on terror; it diminished them. 

For five and a half years, I have listened carefully to the president and his chief advisers. All of it has reminded me of a passage in The Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad put it this way: “Their talk was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight. . .in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world.” 

Conrad’s words capture the political machinations of the Bush administration’s years in Washington. They reflect the mood and the moral nullity of the reactionary enterprise that seeks to tear apart the public good at home and to promote the neoconservative fantasy of world domination that led us into a risky and tragic preemptive war in Iraq. The Bush administration just doesn’t get it. No country can sustain itself, much less grow, on a political fare of one-liners, secrecy, rerun ideas, deliberate distortions, arrogance, paranoia, and official policy pronouncements borrowed from Orwell’s 1984—where recession is recovery, war is peace, and a social policy based on aggressive hostility is compassion. 

The stakes 

Finally, let me leave you with 25 reasons as to why this election is important and why you should get involved. They are: 

1. Iraq. 

2. Woman’s choice. 

3. Global warming. 

4. Public education. 

5. Civil liberties. 

6. Decent jobs at livable wages. 

7. Affordable housing. 

8. National health insurance. 

9. Torture and human rights abuse. 

10. Separation of church and state. 

11. Soaring federal deficits. 

12. The Supreme Court and federal judges. 

13. Increase in poverty and homelessness. 

14. Assault weapons back on the street. 

15. Social Security. 

16. Consumer protection. 

17. Huge national debt. 

18. Preemptive wars and national security. 

19. Mercury and acid rain. 

20. Disaster preparedness and Hurricane Katrina. 

21. Maldistribution of wealth. 

22. Resumption of nuclear testing. 

23. Homeland security—ports, mass transit, and chemical plants. 

24. Renewable energy and gas prices. 

25. Pervasive corruption, cronyism, manipulation and incompetence. 

You could probably add a number of reasons of your own. What’s of paramount importance though, is that the issues are basic, the choices are stark, the stakes are high, and the consequences could be devastating. 

It’s your country! 

Arthur I. Blaustein is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches community development, public policy, and politics. His most recent books are Make a Difference: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service and The American Promise: Justice and Opportunity. He served on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Bill Clinton and was chair of the President’s National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity under Jimmy Carter. 

Reprinted from MotherJones.com with permission of the author.

At 10 a.m. every Friday, Mary Ann Broder opens the Friends of the Library Bookstore for business. She’s been doing that since 1998 when the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library first moved into their present location in the Sather Gate Mall housed in the public parking structure a half block below Telegraph Avenue, between Channing Way and Durant. 

By the time she, or one of the other volunteers, opens the door, people are already gathered outside. Some are looking through the cart of give-away books, while others are eager to get inside to see what new treasures have arrived or maybe what’s been marked down. Book dealers come regularly, looking for bargains. “We’re delighted when a pre-school class arrives, crocodile style with each child holding on to a cloth handle. Escorted by their teachers, they descend on the children’s corner, each selecting a book to buy,” says Broder.  

The generous space, located three blocks from the UC Campus, is a favorite with the university community and houses donated books from private collections, and even from publishers and other stores. Tables display new arrivals, bookcases hold foreign language books, collectibles, fiction, biographies, reference books, cook books, art books, history books, books on computers—you name it and you can probably find it there, in good condition and at amazingly reasonable prices.  

Aside from getting a good deal and maybe a book that isn’t easily available elsewhere, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that the proceeds go to fund library programs that might not get funded otherwise—programs like the children’s summer reading program, music programs including the wonderful annual live jazz series, and such life-changing opportunities as the adult literacy programs. 

The Friends are able to respond to about $100,000 worth of library requests each year because the books are donated and sold in stores by volunteers. In addition to the Sather Gate Store near Telegraph Avenue, the Friends operate a second store in an elegant little space created at the time of the Central Library’s renovation in 2002. Located on the main floor near the elevators, the Central Library Store has a full range of books, but the emphasis is on fiction and children’s books, most of which are in ‘mint condition,’ lightly touched by small hands. 

The store is popular with library patrons and especially with parents and their kids who sometimes discover the store on their way up to the Children’s Room on the fourth floor. With books averaging $2 each, kids often assemble an impressive stack of books—which won’t have to be returned in three weeks. Teachers are also regular customers because in this era of tight budgets they often have to make personal purchases to enrich their classrooms (yes, the Friends give teachers a discount). 

Upstairs, in the Friend’s workroom, volunteers gather each Monday to sort and price books. Sayre Van Young, recently retired after 36 years as a reference librarian with the Berkeley Public Library, works alongside veteran volunteers like Mary Anne Broder, Rose Watada, Gaby Morris, and Joan Haefele. Once the books are ready, volunteers stock the two stores, though at the Sather Gate Store sorting and pricing are an ongoing activity with books donated directly to that location.  

Though operating two stores is recent, the Friends have been around since the mid-1950s when, in the style of the times, they hosted elegant teas for the library staff. The Friends began selling books outside the Central Library at an annual—and very popular—three-day book sale. Friends volunteers remember how book dealers often would line up along the second-level of the old Hink’s parking lot with binoculars in hopes of scoping out titles that they would grab up when the sale began. 

Though it’s been eight years since the last outdoor sale, people still call and ask about the date of next sale. But the volunteers don’t miss working in the musty, dim basement of the old library where books were kept and sorted. And now books are available to prospective buyers year-round. 

The Friends welcome book donations at both locations. If you have lots of books or need help, a volunteer can arrange to pick-up your donations. (Call the Sather Gate Store at 841-5604). Books need to be in good condition, and encyclopedias should be recent. And don’t forget your old maps, audiotape, CDs, videos and DVDs as they are always in demand. 

If volunteering at one of the two stores for two or three hours a week sounds interesting, come in and talk to the volunteers. You will meet interesting people on both sides of the counter. And if book buying or browsing is your passion, check out the Friends’ book stores. And you can justify your acquisitions by knowing you are supporting one of the community’s most beloved and venerable institutions—the Berkeley Public Library. 

Photograph by Lynn Brown: Mary Ann Broder and Miles Karpilow talk books at the Sather Gate store. 

One of the largest residential parcels in the Berkeley, the John Hopkins Spring Estate, commonly known as the Spring Mansion, occupies 3.25 acres in the Southampton area of the north Berkeley Hills. The property is so large as to require three addresses: 1960 San Antonio Ave., 1984 San Antonio Ave., and 639 The Arlington. 

Modeled after Empress Elisabeth of Austria’s Achillion Palace in Corfu, the estate is a scheme of broad balustraded terraces sloping down toward the west. As late as 2005, the grounds were planted with shrubbery, redwood, eucalyptus, pine, and palm trees and ornamented with a fountain and a reflecting pool. On the upper slope stands an imposing two-story mansion designed by John Hudson Thomas. The exterior is primarily Beaux Arts-influenced, while the interiors display the architect’s eclectic influences, including Vienna Secessionist, Arts & Crafts, and Egyptian motifs. 

Measuring 80 ft. by 83 ft., the 12,000-square-foot house, built entirely of concrete, has two main entrances. The eastern entrance in the rear features a rectangular portico and serves the driveway, while the western entrance boasts a semi-circular portico, opening onto the garden terraces and commanding a sweeping vista of San Francisco Bay. This entrance leads to a vaulted passage running along the western length of the building, connecting the dining room in the northwest corner to the living room in the southwest. 

At the heart of the building is a 30-foot high atrium surmounted by a skylight. Four hefty Tuscan columns support the second-floor corridor balconies surrounding the atrium. The upper floor is reached via a grand, 15-foot wide staircase. At the center of the atrium, a slender Italian fountain strikes a Mediterranean note. 

The majestic public rooms are placed on the ground floor along the north and south sides of the house, opening directly into the atrium. These include a living room, dining room, and billiard/sitting room featuring tapestry-covered walls, enormous fireplaces, and rich oak moldings. 

The house was built in 1912–14 by the Spring Construction Company, one of the holdings of landowner and entrepreneur John Hopkins Spring (1862–1933). Born in San Francisco to a New England family, Spring received his real-estate training at his father’s and uncle’s firm, which was involved in various East Bay land ventures. 

In 1897, after the death of his father, Spring moved to Oakland and built a showcase residence by the Sausal Creek in Fruitvale. Following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, he bought a lot in Union Square and built what would become the city’s first department store, City of Paris. 

In the first years of the 20th century, Spring teamed up with Berkeley real-estate developer Duncan McDuffie and capitalists Louis Titus (1872–c.1947) and Wigginton Ellis Creed (1877–1927) in the Berkeley Development Company and the North Berkeley Land Company. He was also a business associate of Francis Marion “Borax” Smith (1846–1931) and Frank Colton Havens (1848–1918), especially in the East Bay real-estate ventures of their Realty Syndicate and its holding company United Properties. 

In 1904–05, Spring acquired J.J. Dunn’s quarry on the former Berryman ranch in north Berkeley. With Creed and Titus as partners, he formed the Spring Construction Company. The company quarried rock at its Spruce Street facility in the La Loma Park and Codornices Park area, and later at the Arlington facility in Cerrito Canyon. Construction vehicles and equipment were maintained at a depot on the old Boswell Ranch site (now the Solano and Peralta junction). In 1906–07, Spring purchased a 142-acre tract around El Cerrito Hill and laid out the subdivision that would become the city of Albany. His best-known venture was the Thousand Oaks subdivision and the shopping district along Solano Avenue, begun in 1909. 

Spring was one of the investors in the Claremont Hotel Co. founded by Louis Titus, though his role in this joint venture has been obfuscated by several contradictory legends. The Landmark Application for the Spring Estate, written in 2000, states: 

“Spring’s first venture into Berkeley real estate was in the Claremont District. ... Before long, Spring had two other partners in the Claremont Tract, Frank Havens and W.P. Mortimer, a Berkeley capitalist. The partners financed the grand Hotel Claremont but construction was slowed down due to financial stringency resulting from the 1907 Panic. 

In 1910, Spring approached his partners with a proposal to play a game of dominoes with the hotel property as the stake. Spring first played Mortimer and beat him. Later he played Havens and lost. It was Spring who planned the lovely garden terraces around the hotel that became known as the ‘Jewel of the East Bay.’” 

Another version is told on the Claremont Hotel’s website: 

“The property … fell into the hands of Frank Havens and ‘Borax’ Smith, a famous miner. They planned to erect a resort hotel on the property with trains running directly into the lobby. Unfortunately, these plans were abandoned. One night, Havens, Smith and John Spring, a Berkeley capitalist, played a game of checkers in the old Athenian Club of Oakland with the stakes being the property, and Havens won. 

He began building in 1906, but the panic of that year interrupted construction. After trying again in 1910, Havens lost heart, and in 1914 allied himself with Eric Lindblom, who had struck it rich in the Klondike. The sprawling Mediterranean hostelry was completed in 1915, in time for the Panama-Pacific Exposition. In 1918, Lindblom took complete control of The Claremont until he sold it in 1937 to Mr. And Mrs. Claude Gillum, who virtually rebuilt it from the foundation up, and completely refurbished the interior.” 

Yet another variant, this time by Oakland architectural historian Annalee Allen, omits Spring altogether: “Legend has it that Havens retained sole interest in the project when he and Smith decided one night to play a game of dominoes (some say checkers) and Smith lost.” 

In 1997, Spring’s son told BAHA’s Lesley Emmington that his father did participate in the game, which was either blackjack or poker, the sole opponent having been “Borax” Smith. The interview notes don’t reveal the identity of the winner. 

Perhaps closest to the truth is the account by longtime Berkeley Gazette columnist Hal Johnson, published on Jan. 29, 1943: 

“It was Spring all-year round in Albany and in Northbrae and Thousand Oaks for some years before the San Francisco fire until January 1920—John Spring, pioneer developer of large residential tracts, road builder and capitalist. The late John Spring was a gambler, not at the card table or at roulette but on the East Bay Area. He won when he backed Berkeley and Albany. Later he lost heavily—in the millions—when he bucked the stock market. 

John Spring—the man who plunged into great financial undertakings and into growing rare flowers and shrubbery—passed out of the world picture April 16, 1933, at the age of 70. He left a seemingly permanent monument here in the Spring mansion, San Antonio Ave., now Williams College. Spring built that massive structure of 12 great rooms, including six bedrooms, each with a private bath, in 1914. 

He erected the great house of reinforced concrete at the time of his lowest ebb financially—when he owed more than a million dollars and was land poor. He had sold thousands of dollars worth of home sites in that vicinity on the strength that he would build his own home there. And he kept faith with buyers. 

The Spring mansion is probably the only residence in the East Bay which has a reinforced concrete roof. That area then was outside of the city limits and there was no fire protection. 

Growing there still are stately pines brought from Norway and Irish yew trees. When Spring lived there he had a great rose garden with all varieties that would grow in Northern California. On Avis Rd. you can still see some of the imitation rocks which were part of the foundation of the large greenhouses.  

John Spring was born in San Francisco Dec. 13, 1862. His father, Francisco Samuel Spring, and his uncle, John Spring, came to California about 1852. Capt. John Hopkins Spring, old New England sea captain, brought his two sons to California on his own boat. They went into the real estate business and John Spring followed in their footsteps. 

Spring saw a future for the East Bay Area. As late as 1915 he owned practically all of Albany, except the Gill tract at San Pablo Ave. and Buchanan St., all of Thousand Oaks and Arlington Heights and a large part of Northbrae. Some 3,500 homes since then have been erected on his original holdings.  

He was an athlete as a young man and won medals for swimming and for bicycle racing. His three daughters are Mrs. George Friend of 120 Hillcrest Rd., Mrs. Noble Newsome of 410 Pala Ave., Piedmont, and Miss Dorothy Spring, now a WAAC stationed at Sacramento. His son, Frank Spring, is chief designer for the Hudson Automobile Co. and lives in Michigan. Mrs. Charlotte Montgomery of San Francisco is his sister. She is the widow of Dr. Douglas Montgomery who died while they were in South America soon after they had made their escape from Shanghai. 

John Spring took chances but as long as these chances were in real estate they were winning ones. When San Francisco was burning, the day following the April 1906 earthquake, he offered $400,000 for the lot and steel structure of the proposed new Spring Valley Water Co. building and the offer was quickly accepted. 

He formed the Union Square Improvement Co. with East Bay capital and erected a large building. In 1915 the structure was sold to the Hooper Lumber Co. for more than $1,250,000—a handsome profit. The building, Stockton and Geary Sts., has been occupied by the City of Paris since it was built. 

Spring gradually acquired tidelands from about where the Key Route Pier was built to near the Ford plant in Richmond. These were sold in 1925 to the Santa Fe Railroad for $700,000. 

He cashed that check with the late Phillip M. Bowles, president of the American Bank in Oakland and associated with Spring in many financial deals. “Why John, that check is for $700,000,” exclaimed Bowles. “Where did you get the money?” “I just sold those tidelands on which you wouldn’t loan me $50,000 a few months ago,” replied Spring. 

Between 1926 and 1929 John Spring lost more than a million when the bottom fell out of the stock market. He paid dollar for dollar, took his loss with a smile and went down the peninsula to live. 

There was one time when John Spring figured he won when he lost. He was associated with the late F.M. (“Borax”) Smith and Frank C. Havens in the plans for Hotel Claremont. Spring wanted to have near Berkeley a hotel on a peer with the Del Monte. He was responsible for the beautiful Claremont Hotel gardens.  

About 1912, the Hotel Claremont had been started, but was a long way from being finished. Taxes, interest on investment and care of the gardens were eating into the finances of the combine that had undertaken to erect the hotel. 

One by one they dropped out until Spring and Frank Havens were left holding the sack which contained a $400,000 mortgage. Spring and Havens played a game of dominoes at the old Athenian Club in Oakland with the hotel property as the stake. Havens won the game and the unfinished Claremont Hotel.” 

Spring’s own home was completed in 1914, but he didn’t enjoy it for long. At Christmas 1915, he left his wife Celina for another woman. In 1918, Celina Spring sold the estate to the Cora L. Williams Institute of Creative Development (later Williams College), a tony elementary and secondary school known for its focus on languages, poetry, music, and literature. 

Famous guest lecturers such as Mark Twain and psychologist Alfred Adler taught courses there. Interpretive dance inspired by Isadora Duncan was taught, and Institute students danced with the Boyntons at the Temple of Wings and with Duncan colleague Vassos Kanellos at the Hearst Greek Theater. One of the students, Helen Bacon Hooper, went on to dance with Martha Graham. The Williams Institute’s most celebrated alumnus was probably Irving Wallace (1916–1990), author of The Chapman Report. 

The school occupied the mansion for five decades. In 1975, the Spring estate was purchased by real-estate investor Larry Leon, who made the mansion his home for the next 30 years. The estate was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 2000. Last year Leon sold the property to a consortium of investors who were planning to establish a conference center on the site. They have since cleared the grounds in preparation for building additional structures. 

Everyone has something particularly annoying about their job. I’m sure yours has at least one (I can see the heads nodding). O.K. It’s more than one. Me too. I’ve got a few and one of these serenity-busters that bugs me the most is being asked which building code justifies an item that I’ve called-out during an inspection. 

Now, I’ve actually gotten quite a bit better at finding things in the code book in the last year or two and to discuss the finer points that come out of their study, but to be frank, it’s not that relevant to what I do.  

The building code really doesn’t apply much to looking at old houses. Now, on the face of it, that seems like a reasonable statement but, in the search for something to hang our ideas upon, people still keep running down the cognitive ravine to the what seems as though would be found at the root of what’s right or wrong about a house, i.e., the codes. 

There are a bunch of problems with this thinking and it really messes with my day, if you know what I mean. How do I justify the things I have to say about a house.  

Does the code tell me what’s wrong or right? Can I say that something is wrong because it didn’t follow the code? No. I can’t and here’s why and get ready because it’s quite an onslaught. 

First, many of the building I see were built before the first building code even existed. While building protocols or practices DID exist, there was nothing written down as to what you could and couldn’t do. The first building code book came out in 1917 and even this was a very slender pamphlet. The majority of buildings I see (those from the 1920’s & 30’s) were built with some codes in force but were, again, largely the result of good practices and not enforced rules. 

Since everything old we see is grand-fathered, or adopted as acceptable unless changed in some way, there’s almost nothing the code has to say about these much older buildings. 

For the sake of argument we can talk about a building from 1970 and say that many modern codes would have applied to it but here again, there are a range of problems. What city were we in at the time of construction? What version of the code was being used on the dates of the inspections? 

Who was the site inspector for the inspections and what local additions to the code were being practiced by the city for this type of construction at the time? Also, what were the zoning practices for this site at the time of construction? 

This mass of conditions makes it virtually impossible to say what rules would have applied to a particular building at the time of construction over a wide range of issues including set-backs, specific electrical codes, building height, the steepness of stairways and the requirement for smoke detectors. The list is huge.  

One thing that’s very important to realize is that, not only were the city policies and adopted codes relevant to each condition, but the specific site inspector was and is much like a judge in each case. 

No matter what the code book may say, the site inspector has the authority to call things as they see fit. Of course if they wander too far afield, we can “appeal” to the chief inspector or higher government official but it usually doesn’t work. 

So, how can I say that a stairway would have violated the code in 1966, when, for all I know, the city inspector stood there on that day, looked at his 1964 copy of the Uniform Building Code and his local Oakland amendment sheet and decided that these didn’t apply to what he (yes it was a guy) thought of as a servant’s entrance. You see, there’s just too much “noise” between that event in the past and today to be able to say much of anything about what the right call would have been at the time of construction. 

Even construction from the very recent past has problems of this sort, although this can more easily sorted out, if you’re serious about it and willing to do a lot of calling around. 

However, the important thing in my line of work isn’t to say what the site inspector or the plan checker would have said at the time but what I, as an observer, can say based on what I know and see today.  

That’s the nitty gritty of the job. I’m not a code checker and if I were, you can see how woefully hobbled I would be in performing it. I never know, for certain, which code was in force (they’re constantly being revised), what presiding official’s would have said at the time and also, how much has changed since that time.  

That’s is one more thing that makes code checking virtually impossible on older building. They’re being changed all the time. Many houses I see have been remodeled, and remodeled and remodeled. Little thing here, big thing there, tear this out, put this here. By the time I come along, it can be quite a trial to tell, even broadly, what the original building looked like and when each change came to pass. 

Nevertheless, I’ll confess that I do spend a lot of time looking at this aspect of the houses I see. I do, in part because it’s a puzzle and sort of irresistible. Partly, because it can help to ferret out mistakes that might be important. 

One oft-seen case in which it’s relevant is the one where a wall or other load bearing member has been moved or re-moved. If I don’t think about what the building would originally have looked like, it’s easy to miss something of this sort which might be truly vital. So I try. 

Once again, the point I wanted to make has required that you slog through all this stuff and so you have my gratitude and apology. And here it is. 

Home inspectors are not code checkers because the code says so very little about buildings. This may seem nutty to say but it’s really quite true. You can’t design a building using the codes and as code experts are so fond of saying, the code is a MINIMUM standard, not a recommended formula for construction. The code also says almost nothing about the way in which things wear out, decay and fail. 

Amazingly, there’s no code for seismic retrofitting, so you can’t say that there aren’t enough bolts in your retrofit based on that book.  

The code doesn’t say when the paint job or the leaky window needs fixing and it doesn’t say that you have to have x number of smoke detectors in your old building (unless you are doing a remodel and they make you put some in). The code doesn’t prevent many places where slips and falls occur and also doesn’t point out the myriad improvement and upgrades that time and technology have provided. 

In short, I’d say that the most of what I’m doing in my job has almost nothing to do with the code. It’s there all the time as a reference, lurking just out of sight, and I like to invoke it where it says something of value but that’s very different from “calling something” as a violation.  

As you can see, I just can’t do that, ever. All I can do is to say that some current codes say such and such a thing and that this may be in violation of one of them. However, I can say that something is a problem, that something is dangerous (in my view). That something is a bad idea (all too often…) and might lead to harm or distress. And let me tell you, friend, you can sure fill up a day with that stuff. 

When we start thinking good thoughts about rain, it must be the peak of fire season. That means fall planting season is coming soon, and it’s time to start looking for plants to fill in (or overcrowd) our gardens. Especially California natives, because this is a good time to plant them, to take advantage of the winter rains. Even drought-loving plants need a bit of watering help in their first year.  

The California Native Plant Society has made a big change in one tradition. The East Bay Chapter’s reliable October sale won’t happen at the Merritt College hort department this year, as the department has some expansion plans and wants the ground it lent the chapter in return for help with the department greenhouse. (Yikes. This must be what it feels like to watch your parents go through an “amicable” divorce.) 

Instead, the Native Here Nursery will host the Native Plant Fair on Saturday, Oct. 28, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 29, noon to 3 p.m. Very local plants from NH –the chapter’s restoration nursery—as well as “horticultural natives” from around the state will be for sale, along with seeds, bulbs, books, art, and other wares; experts and CNPS honchos will talk and answer questions, too. 

Lots of plants, says the sales committee, so enjoy a leisurely and informative weekend. More info and schedules to come on the chapter’s Web site, www.ebcnps.org—or you could volunteer by showing up on Friday or Saturday mornings between now and the sale, or contact the nursery, nativehere@ebcnps.org for other times.  

The other half of the erstwhile couple, Merritt College’s Landscape Horticulture Department, is having its fall sale on Oct. 7. There are always natives there, too, as well as fall-plantable veggies, annuals, perennials, bulbs, trees, who knows what? I find something weird and wonderful every year at my alma mater. You can grab coffee and pastries or a nice lunch burger (veggie or otherwise) and hear live music, buy art or tools, or just schmooze. 

There will be smart and friendly folks to tell you what you need to know about Aesthetic Pruning—the coming thing in tree care, combining traditional Japanese lore with recent discoveries about how trees work—and about flower arranging, Permaculture, garden and landscape design and construction, soils, bugs, plant diseases, and more.  

Here’s a new one: The Watershed Nursery’s Fall Open House & Native Plant Sale, Oct. 14, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., features 20 percent off all plants (except clearance items.) Watershed specializes in natives for habitat restoration, and has recently started having drop-in hours for the public, so you can get a look beforehand. 

Maybe you’ll want to scout the place out anyway; here are the directions from its Web site, www.thewatershednursery.com: “Head east (towards UC Berkeley) on University. Turn left on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Turn right on Cedar. After you begin to go uphill, turn left on Euclid, right on Hawthorne Terrace. Left on Le Roy Ave. Stay on winding road. It will turn into Tamalpais Rd. You will see a small sign 155 with an arrow to the left and down. Please park on the street and walk down the driveway. The nursery is located in a fenced-off area to your right past the pond.” 

Don’t fall in!  

Native Here Nursery 

101 Golf Course Road (across from the golf course entrance) Tilden Park, Berkeley 

Merritt College 

12500 Campus Drive, Oakland (Rte. 13 to Redwood Road exit; uphill to Campus Drive, turn right; up Campus Drive to, guess what? the campus) 436-2418  

The Watershed Nursery 

155 Tamalpais Road, Berkeley 

548-4714 

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.

How Much Food and Water? 

If you’re someone who wants to be prepared for the major quake in our future, you’ve probably done something about having food and water available for you and your family.  

Here are a few things to keep in mind: 

1. Some disaster preparedness groups recommend having three days worth of food and water (1 gallon per person per day). I agree with the ones that say be ready for a full week (think Katrina). 

2. I’ve never seen an emergency kit (including ours) that has enough food or water. You really need to supplement the kits. 

3. The best plan for water is a 55 gallon barrel with a siphon, which you treat with bleach so it will last at least 5 years.  

4. Have plenty of canned foods, which need to be regularly used and replaced.  

5. Some folks have found a source on-line for MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), similar to the military products. We might add these to our web site in the future. 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 26 

FILM 

Alternative Visions “Charming Augustine” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson talks about the mental and emotional loves of animals at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Maybeck Trio at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamberperform.org 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun Zydeco dance lesson a 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Beth Custer’s Clarinet Thing at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Randy Craig Trio at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Larry Coryell, Victor Bailey, Lenny White Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 27 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Colors” A group show by East Bay Women Artists opens at Royal Ground Gallery, 2058 Mountain Blvd., Montclair, Oakland. Exhibition runs to Jan. 7. 451-2661. 

THEATER 

“The Secret Circus” Wed. and Thurs. at 8 p.m. at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, through Oct. 19. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale. 800-838-3006 www.themarsh.org  

FILM 

Celebrate Oaxaca! “Sketches of Juchitan” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Pirates and Piracy “Sonic Outlaws” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Writing Teachers Write” featuring Amy Brooks at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

John Stauber describes “The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“Iranian Voices in Diaspora” with Iranian writers including poets Persis Karim and Mahnaz Badihian and Persian-inspired music by Aleph Null at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with University Symphony Orchestra at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

UC Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Arwen Castellanos & Jorge Liceaga, film and concert celebrating Oaxaca at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Tribute to the Conga at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Izabella at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Maria Kalaniemi Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Larry Coryell, Victor Bailey, Lenny White Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 28 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “Love is a Dream House in Lorin” by Marcus Gardley, inspired by true stories of Berkeley’s historic Lorin District, Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Nov. 5. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

Civic Center Art Exhibition 2006-2007 Opening ceremony at 3 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Courtyard, 2180 Milvia St. RSVP to 981-7541. 

FILM 

The Mechanical Age “The Serial and the Mechanical Age” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Vangie Buell reads from her memoir of growing up in the Philippines “Twenty-five Chickens and a Pig for a Bride” at at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Laurence Juber, guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Wayward Monks at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Omar Ait Vimoun, Algerian Berber music on mandol and oud, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Is, The Bluegrass Revolution, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

A Tribute to Tony Williams with Allan Holdsworth, Alan Pasqua Group, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 29 

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 

Berkeley Rep “Mother Courage” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St., through Oct. 22. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

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 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “The Orchid Sandwich” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 21, at 951 Pomona Ave. El Cerrito. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theatre “Colorado” A dark comedy about celebrity worship, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. Runs through Oct. 28. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

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. 

Shotgun Players “Love is a Dream House in Lorin” by Marcus Gardley, inspired by true stories of Berkeley’s historic Lorin District, Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Nov. 5. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

UC Dept. of Theater “Suburban Motel” six plays by George Walker at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus, through Nov. 19. Tickets are $8-$14. For schedule see http://theater.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

The Cinema of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne “The Son” at 7 p.m. and “The Child” at 9:05 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Taiwan Film Festival “ Murmer of Youth” at 3 p.m. at Pacific Fim Archive, and “Tigerwomen Grow Wings” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Theater, 2621 Durant. 642-2809. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Frankie Holtz-Davis reads from “Mahrynie Red - The Journey” at 6 p.m. at the African American Museum & Library, 659 Fourteenth St., Oakland. RSVP to 637-0200. 

David Kamp describes “The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Free Range, Extra Virgin Story of How We Became a Gourmet Nation” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

Genieve Abodo discusses “Mecca and Main Street: Being Muslim after 9/11” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

“Aging Artfully” with Amy Gorman at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 527-4977. 

Brian Morton reads from his new novel “Breakable You” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jon Fromer, Francisco Herrera and the Molotov Mouths at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$25. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Finless Brown at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Taylor Eigsti/Dayna Stephens Duo at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Joel Dorham Latin Jazz Octet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Grapefruit Ed, with Bill Cutler and the Hounds of Time at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. m 

Sam Bevan at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Bill Kirchen, rockabilly, dieselbilly at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Oh Yeahs! at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Pockit, Ubzorb, Precise Device at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

La Plebe, Inspector Double Negative, Static Thought 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. 

Marcus Shelby Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Somethingfour at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Girlfriend Experience, The Hundred Days, Charmless, indie rock, at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

A Tribute to Tony Williams with Allan Holdsworth, Alan Pasqua Group, 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. 30 

CHILDREN  

“Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day” at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$18. 925-798-1300. 

THEATER 

“Happy Days” Beckett’s last play at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $9-$25. 415-531-8454. 

FILM 

“Special Circumstances” the story of Héctor Salgado, Chilean political prisoner, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Discussion with filmmakers will follow. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Mechanical Age “The Magic Lantern and the Mechanical Age” 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

“Milarepa” from Tibet. Benefit screening at 6:30 p.m. at Wheeler Hall Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $15. 877-697-2998. 

Taiwan Film Festival “Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring” at 2:30 p.m. and “How High is the Mountain” at 4 p.m at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-2809. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John Brady Kiesling discusses “Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Joe Quirk reads from his book “Sperm Are From Men, Eggs Are From Women” at 10 a.m. at C’era Una Volta, 1332 Partk St. at Redwood Square, Alameda. 769-4828. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“King Arthur” by Henry Purcell, directed by Mark Morris at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus, through Oct. 7. Tickets are $42-$110. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Faye Carroll and her Trio featuring Frederick Harris on the piano at 8 and 10 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Evelie Posch and Brook Schoenfield at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Bulk at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dougie MacLean at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Cost is $27.50-$28.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Omnesia, Holden, Future Action Villans at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Jarrett Cherner Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Arlington Houston Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dangerous Rhythm: Tim Fox at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Misner & Smith, acoustic rock, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 558-0881. 

Deep Hello, Alexis Harte, Steve Taylor-Ramirez at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

While it Lasts, See it Through, New Soldiers 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. 

A Tribute to Tony Williams with Allan Holdsworth, Alan Pasqua Group, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, OCT. 1 

CHILDREN 

Circus for Arts in the Schools with Jeff Raz, clown, and much more at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at Kofman Auditorium, 2200 Central Ave., between Oak and Walnut Ave., Alameda. Tickets are $10-$12.50. Children under 3 free. 587-3399. www.circusforarts.org 

Bongo Love Band at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

“Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$18. 925-798-1300. 

THEATER 

“Pagbabalik” A Filipino-American multi-disciplinary play at 7 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. www.lapena.org 

FILM 

Taiwan Film Festival “Viva Tonal-The Dance Age” at 7:30 and “The Strait Story” at 9:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Durant Ave. 

The Mechanical Age “Pandora’s Box: The Engineer’s Plot” and “The General Line” at 2:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mutabaruka, dub poet, at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Four Flavors of Jazz, new talent from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and veterans from 2 to 6 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. 238-3052.  

Live Oak Concert with Rebecca Rust, ‘cello, Friedrich Edelmann, basson, and Vera Breheda, piano at 7:30 pm. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. 

Brand Nubian at 9 p.m. at 2232 MLK, 2232 Martin Luther King Blvd, Oakland. Cost is $10-$12. 384-7874.  

Shooglenifty at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jonathan Kreisberg Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Vegitation, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10, or $20 including 8 p.m. poetry reading with Mutabaruka. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Paul H. Taylor & The Montara Mountain Boys at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Hernan Gamboa, Venezuelan folk music, at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373.  

MONDAY, OCT. 2 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Whitework Embroidery” opens at Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles, 2982 Adeline St. and runs through Feb. 5. Hours are Mon.-Sat. noon to 6 p.m. Free. lacismuseum.org 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: Works by Bay Area Student Visionaries at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Last Word Poetry Reading with Patricia Edith and Jan Steckel at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Neil Gaiman reads from “Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders” at 7 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $10. 559-9500. 

Readings from “The Womanist” Mills College Literary Journal at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Khalil Shaheed, all ages jam, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Three Sounds: Melody of China with guests Gene Colman and Wei Wu at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jimmy Bosch at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

“You’re going to talk to me! Another happy day!” Samuel Beckett’s heroine Winnie addresses her seldom-seen husband Willie after he’s finally emitted a syllable. 

But the talking—and most of the very local action—is Winnie’s, primarily, as Beckett’s last full-length play centers on this older woman’s predicament, trapped to the waist in a mound of earth, and on the soliloquy-like monologues she delivers to make sense of it all and carry on and find happiness. 

Visiting Russian performer Oleg Liptsin’s very fine theatrical conceit, that of playing Winnie in a modern form of the Kabuki onnagata (male actor playing a stylized woman), accompanied complementarily by Jayne Entwistle (of Big City Improv) as Willie, only adds to Happy Days’ spare, elegant poetry that pares existence to the bone.  

This balancing act between absurd humor and a strangely familiar pathos comes to the Berkeley City Club, presented by Antares Ensemble as a benefit for PAAP—a scholarship fund to send Berkeley and Oakland students to UC—one night only, Saturday Sept. 30, after closing a very short run this Thursday at the Shelton Theatre in downtown San Francisco.  

Liptsin has directed at Shelton on previous visits, and his production of Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse is due to open there Oct. 7. But he seldom performs here, and to see him essay the female lead of this modern classic (which he directed earlier this year at the Beckett Centenary Festival in Krakow) is to witness a sterling example of the innovations of Russian theatrical technique that trace back to V. S. Meyerhold, to his student Eisenstein and its adaptation to Soviet film, to Bio-Mechanics and Eccentrism—much-heralded styles that we hear of, but seldom see, except second (or third) hand. 

Liptsin’s the genuine article, and though the rigors of Winnie’s predicament prevent him from employing the more acrobatic means of his style, the range and play of expressions on the living mask of his/Winnie’s face, as well as the vigor of gesture (hands darting in and out of a handbag, where the things rummaged up—a toothbrush, a compact, a tiny .22 pistol—serve as the only props in the barren landscape of bare stage that’s backdrop to The Heap) and the vocal expression are athletic enough for a dozen other shows of physical theater. 

Beckett wrote Happy Days in English, after having written Waiting for Godot and Endgame (his two other full-length plays) and most of the rest of his dramatic and fictional prose work from the late 1940s to 1960 in French. 

It premiered in New York, though Beckett was more closely associated with its first Paris production, in which Roger Blin directed Madeleine Renaud as Winnie, with her husband, the great mime Jean-Louis Barrault, as Willie. When he later directed the play himself, Beckett, who said he tried to direct his own works as though someone else had written them, and indeed felt that time had made it as if someone else had, changed both text and stage directions, contrary to the general impression that he was an absolutist in the literal presentation of his plays as written. 

Liptsin has cut Happy Days somewhat, and added a kind of denouement, not so much to the text as to its style of presentation. The result plays up Happy Days’ curiously wry charm. 

“Theater is a game in liberation,” Liptsin says, “and to liberate oneself, one needs distancing, a detached position ... the mask from theater tradition is enormously inspiring.” 

“Earth, you old extinguisher!” Liptsin, expressing Beckett’s eloquent Anglo-Irish, the heir to the Enlightenment idiom of Swift, Goldsmith, Burke and Bishop Berkeley, delivers the lines in Slavic rhythm and accent, rendering the tiniest nuance with his torso, long arms and hands, the angle of his head, the corners of his eyes and mouth—finally, the face alone. The audience seems to laugh serially at the lines and expressions, then falls into a rapt silence.  

When Beckett’s plays are done like this, as poetry of the stage, there’s none of that nervous questioning of what it all means that dogs so many productions, so many discussions. It’s all right there, not transparent but palpably present, and as mysterious as life itself, just as theater is both immediate and yet always something else. 

Beckett, whose “minimalism” has become a proverbial cliche, expressed his own views on meaning when he said that if he knew what it meant, he would have stated it in the play, and that his work was solely made up of “fundamental sounds (no pun intended),” and that it was up to critics and the audience to search for meaning, if they wanted to, and if they had qualms, “provide their own aspirin.” 

HAPPY DAYS 

8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30 at Berkeley City Club.  

Sliding scale, $9-25. Parking, $5. 

(415) 531-8454 or www.antaresensemble.org. 

Milarepa, a new film by Tibetan lama and actor/director Netken Chokling, will show at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30 at Wheeler Hall Auditorium on the UC campus.  

The screening is sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies and is presented in association with the Mill Valley Film Festival.  

Milarepa premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, after which Chokling set out to distribute the film himself. The first-time director is taking his film around the country in a series of benefit screenings. 

The story concerns the formative years in the life of one of Tibet’s most revered saints. Milarepa came from wealth, but when his father died, Milarepa and his mother were left in the care of in-laws who stole their money and treated them like peasant slaves.  

When his mother urges him to exact revenge by studying sorcery, Milarepa journeys to the home of a great master and becomes his student. Eventually he returns to the village of his in-laws and uses his powers to stir up a storm to destroy it. But revenge proves hollow, and the film concludes with Milarepa’s realization that vengeance and destruction are futile. Part two, due in 2009, will pick up the story from here.  

Tickets are $15, with all proceeds benefiting the Conservancy of Tibetan Art and Culture and Orphan Project. For more information, see www.milarepamovie.com.

Another weekend, another film festival.  

This time it’s the Taiwan Film Festival, held on the UC campus at the Berkeley Art Museum and at Pacific Film Archive Friday, Sept. 29 through Sunday, Oct. 1. 

The festival’s theme is “Beyond the New Wave” and features eight documentary films selected to demonstrate the range and vitality of contemporary Taiwanese filmmaking. 

The “New Wave” refers to Taiwanese films of the 1980s by directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang, films that took the country’s film industry beyond the formulaic teen romance and kung-fu features that dominated the country’s output in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The New Wave films instead took a more realistic approach, delving into Taiwanese history and depicting the lives of ordinary people.  

In recent years, affordable digital technology has fostered a boom in Taiwanese documentary filmmaking, but these films rarely make it to U.S. theaters. These screenings, several of which feature the directors in person, represent the only chances Bay Area moviegoers may get to see any of these engaging films.  

The screenings are divided between the Berkeley Art Museum (2621 Durant Ave.) and the Pacific Film Archive theater (2575 Bancroft Way). For more information, see http://2006tff.blogspot.com.

Resurrecting a book is probably like raising Lazarus. It can happen, but only with a little divine intervention. On the other hand, there are scientifically documented cases—like Their Eyes Were Watching God (and indeed all the works  

of Zora Neale Hurston)—in which books have been resurrected and have stayed with us. So it is with both fear and hope that I will now, ladies and gentlemen, attempt to raise a book from the dead. 

This book really is dead but should not be. Very occasionally you can find a copy in a used bookstore, but the only good sources for copies are libraries and the various online consortiums like abebooks.com and alibris.com. Nonetheless, this is a book worth searching out. The Ninth Wave, published in 1956 by late Berkeley Political Science Professor Eugene Burdick was, according to the cover blurb of my old paperback, a best seller, but I’ve never met a single soul, besides the friend who gave me the book, who has ever read it. 

Burdick achieved much more fame with his books Fail-Safe (with Harvey Wheeler) and The Ugly American (with William Lederer), bona fide best sellers in 1962 and 1959, respectively. His life was rather short, 1918 to 1965, but Burdick’s interests ranged far. He was a Rhodes Scholar; one of his stories appeared in the 1947 O’Henry Prize Stories; and he studied American voting behavior. An excellent short biography of him appears on the UC Berkeley “In Memoriam” website. 

The story concerns high school surfing buddies in Southern California beginning in 1939—how cool is that? In fact, on the web you will find the book frequently mentioned on surfing sites. And in the 25 year interval between when I first read, and then reread, the book, surfing was one aspect that stuck out in my mind. However, surfing is really just the frame of the book. It’s not a book about surfing, although the passages on the water are incredibly lyrical and evocative. 

The friends, Hank and Mike, go off to Stanford (now just calm down, you Old Blues; after all Burdick was a professor at Cal, not Stanford). Hank becomes a doctor, Mike a lawyer and political behind-the-scenes man. The book’s got everything: class and race issues at Stanford, surfing, Hollywood, Coachella Valley, Fresno, Highway 99, Malibu, communists, the wine country, South of Market winos, North Beach, World War II, big time politics, California land grabs, sex. 

The first half is epic in its complexity: Hank’s early years in his grandparent’s boardinghouse in North Dakota; his ending up in high school in Southern California; Mike’s unhappy socialist father; Mike’s affair with his high school English teacher, and later, Mike’s convincing a drunk to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.  

Actually, I think that’s part of its problem. There’s just too much; you get exhausted after a while, and put the book down. Then the next section keeps you up late into the night. It wants to be a serious novel, and it is, but it often reads like a pot boiler, and it seems to be one part Frank Norris and one part Raymond Chandler. 

The cover of my Dell paperback edition (“5th BIG PRINTING”) from 1963 doesn’t help sort out the various strands. A blurb from the Chicago Tribune appears above the title: “A powerful novel … Violent actions, startling sexual episodes … bold, brash.” (Lest a small percentage of you get carried away by the “startling sexual episodes.” They were probably startling in 1956. Today, not so much. Not bad, however.) 

And the cover art is an absolute cross between the cover of All the Kings Men and the poster for From Here to Eternity (Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in the surf). Seriously, couple in the surf and politician in front of the microphone. No wonder, then, that the book has fallen on hard times. 

But the strength of the book is that it makes us see our world through new eyes. Some great books, like Their Eyes Were Watching God, tell us a story we didn’t know; others, like these, tell us a story we think we know. And we soon learn that we really didn’t know it at all. The Ninth Wave seems frighteningly modern. Actually, I think it  

speaks more to us today than perhaps it would have before 9/11. Mike devours everything he can read at Stanford, (while Hank devours anything he can eat) and slowly develops an operating principle for his life. We see the first flowering of the principle in a very discomfiting passage. 

While at Stanford, Mike and Hank visit their philosophy professor, Moon, ostensibly to talk about some point from class, but the conversation takes a nasty turn, and as they leave, Hank says: 

“You son of a bitch. You had to let him know that you know he is a queer. Is that the only reason you stopped by his office?’ 

“I don’t get it,” [Mike said]. “Being queer is all right, we say. Maybe it’s better than being normal. Maybe it’s being superior. But we can’t talk about this fine thing. It’s very bad to mention to a queer that he possesses this fine thing.” 

“That’s not why you said it; to be nice and conversational,” Hank said wearily. “You said it to hurt him … You want to see if you can break through and find something that a person is scared of.’ 

Find the thing that people are afraid of and you can control them: 

“I just start to itch with curiosity when I see a guy with a perfect little world, everything consistent, everything balanced … the guy happy in the middle of the world. I don’t believe in it. I have to see if it’s real.” 

“And is it?” 

“No, It never is. Everybody is always scared of something.” 

Although it has taken a long time to get to this point in the novel, this idea—everyone is afraid of something; you just have to find out what it is—becomes the basis for the rest of the book.  

At every turn, Mike pushes. He gets engaged to the daughter of Napa Valley winemakers and here’s what he says to his future in-laws: 

I don’t know about breeding and good environment … Not a thing. But I know something about you. I know that both of you came from good old California families who left you a lot of money. And I know that neither one of you has earned a cent in your life. You even lose a couple thousand dollars a year on this vineyard.  

And I know that you run the vineyard because it’s fashionable and you can play like the country squire and his lady. And I also know that you run a winery so that you can have a good excuse to lap up a couple of gallons of wine every day. 

The first half is fascinating, but it’s the second half that becomes gripping, as Mike plays kingmaker for John Cromwell, a well-to-do lawyer whose main talent is that he’s a riveting speaker with populist notions. What’s disturbing is that Mike’s philosophy—and that’s really not the right word for it—is not in the service of anything, neither right nor left. Not to make himself governor or to help people. It’s just because he can do it. 

Mike doesn’t rely on traditional politicking, but on the then-newfangled opinion polls and the shaping of a candidate to fit the polls. How Mike manipulates the Democratic nominating convention, and then the primary, is amazing and horrifyingly realistic, Premonitions of our last two national elections—as well as our California ones—run throughout the book. “Most voters don’t care about politics,” says Mike. “…They vote out of habit, because they’ve been told to vote. And they always vote Democrat or Republican. …But the really important ones are the eight or ten per cent that’re scared. They’re the real independents, the people whose vote can be changed.” 

One can’t help but think of those polls that showed a substantial “undecided” group in the last election, when the rest of us were wondering how in the world someone could not know what to think about the two candidates. Mike says that’s it’s no longer political corruption that runs things—it’s money, power, influence, and manipulation of the voters. It’s all legal. 

Burdick’s training as a political scientist infuses the entire book, albeit in an extremely depressing way. It is most clear when Mike is explaining the results of some polls he has conducted. He’s talking to Hank and to Georgia, with whom he is about to launch a desultory and long-lasting affair. She’s the daughter of a wealthy Jewish movie mogul. The second question in Mike’s poll is “In general, what sorts of things do you worry about?” 

‘I don’t believe it,’ Georgia said. She stared at the paper. ‘Only eight per cent of them worry most about war and depression and the atom bomb. The rest are worried about their jobs and themselves.’ 

The third question is “What group in general do you think is most dangerous to the American way of life?” 

“The answers always fall into five categories,” Mike said. “Just like clockwork. First, the people who say Big Business or Wall Street of the Bankers or Rockefellers or General Motors. I call that the ‘Big Business’ category. Second is the ‘Trade Unions’ category. That’s obvious…Third is the “Communist Conspiracy’ category. Fourth is a category you won’t like much. It’s the ‘Jewish Conspiracy’ category.  

That’s where you put the people who say the Jews or International Jewry or Bernard Baruch. The fifth group is the “Religious Conspiracy’ … people who say the Pope or the Catholics or ‘those snotty Episcopalians’ or ‘those Mormons and all their wives’ … that sort of thing.” 

Ask the question “What group in general do you think is most dangerous to the American way of life?” today and just substitute a few words in the answers: “Muslim,” “Al Queda,” “gay,” “immigrant,” “environmentalist.” The only ones that we don’t need to change are “Big Business” and “Jews,” I guess. 

Not as much as changed in 45 years as we would like to think. As I was rereading the book, I could hear echoes of a recent TV ad proclaiming “Governor  

Schwarzenegger’s secret plan to discredit California nurses”—or something to that effect.  

I’m not normally a person who gives much credence to secret plans, but The Ninth Wave has given me pause. 

The book is not all politics, however. There are many telling small moments, moments that raise it beyond (if not above) being “simply” a novel about politics: love, marriage, friendship are all major concerns here. Mike is not “evil” in any traditional sense-perhaps “amoral” is as close as we can come-and along with his brilliance and single mindedness, there is an overriding sense of emptiness. Although Hank drifts in and out of the novel (which is another problematic aspect, I think), it’s clear that the  

bond he and Mike share is extraordinary, and at the very end, devastating. Mike’s wife seems to accept his affair with Georgia: it’s clear-to us and to Georgia-that Mike is not going to leave his wife. And there are scenes of great emotional power beyond political maneuvering: a fight with some thugs on a beach; a card game in a dorm room. At one point, Mike and Georgia drive out Wilshire Blvd., past UCLA, and then past the Veteran’s Home that’s still there. Georgia comments that the veterans must hate it and Mike asks how she knows: 

I guess by looking at them. I think the sunshine and palm trees and salt air frustrates them. When you’re dying you ought to be in a cold, dreary climate. It would make it easier. They ought to build the veterans’ hospitals in the mountains and out on the deserts … where it’s lonely and bleak. It must be hard to sit around in the sun and watch people going by in sport shirts and know you’re going to die. 

That seems to me to one of the clear Raymond Chandler moments, of which there are many. Georgia herself, for instance, is one of those slightly damaged but strong women who could easily be spending her evenings with Phillip Marlowe. The book is for all its emphasis on politics a very atmospheric book about California. 

It’s astounding that Fail-Safe and The Ugly American were both made into movies, while The Ninth Wave has disappeared. It begs to be made into a movie—but the kind only Northern California’s own Saul Zaentz or Philip Kaufman could make: there’s a balance of depth of thought and great story telling that few directors could  

probably capture. (Saul and Philip, are you reading this?) 

If this novel were simply astonishing in its prescience, which it is, it would be worth resurrecting for that alone. But thankfully it’s more. Certainly, it should be on all “Best Books about California” lists, because the state is a major character. For all of its flaws, the book does have a claim to deserving a new life: it provokes the reader to look-at both the physical and political environments-through a new lens.  

Today, the story itself not new; we’re living it in many ways, but the books help us to see that. 

I’d like to be able to make some kind of Berkeley connection with the California Academy of Sciences’ new exhibit, “Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries.” But geology is against me. There was no there here during the dinosaur era: the coast of North America ended about where the Sierra Nevada is now. Westward, there were volcanic island arcs, ancient equivalents of Japan or the Philippines, then open ocean. 

“People ask where the California dinosaurs are,” says Peter Roopnarine, Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology, who studies prehistoric mass extinctions. “We’ve only found bits of 12 individuals.” 

Their fragmentary remains had been washed into the Jurassic or Cretaceous seas, entombed in marine deposits that make up the bedrock of the Central Valley and the Coast Ranges.  

Giant reptiles of other kinds abounded in those warm waters, feeding on fish, squidlike creatures, and each other: fish-shaped ichthyosaurs, lizardlike mosasaurs, long-necked plesiosaurs (the classic Loch Ness Monster types), and enormous sea turtles. But those beasts just don’t have that dinosaur charisma. So the Academy’s exhibit, a collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History and Chicago’s Field Museum, focuses on the land-dwelling saurians we all know and love. 

It’s an effective mixture of old bones (or their replicas) and state-of-the-art technology. 

“The exhibit was designed to highlight new aspects of dinosaur paleontology,” Roopnarine explains. “There have been changes in the way we think about dinosaurs. They were faster and more powerful than we thought, and their behavior was more complex.”  

So there’s an emphasis on biomechanics that was lacking in older exhibits. Along with the obligatory Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, there’s a one-seventh scale model that demonstrates how T. rex would have walked. The life-sized fiberglass-and-steel Apatosaurus (the dinosaur formerly known as Brontosaurus) skeleton was generated from a digital model; on the wall behind it, computer animation builds the behemoth’s neck, from the vertebrae through the layers of muscle. 

As for behavior, the trophy wall of horned-dinosaur skulls frames a discussion of what those nose spikes and neck shields were for: protection against predators, or competition within the species as in modern horned mammals? Roopnarine speculates it was a bit of both. 

The section on trace fossils spotlights a replica of a fossil trackway from Davenport Ranch in Texas: a herd of sauropods, adults and young traveling together, left their footprints on an ancient floodplain, as did the bipedal carnivores that stalked them. 

Surprisingly, there’s not much in the exhibit about the evidence that some dinosaurs—like the duckbill Maiasaura, the “good mother lizard”—cared for their young, as living alligators, crocodiles, and birds do. And I didn’t see any coprolites: fossilized dino dung can be very informative. 

Less spectacular than the monstrous bones, but fascinating to any dinosaur aficionado, is a slice of grayish rock from New Jersey that includes a layer marking the slice of geological time when the dinosaurs, and a host of other species, went extinct: the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.  

Here, come to think of it, is the Berkeley connection: it was UC’s Luis and Walter Alvarez who first made the case for an extraterrestrial impact as the agent of extinction. There’s compelling physical evidence for this, but massive volcanic eruptions and changes in sea level may also have played a part; the exhibit explains the competing hypotheses. Roopnarine says scientists disagree as to whether dinosaurs were already in decline when the asteroid or comet struck, but that recent research supports continued diversity right up to the end. 

My personal favorite, though, was the lovingly detailed reconstruction of a swampy forest in what is now China’s Liaoning Province about 130 million years ago. It’s an old-fashioned diorama, with reconstructions of flora (ginkgo trees, horsetails, giant fernlike plants) and fauna (insects, frogs and salamanders, unprepossessing early mammals, the largest about badger-sized). 

And of course dinosaurs, and birds. It would be reasonable to say and/or birds: “Modern birds are firmly nested within the dinosaurs,” says Roopnarine.  

Birds are the only dinosaur lineage that survived the Great Dying. Feathers apparently evolved some 150 million years ago, long before flight: they may have functioned as insulation or in courtship displays. Even T. rex may have been downy in its youth. The avian dinosaurs of Liaoning were weird and wonderful creatures: four-winged gliders, terrestrial insect-catchers, a long-clawed planteater that had evolved from carnivorous ancestors (as, millions of years later, did the giant panda).  

There’s something here to appeal to dinophiles of any age. The exhibit, at the Academy’s temporary quarters at 875 Howard St. in San Francisco, runs through Feb. 4, 2007. 

For information, visit the Academy’s website: http://calacademy.org. The American Museum of Natural History’s site (www.naturalhistory.com) has much more detail, including interviews with Mark Norrell (who has done field work in Liaoning), Niles Eldredge (of punctuated equilibrium fame), and other paleontological luminaries. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan  

A scale model in the exhibit at the Academy of Sciences demonstrates the tyrannosaur’s gait.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 26 

Tuesday is for the Birds An early morning walk for birders through Bay Area parklands. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. This week we will visit Point Pinole. For meeting location or to borrow binoculars, call 525-2233.  

Nature Meditation Walk at Lake Temescal Enjoy Lake Temescal through this meditative walk, using the words of Henry David Thoreau to guide us. Meet at the south entrance at 9:30 a.m. Registration required. 521-6887.  

WriterCoach Connection seeks volunteers to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. Training from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. For information contact 524-2319. writercoachconnect@yahoo.com 

“Encounter Point” A documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Q & A with the filmaker after the 7:30 screening. www.encounterpoint.com 

Albany Library Homework Center is open from 3 to 5 p.m., Tues. and Thurs. for students in third through fifth grades. Emphasis is placed on math and writing skills. No registration is required. 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext 17.  

Torture Teach-in and Vigil with Daniel Ellsberg at 12:30 p.m. at the fountain on UC Campus, Bancroft at College. 649-0663. 

“Older and Wiser: Basic Legal Knowledge for Seniors” Estate planning for seniors at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-5190. 

Choosing Infant Care A workshop for parents at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave., Oakland. 658-7353. www.bananasinc.org  

PC Users Group problem solving session with Tom Cromarte at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St., near corner of Eunice. Come with your questions and problems for Tom’s help and invite your friends. Free. MelDancing@aol.com  

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. 

Handbuilding Ceramics Class from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, except for materials and firing charges. 525-5497. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

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

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 27  

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll learn about spiders, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, at 3:15 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684.  

Native Plant Nursery Volunteers Needed for plant propagation and transplanting, watering, and other maintenance associated with growing native wetland plants. From 1 to 3 p.m. at the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. For information call 452-9261 ext. 109. www.savesfbay.org/bayevents 

Circus Circus with Lovee the Clown, face painting and more at 11 a.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. 

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. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Discussion of the November Ballot Propositions Sponsored by the Berkeley Grey Panthers at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

“Help Democrats Take Back Congress” at Bay Area Political Forum at 7 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. 

“The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

League of Women Voters “California Clean Money Campaign” with Trent Lange, at 5 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $15. For reservations call 843-8828. 

“The Founding Fathers’ Religious Reasons for Separation of Church and State” with Barbara McGraw, Professor of Business Administration, Saint Mary’s College of California, at 4 p.m. at 110 Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-1640. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11” by David Ray Griffin at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito. 433-2911. 

WriterCoach Connection seeks volunteers to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. Training session at 6:30 p.m. For information call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Spirited Child Series Learn how temperament affects children’s behavior and how to best live and work with inborn traits at 7 p.m. at Bananas. To register call 752-6150. If you need child care, at $5 per child, call 658-7353.  

New to DVD: “Three Times” at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $3-$5. 848-0237. 

“Introduction to New Body–New Mind” with Robert Litman at 7 p.m. The Teleosis Institute, 1521 5th St., corner of Cedar St., Upstairs Unit B. Cost is $5-$10. RSVP to 558-7285. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Current Events Discussion Group meets at 7 p.m. at the Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. 597-4972. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 28 

Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors with Iraq War resister, Latino activist and former Navy Fire Controlman, Pablo Paredes at 6 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street between Telegraph and Broadway, Oakland. Donation $5-$10, no one turned away. 465-1617. 

Radio Zapatista Report back and benefit for health care in autonomous Zapatista Communities at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Shopping with the Chef All-organic shopping advice with Lucy Aghadjian at 4 p.m. at the North Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 548-3333. 

Easy Does It Disability Assistance Board of Directors Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1744A University Ave., behind the Lutheran Church between Grant and McGee. All welcome. 845-5513. www.easyland.org 

Free SAT Strategy Session from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 526-7512. 

Woman’s Heart Health Panel discussion at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Volunteer at Lawrence Hall of Science Open house for new volunteers at 2 p.m. or Sun. at 2 p.m. For information call 643-5471.  

FRIDAY, SEPT. 29 

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 

First Amendment Assembly Speakers include Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post; Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers; Judith Miller, former New York Times reporter; Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary Magazine essayist; and Dan Weintraub, political columnist for the Sacramento Bee Fri. from 3:15 to 8:45 p.m. and Sat. from 8:30 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. at UC Graduate School of Journalism, North Gate Hall. Cost is $50. To register see www.cfac.org 

“Bridging the Chasm between Islam and the West” with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Founder & Director of the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. www.uucb.org  

BOSS’s Homeless Graduation and the 60th birthday of Executive Director boona cheema at 6 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. For tickets and information call 649-1930.  

“East Asia in Transition: Comprehensive Security in the Pacific Rim” Conference from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Toll Room, Alumni House, UC Campus. 642-2809. http://ieas.berkeley. 

edu/events/2006.09.29.html 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Bart Ney of CalTrans on “Retrofitting the Bay Bridge.” 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.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 30 

2nd Annual Berkeley Juggling and Unicycling Festival Sat. and Sun. beginning at 10 a.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose Ave., with a show at 7:30 p.m. www.berkeleyjuggling.org 

Take Back the House with the Progressive Democrats of the East Bay and East Bay Young Democratic Club at 3 p.m. at Albatross Pub, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $30-$35. 601-6456. www.pdeastbay.org 

Community Reading of “Funny in Farsi” and “The Circuit” at 11 a.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6147. 

IMPACT Bay Area’s Advocates for Women Awards Luncheon and Auction from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Scott’s Seafood Restaurant, Oakland. Cost is $65. www. impactbayarea.org 

“Untraining White Liberal Racism” An introductory workshop from 1 to 5 p.m. at Berkeley High School Library, 1980 Allston Way. Cost is $10-$50 sliding scale, no one turned away. 235-3957.  

“Positively Ageless: A Celebration of Art and Aging” Art auction and benefit for Adult Day Services of Alameda County from 6 to 8 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717 Fourth St. Tickets are $25. For reservations call 577-3543. 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.  

Don’t be Rattled Learn about the rattlesnake, one of the Bay Area’s most misunderstood inhabitants at 10:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Evergreen Shrubs for Structural & Architectural Solutions at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

“Creating An Ecological House” with Skip Wentz on natural building materials, solar design and alternative construction methods, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. 525-7610. 

“Special Circumstances” A film on Héctor Salgado, Chilean political prisoner, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Discussion with filmmakers will follow. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Asthma Walk at Lake Merritt supports asthma research & education. Check in at 9 a.m., walk starts at 10 a.m. For information and directions call 893-5474. www.alaebay.org 

Passport Fair with information from Lonely Planet authors about planning your next trip from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Oakland Main Post Office, 1675 7th St., Oakland. 

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

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

Animal Communication for healing or therapy at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave. Cost is $25 for 15 minute session, 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.  

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. 

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

Yoga for Peace at 9:30 a.m. at Ohlone Park, MLK at Hearst. Bring a yoga mat, warm blanket, and peace sign.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, OCT. 1 

People’s Park Community Garden Day Come join other gardeners as we spiffy up the west end Community Garden in People’s Park from noon to 4 p.m. 658-9178. 

Tenth Anniversary Celebration of Halcyon Commons Park Block party between Prince & Webster, from 1 to 4 p.m. with music, fun activities for children, and program on the history of the community-designed park. Free. 849-1969. 

Owls and Oaks Learn the folk legends and the true stories of owls at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Spinning a Yarn Learn how yarn is made on a spinning wheel and try your hand with a spindle from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Otsukimi Japanese Moon Viewing Festival at 5:30 p.m. at the Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Belleview Ave., Oakland. 482-5896. www.oakland-fukuoka.org 

Animal Day at the Kensington Farmers Market to support the work of local rescue groups, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave. at Amherst, behind Ace Hardware. 528-4346. 

Vernon Wenrich Memorial Picnic will be held at 1 p.m. to honor the life of a man who served as counselor at Berkeley High School for over 40 years, many of those as head counselor. For more details call Marjorie Wenrich at 206-355-5197.  

Volunteer at Lawrence Hall odf Science Open House for new volunteers from 2 to 3:30 p.m. For informati`on call 643-5471. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

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

Kickabout at Codornices Park Soccer for all, skill and talent not required. For more information contact cambour@hotmail.com  

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “Sustained by Joy” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, OCT. 2 

Evening of Conscience to Benefit World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime with Daniel Ellsberg, Boots Riley, and Alice Walker at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave. Suggested donation $15-$50. 415-864-5153. 

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. 

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. 

Lead Abatement Repairs Find out about funding for lead hazard repairs for rental properties with low-income tenants or vacant units, from 4 to 6 p.m. at 2000 Embarcadero, #300, Oakland. 567-8280. 

TUESDAY, OCT. 3 

Tuesday is for the Birds An early morning walk for birders through Bay Area parklands. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. This week we will visit Arrowhead Marsh. For meeting location or to borrow binoculars, call 525-2233.  

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Torture Teach-in and Vigil with Father Louis Vitale at 12:30 p.m. at the fountain on UC Campus, Bancroft at College. 649-0663. 

Discussion Salon on Clean Money and Campaign Reform at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut.  

Sleep Soundly Seminar A free class on how hypnosis can help you sleep at 6:30 p.m. at 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland. To register call 465-2524. 

Guitars in the Classroom Free music and guitar classes for public school elementary teachers, beginners at 5:30 and intermediate at 6:30 p.m. at Lakeview Elementary School, 746 Grand Ave., Oakland. Classes run for 8 weeks. Advanced registration is required. 848-9463. 

Albany Library Homework Center is open from 3 to 5 p.m., Tues. and Thurs. for students in third through fifth grades. No registration is required. 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext 17. 

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. 

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. 

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

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

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6195.  

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27, at 7 p.m., at 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 28, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 22 

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 

Berkeley Rep “Mother Courage” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St., through Oct. 22. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

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 

“Church House, Dope House, Dream House” a one-woman show by Yehmanja, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $25. www.churhchousedopehousedreamhose.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “The Orchid Sandwich” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 21. at 951 Pomona Ave. El Cerrito. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theatre “Colorado” A dark comedy about celebrity worship, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. Runs through Oct. 28. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

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 

“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. Gallery open Thurs.-Fri. 4 to 6 p.m. and Sun. noon to 4 p.m. 532-9142. www.peraltahacienda.org 

“The Halloween Show” Mixed media group show. Reception at 7 p.m. at Eclectix, 7523 Fairmont Ave., El Cerrito. Runs through Nov. 4. 364-7261. 

FILM 

The Cinema of Jea-Pierre and Luc Dardenne “La promesse” at 7 p.m. and “Je pense a vous” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Oakland S.O.U.P.: Sing, Open Up, and Poetize, with Jan Steckel at 6:30 p.m. at Temescal Café. 4920 Telegraph Ave. selene@matchlessgoddess.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Deep Roots Dance “Envoi” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Eighth Street Studio Theater, 2525 8th St. Cost is $10-$15.  

Toshi Reagon at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Savion Glover, tap dancer, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $28-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Tom Peron/Bud Spangler Interplay Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Pele Juju with the Shelley Doy Extet at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15-$17. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Amy Meyers and Judea Eden at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Storyhill, contemporary folk duo, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Matt Renzie Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Johnny Reyes and Amy Obenski at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Guerilla Hi-Fi, Double Stroke, Myles Boisen’s Past-Present-Future at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Allegiance, Ceremony, Acts of Sedition, benefit for the American Cancer Society, 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. 

Native Elements, live roots reggae, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$9. 548-1159.  

San Pablo Project at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lava Nights, One in the Chamber at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $8. 451-8100.  

Karrin Allyson at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 23 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Face of Poetry” Photographs by Margaretta Mitchell. Artist talk at 3 p.m. in the Community Room 3rd Flr., Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., through Oct. 30. 981-6100. 

“Flowers and Foliage” watercolors by Joanna Katz. Reception at 3 p.m. at Back in Action Chiropractic Center, 2500 Martin Luther King Jr Way. 

“Symbols and Myths” Chinese Hill Tribe Batiks and Embroideries. Reception at 5 p.m. at Ethic Arts and Red Gingko, 1314 10th St. 527-5270. 

FILM 

The Cinema of Jea-Pierre and Luc Dardenne “Rosetta” at 6:30 p.m. and “Falsch” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Peter Phillips, Dennis Loo and others talk about “Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Robert Harris describes “Imperium” the story of Marcus Cicero’s rise to power, at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Brian Daffern introduces his new fantasy-adventure “The Ambient Knight” at 2 p.m. at the ASUC Bookstore, Bancroft and Telegraph.  

Rhythm & Muse features Upsurge! with jazz poets Zigi Lowenberg and Raymond Nat Turner, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., between Eunice & Rose Sts. 644-6893.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concerts presents Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St., between Durant and Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$12. For reservations call 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

One Soul Sounding Concert and Ritual Autumn Equinox Celebration at 7:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$22. www.lisarafel.com  

Bryan Baker, piano and Rod Lowe, tenor, at 8 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensingon. Tickets are $15-$50. 525-0302. 

“A Walk by the Sea” World dance and music performance by Mahealani Uchiyama and guests, at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $20. 845-2605. www.mahea.com 

“Movements of Bliss” Sacred dance of India by the Odissi Vilas Dance Company at 7 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. 415-456-2799. 

Bayanihan Philippine National Dance Company at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988.  

Bird by Snow, Spencer Owen, and James Moore at 8 p.m. at The Living Room, 3230 Adeline St. Donation $2. 601-5774. 

Los Boleros at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568.  

Rhonda Benin & Soulful Strut at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

Cyndi Harvey and Johnny Mac at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

David Jacobs-Strain, progressive roots and blues, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. 

Ken Berman Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Living Remix at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $8. 451-8100.  

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

KC Booker & Big Soul, Rock ‘n’ Roll Adventure Kids, Little Boy Blue, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Matt Morrish & Trinket Lover at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Tinkture, Toast Machine at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 24 

THEATER 

African-American Shakespeare Company “Taming of the Shrew” at 4 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd. Oakland. 238-7275.  

EXHIBITIONS  

“The Whole World is Watching” Peace and Social Justice movements of the 1960’s & 1970’s documentary photographs. Reception at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893.  

Judith Corning “Parklands” Reception with the artist at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

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

“Measure of Time” Guided tour at 2 p.m. lecture by Linda Dalrymple Henderson at 3 p.m at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

FILM 

The Mechanical Age “Sherlock Jr.” at 4 p.m. and “The Man with a Movie Camera” at 5:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Annual Grito de Lares Celebration from 4 to 7:30 p.m. p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568.  

“9/11 & American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out” at 7 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. School. Tickets are $15 in advance. 486-0698.  

Murray Silverstein reads “Any Old Wolf” and “Patterns of Home” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Benefit Classical and Jazz Concert to restore the 1909 Steinway at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, from 2 to 6 p.m. at 1924 Cedar. Donation $5. 841-4824. 

Rolando Villazón, tenor, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $68. 642-9988.  

Tilden Trio at 7 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost ia $10-$15. 845-1350. 

Opera at the Chimes: Scenes from Carmen at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $18-$22, includes reception. 836-6772. 

Sundays at Four Concert with oboist Laura Reynolds, clarinetist Bruce Foster, and the Sor Ensemble Series at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. Tickets are $18, children under 18 free. 559-2941.  

Crosspulse Rhythm Duo at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $7.50-$12.50. 925-798-1300. 

Vern Williams Memorial Concert at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Brazilian Soul Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged: The Whiskey Brothers at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Kenny Werner Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. 

Nate Lopez at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Zoe Ellis Group at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

MONDAY, SEPT. 25 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ayun Halliday reads from “Dirty Sugar Cookies” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

“The Myths and Reality of the Near-Death Experience” with author PMH Atwater at 7 p.m. at Unity, 2075 Eunice St. Donation $10. 523-4376. 

Poetry Express theme night on favorite poems at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

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.  

Musica ha Disconnesso at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Sarah Manning at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 26 

FILM 

Alternative Visions “Charming Augustine” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson talks about the mental and emotional loves of animals at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Maybeck Trio at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamberperform.org 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun Zydeco dance lesson a 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Beth Custer’s Clarinet Thing at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Randy Craig Trio at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Larry Coryell, Victor Bailey, Lenny White Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 27 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Colors” A group show by East Bay Women Artists opens at Royal Ground Gallery, 2058 Mountain Blvd., Montclair, Oakland. Exhibition runs to Jan. 7. 451-2661. 

FILM 

Celebrate Oaxaca! “Sketches of Juchitan” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Pirates and Piracy “Sonic Outlaws” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Writing Teachers Write” featuring Amy Brooks at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

John Stauber describes “The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“Iranian Voices in Diaspora” with Iranian writers including poets Persis Karim and Mahnaz Badihian and Persian-inspired music by Aleph Null at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with University Symphony Orchestra at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

UC Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Arwen Castellanos & Jorge Liceaga, film and concert celebrating Oaxaca at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Tribute to the Conga at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Izabella at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Maria Kalaniemi Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Larry Coryell, Victor Bailey, Lenny White Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 28 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “Love is a Dream House in Lorin” by Marcus Gardley, inspired by true stories of Berkeley’s historic Lorin District, Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Nov. 5. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

Civic Center Art Exhibition 2006-2007 Opening ceremony at 3 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Courtyard, 2180 Milvia St. RSVP to 981-7541. 

FILM 

The Mechanical Age “The Serial and the Mechanical Age” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Vangie Buell reads from her memoir of growing up in the Philippines “Twenty-five Chickens and a Pig for a Bride” at at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Laurence Juber, guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Wayward Monks at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Omar Ait Vimoun, Algerian Berber music on mandol and oud, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Is, The Bluegrass Revolution, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

A Tribute to Tony Williams with Allan Holdsworth, Alan Pasqua Group, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Film was the dominant art form of the 1920s, an international cultural phenomenon which, in the days before sound, was considered a universal language.  

No one seemed to have more fun with the form and its potential than the Germans, who exploited every camera angle, every trick of light, every effect—technical, psychological and otherwise—that the medium had to offer. 

Two rare German silents have been released by Kino that illustrate the point beautifully. Asphalt and Warning Shadows, masterpieces of Expressionism, take vastly different approaches to the form while reveling in its indulgences. 

If, as Godard said, the history of cinema is men photographing women, these two films fit the mold. Both feature luminous beauties in the lead roles, with the men around them driven nearly to ruin by desire and lust.  

Asphalt starts with a cinematic bang, with a rush of images merging and hurdling by in a stunning montage of the throbbing city, the hustle and bustle, the energy and the vice. Then, about 20 minutes in, it takes a step toward melodrama, but beautifully constructed and artful melodrama, with every furtive glance, every emotion, every moment drawn out for maximum effect. The plot is remarkably simple, and could be explained in 10 seconds. But it is not the story that matters so much as the manner in which it is conveyed. Director Joe May constructs the film like a master musician playing just a few notes but playing them with such virtuosity that a few notes are all that are needed.  

Warning Shadows is slightly less accessible but no less remarkable in its achievement. It is a purely visual film, with no intertitles to convey plot or dialogue—beyond the opening credits, that is, which feature each actor appearing on a proscenium, each introduced along with his shadow, for shadows prove to be characters as much as the people who cast them.  

The story concerns a woman and her husband. They are hosting a dinner party of her suitors. A traveling entertainer crashes the party and proceeds to put on a show of shadow puppetry, a show that plumbs the depths of each character’s consciousness. The shadows take on the semblance of reality, acting out a passion play that, in the best Expressionist fashion, gives shape to the tensions and desires in the minds of the party’s hosts and their guests. The husband, overcome with jealous rage, seeks revenge on his flirtatious wife and her ardent suitors, while her beauty and careless allure lead the men to destroy first her and then each other.  

The film was photographed by Fritz Arno Wagner, the famed cinematographer who also shot F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and Fritz Lang’s M. 

Expressionism can be an acquired taste, but it holds many of the same pleasures as American film noir: the overwrought emotion, the heightened reality, the dark shadows and shady characters. And these two films play up those qualities, creating strange, twisted, fever-pitched realities. It is an art that celebrates its own artifice. 

Fritz Lang is best known today for Metropolis, the 1927 science fiction classic that recently screened at Pacific Film Archive. The film has been tremendously popular throughout the decades, and the fact that much of the film has been lost, cut by censors and misguided studios, has only added to its allure. 

But the unfortunate result is that a misconception has developed over the years, leaving many modern viewers with the notion that Metropolis represents not only the best of Lang, but the best of silent cinema. 

As fine an achievement as Metropolis is, it is by no means the best film of its time. Not even close. Influential, yes. Enjoyable, yes. Well made, yes. But for the most part it is influential primarily in its own genre.  

Lang was hardly devoted to science fiction. In fact, he was primarily interested in realism; he wanted to tell stories rooted in the realities of Germany life. But Metropolis does contain many typical Lang characteristics: It is full of the sort of grand production values and plots that Lang could indulge in when backed by Ufa, the powerful and financially flush German studio that produced most of Lang’s early films.  

Lang made several long, somewhat overblown films for Ufa in the 1920s, including Die Nibelungen (1924), Spies (1928) and Woman in the Moon (1929), all of which have been previously released on DVD by Kino in excellent editions based on restored prints. But the best film he made in the silent era precedes all of these.  

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) catches Lang before his visions became quite so grandiose. It is pure Lang in so many ways: a pulpy, somewhat lowbrow story; a lengthy running time; an obsession with grand, symmetric imagery. Kino has just released the film in a newly restored version on DVD, tracking down more previously missing footage to make this the most complete version yet. The visual quality is spectacular, and the scoring is also excellent. And Kino has placed the two parts on two separate discs, reinforcing a detail that has been glossed over in some presentations: Dr. Mabuse is actually two films, released separately over a short period of time—the original Kill Bill. 

The only drawback is that the set contains no extra features. The previous DVD incarnation, released by Image Entertainment, boasted an excellent commentary track with historical background and insightful criticism. For those interested in delving deeper into this classic, that edition is still indispensable.  

The opening scenes of Mabuse quickly and brilliantly set the tone, establishing Mabuse’s master-of-disguise persona before diving immediately into intrigue with a sequence in which a government document is stolen and used by Mabuse to manipulate the stock market. It is a complex bit of choreography that features great use of Lang’s favored symmetric compositions, the most striking image being a trestle bridge that crosses the screen, framing beneath it a road on which a speeding automobile hurdles toward the camera, contrasting the horizontal rush of the train with the rapidly approaching vertical movement of the car. 

The sequence ends with the final result of the theft: a decimated stock exchange, empty except for the ominous superimposed face of the supercriminal Mabuse.  

Lang was bold and brash with his scope and subject matter—even more so with his own public persona—but despite these few examples, he was rarely daring in a technical sense. His camera rarely moves, his shots are rarely dynamic; indeed, they contain little of the style and flourish typical of German films of the period. Instead he holds the camera still, creating mostly static compositions, relying on character and context to hold the viewer’s attention. The idea was that surprising angles and compositions were too easily undermined by their overuse. Therefore a more restrained style would increase the impact of more experimental shots. However, when the actors are weak, the weakness of the technique reveals itself, especially when Lang chose to employ another of his vacuous paramours. But with Rudolf Klein-Rogge in the title role, Lang had found his true muse, an actor who could hold the camera’s attention.  

Those static, symmetric shots have their own power, but Lang overuses them. In fact, it can come as something of a relief when he veers from them, for then the film develops a more dynamic energy. Shots of the Excelsior Hotel, for instance, are photographed dead-on from the outside, the revolving door and sign center screen. Likewise the Andalusian nightclub. Until, that is, the maitre d’ takes Inspector Van Wenk out the back door to lead him to the illicit gambling den. Here Lang, just for a moment, embraces the Expressionist aesthetic of the era with an excellent composition: straight ahead, a balcony runs across the top of the screen, with a dark, shadowy staircase running down the right side of the frame. In the foreground, a decaying archway and pillars with peeling paint frame the scene as the two men traverse the frame from left to right, through the archway, behind the pillar, up the stairs and through a doorway. It is simple but immensely effective, taking what could have been a perfunctory moment and transforming it into something much more dramatically compelling. 

And this is where Lang truly excels: In taking relatively mundane, pulpish subject matter and elevating it to the point of artful melodrama. When he takes things too seriously he fails. Die Niebelungen collapses under the weight of its own gravity; Metropolis, which for the most part consists of fun, melodramatic silliness, is diminished by its trite, tacked-on message (“The mediator between Head and Hands must be the HEART!”). With Spies, Lang returned to the Mabuse mold, with Klein-Rogge again playing a criminal mastermind, but the film is somewhat less successful than the Mabuse films.  

Mabuse is pure schlock, but it is schlock of a high order. It was meant to reflect the tawdry side of the waning days of the Weimar Republic, but that intellectual aspect is hardly necessary to enjoy the movie. Indeed, it seems more like an after-the-fact rationalization for a wild, silly tale. In fact, the film really has more of the feel of a serial, and this may in fact be the best way to enjoy it, watching just a couple of acts at a time, as each act without fail ends with a cliffhanger. 

Eventually Lang would find himself on a tighter leash. Without Ufa’s backing—lost in part due to Metropolis’ extravagant budget—Lang was no longer able to indulge his every whim. The result were films in which he displayed remarkable economy and ingenuity, overcoming small budgets and limited resources with innovation and improvisation. The first of these, M (1931), Lang’s first sound film, is his best work. And this was followed by another Mabuse film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932). Both films catch Lang at his peak, with taught, economical visual storytelling combined with innovative use of sound. Lang counterpointed his sound effects with sequences of absolute silence, evincing a confidence and sophistication rare in the early sound era. These two films have none of Lang’s heavy-handed, plodding story development and few of his mind-numbing symmetric compositions, but instead transform their minimal resources into movies of maximum effect. Both have been previously released in excellent DVD editions by the Criterion Collection.  

Ranging from a violent clash between brothers in a quiet orchard, to edgy life at court under the onus of a suspicious usurper, to philosophical exile in the Forest of Arden where the usurper’s own brother, the deposed duke, has fled with his retinue, CalShakes’ As You Like It, directed by artistic director Jonathan Moscone, spreads out from a series of situations and encounters into a big show (if not quite a spectacle), incorporating a gypsy band, vocal renditions of The Bard’s sublime songs, a rather modest drag act, a little Big Time Wrestling, a good deal of business and routines imported from cabaret, burlesque and sitcom ... in other words, something of an extravaganza, played out under an enormous moon waxing through the boughs of trees (all scenery) to the nighttime sound of crickets (very real), in the Bruns Amphitheatre, facing the hills over Siesta Valley near Orinda.  

The central focus is the love between Rosalind (Susannah Schulman) and Orlando (Stephen Barker Turner)—she the daughter of an exiled duke, banished herself by her usurping uncle (both men played by Peter Callender); he the wrongly disinherited son of the old duke’s retainer, who also flees to the Forest of Arden to escape the wrath of his brother. 

But as in many of Shakespeare’s comedies, each action, every predicament is mirrored or contradicted by another, the very words flying “like a white doe,” as Melville said of the Truth in Shakespeare, “from tree to tree in the woodlands,” striking strange chords from simple tunes, all resolved in the marriage of four unlikely couples. 

“One of Shakespeare’s most eloquent Romantic comedies,” says Moscone, and this production’s a breezy one, with quick scene changes, some overlapping. Quickly working through the various encounters that establish all the various interweaving complications, the action passes to the exiled duke’s habitat, where he lives “with many merry men in the Forest of Arden, like the old Robin Hood of England.” The ebullient exile is contrasted with his terse, cruel brother through lightning-quick costume changes as much as by manner.  

Here, in a sublunar Arcady, rustics pursue each other in love-play, and the love-lorn Orlando finds himself hanging leaves of verse on the bare branches, proclaiming his love for the briefly-glimpsed Rosalind (besides throwing them into the audience as reams of broadsides, as well as hoisting her name alphabetically on a display of banners, its cord finally cut by melancholic Jaques—a fine casting of Andy Murray—the humorist). Here, too, Orlando again meets his love, but unawares (“Does he know I am in this forest, and in man’s apparel?”)—and she slurs love itself to him, saying, “I would not be cured, youth! I would cure you if you come every day to my cot, and call me Rosalind and woo me.” 

It’s in the Forest that the music strikes up, Gina Leishman’s hot gypsy strains, played behind and in front of the action with brio by “The Band from Amiens,” Dan Cantrell, Lila Sklar and Djordje Stijepovic, on accordion, skirling violin and bass fiddle plucked and bowed. The show truly comes into its own then, with rousing group dancing, and song in unison, as well as a particularly good solo, almost chanson, by Julie Eccles (finely playing Celia, Rosalind’s cousin, who follows her into the Forest as “Aliena”) of “Under The Greenwood Tree.” “I like this place, and willingly could waste my time in it.”  

There are good, almost cracker barrel, burlesques in the comic routines that stand out: Dan Hiatt as a wonderful Touchstone, the Fool who follows the ladies from court into exile, lolling in a rocking chair he’s just rocked himself out of, exchanging drolleries with an astute shepherd (Rod Gnapp) and proposing to his match, rustic Audrey (“I do not know what poetical is!”). A drunken minister and an obtuse boyish bucolic cluelessly in love with Audrey are skillfully portrayed by James Carpenter, who also plays Adam, Orlando’s loyal retainer. Max Gordon Moore essays the parts of a foppish courtier frog who drops his accent for streetwise talk when he warns off Orlando from the usurper’s wiles and a gawking shepherd boy, whose cig-puffing intended Phoebe (Delia MacDougall) ends up pursuing cross-dressed Rosalind, even coming on with a torch song, in feather boa at a stand-up mic. 

The wedding at the end is grand, with a bride in topper and suspenders over white veil and ruffles. The threat from the usurper is gone through a Deus ex machina: an unseen religious man has turned him into an anchorite, and Jaques, who once was “ambitious for a motley coat,” flees the general happiness to join the converted villain in the hermitage. 

“And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, from hour to hour we rot and rot, and there hangs a tale ... and so I laughed.” Jaques the melancholy serves as counterpoint, and underlines the Bard’s sly logic—and strange dispassion—of love. When Andy Murray is reciting, or Julie Eccles is singing, they (and we) taste his words and the shadow of the world behind them. But sometimes the trimmings get too rich and run over, obscuring the geometry of the clear, clean lines moving in a coincidence of opposites. On Kris Stone’s marvelous set (well-lit by Alexander V. Nichols, with sound by James Ballen and wildly diverse costumery by Katherine Roth), the cast moves with alacrity (well-choreograhed and fight-directed by MaryBeth Cavanaugh and Dave Maier) and speaks well. “Say then good-bye, and you talk in blank verse!” 

But the showmanship can stir up the dust in the missed silences that dog the glib speech (“Why, it is good to be sad and say nothing!” exclaims Jaques), and also pile gesture upon gesture unto gesticulation. There are moments—belied by Audrey’s noodling a line from My Fair Lady—where one asks, “Is this Brigadoon or what?”  

But in any case, it really is, in Ed Sullivan’s words, a really big show. 

AS YOU LIKE IT 

7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday through Oct. 15 at the Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda. $15 and up. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org.

At 10 a.m. every Friday, Mary Ann Broder opens the Friends of the Library Bookstore for business. She’s been doing that since 1998 when the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library first moved into their present location in the Sather Gate Mall housed in the public parking structure a half block below Telegraph Avenue, between Channing Way and Durant. 

By the time she, or one of the other volunteers, opens the door, people are already gathered outside. Some are looking through the cart of give-away books, while others are eager to get inside to see what new treasures have arrived or maybe what’s been marked down. Book dealers come regularly, looking for bargains. “We’re delighted when a pre-school class arrives, crocodile style with each child holding on to a cloth handle. Escorted by their teachers, they descend on the children’s corner, each selecting a book to buy,” says Broder.  

The generous space, located three blocks from the UC Campus, is a favorite with the university community and houses donated books from private collections, and even from publishers and other stores. Tables display new arrivals, bookcases hold foreign language books, collectibles, fiction, biographies, reference books, cook books, art books, history books, books on computers—you name it and you can probably find it there, in good condition and at amazingly reasonable prices.  

Aside from getting a good deal and maybe a book that isn’t easily available elsewhere, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that the proceeds go to fund library programs that might not get funded otherwise—programs like the children’s summer reading program, music programs including the wonderful annual live jazz series, and such life-changing opportunities as the adult literacy programs. 

The Friends are able to respond to about $100,000 worth of library requests each year because the books are donated and sold in stores by volunteers. In addition to the Sather Gate Store near Telegraph Avenue, the Friends operate a second store in an elegant little space created at the time of the Central Library’s renovation in 2002. Located on the main floor near the elevators, the Central Library Store has a full range of books, but the emphasis is on fiction and children’s books, most of which are in ‘mint condition,’ lightly touched by small hands. 

The store is popular with library patrons and especially with parents and their kids who sometimes discover the store on their way up to the Children’s Room on the fourth floor. With books averaging $2 each, kids often assemble an impressive stack of books—which won’t have to be returned in three weeks. Teachers are also regular customers because in this era of tight budgets they often have to make personal purchases to enrich their classrooms (yes, the Friends give teachers a discount). 

Upstairs, in the Friend’s workroom, volunteers gather each Monday to sort and price books. Sayre Van Young, recently retired after 36 years as a reference librarian with the Berkeley Public Library, works alongside veteran volunteers like Mary Anne Broder, Rose Watada, Gaby Morris, and Joan Haefele. Once the books are ready, volunteers stock the two stores, though at the Sather Gate Store sorting and pricing are an ongoing activity with books donated directly to that location.  

Though operating two stores is recent, the Friends have been around since the mid-1950s when, in the style of the times, they hosted elegant teas for the library staff. The Friends began selling books outside the Central Library at an annual—and very popular—three-day book sale. Friends volunteers remember how book dealers often would line up along the second-level of the old Hink’s parking lot with binoculars in hopes of scoping out titles that they would grab up when the sale began. 

Though it’s been eight years since the last outdoor sale, people still call and ask about the date of next sale. But the volunteers don’t miss working in the musty, dim basement of the old library where books were kept and sorted. And now books are available to prospective buyers year-round. 

The Friends welcome book donations at both locations. If you have lots of books or need help, a volunteer can arrange to pick-up your donations. (Call the Sather Gate Store at 841-5604). Books need to be in good condition, and encyclopedias should be recent. And don’t forget your old maps, audiotape, CDs, videos and DVDs as they are always in demand. 

If volunteering at one of the two stores for two or three hours a week sounds interesting, come in and talk to the volunteers. You will meet interesting people on both sides of the counter. And if book buying or browsing is your passion, check out the Friends’ book stores. And you can justify your acquisitions by knowing you are supporting one of the community’s most beloved and venerable institutions—the Berkeley Public Library. 

Photograph by Lynn Brown: Mary Ann Broder and Miles Karpilow talk books at the Sather Gate store. 

One of the largest residential parcels in the Berkeley, the John Hopkins Spring Estate, commonly known as the Spring Mansion, occupies 3.25 acres in the Southampton area of the north Berkeley Hills. The property is so large as to require three addresses: 1960 San Antonio Ave., 1984 San Antonio Ave., and 639 The Arlington. 

Modeled after Empress Elisabeth of Austria’s Achillion Palace in Corfu, the estate is a scheme of broad balustraded terraces sloping down toward the west. As late as 2005, the grounds were planted with shrubbery, redwood, eucalyptus, pine, and palm trees and ornamented with a fountain and a reflecting pool. On the upper slope stands an imposing two-story mansion designed by John Hudson Thomas. The exterior is primarily Beaux Arts-influenced, while the interiors display the architect’s eclectic influences, including Vienna Secessionist, Arts & Crafts, and Egyptian motifs. 

Measuring 80 ft. by 83 ft., the 12,000-square-foot house, built entirely of concrete, has two main entrances. The eastern entrance in the rear features a rectangular portico and serves the driveway, while the western entrance boasts a semi-circular portico, opening onto the garden terraces and commanding a sweeping vista of San Francisco Bay. This entrance leads to a vaulted passage running along the western length of the building, connecting the dining room in the northwest corner to the living room in the southwest. 

At the heart of the building is a 30-foot high atrium surmounted by a skylight. Four hefty Tuscan columns support the second-floor corridor balconies surrounding the atrium. The upper floor is reached via a grand, 15-foot wide staircase. At the center of the atrium, a slender Italian fountain strikes a Mediterranean note. 

The majestic public rooms are placed on the ground floor along the north and south sides of the house, opening directly into the atrium. These include a living room, dining room, and billiard/sitting room featuring tapestry-covered walls, enormous fireplaces, and rich oak moldings. 

The house was built in 1912–14 by the Spring Construction Company, one of the holdings of landowner and entrepreneur John Hopkins Spring (1862–1933). Born in San Francisco to a New England family, Spring received his real-estate training at his father’s and uncle’s firm, which was involved in various East Bay land ventures. 

In 1897, after the death of his father, Spring moved to Oakland and built a showcase residence by the Sausal Creek in Fruitvale. Following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, he bought a lot in Union Square and built what would become the city’s first department store, City of Paris. 

In the first years of the 20th century, Spring teamed up with Berkeley real-estate developer Duncan McDuffie and capitalists Louis Titus (1872–c.1947) and Wigginton Ellis Creed (1877–1927) in the Berkeley Development Company and the North Berkeley Land Company. He was also a business associate of Francis Marion “Borax” Smith (1846–1931) and Frank Colton Havens (1848–1918), especially in the East Bay real-estate ventures of their Realty Syndicate and its holding company United Properties. 

In 1904–05, Spring acquired J.J. Dunn’s quarry on the former Berryman ranch in north Berkeley. With Creed and Titus as partners, he formed the Spring Construction Company. The company quarried rock at its Spruce Street facility in the La Loma Park and Codornices Park area, and later at the Arlington facility in Cerrito Canyon. Construction vehicles and equipment were maintained at a depot on the old Boswell Ranch site (now the Solano and Peralta junction). In 1906–07, Spring purchased a 142-acre tract around El Cerrito Hill and laid out the subdivision that would become the city of Albany. His best-known venture was the Thousand Oaks subdivision and the shopping district along Solano Avenue, begun in 1909. 

Spring was one of the investors in the Claremont Hotel Co. founded by Louis Titus, though his role in this joint venture has been obfuscated by several contradictory legends. The Landmark Application for the Spring Estate, written in 2000, states: 

“Spring’s first venture into Berkeley real estate was in the Claremont District. ... Before long, Spring had two other partners in the Claremont Tract, Frank Havens and W.P. Mortimer, a Berkeley capitalist. The partners financed the grand Hotel Claremont but construction was slowed down due to financial stringency resulting from the 1907 Panic. 

In 1910, Spring approached his partners with a proposal to play a game of dominoes with the hotel property as the stake. Spring first played Mortimer and beat him. Later he played Havens and lost. It was Spring who planned the lovely garden terraces around the hotel that became known as the ‘Jewel of the East Bay.’” 

Another version is told on the Claremont Hotel’s website: 

“The property … fell into the hands of Frank Havens and ‘Borax’ Smith, a famous miner. They planned to erect a resort hotel on the property with trains running directly into the lobby. Unfortunately, these plans were abandoned. One night, Havens, Smith and John Spring, a Berkeley capitalist, played a game of checkers in the old Athenian Club of Oakland with the stakes being the property, and Havens won. 

He began building in 1906, but the panic of that year interrupted construction. After trying again in 1910, Havens lost heart, and in 1914 allied himself with Eric Lindblom, who had struck it rich in the Klondike. The sprawling Mediterranean hostelry was completed in 1915, in time for the Panama-Pacific Exposition. In 1918, Lindblom took complete control of The Claremont until he sold it in 1937 to Mr. And Mrs. Claude Gillum, who virtually rebuilt it from the foundation up, and completely refurbished the interior.” 

Yet another variant, this time by Oakland architectural historian Annalee Allen, omits Spring altogether: “Legend has it that Havens retained sole interest in the project when he and Smith decided one night to play a game of dominoes (some say checkers) and Smith lost.” 

In 1997, Spring’s son told BAHA’s Lesley Emmington that his father did participate in the game, which was either blackjack or poker, the sole opponent having been “Borax” Smith. The interview notes don’t reveal the identity of the winner. 

Perhaps closest to the truth is the account by longtime Berkeley Gazette columnist Hal Johnson, published on Jan. 29, 1943: 

“It was Spring all-year round in Albany and in Northbrae and Thousand Oaks for some years before the San Francisco fire until January 1920—John Spring, pioneer developer of large residential tracts, road builder and capitalist. The late John Spring was a gambler, not at the card table or at roulette but on the East Bay Area. He won when he backed Berkeley and Albany. Later he lost heavily—in the millions—when he bucked the stock market. 

John Spring—the man who plunged into great financial undertakings and into growing rare flowers and shrubbery—passed out of the world picture April 16, 1933, at the age of 70. He left a seemingly permanent monument here in the Spring mansion, San Antonio Ave., now Williams College. Spring built that massive structure of 12 great rooms, including six bedrooms, each with a private bath, in 1914. 

He erected the great house of reinforced concrete at the time of his lowest ebb financially—when he owed more than a million dollars and was land poor. He had sold thousands of dollars worth of home sites in that vicinity on the strength that he would build his own home there. And he kept faith with buyers. 

The Spring mansion is probably the only residence in the East Bay which has a reinforced concrete roof. That area then was outside of the city limits and there was no fire protection. 

Growing there still are stately pines brought from Norway and Irish yew trees. When Spring lived there he had a great rose garden with all varieties that would grow in Northern California. On Avis Rd. you can still see some of the imitation rocks which were part of the foundation of the large greenhouses.  

John Spring was born in San Francisco Dec. 13, 1862. His father, Francisco Samuel Spring, and his uncle, John Spring, came to California about 1852. Capt. John Hopkins Spring, old New England sea captain, brought his two sons to California on his own boat. They went into the real estate business and John Spring followed in their footsteps. 

Spring saw a future for the East Bay Area. As late as 1915 he owned practically all of Albany, except the Gill tract at San Pablo Ave. and Buchanan St., all of Thousand Oaks and Arlington Heights and a large part of Northbrae. Some 3,500 homes since then have been erected on his original holdings.  

He was an athlete as a young man and won medals for swimming and for bicycle racing. His three daughters are Mrs. George Friend of 120 Hillcrest Rd., Mrs. Noble Newsome of 410 Pala Ave., Piedmont, and Miss Dorothy Spring, now a WAAC stationed at Sacramento. His son, Frank Spring, is chief designer for the Hudson Automobile Co. and lives in Michigan. Mrs. Charlotte Montgomery of San Francisco is his sister. She is the widow of Dr. Douglas Montgomery who died while they were in South America soon after they had made their escape from Shanghai. 

John Spring took chances but as long as these chances were in real estate they were winning ones. When San Francisco was burning, the day following the April 1906 earthquake, he offered $400,000 for the lot and steel structure of the proposed new Spring Valley Water Co. building and the offer was quickly accepted. 

He formed the Union Square Improvement Co. with East Bay capital and erected a large building. In 1915 the structure was sold to the Hooper Lumber Co. for more than $1,250,000—a handsome profit. The building, Stockton and Geary Sts., has been occupied by the City of Paris since it was built. 

Spring gradually acquired tidelands from about where the Key Route Pier was built to near the Ford plant in Richmond. These were sold in 1925 to the Santa Fe Railroad for $700,000. 

He cashed that check with the late Phillip M. Bowles, president of the American Bank in Oakland and associated with Spring in many financial deals. “Why John, that check is for $700,000,” exclaimed Bowles. “Where did you get the money?” “I just sold those tidelands on which you wouldn’t loan me $50,000 a few months ago,” replied Spring. 

Between 1926 and 1929 John Spring lost more than a million when the bottom fell out of the stock market. He paid dollar for dollar, took his loss with a smile and went down the peninsula to live. 

There was one time when John Spring figured he won when he lost. He was associated with the late F.M. (“Borax”) Smith and Frank C. Havens in the plans for Hotel Claremont. Spring wanted to have near Berkeley a hotel on a peer with the Del Monte. He was responsible for the beautiful Claremont Hotel gardens.  

About 1912, the Hotel Claremont had been started, but was a long way from being finished. Taxes, interest on investment and care of the gardens were eating into the finances of the combine that had undertaken to erect the hotel. 

One by one they dropped out until Spring and Frank Havens were left holding the sack which contained a $400,000 mortgage. Spring and Havens played a game of dominoes at the old Athenian Club in Oakland with the hotel property as the stake. Havens won the game and the unfinished Claremont Hotel.” 

Spring’s own home was completed in 1914, but he didn’t enjoy it for long. At Christmas 1915, he left his wife Celina for another woman. In 1918, Celina Spring sold the estate to the Cora L. Williams Institute of Creative Development (later Williams College), a tony elementary and secondary school known for its focus on languages, poetry, music, and literature. 

Famous guest lecturers such as Mark Twain and psychologist Alfred Adler taught courses there. Interpretive dance inspired by Isadora Duncan was taught, and Institute students danced with the Boyntons at the Temple of Wings and with Duncan colleague Vassos Kanellos at the Hearst Greek Theater. One of the students, Helen Bacon Hooper, went on to dance with Martha Graham. The Williams Institute’s most celebrated alumnus was probably Irving Wallace (1916–1990), author of The Chapman Report. 

The school occupied the mansion for five decades. In 1975, the Spring estate was purchased by real-estate investor Larry Leon, who made the mansion his home for the next 30 years. The estate was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 2000. Last year Leon sold the property to a consortium of investors who were planning to establish a conference center on the site. They have since cleared the grounds in preparation for building additional structures. 

Everyone has something particularly annoying about their job. I’m sure yours has at least one (I can see the heads nodding). O.K. It’s more than one. Me too. I’ve got a few and one of these serenity-busters that bugs me the most is being asked which building code justifies an item that I’ve called-out during an inspection. 

Now, I’ve actually gotten quite a bit better at finding things in the code book in the last year or two and to discuss the finer points that come out of their study, but to be frank, it’s not that relevant to what I do.  

The building code really doesn’t apply much to looking at old houses. Now, on the face of it, that seems like a reasonable statement but, in the search for something to hang our ideas upon, people still keep running down the cognitive ravine to the what seems as though would be found at the root of what’s right or wrong about a house, i.e., the codes. 

There are a bunch of problems with this thinking and it really messes with my day, if you know what I mean. How do I justify the things I have to say about a house.  

Does the code tell me what’s wrong or right? Can I say that something is wrong because it didn’t follow the code? No. I can’t and here’s why and get ready because it’s quite an onslaught. 

First, many of the building I see were built before the first building code even existed. While building protocols or practices DID exist, there was nothing written down as to what you could and couldn’t do. The first building code book came out in 1917 and even this was a very slender pamphlet. The majority of buildings I see (those from the 1920’s & 30’s) were built with some codes in force but were, again, largely the result of good practices and not enforced rules. 

Since everything old we see is grand-fathered, or adopted as acceptable unless changed in some way, there’s almost nothing the code has to say about these much older buildings. 

For the sake of argument we can talk about a building from 1970 and say that many modern codes would have applied to it but here again, there are a range of problems. What city were we in at the time of construction? What version of the code was being used on the dates of the inspections? 

Who was the site inspector for the inspections and what local additions to the code were being practiced by the city for this type of construction at the time? Also, what were the zoning practices for this site at the time of construction? 

This mass of conditions makes it virtually impossible to say what rules would have applied to a particular building at the time of construction over a wide range of issues including set-backs, specific electrical codes, building height, the steepness of stairways and the requirement for smoke detectors. The list is huge.  

One thing that’s very important to realize is that, not only were the city policies and adopted codes relevant to each condition, but the specific site inspector was and is much like a judge in each case. 

No matter what the code book may say, the site inspector has the authority to call things as they see fit. Of course if they wander too far afield, we can “appeal” to the chief inspector or higher government official but it usually doesn’t work. 

So, how can I say that a stairway would have violated the code in 1966, when, for all I know, the city inspector stood there on that day, looked at his 1964 copy of the Uniform Building Code and his local Oakland amendment sheet and decided that these didn’t apply to what he (yes it was a guy) thought of as a servant’s entrance. You see, there’s just too much “noise” between that event in the past and today to be able to say much of anything about what the right call would have been at the time of construction. 

Even construction from the very recent past has problems of this sort, although this can more easily sorted out, if you’re serious about it and willing to do a lot of calling around. 

However, the important thing in my line of work isn’t to say what the site inspector or the plan checker would have said at the time but what I, as an observer, can say based on what I know and see today.  

That’s the nitty gritty of the job. I’m not a code checker and if I were, you can see how woefully hobbled I would be in performing it. I never know, for certain, which code was in force (they’re constantly being revised), what presiding official’s would have said at the time and also, how much has changed since that time.  

That’s is one more thing that makes code checking virtually impossible on older building. They’re being changed all the time. Many houses I see have been remodeled, and remodeled and remodeled. Little thing here, big thing there, tear this out, put this here. By the time I come along, it can be quite a trial to tell, even broadly, what the original building looked like and when each change came to pass. 

Nevertheless, I’ll confess that I do spend a lot of time looking at this aspect of the houses I see. I do, in part because it’s a puzzle and sort of irresistible. Partly, because it can help to ferret out mistakes that might be important. 

One oft-seen case in which it’s relevant is the one where a wall or other load bearing member has been moved or re-moved. If I don’t think about what the building would originally have looked like, it’s easy to miss something of this sort which might be truly vital. So I try. 

Once again, the point I wanted to make has required that you slog through all this stuff and so you have my gratitude and apology. And here it is. 

Home inspectors are not code checkers because the code says so very little about buildings. This may seem nutty to say but it’s really quite true. You can’t design a building using the codes and as code experts are so fond of saying, the code is a MINIMUM standard, not a recommended formula for construction. The code also says almost nothing about the way in which things wear out, decay and fail. 

Amazingly, there’s no code for seismic retrofitting, so you can’t say that there aren’t enough bolts in your retrofit based on that book.  

The code doesn’t say when the paint job or the leaky window needs fixing and it doesn’t say that you have to have x number of smoke detectors in your old building (unless you are doing a remodel and they make you put some in). The code doesn’t prevent many places where slips and falls occur and also doesn’t point out the myriad improvement and upgrades that time and technology have provided. 

In short, I’d say that the most of what I’m doing in my job has almost nothing to do with the code. It’s there all the time as a reference, lurking just out of sight, and I like to invoke it where it says something of value but that’s very different from “calling something” as a violation.  

As you can see, I just can’t do that, ever. All I can do is to say that some current codes say such and such a thing and that this may be in violation of one of them. However, I can say that something is a problem, that something is dangerous (in my view). That something is a bad idea (all too often…) and might lead to harm or distress. And let me tell you, friend, you can sure fill up a day with that stuff. 

When we start thinking good thoughts about rain, it must be the peak of fire season. That means fall planting season is coming soon, and it’s time to start looking for plants to fill in (or overcrowd) our gardens. Especially California natives, because this is a good time to plant them, to take advantage of the winter rains. Even drought-loving plants need a bit of watering help in their first year.  

The California Native Plant Society has made a big change in one tradition. The East Bay Chapter’s reliable October sale won’t happen at the Merritt College hort department this year, as the department has some expansion plans and wants the ground it lent the chapter in return for help with the department greenhouse. (Yikes. This must be what it feels like to watch your parents go through an “amicable” divorce.) 

Instead, the Native Here Nursery will host the Native Plant Fair on Saturday, Oct. 28, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 29, noon to 3 p.m. Very local plants from NH –the chapter’s restoration nursery—as well as “horticultural natives” from around the state will be for sale, along with seeds, bulbs, books, art, and other wares; experts and CNPS honchos will talk and answer questions, too. 

Lots of plants, says the sales committee, so enjoy a leisurely and informative weekend. More info and schedules to come on the chapter’s Web site, www.ebcnps.org—or you could volunteer by showing up on Friday or Saturday mornings between now and the sale, or contact the nursery, nativehere@ebcnps.org for other times.  

The other half of the erstwhile couple, Merritt College’s Landscape Horticulture Department, is having its fall sale on Oct. 7. There are always natives there, too, as well as fall-plantable veggies, annuals, perennials, bulbs, trees, who knows what? I find something weird and wonderful every year at my alma mater. You can grab coffee and pastries or a nice lunch burger (veggie or otherwise) and hear live music, buy art or tools, or just schmooze. 

There will be smart and friendly folks to tell you what you need to know about Aesthetic Pruning—the coming thing in tree care, combining traditional Japanese lore with recent discoveries about how trees work—and about flower arranging, Permaculture, garden and landscape design and construction, soils, bugs, plant diseases, and more.  

Here’s a new one: The Watershed Nursery’s Fall Open House & Native Plant Sale, Oct. 14, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., features 20 percent off all plants (except clearance items.) Watershed specializes in natives for habitat restoration, and has recently started having drop-in hours for the public, so you can get a look beforehand. 

Maybe you’ll want to scout the place out anyway; here are the directions from its Web site, www.thewatershednursery.com: “Head east (towards UC Berkeley) on University. Turn left on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Turn right on Cedar. After you begin to go uphill, turn left on Euclid, right on Hawthorne Terrace. Left on Le Roy Ave. Stay on winding road. It will turn into Tamalpais Rd. You will see a small sign 155 with an arrow to the left and down. Please park on the street and walk down the driveway. The nursery is located in a fenced-off area to your right past the pond.” 

Don’t fall in!  

Native Here Nursery 

101 Golf Course Road (across from the golf course entrance) Tilden Park, Berkeley 

Merritt College 

12500 Campus Drive, Oakland (Rte. 13 to Redwood Road exit; uphill to Campus Drive, turn right; up Campus Drive to, guess what? the campus) 436-2418  

The Watershed Nursery 

155 Tamalpais Road, Berkeley 

548-4714 

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.

How Much Food and Water? 

If you’re someone who wants to be prepared for the major quake in our future, you’ve probably done something about having food and water available for you and your family.  

Here are a few things to keep in mind: 

1. Some disaster preparedness groups recommend having three days worth of food and water (1 gallon per person per day). I agree with the ones that say be ready for a full week (think Katrina). 

2. I’ve never seen an emergency kit (including ours) that has enough food or water. You really need to supplement the kits. 

3. The best plan for water is a 55 gallon barrel with a siphon, which you treat with bleach so it will last at least 5 years.  

4. Have plenty of canned foods, which need to be regularly used and replaced.  

5. Some folks have found a source on-line for MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), similar to the military products. We might add these to our web site in the future. 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 22 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

Discussion of Artist Live/Work Space in West Berkeley with the Civic Arts Commission from 1 to 2 p.m. at 2246 Fifth St., conference room. For information please call 981-7533. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with John Sutter on “What is New in the Regional Parks?” 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.  

Declaration of Peace Benefit Dinner with panel discussion with Sarad Seed, Michael Eisenschauer, Margot Smith and Jim Haber at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $25, no one turned away. 495-5132. 

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

Kol Hadash Humanistic Rosh Hashanah Service at 7:30 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. 428-1492. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 23 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of Old and New in the North Shattuck Neighborhood, led by Robert Johnson, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. To sign up and for meeting place call 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley. 

info/histsoc/  

Family Nature Hike to meet the creatures around Jewel Lake in Tilden Park. Meet at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Farm Friends Meet the latest additions to the farm and say hello to the established residents on an interactive tour at 2 pm. at Tilden Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Latino Art, Health and Community with vendors, support groups, social services and complementary treatments from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave., OAkland. 420-7900. 

Banned Books Week Celebration with a community read-aloud, for all ages, of Alvin Schwartz’s “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” at 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6133. 

Poison Oak Learn to identify, prevent and heal poison oak at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland Uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Solo Sierrans Hike in Tilden Park Meet at 5 pm at Lone Oak picnic area for an hour hike through the woods. Optional dinner afterward. 234-8949. 

Autumnal Equinox Gathering Led by Rabbi David Cooper at 6:15 at the Interim Solar Calendar, in Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. www.solarcalendar.org 

Free Market Day of Exchange from noon to 4 p.m. at People’s Park. Bring your extra things to give away, and find treasures from others. Everyone welcome. rachel@cathaus.org 

Know Your Rights Training and CopWatch Orientation from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

“The Fight for Immigrant Rights and Black Liberation” with Don Alexander, Spartacist League Central Committee, at 4 p.m. at the YWCA, 1515 Webster St., Oakland. 839-0851.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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.  

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. 

Animal Healing Cicle, a guided meditation to send healing energy to pets at 5 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave. Suggested donation $5. 525-6155. 

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. 24 

Farm Stories and Songs Come clap your hands or your paws and sing along at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Bee Keeping in the City” A hands-on workshop from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Berkeley Eco-House, 1305 Hopkins St. Cost is $15 sliding scale, no one turned away. For information on what to bring call 547-8715. 

BCA Endorsement Meeting for candidates and ballot measures at 3 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 549-1208. 

Military Families & War Resisters Speak Out at 1 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, Oakland. Donation of $10 to $25 at the door, and $5 for students and seniors. 415-864-5153. 

“9/11 & American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out” with David Ray Griffin, Peter Dale Scott, and Ray McGovern at 7 p.m. at Martin Luther King Middle School. Cost is $15-$20. Sponsored by KPFA. 848-5006. 

“Church House, Dope House, Dream House” a one-woman show by Yehmanja, at 3 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Coomunity discussion following the performance. www.churhchousedopehousedreamhose.org 

“Are We Still Dinosaurs? The Asteroid Test – Protecting the Earth from the Next Big Collision” at 4 p.m. at Chabot Space & Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd. Oakland. Tickets are $6-$8, seating is limited. 336-7373. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring change of clothes, windbreaker, sneakers. For ages 5 and up. cal-sailing.org  

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair flats from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Community Peace Tashlick, the start of the Jewish New Year at 3 p.m. at the Emeryville Marina Follow Powell Street towards the bay past the Holiday Inn and Watergate apartment complex. The road curves to the right. Follow it to the end and park. The event is a short walk from the parking lot. www.bayareawomeninblack.org 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Balinese Dance Class with Tjokorda Istri Putra Padmini at 11 a.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 237-6849. 

Kickabout at Codornices Park Soccer for all, skill and talent not required. For more information contact cambour@hotmail.com  

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. 

Fall Plant Sale at the UC Botanical Garden at 10 a.m. 643-2755. 

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

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

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “Awareness, Self-Healing and Meditation” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 25 

“Encounter Point” A documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.encounterpoint.com 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at the Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Union, UC Campus. Appointments recommended. 773-2404. 

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. 

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

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. 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 26 

Tuesday is for the Birds An early morning walk for birders through Bay Area parklands. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. This week we will visit Point Pinole. For meeting location or to borrow binoculars, call 525-2233.  

WriterCoach Connection seeks volunteers to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. Training from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. For information contact 524-2319. writercoachconnect@yahoo.com 

“Encounter Point” A documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Q & A with the filmaker after the 7:30 screening. www.encounterpoint.com 

Albany Library Homework Center is open from 3 to 5 p.m., Tues. and Thurs. for students in third through fifth grades. Emphasis is placed on math and writing skills. No registration is required. 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext 17.  

Torture Teach-in and Vigil every Tues. at 12:30 p.m. at the fountain on UC Campus, Bancroft at College. 

“Older and Wiser: Basic Legal Knowledge for Seniors” Estate planning for seniors at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-5190. 

Choosing Infant Care A workshop for parents at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave., Oakland. 658-7353. www.bananasinc.org  

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. 

Handbuilding Ceramics Class from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, except for materials and firing charges. 525-5497. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

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

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 27  

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll learn about spiders, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, at 3:15 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Circus Circus with Lovee the Clown, face painting and more at 11 a.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. 

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. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Discussion of the November Ballot Propositions Sponsored by the Berkeley Grey Panthers at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

“Help Democrats Take Back Congress” at Bay Area Political Forum at 7 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. 

“The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

League of Women Voters “California Clean Money Campaign” with Trent Lange, at 5 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $15. For reservations call 843-8828. 

“The Founding Fathers’ Religious Reasons for Separation of Church and State” with Barbara McGraw, Professor of Business Administration, Saint Mary’s College of California, at 4 p.m. at 110 Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-1640. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11” by David Ray Griffin at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito. 433-2911. 

WriterCoach Connection seeks volunteers to help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. Training session at 6:30 p.m. For information call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Spirited Child Series Learn how temperament affects children’s behavior and how to best live and work with inborn traits at 7 p.m. at Bananas. To register call 752-6150. If you need child care, at $5 per child, call 658-7353.  

New to DVD: “Three Times” at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $3-$5. 848-0237. 

“Introduction to New Body–New Mind” with Robert Litman at 7 p.m. The Teleosis Institute, 1521 5th St., corner of Cedar St., Upstairs Unit B. Cost is $5-$10. RSVP to 558-7285. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Current Events Discussion Group meets at 7 p.m. at the Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. 597-4972. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 28 

Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors with Iraq War resister, Latino activist and former Navy Fire Controlman, Pablo Paredes at 6 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street between Telegraph and Broadway, Oakland. Donation $5-$10, no one turned away. 465-1617. 

Radio Zapatista Report back and benefit for health care in autonomous Zapatista Communities at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Shopping with the Chef All-organic shopping advice with Lucy Aghadjian at 4 p.m. at the North Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 548-3333. 

Easy Does It Disability Assistance Board of Directors Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1744A University Ave., behind the Lutheran Church between Grant and McGee. All welcome. 845-5513. www.easyland.org 

Free SAT Strategy Session from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 526-7512. 

Woman’s Heart Health Panel discussion at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Volunteer at Lawrence Hall of Science Open house for new volunteers at 2 p.m. or Sun. at 2 p.m. For information call 643-5471. lawrencehallofscience.org. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 29 

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 

First Amendment Assembly Speakers include Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post; Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers; Judith Miller, former New York Times reporter; Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary Magazine essayist; and Dan Weintraub, political columnist for the Sacramento Bee Fri. from 3:15 to 8:45 p.m. and Sat. from 8:30 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. at UC Graduate School of Journalism, North Gate Hall. Cos tis $50. To register see www.cfac.org 

“Bridging the Chasm between Islam and the West” with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Founder & Director of the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. www.uucb.org  

BOSS’s Homeless Graduation and the 60th birthday of Executive Director boona cheema at 6 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. For tickets and information call 649-1930.  

“East Asia in Transition: Comprehensive Security in the Pacific Rim”Conference from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Toll Room, Alumni House, UC Campus. 642-2809. http://ieas.berkeley. 

edu/events/2006.09.29.html 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Bart Ney of CalTrans on “Retrofitting the Bay Bridge.” 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.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Sept. 25, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5158.  

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6195.  

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 27 at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 28 at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.