Opinion

March is Arts Education Month, according to press releases from the City of Berkeley, Alameda County and county education superintendent Sheila Jordan. It’s a cause everyone can get behind: kids and arts, what’s not to like? We’d like to get on the bandwagon too, before it’s too late. We believe that art is good for kids, and kids are good for art. We’ll even endorse the slogan some creative PR firm dreamed up: “Art IS education.” Of course it is. -more-

Sunday was a beautiful Northern California spring day, sunny in the afternoon but not too hot for long walks out of doors. In San Francisco, as in many other cities, lots of people combined their desire to take walks with their commitment to putting a halt to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and judging by the pictures a good time was had by all. Peace marches in the springtime are an American tradition going back at least 40 years in our own subculture, and they have much to recommend them. Especially for those of us who lived in the Midwest 40 years ago, it was a genuine pleasure, in spite of the underlying reason, to go to Washington as the cherry trees were breaking into bloom and walk out of doors carrying signs and pushing the kids in strollers. And it eventually worked—Americans caught on to the waste and carnage in Vietnam and withdrew, though not nearly soon enough. -more-

BLACK OAK BOOKS -more-

“We want to turn this into a new type of artists’ community,” said Doug Herst, owner of 5.5 acres of industrial land in West Berkeley, speaking at a special meeting at City Hall. He came over as a nice guy, and he really seemed to like artists and the arts. Sounded great. Until he unveiled the real project: a million square feet of mostly commercial, office, and residential development, with only seven thousand square feet for arts/crafts workshops, and only 20 percent of the residential units as artist live/work studios. -more-

Dear Mayor, -more-

NO TEARS FOR BARNES AND NOBLE -more-

In April 2002 Berkeley’s handsome Central library at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Kittredge reopened with a splendid party attended by more than 7,700 people. It had been completely renovated and almost doubled in size. Support for this project came from citizens of Berkeley, who passed a bond measure to pay for the building, and from private donations, funneled through the Berkeley Public Library Foundation, which paid for new furniture, equipment, and refurbishing of the original furnishings of this historic structure. -more-

As my final meeting as chairman of the City of Berkeley’s Commission on Labor draws near, I thought I’d to take a minute to give my farewell to the local labor community and to Berkeley residents. -more-

According to wikipedia.org déjà vu is “the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously.” -more-