Arts & Events

TUESDAY, FEB. 6 -more-

OLD TIME MUSIC IN BERKELEY -more-

In his interview with Robert Hass to an overflowing crowd at International House, the Columbian artist Fernando Botero mentioned that when reading Seymour Hersh’s article in The New Yorker about American soldiers using torture in the same prison at Abu Ghraib where Saddam Hussein used similar violent tactics, he was deeply shocked. -more-

Robert Ernst, cofounder of ’70s-’80s Berkeley experimental performance cooperative The Blake Street Hawkeyes and writer, director, teacher, musician and actor, has a new play, Catherine’s Care, onstage for two more weeks in San Rafael. -more-

All right, the season’s over. Put down that polesaw. I don’t mean the pruning season, exactly. I mean the pruning free-for-all season: that season where a pruner’s only concern is the anatomy and physiology of the tree being pruned. -more-

TUESDAY, FEB. 6 -more-

FRIDAY, FEB. 2 -more-

CONVERSATIONS ON ART -more-

Typing by candlelight (“Like the old guys ... the forefathers”), a nervous, diffident screenwriter fends off the attentions of his feral older brother, a rawboned galoot just in from the desert, spilling potato chips over the writer and ruffling his hair, darkly exclaiming, “Don’t worry about me; I’m not the one to worry about!”—as crickets chirp and there’s talk of coyotes killing cocker spaniels in suburbia by the San Gabriels, in Actors Ensemble’s production of Sam Shepard’s True West at Live Oak Theatre. -more-

Skylights are great. Nearly everyone agrees. They lighten up dark spaces and do so without any energy expense but like so many things, what seems like a good thing at first glance is a bit more complex and not right for every situation. Moreover, as most people know, they come with the possibility of leaks. So let’s take a look at some of the issues associated with putting in a skylight, living with one that you have now and just for fun, some of the newer things happening in this corner of construction. -more-

I’d heard a rumor (Thanks, Chris!) that Ken’s Nursery in San Pablo was up for sale, so I moseyed on up San Pablo Avenue to that weird intersection like a broken asterisk, the corner of Where Value Village Used to Be and Where Bertola’s Used to Be. It’s just before the Mall Under Construction, mere blocks north of Casino San Pablo and the Alvarado adobe. -more-

In case you hadn’t heard, the Association of Bay Area Governments estimates that up to 80 percent of retrofits around here will be ineffective in even a moderate earthquake. -more-

FRIDAY, FEB. 2 -more-

A Jan. 30 story on landmarking the Bevatron wrongly identified the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s affiliations: the University of California manages and operates LBNL for the Department of Energy. -more-