The smiles, gasps and cries of delight from the kindergartners sitting in their classroom at Washington Elementary School Tuesday morning were evidence of a morning well spent. 

The kids had just been in a reading session with Berkeley Public library Librarian Emma Coleman, as part of the Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) Day Celebration in Berkeley schools on March 13. 

“160 volunteers, including 30 city employees, signed up to volunteer to read to students. The idea was to get everyone to read,” said BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

City of Berkeley employees took a morning break from their work to take part in the DEAR day celebrations that started at 9 a.m. Readers included Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, who read to fifth graders at Washington Elementary, and City Councilmember Linda Maio who dropped by LeConte Elementary. 

Besides councilmembers, readers also included fire fighters, police officers, librarians, Berkeley Rotary members, Bayer HealthCare employees, UC Berkeley students and community members. Berkeley Fire Chief Debra Pryor also read to students at Washington from her favorite children’s book. 

Volunteers assigned to an elementary or pre-school classroom read a book of their choice to students for 20 minutes, after which the kids returned to their normal school day schedule. 

City officials get involved in DEAR Day as part of a citywide campaign to increase opportunities for employees to volunteer time in the community. Passed by the City Council last fall, DEAR Day is the second major event to receive City volunteer participation. 

“Eleven elementary schools and three pre-schools in Berkeley Unified were covered,” Coplan said. “For many volunteers this is something they look forward to every year; for others it is often the beginning of a longer relationship as a Berkeley School Volunteer. These are community members, beyond all of the parents who help out in their children's classrooms.” 

For the city, it’s both too much and too little—too much building by UC Berkeley and too little consideration of its potentially profound impacts on the surrounding community. 

City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks issued a stark critique to city commissioners and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) officials Wednesday night about the lab’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) 2025. 

The occasion was a hearing called for four city commissions on the plan’s draft environmental impact report (DEIR). 

The plan calls for nearly a million square feet of new buildings—which includes one completed structure and one now underway—and up to 500 new parking spaces and 1,000 new employees. 

The biggest concern for the planning director was the combined impact of the two faces of city’s most powerful institution, both under control of a single master. 

“The University of California has prepared two LRDPs for jurisdictions under its control,” said Marks, the Berkeley campus and the lab. “This masks the cumulative impacts and makes the university as a whole responsible for mitigation. 

”There is a fundamental problem with the University of California, which is unable to address those impacts because of the way” the process is carried out, he said. 

Marks did praise lab officials who, “unlike the campus, met with city staff several times over the last few months, listened to our concerns and modified their plans.” 

Unlike the university, which refused city requests, LBNL officials were willing to establish benchmarks for parking which would require preparation of new environmental documents to review once they were surpassed, and agreed to establish a transportation demand management program designed to encouraged the use of mass-transit, ride sharing and other programs designed to reduce traffic. 

“However, it’s still a large development in an almost inaccessible location and it also offers free parking,” which encourages the use of passenger cars. 

The net impact is a 38 percent increase in occupied space and a 28 percent employment growth in an area susceptible to earthquakes and wildland fires. 

“I don’t see the justification yet,” Marks said. “There is more justification needed to put this many people in this location.” 

Further complicating matters is the fact that the two separate LRDPs mask the mixed uses of UC-owned land, with some lab facilities being sited on the university campus, and some campus facilities located at the lab. 

“From the community’s point of view, this is all the University of California, and in impacts on the whole of the community.” 

Who pays? 

With impacts of city water, wastewater, traffic, emergency and other systems, any increases of use will result in impacts that cost the city, and Marks cited last year’s California Supreme Court ruling in City of Marina v. Board of Trustees of the California State University, where the justices held that universities are financially liable for mitigation of the impacts of the new construction. 

While the lab is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Marks said that some of the federal millions paid to the university should be passed on to the city to cover the cost of providing services. 

One area where the campus does make concessions to the city is in review of new construction. Marks’s staff can sit in on meetings of the campus Design Review Committee, albeit “rather late in the process,” while the lab doesn’t extend a similar courtesy. 

Marks said he was concerned that the lab site is zoned for building of up to eight floors, although none is planned now that would reach that height.  

Marks said the report also needed to provide more information about toxic materials handling and diesel exhaust emissions, and because the lab is the site of experiments with microscopic nano-particles, he asked that officials comply with the city’s new ordinance which asks for reports on all nano-particle usage. 

More information is needed about the increased runoff that will flow into Strawberry Creek as a result of more impervious surfaces covering the earth, and he asked the lab to address the fact that planned demolitions will involve buildings that may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. 

The DEIR also failed to adequately address the impact on city emergency services in the event of a fire or earthquake. “There will be another thousand people there when—notice I didn’t say if—the earthquake comes,” he said, and the impact would be magnified if a temblor strikes when a major event is underway at Memorial Stadium. 

“There’s not enough analysis of consideration of impacts” on the city’s fire department, the primary first responder in a disaster. 

The splitting of the two UC development schemes becomes even more vexing when trying to consider traffic impacts. “The cumulative impact is underestimated and (the DEIR) avoids mitigations of the impacts on the city and we are troubled by that,” he said. Similarly, implementation of a traffic demand management program should be in place before additional parking is built, and not after as the current plan calls for. 

The plan also doesn’t say how the university would pay for increased use of the city’s wastewater system. “Obviously, the cumulative impacts are a big issue for us,” he said. 

Public input 

Nine members of the public added their voices to the critique, starting with Anne Wagley, who is a plaintiff in a pending lawsuit challenging the campus LRDP. Wagley works as the Planet’s arts and calendar editor 

“The cumulative impacts are a critical issue,” she said, adding that for UC to divide them between two LRDPs with separate environmental rules raises the question of violations of the California Environmental Quality Act. 

“I do not think that Berkeley’s infrastructure can handle” the combined impacts of the two million square feet of new construction in the campus LRDP with the 600,000 to one million in the lab’s plan, she said, given its aging culverts, sanitary system and streets. “I can only hope the lab recognizes the tremendous burden they are placing on their host city and pays for it.” 

Tom Kelly was the lone representative of the Community Health Commission to attend, and spoke from the audience to say that his panel said their main concern was the increased greenhouse gasses that would come from bringing more cars sand buildings onto the site. 

Another concern for Kelly was the pending pact between the university, the lab and the former British Petroleum to create a new $500 million research program. 

“We already have a lot of masters in the campus and lab, and if we add BP to the mix, it will make for a very different city he said,” urging that the resulting programs relocate to Richmond, where the university maintains a field station earmarked for a two-million-square-foot corporate/academic research park. 

Janice Thomas, a Panoramic Hill resident, urged the lab to clean up an area of the site designated as a Superfund hazardous waste site, then locate new construction there, rather in the Strawberry Creek Valley. 

“It really shocked me that they are completely ignoring the seismic risk by building here,” said Hank Gehman, who said geological reports indicate that landslides will occur throughout the hills in the event of a major earthquake, trapping lab employees. 

“Would any major corporation or institution site an important or potentially hazardous lab in the Berkeley Hills?” he asked. 

Pamela Shivola passed out a map listing all the known faults within the lab’s perimeter. 

Commissioners speak 

Next up were members of Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), with Lesley Emmington leading off with praise for Marks’s report. 

The LPC last week adopted a resolution faulting the EIR for its failure to recognize Strawberry Canyon as a historical resource and the lack of any proposed mitigations or alternative sites. 

Emmington said the canyon and its water supply were the primary reasons the university located at its present site and urged the lab to relocate its planned development. “It doesn’t have to be in Berkeley,” she said. 

Marcy Greenhut, chair of the Transportation Commission and its only representative at the hearing, said her panel’s main concern was that the lab should spell out alternatives forms of transportation. 

Then it came down to the Planning Commission, with Helen Burke proposing the motion which was eventually unanimously adopted with some modification.  

The commission called for: 

• A stronger transportation demand management plan, including an eco-pass program providing for assistant with mass transit fares and the imposition of a charge for parking; 

• Permeable paving surfaces to reduce runoff; 

• Greater detail in plans for storage and handling of hazardous materials; 

• Spelling out alternative locations on UCB property; 

• Greater detail in sections detailing responses to earthquakes and wildland fires; 

• Minimal destruction of the natural environment, and 

• More detail on the impacts on housing and the community.

Mayor Tom Bates’ proposal to crack down on people engaged in “prolonged sitting” or yelling in public spaces near businesses got Berkeley City Council approval (5-2-1) in concept Tuesday night—and sharp condemnation from the several dozen residents who came to the meeting to demand that the council not criminalize homelessness and drug addiction. 

Councilmembers Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington voted against the plan the mayor calls the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative; Council-member Max Anderson abstained. 

“The idea is to not penalize any particular group,” Bates said at the meeting. “We need to deal with the social deterioration on our streets.”  

The proposal—which points to homeless, acting-out and loitering people as a major factor in business decline—would create a consistent set of laws throughout the city’s commercial districts and provide police with “clear enforcement mechanisms” to address violations, such as yelling, smoking and selling drugs near businesses.  

A key goal, according to the Commons for Everyone staff report, would be keeping sidewalks “free from obstruction.”  

Noting there is presently no funding source for the measure, Bates underscored that the plan is to balance police enforcement with services that would include increased mental health assistance, cleaner sidewalks and a program to channel donations to nonprofits rather than panhandlers.  

With council approval, Bates’ proposal, championed by the Chamber of Commerce, now goes for refinement to the city manager, city staff and various commissions before coming back to the council in May with more specific recommendations. 

Most the public speakers addressing the council before the vote expressed strong opposition to the measure. 

“Public Commons for Every-one—How Orweillan doublespeak can you get?” asked Bob MacLaren.  

Referring to people who hang out on the streets, MacLaren said: “They’re people too. They have the light of the Christ within them.” 

Another speaker who did not give her name also used a religious reference: “Jesus Christ was homeless all his life,” she said. “How the fuck are you going to say it’s against the law to be homeless. Do you really want that power?” 

Speaking after her was attorney Osha Neumann who often represents homeless and impoverished people. “I prefer the language we just heard to the pretentious and deceptive language of the Public Commons for Everyone,” he said. “It’s not fair and balanced to give somebody a hug and then smack ‘em. It’s not fair and balanced to offer people a few services then smack them with criminalization.” 

Police enforcement causes desperation among the targeted groups, Neumann said, further noting in a letter to the council [reprinted in full on page 9] that selling drugs and smoking within 20 feet of businesses is already illegal.  

Enforcement may violate First Amendment rights, he wrote, asking: “Are police going to be walking their beats with decibel meters?”  

As for “prolonged sitting,” Neumann wrote: “Are we going to have police putting chalk marks on homeless people like the parking enforcement officers do on tires?” 

By signaling out the homeless and mentally ill, the proposal attacks minority populations, Michael Diehl, chair of the Mental Health Commission, told the council. “It’s a civil rights issue,” he said. 

Speaking in opposition to the proposal for the Berkeley-Albany-Richmond-Kensington chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, attorney Jim Chanin said the organization “opposes laws that criminalize poverty.”  

He further contended: “The deterioration of Telegraph Avenue has little to do with homeless people asking for money.” 

The business community disagreed. Deborah Badhia, executive director of the Downtown Berkeley Association, praised the proposal’s two-pronged mental health service-police enforcement approach and underscored the measure’s aim at protecting the business community. 

“The city’s public streets are the front doors for business owners,” she said. “We do not approve of inappropriate street behavior as the business community, and we do not accept foul and abusive language and aggressive behavior.” 

Downtown business owner Alan Kropp also weighed in saying the proposal “will help to make a safe, humane experience for someone who needs help if they’re looking for food or housing; and it’s a safe and humane way for somebody who’s visiting downtown if they want a good shopping, dining or theater experience.” 

Also supporting the measure, Tom Gorham told the council that it took the “stick” approach to get him off drugs and alcohol and into treatment. “It took a trip to the county jail to get sober enough to see people were trying to help me,” he said. 

Councilmembers supporting Bates’ plan pointed to the success of Options for Recovery, a drug and alcohol treatment program, some of whose clients come through court referrals. “I’ve been to many Options graduations,” said Councilmember Linda Maio. “[Options] saves people’s lives.” 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli agreed, saying for some people a “carrot” approach works and for others you need “a bit of a stick.” Referring to a court program, where people can choose between treatment or jail, he noted many chose treatment and some get off drugs as a consequence. 

Councilmember Max Anderson agreed – in part. “The programs lauded tonight are worthy of encouragement,” he said. Options for Recovery, however, “is successful without draconian laws on the books.” 

Calling the proposal a diversion from doing the real work needed to help small business, Worthington said that one solution to drug and alcohol problems would be “detox on demand” in Berkeley. And installation of port-a-potties would resolve the problem of public urination and defecation, he said. 

Worthington further vowed that, if the ordinance passed in May, “Those laws are not going to go into effect.” Berkeley progressives will gather the signatures needed to stop “another oppressive attack on homeless people,” he said. 

Berkeley City Counclimember Laurie Capitelli said an ordinance approved 6-3 Tuesday night to limit the time commissioners can serve on key commissions and to restrict service to just one of these commissions at a time is good government. 

But others argued that limits placed on those serving the city as commissioners unfairly restricts councilmembers’ ability to select commissioners. 

In other matters the council approved two of the three proposals from the Community Environmental Advisory Commission aimed at reducing emissions from Pacific Steel Castings, supported litigation that calls former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a war criminal, and opposes military action in Iran. 

Councilmembers Dona Spring, Kriss Worthington and Max Anderson opposed the ordinance that imposes an eight-year lifetime limit for people appointed to the Housing Advisory Commission, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Planning Commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board. The law also limits commission membership to one of those four quasi-judicial commissions. It lifts term limits for service on other commissions. 

A clause that would have prevented commissioners from serving on one of the four key commissions and also serving on the school board, rent board, library board or the housing authority was withdrawn by Councilmember Laurie Capitelli. The notion had not been raised in public council discussions during which the council approved the ordinance in concept and it was not noted in the staff report accompanying the ordinance.  

Worthington argued against the way the ordinance was changed, saying the clause adding the rent, library, housing and school board to the mix was “snuck in here,” and “buried in the ordinance.”  

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque told the Planet during a break in the council meeting that she added the clause because she thought it was consistent with the council intent to limit commissioners from sitting on more than one key board or commission. 

Addressing the part of the ordinance that limits a commissioner to sitting on only one key commission, Worthington said it disproportionately affects minorities and students. “This is not remotely good government,” he said. 

These limits, that won’t kick in until July, will affect two commissioners, both minorities and students: Jesse Arreguin, a Latino serves on the HAC and the ZAB, and Nicholas Smith, an African American, serves on the Labor Commission as well the Housing Advisory Commission.  

Capitelli said the term limits portion of the ordinance simply cleans up a loophole in the current term limits law, preventing commissioners from quitting a commission a couple of months short of eight years, then getting back on the commission to begin a new eight-year term, but Councilmember Dona Spring said she believes the measure targets specific commissioners: Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman and Zoning Adjustment Board Commissioner Dave Blake. It will also impact Susan Wengraf, Councilmember Betty Olds’ aide and her appointment to the Planning Commission. 

Worthington argued that if changes on the commissions were warranted, Maio, who had appointed Blake, could have removed him and Spring could have removed Poschman.  

“If it weren’t for Gene Poschman, we wouldn’t have the General Plan today,” Spring said. 

“People hope to limit choices of other people,” Steve Freedkin, chair of the Peace and Justice Commission, addressing the council on his own behalf in opposition to the measure. 

But Councilmember Betty Olds argued on the side of the majority: “We need fresh, new ideas,” she said.  

Mayor seeks Housing Authority board members 

Mayor Tom Bates announced at the meeting Tuesday that he is seeking volunteers for the new Housing Authority board. The board that oversees the city’s low-income housing now consists of the City Council and two tenants, but is slated to change governance and become a board appointed by the mayor and approved by the City Council. 

Those interested in the volunteer position can call Bates’ office at 981-7100. 

Council supports citizens on Pacific Steel – in principle  

The City Council seemed to hear the citizens’ outcry over Pacific Steel Castings emissions and approved 8-0-1, with Worthington abstaining, two of three recommendations from the Community Environmental Advisory Commission: one would approve a sampling study of lead and other heavy metals deposited on surfaces near PSC and the other would direct staff to look at the city’s current zoning laws—and to hire outside counsel to write new codes—to force PSC to reduce its emissions or loose its permit to operate. 

Simply approving the CEAC recommendation, however, doesn’t get the job done.  

“Basically, what the City Council did was punt till June,” Worthington told the Planet on Thursday, explaining that following through on the CEAC recommendations depends entirely on whether the council is willing to fund the study, an analysis of the study and an outside attorney to write new laws to address Pacific Steel Castings emissions. 

The council will receive a report from the city manager in May with an estimate of costs to fund the CEAC proposal; the report will then recommend that the issue be addressed during budget sessions in June. 

Community outcry against noxious emissions from northwest Berkeley’s Pacific Steel Casting has been mounting over several decades. While the plant has installed equipment to limit potentially-hazardous emissions, plant neighbors say they continue to smell odors coming from the plant and to experience asthma, skin irritations and other health-related problems they attribute to the plant. 

“This has gone on for too long,” said CEAC Chair Jason Kibbey, addressing the council.  

While staff had recommended the commission wait for a Health Risk Assessment to be released next month, Kibbey argued that the odor issue was sufficient to act immediately. “There is no need for more data,” he said. “This is a quality of life issue.” 

Commissioner Michael Wilson added that PSC publicly reported to the state in 2004 that it disposed of 76 tons of toxic air pollution into Berkeley’s air, about 420 pounds per day. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, charged with regulating the emissions, is “overly constrained in its capacity to protect public health in Berkeley,” he told the council, noting that the district granted the plant’s request to increase its emissions. 

He added that the district has never used a Health Risk Assessment, except for the dry cleaning industry, to compel any Bay Area industrial polluter to reduce toxic emissions. 

Some two dozen community members stayed at the meeting past midnight to address the council on the issue. 

Berkeley endorses lawsuit naming Rumsfeld  

The federal government is unlikely to demand the prosecution of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking U.S. officials for war crimes—the Bush Administration got congress to pass the Military Commissions Act that protects U.S. officials from prosecution for war crimes in U.S. courts—but Berkeley has no such reservations. 

At just before 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, the council, with six members still present, voted unanimously to support a resolution from the city’s Peace and Justice Commission that endorses a Center for Constitutional Rights’ complaint filed in Germany charging Rumsfeld, Attorney General Albert Gonzalez and other high-ranking Bush Administration officials with war crimes. Councilmembers Laurie Capitelli, Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak had left the meeting by the time the item came to a vote. 

The commission had originally asked the City Council to join the lawsuit as a “co-plaintiff,” but city staff opposed that, arguing there could be unknown costs and unintended legal consequences from joining a lawsuit in another country. 

The resolution approved by the council says the U.S. “planned and knowingly engaged in torture and war crimes in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay … and those policies have been authorized and executed by the defendants named in the … complaint.” 

The complaint was filed last year on behalf of 12 torture victims by the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights in order to request that the German Federal Prosecutor open an investigation that would lead to criminal prosecution of U.S. officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the “war on terror.”  

In other actions, the council:  

• condemned the Immigration and Custom Enforcement raids on undocumented immigrants; 

• opposed U.S. military intervention in Iran; 

• supported Rep. Barbara Lee’s TRUTH act, urging congress to investigate human rights abuses in Haiti since the ousting of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide 

After a plea to the council from Henry Wellington, Berkeley Police Association president, not to support a state assembly bill that would keep police complaint hearings open to the public—Wellington says complaints against the police are private personnel matters—Councilmember Gordon Wozniak pulled the item from the council agenda, asking for it to be discussed in April. 

The ghost of construction deals past stalked the Peralta Community College District trustees meeting this week, with a sometimes-bitter clash between trustees and district staff over a $9.7 million proposal to build a new physical education complex on the Laney College campus. 

Trustees voted unanimously to go forward with the proposal—pointedly “in concept” only, and not approving the proposed budget—but only after several trustees expressed concern that they had not seen or heard anything of the project until they got their packets for Tuesday night’s meeting.  

The debate included a heated exchange between trustee Linda Handy and Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris over whether the handling of the physical education complex proposal resembled the way Peralta handled the controversial aborted Alan Dones development deal two years ago.  

The debate came over a proposal by Laney College President Frank Chong that the district build a new women’s softball field, a new men’s baseball field, a field house, and a small parking lot to accommodate them all on the downtown Oakland campus behind the current Laney football field in the area bordering the corner of East 8th Street and the Lake Merritt Channel. 

Chong called it “a very exciting proposal to finish unfinished business at Laney College.” 

Chong said he recommended Sugimura Architects to do the initial design and budgeting “because of their experience in athletics and who they have worked with in the past.”  

The Laney president said he consulted with Chancellor Harris and Vice Chancellor Ikharo before choosing Sugimura. 

The Laney athletic project was discussed and approved at a March 9 board Facilities Committee meeting. However, the posted agenda for the meeting does not list the Laney athletic proposal, but only notes “Board Agenda Items for March 13, 2007 Board of Trustees Meeting.” 

The project is being proposed under California’s five year old education district design-build concept, authorized in 2002 by state law AB1402, in which “school districts select a design-build entity to provide design and construction services under one contract,” according to the state guidelines explaining the method. 

Under the old pre-AB1402 system, under which Peralta’s Berkeley City College, for example, was built, state education institutions first hire an architect to design a construction project and later hire a separate construction firm to manage the construction of it. 

The Berkeley City College construction was delayed by several disputes between the architect and the construction manager, and was the subject of numerous change orders that eventually led the board of trustees to revise the method in which construction change orders were approved by the chancellor’s office and submitted to the board.  

In answer to a trustee’s question Tuesday night, however, Peralta Vice Chancellor of General Services Sadiq Ikharo said that building under the design-build combined architect and project manager procedure would not eliminate change orders entirely. And, in fact, the state guidelines for AB1402 note specifically that design build is not “a method to eliminate change orders or risks not properly allocated in the contract.” 

Sugimura Architects has been working on the proposal for several months at the request of Laney President Chong, and produced an 8-page full color brochure on the project for Tuesday’s meeting, as well as a projected budget. 

The estimated cost for the Laney athletic project was listed at $7.5 million in the trustee meeting agenda packet, but a new projected budget submitted by Sugimura Architects to trustees at Tuesday’s meeting put the costs at $9.7 million. In addition, Peralta Vice Chancellor of General Services, Sadiq Ikharo, said that the costs could balloon if unexpected problems occur in putting down the fields and building in the wetland area along the Lake Merritt Channel. 

The money for the project is expected to come out of the recently-passed Peralta Measure A facilities bond. Once a contract is signed with either Sugimura Architects or some other project manager, construction of the fields and athletic building is expected to take between 18 and 24 months to complete. 

The request for the new Laney fields and athletic facilities began with emotional presentations by several Laney athletes and team coaches, who complained about unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the present fields and buildings, as well as a noncompliance with U.S. Title IX guidelines that require nondiscrimination against female athletes. 

“We have had softball teams refuse to play us because of the condition of the Laney softball field,” softball play Ashley Harley said.  

With players and coaches complaining about bad drainage at the current field and geese that defecate in the grass or rabbits that dig holes, Harley called playing on the field a danger, noting that “it’s hard to worry about your game when you have to worry about your body.” 

Assistant Women’s Softball Coach Charles Hayes said that the “antiquated” conditions on the field “makes it difficult to recruit quality athletes for our women’s softball team.” And citing the Title IX difficulties, Head Track Coach Curtis Taylor said that building the new field house “will allow girls to go in and change and use the restroom immediately adjacent to the field, instead of having to go all the way across campus as they now must do.” 

And Laney women’s track team member Crystal Sensabaugh said that the only training room currently available for women’s field sports at Laney is in the men’s locker room. “It’s awkward for women to go in there when we have to see the trainer,” Sensabaugh said. 

While trustees at Tuesday’s meeting universally said they approved the concept of the new athletic fields and field house for Laney, several were disturbed by what they called the “procedure” by which it came before them. 

Trustee Bill Riley, who sits on the board’s facilities committee, said that “this is the first time I heard of this. Normally, this comes to the board first for discussion.”  

And saying that “I hope the students don’t think I’m stalling, but this just came before me tonight,” student trustee Reginald James said that “it just doesn’t seem like the process was well thought-out.”  

Trustee Marcie Hodge said that the proposal was “more than just a concept. You’re bringing us numbers. I support the concept. The students do need this facility. But I do agree there are problems with the process.” 

Newly elected trustee Abel Guillen said he was concerned that the proposal had jumped by some $2 million from the time it went before the board’s facilities committee to the time it was presented to the full board. “I want to make sure this project remains within 10 percent of the projected cost,” Guillen said. 

And trustee Cy Gulassa said he was “astonished when I saw the proposal while I was preparing for this meeting. What I’d like is that when we have a scope of project this large, we be informed in advance what is being worked on.” Gulassa said that he would recommend a change in board procedures so that board members could be kept informed of large-scale projects in the works before they are initially presented to the board for approval. 

In answer, Laney President Chong said that “I totally respect the board’s concerns about the lack of consultation.”  

And trustee Nicky Gonzalez Yuen, the chair of the board’s facilities committee which approved the Laney project and one of the fiercest critics of the earlier Dones deal, tried to smooth over the differences, asking “everyone to step back and take a breath and calm down. We’re experimenting. We’re trying to do something new. We’re trying to work our way into the design build process. We’re not actually approving a contract, here. We’re approving a concept. If there’s some confusion about the process, I’d like a little forbearance while we’re working on something new. I’d like us to trust staff to come back with a more fully costed-out project.” 

The most heated objections came from trustee Linda Handy, who said that “I have a lot of difficulties with this. No-one told us about this during our meeting two weeks ago, even though this project was being worked on by the architect. I feel we’re being set up to be the bad guys, to question something that the students want and everyone feels is needed. The students already knew about this, and were brought out to the meeting to lobby for it. I think this is a beautiful project, but why did you not go through the correct process?” 

When Chancellor Harris said that “this was an unsolicited proposal” which was not generated by his office, Handy replied “that’s exactly what Alan Dones did, and we’re still hearing about that two years later. If it was bad two years ago, why is it good now?” 

The reference was to a controversial proposal by Oakland developer Alan Dones to create a commercial development plan for some of the same Laney College land now being proposed for the athletic fields and field house.  

The Dones proposal was approved in concept by the Peralta trustees but under fire from Laney faculty and students and community residents, a contract between Dones and the district was never entered into, and Dones eventually voluntarily dropped the plan. The abortive Dones deal is currently the subject of an investigation by a federal grand jury looking into corruption in Oakland politics. 

Harris differed sharply with Handy on the Dones comparison, saying that the Laney athletic proposal was different from the Dones proposal because “this came from the college itself. It didn’t come from a private individual. The Dones project was rejected by the college.” A clearly-agitated Harris said that “we’re bringing this before you [trustees] for your approval. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. But I don’t think bringing it before you is out of order.” 

Handy also complained that the Campbell-based architectural firm that has been working on the project for several months and that made a presentation at Tuesday’s meeting—Sugimura & Associates Architects—is not on the list of Peralta Community College District Board Approved Architects.  

The two-term trustee said that the district was going to have trouble explaining to architects on that list why they were not picked to do the initial workup, and said that the choice of Sugimura to do that work would discourage other architects from bidding on the full contract in the belief that it was a “done deal.” 

Following the meeting, President Chong said he expected that a complete contract proposal could be ready to be brought before trustees within two months. Meanwhile, saying that the problem with women athlete’s equal access to trainers should not wait two years for the completion of the project, trustee Riley got assurances from district staff that a quicker solution to that problem would be found. 

What is being proposed 

14,728-square-foot Athletic Fieldhouse, including men’s and women’s weight room, men’s and women’s training room, football locker room, baseball locker room, men’s and women’s showers, team meeting rooms, and coaches and athletic director offices; Men’s Baseball Field; Women’s Softball Field; adjacent 138 car parking lot 

Who is proposing it 

Laney College President Frank Chong 

Architects 

Sugimura & Associates Architects of Campbell, California 

Projected cost 

Building cost: $3.7 million 

Athletic fields: $3.8 million 

Parking lot: $499,000 

Soft costs: $1.2 million 

Contingency costs: $500,000 

Total price: $9.7 million 

Funding source 

Peralta Measure A Facilities Bond 

Photograph: Courtesy Sugimura & Associates Architects 

An artist’s rendering of the proposed expansions of the sports facilites at Laney College 

Berkeley’s Planning Commission gained a new chair Wednesday night, when incumbent David Stoloff, elected in a controversial coup in February, resigned the post and declared James Samuels his replacement. 

Stoloff’s election sparked bitter controversy, including accusations by ousted Chair Helen Burke that he had lied about his intentions of seeking the office. 

In resigning, Stoloff said he believed he would be more effective as a commission member than as an officer—exactly the reverse of what he’d said the day after his election. 

“I wanted to be chair because I have a vision of what the Planning Commission can do, and I believe I can be the most effective in implementing it,” Stoloff said at the time. 

But Wednesday night, he said that “at this time, I believe I can be more effective as a member than as one of its officer. I resign effective at the end of the meeting ... I expect that Jim Samuels will become chair.” 

Harry Pollack immediately moved for confirmation of Samuels, seconded by Larry Gurley. 

Commissioner Michael Sheen objected, saying he felt that an election shouldn’t be held until the commission’s next meeting because the item had been noticed in the agenda only as “Reconsideration of election of Commission officers” and not as an election. 

Stoloff said that because resignations weren’t covered in the city’s handbook for commissioners, the procedures dictated by Robert’s Rules of Order applied, and no notice of an election for vice chair was required. City Planning Manager Mark Rhoades agreed. 

“To avoid an ambiguity,” Pollack made a motion to formally elect Samuels to the position. When Commissioner Gene Poschman objected, Rhoades again backed the outgoing chair. Sheen objected again, and Pollack responded, “I made the motion, we’ll see what happens. Let’s vote and e done with it.” 

Sheen responded with a substitute motion to install Samuels as interim chair pending a new election for both positions. Poschman made the second, but the motion failed 6-3, with only Burke joining in. 

Pollack’s motion to confirm Samuels passed 6-3. 

“Gene, thanks for the vote of confidence,” said Samuels. 

“It’s better than you got at DAPAC,” Poschman responded, referring to a vote at the last meeting of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee where Samuels’ nomination by Chair Will Travis to serve on a joint subcommittee of DAPAC members and representatives of the Landmarks Preservation Commission was rejected by members—though the actual appointment is up to the City Council. 

The vote for vice chair was closer. Larry Gurley beat out Sheen on a five-four vote, with Roia Ferrazares—who nominated Sheen—joining Burke, Poschman and Sheen on the vote. 

Economic report 

Acting Director Michael Caplan and Dave Fogarty of the city Office of Economic Development briefed commissioners on their efforts to chart a more accurate picture of the state of Berkeley’s retail environment. 

Initially, efforts with the city’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) will plan the nature, location and size of business downtown and along Telegraph Avenue, with efforts spreading to the city’s three other BIDs and eventually throughout the city. 

Citywide, sales tax revenues for the 12-month span ending Sept. 30 of $13.2 million were up for the first time since the post-9/11 economic downturn, Fogarty said. Adjusted for inflation, the 3.2 percent increase from 2001 translates to a much less impressive one percent. 

By contrast, city officials in 2001 had predicted a figure of $16.67 million for 2006. 

“Restaurants are the only sector showing any tendency for increase, Fogarty said, and compromise the city’s dominant retail sector.  

“We have double the proportion of restaurant sales you would expect for a city of this size,” Fogarty said, and with 300 eateries with Berkeley city limits, that works out to about one restaurant for every 300 citizens. 

“Miscellaneous retail,” a category that includes most items but has been dominated in Berkeley by bookstores, is weak, with Internet sales eating heavily into the traditional bricks-and-mortar trade. 

“Bookstores used to be our strongest single sector, and Berkeley accounted for 80 percent of the book sales in Alameda County,” Fogarty said. “But bookstores are one of the most vulnerable sectors of the economy.” 

Another strong sector was recorded music, but it too is being heavily impacted by the availability of music online, he said. But two Berkeley chains are doing well, Amoeba and Rasputin’s, though the owners of both complain about conditions on Telegraph Avenue, he said. 

Employment is still two percent below 2001 levels, though the total number of jobs in the city—including self-employment—is about 79,000, though not all of the positions are filled by Berkeley residents. 

The hardest-hit sector is manufacturing, where employment is down 22 percent from 2001 level, “a striking loss,” Fogarty said. 

One of Berkeley’s strengths is that of the five largest employers, four are public institutions, ranking in order from UC Berkeley, to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to the city itself and the Berkeley Unified School District. 

The first private employer to make the list comes in fifth, Summit Alta Bates Medical Center/Herrick Hospital.  

“The other sector that’s doing well is construction products,” he said, while new car sales have declined—part of a national trend. 

Entertainment, one of Berkeley’s strongest economic sectors, yields almost no sales tax revenues, Fogarty said, because play and film admissions aren’t subject to the sales tax. 

Even then, Berkeley’s movie theaters have been impacted by another new phenomenon, the 16-screen AMC Bay Street multiplex in Emeryville, which has “overwhelming dominance” in the film trade.  

“It has totally eclipsed the theaters in Jack London Square and even the older” 10-screen United Artists multiplex in Emeryville. 

Dismissing Berkeley’s United Artists seven-screen Shattuck Avenue multiplex— “no one goes there but high school students”—Fogarty said Berkeley’s Landmarks-owned theaters are doing better because their fare, weighted heavily toward independent and foreign offerings, appeals more to Berkeley adults.

The Berkeley Board of Education approved the 2007 Summer School Program on Wednesday. 

Over the past few years, the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) has been trying to define its summer school program by introducing a variety of models to improve the academic performances of students not meeting grade standards. 

In a report to the school board, Neil Smith, assistant superintendent of educational services, said, “Research indicated that the traditional summer school remediation program was not particularly effective in increasing student achievement. Therefore, many of the principals have led their school governance councils in exploring site specific interventions to address the needs of their students that are alternatives to summer schools, such as Saturday School at King and extended day classes at Longfellow.” 

Smith added that schools were also designing strategic summer programs to meet student needs. 

The Pre-K Bridge Program—funded by the First 5 Alameda County—is in the works for students entering kindergarten in Berkeley Unified who have never attended a pre-school program. Thirty-six students will be enrolled in the five-week program (June 19-July 20) which will be held at Rosa Parks School.  

Parent training, health and dental screening for students and literacy support will be included. 

At the elementary school level, an extended year is being planned at Cragmont, Rosa Parks and Thousand Oaks. Scheduled to run for six weeks (June 20-July 27), the Cragmont Program is an all-day program that will provide academic support and enrichment for students. 

Thousand Oaks will host a program for Special Education students while Rosa Parks will offer a two-week summer school program (June 18-June 29) for professional development to 20 students. 

Students participating in all three K-5 programs will be taught by teachers familiar with the students’ academic strengths and weaknesses and the focus will be on individual attention. 

Each of the three BUSD middle schools will offer students a four-week program from June 20 through July 18. 

Students who have failed English and mathematics will be offered four hours of daily instruction in these subjects from middle school teachers. 

Middle school Cal Scholars will also be offered a program by Longfellow. 

Since, BUSD provides high school students a chance to make up the credits needed for graduation, Berkeley High will offer students who are not making adequate progress the same program as it has in the past. Four and one half hours of instruction will be provided daily for six weeks (June 20-July 27) which will allow students to take up to two semester courses. 

Math Achievement 

The board also approved the District Plan for Math Education which would help improve student achievement in mathematics. 

BUSD worked with a core group of mathematicians, principals, secondary math department chairs and math teachers in the last few months to come up with a plan whose specific goals are: 

• To increase math achievement for all students 

• To narrow the achievement gap in math for undeserved students, and 

• To increase enrollment and success in college prep math courses at BHS. 

Approximately $870,400 from Measure A, TItle I and Title II funds have been proposed to meet these goals, which will be met by appointing additional teachers to lower middle school class size, math teacher coaches who will promote reflection, collaboration, inquiry and action and a summer institute to help improve the knowledge of teachers. 

Elimination of Grade 6 at BAM 

The board also discussed the elimination of the sixth grade at Berkeley Arts Magnet (BAM). Although 50 students are enrolled in fifth grade at BAM, only six have requested to stay at BAM for the sixth grade. 

BAM is the only elementary school in the district which offers a sixth grade. 

BAMN Rally for Cesar Chavez Holiday 

Carrying posters and wearing brown ribbons symbolizing solidarity, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action & Integration And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) rallied in front of the school board building at Martin Luther King Jr. Way Wednesday. 

Bay area students and community members taking part in the picket demanded that Berkeley schools remain closed on March 30 in honor of California’s Cesar Chavez Holiday. 

“BUSD honors Martin Luther King’s and Malcolm X’s birthdays along with all the other national holidays. But it does not honor the Cesar Chavez Holiday, which is state law in California,” said Eyvette Felarca, west coast co-ordinator for BAMN. 

According to Felarca, the Chavez Holiday legislation—sponsored by Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles—was created specifically to give students from elementary school through college the day off from school. 

“The Latino community will not remain invisible. We will boycott school on March 30 to honor and respect this holiday,” she said. 

BAMN requested the school board at the meeting to recognize the holiday. Oakland Unified and San Francisco Unified are closed for Cesar Chavez Day. 

Physics was what 17-year-old Katy Forte had always wanted to pursue in college. That was until she started school at UC Berkeley last fall. 

“I had to give up the idea,” she said. “All the smart people on campus intimated me and I was too scared to pursue it.” 

But that was last semester. Things changed when Katy heard renowned physicist Stephen Hawking speak on the “Origin of the Universe” during the Physics Oppenheimer Lecture at the Zellerbach Hall Tuesday. 

“It definitely inspired me to go back and take some general classes in physics and see what’s out there,” she said. “Hawking was awesome. The whole lecture was presented in a way that would make perfect sense to anyone.” 

That in itself, as UC Berkeley theoritical physicist Marvin Cohen told the Planet, was the very purpose of the Oppenheimer Lecture. 

“We want to bring world renowned physicists to Berkeley who would give lectures that the public, especially students, would enjoy,” he said. 

Earlier lecturers have included Nobel laureates Murray Gell-Mann, Frank Yang and Robert Laughlin. 

The journey to bring Hawking—who is Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, England—to Berkeley, began four years back. Hawkin, who was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease at the age of 21, has a limited traveling schedule. 

“I had just flown into Heathrow from a conference in Edinburgh and was complaining to my wife about how tired I was,” Cohen said. “Then I saw Stephen Hawking waiting in the Virgin Atlantic lounge en route to China. I thought it was a good time to tell him that if you can go to China you can come to Berkeley.” 

And thus began an exhaustive effort to extract a few days from Hawkin’s schedule that would allow him to come to Berkeley. 

E-mails between Cohen and Hawking went back and forth, and once Marjorie Shapiro, the physics department chair, gave her consent, the date was set. 

“What makes Hawking so popular with all students is his wit,” said Cohen. 

Sure enough, in-between explaining the myth of the creation of the universe from the confines of his chair, Hawking slipped in these lines: 

“What was God doing before He made the world? Was he preparing Hell for people who asked such questions?” 

And later, “At a conference on cosmology in the Vatican, the Pope told the delegates that it was OK to study the universe after it began, but they should not inquire into the beginning itself, because that was the moment of creation, and the work of God. I was glad he didn’t realize I had presented a paper at the conference, suggesting how the universe began. I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the inquisition, like Galileo.” 

For some students outside the ream of physics on Tuesday, Hawking, who was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death, has something of a rockstar status. 

“He’s been on the Simpsons, and has appeared on Star Trek. And if that’s not enough, he’s going on a zero-gravity flight on his 65th birthday. It doesn’t get any cooler than that,” said Robert Hui who had come from Stockton to see Hawking. 

Initial excitement for the event made Cohen realize that the lecture was not going to be just another physics seminar. 

“The Oppenheimer usually fills one of the physical sciences hall. But for this we needed a very big hall,” he said.  

“Sometimes there are situations and personalities that have very general interest. In this case, there is a personality involved who has had a very unusual life and overcome obstacles. Hawking can hear you and see you. But if you waited for an answer, it would take a minimum of twelve minutes. I don’t think people were there to interact with him, they just wanted to be in his presence.” 

Students, alumni, faculty and the general public filled 2000-seat Zellerbach Auditorium and the 700-seat Wheeler Auditorium—for the live video simulcast—in a matter of time Tuesday. 

“The students are attracted by the prospect of being in the same room with the Albert Einstein of our generation. They may not have an interest in physics, but they all want to witness this phenomenon,” said Joe Yang, spokesperson for Cal Performances, which co-produced the event. 

Hawking’s research with black holes (first proposed by Robert Oppenheimer, after whom the Oppenheimer Lecture is named) and “space-time singularities” led to ground-breaking work on the theory of the universe. It also led to the publication of Hawking’s best-selling book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes in 1988. 

Incoming Cal freshman received its 2005 sequel A Briefer History of Time in their dorms last November as part of the new “On the Same Page” program established last year by the College of Letters & Science. 

“This time the books will go out much earlier. The idea is to get them to read a book that has changed the way we view the world,” said Cohen.  

“We want students to interact with the book’s author as well as faculty. Students need to know that physics is nothing to be afraid of. You don’t need to reach the greatness of Einstein to contribute to physics. You can do it in your own way.” 

On the fourth anniversary of the war on Iraq, people need to show their opposition to the war, says Phoebe Anne Sorgen, member of the city’s Peace and Justice Commission and active with Code Pink, among other organizations. 

“Decision makers are influenced by public opinion,” she told the Planet, adding that it appears that the U.S. is “on the eve of war on Iran that risks to be even more devastating than the war on Iraq.” 

Sorgen is among the endorsers of Sunday’s San Francisco anti-war march sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. The march begins at noon at Justin Herman Plaza, followed by a march to Civic Center.  

In Berkeley, some people are meeting at the North Berkeley BART station at 11:15 a.m. Sorgen said. 

Chris Banks is organizing East Bay youth to march together on Sunday. They will gather at the West Oakland BART station at 10 a.m. Banks said that some people thought that the Democrats would move to end the war. “Their vote for Democrats was a repudiation of the Bush administration,” he said Tuesday in a phone interview from the A.N.S.W.E.R. offices in San Francisco.  

“Instead we’ve seen an escalation of the war,” he said. Youth see resources that should go to their education “used to conquer another country.” 

Other events opposing the war on its fourth anniversary include: 

Friday, Candlelight Vigil, 7:30 p.m. Lakeshore Ave. Baptist Church, 3534 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Rep. Barbara Lee to speak 

Saturday, 11 a.m. Walnut Creek march and rally. Walnut Creek BART parking lot to Civic Center 

7 p.m. Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 

Film: Ground Truth 

Monday, Noon, 450 Golden Gate Ave. 

Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district office to urge Pelosi to deny White House war funding.

UC Berkeley professor and former cabinet officer Robert Reich must be feeling prophetic today, since the warning he issued about the use of a university’s good name to greenwash an oil industry giant has just cost Stanford $2.5 million. 

During Thursday’s Academic Senate discussion of the half-billion-dollar planned pact between UC Berkeley and British oil giant BP, Reich cited ads run by Exxon Mobil shortly after it signed a 2002 agreement establishing a $100 million, 10-year research accord with the school across the bay. 

The ads, which ran on the op-ed page of the New York Times, announced Exxon’s alliance “with the best minds at Stanford,” and carried the university’s seal and the signature of the Stanford professor heading up the research. 

“One such ad read, ‘Although climate has varied throughout earth’s history from natural causes, today there is a lively debate about the planet’s response to more greenhouse gasses in the future,’” said Reich, drawing gasps from some in the audience. 

That ongoing ad campaign has just cost the university a $2.5 million donation already pledged by film producer Stephen Bing, a major Democratic contributor. He recently gave $50 million to Proposition 87, the failed November 2006 ballot measure that would have levied a 4 percent tax on oil companies to fund alternative energy research. 

The San Jose Mercury News reported Sunday that Bing killed his pledge in response to the ads. His father, real estate mogul Peter S. Bing, has served on Stanford’s Board of Trustees, and the family has given millions to the university. 

The speakers at Thursday’s discussion either lauded the UC-BP project as the hope for evading an unthinkable future or blasted the eagerness of administrators and academics to surrender to the lure of big corporate bucks at the possible loss of integrity and the sacrifice of alternative research. 

The project’s biggest booster, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, scorned those who said the university should reject the half-billion-dollar package, labeling as “abhorrent” and “a violation of the most basic principles of academic freedom” any effort to halt the funding. 

The only cautionary notes among the seven designated speakers Thursday came from Reich and Associate Professor Ignacio Chapela, an outspoken critic of corporate/academic alliances as well as of the genetic tinkering that dominates the winning proposal UC Berkeley sent the oil company. 

While most of the faculty members in the audience applauded the proponents, graduate and undergraduate students and several faculty members from the social sciences had strong criticisms of the proposal that would create the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI). 

The project would be formalized by a contract between Cal and big oil, with Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory (LBNL) and the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana (UI) as subcontractors. 

New details 

A search of the original proposal selected by BP from five competing responses from Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC San Diego, Cambridge and the Imperial College, London, reveals no occurrence of the word “waste.” 

Instead, the document focuses on production of ethanol, with the main potential source listed as miscanthus, a tall, perennial grass that would be engineered to be super-prolific with little need for irrigation or fertilizers. 

Yet Jay Keasling, EBI faculty scientist and director of the Physical Biosciences Division of LBNL, told faculty Thursday that waste wood and paper waste from landfills would form a major source of biomass to be converted into fuels. 

He also said that ethanol—the primary fuel cited in the proposal—is expensive to distill, can’t be shipped in pipelines but must be trucked instead and yields low energy concentrations. “Why not produce fuels like we use in our cars right now?” he asked. “Why not produce oil, for instance?” 

While any examination of the human, environmental and social costs of converting land to producing genetically altered crops that may be refined with genetically altered microbes was relegated to last place in the proposal BP accepted, Keasling said during the questioning period that monitoring would be done throughout. 

He also faulted the draft for leaving oversight to the last. 

The proposal, a 93-page document, was drawn up with the assistance of the university’s media relations department. The document only contains one mention of the phrase “genetically modified organisms,” although creating gene-altered species to produce and harvest energy is at the core of the proposal. 

The proposal would also oblige the university’s media handlers to work with their counterparts at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Illinois and—most controversially—the oil company itself “to ensure that the EBI maintains national and international visibility as the world’s premier energy research institute.” 

Origin of proposal 

Vice Chancellor for Research Beth Burnside said the proposal began in June of last year when BP announced it would fund an institute to research a “biomass conversion approach to energy conservation.” 

That approach dovetailed with already existing efforts at LBNL, where director Steve Chu was already spearheading efforts to use GMOs to create new fuel sources under the umbrella of the Helios Project, using the research facilities of the lab’s Joint Genome Institute. 

Chu acknowledged that biofuels aren’t the sole answer to climate change, “but if you could have a 10, 15 percent effect on this issue,” it would be “a huge part” of the solution. 

After sending a letter in September to “all deans, chairs and directors,” Burnside said 60 faculty members responded with ideas for proposals, and all were included in the document’s appendix. 

While Burnside said she then began working closely with the Academic Senate’s budget committee, under questioning she revealed that she didn’t consult with the Committee on Academic Planning and Resources Allocation about the seven new full-time hires proposed until after the proposal was submitted Nov. 22, two days after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had pledged $540 million toward a new building if UCSD or UCB won the contract—a sore point with some of the critics. 

“Our objective was to treat this as an ordinary though a little bit oversized industry-sponsored research project,” she said, a remark that led several back-of-the-hall critics to roll their eyes. 

The estimated $50 million a year that would flow from the agreement is more than three times the university’s current annual corporate research funding of $16 million, or 3.1 percent of the $550 million total in external research funding the university received, mostly from the federal government, in 2006. Assuming half the $50 million went to the lab—an affiliate of the university—and UI, the remaining $25 million would raise Berkeley’s corporate total to the 5 percent level, which Burnside said was still well below the 7 percent national average and the 12.1 percent levels of Stanford and MIT. 

Panelist Shankar Shastry, a professor of electrical and bioengineering and director of the university’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), hailed the agreement as the latest in an ongoing series of joint academic/industrial collaborations. 

“That’s what we’re good at in Berkeley. There are few other places that I feel have this magic sauce to be able to put such coalitions together,” he said. 

Corporately responsible? 

Just how responsible a corporation is BP? David Vogel, a professor at Haas School of Business and the Goldman School of Public Policy, said, “On balance, BP is a relatively responsible institution and I’m delighted that it has chosen to associate itself with a relatively responsible university.” 

He cited the company’s adoption of a policy to disclose all payments to governments in developing countries and its efforts to clean up oil spills in Alaska and repair a Texas refinery where 15 people were killed and 200 injured in a 2006 explosion. 

He also cited the retirement benefits given Lord Browne, the CEO during the spills and the era leading up to the Texas disaster. Browne “retired with £5.3 million and an annual pension of £1 million ... this may seem like a lot of money, but his counterpart the same year, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, retired with a retirement package of $400 million. Even if you do the currency, there’s a big difference.”  

Vogel’s list of BP’s corporate sins neglected to cite allegations of murderous relations with repressive regimes in Africa and Latin America. 

Claudia Carr, a professor in the College of Natural Resources who specializes in energy issues in Africa, said the company had an “abysmal reputation” on human rights issues in the Niger Delta and was fully involved in massive human rights violations in Angola and Equatorial Guinea. 

Peace and Conflict Studies student Matthew Taylor faulted the university for dealing with a company which had aided in the CIA-planned overthrow of the democratically elected premier Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, BP’s earlier corporate name. 

Humanists respond 

Reich was the most cautious of the panelists except for Chapela, citing five major areas of concern in joint research agreements. 

The first was the one raised by Birgeneau, “the academic freedom of researchers to contract with whomever they wish in terms of funding,” including the issue of whether Berkeley researchers can take tobacco industry money, an issue “still pending before the regents right now.” 

Second was the question of prior restraints on publication of results of privately funded research, and Berkeley’s approach remains an open question, “a question I hope we have time to discuss,” he said. 

Third on Reich’s list was the ability of funding to distort the research agenda, an issue raised by agroecologist and Professor Miguel Altieri, whose research that he and Chapela do on eco-friendly farming techniques is doomed by corporate funding that looks to patents and rights. 

Reich also cited the $2.9 million Exxon Mobil handed out in 1998 “to researchers who would raise doubts about climate change” and pharmaceutical industry funding designed to “create an intellectual echo chamber of economists” opposed to regulation. 

His fourth issue was the potential impact of funding on hiring and promotion of university staff, and the possibility that critics of corporate funds would be discouraged or not hired at all. “The danger here is potential intimidation,” he said. 

The fifth issue, already cited, was exploitation of the university’s image and reputation on behalf of the corporate sponsor. 

Professor Timothy J. Clark of the university’s History of Art Department said he had “grave misgivings about this deal being struck with British Petroleum,” a name he insisted on using and which slipped into Vogel’s discussion at several points. 

The boardroom wants products and profits, he said, while scientists in the lab want the truth—setting the stage for an ongoing conflict and the need for oversight. 

“The evidence suggest so far that transparency has been notably absent,” he said. 

Burnside disagreed. 

Anthropology Professors Paul Rabinow and Laura Nader offered their own sharp criticisms of the way the proposal had been handled. 

Rabinow, whose specialty is medical anthropology and who has studied genomics extensively, said his main conclusion was “that what was damaged was faculty trust, but there’s not much of that left anyway.” 

Rabinow, who is working jointly on a project with Keasling, said he isn’t opposed to all GMO research and cited LBNL’s development of GMO production of the anti-malarial drug artemisinin as one positive use of the technology. 

Nader said she was “rather shocked by the cavalier attitude of the administration in discussing something as significant” as the commercialization of the university, which would now be devoted “to serving two masters, the bottom line and the truth.” 

Chapela’s statement  

The activist professor, one of the leading critics of Berkeley’s last major corporate partnership (the Novartis agreement), delivered an impassioned address that was ended by moderator Linda Schacht after he went two minutes over the eight-minute limit. 

Blasting the proposal as a document that would lead to the prostitution of the academy, Chapela was the only panelist to remind the audience that GMOs were at the heart of the proposal, while deriding the euphemisms it adopted to describe the highly controversial technology, 

“In the BP-Berkeley spirit, I would suggest we rename ‘science’ what we used to call ‘magic’ in my childhood,” he said. 

Chapela also charged that a Walnut Creek-based company called Mendel Biotechnology is a partner in the deal, a firm which has a $40 million alliance with Monsanto, a multinational corporation which has a vice president on Mendel’s board. 

Two professors included in the agreement are on the board of the firm, he said. 

He echoed Altieri’s concerns that the agreement would end research that focuses on non-patentable technology. 

“If we signed the agreement, can anyone seriously imagine that Berkeley would be in a position to undertake significant research to show the problems with the BP strategy?” Chapela asked. “Can anyone believe that after signing the contract we would be working on alternatives that do not involve patents, immoral profit margins, economies of scale and command-and-control governance?” 

A complete video recording of the senate meeting is available online at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events.php.

Fix Moldy Condos First, Say Residents 

The 11-story-or-so train-bus connector, parking, retail, laboratory structure Wareham Development wants to build next to the Horton Street train station in the heart of Emeryville, will be “enveloped in green ivy” on part of its exterior, and in the evening the lighting coming from the building will cast a “soft glow through the leaves,” Wareham CEO Rich Robbins told some 50 people gathered for a community meeting in Emeryville Thursday evening. 

While some in the audience had nothing but praise for the developer who promised “green” construction and solar electricity for the project, many in attendance called on Robbins to first fix an earlier project on the 5800-5900 block of Horton Street, one that contains about 20 mold-growing condos their owners have not lived in since 2003.  

West Berkeleyan fears Emeryvillization 

Meanwhile at Wareham’s latest West Berkeley venture, the seven-story structure at 2600 Tenth St. known to many as the Fantasy Building, some tenants—mostly independent filmmakers—have signed leases that raise their rents 20 to 100 percent.  

Others have not and are looking with trepidation at the “Emeryvillization” of West Berkeley—the proliferation of labs and high rents that have forced artists out—and the looming April 1 date when tenants must decide to either sign the leases or leave the building, according to documentary filmmaker Alan Snitow, a tenant in the building.  

Minimally, the developer needs to give the artists time to decide whether they can pay the higher rents or if they have to move, Snitow said, arguing that the rents in the building are already market rate and that the city needs to step in to support the artists. 

After the Emeryville meeting, Robbins addressed the Planet’s questions about rent hikes at the Fantasy Building, explaining that they kick in over a period of two-to-three years and are necessary because of the upgrades he is doing at the building. 

Further, Robbins denied that he is considering developing a building that would incorporate nanotechnology uses, something asserted by more than one reliable city insider. The city has no permits on record that would indicate this kind of development is planned. 

At the Emeryville meeting, Robbins, his architect William L. Diefenbach of the SmithGroup and Emeryville’s Community Economic Development Coordinator Ignacio Dayrit spoke. Dayrit’s role was to address the $10-$12 million job necessary to address toxics—PCBs, benzene, methane, lead and more—contained in the ground beneath the project site and the city’s role in helping with the remediation effort.  

Then it was the community’s turn to weigh in on the project. (As Councilmember John Fricke explains it, community meetings such as this one are a mandatory step that precedes a development being formally addressed at the city’s Planning Commission.) 

First to be called upon was Betty Burri, the owner of a condominium at The Terraces, a 101-unit condominium development.  

“My condominium has mold. Wareham built a bad building and hasn’t fixed it,” said Burri. She and 19 other families have been displaced. Some are staying at the Woodfin Suites Hotel and others have been “temporarily” relocated elsewhere, most since 2003. Wareham’s insurance company pays Burri’s hotel bill and she pays the mortgage on the condo and homeowner fees.  

In a phone interview on Friday, Burri told the Planet that the problems started with leaking windows and then the mold set in. It affected about 25 units, and cannot be corrected by simply replacing the windows, she said. The Homeowner Association has sued the developer. The matter is in negotiation. 

Addressing the structure Wareham was proposing at the meeting, Burri said, “I wonder what will happen to the building in five or 10 years.” 

Another Terrace resident added: “I don’t think you should build anything until Terraces is fixed.”  

Robbins said that since the issue is in litigation, he was unable to discuss it. With him, however, were two attorneys, whom he pointed out, who he said would talk to anyone who wished.  

Calling The Terraces “a blemish” on his 30-year record as a developer, Robbins said, “Wareham takes complete responsibility,” and promised: “We’ll stay on course and get it done.”  

A couple of people sitting in the front row had nothing but praise for the developer, but many asked him to consider problems the new building could cause: additional traffic Emeryville residents would have to contend with and inadequate parking. 

Building over height limit 

In a phone interview Sunday evening, Fricke said a particular concern was the height of the building: 169 feet in an area zoned for 55 feet, with the possibility of the developer adding two floors when a public benefit to a project is added. 

“It’s an issue of fairness and uniformity,” Fricke said, noting the buildings near the project are 80-90 feet high.  

“If they want [the area zoned at] 170 feet, we should have that debate,” Fricke said. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board voted 6-3 to approve the controversial Wright’s Garage project at 2629-2635 Ashby Ave. on Thursday. 

Board members Jesse Arreguin, Dave Blake and Sara Shumer voted against the project, which had first appeared before the ZAB on Dec. 14. 

John Gordon had requested a use permit to convert the existing three-tenant commercial building (the Wright’s Garage building) into a four-to-seven-tenant commercial building and to change the uses to one restaurant, one exercise/dance studio and up to five retail spaces. 

In the past, some area residents had expressed concern that a large-scale full-service restaurant at the proposed building—currently zoned for a car repair shop—would add to the neighborhood parking and traffic problems. 

The building, which was bought and is being renovated by Gordon, is bordered on two sides by private homes.  

Gordon met with the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association, Willard Neighborhood Association, Bateman Neighborhood Association and the Elmwood Merchants Group to address concerns related to parking, noise and traffic. 

ZAB had asked city staff to work with the applicant to address parking concerns raised at previous meetings by area residents.  

Boardmember Blake told the Planet that this was probably the first time that a project had been approved without the city knowing the exact nature of the businesses it would be used for. 

Board co-chair Rick Judd said at the meeting that he appreciated the effort by Gordon to explain the uses, but that he would “like at least one use in the building that was not subject to quotas.” 

He added that he was unconvinced by the staff report which stated that the peak consumer parking for the Elmwood commercial district was during the day. 

Staff reported that neighborhood traffic would not be impacted by the new project. 

Judd said that the permit approval was subject to a condition where the applicant would have to show—through a survey—that he had established access to increased parking or accommodated the demand for parking. 

Blake called the project “unusual.”  

“What we are being asked to approve is a development agreement,” he said. “It foresees things in the future.” 

Blake said he took exception to the fact that city staff allowed postings on the Kitchen Democracy website, on which people can post opinions on city issues, to be used as evidence for neighborhood support for the project. 

“To resort to Kitchen Democracy is to give a poll on a website more credibility than public testimony,” Blake said. 

Kitchen Democracy—the brainchild of Elmwood residents Robert Vogel and Simona Carini—allows registered members to comment and vote on pertinent topics which often come up at the ZAB. The website currently has 1,741 members. It recorded 173 votes in favor of and 20 votes in opposition to the project as of Thursday. 

ZAB Chair Christiana Tiedemann spoke in favor of Kitchen Democracy at the meeting Thursday. 

“Generally people who oppose a project come to the meetings. At times members of the public have to stay late in order to comment and that is not always possible. As a board, if we listen only to those who speak at the meetings, we are not being democratic,” she said.  

Board member Shumer said that the website was not the alternative to public testimony. 

“Those who log on to Kitchen Democracy are a subset of the community,” she said. 

Judd added that the board needed help from the city attorney to figure out if Kitchen Democracy fits in as information to justify a finding. “We need to figure out how to handle this,” he said. 

City planning staff told the board that the city attorney had said that comments from the website were like any other forms of information that could be accessed, like media or similar forms. 

Board member Jesse Arreguin argued that city staff gave more weight to support for the project registered through the Kitchen Democracy website than to those who took the time to speak on the issue at the ZAB meeting. 

“This does not give credit to those who come here to give testimony,” he said. “An overwhelming amount of written testimony has shown opposition for the proposed project. Without having any specific knowledge of the tenants coming in there, we can get no idea of the specific impacts the project will bring. The proposed project is not in confirmation with the zoning in the district.” 

Board member Jesse Anthony voted in favor of the project and said criticism that parking is too scarce for the Gordon project is misguided. 

“When the merchants wanted customers in the Elmwood district, the city helped the theater to open there,” he said. “There will be stores opening in the neighborhood even after this project is built. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that only one person has to create parking. Everybody should create parking.” 

Board member Bob Allen said it he looked forward to having the property full of businesses. 

“We have a huge and wonderful opportunity in front of us,” he said. “This is the trigger that gets merchants organized to get the city lot behind the Wright’s Garage to handle special parking.” 

161 Panoramic Way 

The board voted 5-4 to approve a project at 161 Panoramic Way. Applicant Bruce Kelly had first applied on Jan. 11 for a use permit to construct a single-family residential structure with two off-street parking spaces on a 3,295 square foot lot. 

Panoramic Way—a narrow, winding street that begins at Canyon Road and ends at the top of Panoramic Hill in Oakland—provides the only access to the neighborhood and to the homes in the adjacent residential area in the city of Oakland. 

The Berkeley Fire Department had required there also be a fire access stairway from lower Panoramic Way, on the southern side of the property. 

City staff had suggested that granting the applicant an encroachment permit to use the public right-of-way would be useful to the many residents who drive up and down the section of the street at the north end of the property. 

A group of neighbors had opposed the construction, fearing that the building would be a threat to their health and safety because of the area’s poor access, potential fire hazard, and location on an earthquake fault. 

Board member Terry Doran supported the Kelly project. 

“The kinds of hazards put forward by the neighbors are real. But one more house on the block is not going to make the community more unsafe than they already are,” he said.  

ZAB members had asked the applicant to provide an arborist’s report at the hearing.  

A Feb. 16 report from Steve Batchelder, consulting arborist, said that the two Live Oak trees on the property “can be adequately protected and that the long term tree health can be assured through the proper implementation of the tree protection and health mitigation treatments recommended.” 

Arreguin opposed the project. 

“The applicant has not made a good faith effort to mitigate negative effects of the driveway by putting it on the north side of the property instead of the south side,” he said. 

Blake said that adding more homes on Panoramic Way was an irresponsibility. 

“The ridiculously narrow street combined with the dead-end frightens me,” he said. “Whatever the risk is, it’s the responsibility of the board not to increase it.” 

Tiedemann said that the board should not overlook the stairway the developer was going to put in. 

“If there is a fire, it will provide a great emergency access point,” she said. 

Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board members are divided about whether it is appropriate to use public comments from the website KitchenDemocracy.org to justify approval of the reuse of Wright’s Garage building at 2629-2635 Ashby Ave.  

The zoning ordinance for the Elmwood commercial district states that in order for ZAB to approve the project there has to be evidence of substantial neighborhood and merchant support for the proposed project. 

A Jan. 25 staff finding to ZAB for the proposed project states: “The Elmwood Merchants Association supports the reuse of the building and compliments the work of the project proponent, but have expressed hesitation with the proposed uses and lack of parking in the district.” 

A March 8 staff finding to approve the same project states: “Neighborhood and community support of a restaurant use is evidenced by the positive polling results posted on KitchenDemocracy.com,” leading some ZAB members to argue at the ZAB meeting Thursday that ZAB was not putting equal weight on opposition through letters and public testimony. 

“Before they could use Kitchen Democracy, the Jan. 25 finding was the only support ZAB had for the project,” ZAB commissioner Dave Blake told the Planet on Friday. “The board needed to make a finding because they wanted to approve the project, so they used the only thing that was available to them to justify it. ZAB ignored all of the testimony in opposition for Wright’s Garage, ignored letters from merchants and neighborhood associations and relied solely on the Kitchen Democracy website to make this required finding.” 

On Thursday Blake voted along with board members Jesse Arreguin and Sara Shumer to deny the project. 

“It’s not that the comments on Kitchen Democracy are not reliable,” he said. “It has some validity. But the decision is an insult to everyone who came to ZAB or wrote to us about the project,” he said, adding that ZAB had received more than 30 letters in opposition.  

KitchenDemocracy.org recorded 173 votes in favor of and 20 votes in opposition to the project as of Thursday. 

ZAB board member Michael Alvarez Cohen—councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s appointee to the ZAB—voted in favor of Wright’s Garage Thursday. 

Alvarez Cohen is listed as a board member and strategic advisor for KitchenDemocracy.org 

ZAB chair Christiana Tiedemann told the Planet that her decision on Wright’s Garage was based on zoning laws and the public hearing as well as the comments on KitchenDemocracy.org. 

“It’s completely incorrect that I didn’t listen to people at the hearing,” she told the Planet on Monday. “I read the comments on Kitchen Democracy. Many of the opponents who listed their message on it were those who showed up at the hearing. Consideration was given to all kinds of comments. Receiving written commentary and public testimony is very important. However, people who don’t oppose the project don’t often come to the meetings. Often they work late or have early morning schedules.” 

Tiedemann said the future use of Kitchen Democracy as a way to gather citizen opinions on issues would depend on whether neighborhood sentiment was required for a project. 

“I guess we have to wait and see how it works out,” ZAB co-chair Rick Judd told the Planet on Friday. “ZAB has always had a traditional set of rules for holding hearings. Now we have a new vehicle, a new technology that the previous set of bodies have not used before. As a retired lawyer, my concern is that everybody has access to the same information and it is preserved as recorded documents, that we not be each looking at something different on the computer screen. The idea of an administrative hearing is to base it on common facts.” 

Judd added that he would tend to give a little more weight to people he could see. 

Board member Arreguin remarked that he was very upset by the board’s decision Thursday. 

“I think it’s unfair that comments on a message board were given more importance then public testimony and letters of opposition. What the ZAB did was wrong,” he told the Planet. 

Robert Vogel—co-founder and president of KitchenDemocracy.org—told the Planet that the website was not a replacement for other methods of participation.  

“It merely adds another channel,” he said. “Equal weight should be given to all comments, whether it be made at City Hall hearings, through letters, or on the Kitchen Democracy website. If ZAB is ignoring comments made in opposition, then this should not be the case. It’s wrong not to give lots of weight to people who have taken the effort to come to City Hall. But it’s also wrong to ignore people who take the effort to read the issue on Kitchen Democracy and comment on it.” 

Vogel said the website followed the same process that was followed for public testimony at City Hall. 

“Just as you have to fill in your name and address at City Hall or ZAB, a person has to go online and register with his or her address. Ultimately, there is no way to verify whether this is the correct address for both City Hall or Kitchen Democracy,” he said. 

Vogel added that Kitchen Democracy’s membership had grown 70 percent in the last six months. 

“Diversity of our users has increased as well. Sixty percent are now living outside District 8, the district we had first started out with,” he said. 

District 8 councilmember Gordon Wozniak—who had supported Wright’s Garage publicly on Kitchen Democracy—said that the website reached out to a broad group of people. 

“I don’t understand why anyone would make the argument that ZAB favored the comments on Kitchen Democracy over public testimony. Board members are required to look at every kind of citizen input,” he said. 

Wozniak said that if Wright’s Garage were appealed to the City Council, he would ask the city attorney for advice on whether he should recuse himself from voting since he has already posted his opinion about the issue on the website.

At tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting, city staff will ask the community concerned with Pacific Steel Casting emissions to wait until a health risk assessment based on known emissions is published in mid-April to ask for further studies and hearings. 

Also on the agenda is a discussion of enforcement against disruptive street behavior, limits on serving on key city commissions, open selection of library trustees and advisory measures against using military force in Iran, against raids involving undocumented workers and supporting a lawsuit in Germany against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 

Pacific Steel Castings’ emissions 

Steven Ingraham of the West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs says the community does not want to wait for the health risk study, as staff has suggested. Once the study is released, it will take months more before the Bay Area Air Quality Management District takes action, he said, supporting the city’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission’s recommendations: 

• testing the neighborhood for lead and other compounds; 

• convening a public hearing to show the impacts of PSC emissions on the “quality of life, health, enjoyment of property, and potential long-term health risks” for the community; and 

• enforcing existing zoning and storm water codes and developing new codes to reduce or eliminate harmful emissions. 

In operation since 1934, Pacific Steel is a foundry with three plants near Second and Camellia streets in northwest Berkeley. The plant, with some 600 union workers, makes custom-made steel castings for such items as bridge components, water system valves and medical treatment equipment.  

“We should look at the health risk assessment first,” said Nabil Al-Hadithy, the city’s toxics manager, contending that future testing would be as problematic as in the past. 

A prior sampling was “not done following appropriate methodology,” Al-Hadithy said. The results may have included, for example, lead from house paint and not from the foundry. 

Similarly Al-Hadithy said a council workshop should be convened only after the health risk assessment is out.  

As for code enforcement, Al-Hadithy said that some issues could be taken care of in-house, but that others—drafting new laws—would have to be contracted out at significant cost. 

But Ingraham says once the health risk assessment is released the community may have to wait until the air district weighs in on it.  

“I’m looking to the city for more proactive role,” he said, adding that despite new emissions controls, people living within a mile or so of the plant continue to smell the “burnt pot-handle” smell, which indicates that emissions continue to leave the plant. 

Timing of BAAQMD presentation questioned 

Also of concern is the appearance on tonight’s agenda of a presentation by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District on a recent study “regarding diesel particulate impacts and port expansion.”  

“It looks like we’re being managed,” said Ingraham, explaining that he thought the BAAQMD, which oversees PSC’s emission controls, would address the PSC issue and take advantage of their time to address the council and counter some neighborhood concerns.  

Commission restrictions 

If the council approves the limits proposed for persons serving on the Zoning Adjustments Board, the Planning Commission, the Housing Advisory Commission and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, no individual will be allowed to serve on more than one of these key commissions and no person will be permitted to serve on any of these commissions for more than eight cumulative years. Term limits would be rescinded for other commissions, except the Youth Commission, where terms would be limited to four consecutive years.  

Additionally, in a paragraph included in the ordinance draft but not mentioned in the staff report, no commissioner would be allowed to serve both on a commission and on the Rent Stabilization Board, the Board of Library Trustees, the School Board or the Berkeley Housing Authority.  

Sitting on sidewalks addressed 

A proposal by Mayor Tom Bates, which, if approved, will go to various commissions before coming back to the City Council for final approval, will address disruptive street behavior, including sitting on the sidewalk. The proposal is called “Public Commons for Everyone Initiative.” 

Peace and Justice says no war in Iran, supports Truth Act, more 

As the world situation becomes increasingly volatile, the Peace and Justice Commission has come forward with a number of resolutions: 

• Opposing U.S. military intervention or use of force in Iran. 

• Supporting Rep. Barbara Lee’s Haiti Truth Act, which calls for an investigation into the removal of Haiti’s democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Feb. 29, 2004. While Aristide says the U.S. military forcibly removed him, the Bush government says he asked for their help to leave. 

• Supporting the prosecution in Germany of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Director of Intelligence George Tenet, the former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general and others “for war crimes and torture perpetrated against Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib … and in Guantanamo Bay Naval Station.”  

The city manager, however, is recommending against this resolution, saying the city does not have the resources to evaluate whether the complaint is justified or whether the city would suffer a fiscal or legal consequence. 

Library trustee selection 

The council will be asked to recommend two of their members to join a committee that consists of two members of the Board of Library Trustees, to devise a process of trustee selection that is “more open and transparent.” Currently the trustees self-select new members when one member leaves, with the approval of the City Council. 

Condemning immigrant raids 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli is calling on the city to condemn the current Homeland Security raids in which people without proper identification are sent to their home countries, sometimes picked up and jailed leaving their young children to fend for themselves. 

Supporting open citizen police review hearings 

The council will be asked to support AB1648, which would allow civilian review boards that operate outside of a police department to hold public hearings on complaints about police misconduct. Berkeley has not held police complaint hearings since mid-September, following a California Supreme Court decision that is interpreted by many, as eliminating open complaint procedures. 

Robberies up 

The police chief will give a report that shows that since July Berkeley has followed the nation-wide trend with the number of robberies increasing. While robberies, defined as taking of property by force or threat of force, were up, property crimes decreased during the same period. 

Tonight’s series of meetings begins at 5 p.m. with a workshop to discuss the 2008-2009 citywide work plan. At 6:30 p.m. the Redevelopment Agency will meet to look at adding $400,000 to the Oxford Plaza Apartment project. 

The regular meeting begins at 7 p.m. All meetings are at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way and available via Cable TV Channel 33, KPFB-FM 89.3 and via the internet. 

The citizen planners shaping the new plan for downtown Berkeley are preparing to face a major decision about the city center’s streetscape. 

A second task awaiting discussion by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) is a new policy to encourage more economic development in the area. 

Members heard a report last week on options for street-level frontages on new multi-story buildings to be erected in the new, expanded downtown area encompassed by the plan. 

“The issue also has implications for urban design,” said Matt Taecker, the planner hired to draft the document mandated in the settlement of a city lawsuit challenging university expansion plans. 

While current requirements call for ground floor retail in new mixed-use buildings with housing or offices above, the downtown currently suffers from widespread shop vacancies. 

Deena Belzer, an economic consultant hired by the Downtown Berkeley Association, urged a change in the policy, as well as a plan that recognized some streets as commercial and others as residential or oriented toward the arts. 

Taecker said the entrances to residences are typically landscaped or raised above street level and set back somewhat from the streets, while retailers like big windows and immediate exposure to passersby so they can attract customers. 

“This is not a typical downtown,” said Taecker. “This is really a cultural center,” with civic and cultural uses predominating. 

Residences with street front entrances are concentrated in the northwest, southwest and southeast corners of the planning area. 

Belzer and the DBA have urge concentrating new commercial uses along Kittredge and Center streets and University Avenue, all largely east of Shattuck Avenue, as well as along Shattuck between University and Kittredge. 

Current sites that are either vacant or underdeveloped—and not counting properties owned by the university—could accommodate up to 300,000 square feet of new retail and restaurant uses, Taecker said. 

Economic future 

Members also worked their way through a draft Economic Development and Employment Element prepared by city staff, and Planning and Development Director Dan Marks led the discussion. 

The big question, Marks said, is “how much space do you want and where will it be?” 

One point agreed early on was that no more construction could take place under the city’s current cultural bonus, which has resulted in numerous complaints and at least one lawsuit. 

“The existing cultural bonus was very poorly drafted conceptually and we would not rely on it,” Marks said. A new version “will require sitting down with a lot of people and talking about it.” 

Helen Burke, a planning commissioner as well as a DAPAC member, said she liked the idea of spelling out the ways builders can get more density from their projects. 

“The issue for this group is whether you want to go beyond existing city policy and what types of bonuses you want,” Marks said. 

Architect Jim Novosel said he was concerned by the lack of a statement on the need for ground floor parking in new construction, a critical factor given the high costs of building spaces below ground level. 

Mim Hawley said she wanted something in the policy requiring that streets be maintained, which she said is a significant factor in attracting people to the downtown. 

Asked about the need for grocery stores, Marks said a major problem is that downtown rents are higher than grocers can afford—raising the possibility of creating a lower-rent density bonus incentive to attract them. 

“It’s very important to try to incentivize these things,” said Michael Caplan, the city’s economic development director. Caplan and Mayor Tom Bates have called for policies that give developers more certainty and faster processing in exchange for granting bonus for building in low-cost housing and other city needs. 

Jesse Arreguin, a UC graduate student who serves on several city commissions, said he was concerned about the lack of data in the element’s analysis.  

Linda Schacht, a DAPAC member and journalism instructor at the university, said she had hoped to see a bonus included for creating sustainable buildings, but Marks said that would be included in the plan’s separate section on sustainability—a concept DAPAC has already approved. 

One issue that has provoked ongoing debate is street safety, which some see as a measure targeting the downtown’s homeless. 

Rob Wrenn, a transportation commissioner, said he wasn’t sure the plan should include more jobs downtown, preferring more housing instead.  

While a new building fee was proposed to create more open space, Wrenn said the only new fee on downtown buildings should be a transportation services fee to help fund alternative transit and discourage passenger car use. 

In the end, no action was taken on either set of issues, leaving more work for the committee as its November deadline approaches slowly but inexorably.

The Berkeley Board of Education will meet Wednesday to approve the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) 2007 Summer School Program. 

“We have been trying to define summer school for the last few years,” said BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan. “We don’t get any separate funds for summer school. Currently it is only available to those kids who require it to advance to the next grade level. In high school, if a student didn’t pass a class required for graduation, then the student would have to go to summer school.” 

BUSD is considering using the summer school model during the school year, after or before school. 

“The kids who have trouble at school, go to summer school. But, by the time they go back to school, they forget most of what they learned during the summer,” Coplan said. “So we are trying to implement the same learning process before or after school hours.” 

Other matters 

The board will also look at a plan to improve student achievement in mathematics as a way to narrow the achievement gap in mathematics at middle school. 

The board will review the positive certification of the second Interim Report, which certifies that the district will be able to meet its financial obligations for the current and subsequent two years. 

The board will also discuss and consider the elimination of grade six at Berkeley Arts Magnet, the only elementary school which has a sixth-grade level. 

Late Monday, Berkeley High School Principal Jim Slemp reported that he was feeling better but that he was still hurting following an accident on his bike.  

At 7 a.m. on Friday, an oncoming motorist at the intersection of Telegraph Avenue and Oregon Street hit Slemp as he rode his bike to school. 

“I was in a bike lane with a helmet,” recounts Slemp, “and a person on Oregon Street coming onto Telegraph looked like they were going to stop, but just slowed down, and hit me.” 

After the accident, the fire truck arrived, followed by an ambulance which carried Slemp to Alta Bates General Hospital on Ashby Avenue, just a few blocks away. He stayed under care at the hospital for two and half days, returning last Wednesday with a cast. 

“I broke three ribs, my shoulder in two places, and my thumb in two places,” says Slemp with a smile on his face, “but the recovery shouldn’t be too long. Ribs are the longest, taking about six weeks, according to my doctor.” 

During Slemp’s absence, Vice Principal Rory Bled took the role of principal for Monday and Tuesday of last week. Everything went smoothly and there weren’t any problems, according to the administration. 

When the City Council passed a resolution in December favorable to the Gaia building owner, councilmembers thought they had dodged a bullet. They were still under fire, however. 

Patrick Kennedy, a principal in Panoramic Interests, which developed the mostly-residential building at 2116 Alston Way, had threatened to sue the city unless it approved his interpretation of the requirement for cultural use of the two ground floors: cultural activities are required, but so are other profit-making ventures, he said. 

The council resolution that pleased Kennedy pushed his tenant, Boalt Hall alumna Anna De Leon, who owns Anna’s Jazz Island, to dig out her lawyer hat and and fire off a complaint against the city. The suit, filed in Superior Court last week, claimed that the city violated the building’s use permit by allowing anything other than cultural uses on the first two floors. 

Kennedy was allowed by the city to build two stories higher than he would have been otherwise permitted, because he promised cultural uses on the first two floors.  

De Leon’s lawsuit, brought on behalf of three residents deprived of the benefits of those uses, argues in the complaint that the building “was granted two extra floors of revenue-generating residential apartments in exchange for placing 10,000 square feet on the bottom two floors into 100 percent cultural use.” 

Berkeley residents can weigh in with their concerns about the major expansion planned at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory during a 7 p.m. hearing Wednesday. 

Members of four city commissions will gather in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way, for a hearing on the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) on the lab’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) through 2025. 

The lab, a joint partnership of the UC Berkeley and the federal Department of Energy, will be the site of much of the research to be funded by a $500 million agreement between the university and BP, the former British Petroleum. 

That proposal focuses on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, and will incorporate nanotechnology—two political sensitive concerns shared by some members of Berkeley’s activist community. 

Members of the Planning, Transportation, Community Health and Landmarks Preservation commissions will take public testimony and raise their own concerns. 

Both the plan itself and the DEIR are available online at the lab’s website: www.lbl.gov/LRDP. 

Members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted March 1 to adopt a position that the DEIR failed to address the impacts of the loss of a community cultural resource in areas of Strawberry Canyon that will be included in the expansion plans. 

The commission also said the revised EIR should include mitigations to compensate for the loss. 

The LRDP calls for: 

• 980,000 square feet of new construction and the demolition of 320,000 feet of existing buildings, with a net increase of 660,000 square feet. 

• The addition of 375 to 500 new parking spaces, with the final number determined by development of alternative transportation programs. 

• The addition of 1,000 new employees above the current base of 4,375.  

At the March 8 meeting called by Wareham to show off its proposed transit cente-commercial-laboratory project, some 50 community members showed up—as well as two Wareham attorneys, a Wareham architect, a public relations consultant and a couple of helpers to operate the power point display. An Emeryville Police officer was stationed near the door. 

As the meeting progressed, the police officer appeared at the side of one member of the audience who was making an audio recording of the meeting and told the individual to turn off his recorder, as he did not have permission from Robbins to record. The individual hesitated and the officer told him that if he didn’t turn the recording off, he would ask him to leave. 

Robbins’ attorney Semha Alwaya, who was nearby, added to the insistence that the individual would have to turn off the recorder. In the end, he complied. 

Emeryville City Counclmember John Fricke, who did not attend the meeting, said in an interview Sunday evening, that he had received several complaints on the issue.  

Fricke, who is an attorney, said as he understands it, because the meeting was intended for the public and advertised as such, even though it was held by a private developer, it was a public meeting and any member of the public could record it.  

Reached Monday, Emeryville City Attorney Michael Biddle disagreed, saying he considers the meeting private, since it was called by the developer and not the city.  

Then why was a uniformed Emeryville police officer there apparently doing the bidding of the developer? the Daily Planet asked. 

“You’re kidding me,” Biddle responded, unaware an officer had been there. “I don’t know why we would have an Emeryville police officer there,” he said. 

Calls to Robbins’ attorney Semha Alwaya were not returned. 

Since they are something of a dying breed and I’m someone who grew up in Berkeley in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I seem to have hippies on the brain not infrequently.  

In the neighborhood I moved to three years ago there aren’t any, unlike the Southside digs I occupied for 18 years, and their absence was one of the first things I missed. It made me think, well, why do I think there aren’t any? Maybe there are some here and I didn’t recognize them. Are long hair, tie-dye, and anarchism visibly proclaimed on patches or signs required identifiers? 

A friend of mine recently said she asked her 13-year old son if he’d had a wet dream yet, and we laughed about her boldness and his shocked reaction. It sent me on a strange chain reaction of musings, so bear with me—there is a point at the end. 

First, it made me think about the role of moms in raising sons, and how explicit it’s advisable to be with them, and whether something like that is best coming from a dad. Or questions about menstrual periods coming from mom. But then I thought, well, fooey (or equivalent expletive), if you have a good relationship with your kids and you don’t want to cultivate secrecy and embarrassment around sexual issues, both parents can surely talk to their kids about that stuff. 

Then my mind jumped onto a tangential track (as it is wont to do) and I thought, what a mind-blowingly taboo thing that would be to ask on my in-law side of the family. My husband’s family is Muslim (though he’s atheist like me), and a mom asking her son if he’d had a wet dream would be just south (ahem) of Bizarro world. 

Then I thought, well, it isn’t fair to put that taboo in a cultural box, there are plenty of WASPy households that wouldn’t dream of such prying. But despite my own WASPy heritage I personally loved the free and easy nature of her inquiry and hope not to avoid any such topics with my own little son, whose only wet dreams for the moment are related to wet diapers. 

And I thought, well, duh, that’s because I’m still part hippie. Part professional working woman, with Chamber of Commerce-friendly blazer and leather-trimmed purse-slash-briefcase. Part mod-surf-punk weekend daytripper with silly logo T-shirts I should have given up wearing a decade ago and mini-shoulder bag with old concert pins. Part mommy, with spit-up stains on my sweatpants and baby bag permanently packed and ready to fly out the door. And yes, part hippie—the only part of me that doesn’t seem to leave a visible footprint. Sure, some hippies are visually unmistakable, but many aren’t. 

Would you always know from looking at someone whether they’ve gone to political protests or lived in a commune? I used to visit the Berkeley Living Love Center as a child with my dad, and my best friend lived in a nudist colony briefly with her parents, but it doesn’t show. I think nothing of walking nude around my apartment, to the chagrin of my husband, who reminds me that the window’s open. I just don’t care—that hippie childhood again. “So what, it’s just cloth,” we responded when the boys snickered that they saw our underpants when we swung from the monkey bars. Snickering over underpants, yeesh—how establishment. 

I still think love is all you need which seems garishly naïve to many and I think that war, for any cause, is only a short-term fix at best and violence to solve problems is nonsensical. To get all John & Yoko about it, just imagine—what if we took the $369 trillion we’ve spent in Iraq so far (check out http://nationalpriorities.org and click on “Cost of War” under Quick Hits to see the total keep rising in real time) and plunked it down to build schools, businesses, roads, and hospitals? Er, talk about winning hearts and minds… 

But I digress (again, as I am wont to do). Basically, my inner hippie still believes in Free to Be You and Me, and I mean really free, as in free to be ugly or geeky or quiet or a homebody, not free as in “free” to fit the carefully disheveled activist-student-artist Urban Outfitters mold. 

Peace-love-live and let live. It’s all so … dated. 

And why is that? If being punk or goth or rock or mod or even country is perennially retro-cool, why is being a hippie relegated to Hopelessly Un-cool Uncle Milt status in the pop-cultural family? Who knows. But fortunately, hippies don’t give a damn. Which is why I love them. In this image/status-obssessed world, thank god(dess/universe) for the ones that don’t give a damn. 

So you may never recognize the hippie in me if you see me on the street, big deal. Just remember, it’s more than tie-dye deep. 

Sonja Fitz, who still has her vinyl copy of the Living Love Center LP and, well, all her vinyl records, in fact, lives in Berkeley. 

Steve Cho, a Korean owner of a liquor store in the Pic-Union/Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles and a member of the U.S. National Guard, likes to listen to Spanish music and is currently learning Spanish. He admits, however, that there is hardly any communication between Koreans and Latinos. Others say the separation runs even deeper. 

In clubs, schools and the workplace Koreans and Latinos are increasingly sharing the same spaces, and yet there is little interaction between them. One public high school teacher here noted that his Korean and Latino students have “learned from their relatives to mutually ignore each other.” 

As the two communities continue to grow, they are becoming more dependent economically on one another. In major cities across the U.S. it is now common to find Korean-owned establishments employing predominantly Latino workers. While this opens opportunities for cultural exchange it also often leads to serious, sometimes violent, misunderstandings. 

Koreatown 

“The building I live in is predominantly Korean,” says Cho. In the next building nearly all of the residents are Latino. There are no links between residents of the two buildings, just the occasional glance and a resounding silence.” 

A recent article on Korean-Latino relations, in the Spanish-language daily La Opinion listed some of the similarities between the two communities. Among them is the high population of foreign-born, Korean and Latino alike, many of whom struggle with English. This limits not only their ability to communicate with one another, but also to participate in the political process and integrate into mainstream society, 

Alvaro Ramirez, who was born in Colombia and came to the United States in 1996, told La Opinion he believes Koreans exploit the Latino community through the high prices of goods sold in local stores and the low wages paid to Latino employees. 

According to Korean media in Los Angeles, which has one of the largest Korean and Latino populations in the country, nearly 60 percent of Koreatown’s labor force is Latino. 

Jae Hak Lee, a researcher at Koryo University in Seoul, Korea, says his studies reveal that nearly 65 percent of Latino workers employed by Koreans say they have a negative view of their employers. Two out of three Latino employees say they would prefer to work for non-Koreans, who would have more respect for labor laws. In contrast, 74 percent of Korean business owners say they prefer to hire Latinos. Why the discrepancy? For some, the reason is cultural. 

Many Korean immigrants tend to be entrepreneurs. They come from a society where a six-day work week is the norm; and because they often don’t speak English they use their savings to open small businesses here. The size of the Latino labor force and a burgeoning Korean entrepreneurial sector make it a given that these two communities are going to rely on each other, particularly in cities like New York and Los Angeles. 

Tensions between the two groups have been growing for several years. There has been a recent spike in court cases involving Korean business owners and their Latino employees . According to the New York-based National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, Latino immigrant workers filed a lawsuit against the Food Bazaar, a Korean supermarket chain for $1.5 million in unpaid wages. 

Nine Latino workers claim they received no wages for the duration of their employment as grocery baggers. Forced to live off customer tips that amounted to $100-200 a week, they say they worked an average of 50 hours per week, and were fired without notice. 

“Some Korean employers treat their Latino employees differently than Korean workers,” says Danny Park at the Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance. “They’ve been known to fire workers without any notice.” 

One story that caught the attention of both communities was the killing of a Korean man in late January by his Latino employee after his boss apparently criticized him for not working hard enough. 

The incident raised fears among Koreans, who are concerned over a repeat of the deadly Los Angeles riots of 1992, in which African Americans, angered by perceived racism from Korean storeowners, burned and looted Korean-owned establishments. This time, they say, any riots that break out could be between Koreans and Latinos. 

In 2002 a number of Latino employees were fired by their Korean employers after attempting to form a union. Last year many Latino workers expressed fear of losing their jobs after participating in mass rallies against planned immigration laws. 

Growing tensions have spurred leaders in both communities to call for increased dialogue and promotion of cultural understanding. Charles Kim, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, says the Korean community needs to make more of an effort to understand the Latino community. 

“Koreans need to change the way the see their Latino neighbors,” says Kim. 

Store owner Steve Cho says that while community leaders and activists call for unity and understanding, the divide is clear and not going away in the neighborhoods. 

“Ultimately,” says Cho, “Latinos and Koreans have to get along. We have to learn to respect our mutual cultures and see each other as human beings.” 

Aruna Lee is a writer for New America Media. Elena Shore of New America Media contributed to this article. 

After a camping hiatus of over ten years, here I sit, reclining in a canvas chair overlooking Wild Plum Creek, the Sierra Buttes rising as sentinels above me. After my children had grown, I’d sworn off camping. What am I doing here? 

Let’s face it, some camp and some don’t. You either love it or you hate it. Regardless of the value, you have to enjoy camping to put up with its detractions, and there are detractions. 

You might as well start with the dirt. From the moment you alight from your car, the particles begin to attach themselves to body and clothing. They’re on your tent, tablecloth and sleeping bag. You see, I’m talking about your basic campsite, no trailer or RV, just a tent and its accouterments. No matter how often you wash your hands, it’s hopeless, two minutes later they are again grimy and brown. Except for state parks, most public campsites do not have showers. Dirt soon becomes a second skin.  

Then there are the bugs, in numerous varieties. In the cool of dawn and the waning of dusk, mosquitoes emerge. Your ear instantly detects the high-pitched whine of the voracious female out for your blood. The appearance of food on the table acts as a signal for yellow jackets, anxious to sample both sweet and savory and any moist tidbits. Even when you’ve hidden all manner of edible morsels, they linger and buzz your person, just in case an ort has attached itself to your shirt. When lanterns glow, moths make a bee-line toward the light, dive-bombing and refusing to take no for an answer. It draws them like a magnet, so stay out of their way. 

If you’re a person who prefers to accomplish daily tasks at a rapid pace, camping is not for you. On the other hand, if you dream of slowing down, welcome. Simple tasks like brushing your teeth or brewing a cup of coffee stretch into the future. Preparing an entire meal, eating and cleaning up can seem monumental. There’s no getting around the fact that camping is work, from the planning and packing to arriving home with multiple loads of dirty camp gear. While setting up camp is part of the allure, breaking it down and somehow fitting everything back into the car seems to take forever. 

My memories of camping stretch back in time to when one or two dogs filled in for children. An International Scout, a Citroen 2CV, a Fiat Spider, several Peugeots and a Chevy Blazer doubled as transport vehicles. Even the arrival of babies didn’t deter me, though sleep was not a generous commodity. As the kids grew, roles were established. My son took up fishing at an early age, accompanying his dad and soon venturing out on his own. My daughter socialized as she roller-skated around the campgrounds, making friends wherever she went and usually being offered tastier vittles than anything we had brought.  

Last year, 48 million Americans occupied campsites in all 50 states. What is the allure that draws people of all ages in ever-increasing numbers? 

At Lassen Volcanic National Park, the scenery is spectacular—soaring volcanic peaks, hot, bubbling fumaroles, gurgling mud pots, untouched meadows, burbling creeks and serene lakes. Better yet, park attendance is low, making your experiences personal rather than mass-produced. 

There you can enjoy the solitude of an early morning walk around Manzanita Lake, when the air is crisp and breezes ruffle the reeds. Your only companions are families of ducks and geese effortlessly gliding and foraging while muskrats leave their burrows along the tree-shadowed shore. Eagle and osprey are secure in their aeries in towering pines. 

Return in the evening for “the rise” and you’ll share the lake with anglers casting their flies at trophy trout while the pink-hued light of the setting sun mirrors Lassen Peak upon the surface. Listen to the quiet “fish-talk” as anglers compare notes on which fly is hot and gently swear at the fish who got away. 

Closer to home, Samuel P. Taylor State Park even boasts showers. The one-hour drive makes an impromptu weekend escape possible. Pitch your tent below towering coastal redwoods and savor the quiet sounds of Papermill Creek tumbling across well-worn boulders. Hike the creek trail or watch raptors soar above the open grasslands. Your campsite can also serve as a perfect home-base from which to explore Tomales Bay, the Point Reyes National Seashore and nearby coastal treasures. 

If driving is not on the agenda, take advantage of the free time to cook up a breakfast scented with wood-smoke. Breathe in the tantalizing aromas of al fresco cooking as breakfast sizzles in the pan. Eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, bread toasted over graying coals, hot coffee—let the air sharpen your taste buds, accentuating every flavor. Nothing ever tasted so good. 

Back at Wild Plum Campground, off the north fork of the Yuba River, we sit bundled up around a warming campfire. After a busy day spent exploring the nearby Lakes Basin, we slowly roast marshmallows to place against squares of chocolate and graham crackers for the perfect s’mores. Millions of stars amid a shaft of moonlight crowd the inky night sky, a rare treat far from interfering civilization. Once again I share this time and place with my children, now grown and with friends and dogs of their own, one of which, the dog, is cozily ensconced in my camp chair. 

Having the time to fall into the rhythm of nature could be the allure for couples, families and even solo campers, enjoying a relaxed freedom not easily attainable in more controlled settings. With fewer attractions and lacking the electronic distractions that seem to have taken over our lives, time seems available to talk, just sit and watch sparks rise from burning logs, once the camp chores are done. 

Even as the years pile up, the simple lure of wilderness continues to call: forests of trees, the sound of water, the call of birds and time spent among family. As long as I can still manage to climb out of the tent each morning, I’ll endure the distractions and heed the call of the perfect campsite.  

LASSEN VOLCANIC  

NATIONAL PARK 

About 180 miles north of Sacramento, east of Redding via State 44 or Red Bluff on State 36. (916) 595-4444, www.nps.gov/lavo.  

SAMUEL P. TAYLOR STATE PARK  

Take the Central San Rafael exit off HWY 101 north and follow Sir Francis Drake Blvd. 15 miles to the park. 8889 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Lagunitas. (415) 488-9897. 

WILD PLUM CAMPGROUND (TAHOE NATIONAL FOREST) 

One mile east of Sierra City (Hwy 49) on Wild Plum Road. 100.miles northeast of Sacramento.  

A young friend told me that she’d made the mistake of watching the city council on cable on Tuesday night. Her verdict? “Pathetic!” she said. “Most of the time they didn’t even seem to know what was going on.” Sadly, I agree. 

I hadn’t planned to go to the meeting myself, or even to watch it online as I occasionally do when I’m feeling masochistic. But on the way back from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information awards dinner in San Francisco, I made the mistake of turning on the car radio to see what was happening. Big mistake. 

A representative of a business association (which the Planet belongs to) was carrying on at length about how some people are afraid to go to Berkeley’s two genuinely urban commercial zones, Telegraph and Shattuck Downtown, because of the presence of other people on the streets who act weird.  

Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration of what was being said, but Hey You Guys! This is no way to improve the business climate in town. I was so struck by the foolishness of it all that instead of going home I went to the meeting to throw in my two cents worth before public comment closed on the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative, whose name seems to come from 1984 (Orwell’s novel, not the year).  

There I heard one business association leader after another repeat the same refrain, which was eagerly taken up by Hills councilmembers. Some people who live in the Berkeley hills are afraid to go to downtown Berkeley and Telegraph Avenue. Some are even afraid to leave their homes. I’m sorry for them, but perhaps they should take to heart what Franklin Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address: “[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” 

There are still, as there have been in the 34 years since we came back to Berkeley, people on the streets who are obviously in mental distress who could benefit from some help. There are still young people on the street who have come here expressly for the purpose of displaying their alienation from conventional society by their dress and demeanor. There are even still some drug users and sellers, though fewer in number compared to past years, or to parts of Oakland, Richmond or even San Francisco.  

But should privileged hill dwellers be afraid to come downtown because of them? Of course not. The commercial streets are crowded with people going about their business at least until midnight most days. Walking along Telegraph and Shattuck is safer than walking through the deserted streets of expensive residential areas at night. 

And there are plenty of laws already on the books to prohibit genuinely antisocial behavior. The last thing the city of Berkeley needs to spend its money on is yet another round of redundant and probably unconstitutional attempts to solve social problems with police action.  

We do have real problems here, by the way.  

The lively neighborhood where the Planet office is located has been plagued by armed robberies of patrons on their way to BART from our beloved Starry Plough and La Pena late at night. Residents a bit farther away, near Sacramento and Oregon, are justifiably frightened because of gunfire in their neighborhood. If there are extra police funds available, we’d appreciate a little more help in South Berkeley—using our police force to roust drunks downtown instead would be a real waste of money  

And the mayor’s final rambling diatribe was the worst of all. He seemed to have just noticed that some Berkeleyans have been going to El Cerrito Plaza to shop instead of shopping on Shattuck, and he seemed to be blaming it on street behavior. Maybe our mayor’s not a shopper, and he certainly hasn’t been in business for most of his life, but there two words he might think about when he ponders what might be wrong with shopping downtown: Parking and Stores.  

Yes, yes, I know transit advocates insist that there are plenty of buses which go there, and that there are even some garages if you can find them. But this is America, and California to boot, and nine out of every ten shoppers still expect to find a free parking space right in front of the store of their choice, as they can in El Cerrito Plaza. Sad but true.  

And that’s the main reason the retail stores have largely departed from downtown Berkeley, both Telegraph and Shattuck, and will continue to depart. Every national chain brought in by Berkeley’s clueless doctinaire planners has demonstrated the problem: Barnes and Noble, Eddie Bauer, the Gap. As we add more and more luxury student condos and their associated autos to the mix, it’s only going to get worse for in-town retail. Pizza, beer and t-shirts will do well, but other kinds of stores will continue to depart for greener pastures. 

Like Fourth Street. I might have missed it, but I didn’t hear anyone from Fourth Street in the lineup of complainers at the hearing-- this despite the fact that when I was last at my excellent optometrist on Fourth Street I encountered three (polite) requests for funds on the street in the (short) distance between my car and the shop. Denny Abrams, the tsar of Fourth Street, has mastered the technique recommended by the Andrews Sisters in their World War II hit: “Ac-centuate the Positive, E-liminate the Negative, Latch On to the Affirmative, and Don’t Mess with Mr. In-B-Tween.” Fourth Street, love it or hate it, has Parking and it has Stores, just like El Cerrito. Retailers that can’t cut the mustard are politely but firmly asked to move on, to be quickly replaced by better competitors. Spare-changers on the street don’t seem to bother the crowds of happy shoppers I threaded my way through.  

There’s plenty of positive to accentuate in downtown Berkeley these days despite retail’s slump. Downtown, the restaurant run by the current Downtown Berkeley Association president, has good food and good music, a winning combination. Good music can also be found at Anna’s Jazz Island, and of course there’s all the lively theater at Aurora, not to mention the movies. And there are more good food establishments, some less expensive than Downtown, like Angeline’s, the newish New Orleans restaurant which has taken over part of the space vacated first by Huston’s Shoes and then by Gateway Computer. Dollars contributed to the DBA would be better spent pointing up what’s working than complaining about what’s not. 

And that goes for Telegraph too. In the midst of the whining from their peers, some businesses on Telegraph are just doing what they do, and doing it well. The very civilized Le Bateau Ivre has just celebrated its 35th anniversary by adding a live music night every Monday, and the ones we’ve been to have been packed with eager music lovers. Rasputin’s Records continues to thrive despite internet competition. Adagia, the new restaurant in the historic Ratcliff-designed Westminster House building on the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, is buzzing, as are many less pricey ethnic restaurants on Telegraph itself. Peet’s new store in another historic building is well-lighted and full late into the night. 

Council members on Tuesday praised the efforts of programs which help people in distress despite being chronically under-funded. Perhaps what’s needed now is some kind of twelve-step program for Berkeleyans imprisoned in their isolated homes by their own irrational fear of Downtown. Maybe those of us who enjoy the Downtown experience, both Shattuck and Telegraph varieties, could sign up to take the fearful folks, one-on-one or in groups, on tours of our favorite hotspots of an evening. There’s no reason for them to be paralyzed by unreasoning, unjustified terror. 

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” How often in the reign of the current mayor will we find the opportunity to use that now-hackneyed quote from Lord Acton? Tomorrow’s Berkeley City Council agenda offers yet another one. It contains not one but at least two naked power grabs by Mayor Bates, aided and abetted by the so-called ‘moderate’ councilmembers and the sycophantic faction of ex-progressives who have joined them to create the new conservative majority on the city council. (Style note: when both “so-called” and single quotes are used, it means we think the word ‘moderate’ lost all meaning in Berkeley politics years ago, as did ‘progressive’.)  

Grab No. 1: The new ordinance aimed squarely at purging the most knowledgeable members of the city’s boards and commissions, the few who have offered token resistance to the mayor’s policy of all-development-all-the-time, on tonight’s council agenda (Tuesday).  

It wasn’t enough for whoever did the drafting at the mayor’s behest to bar commissioners from serving sequential terms on quasi-judicial commissions, just in case they might actually find out what’s going on. Then a provision was added to keep anyone from being on more than one such commission at a time (as if there were a huge citizen demand to attend tedious meetings). There were three prominent targets: Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman, a retired professor of political science who has forgotten more about drafting zoning regulations than anyone on city staff will ever know; Zoning Commissioner Dave Blake, a neighborhood organizer who manages to be both a small-scale landlord and a tenants’ rights activist; and Jesse Arreguin, a UC senior with a strong interest in affordable housing, who’s been active in local government issues since he was a teenager in San Francisco, who serves on both Zoning and Housing.  

This is a variant on the “first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” school of political action. For those of you who missed the Shakespeare course, Dick the Murderer proposed getting rid of lawyers to make sure that no one was around to thwart his nefarious schemes—he was not a good government kind of guy. The targeted three are not actual lawyers, but they’ve made it their business to become knowledgeable about the way zoning regulation works, and they’ve used that knowledge on behalf of citizens to curb the excesses of the building industry as much as possible. 

Case in point: after last Thursday’s Zoning Board meeting I got a frantic late night call from an Ashby Avenue neighbor, a long-term political activist on the state and national level, who’d paid scant attention to local issues (not even reading the Planet!) until they appeared on her doorstep. She was shocked at the way the proposal to transform Wright’s garage into a bar was ramrodded through ZAB with nary a word of protest from most of the commissioners. She did say that “some guy named Dave” laid out exactly what was happening to them for the benefit of the alarmed neighbors, but that he was on the wrong end of the vote, along with a “Jesse” and “some woman.” When I told her that said Dave and Jesse were being kicked off the ZAB, as a card-carrying Prog she was even more shocked.  

But killing the shade-tree lawyers wasn’t enough. (Old-timer’s slang translation: cf. the shade-tree mechanic, who fixed cars in his backyard.) Now someone is trying to drive a stake through their hearts. Into the draft has crept a further refinement, not openly requested at the council meeting where the commissioner-crippling scheme was first discussed. Now those who serve on the Rent Board, the School Board, the Library Board and the newly created Housing Authority are also to be barred from commission service. Not coincidentally, Blake and Arreguin were just elected to the Rent Board. Doesn’t this one violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of association? 

Looking for possible defenses against this kind of wholesale attack on commissioners, I dredged up the history of the Fair Representation Initiative, placed on the ballot by citizens in April 1975. Its purpose was to give minority councilmembers Ying Lee and Loni Hancock the opportunity to appoint their own commissioners, at that time the exclusive right of the then council majority, the ancestral tribe of today’s moderates. It said nothing about limiting service to one commission.  

The mayor’s proposal will now curtail the ability of all councilmembers to appoint the commissioners they prefer. I asked someone who was active in the initiative campaign whether this violates the Fair Representation ordinance, and he said it’s “certainly against the spirit of the ordinance,” if not the letter.  

A poignant historic irony is that one of the people who might now be barred from serving on city commissions is former councilmember Ying Lee herself, who agreed to join the Library Board at a time when her presence was needed to restore eroded public confidence in library management. And former-councilmember former-mayor now-assembymember Hancock is the now-wife of then-assemblymember now-mayor Bates, under whose watch the fair representation ideal is being done in. Ah, power! Ah, Berkeley! 

Power Grab No. 1 is so complicated that there’s little space left here for Power Grab No. 2, the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative. Who dreamed up this triply-redundant name? The PCE Initiative doesn’t seem to be a real initiative in the legal sense, just a tricky name in the unhallowed tradition of the Bush administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative, which many Berkeleyans know meant just the opposite of what its name implies.  

And it’s the same kind of Orwellian double-speak. What the name really means is Public Commons for Everyone Except You, if you should happen to be the tired, the poor or the huddled masses. Let’s hope it’s not a real initiative in the tradition of the disastrous anti-speech ballot measures N and O of about ten years ago, which cost the city a fortune in election spending and legal fees before they were properly struck down in federal court. Bates was an avid sponsor of that expensive boondoggle. Pray that he’s not poised to try it again.  

COMMISSIONERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for an excellent editorial on the effort to dislodge non-partyline commissioners. If Berkeley voters would begin a gentle chant, “term limits for councilmembers” every time this power play against knowledgeable commissioners was suggested, it would suddenly never be mentioned again. Politicians who refuse to allow diverse perspectives even to be voiced from advisory, relatively powerless commissions, don’t belong in office. 

Carol Denney 

• 

COMMISSION TERM LIMITS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Everyone knows that the current struggle over further limits on the terms served by city commissioners is no more than a squabble between rival factions. That shouldn’t prevent the rest of us from considering the matter objectively—rather than sardonically, as Ms. O’Malley does with her remark “as if there were a huge citizen demand to attend tedious meetings.” She may have it backwards, and any alleged shortage of volunteers could well be explained by the number of commissioners who appear to be permanently entrenched. 

Common sense tells us that if commissioners can serve on one body for no more than eight years out of ten (voiding their present ability to leave briefly and later be re-appointed), more citizens can serve. On the one hand this is inherently more democratic, and on the other it still allows a significant period of service in which to build expertise.  

Revan Tranter 

• 

SUSTAINABLE BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The March 9 article on Sustainable Berkeley has several corrections that might be misleading to your readers.  

1. Sustainable Berkeley is a voluntary collaborative; it is not a not city commission. It does not govern or regulate. It formed in response to a report that identified that the city does not have capacity to lead our community to meet major goals such as zero waste and carbon neutrality, that the changes necessary to reach ambitious goals require a collaborative including all segments of society.  

a. The Sustainable Berkeley Steering Committee was self generated by environmentalists, businesses and academia to work together voluntarily to make Berkeley a green city; the steering committee was not selected by the city or mayor.  

b. Sustainable Berkeley does not claim to be fully representative of the community. We hope to continue to become more inclusive, since everyone in Berkeley needs to realign their homes and businesses to reach Berkeley’s goal to be the greenest city in America and to reduce GHG by 80 percent by 2050. 

2. Sustainable Berkeley is unincorporated since it is so new; it uses Community Energy Services Corporation (CESC) as its fiscal agent. The Berkeley Energy Commission is the governing board of CESC, they support creation of Sustainable Berkeley and an Energy Commissioner plans to join the steering committee. 

3. Sustainable Berkeley hired Timothy Burroughs to convene the community and create a GHG Reduction Plan. This process will be inclusive, transparent and posted on the Sustainable Berkeley and City of Berkeley website once it is developed. The Steering Committee and Mayor Bates will not have editorial control over the plan. Sustainable Berkeley has a city contract to deliver the plan to the city manager and mayor in December 2007. 

4. Timothy Burroughs was hired as a by Sustainable Berkeley without a recruitment process since he is a nationally recognized expert in GHG Reduction and the position is temporary through December 2007. 

5. Cisco De Vries is not an employee of Sustainable Berkeley; he is the mayor’s chief of staff working half-time for the city on GHG Reduction. We look forward to continued leadership and support from Mayor Bates. This spring, Mayor Bates will help us convene a meeting to inspire our top 100 commercial energy users to take action to reduce their emissions while saving money and helping make downtown green.  

Joel Kreisberg 

Chair, Sustainable Berkeley 

• 

BESIDE THE POINT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley citizens on the losing side of a decision at the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB), a citizen commission or the City Council often complain that the deciding body acted in an “undemocratic” manner. Usually this is said to occur because the government entity failed to recognize the predominant number of supporters for one side that was present at the meeting, where “almost everyone” publicly favored the outcome that lost. 

While this complaint is technically accurate, it is also beside the point. Berkeley has a representative form of government and is not a direct democracy. We choose people to make our decisions for us based on all the information they can gather, and we don’t take the votes of the attending citizens at these public meetings. The purpose of a public hearing or meeting, therefore, is not to count heads for or against something but to try to ensure that all points of view have been heard and that all relevant information is available. From that perspective, it shouldn’t matter if the same opinion is presented once or a hundred times, as long as it’s clearly understood. Deciding commissioners or councilmembers should act based on their consideration of all the relevant points of view, not just the views of those who may have packed the meeting with their supporters. 

As Warren Buffett once said about the stock market, Berkeley commissions and councils shouldn’t act as voting machines, they should act as weighing machines—weighing all opinions, not counting heads physically present. 

Our representative form of government is important in a town where most citizens simply don’t have the time or physical stamina to attend public meetings that often run into the late hours. We have decided to trust others with the task of making our civic decisions for us, based on all the input they can gather. And that’s precisely why organizations like Kitchen Democracy were formed—to give voice to those who cannot physically attend all the meetings all the time. While Kitchen Democracy does record opinions, its main value is facilitating the weighing of arguments for and against, and the opinions presented in writing. We should ask our civic representatives to read those opinions, and not just to vote according to the majority recorded there; Kitchen Democracy votes could be “packed” as readily as the audience at ZAB meetings.  

The relevant word in this discussion is “trust." Those who cannot trust their representatives to make fair decisions should indeed exercise their democratic rights—but that happens directly only at the ballot box, not at a late-night public meeting. 

Alan Tobey 

• 

TELEGRAPH AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am glad the Berkeley City Council has time for foreign policy (“City Backs Action on Rumsfeld”). However yesterday I went for a walk on Telegraph Avenue near the Berkeley campus. Is there another college town street in America more ugly and depressing than this? Why do the students rush along like they are afraid to even walk there? Why have I never seen any policeman or woman on the street walking or on bicycles? What right do the pan handlers have for violent stares that seem to imply that if you don’t give them money they might kill you? 

And finally, why was I the only guy with gray hair to be seen? I will tell you why: The street is scary. And there is nothing so ugly and depressed near a major university coast to coast. Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley is a disgrace to every Californian and American. The city political workers should take a look in their own back yard. What was once a wonderful college town neighborhood is one more store closing away from becoming a total urban disaster zone. 

Ken Vermes 

San Rafael 

• 

VAN HELL BUSES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m thrilled with the Planet’s coverage of AC Transit’s misguided plans to purchase 50 new Van Hool busses. I’m neither senior nor disabled but as an AC Transit bus rider, I very much agree with the “Van Hell” moniker. Thanks to you, I now know the extremely fishy circumstances behind their purchase from a Belgium company on a sole source contract. I also learned that Mayor Tom Bates asked to “inspect” one of the busses because he’s never ridden in one! Gee, I wonder why not?  

This past summer, when the Berkeley City Council discussed initiatives to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Mayor Bates declared, “It is time for the politicians and the people to catch up to the scientists and make the necessary changes in policies and behaviors.” I’m sure Mayor Bates knows that fossil fuel combustion is by far the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and using public transportation is one of the “necessary changes” that is needed. It’s time you walked, er, rode your talk Mr. Mayor.  

I propose that Mayor Bates go beyond inspecting the Van Hool’s and actually try to conduct his normal activities using public transportation for one week in the Bay Area. I hope that all of the MTC commissioners do the same. You’ll soon learn some inconvenient truths about the public transit in our region. Sadly, the Van Hool’s are just one of many problems. The Daily Planet’s account of the Mayor’s adventures on public transportation could be quite amusing. Meanwhile, please continue to monitor the concerns of bus riders and the response of elected officials who serve on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 

Martha Wallner  

Albany 

• 

SIERRA CLUB IN BED WITH  

DEVELOPERS, SMART GROWTHERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Sierra Club, which found itself dug deep into political quicksand and internal rancor over immigration and population control, appears to be backing thoughtlessly into another unwinnable, charged battle, this one aligning with a newly minted, polarizing developer front group in North Oakland called Urbanists for a Livable Temescal-Rockridge Area (ULTRA). 

ULTRA was formed to shill for condomania—Oakland’s belated, Jerry Brown era-effort to jump onto the development bandwagon, as his response to the public clamor for retail. Oakland’s version of condomania is especially developer-friendly—no impact fees, no environmental review or study of cumulative impacts prior to approvals, variances handed out like candy, no attempt to save decent and affordable, often historic housing, no respect for the neighbors’ loss of views and sunlight, a rubber stamp Planning Commission whose only concern is apparently that projects aren’t high enough or parking inadequate enough. 

Newspeak rules: Ultra, in a press release announcing the forum, claims that “higher density development along main commercial and transportation corridors” will actually create “more green open spaces,” “support local public schools,” promote “economic and cultural diversity,” and “healthy community interaction.” 

These $500,000-$800,000 condos are designed for single yuppies or perhaps childless young couples and are actually more expensive than many single family homes with yards and garages for sale in the same area. How can they truly support the schools, represent diversity, or justify any of the other ULTRA claims? 

The truth is that these projects are impacting affordable, rent-controlled multifamily units (condos are exempt from local rent control by state law). They create more strain on local police and fire departments already overburdened, not to mention other suffering infrastructure like streets, sidewalks, street trees, and parks. And the trashing of livable neighborhoods with looming ultramodernist condos whose residents further clog the streets (yes, they WILL drive cars!) will push more people OUT of cities. This will defeat what one assumes is behind the Sierra Club’s clueless participation in pushing condomania--saving farmland and open space. 

The Sierra Club is co-sponsoring the ULTRA forum from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, March 17 at the North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 MLK Jr. Way at 58th Street. Concerned Sierra Club members might contact the organization regarding its alliance with ULTRA.  

Robert Brokl 

• 

ABAG AND THE PENTAGON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Feb. 27 article, “Association of Bay Area Governments Helps Fund Pentagon Program,” demonstrates obvious confusion about ABAG’s Financial Services Department and how we serve as a conduit to secure financing that will fund a variety of projects in the Bay Area and other parts of California. The program offers such cost-effective financial services for cities like Berkeley that it is important to clear up any misunderstanding about how the program works. We help local governments and others gain access to tax-exempt debt financing and save considerably on public financing costs.  

In response to concerns raised in the article, ABAG itself doesn’t give or lend money to projects. We do provide a full range of cost effective financing services, expertise, and finance program options to local governments, non profits, schools, private universities, special districts, housing partnerships, hospitals, and healthcare organizations. Through various financial programs, we help them gain access to inaccessible financing. Note that these financial services are focused primarily in the greater Bay Area, with only 30% of debt financed secured for other projects outside our region.  

ABAG Finance Authority for Nonprofit Corporations, an ABAG finance program, cited in the article has helped nine projects in the City of Berkeley alone gain access to funding and lenders. This has translated into securing $78,600,000 to finance the construction of multiple apartments/mixed use facilities, multi-family rental housing, and a community health center; seismic upgrades and building improvement; and the refinancing of multifamily housing revenue bonds.  

I invite you to go our website at www.abag.ca.gov/services/finance/ for a full description of the financial services programs and ways they are serving the Bay Area during these critical times of limited state and local budgets and restricted funding sources.  

Kathleen Cha 

Senior Communications Officer 

Association of Bay Area Governments 

• 

SOUTH BERKELEY NEEDS HELP! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m new to Berkeley, and have lived in South Berkeley for about three years now. In that time frame I have been consistently shocked and saddened by the lack of concern that both the mayor and our City Council, namely Councilmember Max Anderson, have shown towards truly addressing violence and presenting solutions for our community. Sunday night there was more gang activity one block from my home. My neighbors and I are trying to do our part to build community and live our lives, but we can’t when we feel that a few bad individuals are permitted to cause fear on our streets. My neighbors and I are asking for real change to happen. I’m not sure what the solutions are, but a real dialogue must happen. Several neighbors have suggested the installation of surveillance cameras at the corner of McGee and Oregon, as well as at the youth park on Oregon Street. Others have suggested more police foot traffic. My neighbors and I have been open to this discussion for awhile. What we really need though is some action. 

Don Mack 

• 

MOLLY IVINS WAS A PLAGIARIST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s sad that the Berkeley Daily Planet has been doing a tribute to a journalist (Molly Ivins) who repeatedly has been caught plagiarizing the work of others. The most widely publicized instance was when she lifted most of a column from Southern humorist Florence King in 1995. Here’s how Ivins’ victim described the theft: www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.16894/article_detail.asp.  

But she continued to steal from other people after that. In 2003, she plagiarized Australian writer Clive James (http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/005528.php). If journalists were intellectually honest, they would have kicked her out of their profession years ago. But by doing a tribute to her, the Daily Planet is endorsing her ethics. 

Bob Gamboa 

There is a lot that’s troubling about the mayor’s “Public Commons For Every One Initiative,” beginning with the name. I really regret that new-speak has made its way from our nation’s capital to Berkeley. A more accurate name for this initiative would be the “Get Homeless People Off the Streets of Berkeley Initiative.”  

Of course such a naked avowal of intent is unseemly, so the initiative follows a pattern of sweetening the pill with provisions for increasing referrals to largely nonexistent services; stepped up activity by the Mobile Crisis team (often viewed on the street as an arm of the police); and no reduction in homeless services, without, however a commitment to any increase in funding for those services. There is still no daytime youth drop-in center in Berkeley and no detox. 

At the core of this initiative is yet another push for new anti-homeless laws. The implication of the proposal is that there are currently not enough laws to do the job. The fact is that when the police get their marching orders they are perfectly capable of rousting just about anybody using threats, intimidation and the laws that are on the books right now. 

The proposal calls for “creating consistent community standards for public behavior,” evoking images of Taliban-like patrols monitoring the conduct of citizens, although of course the only citizens whose conduct would be monitored would be the poor and the homeless.  

The problematic street behaviors identified in the proposal are “prolonged sitting and smoking in front of businesses, yelling at people as they walk along the corridor, and/or selling or consuming drugs.” Selling or consuming drugs is already illegal. Smoking in the commercial corridor is likewise for all practical purposes illegal under the current ordinance that prohibits smoking within 20 feet of a doorway or air intake. That leaves “prolonged sitting” and “yelling at people.” 

So seriously, are we going to have a “no yelling” ordinance? Are police going to be walking their beats with decibel meters? And really, is every happy-go-lucky yeller going to be cited or is it only going to be homeless yelling that gets the attention of the police. And do we really think this can be enforced without running afoul of the First Amendment? And have we forgotten that there is already a Berkeley ordinance that makes it unlawful “for any person to solicit another in any public place . . . ”in any manner which coerces, threatens, hounds, or intimidates the person solicited.” (BMC 13.37.020.) 

If we agree a “no yelling” ordinance should be a nonstarter that leaves the terrible social problem of “prolonged sitting.” How exactly would this one work? Are we going to have police putting chalk marks on homeless people like the parking enforcement officers do on tires? And if the person moves does the clock start again?  

We don’t need to go down this road. We’ve been here, we’ve done that, it doesn’t work, and it does us little credit. Criminalizing homelessness only increases the quotient of desperation in our community. It might be possible to sweep that desperation out of sight, but it will still be there to haunt us. 

There is a better way. 

Osha Neumann is a local attorney and artist.

Weasel words and spin doctoring in Berkeley! A public commons is a place where people can sit, sleep, feed the geese, talk, and generally rub shoulders, dance, make music, and interact with all sorts of people. Putting laws in place which target the very people most in need of a relaxing space is the very opposite of “public” or “commons.” The old guys sitting on the park benches or on the barrels on the porch of a general store could be annoying, as could the chorus in a Greek play, but they were the essence of the public, the whole picture, the alternative views, the different values in life.  

I can foresee the whole thing going down in costly legal flames over the issue of differential enforcement. If I, a sweet old lady, not begging, sit for three or four hours and talk to everyone who wants to talk with me, and the guy two benches over is chased because he has been there for three hours and is talking to everyone in earshot, where is the justice? We will, in effect, have a closed area where only those who are taking part in a commercial transaction or are picturesque will be welcomed.  

Since the retailers in Berkeley have fought every well intentioned and well thought-out proposal to put in public spaces, in favor of parking and congestion, why do they deserve extra consideration because they have made our existing public spaces intolerable? People with the good of Berkeley in mind have been trying to get Telegraph, between the University and Dwight, closed for all but emergency and commercial deliveries for years, so that people can walk, talk, and shop with lots of attractive, common, public space around them. Who shoots this idea down every year? The merchants. One of those parking spaces might be taken by a customer who wouldn’t walk half a block from a parking garage, but who would circle the block for an hour waiting for that space. Again, the idea that delivery trucks only show up at designated times, and don’t double park, blocking traffic, is opposed by the merchants, even though that is even more destructive of casual automobile shopping trips than having to use a parking garage.  

We see the same reflex, cars good, people bad, reaction from the merchants on North Shattuck, who want their clumsy, badly designed and dangerous intersections preserved because a more sensible layout which encourages people to walk around might remove a few parking spaces.  

When I see the Telegraph (and Shattuck and University Avenue) merchants putting out benches for people to sit on, putting out trash cans, putting out tubs of trees and flowers and maintaining them, similar to what is on Fourth Street, then I will believe they care about public spaces. Until then, I see them as exploiters of what should be public spaces for their private gain.  

Mayor Bates’ regressive, anti-public, anti-common good proposal to stigmatize or criminalize ordinary people who use the streets needs to be shot down. Going from reasonable proposals to make North Shattuck and, at the opposite end of Shattuck, the Adeline intersection, more inviting public spaces to a proposal to harass people using existing public spaces, shows a schizoid type of fragmented reality in our public planners and other officials which does even more than the street people to make Berkeley deserve its international reputation as the “open ward.”  

Teddy Knight is a Berkeley resident.

Last June I attended an Oakland City Council meeting at which the would-be developer for the Oak to Ninth project was comparing the proposed development to other urban waterfront projects including Chicago’s Millennium Park. 

I am from Chicago and, as anyone who has visited Chicago knows, its entire lakefront is one continuous park, and Millennium Park in downtown is indeed a jewel for all citizens of Chicago to use and enjoy—with many venues and easy public access.  

The Oak to Ninth also could be a dazzling world-class waterfront, but the current plan blocks off much of waterfront park making it accessible only by the residents of the proposed condominium towers. 

The project not only sets aside the well-considered Estuary Policy Plan that was approved unanimously by the then sitting City Council, it is a “public rip-off of historic proportions.”  

These are the reasons that a group of citizens mobilized to exercise their first amendment rights to petition for a referendum. Twenty-five thousand signatures were collected in opposition to the ordinance approving the sale of this public land.  

The signatures were triumphantly turned in Aug. 17. However, instead of respecting the rights of the citizens of Oakland to challenge this ill conceived ordinance, City Attorney John Russo sided with the developers and disqualified the petitions claiming that it did not include the proper ordinance—even though the ordinance that petitioners used was the one that had been approved by the city council.  

The petitioners sued to have the signatures counted; however, John Russo joined the developers’ attorneys to engage the citizen groups in costly legal battles bound to strain their financial wherewithal and therefore their First Amendment rights. 

In opposing the petition, the attorneys for the developer cite many significant differences between the final ordinance and the ordinance the petitioners took from the city website per instructions of the city clerk’s office. 

The City Charter obligates the city to have the ordinance available to the public on the day that it is passed. The State’s Brown Act calls for citizens to be apprised of what is being passed by the City Council. If the final ordinance shows significant differences from what the city provides its citizens then it would appear that the city did not follow its own charter and the Brown Act in passing the ordinance. If that is the case the John Russo has the obligation to void the ordinance.  

City attorney spokesperson has stated that ‘We’re trying to uphold state law. We can’t pick and choose what laws we want to uphold’. 

Becky O’Malley wrote in her 8/18/06 Berkeley Daily Planet editorial: “[Mayor Dellums] would be well-advised to bring all parties back to the drawing board to see if they can’t do a lot better by what everyone agrees is a world-class opportunity. It’s such a good site that it merits a seriously big-time international design competition, instead of just another routine Big Ugly Box condo development on steroids.” 

I urge John Russo and Mayor Dellums to step forward in defense of Oakland’s people and its amazing potential as a waterfront city to achieve what it deserves rather than this ill-conceived giveaway to a developer.  

Once the waterfront is gone it will be gone forever. 

Akio Tanaka is an Oakland resident.

Luckily for our democracy, even in our nation’s darkest hours there have always been a courageous few willing to speak truth to power. They may start out as mavericks with powerful enemies out to silence them, but they often go on to become inadvertent heroes, as the rest of the country finally catches up. 

Something similar may be happening in Berkeley. While the kind of personality willing to delve deeply into the details of Zoning code and Planning documents hardly seems likely to spark a movement à la Mario Savio or Barbara Lee, a handful of our local truth sayers have become the targets of a bald attempt to silence their participation in the often boring but significant arena of land use. 

Those who pay close attention to city politics are already aware of the realignment of political factions taking place over the past four years. Mayor Bates, elected as a progressive, has regularly built a City Council majority composed of several councilmembers who are anything but. 

This past Tuesday, a council majority of Bates, Wozniak, Capitelli, Olds, and Moore adopted the first reading of an ordinance aimed at eliminating a number of community members serving on Zoning, Planning, Landmarks, and Housing commissions by enforcing term limits of eight years and prohibiting these land-use commissioners from serving on any other commissions. 

While the original proposal referred to the city attorney in January attempted to masquerade as a good-government measure, promising to close loopholes in an earlier attempt at limiting terms for all commissions, when the council referral was stripped down to its bare bones—targeting only land use and eliminating term limits for other commissions—the mask began to slip. And when the city attorney (who certainly didn’t come up with the idea by herself) added a provision, unmentioned in the council referral, prohibiting members of the Rent Board, School Board, and Library Board from serving on land-use commissions, the mask fell away altogether. There has hardly been a rush of School and Library Board members clamoring to spend yet more hours in meetings! But two of the community members targeted by the ordinance (progressives Dave Blake and Jesse Arreguin) recently won four-year terms on the Rent Board; this provision would have effectively removed them from decision-making roles on land use for years to come. 

Enough protest surfaced to pressure the council into removing language related to the three elected boards, but too late to replace the mask. The council majority had no better rationale to offer as they passed the remaining part of the measure (terms limits and prohibitions on simultaneous service) than that given in the weakly worded staff report: “diversity” and the need for “fresh viewpoints.” It’s particularly ironic to make this change in the name of diversity. Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who will have the most commission appointments affected by this legislation (a number of his land-use appointees serve on second commissions, including the chair of Public Works), has a record of diversity in his appointments far above average, and one of the commissioners targeted, Jesse Arreguin, is Latino—a member of one of the most underrepresented minorities on city commissions and a rising political star deserving of progressive support. 

As I wrote in a letter to councilmembers, term limits are by nature antidemocratic: They arbitrarily deny us the best service from the best people available. While it’s good that this ordinance removes term limits for most city commissions, it’s even more important that term limits be eliminated for land-use commissions, where expertise matters most. We especially need the institutional memory of long-time land-use commissioners when they are willing to serve. How can Mayor Bates, who challenged term limits up to the U.S. Supreme Court, even consider such a proposal? 

In addition, under the Fair Representation provisions passed by Berkeley voters, every one of our elected councilmembers deserves the right to appoint the best person s/he feels fit. If individual councilmembers don’t wish to appoint people to more than one commission, they’re free not to, but why does the council majority feel it has the right to limit the choices of other councilmembers? 

As someone who once served simultaneously on two commissions (Zoning and Parks & Rec), I believe the city only gains when people are willing to volunteer to this extent, and suffers when councilmembers are denied the right to represent their constituents with the best possible commissioners available. Simultaneous service should be up to the councilmembers and commissioners involved; there’s no need for legislation to address this non-problem! 

But good government was never the intent of this legislation. Instead, the ordinance targets a handful of commissioners whom powerful interests (many of them deep-pocket campaign contributors) find threatening. I have watched with dismay as some land-use commissioners have strayed from strong interpretations of our Zoning Code and Area Plans in favor of politically expedient choices. I have to question why anyone would target a handful of citizen volunteers with outstanding knowledge of Berkeley’s land-use code. Removing experienced voices is, in fact, the antithesis of good government. 

So what was this legislation really intended to accomplish? Consider the effect term limits have had on the State Assembly and Senate: Professional lobbyists and long-term Sacramento staff get more power, while legislators are removed just as they are amassing enough experience to be effective. 

I don’t always agree with the commissioners targeted by this purge, but I know them to be people of integrity who do their best to call the attention of their appointed boards to the law as it is written and to apply it fairly. Good government when it comes to land use means enforcing the Zoning Code and Area Plans evenhandedly and without prejudice. Isn’t it time we all started to listen to the voices who call our attention to the facts, however inconvenient they may be to powerful interests in this City? 

Councilmembers will have a chance to redeem themselves at a second reading of the ordinance next Tuesday. 

Nancy Carleton is a long-time community activist and life-long progressive who served as chair of the Zoning Adjustments Board (Maio appointee) at the same time she was vice-chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission (Worthington appointee). Berkeley, amazingly, still stands. 

The Berkeley Independent Study program is an exemplary educational program that currently educates 140 high school students. However, because it is so well run, Berkeley Independent Study is rarely in the news. And like many quietly successful programs, Berkeley Independent Study is at risk of losing the essential element that lends to its success, its proximity to Berkeley High School. Located on Derby and Martin Luther King, it is a 10-minute walk to the main Berkeley High campus and it is immediately adjacent to the Alternative High School. 

As an independent college advisor and educational consultant, I work with students throughout the United States to help them make the best possible decisions with regard to high school and college. One of the groups of students that I specialize in includes students who need an independent study program because of the rigorous demands of their sport or performing art. Two ballet dancers and 12 alpine racers are among my current students. What distinguishes Berkeley Independent Study from the other independent study programs is its location. Because of its close proximity to Berkeley High, the parent campus, BIS students can take up to two courses a semester at the regular high school and participate in athletics, clubs and other large school activities easily, without having to overcome a social hurdle. Combined with a wide breadth of academic course offerings and highly motivated teachers in the Independent Study program, this enables Berkeley Independent Study students to take the most challenging courses possible. In comparison, most independent study programs that I have looked at throughout northern California offer few AP and honors courses, and their students have fewer choices and less chance of attending highly selective colleges as a result. 

Beyond academics, the problem of isolation and alienation cannot be underestimated. In my experience, it is the number one problem of students on independent study. Regardless of personality type, the structure of independent study lends to loneliness, and loneliness in adolescents can be destructive. At Berkeley Independent Study the proximity to the high school and the Alternative High School allows students to interact with others at lunchtime, after school, or meet in the library, in addition to attending regular classes. 

The faculty, administrators, parents and, most importantly, the students, are happy with the location of Independent Study Program. Yet, it appears that the Berkeley Unified School District cannot leave well enough alone. Currently, the plan is to move the independent high school students out of the current location, possibly to Willard Middle School, in order to move 7th and 8th grade students who are at risk into the Independent Study Program space. This does not make sense—moving high school students out, possibly to a middle school site, in order to move middle school students into the high school site. Few studies suggest that middle school students benefit from being integrated with older students. Moving the high school students out to a middle school, or removing them from walking distance to the high school, will be detrimental to their education. Students will be unable to take AP Biology, AP Chemistry or photography, which are not offered in the Independent Study Program. What would make more sense would be to educate middle school students with other middle school students and allow the Berkeley Independent Study program to remain at its home site where it has a compatible and healthy relationship with the Alternative high school. Adding mobile classrooms could resolve the space issue. 

In 2002 the Berkeley Daily Planet reported that Superintendent Michele Lawrence recognized that her original proposal to move the independent study program to the adult school was not a good idea, in part because of concerns about “the wisdom of putting young children alongside adult students.” Yet, this suggestion has been bandied about more recently for reasons that do not reflect the best interests of the students. It is still not a good idea. Hans Barnum, a 2005 graduate from the Alternative High School, wrote in the Jan. 14, 2005 Daily Planet “Alternative High School and Independent Study students, who share a campus a few blocks from Berkeley High School, have worked hard to survive and thrive in school, expecting to graduate at the Greek Theatre graduation ceremony, attend junior and senior prom, have access to needed services on BHS campus, and be welcomed to attend rallies, games and have other opportunities that are available to their peers at BHS.” The new baseball field on Derby across from the Alternative High School and Independent Study program will contribute to the students feelings of belonging. Nothing is more important for teenagers.. Berkeley Independent Study is a program that the Berkeley Unified School District, Administrators, School Board members and the community can take great pride in. Surely there is a better solution than jeopardizing a successful program by forcing it to move away from where it is thriving, isolating it, and the students. 

Wendy Walker-Moffat is a Berkeley resident.

Becky O’Malley’s March 2 editorial on Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article asks “Can we do anything to stop this insane plan from here?” Yes, as a matter of fact, there are many things each of us can do right here, right now to stop the Bush Regime’s plans to attack Iran and continue the Iraq war. Here in Berkeley we can live up to our heritage as leaders of progressive social movements. We can write to Congress, occupy offices of congresspeople, work for impeachment, and sue Cheney and Bush. Many people are doing these things; why not join them, take action, have hope, and read on? You’ll be happy you did something. 

A good start is getting Cheney to resign. There are many signs pointing to his imminent resignation—he’s being hounded by the press, he’s fighting with Bush and others in the administration, he’s loosing his mind (New York Times’ Frank Rich said he was cracking up), his heart is weak, and he’s facing a Congressional investigation and protests wherever he goes. Rumsfield, Ashcroft and others who gave the Bush Administration bad press have left. Cheney’s resignation will help stop the war plans. So let’s act quickly to get him out, while Congress and the media are focused on the Libby verdict. 

In February I attended the U.S. v. Libby trial where I saw the prosecution prove that Dick Cheney committed perjury, obstructed justice, and broke the law in directing the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Everyone knows Cheney is guilty. Now that Libby has been convicted, DOJ Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald can bring criminal indictments against Cheney if Congress asks him to. Some Congressmembers want to subpoena Fitzgerald and hold hearings on the evidence establishing Cheney’s guilt: Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., Chair of the Armed Services Committee; Senator Charles Schumer, D-NY; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; Chair of the Government Oversight Committee; Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., Chair of the House Judiciary Committee; Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-NY. Hinchey said “ Vice President Cheney, must be held accountable.... This case doesn’t end with Mr. Libby’s conviction. Testimony in the Libby trial made it even clearer that Vice President Cheney played a major role in the outing of [covert CIA operative Valerie Plame] Wilson’s identity. It is time to remove the cloud hanging over Vice President Cheney and the White House that Special Counsel Fitzgerald so aptly described in his closing remarks, and expose all of the lies that led to the outing of Mrs. Wilson’s identity.” Let’s Congress to investigate NOW! Contact Pelosi, Barbara Lee, or any member of Congress and ask them to hold hearings NOW. They can interrogate Cheney and impeach him or force him to resign! 

Additionally, the East Bay group IBC (Impeach Bush-Cheney) is actively working to oust Cheney and Bush. Go to www.impeachbush-cheney.com to get involved. Attend the “We the People” event in Berkeley on March 24 at 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Church, Cedar @Bonita, with Elizabeth De La Vega. 

Peace groups CodePink (www.codepinkalert.org), Creative Voices for Nonviolence and others, regularly occupy Congress members’ offices in the San Francisco Bay Area to request a NO vote on the supplemental appropriation, impeachment, and more. Nancy Pelosi’s office is occupied every Wednesday at noon. Contact CODEPINK Occupation Project, Janet Weil, Bay Area Code Pink, (925) 212-7477, weiljs@yahoo.com 

MoveOn.org has letter writing campaigns to de-fund the war, impeach Cheney and Bush, and more. Join them and spend a little time ending the war and ousting the Bush Crime Mafia. 

Finally, I am lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit, People of the United States v. Richard B. Cheney and George W. Bush. Everyone, especially those with legal backgrounds, can assist with the lawsuit. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits suing a sitting Vice President and President for harm done to citizens of the United States. The suit includes numerous causes of action, including wrongful death and economic and emotional harm resulting from going to war based on false and misleading intelligence, war profiteering, and trampling constitutional rights. Please contact me at c_papermaster@yahoo.com. 

So take hope, Berkeley. Better still, take action now. You’ll feel so much better if you stand up and do something about the situation. Martin Luther King Jr. said “our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man and woman of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.” 

Cynthia Papermaster is a Berkeley resident, law librarian, and peace activist. She, her daughter, and their little dog Jimminywinks went to DC for the giant peace Rally on Jan. 27.

FUELS RUSH IN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It was with growing apprehension that I watched my 13-year-old daughter whip through her advanced math and science homework last night. Because of her interest in science, I had been hoping that she might want to attend UC Berkeley in a few years, a close-to-home university with a world-class reputation. But judging on the track that they’re on lately, UC Berkeley’s reputation will be down the drain by the time she’s ready for college. 

The latest news from a gushing UC President Robert Dynes is that for $500 million, British Petroleum is more than welcome to the energy and resource research and development at Cal for the next 10 years. UCB is on its way to becoming BP University. 

Playing back the clip of the Feb. 1 press conference, I watched in fascination as Gov. Schwarzenegger, Chancellor Birgeneau and President Dynes stood, in turn, at the BP podium flanked by the flags of the nation, state and BP. They elaborated on how proud and honored they were that BP had “picked” California and UC Berkeley. It felt like a bad dream. I would never want my daughter to think she was attending a public university and instead be put to work for a giant corporation with a terrible international track record for human rights violations. But that’s beside the most important point, which is that it doesn’t matter what kind of track record it has: a corporation should not be taking over a public institution’s research and development. I want my daughter to be able to attend a reputable public institution that does its research for the betterment of humankind, not a corporation. 

This is not just a campus issue. BP’s corporate interest is taking precedent over scientific research for the public good. This is unacceptable. Taxpayers should not subsidize research for private companies. Chancellor Birgeneau, do not sign the contract with BP. Keep Berkeley’s reputation clean. 

Kirstin Miller 

Oakland 

• 

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Humans have a large capacity for hope, and it’s a good thing. But along with hope comes a tendency for self-deception. It is fascinating to watch people struggle to deal with this actually very simple issue! 

We need to immediately reduce the burning of carbon-based fuels to a minimum. That is crystal clear. There are only three possible sources of energy large enough to replace petroleum: coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. Burning coal or natural gas pollutes our air and causes global warming. Since natural gas is relatively clean, it should be reserved, if it is to be burned at all, for heating our homes. Nuclear energy is expensive, and unsafe in many ways, including the risk of radiation poisoning, genetic damage, and of course atomic warfare. 

That leaves energy conservation (reducing energy consumption) as the only viable alternative. And we know how to do it: public transit, bicycling, and walking. So why to we need BP and an Energy Biosciences Institute to tell us these obvious facts? 

Mike Vandeman 

San Ramon 

• 

GLOBAL WARMING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

All the concern at UC Berkeley for the BP grant is misdirected because no one is pointing out that the grandiose program will do little to get global warming under control. Why? Because it proposes nothing to remove the excess of carbon dioxide already causing warming and poisoning the oceans, perhaps irreversibly. 

A recent scientific paper cited in the July 6 San Francisco Chronicle indicated that that gas is raising ocean acidity to be killing off corals and their associated flora and fauna. This acidity effect was reported on in considerable detail in The New Yorker by E. Kolbert in her Nov. 20 article “The Darkening Sea.” Another report given ink by the Chronicle on Dec. 7 2006, indicated that the warmest parts of the oceans, now having temperatures above historic averages due to global warming, are showing diminished levels of phytoplanktons that used to take up 50 percent of the total carbon dioxide load on the globe. Those microorganisms are also the basis of the whole open ocean food chain so diminishing levels of phytoplankton eating krill have to occur leading to diminishing levels of whales, as most whales are built to eat only krill. So several effects from that gas are showing up now including a reduction in natural uptake of that gas resulting in increasing the excess. 

What has to be done to give the oceans a chance to recover from the poisoning excess of that gas is go black; that is, make charcoal from our most of our organic wastes that are becoming messy and costly problems with contamination from germs possibly getting a chance to spread in the environment. The pyrolysis process to make charcoal also distills off a considerable amount of organic fuel compounds with little if any carbon dioxide being released. Much of our organic waste now gets composted, which speeds rapid recycling of carbon dioxide back onto the globe after it had been trapped in biota. We may be feeding back as much of that gas by our waste handling, especially by doing composting, as by our car emissions. So pyrolyzing most of such wastes would give us a way to stop recycling some of that gas from the globe. All the biofuel crops could be pyrolyzed giving the fuel distillate and charcoal without useless emission of that gas that occurs with any kind of microbial degradation. Also we could pyrolyze collected solids from sewage and farm animal excreta. The fuel distillate would be burned to provide the pyrolysis heat with any extra being connected to steam driven electric power plants. The burying of charcoal, done to prevent waste-tire-like fires, would be doing what Nature did eons ago in burying biota to become coal with the result of removing some carbon dioxide from recycling. 

Nothing in the BP grant program will be doing removal of some of the excess of that gas from the globe to allow our oceans a chance to recover. If you want to see what doing nothing about the excess of carbon dioxide leads to, read the Chronicle’s March 11 story on page A6.  

James Singmaster 

UC Davis Environmental Toxicologist, Retired  

Fremont 

• 

ENSURE SAFEGUARDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is no doubt that the program of research proposed by the BP contract entails significant risks to the academic quality of the university, to local public safety, and to the global environment. Yet, it is equally true that this research is vital and urgent in its very plausible aims to contribute significantly to energy independence (for the United States and other nations), to an environmentally sound energy supply, and consequently to global security and peace among nations. 

It is a strength of the university’s contribution to the proposal that, while yes, Cal is especially strong in its qualifications for research in synthetic biology and related topics, at the same time, Cal (and the larger community) is also particularly rich in experts on the potential ecological impacts, food supply impacts, justice implications, and so forth. Those other strengths—the ability to bring well-informed skeptics into the research—gave an extra boost to the bid for the contract. Those other strengths make Berkeley uniquely qualified to intelligently manage the risks while pursuing the urgent needs. What better place to conduct this research? 

I suggest that the skeptical voices being raised now are best spent not in trying to drive the contract out of town but, rather, to welcome it under conditions that ensure the research is conducted openly and with ample safeguards to public safety. 

Thomas Lord 

• 

LBNL LONG-RANGE PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

People opposed to the controversial energy research being proposed in Strawberry Canyon might weigh in on the bricks-and-mortar underpinnings currently under review as part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (LBNL) 2006 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP).  

Up for review is the land use plan that will guide development at the LBNL hill site over the next 20 years. Commonly known as the Berkeley Lab, it is a government owned and contractor operated federal laboratory. 

As recently as 2003, the Bush administration required competitive bidding of the national laboratories financed by the Department of Energy (DOE). To keep the contract with the federal government the university has, it would seem, bought into the federal government’s research agenda.  

How this plays out locally is expanded development in Berkeley’s backyard.  

The acknowledged significant and unavoidable impacts include alterations in the site’s visual character (aesthetic impacts), toxic air contaminants resulting in an excess cancer risk (air quality impacts), a substantial adverse change in historical resources (cultural resources impacts), constructions noise impacts that cannot be mitigated (noise impacts), and degradation of level of service at local intersections (transportation impacts).  

The 2006 LRDP DEIR can be accessed on-line at www.lbl.gov/lrdp. 

The City of Berkeley is receiving public comment at a joint commission meeting on Wednesday, March 14 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center.  

Written comments on the 2006 LRDP DEIR should be received at the Berkeley Lab by March 23 and mailed to either of the following addresses: lrdp-eir@lbl.gov (attention: Jeff Philliber) Jeff Philliber, Environmental Planning Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, MS 90J-0120, Berkeley, CA 94720. 

The 2006 LRDP is a land use document and not a mission statement or policy document. It is tucked in and neat and tidy. But there are assumptions underneath that are less clear, more messy, and highly controversial. Perhaps we can together connect the dots.  

Janice Thomas 

• 

DELLUMS’ POLICE PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your story on Oakland’s police reorganization, announced at Mayor Dellums’ press conference (“Dellums Pledges to Reorganize Oakland Police,” March 9), was the most informative and detailed report to appear in the local press. 

A bit of context helps understand what happened and, more important, what is not being done. Oakland has half a police department, compared by population with Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and most major cities (Department of Justice statistics can be found at www.orpn.org/staffing.htm). Are we to believe that a reorganization will make OPD as effective as these cities? Incidentally, New York City and some others use the same area-based administrative setup that Oakland just adopted. It is hardly credible that all these cities are wasting money on police departments twice as large as needed. OPD is simply understaffed.  

Less than two weeks ago Mayor Dellums referred to Oakland’s $1 billion budget as “chump change” (Oakland Tribune, Feb. 28). Using a liberal figure for police salary, benefits, and overhead, it would take $72 million to bring Oakland up to the minimum of 1,100 officers that we need—7 percent of the budget (an increase of 400 officers at $180,000 per officer, the approximate figure used in the city budget). Public safety should be the first priority of city government, but neither the mayor nor the other officials at the press conference has offered a solid plan to get to 1,100 police. 

No wonder Oakland has a national reputation for sideshows, violence on the streets, and routinely places among the top half dozen cities in the country for vehicle theft. 

Charles Pine 

Oakland Residents for  

Peaceful Neighborhoods 

• 

LENNAR’S TRACK RECORD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If the city of Alameda is seriously considering Lennar Corporation as a leader for the Naval Air Station project, they need to do a bit of research about Lennar’s track record. Spend some time on www.DefectiveHomes.org and read about how Lennar turns the American Dream into the American Nightmare for thousands of homeowners throughout the country, including California. 

Sen. Elizabeth Dole said it best when she was on the Federal Trade Commission: “... for too many Americans, the dream home has turned into a nightmare. You know as well as I do that as families move into their own little Garden of Eden, more and more are finding the apple full of worms. As a result, some homebuyers believe they are being bilked for thousands of dollars, and they are expressing not only anguish but outrage. Shoddy building practices can be concealed from many purchasers who cannot be expected to have the technical expertise to evaluate the structural soundness of a home or the quality of electrical, plumbing, or air conditioning systems…The patience of the American consumer is rapidly running out. . . . Consumers are demanding more protection from the government, not less. The consumer movement is no longer made up of small bands of activists with no troops standing behind them; the consumer movement is now part of our culture—it embraces every one of us. And it will not be denied over an issue so fundamental as decent housing . . .” 

This statement was made in 1979, but nothing has changed. If anything, with the raging housing boom, and the inability of local inspectors to keep up with inspections, this problem has become a national virus, and Lennar is the poster child for defective homes. 

If the city does select Lennar, they will need to implement a very aggressive inspection policy throughout the entire construction phase, not just final inspections, when the worst defects are already covered up with walls and roofs. 

One of the most egregious examples of Lennar’s callous disregard for the American Homeowner was the electrocution of a man in a new Lennar home that recently received a clean inspection. Now the widow and her children are involved in a lawsuit with Lennar, and Lennar is not accepting responsibility. The lawsuit details can be found at www.DefectiveHomes.org 

Mike Morgan 

• 

REGRETTABLE ACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The attempt to limit and restrict participation on city commissions is yet another regrettable act by our current City Council. City Councilmembers have the right and obligation to appoint, and if they choose to, re-appoint, members to city commissions. Any individual councilmember who chooses to limit participation on our city commissions has every right to make that individual decision; to make that decision for every other councilmember is nothing short of arrogant. At the very least please do not enact this proposal until it has a chance to be vetted by every commission that would be or could be impacted. 

John Selawsky 

• 

DON’T TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last month five members of the Berkeley City Council asked for legislation to be drafted that would impose term limits on members of four major commissions (Zoning, Planning, Housing and Landmarks) and would prevent anyone from serving on those commissions if they also serve on any other Berkeley commission. 

On Thursday the city attorney produced the actual wording of the ordinance. We were shocked to see that language has been added that bans rent board commissioners (and library trustees, and school board members) from serving on what Mayor Bates refers to as the “power” commissions. 

We never knew that serving on the rent board would deprive us of the right to serve our city and our councilmembers in the same capacity as any other Berkeley citizen. 

We don’t understand why the council majority has been trying to reduce citizen participation in public life, but for them now to propose limits on the civil rights of citizens over whom they have no appointment power begins to make their action look even less like the “good government” procedure they’ve billed it as and more like an attempt to evade the clear provisions of the Fair Representation Ordinance enacted by the citizens of Berkeley at the polls. Given that the city attorney has written legislation substantially different from what the council majority proposed, we ask the council not to act tonight, and to (1) inform the members of the three affected bodies of the proposed action as is traditional in these circumstances, (2) publicly notice their new language, and (3) hold a proper public hearing. 

Commissioners Howard Chong, Jason Overman and Eleanor Walden could not be reached in time to participate in this letter. 

Rent Stabilization Boardmembers: 

Jesse Arreguin, chair,  

Jack L. Harrison, vice-chair 

Chris Kavanagh, Dave Blake,  

Lisa Stephens, Pam Webster

Those who object to a new ferry terminal along the Albany or North Berkeley shoreline can relax. After last Thursday’s scoping session conducted by the Water Transit Authority, it appears that the two northern locations are likely to be ranked a distant third and fourth behind the other two candidate sites in the Berkeley Marina. The northern sites are Buchanan Street (really closer to Fleming Point next to the race racetrack’s underutilized north parking lot) and Gilman (really a little to the north of Gilman, across from the stables area). 

There may or may not be significant negative environmental effects caused by a ferry transiting Eastshore State Park waters every half hour during the morning and afternoon commutes. Personally I suspect that it would be difficult to demonstrate that the narrow band of intermittent disturbance adjacent to a ferry route is a measurable threat to any local species. But this is really being driven by Albany’s ongoing debate about land use policy on the Albany waterfront. 

Those who see the benefits of a mixed-use urban waterfront with appropriately scaled commercial and recreational activities tend to want the ferry. Those with a vision of an unbroken, continuous shoreline park are in strong opposition. The ferry is viewed as the camel’s nose in the tent, leading the way to further commercial development. In any case the question is all but moot with respect to this round of ferry planning, as the advocates of the open space monoculture seem to be carrying the votes in Albany, and we can focus the debate on the options available for Berkeley. 

Unfortunately, the graphics presented at last week’s scoping meeting were somewhat misleading. Despite assurance from WTA staff that no marina berths would be displaced by the ferry terminal, the large site plan of the Doubletree terminal shows about 40 berths of F-dock (one of the newest docks in the marina) mysteriously vanished to make room for the ferry. 

“It’s only a concept sketch” is the excuse given, but really, the consultants who draw these finger paintings should be capable doing their homework a little better than that. 

The Doubletree location makes economic sense only if the new terminal is integrated into the existing Hornblower docks—or at least designed to co-exist with existing marina facilities. There are several ways to do this without significantly disrupting either the Hornblower operation or revenue-generating marina berths, but none of these options are shown. 

What about the other site, near Hs. Lordships restaurant? For some reason the technical difficulties of the open water location are being soft-pedaled. A thin line labeled “wave attenuator” substitutes for a breakwater. A floating breakwater may in fact be feasible, but this will have a much larger footprint than shown. It will be a significant engineering and construction cost, and might or might not prove to be more economical than a new fixed breakwater over time. 

The problem here is that both these errors combine to give the casual observer the impression that both of the marina sites are more-or-less equivalent in terms of cost and time-line. This is extremely misleading when the real-world economics are taken into account. The Doubletree hotel site has the potential to become a ferry terminal with minimal additional infrastructure. Indeed, it already is a ferry terminal for the Hornblower operation. 

Most of the required dock, parking, dredging and breakwater are already there. Environmental review would be streamlined by the fact that the ferry uses an existing maritime facility and transits water already heavily-traveled by vessels of approximately the same size or larger. We might even be able to begin the service sooner than first-quarter 2011 as now anticipated by WTA. 

If you attend the second scoping meeting (Albany library, Thursday March 15, 6:30 pm), check out the site plans carefully and ask questions about the assumptions behind them. 

Why does WTA insist on spending millions to duplicate facilities that are already in place? Perhaps the systemic problem is that WTA, because of its assured bridge toll revenue funding, is planning an over-subsidized service. 

Ferries are wonderful additions to our mix of public transportation options, and can improve the quality of life even for occasional users. But let us not delude ourselves into believing that ferries will reduce congestion or improve air quality in any significant way. As such, it is hard to justify a per-trip subsidy that is any higher than the subsidies for more practical options like Transbay bus service or increased parking at BART stations. 

And, transportation policy aside, we also need to avoid heavy subsidies for the Berkeley ferry because an artificially low ticket price is likely to generate artificially high passenger volume, and this would strain the capacity of either of the two Berkeley Marina locations. Pricing the tickets closer to actual cost will keep the scale of the service small, and the number of cars well within what our existing infrastructure can support. 

Cost-based pricing will avoid using subsidies better spent on more efficient modes of transportation, and it will avoid the necessity to spend many millions on parking structures and other high-volume terminal facilities. 

But the best argument for keeping the subsidy level low and the scale of the service small is to reduce risk. Despite WTA’s projections, there really is no reliable way to anticipate the passenger demand. By avoiding high terminal costs, we will not have committed millions of public transportation dollars to a service that might not be viable. Too few riders makes it economically wasteful. Too many riders means it will have to move to a location that can support more parking. 

Another example of the effect of over-subsidizing is the design spec for the two new ferries: The distance from the marina to SF is only 5.6 miles; you only need to go 17 knots to cover that distance in 20 minutes. But WTA has ordered two new 25-knot designs, requiring engines that are more than twice as powerful as what would be required for a slower speed that matches the route, even with reasonable margins. (Power varies by speed cubed.) Cost, weight and emissions implications are clear. This is a very high price to pay for the ability to swap out the ferries to longer and less viable routes that require the higher speeds. 

Not to mention that the higher speed also appears to driving a switch from compliance with the 46 CFR Subchapter T standards to which virtually all U.S. ferries are built, to the more stringent International Maritime Organization code for high speed craft. (Okay, WTA is petitioning for an exemption from the seat belt requirement, but it demonstrates how inappropriate the ISO standards are for a boat that only needs to go 17 knots.) More weight, more cost, and totally unnecessary if the speed were matched to the route. 

WTA has the resources to do this right. Regional Transit Measure 2 provides funding from Bay Bridge toll revenue. Follow the progress of the contract with shipbuilder Nichols Brothers—these 25-knot 149-passenger catamaran ferries are contracted to cost about $6 million and be delivered sometime this year. If this first major real-world acquisition by WTA is delivered significantly late and over budget, I fear that WTA will be well on its way to creating a legacy of technical and administrative errors that will rival those of BART in its early years. 

Paul Kamen is a naval architect.

Sustainable Berkeley formed last year to help foster collaborations towards a more sustainable future across sectors in Berkeley. It offers a rare glimmer of hope that people from business, government, universities, and the community can work together towards common goals in spite of the many divisions, which continually prevent the success of such efforts.  

While the Daily Planet has focused its reporting on the nature of the contracts between Sustainable Berkeley and the City of Berkeley, it has missed the amazing outcomes to date. 

Community sustainability internships 

Sustainable Berkeley leveraged a strong partnership with the Chancellor’s Advisory Commission on Sustainability to provide internships to community efforts outside the University. These are now supporting efforts towards increasing green collar job opportunities, exploring the solarization of the Berkeley Unified School District, making access to healthy foods more affordable by developing a natural grocery cooperative, and to reducing the harmful impacts of pharmaceutical disposal at our medical facilities. 

Sustainable business outreach 

Sustainable Berkeley has been providing outreach and education to restaurants and the largest energy users with funding from PG&E, under contract with the city. Sustainable Berkeley offers a single point of contact to businesses, while reducing the inefficiencies of having representatives from multiple agencies competing for the limited time of these business leaders. 

The Berkeley Sustainability Summit 

In October of last year Sustainable Berkeley provided logistical and other support to the Ecology Center in launching the Berkeley Sustainability Summit. This one-day event included 24 brief presentations on successes in business, housing, gardening, creeks, youth engagement, food justice, health care, university, city government, and many other sectors. The report and DVD from the summit are available at www.ecologycenter.org.  

Green Gathering 

Sustainable Berkeley co-sponsored the city’s third Green Gathering last year with more than 160 local leading organizations, agencies, businesses, and individuals celebrating the achievements of local entities towards reaching a city-wide triple bottom line: environmental protection, economic development, and social equity. Keynote speakers included Dan Kamman of the Berkeley Institute for the Environment and Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. This gathering allowed deep cross sector networking to occur, building a foundation for future collaborations.  

Champions of Sustainability Awards 

Sustainable Berkeley’s awards program received over 30 nominations from business, education, and community groups working to make Berkeley a model of sustainability. The winners represent the best work in combining environmental excellence and economic vitality with social equity efforts. Awardees include: Vital Vittles, the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, Sun Light and Power, The BioFuel Oasis, Rising Sun Energy, and Cal Dining. 

Climate protection 

The contract under current consideration by city staff and elected officials is to lead a multi-stakeholder process to identify and evaluate the many options our community can take towards meeting the Measure G climate protection goals. Whether this should be untaken by a city staff, a pubic commission, or task force, or by Sustainable Berkeley or some other group, is up to Council to decide. Regardless of where or how it happens, this critical work must be completed quickly if we are going to reduce our disproportionate climate impacts. 

It is unfortunate that no reporting has been offered by the Daily Planet on any of the above successes, and that the collaboration has been portrayed as being intentionally exclusive and self-serving.  

I believe it is time for our many uncoordinated sustainability initiatives to work in a more collaborative, efficient, and effective way. I believe that no one sector (government, business, academic, community) can take the lead on this alone. I believe that Sustainable Berkeley is the best chance we have towards those ends. I hope you will join Sustainable Berkeley in making Berkeley a leader in climate protection and environmental sustainability. 

Martin Bourque is the executive director of the Ecology Center. 

“It’s the same the whole world over 

It’s the poor wot gets the blame 

It’s the rich wot gets the gravy 

Ain’t it all a bleeding shame.” 

World War I British soldiers sang that little ditty as they marched off to the horrors of the Marne and Flanders. The wounded vets in Walter Reed Hospital—living in run-down rooms infested with rodents, cockroaches and mold—could chime in with their own version of a “rich man’s war, poor man’s blood.” Because the current scandal is not about Bush administration incompetence, it’s about a simple trade-off: profits over bandages. 

When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired Army Secretary Francis Harvey following the Washington Post’s devastating revelations, Gates said he did so because the Army has shown “not enough focus on digging into and addressing the problems.” 

But “addressing” the problem will require jettisoning former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s high-tech subsidies to the nation’s arms makers at the expense of the grunts, as well as the White House’s mania for privatization. 

Harvey was brought in by Rumsfeld specifically to reduce the federal work force and, as he said in a speech last year, “improve efficiency.” A former executive for the one of the nation’s leading arms producers, Westinghouse, Harvey hired IAP Worldwide Services—run by two former Halliburton executives—which promptly reduced the number of people providing service at Walter Reed from 300 to 60. The cutback and resulting increase in workloads kicked off an exodus of trained personnel, which an in-hospital study just released by the House Committee on Oversight and Governance found could lead to “mission failure.”  

While President Bush has railed about “red tape” and “bureaucracy” as the source of the problem—Republican metaphors for government—the administration has actually allowed veterans’ health care to lag behind civilian care. And more cuts, plus a funding freeze by 2010, are on the boards.  

In contrast are the way the “Big Five” arms companies, Lockheed Martin. Northup Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon are treated. The first three of the above “Five” will corner one out of every four dollars in the $481.5 billion military budget. 

In turn, the companies pony up tens of millions in contributions by Election Day. Since 2000, Lockheed Martin, Northup Grumman and General Dynamics have poured $62.5 million into the election cycles, favoring Republicans at a rate of a little more than two to one. 

Someone always has to pay for these handouts, and in this case it’s the vets. Take the disability scandal.  

A recent study by Army Times found that the Army is systematically shortchanging wounded soldiers by keeping their disability ratings low. According to the Government Accountability Office, the number of soldiers approved for full disability benefits fell from 642 in 2001 to 209 in 2005, in spite of a huge influx of wounded and disabled from the Iraq War.  

If soldiers are rated 30 percent or more disabled they are entitled to disability retirement pay, medical benefits and commissary privileges where prices for goods are significantly lower than in the civilian market. A rating below 30 percent means they get severance pay and no benefits. 

What the Army (and Navy, Marines and Air Force) are doing is deliberately low-balling the disability ratings and then throwing up roadblocks to force soldiers into the Veterans Administration (VA). While the VA does generally raise the disability ratings, the Army saves money because the VA designation does not come with commissary and exchange privileges, or military health care. 

In one case, a Marine was discharged for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at 10 percent disability. Using the same information that was used in the Marines Corps’ determination, the VA rated him at 50 percent disability. 

If the Army rates soldiers lower than 30 percent, and those soldiers develop disabling conditions after they are discharged, tough. They can go to the VA, but besides their severance pay, they get no more money from the Army. 

This is not about big bucks. In 2004, the Army paid out $1.3 billion in disability benefits to some 90,000 soldiers. The current war in Iraq is costing approximately $8 billion a month. 

What Army Times found was that soldiers, uninformed that they could appeal their disability rating, accepted the first rating they were offered. “Soldiers are trained,” says Ron Smith, deputy general counsel for Disabled American Veterans. “When the evaluation board says, ‘this is what you get,’ the soldiers say, ‘Yes sir.’ A lot of people don’t appeal.” 

Indeed, only one in 10 challenge their assigned rating. 

What the boards are very eager to do is put soldiers on “temporary disability retirement” that reduces their basic pay and tosses them out of hospitals. That category has jumped four-fold between 2001 and 2005.  

Most of these vets go home—they are on “temporary disability” for 18 months before they are reevaluated again—to find there are either no services available for them or that such services are hundreds of miles away. According to an Associated Press study of soldiers killed in Iraq, almost 50 percent come from towns of fewer than 25,000, and 20 percent from towns of less than 5,000.  

Not only are these towns small, they are poor. Almost 75 percent of the dead came from towns whose inhabitants earned below the mean per capita national income, and more than half from towns where poverty rates topped the national average.  

When veteran advocates complained about the disability issue, Pentagon spokesperson Marine Major Stewart Upton responded with the verbal equivalent of the “fog of war”: “We are in the midst of a business-process review that will generate improvements to the program effectiveness, including timeliness goals for processing cases and standard definitions of start and end points as well as other metrics to ensure that progress can be accurately measured over time against common metrics.”  

Squalor and disability rip-offs are just a part of the way that the Pentagon is shortchanging vets. According to findings released by the American Psychological Assn., the military’s mental health system is so overwhelmed that returning vets and their families are not getting the help they need. 

While more than three out of 10 returning solders from Iraq and Afghanistan have a “mental disorder,” a special task force found there was “no evidence of a well-coordinated or well-disseminated approach to providing behavioral health care to service members and their families.”  

Some 40 percent of the psychologist slots in the Army and Navy are unfilled, which not only means vets and their families don’t get seen, but that the psychological staff on the job is overwhelmed. According to the study, 33 percent of the mental health staff is burned out, and another 27 percent reports “low motivation for their work.” 

When the vets go home, there are even fewer mental health resources, and between 80 to 90 percent of the caregivers are not trained to deal with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “I know guys who are dealing with doctors who have no concept of PSTD,” Russell Terry, chief executive officer of the Iraq War Veterans Organization told the Houston Chronicle. 

Screwing the vets isn’t incompetence; it’s a trade off. If someone gets the gravy, someone gets the shaft. 

One of the least likeable things about California State Senate President Don Perata is that even on issues where you support him in principle, the Oakland Democrat often does it in such a backhanded, underhanded, and throw-a-brick-and-hide-your-hand-handed kind of way that you end up having to oppose him because of the particularly unprincipled way he goes about trying to apply those principles. 

So it is with Mr. Perata’s attempts to modify legislative term limits in California in order for Mr. Perata to be able to run for another term in the State Senate. 

Some background, for those who have been busy with other concerns. 

Legislative and executive term limits have distinctly different backgrounds. The idea for executive term limits can be traced directly back to the period of the American Revolution and the writing of the Constitution, in which many American revolutionary leaders and thinkers were worried that the country would slide into a New World monarchy to replace the British one so recently overturned. The concern was that an elected executive—a president, for example—would be able to consolidate so much power in the office that un-electing him or her would eventually become a practical impossibility, and a virtual “democratic dictatorship” would be established. George Washington alleviated those fears by voluntarily limiting his time in the presidency to two four-year terms. American presidents down through the years followed that lead until Franklin Roosevelt, who ran for a third and fourth term in the midst of war. Congress reacted by passing the 22nd Amendment that constitutionalized the two-term presidential limit and gave future presidents no choice in the matter. 

Legislative term limits have never had the same push or popularity in America, perhaps on the theory that no single legislator can amass the dangerous kind of power that an executive can, and absent that danger, the right of people to choose whomsoever they want to represent them in the Legislature or Congress should not be unnecessarily disturbed. But in recent years our conservative friends—who sometimes tend to loudly proclaim their support for America’s democratic ideals only until they find the results of that democracy inconvenient to their other goals—have complained that the Legislature is bad because the legislators stay there too long and, so, in 1990, they induced California voters to pass Proposition 140. This was a bare-bones measure, simply-written and easily-understood, which limited the terms of California legislators to three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year terms in the Senate. 

Except, that is, in the case of Mr. Perata, who plays a different sort of game, with rules he makes up as he goes along, and gets himself judged by friendly umpires if anyone complains that he’s cheating. 

More details. Mr. Perata was originally elected in November of 1998 to serve out the last two years of Barbara Lee’s District 9 State Senate term after Ms. Lee moved up to Congress. Mr. Perata was re-elected to a full four-year term in 2000. Since one of the provisions of Prop. 140 was that the two-term Senate limit applies to partial terms as well except for “any unexpired term to which a person is elected or appointed if the remainder of the term is less than half of the full term,” and since Mr. Perata was elected to serve out the full second half of Ms. Lee’s term, it was assumed by most observers that Mr. Perata’s time in the State Senate would legally come to an end in 2004. 

The ambitious Mr. Perata, however, got an opinion by then-California Attorney General Billy Lockyer and a ruling by a California Superior Court Judge that he was eligible for a third term under Prop 140 because even though Mr. Perata was elected before the beginning of the second half of Ms. Lee’s full term, he did not actually report for duty until a couple of days after the term had begun. Call it the “slacker rule,” in which you win if you don’t report to work on time. 

And so Mr. Perata was able to extend his term through the 2008 season after which, presumably, the California Constitution required that the State Senate game was up for him. 

But politicians often find it hard to give up the perks of office after they have gotten so used to them. And so Mr. Perata now seeks to continue his tenure in Sacramento’s upper house by scrambling next year’s elections all to hell. 

The easiest, cleanest, simple way to accomplish this would have been to put before voters a new initiative to abolish legislative term limits altogether, therefore allowing Mr. Perata or anyone else to continue to run for the Legislature and win until the voters got tired of them. There being no identifiable statewide sentiment to pass such a voter initiative, however, Mr. Perata and his supporters had to go the modified, limited route, to paraphrase a term of comparable sleaze from the Nixon years. 

Stick with me, friends, because here it gets quick and complicated. 

Because current state law under Proposition 140 prohibited termed-out from running in the June, 2008 Democratic and Republican primaries for nomination to their positions, placing a modification of the term-limit law on the June ballot would come too late and would not help Mr. Perata retain his seat in the state Senate past the 2008 term. Thus, he had the need for an earlier election in 2008, fulfilled neatly when the Legislature recently passed a bill to establish a February Presidential primary, which could, conveniently, host other ballot measures as well. But that meant that the state would have to hold two spring elections next year—Presidential primary in February, regular primary in June—with the Legislature leaving it to the counties to come up with the money to pay for all of this (our Republican friends in the Legislature, to their credit, voted against the double-primary because it didn’t provide state money to the counties to fund the February affair). 

That left the way open for term limit opponents to draft a term-limit modification referendum for the February ballot in time for Mr. Perata to be able to run on the June ballot. In mid February, the San Leandro public interest law firm of Remcho, Johansen & Purcell submitted to the California Secretary of State’s office in advance of being disseminated to the public for petition signatures and ballot qualification. 

But here comes the “oops” factor that revealed that this was less a term-limit-limiting initiative than it was a keep-Mr.-Perata-in-office drive. 

A month ago, in a blog posting on his California Progress Report entitled “Drafting of Initiative on Term Limits May Prevent Perata, President pro Tem of California Senate, from Running for Re-election Next Year,” Oakland Democratic Party activist Frank Russo reported that “the problem for Perata and the other Senators is with [one of the] proposed [amendments], which provides that one cannot run for the Senate or Assembly if the ‘service of the full term of office’ to which you are seeking be elected ‘would exceed the maximum years of service permitted’ of 12 years. By my count,” Mr. Russo concluded, “if Perata were re-elected in 2008, he would have 14 years at the end of that term and therefore would not be able to do so.” 

A day later, Mr. Russo wrote that “Robert Salladay of the LA Times ‘Political Muscle’ blog has reported in an update to ... that: ‘Citing an "abundance of caution," attorneys for the initiative filed an amendment this afternoon removing the disputed section. Whew! Don Perata can enjoy the long weekend now.’"  

Beyond Chron reporter Paul Hogarth wrote late last month that in order to save Mr. Perata’s job for another term, the amendments to the original initiative “added that if a legislator served less than half of a full term (i.e., Don Perata’s service from 1998-2000), that time would not be counted towards the 12-year cutoff. In other words, the amendments were designed so that Don Perata could serve as State Senate President until 2012.” (And much thanks to Paul Hogarth’s Beyond Chron posting for originally alerting us to this scam.) 

I was opposed to legislative term limits in California when they were first passed by voters in 1990. I’m opposed to them now. The California State Legislature is too often a broken institution, with power concentrated in a small circle of policymakers at the expense of the rest of the people of this state. Term limits have not broken up that concentration, however, they have only changed some of its names and faces involved, and merely transferred a lot of the power from the politicians themselves to staffmembers—who have no term limits and can be passed on from legislator to legislator—and to corporate and other big-interest lobbyists. For the average person sitting in Berkeley or Oakland, we are as far removed from influencing that power as we are in walking distance from the Bay Area to Sacramento. 

But fiddling with state law merely to make sure Mr. Perata has a job in two years is not the way to reform that system, particularly when it comes at the expense of California counties who will have to cut other services in order to satisfy this exercise in dual primaries. My guess is, voting down the Perata Proposal will let the state’s politicians know we’d prefer a better way to do this. 

Guy Hyde Chick is the kind of name one doesn’t forget easily. In addition to its catchy concatenation of consonants, the name stands for one of Bernard Maybeck’s most famous houses. But what of the man who built the house? This shadowy figure, now all but forgotten, once played a visible role in Berkeley’s public life. 

Guy was born in 1868 in California to George Chick and Florence Hyde. His father hailed from Maine, his mother from Wisconsin. Little is known about the father, a real-estate agent who was usually absent when the census takers came around (and in Seattle, where the family lived throughout Guy’s childhood and adolescence, they came around annually). Guy was the eldest of three Chick boys, all recorded as born in California. 

The Chicks first appeared in the Berkeley directory in 1889, when Guy was a UC engineering student. Mother and sons lived on Chapel Street between Bancroft and Allston Ways—current site of UC’s Spieker Aquatic Complex. By 1891, Florence had bought a house at 2611 Durant Ave. near Bowditch, on a site now occupied by the UC Berkeley Art Museum. 

Following graduation, Guy went to work for the city as superintendent of streets, a position once held by contractor A.H. Broad. Here he became close to the city engineer, Charles L. Huggins—so close, in fact, that when Guy married Cora Mott in 1899, the young couple moved into the Huggins home at 2313 Channing Way. 

They didn’t remain there long. Guy assumed a new position as manager of Anthony Chabot’s Contra Costa Water Company, Berkeley Branch, with an office at 2142 Shattuck Ave. The new job made possible a new home at 1833 Arch Street, between Hearst and Virginia. The only other house on the block was occupied by the well-known geologist and geographer Harold Wellman Fairbanks. 

The Northside around the turn of the century was a heady place dominated by the Hillside Club and its myriad cultural activities. That the Chicks became active members is evident from the club’s minutes for December 12, 1903, which report that Mr. Chick, along with Mr. Coxhead, Mr. Maybeck, and Mr. Arthur Bolton, was appointed to a committee to draw up plans for laying out the intersection of La Loma and Le Conte Avenues. 

The committee appointment was entirely appropriate. Chick was by then not only a civil engineer but the president of the Contra Costa Construction Company, which engaged in street and road building in Berkeley and far beyond. The secretary and treasurer was Cora Chick’s brother, George Morgan Mott, Jr. 

In October 1904, Chick joined his neighbor Harold Fairbanks and Daley’s Scenic Park developer Frank M. Wilson in a petition to ameliorate the steep grade of the 1800 block of Arch Street by dividing it into two roadways. Wilson, who had sold the hilltop property now occupied by the Pacific School of Religion to Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was planning to repurchase it and reopen Daley Avenue (now Ridge Road) through to Arch Street. The petitioners’ request went nowhere; Ridge Road still ends at the top of Holy Hill, and pedestrian access to Arch St. is provided via a double stairway hugging a lion’s head fountain (now dry). 

Two months following the petition, Chick almost lost his life, tumbling down a 15-foot sewer ditch while supervising the laying of the 25th Street sewer in Oakland. Fortunately, the accident occurred near Fabiola Hospital, where Chick’s broken foot was treated. 

When the Hillside Club contemplated the construction of a clubhouse in September 1905, Chick was appointed to a five-member committee that would select a suitable site. To finance the building, the club intended to form itself into a corporation, with each of the 125 members purchasing stock. The committee dispatched its business so rapidly that a mere two months later, a lot had already been purchased, Maybeck had perfected the building’s design, and the newspapers were reporting that construction was soon to begin. 

Another committee in which Chick participated was an investigative body headed by John Galen Howard that analyzed the damaged Berkeley High School in June 1906. 

The San Francisco earthquake and fire drove many refugees into the East Bay, sparking a real-estate boom. Chick took advantage of the opportunity by forming the Chick, Sittig & Co. real-estate firm. Cora’s father and brother were treasurer and secretary, respectively. The newly built houses Chick, Sittig & Co. listed were often touted as available with “sidewalks and street work done.” 

By 1910, Chick and the two Motts had founded a third company, Contra Costa Building Materials Co., which they ran concurrently with the construction company. Flush with success, Chick and his brother-in-law turned their attention to building adjacent dream homes. In May 1913, George Mott, Jr. purchased close to two acres in Kellersberger Plot 72, Oakland Township, from Catharine Janssen Heimbold, widow of Julius Heimbold, who had bought the land from the Hibernia Savings & Loan Society in 1888. 

For the design of his new house, Chick naturally turned to Hillside Club guru Maybeck. The location, at 7133 Chabot Road, was a canyon upslope abounding in ancient oaks. The architect positioned the house parallel to the hillside, between terraces above and below. The shingled building is crowned with a broad, generously trellised gable roof. Enormous glass doors bring the outdoors into the elegant ground-floor rooms, where zen views delight the eye at every turn, and grand spaces are arranged for flowing connectivity. 

According to the building permit of Sept. 22, 1914, the house was built by Chick’s Contra Costa Construction Company. The architectural firm of Maybeck & White provided six pages of typed specifications plus a handwritten page of detailed color specifications. The plaster ceiling porch of kitchen was to be blue; the rafters, red; the roof corbels, green; roof soffits, yellow; bay and balcony soffits, red; four-by-tens, green; board-and-batten at the rear entrance, red and varnished, front door, Prussian blue. Cora Chick was doubtful about the color combination, finding it too bright, but Maybeck assured her that “in twenty years it will be beautiful.” Ninety-two years later, it still is. 

The Chicks and their five children enjoyed their house for a mere half-dozen years. Construction contracts signed before the US entry into World War One came due after the war. Prices had shot up in the interval, forcing the Contra Costa Construction Company out of business. Both Chick and Mott Jr. sold their Chabot Road properties and moved out of town. Mott Sr. retained the building materials firm and his house at 1516 Hawthorne Terrace. 

George Mott, Jr. moved to Rio Linda in northern Sacramento County and became a fruit farmer. He is remembered as “the father of the Rio Linda Fire Department” for helping to form the Rio Linda Fire District in May 1923. A few months later, his father’s Hawthorne Terrace house turned to ashes in the Berkeley fire, and Mott Sr. retired to his Nevada City country house. 

The Chicks relocated to Napa, but homesickness got the better of them. Within a couple of years they returned to the East Bay, settling at 6437 Colby Street. Guy established a real-estate and insurance company at 2140 Shattuck Ave., which he later moved to the Hutchinson Bldg. at 1706 Broadway, Oakland. 

Guy Hyde Chick was last listed in the directory in 1933. The following year, Cora was listed as his widow. She lived until 1950, spending her last decade at 3016 Avalon Ave., a fine house designed by Henry Gutterson in 1915. Upon her death, it passed to her son Gilbert, who owned it until his death in 1968. 

The former Chick house on Chabot Road changed hands many times. Since 1979, it’s been the home of art dealer Foster Goldstrom, who takes delight in generously sharing it with architecture lovers. The house almost came to perdition during the Oakland Hills fire of 1991. It was saved through the efforts of three firemen, who had to choose one house to protect. They chose very well indeed. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson. Quatrefoils on the balcony over the rear entrance at 7133 Chabot Road, Oakland. 

Too Many Valves? 

Since Contra Costa County passed the ordinance requiring the installation of automatic shut-off valves in homes being sold (in unincorporated areas), I have heard from a good number of Realtors and homeowners who are complaining that the County went overboard.  

The controversy? The County requires a valve at the outside meter, either of the seismic, or “shaking” variety, or the “excess flow” type valve. Either one will do a fine job of turning off the gas to a home during a serious quake—although they act in different ways. This makes sense to everyone. The County, however, also requires excess flow valves on every gas appliance inside the home (fireplaces excepted). This is redundancy and will cost homeowners much more than just having an outside valve put in.  

Companies like us stand to make more money from this—but we can’t help but wonder: is this over-kill? How is this relevant in Berkeley? I predict that Contra Costa County is just the first governmental entity in the Bay Area to do this: more will follow. Hopefully, the Berkeley City Council will enact a similar ordinance, but without the redundancy of valves.  

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

Mr. Cantor, What do you think about lifting the shell of a house and building a new first floor under it? 

Our home needs a new foundation, and if it needs to be lifted three inches for that process, why not lift it ten feet and three inches? Our floor plan is already buggered up, and there is room for a stairway. Are there zoning issues? Height limits? I think the current footprint is pretty close to the property line. As a related aside, how does one find out the basic rules for additions in Berkeley vis-a-vis setbacks, pop-ups, etc. It seems to vary from job to job. 

Thanks, 

Anonymous 

Dear Anonymous, 

Did you hear about the woman who added a story to her liquor store? Yea, she wanted to lift her spirits! 

Thanks for the great question. My readers are so darned smart. It’s most gratifying (and saves me the trouble of thinking up subjects). 

It’s interesting that the lifting of a house for foundation replacement isn’t very different from lifting a house for the addition of another level of living space. There is some cost difference but it’s not significant, perhaps $5,000 for a smallish house but that’s not much when you consider the real and financial impact of a job of this import. It may seem surprising but the task of lifting a house 3 inches isn’t much less work that lifting a house 10 feet. 

When we’re faced with the sad reality of having to replace a foundation, it’s always worth asking whether the replacement should include elevating the house. Now, all houses aren’t well suited to this exercise but many are. And the first question in determining which is the case is to look at the issue of density. 

Yes, I am dense but that’s not the issue. It’s the density of our neighborhoods that we should be looking at. Neighborhood density has been a political hot-button issue for as long as city councils have been sitting on their exasperating little demi-thrones and our fairest of cities is no exception, meters and all. 

Nonetheless, I do consider city and neighborhood density to be an important consideration and I’ll be frank. I favor higher density. Berkeley, as one example has held to a very low density (by urban standards) for many years and while I can understand the desire to preserve older buildings and to control parking mayhem, there are ways to manage these issues while increasing density. If we don’t we’re consigned to ever increasing urban sprawl and the loss of wild undeveloped land. Also, higher density is green, assuming you do it properly. New York City is one of America’s greenest cities precisely because of its very high density and the low number of cars per capita. But I digress. 

Adding a story means that you will be greatly increasing the square footage of your home and in many cases, doubling it. Your local zoning department should be consulted before you’ve invested very much thought in such a project and also well in advance of your foundation replacement. If you do not currently have proper setbacks (the distance from your house to the fences and sidewalk boundaries), you may be considered to be “existing non-conforming” by your zoning official (you should in response call them “exasperating non-comforting” but never to their faces). 

This designation can mean that the normal allowances for expansion may be withheld in your case but these issues are often complex and negotiations are often successful within some limits. The important thing is to open and maintain a conversation with your zoning official. All joking aside, the zoning official can be exceedingly helpful and most are quite reasonable within the strictures of their department rules, so it’s a good idea to be friendly and play ball. 

I’ll even go a step further and suggest that you come to this expert with a very rough plan and ask them how they would approach the expansion process, particularly if there are non-conforming features to contend with. If you give them a little elbow room, you can get amazing help and sometimes even free design advise. Now, I’m not suggesting that you give away the farm but a little open-mindedness in the early stages can be a great asset. 

If your property is zoned to allow for significant expansion and you have the go-ahead for an enlargement, it’s best to proceed with drawings produced by an architect. 

In fact, the last bit regarding zoning negotiations can also be done by an architect and many know the ropes better than thee or me and can save some tears. That said, the exploratory phase can be undertaken by any sturdy individual. Remember, don’t argue. Ask, negotiate, explore but don’t fight. These folks get a lot of squabbling and you’ll gain nothing by losing your temper. 

If there are questions about the amount of square footage that can be added to the dwelling given lot size and the site zoning limit, the new lower floor can sometimes be apportioned to non-habitable functions such as parking or storage. 

Many a house has been given a garage through this lofty upgrade and sometimes it allows the addition an apartment when lack of parking has been the constraining condition. I recently saw a house-jacking (no, they didn’t steal it) where two garages were being added to the front lower level and it was clear that this was part of a second unit addition. Again, the zoning needs to allow these changes but this can be a way to increase density and income. 

In the case noted above, some special seismic modifications also needed to be included since most of the front wall of the, now two-story building was tossed away and the loss of “shear” or resistance to bending needed to be augmented in that front wall. The point one can take from this observation is that lifting houses often involves some re-engineering or other complication; i.e., there is no free lunch. 

However, lifting a house when the foundation needs to be replaced is an awful lot like a free lunch. You can often get a two-for-one through this process, especially if you think out the requirements and your needs in the process. 

There are a few wonderful things about this project. One is that you don’t need two roofs for the two stories you’ll now have (assuming your lifting a one-story house), the one you have will be just fine.  

Another is that the fine details often seen on older houses get to be thrust upward to greater notice while the simpler details often found in newer construction (which are easier to effect) can be placed closer to the ground. 

Good architectural practice is to place the small, more complex and finer details higher up and simpler, weightier details closer to the ground. This is often referred to as “grounding.” 

People sometimes ask if one can live in a house during this process and the answer is yes, with some serious provisions. First, I would never stay in the house during the lifting process and secondly, plumbing connections are broken and must be temporarily reconnected once the house has been elevated, so a delay should be expected (most electrical systems remain where there are at least for the short-term since they tend to connect by long flexible “drops” from the street. 

Eventually the main panel will have to be relocated). Lastly, when a house is pushed up in the air, access becomes something of an issue and new stairways are needed to provide access. It may be best to allow for some construction to be completed prior to reinhabiting the dwelling. If you’re lifting a house a short distance for a foundation replacement without adding a story, it’s virtually always fine to stay in the home. 

So there are a few thoughts on this most fruitful of building adventures. Naturally, there’s a great deal more to say about any specific project but I do feel that these are worthwhile gains to seek when the arduous and expensive undertaking of foundation replacement is needed.  

A tip I would like to offer is that if you are ever faced with a foundation replacement and consider the addition of a story out of reach for the time being, it’s a really good idea to have your contractor install two-story foundation anyway. That way, when you or the next owner is ready to push the building up and add that extra space, the foundation won’t have to be replaced again (foundation being size for the number of floors they support). 

I would also like to say to all my dear neighbors that I hope that you will support these projects as you would expect other to support yours and not opposed growth or construction on principle. 

Berkeley was once farmland and before that a wild home for Olone, birds and beasts. Growth came and it looks pretty good. I believe that our Urbanness is exciting and lively and that thoughtful, intelligent growth can make us greener. Perhaps we can get dense enough to bring those trolley cars back. Now wouldn’t that be progress! 

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

“Tell that guy I don’t board dogs, and I refuse to stay at somebody’s house and pet sit.” 

“Dad— 

“Tell him that the customers have to provide their own plastic bags. I’ll pick up poop, but with their bags, not mine.” 

“Dad— 

“What did you say his name was?” 

“Craig. It’s craigslist, and— 

“Well, tell Craig List I’ve got experience with all kinds of animals, not just dogs and cats, and— 

“Dad, it’s not Craig List. It’s craigslist. It’s not a person, it’s a website. I’m putting your ad in cyberspace.” 

“How much does it cost?” shouted Mom from the kitchen. “I don’t want to waste good money on the impossibility of finding an old man a job.” 

“I can work!” yelled Dad. “I’ve got plenty of skills— 

“It’s free,” I said. “Running a community ad on craigslist is free.”  

“Free?” asked Dad. “How can that be?” 

“Run the ad,” shouted Mom. 

I was visiting Las Vegas, trapped in the desert with two argumentative octogenarians. My father had once again been complaining about his lack of employment. A decade ago, back in New Jersey, he’d been retired for six months. Then he’d gotten a job as a divot replacer on a nearby golf course. He had dreams of driving powerful tractors and complicated lawn mowers, but after a few years of carrying a bucket and replacing holes in putting greens, he’d quit. Now he was locked up with my mother in a retirement community in northwest Las Vegas. There seemed to be no employment opportunities for an energetic, feisty 81-year-old who spent half a year in Nevada and the other half in New Jersey.  

“Let me see what you wrote,” said Dad, peering over my shoulder at the computer screen. “I wanna make sure you listed all my best qualities.” 

I read the ad aloud to him. Mom hovered outside the doorway, eavesdropping. 

“Need someone to walk your dog, or look after your pet/s while you’re gone? I’m a retired biologist who is up early and available to exercise dogs, feed pets, give medicines, run errands. I’m well acquainted with all species, including reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, and furry creatures, big and small (pet rats, guinea pigs, gerbils, rabbits, hamsters, etc.) Fee negotiable. Respond via e-mail.” 

“I don’t want your father walking big dogs,” said Mom. “It’s not safe.” 

“Nonsense,” said Dad. “Leave it in. I can walk any dog, big or small. Hell, I could walk a wolf or a mountain lion.” 

Mom rolled her eyes. 

“Remember that time I wrestled a bear? I was in the Army, and— 

“That was over 60 years ago,” said Mom. “You were drunk.” 

“It was a big, smelly bear,” said Dad. “From Texas.” 

“Look,” I said, interrupting an argument I’d heard on and off for the past 50 years. “We’ll run the ad. What can it hurt? You can screen potential customers on the telephone. If you don’t want to walk their dog or feed their mice, you don’t have to. What do you have to lose?” 

“Tell Craig to run it,” instructed Dad. 

“Are you sure it’s free?” asked Mom. 

Later that day Dad and I took a walk. We ran into a couple following a small gray Schnauzer, a dog who looked just like my beloved, departed Whiskers.  

“I’m a professional dog walker,” Dad announced while I petted their little pooch. 

“Really,” said the woman. “How interesting.”  

“Yes,” said Dad. “I’d give you one of my cards but I left them at home.”  

“Dad,” I said. “You— 

“I’m good with any kind of animal,” said Dad. “I can do anything.” 

“Really,” said the man. 

“The only thing I don’t do is provide plastic bags,” said Dad. “You’ll have to do that.” 

The man and woman nodded. They appeared anxious to continue their walk. Dad and I headed in the opposite direction, but after a few steps Dad turned and shouted after them. “You can look me up at Craig’s,” he said with unabashed, youthful enthusiasm. “It’s free!” 

Most of Ron’s columns have featured street trees. I’m making an exception for Michelia doltsopa; the few specimens we know about are in private gardens and storefront planters. I would have passed off the one on our street as some odd magnolia, but she recognized it for what it was. One clue: the flowers are borne among the leaves rather than at the ends of the branches.  

The accompanying photograph, taken after a long siege of rain, doesn’t really do the tree justice. At its peak, the white flowers glow against the leathery dark-green leaves. Frank Kingdon-Ward, the celebrated plant hunter who saw M. doltsopa in bloom in the Adung River valley near the Tibetan-Burmese frontier, wrote: “Its oyster-white shallow cups have a nacreous gleam, and it is a more beautiful tree than any magnolia, except perhaps the peerless Magnolia campbelli.” And this is coming from a man who knew his magnolias. The flowers are also fragrant. 

Kingdon-Ward wasn’t the first to come upon this tree, which grows wild through the Eastern Himalayas, from Nepal to India’s North East Frontier Area. That honor goes to Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, an earlier botanical explorer who may have been the first western scientist in Nepal, in 1802-03, with a diplomatic mission led by a Captain Knox. He gave the type locality for M. doltsopa as Narainhetty or Narayan Hetti, near Kathmandu. His Account of the Kingdom of Nepal also mentions other trees “hitherto unnoticed by botanists.” 

Trained in medicine in Scotland, Buchanan-Hamilton was surgeon to the British governor-general in Calcutta, somehow finding time also to organize a zoo and catalogue the fish of the Ganges. In addition to Nepal, he made plant-collecting forays all over India before settling down to run the Calcutta botanical garden in 1814.  

You have to hand it to those Indiana Joneses of botany. Prospecting for plants on the borderlands of China and India could be a dicey business. There were precipitous mountain trails and steamy leech-infested lowlands, endemic diseases, and local folk who had never seen a westerner and were none too happy to meet their first. Neither were the dogs, the large and surly Tibetan mastiffs.  

The explorers left behind some great books—many of Kingdon-Ward’s travelogues are still in print—and enriched our gardens with a bounty of rhododendrons, primroses, poppies, maples, and more. Michelia doltsopa is a standout among them. In the wild, it reaches a height of 90 feet and is harvested for its timber. “For carpenter’s work a preference is given to the Champa or Michelia, which is certainly a good kind of timber,” wrote Buchanan-Hamilton. Cultivated specimens are much shorter, 25 to 30 feet. Growth habit can be bushy or narrow and upright; older trees have broader crowns. Michelias in general prefer full sun or partial shade and well-drained, humus-rich, neutral-to-acid soil. 

Like their magnolia relatives, Michelias—there are some 50 species—flower in winter. Theirs is a venerable family. Magnolias and their kin have been traced back to the Cretaceous era, 95 million years ago, when the flowering plants were just emerging. Darwin considered the origin of flowering plants “an abominable mystery,” and their history is still murky. It appears, though, that the oldest flowering trees may have been magnolias or something like them. 

Before the advent of bees or butterflies, they were probably pollinated by flies or beetles as many magnolias still are. 

Now found only in East Asia and eastern North America, the magnolia family once had a much wider distribution. Their fossils have turned up in Idaho, England, even Greenland. But the world was warmer then, and climate change—the drying of the American west, the glaciation of Europe—pushed the magnolias into their present refugia. The remnant distribution of the family is paralleled by other plants, including ginseng, and a few animals, notably the alligators, paddlefish, and giant salamanders. We’re lucky to have these beautiful survivors, bringing a touch of the Mesozoic to city streets and yards.  

Photograph by Joe Eaton:  

At its peak, the white flowers of Michelia doltsopa glow against the leathery dark-green leaves. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Through Women’s Eyes” featuring works by Frances Catlett. Reception at 6 p.m. at the Prescott Joseph Center for Community Enhancement, 920 Peralta St., Oakland. Exhibition runs through May 3. 835-8683. www.rescottjoseph.org 

Paintings of Michael Murphy Reception for the artist at 5 p.m. at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. Exhibition runs through April 13. 649-8111. 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 1. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Seldom Seen Acting Company, a group of homeless actors who share their life stories through theater perform at 10:30 a.m. at The SVdP Downtown Services Center, 675 23rd St., Oakland. To RSVP call Christine at 636-4255.  

Berkeley Rep “To the Lighthouse” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. and runs through March 25. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2917. 

Central Works Theater Ensemble “Lola Montez” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. through March 25. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Virago Theatre “Orphans” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at BridgeHead Studio, 2516 Blanding Ave, Alameda, through March 31. Tickets are $10-$15. 415-439-2456. www.viragotheatre.org 

FILM 

Asian America Film Festival “American Zombie” with director Grace Lee in person at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is TBA. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alfred Brendel in Conversation on Music and Culture with Prof. Anthony J. Cascardi at 5 p.m. at the Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way. 643-5694. 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore introduces her book “Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California” at 6 p.m. at Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th St.., Oakland. 444-0484. 

Kate Greenstreet and Janet Holmes read from their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

A Talk with Valentino Achak Deng one of Sudan’s “Lost Boys” at 7:30 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera Company “The Seraglio” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300.  

Music from Iraq with Rahim Alhaj, part of the Beyond Walls, Beyond Wars series, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Remembering Rachel Corrie concert with the Georges Lammam Ensemble, Huwaida Arraf & Francisco Herrera at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship, Cedar and Bonita. Donation $10-$20. 236-4250. 

Music that Cooks with singer/songwriters: Jamie Jenkins, Chris Berkner, Sharon Michelle, to raise funds for meals for the less fortunate at 7:30 p.m. at College Avenue Presbyterian Church, 5951 College Ave. Donation $5-$10, all ages welcome. 

Stomp the Stumps benefit for Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters with Workingman’s Ed, Funky Nixons and Gary Gates Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054.  

Lady Bianca CD Release Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Free Jazz Fridays with The Troublemakers Union at 8 p.m. at 1510 Eighth St. Performance Space, Oakland. Cost is $5-$15 sliding scale. 415-846-9432. events@thejazzhouse.com 

Lost Trio CD release party at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373.  

Adrianne, singer/songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave.. 548-5198.  

Black Brothers at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The B Stars, Real Sippin’ Whiskeys, The Cowlicks at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Spectacle, Ultra Gypsy, Zoe and others at 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $30. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Mario DeSio and Alex Walsh at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Dave Matthews BLUES Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse, 402 Webster St., Oakland. 451-3161. 

This is My Fist, Love Songs, Final Fight at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

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

Roots Reggae from St. Croix at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $25-$28. 548-1159.  

Swoop Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Randy Weston’s African Rhythms Quartet, featuring Billy Harper at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 17 

CHILDREN  

St. Patrick’s Day Songs with Tara Reinertson at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Part. 525-2233. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Gary Laplow at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jacqueline Lynaugh as Lady Emerald celebrates National Reading Month Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 452-2259. 

THEATER 

“Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop” by Aya de Leon at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St. Oakland. Part of Women HerStory Month. Cost is $10-$15. http://laney.peralta.edu/womensherstorymonth 

“Chin-Checked” The magician Chin-Chin at 8 p.m. at Willies Mays Skybox Lounge, 6005 Shellmound St., Suite 200, Emeryville. Tickets are $25. www.chin-chin.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Bad Intentions” Counterculture expressed though painting, music and film, a collaboration by Scott J. Taylor and Clayton Glinton. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit # 116, located in a store front loft of the historic cotton mill studios, Oakland. 535-1702. www.thefloatcenter.com 

“Ancient and Modern Tatoo Art” opens with a reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Art Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Cultural Exchanges Along the Silk Road An academic conference at 2 p.m. at Hertz Hall. Free. 642-3691.  

“Luck: How it Applies to the Writing Process” with Cheryl Dumesnil, and announcement of the winning poems, at the 81st Annual Poets’ Dinner, at noon at Francesco’s in Oakland. Tickets are $26-$27. For reservations call 235-0361. 

“Berkeley One and Only” with photographer Jon Sullivan at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Schola Cantorum San Francisco “In Exitu Israel” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $12-$20. www.scholasf.org 

Cantare Con Vivo perform Maurice Durufle’s “Requiem” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $25. 925-798-1300. 

Norma Gentile, soprano, sings the songs of Hildegard von Bingen at 8 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Tickets are $15-$20. 528-8844. 

Ensemble Masques “Mensa Sonora: Biber and his Contemporaries” at 8 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College at Garber. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Jewish Music Festival “Tribute to Tzadik Music” at 2 p.m. at the Jazzschool, 2087 Addison St.. Tickets are $5-$10. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

Jewish Music Festival “Pharaoh’s Daughter” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $20-$25. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

St. Patrick’s Day Celebration all day at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Martin Carthy in Concert at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Juan del Gastor, Luis Pena, Lakshmi, gypsy flamenco, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $30-$40. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lisa B. & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com  

The Venezuelan Music Project at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Roots Reggae from St. Croix at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $25-$28. 548-1159.  

Katie Knipp and Buxter Hoot’n at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Cave Painters at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Melanie O’Reilly & Aisling Gheat at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Frank Martin Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Blind Duck, Irish music, at 7:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Sweet Crude Bill and Fun with Finnoula St. Patrick’s Day Celebration at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Joey Lent & Chuck Steed, folk rock, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Spectacle, Ultra Gypsy, Zoe and others at 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $30. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

The Jury at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Resistant Culture, Naked Aggression, Mouthsewnshut at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 18 

CHILDREN 

Celebrating 100 Families Oakland and make art with others from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

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. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Growing Hunger: The Struggle of Small Farmers in the 21st Centruy” Artist talk at 2 p.m. in the 3rd flr Community Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. through April 18. 981-6241. 

Michael Kammen, author of “Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture” will talk and show slides at 5 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

“California Landscape” Paintings by Jeff Levitch Artists Talk at 3 p.m. at ASUC Art Studio Gallery, Lower Spoul Plaza, UC Campus. 642-3065. 

Sylvia Boorstein, author of “Pay Attention for Goodness’ Sake: The Buddhist Past of Kindness” and Edie Hartshorne, author of “Light in Blue Shadows” in conversation with Arisika Razak, and Betsy Rose at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Clare Langley-Hawthone reads from her mystery novel “The Consequenses of Sin” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera Company “The Seraglio” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300.  

“Jazz at the Chimes” with John Calloway at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $10. 228-3218. 

Chamber Music Sundaes, San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends, at 3 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$22. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

Jeanne Stark-Iochmans, pianist, at 4 p.m. at Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Tickets are $30-$40. 601-7919. www.fourseasonsconcerts.com 

“Spirituals and the African/ 

American Experience” with soloist Marilyn Reynolds at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 444-3555. 

Ricks Knudson, piano, works by Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin, Rachmaninoff at 4 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Free. 849-2103. 

Univ. of Chicago Motet Choir Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Lakeshore Babtist Church, 3534 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Free. 893-2484. 

Cantare Con Vivo perform Maurice Durufle’s “Requiem” at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $25. 925-798-1300. 

Classic Jungle Jazz Piano Concert with Seth Montfort, at 5:30 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $15. 415-362-6080. 

Cantabile Chorale Rachmoninoff’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $6-$25. 650-424-1410. www.cantabile.org 

Alfred Brendel, piano, at 5 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38-$76. 642-9988. 

Jewish Music Festival “Diaspora Blues” with Steven Bernstein and Peter Apfelbaum at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $20-$25. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

Jewish Music with Baguette Quartet members Odile Lavault, accordion and Rachel Duling, violin, at 1 p.m. at Afikomen Judaica, 3042 Claremont Ave. 

Fundraiser for Young People’s Symphony Orchestra with Phil Lesh at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $75. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Robin and Linda Williams at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

MONDAY, MARCH 19 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PlayGround Six emerging playwrights debut new works at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $18. 415-704-3177. 

Allan Brandt describes “The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Page to Stage A conversation with playwright Adele Edling Shank at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. 647-2949. 

Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan in Conversation on McKibben’s new book “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $10-$12. 415-255-7296, ext. 253. w 

G.P. Skratz and Summer Brenner read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Jacob Needleman talks about “Why Can’t We Be Good?” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Poetry Express with Lenore Weiss at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Katherine Heater and Friends, viola de gamba and harpsichord at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

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

West Coast Songwriters Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761  

Ralph Alessi & This Against That, featuring Ravi Coltrane, Ben Street, Andy Milne and Gerald Cleaver at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, MARCH 20 

CHILDREN 

Magician and Comedian Timothy James at 6:30 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For ages 3 and up. 524-3043. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“City of Walls, City of People” The urban experience in Oakland, CA, and Venice, Italy, a collaboration with California College of the Arts, and Istituto Universitario di Architettura, Design e Arti, in Venice, on display at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-9425. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Batstone discusses “Not For Sale: the Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It” at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500 

Joe Boyd reads from “White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

Athena Tergis, John Doyle & Mick Moloney at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Terrence Brewer at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21 

EXHIBITIONS 

Youth Arts Festival Annual exhibition of artwork from Berkeley’s K-8 public school students at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-9873. 

Honoring César Chavez Poster Exhibition on display at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., Through April 23. 981-6100. 

FILM 

Film 50: History of Cinema “Persona” with a lecture by Marilyn Fabe at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Asian America Film Festival “Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” with director Hong Sang-soo in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is TBA. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kemble Scott introduces his new novel “SOMA” set in San Francisco, at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Cafe Poetry and open mic, hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Poetry Slam on the Jewish Diaspora at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

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

UC Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

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

Justin Hellman Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Greg Brown at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $35.50-$36.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

THURSDAY, MARCH 22 

EXHIBITIONS 

“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. 

“Somebody” The New World of Figurative Art Works by seven artists exploring the human form at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

FILM 

Women’s HerStory Film Series “Water” at noon at 4 p.m. at Laney College Forum, 900 Fallon St. http://laney.peralta.edu/womensherstorymonth 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time” reading with Patricia Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Megan Seely discusses “Fight Like a Girl: How to Be a Fearless Feminist” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Susannah Patton and Laura McPhee describe Flaubert’s Normany and Matisse’s South of France at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Rebecca Chiyoko King-O'Riain on “Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants” at 4 p.m. at Center for Race & Gender, 642 Barrows Hall #1074, UC Campus. 643-848. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$42. 415-357-1111. 

Jewish Music Festival “Aires de Sepharad” at 8 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St.. Tickets are $20-$25. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

“The Josquin Singers” Lenten Music from the Byzantine and Slavic traditions at 7:30 p.m. at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension, 4700 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $15. 868-0695. www.bayareabach.org 

The KTO Project and Aluna at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Peter Mulvey at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Pete Yellin Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

YBSC, Latin jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Los Nadies, Seth Newton, Luke Newton at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Rico Pabon, CD release party at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Headnodic & Raashan Ahmad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

The Music Lovers, The Hot Toddies, at 8:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Rachelle Ferrell at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $26-$30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

MAGICIAN CHIN-CHIN IN EMERYVILLE 

Chinese-Korean-American magician Chin-Chin sports a fire-red hair-do (both the hair and red are good luck to Chinese), white vinyl tails as formal wear and performs his magic to electronic music and hip-hop, featuring his florescent red birds. At 25, Chin-Chin is the only competitor ever to win three Stage Magician of the Year awards from SF Conjurors. The Montclair resident also placed in the top 10 at the International Brotherhood of Magicians convention in Miami. He’ll open his show, Chin-Checked, 8 p.m. this Saturday at the Willie Mays Skybox in Emeryville. 21 and over only. Tickets and information are available at www.chin-chin.com. 

‘ALL ABOUT EVE’ AT THE CERRITO THEATER 

Bette Davis stars in All About Eve this weekend as part of the Cerrito Theater’s classic film series. The film, written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1950. 6 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. x 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.picturepubpizza.com.  

FREE-JAZZ FRIDAYS AT THE JAZZ HOUSE 

The Troublemaker’s Union performs today (Friday) as part of the Jazz House “free jazz” series on the first and third Friday of every month. The show is 8 p.m. at 1510 8th St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$15 sliding scale. The show is a tribute to Women’s History Month, featuring an experimental mix of Caribbean, South American, African American and north and west African sounds, deconstructed and reformulated as free jazz. For details, www.TheJazzHouse.com

Randy Weston—jazz pianist, composer, bandleader—turned 80 last year. Along with a few other generation be-boppers, such as Sonny Rollins, Hank Jones, Jimmy Heath and Benny Golson, he is one of the last survivors from the halcyon days of what was then being called modern jazz. 

Weston studied with Thelonious Monk at Monk’s apartment in the late ’40s. He sat and listened for three years while Monk played his eccentric, boppy, poignant style of Harlem stride piano. He remembers that Monk had a photo of Billie Holiday on the ceiling above his piano that served the purpose of a Greek Orthodox icon. From Monk he learned that conventional virtuosity was not all there was to playing jazz piano.  

Weston’s piano style is closer to Monk’s manner than any other jazz pianist, but with his own personal rhythmic and harmonic take on that style. He is like a Monk from an alternate universe or the son of Monk. He also learned from Ellington, Basie, Nat King Cole and Art Tatum. From Tatum he learned that conventional virtuosity was still a part of playing jazz piano. 

Weston’s task, and that of the whole second generation of boppers, was to synthesize and give system to the mercurial innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Sonny Rollins and Max Roach, Charlie Mingus and Sun Ra all responded to this task in their own unique ways. All of them, and many other jazz musicians throughout the history of this music, have shown an interest in the music of Africa. For the last 45 years Weston has applied what he received from Monk, Diz and Bird, especially Monk’s practice of thematic improvisation, to his study and work with African music and musicians.  

He first went to Africa in 1961 when he played in Lagos, Nigeria. He returned to Lagos two years later and in 1967 took his sextet across the whole continent. The next year he settled in Rabat, Morocco playing an increasingly African influenced music with his trio in a nightclub he ran through 1972.  

He learned that the piano, besides being capable of playing the harmonic and melodic complexities of a Mozart sonata, could also be a drum, a pitched percussion instrument. A wealth of classic compositions, including such jazz standards as Little Niles, Berkshire Blues, The Healers, Blue Moses and Hi-fly, were the fruit of that knowledge. Among a wealth of brilliant recordings, he has summed up his American roots with beautiful tribute albums to his heroes, Monk and Duke Ellington. Last spring, to celebrate his 80th birthday, he brought the Gnawa Master Musicians of Morocco with him for the SFJAZZ Festival, combining the power of Islamic Sufi mysticism with the jazz musicians’ voodoo mysticism.  

For his current gig, he is joined by tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, a long-time colleague. Harper has also worked extensively with Art Blakey, Max Roach and Elvin Jones, all of whom had a deep interest in African rhythms and percussion. Although Weston has played in concert in the Bay Area not infrequently over the last few years, this will be his first club date locally in a long time. The combination of Weston with a hard-edged reed player like Harper in the intimate setting of a jazz nightclub harks back to the good old days when hard bop was heard every night in Lower Manhattan at places like Slug’s and the Five Spot. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear and don’t miss this modern jazz master. 

Randy Weston, along with tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, will perform two shows daily Friday through Sunday at Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. For more information, call 238-9200 or visit www.yoshis.com. 

Photograph: Jazz legend Randy Weston is one of the last survivors of the halcyon days of modern jazz. He performs this weekend at Yoshi’s in Oakland.

Mozart purists should not expect Berkeley Opera’s new production, Seraglio, to have much resemblance to the renowned opera The Abduction From The Seraglio. Nothing in this rendition follows the original except the music.  

The opera has been pushed across genre boundaries and become an immiscible dichotomy of clashing forms. Mozart’s plot is reinvented, updated, and made “relevant” by the use of street slang and hip lyrics. Characters are added: an invisible dog and a “cheeky” child. The directors, carried away by their own unconstrained enthusiasm, have taken a musical creation that reflects the rationality and elegance of the Enlightenment and superimposed upon it a text and plot that relies too heavily on chaos and vulgarity.  

Jonathan Khuner, Ross Halper, and Amanda Moody set about to “reinvent” the master’s work, reframing the characters, the period, and the locale. Granting that the original, though musically superb, has a libretto that, for our modern sensibilities, seems stilted and boring, still, how far should one go in trying to spruce it up?  

Here, the seraglio is not a harem but a whorehouse; the time is in a future post-petroleum world in which “oil is over, money is over, gold is over.” The characters reflect a bleakness usually associated with the rough Brechtian style. They are caught in a futureless trap in which the only remaining currency is pleasure. Yet here no one smiles and the Prima Donna is perpetually stoned. The Primo Tenore, the romantic lead, is the food editor of a defunct national newspaper. The cast looks like scrappy leftovers from The Three Penny Opera spouting a text that would be more appropriate in a Mel Brooks movie.  

Each disparate element by itself has some degree of value: The music remains, of course, a triumph of logic and equipoise, the text is at times indeed witty, and the plot certainly uniformly weird. The zany confusion onstage is augmented by an imaginary dog that eats drinks and defecates (imaginary stuff) onstage. Osmin scoops the excrement in a plastic bag, and flings it about, at one point looking like he is aiming it squarely at the conductor’s head!  

Saddled with this juvenility the performers nevertheless give their all. Maestro George Thompson, a top notch conductor, kept the performance under control with a firm hand. After a rough start, the orchestra pulled it together, and the Maestro was able to evince poised rhythms, especially important for the great bravura arias of Connie and Osmin. The cast was uniformly good. Soprano Sheila Wiley, as Connie, the journalist being held prisoner in the Seraglio, displayed a clear well articulated voice.  

Blondie (Ann Moss), described in the program as “a seraglio kitten,” sang and acted with verve: her agility and high voice impressive. Andrew Truitt, Brian Thorsett, and Roger McCracken, (Beau, Pedrillo and Osmin, respectively) displayed vocal assuredness and theatrical know-how. All in all it was a strong lively cast. One can only lament not being able to listen more attentively, given the incessant distraction of the flood of unexpectedly pungent surtitles.  

The excellent actor Armand Blasi played Gorgeous Jerome, described in the program as “previously a CEO of an international oil firm … now the feared boss of the oldest trade on earth … including other amusements, at his own establishment, The Seraglio.” Bald, wearing a long red robe, with white satin pants and a lace collar, he was a convincingly depraved figure. His blank faced cynicism was reminiscent of a Christopher Walken character.  

SERAGLIO 

Presented by the Berkeley Opera at 8 p.m. Friday and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the  

Julia Morgan Center, 2640 College Ave. 

(925) 798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org.

Phillip and Treat are orphans, abandoned by their father when little, bereaved by their mother’s more recent death. But they still constitute a kind of nuclear family, however abbreviated and dysfunctional: Treat’s the breadwinner, a petty criminal who watches out for his little brother by keeping the allergic couchpotato Phillip indoors in their North Philadelphia tenement row house, with windows shut, subsisting mostly on tuna sandwiches (Phillip’s a gourmand of mayonnaise).  

One night, Treat brings home a middle-aged drunk, an attache-case-wielding businessman, apparently quite a character, who sees in Treat a new edition of The Dead End Kids that Harold (the drunk) used to watch in movie matinees as a kid in Chicago. Finding a wad of stock certificates in the case, Treat decides to keep Harold on the premises and ransom him through his associates. But the morning after proves more than a hangover: it turns out that Treat’s abducted a King Orphan, more streetwise—and just wise, in every sense—than the feral Philly boy. The tables are turned, and Harold sets about making an orphans’ home out of his seeming prison and captors, part of his project to orphanize the world. 

That’s the set-up to Lyle Kessler’s Orphans, which Robert Lundy-Paine has directed for Virago Theatre Co. at BridgeHead Studio, right off the Park Street Bridge in Alameda—a funny, perceptive, eerily engrossing chamber play. 

The claustrophobic little utopia that develops is a true Platonic republic, but standing on its head, kind of Sociology 101 upside down. Many are the lessons and the rewards the brothers are subject to—including Pierre Cardin suits (“Peer Card-In,” in Treatspeak), pale yellow loafers, bouillabaise (“I speak the French language now,” avers Phillip) and, more homey, “a slice” of corned beef, suitable for a Dead End Kid, Harold’s model citizen. 

But there are tests and trials as well. Treat’s violent streak casts a shadow over developments, and Harold runs him through the wringer to squeeze his sense of injured pride and thwarted justice out of him, so he can attain the poise necessary to be a businessman in Harold’s shadowy dealings. 

Robert Hamm, a familiar face on East Bay stages, is just the guy for the role of Harold: the kind of actor who consistently brings unusual, divided characters to life. He maintains Harold’s strange incognito best in moments of reminiscence, of openness and professed identity with the clueless boys who hold him—whom he holds. There are wry moments, half tender, half absurd, as when Harold teaches shut-in Phillip what a shoehorn is. 

Alec Mathieson plays Phillip with the naturalness of a kid who has only known the unnatural, only knowing of the world through late night TV. An eighth grader in Alameda, he already has a background in opera and musical theater, undoubtedly a reason why his portrayal of Phillip beginning to discover what’s outside the row house is such a mature one, capturing the precocious young man who’s as inexperienced as a little boy. 

As Treat, Kenneth Sears is intense, menacing—and terribly funny, making his character at times into an almost slapstick crook from those old serials Harold keeps recalling. His emotional outburst, a first for Treat, at the conclusion, is prolonged nicely, bringing the play back to reality yet skirting the sentimentality the script approaches at that crucial point. 

Virago specializes in making a sort of site-specific production; last year’s revival of The Threepenny Opera, gained much of its offbeat charm from the toe-to-toe audience contact and the archival oddity of the old upstairs fraternal hall (also in Alameda) it was played in. Orphans capitalizes on its location, too; spectators feel they’re somewhere just out of town, in the rundown fringe, a nearby but half-forgotten world.  

ORPHANS 

Presented by the Virago Theatre at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through March 31 at Bridgehead Studio, 2516 Blanding Ave., Alameda. $10-$15.  

(415) 439-2456. www.viragotheatre.org.

Guy Hyde Chick is the kind of name one doesn’t forget easily. In addition to its catchy concatenation of consonants, the name stands for one of Bernard Maybeck’s most famous houses. But what of the man who built the house? This shadowy figure, now all but forgotten, once played a visible role in Berkeley’s public life. 

Guy was born in 1868 in California to George Chick and Florence Hyde. His father hailed from Maine, his mother from Wisconsin. Little is known about the father, a real-estate agent who was usually absent when the census takers came around (and in Seattle, where the family lived throughout Guy’s childhood and adolescence, they came around annually). Guy was the eldest of three Chick boys, all recorded as born in California. 

The Chicks first appeared in the Berkeley directory in 1889, when Guy was a UC engineering student. Mother and sons lived on Chapel Street between Bancroft and Allston Ways—current site of UC’s Spieker Aquatic Complex. By 1891, Florence had bought a house at 2611 Durant Ave. near Bowditch, on a site now occupied by the UC Berkeley Art Museum. 

Following graduation, Guy went to work for the city as superintendent of streets, a position once held by contractor A.H. Broad. Here he became close to the city engineer, Charles L. Huggins—so close, in fact, that when Guy married Cora Mott in 1899, the young couple moved into the Huggins home at 2313 Channing Way. 

They didn’t remain there long. Guy assumed a new position as manager of Anthony Chabot’s Contra Costa Water Company, Berkeley Branch, with an office at 2142 Shattuck Ave. The new job made possible a new home at 1833 Arch Street, between Hearst and Virginia. The only other house on the block was occupied by the well-known geologist and geographer Harold Wellman Fairbanks. 

The Northside around the turn of the century was a heady place dominated by the Hillside Club and its myriad cultural activities. That the Chicks became active members is evident from the club’s minutes for December 12, 1903, which report that Mr. Chick, along with Mr. Coxhead, Mr. Maybeck, and Mr. Arthur Bolton, was appointed to a committee to draw up plans for laying out the intersection of La Loma and Le Conte Avenues. 

The committee appointment was entirely appropriate. Chick was by then not only a civil engineer but the president of the Contra Costa Construction Company, which engaged in street and road building in Berkeley and far beyond. The secretary and treasurer was Cora Chick’s brother, George Morgan Mott, Jr. 

In October 1904, Chick joined his neighbor Harold Fairbanks and Daley’s Scenic Park developer Frank M. Wilson in a petition to ameliorate the steep grade of the 1800 block of Arch Street by dividing it into two roadways. Wilson, who had sold the hilltop property now occupied by the Pacific School of Religion to Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was planning to repurchase it and reopen Daley Avenue (now Ridge Road) through to Arch Street. The petitioners’ request went nowhere; Ridge Road still ends at the top of Holy Hill, and pedestrian access to Arch St. is provided via a double stairway hugging a lion’s head fountain (now dry). 

Two months following the petition, Chick almost lost his life, tumbling down a 15-foot sewer ditch while supervising the laying of the 25th Street sewer in Oakland. Fortunately, the accident occurred near Fabiola Hospital, where Chick’s broken foot was treated. 

When the Hillside Club contemplated the construction of a clubhouse in September 1905, Chick was appointed to a five-member committee that would select a suitable site. To finance the building, the club intended to form itself into a corporation, with each of the 125 members purchasing stock. The committee dispatched its business so rapidly that a mere two months later, a lot had already been purchased, Maybeck had perfected the building’s design, and the newspapers were reporting that construction was soon to begin. 

Another committee in which Chick participated was an investigative body headed by John Galen Howard that analyzed the damaged Berkeley High School in June 1906. 

The San Francisco earthquake and fire drove many refugees into the East Bay, sparking a real-estate boom. Chick took advantage of the opportunity by forming the Chick, Sittig & Co. real-estate firm. Cora’s father and brother were treasurer and secretary, respectively. The newly built houses Chick, Sittig & Co. listed were often touted as available with “sidewalks and street work done.” 

By 1910, Chick and the two Motts had founded a third company, Contra Costa Building Materials Co., which they ran concurrently with the construction company. Flush with success, Chick and his brother-in-law turned their attention to building adjacent dream homes. In May 1913, George Mott, Jr. purchased close to two acres in Kellersberger Plot 72, Oakland Township, from Catharine Janssen Heimbold, widow of Julius Heimbold, who had bought the land from the Hibernia Savings & Loan Society in 1888. 

For the design of his new house, Chick naturally turned to Hillside Club guru Maybeck. The location, at 7133 Chabot Road, was a canyon upslope abounding in ancient oaks. The architect positioned the house parallel to the hillside, between terraces above and below. The shingled building is crowned with a broad, generously trellised gable roof. Enormous glass doors bring the outdoors into the elegant ground-floor rooms, where zen views delight the eye at every turn, and grand spaces are arranged for flowing connectivity. 

According to the building permit of Sept. 22, 1914, the house was built by Chick’s Contra Costa Construction Company. The architectural firm of Maybeck & White provided six pages of typed specifications plus a handwritten page of detailed color specifications. The plaster ceiling porch of kitchen was to be blue; the rafters, red; the roof corbels, green; roof soffits, yellow; bay and balcony soffits, red; four-by-tens, green; board-and-batten at the rear entrance, red and varnished, front door, Prussian blue. Cora Chick was doubtful about the color combination, finding it too bright, but Maybeck assured her that “in twenty years it will be beautiful.” Ninety-two years later, it still is. 

The Chicks and their five children enjoyed their house for a mere half-dozen years. Construction contracts signed before the US entry into World War One came due after the war. Prices had shot up in the interval, forcing the Contra Costa Construction Company out of business. Both Chick and Mott Jr. sold their Chabot Road properties and moved out of town. Mott Sr. retained the building materials firm and his house at 1516 Hawthorne Terrace. 

George Mott, Jr. moved to Rio Linda in northern Sacramento County and became a fruit farmer. He is remembered as “the father of the Rio Linda Fire Department” for helping to form the Rio Linda Fire District in May 1923. A few months later, his father’s Hawthorne Terrace house turned to ashes in the Berkeley fire, and Mott Sr. retired to his Nevada City country house. 

The Chicks relocated to Napa, but homesickness got the better of them. Within a couple of years they returned to the East Bay, settling at 6437 Colby Street. Guy established a real-estate and insurance company at 2140 Shattuck Ave., which he later moved to the Hutchinson Bldg. at 1706 Broadway, Oakland. 

Guy Hyde Chick was last listed in the directory in 1933. The following year, Cora was listed as his widow. She lived until 1950, spending her last decade at 3016 Avalon Ave., a fine house designed by Henry Gutterson in 1915. Upon her death, it passed to her son Gilbert, who owned it until his death in 1968. 

The former Chick house on Chabot Road changed hands many times. Since 1979, it’s been the home of art dealer Foster Goldstrom, who takes delight in generously sharing it with architecture lovers. The house almost came to perdition during the Oakland Hills fire of 1991. It was saved through the efforts of three firemen, who had to choose one house to protect. They chose very well indeed. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson. Quatrefoils on the balcony over the rear entrance at 7133 Chabot Road, Oakland. 

Too Many Valves? 

Since Contra Costa County passed the ordinance requiring the installation of automatic shut-off valves in homes being sold (in unincorporated areas), I have heard from a good number of Realtors and homeowners who are complaining that the County went overboard.  

The controversy? The County requires a valve at the outside meter, either of the seismic, or “shaking” variety, or the “excess flow” type valve. Either one will do a fine job of turning off the gas to a home during a serious quake—although they act in different ways. This makes sense to everyone. The County, however, also requires excess flow valves on every gas appliance inside the home (fireplaces excepted). This is redundancy and will cost homeowners much more than just having an outside valve put in.  

Companies like us stand to make more money from this—but we can’t help but wonder: is this over-kill? How is this relevant in Berkeley? I predict that Contra Costa County is just the first governmental entity in the Bay Area to do this: more will follow. Hopefully, the Berkeley City Council will enact a similar ordinance, but without the redundancy of valves.  

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

Mr. Cantor, What do you think about lifting the shell of a house and building a new first floor under it? 

Our home needs a new foundation, and if it needs to be lifted three inches for that process, why not lift it ten feet and three inches? Our floor plan is already buggered up, and there is room for a stairway. Are there zoning issues? Height limits? I think the current footprint is pretty close to the property line. As a related aside, how does one find out the basic rules for additions in Berkeley vis-a-vis setbacks, pop-ups, etc. It seems to vary from job to job. 

Thanks, 

Anonymous 

Dear Anonymous, 

Did you hear about the woman who added a story to her liquor store? Yea, she wanted to lift her spirits! 

Thanks for the great question. My readers are so darned smart. It’s most gratifying (and saves me the trouble of thinking up subjects). 

It’s interesting that the lifting of a house for foundation replacement isn’t very different from lifting a house for the addition of another level of living space. There is some cost difference but it’s not significant, perhaps $5,000 for a smallish house but that’s not much when you consider the real and financial impact of a job of this import. It may seem surprising but the task of lifting a house 3 inches isn’t much less work that lifting a house 10 feet. 

When we’re faced with the sad reality of having to replace a foundation, it’s always worth asking whether the replacement should include elevating the house. Now, all houses aren’t well suited to this exercise but many are. And the first question in determining which is the case is to look at the issue of density. 

Yes, I am dense but that’s not the issue. It’s the density of our neighborhoods that we should be looking at. Neighborhood density has been a political hot-button issue for as long as city councils have been sitting on their exasperating little demi-thrones and our fairest of cities is no exception, meters and all. 

Nonetheless, I do consider city and neighborhood density to be an important consideration and I’ll be frank. I favor higher density. Berkeley, as one example has held to a very low density (by urban standards) for many years and while I can understand the desire to preserve older buildings and to control parking mayhem, there are ways to manage these issues while increasing density. If we don’t we’re consigned to ever increasing urban sprawl and the loss of wild undeveloped land. Also, higher density is green, assuming you do it properly. New York City is one of America’s greenest cities precisely because of its very high density and the low number of cars per capita. But I digress. 

Adding a story means that you will be greatly increasing the square footage of your home and in many cases, doubling it. Your local zoning department should be consulted before you’ve invested very much thought in such a project and also well in advance of your foundation replacement. If you do not currently have proper setbacks (the distance from your house to the fences and sidewalk boundaries), you may be considered to be “existing non-conforming” by your zoning official (you should in response call them “exasperating non-comforting” but never to their faces). 

This designation can mean that the normal allowances for expansion may be withheld in your case but these issues are often complex and negotiations are often successful within some limits. The important thing is to open and maintain a conversation with your zoning official. All joking aside, the zoning official can be exceedingly helpful and most are quite reasonable within the strictures of their department rules, so it’s a good idea to be friendly and play ball. 

I’ll even go a step further and suggest that you come to this expert with a very rough plan and ask them how they would approach the expansion process, particularly if there are non-conforming features to contend with. If you give them a little elbow room, you can get amazing help and sometimes even free design advise. Now, I’m not suggesting that you give away the farm but a little open-mindedness in the early stages can be a great asset. 

If your property is zoned to allow for significant expansion and you have the go-ahead for an enlargement, it’s best to proceed with drawings produced by an architect. 

In fact, the last bit regarding zoning negotiations can also be done by an architect and many know the ropes better than thee or me and can save some tears. That said, the exploratory phase can be undertaken by any sturdy individual. Remember, don’t argue. Ask, negotiate, explore but don’t fight. These folks get a lot of squabbling and you’ll gain nothing by losing your temper. 

If there are questions about the amount of square footage that can be added to the dwelling given lot size and the site zoning limit, the new lower floor can sometimes be apportioned to non-habitable functions such as parking or storage. 

Many a house has been given a garage through this lofty upgrade and sometimes it allows the addition an apartment when lack of parking has been the constraining condition. I recently saw a house-jacking (no, they didn’t steal it) where two garages were being added to the front lower level and it was clear that this was part of a second unit addition. Again, the zoning needs to allow these changes but this can be a way to increase density and income. 

In the case noted above, some special seismic modifications also needed to be included since most of the front wall of the, now two-story building was tossed away and the loss of “shear” or resistance to bending needed to be augmented in that front wall. The point one can take from this observation is that lifting houses often involves some re-engineering or other complication; i.e., there is no free lunch. 

However, lifting a house when the foundation needs to be replaced is an awful lot like a free lunch. You can often get a two-for-one through this process, especially if you think out the requirements and your needs in the process. 

There are a few wonderful things about this project. One is that you don’t need two roofs for the two stories you’ll now have (assuming your lifting a one-story house), the one you have will be just fine.  

Another is that the fine details often seen on older houses get to be thrust upward to greater notice while the simpler details often found in newer construction (which are easier to effect) can be placed closer to the ground. 

Good architectural practice is to place the small, more complex and finer details higher up and simpler, weightier details closer to the ground. This is often referred to as “grounding.” 

People sometimes ask if one can live in a house during this process and the answer is yes, with some serious provisions. First, I would never stay in the house during the lifting process and secondly, plumbing connections are broken and must be temporarily reconnected once the house has been elevated, so a delay should be expected (most electrical systems remain where there are at least for the short-term since they tend to connect by long flexible “drops” from the street. 

Eventually the main panel will have to be relocated). Lastly, when a house is pushed up in the air, access becomes something of an issue and new stairways are needed to provide access. It may be best to allow for some construction to be completed prior to reinhabiting the dwelling. If you’re lifting a house a short distance for a foundation replacement without adding a story, it’s virtually always fine to stay in the home. 

So there are a few thoughts on this most fruitful of building adventures. Naturally, there’s a great deal more to say about any specific project but I do feel that these are worthwhile gains to seek when the arduous and expensive undertaking of foundation replacement is needed.  

A tip I would like to offer is that if you are ever faced with a foundation replacement and consider the addition of a story out of reach for the time being, it’s a really good idea to have your contractor install two-story foundation anyway. That way, when you or the next owner is ready to push the building up and add that extra space, the foundation won’t have to be replaced again (foundation being size for the number of floors they support). 

I would also like to say to all my dear neighbors that I hope that you will support these projects as you would expect other to support yours and not opposed growth or construction on principle. 

Berkeley was once farmland and before that a wild home for Olone, birds and beasts. Growth came and it looks pretty good. I believe that our Urbanness is exciting and lively and that thoughtful, intelligent growth can make us greener. Perhaps we can get dense enough to bring those trolley cars back. Now wouldn’t that be progress! 

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

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 

Interfaith Candelight Prayer Vigil for the 4th Anniversary of the US occupation of Iraq at 5 p.m., at First Congregational Church lawn on Dana St. 

“Killowat Ours” a documentary on our use of electricity, and “The Vineyard Energy Project” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., midtown Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Blowin’ in the Wind” A documentary on depleted uranium by David Bradbury at 5 p.m. 215 Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 415-485-9528. http://ucnuclearfree.org 

“Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California” with author Ruth Wilson Gilmore at 6 p.m. at Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th St., Oakland. 444-0484. 

Rakkasah West: Middle Eastern Folk Festival from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Richmond Auditorium, Richmond. Tickets are $12. Festival continues all day Sat. and Sun. www.rakkasah.com/west 

Seldom Seen Acting Company, a group of homeless actors who share their life stories through theater perform at 10:30 a.m. at The SVdP Downtown Services Center, 675 23rd St., Oakland. To RSVP call Christine at 636-4255.  

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Fed Collignon on “Famous Berkelyans in the Arts” 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.  

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” a documentary followed by discussion at 6:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. 

“Globalization in Africa: The Catholic Church’s Response” with Rev. Dr. Patrick Kalilombe from Malawi at 7 p.m. at JSTB, GTU, 1735 Leroy Ave. Followed by symposium on Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. 549-5028. 

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, MARCH 17 

Unclothed Oak Grove Photo Shoot with photographer Jack Gescheidt at 10 a.m. at the Memorial Oak Grove. All welcome. for more information on the photographer see www.treespirit.com www.saveoaks.com 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Room, 2727 College Ave. All welcome.  

Discussion on Health Care Reform with Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Assemblymembers Loni Hancock, Fabian Nuñez, Sandre Swanson and others at 9:30 a.m. at Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza. 

St. Patrick and the Snakes Learn the story of St. Patrick and meet our snake at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Canoe at Arrowhead Marsh in Oakland with Save the Bay. From 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Cost is $30-$40. To register call 452-9261, ext. 109. 

Tinkers Workshop Spring Used Bike Sale at 84 Bolivar Drive, West Berkeley. All types of bikes available, and proceeds benefit Tinkers Workshop programs form youth. www.tinkersworkshop.org 

“Starve War, Feed Peace” Fourth Anniversary March and Rally Against the War, in Walnut Creek. Progressive Democrats of the East Bay will meet at 11 a.m. at the Walnut Creek BART and march to Civic Park, Civic and Broadway, for a noon rally. 925-933-7850. 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk Join a Park Ranger for a walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters. Terrain is steep, wear walking shoes and bring water. Rain cancels. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Cal-Trans Park and Ride lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. 925-228-8860. 

81st Annual Poets’ Dinner and Awards with Cheryl Dumesnil, at noon at Francesco’s in Oakland. Tickets are $26-$27. For reservations call 235-0361. 

“The Ground Truth” Iraq war documentary at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

Lead-Safe Painting and Remodeling A free class on how to detect and remedy lead hazards in the home, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

“Developing Livable Communities” A forum sponsored by Urbanists for a Livable Temescal Rockridge Area, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and The Sierra Club, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, entrance at parking lot at 58th St., Oakland. Please bring a brown bag lunch. Pastries, drinks and other snacks will be provided. 925-376-0727. www.ultraoakland.org 

California Writers Club meets to discuss “A Celebration of Local Color” with Annalee Allen, at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120. 

Rakkasah West: Middle Eastern Folk Festival from 11 a.m to 11 p.m, Sun. from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Richmond Auditorium, Richmond. Tickets are $15. www.rakkasah.com/west 

African Dance Class at 11 a.m. at Black Repertory Group, (Purple Bldg.), 3201 Adeline St. Open to all. Cost is $11. 368-2475. www. 

youmustdance.blogspot.com 

Celebrate Women’s History Month on the USS Hornet Events from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.. Tickets are $6 for children, $14 for adults. The Hornet is berthed at 707 W Hornet Ave., Pier 3, Alameda. 521-8448, ext. 237. 

Kids Garden Club for ages 6-9 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

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 

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

SUNDAY, MARCH 18 

Shoreline Discovery Walk along Lone Tree Point Regional Shoreline with Bethany Facendini, naturalist, from 3 to 4 p.m. Call for meeting place. 525-2233. 

First Signs of Spring A five mile hike in the Crockett Hills from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Meet at the Crockett Ranch Staging Area. Bring water and a lunch. 525-2233. 

“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. www.ebparks.org 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m., Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. 

“Dancing Through My Spiritual Journey” with Roger Dillahunty at 9:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack van der Meulen on Tibetan yoga “Opening to Kum Nye” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 19 

Iraq War Anniversary Vigils at 5:30 p.m. at the Rockridge BART, at 6 p.m. at Live Oak Park, and at University and San Pablo, and at Shattuck and Cedar, and at 7 p.m. at The Alameda btwn Solano and Marin. 

Berkeley Partners for Parks presents a panel of local grant-givers to help aspiring activists start and fund community projects at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Works Green Room, 1326 Allston (below Acton). 848-9358.  

Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan in Conversation on McKibben’s new book “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $10-$12. 415-255-7296, ext. 253. www.globalexchange.org 

Women for Peace with Loulena Miles, staff attorney for TriValley CAREs at 10 a.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. 

“The Story of Rosa Parks” video at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 6 to 7 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at East Pauley Ballroom, 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. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 20 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Martin Luther King Regional Shoreline. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Sunshine Ordinance for Berkeley Workshop on open government at 5 p.m. at City Council Chambers 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. The public will have time to comment. 981-7170. 

Traditional Ringing of the Berkeley Peace Bell at noon at City Hall. Bring your own bells! 

César Chavez Commemoration with a showing of “No Grapes” at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

Berkeley Garden Club “Brighten Your Garden with Birds” presented by local birding author Pat Bachetti at 2 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. 

Spring Equinox Gathering at the Solar Calendar at 6:30 p.m. in Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. www.solarcalendar.org 

“Slow Is Beautiful: New Visions of Community, Leisure, and Joie de Vivre” with author Cecile Andrews at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. www.hillsideclub.org 

“Food Safety in Oakland” A public hearing with the Food and Drug Administration on recent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses associated with microbial contamination of fresh produce, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Federal Building, 13th St., at Clay, Oakland. 202-314- 4713. isabelle_howes@grad.usda.gov 

“Not For Sale: the Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It” with author David Batstone at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

“How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US” at 4 p.m. at the IEAS Conference, 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

“Your Favorite Stress Busters” Discussion at noon at the Herrick Campus of Alta Bates Medical Center, 2001 Dwight Way, Mafly Auditorium. 644-3273.  

“Hiking the Camino de Santiago” Susan Alcorn will show slides of her 400-mile trek along Spain’s ancient pilgrimage route at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Elder Co-Housing presentation at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Oreintation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave. Registration required. 594-5165. 

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

ADD & Autism with Dr. Thauna Abrin of Defeat Autism Now at 7:30 p.m. at 828 San Pablo Ave. Ste 115C. RSVP to 282-2104. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

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, MARCH 21 

Teach-In and Vigil Against American Torture every Wed. at noon at Boalt Hall, Bancroft Way at College Ave.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, at 3:15 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Walk, Talk, Buck the Fence What’s at stake in the Ecology of Berkeley’s Strawberry Canyon A walk at 5 p.m. every Wed. with Ignacio Chapela and expert guests to discuss what is at stake in the proposed steps for the filling of the Canyon by the UC-LBL Rad-Labs, and now British Petroleum. http://canyonwalks.blogspot.com  

Spring Hike in Briones from 1 to 4 p.m. to see wildflowers, lagoons, vistas and black oaks. Meet at the Bear Creek Staging Area. 525-2233. 

“Media Bias in the Middle East” with Khaled Abu Toameh, a Jerusalem Post writer, who also wrote for the Palestinian newspaper, at 7:30 p.m. at 60 Evans Hall, UC Campus. 818-419-6500. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 9 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

Albany Library Evening Book Club meets to discuss “Tortilla Curtain” by T. Coraghessan Boyle at 7 p.m. at The Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

New to DVD: “Casino Royale” at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

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. 

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 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MARCH 22 

Dedication of the Maudelle Shirek Building at 4:30 p.m. at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 981-7008. 

“Stopping the Destruction of Our Sierra Nevada Forests” at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Banff Mountain Film Festival Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $13-$15 available from REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Women’s History Month “Legacy of Visionaries” a lecture on the women who helped form the East By Regional Park, Save Mount Diablo and Save the Bay at 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Registration required. 636-1684. 

“Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time” with Patricia Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Easy Does It Emergency Services Board of Directors Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. 845-5513. 

Great Books Discussion Group meets to discuss “Billards at Half-Past Nine” by Heinrich Boll at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3700, ext. 16. 

Family Story Time for children ages 3-7 at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, North Branch, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins. 981-6107. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

ONGOING 

Tax Help at the Berkeley Public Library Sat. from 11:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the South Branch. Call for appointment. 981-6260. Also every Tues. and Thurs. at the West Branch from 12:15 to 3:15 p.m. Call for appointment. 981-6270. 

Berkeley Youth Alternatives Girls Basketball Age 15 and under league begins April 11 and 18 and under begins April 13. From 5:30 to 8:30 at Emery High School, 1100 47th St. Emeryville. Cost is $175 per team. 845-9066. www.byaonline.org 

Medical Care for Your Pet at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society low-cost veterinary clinic. 2700 Ninth St. For appointments call 845-3633. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. March 19, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Homeless Commission meets Mon. March 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426.  

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. March 19, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche, 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., March 21, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601.  

Commission on Aging meets Wed., March 21, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344.  

Commission on Labor meets Wed., March 21, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Delfina M. Geiken, 981-7550. 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed. March 21, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed., March 21, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5427.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., March 21, at 7 p.m. at South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6195.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., March 22, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. Harvey Turek, 981-5213.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., March 22, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.

TUESDAY, MARCH 13 

FILM 

Alternative Visions “When a Stranger Comes to Town: Recent Animations” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Stehen Hawking on “Origin of the Universe” at 7:30 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $15-$32. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Gordon Ball and Hilton Obenzinger read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Mike Farrell reads from his memoir “Just Call me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Susan Snyder, author of “Past Tents: The Way We Camped,” reads at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Rohini Hensman reads from “Playing Lions and Tigers” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

GiveWay at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Courtableu, Cajun/Zydeco at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. 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 

Danny Hoch Hip Hop Workshop at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $7-$15. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Debbie Poryes and Friends, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

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

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14 

FILM 

Film 50: History of Cinema “8 1/2” with a lecture by Marilyn Fabe at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Understanding Tibetan Monastic Music in the 21st Century” at 4 p.m. in the Seaborg Room, Faculty Club, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies. 643-6536. 

Kim Stanley Robinson introduces “Sixty Days and Counting” a trilogy of near-future eco-thrillers at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Carol Cosman reads from her new translation of Albert Camus’ “Exile and the Kingdom” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

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 

Open Storytelling hosted by Ed Silberman at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera Company “The Seraglio” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300.  

Gyuto Monks Tibetan Tantric Choir at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Harvey Wainapel Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Eric & Suzy Thompson, Del Ray & Steve James at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Billy Dunn & Bluesway at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

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

Machina Sol at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra with special guest Faye Carol at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, MARCH 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

“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. 

“A Visual Journal” Oils and works on paper by Lisa Bruce. Reception from 4 to 7 p.m. at Bucci’s, 6121 Hollis St., Emeryville. Exhibition runs to March 30. www.lisabruce.com 

“Somebody” The New World of Figurative Art Works by seven artists exploring the human form at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Khalil Bendib, editorial cartoonist will present a slide show and talk about his work. Reception at 6 p.m., presentation at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dave Eggers, author of “What is the What” will read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Sisters in Crime Panel discussion with local mystery writers at 6 p.m. at the South Branch Berkeley Public Library, 1901 Russell St. 981-6149. 

Antonia Juhasz, Steven Hiatt, and Jonathan Schwartz discuss “A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Jazzin’ Up Mama's Hymns: A Socio-Historical and Cultural Interpretation of Gospel Blues with Mark Wilson at 7 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. 

Ken Alder discusses “Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jewish Music Festival “Ensemble Lucidarium” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $22-$26. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

Eda Maxym’s Imagination Club with Stephen Kent at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Ben Flint Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Travis Jones and Chojo Jacques at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Me & My Arrow, Merch, The Swamees at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

The Tie One On’s at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Headnodic & Raashan Ahmad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Randy Westons’s African Rhythms Quartet, featuring Billy Harper at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Through Women’s Eyes” featuring works by Frances Catlett. Reception at 6 p.m. at the Prescott Joseph Center for Community Enhancement, 920 Peralta St., Oakland. Exhibition runs through May 3. 835-8683. www.rescottjoseph.org 

Paintings of Michael Murphy Reception for the artist at 5 p.m. at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. Exhibition runs through April 13. 649-8111. 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 1. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Seldom Seen Acting Company, a group of homeless actors who share their life stories through theater perform at 10:30 a.m. at The SVdP Downtown Services Center, 675 23rd St., Oakland. To RSVP call Christine at 636-4255.  

Berkeley Rep “To the Lighthouse” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. and runs through March 25. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2917. 

Central Works Theater Ensemble “Lola Montez” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. through March 25. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Virago Theatre “Orphans” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at BridgeHead Studio, 2516 Blanding Ave, Alameda, through March 31. Tickets are $10-$15. 415-439-2456. www.viragotheatre.org 

FILM 

Asian America Film Festival “American Zombie” with director Grace Lee in person at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is TBA. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alfred Brendel in Conversation on Music and Culture with Prof. Anthony J. Cascardi at 5 p.m. at the Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way. 643-5694. 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore introduces her book “Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California” at 6 p.m. at Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th St.., Oakland. 444-0484. 

Kate Greenstreet and Janet Holmes read from thier poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

A Talk with Valentino Achak Deng one of Sudan’s “Lost Boys” at 7:30 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera Company “The Seraglio” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300.  

Music from Iraq with Rahim Alhaj, part of the Beyond Walls, Beyond Wars series, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Remembering Rachel Corrie concert with the Georges Lammam Ensemble, Huwaida Arraf & Francisco Herrera at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship, Cedar and Bonita. Donation $10-$20. 236-4250. 

Music that Cooks with singer/songwriters: Jamie Jenkins, Chris Berkner, Sharon Michelle, to raise funds for meals for the less fortunate at 7:30 p.m. at College Avenue Presbyterian Church, 5951 College Ave. Donation $5-$10, all ages welcome. 

Stomp the Stumps benefit for Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters with Workingman’s Ed, Funky Nixons and Gary Gates Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Lady Bianca CD Release Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Free Jazz Fridays with The Troublemakers Union at 8 p.m. at 1510 Eighth St. Performance Space, Oakland. Cost is $5-$15 sliding scale. 415-846-9432. events@thejazzhouse.com 

Lost Trio CD release party at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Adrianne, singer/songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Black Brothers at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The B Stars, Real Sippin’ Whiskeys, The Cowlicks at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Spectacle, Ultra Gypsy, Zoe and others at 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $30. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Mario DeSio and Alex Walsh at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Dave Matthews BLUES Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse, 402 Webster St., Oakland. 451-3161. 

This is My Fist, Love Songs, Final Fight at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

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

Roots Reggae from St. Croix at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $25-$28. 548-1159.  

Swoop Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Randy Weston’s African Rhythms Quartet, featuring Billy Harper at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 17 

CHILDREN  

St. Patrick’s Day Songs with Tara Reinertson at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Part. 525-2233. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Gary Laplow at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jacqueline Lynaugh as Lady Emerald celebrates National Reading Month Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 452-2259. 

THEATER 

“Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Hop” by Aya de Leon at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St. Oakland. Part of Women HerStory Month. Cost is $10-$15. http://laney.peralta.edu/womensherstorymonth 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Bad Intentions” Counterculture expressed though painting, music and film, a collaboration by Scott J. Taylor and Clayton Glinton. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit # 116, located in a store front loft of the historic cotton mill studios, Oakland. 535-1702. www.thefloatcenter.com 

“Ancient and Modern Tatoo Art” opens with a reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Art Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Luck: How it Applies to the Writing Process” with Cheryl Dumesnil, at the 81st Annual Poets’ Dinner, at noon at Francesco’s in Oakland. Tickets are $26-$27. For reservations call 841-1217. 

“Berkeley One and Only” with photographer Jon Sullivan at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Schola Cantorum San Francisco “In Exitu Israel” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $12-$20. www.scholasf.org 

Cantare Con Vivo perform Maurice Durufle’s “Requiem” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $25. 925-798-1300. 

Norma Gentile, soprano, sings the songs of Hildegard von Bingen at 8 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Tickets are $15-$20. 528-8844. 

Ensemble Masques "Mensa Sonora: Biber and his Contemporaries" at 8 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College at Garber. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Jewish Music Festival “Tribute to Tzadik Music” at 2 p.m. at the Jazzschool, 2087 Addison St.. Tickets are $5-$10. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

Jewish Music Festival “Pharoh’s Daughter” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $20-$25. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

St. Patrick’s Day Celebration all day at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Martin Crthy in Concert at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Juan del Gastor, Luis Pena, Lakshmi, gypsy flamenco, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $30-$40. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lisa B. & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com  

The Venezuelan Music Project at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Roots Reggae from St. Croix at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $25-$28. 548-1159.  

Katie Knipp and Buxter Hoot’n at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Cave Painters at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Melanie O’Reilly & Aisling Gheat at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Frank Martin Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Blind Duck, Irish music, at 7:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Sweet Crude Bill and Fun with Finnoula St. Patrick’s Day Celebration at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Joey Lent & Chuck Steed, folk rock, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Spectacle, Ultra Gypsy, Zoe and others at 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $30. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

The Jury at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Resistant Culture, Naked Aggression, Mouthsewnshut at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 18 

CHILDREN 

Celebrating 100 Families Oakland and make art with others from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

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. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Growing Hunger: The Struggle of Small Farmers in the 21st Centruy” Artist talk at 2 p.m. in the 3rd flr Community Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. through April 18. 981-6241. 

Michael Kammen, author of “Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture” will talk and show slides at 5 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Sylvia Boorstein, author of “Pay Attention for Goodness’ Sake: The Buddhist Past of Kindness” and Edie Hartshorne, author of “Light in Blue Shadows” in conversation with Arisika Razak, and Betsy Rose at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Clare Langley-Hawthone reads from her mystery novel “The Consequenses of Sin” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera Company “The Seraglio” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300.  

“Jazz at the Chimes” with John Calloway at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $10. 228-3218. 

Chamber Music Sundaes, San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends, at 3 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$22. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

Jeanne Stark-Iochmans, pianist, at 4 p.m. at Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Tickets are $30-$40. 601-7919. www.fourseasonsconcerts.com 

“Spirituals and the African/American Experience” with soloist Marilyn Reynolds at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 444-3555. 

Ricks Knudson, piano, works by Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin, Rachmaninoff at 4 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Free. 849-2103. 

Univ. of Chicago Motet Choir Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Lakeshore Babtist Church, 3534 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Free. 893-2484. 

Cantare Con Vivo perform Maurice Durufle’s “Requiem” at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $25. 925-798-1300. 

Classic Jungle Jazz Piano Concert with Seth Montfort, at 5:30 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $15. 415-362-6080. 

Cantabile Chorale Rachmoninoff’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $6-$25. 650-424-1410. www.cantabile.org 

Alfred Brendel, piano, at 5 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38-$76. 642-9988. 

Jewish Music Festival “Diaspora Blues” with Steven Bernstein and Peter Apfelbaum at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $20-$25. 800-838-3006. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

Jewish Music with Baguette Quartet members Odile Lavault, accordion and Rachel Duling, violin, at 1 p.m. at Afikomen Judaica, 3042 Claremont Ave. 

Fundraiser for Young People’s Symphony Orchestra with Phil Lesh at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $75. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Robin and Linda Williams at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

MONDAY, MARCH 19 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PlayGround Six emerging playwrights debut new works at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $18. 415-704-3177. 

Allan Brandt describes “The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Page to Stage A conversation with playwright Adele Edling Shank at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. 647-2949. 

Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan in Conversation on McKibben’s new book “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $10-$12. 415-255-7296, ext. 253. www.globalexchange.org 

G.P. Skratz and Summer Brenner read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Jacob Needleman talks about “Why Can’t We Be Good?” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express with Lenore Weiss at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Katherine Heater and Friends, viola de gamba and harpsichord at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

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

West Coast Songwriters Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ralph Alessi & This Against That, featuring Ravi Coltrane, Ben Street, Andy Milne and Gerald Cleaver at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

THE GREAT UNCLOTHED OAK GROVE  

PHOTO PORTRAIT 

Shed your clothes to support the oaks! Join photographer Jack Gescheidt for the Unclothed Oak Grove Photo Portrait from 10 a.m.-noon Saturday at the Memorial Oak Grove in Berkeley to create a photograph for the TreeSpirit Project—naked humans in communion with trees—depicting our interdependence with trees in general, and with this specific grove of native oak trees threatened by state plans to uproot them.  

Gescheidt's photographs celebrate the connection between human beings and trees through portraits of unclothed people among trees. All ages and sizes and shapes and physical ability of human are welcome. The photographer is expecting hundreds of participants to attend, showing their reverence for nature by posing nude safely, peacefully, tenderly for a few minutes among this specific grove of native oak trees threatened by state plans to uproot them. For details, jack@treespiritproject.com. 

www.treespiritproject.com. 

AN ITALIAN CLASSIC AT  

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 

One of Federico Fellini’s greatest films, 8 1/2 (1963), will be screened at 3 p.m. Wednesday as part of UC Berkeley’s Film 50 lecture series, hosted by Marilyn Fabe, at Pacific Film Archive. The series is open to the public as space permits, but it’s generally a good idea to get tickets well ahead of time, as the screenings often sell out. $4-$8. 2575 Bancroft Way.

There is no sound quite like that of an orchestra warming up before a performance. Even for the classical music novice, the scattered sounds of violins, tympani, cellos and brass running through a chaotic mesh of notes and rhythms is enough to build anticipation for what awaits, for the drama and emotive power of supreme musicianship. 

But for many, the experience of a symphonic performance often seems out of reach, either financially or intellectually. The common perception, right or wrong, is that classical music is for the elite, for those with more time and money than the rest of us. 

The San Francisco Symphony, aware of this perception, has sought to mitigate it with their 6.5 Series, an ongoing program of Friday night performances with several features geared to bridge the culture gap. The performances start early, at 6:30 p.m., and tickets start at $25, a nearly 50 percent discount off the regular starting price.  

That’s all well and good, and it certainly helps to bring the experience of the symphony closer to many who otherwise might not have the cash to venture into Davies Hall, but it does little to break down the intellectual barriers. Thus the symphony has added another touch: The evening’s conductor will actually talk to you, introducing each piece, explaining the circumstances behind its creation, its place in the pantheon of the classics of classical, as well as its themes and instrumentation and the pleasures and difficulties that confront the modern orchestra that attempts to perform it. In other words, they’ll tell you just what the hell is going on here and why you should care.  

The San Francisco Symphony has an advantage in this area, for music director Michael Tilson Thomas is not only one of the nation’s foremost conductors but is also considered one of classical music’s greatest ambassadors. His “Young People’s Concerts” with the New York Philharmonic have been compared to Leonard Bernstein’s concerts of the 1950s that inspired a generation of classical music lovers.  

On Feb. 9, Thomas, or MTT as he is known, conducted the orchestra in a performance of Hector-Louis Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été (Summer Nights), Opus 7, a program of six love songs setting to music the poetry of Théophile Gautier. To perform the pieces, Thomas introduced mezzo-soprano Susan Graham. 

In his introduction, MTT explained the circumstances behind the songs and briefly discussed their musical and lyrical themes before asking the audience to hold their applause between the songs, stating that the silences between were as much a part of the performance as the music itself. He requested that the audience use that pause to reflect on what they’ve just heard and to clear the mind in preparation for the next—a prospect made challenging by a scattered chorus of several hundred long-suppressed coughs from throughout the auditorium.  

But that too was entirely in keeping with the evening’s light tone, a tone set early by MTT’s impromptu opening remarks, which roused a wave of laughter as the conductor botched the title of Berlioz’ Roman Carnival Overture and had to be gently corrected by the string section. If you could cram an orchestra into your living room for a casual performance, this is what it might feel like. 

The evening’s all-French program also included Debussy’s Nocturnes and Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  

The Jan. 26 performance featured Lawrence Foster conducting Gerhard’s Concerto for Orchestra. As he stepped up to the podium, Foster pre-emptively pardoned himself for his expository talents, deferring to Michael Tilson Thomas as the master of audience relations. 

“It is intimidating to be on the same box as MTT, who is the master of explaining pieces,” Foster said, but made the point moot just as quickly, with a lucid and informative introduction to Gerhard’s piece that included demonstrations by various sections of the orchestra as to how the piece would highlight each instrument. Again, the mood was casual, the musicians clearly enjoying the chance to spotlight the talent and work that goes into their performances.  

The evening also included Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, with Foster conducting and featuring the acclaimed pianist Radu Lapu. Lapu delighted in the opportunity to present the virtues of Mozart; the performance emphasized the dynamics between the pianist and the orchestra, with Lapu turning toward the musicians as their parts echoed and commented on his own. At one point Lapu ran a scale of notes down to the lower register and glanced at the orchestra as the musicians perfectly blended their sound with the fading piano note, an appreciative smile sliding across Lapu’s face as the sound drifted into silence. The audience was appreciative too—they called for three encores. 

Beginning Wednesday, Associate Conductor James Gaffigan will lead the symphony and pianist Yundi Li in a series of performances running through Saturday that will feature Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2. The Friday performance will again be part of the 6.5 Series, with Gaffigan culling pieces from the other programs and leading the orchestra and soloists through examples that will help provide context for and insight into each work.  

SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY’S 

6.5 SERIES 

6:30 p.m. Friday, March 16 at Davies Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. $25-$114. (415) 864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org.  

Photograph: James Gaffigan will lead the orchestra and pianist Yundi Li in the San Francisco Symphony’s next 6.5 Series performance. 

Most of Ron’s columns have featured street trees. I’m making an exception for Michelia doltsopa; the few specimens we know about are in private gardens and storefront planters. I would have passed off the one on our street as some odd magnolia, but she recognized it for what it was. One clue: the flowers are borne among the leaves rather than at the ends of the branches.  

The accompanying photograph, taken after a long siege of rain, doesn’t really do the tree justice. At its peak, the white flowers glow against the leathery dark-green leaves. Frank Kingdon-Ward, the celebrated plant hunter who saw M. doltsopa in bloom in the Adung River valley near the Tibetan-Burmese frontier, wrote: “Its oyster-white shallow cups have a nacreous gleam, and it is a more beautiful tree than any magnolia, except perhaps the peerless Magnolia campbelli.” And this is coming from a man who knew his magnolias. The flowers are also fragrant. 

Kingdon-Ward wasn’t the first to come upon this tree, which grows wild through the Eastern Himalayas, from Nepal to India’s North East Frontier Area. That honor goes to Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, an earlier botanical explorer who may have been the first western scientist in Nepal, in 1802-03, with a diplomatic mission led by a Captain Knox. He gave the type locality for M. doltsopa as Narainhetty or Narayan Hetti, near Kathmandu. His Account of the Kingdom of Nepal also mentions other trees “hitherto unnoticed by botanists.” 

Trained in medicine in Scotland, Buchanan-Hamilton was surgeon to the British governor-general in Calcutta, somehow finding time also to organize a zoo and catalogue the fish of the Ganges. In addition to Nepal, he made plant-collecting forays all over India before settling down to run the Calcutta botanical garden in 1814.  

You have to hand it to those Indiana Joneses of botany. Prospecting for plants on the borderlands of China and India could be a dicey business. There were precipitous mountain trails and steamy leech-infested lowlands, endemic diseases, and local folk who had never seen a westerner and were none too happy to meet their first. Neither were the dogs, the large and surly Tibetan mastiffs.  

The explorers left behind some great books—many of Kingdon-Ward’s travelogues are still in print—and enriched our gardens with a bounty of rhododendrons, primroses, poppies, maples, and more. Michelia doltsopa is a standout among them. In the wild, it reaches a height of 90 feet and is harvested for its timber. “For carpenter’s work a preference is given to the Champa or Michelia, which is certainly a good kind of timber,” wrote Buchanan-Hamilton. Cultivated specimens are much shorter, 25 to 30 feet. Growth habit can be bushy or narrow and upright; older trees have broader crowns. Michelias in general prefer full sun or partial shade and well-drained, humus-rich, neutral-to-acid soil. 

Like their magnolia relatives, Michelias—there are some 50 species—flower in winter. Theirs is a venerable family. Magnolias and their kin have been traced back to the Cretaceous era, 95 million years ago, when the flowering plants were just emerging. Darwin considered the origin of flowering plants “an abominable mystery,” and their history is still murky. It appears, though, that the oldest flowering trees may have been magnolias or something like them. 

Before the advent of bees or butterflies, they were probably pollinated by flies or beetles as many magnolias still are. 

Now found only in East Asia and eastern North America, the magnolia family once had a much wider distribution. Their fossils have turned up in Idaho, England, even Greenland. But the world was warmer then, and climate change—the drying of the American west, the glaciation of Europe—pushed the magnolias into their present refugia. The remnant distribution of the family is paralleled by other plants, including ginseng, and a few animals, notably the alligators, paddlefish, and giant salamanders. We’re lucky to have these beautiful survivors, bringing a touch of the Mesozoic to city streets and yards.  

Photograph by Joe Eaton:  

At its peak, the white flowers of Michelia doltsopa glow against the leathery dark-green leaves. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 13 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

DEAR Day: Drop Everything and Read Come read in a Berkeley Public School at 9:30 a.m. For information or to sign up call 644-8833. bsv@berkeley.k12.ca.us 

National Nutrition Month Cooking Demonstrations at 2:30 p.m. at the Tuesday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 548-3333. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, at 3:15 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council will discuss Student Support Plans, Advisories, and Common Assessment Measures at 4:15 in the Berkeley Community Theater. 644-4803. 

“Religion and Freedom of Speech: Cartoons and Controversies” with Robert Post, Prof of Law, Yale Univ. at 7:30 p.m. at the Lipman Room, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 643-9670. 

Women’s HerStory “HIV/AIDS and the Down Low” Lecture and discussion at 6 p.m. at Laney College Forum, 900 Fallon St. http://laney.peralta.edu/womensherstorymonth 

A Talk with Valentino Achak Deng one of Sudan’s “Lost Boys” at 7:30 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

“Late Pleistocene to Holocene Evolution of the San Francisco Bay” at 5:30 p.m. at the Goldman School of Public Policy, Room 250, corner of Hearst and LeRoy. 642-2666. 

St. Patrick’s Day Party with Irish Songs at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

“Past Tents: A Portrait of Camping in the Early West” with author Susan Snyder at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704.  

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. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14 

Teach-In and Vigil Against American Torture every Wed. at noon at Boalt Hall, Bancroft Way at College Ave.  

Walk, Talk, Buck the Fence What’s at stake in the Ecology of Berkeley’s Strawberry Canyon A walk at 5 p.m. every Wed. with Ignacio Chapela and expert guests to discuss what is at stake in the proposed steps for the filling of the Canyon by the UC-LBL Rad-Labs, and now British Petroleum. http://canyonwalks.blogspot.com  

“Solving the Klamath Crisis” in commemoration of the 10th Annual International Day of Action for Rivers, at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Free. 849-2568.  

Special Meeting on UC’s Berkeley Lab’s Proposed Development in Strawberry Canyon at the Planning Commmission at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst at MLK, Jr. Way. The plans are available on-lone at www.lbl.gov/lrdp 

“Stromwater Designs: Designing a Soft Path” with Rosey Jenks at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, 315A, UC Campus. Part of the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium. http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

“Arab-Israeli-Palestinian Peace: From Crisis to Hope: Making Peace an Urgent Priority for U.S. Policy” with Ronald Young of the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative, at 9:45 a.m. at Giesy Hall, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, 2770 Marin Ave. 559-2731. www.plts.edu  

“Genocide Widows and Survivors in Rwanda” A lecture and discussion with Laura Frazier at 1 p.m. at Laney College Forum, 900 Fallon St. Oakland. Part of Women HerStory Month http://laney.peralta.edu/womensherstorymonth 

“Photography for EBay” Learn professional quality studio lighting techniques for use at home, with instructors from the Pacific Center for Photographic Arts, at 7 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $35. Registration required. 428-2463. 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Building Connections Through Rhythm A drumming workshop for Women HerStory Month at noon at Laney College Theater Building Room 319, Oakland. http://laney.peralta.edu/womensherstorymonth 

Kentro Body Balance Movement Class at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

New to DVD: “Borat” at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

El Grupito, a group for practicing and maintaining Spanish skills, meets at 7:30 p.m. at Diesel Books, 5433 College Ave., Oakland. 653-9965. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MARCH 15 

Tilden Mini-Rangers An afterschool program with hiking and nature-based activities for children aged 8-12, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Dress to get dirty. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Women’s History Month “Rosie the Riveter” a lecture with the National Park Service on the World War II Home Front National Park at 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Optional pot-luck dinner follows. Registration required. 636-1684. 

“Hardy Californians: A Woman’s Life with Native Plants” A discussion of the new expanded edition of Lester Rowntree’s book with Rowntree’s grandson at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 525-0689. 

Proposed New Berkeley/ 

Albany Ferry Terminal Public Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 1247 Marin Ave. For information see www.watertranist.org 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at LeConte School. We will discuss gang tag graffitti, the mixed-use building proposed for 2700 Shattuck/2100 Derby, changes proposed for Telegraph, the Save the Oaks issue and more. Please use Russell St. entrance. 843-2602. 

Environmental Justice Symposium “Conserving Indian Country” Tribal leaders, Indian Law and Environmental Law experts will meet to discuss environmental and land use law in Indian Country, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Fri. from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Campus. Cost is $10 per day. 415-863-8688. http://ej.boalt.org 

“Shellmound” A documentary on the transformation of the Emeryville Shellmound from a native burial ground into the Bay Street shopping center at 7 p.m. at the Inter-tribal Friendship House, 523 International Blvd., Oakland. 486-0698. www.shellmoundthemovie.com 

“Understanding California’s Tsunamis: Where Do They Come From and How Are They Formed?” at 12:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

Simplicicty Forum on Simple Taxes and Living Without a Car at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Library, Claremont Branch, Benvenue at Ashby. 549-3509. 

“Sustainable Residential Interiors” with authors Debbie Hindman, Kari Foster, and Annette Stelmack at 7:30 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Sisters in Crime Panel discussion with local mystery writers at 6 p.m. at the South Branch Berkeley Public Library, 1901 Russell St. 981-6149. 

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

“Eat at Bill’s: Life in the Monterey Market” a new documentary by Lisa Brennis at 7:30 at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street at Arch. Cost is $5. 843-8724. 

“Keeping Kosher on the Prairie, Keeping Chickens in Petaluma” with Eleanor Kaufman at 6:30 p.m. at Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. 

“Travel to Greece” with Lonely Planet author Michael Stamatios Clark at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Public Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Free. 526-7512. 

Family Story Time for children ages 3-7 at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, North Branch, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins. 981-6107. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 

Interfaith Candelight Prayer Vigil for the 4th Anniversary of the US occupation of Iraq at 5 p.m., at First Congregational Church lawn on Dana St. 

“Killowat Ours” a documentary on our use of electricity, and “The Vineyard Energy Project” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., midtown Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Blowin’ in the Wind” A documentary on depleted uranium by David Bradbury at 5 p.m. 215 Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 415-485-9528. http://ucnuclearfree.org 

“Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California” with author Ruth Wilson Gilmore at 6 p.m. at Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th St., Oakland. 444-0484. 

Rakkasah West: Middle Eastern Folk Festival from 7 to 11 p.m. at the Richmond Auditorium, Richmond. Tickets are $12. Festival continues all day Sat. and Sun. www.rakkasah.com/west 

Seldom Seen Acting Company, a group of homeless actors who share their life stories through theater perform at 10:30 a.m. at The SVdP Downtown Services Center, 675 23rd St., Oakland. To RSVP call Christine at 636-4255.  

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Fed Collignon on “Famous Berkelyans in the Arts” 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.  

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” a documentary followed by discussion at 6:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. 

“Globalization in Africa: The Catholic Church’s Response” with Rev. Dr. Patrick Kalilombe from Malawi at 7 p.m. at JSTB, GTU, 1735 Leroy Ave. Followed by symposium on Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. 549-5028. 

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, MARCH 17 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Room, 2727 College Ave. All welcome.  

St. Patrick and the Snakes Learn the story of St. Patrick and meet our snake at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Canoe at Arrowhead Marsh in Oakland with Save the Bay. From 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Cost is $30-$40. To register call 452-9261, ext. 109. 

Tinkers Workshop Spring Used Bike Sale at 84 Bolivar Drive, West Berkeley. All types of bikes available, and proceeds benefit Tinkers Workshop programs form youth. www.tinkersworkshop.org 

“Starve War, Feed Peace” Fourth Anniversary March and Rally Against the War, in Walnut Creek. Progressive Democrats of the East Bay will meet at 11 a.m. at the Walnut Creek BART and march to Civic Park, Civic and Broadway, for a noon rally. 925-933-7850. 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk Join a Park Ranger for a walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters. Terrain is steep, wear walking shoes and bring water. Rain cancels. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Cal-Trans Park and Ride lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. 925-228-8860. 

“The Ground Truth” Iraq war documentary at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

Lead-Safe Painting and Remodeling A free class on how to detect and remedy lead hazards in the home, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

“Developing Livable Communities” A forum sponsored by Urbanists for a Livable Temescal Rockridge Area, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and The Sierra Club, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, entrance at parking lot at 58th St., Oakland. Please bring a brown bag lunch. Pastries, drinks and other snacks will be provided. 925-376-0727. www.ultraoakland.org 

California Writers Club meets to discuss “A Celebration of Local Color” with Annalee Allen, at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120. 

Rakkasah West: Middle Eastern Folk Festival from 11 a.m to 11 p.m, Sun. from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Richmond Auditorium, Richmond. Tickets are $15. www.rakkasah.com/west 

African Dance Class at 11 a.m. at Black Repertory Group, (Purple Bldg.), 3201 Adeline St. Open to all. Cost is $11. 368-2475. www. 

youmustdance.blogspot.com 

Celebrate Women’s History Month on the USS Hornet Events from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.. Tickets are $6 for children, $14 for adults. The Hornet is berthed at 707 W Hornet Ave., Pier 3, Alameda. 521-8448, ext. 237. 

Kids Garden Club for ages 6-9 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

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 

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

SUNDAY, MARCH 18 

Shoreline Discovery Walk along Lone Tree Point Regional Shoreline with Bethany Facendini, naturalist, from 3 to 4 p.m. Call for meeting place. 525-2233. 

First Signs of Spring A five mile hike in the Crockett Hills from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Meet at the Crockett Ranch Staging Area. Bring water and a lunch. 525-2233. 

“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. www.ebparks.org 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m., Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. 

“Dancing Through My SPiritual Journey” with Roger Dillahunty at 9:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack van der Meulen on Tibetan yoga “opening to Kum Nye” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 19 

Berkeley Partners for Parks presents a panel of local grant-givers to help aspiring activists start and fund community projects at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Works Green Room, 1326 Allston (below Acton). 848-9358.  

Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan in Conversation on McKibben’s new book “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $10-$12. 415-255-7296, ext. 253. www.globalexchange.org 

Women for Peace with Loulena Miles, staff attorney for TriValley CAREs at 10 a.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. 

“The Story of Rosa Parks” video at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 6 to 7 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at East Pauley Ballroom, 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. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING 

Tax Help at the Berkeley Public Library Sat. from 11:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the South Branch. Call for appointment. 981-6260. Also every Tues. and Thurs. at the West Branch from 12:15 to 3:15 p.m. Call for appointment. 981-6270. 

Berkeley Youth Alternatives Girls Basketball Age 15 and under league begins April 11 and 18 and under begins April 13. From 5:30 to 8:30 at Emery High School, 1100 47th St. Emeryville. Cost is $175 per team. 845-9066. www.byaonline.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., March 13, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., March 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., March 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., March 14, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti, 981-6740.  

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., March 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., March 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., March 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7010.