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Dream Kitchen performs at Jupiter during the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival in August. Photograph by Hali McGrath.
Dream Kitchen performs at Jupiter during the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival in August. Photograph by Hali McGrath.
 

News

Reader Contribution Issue

Friday December 29, 2006

Happy New Year! 

 

Thank you to all of our readers who sent in contributions for this issue. We regret that we couldn’t publish them all. There will be no Tuesday, Jan. 2, issue, but we will be back on Fri., Jan. 5, with a special issue looking back at 2006 and ahead to 2007.


Peace on Earth Disrupted By Series of Holiday Quakes

By Richard Brenneman
Friday December 29, 2006

It wasn’t holiday presents but a twitching reminder of its potentially destructive presence that the Hayward Fault gave East Bay residents this holiday season, ending—for the moment—with a weak Thursday morning spasm. 

The seismic swarm began with a sharp little shake six days before the holiday at 7:12 p.m. on Wednesday the 20th, initially reported as registering 3.67 on the 10-point Richter Scale. 

The next shock—a magnitude 3.68—hit at 10:49 p.m. Friday, followed by an imperceptible 1.4 42 minutes later centered a mile further southeast.  

A 3.51 jolt at 9:21 a.m. Saturday, located at the same site as the two earlier and stronger quakes. Two more smaller quakes—a 1.6 and a 1.0—followed at 2:23 p.m. Saturday and 12:12 p.m. Sunday.  

An April 15 quake measuring 2.8 on the Richter Scale originated in the same location—1.2 miles southeast of California Memorial Stadium, which sits directly over the fault. 

According to a report by the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, the recent quakes “are occurring in a pocket of seismicity in the Berkeley-Piedmont border region.” 

As of noon Saturday, the area had been the scene of “99 earthquake(s) of magnitude 2.0 or larger and 10 of magnitude 3.0 or larger occurring within a radius of 1 mile of this sequence since 1970.” The three sharpest pre-Christmas temblors this year are “the three largest earthquakes to date.” 

University plans to renovate the Memorial Stadium interior and add a gym along its western wall are currently facing legal challenges, along with other projects located adjacent to the fault zone—including an underground parking lot. 

One contention in all the suits is that the gym should be prohibited and stadium work limited because of the Alquist-Priolo Act, a state law barring new construction on faults and limiting renovations to have of a structure’s value. 

Another project, a transformation of residential Bowles Hall into a corporate learning retreat is also complicated because a corner of the building may be directly over the fault as well. 

The strongest quakes all originated at depths of between 2.8 and 6 miles beneath the surface about 1.2 miles southeast of Memorial Stadium, according to reports posted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). 

While the small 2.6 shaker that struck at 10:07 Christmas morning also originated on the Hayward Fault, its epicenter lay further to the southeast in the hills above Union City. 

And another small jolt—a 1.8 centered on the fault’s northern reaches beneath San Francisco Bay five miles northwest of San Pablo—preceded Wednesday’s first shaker by five hours and 5 minutes. 

The latest quake Thursday morning measured 2.8, and originated about eight tenths of a miles further southeast that the epicenter of the strongest quakes.  

In a twist, the epicenter for the strongest quakes was located precisely where the UC Berkeley Seismology Laboratory pinpointed the origin of a hypothetical 6.5 earthquake for a 2003 exercise. 

According to the university’s estimates, a quake of that intensity at that epicenter would result in more than $5.6 billion in damages. 

For more on the simulation, see the university’s web site at http://seismo.berkeley.edu/eqw/q2003/ 

For up to date information on the recent quakes, see the USGS web site at http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/San_Francisco.htm. “Events,” as seismologists described them, are posted within moments of their occurrence. 

To see where else the quake was felt, click on the first of the two “Did you feel it?” links for a map of reports, and then on the “Statistics” link for a list of reports by ZIP code.


Accommodations

By Esther Stone
Friday December 29, 2006

Seventeen years have passed since the day I signed the rental agreement on my one-bedroom apartment in November, 1989. The day before, my husband Ed and I had shared in the Thanks-giving festivities at my brother’s house, and chose not to reveal that we had decided to end our seven-year marriage. But, bright and early on the following day, I set about looking for a suitable apartment for myself.  

I checked the listings under “Apartments for Rent” in the local paper and by noon had appointments to see two apartments in Albany, by coincidence a block from each other. 

The first seemed adequate, but I wanted to see the second one before making a decision. As I approached the building, it looked very appealing, with two tall palm trees in front and attractive landscaping—much nicer than the first apartment, which was located on a busy street, over a storefront. 

I greeted the rental agent, and we climbed two flights to the top floor. The door of the apartment opened onto a long hallway. There was a good-sized bedroom with a wall-long closet to the left, and a bathroom on the right; and a coat closet and a walk-in storage closet in the hallway. 

Ahead was a large L-shaped living room, a dining area (which the first apartment lacked), and a galley kitchen. The apartment had new carpeting, had been freshly painted and had lots of wall space. It was bright and airy, had a desirable southeast exposure and, from the balcony, a view both of the Berkeley Hills and San Francisco. It was perfect! I remember spontaneously doing a little dance in the dining area and saying “I think I’m falling in love!”  

The rent was reasonable, and within minutes we were finishing off the necessary paperwork. The rent was on a month-to-month basis, starting Dec. 1. “How long do you think you’ll stay here?” she asked idly. “I have no idea,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. “A month, a year, forever…” 

My future was a blank page, a blank book, and I liked the idea of renting month to month. I was starting a new life and wanted to keep my options open. If something interesting came along, why not pursue it? I would be able to switch gears quickly, without the encumbrance of a lease or the demands of owning a house. 

I had been living and working as a travel agent in Walnut Creek when Ed and I first met, and when we married I moved into his house in the Oakland Hills and commuted to work. I now had a new job at another travel agency in Berkeley. I was to start at the beginning of the year, after a week’s computer training class in Dallas, giving me a chance to settle into my new apartment and my new life in a leisurely fashion. 

I hired two young men with a truck for the move, and as they toiled away I was surprised at how many possessions I had. Their work was doubly difficult, because our house was cantilevered over a hill, and my furniture had to be carried up three flights of stairs at one end, and then up another two flights at the other. 

They were exhausted by the time the job was done, and as I was writing out a check, one of them turned to me, shaking his head, and said, “I don’t know where you’re going to put all this stuff, lady.” As I surveyed the chaotic scene I agreed with him. “I don’t know either,” I replied. 

Furniture was scattered about helter-skelter. There was a welter of tables, chairs, bookcases, beds, dressers and lamps surrounding me, along with cartons of books, dishes, kitchen appliances, and clothing.  

Over the next few weeks I felt like a new bride as I shopped for cleaning supplies and utensils, measured, cut and applied shelving paper, bought and installed a shower curtain, filled my bookcases, hung pictures and arranged my sundry souvenirs from my years of worldwide travels.  

Day by day and bit by bit everything soon fell into place and, amazingly, it seemed almost as if the apartment had been custom-designed to accommodate all my possessions, and it became my home and my sanctuary. From the first I had a feeling of happy anticipation each time I turn the key in my lock to enter, and that sensation has never left me.  

My life these past 17 years has not been uneventful. As a travel agent I have visited a host of exotic places and had encounters with many fascinating people. Although I retired nearly ten years ago, I still travel whenever the spirit moves me, and just in this past year I’ve been to both China and back to Italy for my umpteenth visit. I have many interests and pursuits; I have loved and been loved; I have family and friends close by; and my health is holding up.  

The apartment is holding up, too. Although the paint on the walls is no longer fresh and the carpet is stained and frayed in spots, it still looks much the same as it did all those years ago, and still manages to accommodate itself to my needs. When, a few years ago, I bought a computer desk and three new bookcases, almost magic-like, with a little ingenuity I was able to find space for them. 

If, years ago, I imagined that I might some day leave to pursue some passing fancy, that likelihood is long past. But I do sometimes wonder how long I will remain here. I no longer navigate the stairs as casually as I once did—my balance is now somewhat precarious, and I need to hold onto the railing as I slowly trudge up and down. My future seems as uncertain now as it did when I first moved in. Might I actually end up staying here forever? It’s hard to say. Only time will tell. 

 

 


A Magical Visit to Davies Hall

By Maya Elmer
Friday December 29, 2006

The magic happens the moment I step forward into the acoustical ambiance of a music hall and I hear that first cacophonous onslaught of instrument and musicians. They’re not just tuning up although there’s that, too. Some violinist is frantically last minute practicing a difficult phrase, at the same time the flautist is re-doing a trill. I watch the kettle drummer bending his head to catch the tremors as he taps the taut drum head. The uncorralled musicians of this moment in contrast to the program’s promised presentation ! 

Those sounds provoke the excitement that never fails to ripple through my heart when I step past the usher at the Hall door in the beautiful glass and concrete Davies Symphony Hall which anchors one corner of the Civic Center in San Francisco. When I hear such a strange prelude, the thrill is always there. Real live human beings are about to change dits and dots on paper into music that evanesces after it is played; reverberating only into the cells of memory. 

• 

 

It was in the fall, 10 or 15 years ago. For a mere pittance in artistic circles ($20.00 a ticket) I began to attend the senior Symphony Series on Thursday afternoons in San Francisco. 

Of course there was a catch—there always is: Out of all the weekly season’s programs, I would have to accept the eight they offered—and friend Kay and I had to sit in the seats they dealt out to us. In our beginning, twenty years ago each program would find us in different seats; and each September I couldn’t wait to tear open the envelop when the season’s tickets were enclosed. What concerts? and where would we sit? Like the expectation of winning in a lottery .  

I always thought the symphony organization was paying us olders back in a generic way: doing their civic duty in one fell swoop, just being generous. Until once, pre-concert, I overheard two smartly dressed women gossiping while lined up in front of me at the small hall-bar for a glass of wine.  

Silver-hair, pleated plaid skirt and jacket by Armani said, “Well, it really pays off for us.”  

“How’s that?” silver-hair, and tailored-by-a couturier pant suit responded. “Besides filling up the auditorium on a midweek matinee? With little-old-ladies who have given up driving to SF from Walnut Creek?” and she laughed deprecating her own self-description.  

“There’s that, too,” and Armani Jacket smiled at the implied humor. “ But best of all, it’s like a dress rehearsal for the evening performances—gives Josh Kosman a chance to hear the music and write a review that comes out in the Friday paper.” They both obviously knew the name of The Chron music critic.  

“Well, he boosts the weekend box office.” replied Pantsuit. “The tickets fly out the window if he says MTT is doing a good job. The seats are really filled if he praises the soloist.” 

“Yes, I grant you that. But Josh goes overboard at favoring the new music, usually that short piece at the beginning of the program. I can’t stand that stuff.” Armani Jacket dared to voice that bit of contemporary heresy .  

The women moved away from the bar, careful not to spill any of their Chardonnay’s on their symphony-elegance.  

I stepped up, “ One coffee,” I ordered, “please, only half full, and add two ice cubes.” The coffee is great here—probably Peet’s—It’s always so hot I never have time to finish before the ten minute warning chimes ring for seating.  

Oh, woe, the year when our seats were in the 2nd row, side section: Most of the music just eddied around us. We had to stare up at the immediate legs of the bass viol players and the black pumps, ankles and thighs of the end cellists. However, there was an antidote for that pill: Arrive early enough to exchange seats at the box office. But before friend Kay discovered that way, I had found one other answer.  

After the concertmaster entered to a smattering of applause, when the audience settled down, when the candy wrappers didn’t rustle any more, I said, “Look, Kay,” and I prodded her gently with my elbow, “Look over there.” She turned slightly and her glance followed the gesture of my head towards the rear of the house. Agreement was implicit in her smile.  

When the lights lowered just before MTT or a guest conductor stepped through the stage door, in a matter of seconds I grabbed Kay’s arm, scooted over our seat mates, and dashed back up the center aisle for four rows. We settled down in the perfect house seats: two on the aisle kept available for last minute sales at full price.  

Heading the symphony roster is the stalwart good looking concertmaster who about five-six years came to the orchestra from Europe. I have an old-ladies crush on Alexander Barantschik; his name is like music itself when I say it aloud. Alex-AND-der Bar-An-Schik. I smile when he strides to the front, sounds his “A” and takes the first violin chair. What sends me is not his debonair demeanor. Nor just the way his violin strings leave smoky trails of heaven in the air. 

The tipping point that turned me into an aging Barantchek groupie has nothing to do with music—hold your breath: It is the red lining to his afternoon concert jacket—what a European touch! His looks, his skills and the flamboyance of his red lining: irresistible! Of course, MTT, our conductor, is pretty dashing himself..  

It is easy to check out the blonde in the violas—she’s a happy-camper with a great smile whose body sways with the notes she plays. The piccolo player leaves me breathless : it is said she can do 28 notes in five seconds. 

I watch for Robin Sutherland who plays the keyboard part. I don’t need the opera glasses to find him: his hair is swept straight back right from his eyebrows, from his forehead and fastened tightly behind. He sports a long blond ponytail! I’m sure he had to fight for it with the symphony brass.  

We look forward to what Kosman will say in tomorrow’s Chronicle about what we have heard this afternoon. It doesn’t matter whether we agree with him or not. We know. We burnish each such afternoon like the pearl it is.  

Thanks Be. 

 

 


Finding Your Story in Writing Class

By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Friday December 29, 2006

I want to write a piece for my writing class but what can I write? It is 6 p.m. on Wednes-day, class begins at 7 p.m. No, I do not have to have something to show this week, after all it is an adult school class, no grades. I have finished with that when I finished with school, no more worrying about grades. 

But I want to write something for today’s class, old habits die hard. Yes, I have all these lofty dreams to write all these wonderful short stories about India and become another Indian woman author. After all is it not the time when Indian women authors are flourishing? They write well and from the book covers, I can see they look cute too. The club I want to join, a wannabe. 

Yes, I can write about the India-Pakistan war, from my mother’s perspective or write my grandparents’ stories. They are dead, so I have to tell those stories to keep them alive, but no not in an hour. I have come back from work and my room is a mess. I grab a quick bite of leftovers from yesterday’s dinner and start writing about what else but the writing class.  

The class meets at the Jewish Community Center. Though it is just across from my home, I had never been there. What would a south Indian woman, a Hindu, do at the Jewish community center I had thought. After all I cannot even pass off as Jewish, assuming I wanted to. I had Jewish friends in graduate school but I felt more comfortable with my own kind. Then  

I spotted the item in the Berkeley Daily Planet, announcing a prose writing class at the JCC. The facilitator welcomed new people, fresh blood to pounce on as I later learnt. 

I had had two attempts at prose writing. I had tried to write about our electrician in India, when my mother suggested I better stick to poetry. Then I had tried writing letters to editors that none published. Here I was a scientist who considered herself a poet after having written only a few poems.  

Anyway I had felt I would not lose much, the class was free after all. Wednesdays were aerobics days for me but I could miss that once, check out the class it wouldn’t hurt. Besides I had my menstrual cycle that Wednesday so I couldn’t attend the aerobics class. 

There were two other women Jo and Jane in the class that night. George, the instructor was fiery, opinionated. Jo transported me to Arkansas where she and her husband were attending an auction on a palatial house, and for the price that in Berkeley I would barely get a decent condo. Then Jane, feisty and strong read about Madison, and the streets, the buildings and the grounds came so alive. Wisconsin Madison was the school that had offered me my first admission to graduate school. I had not gone there, but now I knew the city probably better than if I had spent five years freezing there in winter, all sitting listening to Jane, in the comfortable library surrounded by books. 

Everyone commented on what they liked and did not like. George began and others took up and I was all the time wondering, did I really fit, how would I write? Then I was told, write in first person present tense, an “Oh, phew” story about something that did not happen, what you narrowly missed. 

So here I was writing the first five pages, in my early 30s, not having written essays since high school. It was this story set in Delhi, about a time when in my teenage years a friend of mine had narrowly missed being raped by another friend’s father, and how I had escaped being the victim. The story I had not thought of for years, and now here it all came out, also Delhi, the traffic, the crowded buses, with men trying to grope the women, the colony where I lived, the summer heat with the loo (hot summer wind). I was transported there, could see the beautiful saris, Palika bazaar, with the shopkeepers haggling and the black smoke from Akbar hotel chimney.  

It was like love all over again being transported to different worlds, both mine and others. I could be in South Africa, in Soweto or on the March, hearing Walter Sisulu's voice. Then once we tore it apart and had Judy in tears, we moved on to Mexico in the ‘70s, journeying there with anthropologist Rose studying violent and non-violent families in Oxaca. Then onto a Parade of Civil War veterans and through Jo I actually felt I knew someone who took part in the Civil War (talk about six degrees of separation). 

Jonathan, the only male member of the group was there offering astute comments and keeping up his exchanges with George, who himself had the story of his conversations with his hairdresser who has reached menopause. This story drew some comments, not pleasant from the predominantly female crowd. Then after reading the therapist’s story about the narcissist who wanted to correct everyone but himself, and the introduction about the different personality types she was planning to write about, I wondered, in how many of them I would see myself.  

And so for two hours every Wednesday I am transported to different countries , different times, all along working on my writing, I can invent people, make their dreams or shatter them, go into their yearnings and desires, control their choices, and craft their lives a lot better than I can my own. And here I am the one in control with my pen, or computer keyboard and I can erase or correct without a trace with feedback from the group. 

How easy if in life I could just do a rough draft and a final draft like that. And yes I know North Oakland and acid days, and the Romanian immigrant families in Winnipeg Canada. I have been there shared all these experiences across time and space all along sitting in a comfortable chair around a large table with a bunch of feisty people from their 80s to their 30s, traveling with the years, traveling with the stories. And here I feel in control ... sort of. 

 

 


The Fight to Desegregate Berkeley’s Public Schools

By Gilbert G. Bendix
Friday December 29, 2006

Both my wife Selina and I were strong believers in public schools. It seems strange therefore that, when the time came in 1958, we became private school parents. There were three reasons. 

Our oldest, Erica, was born a month too late, and would have had to wait a full additional year to be admitted to kindergarten in the public school system. Also, the ‘neighborhood schools’ reflected the racial housing segregation. 

For that matter, it was the official policy of the school system to assign minority teachers only to schools in minority neighborhoods. Finally, Berkeley had been unable to pass either a school bond or a school tax measure, and the financial condition of the schools affected our perception of their educational potential. 

Why couldn’t a great center of learning, like Berkeley, pass a school bond? Of course it required a two-thirds majority, but should that be a problem in Berkeley? It was, and parents were determined to get to the bottom of this. Analysis of the election results showed that West Berkeley, where the minority population was located, was our Achilles heel. The home owners of West Berkeley figured that the all-white school board would spend the tax money exclusively in the white hills schools. Berkeley’s liberals decided to change that. 

At the next election, we fielded full slates of candidates for both the City Council and the school board, including an African-American, then called Negro, on each slate. We swept that election and ended Republican rule of Berkeley. After that, school-funding measures passed without difficulty. 

The new school board had more than adequate funding on its agenda. It agreed with the United States Supreme Court that ‘separate, but equal’ education is never equal, and we gradually moved to desegregate the schools, first the junior high schools, then the elementary schools. I testified before the board at each of the stages, arguing that my white children would get a better education if exposed to children of wider backgrounds. 

There were bumps in the road. Opponents of desegregation forced a recall election against some of the school board members, threatening a white exodus from Berkeley unless desegregation was stopped. The recall failed. 

The final elementary school desegregation plan was adopted in 1966 and was scheduled to go into effect a year later. Some children from the Columbus School area in West Berkeley would attend Oxford School through third grade, and children from the Oxford area would attend Columbus from fourth to sixth grades. 

I was on the Oxford PTA intergroup relations committee. We were trying to think of ways to smooth the transition, finding ways for the children from the two schools to meet each other before that day little more than a year away. I went home and suggested to Selina that we run a Saturday morning science club, with an equal number of kids from each school. 

We were in possession of school microscopes, boxes of components for building electric circuits, and a variety of other suitable supplies. Selina liked the idea, and so did the Oxford PTA. One of the other mothers owned a VW Microbus and offered to act as chauffeur and to bring apple juice and cookies to each session. Columbus PTA was approached, and they arranged for the Columbus teachers’ lunchroom to be used for our club. Selina and I decided to set the grade level at third grade. Since our youngest was at that stage, we knew just what to expect. 

The science club was a big success. Of course, we only drew kids who were already enthusiastic about science, so we didn’t deserve any medals. But what about social mixing? Well, the children seemed to team up without regard to skin color, but the boys tended to congregate at one end of the room and the girls at the other. What in the world can you expect from a bunch of eight-year olds? 

Did school desegregation achieve its desired ends? I’m not prepared to say. Yes, race relations have improved. No, we’re still a very divided society, in Berkeley as in the rest of the country. Maybe, if there had been several hundred little clubs throughout the city instead of our one, maybe a glee club here and a sewing bee there, things might have worked out better. I can dream, can’t I?


Learning to Leave Lycos

By Edith Monk Hallberg
Friday December 29, 2006

I really wish that I didn’t have to leave Lycos. After all, it was my major source of information and was also a means of connections with family, friends, and political action for more than six years. From practicing on Lycos, I moved to a second account with Yahoo, and now a third account, also with Yahoo, as I must end this relationship with my friend Lycos, which is now my enemy. I had some problems with Lycos in the past. 

Once, they lost about 300 e-mails that were reinstated within a couple of weeks, and apologized profusely for it. Another time they un-alphabetized my Address Book and fixed that. But I only had 0.5 GB of space, and I was often at 80 percent of that because of spam. 

I didn’t want to pay for more space, so as time allowed I would print and delete (or forward to my other account) to allow room for more messages. In June I was informed that Lycos was becoming new and improved! Everyone would be up to 3 GB. at no cost, beating out Yahoo and other competitors. Yippee! I thought, and waited patiently as I went through the drill of delete, forward, print.  

Weeks passed and I waited and waited. Finally those GBs came through in late July, and then the horror began. I noticed that my Address Book was alphabetized by nickname (who remembers those?), and I had hundreds of spam to go through. I could deal with that, but the worst was yet to come. On Aug. 4 I got a message from Moderator Portside, a leftist information source. It said roughly; “We are unsubscribing you because Lycos.com has blocked us 34 times. We figure that if you can’t receive our messages that your other contacts are being stopped as well and you should look into the matter.” 

Shades of Chomsky and Zinn! I was seeing red at that point. But there was more. A good friend and I met every week for dinner, often at different times and places. So, I e-mailed her. We went back and forth as it turned out that my replies were turning up blank! So was forwarded mail and I usually couldn’t print, either. 

I called the Library and got a phone number and address, which I have since lost, and I called Boston at mid-day, only to find out from a recording that they don’t have Consumer Service. You have to get a help ticket. You are allowed two or three, and you are supposed to get an answer within 48 hours. 

I started with a timid question “Why am I getting so much spam while messages I want are being blocked?” The reply said to check the spam filter and reset the browser. (huh?) I tried again, this time more urgently and fitting 4 questions into one box; Why do my replies coming up blank? Why do I have so much spam? Why am I having trouble forwarding mail? How can I preserve my e-mails until I can either print them and close my account? 

The reply some days later was more gibberish ending with “If you leave Lycos you will lose data.” Well, I replied to this with “I don’t understand, please help me out” Their reply was “Sorry we couldn’t help you. Your reply came up blank!”  

I had my son-in-law open a new Yahoo account using the first name of my other Yahoo account, with the first name of my Lycos account so I have become ediecatladee@Yahoo.com. I like it, but Lycos wouldn’t let me forward messages to that account, but then it also wouldn’t allow me to forward mail to my other account at Yahoo. 

My son-in-law also copied my Address Book and realphabetized it and sent it to my new account. I think he missed a couple of names but most of it is intact. I have most of my contacts and I can move on, except.... I still have about 200 messages that I need time and paper to print out because I am so busy deleting hundreds of spam even though the filter is on.  

While only a few in my Inbox are from contacts that I don’t have addresses for, I can’t reply to or forward them so I must wait until I have time to copy them down to answer from Yahoo. Of course, I sure wish it was possible to answer job offers, freebie offers and to perhaps enjoy other tantalizing offers of romance, but of course I have no time to open a small number.  

This experience with Lycos has made me afraid to do any business on the Internet for fear of Identity Theft and scams. So, for a while, I’ll still delete and print until Lycos is almost gone. Then, two questions remain; How do you close an account? Do you think Lycos would appreciate this feedback If I can find their address?


On this darkest night

By Mary Wheeler
Friday December 29, 2006

On this darkest night 

Shivering birds take flight,  

Flee the bitter cold 

E’er Winter takes hold. 

 

In our Winter, we 

Too from darkness flee, 

Turn from ceaseless strife 

Seeking hope in life. 

 

Yet soon the Earth will turn 

The days grow warm and long 

And with their joyful song 

The birds will then return. 

 

So as the bleak year’s done 

May we with hope now greet, 

Go forth in peace to meet, 

The new with voices one. 

 

May we wisdom and love, 

Goodwill and caring learn. 

And from our hatred turn 

To seek light from above. 

 

But first, this darkest night, 

Let us be still, let us pause, 

Listen to nobler cause, 

And then go forth renewed, 

Forget battle and feud. 

Emerging from our night 

To seek the New Year’s light. 

 

—Mary Wheeler 

Christmas 2006


Four Social Poems

By Lowell Moorcroft
Friday December 29, 2006

Irene 

I met you as hours driving forward permitted. 

The universe announcing progress in the morning paper 

Made against its black and white your color apt. 

You were an old royal star, a Rigel, a warm 

Mars. There was that self-announcing traffic 

Yelling the bellicose morning of business days, 

Your face against it, pointed, still, aware, under 

A small hat, making the perfect marker for 

The corner to meet at. Always coffee, always 

A search for sugar in lumps no longer cubed 

That way, little bags instead, your crinkled 

Filed fingers tearing them in anyway impatience. 

Then fifteen minutes, twenty sometimes, to find 

The calm bottom of exchange from which to proceed. 

My office waited. The hurried lines for bran 

Muffins, styrofoam occasionally opened for your look to note 

An order for doughnuts as they were your past. 

I wondered at the coral wipe you left on Kleenex 

By the saucer, what cosmetic vintage it belied 

From purses, wallets, whatever you retained to 

Speak fashions that were left to you alone. 

Your bedroom I once thought I saw in Vogue 

In the library someone left on the wide oak 

Table - yellow, with gold inlay wallpaper. No 

Wainscoting (I regretted) but baseboards in 

Severe walnut, fresh white summery bureau 

On which a rich match of bottles stood arrayed. 

Cologne from where? How long? From what wartime 

Flowerfields drawn off? And then the stir of 

Conversation noting noon approached. The lunch for crowds 

Drawn ready—that was time, impolitic with new requests. 

 

The Greece of Quiet 

We must always remember that the great things 

Were material, were borrowed from earth and made 

Into the hope that, without matter, would have failed. 

No one can say how right this transformation was – 

The temple took its turn through stone, is all one says. 

As we, vibrant, move air out of our way, 

The temple made its way through stone 

Before taking on sleep. Before changing the slate sky. 

We who put small range to our pleasures – our garden 

Where we once decided daphnes or irises would 

Flair in the pleated soil - gives us  

Something like that quiet. But we 

Know we also are propelled to churn 

In our own bronze body, as we remember well when, in 

The city of that kind turn of time called youth, 

Playing and talking under stone or woven canopies, 

The brushed air pleading to have heaven find us 

Always upright, singing, clasping another’s hand 

To our breast, our brown arms in quiet sun, we turned 

In the eyes of all those looking, looking for happy repose. 

 

The Proprietors 

We have a love for you, but it is a  

Brief love. A night in blankets, a  

Poem on the radio, in the vast land  

Of the street a careful, well-meaning nod.  

We have a love for you if you can just  

Wait a minute while we answer the damned  

Phone. Take a mint, a cup of drab coffee  

In a styrofoam cuticle, a finger-cup.  

We know, you know this quick attention  

We call love will not sustain you, but  

We've managed to crawl out upon this ledge,  

This bookstore, coffeehouse, imported goods store,  

Where we demand the opportunity to lie  

In the small capital of sun  

We've earned. You are of course part  

Of it, we won't let the coffee go,  

Or fail to see how you've transformed  

Your tiny cuticle of realm into  

Intellectual paradises. But we have to do  

The books. It's time, in fact, it's  

Way past time. And you know the way out,  

Through the door that rings a stranded bell,  

To tell us you've gone, rather like  

Those quasars now and then in the newspaper  

Saying to a silent scientist some star  

Has wrapped the focus of its intent  

Around a blank nodule, cancer beam,  

For which we have no further mercy,  

No X-ray to explain our cold heart. 

 

We of All Saints 

We of all saints have shown the least devotion. 

At the time we were driving and the radio had gathered 

From passing farmscapes it seemed, with drifting silos 

That had the prettiness of ambition to round them out, 

Such pretty and relentless songs of love that could not 

Quiet the soul at 60 mph. We of all saints could reach into 

Wind by the window that our engineered wheels 

Created us into, we were the wind while the air was still 

Enough that corn waited in attention to the sun, it was 

Angelic on the road, and this was god enough. 

We of all saints spent lives that earth terrified 

Only occasionally with dying, the dog smacked into, 

The little newspaper girls trapped in photo'd wells 

Crying for their feet back on national TV. Prayers 

Were reinvented and placed in bookstores under signs 

Unsignifying but touching enough to say, someday, some- 

Day will come the colossal unsinging of unmercy's gold 

In a bookstore with the PA system's silence humming 

A heedless grace in the pretty stacks, sometime the saints 

Will arrive with rusty trombones, woodcut faces 

Blasted with hateful honor to add to traffic 

The whine of their ways, and we will wonder what  

Collegium set us to choir with their esteem, when 

The ride through the countryside with the radio's prayer 

Seemed more eventful than chapel myths, the mild farm 

Close enough to death with grazing beasts. 

 

 

 


What is Peace on Earth?

By Fred Foldvary
Friday December 29, 2006

Peace on earth requires not just an absence of war among countries, but harmony among peoples. Social harmony requires the recognition of a universal ethic that prescribes equal rights for all, privileges for none. There is no peace when you impose your values on others. Let us abolish all laws restricting and imposing costs on peaceful and honest human action. Be at peace with nature and humanity by taxing pollution, not labor. Abolish poverty by sharing the surplus from land, rather than depriving people of benefits from enterprise. Do not mistake “silent night” for peace, for there is no peace without liberty.


Alaska

By Catherine Freethy
Friday December 29, 2006

The hat lands in a pail of green mossy water and sober felt. 

People glare and do not see death in the trees.  

Glen was never my friend 

the trees commit slow suicide.  

 

Bloated eyes seek solace in the sky. 

we fought, and spent time smoking in parking lots. 

I never hear esoteric sounds/ the boxer fights his rounds.  

 

Now the oceans are locked at night. In Alaska, the land bathes in oil and floates in light. At 4:50 p.m. struck down in a violin trash bin. The answer: stumble alone. 

 

The gold fish ice the dying plant. 

The Doctor is in.  

They laughed about the couch.  

We walked/ the air is cool.  

There-we are banned.  

The church is a garden of marble.  

Meryl drives the semi/bunny rabbits call the cops.  

Rocks sit by the road and say nothing. 

 


What If ...

By Andrew Rosenthal
Friday December 29, 2006

Hello everyone. I have a request. Please, I would very much appreciate the assistance of anyone computer savvy enough to send the following message around the world to as many newspaper editorial sections in as many languages as possible. 

 

My Dear Co-inhabitants of our Beautiful Planet: 

What if we the human beings, of planet Earth, decided to make the concept of a super power obsolete? 

What if embarrassment and “saving face” were likewise to become obsolete? 

What if the USA initiated an, ongoing/on growing, series of Peace Talks, round table discussions with equally rotating facilitators, inviting every world leader, NGO, terrorist organization, the military, and CEOs of the planet’s top 20 corporations? 

Say these talks were held somewhere neutral like Switzerland or Greenland or maybe better still, with stronger symbolization, not so neutral, in the middle of the mid-east. Then the world would know that these talks were sincere. They’re simulcasted live on radio and TV, with NO commercials, all over the world in every language. And, woven through out the entire proceedings is a totally honest, very thorough, cross-cultural educational program. 

This could be paid for out of each countries military budget according to its size/ability to pay a fair percentage of the expenses. And, the United Nations would be responsible for the highest quality, most humanitarian/respectful security system ever created. In other words, “People, check your guns, etc…, at the door!” What if…? 

What if we spent as much time, effort, energy, attitude, and money on enhancing our humanity as we do on being consumers? 

What if parenting and inter-personal communication classes were set up, meeting on a regular basis (2 or 3 times week, for example, in every neighborhood, with parents and children participating equally? 

What if all nations guilty of slavery, in the present or the past, and Indigenous genocide, physical and emotional, decided to heal those incredibly deep wounds? 

What if we healed all forms of emotional and physical abuse?  

What if we all decided to work cooperatively to bring our emotional and psychological growth up with our technological? 

What if we were all willing to assist each other in giving up our oil and other addictions both physical and emotional? 

What if we worked together to build a worldwide, spider-web designed, public transportation system, one neighborhood at a time? What if this system was the most economical, safest, most efficient, most environmentally sound, and most comfortable ever conceived of…?  

What if we all decided to work cooperatively to be more Motivated by Love than fear, more Motivated by Cooperation than competition and willing to Listen more with Acceptance than judgment and criticism? In other words, listen and speak from our Hearts.  

What if we co-created an international school action that touched every grade and every school? And an educational concept that consisted of the most honest, most direct, most respectful, deepest and most thorough cross cultural education possible, specifically designed for every grade and every school on the planet. This, of course, would consist of religion, race, philosophy, politics, Love, Respect ( a key ingredient of love) all the arts, all sports, all communication styles (except violence) all the ways that we interact ... Always emphasizing, teaching and supporting each other to have the healthiest self-esteem. And, really, the only appropriate leader there is ... Who we see in the mirror.  

What if we the people of planet earth dismantled the military industrial complex, which Dwight Eisenhower warned us about in the ‘50s, who listened? What if … we took the $2.5 billion for 1 B-2 bomber, $2.5 billion for 1 polaris submarine, 1.5 million a year to maintain 1 aircraft carrier, and the 100 million land mines in 62 countries of this world that cost $3.00 a piece to put in the ground and $1000.00 a piece to take them out…  

What if we took this money and put it into education, healthcare, and housing?  

What if we took the word “Industry” away from medical ? 

What if everyone got 100 percent choice as to practioner and medication and traditional health care was combined holistically with all the alternatives in the world? 

What if we took that same “Industry” away from music and the other arts? 

What if we put as many arts courses as science and math courses in every school? 

What if all of us, all over this world, became aware that the two biggest “plagues” on our planet are Little and No self-esteem? 

What if we began to help each other heal these “plagues” 

What if we really were more Motivated by Love than fear?  

What if what you’ve just read was accepted as genuine possibility and Not simply dismissed as idealism 

My Good Friends All Over This World, What if ... 

With the utmost Love and Respect, 

—Andrew Rosenthal 

 

And please know, “There is only Love and a Cry for Love…” I believe that the Bush family, the Bin Laden family, the Hussein family, etc., and all their relatives, friends, CEO’s, generals, sergeants and privates… are Crying for Love and to have healthy self-esteem; I believe that this is especially true for the joint chiefs of staff and the world’s top multi-national corporations.  

“Ask for 100% of what you want 100% of the time, be willing to hear “No” and negotiate for the difference..” 

Thank you! Peace! 

And may the sun always shine in and from our hearts…  


I talk to God

By Myrna Sokolinsky
Friday December 29, 2006

I talk to God 

 

I talk to God and God said this to me, 

“You should be president of this country.” 

Five nice judges made me president 

And that is why I was confident. 

I was born again a very pure and holy man 

I come from a very well-connected clan. 

The computer did the job for me in 2004 

Each vote for Kerry gave me one vote more. 

 

My dad got me into the National Guard 

By not showing up it wasn’t very hard. 

But I need a lot of unconnected guys 

For my oil grabbing enterprise. 

Global warming is not caused by oil don’t you see? 

More tax cuts for the rich will fix it handily. 

God told me it’s part of his intelligent design 

It’s not a problem that is mine or thine 

 

My wealthy friends were very nice to me 

They bought me a baseball team and oil company. 

It’s people’s fault if they are black and poor 

I think they like to sleep out of door. 

We are law-abiding folks who will not torture you 

Just cruel and degrading treatment will do. 

But if you’re rich I’ll tell some lies so you can own the oil 

Because to my friends I’m very loyal. 

Very loyal. 

 


The Connection Between Learning and Teachers

By Marvin Chachere
Friday December 29, 2006

Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice … does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.  

—K. Wilhelm Freiherr von Humbolt  

(1764 – 1835)  

Ref. Limits of State Action  

(Liberty Fund, 1993)  

 

I Former Days  

Around the time our system of schooling was taking shape the verbs “to teach” and “to learn” were interchangeable, both capable of taking a direct object, an indirect object or both. Toddlers learned to talk and teachers learned first graders to read. Fathers marched naughty sons to the woodshed to learn them a thing or two. 

In the middle of the nineteenth century the great Benjamin Disraeli, a novelist before he became a statesman, and so a purveyor of language before becoming a purveyor of imperialism, exhorted his Tory colleagues, to “Learn to know the house and learn the house to know you.” 

Nowadays, such usage is considered uneducated and vulgar but it tells us a lot about the intimate give-and-take in this instance between the act of teaching and its intended result. 

The fact that teaching and learning were once synonymous may sound strange but every teacher has experienced it; you have to teach a subject to find out how little you know of it. 

Thomas Young, (1773–1829), professor of natural history at the Royal Institution, famously referred to as “the last man to know everything,” told a friend that when he wanted to understand something he would write about it and the very process of formulating what exactly he wanted to know would lead to guesses (hypotheses) and experiments that confirmed or denied them and ultimately to knowledge. Learning is self-teaching. 

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), world renowned Swiss born zoologist and geologist was hired by Harvard in 1848 to introduce science and in doing so influenced a generation of American scientists. Notice the word is “influenced” not “taught” because Agassiz had little more to say to them than “Look, look, look and look again.” To illustrate this and incidentally to pay tribute to a great teacher Agassiz’s students and their students like to tell the story about the fish … some say it was not a fish but a snail. 

The great man presented a graduate student in the laboratory with a fish (or a snail) and told him to find out what he could. By and by, he said, I will ask you what you have seen. The student got no further directions. Each morning he arrived at the laboratory, sat before the aquarium and stared at the fish (or snail) but could think of nothing to do. Agassiz, concentrating on his own work, paid little attention to his student. After about ten days, in a fit of exasperation and desperation the student took up a pencil and began to draw the fish (or snail). 

Only then did he get an approving comment: The pen is a great third eye, said Agassiz, thereby inspiring the student to see more. Under a watchful eye and in the fullness of time this student and others went on to distinguished careers in science. Great teachers inspire and do not control, direct but do not restrain, guide and comment but only after learning has begun. It follows then that teaching is not a pitch-catch, cause-effect activity. Self-teaching may be energized by the desire to emulate. Self-teaching is not imitation. Teaching causes learning alright enough, but in the teacher and not necessarily in the student. 

To sever learning from its cause-effect tie with teaching frees it for closer, clearer scrutiny. Think of all that has been written, library shelves crammed with studies and reports. Learning, they tell us, is susceptible to reinforcement and extinction. As personal attainment learning is valued if it fosters a student’s ability to generalize and to discriminate. Psychologists classify learning, examine mental processes of rote learning, memory, concept learning. Professional educators preach learning skill, methods to be used to teach the principles that are needed to sustain social, civic, moral and aesthetic values. Learning involves the acquisition of knowledge, all agree, and this invites philosophical language. All studies and reports make necessary assumptions about learning, assumptions that are sometimes simple, clear and distinct as they ought to be, and sometimes not. 

The system we have overlooks the common sense meaning of learning. It provides schools and schools provide environments that more or less facilitate learning. To embrace common sense learning we must let our minds be free. Doing so presents a simple concept of learning that is at once sharp, far-reaching, and revealing of features that point the way towards significant improvements.  

 

II Two Modes of Learning  

Linguistic considerations are revealing. The present participle “learning” is commonly followed by “to” or “about” and this suggests two modes of learning: All learning is either learning to (insert a verb) or learning about (insert a noun). The first mode involves physical activity and ends in the acquisition of a particular skill. 

School-age children learn to play baseball, to ride a bicycle, to sing, to draw, to read, to write, etc. Learning to (verb) leads to performance. The second, learning about (noun), results in knowledge. (There is third mode distinguished by another suffixed preposition—learning that. This involves the acquisition of facts, and the acquisition of facts is static and contributes little to the kind of learning we want.)  

Each of these two modes of learning calls for a different approach. How a student learns to speak Chinese is quite different from how he or she might learn about Chinese. A student learns to do something by imitating and practicing. The goal is clear and the process is self-regulatory. 

If a student wants to use a word and does not know the Chinese for that word, then he goes to his dictionary. If she pronounces a word incorrectly, then she will not be understood and must, therefore, alter the pronunciation until she gets it right. In its unassisted aspect learning to is acquired naturally with growth and maturation. Human babies suckle, like animals, by instinct, but as they grow they learn to walk by practice and to talk by imitation. 

The fact that some animals can learn to do tricks but no animal can learn about something suggests that learning about (noun) is the more elevated, the more admired, more desirable mode. This may be, but the two are so intimately connected that it is virtually impossible to have one without the other. Learning about (noun) depends on learning to (verb) for its very existence. 

It is useful to recall the contrast Richard Hofstadter draws between a person of intelligence and a person of intellect (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Vintage Books, 1962), a distinction paralleling the two modes of learning. Intelligence refers to “…an excellence of mind…, [an] …unfailingly practical quality” while intellect is “…the critical, creative and contemplative side of mind”. Intelligence seeks to grasp and evaluate while intellect evaluates evaluation.  

 

III Yin Yang Connection  

To understand the relationship between the two modes of learning we need to consider how we determine that learning of any sort has taken place. As a teacher what tells you that a student has learned what you taught? What is evidence for learning? 

Teachers, indeed everyone, must per force interpret what a person does as evidence for that person’s mental state. Thus, learning about (noun) a supposed elevated mode, is linked vitally to the primary mode, learning to (verb). Doing is the ordinary manifestation of learning. 

Students demonstrate that they have learned something by doing something. Anyone who has learned to do something—play the piano, solve a quadratic equation, speak Russian, etc.—feels good about it. There is a delightful sense of accomplishment; we get an emotional lift. And we do it again just to bring back the good feeling. 

A cycle is developed. We do well what we enjoy doing and we enjoy doing what we do well. The point is that learning to (verb) and learning that (noun) are linked by this feeling of enjoyment. Depending on context and purpose, learning to may require assistance, and this is where teaching, more properly termed instruction, enters. 

A teacher or instructor directs with explanations and demonstrations. Success may arise from determination and innate gifts, the whole endeavor being more or less strenuous, more or less useful. Training, therefore, arouses, extends, enhances and occasionally perfects the student’s inherent talents. 

The situation is quite different with the other mode of learning, learning about (noun). Here attainment cannot be reached by imitation and practice. Training doesn’t enter the picture. Learning about is open ended, not self-regulatory; there are no criteria that can readily be applied, no universally accepted standard. 

To learn about Medieval England, say or to learn about the Constitutional Convention means to acquire information and the nature of the information is not preordained. Two people may know a lot about seventeenth century England and yet not know the same things. Furthermore, learning about something is very personal and reflects a philosophical conundrum, i.e. only the learner knows for sure what he or she knows.  

Teachers assess and tests record which algebra problems you solved correctly, and whether the steps you took are appropriate. Neither teacher nor test can determine how much of algebra you actually know. The view offered here is simple—of course it is—but it is not simplistic. What makes it useful is that it reveals how the two modes of learning interact. reinforcing one another. A student learns about Algebra when he or she learns to do algebra.  

You can know about something and not be able to do it—I know how to play the piano in the sense of knowing what my hands and fingers must do to black and white keys, but I can’t actually play the piano. And yet, conversely, if you can do something then you know about it and the better you are able to do it the more you are likely to know about it.  

The primary mode—learning to (verb)—is practical, the other—learning about (noun)—is formative. The primary mode implies the formative, but not visa versa. On the philosophical level they parallel the body-mind duality as well as the controversy between learning for some practical purpose and learning for its own sake.  

Conclusions: Employ the primary to achieve the formative. Students can, with and sometimes without help, train themselves to perform to the satisfaction of their teachers. The leap from what a student can do to what a student has learned has no sound logical justification. 

A teacher can conclude that you got 90 percent of the problems right, give you an “A”, but it would be foolish to interpret that to mean: You learned 90 percent of Algebra. 

Poised between the marketplace and the ivory tower, the system we want is neither at one extreme nor the other. It follows, therefore, that neither learning to (verb) nor learning about (noun) is sufficient alone. 

Neither mode should be prized above the other. Like yin and yang, they need one another. The system we want, the system we deserve ought to deliver both.


Emma

By Mertis L. Shekeloff
Friday December 29, 2006

You couldn’t find a better caregiver than my mother; she nursed my grandmother and two uncles to their end. Almost. Though unsurpassed at nursing, she could do it only to a point. A crucial point. She was incapable of overseeing a patient’s death.  

“I simply can’t stand seeing someone I love die,” she explained, “I just can’t stand it!” 

This job she has given to me. 

Grandmother Emma, suffering from an undisclosed list of maladies, was Mother’s first patient. The doctor never gave a clear diagnosis so we never knew the severity of the illness. It began to hit us after she had lost an unusual amount of weight. 

I, especially, was in denial. Instead of the outsized dresses I used to buy her, I was now pleased to get her more fashionable outfits which came in the more common sizes. She went from a 26 to size 10, a weight, I thought, was more appropriate for a lady slightly over 5 feet tall. I found this new petite form attractive and pooh-poohed the idea that a ravaging disease had shrunken her body. 

Grandmother, however, missed her rotundity and insisted this dramatic weight loss was the result of doctor error, or that her doctor had, without telling her, given her a prescription to promote radical weight loss. 

“Grandmother,” I countered, when she presented this idea to me, “I’ve never seen a fat old person. Losing weight is just part of aging. You look great!”  

She gave me a look that I knew well; a common expression members of my family often sent my way. A look which said, “There you go again, Miss High and Mighty. Just because you went to college doesn’t mean you know everything! “  

********* 

When Grandmother Emma became bedridden, Mother moved from her side of the duplex to sleep on a daybed in Grandmother’s room where she was alert to every sound of discomfort Grandmother made. Mother was up at dawn to stand vigil over Grandmother’s bed—ready to wrestle whatever demons Grandmother’s illness brought forth. Yes, if one needed a Florence Nightingale, Mother was a reasonable facsimile. 

Patient and good-spirited, Mother was surprised one day by a kick in the belly when she was turning Grandmother over to change her bed. Mother was never sure if the kick had been accidental. It’s my bet that Grandmother Emma had been delirious when she kicked. Mother leaned over the bed and whispered, “Now, why did you do that? You know I’m trying to do my best for you. Why would you hurt me like that?” Grandmother did not respond. 

But when I think of it, she might have heard Mother’s admonition. She’d always been a crusty little old lady and might, indeed, have kicked Mother on purpose, I wouldn’t put it past her.  

Mother enticed Grandmother with tasty meals, portioned out her daily medication, and sat close-by to murmur soothing words, finding surcease in busy work. Being busy distracted her from thoughts of death. When the end neared, signaled by a 911 call to take grandmother to the hospital, presumably to die, Mother sensed her services had ended. She gave me a look signifying the passing of the baton. Now, my turn.  

My task was visiting the hospital daily to keep up on Grandmother’s progress or lack of it. Fortunately, the hospital was halfway between the school where I taught and my home—less than five minutes away from each. 

Everyday after school I headed for the hospital. Getting off the elevator - I quickly put on a false cheery smile to camouflage the fear and anxiety I actually felt before bursting into Grandmother’s room. Usually she was waiting for me, I could tell. She gave me a weak “Hi, baby” smile. Perfect little white teeth, flawed only by a space around the right front tooth where she had had a gold crown removed. 

I stood at the foot of the bed looking down at her. She looked back, smiling.  

I rearranged the flowers, wiped imaginary dust from the side table, straightened out wrinkles from the top sheet and smoothed out, again, a space to sit down—on the bed, close to her. Trying to overlook how little of the bed she now took up—how thin her arms had become—and how little she resembled the Emma of my childhood, adolescence and adult life. That Emma had been a round, jolly woman. And always the love of my life.  

She always had a passion for gambling, horse racing especially, and would go play the ponies most days of the week—often with less than five dollars in her purse. If she won, I was among the first she’d call to offer a little gift. She loved money, too. Although I could little afford it, I once gave her the first hundred dollar bill she had ever seen—just to see if she would faint dead away. I had passed the tightly rolled bill to her, casually: for all she knew, it might be money to buy Sunday’s chicken. I remember loving the absolute incredulous look which molded her face after she unfolded it ... The way she lovingly rolled it up again and quickly shoved it into her brassiere, where it lay hidden and secure under the soft ample folds of her breast. Her pleasure was palpable. Looking heavenward, “Thank you, Jesus,” she said jubilantly patting her treasure trove. 

 

• • • 

 

I found a bottle of lotion in the drawer next to her bed. She enjoyed a daily massage. Turning back the covers, I was amazed and delighted to find an enviable pair of firm, cafe au lait-colored thighs, unusual for an 86-year-old woman. I hope I’ve inherited these gorgeous thighs, I mused. 

“You look pretty good for a sick old lady,” I teased, and rubbed. 

“Jealous?” she retorted. 

“You better believe it!” 

 

• • • 

 

Mother called one evening. “Mertis, you should go to the hospital,” she said in a muffled voice. 

“O.K., I’m on my way,” I answered. I was there in minutes. 

The floor seemed especially quiet. A nurse met me and led me to a dimly lit room where Grandmother was sleeping, breathing noisily; propped up on pillows and looking peaceful. I stood looking at her a few minutes and took a chair near the foot of the bed. I sat listening to the noisy rattling of my grandmother’s last breaths. 

I was numb, mute and didn’t know what to do. I sat there sensing this was the end. I shouldn’t be in this chair—my place should be there on the bed next to my grandmother. 

I thought I should be holding her—assisting in her journey to the other side. I sat there thinking it was important for me to hold her—that she would sense my presence—she would know it was me. The closeness and warmth of my body would be a comfort to her. I sat in the chair thinking that I should get up, go sit on the bed and hold my grandmother as she lay dying. I will go in a little while. Go, Mertis—do your part! 

While I sat there waiting for whatever it took to get me out of that chair, Grandmother Emma died. 

 

 


An Interesting Story

By David Vasquez
Friday December 29, 2006

I got on the bus in a major city just the other day. After loading my bicycle on the front rack, I removed my bike flag and carried it on board with me. I went to the back and found a seat facing the front. The pair of seats opposite me faced the back of the bus and there I saw a teenage boy. It was clear he was friends with another young man who sat on the opposite side of the bus.  

“He got one of them gay bike flags, there,” the first young man said to his friend, more than once, indicating me and clearly wanting to get my attention in some way. I ignored him. He then began looking at me with a grin, attempting to get my attention by some means. I paid no attention, even when he began grinning at me and making a hand motion in the air, pretending to masturbate.  

I continued to stare forward and brought out my Braille slate to practice writing. Generally when I do this, I look straight ahead, concentrating on what my hands are doing instead of what is happening in front of my eyes. After a short time of seeing what I was doing (and probably noticing that I was paying no attention to him), the young man said to his friend, “Hey, I think he blind. Yeah.” He then began waving and grinning directly in my line of vision, perhaps to see if he could get me to laugh.  

He got the attention of a woman in the seat behind me, though. “What?” she asked of the first young man, after talking to the second briefly, trying to learn if their families knew each other. “I think he blind. He doin’ Braille,” the first young man said.  

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I knew it was the woman who had spoken to the young men. As I was turning my head toward her, she said “Are you blind?” I did not finish turning my head to face her, but instead turned back facing front and said nothing. There was an uncomfortable pause. “Well, it don’t matter to me—” she went on after a moment.  

At that moment I almost felt like crying. I didn’t understand how people can behave this way, singling a person out in front of other people, pointing out what they perceived was a disability in front of a crowd. Instead, I continued to ignore them.  

Meanwhile, their interest in me trailed off as they sat with their actions exposed, I hope, by my ignoring them. I hope they learned something.  

 

 

 

 

 


Photograph

Friday December 29, 2006

I took this photo in south Berkeley in late November, 2006 ... not very "holiday," but pretty peaceful, don't you think? Photograph by Max Batts.


Julia Child Entertains

By Maggie Morley
Friday December 29, 2006

I stew my goose in green Chartreuse, 

Poach giblets in reduced Pernod. 

I braise lamb shanks in darkest brews, 

I stew my goose in Green Chartreuse, 

and dinner guests cannot refuse 

to dine chez moi, for they well know 

I stew my goose in green Chartreuse, 

Poach giblets in reduced Pernod. 


Space Ship

By Lenore Waters
Friday December 29, 2006

On the way to the kitchen at midnight 

To get a glass of water, 

I pass the computer desk. 

The green and red tiny lights, some round, some oblong, some bright 

In the blackness 

The refrigerator hums 

For a moment—call it a nanu second— 

I feel I am at the controls of a Star Trek like space ship 

Hurtling through the universe on an unknown mission 

I turn, feeling disoriented, to the window. 

The streetlight casts a warm amber glow on the street below, 

The dry leaves are moving about in the wind. 

Porch lights are on in the neighbors’ bungalows. 

I am still on planet Berkeley. 

 


DEAR earth commUNity friends

By Bill Trampleasure
Friday December 29, 2006

DEAR earth commUNity friends 

especially the Berkeley variety 

and/or the UC Berkeley variety 

and especially the Acroft Court variety 

and especially the thousands or more 

to whom I delivered for the United States Postal Service 

and United Nations Postal Union 

both junk and marvelous stuff for about 30 years 

and the UNcertain number to whom I handed out 

Berkeley Daily Planets for about three years 

and the less huge but very neighborhoodly/friendly neighbors 

on-the-court and beyond  

and of course our kids (Calvin, Lee and Grace) 

and Berkeley schools Whittier, Garfield/King 

and good old BHS ‘46 and UC Berkeley ‘50 

(which claimed to be nifty) 

and our 6 billion friends on our ONE WORLD, 

so named by Wendell Willkie 

but now 192 nation states 

who are on the right track 

but hardly nurtured 

since the UN was born in 1945 

the same year the BOMB was born 

and so overly nurtured at UC Berkeley 

and many places of so-called “higher learning” 

where WORLD WITHOUT WAR a “puzzlement” 

and no body has yet foUNd 

anything like a solution 

to our human-being-created-catastrophe 

EXCEPT MAYBE POSITIVE PRAYER 

IN CONNECTION WITH BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS. 

 

Like I tell my UNitarian/UNiversalist friends- 

“It can’t hurt! IT MAY HELP!” 

 


Getting Going in a Gallery

By Alta Gerrey
Friday December 29, 2006

At the tender age of 64 I decided to start a new art gallery. Did I realize what I was getting into? Well ... I did know two things: there are a lot of fine artists in the Bay Area, and while I feel good it’s best not to waste feeling good. I enjoy sharing beautiful work with others. And good conversation has always been a favorite pastime; Saturday afternoons are turning into conversation hour, with a couple of regulars who enjoy chatting about art and philosophy. That’s fun, too. 

The current exhibit is by an artist I began collecting when I was just 24—Don Clausen had his gallery across from the DMV (his son Eric now has that space) and I wandered in. Don’s dog scared me, and Don would rather paint than chat, but I enjoyed wandering through the rooms to view his work. 

At Clars Auction Gallery last year, I was able to buy a classic Clausen—a view of a harbor in China at dawn. His son Eric wants it if I ever decide to sell it; he remembers his dad working on a series of such paintings, and says it’s one of his happy childhood memories. As we talked at the cafe they go to every morning, Don told his son “Those were my potboilers. I tried to do one a week to take up to Telegraph Avenue to sell.” 

He waves his finger at his son, “That’s how I supported you!” The painting I have says $90 on the back. It has pride of place over the mantel in my home office.  

His paintings don’t go for $90 anymore, as any collector knows, but I still love his work and am happy to have some from the various stages he’s explored with his oil paintings and sculptures. The current exhibit here at Alta Galleria consists of abstracts and portraits. At his reception I told him I was honored to show his work. 

He wagged his finger at me and said, “Now don’t expect any more treats!” 

Don showed up wearing his Marine Corps cap and I had unknowingly chosen an anti-war activist for the musician at that opening, but peace prevailed. The musician was Robert Temple, local singer and songwriter, and Clausen’s wife Charlotte told me later she thought he was an excellent choice. 

The hardest part of any business for me is keeping track of bureaucratic demands. When I went to pick up the business license, I had to close the Gallery and find parking, but the license was ready. As the lady handed it to me, I held out a check. The lady told me I had to go to another building to pay. I put more money in the meter and went and stood in line (not an easy task, as I have multiple sclerosis) but when I got to that counter, that lady said, “Where are your documents?”  

“What documents?” 

She told me and I replied that I had already shown them to the Permit Board.  

“I need to see them, too.” she stared at me. After a moment she asked “Do you have them?”  

“Can I do this by mail?” I asked.  

“Yes.” By the time I got out, the Gallery had been closed for over an hour, I was cranky and tired, and nothing had been accomplished. It took two months for me to find one of the documents and send a check. The other document is somewhere, probably, in one of these piles of papers. 

There’s no heater in this room; i close earlier than I had originally planned because it’s a drag sitting in a cold room when it’s dark outside. But the art is beautiful, I like the artists who have shown here—Mark P. Fisher and Mary Ann Hayden, and of course, Don Clausen, and I’ve met some lovely people.  

The neighbors are supportive, and there’s Espresso Roma is on the corner; who could ask for more? 

Alta Galleria is located at 2980 College Avenue, #4, at Ashby, next to the Elmwood Theater in Berkeley. The phone number is 421-1255 and we try to be open from 11 to 6 Tuesday through Friday and 11 to 5 on Saturday.


The Hurrahs of War

By Mary Barrett
Friday December 29, 2006

My mother painted white lights with scarlet nail polish for Christmas during the war—I was just born, “fifth dependent” my father bragged since I kept him from active duty.  

He volunteered for Civil Defense instead and scanned the night sky with binoculars from the cupola of the Webster Hotel spying for enemy aircraft that might fly in across Lake Ontario from Canada. Family rumor is they fired him, though, for falling asleep, while a tub of a U.S. plane flew across during his 2 a.m. watch, and wasn’t reported.  

An easy baby, Mother detailed, I slept, I cooed, though I cried when she sang any slow tune in a minor key, even if it was Irish. I didn’t like Marsie Dotes, either. She dried the winter diapers on a line hung across the cellar, three of us in diapers at once, and boiled baby bottles on the stove.  

She didn’t complain, grateful for hot water and health. We strung those Victory lights with garish others, the nail polish peeling off but symbolic of ‘making do’ and ‘overcoming’, right up until I left home in the ‘60s, brash and protesting a different war, my father still the patriot, my mother understanding.  

I refused the 4th of July hoopla at the Firemen’s Field where my father gave rousing speeches; I couldn’t stomach the hurrahs of war, fireworks like bombs, while images of terrified peasants running from napalm were the news; Pete already dead. I didn’t understand the concept of winning, the word couldn’t apply to burned babies, parents blown up by grenades.  

My father believed in the justness of war until he saw, on the black and white TV down in the cellar, Nixon’s shadowed face, a revelation.  

“Defending his ego not freedom,” Dad said, and voted Democrat after that, proud he had when Nixon resigned. Had he and mother seen Bush’s fatuous face and lived with his reckless choices, I imagine their efforts toward peace joined with ours. Together we light up this dark season, strings of protests, like victory lights, bright and glowing to make do, to overcome. 


An Exuberance of Whales

By Sherry K. Bridgman
Friday December 29, 2006

It was one of those sparkling September days here in the Bay Area, blue skies and warm with little or no wind. What fog there was had melted away by the time I reached dockside where the boat the Salty Lady was moored. 

By arriving early, I could meet with the naturalist and the Captain for any last minute information. This was a trip to the Farallone Islands sponsored by the zoo where I worked at the time as the Membership Director in the 1980’s. We did four trips a year to the Farallone Islands, two to see birds in the spring and summer and whales in September and January. The Farallone waters are rich in fish and wildlife and are designated the Point Reyes Farallon Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Because it is a refuge no one is allowed on the islands. Only the Pt. Reyes Bird Observatory has limited access for bird counts and observations. 

Members started arriving well before 6 am. And by 6:10 everyone was on board. As I stepped aboard the Captain was giving the safety talk. The captain also had some rules; if you were seasick do not lock yourself in the restrooms! You must go to the back of the boat and lean over the rail if you feel nauseated. He emphasized this very strongly. 

We were ocean bound shortly thereafter for the two-and-a-half hour trip to the islands. Out through the Golden Gate, past Pt. Bonita; as we cleared the Marin coast we could see the Farallone Islands some 27 miles away and the early morning sun was making them a spectacular sight. 

We were about five miles from the islands when the Captain announced over the intercom “two whales at 2 o’clock (that would be slightly to the right, the front of the boat being at 12 o’clock). Then there was another sighting at 11 o’clock—at 4 o’clock—whales were everywhere. We were so close at times you didn’t need your binoculars. Our Zoo members were thrilled and very excited. The captain had slowed the boat to an idle, which makes the boat pitch from side to side. Then he cut off the engine completely because his fish finder was indicating whales under the boat. There were shouts from the naturalist pointing out which one’s were Blues and which were Humpbacks. 

Then I heard “man overboard” my heart sank. (Gosh, it was hard enough to get members, and now I am losing one overboard!) When I got to the other side where he’d gone overboard, two quick thinking guys and the first mate had him in tow on a long pole. The Captain was directing his safe rescue. He still was clinging to his camera and binoculars! They took him in the cabin, put him in dry clothes and wrapped him blankets to prevent hypothermia. By this time he had his voice back and he was thanking his rescuers. The temperature of the water at that time was 46 degrees. 

The upwelling of the ocean here produces myriad of krill on which the whales feed. Both the Blue and the Humpback whales are baleen feeders; they may also take other small schooling fish such as sardines and prawns. 

After three exciting hours of looking at whales, the Captain announced we were heading back to Sausalito. Most of the people found a comfortable place on the boat and fell asleep in the warm sun. 

About a mile from the Golden Gate, the Captain wanted everyone on board in the cabin immediately. The ocean seemed calm, with very little wind. I hustled everyone into the cabin as quickly as I could, and I was the last to step in and close the door. Most of the people were facing the front of the boat because it was very crowded. I turned around and looked out to sea—then I saw it. A rolling 15-foot wave coming directly at us. We were raised up and then down, somewhat like a roller coaster. Then it was over. The Captain told us it was a rogue wave, and luckily he had been radioed from another boat in the vicinity that the wave was coming our way. 

What a fabulous day of whale watching! All in all, we had seen 25 Blue whales and 28 Humpback whales. Probably counted some of them twice! 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Checking Out Chavez’s Venezuela

By Mel Martynn
Friday December 29, 2006

Last Spring I noticed that articles about Venezuela and its president, Hugo Chavez, began to appear more and more in the media. At first they were almost all negative, from attacks in the New York Review of Books, to snide comments in the New York Times. 

Then there were the TV snippets showing Fidel Castro and President Chavez, along with condemnations from various parts of the Bush administration. Soon I saw Venezuelan solidarity groups being formed and films such as “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (about the attempted coup of President Chavez). 

It became obvious that something special was happening down there. So when I learned about a Global Reality tour that would be coinciding with the presidential election I decided to go and see for myself. 

What I found was 

1. Overwhelming support by the people of Venezuela for Pres. Chavez and his ideas,  

2. A significant number of successful programs promoting help for the poor and dispossessed in both Venezuela and throughout Latin America, and  

3. The on-again, off-again efforts of the U.S. government to destablize the success of 1 and 2. 

President Chavez was re-elected with over 60 percent of the vote. The weekend before, I attended a rally of his supporters that numbered over one million. Many had traveled hours from all parts of the country. 

On election day, with a Spanish translator, I interviewed about 25 people who had just cast their ballots. The most popular reason they voted was to endorse the various Mission programs set up by the government. (These have no connection to the Spanish missions established in the U.S.). 

These programs focus on education, especially literacy, high school graduation, improved health centers, and job creation. Because one of our tour members suffered severe back pains, we were able to witness first-hand the medical services, Totally free, these Cuban staffed clinics are spreading throughout the country. Supported by the exchange of oil to Cuba, they supply a needed solution to areas previously experiencing little or no healthcare.  

Inheriting a system of extensive corruption, historically greased by the petrodollar booms, Chavez is now widely funding cooperatives in an effort to promote a new consciousness of group initiative. There are presently over 1,000 government co-ops in Venezuela. We visited them in both the city and country. 

At a women fruit canning operation, we were asked by the leader our most provocative question. What did we think of Chavez referring to Bush as the devil at the United Nations? (We generally agreed that it made the U.S. population more defensive.) We also went to a shoe factory where petroleum based products were recycled into shoe soles. This has been one of the paradoxes in the recent history of Venezuela.  

Lots of money available during high oil price times but very little of it distributed to the lower sections of the society. At present record oil profits, the government is scheduled in 2007 to be able to distribute nearly 10 billion dollars. This is beyond the automatic reserve system.  

A significant factor about the Bolivarian Revolution, as the government nicknames itself, is the additional use of the country's oil resources and profits to subsidize reforms for the poor throughout Latin America. Chavez has not only closely identified himself with the cause of Cuba, but also Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina. The day before we left, a milk cooperative in Argentina was re-funded after missing a payment deadline to the U.S. financier George Soros.  

Chavez has also embraced the cause of indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan people. When attacked by conservatives in the election in an attempt to raise fears about who would gain by his programs, Chavez willingly took up the cause of his own indigenous and Black background. He went on to pointedly scorn his opponents for their attempts at a racial exploitation of the campaign.  

In his campaign, Pres. Chavez prominently warned against U.S. government interference. One of his most popular banners that stretched across streets advocated “Against the devil, and against imperialism.” 

During our tour we heard from author Eva Golinger, “The Chavez Code,” and in 2007, “Bush vs. Chavez.” Using research discovered from the Freedom of Information Act, she boiled down the interference into three categories; Financial aid, including money and advice, Diplomatic, accusing Chavez of fostering terrorism, becoming a dictator, and destabilizing the region, and Military, increasing pressure in the region by building up to as many as 40,000 troops on neighboring Caribbean islands, and aiding and installing Colombian paramilitary groups in Venezuela to assassinate Chavez. (One such group was actually seized by Venezuelan troops earlier in 2006). 

Recently, Jens Gould in the N.Y. Times detailed much of these same charges. According to officials involved in the projects, Gould cited the United States Agency for International Development with distributing about $25 million to various Venezuelan organizations over the last five years.  

During the election, consumers throughout the country cleared out the supplies of their local stores, fearing some type of coup as the result of the expected Chavez victory. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of government troops were distributed throughout the nation for security reasons. Fortunately, democracy ruled the day, at least for now.  

However, with so many successful and popular initiatives in Venezuela, and support for other progressive reforms in other Latin America countries, it's obvious that further destabilizing efforts by the U.S. government will not disappear. In the meantime I encourage everyone to learn more about what is happening in the Bolivarian Revolution.


Night Storm

By Sandra J. Whittaker
Friday December 29, 2006

Still ... Still ... waiting for the storm 

 

The long menacing wait ... still ... still ... 

 

Then... the dark harbinger of the huge wind 

 

begins to snake among the leaves ... 

 

Not so still now ... but no real wind 

 

yet. 

 

A great saucer sized splash-drop 

 

Offers its taste to the waiting earth ... 

 

Another and another ... hundreds ... millions 

 

Lashed hard by the great wind 

 

Sideways now. 

 

Ice from the sky ... hitting soft things 

 

punishing ... with its cold soldiers. 

 

Fear begins to whisper along the neck 

 

Pass ... let it pass ... 

 

Let it be gone 

 

and 

 

gone. 

 


The Return of Joe’s Nose

By Janis Mitchell
Friday December 29, 2006

My friend Joe had a nose that expanded during puberty to become the dominant feature on his face. It was long and beaklike with an unexpected wideness at the downward slope so that when you looked at him dead on you saw a diamond shape that was narrow between the eyes, wide at the midpoint and sharply narrow above the lip. 

From the side it looked like an isosceles triangle with a lump in the middle. He was extremely self-conscious about his nose and hated it so much that when he got out of college he had the thing realigned and cut down to size. 

The surgeon gave him a gentle slant with a pert little rounded tip and two perfectly balanced commas where the nostrils modestly flared. His new nose fits neatly into the original features of his face and no longer competes with their even ordinariness. It is kind of a generic nose that could be adapted to the face of man or woman and effectively withholds any declaration of ethnicity. 

Joe was so delighted with his new nose that he willingly retired from the highly competitive basketball dynasty he had played with every Saturday afternoon for years because he didn’t want to risk any damage to his nose. He developed an involuntary hand gesture that involved raising his flat palm in front of his face to deflect any potential flying object that might undo the surgeon’s perfect creation. He tolerated the teasing of his friends and former teammates with good enough grace that they lost interest in ribbing him after a while and his new nose became accepted. 

In the years following his operation, Joe thrived. He found success in his profession, fell in love and took a wife, had some children, and seemed to live a happy and satisfied life. Then one day he looked across the dinner table at his 16-year old daughter and discovered his old nose pointing down at her plate. 

His initial reaction was a mental “Oh no!” and he had to resist the impulse to slap himself on the forehead. There was the shock of seeing it again to absorb but there was also a realization that swept over him in a hot flush of recognition. Looking at her in that moment Joe remembered his long-ago hope that his little daughter would inherit the ideal best that he had to offer; that she would embody his most perfect self. 

When he saw his nose on her face he also saw the stubborn streak they share, the mutual dislike of green vegetables, and the tendency to sulk when thwarted. These were not traits that he wanted to pass on and he would like to have seen them rendered casualties of evolution. But here they were, the same characteristics that he struggles with in himself. 

She truly is his child and he understands her in a way that rocks his very soul. He can glimpse times in her life when she may cause hurt to herself and others because of her very nature. He wishes that he could warn her or protect her from the isolating aspect of these tendencies. He knows that he can help her by teaching her what he has learned from his long marriage about staying receptive despite the impulse to shut down. 

So he kept on looking at the nose; it was the first time he had ever seen it objectively. There had been a time in Joe’s life when he believed that his nose was the single barrier to his happiness. He now found it curious that the dimension and shape of a nose could take on such importance. As he looked at his precious child, he saw the nose as part of a face that he loved with absolute devotion. He would like her to know how beautiful she is in this moment. He wonders how she feels about the parts of him that live on in her and he hopes that she can forgive him. She can do whatever she wants to do about the nose. 

 


The Old Routine: Hu’s on First

By Robert Marsh
Friday December 29, 2006

The Scene: The WHITE HOUSE GREEN ROOM. The PRESIDENT is briefed by his PROTOCOL OFFICER just before the summit meeting with the leaders of China, Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao and Zhu Rong Ji. 

 

P.O.: Well, Mr. Preident, there are several players besides yourself a this summit conference. 

Pres.: Look, if you’re the Protocol Officer you must know all the players. 

P.O.: I certainly do. 

Pres.: Well, you know I’ve never met the guys, so you’sll have to tell me thier names and when each of us goes on. You know, it seems to me they give these Chinese leaders nowadays very peculiar names. 

P.O.: Well, let’s see, in order of appearance, Hu’s on first... 

Pres.: That’s what I want to find out. 

P.O.: I said Hu’s on first, Wen, he’s on second, and Zhu... 

Pres.: Look, you’re the Protocol Officer and you don’t know the fellows’ names? 

P.O.: Well, I should. 

Pres.: Well then, who’s on first?  

P.O.: Yes. 

Pres.: I mean the fellow’s name. 

P.O.: Hu. 

Pres. The guy on first. 

P.O.: Hu is on first. 

Pres.: I’m asking you who’s on first. 

P.O.: That’s the man’s name. 

Pres.: That’s who’s name? 

P.O.: Yes, Hu. Wen, he’s on second. 

Pres.: When who’s on second? 

P.O.: No, Hu’s on first; Wen he’s on second. 

Pres.: Who’s on first when he’s on second? 

P.O.: Yes. 

Pres.: Well, um. I am on third? 

P.O.: No, Zhu is on thrd. 

Pres.: I is on third! So I was right when I said: “Is our children learning?” 

 


The Four Forty Second

By Justice Putnam
Friday December 29, 2006

Thomas Matsui hadn’t slept for almost 46 hours. The Italians had long stopped the fight, but the Nazis kept at it. Mortar shells exploded nearby with a frightening consistency. The rocky Italian hillside bucked and rolled with each explosion. 

Battle has an uncanny affect on a soldier; it becomes a kind of tedium. The first month of a soldier’s battle is the worst, it all being so new. The mortality rate is highest during that first month. After six months, with bombs exploding around the battlement, a soldier will daydream. 

Thomas Matsui thought of his family’s orange and avocado orchards rustling in the warm coastal breeze. He thought of the smell of his mother cooking rice in the farmhouse just above Pacific Coast Highway near Balboa. He conjured his father in the workshop, standing at the grinding wheel, sharpening the tools.  

These were daydreams that made the tedium of battle tolerable. But Thomas Matsui had other daydreams that were not so idyllic.  

He saw his parents crestfallen from the notice tacked on the farmhouse. Civilian Exclusion Order Number 33 gave only two days to sell the farm before the Military evacuated them to the camp in Montana. He remembered the offer that came from The Irvine Company later that day. Mere pennies on the dollar for what the farm was worth.  

He remembered the drive to the Civilian Control Station in Los Angeles, his mother crying the whole thirty miles. Twenty years growing avocados and oranges; all gone in a day. Twenty years and all the possessions acquired; gone in a day. Only allowed bedding and linens, some kitchen utensils and clothes; twenty years of Thomas Matsui’s life was spent on that farm. He was born there. It was lost in a day. 

The Nazis increased the frequency of the mortar attack and shook Thomas Matsui out of his reverie. He knew Marines on the other end of the hillside were getting the brunt of the bombing. The Four Forty Second though, were well hid and dug in. Soon the bombing would cease and the real battle would commence. There would be no time to daydream then. 

Thomas Matsui chuckled at the memory of the military recruiter who came to his camp that Thursday in June. How fresh-faced and upright he was; the perfect embodiment of American righteousness. Thomas and his family had been at the camp for a month and life was a brutal series of bad weather and racist guards. The chance to escape that prison, with the hopeful promise of making his parent’s life easier was too great to pass up. If he fought hard and patriotically, maybe the war would end sooner and his parents would no longer be incarcerated. 

But the farm and all they had was lost. No, not really lost, in effect stolen. But that did not matter any longer. He wanted this war to end so his parents would not suffer any more. 

The mortar attack suddenly stopped. Thomas Matsui shouldered his rifle and aimed down the hillside. 

The real battle was about to begin.


Opinion

Editorials

Santa on College

Friday December 29, 2006

Santa, a.k.a. Berkeley Daily Planet Publisher Mike O'Malley, greets shoppers Sarah James, Lizzy P. and baby Cassius on College Avenue in the Elmwood before Christmas. Photograph by Anne Wagley.


Public Comment

Hark, The Halliburton Chorus

By D.J. Randolph
Friday December 29, 2006

We will have victory in Iraq, said President Bush 

before Christmas  

as he began to listen.  

Departing Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, 

“Gosh and Golly!” 

The Military said, 

“Yes Sir! No surge.” 

The Politicians said, 

“If I am elected …” 

The Churches said, 

“Let us pray.” 

The Media that could not expose lies and corruption 

exposed Britney Spears and said 

“Shocking!” 

The people heard the melody of Handel’s “Messiah” 

but with different words and said, 

“Hark, the Halliburton Chorus.” 

“Hall-i-burton. Hall-i-burton.Hall-i-burton. 

Hall-i-burton. Halliburton. 

For Dick Cheney omnipotent reigneth. 

And he shall reign forever and ever 

Or 2008, or 2008, or 2008!” 

The man whose birthday was being celebrated said, 

“Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” 

 


Girl at the Beanery

By Judy Wells
Friday December 29, 2006

She sits with her  

grandmother, perhaps,  

clenching a vanilla smoothie.  

She has  

Alice-in-Wonderland  

ringlets around her face  

which she twists and turns  

with the emotions  

of a story her  

grandmother, perhaps,  

is reading to her  

from a thick tome.  

The girl’s eyes register concern,  

alarm, anxiety,  

and I wonder  

from my seat next to her  

what, on heaven’s earth,  

is grandmother reading  

in that soft relentless tone?  

She does not look up  

at Alice’s face  

(for I have now named her Alice!)  

nor does she seem to notice  

that Alice is squirming  

and clenching her locks.  

What can she be reading,  

this sturdy grandma  

with short grey hair  

and Ben Franklin glasses?  

I want to ask.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to peer over her  

shoulder and see whether  

it’s Harry Potter  

or perhaps The Tell-Tale Heart  

by Edgar Allan Poe  

but I don’t.  

No matter.  

I am witnessing the power 

of literature, the power  

of storytelling, the power  

of grandmas over little girls  

and I wonder  

Who will Alice be  

when she grows up?  

A Ph.D. in lit,  

a poet, or a patient on a therapist’s couch  

talking about the times  

her grandma, perhaps,  

tortured her  

in a coffee shop  

in Berkeley.  


Daisy

By Michael Howerton
Friday December 29, 2006

Daisy Howerton, 9 months, enjoys an issue of the Daily Planet. Photograph by Michael Howerton.


Moments When Berkeley Still Surprises and Inspires

By Joanna Manqueros
Friday December 29, 2006

Our town has moments which stand out, and keep me surprised and in love with this place. 

A graduate of the Berkeley Schools from first grade through UC Berkeley, I sometimes get jaded walking around town. I attended 5th grade with Zachary Running Wolf, before he considered himself an activist or representative of any tribe. A shy kid, he was quiet in class. For me, it’s a small town. 

Here are some memories of places around here, for which I give thanks: on a regular school day in 3rd grade in Kilamanjaro, an experimental branch of the Berkeley Public Schools, I met a truant officer. I was selling rings with my friends on Telegraph Avenue mid-morning in 1972 when he asked to meet our teacher. “OK” I said, “come with me.” 

My friends and I walked him back to our “school”, an open area on Euclid where the teachers were high up in an oak tree playing chess with some older kids. “Hey,” I said, “you guys, there is a guy here to meet you.” They called down, “just send him up.” The poor man, dressed in a suit looked as if he had been struck; “those are your teachers?” 

Off he went, totally befuddled. 

My early morning YMCA visit yesterday: no one around and a cold frost on the cars. I see a woman sleeping under a blanket on Allston Way. I learned from my paramedic husband not to touch sleeping homeless people, even if you are giving them something, because they have learned that danger is all around and might jump up with a knife. 

Instead, I called to her, “Good morning; here is some money.” Under the blankets, a sleepy face greeted me with a big smile. “Thank you so much lady and merry christmas.” I hand her the $10 and move on to my day. 

The Ethiopian cab driver who gave me a lift when my car broke down thanking me for the Vik's chai, the “best hot chai” he had had since leaving home years ago. 

I interviewed Tom Bates on KALX the day after he lifted the newspapers and became elected mayor anyway. Upbeat, fun and full of energy for the job, he was ready for work, almost like a young boy with a new toy. When asked about the university and how to get them to pay their fair share, I remember him saying that one of the “first things” he would do in office was to get them to pay up, especially for services they get for free like fire department and other perks that the citizens pay for. 

The blues guitarists playing the Berkeley flea market in the cold. There is no place like home. For me this is the biggest holiday gift this year, to live somewhere I truly love, imperfections and all.


Confessions from a West Berkeley Fenix

By Patrick Fenix
Friday December 29, 2006

Confessions from a West Berkeley Fenix 

 

Oaxaca, July 18 1977, diary: (from a happier peaceful time in that 

magic place) 

“...walking around here today as if I’m a ghost, departed, because I planned to be on the bus to Tehuantepec at 11 a.m. but it was sold out and I have to wait until 7 p.m.... 

...and wandering up the hill on a narrow cobblestone street, I 

see a small cardboard sign in a shop window: 

 

SE REPARAN SANTOS, 

NIÑOS DIOS, IMAGENES, 

ESTATUILLAS, ETC. 

SI ESTA ROTO, DESCOLORIDO 

Y SIN PESTAÑAS 

(We repair saints, Baby Jesus, Images, 

Little statues, etc. 

If it’s broken, discoloured,  

and missing eyelashes)” 

 

II 

Maseru, Lesotho, Southern Africa, Sept. 20 1970, diary: (from a troubled time in 

that impoverished mountain kingdom) 

“Captain ‘Cock’ Roach* sat silent at the other end of the long living room, his eyes calmly resting on mine, his hands, large, strong, gently clasped, now in his lap, now lifted to chest level. His wife was a bit tipsy and was flirting with me, leaning over to offer a thin Dutch cigar and a generous view of her warm bosom. 

Captain Roach was the dictator’s chief assassin. 

 

 

 

 

I saw the killer’s calm eyes, gently clasped hands, and I knew that he loved his bored wife as a child loves his mother.”  

 

*real name Ted. 

 

III 

Berkeley, Nov. 4 2002, diary: 

“I have become a dwarf servant ... It wasn’t easy, since I am by nature neither a dwarf nor given to service ... I really would rather control, direct, hold sway or just be left in peace ... or perhaps to create from nothing, akin to Donoso’s Mudito*, but remembering with a shudder how he ended (ashes in a burlap bag, blown around the cold river’s edge). 

There is happy crazy and there is miserable frightened crazy.” 

 

* principal character in Jose Donoso’s novel “The Obscene Bird of Night” 

 

IV 

West Berkeley, July 17 2005, diary: 

this morning a poem began in me:  

“how have i failed you?  

let me count the ways ...  

no, fool, you can’t count the innumerable ... 

better just peel the orange before you, 

translucent in the morning sun, 

and have the grace to forgive yourself ...” 

 

(Patrick Fenix, Serial Poet inénarrable*) 

* unintentionally funny


Sandinistas and Sandalistas

By Ted Vincent
Friday December 29, 2006

Daniel Ortega Saavedra of Nicaragua’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional is once again president of his country. A hollow shell of the militant Marxist that he was in his first term 1984-1990, one can question how much satisfaction his victory provides for those from Berkeley and elsewhere who trekked to Nicaragua during the 1980s to work for the revolution. 

What remains of the dramatic FSLN literacy crusade are mostly moldy books, and the clinics we were shown are mostly closed. Five years after the 1990 Sandinista electoral defeat Tyrion Perkins wrote in Green Left Weekly that “Nicaragua had 60 percent unemployment, 80 percent poverty, increasing illiteracy; an increase in family break-up, and drug addiction which depoliticizes much of the population.” 

While little may be left of the substance of the Sandinista revolution, the democratic electoral process they instituted could be said to have swept over Latin America, from Venezuela through, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentine, Chile, Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay. Although Vene-zuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales appear unusual for their consistent stances for the poor, attention to that sector marks the other new governments, which are led by people who have worked among the poor and who are not from the elite. 

In Chile, for instance, President Michelle Bachelet is probably the least left of the new crop of heads of state, but having been a pediatrician in a clinic for poor women she had the inspiration to sign a law providing 14 year old girls in her country the morning after pill without parental interference. The Sandinistas’ political process began with commitment to those in the barrios and farms, and freely contested political elections. A pro-Sandinista journalist wrote in 1986, “For a century we had only two political parties. Now we have twelve.” 

The party system allowed a leftist win; prepared for possible un-election with safeguards against a consequent blood bath; and preserved opportunity to be reelected. Ortega won the presidency in 1984, lost it in 1990, and was re-elected this year. 

Before the FSLN, the elected left-wing governments in Latin America were typically ousted via tanks, slaughters, citizens disappeared, dictatorship, and a cover of civilization provided by the high clergy of the Catholic Church. Significantly, an official at the Bishop’s office in Managua was caught on tape in the 1980s waxing eloquent about his dream of a massive funeral pyre of Sandinistas in the square. 

But down in the barrios people were listening to the liberation theology of the likes of Father Uriel Molina, who preached unity of spiritual uplift and economic transformation, ending services with the song that went ‘The unity of the Latin people Will bring the gorillas’ fall And there is only one road And that’s the unity of all Revolution in Uruguay, Revolution in Paraguay, Revolution in Guatemala, Revolution in Nicaragua, Revolution in Argentina, en todo America Latina. Nicaragua in the 1980s was high stakes international conflict. 

American advisors were on the Honduran border. Cuban medics manned Nicaraguan clinics. Momar Kadafi’s “Little Green Book” sold briskly in Managua shops. Among the cultural exchanges was a circus troupe in 1986 that had artists from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, and Vietnam. It was in this atmosphere that I arrived in Managua in 1984 with a TECNICA computer worker volunteer group. 

A guide offered tours of schools and clinics and also asked if we would like to visit the offices of the political opposition. We went to hear the angry tirades, and then accepted the offer to visit the editorial office of the rabidly anti-Sandinista La Prensa daily. After that invigorating stop, we were led to the independent Human Rights Commission - the one for the opponents of the government. 

In short, this alleged Marxist totalitarian government had vans ready for visitors who were asked “Can we take you to hear politicians, newspaper editors and human rights activists denounce us?” “What are you Sandinistas?” we visitors asked. “We are the danger of a good example,” we were told with a sly smile. 

The new path was begun by a founder of the Sandinista Front, Carlos Fonseca. He and his Marxist comrades discussed what to name their little group, and he said the usual nomenclature, such as Party of the Mobilized Masses, was dull. He proposed that they employ Nicaragua’s well known national hero, Augusto Sandino, a non-Marxist who led the seven year war against a U.S. Marine occupation of the country 1927-1933. 

Once the new Sandinistas were in power, programs were in the name of Sandino, as today Hugo Chavez acts in the name of the Latin hero Simon Bolivar. From 1979 until the 1984 elections, the Sandinista government was a group project, and for a while the top junta included the head of the chamber of commerce and the publisher of La Prensa, Violetta Barrios de Chamorro. Her husband Pedro Joaquin Chamorro had criticized the dictator Anastasio Somoza in his paper, for which Somoza had him assassinated in 1978. Violetta’s political trajectory illuminates facets of the Sandinista political process. 

In 1980 she resigned from the government over what she considered chaos unfair to business, namely agencies and projects were cropping up pell mell with no central authority granted. But she left quietly, and only spoke out after having been toasted by FSLN officials for her work. Violetta Chamorro was an independent minded woman—lettering her hair grow grey, which “no woman in Nicaragua with enough money for hair dye did,” according to a pundit. 

She became an anti-Sandinista in the mode of Democratic Conservative Party leader Rafael Cordova Rivas who in 1986 replied to a snide FSLN quip about his party office locking its doors to all but party members that, the DCP “is open to everyone of all stripes excepting those who take money at the troth of the CIA in Washington.” 

While Violetta was “loyal opposition,” her son Pedro Chamorro Jr., who edited La Prensa, developed such hatred of the Sandinistas that he moved to Miami and essentially became a Contra. Remaining with mother was another son Carlos Chamorro, who happened to be the editor of the FSLN daily, Barricada, while uncle Xavier Chamorro edited the nation’s third daily, the left-independent El Nuevo Diario. The revolution was marked by complex alignments in families. “We never discuss politics at home,” a Chamorro said. 

The 1990 election put the Sandinistas in the loyal opposition. An FSLN economist had commented in 1988 before having to meet with a contingent of bankers from New York, “Sometimes I think it would be easier to fight for the poor if we were the opposition.” 

Of course, it wouldn’t be easy. Incoming President Chamorro was urged by business interests to move quickly to dismantal the revolution. She took her time studying the proposals, and when she did move to close agencies and reign in labor, she refused to physically break certain strikes and demonstrations, in part because she didn’t have the force. The Sandinista process was still in place. The Managua city police were the same low key Sandinista cops known for “community policing” rather than busting heads, and President Chamorro’s commander in chief of the army was the same General Joaquin Cuadra Lacayo who had led the army for the Sandinistas. 

Demands upon Violetta Chamorro to return more expropriated land to “the rightful owners” were answered in the negative in 1995, when she coupled a veto of a labor law opposed by business and the IMF with a nod to the left. She signed an FSLN-promoted comprehensive property law legalizing Sandinista grants in land reform during the 1980s. Some 200,000 rural and urban families got title. The law also legalized the properties Chamorro passed out to demobilized soldiers from both the contras and the army after 1990. 

The Chamorro conservative government, contrasted with that of her conservative successor, Arnoldo Aleman. He acted quickly and aggressively to privatize state property often in return for kick backs. His brazenness led to his present position, living under house arrest for his crimes. But before the corrupt Aleman left office he faced a crisis of FSLN inspired street riots against his pro-IMF policies. General Cuadra Lacayo publically warned Aleman he had better change his politics or face real trouble. Aleman made a deal (said to have angered all sides), in which Daniel Ortega tabled militant FSLN demands in return for a new electoral law that gave Ortega improved chances for returning to the presidency. 

Instead of a top presidential candidate having to receive 45 percent of the votes to avoid a runoff, the new law permited 35 percent, if the candidate was also 7 points or better ahead of the runnerup. In Ortega’s previous losing efforts he never reached 45 percent.  

In November 2006 his 38 percent was enough. (An anti-Ortega Sandinista party had 6 percent). Granted, the Ortega that was just reelected is no one we who traveled to Nicaragua can be proud of, none-the-less, it must be admitted that the Sandinistas replaced a stultifying dictatorship with a fragile system of democracy that addresses the poor, and which daring people have now instilled across Latin American.


Kuma

By Caroline Wagley-Pedemonte
Friday December 29, 2006

Kuma was adopted from the Milo Foundation in January 2006, and has since spent many happy days greeting visitors to the Berkeley Daily Planet newsroom. Photograph by Caroline Wagley-Pedemonte.


The Problems with the City of Berkeley and Automobiles

By Carolyn Sell
Friday December 29, 2006

What is it that the City of Berkeley doesn’t get about Californians and their cars? 

Cal Trans apparently gets it, as they plan for yet another bore through our hills to the east to accommodate Caldecott Tunnel traffic. Oakland and San Francisco get it, as they (and the rest of us) pay through the nose to retrofit the Bay Bridge. Marin County gets it, as they widen and improve the Highway 580-101 merge. 

Just Berkeley is in a state of total denial, creating huge numbers of ugly, high-rise rabbit-warren developments, all with inadequate parking both for tenants and the commercial establishments expected to inhabit the lower floors. 

The latest one just approved for 1885 Martin Luther King (“Trader Joe’s”) is the final straw for some of us. The theory that “public transit corridors” can support huge populations simply doesn’t fly. Even though I live half a block from the BART station, I can only name one or two acquaintances in the neighborhood that are car-free. 

The greenest among us, who use alternate means of transportation as often as possible, still maintain a car for heading out of town or hauling groceries. The city thinks Berkeleyans will live without their cars? I invite ZAP and other city officials to tally the frequency with which folks with E- or M-stickers who live maybe five blocks away get in their cars to park in front of my house so they only have to walk half a block instead of five blocks to the BART station. 

I’d also like to invite various city officials to tally the number of illegal garage conversions where legitimate parking has been destroyed in favor of habitable space or storage. Of course the city doesn’t really care, since it is willing to consider allowing us to park on our front lawns, rather than enforcing the very necessary off-street parking requirements as outlined in building and zoning codes. 

As a bike commuter, I’d like to know how much income the city generates every year in double-parking fines. I have yet to see any delivery truck cited for double-parking, yet every day I’m forced to swerve into traffic in order to pass double-parked vehicles blocking the bike lanes. Where are all the yellow and white spaces on our streets to accommodate commercial and passenger loading? 

I also wonder how many residents (like my neighbors) covet the street parking in front of their homes with nazi-like zeal, starting note-on-the-windshield wars and leaving threatening phone messages when someone dares to use “their” space or touch their car bumper while parking in tight areas. Preferential parking stickers do no good if there are more cars than spaces. And in Berkeley there are, by a long shot. It will only get worse, thanks to the big development boom.


Recounting My Narrow Escapes

By Charles Smith
Friday December 29, 2006

During my lifetime I have had several narrow escapes from almost certain death. 

1. The first happened in 1939 when I was riding my bicycle and was hit by a drunk driver. I was thrown about sixty feet and had a skull fracture. I was in the hospital for three weeks and in a delirious coma, i.e. I was partly awake, recognized people, but did not remember anything that happened until I came to my senses at home a few days later. My mother asked me if I knew what had happened. I could not answer, so she brought me a copy of the Ft. Morgan Times with an article about the accident and my injuries. 

2. The second happened on April 24th, 1945 in Germany during WWII. I was riding in a truck on a back road. Other soldiers were clearing the road of snipers. Whenever any was discovered they dove for cover and called up the tanks to wipe out the snipers. 

The truck I was in stopped by the side of the road. Some tanks started to pass us. I was sitting with my back to the road. I noticed that a tank just barely missed the truck behind us. A fraction of a second later, the tank sheared off the side of our truck, running over everyone else sitting beside me on the truck. 

Luckily I had worn my pack, since there wasn’t room for it in the center of the truck. Persons on both sides of me were killed. I have a 16 inch gash in the right buttocks with goes within 1/4 inch of the bone; and a 6 inch scar on my hip. 

3. This time was on the first of October, 1957, when the Russian Sputnik had been sent up. I was working for the California Division of Highways. Two of us had been on a traffic study in Gilroy. We were coming home through San Jose. It was a pitch black night, with low overhanging clouds. There was no oncoming traffic. 

A railroad switch engine was blocking the highway. We skidded into it. The car was totaled. All I had was a lap belt. I rotated on the belt and hit the windshield with my forehead, cracking the windshield badly. Luckily my head didn’t go through the windshield. I could have had my head cut off, and would have lost a lot of blood. 

4. This time in January 1999, I was at home, lying in bed. I had taken the prescription drug Hytrin. It is an alpha blocker, usually given for high blood pressure, which I didn’t have. It sometimes causes fainting. I had fainted, sitting on the toilet seat in the bathroom. I came to and went into the bedroom where I told my wife what happened. While she was in the bathroom I called the ambulance and fainted again. They hooked up a gadget which showed the message “Hook up to a live body.” When they got me to Alta Bates hospital, I had a pulse of 12 to 15 per minute. They gave me a pacemaker.


Columns

Column: The Public Eye: All I Want for Christmas is ... the Truth

By Bob Burnett
Friday December 29, 2006

This is the time of year when many of us take time out to count our blessings and, perhaps, say a few prayers for peace on earth. Of course, I want peace on earth, too. But what I want first is the truth. 

John Lennon said it all: 

 

I’m sick and tired of hearing things 

From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites 

All I want is the truth 

Just gimme some truth. 

 

I’m tired of being lied to by President Bush and his minions. I’m tired of hearing his glib assurances about the occupation of Iraq, homeland security, human rights abuses, and everything else of consequence. I’m tired of seeing his disingenuous smile. I’m tired of seeing Dubai shrug, of watching his body language that tells me what he’s really thinking is: “I’m lying; it’s politics; get over it.” I want the truth. Gimme some truth. 

The last several weeks have brought more sickening revelations about the president’s lack of candor. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group report observed the administration hasn’t been telling Americans the whole truth about Iraq: 

“There is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases… For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.” 

Meanwhile, Bush came out for an increase in the size of the Army, but said he hadn’t made his mind up whether or not there should be a “surge” of troops sent to Iraq-and yet claimed to be “the decider.” And, on Nov. 8, at the news conference where he reported that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld would be replaced by Robert Gates, Bush admitted lying to reporters about Rumsfeld’s status. He did his now familiar “aw shucks” dance: “The only way to answer [the reporter’s] question, and get it on to another question, was to give you that answer.” Bush was unapologetic about lying; he tried to sluff off his behavior as politics as usual 

But, it’s not politics as usual. When even the most cynical observer thought it impossible to set the political bar any lower, Bush has done it. He’s given us politics Ala Dubya; espoused political ethics where it’s okay to lie about everything as long as you win. It’s the politics John Lennon referred to when he wrote about “uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites.” And, I’m sick and tired of it: after all, Bush works for the people of the United States. He’s not some corporate CEO who gets paid millions to fudge on corporate earnings so the stock price stays up. George W. Bush is our president: he’s supposed to be a person we can trust. 

The hard truth is that we can’t trust him. Americans have seen too much of Dubya. As a recovering alcoholic, it seems he’s replaced one addiction with another: he doesn’t compulsively drink any more, now he lies. Bush may be sober, but he’s certainly not clean. 

What America needs for Christmas is a fresh start. We need to break away from the sleaze and malfeasance of the Bush administration. Get back on the path to good government; reclaim our democracy. Talk straight for a change. 

We’ve got an opportunity to do that with a Democrat-controlled 110th Congress. The place they should start is by telling Americans the truth. We need straight talk about where we are in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East in general. We need someone other than George Bush to give us an honest assessment of where we are in the campaign against terrorism: what it will take to bring Osama bin Laden to justice and to protect the US from further attacks. We need to come clean about our defense failures. 

Of course, it’s not just Iraq, the campaign against terrorism, and homeland security. Americans desperately need to hear the truth about a wide-array of important issues: global climate change, human rights, healthcare and the social safety net, education, jobs and energy independence, to name only a few. America is in trouble and we can’t count on George W. Bush to either acknowledge this or do something about it. 

We have no choice but to turn to the new Congress. We should ask Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to provide the leadership that the Bush administration hasn’t mustered. And their first step should be to tell America the truth through public statements and congressional hearings. 

That’s what I really want for Christmas. Because I’m “sick and tired of hearing things from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites. All I want is the truth, just gimme some truth.” 

 

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


XMAS at the Mall

By Pete Walker
Friday December 29, 2006

The Muzak carols waft over the manic shoppers;  

they are washed in the christmas blood of the lamb,  

as the dread haze of the Holidaze  

creeps in on little noel feet.  

 

Starving for the promised love that never transubstantiates,  

the abandoned humans pig out  

in an orgy of spending.  

’Tis a blood-letting of the bank account  

and the severed artery of credit  

bleeds many a household into ruin. 

 


Plight of the Lilacs

By Sandra J. Whittaker
Friday December 29, 2006

Lilacs bend and stoop 

Carrying hod-heavy snow 

On lean leafless poles. 


My Special Balabusta

By Irene Sardanis
Friday December 29, 2006

I was in a period of dark despair. My marriage of six years was over. Despite my high tolerance for emotional abuse, my husband crossed the line when he pushed me against the wall for disagreeing with him. The following day I packed a few essentials and moved into a small furnished apartment in West Los Angeles. 

After a few weeks in my new place, I met Mrs. Goldsmith, my neighbor across the hall. She looked as though she was in her mid-70s, a tall slightly bent over woman. She wore one of those drab looking dresses from the ‘30s. She had a warm, friendly smile that drew me to her. She explained that she was slightly deaf and I would have to speak up for her to hear me. Would I like to come over for coffee sometime? I was grieving the loss of my marriage, not wanting to talk to anyone about my raw feelings. Yet I was touched by this stranger’s willingness to befriend me and invite me to her table. 

Over coffee, she told me her story. Widowed in her 20s with two children during World War II, she needed to earn money to support her family. She became a nanny to several wealthy families in Beverly Hills. Mrs. Goldsmith liked children. She also liked to cook but it wasn’t satisfying to cook for one person. Her children did not visit very often anymore. It would be nice to have some company for dinner she said and invited me to dine with her the next day. I graciously accepted. After all, I was also lonely and in need of company. 

After that first dinner of the tastiest most delicious beef stew, sharing evening meals with her became our custom. When I came home from work, tired and hungry, I would find a note under my door. “Soup’s on. Come on over.” Her apartment was furnished with antique furniture with a lot of nick-nacks over the T.V. and end tables. The piece I loved the most in her apartment was a worn out Queen Ann chair that felt womb-like when I sat in it. 

Each evening I sat in her kitchen and watched Mrs. Goldsmith cook. She explained to me how she learned to economize and buy certain meats that required slow-cooking, like beef tongue. Some picky eaters might turn their nose up at this dish, but she taught me the importance of cooking meat slowly with certain spices. The result was a tender, tasty, luscious tongue. I still have the recipe and here it is: 

 

Fresh Tongue  

3 lbs. Tongue 6 peppercorns  

2 cups water 6 cloves  

l Tablespoon salt 1 onion quartered  

2 bay leaves  

 

Method: Wash tongue. Place on rack in Pressure Cooker. Add water and other ingredients. Close cover securely. Place regulator on vent pipe and cook 45 minutes with regulator rocking slowly. Let pressure drop of its own accord. Remove skin; strain liquid. Keep tongue in liquid until ready to serve. 

 

She taught me to cook with patience. One of my other favorite dishes was her brisket of beef. She would make a marinade of bullion and spices and cook this meat in her small porcelain oven for hours. It was fork-tender when we sat down to eat. Of course she gave me a plate to take home for sandwiches the next day. Here I was from a Greek Orthodox background; she was from a Jewish Orthodox culture, and for me, it was a perfect fit. 

When I came down with a bronchial flu one winter, Mrs. Goldsmith was in and out of my apartment with Matza Ball soup and hot teas. She even drove me to the doctor’s office one cold morning when my temperature spiked. Thinking of her now, many years later, I believe she loved me to health. 

I told her the truth about my situation one evening over a hearty beef pot roast dinner. My marriage was over and I was getting a divorce. I felt ashamed to tell her sooner, I explained, in case I might reconcile. That was not going to happen. She understood and said some relationships were like a bad meal, not digestible.  

The time came when I needed to leave my small haven and Mrs. Goldsmith. The plan was set for me to return to school and complete my college education. To save money, I would be rooming with two other students near the university. We sat together at her kitchen table, the one where we shared countless beef stews, hearty soups, casseroles and luscious chocolate desserts. I felt I was not leaving Mrs. Goldsmith. I was leaving my beloved fairy godmother.  

She looked at me and her eyes were so kind and loving. “I don’t have money to give you,” she said sadly. “I wish I did, dear. But you will always have food to eat at my table. Anytime you are hungry, you just need to call and let me know. I will always have something from the stove to share with you.” 

Over the months of watching her cook, I had collected many of Mrs. Goldsmith’s recipes that I was ready to make on my own. When she came to visit me once, I had an opportunity to try some of her recipes. She looked pleased as she tasted my version of her stew. Yes, she had taught me well. 

I never knew my grandparents from the old country in Greece. When I was a child, they were far away. Mrs. Goldsmith became my adopted grandmother, my own special Balabusta, the one who fed and cared for me when I was lonely and hungry. She gave me more than cooking lessons, she taught me to cook patiently and cook with love. 

She has been gone many years. If I sit still and think about her, I can see her in her small kitchen, stirring some sauce in a pot at the white porcelain stove as I sit at the table smelling her wonderful beef goulash. I wish she were here so I could have a plateful right now. 

 


Epiphany, or The Japanese Twinge

By Paul Dalmas
Friday December 29, 2006

(With Apologies to John Galsworthy)  

 

Shortly after New Year’s Day, Lathrop Wisebroat, well known at Redwood Acres Country Club, stepped onto the small balcony off his bedroom and surveyed the sweep of turf that sloped obediently from his house to the street below him. The perfect winter day, he reflected, and inhaled the cool morning air. He admired the blue sky and observed the vibrant gold of a last maple leaf that lay on the green lawn. How could life be better? His home stood proud amid equally proud homes, walled, gated and impregnably sheltered from what lay beyond them. He breathed deeply again, noticed a glint of red from the driveway across the street, then felt an odd sensation under his rib. It was a twinge, an unexpected throb beneath his sternum, followed by an emptiness.  

“Nothing,” he said aloud, for that is what his internist had assured him; he was the picture of health. Lathrop stepped to the mirror over his bureau. Still handsome at fifty, he thought, and he raised his brow slightly, admiring the healthy tan, the firm chin, the trim waistline, the full crop of mostly dark hair. Distinguished. Young women who assisted at the firm still examined him approvingly, he had observed. A lucky man. One in a million.  

Lathrop trotted downstairs, past the drying Noble Fir that still filled the room with its rich seasonal fragrance, and across the carpet, specked with pine needles and bits of tinsel. A bit vulnerable in his silk pajamas, he stepped barefoot outside to retrieve the morning’s Journal. On the porch he paused again and enjoyed his world: immaculately trimmed lawns, freshly swept cobblestone driveways and impeccably cared-for residences. His mind floated to the calm blue of the pool behind his house, the sleek lines of the plasma television in his den, and the careful stitching on the golf bag in the trunk of his stately sedan.  

The grass chilled the soles of his feet as he walked to where the paper lay near the street. As he stooped to pick it up, his eye again caught the red glint, a glint he now identified as the hood of a bright roadster in his neighbor’s driveway across the street. It gleamed in the slanted December light, the color of a matador’s cape. Teardrop headlamps and a sneering grille. He imagined himself behind the wheel, the top down, wind tousling his hair and ruffling the linen of an open collar.  

He straightened himself, inhaled, and again felt the odd twinge and emptiness in his chest. A morning like this, he thought, and such a beautiful automobile with no one on the block but me who has the––to come out and––.  

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”  

Lathrop was startled by his right-side neighbor Edgar Wagstaff, also well know at Redwood Acres Country Club, standing in almost identical silk pajamas in the exact position before his house that Lathrop occupied before his own. He bore a healthy tan, a firm chin, a trim waistline and a full crop of mostly dark hair. For an instant Lathrop had the sensation he was looking in his mirror.  

“Yes, a beautiful day,” Lathrop replied agreeably but caught a bit off guard.  

“A glorious time of the year in California.”  

“December. Always an exceptional month,” Lathrop said. “I was just admiring the Fulton’s new car.”  

“Lexus,” replied Edgar, eyeing the iconic L on the grille. “Fine engineers, those Japanese.”  

“Certainly are.” Lathrop’s voice had regained its accustomed confidence.  

“Prefer them to those little German things. Not so gaudy. I hear it’s a Christmas surprise from that young wife of his.”  

“Impressive.”  

“Certainly is. Well, have a good day.”  

“You, as well.”  

Journal in hand, Lathrop crossed the lawn back to his porch, then turned once more to admire the shimmering Lexus. The car was vibrant, alive almost. He mentally cruised a stretch of Highway 1 just above Big Sur, until he heard a muffled cough. It was Edgar, still standing in his spot by the curb and also still admiring the red automobile. For an instant they looked one another directly in the eye, and embarrassed, Lathrop retreated to his house.  

A moment later, as he stood alone in his den, the odd twinge and emptiness once more disturbed Stanley’s chest. Then, unaccountably upset, Lathrop found himself thumbing the Yellow Pages for the number of a Lexus dealer.  


Nightmare

By Miles Levinkind
Friday December 29, 2006

As in a nightmare he woke to a wasteland—he was alone—for all he knew he was the last human being left on Earth—and when he died the sound of the human voice would never be heard in the Cosmos again—and for his remaining days he had to live with the horror of that thought foremost in his mind—but he had already lived through the death of birth of our species, and so he was resigned to his and our species fate—what could the meaning of his life be now that he was the sole survivor of our species?  

Only to somehow communicate a warning to the next sentient beings to inhabit or to visit the planet—but how? He would write it down and then seal it in a vessel in a cave, where it would last for thousands of years, long enough to be discovered, if ever—when it was done, he lay down and died—is it too late for us? The answer is in each of us—in what each of us is willing to sacrifice so that our species may survive the holocaust which is upon us—without sacrifice the death of birth of our species is upon us.


Inspired by my sister

By Brenda Revsen
Friday December 29, 2006

Inspired by my sister  

(An ode to Linda) 

 

My Siss—a Spark 

A radiant spark which ignites whom ever she touches 

 

A spark which ignites her tencity 

her intelligence 

ignites her ability to give 

ignites her smile 

which radiates her lovely face 

continue to spark 

continue to ignite 

continue to move forward 

 

My Sis a spark of life  


A 14-Year-Old Boy Named Ahmed

By Tracie De Angelis Salim
Friday December 29, 2006

Now, when the world’s attention is pinned on Iraq, the Iraq Study Groups’ findings, Syria, Iran and the possibilities for a new outcome in the region, my mind wanders to Ahmed and Palestine.  

Ahmed is a 14-year-old boy suffering under the ongoing daily occupation of the West Bank, Palestine. The utterance of that word, Palestine, in the mainstream media can be considered taboo; the editors preferring “The Occupied Territories,” or “Palestinian Territories” instead. 

Such a loaded issue: Palestine. When will the world turn its attention to the millions of people living under horrific conditions, all in the name of “security?” But, I digress. 

This story is meant to take the reader into the world of a 14-year-old boy, Ahmed. As you read, think about what you are tangibly connected to in your day to day life. Think about how you would feel if every day you lived under the threat of having this taken away from you; something you worked so hard to obtain. Finally, think about what it would mean to you to be a person without a state, land, a home, a passport, a name and yet still work hard with hope pumping through your system. 

This is a true story. His name is Ahmed. Beads of sweat form on his upper lip and his brow; ringed stained pits cover his tee-shirt. Heavy set, his frame holding the weight of his body, he moves gracefully, effortlessly and with confidence. Carefully plowing the land, harvesting his crops, planting the seeds, driving the tractor. Professionally moving the sand, shoveling the stones, pouring the cement. 

Lovingly shopping for food for his family, tending to the needs of the children, the chickens, the sheep, goats and cows. Responsibly waking for school, studying and learning. Yes, men in Palestine work hard, finding their dignity in the fruits of their labor, in their sense of proprietorship, camaraderie, responsibility, and ambition but, this is different. Ahmed is different. He is 11. (This story was originally written by me in 2006 when living in Palestine).  

I don’t see him that often, but it seems that every time I do, the image is the same ... that of a sweaty, busy, satisfied and productive young person. And, I noticed today that nearly the same words left my mouth after parting ways with him: “That kid is always working so hard ... and smiling.” 

But it is not his sense of ambition or commitment to the land and people that most impresses me ... rather, what settles me every time I see him is his kindness and warmth, inviting me once again to have hope. Now, three years later, Ahmed has lost his older brother; not by the tragedy of the occupation, but by an accident of electrocution. Upon hearing the news, my heart sank for Ahmed; where would he find his hope now? 

During this holiday season, my heart reaches out to each of you to give Ahmed tangible hope. Do this by committing to learn something new about the facts on the ground in Palestine. This would be a great gift to Ahmed and all the children of the region. 

Ahmed’s gift to me years ago was hope. Hope in the hearts of the young people. For Ahmed ... I thank you. Now, I want to return that gift ten-fold. 

Please, expand your efforts to understand the region and how it relates to Iraq, Syria and Iran. Include Palestine in your research. The entire region suffers. We, as Americans, owe it to the people to better understand their struggles. It has been said that one voice speaking out can change 1,000 minds. 

This season, I ask of you to be a part of greater human-kind and share what you learn with others about this part of our world. They need you. Ahmed needs you.


Southwest winter

By Ralph Walbridge
Friday December 29, 2006

Southwest winter 

 

 

snow rides the rafters 

as day comes down 

a shute of sun 

 

truth burns wearily 

in the fireplace 

 

an old man rises pensively 

seeking bearings in pinon 

and sage 

 

he frets sometimes 

a joker pulled from 

a random deck of memories 

 

wild one played in too many hands 

 

he falls back 

exhausted 

refers to the cold outside 

 

what can be saved 

along the red deck of sun 

shadows will find lengths 

of ground 

throughout the day 

 

between them snow will darken 

where its fallen  

 


Remembering My Little Old Lady Friends

By Charles Smith
Friday December 29, 2006

During my lifetime I’ve had several Little Old Lady Friends who might be of interest to the readers of my memoirs. 

 

Emma Packard 

Mrs. Packard was the widow of Walter Packard. They had both graduated from Iowa State in 1911. He was an economist and soil expert. He was the first administrator of the Ag experiment station in the Imperial Valley in 1912. Their daughter, Emmy Lou, studied under Diego Rivera in Mexico. 

Later he was the head of the Marshall Plan in Greece. He changed Greece from a primitive country to a modern one. Edward R. Murrow did a program on it. They retired to Berkeley in 1948. Here he founded the California Powers Users Association. 

For several years I was his chauffeur who took him various laces. He invited friends to the UC Men’s Faculty Club for Saturday luncheon session to discuss current issues.  

When Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, Diego Rivera was in San Francisco. He hid out in a little office building in the rear of the Packard’s house, as he feared they might be after him too. 

Mr. Packard had an accident from which he never recovered. She lived at the Shattuck Hotel where she had a refrigerator in her room and got some meals from the hotel cafe.  

I took her to the Berkeley Co-op grocery store on Saturdays for several years. Their co-op number was 224, from the 1930s. 

She began to fail and the family moved her to a nursing home in Napa. 

 

Ilsa (Fuchs) Brieger 

I met Mrs. Brieger at a conference on Ombudsmen at the Claremont Hotel, where we were the guests for three days of a Foundation in New York which was holding such conferences all around the country. (They were refugees from Germany. A brother was a professor at Stanford). 

Following that conference Mrs. Brieger collected signatures in front of the Co-op on an initiative to have a City Ombudsman, which passed handily. She used to volunteer in the Ombudsman’s office. 

The problem was that the first Ombudsman was a law student who studied on the job and angered the City Council. So they put it on the ballot to abolish the Office. The Daily Cal cams out with a headline mistakenly saying to vote “Yes.” 

After the election, she still went to the office. She said the phone was ringing off the wall from persons with problems they wanted help with. 

I saw Mrs. Brieger once a week, cleaning off her roof on Keith St., planting Leonatic bushes, taking her to Kaiser, etc. 

She had only one eye and had poor depth perception. She bumped the fence a the LWV parking lot, bumped three cars in the Safeway parking lot, sideswiped a city truck. She ran into a tree and was injured so badly she passed away soon afterward. 

 

Erna (Prather) Harris 

She had grown up in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Her father was a supporter of Ghandi and stood in front of the jail all night to keep a prisoner from being lynched. 

She went to Wichita State in the 1930s while it was still segregated. Her first year she won a national award for her writing. After graduating she tried to start a newspaper, but the advertisers boycotted her. 

She then went to work for a Los Angeles paper, wrote a column opposing the evacuation of the Japanese. Westbrook Pegler attacked her, and the FBI investigated her. 

She visited C.O.s in prison who were there for refusing to dig holes and then fill them up. She was active in the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, and visited Russia. 

She came to Berkeley to be near KPFA. Here in Berkeley she ran the Bias Press printing shop. She lived in the Co-op housing at the corner of Sacramento and Addison. She was on both the Co-op and Book Unlimited boards at different times. 

I ran a clipping service for her and Laurie Sisson, her partner. I took her shopping on weekends. She was about to go blind. 

A support group was formed by Dr. Taller of Kaiser while she lived in a nursing home on Ashby Ave. After she died, a large group of persons held a Memorial Service for her. 

I sent a collection of writings about her and her obituary to 77 Afro-American colleagues so that students everywhere would know what a wonderful woman she was. 

 

Catherine (Janes) Webb  

The Lady of Albany Hill 

I used to give Catherine Webb rides home after meetings. I mentioned once that she should do her memoirs. She took me up. She had four large file cabinets full of her family history. 

I ended up going to her place every Sunday night for two years to help with the account she was writing. Mostly I just sat and listened. It was given to the Bancroft Library. 

She had quite a story to tell. 

Her family came from Massachusetts. One grandfather had been the editor of the Nevada City Democrat newspaper. He died during a fire at the paper when he went back in to rescue some papers and a wall fell on him. 

The other grandfather was a red neck who hated Chinese. He was a carpenter who built structures for gold mines. He later was mayor of Stockton, and finally a stock broker in San Francisco. 

Her mother grew up in San Francisco, married a miner who took her to Canada where they had to melt snow for water. 

Later her father was shot and killed by an irate workman in Mexico. 

So her mother came back to Nevada City to live on the family farm with the four children. 

Catherine Webb graduated from Cal in 1929. She married a physicist who worked at a refinery in Emeryville. He caught the commute train from the bottom of the Albany Hill. 

He did experiments on heavy water in the basement there on Albany Hill, became an alcoholic and moved to Buckskin, Nevada. 

Catherine Webb wrote several books, self-published several of them. She is honored by the Albany Library, and part of it is named after her.


Garden Variety: Short List: Three New Year’s Garden Resolutions

By Ron Sullivan
Friday December 29, 2006

Yes, there are New Year’s resolutions for gardeners. We’re prone to every other bad habit known to humanity; why not resolutions we know perfectly well we’re not going to keep for more than a month or two? 

Number One sounds easy: I will not work on my garden or tread on its soil until it dries up a bit after any serious rain.  

Those of us who’ve managed to arrange beds with paths so well laid-out that one can reach everything without getting muddy, well, those get a break on this. Takes a long reach or lots of ground to spare, in my experience, but it’s a good idea.  

However industrious we are, our clay soils need a break from being stepped on when they’re soggy. Walking on the bed that you spent last fall fluffing up with amendments and a spading fork will wipe out your work in minutes. Time to put your feet up, not down.  

Number Two relates to mud too: I will mulch mulch mulch, and I’ll get a move on about it.  

Leaves are still falling; tree crews are still chipping; the garden store’s still selling bags of ground-up assorted stuff. (But avoid the cypress mulch, please. That industry’s wreaking hell on the beautiful, irreplaceable, and protective wetlands of the Southeast.) Rain falling on bare soil actually compacts it, which is exactly what we don’t need here.  

If you’re growing dryland natives or desert plants and don’t want to add fertility (and are lucky enough to have soil that doesn’t need repair and rehabilitation) you can mulch with gravel or rock. That will keep down the dust and mud, and good-sized-rock mulch will give the squirrels pause when they cast covetous eyes on your calochortus bulbs.  

Just keep the mulch pulled a few inches back from the bases of your woody plants—ceanothus, manzanita, oaks—because they usually resent living in turtlenecks. You can push your microclimate boundaries a bit, too, with sun-reflecting pale or heat-absorbing and—retaining dark colors. It’s worth an experiment. Out of kindness to your neighbors, just avoid those blinding white “marble” chips. 

Number Three’s where I start losing my resolve: I will limit my purchases to plants that will actually fit in my garden, and that includes how big they’ll be in five years.  

Someone gives me a pack of seeds or a ginger pup and I have to give those room. Some new heuchera shows up in the nursery and how can I live without that intriguing combination of burgundy and silver? Joe wins a door prize and it’ll be absolutely perfect if we can build up a little drainage for it. And that waning houseplant turns out to need only a change of scenery and suddenly we have a new look out there.  

Well, something else is bound to die and leave room. Or I can subdivide something and pass my “problems” along. What goes around comes around, whether it’s pass-along plants or a tired old tradition like this.  


About the House: The Stinky House Syndrome

By Matt Cantor
Friday December 29, 2006

Mr. & Mrs. American home owner, are you suffering from Stinky House Syndrome? Does your house smell bad? Do strangers flee your dwelling soon after entering? Do relatives plan family gatherings at the homes of less scintillating family members? Are you engaging in microbial experiments without possession of the pertinent advanced degree? If you answered yes to any of the above, you may be a candidate for dehumidifier ownership. 

Once again, it’s the rainy season and the calls about stinky basements, green growths on baseboards and sneezing basement dwellers are pouring in (so to speak). As property values and rents grow, more and more people find themselves living in or using basements or backyard sheds that do not provide adequate protection against damp conditions. Even if you only have a damp basement below your living space, you can be subject to elevated humidity levels that can make your home feel clammy and cold. This is a complex area of home care and much needs to be said that I can’t cover in 1,000 words or less. But there is a formidable tool in the war on mold that is worthy of a some discussion, and that’s our friend the dehumidifier. 

A dehumidifier is essentially an air conditioner but with a few notable differences. The technology that’s used to chill air in your refrigerator or air conditioner chills a set of coils and then pumps the waste heat to another set of coils for discharge. In the case of an A/C those are on the outside. And if you put your hand over them, you can feel the heat. The cold coils also gather moisture in the air since moisture tends to condense on a cold surface, just as it does on your windows when you have the heat turned on. 

A dehumidifier condenses moisture in the atmosphere on those cold coils and allows it to drip into a pan. Rather than moving the warm coils to the outside, they are placed just past the chilling and dripping business in the system and warm the air back up before releasing it into the room. This way, you are able to remove the moisture without cooling the room. Of course, if you want it cool and dry, you can simply run an air conditioner, although they are somewhat less efficient at removing moisture since they are not designed to provide this as their sole function. 

Now, what to do with all that water? First, keep in mind that the water gathered from a cold system like this isn’t safe to drink, since it is likely to contain fungal matter and dust. So it’s best to simply discharge it down a drain or out to the garden. Small inexpensive dehumidifiers fill a small trough or tray which must be taken out and emptied from time to time, but larger ones are provided with drain pipes and can be set up to run with almost no maintenance for very long periods. These larger models (actually all of them) are rated in terms of “pints per day,” and it’s best to try to choose one using this system. Small models are less than 10 PPD and large ones can be over 40 PPD. The larger ones should be expected to cost well over $1,000 but may well be worth it if you’re experiencing real distress. 

Every year I meet a few people who have a bad situation that calls for a dehumidifier. One couple that I met last year had a tenant living in a basement apartment. Part of the tenant’s space was getting wet from leaks and featured a lovely zoological menagerie of fungi and protists (part of the mildew family). Everybody gets freaked when this is happening and all sorts of allegations of devil worship and bad genetics get hurled about but the simple truth is that people are dealing with this all the time. It’s not a basis for bad behavior or threats. It’s just nature doing what it always does when some basic requirements are met. It grows stuff. Fungi love moisture.  

They also need oxygen and food but that’s available at everybody’s house. I haven’t seen any houses that don’t have a nice source of sugar and oxygen. A damp 2 x 4 will work nicely, thank you very much but a sheet of paper surfaced sheet rock will work even better. We line the inside of our houses with paper and it’s no shock when stuff starts growing on the surface. We really ought to quit this odd habit and it is happening slowly. Alternatives to paper surface gypsum drywall have been around for some time and, in these litigious times, they’re really surging. I suspect that we won’t be able to find the paper type in another 10 years but I digress. 

So we have food, air and only need water. How much water do we need to grow fungi (that includes the molds and most mildew). The answer varies with the organism but it’s about 70 percent to 100 percent. Few of these things grow below 60 percent and 50 percent is quite safe and comfy.  

Basements often have walls that are damp and the moisture levels easily meet the requirement. When moisture is present on the surfaces it evaporates and becomes part of the atmosphere. If there is enough of this, the entire house can achieve levels where fungi begin to grow. While rare, it is not unusual to have portions of basement, window sills, closets and spots on ceilings where little farms are agrowin’. 

Although it may seem almost too easy to find plausible, the simple deprivation of an adequate level of moisture is all that is needed to prevent fungi from growing. They just stop growing when things dry out. True, the dead spores remain and can affect the immune systems of some fairly allergic persons but for the most part, when things dry out, the ill effects vanish. It is wise to clean the surfaces and possibly replaced damaged or deeply infested materials such as sheetrock if these have become filled or covered with culture (of course, doesn’t all the Bay Area have that problem?) but once the level of required dampness is gone, there just won’t be more growth. If you want to clean and kill mold spores, a dilution of bleach works nicely. 

There are many things that one can do to prevent this including creating proper drainage, venting the spaces below the house, the use of plastic barriers and sealants but for situations that are currently unmanageable, a dehumidifier is a quick, simple and relatively inexpensive fix. Downside?, they use electricity. If you’re thinking of getting one, especially a “whole crawlspace” or “whole house” model, check out the energystar.gov website. You can get a rebate for making the right choice and help to control your electric bill. Like their cousins, the air conditioners, dehumidifiers use a fair amount of electricity but given the important job they do, it’s worth it. I would make sure I bought enough but not too much capacity so as to control the energy cost. Better models have humidistatic controls that allow you to set the percentage of moisture you like. Don’t set them too low. It’s not comfortable and will only cost you more money. 

After the rainy season, you may want to take some other actions in response to mold and wetness but in the immediate, the use of a dehumidifier can be a lifesaver. It may save your hacking lungs, the frame of your lovely old Victorian or the precious relationship you have with the nice young man who lives down in the basement. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday December 29, 2006

Don’t Blame Uncle Hayward 

 

Carol Lonergan of Oakland got an unwelcome birthday present just before Christmas, when the Hayward Fault gifted her and the rest of us with a 3.7 quake, one of three that week. 

The New York native didn’t like it one bit: “we felt that sickening boom and shaking, like the house had been rear-ended in slow traffic.”  

What a perfect description. 

When Uncle Hayward just can’t take the pressure any more and finally ruptures, we can’t say he didn’t warn us. Some of us are comfortable just ignoring the gentle (but sickening?) reminders, but others, thankfully, have decided to no longer put off having their retrofit checked, installing an automatic gas shut-off valve, securing furniture, and buying emergency kits. 

This is the time. Let’s do it. 

 

 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday December 29, 2006

FRIDAY, DEC. 29 

THEATER 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. Tickets are $10. 232-4031. 

Aurora Theatre Company “A Little Cole in Your Stocking” at 8 p.m., Wed.-Sat., at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 30. Tickets are $25. 843-4822. 

Shotgun Players “The Forest War” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan 14. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ralph Nader on continuing the themes of “The Good Fight” at at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alex Pfeifer-Rosenblum at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

David Grisman Bluegrass Experience at 5 and 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mark Robinson Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dave Lionelli and Jamie Jenkins at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

That Man Fantastic, Ramon & Jessica, Sligo Rags at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

All You Can Eat, Born/Dead, Drain the Sky and others at 6 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $10. 525-9926. 

Chris Zanardi Quartet, jazz and groove, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Frost Bite, RBL Posse at 7 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Lord Loves a Working Man, The Struts at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

McCoy Tyner Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $35. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 30 

CHILDREN  

Elmwood Theater Matinee Benefit for local schools showing “Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Wererabbit” at 10 a.m. and noon, and noon on Sun. Cost is $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 843-3794. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Black Tie Botanical Experience” Botanical watercolors by Bay Area artists. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to Jan. 29. 444-7411. 

FILM 

“924 Gilman” Screening of the documentary in celebration of the music venue’s 20th anniversary at 2 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

THEATER 

International Comedy Showcase with comedians from Africa, China, Labanon, Scotland, India and Iran at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattucks Ave. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Workingman’s Ed at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Stephanie Crawford, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Clifford Lamb Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Paul Mooney Sat. at 7, 9 and 11 p.m. and Sun. at 7 and 9 p.m. at Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $40-$100. 652-2120. 

The Loud Family, Anton Barbeau, Fainting Goats at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

California Flight, Mike Marshall at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $10. All ages. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Cyril Guiraud Trio, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

924 Gilman’s 20th Anniversary with Social Unrest, El Dopa, Black Fork, and others at 6 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $10. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 31 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra New Year’s Eve Celebration, dedicated to the memory of Maestro Edgar Braun at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Free. 415-248-1640. 

Jesus Diaz and his Bay Area Cuban All Stars at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $25-$27. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Bobby Cespedes & Her Trio with John Santos at 7 and 10 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $50-$75, includes traditional Cuban dinner. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Will Durst “Big Fat Year End Comedy Show” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$17. 925-798-1300. 

High Country at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Disappear Incompletely at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. Cost is $10. 848-8277. 

New Year’s Eve Flamenco Fiesta at with dinner and performances by Yaelisa and Caminos Flamencos Company at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $50-$145. 287-8700. 

Jazz Fourtet at 10 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Balkan Bash with Edessa, Ziyia, Joe Finn at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Kings & Queens New Years Bash at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $20 in advance from ticketweb. 548-1159.  

Zadell at 9:30 p.m. and Jason Martineau at 6:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

California Flight, Baby James at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is tba. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Antioquia, Sinclair at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

McCoy Tyner Quartet at 9 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $100. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

MONDAY, JAN. 1 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Christina Hutchins, poet at 7:30 p.m. at Montclair Women’s Club, 1650 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $5. 276-0379. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Parlor Tango with Odile Lavault on bandoneon at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. 

TUESDAY, JAN. 2 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu, Cajun/Zydeco at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffman Trio and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Hammond B-3 Organ Group at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Philips Marine Duo, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 3 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

Moh Alileche at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Film “From Kabylia to California” at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Joe Cardillo at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

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

Paul Maousos at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Christian Scott, trumpet, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JAN. 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Whitework Embroidery” at Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles, 2982 Adeline St. Runs through Feb. 5. Hours are Mon.-Sat. noon to 6 p.m. Free.  

THEATER 

Azeem’s “Rude Boy” opens at 8 p.m. at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way and runs Thurs.-Sat. through Jan. 27. Tickets are $15-$22. 800-838-3006. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Amha Baraka at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Irene Sazer’s Real Vocal String Quartet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Noel Jewkes & Junqueyard Jazz Cats at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Sylvia Herold & Euphonia at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

The Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of San Francisco at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568.  

Jeffrey Luck Lucas, Alela Diane, The Hobbyists, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. 

Matt Lucas at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub. 647-1790.  

Maria Muldaur at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200.  

 

 


Arts and Entertainment

Friday December 29, 2006

INTERNATIONAL COMEDY SHOWCASE 

 

South Berkeley’s La Peña Cultural Center will host an “International Comedy Showcase” at 8 p.m. Saturday, featuring comedians from Africa, China, Lebanon, Scotland, India and Iran. $13-$15. 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. 

 

20th ANNIVERSARY BASH FOR 924 GILMAN  

 

924 Gilman, Berkeley’s venerable member-run punk rock venue, will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a 6 p.m. show Saturday featuring a number of bands, including Solcial Unrest, El Dopa and Black Fork. All ages welcome; no alcohol, no drugs, no violence. $10. The celebration will be preceded by a 2 p.m. screening of 924 Gilman, a documentary about the venue.  

525-9926. 

 

CELLULOID CLASSICS IN EL CERRITO 

 

The Cerrito Theater continues its weekend series of classics from yesteryear with After the Thin Man (1936), the second film in the classic Thin Man series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as a crime-solving couple. The series was based on the novel The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett and shows at 6 p.m. Saturday and at 5 p.m. Sunday. 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.picturepubpizza.com. 

 

CHAMBER CONCERT IN MEMORY OF A MAESTRO 

 

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra will perform a special New Year’s Eve concert in memory of Maestro Edgar Braun at 8 p.m. Sunday at First Congregational Church in Berkeley. Admission is free. 2345 Channing Way. (415) 248-1640.


Moving Pictures: ‘Backstage’ at Tale of Obsession and Celebrity

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday December 29, 2006

Backstage, opening today at Shattuck Cinemas, is a story of obsession and fantasy, depicting the relationship between a pop star and one of her fans, a teenage girl who has come to idolize the singer to the point of zealous obsession. 

Much of the plot may seem over the top, but director Emmanuelle Bercot based her screenplay on actual fan letters written to pop stars, fashioning these missives into a screenplay that attempts to explore the strange dynamic between the trappings of fame and the marketing of celebrity and the desperation of the young, impressionable consumer who becomes irresistibly drawn to the unattainable.  

If the film seems at times to indulge too greatly in an adolescent world, to dwell on the clichés of the pop star lifestyle, it is important to remember that this is deliberate, that the film is essentially telling the tale through the eyes of a star-struck girl who has romanticized and glorified every facet of her idol’s existence. She is hardly an objective observer; rather she provides a filtered lens that colors the action with her own dreams, desires and pain. 

Lauren, the star, is self-centered and melodramatic. She sees her success as something of a trap and her self image as a reluctant celebrity, combined with her troubled romantic life, send her into wildly inappropriate bouts of self pity. But Lucie, the young girl who worships her and, through a chance encounter, becomes her confidant, interprets this drama even more dramatically, seeing Lauren as a martyr, as an artist on a grand scale, and thus any impediment to Lauren’s happiness and artistic success is seen by Lucie as a force of evil intent on destroying a goddess.  

The casting, by Antoinette Boulat and Bercot, is excellent. Emmanuelle Seigner has just the right aura, bringing to the role of Lauren great beauty and ferocity as well as vulnerability and emotional instability. And Isild le Besco plays Lucie with the appropriately ungainly movements of a budding adolescent, the stark, frightened, deer-in-the-headlights expression of a girl forever lost, and the sensual, maniacal, glassy-eyed gaze of a slightly unhinged fan seeking to forever bind herself to the object of her obsession. Supporting roles are often filled by non-actors who hold the same occupations as their characters; the security guard is played by a security guard, the record executive played by a record executive, etc., and the technique succeeds in bringing a certain veracity to the film’s otherwise heightened realism. 

There are a few missteps however. Bercot created an entire album of original songs by Lauren and often relies a bit too heavily on them to carry the film’s emotional weight, with too many shots drowned out by music and too many scenes simplistically explained by Lauren’s lyrics. And her use of symbolism can be simplistic and heavy-handed as well. One of Lauren’s possessions, for instance, is a stuffed deer, meant to capture the nature of her own existence: innocence captured, killed, stuffed and always on display, a lifeless commodity used to adorn a hotel room just as posters of Lauren adorn the bedroom walls of teenagers all over France. Had it only appeared once, or perhaps only in the background, it might have been a more subtle and effective symbol. But Bercot features it so prominently it almost becomes a parody of the use of symbolism. In one scene Lauren appears is profile alongside the profile of the deer, just to make sure we don’t miss the connection; and in another shot, Lucie is seen caressing the deer and nearly kissing it. 

But again, we are seeing this story through the eyes of a deranged fan, so perhaps these awkward moments can also be attributed to her skewed perspective. And ultimately that is where Backstage has its greatest success, in the presentation of that perspective. For whatever its faults and however silly its characters may sometimes be, viewers who remember the more dramatic fancies of their adolescence will recognize some degree of truth in Lucie’s delusions and the burden they inflict on the adults around her. 

 

BACKSTAGE 

Starring Emmanuelle Seigner and Isild le Besco. Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot.  

Written by Jerome Tonnerre and Bercot.  

115 minutes. Not rated. In French with English subtitles. Playing at Shattuck Cinemas. 

 

Photograph: Isild le Besco plays a teenage girl who becomes the friend and confidant of the object of her obsession, a glamorous pop star played by Emmanuelle Seigner, in Backstage.


Bobi Cespedes, John Santos Bring in New Year at Anna’s

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday December 29, 2006

Cuban singer extraordinaire Bobi Cespedes and her trio will be joined by Bay Area Latin music luminary John Santos on percussion for two shows and dinner, 7 and 10 p.m. New Year’s Eve at Anna’s Jazz Island on Allston right off Shattuck. Validated parking at Allston Way Parking across Shattuck next to Ross. 

“John produced three of Bobi’s records,” said club founder Anna De Leon, “But I don’t think they’ve ever performed together live before. She was always working with Conjunto Cespedes, which she co-founded, and John was with his Machete Ensemble, or recording or working with stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri or Cachao.” 

Conjunto Cespedes, the 12-piece group Cespedes cofounded in the ‘80s, disbanded a couple of years back; Santos, Grammy-nominated several times, just put Machete Ensemble to rest a month or so ago after 21 years, citing the difficulties of keeping a big band well-rehearsed and booked, as well as the current official cultural scene, which he characterized as a war on the arts. 

The two former big band leaders can each boast a wealth of experience. Bobi Cespedes has garnered a higher profile in recent years with Mickey Hart’s Planet Drum and the Bembe’ Orisha Orisha bands, but her career as a Yoruba-Lucumi priestess is four decades long, and has taken her all over the world, delivering lectures and performing rituals. Conjunto Cespedes was a leader in combining traditional Afro-Cuban music and poetry with modern horn arrangements. 

John Santos has also pioneered in the fusion of newer and more time-honored Latin and Jazz forms in music and dance, leading his Machete Ensemble and other groups in memorable shows, such as Cuban bassist, the very original Cachao, in his East Bay appearance in the 90s. 

Anna’s Jazz Island, which opened a year ago last summer, is an improved edition of the previous Anna’s on University—improved in terms of size (almost twice as big), acoustics, a full bar and proximity to BART. 

“The old place was sold out every weekend,” De Leon said, “but I wanted to have a room where I could book groups of greater stature, groups with bigger followings; where I could have a grand piano, and where I could have as much truly acoustic music as possible. Normally, we don’t mic the piano, drums or horns, just the bass, singers and instruments like a flute. And I love it! We use a Bose system, not conventional speakers. And I like being less than a block from BART.” 

 

Coming up at  

Anna’s Jazz Island  

 

Saturday, Jan 6: Babatunde Lea and his band “on Three Kings’ Day!”  

 

Saturday, Jan. 13: Lloyd Gregory (familiar from The Fifth Amendment). 

 

Friday, Jan. 19: Pamela Rose with a group including a Hammond B-3 as well as Danny Caron on guitar, “Charles Brown’s old bandleader.” 

 

Friday, Jan. 26: The polished husband and wife team, singer Bobbe Norris and pianist Larry Dunlap. 

 

2120 Allston Way. 841-5299. www.annasjazzisland.com. 

 

 


Live Music Options For New Year’s In Berkeley

By Galen Babb
Friday December 29, 2006

If you want to hear great music New Year’s Eve but don’t want to go far from home there are fantastic options right here in Berkeley covering a wide range of styles, from kid friendly world music to a jazz combo that specializes in cover versions of the music of Radiohead. 

The intimate setting of La Peña Cultural Center is the perfect place to hear the Cuban jazz of Jesus Diaz and his Bay Area Cuban All-Stars. Diaz is a Cuban-born percussionist and vocalist who has worked in the past with Carlos Santana and Dizzy Gillespie. 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org. 

If you are looking for a sound that is more in the Americana genre then you’ll want to check out the bluegrass band High Country at the Freight and Salvage. The bill also features bluegrass duo Dix Bruce and Jim Nunally. The Freight’s New Year’s celebration offers silly hats, a buffet, and sparkling apple cider at the stroke of midnight. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761. www.thefreight.org. 

Ashkenaz is featuring Balkan music with early start time of 7:30 p.m. so that families with kids can come and enjoy the festivities. The bill features Edessa, one of the Bay Area’s premier Balkan music bands, performing along with Greek music specialists Ziyia. Scandinavian and Cajun fiddler Joe Finn will also perform. 1317 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com. 

Jazz enthusiasts may want to check out Jupiter, the downtown brewery, which will feature Disappear Incompletely, an electro-jazz ensemble that performs jazz arrangements of the songs of alternative rock band Radiohead. 2181 Shattuck Ave. 843-8277. www.jupiterbeer.com. 

At Anna’s Jazz Island you can hear the Cuban music stylings of Bobi Cespedes and her trio featuring John Santos as a guest percussionist. Cespedes’s music is in the style of the Buena Vista Social club and she has a warm and sultry voice that has been compared to that of Cesaria Evora. 2120 Allston Way. 841-5299. www.annasjazzisland.com. 

The Starry Plough in South Berkeley will feature Afro Cuban rock band Antioquia and the rock band Sinclair. As owner Mike Naina summed it up, “It is going to be a rockin’ night.” 3101 Shattuck Ave. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

 


SF Chamber Orchestra, Le Bateau Ivre Mark New Year

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday December 29, 2006

New Year’s Eve and Day may be celebrated for free at two remarkable and complementary shows at two venerable Berkeley venues—the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Simon, with guest artists pianist Robert Schwartz and trumpeter Jeffrey Strong at 8 p. m. on Sunday, New Year’s Eve, First Congregational Church (2345 Channing Way at Dana)—and Parlor Tango (bandoneon player Odile Lavault, pianist Marco Casasola and cellist David Morris) inaugurating a new, no cover Monday night Arts Events series, New Year’s Day at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre Restaurant & Coffee House, 2629 Telegraph Ave.  

The SF Chamber Orchestra will play Schubert’s Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich’s witty First Piano Concerto, and Handel’s Trumpet Concerto in G Minor in a concert dedicated to the memory of their founder, Maestro Edgar Braun, who presided over the orchestra from 1993 to 2002. 

Robert Schwartz, a Sacramento native and now San Francisco resident after 15 years in New York, 1975 Ravel Prizewinner whose recording of Romero’s “Spirals” was recently released on Klavier, will perform with the orchestra, as will Jeffrey Strong, who was first chair trumpet with the CMEA All-State Orchestra as well as a member of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, and has freelanced with both the SF and Berkeley Symphonies and Opera Brass. 

The performance is free, with preferred seating to SFCO members. Reservations and information: (415) 248-1640 or info@sfchamberorchestra.org. 

 

And on New Year’s Day, in what promises to be the first of a diverse new Arts Events series, Le Bateau Ivre will present Parlor Tango in an atmosphere of “candles, wood floors and room for dancing” at the restaurant, previously closed on Mondays. “It’s something new for us,” commented Thomas Cooper of Le Bateau Ivre. 

“We’re considering string quartets, Bluegrass, opera, poetry readings, book signings, fundraisers and evenings with the flavor and music of different ethnic groups and nationalities,” he said. “We’ll be open from 6 to 10, with the events from 7 to 9. Le Bateau Ivre will make some money on people ordering food and drink, although there will be no cover charge. The various groups putting on the evenings won’t charge the restaurant; we will not charge them. It will be a very low key arrangement, which we hope will introduce people to Le Bateau Ivre Restaurant through these events.”  

Information at 849-1100 or www.LeBateauIvre.net; for events planning, Cooper@lebateauivre.net. 

 

 

Photograph: The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra will perform on New Year’s Eve at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley.


‘Bobby’ Prompts Memories of Kennedy

By Scott Badler
Friday December 29, 2006

In “Bobby,” the final day of Robert Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency, is brought to life through the lives of an ensemble of characters. 

That week in 1968, at thirteen, I was making a final campaign push myself for Kennedy. Incomprehensibly, not everybody was voting for him. In fact, not everybody in our Los Angeles household was voting for Kennedy. 

Based solely for his anti-Vietnam stance, my mother had come out for Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy immediately after he had announced his candidacy. 

My fascination and passion for Kennedy began as soon as he announced his candidacy. For once, I scanned the Los Angeles Times front page for details about Kennedy speeches and primary victories before the sports pages. 

My father and I attended a Kennedy rally at the local junior college. When Kennedy’s motorcade hit the campus, I bolted after it, reaching his car and his outstretched hand. If I’d been a fervent young Kennedy supporter before that night, now I was happily fixated on Kennedy and the campaign. 

Once Kennedy had announced he would run, I expected my mother to switch allegiance to Kennedy for both sensible and self-interested reasons, but so far she had resisted my appeals. 

Not wanting my father’s vote to be cancelled out, I knew it was time to play hardball if Kennedy was going to carry our household. I pleaded and kidded to my mother to vote for Kennedy. 

“C’mon Mom. Please vote for Kennedy. You know he’s going to win anyway. Might as well go with a winner.” 

But my mother wouldn’t budge. I had never seen her so stubborn, especially about something I wanted so badly. 

I tried using the issues. First, I tried Civil Rights. At her urging, our family had marched in civil rights parades. 

I followed her around the house while she attempted to evade me. 

“Mom, listen. McCarthy and Kennedy are the same on the war, but Kennedy is stronger on Civil Rights. Everybody knows that. McCarthy could care less about Negroes. Civil Rights. Isn’t that what you care about most? There’s more than one issue besides the war. Please. Vote for Kennedy!” 

“No,” she said turning around to face me, pursing her lips. “McCarthy was first.” 

But I wasn’t done yet. Like a dog nipping at her heels, I tagged behind while she busied herself with domestic chores. Undaunted, I had other issues. 

My mother was a fervent follower of Cesar Chavez, who led the fight for better conditions for migrant farm workers. Kennedy had aligned himself with Chavez, even flying to California when Chavez ended his 25-day fast, just before the New Hampshire primary. My mother had banned grapes from our house since Chavez began his crusade. I had sacrificed because I loved grapes. Now it was her turn to sacrifice for me. 

“I’m still voting for McCarthy,” she said. This was going to be more difficult than I thought. 

Now I was desperate. The Hell with the issues. Just do it for me. I never asked for that much did I? Some new clothes, perhaps, another cookie, or once in a while a big item like a new bike. More or less I got what I needed. Especially if I really wanted it. Once, there was a particular pair of shoes I desired. My mother and I drove all over the Valley in a vain attempt to find the shoes so I could wear them on the first day of school. She wanted to make me happy. Well, voting for Kennedy would make me happy! Didn’t she understand? 

I thought of a revelatory conversation I’d had with my parents when they revealed almost casually that they’d give up their life for me if the circumstances presented themselves. 

Really? 

This was quite a shock. I couldn’t think of anybody I would give up my life for. But my parents, in the event that there was only enough water or food for one person, would give it to me. Or take a bullet. I came first. 

You don’t need to give up your life. Just give up your vote. For Kennedy. For your son. A political favor. Don’t you know much this means to me? What’s one vote? One favor. Please! 

No luck. 

Now I was both desperate and angry. I had time for one last campaign blitz on the night before the California primary election. Gathering posters, stickers and campaign material, I smothered the inside of her car with Kennedy campaign material. When she went to vote the next morning, she’d have quite a surprise. Who could resist? Get on the bandwagon, Mom. She’d have to vote for Kennedy now, I reasoned. 

When she came back from the polls, I asked her hopefully, “Who did you vote for?” 

“McCarthy,” she said. 

I turned away, hurt and furious. There was nothing else to say. I had done everything I could for Kennedy. And I’d failed. 

In the end, of course, it didn’t matter. 

I’d gone to bed after Kennedy had been declared the winner. The nightmare I thought I was having turned out to be the television newscasters’ voices drifting poisonously in to my bedroom. 

The campaign was over. 

 


How to Make a Paper Peace Sign

By James K. Sayre
Friday December 29, 2006

Take two sheets of red construction paper, one sheet of green construction paper and one sheet of regular white paper. Pencil-sketch an outline for a large egg-shaped peace symbol on the white paper, making almost as big as the whole sheet. Staple the white sheet on top of the green construction paper and carefully cut out your peace sign through both sheets. 

Save all the pieces, preferably in the their original orientation. Then glue the green peace symbol onto one of the sheets of red construction paper. Glue the remaining green pieces onto the second sheet of red construction paper. Voilà, you have two nice complementary peace signs, suitable for hanging in your front window. 

Since construction paper is somewhat translucent, in the daytime, you can enjoy the back-glow red and green of your peace signs sitting in your window. Of course, you can switch colors of the construction paper, you might even try using black-and-blue for a symbolic statement. 

Let’s give peace a chance; we’re tired of giving Bush’s endless fascist wars a chance—We want to see these chicken-hawks start laying some peace-eggs in 2007. If these chicken hawks don’t start laying some nice peace-eggs next year, we’ll be shipping them off to a certain Kentucky Colonel “for recycling.” 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holy-days and have a Bright New Year.


Berkeley Fragments

By Mike Palmer
Friday December 29, 2006

 

At “Launderland” 

the laundromat 

that’s fixed on that 

radio station 

that plays the hits  

from the ’70s 

day and night 

a homeless man 

is inside  

and 

uses this space 

for his living room. 

 

He spends the money 

he’s begged for all day 

on playing video games 

while talking 

to himself. 

 

Others read books. 

One does pages of Math 

(or is it Engineering?) problems 

while his clothes spin. 

 

As if performing 

a religious ritual 

a laundromat worker 

 

 

 

 

 

cleans each washing machine 

and dryer 

slowly, methodically, gliding a towel 

around the edges  

and over the top. 

As if a higher power 

he reports to 

is watching him. 

 

I go down the street and 

eat my dinner 

at a Chinese restaurant. 

 

• 

 

The way a homeless person 

walks directly in front of you 

without looking at you 

and you have to move out of 

their way 

to avoid collision. 

 

(CEO’s and University Chancellors 

employ the same technique.) 

 

Without speaking 

they want you to know 

that they live 

in your world. 

 

 

 

 

The closed and abandoned 

cinema. 

The windows where posters were placed 

for the current and upcoming movies 

are now covered with graffiti. 

 

Homeless teenagers 

sit at the entrance 

listening to techno music 

laughing. 

 

A tombstone 

desecrated. 

 

• 

 

The site of the “Massage Parlour”  

that everyone who lived here  

knew was a house of prostitution 

across the street from 

the upscale supermarket 

is where 

“15 Luxury Condominiums” 

are being built. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A large sign 

announces their availability 

for those who can afford the cost. 

 

Cody’s Book Store on Telegraph Avenue 

world famous 

a place where 

the best writers read 

and signed their books 

is closed, abandoned. 

 

Has become a place for 

selling Halloween supplies. 

 

• 

 

When I check out my purchase 

at the upscale supermarket 

a young man 

says to his co-worker 

“It’s all about property” 

his dreadlocks dancing as he speaks. 

He looks directly at me and asks 

“Sir, are you blessed?” 

 


A Short Review of Shakespeare’s Complete Works

By Josef Kay
Friday December 29, 2006

9 Laughers, 11 Laments; the rest just a combination of the two or wholly unclassifiable. 

 


Writing

By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Friday December 29, 2006

Saturday morning, make to do list 

TV-morning show-Spinach scare in California 

Equation predicting celebrity pairing bliss quotient 

Based on Google hits with skin 

Fashion discounts on designer labels sold through billion dollar babes 

Yes, I need to know all this 

Switch off TV 

Brisk walk with seventy-year-old father 

Who wants to overtake others 

Stop at Andronico to get San Francisco Chronicle and 

sun kissed nectarines 

Surf websites-Biospace, Craigslist 

Jobs-Qualifications-Figure out match quotient 

Emails-delete spam—oh! The usual Viagra, 

XXX, Someone giving money for free 

Just want my ID 

Mahogany magazine, my friend asks if I will write a few lines 

On what beauty means to me, a middle aged woman of color 

Maybe I will, maybe I won’t-- 

Make dal for my father and me—wash dishes 

Feel guilty—I’ve been busy—take my father 

Watch Al Gore movie, ‘Inconvenient Truth’ 

Feel included when movie mentions Bombay Record Rainfall 

Learn Nairobi was built above mosquito line 

Walk home, feel good my Carbon footprint isn’t big, 

Feel elite I know the phrase Carbon footprint at all 

But oh! Petro-cosmetics and synthetic fabrics—maybe 

I shouldn’t buy that pretty pineapple dress with palm trees 

Remember my friend who told me the US cosmetic industry 

Is bigger than the GDP of many African countries 

Go home—cook cabbage peas curry, 

Eat with pasta and tortilla 

A hurry-hurry world 

No time for making chapatti 

Wash dishes sans dishwasher 

Lug my father’s laundry—then mine downstairs 

No dry cleaning solvent, but dump detergent 

Close the door, complete Hedgebrook application essay 

Why as a woman I need six weeks to be cooked and fed 

To write—whatever, whenever—easy essay girl 

Come outside—meet my father’s shrunken face 

“Can we go to see ‘Vajra’-Tibetan documentary?’ 

He asks with childlike curiosity 

I feel guilty again—meeting for two months after two years— 

and I am busy 

The instructor said, “write a poem of the moment” 

At 9pm I shut the door 

Put pen on paper—pull it along 

A poem does not pour out. 

 


Two Cheers

By George Brunn
Friday December 29, 2006

Two Cheers 

 

Rumsfeld’s gone; 

His ghost lingers. 

Here comes Gates; 

Cross your fingers. 

 

How to Win the War 

 

Have the Iraqis shout, 

“You’ve won, now get out!” 


My First Walkure

By Bill Beckerman
Friday December 29, 2006

I was a sophomore to opera 25 years ago in 1981. It was early December and an opera friend, Alice, called me to offer a ticket to use her box seat at a performance of The Walkure. I knew only three things about The Walkure: It was long, loud and the costumes were strange. 

I was now a new opera fan and had some wonderfully influential people guiding me into the life—the world of opera. I eagerly accepted Alice’s offer for an afternoon of opera at the War Memorial Opera House. Who knew that this first performance of the Walkure would also turn out to be legendary in the annals of San Francisco Opera History? 

Yes, this is a day that all the old timers at the Opera Company still remember. This was the Sunday matinee in which the scheduled tenor, James King, called in sick at the last minute. What happened to resolve this potential catastrophe, ended up being what I call the “opera” of opera; The dramas that ensue behind the scenes at the opera house that add a second dimension to the high drama of opera. Back in those days it was said that only about four or five singers were capable of singing a respectable performance of the role of Sigmund in The Walkure. And one of those people happened to be at home on vacation nearby.  

You see, opera singers travel the world all season long; Their idea of vacation is to go home. And Mr. Adler knew that the famous tenor, Jess Thomas, lived nearby in Tiburon. In a matter of an hour, Mr. Thomas managed to finish his morning ablutions, find his way to San Francisco, get fitted for his costume, work out a few stage directions, and was singing the strenuous tenor role of Sigmund. The headlines in the paper the next day would read, “Jess Thomas’ 11th-Hour Rescue for ‘Die Walkure’ ”, and all I knew was that I was going to a Sunday matinee of an opera that I’d never seen before.  

The corner box, where I sat, in the square-shaped opera house create a vast amount of space in the back of the box and besides, there are a few steps in this box to get to the rear seating area. Happy me, the steps have courtesy lighting to help see them and they are bright enough to read the print in the libretto if you are seated on the steps. Since I found myself alone in the box that afternoon, I eschewed the elegant chairs and instead sat right down there on the carpet so I could follow along with the dialog.  

It’s very interesting to contemplate myself as I was there that evening. Only partly understanding what was happening on stage with the complicated relationships between the characters, I was also clueless about what was happening back stage with the suiting up of the surprise guest tenor, Jess Thomas. 

I saw the silhouette of a woman entered the box as the lights were dimming. I didn’t know who she was, but it was certainly not for me to question that she belonged there. I barely belonged myself, living above my station for that afternoon as a guest in the opera house. I was intrigued that she, too did not avail herself of the elegant seating available. She positioned herself on her knees and draped herself over the railings in the very front of the vast box.  

She was about ten feet in front of me and there was no way for me to miss her antics. She was in my line of sight as I alternately watched the stage and followed the dialogue in my libretto that was carefully held opened on the step where I sat. I looked up and she was leaning so far forward, I thought she was about to fall and tumble right out of the box. I looked back at the libretto and glanced up again to see her arms waving all around over her head. I swear, from the shadows where I sat, it looked more like she was watching a football game then the opera that I was watching. 

The first act ended, the lights came up and she turned to look at me. I suppose she thought she was alone in our box, but I also don’t think she cared how she appeared to me. She gave me a nice smile as she exited through the curtain out to the lobby.  

The first intermission came to a conclusion as the lights dimmed and my mystery friend, practically the only other person I could see from my floor perch, reappeared through the entrance of the box and resumed her post at the railing of our shared vantage place. While act one is dominated by a long love duet, the second act is more contentious. Husband, Woton, and his wife, Fricka, argue a lot. His demigod daughter has to announce bad news of the impending death of her mortal charge, Sigmund. The daughter appears to Sigmund in a dream-like state and yet ends up so moved by his passion that she gives him a reprieve. This reprieve is short lived and vetoed by Wotan with the abrupt death of Sigmund.  

Of course, I’m still watching the silhouette of the mystery lady rooting and cheering in the dark until the action ended. Act II was now finished and the lights came up again for another intermission. I could finally figure out who my mysterious companion was as she exited through the curtain after the second act.  

She said to me emphatically, “My husband is dead, I won’t be back!” It was the famous tenor’s wife, Violeta Thomas! 


Books: ‘Single Mom Seeking’ Find Success in Publishing World

By Annie Kassof
Friday December 29, 2006

Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches from the Dating World is a spunky, sexy, page-turner of a book about Berkeley author Rachel Sarah’s search for a good man. I got to practically witness it being written as her story unfolded, since Rachel and I are in a writing group together. 

Rachel Sarah was living in New York City when her ex-boyfriend, Eric (who she describes as being bipolar and alcoholic) walked out on her and their six-month-old baby girl, Mae. He ends up moving abroad, leaving Rachel devastated. A few months later, around the time the WTC falls, she’s slowly begun to accept that she’s now sole parent to lively, biracial Mae. Problem is, Rachel, a vibrant, adventurous young woman, also discovers her libido’s back—and in high gear. With a bit of trepidation she’s already begun flirting with everyone from her apartment building manager to the local UPS man, with mixed results.  

One day she tells some friends, “I want to meet someone,” and they set her up on the first of many blind dates. Even though in the long term she wants a man who will stay, in the short term she realizes that she definitely doesn’t want to kiss her sex life good-bye just because she’s a single mom. 

Rachel is ever conscious of the impact of her dating adventures on her growing daughter. Balancing our needs as single moms with those of our children is a constant juggling act, yet Rachel manages both mothering and dating with grace and style. 

When a friend of a friend, Victor, becomes a boyfriend, it’s not long before Rachel finds that he’s more interested in smoking pot with his old buddies than cuddling with her on a holiday visit to his family home, so she says goodbye. With every man she meets she assesses his suitability as father-material, and Victor clearly didn’t measure up. As much as she wants a satisfying love life, Rachel (who wants to be for Mae “the kind of mother I never had,”) is first and foremost conscientious of her daughter’s well-being. 

She decides to pack her bags and move back to the Bay Area, her childhood home. Here, she quickly hooks up with other single parents and establishes herself as a freelance writer and a columnist for a Jewish newspaper. 

With the encouragement of her girlfriends she boldly enters the world of online dating, and writes with insight, detail, and humor about the broad-ranging results which ensue.  

Single Mom Seeking makes no pretense about being anything other than a fast-paced, sexy story of one woman’s search for her own Cinderella ending.  

Its strengths are its dialog, its honesty, and Rachel’s devotion to Mae. She writes, 

When a man meets my child, it’s a true test. Will he bend down on one knee and talk to her face to face? Or will he ignore her as she hovers at his legs, and look into my eyes instead?  

Also, I think there’s something brazen about telling readers that your hormones are raging and damn it, you’re going to do something about it. If some of the passages lean a bit toward descriptions that are on the um, racy side, well, that’s what helps make it a page-turner. 

I have to say, I truly admire Rachel’s gumption in writing her book. As a single mom also, I pretty much figure the chances of my meeting someone new who wants me and my kids (we’re sort of like a package deal), is just too remote. So unlike Rachel, I don’t even bother looking. 

But more than that, Rachel Sarah wrote a book about her life while raising a child on her own. Now, that is what I truly admire.  

 

Single Mom Seeking:  

Play Dates, Blind Dates  

and Other Dispatches  

from the Dating World 

By Rachel Sarah 

Published by Seal Press, 2006, Emeryville. $14.95. 

 

Rachel Sarah will launch her new book with a reading and party sponsored by Black Oak Books at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11 at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 

 


Black Hats: A Novel of Earp and Capone

By Joe Kemkes
Friday December 29, 2006

I always liked the guys in the black hats—the “bad guys”—when I went to the cowboy movies as a kid. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Butch and Sundance: talk about grabbin’ for the gusto—these guys had it goin’ eight ways ‘til Sunday. 

Then the Black Hats started turning up on the heads of urban hoods: Vito Carleone, Al “Scarface” Capone and all the bad boys on those mean, mean streets. Black Hat, Black Heart, Black Hand. 

Sometime between Jesse James’ last dance and Al Capone’s rise in the mob, Sheriff Wyatt Earp, age 72, left Tombstone, Ariz., and settled in Manhattan to deal cards in a speakeasy. Al Capone, in his 20s, was a bartender in Brooklyn and was starting to run with the mob. What if their paths had crossed? 

Patrick Culhane (pen name for Max Allan Collins, who also wrote Road to Peridtion) entertains this “what if” proposition in his fictionalized tale Black Hats: A Novel of Wyatt Earp and Al Capone.  

Hats is set during Prohibition when there was big money to be made on illegal liquor. Capone heard about a stash of 3,000 cases of booze secreted in a Manhattan warehouse and decided to steal it. The owner hired Earp and Bat Masterson to guard the warehouse and to make weekly deliveries of the booze to his club. When Capone finally finds out where the stash is hidden, this is how Culhane brings the suspense to a climax: 

 

When the bald gunner rounded the corner, still spraying slugs, Bat Masterson took aim and fired twice, and the guy, not hit but startled, pulled back, letting up on the trigger. Bat had him now, and he fired ... only he didn’t fire, he squeezed the trigger, all right, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He was out. “Even little guns need bullets,” the machine gunner said, his eyes wild, his smile rabid-animal crazed. The son of a bitch was laughing when he fired ... only he didn’t fire, either, his trigger bringing only clicks. He was out, too. Bat was scrambling to reload when he heard the footsteps. Wyatt’s steady footsteps. “Big gun”, Wyatt said. “Big but empty.” The thunder of Wyatt’s long-barrel .45 rivaled anything the sky could summons and its impact shattered the bald head like a melon. Bat’s eyes went to Wyatt. “What’s that?” “What?” “On your ear?” Wyatt touched his left lobe. His fingers bought back blood. “A little graze. Bat roared with laughter. “Don’t tell me after all these years, you finally took a bullet!” Wyatt raised a blood-dabbed finger in warning. “Not a word.” (Pages 250-51)  

 

Using the glittering backdrop of showgirls and cafe society, gangsters and gamblers, Black Hats convincingly portrays an eerily plausible story of a legendary sheriff’s last stand against the man who went on to become Public Enemy #1. At bookstores March 27, 2007.


Garden Variety: Short List: Three New Year’s Garden Resolutions

By Ron Sullivan
Friday December 29, 2006

Yes, there are New Year’s resolutions for gardeners. We’re prone to every other bad habit known to humanity; why not resolutions we know perfectly well we’re not going to keep for more than a month or two? 

Number One sounds easy: I will not work on my garden or tread on its soil until it dries up a bit after any serious rain.  

Those of us who’ve managed to arrange beds with paths so well laid-out that one can reach everything without getting muddy, well, those get a break on this. Takes a long reach or lots of ground to spare, in my experience, but it’s a good idea.  

However industrious we are, our clay soils need a break from being stepped on when they’re soggy. Walking on the bed that you spent last fall fluffing up with amendments and a spading fork will wipe out your work in minutes. Time to put your feet up, not down.  

Number Two relates to mud too: I will mulch mulch mulch, and I’ll get a move on about it.  

Leaves are still falling; tree crews are still chipping; the garden store’s still selling bags of ground-up assorted stuff. (But avoid the cypress mulch, please. That industry’s wreaking hell on the beautiful, irreplaceable, and protective wetlands of the Southeast.) Rain falling on bare soil actually compacts it, which is exactly what we don’t need here.  

If you’re growing dryland natives or desert plants and don’t want to add fertility (and are lucky enough to have soil that doesn’t need repair and rehabilitation) you can mulch with gravel or rock. That will keep down the dust and mud, and good-sized-rock mulch will give the squirrels pause when they cast covetous eyes on your calochortus bulbs.  

Just keep the mulch pulled a few inches back from the bases of your woody plants—ceanothus, manzanita, oaks—because they usually resent living in turtlenecks. You can push your microclimate boundaries a bit, too, with sun-reflecting pale or heat-absorbing and—retaining dark colors. It’s worth an experiment. Out of kindness to your neighbors, just avoid those blinding white “marble” chips. 

Number Three’s where I start losing my resolve: I will limit my purchases to plants that will actually fit in my garden, and that includes how big they’ll be in five years.  

Someone gives me a pack of seeds or a ginger pup and I have to give those room. Some new heuchera shows up in the nursery and how can I live without that intriguing combination of burgundy and silver? Joe wins a door prize and it’ll be absolutely perfect if we can build up a little drainage for it. And that waning houseplant turns out to need only a change of scenery and suddenly we have a new look out there.  

Well, something else is bound to die and leave room. Or I can subdivide something and pass my “problems” along. What goes around comes around, whether it’s pass-along plants or a tired old tradition like this.  


About the House: The Stinky House Syndrome

By Matt Cantor
Friday December 29, 2006

Mr. & Mrs. American home owner, are you suffering from Stinky House Syndrome? Does your house smell bad? Do strangers flee your dwelling soon after entering? Do relatives plan family gatherings at the homes of less scintillating family members? Are you engaging in microbial experiments without possession of the pertinent advanced degree? If you answered yes to any of the above, you may be a candidate for dehumidifier ownership. 

Once again, it’s the rainy season and the calls about stinky basements, green growths on baseboards and sneezing basement dwellers are pouring in (so to speak). As property values and rents grow, more and more people find themselves living in or using basements or backyard sheds that do not provide adequate protection against damp conditions. Even if you only have a damp basement below your living space, you can be subject to elevated humidity levels that can make your home feel clammy and cold. This is a complex area of home care and much needs to be said that I can’t cover in 1,000 words or less. But there is a formidable tool in the war on mold that is worthy of a some discussion, and that’s our friend the dehumidifier. 

A dehumidifier is essentially an air conditioner but with a few notable differences. The technology that’s used to chill air in your refrigerator or air conditioner chills a set of coils and then pumps the waste heat to another set of coils for discharge. In the case of an A/C those are on the outside. And if you put your hand over them, you can feel the heat. The cold coils also gather moisture in the air since moisture tends to condense on a cold surface, just as it does on your windows when you have the heat turned on. 

A dehumidifier condenses moisture in the atmosphere on those cold coils and allows it to drip into a pan. Rather than moving the warm coils to the outside, they are placed just past the chilling and dripping business in the system and warm the air back up before releasing it into the room. This way, you are able to remove the moisture without cooling the room. Of course, if you want it cool and dry, you can simply run an air conditioner, although they are somewhat less efficient at removing moisture since they are not designed to provide this as their sole function. 

Now, what to do with all that water? First, keep in mind that the water gathered from a cold system like this isn’t safe to drink, since it is likely to contain fungal matter and dust. So it’s best to simply discharge it down a drain or out to the garden. Small inexpensive dehumidifiers fill a small trough or tray which must be taken out and emptied from time to time, but larger ones are provided with drain pipes and can be set up to run with almost no maintenance for very long periods. These larger models (actually all of them) are rated in terms of “pints per day,” and it’s best to try to choose one using this system. Small models are less than 10 PPD and large ones can be over 40 PPD. The larger ones should be expected to cost well over $1,000 but may well be worth it if you’re experiencing real distress. 

Every year I meet a few people who have a bad situation that calls for a dehumidifier. One couple that I met last year had a tenant living in a basement apartment. Part of the tenant’s space was getting wet from leaks and featured a lovely zoological menagerie of fungi and protists (part of the mildew family). Everybody gets freaked when this is happening and all sorts of allegations of devil worship and bad genetics get hurled about but the simple truth is that people are dealing with this all the time. It’s not a basis for bad behavior or threats. It’s just nature doing what it always does when some basic requirements are met. It grows stuff. Fungi love moisture.  

They also need oxygen and food but that’s available at everybody’s house. I haven’t seen any houses that don’t have a nice source of sugar and oxygen. A damp 2 x 4 will work nicely, thank you very much but a sheet of paper surfaced sheet rock will work even better. We line the inside of our houses with paper and it’s no shock when stuff starts growing on the surface. We really ought to quit this odd habit and it is happening slowly. Alternatives to paper surface gypsum drywall have been around for some time and, in these litigious times, they’re really surging. I suspect that we won’t be able to find the paper type in another 10 years but I digress. 

So we have food, air and only need water. How much water do we need to grow fungi (that includes the molds and most mildew). The answer varies with the organism but it’s about 70 percent to 100 percent. Few of these things grow below 60 percent and 50 percent is quite safe and comfy.  

Basements often have walls that are damp and the moisture levels easily meet the requirement. When moisture is present on the surfaces it evaporates and becomes part of the atmosphere. If there is enough of this, the entire house can achieve levels where fungi begin to grow. While rare, it is not unusual to have portions of basement, window sills, closets and spots on ceilings where little farms are agrowin’. 

Although it may seem almost too easy to find plausible, the simple deprivation of an adequate level of moisture is all that is needed to prevent fungi from growing. They just stop growing when things dry out. True, the dead spores remain and can affect the immune systems of some fairly allergic persons but for the most part, when things dry out, the ill effects vanish. It is wise to clean the surfaces and possibly replaced damaged or deeply infested materials such as sheetrock if these have become filled or covered with culture (of course, doesn’t all the Bay Area have that problem?) but once the level of required dampness is gone, there just won’t be more growth. If you want to clean and kill mold spores, a dilution of bleach works nicely. 

There are many things that one can do to prevent this including creating proper drainage, venting the spaces below the house, the use of plastic barriers and sealants but for situations that are currently unmanageable, a dehumidifier is a quick, simple and relatively inexpensive fix. Downside?, they use electricity. If you’re thinking of getting one, especially a “whole crawlspace” or “whole house” model, check out the energystar.gov website. You can get a rebate for making the right choice and help to control your electric bill. Like their cousins, the air conditioners, dehumidifiers use a fair amount of electricity but given the important job they do, it’s worth it. I would make sure I bought enough but not too much capacity so as to control the energy cost. Better models have humidistatic controls that allow you to set the percentage of moisture you like. Don’t set them too low. It’s not comfortable and will only cost you more money. 

After the rainy season, you may want to take some other actions in response to mold and wetness but in the immediate, the use of a dehumidifier can be a lifesaver. It may save your hacking lungs, the frame of your lovely old Victorian or the precious relationship you have with the nice young man who lives down in the basement. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday December 29, 2006

Don’t Blame Uncle Hayward 

 

Carol Lonergan of Oakland got an unwelcome birthday present just before Christmas, when the Hayward Fault gifted her and the rest of us with a 3.7 quake, one of three that week. 

The New York native didn’t like it one bit: “we felt that sickening boom and shaking, like the house had been rear-ended in slow traffic.”  

What a perfect description. 

When Uncle Hayward just can’t take the pressure any more and finally ruptures, we can’t say he didn’t warn us. Some of us are comfortable just ignoring the gentle (but sickening?) reminders, but others, thankfully, have decided to no longer put off having their retrofit checked, installing an automatic gas shut-off valve, securing furniture, and buying emergency kits. 

This is the time. Let’s do it. 

 

 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.


Berkeley This Week

Friday December 29, 2006

FRIDAY, DEC. 29 

“Life on Earth” The documentary by David Attenborough, a chronology of the flora and fauna of the Earth over 3,500 million years, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 31 

New Years Eve Circle Dance Party at 8 p.m. at Hillside Church, El Cerrito. Simple folk dancing done in a circle. No partners or dance experience needed. No alcohol. Donation of $5 appreciated. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

“Toward a Unified Theory of Religion” with Sarah Lewis of the GTU at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Pilgrimage Tom Mead on Tibet’s sacred sites at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, JAN. 1 

An Evening of Argentine Tango Dinner at 6 p.m., lessons at 7 p.m. at Lake Merrit Dance Center, 200 Grand Ave. at Harrison, Oakland. Tickets are $25-$30. 326-6415. 

TUESDAY, JAN. 2 

Snowshoeing Basics with Cathy Anderson-Meyers at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Free Legal Assistance the first Tues. of the month at 6 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Advance registration required. 526-3720, ext. 5. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Confetti Arts Day at Habitot Children’s Museum Art projects using left-over New Year’s confetti, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $6. 647-1111. 

New to DVD “Little Miss Sunshine” at 7 p.m. at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Discussion Salon on “Delight” at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut.  

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, JAN. 3  

Winter Break Movie Series for Teens will show “Spiderman 2” at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6133.  

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Advanced sign-up is required 594-5165.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, JAN. 4 

Teen Book Club meets to discuss favorite picture books at 4:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. Bring a book to share. 981-6107. 

FRIDAY, JAN. 5 

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 

Report on Lebanon with Dr. Paul Larudee on his visits during the summer of 2006, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free. 845-4740. 

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” A documentary and presentation by the Sierra Club at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation of $5 acccepted. www.HumanistHall.net 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com (code UCB) 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, JAN. 6 

“The Mosque of Paris: A Forgotten Resistance” Documentary film and presentation on how the Muslim community of Paris saved Jews in Nazi-occupied France. Discussion with Dr. Annette Herskovits who survived the the Holocaust as a child in France. At 7 p.m. at Berkeley UU Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Sponsored by the UU Social Justice Committee. 528-5403. 

Movies that Matter “The Last Temptation of Christ” at 6:30 p.m. at Neumayer Residence, 565 Bellevue St. at Perkins, Oakland. Free. 451-3009. http://joyfulharmony.org  

Freedom from Tobacco Quit Smoking Class from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and runs for six Saturdays. Option of free acupuncture included. For information call 981-5330. quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Sickle Cell Presentation and Discussion at 3 p.m. at the African American Museum and Library, 659 14th St., Oakland, in conjunction with the “Can We Spare Some Change? - A Change in Attitude” Exhibition. 637-0200. 

Sunset Walk in Emeryville Meet at 3:30 p.,m. behind Chevy’s Restaurant at the small parking lot for an hour walk through the Marina. Rain cancels. Wheelchair accessible. 234-8949. 

Luna Kids Dance Open House from 1 to 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, Studio C, 2640 College Ave. 644-3629. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Petite Pooches Playgroup for small dogs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., one block north of Solano on Ensenada at Talbot. 524-2459. 

ONGOING 

Help with Medicare Part D Enrollment Seniors who need to enroll in the prescription drug plan, or change their plan can get help and advice at Berkeley Senior Centers. Appointments required. Call 1-800-434-0222.  

Peace Action West, a local non-profit which promotes peace and justice, is looking for volunteers to do data entry, stuff envelopes and other tasks. Locates across from the Berkeley Bowl. 849-2272, ext. 104. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed. Jan. 3, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487.