The purple ribbons fluttering in the wind inside the Berkeley High School courtyard symbolized the loss of BHS Vice Principal Denise Brown for the entire Berkeley Unified School District Monday. 

Purple, as those close to the 50-year-old vice principal know, was her favorite color. And in a tribute on Friday, hundreds of grieving students and staff spread hues of purple throughout the school in her memory. 

Recuperating from a knee replacement surgery at home for a month, Brown felt dizzy on Friday afternoon and was rushed to the intensive care unit at around 3 p.m. She was declared dead two hours later. 

Brown’s son Justin Real, 22, told the Planet that the probable cause for his mother’s death was a blood clot. 

“She didn’t really have any serious illnesses, although the doctors told me that she was diabetic. I guess we will have to wait until the autopsy results come out to find out what really happened,” said Justin, adding that arrangements for a memorial service were still pending. 

Justin, who recently graduated from the University of Oregon, was with his mother at the hospital when she died. 

“It’s difficult for me, but it’s more difficult for my sister Sarah, who was really close to her,” he said. As friends and family gathered inside Brown’s house on Monday afternoon to comfort the two children, Justin told the Planet that his main concern at the moment was his sister. 

A senior at Berkeley High, Sarah, 18, is also an accomplished dancer.  

“She’s applying to dance programs and auditions all over at the moment,” Justin said. “My mother was a really big support in that field, especially when it came to applying to schools such as Julliard. I really hope she gets into a good program in New York, because that’s where she wants to go.” 

Sarah told the Planet that although her mother had had pains from her knee surgery during her recovery, there had been no indication that it was life-threatening.  

“The doctor said it was normal. We didn’t really think twice about it,” she said. 

Both Sarah and Justin described Brown as the “coolest mom ever,” whose favorite things included The Color Purple (both the book and the color), watching “I Love Lucy” and author James Baldwin. 

“She was just amazing. A real people person,” said Justin, whose first memories of his mother were from when she was a teacher at LeConte Elementary School. 

“I never got her as a teacher though. My mom would never allow that. Even when she joined as an administrator at Berkeley High, I had already graduated,” he said. 

At Berkeley High, as students gathered around her memorial to put flowers and write messages on Monday, many remembered her from their days at LeConte. 

“I knew her from Kindergarten,” said Rosey Chardak, a sophomore who did not go to class on Monday. 

“I was sitting here all day. I just don’t feel like doing anything after I heard the shocking news on Friday,” she said scribbling a message on the memorial. 

Rosey’s message to Brown read: 

“I am going to miss your ability to create a relationship with everyone you met. May you rest in peace but never be forgotten.” 

News of Brown’s death spread over the popular social networking websites MySpace and Facebook over the weekend. 

Maddie Trumble, a senior at Berkeley High, encouraged the BHS community to wear purple on Monday in honor of Brown. 

“Denise Brown—teacher, dean, and mother to all, passed away Friday night. Her favorite color was purple. It’s vibrant, loud, and beautiful—everything she was ... wear a purple shirt, headband, hat, anything. But make it purple. And spread the word,” her message on Facebook read. 

A native of Oakland, Brown graduated from Oakland Tech and went on to meet her future husband Juan Real—from whom she is now divorced—while she was pursuing acting at the Black Repertory Theatre in Berkeley. 

Brown taught kindergarten at LeConte Elementary School for ten years, where she introduced innumerable students to music, dance and theater. She later went on to serve as a vice principal as well as dean of discipline at Berkeley High, where she became a “second mother” to many students. 

Nia Shina Franklin, who had Brown as her kindergarten, first-grade as well as fourth-grade teacher at LeConte, described her as a warm and loving person. 

“If she liked you she would hug you. I remember acting in legendary school plays such as the Vegetable Coup and The Biz which she scripted,” Nia said. “There will never be a community as wonderful as the one she had created. She will always be our hero, our Queen of Berkeley.” 

Seven years ago, the Atlantic Monthly published “The Kept University,” a story about a $25 million five-year liaison between the giant Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and California’s premier public university, UC Berkeley. 

Today, critics say the university has not sold itself so cheap, having announced last week that it sealed a $500 million deal with BP (formerly know as British Petroleum), ignoring a 2004 Michigan State University report on the Novartis-university experiment that cautioned the university against entering into future agreements with industry involving large groups of researchers. 

The 10-year partnership with the oil giant, whose 2006 net income was $22.5 billion, also includes Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (which the University of California runs for the Department of Energy) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.UC Berkeley/LBNL will get $400 million over four years for the new Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) and the University of Illinois will receive $100 million. 

“In launching this visionary institute, BP is creating a new model for university-industry collaboration,” said UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Research Beth Burnside, professor of molecular and cell biology, quoted in a UC Berkeley press statement. 

The project is “dedicated to long-term research into the production of alternative fuels, converting fossil fuels to energy with less environmental damage, maximizing oil extraction from existing wells in environmentally sensitive ways, and finding ways to store or sequester carbon so that it does not get into the atmosphere,” the UC Berkeley statement says. 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, at UC Berkeley for Thursday’s ceremonial announcement, said the state would kick in another $40 million to construct a building for EBI, proposed for the Strawberry Canyon area of campus, near, but not within, the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs property. The funds would come from bonds that would have to first be approved by the legislature. (Other politicos present to cheer on the partnership included the mayors of Berkeley and Oakland, State Sen. Don Perata and Assemblymember Loni Hancock.) 

The deal raises a host of questions for UC Anthropology Professor Laura Nader: “Do they have academic freedom?” Nader asked in an interview with the Daily Planet Friday. 

Nader’s concern was that if some scientists were to begin their research at the institute in one direction, they might not be free to shift gears to follow their inquiry in another direction, if they came to believe that more appropriate. 

“The university has more to give BP than BP has to give the university,” Nader added, noting that the link to the university is “one way for BP to clean up its reputation. BP is in legal trouble from Texas to Alaska.” 

Nader was referring to a March 2005 explosion at a Texas refinery that killed 15 people and injured 170. BP accepted full responsibility for the blast. 

And she was talking about BP’s March 2006 leakage of 200,000 gallons of crude oil in Alaska, one of the state’s largest oil spills.  

BP’s reputation has been further tarnished: 

• According to CNN reports, in June 2006, the U.S. futures market regulator said BP tried to manipulate U.S. propane prices by cornering the market in February 2004, which BP denied. 

• In July 2006, the Independent of London ran a story about a group of Colombian farmers who had won a multimillion-dollar settlement from BP “accused of benefiting from a regime of terror carried out by Colombian government paramilitaries to protect a 450-mile pipeline.” BP was not accused of having direct involvement in the paramilitary activities. 

• Building up to a boycott of BP that Rainbow/Push would announce the following week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote an editorial in the June 20 2006 Chicago Sun Times, blasting the oil companies for the high price of gas and heating oil and signaling out BP: 

“BP made $5.3 billion in profits in the first three months of the year. African Americans are major consumers in the U.S. market that BP controls. But they aren’t in on the rewards. BP has 800 gas distributors who now own more than 10,000 gas stations around the United States. None are African American,” he wrote. 

“Of 1,200 senior managers in the United States, BP has zero African Americans. Of 33 vice presidents, zero African Americans. BP does some $16 billion in procurement each year—less than one-third of 1 percent of which goes to African-American businesses.” 

British Petroleum, originally known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company when it was established about 100 years ago, merged with Amoco, formerly Standard Oil of Indiana, in 1998 and renamed itself BP in 2000 at which time it adopted the tagline “Beyond Petroleum.” Arco is a subsidiary of BP. 

Ignacio Chapela, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, is another faculty member questioning the wisdom of the new partnership. Chapela was one of the chief critics of the Novartis deal. 

“I feel bad about this,” Chapela told the Daily Planet. “I feel like a broken record. Ten years ago, Novartis tried to do the same thing.”  

Just like the announcement a decade ago, this one came as a surprise, he said. “There was no discussion.” 

Among the questions that need to be raised, in addition to the independence of academic research, is whether the university will be used by BP to shield it in questions of legal responsibility, he said. “The university is under a lot less scrutiny” than companies standing on their own. 

“How come nobody asked these questions?” he asked. 

In addition to legal protections involving BP research and product development, the university also shields private corporations in other ways: the public-private institute, on university property and exempt from city zoning regulations, will come under less strict environmental review when it constructs its building. It will also be exempt from city property and business taxes. 

William Drummond, professor of journalism and chair of the Academic Senate, said he is happy Nader and Chapela are raising questions about researchers’ academic freedom.  

“I don’t want a repeat of Novartis,” he said. “Their concerns are valid.” 

However, he supports the venture. “This area of research is important to our future,” he said. “It’s good for the campus, for the students and for the planet.” 

Drummond asked, “What is the alternative? Wait for the glaciers to melt?” 

Still, Drummond said he doesn’t have an idealistic view of BP. “What do you expect of capitalists? They do bad things,” he said. “We need to protect ourselves so that they don’t steal the farm.”  

One safeguard will be the vetting of new hires for the project through the Academic Senate.  

A professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Miguel Altieri shares many of Chapela’s concerns, further pointing out possible environmental devastation that could be caused by the need for corn production for corn-based ethanol, the major alternative fuel to be studied in the project. Because there’s not enough land in the United States for production, companies would go to foreign countries to grow the crop, using herbicides and pesticides and depleting the land, he said.  

“It would cause huge environmental damage, including deforestation,” Altieri said. “We need an open discussion of this new deal.” 

Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of CorpWatch in Oakland and author of Iraq, Inc., said by putting money into research for alternative fuels, BP is “greenwashing” its reputation. 

While it is not a bad thing to try to develop alternative fuels, he added, BP won’t be funding the critical need. “What we really need is public transportation—more buses and trains,” he said. “Producing ethanol is not going to make a big difference—it’s just a diversion.” 

With the final campaign expenditures for the November elections in on Jan. 31, it became definitive that the top spender was the losing challenger for District 7: George Beier. 

In all, Beier spent $107,658.82 on the elections, taking $61,841 from his own deep pocket. (The $107,658 does not include the $18,000 contributed to Beier’s campaign by the Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee.)  

The amount the campaign paid per vote comes to $57.57. 

Some of the big spenders donating to the Beier campaign during the Oct. 22–Dec. 31 period include a number of developers who signed up for $250 a pop, including, Fourth Street developer Denny Abrams, Library Gardens developer John DeClerq, John Gordon of Gordon Commercial and the California Real Estate Political Action Committee. Development company Hudson-McDonald was represented by separate donations from the principals, Evan McDonald and Christopher Hudson, and their wives.  

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who won the election for District 7, said he was particularly concerned by the large amount of personal funds contributed. 

“I pray it doesn’t start a trend that rich people try to buy elections,” he said. 

Worthington spent $51,383 on the election and won with 2,119 votes. He spent about $24.25 per vote, none of it from his own pocket. 

While Beier collected donations from 76 contributors during the period, Worthington collected donations from 126 sources.  

Worthington received seven $250 donations from unions, including: Public Employees Union Local 1; Northern California District Council, ILWU; Sprinklers, Fitters and Apprentices, Local 438 Political Action Committee; Service Employees International Union 616; SEIU Local 535, Berkeley Firefighters Association; SEIU Local 790; and SEIU Health Care Workers.  

City officials who gave Worthington funds during this period included City Councilmember Darryl Moore, $200, and Mayor Tom Bates, who, notably, gave his $250 donation only on Dec. 1, after the close election was clearly decided in Worthington’s favor. 

District 4 

Challenger Raudel Wilson, who moved to Hercules soon after losing the election to Dona Spring, picked up $19,304 to garner 1,228 votes. He spent $15.72 per vote. 

Wilson’s late contributors include a number of developers and their spouses who gave $250 each, including Carolen and Doughlas Herst, Evan McDonald and Christopher Hudson, of Hudson McDonald LLC, and UC Berkeley professor and developer David Teece at $250. 

None of the 15 contributors for the last period live in District 4 and eight of the 15 contributors were from outside Berkeley. 

Incumbent Councilmember Dona Spring spent $21,620 on the campaign, winning with 3,127 votes, each costing $6.91. 

Spring got 12 contributions for the last period, five from within the district, nine from Berkeley and three from elsewhere. Spring’s donations per individual were more modest, with only one of the 12, Landmarks Commissioner Carrie Olson, giving $250. Other funders included environmental attorney Norman La Force at $175 and $100 from Lesley Emmington Jones, an employee of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association and $150 from progressive author Michael Parenti. 

Dictrict 8 

In District 8, incumbent City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak spent $57,743 to win and received 2,730 votes, which means that each vote cost him $21.15. 

Supporters include community activist Martha Jones, who gave $150 and a number of scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, from which Wozniak is retired, including Warren Byrne ($100), Chuck McFarland ($200) and Art Poskanzer ($100). 

He also received $250 from the California Real Estate Political Action Committee, $100 from John DeClerq of Eng Properties, $100 from Anika Thede of Northbrae Properties and $250 from Fourth Street developer Denny Abrams. 

Student Jason Overman spent $9,053 to win 1,580 votes, spending $5.73 per vote.  

Contributions included those that came from SEIU 535 ($250), fellow Rent Board Member Howard Chong, ($200) and Councilmember Dona Spring ($250). 

District 1 

In District 1, Linda Maio spent only $2,707 to win 3,746 votes. That’s 72 cents per vote. Maio reported two contributions, one $100 check from veterinarian Diane Sequoia and a $250 donation from SEIU 535. Challenger Merrilie Mitchell, who received 1,126 votes spent no funds on the election. 

Mayor 

In the mayor’s race, incumbent Mayor Tom Bates spent $104,626 and won with 25,680 votes. That’s $4.07 per vote. Challenger Zelda Bronstein, who picked up 12,652 votes, spent $35,085—or $2.77 per vote. 

Bates received a mix of contributions from unions, developers and elected officials. The unions which supported Bates at $250 each during this election period included Northern California Carpenters, Operating Engineers Local 3, SEIU Healthcare Workers West, SEIU 790, SEIU 535, Sheet Metal Workers Local 104 and Teamsters Local 853 and $250 from the Drive Committee PAC, affiliated with the Teamsters. 

Developers who weighed in with $250 donations include Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald of Hudson McDonald, Phil Tagami of California Commercial Investments and UC Berkeley professor-developer David Teece. Elected officials contributing $250 included former Assemblymember Wilma Chan and Supervisor Keith Carson. 

Bates also got $250 from the California Real Estate Political Action Committee (as Bronstein had earlier). 

Bronstein’s contributions came from a wide range of donors: the Berkeley Board of Realtors gave $200, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association employee Lesley Emmington Jones gave $100, Phyllis Dalhinow, retired professor from UC Berkeley contributed $250, Rebecca Dalhinow, assistant professor at Fullerton State University gave $150. 

Mayoral hopeful Christian Pecaut filed campaign statements only through Oct. 21, indicating he had spent $176, and candidate Zachary Running Wolf did not file any campaign finance statements at all. 

Detailed campaign spending can be found at the Berkeley City Clerk’s website: www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Elections/campaign/default.htm 

When Charles Hamilton teaches jazz at Berkeley High, every note has to be perfect. 

It is perhaps dedication to excellence which earned Hamilton the Coca-Cola Company/National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts 2007 Distinguished Teacher in the Arts Award in January, and helped the BHS Jazz Combo win at the Folsom Jazz Festival last week. 

The Berkeley Unified School District honored Hamilton with “Jazz in Motion: In the Day of Charles Hamilton” at the Berkeley High Little Theatre on Saturday. 

In attendance were BUSD arts program coordianator Suzanne McCulloch, Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, who presented Hamilton with a proclamation. 

Described as the “glue that holds the BHS jazz program together,” Hamilton has been the guiding light for Berkeley High’s jazz ensemble for the last 25 years. 

During one of his practice sessions at Berkeley High for the Folsom festival, Hamilton spoke about his passion for music, his love for his native state of Louisiana and his desire to help students reach for the stars. 

“At Berkeley High, we do jazz differently,” Hamilton said smiling, sitting on a stool at the center of the music room with the BHS Jazz Ensemble. 

As a young boy in Baton Rouge, La., Hamilton grew up listening to different kinds of music. Jazz, the maestro said, was something he had picked up a lot later when he got hooked on artists such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. 

Hamilton’s move to California was primarily to study music at San Francisco State University. He also received his Standard Teaching Credentials at SFSU and went on to achieve a Masters Degree in Performance at the College of Holy Names in Oakland.  

“Jazz was the kind of music that excited me. I was just as eager about it as my students are now,” Hamilton said, as he proceeded to take his students through a phrase from Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” 

“The thing that the Berkeley High ensemble does differently from other schools is that we swing and we are able to improvise,” he said. “Jazz is about improvising, about expressing ourselves. The kind of music we play is what makes us stand out.” 

When one of the band members makes a mistake, Hamilton is quick to offer more advice than criticism. 

“He doesn’t get frustrated. He lets us do a lot of things on our own,” said Arianna Kandell, a junior who is in her first year of training under Hamilton. “The Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble is his band. He made it what it is today. You can come here and be yourself and still go through a professional playing experience.” 

Also present during the late afternoon practice session was noted Bay Area drummer Scott Amendola. “He really listens to them,” Amendola said. “He knows how to work with kids.” 

Hamilton said: “I tell my students that the ability to read well, to improvise and knowledge of the instrument are what goes into making a great jazz player.” 

Under Hamilton’s watch, the jazz program has won national and international acclaim, sending many students on to become professional jazz musicians. The band has performed at prestigious venues such as the Vienna Jazz Festival in Southern France and the Umbria Jazz festival in Italy and will tour Japan this summer. 

At the practice session, as the band reached a crescendo during “Come Rain or Come Shine,” a quieter piece, Hamilton was quick to point out a flaw in what would perhaps sound like a perfect composition to the untrained ear. 

“You need to be more sensitive,” was the advice he bestowed on one of the trombone players. “If you don’t do that you can end up scaring the hell out of whoever’s listening instead of making them enjoy it. The objective of this piece is to be laid back,” Hamilton, a trombone player himself, warned. 

Hatem Elgaili, who plays the alto sax, told the Planet that it was Hamilton’s attention to subtle details that made the difference. 

“He has been doing this for 25 years, you see. The band trusts his judgment on the smallest things completely,” Elgaili said. “For us, it’s not just about winning competitions, it’s also about playing good music.”  

Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee 

Berkeley High School Jazz Program Director Charles Hamilton gives alto saxophonist Hatem Elgaili a few pointers during a practice session for the Folsom Jazz Festival. BHS placed first and second in the Combo Division competition at the festival last week.

With a November deadline looming, the panel of citizens charged with helping the city draft a new downtown plan will pause to take stock Wednesday. 

The Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee—DAPAC—is charged with charting the course for the city center’s future in light of UC Berkeley’s plans to add more than 800,000 square feet of new uses within expanded downtown boundaries. 

Under the terms of the settlement of a city lawsuit challenging the university’s environmental documentation for their Long Range Development Plan 2020, the city is drafting the new plan with financial support from the school. 

The panel has tasked subcommittees with working out details of proposals for plan sections dealing with historical buildings, transportation and the future of Center Street. Another subcommittee focusing on the city’s interests in development of university-owned sites downtown will present its report Wednesday. 

Matt Taecker, the city planner hired with university funds to oversee drafting of the plan, will present a draft of a general outline for the plan Wednesday, when the committee gathers at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Following the presentation, DAPAC members will discuss the schedule for drafting key plan segments, with the goal of setting general policy directions for each by mid-summer and preparing a draft plan for committee and public review in the fall. 

Members will also get their first look at plans for a major renovation of the venerable Shattuck Hotel, once the downtown’s signature landmark. 

William Howard and Robert Richmond of R2L Architects will make the presentation for BPR Properties of Palo Alto, which plans to redesign the aging hotel’s interior, reduce the number of rooms and transform the structure into upscale accommodations.

The School Board will be meeting on Wednesday to receive information on the governor’s budget for fiscal year 2007-08, which was released on Jan. 10. 

The report would help the Berkeley Unified School District learn what the school district should expect monetarily in the next school year. 

Board members will also be approving the Adult School BSEP Site Plan for 2006-07. The Adult School, which is located on San Pablo and Virginia, was formerly an elementary school. It was upgraded recently with a grant of $3 million and is now used by thousands of adults who take classes there during the day and at night. 

The board will also receive a report on the Free and Reduced Lunch Program which will help the school district review the success of the program. 

Exit exam 

Berkeley High School students are taking their exit exam today (Tuesday). The exams take all day and are given at the gymnasium adjacent to the cafeteria. They test students’ knowledge of English and math to make sure they are up to graduation standards. 

With royal fanfare, British Petroleum just donated $500 million in research funds for UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois to develop new sources of energy—primarily biotechnology to produce biofuel crops. This comes on the anniversary of Berkeley’s hapless research deal with seed giant Novartis ten years ago. However, at half a billion dollars, the BP grant dwarfs Novartis’ investment by a factor of 10. The graphics of the announcement were unmistakable: BP’s corporate logo is perfectly aligned with the flags of the Nation, the State, and the University. 

CEO/Chairman Robert A. Malone proclaimed BP was “joining some of the world’s best science and engineering talent to meet the demand for low carbon energy … we will be working to improve and expand the production of clean, renewable energy through the development of better crops…” This partnership reflects the rapid, unchecked and unprecedented global corporate alignment of the world’s largest agribusiness (ADM, Cargill and Bunge), biotech (Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dupont), petroleum (BP, TOTAL, Shell), and automotive industries (Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, SAAB). With what for them is a relatively small investment, these industries will appropriate academic expertise built over decades of public support, translating into billions in revenues for these global partners.  

Could this be a “win-win” agenda for the university, the public, the environment and industry? Hardly. In addition to overwhelming the university’s research agenda, what scientists behind this blatantly private business venture fail to mention is that the apparent free lunch of crop-based fuel can’t satisfy our energy appetite, and it will not be free or environmentally sound.  

Dedicating all present U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12 percent of our gasoline demand and 6 percent of diesel demand. Total U.S. cropland reaches 625,000 square miles. To replace U.S. oil consumption with biofuels, we would need 1.4 million sq.mi. of corn for ethanol and 8.8 million square miles of soybean for biodiesel. Biofuels are expected to turn Iowa and South Dakota into corn-importers by 2008. 

The biofuel energy balance—the amount of fossil energy put into producing crop biomass compared to that coming out—is anything but promising. Researchers Patzek and Pimentel see serious negative energy balances with biofuels. Other researchers see only 1.2 to 1.8 returns, for ethanol at best, with the jury still lukewarm on cellulosic biofuels.  

Industrial methods of corn and soybean production depend on large-scale monocultures. Industrial corn requires high levels of chemical nitrogen fertilizer (largely responsible for the dead zone in Gulf of Mexico) and the herbicide atrazine an endocrine disruptor. Soybeans require massive amounts of non-selective, Roundup herbicide that upsets soil ecology and produce “superweeds.” Both monocultures produce massive topsoil erosion and surface and groundwater pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff. Each gallon of ethanol sucks up three to four gallons of water in the production of biomass. The expansion of irrigated “fuel on the cob” into drier areas in the Midwest will draw down the already suffering Ogallala aquifer.  

One of the more surreptitious industrial motives of the biofuels agenda—and the reason Monsanto and company are key players—is the opportunity to irreversibly convert agriculture to genetically engineered crops (GMOs). Presently, 52 percent of corn, 89 percent of soy, and 50 percent of canola in the United States is GMO. The expansion of biofuels with “designer corn” genetically tailored for special ethanol processing plants will remove all practical barriers to the permanent contamination of all non-GMO crops.  

Obviously the United States can’t satisfy its energy appetite with biofuels. Instead, fuel crops will be grown in the developing world on large-scale plantations of sugarcane, oil palm  

and soybean already replacing primary and secondary tropical forests and grasslands in Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador and Malaysia. Soybeans have already caused the destruction of over 91 million acres of forests and grasslands in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. To satisfy world market demands, Brasil alone will need to clear 148 million additional acres of forest. Reduction of greenhouse gases is lost when carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops.  

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of small-scale peasant farmers are being displaced by soybeans expansion. Many more stand to lose their land under the biofuels stampede. Already, the expanding cropland planted to yellow corn for ethanol has reduced the supply of white corn for tortillas in Mexico, sending prices up 400 percent. This led peasant leaders at the recent World Social Forum in Nairobi to demand, “No full tanks when there are still empty bellies!”  

By promoting large-scale mechanized monocultures which require agrochemical inputs and machinery, and as carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops, CO2 emissions will increase not decrease. The only way to stop global warming is to promote small-scale organic agriculture and decrease the use of all fuels, which requires major reductions in consumption patterns and development of massive public transportation systems, areas that the University of California should be actively researching and that BP and the other biofuel partners will never invest one penny towards. 

The potential consequences for the environment and society of BP’s funding are deeply disturbing. In the wake of the report of the external review of the UCB-Novartis agreement that recommended that the university not enter into such agreements in the future, how could such a major deal be announced without wide consultation of the UC faculty? The university has been recruited into a corporate partnership that may irreversibly transform the plant’s food and fuel systems and concentrating tremendous power in the hands of a few corporate partners. 

It is up to the citizens of California to hold the university accountable to research that supports truly sustainable alternatives to the energy crisis. A serious public debate on this new program is long overdue.  

Miguel A. Altieri is a professor at UC Berkeley and Eric Holt-Gimenez is executive director of Oakland’s Food First. 

The Zoning Adjustments Board will once again hear the request for a use permit for the conversion of Wright’s Garage on 2629-2635 Ashby Ave. into a multi-tenant commercial building on Thursday. 

At the Jan. 25 ZAB meeting, residents voiced concerns primarily about parking and traffic, which they said would become worse if a large-scale fine dining restaurant was housed at the proposed commercial building. 

Applicant John Gordon told ZAB members at the last meeting that he had met with representatives of the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association, Willard Neighborhood Association, Bateman Neighborhood Association and the Elmwood Merchants Group to discuss the project and address the concerns raised at the January 11 ZAB meeting. 

Gordon added that with the help of the neighborhood groups, he had created multiple conditions to help mitigate project concerns related to noise, traffic, parking and use types. 

An open house was hosted at the project site on Jan. 20. Gordon told board members that he would try to mitigate the impact of cars in the area but wouldn’t be able to solve it completely. 

Board members urged Gordon and community members to think about creative solutions with respect to parking in the neighborhood. 

Other matters 

The board will once again hear a request for a use permit to increase alcohol service at the Ethiopian Restaurant on 2953-2955 Telegraph Ave. by adding service of distilled spirits to the existing service of beer and wine, and by increasing operating hours from 8 a.m. to midnight daily to 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily to Jan. 

The board will also hear a request by Timothy Carter to demolish an existing dwelling and build a two-unit building with three stories, a floor area of about 4,372 square feet and two parking garages, on a 4,996-square-foot lot at 2717 San Pablo Ave. 

At earlier meetings, ZAB members had concerns about the proposed building towering over the neighboring buildings on the east and had asked the owner to scale it down. 

East Bay Municipal Utilities District officials are urging their customers to ease off on the taps—at least until they can finish a much needed retrofit of the Claremont Tunnel. 

Failure to comply could lead to rationing, warns an announcement issued Friday. 

The source of a significant amount of the water used by customers form Crockett to Oakland, the tunnel has been closed to accommodate repairs that will enable it to better withstand earthquakes, reported utility spokesperson Charles C. Hardy. 

EBMUD has set a goal of reducing daily water use by 10 percent—or eight million gallons a day. 

If customers fail to trim their taps, the utility warns it could be forced to implement mandatory rationing.  

Customers affected are residents of Berkeley, Oakland north of Highway 24, Albany, El Cerrito, Richmond, Emeryville, San Pablo, Crockett, El Sobrante, Hercules, Rodeo, Kensington and Pinole.  

Like everything else these days, the risk of rationing is quantified in a color-coded scale—this one consisting of four levels ranging from green (low) through red (high). The current coding for the affected area is orange, for urgent. 

According to the utility’s code, orange means “demand is still too high ... to guarantee a reliable water supply,” with an uptick in the thermometer likely to lead to greater problems. 

EBMUD is asking customers to check their water systems for wasteful leaks, turn off all their sprinklers and stop washing their cars and driveways. 

The utility will update the alert every Monday for the duration of the repairs. 

Steal music player, lose their bikes 

The bad guys went 1 for 2 Sunday afternoon when they made the mistake of trying to rob the wrong UC Berkeley student. 

Their target, a 19-year-old woman, was waiting for a bus on Bancroft Way near the Recreational Sports Facility when a pair of bandits clad all in black and wearing the inevitable hoodies pedaled up on their bikes. 

One of the pair grabbed the woman’s MP3 music player out of her hand, and she responded by grabbing back. Clutching the end of one of the hooded sweatshirts, she gave a yank, sending both tumbling off their two-wheelers and onto the pavement. 

The robbers, described as a pair of 16-to-17-year-olds, then fled on foot. 

The woman was unharmed during the incident, reports UC Berkeley Police Chief Victoria L. Harrison. The two suspects remain at large.

Some of Berkeley’s poorest older residents will soon be living in comfortable new quarters with the opening Thursday of the Margaret Breland Apartments. 

Named for the former Berkeley City Council member who died two years ago, the complex features 28 apartments in a four-story building at 2577 San Pablo Ave. 

The project is a joint effort of Resources for Community Development (RCD) and Jubilee Restoration, both Berkeley developers specializing in non-profit projects. 

Jubilee is headed by the Rev. Gordon Choyce Sr., who was pastor of Breland’s church.  

RCD is the developer which is developing a city-backed 97-unit, six-story low-income Oxford Plaza housing project at the site of the city parking lot on Oxford Street between Kittredge Street and Allston Way. 

Thursday’s opening ceremonies will begin at 4 p.m. and will continue until 6 p.m.  

Alonzo Carter was named as the new Head Coach for Berkeley High’s football program on Wednesday. 

The selection process, begun in December 2006, drew over a dozen candidates. Seven applicants were interviewed by a panel of seven, including student Jovan Williams (a senior at BHS), parents, faculty and administrators. 

Carter has coached football at McClymonds High School in Oakland for a decade. He has been credited with sending more than 60 student players on to play for Division 1 colleges since 1993. 

“He is known for carrying a satchel with all of his player’s transcripts, though he doesn’t have to look in the bag to tell you how his students are doing,” said Mark Coplan, BUSD spokesperson. 

“Alonzo Carter has a great reputation with the college recruiters. He personally tracks his players’ performance and attendance and makes sure that his students stay on track,” said BHS athletic director Kristin Glenchur said in a statement 

Carter also got a boost from UC Berkeley head football coach Jeff Tedford. 

“Alonzo is a great communicator and can motivate young people to give their best effort,” Tedford wrote in his recommendation. “He is an intelligent person who sees education as a priceless tool for young people and recognizes athletics as a vehicle to sponsor a higher goal, academically and socially. I would be proud to entrust him with my own children.” 

BHS principal Jim Slemp introduced Carter at the Donahue Gym on Wednesday where he had his first meeting with varsity and Junior Varsity football players. 

With at least six residential development projects and one cathedral either proposed, approved or actually under construction within 800 feet of Lake Merritt, and the City of Oakland’s zoning code in something of a shambles, close to 150 Oakland residents came out to the Lake Merritt Garden Center on Wednesday night to share their issues about high-rise development around the lake. 

The meeting was co-sponsored by Oakland City Councilmem-bers Nancy Nadel and Pat Kernighan, who said this was the start of a six-month process that they hoped would result in recommendations to City Council on zoning code changes for the areas in the vicinity of the lake. 

“It’s a beginning,” Kerninghan said following the meeting. “Clearly a lot of work needs to be done. There was some consensus that the area immediately around the lake needs to be protected. But the question is, at what distance from the lake and in what directions should higher development take place?” 

But Nadel said that “while we’re working towards consensus, we don’t have consensus yet.” 

Meeting participants broke into discussion groups at 10 separate tables and then reported the results back to the general body. 

Most of the groups reported that the lake itself—home of the first urban wild bird habitat in the United States and considered Oakland’s urban park jewel—should be protected from development along its immediate shores. “The lake provides openness, light and space, and that should be protected,” one woman reported from her group, with another adding that the land around the lake was “precious.” “Development should be targeted to areas that are less contentious than the lake,” she said. “Density in the downtown area is a great idea.” 

But others said that even in areas close to the lake where high-rise development should be permitted and encouraged—such as the Broadway corridor near the Forest City Uptown project—overdevelopment should be guarded against. “We don’t want that to become a concrete jungle.” 

And opposition to unregulated, wholesale high-rising of buildings in the Lake Merritt area was the overriding theme. 

“With high-rises, you get isolation without solitude and density without community,” one woman said, quoting an unnamed Polish architect. And another woman, who said she lived at East 28th Street and 11th Avenue but still has an unrestricted view of the lake, said she wants to keep it. 

“This is one of our spiritual issues,” she said. “People who don’t have parks in their neighborhoods depend on these views. We get up in the morning and are able to look at our city. We don’t want to be blocked from it.” 

But while the sentiment against high-rises was dominant, it was not universal. One table reported that they were evenly divided on the issue. Even the way the meeting was organized was contentious. Another reported that “four people in our group decided that this wasn’t the right process, and left.” 

The meeting itself got off to a rocky start, with several participants seemingly in disbelief that public officials were sincerely asking for their opinions. 

“Are there any assurances that the city will listen to our recommendations?” one woman asked. “You certainly didn’t listen to them around the Estuary Plan.” 

And a male participant said flatly that it was too late for long-term planning, and called for an immediate moratorium on high-rise development until a plan could be developed. 

Another woman referenced the city planning document already in existence, asking, “why weren’t we provided with a copy of the city’s General Plan? The task you’re asking us to undertake is too big for this meeting.” She suggested that instead of providing their views on how the Lake Merritt area neighborhoods should be developed, participants should have gone through the General Plan as a starting point. 

But Oakland Development Director Claudia Cappio said that, in fact, was the purpose of the meeting. She pointed out that when the General Plan was drawn up several years ago, the city was supposed to go back and conform the individual zoning districts to that plan. That action was shelved in the Jerry Brown years, however. 

“It was a political decision under Jerry Brown not to do it,” Cappio said. 

That left the lake area particularly vulnerable to high-rise development because at least three of the zoning districts directly bordering the lake—two on the northwest side along Lakeside between Snow Park and the Main Library and the other on the southern side along Lakeshore—currently have no height limits at all.  

Following the meeting, Cappio said that her office will next develop a working plan for how the meetings will proceed. 

“We’ll take the suggestions that came out of tonight’s meeting and overlay that with what my office is required to do by law,” she said. After consulting with Councilmembers Nadel and Kernighan, Cappio said a plan for the remaining process will be emailed to meeting participants “to see if people buy into it. I don’t want to impose a process.” 

Nadel said that while the general ideas were appropriate for the first meeting, she wants subsequent meetings to get more specific. 

“We will need more details from the public on what they want and don’t want,” the councilmember said, “so that we can go through with the process of conforming the zoning code to the General Plan. That’s the only way we will be able to protect the resource of the lake.” 

Photograph by David Sasaki.  

A participant at Wednesday’s community meeting on development and highrise construction around Lake Merritt holds up an area zoning map passed out by city staff. 

To build or not to build is the question North Shattuck residents and business owners find themselves asking about the proposed $3.5 million dollar plaza that would transform Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto to streetscape by closing off Shattuck Avenue between Vine and Rose street. The pedestrian plaza will be constructed on what is now a paved service road adjacent to the existing shops on the east side of Shattuck Avenue between Vine and Rose Streets.  

Members of North Shattuck Plaza, Inc., (NSP) and the North Shattuck Association (NSA), will be organizing the first in a series of community workshops on Feb. 7, which they say will be an attempt to engage the community in a dialogue about how to improve the proposed plan. 

“The workshop will give us an opportunity to start from scratch,” said David Stoloff, NSP chair, who committed himself to the project more than a year ago. 

“We need to find the points of agreement and back off the controversy,” he said. “I want everyone to come to this meeting with an open mind. I am looking for suggestions from community members and the merchants.” 

Stoloff said that the NSP wants to improve the North Shattuck Business district and make it a model for other cities. Support from merchants is crucial because it will be funded partly by fundraising, he said. 

The NSA and the business improvement district—made up of neighborhood businesses and property owners—entered into a partnership with the non-profit NSP Inc. to raise the required funds and oversee the plaza’s final design, construction and operation. 

Business owners on North Shattuck have circulated a petition among neighbors and merchants opposing the proposed alteration of roads, parking and pedestrian courses that presently exist along Shattuck Avenue. 

The petitioners include Earthly Goods, Masse’s Pastries, Bing Wong Laundry, Peet’s and other area stores. 

“The project will kill businesses,” said Allen Connolly, owner of Earthly Goods—a high-end clothing store in North Berkeley—who initiated the petition. 

Connolly, who has been in the retail business in the neighborhood for 20 years, told the Planet that the project would negatively impact struggling independent businesses in the area. 

Independent bookstore Black Oak Books, which has operated on Shattuck for over two decades, recently announced that it was up for sale citing low sales and competition from the Internet. 

“Unlike other parts of Berkeley, this area is in good condition. The idea of redeveloping it is frivolous. The millions of dollars and nine months of tearing up the area will affect our deliveries and parking,” Connolly said. 

The proposed plan would replace the current angle parking and access lane along the eastern side of the avenue with a 50-foot-wide pedestrian walkway with landscaped plantings, two rows of trees and benches. 

Connolly and other area business owners oppose the reconfiguration of the store front parking along Shattuck Avenue which would be replaced by a concentrated satellite parking lot near Rose Street. Stoloff told the Planet that the project would keep the parking neutral—that is, the number of parking spaces would neither increase nor decrease.  

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, in whose district the proposed plaza is located, said that the current plan of the North Shattuck Plaza plan was a revised version of part of the North Shattuck Urban Design and Circulation Report that had been adopted by the city six years ago. 

“There didn’t seem to be any opposition back then. So why now?” Capitelli asked.  

“The current plan has the potential for a wonderful public space where people can gather. North Shattuck has nothing like that at present,” he said, adding that the workshop would be a chance to go back to a blank palette and address community needs.  

Art Goldberg, who has been living in the neighborhood for 20 years, told the Planet that there was a lot of distrust between the merchants and the members of NSP. 

“The group that put together the plan for the North Shattuck Plaza did not consult with the neighbors. As a result we held our own meeting at the Live Oak Park in January where there was pretty strong opposition for the project,” Goldberg said. 

“One of the things we don’t want in the plan is a ‘pedestrian-friendly’ promenade with benches. This will worsen panhandling and homeless issues. We will be going to the Feb. 7 meeting because they have said they will listen to us this time,” he added. 

Former Berkeley councilmember Mim Hawley told the Planet that the proposed plaza would be a model for environmental sustainability in an urban shopping area. 

“It will have features that protect water quality, replace asphalt and concrete with permeable surfaces, and help manage storm water runoff. Dozens of healthy trees, sidewalk extensions with native plantings and space for kids to play will provide a welcoming everyday connection with nature,” Hawley said. 

John Steere, boardmember for Livable Berkeley and Berkeley Partners for Parks, told the Planet that although the two organizations had not taken a formal stand on the project, he thought the city would benefit greatly from it environmentally. 

Connolly said that the proposed trees and public restrooms in the plaza would be difficult to maintain. 

“Yes, the plan would add more trees but who is going to take care of them?” he asked.  

“The city definitely won’t. It’s just going to turn out like People’s Park north. The only way merchants would support the project is if the planners don’t remove any of the parking and the roads in the area but just add new parking. We would contribute to that.”

“To stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers and service members can choose to stop fighting it,” First Lt. Ehren Watada. 

On Monday, the court-martial begins for Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. 

He won’t be alone. People from across the country, including the Bay Area, are planning to go to Fort Lewis, Wash., where Watada will be tried. 

Berkeley artist and activist Betty Kano will be among them. 

“I feel an urgency to witness and support Ehren Watada,” said Kano, a member of the Watada support committee of Asian Pacific Islanders Resist! Seven East Bay residents, including a representative from Code Pink, plan to attend the trial. 

“I think that his consciousness is extraordinary. He’s putting himself at real risk; he commands respect,” she said. 

Kano, who is Japanese American, said the actions of Watada, an Asian American, has special significance for the Asian American community: “It’s a source of pride.”  

For refusing to deploy to Iraq and speaking out about it, Watada is facing four years in a military prison, reduced Monday from a possible eight years, Eric Seitz, Watada’s attorney, told the Planet on Wednesday.  

In a phone interview on Thursday, Watada told the Daily Planet: “I’m willing to go to prison for what I believe in.”  

After Sept. 11, 2001, Watada joined the military as a patriot, but learning that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he refused deployment to fight what he sees as an unjust war. 

“I’ve taken an oath to defend the constitution,” he said. “I must be willing to sacrifice” by refusing to fight and going to prison. 

Watada said he thinks the military “trumped up the charges to instill fear so that I would capitulate.”  

Another officer who wrote an op-ed piece calling Bush a liar was allowed to resign, Watada said, but the military refuses to allow him to deploy elsewhere or to resign. “There’s a lot of support for me in the military,” he said. “And a lot despise me.”  

Many people in the military and in America in general still believe that that the war in Iraq is tied to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Watada said. 

“We need to educate ourselves,” Watada said. “We need to hold ourselves accountable and bring the troops home.”  

Ending the war is up to the people, he said. “Control comes from the people.” 

Watada’s attorney explained that, after negotiations with the military, the two reporters that had been subpoenaed would no longer be asked to testify. The reporters, freelance reporter Sara Olson and Honolulu Star-Bulletin journalist Gregg Kakesako, had been subpoenaed to testify that the stories as published accurately reflected the statements made by Watada. 

Seitz said that Watada agreed to “stipulate to the facts”—that is, he agreed to say that what the reporters had written was accurate.  

On Jan. 16, the judge who will preside over the court-martial, Lt. Col. John Head, ruled that the jury—minimally five Army officers—should decide whether Watada’s speech endangered troop loyalty. The judge refused to allow as evidence Watada’s motives for refusing to go to Iraq and evidence as to whether the war violates international law. 

“The allegations of disloyalty will be difficult (for the military) to prove,” Seitz said.  

In a phone interview from Washington, D.C., freelance journalist Sarah Olson said she was glad that the subpoena had been withdrawn and was grateful for the strong support shown by a coalition of organizations, such as the Society of Professional Journalists and the writers’ association PEN, and media such as Mother Jones, as well as individuals, all supporting the position that journalists should not be asked to testify in cases in which their sources are involved. 

“We need to preserve journalists’ ability to gather and disseminate news without government interference,” Olson said. 

Still, Olson said, the support mainly comes from independent journalists and independent media. “There has been no outcry by major media,” she said. 

Of particular concern in the Watada case is that charges against him relate to speaking out against the war. If he is prevented from putting out his perspective, that is a concern for journalists, Olson said, arguing that the censorship would impede her “ability to tell all aspects of a story and foster debate.” 

A journalist’s job is to tell the whole story, she said. “People need enough information to make decisions.” 

Today, Friday, API Resist! will hold a press conference at noon on the steps of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Building at 2180 Milvia St. and on Tuesday, those members of API’s Resist! not in Fort Lewis will be joined by others to hang a banner in support of Watada from the Berkeley pedestrian bridge across I-80, beginning at 5 p.m. 

For more information about the Watada case, go to www.thankyoult.org and for information about the delegation to Fort Lewis call 510-559-8189.

After months of grappling, Pacific Steel Casting Co. (PSC) and non-profit Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) entered into a consent decree in Federal Court on Monday that would bring about specified emissions reductions, create a scrap metal inspection program, and establish a joint consultation committee to recommend and oversee ongoing pollution reduction efforts. 

CBE had first sued PSC in July 2006 alleging that the West Berkeley-based steel foundry violated the air district’s permit with respect to the amount of emissions from the steel foundry in Berkeley. 

Although CBE’s preliminary injunction was denied by a Federal Court in San Francisco, Adrienne Bloch, staff attorney for CBE, told the Planet the organization would have won the lawsuit. 

“If the judge had ruled in favor of CBE, then Pacific Steel would have paid money to the U.S. Treasury. The settlement allows PSC to put funds into its entire facility for improvement instead,” Bloch said. 

She added that the decree allowed the community to have a voice and build a dialogue between PSC laborers and area residents. 

As a result of the agreement, the Joint Consultation Committee—comprised of members from CBE, PSC and the Glass, Molders, Pottery International Union (GMP)—will meet quarterly to recommend expenditures from the reserve fund to reduce emissions. 

Elisabeth Jewel, of Aroner, Jewel & Ellis Partners, the public relations firm for Pacific Steel, told the Planet that a reserve fund of $350,000 would be created for selected projects to achieve reduction in emissions levels at the facility.  

“The prolonged litigation was not in anybody’s best interest,” said Jewel. “The fact that the court denied the preliminary injunction proves that the merits of the case were questionable to begin with. The reserve fund which resulted from the settlement would help to reduce emissions and conditions at the plant.” 

A minimum of two tons in particulate matter, hazardous air pollutants or volatile organic componds would be reduced as a result of the emissions reduction projects. 

Jewel said that this was in addition to the reduction of emissions from the carbon filter absorption system on Plant 3. 

Bloch said that CBE was especially pleased because the agreement made it mandatory for PSC to select and inspect the scrap metals it bought to be melted and formed into castings. 

The deal came as a surprise to some environmentalists and community members working on the campaign to clean up Pacific Steel. 

Andrew Galpern, a west Berkeley neighbor who complained about the emissions, called the decree terrible. 

“There is no mention of funding or plan for comprehensive community air testing in the neighborhood,” Galpern said.  

“Moreover, there is no funding or plan for a health effects survey to learn what harm has already been caused to workers and residents. The air still stinks in the neighborhood. Why should anyone celebrate an agreement that allows PSC to continue polluting the East Bay?” he asked. 

Denny Larson, director, Global Community Monitor, said that the settlement came out of the blue. 

“While it may be welcome, it is unclear how neighbors will be able to monitor whether pollution levels really decrease under the settlement. The settlement does not contain a basic demand to have more air monitoring at the source and in the impacted community," Larson said.  

Beck Cowles of the Ecology Center told the Planet that while her organization viewed the decree as progress, PSC's pollution issues went beyond what was covered in the agreement.  

“Rather than make improvements only as a result of public outcry, we'd like to see PSC take the initiative and become better neighbors by adopting toxic use reduction practices that would eliminate all toxic emissions, such as using existing pollution control devices properly and at all times and preventing fugitive emissions from escaping their plant,” Cowles said.  

“We believe they should also provide for adequate monitoring of their operations rather than place this burden on the community.” 

The agreement between PSC and CBE ends in three years or sooner when the $350,000 runs out.  

A Community Meeting on Pacific Steel Casting will be held Wednesday at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 6th St., 7pm. For details, call (415) 248-5010. 

Berkeley’s Transportation Commission joined the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) on Wednesday to talk about transportation conditions in downtown Berkeley and explore options for transportation improvements.  

Transportation consultants for the Downtown Area Plan, the IBI Group, highlighted the challenges and some of the information pertinent to the downtown plan. 

Matt Taecker, secretary to DAPAC, along with the IBI Group, explained the role of transportation modeling and how it would be used to understand the impacts of lower- and higher-intensity land use options. Alternative configurations of roadways and transit facilities were also examined. 

DAPAC members and transportation commissioners gave their opinions on the options that should be modeled and voted against a plan to run Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on Oxford Street. 

AC Transit’s proposed BRT project, promising to make Berkeley a “green” city on “the cutting edge of new transportation technologies,” has yet to finalize the routing and design of BRT.  

The rapid buses would serve passengers traveling between Bayfair, Downtown Oakland, and Downtown Berkeley along East 14th/International Blvd., and Telegraph Avenue.  

“BRT should be an effort to make transit better for people, so that more people use it. It should not be a attempt to keep people out of downtown, like some people want to do to the homeless,” said Transportation Commissioner Rob Wrenn. 

DAPAC member Juliet Lamont said that incorporating the use of greenery downtown into the transportation plans was extremely important.  

Len Conly, co-chair of Friends of BRT—an organization that was formed in 2005 in order to support AC Transit’s BRT project—spoke in favor of BRT. 

“A BRT system, such as that proposed for Telegraph Avenue, uses dedicated lanes, multiple door loading, and off-board payment of fares to make bus travel much faster and more convenient, especially for the disabled. BRT will help reduce congestion, oil consumption, pollution and carbon dioxide emissions,” Conly said. 

The boards also voted to approve the option of two-way traffic on the west side of Shattuck Avenue and consider options for the east side of Shattuck. 

Taecker told the board members that transportation modeling helped illustrate “how downtown Berkeley’s transportation system functions today, and how it might function in the future.”  

He added that staff would present results of the transportation modeling to both boards in April so that DAPAC could have an informed deliberation on “preferred” options in May. 

The transportation modeling would be responsible for measuring: 

• Quantity and distribution of trips (origins and destinations) 

• Mode split of trips (autos, transit, walking and bikes) 

• Traffic performance (intersection volume & capacity) 

• Other performance issues, including those related to parking. 

Taecker told board members that parking-related conditions would be discussed in a future joint meeting. A representative from AC Transit told board members that AC Transit would be releasing its draft EIR for the BRTproject very soon. 

Some of the highlights in the study presented by the IBI Group illustrated that downtown Berkeley attracted nearly 10,000 work-related trips daily with downtown residents generating approximately 1,000 work-based daily trips  

UC Berkeley generated approximately 30,000 daily trips, of which roughly half were work related. The study also showed that BART accounted for 22,000 of the 40,000 daily transit trips (work and non-work) to and from downtown. 

City Interest in UC Properties 

Dorothy Walker, chair of the DAPAC Subcommittee named City Interest in UC Properties (CIUPS), presented a report to the board on the function and design of Oxford Street. 

CIUPS was formed in December to look at UC properties in downtown Berkeley and its possible development. The committee is responsible for: 

• Identifying UC owned properties that might be appropriate for non-UC uses. Identify city or private properties that might be appropriate for UC uses. 

• Identifying the appropriate development potential of sites. 

• Identifying how any mutually advantageous land exchanges could be achieved and how to assure equity between the city and the university. 

• Identifying other areas for city/university collaboration that might be included in the plan. 

Currently, the committee includes three ex-officio UC members of DAPAC who were selected by the university as well as ten other DAPAC members selected by DAPAC Chair Will Travis. 

According to CIUPS, the only large downtown site which requires no assembly of land is already in public ownership, does not involve any buildings of historic interest and has a history of large scale development is the Department of Health Services. The building is situated near the University Avenue gateway to downtown and at the southern end of the North Shattuck area. 

CIUPS is brainstorming ideas for a new retail center at this location that would help attract foot traffic to the downtown area. Walker also told board members that a “number of exciting ideas had emerged for the development of Oxford Street.” 

Although CIUPS has not come to any conclusions yet, some of the proposed ideas for Oxford Street involved a public plaza on the West Crescent, a more prominent downtown presence for the Berkeley Art Museum and the Film Archive as well as Warren Hall (which houses UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health).  

DAPAC member Lisa Stephens asked the subcommittee to get more information from the University about the conversion of Bowles Hall from a student residence to a executive hotel building and the construction of the student gymnasium at the Oak Grove.

To the great disappointment of those who had hoped to save the 53-year-old Bevatron building housing a particle accelerator, the Berkeley City Council voted 7-to-2 at its Tuesday night meeting to uphold the Landmarks Preservation Commission decision to require that the science practiced in the structure be memorialized, but that there be no requirement to preserve the structure itself. 

Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring voted in opposition. 

The University of California, which manages the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—of which the Bevatron is a part—has stated that it plans to demolish the structure at 1 Cyclotron Rd. some time between 2008 and 2012. 

The building is under consideration for eligibility on the Register of Historic Places and should not be demolished, appellant Pam Sihvola told the council.  

“It should remain intact in its entirety,” Sihvola said. Appellants Sihvola and L.A. Wood said they are also concerned with the large amount of debris—including hazardous materials—that would have to be trucked through Berkeley during demolition. 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said he had worked at the Bevatron and contended that what should be memorialized was the science. “There are other ways to honor the Bevatron than to keep a deteriorating old building,” he said. 

On the Ledge 

Berkeley High students sit on the ledge outside the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Building at Milvia Street and Allston Way, smoking, playing loud music and generally disturbing people inside the building, Police Chief Doug Hambleton told the council. 

That’s the reasoning behind the $250 ticket given one student for “loitering and disorderly conduct.” The student’s mother came to the council meeting to strenuously object both to the ticket—sitting on the ledge is not disorderly conduct, she said—and to the exaggerated sum required to pay the fine. 

“When I first saw students on the ledge, I thought it was an ideal place to sit,” said Councilmember Betty Olds, who later said she understood the need to keep the young people from disturbing city workers. “But such a high fine seems unfair.” 

The council voted 7-1, with Worthington in opposition, to refer the question to the city manager in order to see if the fine can be lowered and to have the Parks and Recreation Commission look to see whether benches can be installed in the area. 

Race  

Members of the Peace and Justice Commission came to the council to lobby for approval of an item, asking the city to comply with the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, by polling department heads on the question. 

“We have enormous levels of racism right here in Berkeley,” said Worthington, who brought the item to the council. Worthington said it is manifested, in part, in who gets contracts and who gets hired. Part of the reason for collecting the data is to identify problem areas, Worthington said. 

The item will be back before the council Feb. 27, with greater precision on what kinds of information should be collected. 

Reducing Greenhouse Gases 

A number of items were passed on the consent calendar, which means they were passed without discussion. (Worthington abstained on all the items, protesting that he wanted to hear from the public on the items before he decided which among them he wanted to remove for discussion and possible action.) 

A measure to give Sustainable Berkeley, a non-profit corporation, $100,000 to write an emissions reduction plan was passed on the consent calendar in concept, with councilmembers Spring and Worthington abstaining. 

Although a press statement released by the mayor’s office said that the item gives the funds to Sustainable Berkeley to write the emissions reduction plan, Mayor Tom Bates’ Chief of Staff Cisco DeVries said the funds would not be allocated until the council approves them in its 2007-2008 budget.  

Included in the council packet was a letter from Transportation Commissioner Rob Wrenn, calling for a person who is an expert in transportation matters to sit on the Sustainable Berkeley steering committee. The council did not address the question. 

The council also approved on consent: 

• The designation of Feb. 7 as National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day; 

• Designating Berkeley as a “pro-choice” city, joining a campaign initiated by West Hollywood as a campaign for greater access to abortion, reproductive health care and other services.

On Wednesday night, Neil Smith, director of educational services for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), delivered a presentation on student data for eight different tests to the School Board. This is the first report of its kind that compiles all of these high-stakes tests.  

The presentation included statistical information on the Advanced Placement (AP) Test, Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), the Annual Performance Index (API), among others.  

“Measure B that passed in 2004, brings money to do data evaluation so we can see what is effective [in the schools] and base our decisions on what really works, rather than on emotions,” said district Public Information Officer Mark Coplan.” 

Probably one of the most important performance indicators for Berkeley schools is the API, which is showing significant progress in most schools with the exception of Berkeley High School (BHS). BHS did not receive an API score this year, puzzling many administrators. 

“My guess was that we didn’t get the 95 percent participation rate for the California Standardized Test,” said school board director John Selawsky. “Many students opt out of taking the tests and therefore the schools don’t receive an API rating.” 

BHS principal Jim Slemp concurred, “The mass number of students who don’t take the [CST] test is a problem. We’re a great school and if we’re not certified, it isn’t an honest measure of who we are … It’s a dilemma. The best way to increase participation on the test is to educate students on why it’s important.” 

Despite the situation at BHS, the average elementary school API for 2006 is 790. The middle schools (Willard, King, and Longfellow) are at their highest average ever of 719. B-Tech, formerly Berkeley Alternative High School, made significant progress going from 372 to 532. According to Coplan, the state stops measuring API after a school surpasses the highest possible index of 800.  

In terms of the SAT, Berkeley High School math scores have remained consistent over the years, but are still better than the county and the state average. The average test scores on the AP tests at BHS have been on a downward decline. Slemp explains that this trend should be expected. 

“We want that to happen,” said Slemp. “We want students taking as many AP classes as possible and that’s why we see the downward trend. The research says that if students take at least one AP class, their success in college will increase about 34 percent academically.”  

To increase student achievement, the BUSD allocated funds for two teacher special assignment (TSA) positions for the purpose of creating reports and collecting data. Aaron Glimme, Science Department Chair, is the TSA at BHS, while Seth Corrigan is the TSA for middle/elementary schools. 

Glimme explained about the job: ” We use a web-based data system called DataWise that we use to provide support for teachers at the site. We compare things such as student grades with ethnicity. The point of the job is to give teachers data-driven research to inform them how to teach more effectively and get feedback.” 

Selawsky pointed out other ways the district is helping with student achievement. The BUSD performs its own assessments, including the DRA/QRI, teacher assessments, student portfolios, etc. In the elementary schools, principals map each individual student’s achievement over the years. 

“These facts are tied to state standards,” said Selawsky. “The more we have teachers aware of the state standards, the better students will perform. This is just one measurement of student achievement. Unfortunately, there is a lot of emphasis based on these tests at the state and federal level rather than on our local evaluations.” 

Student Director Mateo Aceves expressed concerns over the testing results. 

“We know that there are a bunch of factors that contribute to kids doing worse,” said Aceves.” However, the biggest thing is a trend showing that minorities aren’t scoring proficiently in significant numbers. That’s what really scary.” 

While most Berkeleyans may have found last week the same as any other week, Berkeley High School (BHS) students found it more stressful than usual—they took their semester finals. 

BHS required all teachers to give students a semester final. Most classes and all Advanced Placement (AP) classes got a written test as their final, while some elective classes such as the popular Politics and Power class (where they simulate a Model Congress), taught by Steven Teel, voted on final legislation in Congress. 

The week before finals week brought a lot of anxiety to us and increased our already high stress levels. Our teachers told us to prepare for six two-hour finals given over the course of three days. The administration requested that teachers not give too much homework and not give tests to their students the week prior to finals week, also called Dead Week. While most teachers followed these suggestions, many teachers continued to test their kids and gave them piles of busywork.  

On the flipside, the three days of finals were shorter days. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, students got out of school at 12:40 p.m. That was the best part of finals, I must say. However, I think it would be worthwhile for the school to let kids out early on Tuesday at 12:40 p.m. as well. 

Here’s my reasoning: As it works, first and second period finals were on Wednesday, third and forth period finals were on Thursday, and fifth and sixth period finals were on Friday. On Wednesday, you had a shorter day to study for your Thursday finals. Likewise, on Thursday you had more time to study for your Friday finals. However, isn’t it logical to say that you should get a shorter day on Tuesday to study for your Wednesday finals?  

As fate would have it, I had my most difficult finals on Wednesday (AP Biology and AP Calculus BC). I got out at 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday and had around three hours less time to study for these finals, as I had to study for my Wednesday finals (Politics and Power and French 7/8). I hope that the administrators consider making this change for future years. This way, all finals will receive an equal playing field. 

If you are completely confused about what finals are, I’ll explain it to you. Most teachers use finals as a way to test kids on all the information they have taught them during the course of the semester. Sounds great, doesn’t it? If you’ve learned it all already, it should be easy, right? WRONG.  

Many kids, who didn’t understand the material before, either do really poorly or study the night before the test, “spit it out” on the test, and then forget it all again. This is not to say the kids who do well in the class do poorly on the final, but it is definitely a challenge. Some finals count for almost nothing of your grade, while others can account for up to twenty-percent of your grade. It varies according to the teacher. 

With all of this said, many of us are glad that finals are over. We realize that we have another set of finals at the end of the year, but by then … well, it will be the end of the year. At least the next set of finals will be something to look forward to.

The Albany-Berkeley Soccer Club Panthers defeated the Elk Grove Attack 4-0 on Sunday to win the under-14 Boys Association Cup state soccer championship played in Danville. 

The Attack had no answer for Panthers’ star Manuel Ramirez Jara, who scored three of the Panther goals. Thomas Rocroi also scored. Throughout the tournament, the Panther defense kept opponents from scoring, allowing only three goals in seven tournament games. 

During preliminary round play in Sacramento, the Panthers easily defeated teams from Stockton, Petaluma and Brentwood. In the “sweet 16” played in Morgan Hill, they defeated a very good Oakland Tigres team 3-0.  

The Panthers barely escaped their quarter-final game against the Rockridge Sting, another mostly Berkeley Team. The Panthers prevailed in sudden death “golden goal” overtime after the game was deadlocked 1-1 at the end of regular play. 

The Panthers advanced to the final with a 2-0 win over Almaden Newcastle.  

As an indication of the strength of local soccer, four of the eight quarter-final teams were from the Alameda/Contra Costa County District 4 competitive playing league. 

This was the second consecutive state championship for Panther coach Miguel Jara. Last year, his under-12 girls’ Dragonfly team also won their state championship. 

It’s too bad Molly Ivins could not have been in Washington for the peace march on Saturday. She would have appreciated the overall tone of the event:  

This war must stop!  

This Congress must act!  

Reverse the Decider! 

But she might also have been disappointed, as I was. Being of a certain age, it was difficult not to remember that crises similar to those we are in now—the world on fire because of our government’s actions—brought out much larger crowds during the Vietnam war. They say there were about 400,000 people at the Saturday march. That sounds impressive, but it is 100,000 fewer people than marched in an antiwar march in New York the Sunday before the Republican convention opened in August 2004. Many Americans and Iraqis have died in the intervening three years. A lot of strategies have failed, and a lot of calls for peace have been ignored since then.  

Because the war is so much worse now than it was in 2004, I thought there would be a huge turnout. I walked through the crowd from the beginning point near the speakers’ platform to the end. The crowd was so much smaller than ones I had seen there more than 30 years ago.  

What disappointed me most, though, was the lack of people under 60 and especially the relatively small number of people of college age. I realize that without a draft, it’s easy for the war to seem remote, not part of our lives. Still, given the election results and the threats both President Bush and Vice President Cheney made last week to ignore the opinions of Congress, the Senate and the American people regarding the president’s much-criticized plans to send more troops to Iraq, I thought determined, angry people would pour into Washington, that the planes would be overbooked, the trains overflowing, the streets so full that the Decider would see and hear them all the way to the White House.  

To overcome apathy and detachment, we need to promote the idea as widely as possible that we—ordinary people—are responsible for what our elected officials do and, if we disagree with what they do in our name, we have a responsibility to work hard to stop those actions. In other words, the democracy the neocons planned to export to Iraq should be brought to full life at home. 

I fear that live connection between people and government is missing. We act as though the government is a force outside our responsibility, let alone beyond our control. The realization that the Vietnam war was “our” war—a wrong war being fought in our name and with our money—eventually led to the explosive growth and diversification of the movement against that war. It swelled the ranks of the peace movement and inspired people to fill the streets of Washington and other American cities. Sure, sometimes they did so with a great sense of futility, as presidents, then as now, ignored the peoples’ will. But the ranks of protesters kept growing as more and people came to think it was fundamentally important not to give up the effort to bring an illegal and immoral war to an end.  

Much has changed since then, but the need to be active citizens has not changed. As we know from history, horrific events happen in the names of citizens when they are apathetic about what their officials are doing. Given what is taking place today and what is promised—edging closer to attacks on Iran, expanding the number of troops in Iraq against most advice, ignoring the advice of leaders in Congress and in the military, ignoring the wisdom of the international community, and, worse, death and more death every day—surely we are on the edge of such a time now. 

At the rally in Washington, two voices, those of Robert Watada of Honolulu and Jane Fonda, were especially eloquent. Watada, the father of First Lt. Ehren K. Watada—who is being court-martialed for his refusal to deploy to Iraq again because he thinks the war is illegal because it violates Army regulations that wars must be waged in accordance with the United Nations Charter—said his son “seeks to give others a voice.” He encouraged other troops to follow his son’s example and resist service. Fonda said she had feared that lies told about her 30 years ago when she opposed the Vietnam war would distract from the cause if she spoke out against the war in Iraq. Finally, she said, she felt compelled to speak. “Silence is no longer an option,” she said. 

The plaintive voice of a veteran who recently returned from Iraq also was eloquent. “I thought I was going to serve my country, to protect my country,” he said. “Instead, I went there for causes that have proved fraudulent.” 

Since that war, the internet has empowered our communication. It has greatly increased our ability to engage in political action easily—give money to candidates and causes, organize voter drives and participate in polls. All of that is valuable work, but we are invisible as we do it. Perhaps that matters. Perhaps it is time for more people to be visible witnesses so all generations and the rest of the world can see what we stand for—and what we stand against—at this crucial time in history. 

Let’s do it in the smart and feisty spirit of Molly, whose wise words have amused, moved and inspired us for so many years. 

Betty Medsger, former head of the Department of Journalism at San Francisco State and former Washington Post reporter, is writing a book about resistance during the Vietnam war.

It took seven years of neighborhood complaints to shut down Dwight Way Liquors on Sacramento Street and that was too long, say members of Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition (BAPAC). 

Tuesday night, with about two dozen BAPAC members in the audience, the City Council approved four of the five recommendations the group had put before them, all aimed at giving city enforcers new tools to control problem alcohol outlets and underage drinkers. 

But the council ignored an “informational” report on its agenda written by the Health and Human Services staff, addressing the need for treatment and other services for people with substance abuse issues. The proposals are costly and will be discussed during the budget process, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said in a telephone interview Wednesday. 

Current law “fail(s) to protect the community’s well-being,” BAPAC Secretary Lori Lott said, addressing the councilmembers Tuesday night. 

The council passed three of BAPAC’s five recommendations unanimously: 

• the first reading of a law that mandates alcoholic beverage service training for those selling alcohol. 

• a recommendation to the Planning Commission that if an outlet selling alcoholic beverages were closed for more than 90 days, the right to alcoholic beverage sales could be terminated.  

• a recommendation for the city manager to meet with BAPAC representatives to formulate a proposed “deemed approved” ordinance, which would require alcohol-selling establishments to pay fees for enforcement of operating standards. 

The council also voted 7-1-1, with Councilmember Kriss Worthington opposing and Councilmember Linda Maio abstaining, to approve an ordinance that would target the host of a gathering for a possible misdemeanor if minors consume alcohol on the premises. This is known as a “social host” ordinance. 

A fifth proposal, called a “second response ordinance,” was held for further examination by staff and will come back to the council in two weeks. This would be a redrafting of an existing law, increasing fines for multiple police calls for noisy parties at the same location. 

Many other cities have deemed-approved ordinances requiring annual inspection fees. The cost ranges from about $290 in Oxnard to $1,500 in Oakland. City staff estimate that a program in Berkeley would need five inspectors and cost about $750,000, but BAPAC members say inspections can be accomplished with fewer staff at a lower cost. 

Oakland’s deemed-approved ordinance is carried out by a multi-agency team that includes police, police technicians, a planner and a part-time city attorney. The team, according to a May 2005 report authored by the Oakland police chief, “encourages alcohol licensees to make site improvements, i.e. increased lighting, a clean environment, discouragement of loitering and proper signage to encourage better behavior from patrons and potential loiters.” The program also uses decoys to determine whether the establishment is selling alcohol to minors. 

The problem with the current nuisance law, is that “the public has to prove that it’s a public nuisance,” Ed Kikumoto, policy director for the Oakland-based Alcohol Policy Network, told the council. Regulations in a deemed-approved ordinance would put the onus on the business owners. “The owner must abide by the rules,” whether or not there are complaints, Kikumoto said. 

Dawn Trigstad Ribin of BAPAC said the current nuisance procedure is used only in the most egregious cases. “It’s very time consuming for the city and costly for the owners,” she said, supporting an eventual deemed-approved law. 

Addressing the council, Tim James, manager of local government relations for the California Grocers Association, agreed that training persons who sell alcohol should be mandatory. But in a phone interview Wednesday, he addressed the proposed deemed-approved ordinance, saying he thinks only problem outlets should pay inspection fees. 

“The challenge lies in not overly burdening responsible retailers,” he said. 

Kenan Wang, of the Interfraternity Council and the Associated Students of the University of California, was among a group of students at the council meeting who questioned the recommendations for social host and noisy party ordinances.  

“I’m skeptical of certain parts of (the social host) ordinance,” Wang said. “It does not distinguish between 20-year-olds and a 13-year-old. College students will party and will drink. We need to focus on curbing the negative consequences.” 

Addressing the recommendations to curb noisy parties, Daniel Montes, also a student, called on the council to “consider the voice of the students.” 

Staff proposals, which the council did not consider, target school intervention to address truancy problems and train school staff in substance abuse issues. Their recommendations also include increasing recreational opportunities for youth, access to treatment for people without insurance, affordable housing opportunities for people with drug and alcohol issues and creating programs for elderly substance abusers.

Lately opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com has been getting complaints not only about outrages and abuses in the wider world, and about our own supposed transgressions in the pages of the Planet, but about letters to the editors and other responsible parties in other media which the proprietors of same didn’t print. For example, we ran a couple of letters lambasting the San Francisco Chronicle for a particularly lame editorial on Lt. Ehren Watada’s refusal to fight in what he terms an illegal war. The editorial writer claimed that “no soldier can be allowed to pick and choose assignments, a notion that undercuts the necessary hierarchy of military order.” He or she must have been out the day they studied the Nuremberg Trials in history class in high school. To be fair, the Chronicle did publish one snappy letter the next day making this very point, but two other good ones which the Chron didn’t see fit to print ended up in the Daily Planet instead. Which is fine. Happy to be of service.  

Last week we were copied on a bunch of complaints about the KitchenDemocracy.org website, which evidently doesn’t offer a complaints column. The site says it’s based on the premise that “Elected officials want to interact with their residents. Because they rarely have such easy access to the opinions of so many citizens, Kitchen Democracy is a valuable channel through which they connect with their residents.”  

How are residents supposed to connect with these electeds? By signing up with Kitchen Democracy (K-D to fans), of course, in order to record votes on their proprietary website. 

Several e-mail writers objected vigorously to K-D’s practice of requiring would-be voters to disclose personal information before being allowed to join, and others complained that they’d tried to enroll but their comments never appeared on the site as promised. These complaints weren’t intended for publication in the Planet, so we won’t reprint them here, but readers should sample the page in question and form their own opinions about the virtues and faults of the process. 

What did catch my eye among the forwarded emails was a copy of a letter from District 8 councilmember Gordon Wozniak, addressed to “Berkeley residents.” Here’s what he said: 

“Recently Kitchen Democracy has launched an issue that is important to the vitality of the Elmwood Business District. Should Wright’s Garage convert to various retail uses and a restaurant? On Feb. 8, the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) will probably decide whether or not to approve the application to convert the garage. Some are concerned that the conversion would exacerbate traffic and parking problems, while others believe it would benefit business throughout the Elmwood District. What do you think? Go to www.kitchendemocracy.org/22, read the article and your neighbor’s comments, then vote and tell ZAB what you think. Thanks for participating!” 

Well, I’m signed up as a member of K-D’s voting group myself, having long since abandoned any claims to privacy. I’m also personally concerned, since I live on Ashby Avenue, and any adverse effects from this project would impact my home. So I went to the site to see what was going on. I was amazed to discover that the “article” about the Wright Garage application was an effusive tribute to the virtues of the proposal signed by none other than Gordon Wozniak, complete with large color picture of his smiling face.  

What’s wrong with this? Well, for starters, after ZAB makes its decision on the project, no matter which way it goes, there’s sure to be an appeal. An appeal to whom? To the City Council, of course, on which the same Gordon Wozniak sits in a quasi-judiciary capacity to hear appeals of land use and zoning decisions by commissions. (What does “quasi-judiciary” mean? Acting as a judge.) 

When I was on another quasi-judiciary body, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the city attorney successfully prohibited three LPC commissioners from hearing Temple Beth-El’s application for a variance to build on a landmarked site just because we were board members or employees of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, even though we had not expressed or even formed any opinion on the particular project. And here’s Councilmember Wozniak touting this project on the Internet before it’s even gotten to ZAB! How could he possibly be allowed to vote on it when it reaches the council level?  

I posed the same question to a long-time ZAB member, and heard an explosion in which the words “propriety” and “ethics” figured prominently. He certainly didn’t think that ZAB members would ever be allowed to vote if they’d already expressed an opinion on a project before them. On the other hand, city councilmembers vote all the time on things that they’ve previously endorsed in campaigns and elsewhere, and no one complains.  

What does our city attorney have to say about this? Will Councilmember Wozniak be allowed to vote on a Wright’s Garage appeal if there is one? It will be interesting to see what happens. 

As we had feared, Molly Ivins died on Wednesday. The anti-war war columns that we’d requested on Tuesday as a way of carrying on her last campaign have been coming in, and we’ll be printing one in every issue for a while as a tribute to her. We’ve also gotten, unsolicited, a good number of letters just expressing the writer’s appreciation for Molly herself, which we’ll add to our letters pages, some in print and all on the web. The Texas Observer, where she worked for many years and continued raising money for after she moved on, has put together an affecting memorial at texasobserver.org, another good place for readers to send their comments on Molly herself.  

The poetry that students were forced to memorize when Molly and I were in school in the 1950s has an annoying way of popping into one’s mind at moments like this, even though much of it is now out of style. In the context of Molly’s death, I can’t help recalling memorized lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (do kids still read him?): “Lives of great men all remind us/ We can make our lives sublime/ And departing leave behind us/ Footprints on the sands of time.”  

Deconstructing this message, even though the expression sounds mawkish to twenty-first century ears, can still be worthwhile. The Great Men thing is profoundly annoying to feminists, of course, but let’s ignore that for the moment. And “sublime”? What does that mean in today’s world, where fame is 15 minutes and it’s usually for doing something ugly?  

Let’s just look at Molly’s “footprints on the sands of time,” and remember another quote commonly attributed to Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.”  

Molly danced her way across the sands of time, jumping for joy and whooping with laughter as she took part in all the serious revolutions of the second half of 20th century and the beginning of the twenty-first. The poor woman hasn’t been dead a week, and already the Internet is circulating marvelous legends about funny things she might or might not have actually said, a sure sign of imminent canonization in the Church of the Left, right up there in the pantheon next to Emma Goldman.  

She gave Serious Journalism a good try, but ultimately rejected it as stultifying. Instead, she revived the use of the American Language, Texas Branch, as a way of telling a story, the whole story, not just a sanitized corporate version of the story told in sanctimonious clean language. The web apocrypha includes many examples, some undoubtedly authentic, of the way the New York Times tried and failed to clean Molly up. And Thursday’s obituaries provided another great one, perhaps intended, perhaps not.  

Here’s the Times obit: “She cut an unusual figure in the Times newsroom, wearing blue jeans, going barefoot and bringing in her dog, whose name was an expletive.”  

And here’s the real deal, sent to the Planet by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post: 

“There’s a heartfelt compliment I always meant to give Molly, but never got around to it: Lady, you’re even more piss than vinegar.  

“I’ve read Molly’s work almost my whole adult life, but I met her only a few times, in 1977, when we walked our dogs together in Lincoln Park in Albany (N.Y.). I was working for the local paper; Mol was working for the New York Times. My dog was named Augie. Her dog was named Shitter. I knew immediately this was a woman to be loved and feared.” 

Amen.  

And one more quote, this one from executed Wobbly Joe Hill, most often remembered in a song widely sung in funereal contexts in the Church of the Left: “Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize.” 

Here’s Molly’s version of Joe Hill’s last words, one more time: 

“We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge….We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!” 

As we said Tuesday in this space, we’re asking readers and writers to enlist in Molly’s “old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war.” Please keep those anti-war columns coming until the war is over. The first one, submitted by Betty Medsger, who used to live around here, appears in this issue. 

OAKS, BEVATRON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

You could solve both the oaks and Bevatron demolition controversies by building the proposed athletics training center on the site of the old Bevatron, sparing the oaks on the fault line and commemorating the Bevatron with a suitable bronze plaque on the new building. 

Steve Juniper 

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ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Seeing the city map of cell phone antenna locations was a lesson in environmental injustice. Two locations in North Berkeley approved and 15 in South Berkeley—how surprising. Patrick Kennedy has done all the work on his building necessary to install 12 to 18 more antennas here in South Berkeley, abutting a residential neighborhood, across the street from Savo Island, a housing development with many seriously handicapped, vulnerable citizens, and one block from a child care center servicing our youngest, most of whom are minorities. 

The Zoning Board denied his permit for these antennas and of course Kennedy will appeal, since most of the work is done and the only approval for it is missing. I’m sure there will be serious pressure put on the mayor, council and ZAB members by Mr. Kennedy and the cell phone companies to change the ZAB decision or override it. Will their concern be for the people of South Berkeley or out-of-town developers and international corporations? We await their decision. 

The cell phone representative argued that UC Berkeley needs these particular towers in this particular location. Now that really caused me to guffaw—Cal owns half the town, has hundreds of buildings and a large hillside so they surely have a place for antennas and don’t need to add to ours down here. 

Rosemary Vimont 

• 

SPOTTY COVERAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Anyone with a cell phone knows that coverage in Berkeley is spottier than coverage in surrounding areas. My own business has suffered as a result. Perhaps our city leaders could add a new message to the Nuclear Free Zone signs: “Welcome to Berkeley: A Business-Free Zone.” Of course, they’d have to raise residential property taxes to pay for those signs, because business sales tax dollars are going to Albany and Emeryville. 

Tom Case 

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CELL PHONE ANTENNAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your Jan. 20 story, “ZAB Rejects Cell Phone Antennas on UC Storage,” was quite interesting. It seems that some activist-citizens in Berkeley did not want to see Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications be able to improve their local cellular telephone service offerings. I trust that none of these activist-citizens are currently users of cell phones or any other modern electronically-based technology, including television, radio, Internet, e-mail, WiFi or even the traditional telephone. For if they are, they are thus being schizophrenic, plain silly or as the folk saying goes, cutting off their noses to spite their face. Many people seem to want to enjoy the fruits of modern technology without allowing the needed supporting infrastructure to be placed locally in their neighborhoods. 

As for alleged health concerns, we are all already taking a 24/7 daily bath in a cornucopia of electromagnetic energy: electricity, radio waves, television broadcasts, microwaves, radar, WiFi and satellite television signals. This is on top of all the natural electromagnetic radiation, which we receive from the sun, plus cosmic radiation originating from beyond our solar system. This radiation has been showering down on our Earth for billions of years; all species of plants and animals have evolved and lived in this radiation bath. There is also radioactivity from natural sources in the earth’s rocks. 

In a similar vein to our Berkeley protests, some of the good citizens through the tunnel out in Lafayette are up in arms about whether to continue to allow cell phone service antennas to be disguised as artificial “trees” with their blue-green needles and branches. And I thought that the corporations were quite smart in making these broadcast antenna/trees an obviously artificial blue-green color to stop ignorant woodsmen or tree trimmers from cutting down the antenna-trees in a fit of harvesting or pruning mania. Hmm, artificial Christmas trees are fine and dandy, but artificial cell phone tower/trees are not. Wonders never cease with the human species. 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

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INSINUATING LANGUAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I must protest a statement made in your Jan. 9 article “BSEP Extension Best News for BUSD in 2006.” Your writer insinuated that the former staff of B-Tech, or, Berkeley Alternative High School as it was known then, did not care about the students. My domestic partner was a teacher at Berkeley Alternative. I got to know the story of Berkeley Alternative, and saw how hard some of the staff worked to not only keep the students interested, but keep the students showing up. Knowing that my partner would get up at 4 a.m. to create curriculum, and stay up until 10 p.m., doing the same, I know she cared. I got to know other staff at the school through my partner. These were some genuinely dedicated people. I’d like to know how your writer concluded that these teachers didn’t care at all about their pupils. Unless you’ve worked with students, you really don’t have a right to pass judgment in such a sweeping way as your writer did in your paper. And I assume he/she has never worked with students, otherwise he/she would not have been so quick to put down a group of educators so casually. Trust, I know that things were not perfect at that school, but then, when you’re talking about a majority students-of-color school in an urban area, “perfect” is rarely a qualifier. But what your paper wrote was offensive and inappropriate.  

I’ve worked with at-risk kids myself, and no matter how much you care and remain engaged in your work and your commitment to the children, you’re never really appreciated enough… but, boy, are folks ready to tear you apart at the slightest twitch, or in this case, glitch in the system! But it’s still not necessary to see it printed in such a careless, back-handed and unsolicited fashion. I hope that in the future you think twice about assigning topics to writers who probably don’t have a clue about what they’re being asked to comment on through a medium like the Daily Planet. No wonder we’re struggling to find folks who are willing to go into teaching. To be treated this way? 

Pablo Espinoza 

Oakland 

• 

MOLLY IVINS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Molly Ivins was a woman of will and wit. Her death was not like a ship passing in the night, but more like a speed boat going full throttle across your front lawn—big, noisy and gunning for your living room, especially if the taxpayer furnished it. 

Until her last published breath, Ivins’ engine was revved and running. Her final column of Jan. 11 stated “Stop it Now,” referencing the president’s proposed surge in troops. “Hit the streets,” Ivins implored, “banging pots and pans.” 

She’d probably prefer demonstrators with big spoons and cookware at her funeral than flowers and eulogies. For Ivins, anti-Bush sentiments supersede all others. 

Mary Alice Altorfer 

New Braunfels, TX  

• 

BROWER CENTER EXPENSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I sat in the City Council chambers many years ago when inclusion of the David Brower Center in the Oxford Lot development was approved. The Planning Commission, HAC, ZAB, DRC and council have all publicly worked on this project for years. The city did a great thing when it decided to finance an affordable family housing project, especially downtown.  

What makes this project expensive is not the Brower Center and it is not the Oxford Plaza housing—it is the public parking. Downtown merchants and others insisted on public parking to replace the spaces on the surface lot. And as many of us tried to explain at the time, parking spaces are extremely expensive to construct and parking fees do not pay for that cost. It is this cost which is driving the price so high and is no reason to oppose the project itself. If you feel that the city cost is too high, don’t sign an initiative to stop the project— just stop the parking garage and make the project car-free, saving the city several million dollars. 

The Brower Center will be a four-story office building that will house environmental groups including Earth Island Institute. It is privately funded. It will be the first LEED platinum green building in Berkeley. It will serve as a model for how to build buildings that won’t guzzle energy. For information, see: www.browercenter.org. 

The Oxford Plaza housing project next to the Brower Center will have 96 affordable housing units, the largest number built anywhere in Berkeley since the 1980s. It is one of the few projects built anywhere in Berkeley in the last 20 years that has affordable family-sized units. As with any below-market housing, the project is not viable without a city subsidy. The project has been hit hard by rising construction costs, as have other projects in Berkeley and in the Bay Area. Oxford Plaza will also be a green building. For more information see RCD’s website: www.rcdev.org/what_development_oxford.html. 

The city’s requirement that parking at the Oxford lot be replaced underneath has greatly added to the costs. That is the real culprit and if anything has to be changed, that’s it. Let’s not throw out the baby with the dirty bath water. 

Wendy Alfsen  

• 

SUGGESTED READING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just finished reading a Jan. 21 New York Times Magazine story about Vermont’s socialist Congressman, Bernie Sanders. Berkeley’s political leaders and Berkeley’s voters ought to read it. These lines were standouts: “(As mayor of Burlington) Sanders spoke out against poverty in the third world and made good-will visits to the Soviet Union and Cuba...But a funny thing happened on the way to what many had dismissed as a short-running circus. Sanders undertook ambitious downtown revitalization projects and courted evil capitalist entities known as businesses. He balanced budgets...” If socialists like Sanders are working to attract job-creating businesses, in what category shall we place most of our elected city leaders, and most of our city’s bureaucracy, who are busy chasing business away? 

Russ Mitchell 

• 

PROPAGANDIST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On the basis of his two op-ed pieces, there is little doubt Matthew Taylor is a Palestinian propagandist and not a reliable commentator. The symptoms could not be more pervasive: Selected details are repeated without context (a “home” demolished here, a road built there, but not a single mention of Kassam rockets, shootings at civilians or the barbaric suicide bombers culture); supporting “sources” are invariably among the worst detractors of Israel (Ilan Pappe, Uri Avnery, Jeff Halper, John Pilger, without any cross-checking from official Israeli sources); instances of baseless accusatory words, such as “colonization”, “colonial” “land theft” number over 30 in just two short articles; intentional distortion of official documents, such as the Mandate for Palestine, where he selectively notes the “civil and religious rights” of the Palestinian Arabs while he conveniently omits the “national rights” of Jews over the whole land. 

Is there any point in engaging a propagandist with rational arguments? Not likely. True believers have their minds hopelessly twisted and the more they try to be convincing, the deeper they sink into a hole of their own digging. But it’s always a delight to see how ineffective any attempt to coherently defend Carter’s opinions can be! 

And since Carter’s book was the object of Matthew Taylor’s misguided praise, the latter should know that during Carter’s presentation at Brandeis University last week, he himself apologized for his infamous passage on page 213 of his book where he condoned Palestinian terrorism. He even characterized the inclusion of this passage as “stupid.” But this did not seem to alter Taylor’s views of the matter. For him, the Hamas tactics are still a “comprehensible as a desperate and misguided response to oppression.” Need I say more? 

Rachel Neuwirth 

Los Angeles 

• 

AMAZON PETITION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would have been only too happy to sign Henry Norr’s petition [requesting that Amazon remove a negative description of Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid]—and I’m sure there are many others as well—had I known about it. I saw the obvious bias and was appalled. 

M. McCormick 

• 

THE SPIRIT OF MOLLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Molly Ivins lives in me and in everyone who stands up and voices their opinion. “It’s up to us”! Seniors live on $600—that’s a sin and shameful. Our poor welfare moms and handicapped live on pennies—that’s shameful. We care so little for those that gave us life! I get sick when I hear the rich use tax loop holes to get a free ride and the average Joe is paying $2,000 a month in taxes! For what? To see Americans be killed—so we can make a group of Good Old Boys from Texas Rich! Come on America! Schools are in shambles with no books and prisons are decked with weights and TVs! That’s stupid! Buildings and transportation spend fortunes that could help our communities. What does this say about us? Nothing—we are not making all the rules! It says we are losers if we don’t do something about this mess were in! Are we losing our human spirit?  

Life is not a video game! We need a new sheriff in town and I’m voting for Hillary! Come on girls, this place stinks—high gas prices, no healthcare, pollution... Shall I go on? Please, let’s let the girls give the place a shot. We are better homemakers and the country is our home! End Iraq! End War! Begin life! 

Julie Parker 

• 

QUAKE THREAT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While I love trees as much as the next guy, I’m more concerned about a possible misunderstanding stemming from suggestions that the proposed gym would be safer somewhere else on campus. 

The Alquist-Priolo Act attempts to mitigate the specific danger of a surface rupture (tear along a fault line). But earthquake danger isn’t limited to a rupture and doesn’t stop a few feet from the fault. 

Please recall that Loma Prieta (Santa Cruz) collapsed the Cypress Structure (Oakland). When the Hayward Fault goes (and it is overdue), it won’t matter where in Berkeley you’re doing pushups if your building is unsafe. 

Homeowners, install an automatic gas shutoff valve and bolt your foundation! Renters, nag your landlords! 

John Vinopal 

• 

SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am preoccupied with the question of how we can make elementary school classrooms places of self discovery for our children. Two things are lacking: a supply of teachers who love to teach, and training in restoring the self-confidence of children who come from stressful family situations. How shall we encourage the idealism of teachers? How shall we recognize the imperfect character of the home environment for many children? We want all our children to become self-learners. More is needed to achieve such a goal than the No Child Left Behind Act. 

Romila Khanna 

• 

COMMISSIONER TERM LIMITS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a surprise move against Berkeley’s long-standing democratic political traditions and values, the Berkeley City Council on Jan. 16—by a one-vote margin—forwarded a proposal to the city attorney that, if implemented in the future, would effectively remove progressive-leaning Berkeley citizen volunteers from the city’s most high-profile commissions and boards. 

If passed again by the council in March, the measure would remove—and bar future—citizen volunteers from serving on two or more commissions or boards simultaneously.  

Originally initiated by Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, the proposal is a thinly-veiled attempt to target and remove progressive commissioners who currently serve on Berkeley’s four most powerful and influential commissions: the Planning Commission, Zoning Board, Housing Commission and Landmarks Preservation Commission. 

The four above commissions effectively determine Berkeley’s city-wide public policy directions for new and existing commercial/residential development, affordable housing, transportation and city land use policies. 

Mr. Capitelli’s proposed regulation would remove current commission volunteers with years of public policy experience and expertise from providing their input, concerns—and votes—on the four above commissions. 

More significantly, the regulation would unilaterally strip City Councilmembers of their sovereign prerogative to appoint the commission members they see fit for volunteer positions. 

Mr. Capitelli’s proposal strikes at the heart of the council’s democratic process: It removes each councilmembers’ right to select the representative of their choice to city commissions. This goes against the grain of Berkeley’s long established democratic traditions and values. 

I urge Berkeley citizens to attend the council’s March meetings when Capitelli’s proposal will again return before the council for a vote. It is critical that Berkeley citizens demand that their respective councilmembers vote against this blatantly anti-democratic measure. 

Chris Kavanagh 

• 

OPEN OUR STREETS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Not every street in town needs to be paved. Consider an ordinary street, where space is reserved for sidewalks, bike lanes, parking, and so on. Although sandwiching these spaces together seems to be the democratic way to share our city, experience shows that it amounts to an absolute monopoly in favor of cars. It’s both unsafe and unpleasant for the unmotored masses to dodge through endless armies of traffic. What we need is a network of paths dedicated to walking, wheelchairs, and bikes, which criss-cross the city, overlaying a fresh and open alternative to the stifling world of gray and dangerous roads. I hear that the lucky and illustrious residents of Boulder, St. Paul, and even Walnut Creek for God’s sake, already have such networks. 

We could do even better: imagine if every fourth street were overturned—made into gardens, slow and flowered paths, amphitheaters, block parties, trolleys sheltered from rush hour traffic, bazaars... anything, really. 

Opening Center Street to foot traffic will create a sorely needed oasis among downtown’s pestilence of swiftly-erected towers. The fight may be bitter, and the petro-maniacs are generally richer and more powerful. Fortunately for Center Street, the usual bogeymen of parking shortages and muffled shopping can be brushed aside. Assuming we will win, hats off to a future Berkeley wisely chosen. A standing ovation to the real visionaries fighting from within the bowels of city policy, within the hostile corridors of the new downtown planning “DAPAC.”  

Adam Wight 

• 

EARTHQUAKES AND A  

FLU PANDEMIC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The slow governmental response to Hurricane Katrina convinced many Bay Area residents to prepare to fend for themselves for at least a week after the inevitable big earthquake that’s coming. Emergency preparedness courses here are now oversubscribed, and one thing people are learning is that they should store at least one week’s supply of food and water for themselves, their families, and their pets. 

A bird flu pandemic is not inevitable, but it is a real possibility. Can one prepare for it? Federal guidelines concerning a flu pandemic, issued Feb. 1, advocate that in such an epidemic sick people and their families, including apparently healthy members, stay home for seven to 10 days. So while you’re stocking up to survive the Big One, you might store a bit more food in case there is a flu pandemic during which public gatherings might well be discouraged. Since normal business transactions at banks and filling stations will be disrupted, you might also visit your ATM now and keep your gas tank at least half full at all times. You could also purchase now some face masks to reduce the spread of the virus; ask your local health department about the type of mask they recommend. 

Dick White 

Member, Berkeley Disaster and  

Fire Safety Commission 

• 

OIL DRILLING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

President Bush is at it again. In his State of the Union address concerning energy, Bush insisted on drilling oil at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which is home of the Gwich’in people. The Gwich’in people live their own way of life, which includes being with nature and living among the caribou and other animals. 

The Arctic National Wildlife refuge is their sovereignty and it shouldn’t be disturbed by oil drilling. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

DETAINEES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The detainees are not the worst of the worst: The government’s own documents show that few of the men had ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and most were, in fact, turned over to the United States in exchange for bounties. 

Demand that the fundamental right of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions be upheld, despite attempts to legislate their demise. The men at Guantanamo deserve their day in court. Respect for these rights is essential to democracy. 

Holly Brownscombe 

• 

THE NEW PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

President Bush’s address to the nation Wednesday evening has left many people, politicians, and specialists in doubt about the “success of his “new”/revised plan of action in Iraq. Indeed, many of us could not even understand exactly what “success” in Iraq is to the President. 

Will the sending of 20,000 plus troops change the course of the War in Iraq? No. 

This President’s inability to look at the world situation with clear eyes and a respect for the many issues involved will preclude this success. In addition, Mr. Bush has engaged in a pattern of communication with his country and with the world in which his words, his intentions and his actions have been shown to be in conflict with one another. 

Since the beginning of his presidency, Bush’s lack of dealing with North Korea—until a crisis erupted recently—shows his lack of judgment, ability, and skill in foreign relations. North Korea’s erratic dictator does have the real WMDs. Bush’s dismissal of working to avoid a nuclear maelstrom casts doubt on his “intention” of going to Iraq to stop Saddam’s procurement of WMDs. The publication of the Downing Street memos show that the US knew there were no weapons. 

George W. Bush is a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. His appearances (sheep/wolf/good natured Texan), his words, and his intentions cannot be trusted. As John Knowles wrote in A Separate Peace, “wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.” 

We must stop this bearer of an ignorant, inauthentic heart. Support Congress in stopping all funding of the war and the movement of more troops to Iraq. Bush and Cheney must be impeached. The deaths of over 600,000 innocent Iraqis, 3,000 US soldiers, and the severe disablement suffered by people of both countries demand the condemnation of the world. Never again should the leaders of our country be able to pursue such wanton murder, torture, and terror on the world. It is time to say “enough”! 

Teresa Paris 

• 

HEADLINE QUESTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Above a Jan. 5 article, written by Richard Brenneman, the headline reads “UC Stadium Tree-Sitter Arrested for Tresspassing.” 

I have a question: Why would anyone be arrested for passing bunches of hair around?  

Is there a law? Just asking. 

B.M. Jensen 

• 

TWO FILMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We saw to films at one go. The juxtaposition of Children of Men with Freedom Writers was astonishing. P.D. James had the brilliant idea of paring away the non-essentials of our suicidal earthly romp so that we might, just possibly, see the truth. From there, in that light, to view the reality of our children’s live, affirmed the earlier warning, and solution. See them. Both. Together. 

Pamela Satterwhite 

Compared to adjacent communities, Berkeley is in many ways an attractive city to live in or to visit. But our city is very vulnerable to pressures brought by commercial real estate developers. A case in point is the pending application by Gordon Commercial for a use permit that includes a 5,000-square-foot restaurant and bar at Ashby just below College. If this application is granted, it will increase retail floor space in the four-block area surrounding College and Ashby by 11 percent, and quality of life in the neighborhood will decline for residents and visitor alike. 

The proposed development project violates Zoning Ordinance regulations. The developer is asking for approval of his application prior to stating in detail to which kinds of retail businesses he proposes to lease. This in effect cedes to the developer control over the character of these businesses and their impacts on the neighborhood—a concession that would be highly irregular in the history of the city’s application approvals. (Once a use permit is granted for a restaurant, for example, it is extremely difficult to revoke that permit, regardless of the restaurant’s policies, type of food served, etc.) Granting the developer this “blank check” to profit from his property as he pleases is not in keeping with Berkeley residents’ wish to assure the quality of life in their city.  

The Berkeley Zoning Ordinance allows a maximum of seven restaurants in the Elmwood District. The developer’s application exceeds this quota. As the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association (CENA) has pointed out, this application also requests that additional official quotas be overridden and parking space waivers be given. The Berkeley Ordinance does stipulate that a quota can be overridden, but only on the condition that the intended use will not “Generate traffic and parking demand beyond the capacity of the commercial District or significantly increase impacts on adjacent residential neighborhoods.” The developer’s proposal for a large, full-scale restaurant/bar clearly fails to satisfy this requirement. 

The only access to the restaurant for trucks delivering food and supplies will be Ashby Avenue, which is already the most congested street in Berkeley. Traffic on both Ashby and College backs up for blocks, and parking—for Elmwood Theater goers as well as for shoppers—is difficult to find. Drivers roam residential side streets to locate an available space. Residents routinely find it difficult to park in the vicinity of their own homes. As might be expected, traffic accidents have taken a toll in this neighborhood. Making this situation worse will be detrimental to quality of life and health in the district. 

In addition to food delivery vehicles, workers as well as patrons of the restaurant/bar will exacerbate the traffic gridlock and parking problems. The neighborhood was not designed for, and cannot now be feasibly transformed to handle, the intense demands that developers propose to place upon it.  

The Berkeley Zoning Ordinance permits the serving of alcohol “only as incidental consumption with meals in food service establishments.” Violating this condition, the developer proposes to install a bar, where drinks can be purchased apart from—and notoriously not necessarily “incidental” to—a meal. The proposed bar will be open every day until late at night, which will increase drunkenness, rowdiness, and noise. Are these what the neighborhood needs? 

Are vacant storefronts in the Elmwood district a good reason for inviting in over-sized development projects? Elmwood commercial vacancies are in fact very few, and result from commercial landlords demanding higher rents than prospective store owners can afford to pay. I moved into the neighborhood in 1980 and remember a shoe repair shop and a tailor on College Avenue. Around the corner on Ashby was Burnafords, a fresh-produce store. But small, locally-owned businesses of this kind could not afford relentless rent increases. 

Commercial landlords tell city government, in effect: “If you do not let us do what we want with our properties, we will hold them vacant until we get our way.” This coercive strategy has been successful in the past because the owners have been able to hold out as long as it takes to get political support for their plans. And they can pay their way into City Hall by supporting pro-development ballot measures and political candidates who will return the favor and support them. 

A new large restaurant would increase fees and sales-tax revenue to the city, but at what price? Please consider: 

• Increasing the business activity and congestion at this intersection entails new city expenditures for maintaining the streets, handling sewage, etc. Increased revenues to the city will be diminished by these infrastructure costs. 

• Berkeley’s Planning Department is funded largely by developers’ fees, and (much more importantly) the planning profession is ideologically as well as economically linked to development interests. Notwithstanding the conscientious intentions of individual planners, this situation results in a conflict of interest that may favor inadvisable development projects and regard neighbors’ concerns merely as obstacles to be overcome. 

• Berkeley government exists to serve our community, not vice-versa. Yes, the city needs revenue in order to provide services, and city workers deserve to be adequately paid. But selling our community to developers is not the only or best solution to fiscal crisis. Budgetary reform and better planning are needed to make Berkeley government sustainable. 

The Elmwood remains a wonderful neighborhood—but unless Berkeleyans rally to its defense, much that is wonderful about it will be lost.  

Raymond Barglow is a member of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club. 

The world’s best-loved cities all have something in common—beautiful public squares and plazas surrounded by magnificent buildings. They are the places where people meet and things happen, the places we tell stories about. Across the United States, public squares and plazas are being rediscovered as a powerful way of revitalizing and transforming downtowns. 

Cities are also taking stronger steps to heal the natural environment within their borders. They have discovered that restoring nature in the city not only helps the environment, but also connects people with place, while, in many cases, enhancing local prosperity via tourism, increased visits by local citizens and increased land values. As one model of a successful strategy that celebrates nature in the city, the City of San Luis Obispo’s Mission Plaza and San Luis Creek restoration has unequivocally contributed to bringing the downtown commercial vacancy rate from 60 percent to current full occupancy. 

Berkeley recently took an exciting and positive step towards transforming its downtown into a world-class destination with nature as inspiration when the City Council appointed Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee voted for the pedestrianization of one block of Center Street, between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue, as their preferred option for the site. And, in acknowledgment of a decades-long community vision of restoring, honoring and celebrating Berkeley’s “green” infrastructure, her creeks, the DAPAC also said that a “maximum practical” creek design should be prepared as part of putting together a plan for Center Street. 

The Berkeley Center Street project site is not only the core of the downtown but is also a transit hub served by the downtown Berkeley BART station and several AC transit lines. Approximately 10,000 pedestrians already traverse Center Street each day, walking from BART to campus. If there is any one place in downtown Berkeley that is practically begging to become a pedestrian plaza, this is it. It is a location that has great importance to the citizens of Berkeley and the greater Bay Area as a destination for the arts and entertainment, as well as education and commerce.  

Also coming to this central location are a “green” hotel/conference center and a world-class art museum, to be designed by one of the most exciting architects alive today, Toyo Ito. It’s an exhilarating time for downtown Berkeley, especially now, with the newly added hope of a beautiful and functional world-class public space accessible to all citizens, regardless of age, ability or income. A trademark of a great community! 

We hope that residents of Berkeley and the Bay Area will join us in advocating for this promising vision. 

Kirstin Miller is a member of Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Plaza Steering Committee.

Sept. 11, 2001 was a terrible tragedy. For those of us who were up early that morning and were called to turn on the TV, we saw a horrible series of events—not read, not imagined—in real time. A worse tragedy occurred when our country, under false pretenses, attacked Iraq. Although the bombs, mortars, other sophisticated weapons were directed at Iraqis, the attack was also a less obvious one against Americans. 

Although more than 3,000 U.S. military personnel are dead, more than 22,000 maimed, and a yet-to-be-determined number suffer from post-traumatic-stress-disorder, the human physical toll paid by Iraqis is off the scale compared to our numbers. We have effectively destroyed the Cradle of Civilization. 

In a different manner, the Bush administration has grievously harmed the United States. The National Priorities web page (http://nationalpriorities.org) has a frightening microsecond report on the cost of the war: at 6:50 p.m. on Jan. 21, we had spent $362,772,925 or $2 billion a week. National Priorities also reported that the cost to California is $46 billion and to Berkeley, $130 million. Our social, physical, ethical, moral condition is tattered. Our environmental condition is fragile. We are much weaker in every way from each of our wars since World War II, but the Iraq war is perhaps the most evil. Individual profiteers from Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, Bechtel, have become fabulously wealthy. The rest of us are poorer in every way.  

We have also become in the years after the attack on Iraq the moral pariahs of the world. As a nation we shuddered to see (and also imagine) people jumping, falling off the top floors of the Twin Towers, the employees, the fire fighters and the police trapped in the buildings. And, I, as an individual cannot forget the Iraqi men, women and children, innocent or not, who never attacked the United States, being shot, mortared, shrapnelled, beaten, humiliated, tortured, raped, pushed out of their houses, out of their cities, out of their living and pushed to the brink of and over to death. Their condition is never far out of my mind. I cannot enjoy any event without feeling guilt that it is my tax dollars, my complicity as an American that is doing such barbarous acts. 

I go to demonstrations, write letters, engage in political activity, as efforts to stop the war, to assuage the horror felt, the guilt over what we have done and continue to do. Individuals like Cindy Sheehan can galvanize part of the population with her just and emotionally effective call to end the war and we are grateful for our leaders against the war. 

Lt. Ehren Watada, is one of these leaders. Lt. Watada, is the first U.S. Army officer to refuse to serve in Iraq. He enlisted in patriotic firmness after 9/11. Over his mother’s protests, he insisted that he did the right thing. His military superiors consider him to be exemplary as an officer, “a leader of men” and told him that he would have a bright future in the Army. While stationed in Korea, his superior officer told him that he would undoubtedly be posted in Iraq, and as a good officer, he should learn everything about the country to which he was to be sent. And he studied. In the process, he learned that the attack was based on lies told by the Bush administration: that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that there was no connection between the attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and wherever the downed plane in Pennsylvania was approaching and Iraq. 

Watada was also aware of the Nuremberg Principles that essentially places responsibility on the individual, even if that person is the head of state, or a member of the military, to not obey orders that violate international law. 

He tried to resign three times (an officer submits his resignation to the president) and was denied each time. He is now court-martialed in Ft. Lewis, Washington facing four counts: two for missing troop movement and two for criticizing the president. Two other speech counts, which depended on the testimony of freelance journalists Sarah Olson and Star Bulletin’s Gregg Kakesako, were dropped when other journalists joined in defending freedom of the press. 

Watada is a young man (27) with extraordinary clarity about his moral responsibility and I am grateful for his principled and clearly articulated thoughts about his obligation to defend the Constitution, the U.N. Charter, and the Nuremberg Principles, He said, in talking to a roomful of veterans: “...that to stop an illegal war and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fight it.” 

My gratitude to him is expressed in committing civil disobedience by blocking the doors of the San Francisco Federal Building (450 Golden Gate Ave.) last month and again this first Thursday of February (every first Thursday) as well as joining a dozen or so Bay Area people, including Berkeley resident Betty Kano, who are traveling to Ft. Lewis to support Lt. Watada and to stand in protest of the war. 

Molly, you made many of my dark days brighter by your wit, your humor, your clear disgust with what the Bushies were doing. I shall miss you terribly but will struggle on against the dark forces in this country just as you did.  

Ying Lee is former member of the Berkeley City Council who served on Congressman Ron Dellums’ Washington staff for many years.

CENTER STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a member of DAPAC, I voted with a majority of the committee to express a preference for a pedestrian plaza on Center Street. The purpose of this vote was not to recommend building a plaza, or to declare that DAPAC supports a plaza as the right answer. Knowing that a majority of the committee members would prefer such a plaza is just the first step in a conversation. The second step is to produce some preliminary designs in consultation with downtown merchants and anyone else who is interested. With designs in hand, we can have a more directed and constructive discussion -- “This design is good, but it would be better if you change this feature..” “That one won’t work because there is not enough space for emergency vehicles.” “Here are our needs. Let’s find a way to accommodate them.” Having repeated public meetings where people just stand up to express general support or opposition to building a plaza won’t get us anywhere. DAPAC was not created to conduct a plebiscite, but to create a plan. Envisioning a plaza and seeing if it can work is the only way we will be able to determine whether it is the right thing to recommend. People who have reservations about a plaza can be part of this discussion, or they can just throw bricks. Which approach do you think will produce a more thoughtful result? 

Steve Weissman 

• 

ICELAND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How about the university purchasing Iceland not only for the Bears Hockey Team, but also as a its training center for student athletes, e.g., the Bears Football Team? 

Iceland is far enough away from the Hayward Fault to be much safer and eco-friendly than the Memorial Stadium oaks grove regarding the university’s building plans, yet at the same time, Iceland is close enough to the university campus itself without even venturing outside of Berkeley. 

Aaron Cohen 

• 

CROSSING TELEGRAPH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was wondering what they were doing to Telegraph. After reading the recent article in the Daily Planet, I am simply appalled! 

I don’t have a car for financial reasons. I walk a lot and take the bus a lot, and ride my bike occasionally. Crossing the street has become a terrifying experience because of the aggressive drivers who speed, ignore red lights and traffic signs, talk on cell phones, don’t look where they are going, and refuse to yield to pedestrians. I don’t intend to ride my bike on Telegraph even with the bike lane, because the same aggressive drivers will ignore it. I stick to the less busy streets. 

The islands were an important safety feature; without them, Telegraph will become almost as dangerous to cross as Shattuck. 

Mary Kazmer 

• 

MOVE SPORTS FACILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Football and track seasons normally don’t overlap. That’s why Cal should consider building a new, combined stadium and athletic facility on the relatively little-used site of the track stadium at Oxford and Channing. 

The site is closer to public transportation and to UC’s athletic and sports facilities immediately to the east. It would also be away from the Hayward Fault, and would not impinge on the residential neighborhoods already severely impacted by U-C development. Finally, it would be within walking distance of other downtown development U-C has in mind. 

Isn’t it about time for UC execs and planners to think of the City of Berkeley as a partner, not an obstacle? 

Alan Goldfarb 

Fremont 

• 

A OPEN CENTER STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I applaud Berkeley’s Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee’s recommendation to make Center Street between Oxford and Shattuck a pedestrian environment, possibly including a daylighted portion of historic Strawberry Creek. 

Currently I avoid the downtown as much as possible other than the theater district. A beautifully designed pedestrian space, particularly with an aesthetic open creek, would change that. I’d love to bring visitors and my family and children to a gracious plaza for lunch, dinner, a cup of tea. 

A public space for people of all ages to meet, rest, converse is often a feature of the world’s best-loved cities. With all it has to offer by way of education, arts, ideas and innovations, and with its citizen makeup, Berkeley is worthy of that aspiration. A carefully designed pedestrian space would continue the steps the city has already taken in that direction when they improved lighting and supported theater and jazz culture. A beautiful public space with an open waterway is in keeping with Berkeley’s commitment to environmental leadership as well as being harmonious with the Arts and Crafts tradition of celebrating nature in the built environment. 

A plaza facilitates social gathering whether it is meeting a friend or participating in a community event. Social connection is good for mental health and longevity. And, at the sight and sound of moving water, people slow down, lower their shoulders and sometimes their blood pressure. They take a deeper breath and become a bit more generous and expansive. The Center Street/Strawberry Creek project is good for our well-being. 

May the Berkeley City Council and Mayor Bates follow through on the DAPAC recommendation. 

Diana Divecha 

• 

WATADA'S COURAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a Jan. 30 editorial (“Sorry Lieutenant”) the Sam Francisco Chronicle wrote: “As an officer, he (Lieutenant Ehren Watada) is in no position to refuse orders to go to Iraq.” 

Sorry, Chronicle editors, but in 1950 the Congress of the United States revised the Uniform Code of Military Justice to limit prosecution to soldiers and officers who refused to obey “lawful” orders. This was not an abstract exercise in legal precision. The Nuremberg trials of former Nazi officials, including military personnel, had just concluded and had repudiated, on a world stage, the “Nuremberg defense". War crimes could no longer be justified by the claim that “I was only following orders when I shot those kids.” 

Since it can be argued that the United States went to war in violation of the UN Charter, to which it is a signatory, there is a legitimate question whether any order issued in furtherance of this war is lawful. 

A court martial may rule for against Lieutenant Watada on the facts of the case but it is just those facts that the present administration does not want examined in a court of law. 

Lieutenant Watada’s courageous act deserves, not only applause, but full support. Especially in view of the spineless behavior of the U.S. Congress in refusing to use its powers to halt this criminal insanity. 

E. Haberkern 

• 

WATADA'S PATRIOTISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The following is my rebuttal to a letter written to the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday regarding Ehren Watada.  

I’m strongly opposed to the “Sorry, lieutenant” letter regarding Lt. Ehren Watada’s refusal to serve in Iraq because he believes that it is war based on lies. The writer’s a priori statements must be challenged: “As an officer, he’s in no position to refuse orders to go to Iraq.” 

He’s wrong. Our country is based on the rule of law, not a person, even elected. Watada’s oath to serve his military term is based on honesty. Of course his oath only holds if it is based on the truth as most of us understand it. 

Most people in the US now recognize that the attack against Iraq was based on the lie that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction. If my parent or my commanding officer orders me to kill an innocent person am I to follow these orders or am I to behave as a thinking, responsible American? 

We tried Nazi Germany’s highest officers in Nuremberg, and executed several for following orders to commit War Crimes. The Nuremberg Principles, which we used to execute top Nazis state: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” (note: this is one of six Nuremberg Principles). 

I commend Lt Watada for his courageous act and for being a true patriot in believing that our leaders should be honest, especially when he asks us to die. 

Ying Lee 

• 

CORRECTION ON THE HISTORY OF PEOPLE’S PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

People’s Park was built by the spirit of many people taking their lives and their community into their own hands. Activists did not “pressure the university to create People’s Park ...by holding a series of protests” as Andy Stokols attributed to me saying in his article “New Team Appointed for People’s Park Plans". 

In 1969 “the people” saw the ruins of their neighborhood, torn down and abandoned by UC’s abuse of eminent domain, and THEY built the park. No architectural plans, no leaders, no budget..but rather by collective will and the joy of bettering their neighborhood. The power and beauty of a group of people creating together like this is important to remember. 

This is why the University spending $100,000 of your money to hire a corporate architect firm is a threat to the vision of this historical Park. It is antithetical to the nature of the Park, which, besides being created by, has been improved and tended by, volunteers. Through “user development” we’ve built picnic tables and gardens and Community, still visible through the chaos of holding together the edges of today’s society. 

The corporate landscape design firm that was just hired by UC will be doing its “needs assessment” this spring. They will call meetings and hand out surveys and collect data and then they will write up the conclusions that the University is paying them to present, undoubtedly proposing more concrete and less freedom. Next UC will want to hire the “design experts” to replace the work and unique process of the park community. 

Nevertheless it may be helpful to participate in the corporate firm’s input process if for no other reason than as an opportunity to meet others who care about the history and future of one of Berkeley’s most important sites. It could be a way to meet different others and to share concerns, desires, and ideas. Perhaps we can find common ground to improve the Park without violating it’s history and spirit. 

But in the mean time, the Park will go on being cared for by the people that go there and just do it. Please join us. Help plan the Anniversary concert for April 22, or volunteer to cook food, or play Frisbee, or do art, or meet homeless people, or grow vegetables, or plan a poetry jam or a picnic or ballroom dancing or... 

People’s Park needs some of this generation to know yourselves as the People and participate in this experiment of Common Land. Enjoy it, improve it, share it. Take it into your own hands, unmediated by the experts, the officials. Do it yourself. It is a thin slice of freedom in a society of hierarchical control. Claim it. 

Terri Compost 

• 

GIVE PEDESTRIANIZATION A CHANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Much has been made in these pages and elsewhere about the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee (DAPAC) decision last week, on a 11-7 vote, to support full pedestrianization of Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford. As a DAPAC member who voted in favor of the motion, I say: “Give pedestrianization a chance!” 

Critics of the decision have said that it is too soon to select a design option for Center Street, that merchants’ concerns haven’t been heard, that first studies need to be made on all three options: 1) the current two-way traffic arrangement; 2) a slow street (or “woonerf”) with one way traffic on rough pavement with wide sidewalks; and 3) full pedestrianization. (Full pedestrianization would allow emergency access at any time and delivery access at certain hours every day.) Unfortunately, the clock is ticking; DAPAC must complete a Downtown Plan by next November, and until DAPAC acted last week, no planning assumptions had been adopted. Furthermore, these options have been under discussion since the UCB Hotel Task Force recommended full pedestrianization two years ago.  

Furthermore, major design elements needing space on Center Street, such as a possible creek and open space plaza that would compete with cars on the street, are waiting to be decided; therefore, a basic planning decision about the street had to be made. 

I understand and appreciate downtown merchants’ concerns about pedestrianizing Center Street. DAPAC’s decision in support of full pedestrianization is the preferred option; in other words, this decision is a starting point only and details need to be worked out. Concerns include but are not limited to: maintenance and security issues, street behavior, delivery access, emergency access, handicapped access, and parking. What’s needed now is a City process to work with downtown business interests and other stakeholders to identify and come up with a strategy to address those concerns. A good place to start would be to conduct a walking tour of that block of Center Street with stakeholders to identify issues and experience visually the relationships between buildings, street width, sidewalk widths, curb locations, etc. I urge the Mayor and City Council to initiate such a process sooner rather than later. 

Helen Burke 

• 

PSC CONTINUES TO POLLUTE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

They’re counting on you to keep your windows closed and your mouth shut. The recent Pacific Steel Casting consent decree with Citizens for a Better Environment is terrible because its missing several important parts that would have protected the people who live and work near the factory. Without these parts in the agreement, the neighborhood is still unsafe and PSC is officially allowed to continue poisoning the people who live and work there. 

Why the agreement stinks? 

There is no funding or plan for comprehensive community air testing in the neighborhood. 

There is no funding or plan for a health effects survey to learn what harm has already been caused to workers and residents by PSC and the toxic emissions. 

There is no funding or plan to release ALL test results to the public so the people who live near the factory can decide whether PSC should be allowed to continue to release chemicals known to cause cancer, reproductive disorders, respiratory disorders and other health problems. 

Remember, this factory is less than a mile from schools, parks, restaurants, and day care centers and the air still stinks in the neighborhood even after PSC added some new equipment that was supposed to fix the problem. Why should anyone celebrate an agreement that allows PSC to continue polluting people in Berkeley, Albany, Kensington, and El Cerrito? Why not ask the neighbors what they think about being poisoned just a little more slowly while Pacific Steel Casting and Citizens for a Better Environment and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and Mayor Bates and Council Member Maio shake hands and celebrate a terrible job well done! 

They’re counting on you to keep your windows closed and your mouth shut. 

Andrew Galpern 

• 

ORGANIZING ACTIVISTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m working with a group of neighborhood activists in an East Coast College town. They’re being overrun with college expansion and an autocratic, development-minded mayor, and there’s no discernible community sector to fight it. In one of my recent e-mails to them, I commented:  

“I’m not sure your town is any worse than anyplace else in terms of development, but I can tell you what we do have in Berkeley that I don’t see much evidence of there: organized neighborhood groups and activists that work together. I almost can’t keep up with all the condo conversion ordinances and measures to change them and referendums to block these changes, etc. If you Google the Berkeley Daily Planet (our free community newspaper, gone defunct but resurrected by a couple who sold their software company to do so), you’ll find many stories each week of the ongoing battles with city officials, college officials, and developers. Oftentimes they actually make some headway in forcing compromises because they won’t shut up and go away.  

And a young person on their end asked me: Why do you think Berkeley has such an activist population? I have always attributed [my town’s] lack of such activity to its growing affluence and transient nature of the student body, yet Berkeley faces the same issues.  

I should have a concise answer for this great question, but I don’t. I haven’t been involved in any activist issues before now, and I’m still not connected with my own neighborhood in Berkeley. Can you enlighten me with your current and historic perspective and/or print this question somewhere in the Daily Planet to invite answers? It seems like a fruitful one. Or can you recommend any books/articles/documentaries on the subject?  

Thanks so much for any help you can provide these unfortunate, rudderless activists in a small New England college town. I really appreciate all you’re doing to keep our democratic, free press going, and I know this is a crucial part of keeping activism alive in Berkeley!  

Ann Foley 

• 

BOWLS HALL EXPERIENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There are always two sides of a story. Bob Sayles had a positive experience at Bowles Hall. I believe that he is telling the truth from his perspective. I was at Bowles Hall in the same period (1948-1952), and I found the atmosphere very chilling. Noisy, rowdy, inconsiderate. Upperclassmen who hazed lowerclassmen in a fraternity-like atmosphere. Drinking bouts. No perceptible guidance system—just a housemother who knew she was outnumbered and had to be a mascot. And an atmosphere in which I felt afraid, certainly never accepted When I moved to International House as a graduate student (1952--1955), I was amazed at the difference: nurturing, well-ordered, friendly, considerate. I should have moved there sooner.  

Adolescent behavior in residence halls is nothing new, but I see no reason to institutionalize it. I, for one, am more willing to trust the Housing Office at UC than some alumni who don’t know the campus today and who want to reinstate their vision of how they remember Bowles Hall. Old days can’t be relived, today’s world is different. And opposing each new move by the UC officials doesn’t seem a productive tactic. Why not let UC make choices in terms of today’s logistics, today’s students? And if the choices the Housing officials make don’t work, today’s students, not those of 50 years ago or more, should be the ones to help guide the system. They, not us oldtimers, are the consumers. 

Sherwin Carlquist 

Santa Barbara 

• 

SAVE BOWLES HALL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to “Bowles Alums Lead Fight to Preserve Beloved Hall” I’m outraged to hear again that the university is ruining the undergraduate experience at Berkeley! Haas needs to redirect the focus of their efforts to create executive suites away from California’s oldest residence hall, Bowles Hall. 

In 1998, when I moved into Bowles Hall my freshman year, I was roomed with two upper classmen. These upper classmen, both of whom were in my major, were able to guide me in my academics and help me become comfortable in the new college environment. (Recently they were both groomsmen in my wedding.) 

It was a shame when they UC Berkeley Housing Office capped the percent of returning Bowlesmen to 17 percent the hall’s capacity in 1999 (previously 50 percent) and even more discouraging when they eliminated any chance to return to the hall in 2005. 

The thought of eliminating the chance for any undergraduate to have the type of wonderful experience I had in Bowles Hall deeply saddens me. I sincerely hope the university will reconsider the location of their executive suites as well as make efforts towards restoring the Bowles Hall experience. 

David Hornung 

• 

PROTEST AGAINST PROF. YOO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the past year a small group of citizens has held a weekly vigil outside of Professor John Yoo’s class at Boalt Law School and in Sproul Plaza to protest his presence at a leading U.S. law college. Yoo’s cockamamie legal theories have buttressed the Bush administration’s claims of dictatorial power and laid the groundwork for the torture so horrifically depicted in Fernando Botero’s paintings on display in Doe Library. 

Every week, students, faculty, and staff chatting on cell phones and plugged into iPods hurry past color photos of screaming men and bloody bodies, averting their eyes as good Germans once did from that which their government is doing. Let us hope that Botero’s paintings and presence at UC will reawaken the moral conscience of this university—if any remains to be woken—to a faculty member so responsible for such reprehensible crimes and UC’s unacknowledged shame. 

Gray Brechin 

• 

MACARTHUR DELIVERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the life of me, I cannot understand why it is so difficult to deliver your paper to the McArthur newspaper box, twice a week, as you do to every other Daily Planet box throughout “the greater Berkeley” area. I have called your office repeatedly to report this problem. All I’ve ever gotten have been half-hearted, unenthused responses bemoaning driver unreliability or scarcity. 

So what is it? You manage to deliver your newspaper to Piedmont, El Cerrito del Norte and Grand Lake. I have found it as far as Mountain Boulevard and Point Richmond. You should know that very many people in North Oakland spend money in Berkeley, patronizing some of the very businesses that advertise in your publication. We routinely cross the border to go to events, to activate, to socialize, to work and to shop. 

Other free publications, which may or may not be worth reading, don’t seem to have a problem stocking their boxes. However varied (the demographics of) their readership, they seem to not single-out any particular area for non-delivery. 

Please step up to the plate and show us the same respect you show everyone else. 

Jimena Pérez, 

Oakland 

• 

CELL TOWERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your recent story, “ZAB Rejects Cell Phone Antennas on UC Storage” (Jan. 30) was quite interesting. It seems that some activist-citizens in Berkeley did not want to see Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications be able to improve their local cellular telephone service offerings. I trust that none of these activist-citizens are currently users of cell phones or any other modern electronically-based technology including television, radio, Internet, e-mail, WiFi or even the traditional telephone. For if they are, they are thus being schizophrenic, plain silly or as the folk saying goes, cutting off their noses to spite their faces… Many people seem to want to enjoy the fruits of modern technology without allowing the needed supporting infrastructure to be placed locally in their neighborhoods. 

As for alleged health concerns, we are all already taking a 24/7 daily bath in a cornucopia of electromagnetic energy: electricity, radio waves, television broadcasts, microwaves, radar, WiFi and satellite television signals. This is on top of all the natural electromagnetic radiation, which we receive from the sun, plus cosmic radiation originating from beyond our solar system. This radiation has been showering down on our Earth for billions of years; all species of plants and animals have evolved and lived in this radiation bath. There is also radioactivity from natural sources in the earth’s rocks. 

In a similar vein to our Berkeley protests, some of the good citizens through the tunnel out in Lafayette are up in arms about whether to continue to allow cell phone service antennas to be disguised as artifical “trees” with their blue-green needles and branches. And I thought that the corporations were quite smart in making these broadcast antenna/trees an obviously artificial blue-green color to stop ignorant woodsmen or tree trimmers from cutting down the antenna-trees in a fit of harvesting or pruning mania. Hmm, artificial Christmas trees are fine and dandy, but artificial cell phone tower/trees are not… Wonders never cease with the human species.  

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

• 

ABAG HOUSING NUMBERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Martinot in his Jan. 16 commentary, “ABAG Allocations Equal Top-Down Decision Making,” misses the point about housing policy and the City of Berkeley’s decision-making and leadership role in meeting Berkeley’s and the region’s housing needs. The City of Berkeley’s elected officials and staff have worked closely with other city and county representatives from the nine Bay Area counties on the ABAG Housing Methodology Committee. Together they helped develop a draft process to distribute the regional housing need required by state law so that local governments can identify appropriate housing sites and policies to meet these planning goals. This Regional Housing Need Allocation (RHNA) process is happening state-wide in all the regions. 

Martinot’s statements that this process and RHNA formula for housing distribution in the Bay Area was pre-determined, dictated top-down, kept secret, and even dominated by the Bay Area’s outer rim city interests, just aren’t true. The Draft RHNA formula has been reviewed intensely and constructively these past two months by all our region’s local governments. Berkeley and other cities have had multiple critical discussions across the board about how to allocate housing need equitably by income level to all our Bay Area communities. With ABAG Executive Board and staff they have wrestled with regional and local challenges like land use, availability of land, jobs, current housing, transportation systems, and strained infrastructure. The final revised RHNA Methodology, which was adopted on January 18th after a public hearing and additional lengthy review, reflects their articulated concerns and priorities. It also recognizes the critical need to secure incentives at the state and regional level to help our cities and counties meet their housing commitment. 

Martinot characterized this whole housing needs process and regional/local collaboration as “a new shift of power” to the region. In fact, the City of Berkeley has been at the forefront of facilitating a regional collaborative and problem solving process since 1961, when ABAG was formed and became the first council of governments in California. Former Berkeley Mayor Claude Hutchison was the first president of ABAG and one of the founding local government leaders to call for a regional local government body that would help Bay Area local governments find creative solutions to local issues they shared and maximize the resources and authority of local government in its dealings with the state. For 46 years, ABAG has continued this commitment.  

Kathleen Cha 

Senior Communications Officer 

Association of Bay Area Governments 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This letter was sent to the mayor, City Council and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee, as well as other city officials and local newspapers.  

As president of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA), it was with considerable dismay that I read of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee’s (DAPAC’s) approval, on Jan. 18, of a motion to support one and only one alternative for the block of Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford. This action was a cynical rush to judgment in which a few members subverted their own subcommittee report. That subcommittee report recommended study of three different alternatives with the implication that there would be a thorough public discussion and evaluation of those alternatives. The five renegade members rammed through their personal preference, and ended up getting the DAPAC to ratify their motion that one and only one alternative model for Center Street henceforth be considered. 

In recent months, there had been considerable thoughtful discussion of how Center Street might be configured in light of the development of two large properties adjacent to the street—the Berkeley Charles Hotel and the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM). Three distinctly different alternatives of merit had emerged in very preliminary form. Each option will affect Center Street and the surrounding areas in every different ways, with important implications for the downtown as a whole. 

Before any one of the three receives support from the DAPAC, the responsible course would be for the DAPAC, or a qualified consultant, to do a thoughtful and professional evaluation of each alternative, including some preliminary designs, which could have indicated how each alternative might work. The assessment of the relative merits would then be part of the record on which the general community could base its own evaluation. DAPAC must also consult with the business and property owners who will be affected to obtain their views on how the three alternatives might affect them and include that input in the evaluation of the alternatives. 

Instead, despite protests from a number of committee members, including the chair, five members of the Center Street Subcommittee used a parliamentary maneuver to gain an 11 to 8 vote for their motion which allows DAPAC to consider only one of the three alternatives. 

The twenty-one member DAPAC, appointed to prepare a new plan for downtown—the economic and cultural heart of Berkeley—has no members that represent businesses, property owners, or arts and entertainment venues in the downtown. I would hope there would be some opportunity for a councilmember to add at least one such representative to DAPAC. At the minimum, each councilmember and the mayor should caucus with their appointees on the DAPAC and insist that they behave responsibly and engage the business community on an ongoing basis. 

It is my profound hope that the DAPAC will place on its agenda in the near future an opportunity to reconsider this action. The council and the mayor should inform their appointees that the three alternatives should be given intelligent, professional consideration, and that design concepts should be discussed with the affected businesses, long before options have been reduced to one. 

Mark McLeod is president of the Downtown Berkeley Association. 

I previously served on the Hotel Convention Center Museum Task Force of which Downtown Business Association (DBA), the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce were all members. After presentations by all sides, the task force recommended the closure of Center Street to through vehicle traffic. The council adopted the recommendations of that task force. I now serve on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC). More than any other interest group, over this last year downtown businesses have had the opportunity to and made presentations to the entire DAPAC and to its Center Street Subcommittee. Even at the subcommittee’s last meeting, most of the time was taken with presentations of DBA-solicited models & drawings and the one environmental presentation was severely restricted. DAPAC made no final determination but decided on a preferred study option—determine if a pedestrianized plaza will work on this street. This is the same decision that was previously made by the task force and by council. That’s what DAPAC (nearly two-thirds majority) decided last week.  

Yet Mark McLeod, current president of the Downtown Berkeley Association, has sent a letter attacking that vote. One could conclude that the DBA and other downtown businesses do not want direct access for hotel, convention center and museum patrons directly across Center Street.  

Currently, those few shoppers/restaurant customers who do drive to Center Street, park in a Bank of America parking lot or a few on street spaces. A similar number of spaces will be still be available in a mid block parking garage under the hotel/convention center/museum. Drivers will walk out of the garage mid block onto Center Street. Just think: Is that driver more likely to pick a restaurant or store where 1) as now, the driver is required to walk down the block to the corner, wait for a light, cross in a cross walk breathing car idling smog and then walk back up the block or 2) that driver can walk fewer steps in a more natural environment, without worrying about moving cars, directly across to that restaurant or store? Wouldn’t customers prefer sitting out front looking across strolling people in a car-free public space over a view of asphalt, parking meters and moving cars? Doesn’t seem like a hard choice.  

If moving and parked cars were a key ingredient for successful business, then downtown would be booming—as that is its current environment. But downtown businesses insist they are struggling—so more cars can hardly be the best answer for future business. We definitely know it’s not the best answer for the museum, the convention center, the hotel (and having chosen a public space option, we can ask their help in designing a new Center Street.)  

We already know that a walkable, rather than a car, environment, is preferred by the pedestrian majority of current Center Street and downtown customers (55 percent of all downtown shoppers walk to their shopping/eating destination). A majority of the customers to the hotel, convention center and museum will come by BART not car. (If not so, the complex would be built next to a freeway exit instead a BART station, wouldn’t it?) Since we’re building a new future, let’s explore creating a Center Street public space that embodies the best of Berkeley (a reality of the why we live here dream). As a downtown neighbor, I look forward to working with downtown businesses and many other stakeholders to do just that. 

Wendy Alfsen is a DAPAC member.

Mark McLeod has written a letter to the City Council, local papers and others which attacks the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee’s vote to support pedestrianization as the preferred option for Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford streets downtown where the new hotel and UC art museum are planned. 

As chair of DAPAC’s Center Street subcommittee, I am writing to correct some factual misstatements in his letter and to elaborate on the DAPAC’s action. 

I will pass over the somewhat intemperate language of his letter (“renegades”; “cynical rush to judgment”; “subverted”) to focus on the substance of his arguments. 

First, it is not true that the subcommittee report recommended further study of three alternatives for Center Street. As the report clearly states, the subcommittee was not able to reach a consensus on what to do with the street. Most subcommittee members thought pedestrianization was the most promising option, but some preferred two alternative options that would allow cars to continue to drive and park on, or at least drive on, the street. The subcommittee left the decision regarding which option was best to the full DAPAC. 

Second, the vote (which was 11 to 7, not 11 to 8) was not the outcome of some “parliamentary maneuver.” The motion that passed was submitted a week in advance of the meeting. DAPAC members, and everyone on the DAPAC e-mail list, got it along with the agendas for the meeting. Everyone knew what was being proposed and had time to think about it. 

Third, there has been ample consultation of stakeholders regarding the future of that block of Center Street. The idea that a pedestrian open space should be created there has been discussed for years. 

The General Plan, adopted in 2001-2002, called for the City to explore options for closing Center Street and also called for a task force to look at the idea of a downtown hotel and conference center. 

In 2004, the 25-member Hotel Task Force was formed. The task force included representatives of DBA and the Chamber of Commerce, and also included a Center Street property owner. It met for five months and heard input from merchants and property owners on Center and nearby streets, along with input from other stakeholders and interested citizens. 

In the end the task force recommended the creation of “a public pedestrian-oriented open space or plaza” on Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford. It called for closing the street to motor vehicles. The City Council subsequently accepted the recommendations and forwarded them to the hotel developer and UC. 

In effect, by its recent action, the DAPAC has voted to affirm the Hotel Task Force recommendation. The DAPAC subcommittee also heard from merchants on Center Street and even discussed detailed drawings for alternative options. 

The full DAPAC has also dealt with Center Street during public workshops and other public meetings since the DAPAC process began in November 2005. Members of the public have had ample opportunities to voice their opinions. Support for the option that DAPAC ultimately approved has been voiced by many throughout the process. 

Now, with only nine months remaining before DAPAC disbands, DAPAC has begun to give its input to staff about what it wants in the draft plan, which is supposed to be finished by summer’s end in time for DAPAC review in the fall. 

Both during the Hotel Task Force process and again in the DAPAC process, merchants have raised a number of legitimate concerns about what pedestrianization will mean for Center Street. Their concerns have been addressed in the Hotel Task Force recommendations and again in the recent motion passed by DAPAC. 

First, there is a concern about how businesses on Center will receive deliveries when the street is closed. There are thousands of streets around the world that have been closed to regular motor vehicle traffic to create pedestrian areas. These streets, like Center Street, typically include restaurants and retail businesses, and all of them manage to get the deliveries they need. 

How this is accomplished varies according to the specific context. On Center Street, it may make sense to allow delivery vehicles onto whatever plaza is created during early morning hours. 

Second, there is a concern about whether the city will follow through and maintain the new open space if one is created. The city certainly will have the resources to do so. The new hotel and associated housing will generate well over $1 million a year in new hotel tax and property tax revenues. A small portion of this would be enough to keep the newly designed public space clean and well maintained.  

Third, there is a concern about the loss of on-street parking. Both the Hotel Task Force and the DAPAC have recommended creation of easy pedestrian access to public parking that will be built underneath the hotel and/or museum. 

Center Street businesses do not currently rely heavily on the on- street parking. A large portion of their business comes from the enormous flow of pedestrians going between BART and downtown bus stops and the UC campus. This flow has been estimated at 10,000 pedestrian trips a day. But with underground parking, it will probably be easier to find a place to park that it is now at the metered spaces on the street. 

By its vote, DAPAC has said that it wants a pedestrian-friendly open space. But DAPAC did not vote to endorse a specific design for that space. It has recommended a design process that will afford merchants, property owners and others an opportunity to voice their opinions on the specific design features they would like to see. Deliveries, maintenance, parking and whatever other concerns are raised can all be addressed in this design process. 

Designs could include varying mixes of trees, landscaping, street and sidewalk surfaces, street furniture, benches, public art, tables and chairs for outdoor dining, etc. A creek or other “water feature” could be included. There is a real opportunity to create a gathering place where people can spend time away from the noise and traffic of Shattuck Avenue. There could also be space for outdoor concerts.  

Without removing cars from the street (with possible exceptions for deliveries and emergency vehicles), it would be impossible to create a real pedestrian plaza. 

With no traffic and parked cars to contend with, people visiting the hotel, conference center and UC art museum will be able to more easily access the restaurants and shops on the south side of the street. There will likely be more of a flow from one side of the street to the other. 

So local businesses stand to benefit. Hopefully Mark McLeod and others will offer their ideas about how this new open space can work to maximum advantage for local businesses. 

Rob Wrenn is a member of DAPAC and a resident of the LeConte neighborhood.

It is heartening to learn that many readers of the Daily Planet understand the reality of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Others say they plan to approach Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, with an open and inquisitive mind. Below, I respond to Dan Spitzer’s and Rachel Neuwirth’s criticisms of my Jan. 9th op-ed on the subject. 

Mr. Spitzer’s letter is littered with ad hominem attacks, in which he insinuates that I am not one of “the sharpest nails in the shed,” that I smoke opiates, and that former President Carter is a “Peanut Brain.” I fail to see how such comments are useful or relevant. 

Mr. Spitzer’s letter does not respond in any substantive measure to the central thesis of both Mr. Carter’s book, and my op-ed: that “the primary obstacle to peace is Israel's unending colonial project.” 

The closest Mr. Spitzer comes to a response is his inaccurate assertion that I “parrot Palestinian propaganda without any substantiation.” Perhaps Mr. Spitzer might choose to re-read my op-ed, in which I offer a specific, personally witnessed instance of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. I saw Israel’s army bulldoze a Palestinian man’s home for one reason: in order to build a road only Israeli colonizers are allowed to access. In one fell swoop, this action combines the crimes of land theft (colonization) with forced dislocation of the inhabitants (ethnic cleansing) and the building of Jewish-only public works projects (Apartheid). 

Such home demolitions are systemic Israeli policy, and are extensively documented by Israeli watchdogs such as Rabbis for Human Rights (http://rhr.israel.net). Home demolitions are a key part of the stated plan of many Israeli political leaders past and present: to confiscate as much of the West Bank as they can get away with.  

Here’s what Arik Asherman of Rabbis for Human Rights had to say about a recent such home demolition in December of 2006: 

“Little Yousef is again homeless, and shortly his sister will again come home from school to discover that the home she left in the morning is now rubble…. This time the family was all alone with their tears. I was not there to stand in front of the bulldozers and nobody from the RHR staff was able to get through the cordon of border police protecting the demolition…. I have promised Ahmed Musa Dari that this is not the end. We will not abandon him and his family. If we simply express our anger, the Mayor [of Jerusalem] will still have succeeded and will continue to harden his heart. He will have been mistaken if you leave the message not only that you are outraged but that you are contributing to the rebuilding of 10 homes and demanding that your country’s officials take action.” 

Asherman requests letters and phone calls to the mayor of Jerusalem, and donations to help rebuild homes. Visit the RHR website for more information at: http://rhr.israel.net/darkness-has-struck-again 

Other instances of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and colonization project in the West Bank have been documented ad nauseam by Israeli human rights organizations such as B’Tselem (www.btselem.org) and Machsom (“Movement Barrier”) Watch (www.machsomwatch.org). To find out more about the Palestinian women who have given “birth” to stillborn babies at movement barriers because they are denied the ability to travel to a hospital, simply visit B’Tselem’s website, listed above, and type in the search terms: Palestinian pregnant checkpoint. Similarly, B’Tselem reports that “The shortage of drinking water [for Palestinians] can cause dehydration and the inability to maintain proper hygiene and thus lead to illness,” whereas Israelis have enough to fill swimming pools. 

To clarify: according to Carter, Apartheid applies only to Israel’s policies in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories: East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza Strip. However, for at least some Palestinians in pre-1967 Israel, the term is quite relevant. A significant number of Palestinian villages inside Israel are “unrecognized” and are officially denied “any basic services such as running water, electricity, proper education and health services and access roads—constituting a gross violation of human rights.” (See the “Association of 40” at www.assoc40.org.) They don’t even appear on a map. Further, Bedouins have been subjected to the worst forms of Israeli oppression, including on Jan. 9 of this year the destruction of an entire Bedouin village, Tawil Abu Jarwal in the Negev, documented by the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (www.icahd.org). 

Mr. Spitzer makes a number of inaccurate claims, including that I cite a “fabricated quote.” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s statement imploring the colonizers to “grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements” appears in Carter’s book—Agence France Presse is the source. It is a matter of extensive public record that Sharon was a fervent supporter of Israel’s illegal colonies during his entire career. 

Mr. Spitzer refers to Israel’s wall, which unilaterally steals Palestinian land. The International Court of Justice has ruled that the wall is illegal and must be dismantled. If its purpose were Israel’s security, it would be built on the 1967 border—but it cuts deep into the West Bank and has permitted, for example, Mod’in Illit to expand at a furious pace on stolen Palestinian farmland. 

Mr. Spitzer’s claim that the West Bank and Gaza are “Palestinian ruled” are patently false. Both are under a nearly 40-year-old Israeli military occupation! The Palestinian Authority cannot possibly “rule” (or even govern) a land over which it has no real sovereignty. Gaza is now the world’s largest open-air prison, and the Israeli air force bombs civilian population centers at will, killing 200 civilians in November 2006 alone, half women and children. The West Bank is being sliced up into territorially discontiguous “Bantustans,” a Swiss cheese surrounded by a sea of illegal Israeli colonies. 

Mr. Spitzer attempts to change the subject and avoid dealing with the realities of Israel’s systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people by raising the specter of the election of Hamas, a movement that arose in 1988 as a response to 21 years of illegal occupation and colonization. While Hamas’ tactics are deplorable, they are also comprehensible as a desperate and misguided response to oppression. Mr. Spitzer’s comments are a misleading “blame the victim” approach. Statements by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya indicate that Hamas appears inclined to recognize Israel in exchange for a full withdrawl to the 1967 borders and a two-state resolution to the conflict. 

To backtrack for a moment, it would undoubtedly have been best for all involved parties had Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon listened to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ repeated pleas following Abbas’ election in January of 2005 to meet and negotiate a final status agreement. However, Sharon refused to do so because his intention was not to achieve a just peace, but to steal as much West Bank land as he could—which is precisely what he did. By refusing to meet with Abbas, Israel helped guarantee the election of Hamas a year later, the outcome it claims it least desired. But does that give Israel the political cover it needs to further ignore Abbas as a partner for peace and steal more land?  

In short, Israel has chosen—and continues to choose—colonization instead of peace. Uri Avnery’s analysis at Gush Shalom (www.gush-shalom.org) is well worth a read. 

One development that offers tremendous hope is Combatants for Peace, a group of former Israeli and Palestinian warriors who have set down their guns and are working together to end the occupation and all forms of violence. Read about their movement at www.combatantsforpeace.org and in the latest issue of PeacePower, available online at www.calpeacepower.org. 

Perhaps Mr. Spitzer, and interested readers, might wish to spend time researching the matter first-hand by visiting both Israelis and the Palestinians in the West Bank. For American Jews, Birthright Unplugged is a Jewish-led organization that offers guided tours of the West Bank (www.birthrightunplugged.org). Or visit Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem, a Palestinian nonviolent activism organization that offers opportunities to live with Palestinian families (www.holylandtrust.org). In film, John Pilger’s insightful documentary “Palestine is Still the Issue” is now available online at www.youtube.com. 

I find Rachel Neuwirth’s commentary quite unsettling. She is the President of Middle East Solutions, which proposes a “win-win peaceful outcome” to the conflict: the ethnic cleansing (“resettlement”) of Palestinians from historical Palestine, and their removal to a new “Palestinian state” in Saudi Arabia. This “Plan for Arab-Israeli Reconciliation,” as she puts it, is outlined at www.middleeastsolutions.com.  

Ms. Neuwirth’s claim that I did not engage “in the slightest effort at fact finding” is obviously false—as mentioned, I have seen Israel’s Apartheid activities with my own eyes. Neuwirth changes the subject from Israel’s current oppression of Palestinians (the main point of Carter’s book) to interpretations of a colonial document issued ninety years ago. She neglects to mention that the document in question specifically states: “Nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Her assertion that the entirety of Palestine “was exclusively allocated to the Jewish nation by international law” could not be more inaccurate—the mandate called for a “homeland” for the Jewish people, but not one that was “exclusive” (or one that would involve the expulsion or mistreatment of the current population).  

Finally, Mr. Spitzer and Ms. Neuwirth both attack UC Berkeley’s Peace and Conflict Studies program (PACS). Mr. Spitzer claims that it is “laughed at” by “most responsible UCB professors.” I’m not sure which UCB professors he has spoken to, or what his criteria is for determining whether or not a professor is “responsible,” but I perceive our program to be held in extremely high esteem. Students have initiated several well-regarded projects recently, including PeacePower, a nominee for UTNE Reader’s “Best New Publication of 2006,” and the Conflict Resolution and Transformation Center (http://conflict.berkeley.edu), a student-led program that addresses student conflict on campus. I am a co-founder of both. 

PACS has been described as a “mission major,” akin to the Department of Public Health. Just as Public Health seeks to eradicate all forms of disease, PACS seeks to eradicate all forms of violence. As Susan Collin Marks of Search for Common Ground says, “violent conflict destroys everything.” Someday, Palestinian children and Israeli children will grow up together, love each other, and be sisters and brothers together. It is up to us to start a nonviolent movement to make that possible, is it not? As Yonatan Shapira of Combatants for Peace has said, we must liberate Palestinians from Israel’s occupation, and free Israel from its role as an occupier. 

Matthew Taylor is a fifth-year Peace and Conflict Studies student at UC Berkeley, editor of PeacePower magazine (www.calpeacepower.org), and Jewish. 

Mr. Spitzer’s latest misunderstanding of the Israel-Palestine disputes, and of President Carter’s recent book, deserves answers. 

Fourteen, to my mind misguided, members of the Carter Center advisory board resigned, protesting President Carter’s book. The board consists of over 200 members. 94 percent of them did not resign. 

The lessons of history must be read very carefully. With the passage of time our knowledge of the exact sequence and meanings of past events becomes less certain. There were three participants at the 2000 Camp David peace talks. None of the three were without partisanship. Exactly why no agreement was reached is not as certain as Spitzer makes out. 

And it is irrelevant anyway. What history can contribute to our knowledge of current conflict cannot compare with current, immediate observations. The precise question is—what is happening right now, on the ground, in the West Bank (Arab Palestine)? It is occupied by foreign (Israeli) troops. That the Arab population is oppressed there is no dispute. 

All sides (Israel, Palestine and the United States as intermediary) have made glaring and destructive past mistakes. Israel will lose nothing and gain everything by taking radical, peaceful steps now. Leave the West Bank. Where is the justice, the peacefulness and righteousness of the Jewish past, of the Book of which Jews are the People? Let is be demonstrated now. 

Israel is a tiny geographic speck surrounded by a sea of a hundred million Arabs who hate it. Israel’s current policy is suicidal. Sanity calls for peace, not suicide. 

Is Dan Spitzer fooling anyone when he calls himself a progressive? One aspect of Spitzer’s Jan. 30 letter to the Berkeley Planet is the use of disingenuous “facts” to create insupportable assumptions in the public mind. Thus the statements about what was offered by Israel to the Palestinians at the Clinton Camp David meetings are riddled with falsehood, but his letter attacking Joseph Lifschutz isn’t really about what Arafat allegedly rejected. (If anyone needs to know what Israel actually offered the Palestinians at camp David—there was no formal proposal--I suggest Israeli Professor Tanya Reinhart’s excellent and well documented book, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948. It’s all there). 

This ploy by Spitzer is used to bolster the idea that Arafat was being unreasonable to insist upon discussing the “right of (Palestinians) to return” to their towns, land, homes from which they fled in 1948. Unfortunately for Spitzer and Zionism, international law is quite clear about the right of any displaced people to return. Supporters of the Israeli state continue to insist that all efforts to assure implementation of this right are the hard evidence that Israel’s right to exist is under serious attack. What they are doing in that case is conflating the idea of the right of Jews to live in the middle east in a democracy--free from persecution--under a secular (i.e. non-Muslim) state that guarantees full political rights to all, with the idea of the right to a Jewish State announced by a Hungarian, Theodore Herzl, in 1896 and declared real by British imperialism in the Balfour Declaration after World War II (1917). A Jewish State is what Israel proclaims itself. For those of us—hopefully a majority of Americans and a majority of Jews—who believe in secular democracy, there can be no allowances for religious states regardless of how congenial that religion’s teachings on justice may be. Unequal rights for classes of citizens is understood to mean discrimination against some groups for the benefit of others.  

The fact that 3.5 million Palestinian civilians continue to live in a hell under Israel’s military domination and the accompanying constant terror-- having no citizenship in any country, absent the right to vote to influence the governance of Israel, that State which governs them against their will, destroys their homes and farmlands, forbids them passage from place to place within the occupied territories, prevents them from working and steals their resources; this condemns Israel to the label of rogue state in violation of international human and democratic rights. The UN General Assembly has been clear on that. Jimmy Carter did a great service to history and justice when he called the Israeli state correctly, an apartheid state in his title. Almost anyone who witnesses what is going on in the occupied territories today can not but come that same conclusion.  

Marc Sapir is executive director of Retro Poll.

The weekend of Jan. 26, speaker of the House and six-time grandmother Nancy Pelosi traveled to Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to get a personal view of George Bush’s “war” on terrorism. Judging from her initial comments, the trip hardened Pelosi’s opposition to Bush’s escalation of the war in Iraq. So, what should we expect the Pelosi-led Dems to do about Iraq? 

Five Democrats—representatives Lantos, Lowey, Murtha, Reyes, and Skelton—and one Republican, Representative Dave Hobson, accompanied Speaker Pelosi on her brief trip. Most are involved in the House of Representatives Appropriation process and, therefore, would be important players in any move to restrict funding for Bush’s folly. 

In her statements at the conclusion of the trip, Speaker Pelosi didn’t address reducing funds for the war in Iraq. She explained her purpose “was to salute our troops and commend them for their patriotism, their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of their families.” After meeting with U.S. troops at the base at Bagram, Afghanistan, Pelosi remarked: “We owe them better policy. We owe them better initiatives ... I believe redeployment of our troops is a step toward stability in the region.” Her choice of words is significant, because “redeployment” suggests a different scenario than “withdrawal,” a middle ground between “stay the course” and “get out.” 

On Feb. 1, House Democrats began a four-day retreat. It’s a safe bet that Madame Speaker has some ideas about what Dems should do beyond passing a “sense of the House” resolution opposing Bush’s latest escalation. The fact that her trip included Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, is an indication that Democrats plan to attack Bush Administration foreign policy on a broad front. 

Afghanistan: Democrats characterized the plight of allied forces in Afghanistan as “the forgotten war.” After meeting with Afghani President Hamid Karzai, Pelosi expressed support for additional US forces for Afghanistan and endorsed the Bush Administration request for $10.6 billion in assistance. She believes the White House has mismanaged the “war” against terrorism. It’s likely that House Dems will argue that US troops should be pulled out of Iraq and sent to Afghanistan and other venues threatened by terrorists. 

Pakistan: On Jan. 12, John Negroponte, outgoing national intelligence director, told Congress that Al Qaeda is “cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hideout in Pakistan.” Democrats proposed a bill linking Pakistan Military aid to success combating Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; if the bill becomes law, President Bush would have to certify that Pakistan was doing its best to combat terrorists. 

Iran: Pelosi’s brief trip did not include a stop over in Teheran, but it’s a safe bet that Iran was a topic of conversation during the long plane flight. On Jan. 19, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held a joint news conference. Speaking for both of them, Reid made it clear: “The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking Congressional authorization—a the current use of force resolution for Iraq does not give him such authorization.” Democrats favor a diplomatic solution to the nuclear confrontation with Iran, one of the key differences between the Bush Administration and Congressional Democrats. In his response to the President’s State-of-the-Union address, Senator Jim Webb called for “an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy.” 

Iraq: The immediate aftermath of the Pelosi trip suggests that Democrats who want House Democrats to vote for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq are going to be disappointed. Webb did not call for an immediate withdrawal and it’s unlikely that Speaker Pelosi, or anyone in her traveling group, will support such a plan. They will seek to define a middle ground, what Senator Webb referred to as: “a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But ... a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq’s cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.” In other words: Recognition that there’s a civil war in Iraq. Policy that follows the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group: increased diplomatic efforts, pressure on the Iraqi government for a political solution, and a shift in US military strategy from providing security to training Iraqis to do the job. 

Pelosi’s plan will gradually reduce the need for American troops in Iraq. However, it won’t necessarily bring them home. Many will be needed in Afghanistan and Pakistan to finish the bungled campaign against terrorism. 

What Democrats propose is not the quick end to the war that many Americans envisage. But, as compared to the collage of tired rhetoric and wishful thinking proffered by the White House, it is a plan. 

Americans are hungry for leadership. Many who trusted Generalissimo George Bush transferred their allegiance to grandma Nancy Pelosi. This is an opportunity for her to not only present a way out of Iraq, but also a realistic campaign against terrorism that features economic initiatives and protection of human rights. A campaign whose underlying slogan is: in grandma we trust. 

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

EDITOR’S NOTE: This week Susan Parker turns her column over to guest columnist Jernee Suga’ Baby Carter, writing in response to the Daily Planet’s call for writers to follow in Molly Ivins’s footsteps.  

Susan comes to me asking me to write an article. “How much do I get paid?” was the first thing out of my mouth.  

She asked me, “How do you feel about the war in Iraq?”  

This question put my mind to work. I hear people talk about it all the time, but I never really say anything myself. Teachers ask us about it at school, but I never raise my hand.  

I hear all the time that the war is wrong. I don’t know what we’re really in it for. I ask different people and the answer is always different. They say things like, “They won’t share their oil.”  

“Why should they?” I ask. “It’s their oil.”  

How would you feel if someone asked you for money? Would you give it to them, or would you keep it to yourself, thinking you have to look out for you and only you? 

Some people tell me that the war is about 9/11 and how Saddam Hussein killed all those people. I was always told two wrongs don’t make a right. Why would America go there and do the same thing? Adults are always making rules up for us kids, but they don’t ever take their own advice. They tell us killing is wrong, but every day people are killed in Iraq. 

Some people say Bush is an idiot. They don’t want him as president. Some say they never voted for him. I saw on the news that they took a poll and nobody likes him. If this is true, then how the hell did he become president? 

Some people come to my school and try to recruit new soldiers. None of my friends want to join up. To them, even going to the wrong neighborhood is like going to war. Some of my friends have been shot over little stuff, like being in the wrong place, talking to the wrong people, or because they make more money than the next guy. So why would they want to get shot in a country that probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them?  

A little hint to all those people in charge of getting recruits: try and send someone who is actually good at making a presentation. Send someone who can answer my questions.  

A guy came to my school and told us that the army is all about teamwork, and that when you get out, they will pay for your college education. Paying for my college education is a good thing, but what about if I don’t get out? What if I get killed? I asked the guy and he said that not everyone comes back. “So why would I want to go?” I asked. He went into a ten-minute speech, but he never answered my question. 

I go to a continuation school. Everyone there is about 16 or older. He told us that we could enter the army at 18 and not have to finish school. Wait, I’m confused again. I thought the adults wanted us to get our education. Everyone in my class was excited that they could quit school and go into the army. But then a light bulb went off in my brain. Without being called on or raising my hand, I yelled out “I’m not old enough to drink or vote yet, but I’m old enough to die for a country that don’t really care about me or my education?” The class fell silent. The teachers looked at me as if I’d just broken the law. I’m waiting for the man to give me the answer. He takes too long so I yell it again. Then I got kicked out of the classroom. 

I just wanted to know why I was old enough to maybe die over there in Iraq, but not old enough to buy a drink or even vote for what I think is right.  

The End.

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.  

(If you don’t know from tree anatomy and physiology, you have no business pruning—just as, if you don’t know the anatomical differences between a dog and a squid, you have no business clipping your puppy’s toenails, never mind doing veterinary surgery.)  

If you’re messing with a tree or shrub now, you’d better take a long close look within it for inhabitants first, because our local songbirds’ nesting season has begun.  

Anna’s hummingbirds are year-round residents here. Two other hummingbird species are commonly seen in Berkeley: Allen’s hummingbird, which breeds here but migrates out in fall; and rufous hummingbird, a migrant that passes through on the way north in spring. (In fall, most of the rufous population migrates south via the Sierra, taking advantage of the summer flowers that bloom months later there than their brethren down here around sea level.)  

Male Anna’ses have been putting on their aerial territorial displays since December, at least. We have a mad turf war going on at our place as a younger male is trying to usurp our longtime resident, Himself. This is made difficult by the fact that our feeders are on the front and back porches and not visible from any one point. Intense crazy chases around the house and around the house again occur daily.  

More significantly, a female Anna’s—distinguishable by her more cryptic coloring, with no red throat gorget—was buzzing the windowframes and conifers last month and snatching up bits of spiderweb. She used these, along with lichens and bits of fuzz and her own spit, to build her tiny, neat, sturdy nest. We take care of our spiders here at the Blake Street Belfry, and that’s one reason why. Everything really is, as Muir said, hitched to everything else.  

Now she’s snatching bugs, which she’ll feed her kids. They need the protein to grow. Hummers usually supplement their nectar diet with insects, but when you see a female going for them persistently it’s a safe bet she’s feeding chicks.  

That’s quite an act to see. She thrusts that long bill down their eager little throats and pumps madly; it looks like a sword-swallower’s performance gone mad.  

She might have built that nest, by our standards at least, any old where. The nest in the photo was built in an office-complex courtyard on University Avenue, just above eye level, over a well-trafficked walkway. Joe and I have run into Anna’s hummers nesting in several local plant nurseries, once on an eye-level twig (I’m five-foot-four) in a 10-foot-tall potted ficus tree that was indoors, in the office shed, maybe 10 feet from the cashier’s desk.  

No shortage of traffic there, and lots of gawkers; the nursery managers had staked a card in the pot alerting everyone to the nest’s presence. The hummingbird was incubating her eggs, and as steadfast as Horton the Elephant. Every human there was on his or her best behavior, and didn’t get closer than, oh, arm’s-length, but we all looked and she looked right back, a fierce glare in her beady little eye.  

The nest in the picture is small—half a walnut shell would stretch the inside—and easy to miss if you haven’t seen one before. Right now, when the leaves are most sparse on the trees, is the best time to spot them. Get up a ladder and look for them before cutting. If you can’t do that, at least watch your trees for a few days, and see if there’s hummer traffic to one particular place. 

Remember: The bugs they’re all eating now are the ones that would otherwise be the parents of the generations that would spend next summer chomping on your garden.  

Other local species are working up to nesting season, too. You might have noticed that the house finches and goldfinches are singing, and that the musical males have female audiences. Some of those robins you’re hearing are getting ready to migrate north, and working off their hormones; others will likely hang around and establish breeding territories in the next month or two. Still others will migrate in from farther south. Jostling will ensue.  

Great horned owls might have great big chicks in the nest already; they start early. The Bewick’s wren that has been singing in our neighborhood all winter might be getting seriously amorous this month, and will nest early next month.  

We’re not the only species that inhabits our cities, and we’d be much worse off if we were. The least we can do is to be aware of our neighbors, and behave well accordingly.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

A female Anna’s hummingbird (Callypte anna) on her nest. 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.  

Unrest in Bolivia’s eastern provinces is spreading, as local landlords and the European-origin wealthy elite who dominate the region dig in to resist efforts by President Evo Morales to institute land reform and use the region’s natural gas reserves to raise national living standards. 

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with six in 10 people living under the poverty line, a figure that jumps to nine in 10 in rural areas.  

Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) won last year’s election on a platform of reclaiming a controlling interest in gas and oil resources, raising fees on foreign mining companies, and turning idle land over to the landless. Gas and oil were successfully nationalized, and income from mining has increased six-fold. As a result, the economy is growing at a respectable 4 percent, and the government has built up a 6 percent budget surplus, which it is using to improve education and subsidize food for the poor. 

But an effort to distribute 48 million acres of land has sparked demonstrations in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city and capital of Cochabamba province, where an anti-Morales governor, Manfredo Reyes, is pushing an autonomy referendum. The departments of Pando, Beni, Tarija and Santa Cruz all voted for autonomy in July 2006. Nationwide, however, the autonomy referendum was defeated. 

While the Parliament approved the land distribution—10 percent of Bolivia’s families own 90 percent of the land— landlords, backed by powerful multinationals, like Cargill, Monsanto, and Brazilian soybean producers, have mobilized to resist the move.  

The tension boiled over in Cochabamba Jan. 10, when local peasants and coca growers marched on the city demanding that Governor Reyes resign after he organized the autonomy referendum. The governor called out the police, who tear gassed demonstrators. A right-wing pro-autonomy group, Youth for Democracy, attacked the demonstrators touching off a riot that killed two and wounded more than 100.  

The eastern provinces are the wealthiest part of Bolivia—Santa Cruz alone produces almost half the nation’s wealth—but there is widespread poverty as well, with working class slums sandwiched between malls and skyscrapers. While Indians make up a majority of Bolivia’s population, most of them live in the poorer highlands.  

Morales supporters point out that when highland tin was the Bolivian economic engine, the eastern elites supported a centralized government. It was only after natural gas deposits were discovered in the east, and Bolivia elected its first Indian president—Morales is an Aymara—that the eastern departments suddenly decided they wanted autonomy. 

An ugly strain of racism has crept into the current standoff. When Morales sacked army commander Marcelo Antezana for unilaterally allowing the United States to destroy Bolivia’s supply of Chinese shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, the general railed against Morales’ close ties with Cuba and Venezuela and “Caribbean mulattoes.” Signs dabbed on the walls in Santa Cruz read “Evo, chola de Chavez,” which translates, Evo [Morales] is [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez’s Indian woman.” 

MAS is currently attempting to amend the constituent assembly to end a two-thirds rule, which allows the elite minority to block political and judicial reforms. Even though Morales supporters have a majority in the Assembly—255 to 137—the elites have successfully paralyzed the process. 

Though a nationwide referendum on autonomy was defeated in the last election, the eastern provinces are forging ahead anyway. Some in the region suspect that secession is the real goal, quietly supported by landlords in neighboring Paraguay, as well as by the Bush administration. 

Any land distribution in Bolivia is likely to reverberate in Paraguay, which has the most unequal land ownership in the hemisphere: 1 percent of the population controls 77 percent of the land. Unequal access to land is already causing unrest in Paraguay. 

And as for the Bush administration, two years ago it began a campaign against Morales, accusing him of being a cat’s paw for Cuba and Venezuela. The administration has also increased the U.S. military presence in the triple border area of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, including deploying Special Forces in Paraguay.  

If an east-west civil war breaks out, the Bush administration is likely to be right in the middle of it. 

(For further information on Bolivia and Latin America in general, go to upsidedownworld.org, the best source of information on the hemisphere) 

Can things get worse in Iraq? Considerably, particularly in the north where Turkey appears to be massing troops on the border.  

Behind the sudden surge of military activity is a classified report by Turkey’s National Intelligence Service entitled “Iraq, Terror, Kirkuk, and the PKK.” The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) has waged a long political and military campaign against Turkey’s mistreatment of its Kurdish minority.  

Ankara is currently upset because it accuses the Kurds of trying to absorb the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as part of a Kurdish autonomous zone by forcing Arabs and Turkic-speaking Turkmen out the city. According to the Intelligence Service, some 600,000 Kurds have moved into the city, and 200,000 Turkmen have been forced out. 

Der Spiegel reports that “Ankara is thinking aloud about a possible military intervention in northern Iraq,” a conclusion echoed by leading Turkish figures.  

On Jan. 9, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said, “There are efforts to alter the demographic structure of Kirkuk. We cannot remain a bystander to such developments. Turkey… will not remain indifferent to developments in Kirkuk.” 

Even the Turkish opposition Republican People’s Party is on board. Party leader Deniz Baykal says, “We are ready to back the government [on intervention]. We’re planning to invite parliament to debate this.” 

The possibility that a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would invade an American-occupied Iraq seems a stretch unless you take into account Turkey’s profound paranoia about its eastern borders, where Kurds constitute a major part of the population. There are approximately 25 million Kurds scattered between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, and Turkey fought a long and bloody war with the PKK in the mid-1980s that killed 30,000 people and razed 3.000 villages. On a number of occasions Turkish troops crossed the Iraqi border pursuing Kurdish guerillas.  

But since the end of the 1992 Gulf War, Kurds in northern Iraq have established a well-organized autonomous region with some of the largest oil reserves in Iraq. If they can successfully win autonomy referenda in Mosul and Kirkuk, the Kurds will be awash in petrodollars and, Turkey fears, set an example to Kurds in neighboring countries to push for an independent nation. 

Ankara is worried that the PKK will rev up another round of war in eastern Turkey, although the Turks spurned a ceasefire offer last year from the PKK. The Turks are angry that the U.S. is not going after the PKK, but since the U.S. and Israel are using the PKK to try to destabilize Kurdish parts of Iran, Washington is not about to abandon them.  

It may be the Turks are just saber rattling to try to get the referendum called off (as the Iraq Study Group suggested), but they may also hope to prod the U.S. into taking more aggressive action against the PKK. Whatever Turkey has in mind, no one should be surprised if Ankara sends troops into Iraq to attack their long-time nemesis. Such an invasion will likely unite the Kurds, who have reason to fear and hate Turkey, and ignite a free-for-all in northern Iraq.  

Oh, and according to the Inter Press Service, Shiia tribes in southern Iraq are joining the resistance against the British, the main reason why London is talking about “cutting and running” from Basra.  

Can things get worse? Alas, yes.  

You could clearly see the change in Molly Ivins’ writing in the last weeks of her life. In large part, gone was the beer-and-bourbon with that we had come to love so much, along with that Texas way of looking at the world and the people therein that comes across both as straight-ahead and corner-out-the-eye at the same time, simultaneous, like you’re ready to face the world head-on, but just as ready to either reach for the pistol in your belt or head for the quickest way out, to laugh about it in great tales told in the shade of a summer porch sometime later, either way it came out. 

But in the last weeks of her life Molly’s writing had lost that touch, replaced by a plainspokenness that was almost plaintive. In the last column of hers I read, the next-to-the-last she wrote and published, she tried, not very well, to use once more the finger of ridicule to poke holes in the little puff-toad President that is George W. Bush, and then simply reduced herself to a simple cry of “enough!” in urging us to disengage from the quicksand that is Iraq. 

“The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck—so it's up to us,” she wrote. “You and me, Bubba. I don't know why Bush is just standing there like a frozen rabbit, but it's time we found out. The fact is WE have to do something about it. This country is being torn apart by an evil and unnecessary war, and it has to be stopped NOW.” 

In part we can assume, now, that this change from the sublime to the imperative was due in great part to the advance stage of the illness that eventually took her life. But, in part, it may have come from a realization that we are rapidly approaching the point when words over the War in Iraq will have lost most of their meaning, and a clash over the future course of this conflict—and the future course of the United States—has become inevitable. 

It was William Henry Seward, then United States Senator and later Secretary of State under Lincoln, who in an 1858 speech called the coming Civil War an “irrepressible conflict.” 

Describing the competing slave and free-labor systems existing side by side in the United States in that time, Mr. Seward said, “these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact and collision results. Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation.” 

In many ways, the political conflict within the United States in these days has the same feel to it, a political conflict that is no longer driven by individuals, but that has taken on a force of its own, so that individuals on either side may have lost all ability to pull back and halt the impending train wreck. 

In a 2003 column talking of the difficulties Democrats and liberal-progressives were having in making any headway among the Bush-era Republicans, Ms. Ivins quoted Texas Senator Gonzalo Barrientos as once saying of his Texas Republican colleagues, “they don't want to govern. They want to rule.” In such a conflict, the side which reverts to clever argument, or demands for meet-and-confer, will be quickly overwhelmed by the side that decides that conversation is no longer in currency, only the exercise of raw power. 

To too many of our conservative friends, led and inspired by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney but assisted in great part by the Bill O’Reillys, Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, and Michelle Malkins of the world, investigation, persuasion, and proving facts no longer holds value, only the steady movement along a pre-determined course to a pre-determined end. To attempt to reason with folks of such mind becomes increasingly useless since they have taken the stance of the cattle baron Fletcher in the movie “Shane;” they have absolutely no intention to practice “reasonableness,” professing it in pious and seemingly-sincere tones solely as a pretext to get you into town so that their gunfighters can get the draw on you. 

They have had considerable practice at this. In these times when someone who can remember what the President said two months ago is considered a “historian,” and reports about things farther back are sometimes looked upon like the Lost Scrolls of Atlantis, one forgets that it was Senator McCarthy and the conservative anti-Communist witchhunts that introduced “political correctness” in our era. 

But too many of our friends on the left are rapidly making up ground, on the theory that subtly and thoughtfulness are becoming less and less useful, and only words that cause the equivalent of blunt force trauma will do. 

And so we have entered the era of the shout-down, in which political differences are settled by three people on camera trying to outtalk and talk over each other, none of them listening but only looking for the slightest opening in which to jam their pre-programmed soundbytes, to be Youtubed over and over ad infintestimalitim, the commentator looking on in bemused wonderment, one eye always on the ratings bar, the circus barker who has loosed the clowns into the ring, and now must dutifully pretend that he has neither control of nor responsibility for the outcome. 

We long—on both the left and the right—for some return to some Grande Americana, the resurrection of the past leadership that fueled this country’s greatness, either in conquest or in democratic tradition, depending upon our own proclivities, but what good would such a resurrection do us if it actually occurred? Theodore Roosevelt, the grandest American imperialist of them all, also gave the simplest prescription for American world power: “speak softly, and carry a big stick.” A Republican Presidential aspirant in these times, espousing such views, would never make it out of the Super Tuesday primaries, where the shaking of sticks is the requirement. And though “Lincolnesque” is often used as the standard for Presidential stature, the actual Lincoln himself would be far too introspective for these days. 

In his Second Inaugural Address, sometimes considered his second-best speech next to the one delivered at the services at the Gettysburg battlefield, Lincoln advanced the theory that the American Civil War—then in its fourth bloody year—might have been God’s punishment to America for America’s long embracement of the slave trade and slavery. 

“The Almighty has His own purposes,” Mr. Lincoln said in the bleak winter of 1865. “’Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” 

Should Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards suggest that the 3,000 American deaths in Iraq, or the horrific injuries sustained by American troops, or even the September 11th terrorist attacks themselves, might be God’s retribution for some past American act, and that an answer to the problems of the terrorist threat to American might, indeed, be a deep search inside the American purpose and heart, how quick would it take for their Presidential candidacy to sink like a stone? 

Introspection is not the fashion, the lifting up of stones to discover and point out what damp and dark secrets are contained therein long ago replaced by a desire merely to throw stones. 

Molly Ivins was a person who first made us laugh and, in laughing, then made us think. In her final days, I believe she may have realized that for the time, being, at least, we have become sadly anesthetized to both, and that those types of appeals had temporarily become useless. Now that she—as in Stanton’s famous phrase about Lincoln—Molly Ivins has left us, and belongs to the ages, perhaps her time will roll around again, and we will have a renewed understanding about how she was so important to us. 

Until then, we are only left with the last words of Ms. Ivins’ last published column, a call to arms so unlike her usual witty insights: We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there.” And her final shout-out: “Stop it, now!” 

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. 

First, from a design stance, I’d like to say that skylights don’t belong everywhere. If you have a 1910 craftsman house, they may not be suitable. Now, every old house doesn’t have to be a restoration showplace, so before you go down this particular road, take a look at what your skylights will look like and where it will be placed. If it’s installed in the fashion of the time (skylight go way back) with suitable trim around the edges, a fitting vault between ceiling and roof and, perhaps, a window or stained glass at the ceiling line, it might be just the right upgrade. Every room isn’t right for a skylight and a gorgeous old room can be ruined by the wrong upgrade. Window light increases as we climb the wall and a placement of one or more high windows near the ceiling (especially those old 10’ beauties in older homes) can provide a great deal of light and approximate the gains that a skylight can provide, especially if they’re placed in a south facing wall (or east for morning … or west for afternoon). 

I’ve seen rooms with some high narrow windows on a south and western faces that were nearly as light as those with skylights and in some cases I think it’s a better choice since a skylight can really flood a room with light (more on that later).  

Light for more than one direction is best since it helps to shape and color objects and spaces. People will tend to gravitate toward rooms that feature windows in two walls and, of course, any well-lit space. 

In an older house, skylights might be a better choice in upstairs rooms or a developed attic. The integrity of style becomes less of an issue in these spaces, but design is still important. 

If you’re thinking about installing a skylight, here are a few tips:  

First, involve a first-rate roofer. This is where these folks earn their money. A skylight is, ultimately, a hole in your roof, so it’s best to be very careful about how you do that since leakage is quite likely to result if everything isn’t done just right. Also, a carpenter must be sure that the wooden members to be cut through are properly supported as the hole is created. If a rafter or joist is cut through to accommodate a skylight of more than about 2’ in width, the member must be joined to the neighboring members by use of a “trimmer.” These are generally installed in pairs (doubled up) and the neighboring members (joists or rafters) must sometimes be doubled up or “sistered” if the resulting load is going to be too great. A skilled contractor should be consulted and lumber sizing tables may need to be consulted. For a skylight of about 16” square this isn’t an issue. For a 2’ skylight, the ceiling joist may need some strengthening. A 4’ skylight is where things get more critical. A skylight that is narrow and long, running down between the joists, can provide a lot of light with a minimum of framing. This also has less leak potential per lumen (unit of light) since the leakage tends to be associated with the top edge. 

For more modern spaces a skylight can also be placed on a diamond or an odd angle for fun. This isn’t that hard for a skilled carpenter and the cost won’t be much more so don’t miss out on cool details because you’re afraid of cost. The real cost will result in hiring the wrong folks and dealing with years of leakage. 

When I got started, skylights were mostly single-layered (or “glazed”) but today, the double-layered bubble or double-glazed type is much more common and thank goodness. Skylights are, after all, placed where the heat gathers and the cold wind wants to “convect” the heat away. There is no window in your house more important to double insulate than your skylight. 

Skylights need to be “flashed” to the roof. In other words, a series of roofing pieces, which continue to overlap and carry the water away down the roof, must be installed around the shape of the “curb” or lip that gets built onto the roof surface. This set of flashings must be installed exactly right so that water doesn’t ever get the chance to drop into that “hole” you’ve just cut in your roof. This is by no means impossible but it’s not for the inexperienced and, again, leave it to a really good roofer. The curb, hole and skylight mounting is less important. Good roof safety is critical. No job is worth the cost of falling off a roof. 

As I mentioned, the skylight is where the heat goes and it’s cold just above. This heat differential can and often does cause condensation to form in the skylight and to weep down the well between roof and ceiling. This is often mistaken for leakage and often a cause of consternation. A vented skylight is less apt to do this, as is a double insulated one but this is no guarantee.  

If you have excess moisture entering your dwelling from the crawlspace or from gas appliances (like stoves, teapots, water heaters and dryers), they can contribute. This may be your chance to find out why the basement is moldy and to finally address the elevated humidity in your house (but that’s definitely another article). So, don’t be surprised if you have weeping skylight syndrome. 

Lastly, let’s take a minute to look at some old and new choices. For slanted roofs, a Velux roof window is a really nice choice. Be sure to buy the correct flashing kit. For a flatter roof, a well built and roofed curb is critical. These babies really beg to leak if not done right. For big light on a small budget, check out one of the new types of tube skylights, such as a Solatube or Sun-Dome. Velux makes one too and I’m very fond of their products because they seem very intent on making sure that the contractor has what they need to do the job right. These tube types are very inexpensive, fairly easy to install and more leak proof since they are modular and require almost no framing modification. They are essentially self-flashing, which is not a guarantee but they are a bit more fool proof (although, as we all know, there is no limit to the wreckage a true fool can manifest). Tube skylights are very modern, so think about what they’ll look like. Nonetheless, I see them as a real asset. 

Here’s an exciting notion that you might take a look at. Solar-Tube type skylights can be quite long and can easily run from a roof, all the way down to a basement if a 1-2’ square space can be found for the trip. The corner of a closet or an abandoned chimney shaft (you’ve been meaning to take that crumbly old thing out anyway) can be enough room for one of these and when you punch through into that dank basement room, you’ll be astounded at the volume of light these silvery tubes can retain and deliver. This is a project that I consider well worth the effort because the result can be so fulfilling. 

Think of skylights as an alternative energy source since they substitute for electric light and, during the day and well into dusk, keep the use of lights at a minimum. This of course applies to all fenestration but most prominently to skylights. When you price this job, consider the electric savings you’ll have over the years, as well as the decreased carbon you’ll be adding to the air and water. 

Remember that skylights are extremely effective and sometimes TOO effective. A small skylight can deliver more light than a wall of windows simply because that’s where the light is. So don’t overdo it. When you paint in this medium, a little goes a long, long way. 

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

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. 

You know, just past the trailer park they’re going to evict for development. That intersection. 

It’s been a while since I’ve dropped in there. The nursery backs onto San Pablo Creek, with a deck set high over the banks looking down on a mix of invasive exotics like German and Algerian ivy, plain-green houseplant tradescantia, and what looks very much like pokeweed. I’ve always liked to stop and scan for birds in the creekside trees—there were a few housefinches, one of them singing, last weekend, and I swear we were hearing geese somewhere—and stand on tiptoe to look over the wall at the creek.  

It’s clear that the recent freeze took a bite out of the stock. The bananas were sulking (though their central growing points looked healthy); some of the six-pack shelves were bare. But the annual color was cheerful, there were plenty of evergreens, and all the citrus looked unfazed.  

And yes, the place is for sale. I talked to owner Kikue Tokuyoshi-Wong, who cited a combination of family necessities and market pressures: “The big-box stores have really hurt us all, of course.” People don’t know any better than to want instant, maintenance-free gardens, in which they think of plants as wallpaper or furniture.  

We spent a few minutes in the kind of gossip I’ve engaged in too often: who used to own what nursery (that’s the jolly part) and when it closed down (the mournful part). Mostly this is family stories: rather a lot of the owners of our remaining family-owned nurseries are related to each other, at least by marriage. 

It bugs me that so many of these old-line nurseries are biting the dust, not just because I’m sentimental. We lose unique knowledge bases and history, and sometimes even plant varieties that have been propagated here over generations. There are heirloom nurseries just as there are heirloom tomatoes.  

Even non-propagating nurseries, which serve entirely as plant retailers rather than growers, have stores of lore about what does well in their parts of town, the sort of oral guidebook that a loyal customer base has let them accumulate.  

There’s no way to predict how long the sale of Ken’s Nursery might take. Prices aren’t reduced, though they’re certainly reasonable; it’s just interesting stuff at an interesting place.  

Get up there soon and maybe you’ll get some of those bush blueberries or kumquat or calamondin or bai makrut trees before I do. Look the other fruit trees over—apple, peach, cherry, Asian pear, greengage—for interesting varieties, ask about their chill requirements, try one anyway. Planting a fruit tree is a better gamble than you’ll get at the casino.  

Ken’s Nursery 

2364 Road 20, San Pablo 

234-1541 

Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. (5:30 during DST) 

Weekends 9 a.m.-4 p.m. 

Closed Wednesdays 

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

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. 

How can this be? The main problem is that not one city or county in the Bay Area has adopted a retrofit code. Many inadequate retrofits are being done by well-meaning contractors who don’t know the basic engineering principles of a good retrofit. All the inspector does is make sure that the contractor did what he said he was going to do—there’s no check of correct engineering.  

What to do? First, call your head building inspector or city manager and tell them you’d like to see a retrofit code put in place. Second, if your house has been retrofitted, have a properly trained retrofit professional make sure it was done right. Also, to see a great explanation of what makes a good retrofit, check out www.bayarearetrofit.com. 

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

TUESDAY, FEB. 6 

FILM 

Alternative Visions “The Other Side” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Leslie Scalapino and Rae Armantrout read at 7:30 p.m. at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Jon Sullivan with show slides and talk about “Berkeley: The One and Only” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Donna Bee-Gates discusses “I Want It Now: Navigating Childhood in a Materialistic World” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zabava and Yalazia, Balkan, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

S.F. Bluegrass & Old Time Festival with Earl Brothers, Circle R Boys and Dyad at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Barbara Linn & John Schott at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ignacio Berroa Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 7 

THEATER 

“Colorstruck” Donald Lacey’s one-man show at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, through Feb. 11. Tickets are $5-$15. 663-5683. 

FILM 

“Race to Execution” on the factors that influence who lives and who dies at the hands of the state, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Oakland. Free. 238-2200. 

Film 50: History of Cinema “The Man with a Movie Camera” at 3 p.m. and Compilations “LunchFilms” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Brian Copeland, author of “Not a Genuine Black Man, or How I Claimed My Piece of Ground in the Lily-White Suburbs” will speak at 6 p.m. at the African American Museum and Library, 659 14th St., Oakland. 637-0200. 

Woodruff Minor describes “The Archecture of Ratcliff” at 7:30 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

Brenda Webster reads from her translation of Edith Bruck’s “Letter to My Mother” a memoir of her life in wartime Auschwitz, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert with Jared Redmond, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

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

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

Gerard Landry & the Lariats, Cajun/Zydeco. at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Antioquia at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Ignacio Berroa Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Clive Carroll, fingerstyle guitarist, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

THURSDAY, FEB. 8 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Flight Out of Time” Exhibition of contemporary prints by Barbara Foster, Jimin Lee and Tadayoshi Nakabayashi opens at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave., and runs to March 17. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

“A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s” Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

“Paintings of Abu Ghraib” by Fernando Botero at 190 Doe Library, UC Campus, through March 23. 643-5651. www.clas.berkeley.edu 

“Used and Re-Used: decorative objects made from utilitarian materials” at the The Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. through March 31. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

"The Children of Chaguitillo” Photography exhibition by Harold Adler Reception form 6 to 9 p.m. at Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave. through March 31. 472-3170. 

Michael Howerton “Portraits” at Chachie’s Coffee Shop, 1768 Broadway at 19th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs though Feb. 28. www.howertonphoto.blogspot.com 

“100 Families in Oakland: Art & Social Change” at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts.. Oakland, through April 22. 238-2200. 

“African Art” by Okaybabs, Yinka Adeyemi, Adeyinka Fashokun, honoring Black History Month. Reception at 4:30 p.m. at the LuchStop Cafe, joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to March 30. 817-5773. 

“Transforming Vision: The Wood Sculpture of William Hunter, 1970-2005” at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts.. Oakland, through March 18. 238-2200. 

“Fire in the Heart” Paintings by Foad Satterfield influenced by African art at the Community Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave., through March 2. 204-1667. 

“Street Portraiture” Photographs by Tom Stone at The LightRoom Gallery, 2263 Fifth St., through Feb. 28. 649-8111. 

“Revisions” Works by Amy Berk using Jewish ceremonial textiles on display at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., through Aug. 5. 549-6950. 

“Environmental Surrealism” works by Guy Colwell and Michelle Waters at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland, through Feb. 23. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

“Berkeley: 75 Years Ago” at the Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Hours are Thurs.-Sat., 1 to 4 p.m. Exhibit runs through March. 848-0181.  

“Art of Living Black” at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond, and runs through March 16. 620-6772. www.richmondartcenter.org 

Oakland Art Association Juried Show at the MTC Offices, Bort MetroCenter, 3rd floor, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 30. 817-5773. 

FILM 

“Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson’s American Journey” at 7 p.m., at Ellen Driscoll Theater, Frank Havens School, 325 Highland Ave., near Oakland Ave., Piedmont. Judge Henderson will speak after the film. Presented by Appreciating Diversity Film Series. 835-9227. 

Film Series with David Thomson “Rio Bravo” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Conversations on Museums with David Behar, Israeli artist, at 6:30 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell describe “A Thousand Names for Joy: A Life in Harmnony with the Way Things Are” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

Dana Whitaker describes “Transforming Lives $40 at a Time: Women and Mircrofinance” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Pauline Chen describes “Final Exam: A Young Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

John Searle will discuss “Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflection on Free Will, Language, and Political Power” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

SF Bluegrass & Old Time Festival with The Mercury Dimes, Flat Mountain Girls, Jeff Kazor & Lisa Berman at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Martyn Joseph, contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mark Robinson & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Duarte, guitar, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Chaplain, Dead Ringer, Scene of Action at 8:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Pat Martino at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, FEB. 9 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “True West” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Feb. 17. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Altarena Playhouse Rogers and Hammerstein’s “A Grand Night for Singing” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 17. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre Company “The Birthday Party” Wed. - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through March 4. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep “The Pillowman” at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through March 11. Tickets are $33-$61. 647-2949. 

Black Repertory Group “Love Don’t Cost a Thang” a gospel play at 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Cost is $15. 472-5608. 

“Colorstruck” Donald Lacey’s one-man show at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, through Feb. 11. Tickets are $5-$15. 663-5683. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito., through March 3. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theatre “Cartoon” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, through March 10. Tickets are $10-$15. www.impacttheatre.com 

The Marsh “Shopping for God” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at 2120 Allston Way, through March 3. Tickets are $15-$22. 1-800-838-5750. www.themarsh.org 

Masquers Playhouse “Arsenic and Old Lace” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., though Feb. 24, at 105 Park Playhouse, Point Richmond. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. 

Ragged Wing Ensemble “The Tempest” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at The Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St., behind Willard Middle School. Runs through Feb. 17. Tickets are $15-$25. 800-838-3006. www.raggedwing.org 

TheatreFirst “Nathan the Wise” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Old Oakland Theater, 481 Ninth St. at Broadway, Oakland, through March 4. Tickets are $21-$25. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Obsession” Works of Fire and Passion Group Show opens with a reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave., and runs to March 3. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

Tony Bellaver “Interventions” Performance art from 1 to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Donations accepted. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

FILM 

The Lubitsch Touch “The Love Parade” at 7 p.m. and “Monte Carlo” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

P.J. O’Rourke reads from “On the Wealth of Nations” at 6:30 p.m. at The Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Reception at 6:30 p.m., program at 7 p.m. Cost is $15-$30. For reservations call 632-1366. 

Jonathan Raban introduces his novel “Surveillance” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alan Chen piano, at noon at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Healing Muses “Trillium” Three harps and two fiddles, at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

Alam Kahn, Indian classical music at 8 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $15. 526-9146. 

Orquesta La Moderna Tradición, Cuban charanga music, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Spanish Harlem Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Hurricane Sam & The Hotshots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Callaloo, Caribbean, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Darryl Henriques “The Social Secutiry Show” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Arlington Houston Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Tartuffi, Pillows, Tippy Canoe at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Albino, Afro-beat, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Pat Martino at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, FEB. 10 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Uncle Eye & the Strange Change Machine at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Dragonwings” An Active Arts Theater production for ages 7-14, Sat. at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater for the Arts, 2640 College Ave, through Feb. 25. Tickets are $14 children, $18 adults. 925-798-1300. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Richmond Art Center Winter Exhibitions Reception for artists at 3 p.m. at 2540 Barrett Ave., entrance at 25th St., Richmond. 620-6772. www.therichmondartcenter.org 

“All Heart” A collaborative show with Children’s Hospital Aokland and Art For Life Foundation. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. Runs through March 9. 644-4930. 

“Found Object Robots” Reception for the artist, Richard Amoroso, at 2 p.m. at the LAkeview Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 550 El Embarcadero, Oakland. 238-7344. 

“Sexicon: The Art and Language of Erotica” Reception at 9 p.m. at Living Room Gallery, 3230 Adeline St. Cost is $6. www.myspace.com/livingroomcollective 

FILM 

A Theater Near You “The Cabinet of the Brothers Quay, Program 1” at 6:30 p.m. and “institute Benjamenta” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mary Ellen Jones, Gary Norris Gray and Patriece read from their works at 3 p.m. at the African American Museum and Library, 659 154th St., Oakland. 637-0200. 

Selene Steese and Jan Steckel, featured poets, at 7 p.m. at The Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St., Alameda. Admission free, donations accepted. 523-6957. 

Renay Jackson, author of “Oaktown Devil” reads from his latest book “Crack City” at 2 p.m. at the Elmhurst Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 1427 88th Ave. 615-5727. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival: John Schott’s Dream Kitchen, guitar, tuba, drums trio, at 8 p.m. at The Fidelity Bank Building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Spring Concert at 8 p.m. at Valley Center, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. 

Healing Muses “La Vie en Rose” at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

Martha & Monica “100 Years of Russian Revolution” music for cello and piano at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Steve Taylor-Ramirez at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

“Queen of Spain” musical theater at 5 p.m. at Music Sources, 1000 The Alameda. For reservations call 528-1658. 

Spanish Harlem Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Alúna, traditional Colombian music, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ed Reed & Peck Allmond All-Star Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Samba Ngo, African-Congolese, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Joshua Eden and Jeremy Hox at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Upsurge! jazz-poetry ensemble, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Moment’s Notice with Deanna Anderson, Antyne, Peter Giordano and others at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Tickets are $8-$10. 847-1119. 

Dangerous Rhythm with Tim Fox at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Lost Cats, swing, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Battle of the Bands: Finals at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. All ages. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

John Howland Trio, Nucleus, Wayward Monks at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Pat Martino at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, FEB. 11 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Mitali Perkins introduces “Rickshaw Girl” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Ira Marlowe sings songs for children under ten, at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Recent Works of Changming Meng” Reception for the artist at 3 p.m. at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave., Suite #4. 421-1255. www.altagalleria.com 

“A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s” Guided tour at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

FILM 

Screenagers: Bay Area High School Film and Video Festival at noon and 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Architecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Meet at the koi pond, first level at 1 p.m. 238-2200. 

Luis Garcia and Richard Krech read at 7:30 at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

“Measure of Time” Gallery talk with Bill Berkson at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Poetry Flash presents Martha Collins and Diana O’Hehir at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Spring Concert at 2 p.m. at Valley Center, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Special outreach concert, free for students and seniors. 849-9776. 

Chamber Music Sundaes featuring San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends in concert at 3 p.m. at St John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door are $18-$22. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

Dawn Upshaw, soprano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $68. 642-9988.  

Community Women’s Orchestra at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1331 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $10, children free. 463-0313. www.communitywomensorchestra.org 

Healing Muses “Sweet Persuasions to Enjoy” music from 17th centry England at 5 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

Seth Montfort and Thomas Penders, piano, at 5:30 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. 848-1228. 

Soulful Swing Jazz Duo, Yancie Taylor, vibraphone, Ben Stolorow, piano, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. berkeleyartcenter.org 

Aileen Chanco and Raja Rahman, piano duo at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. at Sacramento. Tickets are $12. 559-2941. www.crowden.org 

“Sounds New” Contemporary American classic music at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kendington. Suggested Donation $10-$15. 524-2912. www.SoundsNewUS.org 

Ms Pumpkin’s Talent Show at 6 p.m. at Black Reportory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $35. 652-2120. 

Pappa Gianni and the North Beach Band at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Black Irish Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Bob Marley Birthday Tribute with Soja, Native Elements at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

MONDAY, FEB. 12 

FILM 

United Nations Association Film Festival “Armenian Lullaby” and “Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $8-$10. 769-7350. www.unaff.org 

SF Independent Film Festival “Stalking Santa” at 7 p.m. and “Unholy Women” at 9:30 p.m. at the California Theater, 2113 Kittredge St. Tickets are $10 for each screening. 464-5980. sfindie.com 

THEATER 

Shakespeare Intensive “Henry V” staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, Fireside Room, 1925 Cedar at Bonita. Other plays to be read each Mon. to Feb. 26. Cost is $5. 276-3871. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Monday Night Blues Lecture and performance held every Mon. night during Black History Month at 8 p.m. at Kimball’s Carnival, 522 Second St. Donation $5. 836-2227. 

Poetry from the Heart, readings and open mic at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Kensington. 524-3043. 

Poetry Express with Amy Ehrlick at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Livingston Taylor at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Brandon Marsalis at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $26-$30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  

OLD TIME MUSIC IN BERKELEY 

The San Francisco Bluegrass and Old Time Festival journeys across the bay to Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse with a show featuring the Earl Brothers, Circle R Boys and Dyad at 8 p.m. Tuesday. $15.50-$16.50. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org.  

NOT A GENUINE BLACK MAN 

Brian Copeland, the author and performer behind Not a Genuine Black Man, or How I Claimed My Piece of Ground in the Lily-White Suburbs, will speak at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the African American Museum and Library. 659 14 St., Oakland. 637-0200. 

‘FLIGHT OUT OF TIME’ AT KALA INSTITUTE 

An exhibition of contemporary prints by Barbara Foster, Jimin Lee and Tadayoshi Nakabayashi entitled “Flight Out of Time” opens Thursday and runs through March 17 at the Kala Art Institute.  

1060 Heinze Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org. 

A THOUSAND DECISIONS IN THE DARK 

Film critic David Thomson continues his film and discussion series examining the state of cinema toward the end of the 1950s with a screening of Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959) at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Pacific Film Archive.$4-$8. 2575 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

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. 

This, he had not expected of the North Americans. Compelled to respond to this outrage with pencil and brush, he spent the next 14 months creating over a hundred drawings and paintings, based on the photographs which had been published showing the humiliation, abuse, depravity and torture. 

Botero, Latin America’s most celebrated artist, has been known for his whimsical, lighthearted pneumatic figures. Retaining aspects of his personal style, he now addressed issues of deep human concern. The victims in the paintings, currently on view at Doe Library are still volumetric and refer to the Renaissance tradition. 

Botero, growing up in rural Colombia, went first to Mexico and was indelibly impressed by the by the murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros which used modern syntax for an art that would speak to the people. Botero went on to Paris, but was drawn to Florence. It was the Florentine Renaissance painters—Giotto, Massacio, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, who gave volume and flesh to the human body and who conveyed space in artistic terms. The large bodies in the Abu Ghraib series occupy this Renaissance space. The grid of the cell bars in many of the paintings give clear structure to the compositions. 

But we have to look for precedent of these powerful works beyond the formal aspects. They relate to all the paintings of tortured martyrs and, above all, to the pictures of the Crucifixion. In later art they reiterate the horrific paintings and etchings by Goya, especially the bleeding corpses and severed limbs in his “Disasters of War.” And, of course Picasso, whose painting of “Guernica” has eternalized and universalized the first bombing from the air of the small Basque town. “Art is permanent accusation,” Botero said.  

Close to our own time Leon Golub’s “Mercenaries” of the 1980s, relating America’s covert operations in Latin America come to mind. Whereas Golub focused on the perpetrators, Botero spares us the well known images of Pfc England leading naked prisoners on a dog’s leash. We must remember that, while these uneducated soldiers were court-martialled, the initiators of the torture program were never touched. Indeed, Alberto Gonzales, who probably was in charge of the program, was rewarded by the “Decider” who appointed him attorney general of the United States. The banality of evil is only too apparent. 

Botero shows us the degradation, the pain and suffering of the prisoners. They are blindfolded while pain is inflicted on their persons. Nakedness is great humiliation to Muslims. Here they are made to wear brassieres and pink panties. The torturers are indicated by green gloves and heavy boots or the stream of piss directed at the helpless bodies. Sado-massochistic acts as well as forced homosexual ones are displayed. And there are the grey-green hellhounds, staring at the victims, bearing their razor-sharp teeth as they brutally attack the defenseless naked victims. 

The exhibition at Doe Library on the Berkeley Campus was organized by the Center for Latin American Studies, which transformed a computer room into a fine exhibition space in record time. The exhibition was offered to the Berkeley Art Museum, which did not have the space, the time slot or the inclination to mount this exhibition, which is without doubt the most controversial and important show seen hereabouts in many years.

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. 

Ernst’s play—in which he performs as a musician in a three-man band backing the constant action onstage—is the story of an older country woman from the Border States and her confinement, against her will, in a care facility, spun out in her dreams, her squabbles with the head nurse, her private anguish and considerable humor. It’s told in the latest edition of Ernst’s celebrated performance style, as directed with choreographic precision and imagination by Jon Tracy and performed by a talented four-player ensemble. 

“It’s a little like combining film acting with stage,” said Ernst. “When the audience is this close, everybody can see the smallest expressions.” 

Ernst became a big part of the local cultural scene in the ‘70s, after he arrived with playwright John O’Keefe from Iowa, where both had been involved with the famed Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, and where Ernst cofounded a performance group inspired by Polish Theatre Lab’s Jerzy Grotowski’s ideas. 

Ernst and O’Keefe worked with The Magic during its Berkeley days, and when founder John Lion parted company with the troupe, “he kept the warehouse that had been the scene shop for storage, and let us live and work there. Our wonderful, eccentric landlord never figured it out! [Clown] Dave Shine joined us from Iowa. [Mime and author] Leonard Pitt, another Grotowski connection, was just up the street. It was our whole world—I seldom had to travel much, just from cafe to cafe, and often just on Shattuck.” 

From 1975 until the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989, Ernst was resident in Blake Street, mainly doing solo performances and teaching workshops. He kept the warehouse into the 1990s, “but the earthquake did us in; the advanced legacy of Reaganomics didn’t help either.” 

Then “love brought me to Marin,” where he now resides, “and I was driving all the time back to the East Bay, the city, down the Peninsula, wherever I was working,” wearing his different hats as playwright, teacher, and, increasingly, actor in demand with professional companies like ACT and touring shows. 

Jeanette Harrison of Alter (short for Alternative) Theater called him up two and a half years ago, but Ernst was committed to projects and couldn’t perform with the brand-new troupe. “I told Jeanette about the play, then a solo piece for an actress with band, and she shepherded it through a long—and continuing—development, including staged readings at a rocking chair store and Z Space in the city. And got us grants. It’s from the experience of having my own mother in a care facility. Catherine isn’t my mother, but a lot of the situations are the same.” 

Ernst teaches as guest artist at Marin’s Tamalpais High and in SF’s Mission High for the California Young Playwrights Project through the Magic. “It took me 20 years to realize the Bay Area isn’t a theater town, but a place where artists meet. I don’t know what it is, the mountain, the latitude ... Catherine’s Care’s a bit dark—the essence of life is a kind of tragedy—so the audience is unsure when to laugh. But the other night we had a bunch of college kids in to watch, and they had no problem knowing when to laugh.” 

CATHERINE’S CARE 

7:30 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 18. $20 (pay what you will Thursday, Feb. 8). 1557 Fourth St., San Rafael (Central San Rafael exit).www.altertheater.org (415) 454-2787. Free parking.

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.  

(If you don’t know from tree anatomy and physiology, you have no business pruning—just as, if you don’t know the anatomical differences between a dog and a squid, you have no business clipping your puppy’s toenails, never mind doing veterinary surgery.)  

If you’re messing with a tree or shrub now, you’d better take a long close look within it for inhabitants first, because our local songbirds’ nesting season has begun.  

Anna’s hummingbirds are year-round residents here. Two other hummingbird species are commonly seen in Berkeley: Allen’s hummingbird, which breeds here but migrates out in fall; and rufous hummingbird, a migrant that passes through on the way north in spring. (In fall, most of the rufous population migrates south via the Sierra, taking advantage of the summer flowers that bloom months later there than their brethren down here around sea level.)  

Male Anna’ses have been putting on their aerial territorial displays since December, at least. We have a mad turf war going on at our place as a younger male is trying to usurp our longtime resident, Himself. This is made difficult by the fact that our feeders are on the front and back porches and not visible from any one point. Intense crazy chases around the house and around the house again occur daily.  

More significantly, a female Anna’s—distinguishable by her more cryptic coloring, with no red throat gorget—was buzzing the windowframes and conifers last month and snatching up bits of spiderweb. She used these, along with lichens and bits of fuzz and her own spit, to build her tiny, neat, sturdy nest. We take care of our spiders here at the Blake Street Belfry, and that’s one reason why. Everything really is, as Muir said, hitched to everything else.  

Now she’s snatching bugs, which she’ll feed her kids. They need the protein to grow. Hummers usually supplement their nectar diet with insects, but when you see a female going for them persistently it’s a safe bet she’s feeding chicks.  

That’s quite an act to see. She thrusts that long bill down their eager little throats and pumps madly; it looks like a sword-swallower’s performance gone mad.  

She might have built that nest, by our standards at least, any old where. The nest in the photo was built in an office-complex courtyard on University Avenue, just above eye level, over a well-trafficked walkway. Joe and I have run into Anna’s hummers nesting in several local plant nurseries, once on an eye-level twig (I’m five-foot-four) in a 10-foot-tall potted ficus tree that was indoors, in the office shed, maybe 10 feet from the cashier’s desk.  

No shortage of traffic there, and lots of gawkers; the nursery managers had staked a card in the pot alerting everyone to the nest’s presence. The hummingbird was incubating her eggs, and as steadfast as Horton the Elephant. Every human there was on his or her best behavior, and didn’t get closer than, oh, arm’s-length, but we all looked and she looked right back, a fierce glare in her beady little eye.  

The nest in the picture is small—half a walnut shell would stretch the inside—and easy to miss if you haven’t seen one before. Right now, when the leaves are most sparse on the trees, is the best time to spot them. Get up a ladder and look for them before cutting. If you can’t do that, at least watch your trees for a few days, and see if there’s hummer traffic to one particular place. 

Remember: The bugs they’re all eating now are the ones that would otherwise be the parents of the generations that would spend next summer chomping on your garden.  

Other local species are working up to nesting season, too. You might have noticed that the house finches and goldfinches are singing, and that the musical males have female audiences. Some of those robins you’re hearing are getting ready to migrate north, and working off their hormones; others will likely hang around and establish breeding territories in the next month or two. Still others will migrate in from farther south. Jostling will ensue.  

Great horned owls might have great big chicks in the nest already; they start early. The Bewick’s wren that has been singing in our neighborhood all winter might be getting seriously amorous this month, and will nest early next month.  

We’re not the only species that inhabits our cities, and we’d be much worse off if we were. The least we can do is to be aware of our neighbors, and behave well accordingly.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

A female Anna’s hummingbird (Callypte anna) on her nest. 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.  

TUESDAY, FEB. 6 

Disaster Preparedness in Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville A brown bag lunch event sponsored by the League of Women Voters, at noon at Albany Library Edith Stone Room, Marin and Masonic Avenues, Albany. 843-8824. 

“Thirst” A documentary on the politics of the bottled water industry in the U.S. and the world, followed by discussion with producers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Cost is $5-$10. Part of the BFUU Social Justice Committee's Conscientious Projector series. 644-4956. 

Kayaking Alaska’s Inside Passage A slide show with Julie Hinkle and Zephyr Sincerny at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Livable Streets: Celebration, Reflection, And The Future Of A Path-Breaking Legacy at 7 p.m. at 112 Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley Campus. 

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. 

WriterCoach Connection seeks volunteers to help students improve their writing and thinking skills. Commit to 1-2 hours per week during the school day and work one-on-one with students in their English classes. Training from noon to 3 p.m. or from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. For information call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

Sports Nutrition with Carol Lourie on genomic testing, nutritional suppements and accupuncture at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Volunteer Storyreaders Needed Training classes begin at 6 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 5366 College Ave. Registration required. 238-7453. 

Animal Communication Consultations from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For appointment call 525-6255. 

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

Discussion Salon on Social Change and Activism at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda.548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 7 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Explore Oakland’s Shoreline Parks Meet at 10 am at the restrooms adjacent to parking lot at 7th St. and Middle Harbor Rd, Oakland. Dress in layers and bring water and snack for this level, wheelchair- and stroller-friendly walk of about two hours. 848 9358. www.berkeleypaths.org 

“Waves, Wetlands, and Watersheds” An interactive workshop for educators that covers watershed, coastal, and marine issues. From 4 to 6 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Registration required. 636-1684. www.ebparks.org 

Volunteer with the Native Plant Nursery Your help in the nursery will enable Save The Bay to continue restoration of some of the last remaining wetland habitat in the East Bay and help us reach our goal to plant 10,000 native wetland plants at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Park this winter. From 1 to 3 p.m. at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland. RSVP requested. 452-9261 ext. 109.  

Community Meeting on Pacific Steel Casting Tell the Mayor and Berkeley City Council: Stop Pacific Steel Casting's pollution. Our community deserves clean air & environmental justice! It is important for residents to show up and express their concerns about the ongoing pollution and violations at PSC. at 7 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 6th St. at Hearst. 415-248-5010. 

“Little House on a Small Planet” with Shay Salomon on the small house movement at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, 315A, UC Campus. http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

“Race to Execution” a documentary on the factors that influence who lives and who dies at the hands of the state, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Oakland. Free. 238-2200. 

Wild Goose Qi Gong classes at 5:45 p.m. at Rudramandir, Room 106, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th St. Cost is $15. 496-6047. 

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. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, FEB. 8 

“Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson’s American Journey” at 7 p.m., at Ellen Driscoll Theater, Frank Havens School, 325 Highland Ave., near Oakland Ave., Piedmont. Judge Henderson will speak after the film. Presented by Appreciating Diversity Film Series. 835-9227. 

“Breaking the Gridlock!” What will it take to have better transit in Berkeley? Panel and discussion, with Chris Peeples, AC Transit Board of Directors; Matt Nichols, City of Berkeley Transportation Planner; Betty Deakin, Director, Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar at Arch St. Free. 843-8724. 

“Little House on a Small Planet” Live in less space but have more room and enjoy it, with Shay Salomon of the small house movementand photographer Nigel Valdez at 7 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

“The Hydropolitics of Israel & Palestine” A slide presentation by Skip Shiel, followed by discussion at 7:30 p.m. at Friends Church , Fellowship Hall, 1600 Sacramento St. at Cedar. http://teeksaphoto.org 

Richmond Southeast Shoreline Area Community Group meets at 6:30 p.m. at the Richmond Convention Center, Bermuda Room, 403 Civic Center Plaza, Nevin and 25th Sts. For information call 540-3923. To volunteer call 367-5379. 

East Bay Macintosh Users Group Learn how to sync your Mac to your cell phone or PDA, at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. www.ebmug.org 

Café Literario, a Spanish book discussion group begins a new session at 7 p.m. at the West Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 1125 University Ave. 981-6140. 

Storytime for Babies and Toddlers at 10:30 a.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Family Story Time for children ages 3-7 at the Berkeley Public Library, North Branch, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins. 981-6107. 

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, writer, on “False Self/True Self” at 7 p.m. at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito St. off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 625-5831.  

FRIDAY, FEB. 9 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Ed Klinenberg on “Dramatic Impressions of China.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

Forum on Bullying In The Workplace and The Role of The Unions In Fighting It from 4 to 6 p.m. in Room G-209, Laney College, Oakland. Go up the stairs where Eighth St. ends at Fallon St. and turn right. 464-3181. 

First Annual Chinese New Year Sidewalk Parade at 6 p.m. starting at the top/east of Solano Ave. 527-5358. 

“On the Wealth of Nations” A evening with humorist P.J. O’Rourke at 6:30 p.m. at The Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Reception at 6:30 p.m., program at 7 p.m. Cost is $15-$30. For reservations call 632-1366. 

Womansong Circle A participatory circle of song for women at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing. Donation $15-$20.  

“An Inconvenient Truth” screening at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Unit 4 Dorms, 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, FEB. 10 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Exploration of Wildcat Canyon Regional Park with ethnologist and wildlife biologist Jim Hale. The walk includes several rock sites used by Native Americans and is followed by an optional drive to see rock art at nearby Poinsett Park in El Cerrito. Meet at 10 am at the Wildcat Canyon Staging Area, Park Ave. 0.1 mile northeast of McBryde Ave., Richmond. Bring water and lunch. Dress in layers and be prepared for rain and mud. 925-939-4304. www.berkeleypaths.org  

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $3-$5. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Demystifying Tofu and Tempeh” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45, plus $5 materials fee. To register call 531-2665. www.compassionatecooks.com 

“Taking Out Country Back From the Right: A Strategy for Liberals and Progressive for the Coming Two Years” with Rabbi Michael Lerner at 7:30 p.m. at Twin Towers United Methodist Church, Oak and Central, Alameda. Presented by the Alameda Public Affairs Forum. www.alamedaforum.org 

“Principles and Controversies of Evolution” with David Seaborg, evolutionary biologist, to Celebrate Darwin Day at 1 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., midtown Oakland. 393-5685. 

“Conservation Biology” A symposium from 8 a.m. to 7 pm. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Register on-line www.bacbs.org 

“Ethnography of Roses” with horticulturist Peter Klement from 10 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $15-$20. Registration required. 643-2755. 

“The Orchid Guy” Brian Petraska will give an overview of orchids and their culture, at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. Bring an orchid that you want to re-pot. 704-8222. 

“Does Humor Belong in Buddhism?” A conference beginning on Fri. at 4 p.m. with a lecture by Donald Lopez on “What’s So Funny About the Laughing Buddha?” in the Toll Room, Alumni House, UC Campus. Conference continues on Sat. For details call 643-6536. http://buddhiststudies.berkeley.edu/events 

Great War Society, East Bay Chapter, meets to discuss “German & British Military Revisions, 1917-1918” by Robert Deward, at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

Origami for Valentine’s Day from 3 to 4 p.m. at the Art and Music Room, 5th Flr., Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale Sat. from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sun. from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room of the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. To volunteer call 526-3720, ext. 5. 

Choosing Green Building Materials For Your Remodel from 9 to 11 a.m. at Truitt & White, 1817 Second St. Free, but registration required. 649-2674. 

Healing Muses Balkan Dance Workshop with Catherine Sutton from 10 a.m. to noon at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

Healing Muses Workshop on Songs from the French Renaissance from 4 to 6 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

“Love Stories From the Heart” at 9 a.m. at Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters, at 1950 Franklin St., Room 2F. RSVP required, ID needed to get into building. 581-8675. 

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. 

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

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 11 

Rainbow Berkeley’s 8th Annual Berkeley Pride Celebration at 5 p.m. at the Gaia Building, 2120 Alston Way. Suggested donation at the door is $10 to $20. No one turned away for lack of funds. 658-8143. 

Berkeley Hiking Club Explores Berkeley Pathways This 8-mile hike begins at 9 a.m. For information on how to join, please call 524-4715. 

“Open Garden” Join the Little Farm gardener for composting, planting, watering and reaping the rewards of our work, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cancelled only by heavy rain. 525-2233.  

Oakland 2007 Tet Festival Celebrate Vietnamese New Year from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Clinton Park, Oakland, with food, entertainment, and traditional cultural rituals. 436-5391. www.vaced.org 

Workshop on Rounds and Harmony Singing at 1:30 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

“A Rabbi’s Consideration of the Da Vinci Code” with Rabbi Harry A. Manhoff at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 535-0302, ext. 306.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin CAton on “I Can’t Meditate!” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, FEB. 12 

“The Evolution of Influenza Viruses in the 20th and 21st Centuries” with Dr. Arnold Levine at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Free. www.msri.org 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING 

Berkeley Winter Campaign for Cats We are providing free trapping assistance and spay/neuter to feral and homeless cats in Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville and Piedmont, through March 2007. The cats will be spayed/neutered, vaccinated, treated for fleas and returned safely back to their neighborhoods. To report a neighborhood in need or to volunteer, please contact Caitlin at 908-0709. 

Albany Berkeley Girls Softball League Open to girls in grades 1-9. Spring season begins March 3. To register call 869-4277. www.abgsl.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Tues., Feb. 6, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.  

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

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 8, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Feb. 8, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.  

FRIDAY, FEB. 2 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “True West” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Feb. 17. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Altarena Playhouse Rogers and Hammerstein’s “A Grand Night for Singing” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 17. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre Company “The Birthday Party” Wed. - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through March 4. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep “The Pillowman” at 8 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through March 11. Tickets are $33-$61. 647-2949. 

Black Repertory Group “Wild Roots” at 8:30 p.m. and Sat. at 2:30 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $5-$25. 652-2120. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito., through March 3. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theatre “Cartoon” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, through March 10. Tickets are $10-$15. www.impacttheatre.com 

The Marsh “Shopping for God” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at 2120 Allston Way, through March 3. Tickets are $15-$22. 1-800-838-5750. www.themarsh.org 

Masquers Playhouse “Arsenic and Old Lace” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., though Feb. 24, at 105 Park Playhouse, Point Richmond. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. 

Ragged Wing Ensemble “The Tempest” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at The Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St., behind Willard Middle School. Runs through Feb. 17. Tickets are $15-$25. 800-838-3006. www.raggedwing.org 

Word for Word “Strangers We Know” through Sun. at 8 p.m. at 2640 College Ave, through Feb. 4. Tickets are $25-$33. 925-798-1300.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Michael Howerton “Portraits” Reception with the artist at 8 p.m. at Chachie’s Coffee Shop, 1768 Broadway at 19th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs though Feb. 28. www.howertonphoto. 

blogspot.com 

“Often Forgotten” New work by Derek Weisberg and Percy Fells. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at the Boontling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 295-8811. 

Maya Kabat and David Seiler “New Works” opens with a reception at 6 p.m. at the Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave. at Broadway, Oakland, and runs through Feb. 28. 

Tony Bellaver “Interventions” Performance art from 1 to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Donations accepted. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

“Still I Rise” Recent art by Bryan Keith Thomas. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Runs through Feb. 26. 465-8928. 

“Piece of My Heart” Group show reception at 7 p.m. at Back Room Gallery eclectix at 7523 Fairmount Ave., El Cerrito. 364-7261. 

“Take Six: The Art of Living Black” Reception with the artists at 7 p.m. at the WCRC Gallery, 5741 Telegraph Ave. 601-4040. 

FILM 

African Film Festival “The Night of Truth” at 7 p.m. and “U-Carmen eKhayelitsha” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s” Symposium at 1 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Mike Henderson “Art & Singing the Blues” a slide talk at 6:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Cost is $5-$10. 238-2200. 

Tim Wendel reads from his sports novel set in pre-revolutionary Cuba, “Castro’s Curveball” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

“UnPacking” Spoken word and dance performance by Marissa Saunders to benefit the Women's Cancer Resource Center at 8 p.m. at 2232 Martin Luther King, Oakland. Cost is $40-$50. unpackingmy@yahoo.com  

Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert on “Is It Hot in Here, Or Is It Me? The Complete Guide to Menopause” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Songs and Stories of the African American in the 21st Century with Rhodessa Jones at 8 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Free. 238-3842. 

Matt Rahaim, Hindustani vocal music, at noon at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Grupo Cacique y Kongo, Afro-Puerto Rican, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Kodo at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Free Jazz Fridays with Simon Rose, saxophone, Kjell Nordeson, percussion, Damon Smith bass, at 8 p.m. at 1510 8th Street Performance Space, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15.  

A Night of Voices at 9 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave. Oakland.  

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

Slammin, all-body band, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Tin Hat, chamber folk ensemble, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Bill Bell Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Stuart Rosh and Miena Yoo at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Happy Clams, Pickin’ Trix, Dan Lange at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Dave Stein BubHub at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Pieces of a Dream at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, FEB. 3 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Derique, the high-tech clown, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Street Portraiture” Photographs by Tom Stone Reception at 5 p.m. at The LightRoom Gallery, 2263 Fifth St., through Feb. 28. 649-8111. 

FILM 

The Lubitsch Touch “One Hour with You” at 6:30 p.m., “The Merry Widow” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition 27th Annual Poetry Contest and open reading at 3 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, Dining Hall, 1320 Addison St. Please park on the street. 527-9905. 

African American Celebration through Poetry from 1 to 4 p.m. at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline St. Free. 238-7352. 

Ellis Avery introduces her debut novel, “The Teahouse Fire” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“UnPacking” Spoken word and dance performance by Marissa Saunders to benefit the Women’s Cancer Resource Center at 8 p.m. at 2232 Martin Luther King, Oakland. Cost is $25. unpackingmy@yahoo.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jazz in Motion “In The Day Of Charles Hamilton” with Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo performing at 6 p.m. in the Berkeley High Little Theater. Free. 253-8235. 

John Fizer and Gary Wade at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Kodo at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Birdmonster, Poor Bailey, Minipop, Cold Hard Crash at 8:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Pellejo Seco, contemporary Cuban son, at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Medicine Ball with Pee Wee Crayton at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Zydeco Flames at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Naomi Adiv at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Lutsinga Music Ensemble, African dance/funk/jazz, at 9 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Epic Arts Birthday Party celebrations begin at 6 p.m. 644-2204. 

House Jacks, a capella, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Ben Stolorow Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Triple Ave., hip hop, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

The Flux, Socket at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Pieces of a Dream at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, FEB. 4 

THEATER 

Black Repertory Group “The Trial” a gospel play at 7:30 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $10-$15. 652-2120. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s” Guided tour at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

“Art from the 1960s” by Gayle Kaplan opens at 11 a.m. at Start Here Gallery, 2295 B San Pablo Ave., Entrance east of San Pablo on Bancroft. 707-937-3204. 

FILM 

The Lubitsch Touch “Rosita” at 2 p.m., “Design for Living” at 3:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Conversations on Art “The (Fabric)ation of Memory” intergenerational dialogue through the medium of textiles at 2 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950. 

Sandra Lim and Rebecca Black, poets, read at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“Are You Good Enough to be Published?” Symposium at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Kodo at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “Six Seasons” at 3 p.m., with a 2:30 p.m. pre-concert talk, at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Free. 415-248-1640. 

Cheap Suit Serenaders, ragtime and jazz, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$35.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Seth Montfort and Thomas Penders, piano, at 5:30 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. 848-1228. 

Twang Cafe with Town Mountain and Jimbo Trout, Bluegrass and Old Time music at 8 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.twangcafe.com 

Los Mapaches, Andean music, at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Kathy Zavada, singer/songwriter, at 6:30 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $15. 528-8844. 

Lakay, Rasi-n Banbou Band, Haitian, at 6:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Philips Marine Duo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MONDAY, FEB. 5 

THEATER 

Shakespeare Intensive “A Midsummer Nights Dream” staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, Fireside Room, 1925 Cedar at Bonita. Other plays to be read each Mon. to Feb. 26. Cost is $5. 276-3871. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Revisions” Works by Amy Berk using Jewish ceremonial textiles on display at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., through Aug. 5. 549-6950. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Paul Giganti will speak on “How a Book Goes from Idea to Hardbound” at 12:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave. Bring your lunch. 526-3720. 

Monday Night Blues Lecture and performance held every Mon. night during Black History Month at 8 p.m. at Kimball’s Carnival, 522 Second St. Donation $5. 836-2227. 

Rafe Esquith and the Hobart Shakespeareans on “Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire” at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $5 in advance at Cody’s or $10 at the door. Benefits the Berkeley Public Education Foundation. 559-9500. 

Actors Reading Writers “Odd Couples” Stories by Russell Banks and Padgett Powell at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free. 

David Smethurst reads from “Tripoli: The United States’ First War on Terror” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express with Stephanie Manning and Erik Haber at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

Last Word Poetry Series with Julia Vinograd at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

S.F. Bluegrass & Old Time Festival with Lost Coast, Homespun Rowdy, and Diana Jones at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

“Hot Frittatas” international cafe music, at 6 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre , 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

El Cerrito High and Portola Middle School Jazz Bands at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  

TUESDAY, FEB. 6 

FILM 

Alternative Visions “The Other Side” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Leslie Scalapino and Rae Armantrout read at 7:30 p.m. at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Jon Sullivan with show slides and talk about “Berkeley: The One and Only” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Donna Bee-Gates discusses “I Want It Now: Navigating Childhood in a Materialistic World” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zabava and Yalazia, Balkan, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

S.F. Bluegrass & Old Time Festival with Earl Brothers, Circle R Boys and Dyad at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Barbara Linn & John Schott at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ignacio Berroa Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 7 

THEATER 

“Colorstruck” Donald Lacey’s one-man show at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, through Feb. 11. Tickets are $5-$15. 663-5683. 

FILM 

“Race to Execution” on the factors that influence who lives and who dies at the hands of the state, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Oakland. Free. 238-2200. 

Film 50: History of Cinema “The Man with a Movie Camera” at 3 p.m. and Compilations “LunchFilms” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Brian Copeland, author of “Not a Genuine Black Man, or How I Claimed My Piece of Ground in the Lily-White Suburbs” will speak at 6 p.m. at the African American Museum and Library, 659 154th St., Oakland. 637-0200. 

Woodruff Minor describes “The Archecture of Ratcliff” at 7:30 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

Brenda Webster reads from her translation of Edith Bruck’s “Letter to My Mother” a memoir of her life in wartime Auschwitz, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert with Jared Redmond, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

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

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

Gerard Landry & the Lariats, Cajun/Zydeco. at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Antioquia at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Ignacio Berroa Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Clive Carroll, fingerstyle guitarist, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

THURSDAY, FEB. 8 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Flight Out of Time” Exhibition of contemporary prints by Barbara Foster, Jimin Lee and Tadayoshi Nakabayashi opens at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave., and runs to March 17. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

“A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s” Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

“Paintings of Abu Ghraib” by Fernando Botero at 190 Doe Library, UC Campus, through March 23. 643-5651. www.clas.berkeley.edu 

“Used and Re-Used: decorative objects made from utilitarian materials” at the The Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. through March 31. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

"The Children of Chaguitillo” Photography exhibition by Harold Adler at Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave. through March 31.  

Michael Howerton “Portraits” at Chachie’s Coffee Shop, 1768 Broadway at 19th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs though Feb. 28. www.howertonphoto.blogspot.com 

“100 Families in Oakland: Art & Social Change” at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts.. Oakland, through April 22. 238-2200. 

“African Art” by Okaybabs, Yinka Adeyemi, Adeyinka Fashokun, honoring Black History Month. Reception at 4:30 p.m. at the LuchStop Cafe, joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to March 30. 817-5773. 

“Transforming Vision: The Wood Sculpture of William Hunter, 1970-2005” at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts.. Oakland, through March 18. 238-2200. 

“Fire in the Heart” Paintings by Foad Satterfield influenced by African art opens at the Community Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave., through March 2. 204-1667. 

“Street Portraiture” Photographs by Tom Stone at The LightRoom Gallery, 2263 Fifth St., through Feb. 28. 649-8111. 

“Revisions” Works by Amy Berk using Jewish ceremonial textiles on display at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., through Aug. 5. 549-6950. 

“Environmental Surrealism” works by Guy Colwell and Michelle Waters at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland, through Feb. 23. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

“Berkeley: 75 Years Ago” at the Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Hours are Thurs.-Sat., 1 to 4 p.m. Exhibit runs through March. 848-0181.  

“Art of Living Black” at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond, and runs through March 16. 620-6772. www.richmondartcenter.org 

Oakland Art Association Juried Show at the MTC Offices, Bort MetroCenter, 3rd floor, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 30. 817-5773. 

FILM 

“Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson’s American Journey” at 7 p.m., at Ellen Driscoll Theater, Frank Havens School, 325 Highland Ave., near Oakland Ave., Piedmont. Judge Henderson will speak after the film. Presented by Appreciating Diversity Film Series. 835-9227. 

Film Series with David Thomson “Rio Bravo” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Conversations on Museums with David Behar, Israeli artist, at 6:30 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell describe “A Thousand Names for Joy: A Life in Harmnony with the Way Things Are” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

Dana Whitaker describes “Transforming Lives $40 at a Time: Women and Mircrofinance” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Pauline Chen describes “Final Exam: A Young Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

John Searle will discuss “Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflection on Free Will, Language, and Political Power” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

SF Bluegrass & Old Time Festival with The Mercury Dimes, Flat Mountain Girls, Jeff Kazor & Lisa Berman at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Martyn Joseph, contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mark Robinson & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Duarte, guitar, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Chaplain, Dead Ringer, Scene of Action at 8:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Pat Martino at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

CONVERSATIONS ON ART 

Jazz musician Hal Stein will perform at 8 p.m. Friday at Caffe Trieste at 2500 San Pablo Ave. (at Dwight). 548-5198. 

OAKLAND MAGIC CIRCLE ANNUAL BANQUET 

Oakland Magic  

Circle, the oldest magic club in the West, hosts its annual Installation Banquet, “A Night of Wonder & Magic,” on Tuesday, Feb. 6. Performers include international star Amos Levkovitch with his spectacular bird act, Dick Newton's classic magic, mind-reader Greg Keeling and master conjuror James Hamilton, with M.C. Scott Alcalay.  

Dinner at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Bjornson Hall, 2258 MacArthur Blvd. near Fruitvale. Open to all, by reservation only. $25 adult, $20 children. (800) 838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com/event/8934. 

JAZZ IN MOTION AT BERKELEY HIGH 

The Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo will perform “In The Day of Charles Hamilton” at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Little Theater on the Berkeley High School campus. Admission is free. 253-8235. 

‘THE LUBITSCH TOUCH’ AT PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 

Pacific Film Archive continues its Ernst Lubitsch retrospective with Saturday screenings of One Hour With You, the 1932 musical remake of his 1924 silent film The Marriage Circle, at 6:30 p.m., and The Merry Widow (1934) at 8:30 p.m. $4 for PFA members and UC students; $8 for non-members. 2575 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

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.  

Paul Shepard, seemingly no relation to the playwright, has directed this straight-ahead show of one of his namesake’s most famous plays, also designing the excellent, geometrical kitchen set, backed by Shu Ping Guan’s backdrop painting of the mountain ridges with a lone Joshua Tree in the foreground, silhoutted out the windows in the night scenes, no less stark yet suggestive in daylight (Bob Gudmundsson’s design). 

This is the white-toned room—and deadpan world outside—where a barewire chamber play is enacted, a kind of doppelganger double-shuffle between two sons of an absent drunken father as they house-sit (and trash) their mother’s home while she’s sightseeing glaciers in Alaska. 

Kevin Fletcher Tweedy’s original, mostly guitar score framing the tense scenes is a stand-out, its hesitant vibrato splaying off from a ballad tune never quite introduced.  

As the brothers unravel, they’re visited by a golf-betting, gut-driven producer, first enthused over younger brother Austin’s story, then caught up in desert rat Lee’s con games and kitsch Western tales—and by their semi-oblivious mother, back early from Alaska to catch Picasso at the museum, a chance not to be missed. 

Benjamin Grubb, in his Bay Area debut as Lee, and Jay Kiecolt-Wahl as Austin handle the seesaw dialogue of the two brothers circling each other, intermittently jousting, pretty well, with Kiecolt-Wahl managing a despondent drunk act to his own off-key rendition of “Red Sails In The Sunset.” There’s a bit too much of Lee’s yelling and Austin’s whining; the often-monochromatic dialogue needs a little indirection to preserve the dynamics. John Hurst, as Kimmer, the Hollywood moneyman, and Maureen Coyne, as Mom, add good touches that soften the edge—or make it wryer—of this sharp encounter that sounds somehow flattened and banal. 

The show seems another step forward for Actors Ensemble, following a good Hedda Gabler. True West runs on an even keel, its best moment the eerie, wordless ending, with a graceful pirouette right into the curtain call. 

Director Shepard, initially repelled by the play, found it a way to explore his “shadow side.” And, indeed, the playwright’s fabulous success seems to be predicated on the appetites of director, actors—and audience—to express themselves. The ensemble handles it well enough, with a good shaggy dog story (rather self-consciously Beckett on the playwright’s part) and some choice business with a tangled typewriter ribbon and a kitchen overflowing with stolen toasters.  

Too much, or not enough—the strange codependency of the brothers—mythic? sociopathic? just plain dysfunctional? The script coyly hints at all, but neatly sidesteps any dramaturgy, substituting vague reference. 

The director sees a link with Pinter, who was sent up once, lovingly, by his friend Beckett as always writing “menace in a room.” In this and his brilliantly oblique dialogue, Pinter follows Strindberg’s plays peopled by phantoms of their own obsessions and desires, a drama found in the interstices, a Shakespearean modernism. 

But Shepard lacks real insinuation, as well as any chiaroscuro to his characters. In fact, they aren’t characters at all, caught somewhere between caricature and mere types. My father had an expression for a certain kind of bland hypocrite: “Printed on one side.” 

Creatures of the ’70s, as Shepard’s plays and personae age, they begin to show a threadbare and one-way quality, not primitive or sophisticated, just shallow, dashed in without draughtsmanship, becoming the same cliche supposedly played off of. 

As Austin says of the figures in Lee’s preposterous yarn, which he wants his writer brother to flesh out with his “tricks,” they aren’t characters at all, just the fantasy of a ruined childhood. 

TRUE WEST 

Presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Feb. 17 at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. 

$12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org. 

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. 

First, from a design stance, I’d like to say that skylights don’t belong everywhere. If you have a 1910 craftsman house, they may not be suitable. Now, every old house doesn’t have to be a restoration showplace, so before you go down this particular road, take a look at what your skylights will look like and where it will be placed. If it’s installed in the fashion of the time (skylight go way back) with suitable trim around the edges, a fitting vault between ceiling and roof and, perhaps, a window or stained glass at the ceiling line, it might be just the right upgrade. Every room isn’t right for a skylight and a gorgeous old room can be ruined by the wrong upgrade. Window light increases as we climb the wall and a placement of one or more high windows near the ceiling (especially those old 10’ beauties in older homes) can provide a great deal of light and approximate the gains that a skylight can provide, especially if they’re placed in a south facing wall (or east for morning … or west for afternoon). 

I’ve seen rooms with some high narrow windows on a south and western faces that were nearly as light as those with skylights and in some cases I think it’s a better choice since a skylight can really flood a room with light (more on that later).  

Light for more than one direction is best since it helps to shape and color objects and spaces. People will tend to gravitate toward rooms that feature windows in two walls and, of course, any well-lit space. 

In an older house, skylights might be a better choice in upstairs rooms or a developed attic. The integrity of style becomes less of an issue in these spaces, but design is still important. 

If you’re thinking about installing a skylight, here are a few tips:  

First, involve a first-rate roofer. This is where these folks earn their money. A skylight is, ultimately, a hole in your roof, so it’s best to be very careful about how you do that since leakage is quite likely to result if everything isn’t done just right. Also, a carpenter must be sure that the wooden members to be cut through are properly supported as the hole is created. If a rafter or joist is cut through to accommodate a skylight of more than about 2’ in width, the member must be joined to the neighboring members by use of a “trimmer.” These are generally installed in pairs (doubled up) and the neighboring members (joists or rafters) must sometimes be doubled up or “sistered” if the resulting load is going to be too great. A skilled contractor should be consulted and lumber sizing tables may need to be consulted. For a skylight of about 16” square this isn’t an issue. For a 2’ skylight, the ceiling joist may need some strengthening. A 4’ skylight is where things get more critical. A skylight that is narrow and long, running down between the joists, can provide a lot of light with a minimum of framing. This also has less leak potential per lumen (unit of light) since the leakage tends to be associated with the top edge. 

For more modern spaces a skylight can also be placed on a diamond or an odd angle for fun. This isn’t that hard for a skilled carpenter and the cost won’t be much more so don’t miss out on cool details because you’re afraid of cost. The real cost will result in hiring the wrong folks and dealing with years of leakage. 

When I got started, skylights were mostly single-layered (or “glazed”) but today, the double-layered bubble or double-glazed type is much more common and thank goodness. Skylights are, after all, placed where the heat gathers and the cold wind wants to “convect” the heat away. There is no window in your house more important to double insulate than your skylight. 

Skylights need to be “flashed” to the roof. In other words, a series of roofing pieces, which continue to overlap and carry the water away down the roof, must be installed around the shape of the “curb” or lip that gets built onto the roof surface. This set of flashings must be installed exactly right so that water doesn’t ever get the chance to drop into that “hole” you’ve just cut in your roof. This is by no means impossible but it’s not for the inexperienced and, again, leave it to a really good roofer. The curb, hole and skylight mounting is less important. Good roof safety is critical. No job is worth the cost of falling off a roof. 

As I mentioned, the skylight is where the heat goes and it’s cold just above. This heat differential can and often does cause condensation to form in the skylight and to weep down the well between roof and ceiling. This is often mistaken for leakage and often a cause of consternation. A vented skylight is less apt to do this, as is a double insulated one but this is no guarantee.  

If you have excess moisture entering your dwelling from the crawlspace or from gas appliances (like stoves, teapots, water heaters and dryers), they can contribute. This may be your chance to find out why the basement is moldy and to finally address the elevated humidity in your house (but that’s definitely another article). So, don’t be surprised if you have weeping skylight syndrome. 

Lastly, let’s take a minute to look at some old and new choices. For slanted roofs, a Velux roof window is a really nice choice. Be sure to buy the correct flashing kit. For a flatter roof, a well built and roofed curb is critical. These babies really beg to leak if not done right. For big light on a small budget, check out one of the new types of tube skylights, such as a Solatube or Sun-Dome. Velux makes one too and I’m very fond of their products because they seem very intent on making sure that the contractor has what they need to do the job right. These tube types are very inexpensive, fairly easy to install and more leak proof since they are modular and require almost no framing modification. They are essentially self-flashing, which is not a guarantee but they are a bit more fool proof (although, as we all know, there is no limit to the wreckage a true fool can manifest). Tube skylights are very modern, so think about what they’ll look like. Nonetheless, I see them as a real asset. 

Here’s an exciting notion that you might take a look at. Solar-Tube type skylights can be quite long and can easily run from a roof, all the way down to a basement if a 1-2’ square space can be found for the trip. The corner of a closet or an abandoned chimney shaft (you’ve been meaning to take that crumbly old thing out anyway) can be enough room for one of these and when you punch through into that dank basement room, you’ll be astounded at the volume of light these silvery tubes can retain and deliver. This is a project that I consider well worth the effort because the result can be so fulfilling. 

Think of skylights as an alternative energy source since they substitute for electric light and, during the day and well into dusk, keep the use of lights at a minimum. This of course applies to all fenestration but most prominently to skylights. When you price this job, consider the electric savings you’ll have over the years, as well as the decreased carbon you’ll be adding to the air and water. 

Remember that skylights are extremely effective and sometimes TOO effective. A small skylight can deliver more light than a wall of windows simply because that’s where the light is. So don’t overdo it. When you paint in this medium, a little goes a long, long way. 

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

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. 

You know, just past the trailer park they’re going to evict for development. That intersection. 

It’s been a while since I’ve dropped in there. The nursery backs onto San Pablo Creek, with a deck set high over the banks looking down on a mix of invasive exotics like German and Algerian ivy, plain-green houseplant tradescantia, and what looks very much like pokeweed. I’ve always liked to stop and scan for birds in the creekside trees—there were a few housefinches, one of them singing, last weekend, and I swear we were hearing geese somewhere—and stand on tiptoe to look over the wall at the creek.  

It’s clear that the recent freeze took a bite out of the stock. The bananas were sulking (though their central growing points looked healthy); some of the six-pack shelves were bare. But the annual color was cheerful, there were plenty of evergreens, and all the citrus looked unfazed.  

And yes, the place is for sale. I talked to owner Kikue Tokuyoshi-Wong, who cited a combination of family necessities and market pressures: “The big-box stores have really hurt us all, of course.” People don’t know any better than to want instant, maintenance-free gardens, in which they think of plants as wallpaper or furniture.  

We spent a few minutes in the kind of gossip I’ve engaged in too often: who used to own what nursery (that’s the jolly part) and when it closed down (the mournful part). Mostly this is family stories: rather a lot of the owners of our remaining family-owned nurseries are related to each other, at least by marriage. 

It bugs me that so many of these old-line nurseries are biting the dust, not just because I’m sentimental. We lose unique knowledge bases and history, and sometimes even plant varieties that have been propagated here over generations. There are heirloom nurseries just as there are heirloom tomatoes.  

Even non-propagating nurseries, which serve entirely as plant retailers rather than growers, have stores of lore about what does well in their parts of town, the sort of oral guidebook that a loyal customer base has let them accumulate.  

There’s no way to predict how long the sale of Ken’s Nursery might take. Prices aren’t reduced, though they’re certainly reasonable; it’s just interesting stuff at an interesting place.  

Get up there soon and maybe you’ll get some of those bush blueberries or kumquat or calamondin or bai makrut trees before I do. Look the other fruit trees over—apple, peach, cherry, Asian pear, greengage—for interesting varieties, ask about their chill requirements, try one anyway. Planting a fruit tree is a better gamble than you’ll get at the casino.  

Ken’s Nursery 

2364 Road 20, San Pablo 

234-1541 

Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. (5:30 during DST) 

Weekends 9 a.m.-4 p.m. 

Closed Wednesdays 

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

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. 

How can this be? The main problem is that not one city or county in the Bay Area has adopted a retrofit code. Many inadequate retrofits are being done by well-meaning contractors who don’t know the basic engineering principles of a good retrofit. All the inspector does is make sure that the contractor did what he said he was going to do—there’s no check of correct engineering.  

What to do? First, call your head building inspector or city manager and tell them you’d like to see a retrofit code put in place. Second, if your house has been retrofitted, have a properly trained retrofit professional make sure it was done right. Also, to see a great explanation of what makes a good retrofit, check out www.bayarearetrofit.com. 

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

FRIDAY, FEB. 2 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with “Voyage of the Monteno” travelling on indigenous balsa rafts with John Haslett. Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“Why We Fight” Eugene Jareki’s documentary on American militarism at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Informal discussion follows. 482-1062. 

Discover Wild Mushrooms with biologist Debbie Viess at 7:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Followed by field trip on Sat. from 10 a.m. to noon. To regsiter call 238-6641. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at Unit 4 Dorms, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com (code UCB) 

Financial Health Checkup with Josephine White at 11 a.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst St. 981-5190. 

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.  

SATURDAY, FEB. 3 

“New Era/New Politics” A walking tour of Oakland which highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Dress to get dirty! Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

French Broom Removal Help remove this invasive plant which has been displacing native plants in Redwood Park. Meet at 9:30 a.m. at Skyline Gate staging area, 8500 Skyline Blvd. Oakland. 925-756-0195. 

“Bug of the Month Club” Explore the bizarre and fascinating world of insects, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. or 12:30 to 2 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church Office, 1255 First Avenue, Oakland. Cost is $20. Call for reservations 581-3739. 

Sick Plant Clinic Dr. Robert Raabe, plant pathologist, and Dr. Nick Mills, entomologist, will diagnose plant illnesses and recommend remedies. Bring a piece of the plant in a securely sealed container. A zipperlock bag is ideal. From 9 a.m. to noon at Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. 

Bookmaking with Recycled Materials from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10-$15. Registration required. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Benefit Drag Show to benefit Vital Life Services, an HIV/AIDS organization at 6 p.m. at the Bench and Bar Club, 2111 Franklin St. Cost is $10. 655-3435. 

Introductory Workshop in Projective Dream Work from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $45. 528-3417.  

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

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

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 4 

“A Coca Farmer President and Gas Nationalization?” A slide show and Andean music and a report back on a recent delegation to Bolivia at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 415-924-3227. 

“Open Garden” Join the Little Farm gardener for composting, planting, watering and reaping the rewards of our work, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cancelled only by heavy rain. 525-2233.  

French Broom Removal Help remove this invasive plant which has been displacing native plants in Tilden Park. Meet at 1:30 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Area. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Hiking Club Explores the Santa Fe Right of Way This 4-mile hike begins at 9 a.m. For information on how to join, please call 524-4715. 

Learn the Art of Organic Home Farming in a series of three classes with Margaret Lloyd from noon to 3:30 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost for all three classes is $100-$120. Registration required. 643-7265. 

Combatants for Peace Israeli and Palestinian combatants who have forsaken violence in order to promote peace will speak at noon at Grand Lake Theatre, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. Sponsored by Brit Tzedek V'Shalom. 524-1993.  

“Taking Heart in Tough Times” A workshop with Joanna Macy from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists 1924 Cedar St. Cost is $25-$100 sliding scale, includes lunch. For reservations call 841-4003. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

Spring Pruning 101 Learn how prune perennials, shrubs and roses at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 

The Hairy Eye Ball Benefit for East Bay Food Not Boms at 7 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. 

“The Spirituality of Deep Democracy” with Tim Weitzel at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 535-0302, ext. 306.  

Holistic Pet Health A free consultation from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For information call 525-6255. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tu B'Shvat Seder Jewish Holiday of the Trees, benefitting Rabbis for Human Rights, at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10. For reservations call 415-789-7685. 

MONDAY, FEB. 5  

“Restoring America’s Estuaries: Winning Battles But…,” with Friends of Five Creeks president Susan Schwartz at 7 p.m. at the Edith Stone Room, Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

“Steelhead (Ocean-Going Trout) in East Bay Creeks” Andy Gunther, ecosystems expert, will talk about the life cycle of steelhead trout, and the technical and political challenges of restoring these fish to streams in the Bay Area, at 7:30 p.m. at Montclair Presbyterian Church, 5701 Thornhill Rd., Oakland. 655-6658.  

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Course Meets for eight Mon. from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Keller WIlliams, 4341 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Free, but registration required. 652-8885. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

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) 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, FEB. 6 

“Thirst” A documentary on the politics of the bottled water industry in the U.S. and the world, followed by discussion with producers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Cost is $5-$10. Part of the BFUU Social Justice Committee's Conscientious Projector series. 644-4956. 

Kayaking Alaska’s Inside Passage A slide show with Julie Hinkle and Zephyr Sincerny 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. 

WriterCoach Connection seeks volunteers to help students improve their writing and thinking skills. Commit to 1-2 hours per week during the school day and work one-on-one with students in their English classes. Training from noon to 3 p.m. or from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. For information call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

Sports Nutrition with Carol Lourie on genomic testing, nutritional suppements and accupuncture at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Volunteer Storyreaders Needed Training classes begin at 6 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 5366 College Ave. Registration required. 238-7453. 

Animal Communication Consultations from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For appointment call 525-6255. 

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

Discussion Salon on Social Change and Activism at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 7 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Explore Oakland’s Shoreline Parks Meet at 10 am at the restrooms adjacent to parking lot at 7th St. and Middle Harbor Rd, Oakland. Dress in layers and bring water and snack for this level, wheelchair- and stroller-friendly walk of about two hours. 848 9358. www.berkeleypaths.org 

“Waves, Wetlands, and Watersheds” An interactive workshop for educators that covers watershed, coastal, and marine issues. From 4 to 6 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Registration required. 636-1684. www.ebparks.org 

Volunteer with the Native Plant Nursery Your help in the nursery will enable Save The Bay to continue restoration of some of the last remaining wetland habitat in the East Bay and help us reach our goal to plant 10,000 native wetland plants at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Park this winter. From 1 to 3 p.m. at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland. RSVP requested. 452-9261 ext. 109. www.savesfbay.org/bayevents 

Community Meeting on Pacific Steel Casting Tell the Mayor and Berkeley City Council: Stop Pacific Steel Casting's pollution. Our community deserves clean air & environmental justice! It is important for residents to show up and express their concerns about the ongoing pollution and violations at PSC. at 7 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 6th St. at Hearst. 415-248-5010. 

“Little House on a Small Planet” with Shay Salomon on the small house movement at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, 315A, UC Campus. http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

“Race to Execution” a documentary on the factors that influence who lives and who dies at the hands of the state, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Oakland. Free. 238-2200. 

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. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, FEB. 8 

“Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson’s American Journey” at 7 p.m., at Ellen Driscoll Theater, Frank Havens School, 325 Highland Ave., near Oakland Ave., Piedmont. Judge Henderson will speak after the film. Presented by Appreciating Diversity Film Series. 835-9227. 

“Breaking the Gridlock!” What will it take to have better transit in Berkeley? Panel and discussion, with Chris Peeples, AC Transit Board of Directors; Matt Nichols, City of Berkeley Transportation Planner; Betty Deakin, Director, Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar at Arch St. Free. 843-8724. 

“Little House on a Small Planet” Live in less space but have more room and enjoy it, with Shay Salomon of the small house movementand photographer Nigel Valdez at 7 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

Richmond Southeast Shoreline Area Community Group meets at 6:30 p.m. at the Richmond Convention Center, Bermuda Room, 403 Civic Center Plaza, Nevin and 25th Sts. For information call 540-3923. To volunteer call 367-5379. 

East Bay Macintosh Users Group Learn how to sync your Mac to your cell phone or PDA, at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. www.ebmug.org 

Café Literario, a Spanish book discussion group begins a new session at 7 p.m. at the West Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 1125 University Ave. 981-6140. 

Storytime for Babies and Toddlers at 10:30 a.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Family Story Time for children ages 3-7 at the Berkeley Public Library, North Branch, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins. 981-6107. 

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, writer, on “False Self/True Self” at 7 p.m. at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito St. off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 625-5831.  

ONGOING 

Berkeley Winter Campaign for Cats We are providing free trapping assistance and spay/neuter to feral and homeless cats in Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville and Piedmont, through March 2007. The cats will be spayed/neutered, vaccinated, treated for fleas and returned safely back to their neighborhoods. To report a neighborhood in need or to volunteer, please contact Caitlin at 908-0709. 

Albany Berkeley Girls Softball League Open to girls in grades 1-9. Spring season begins March 3. To register call 869-4277. www.abgsl.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Feb. 5, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Feb. 5, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5510.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Tues., Feb. 6, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.  

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

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 8, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Feb. 8, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning  

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.