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Daniel Rudman has compiled a manuscript consisting of the thoughts and opinions of fellow users of the warm pool. Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee.
Daniel Rudman has compiled a manuscript consisting of the thoughts and opinions of fellow users of the warm pool. Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee.
 

News

Flash: BUSD Wins Lawsuit

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday April 10, 2007

The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) emerged victorious when an Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the school district Monday in a suit, American Civil Rights Foundation vs. Berkeley Unified School District, brought by Sacramento based Pacific Legal Foundation (PCL). PCL had sued BUSD in October, charging the district with violating California’s Proposition 209 by racially discriminating among students during placements at elementary schools and at programs at Berkeley High. 

“The judge ruled that the student assignment system that we apply in our elementary schools is legal and that our integration system is fair and legal,” School Superintendent Michele Lawrence told to the Planet Tuesday. 

“I am delighted that he ruled in our favor and I think that his ruling is consistent with the earlier ruling which was also in our favor. I hope that Pacific Legal Foundation will now leave Berkeley alone.” 

Berkeley Unified was sued in 2003 by PCL on behalf of a parent who charged the district with race-based assignment of students in a different and earlier Berkeley program.  

The case was dismissed by Judge James Richman who said that voluntary desegregation plans or ‘race-conscious’ school assignment systems were not specifically prohibited by Prop. 209. 

The attack on BUSD by PCL last year came on the 10th anniversary of Prop. 209.  

Speaking to the Planet in an interview in October, Lawrence said that PCL had used the Berkeley schools to make a “public splash” during the anniversary. 

“BUSD stands firmly by its elementary student assignment plan for Berkeley elementary schools,” she said. 

The school district had also been trying hard to pass Measure A -- a school parcel tax -- at that point. 

The lawsuit alleged that BUSD “uses race as a factor to determine where students are assigned to public schools and to determine whether they gain access to special educational programs.” 

PLF attorney Paul J. Beard said in a statement in October that concerns were: the elementary student assignment plan for Berkeley Elementary Schools, the admissions policy for Berkeley High School’s small schools and academic programs; and the admissions policy for Berkeley High School’s AP Pathways Project.  

“These plans and policies use students’ skin color to help determine how individual students will be treated,” said Beard. “That’s unfair and transmits a harmful message to our kids that skin color matters—and, under Proposition 209, it also happens to be illegal.” 

Beard could not be contacted before press time Tuesday. 

A provision of the California Constitution, Proposition 209 was enacted by California voters in 1996 and “prohibits discrimination or preferences based on race or sex in public education, employment, and contracting.” 

The assignment system in BUSD lets parents put in their first, second and third school choices, and then a computer runs a lottery to give the final placement. The lottery takes into account factors such as race, ethnicity, student background and parental income and education. 

 

 

 

 

 


Manuscript Documents Voices Of the Berkeley Warm Pool

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Often when we’re in the locker room at the pool, my mother will say to me, ‘Do you hear the singing?’ And I’ll ask, “What singing?” “Don’t you hear the music?” she’ll say. And I’ll listen, and I’ll hear sounds bouncing off the walls and different voices, and as I focus in on them they get increasingly melodic... 

And then, when we’re leaving, and we’re often the last to leave, there is a deep quiet because the pool’s empty, everyone’s gone. You don’t hear voices, you don’t hear singing anymore. But you can hear the pool’s own rhythm, the percussive “dm...dum, dm” of the water sloshing in the drains, sounding like drums, a cool bass sound “Dum, dm...dum, dm ...dum,” like the percussion underlying the voices, the voices of all the people who had been singing that day. 

—Susana Praver-Perez and Jan Praver, Berkeley High School warm pool users, in Daniel Rudman’s compilation Soakin’ the Blues Away: Voices of the Warm Pool 

 

 

 

Susana Praver-Perez and Jan Praver are just two of the 170 Berkeley Warm Water Pool users who have lent their voices to a manuscript put together by playwright and pool user Daniel Rudman to garner support for the pool. 

Rudman, 62, was injured when a slab of sheet rock fell on top of him while he was building a ceiling 24 years ago. Numerous doctors, medications and treatments later, Rudman was still bedridden. That was until he discovered the Berkeley Warm Pool in 1987. 

“It represented temporary relief. Freedom. The pool didn’t cure me, but it prevented me from deteriorating any further,” his testimonial says. “It gave me needed hope. Without it, I wouldn’t be alive.” 

Supporters of the warm water pool flocked to the Landmarks Preservation Commission Thursday to speak in support of landmarking the pool. Lack of time prevented the public from speaking their mind and the issue from being discussed any further. 

“It’s the very first thing on the agenda at the next Landmarks meeting and you can be sure we will be there,” said Berkeley resident and warm water pool supporter Marie Bowman to the Planet Friday. 

Designed by renowned Bay Area architects William C. Hays and Walter H. Ratcliff Jr., the warm water pool and the gymnasium are both eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Founded in 1929, it is the only public heated pool in the East Bay. 

The South of Bancroft Master Plan—which was approved by the school board in January—proposes to demolish the old gymnasium that houses the warm water pool at the very end of the project, which the school district says will give them time to work on a plan with the city to save the pool. 

But for the Daniels, the Susanas and the Susies who have found a lifeline in the confines of the warm pool’s therapeutic waters, the battle continues daily to save the only thing that is keeping them alive every day. 

More than 400 people swim at the warm pool daily, and not all are disabled seniors. 

There’s 20-month-year-old Colin Larkin who loves to kick and paddle and blow bubbles at 88-year-old Dave Marshall. Like Colin, a host of other kids are part of the Berkeley Recreation Department’s highly regarded Special Needs Aquatic Program (SNAP) that serves disabled children. 

For many, the warm pool is like a sacred ground, a haven which helps them forget not just the pain and suffering, but also the aging process. 

As Iris Gomez (real name changed in the book), 56, says in the last line of her essay: “Despite all my difficulties, I am not willing to give up. It is not my time yet.” 

Reading the pages that Rudman has so painstakingly created is like reading the manuscript of a film—every character jumps out at you from the pages and entwines you in their world. A world that is sans the old, obese, sick and disabled, and is instead filled with love, compassion and, most importantly, hope. 

“I was coming to the pool for 20 years and I realized that I had never heard the stories that brought people here everyday,” Rudman said while exercising in the warm pool Monday.  

“I wanted to hear them and this gave me the opportunity to do so.” 

Rudman, who shows up at every hearing about the warm pool in his wheelchair, had originally wanted to create a petition to show support for the pool. When that didn’t seem strong enough to send the message across, he thought of compiling testimonies. 

“When I started, my goal was to get 50 testimonials,” he writes. The final tally was 170. Rudman encouraged everyone to write a paragraph, and for those to whom it seemed an impossible feat, he noted down thoughts and memories at the pool, in cars and even over the telephone. 

“Soakin’ the Blues Away” is in many ways a voice for the voiceless, the battered and the bruised. It’s not just a memoir of the bad times, but also the good times. 

As Rudman puts it, the manuscript “demonstrates again and again the ancient truth that we are all part of each other.” 

“Helen Gee from Hong Kong stretches next to Mariya Grinberg from Russia while Farwa Ali from India exercises near Paula Hasker from Sweden... We don’t have conflicts about sex, race, class. We argue about such burning social issues as what constitutes a comfortable water temperature or whether one window or three should stay open.” 

For 75-year-old Juanita Kerby—former model, policewoman, a tax expert for the IRS, and presently a co-chairperson of the Warm Pool Advocacy Group—every trip to the pool is like Deja Vu. Kerby is an alumni of Berkeley High. 

“We are like a family,” she says in the manuscript. “We share each other’s pain and/or grief... As co-chair of the one warm pool committee, I will go to great lengths to save this valuable resource.” 

On Monday evening, some 50 swimmers were enjoying short laps in the pool, their enthusiasm evident from the smiles and shrieks of joy. 

“They come here tired and frustrated and leave a changed person,” said one of the lifeguards. “For some, it’s the only highlight of the day.” 

“Voices of the Warm Pool” documents 51-year-old Susie Bluestone’s excitement in finding pain relief methods, job tips as well as countless friends in a place she least expected. 

It documents—through brief paragraphs and detailed essays—the faith countless families harbor in the warm pool’s parent-tot classes, fear-of-swimming classes and Spirit Walking Aqua Chi classes. 

But, most importantly, it documents the struggle to save a soon-to-be-extinct resource, that could very well be the only thing that keeps a community ticking every day. 


Former Berkeley Councilmember John Denton Dies

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Former City Councilmember, attorney, neighborhood preservationist and humanitarian John Denton died peacefully in his sleep Sunday night at the age of 93.  

“If anyone could be called the conscience of this community, it was John Denton,” Denton’s friend Art Goldberg said in an e-mail to the Planet. “He valued our neighborhoods, our diversity and was committed to honesty and integrity in government, which often put him at odds with those in power.” 

Denton will be remembered on the council as “never being PC enough for BCA [Berkeley Citizens Action],” but at the same time, “To the moderates, he was BCA,” said Clifford Fred, a friend and an aide to Denton for 18 months during his eight years on the council. 

“He did not merely move to the beat of a different drummer; John Denton is the different drummer,” wrote David Mundstock in the online history, Berkeley in the ’70s. Mundstock served as staff for Denton for “a couple of months.” 

Denton’s early life may have set him on his unique path. Born in a charity ward to an Irish mother who left him in a hospital in the Bronx, he was raised in an orphanage until he was 10 or 11, according to Josh Denton, one of John Denton’s three sons.  

He was then adopted by a wealthy childless couple. His adopted mother “really looked after him,” Josh Denton said. Both adoptive parents died when Denton was in his 20s. 

Denton started his career as a lawyer in real estate, but during the Spanish Civil War he took the side of the Republicans and met the woman who would become his wife—Ruth Denton—at an event in support of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 

“They decided to get out of the rat race and moved to a farm in New Jersey,” Josh Denton said. When they heard that an Indian tribe in Santa Fe needed help, they moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

Some time later, they moved to Tucson, where John Denton worked at the University of Arizona. When he wasn’t at the university, he was defending people put in jail as vagrants. “He had a secret friend who was a jailer who would call dad and tell him about people put unjustly in jail.” Denton would defend them. 

Another accomplishment was helping to get a bill through Congress that would prevent prospectors from setting up camp on Indian grounds. 

In 1961, John Denton brought his family to Berkeley, where he was to teach at the university. His mother knew it was the right place to be when she heard baroque music played on KPFA, Josh Denton said. “That sold her on Berkeley.” 

After about five or six years at the university, Denton left and became an expert on the evaluation of real property. One of his passions was city planning and he helped to organize the Council of Neighborhood Associations. 

“John Denton was a great friend of neighborhood groups and sadly we have no one like him today,” said Martha Nicoloff, who was another CNA founder. 

Denton was elected to the Berkeley City Council in 1975 and served until 1986. He served with then city councilmember—now state assemblymember—Loni Hancock, who told the Daily Planet one of the most notable things Denton did on the council was working to change the redevelopment plan in West Berkeley to include affordable housing and retail.  

Hancock adjourned the Assembly on Monday in Denton’s memory. 

“John Denton brought 35 years of experience to the Berkeley City Council as an attorney, author, professor, appraiser, economist and all-around land use and housing expert,” Mundstock wrote. “He had represented Indian tribes in Arizona [to protect their mineral rights], fought to preserve Bay Area neighborhoods from freeways, and [was] executive director of Governor Pat Brown’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Fair Housing,” Mundstock wrote. 

John Denton’s wife, Ruth Denton, passed away in 2003. His son Josh came to live with him in Berkeley after that time. Denton also leaves behind sons David and Robert. 

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be sent to Project VIDA, 1000 Camelia, Berkeley 94710. 


Divided Commission Landmarks Iceland

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Iceland became an official Berkeley historical structure Thursday when a divided Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted its highest level of recognition to the threatened building. 

The commission took no action on the old Berkeley High School gymnasium, after a midnight deadline ended the meeting before members could hold a discussion and vote. Discussion and decision were postponed until the commission’s May 3 meeting.  

Thursday night’s Iceland vote followed impassioned pleas from skaters and architecture buffs as well as pleas from backers of the building’s owners, who hope to develop the property while preserving some of the building’s historic features. 

Five commissioners voted to declare the building a landmark, while four others abstained. 

David Snippen, who was filling in for an absent Miriam Ng, said he would’ve been more inclined to vote in favor on an application that would have designated the building a structure of merit rather than a landmark in order to allow the owners more freedom to develop the property. 

But Carrie Olson and others pointed out that the commission is barred from looking at any other considerations than the merits of the building itself and praised the building as one of the most architecturally pristine examples she’d seen during her long tenure on the commission. 

The rink, located at 2727 Milvia St., has been closed for a week after owners declared they were unable to afford to keep the venue in operation because of the high costs of running a rented refrigerating system. 

Testimony fell into three camps: opposition from the owners and their representatives, ardent support from skaters who want to see the building preserved as a rink, and equally fervent support from two experts on art deco. 

The rink, now closed to skaters, belongs to the Zamboni family of Southern California, manufacturers of the massive street-sweeper-like devices used to maintain the ice surface at rinks. 

While the skaters were the most numerous of the speakers, the LPC has no say over the use of buildings, nor any purview of the interiors of structures unless they are publicly owned. 

Joanne Tillerman of Saveberkeleyiceland.org, said the organization is developing a plan to save the rink and has raised $53,000 in the last two weeks “just sitting on the sidewalk out front.” The group is also approaching corporations and other potential funding sources, she said. 

“We need a chance to transfer ownership to a non-profit,” she said. “Seventy-five percent of skating rinks are owned by non-profits or cities.” 

Bob Skrak, a veteran of the Ice Capades who served as general manager at Iceland from 1958 to 1993, said the numbers just don’t work, in part because of declining interest in skating. 

“In 1994, we had 113,000 people come, but in the first ten months of last year only 33,000 came,” said the 81-year-old former skating pro. “You cannot keep a rink going with that level of business.” 

Ben Anderson, the architectural consultant hired by Iceland’s owners, portrayed the venerable structure as an undistinguished hodge-podge of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles, much of it with little character or articulation. 

Sady Hayashida, the Emeryville architect who had won the LPC’s praise for his design for enlarging the landmarked Howard Automotive building at 2149 Durant St., said Iceland lacked the distinction to merit LPC designation. “It’s not the first, last or only significant example of the architecture in the region,” he said, reeling off a list of descriptors from the city’s landmarks ordinance. 

But architectural historian Michael Crowe, the author of two books on Art Deco and founder of the Art Deco Society of California, disagreed, hailing the building as a “superb example” of the style, unique in its treatment of the rink—a building which he said showed a “remarkable high level of integrity.” 

Paula Trehearne, preservation director of the society Crowe founded, said Iceland is both architecturally and culturally significant, and both she and Crowe agreed the building more than fit the city’s landmark criteria. 

After 76 minutes of testimony, the commission spent another 50 minutes deciding on a course of action. 

An initial motion by Carrie Olson was withdrawn after chair Robert Johnson suggested it was too detailed in the long list of features spelled out, replaced by a more general version from Jill Korte. 

During the discussion, Snippen raised the notion to applying the Structure of Merit category to the building to make development easier. 

Olson and others reminded him that the commission’s charge was solely concerned with architectural merit and that the commission was legally barred from considering other factors. 

“It’s not really in our purview,” said Johnson. 

“The irony doesn’t escape me,” said Jill Korte, “but we always seem to be arguing about (architectural) integrity and just how much a building has, and here we’ve got a building that’s got impeccable integrity,” one of the key criteria for designation as a landmark. 

“Structures of Merit,” while typically less pristine than landmarks, nonetheless carry the same level of protections as do landmarks. 

Gary Parsons, himself an architect, said he was sure that there were more economic issues than the commission had heard, “and it’s wonderful that we don’t have to consider that.” 

Johnson noted that the commission has approved alterations to landmarks. One notable example was Hayashida’s treatment of the Howard Automotive building. 

Snippen again returned to his argument favoring the lesser designation, but when it came to a vote, he abstained, along with Fran Packard, Steve Winkel and Barry C. Gardner Jr., the commission’s newest member, recently appointed by City Councilmember Max Anderson to replace architect Burton Edwards. 

Olson, Korte, Johnson, Lesley Emmington and Gary Parsons voted for designation, and Iceland became an official City of Berkeley Landmark. 

It was Emmington’s last meeting, at least for a while. Perhaps the commission’s most ardent preservationist, she submitted her resignation Friday, three days before the formal end of her eight-year term.  

 

Other actions  

Commissions voted 6-1-1 to approve plans for modifications of the landmarked Southern Pacific station in West Berkeley, which will become the new home of Brennan’s Irish Pub. 

The pub and the once-landmarked building housing Celia’s Mexican Restaurant will be demolished to make way for a block-square residential-over-commercial project being developed by Urban Housing Group at 700 University Ave. 

Emmington voted against the changes, which she said would destroy the character of the pub as a Berkeley institution. Korte abstained. An LPC subcommittee will work with the developers to fine-tune the color scheme. 

Margaret Wade, one of the family who owns the pub, spoke in favor of the move. 

With Packard abstaining and Parsons absent, the commission majority voted to approve an owner-inaugurated application to landmark the residence at 2611 Ashby Ave. 

 

Photograph by Richard Brenneman 

Claudia Polsky wore her daughter’s ice skates around her neck when she addressed the commission to plead that Iceland be declared worthy of landmark status.


Controversial Richmond Casino Proposals Move Fitfully Forward

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday April 10, 2007

A major goof has temporarily stalled the approval process for one Richmond-area casino, while signs of movement have been detected for the second. 

The foul-up resulted from the failure to include or consider 60 pages of critical comments by Contra Costa County officials in the environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Sugar Bowl Casino in unincorporated North Richmond. 

The Scotts Valley Band of Pomos had partnered with a Florida developer who specializes in packaging tribal casinos to build a $200 million, 225,000-square-foot, 1,940-slot machine Las Vegas-style gambling palace. 

The proposed location of the North Richmond casino is a 29.87-acre industrial site along Richmond Parkway on a site bounded by Goodrick Avenue on the East and Parr Boulevard to the south. 

The EIS, required under the National Environmental Protection Act, is equivalent to the environmental impact report (EIR) required of complex projects under state law. 

“We don’t know what happened,” said John Rydzik, an environmental officer with the Sacramento regional officer of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). “We’ve checked our logs, and they do show that we received it.” 

As a result, he said, the draft document, which had been circulated to other federal, state and local governmental agencies, has been withdrawn so that Analytical Environmental Services, a private consulting firm often applied by casino-seeking tribes, can redraft the EIS taking the county’s comments into account. 

A representative of the Sacramento-based firm declined to comment, other than refer press calls to the BIA. 

Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, whose district includes the site of Casino San Pablo and both of the proposed Richmond-area casinos, said preliminary results of a multi-jurisdictionally funded traffic analysis spearheaded by the county show that three casinos within a small area would lead to major traffic problems for the region. 

“When you put three Las Vegas-size casinos in a small area, you’re creating a destination that will dramatically change the character of the existing community,” he said. 

While the final draft of the traffic study is several weeks away, Gioia said the study has revealed potentially serious congestion problems if the two new resorts are added to the already-thriving gambling parlor in San Pablo. 

That study, being prepared under the aegis of the West Contra Costa County Transportation Advisory Group, is being funded by the county, several local governments, the East Bay Regional Parks District and Marin County. 

Though the land for the Sugar Bowl falls within an unincorporated section of Contra Costa County, the Richmond City Council has already approved a lucrative contract to provide police, fire and other services if and when the gambling parlor is built. 

While the Sugar Bowl is purely a gambling parlor, the second project would bring a destination resort, complete with luxury hotel, major entertainment venue, and upscale mall and a posh casino to a shoreline site at Point Molate within Richmond city limits. 

A project that unites Berkeley developer James R. Levine with the political expertise of former Defense Secretary Richard Cohen, the Point Molate resort would be a grander affair catering to high-rollers, particularly mainland Chinese. 

“That project has been dormant for a number of months,” said Rydzik, “but I just talked to the consultant, and there appears to be some new life. We are expecting something in the near future.” 

The “something” would be the circulation of the draft EIS, now being prepared by the same Analytical Environmental Services—the same firm which is drafting the Sugar Bowl EIS. 

If all goes as backers and city officials hope, the Point Molate casino would become a reservation of the Guidiville Rancheria band of Pomos. 

Gioia said Levine had told him he had been lining up new financial backers after Harrah’s Entertainment, then the world’s leading transnational gambling company, had pulled out. 

Top Harrah’s officials had testified before the Richmond City Council during sessions leading up to the vote approving the sale to Levine’s Upstream Investments. 

A divided Richmond City Council has backed both projects in hopes both of badly needed revenues for an aging infrastructure and sorely needed jobs to ameliorate the city’s high levels of unemployment, especially among young men of color. 

Gioia said he is troubled by the agreements the tribes have signed with Richmond. 

“People support the casinos because they believe they will create jobs, but while the Sugar Bowl agreement” does specify that a percentage of non-managerial jobs in the first year will come from local hires, “there are no guarantees beyond that point.” 

The supervisor contends the agreements may not be enforceable and are being gathered by the tribes to show support for their applications when they’re being considered by BIA officials. 

Neither tribe has an agreement with the county, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has insisted be endorsed after the state signs off on gambling compacts.  

The Scotts Valley band asked the county to enter into a municipal services agreement, “but we said no, it was putting the cart before the horse. The governor won’t approve compacts without prior federal approval.” 

Richmond hopes to gain millions from the sale of the Point Molate site, which was transferred to local government after the closure of the U.S. Navy refueling station that occupied the site for decades, followed by many millions more once money starts passing over the green felt of the gambling tables. 

Both tribes seeking to build casinos in Richmond have survived one major hurdle—letters of notice sent recently from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to 38 tribes deemed unlikely to win approval of their projects, said Nedra Darling, an agency official in Washington. 

Before a reservation can be created, the BIA must first take the land into trust on behalf of the tribe; those receiving the recent letters were notified that the action wasn’t likely because their claims to have a historic connection with the land were considered doubtful. 

Critics of the two casinos contend the two Pomo tribes traditionally lived well north of the Bay Area, and Gioia agrees. 

“Their natural range was farther north, in Lake County,” he said of the Scotts Valley band. 

While the two tribes have survived the initial round of letters, approval isn’t certain and depends on a BIA determination that the tribes have a legitimate claim that the sites were within the range of their traditional territory—claims that have run into considerable opposition from Ohlone and Miwok representatives. 

The governor’s office has also opposed an historic basis to their claims. 

The tribes are seeking to have the land declared as reservations under federal legislation that restores land to tribes whose reservations were illegally closed by the BIA during the middle of the last century when federal policy aimed at forcing smaller tribes “into the mainstream.” 

Even if the land is approved for reservation status, yet more determinations are required before casinos can be opened on the sites—federal approval and gambling compacts with the state, followed by the service agreements with local governments. 


City May Moderate West Berkeley Zoning Restrictions

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Developers can buy property in West Berkeley, jack up the rents and force out long-time tenants and nobody can stop them.  

While there may be little recourse for the filmmakers who work out of the Fantasy Building—recently purchased by Wareham Development—Economic Development Director Michael Caplan says there may be a way for the city to help artists in the long-term and control development in West Berkeley.  

A tool city planners might use to bypass current area zoning requirements would be “planned district zoning,” which—if approved by the City Council—would allow the city to negotiate with developers for uses restricted under current zoning rules in return for community advantages. 

“You could have a project that reflects broad community values,” Caplan said. 

The idea could benefit artists and West Berkeley residents who want a voice in the development of the area in which they live and work, said John Curl, a woodworker who works in West Berkeley and co-chairs West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies, which advocates for artists and local businesses in West Berkeley.  

But the planned district zoning also could be just another way of giving developers what they want, he said. 

As part of a $500,000 economic development package approved by the City Council in February, a six-month planner will be hired for $85,000 to write the new more flexible zoning laws that will eventually go to the council for approval. The planned district zoning described in this story is just one possible change that could be recommended by the new city employee, likely to be hired in two months or so.  

In negotiations with a developer, the city could get permanently affordable artist studios, protection of historie resources or “green” building, Caplan said.  

The question, however, is whether such negotiations will work in favor of the community as Caplan describes it—or of the developer, whose goal is profit. 

Such “horse trading” is not unknown in Berkeley. One example is its use at Berkeley’s downtown Gaia building: the developer was allowed to build two stories higher than zoning permitted in exchange for the community gaining “cultural uses.” That project, however, is heading to court due to a dispute over the extent to which the agreement requires cultural uses. 

Caplan said fears that West Berkeley’s negotiated projects would end up as the Gaia project has are unfounded. The projects proposed for overlay zoning “would have to be highly vetted,” he said. 

Curl said it is a positive thing if community needs are taken into consideration. “The goal [in the West Berkeley Plan] is to maintain a mix of uses” and maintain the diversity of the community—economically, socially, racially and ethnically, he said. The current zoning was written to prevent overdevelopment of the area.  

“The purpose of zoning is to moderate market forces so that they don’t have a destructive impact” such as gentrification, Curl said.  

One cannot judge in advance what the advantages or disadvantages of planned district zoning will be. “You have to see what the actual proposals are,” Curl said.  

The planned district zoning, however, precludes a proactive approach on the part of the community. “People can only be reactive,” Curl said. What the community would get from the developer would have to be fought for project by project.  

How this kind of zoning actually plays out is “where leadership is important,” Caplan said. And that, in part, is what Curl worries about. 

Does staff have the community or the developer at heart in negotiations? Because of their training, “staff works closely with developer,” Curl said, adding, moreover that Mayor Tom Bates has opened the door to development in West Berkeley.  

While in the 80s, developers pushed for office space, today they want to promote residential and retail, he said. Laboratory space is also in demand. Pressure to develop could lead to gentrification and a complete social and economic change that would affect the entire city, he said. 

Both Caplan and Planning Director Dan Marks pointed to the proposed Douglas Herst development at the 5.5 acre former Peerless Lighting at Allston Way and Fifth Street as the impetus for planned district zoning. In a recent commentary published by the Planet, Curl pointed to initial attempts at trade-offs with Herst’s proposed development: 

“Herst … want[s] to change the West Berkeley zoning ordinance so they can replace recently [vacated] manufacturing space with seven-story corporate and residential buildings. They want to ‘blur’ the distinctions between residential, office, commercial and industrial. As a ‘trade-off’ for changing the zoning code, Herst said, he would include 20 percent low-income artist live/work housing, along with 80 percent of the units at market rate for anybody. And here’s the kicker: The city already requires 20 percent inclusionary low-income in all housing projects, exactly what Herst is proposing.” 

New residential projects are not now permitted in much of West Berkeley. “Gentrification is the guiding development policy of this administration,” Curl wrote.  

 

 


Emeryville Puts Discrimination on City Council Agenda

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday April 10, 2007

The Emeryville City Council is scheduled to discuss explosive charges of racial discrimination and retaliation against city employees in its May 1 council meeting, but the councilmember who put the item on the agenda does not hold out much hope that the discussion will lead to changes in Emeryville city government. 

“To tell you the truth, I don’t think there’s much sentiment to make those changes,” Councilmember Ken Bukowski said by telephone this week. “I don’t think [the council] is going to listen. But it’s important to make the effort. These are serious allegations and they need to be looked into.”  

The Emeryville City Council will meet on Tuesday, May 1, 7:15 p.m., in the Council Chambers at Emeryville City Hall, 1333 Park Ave.  

At the last Emeryville City Council meeting, an Emeryville-based group called Concerned Citizens for Change presented councilmembers a letter “requesting that the issue of discrimination be placed on the City Council agenda…and that the city no longer see this as a ‘personnel’ matter that cannot be discussed publicly.… From 2004-2007 the city has settled more than four discrimination and retaliation complaints filed against city hall personnel only, which clearly suggests there is a problem. The City Council has discussed or been made aware of all of these complaints and others in ‘Closed Session.’ Yet to date, nothing has been done to correct the problem.”  

Emeryville City Manager Patrick O’Keefe said he could not discuss the group’s charges until his office had developed a formal staff report for the May 1 City Council meeting. 

“A lot of the charges involve personnel matters that we simply cannot go into in public,” O’Keefe said by telephone. He said that once his office had determined what portion of the charges could be discussed, he would speak to the press about the issue. 

Included with the Concerned Citizens for Change letter was a list of what the group called “a few examples of what type of discrimination is being practiced,” listing what the group said were instances involving differences between how white and African-American employees are treated in areas such as work assignments, extension of probation, assessments, and promotions. 

In one of the allegations, the group charged that “three African American female employees (with children) had their flex schedules abruptly eliminated around the same time, while several Caucasian employees were offered a flex schedule. These employees had their schedule for quite some time. Their attendance was then aggressively monitored for excessive or abusive leaves of absence.” In another allegation, the group said that “several African-American female employees have had their probations extended after they believed their work performance was satisfactory. To our knowledge, these employees never had any problems on any other job until coming to Emeryville. It’s suggested that African Americans are sometimes hired because of allegations of discrimination, but are terminated when the ‘dust’ settles.” 

One of the Concerned Citizens for Change making the charges was former Emeryville City Planning Technician Leslie Pollard, who received a $3.6 million settlement from the city last month in her wrongful termination lawsuit. Pollard, who had worked for the city of Emeryville for 27 years, was suspended in 2004 and fired in 2005 after she made complaints about racial comments and harassment by a co-worker, and then was later deemed unfit to perform her job by a psychiatrist contracted with the city. 

Pollard told councilmembers that the group wanted the racial discrimination issue on the council agenda “not just for city employees, but for city taxpayers as well. There is money being given out by the city in litigation settlement that could be avoided.” 

The May meeting will be the third time that Concerned Citizens for Change has come before Emeryville City Council with these charges in recent weeks. At the March 20 meeting, several citizens, organizations, and employees spoke under the council’s public comment session to discuss the Pollard settlement and allegations of racial discrimination in Emeryville city employment. 

Councilmembers, by law, could not respond during the meeting because the item had not been agendized, but following the meeting, the East Bay Daily News quoted Emeryville Mayor Nora Davis as saying, “What you did not hear last night is those many, many minority people employed by the city of Emeryville who certainly have never given any suggestion about discrimination in the city. We have tried very, very hard to be a diverse city and to be a fair city. If we have fallen down in any instance, we will correct it. I truly believe that.” 

Davis could not be reached for comment in connection with this article. 

In its letter to the council in response to Davis’ newspaper comment, Concerned Citizens for Change wrote “Was Mayor Davis suggesting that because not all employees have experienced racial discrimination/disparate treatment that it doesn’t exist? If this is Mayor Davis’ (and others’) state of mind and/or belief, then the lack of interest and action is not surprising. The City of Emeryville may be in a state of denial, and refusing to conduct a diversity assessment internally allows this mind set and practice to continue.” 

At the April meeting, Pollard told Davis that while the mayor had denied that there was discrimination in Emeryville city employment, “you are good at getting back to your constituents and talking with them. Once you hear the information we have to present, we won’t have to convince you that there’s discrimination in the City of Emeryville.” 

Councilmember Bukowski said one of his purposes for putting the issue on the Council agenda was to ask for a change in the city’s employee grievance policy. 

“Currently, if an employee grievance can’t be settled at the city manager level, the issue goes directly to arbitration rather than to the council,” Bukowski said. “I would like to change city policy so that the council gets a chance to evaluate employee grievances before they go to arbitration.” Bukowski suggested that the council might be able to settle many of the employee grievance matters before they turn into litigation. 


Academic Senate Takes Up UC-BP Pact

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday April 10, 2007

The controversy over what may be the largest corporate/academic research pact in the history of American universities is headed back to UC Berkeley’s Academic Senate. 

Despite an earlier statement by Senate President William Drummond that the body needed no further consultation about the proposed $500 million, 10-year pact between the university and BP (the renamed British Petroleum), the Senate will conduct a two-hour special session on the topic April 19. 

The meeting begins at 1 p.m. in Booth Auditorium at Boalt Hall. 

Meanwhile, members of the university’s Graduate Assembly voted Thursday night for their own call for a review of the proposed pact that would tie the university to the oil giant. 

The assembly voted to direct its officers to meet with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to discuss creation of a funding pool separate from the BP-funded Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) to research the impact of biofuels on the environment, geopolitics and ethics. 

Critics like Professors Miguel Altieri and Ignacio Chapela have charged that the push to devote acreage to grow crops to create fuels for cars, trucks and buses would deprive Third World nations of land needed to feed themselves. 

The students also sought to create a committee that would include at least two graduate students to evaluate the needs of students in the project. 

The BP-UCB agreement now being negotiated would form the largest single corporate funding package in the history of American academia.  

BP and the university would be the two signatories, and the university would negotiate subcontracts with the university-affiliated Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

The EBI would feature both separate and combined research programs, with each side reaping the economic benefits from inventions and discoveries created without participation of the other side, while proceeds from patents created jointly would be shared. 

 


Panel Honors Cesar Chavez, Addresses Immigration

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday April 10, 2007

“To this day, I believe, we are here on this planet earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.” 

—Rosa Parks School pledge 

 

When Margot Pepper speaks at an event honoring the legacy of Cesar Chavez on Wednesday, her former second-grade student Gerardo Espinoza will be foremost on her mind. 

A bilingual teacher at Rosa Parks School and a prize-winning journalist, Pepper and Gerardo’s classmates said goodbye to Gerardo on Valentine’s day—just before the little boy, his brothers and parents were deported to Mexico. 

Pepper will speak at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Berkeley City College Auditorium (2050 Center St.) as part of a panel that will include Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer Los Angeles County Federation of Labor; Hilary Abell, executive director of Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security, and Mayor Tom Bates.  

As Pepper tells it, Gerardo’s father, the hard-working Felipe Espinoza, had been in the country 20 years, since he was 14 years old, and his wife Norma Espinoza had been in the United States for 14 years. The senior Espinoza held down two jobs, working five to six days a week at a steel mill and in a restaurant to support his family. 

Felipe Espinoza’s mistake was to trust Walter Pineda, an immigration lawyer—disbarred last November—who instead of gaining the parents legal residence, caused the family’s deportation. “It’s tragic—he really botched up the Espinozas’ case,” Pepper said. 

Pepper has stayed in touch with the family, and she says their stories are heartbreaking. “They’re living in a town of 1,000 with no gas [for cooking or boiling water] and stagnant water. The three boys have been sick,” she said, adding that the community can help the family by sending donations to Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action (BOCA) at 2606 Dwight Way, Berkeley, 94704 and putting Espinoza in the memo line of the check. 

Pepper said she doesn’t know how many people in Berkeley face similar deportation. Some leave without saying a word. “The Espinozas almost didn’t tell us why they were leaving—they were so ashamed,” Pepper said.  

The cloud of deportation disrupts more than the lives of those deported, Pepper said, explaining that she has had to do a lot of therapy-like sessions for Gerardo’s frightened classmates. 

Still, while the recent sweeps that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made in the Bay Area has frightened people, it has had another consequence, Pepper said: it has intensified a determination to fight back. 

In addition to the Wednesday conference, Pepper is working on two related projects. 

One is an ordinance that will come before the City Council in May, calling on the city to become a sanctuary city. The city has already passed a sanctuary city resolution, but an ordinance will be law with more teeth, she said. At the same time she also noted that ICE “sweeps are less likely to happen in Berkeley because of the activism.” 

The other project is a “know your rights” event, which will include immigration lawyers. It will be presented in English and Spanish from 6:30-8 p.m. Thursday, April 26, at Rosa Parks School, 920 Allston Way. 

See Pepper’s “Open Letter to an Immigration Judge” about the Espinoza family, first published in the Daily Planet in February, and other writings at www.margotpepper.com. 

 

 

 

 


Running Wolf Tree-Sit Interrupted by Arrest

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Tree-sitter and one-time Berkeley mayoral candidate Zachary Running Wolf headed back to jail Friday, busted yet again by UC Berkeley police. 

According to the campus police Daily Activity Bulletin, the 44-year-old activist was arrested at 9:57 a.m. and jailed on three outstanding traffic warrants, two from Berkeley police and one from campus police. 

Supporters were working to win his release Monday afternoon as the Daily Planet’s deadline approached. 

Running Wolf was the second tree-sitter arrested Friday morning in the grove immediately west of Memorial Stadium. 

Athena Osborn, the 25-year-old protester known as “Tinkerbell” and “Otter,” was arrested at 1:50 a.m. when she descended from her perch in a redwood. She was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest and booked into the Berkeley city lockup. 

In a phone call to the newspaper moments before his arrest, Running Wolf said police had just arrived and started cutting down the traversing ropes linking the tree-sitting sites and set up to enable rapid movement above the ground. 

Also seized was a banner supplied by Berkeley activist L.A. Wood promoting the website where he posts videos he has shot about the ongoing protests at the grove, berkeleycitizen.org/youtube.html. 

The tree-sit, called to protest the planned destruction of the grove to make way for a $125 million gymnasium, began well before dawn on Big Game Saturday, Dec. 9., when Running Wolf ascended a redwood and took up residence high above the branches. 

He has been arrested three times at the site, twice for traffic warrants and once on charges of threatening police and resisting arrest, felony charges. 

He had attended a court hearing Thursday on the more serious charges. 

Running Wolf is being represented by noted San Francisco defense attorney Tony Serra. 


Zoning Adjustments Board Weighs Use Permit Appeals

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Suzanne Wilson will replace former Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) commissioner Dave Blake at the ZAB meeting Thursday. Wilson was appointed to the position by District 1 Councilmember Linda Maio.  

Wilson is a Berkeley resident and has previously worked for Mayor Tom Bates. She is currently an attorney at the law firm Stockwell, Harris, Widom, Woolverton & Muehl in San Francisco. Blake was appointed to the Rent Board in the November 2006 elections. 

 

AUP appeals 

The board will hear the appeal of an administrative use permit (AUP) that would allow construction at a multi-family residential building at 2008 Virginia St. 

Applicant Lorin Hill had requested a AUP to construct a 1,434-square-foot addition, raising the existing structure approximately six feet to create habitable space on the ground level, and by expanding the footprint of the building, thereby creating a two-story, west-wing appendage to the building.  

Neighbors are appealing the AUP because they are concerned that the additional height will block air and light. 

ZAB board members had also asked the applicant to put up story poles at the site of the building. Planning staff recommends continuing the item to May 24.  

Appeals of AUPs are not subject to public hearing and public testimony does not take place at this time. The board either sets the matter for public hearing or affirms the zoning officer’s decision. 

The board will also hear the appeal of an AUP to construct a second story atop an existing one-story detached garage at 933 Keeler, set back five feet from the property line abutting the street and two feet from the property line to the north, with an average height of 24 feet and a maximum height of 26 feet. 

Applicant Ken Winfield was denied the AUP after which he appealed the decision to ZAB. The issue at hand is the construction of a second story on an accesory building. 

The staff recommends denying the appeal and affirming the zoning officer’s decision. 

 

New hearings 

The board will hear the request for a use permit from Chris Williams of Oakland to establish a yoga studio with incidental retail sale of yoga accessories in an existing, 800-square-foot tenant space at 3320 Adeline St. Staff recommends approval of the project. 

The board will also hear the request for a use permit from Jeff Stein of Berkeley to construct a second story addition on an existing single-family dwelling unit that is non-conforming for lot coverage and west (left) side yard setback at 1625 Berkeley Way. Staff recommends approval. 

Some neighbors are concerned about the additional story, which they say will block sunlight. 

 


Board Discusses Washington School Solar Project

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday April 10, 2007

The Berkeley Board of Education will discuss sending an application to the Office of Public School Construction (OPSC) for funding and approval of the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) funds to complete a solar project at Washington Elementary School. 

Kyoto USA has assisted BUSD in its efforts to put together a pilot solar project. 

According to the staff report, although a solar project could result in operational savings for the district, “solar installations generally take a long time to pay for themselves.” According to Kyoto USA’s analysis of the Washington proposal, the initial cost to purchase and install a solar system is approximately $800,000. 

BUSD applied to PG&E for partial funding of the project, which is worth $305,000. Kyoto USA’s cost estimate does not include district soft costs or an upgrade or replacement of the roof. Staff has estimated the total cost of the project to be $1,250,000. 

 

API rankings 

The board will also receive a informational report on the 2007 Academic Performance Index (API) rankings which was recently released by the California Department of Education (CDE). The rankings are primarily based on student performance in one assessment, the California Standardized Tests. 

John Muir and Oxford topped the list of elementary schools with a state rank of 9. King—with a state rank of 7—placed first among the three middle schools. Berkeley Technology Academy ranked first. Since the API score for B-tech was based on fewer than 100 valid STAR test results, the school was not given a similar school ranking. 

Berkeley High School (BHS) did not receive an API score this year because of a lack of student participation on the STAR tests. Two schools (Rosa Parks and Longfellow) gained one level at the state rankings, and four schools—Muir, Oxford, Washington and Willard—lost one level compared to the previous year. 

Three schools—Jefferson, Rosa Parks and Berkeley Arts Magnet) made gains in the similar school ranking while five schools (Cragmont, Emerson, Malcolm X, Oxford and Washington) dropped from the previous year. 

According to the staff report, the discrepancy between the school statewide rank and the similar school rank is a cause for concern for the site as well as the district. 

 

Student National Origin Report 

The board will receive the Student National Origin Report (SNOR) which is required annually by all school districts as information. The report gives a breakdown of the origins of the students enlisted in Berkeley Unified. 

It will also receive the annual language census report which shows how many languages students go home to, said BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan. Coplan added that given the large diversity present in Berkeley, the number of languages could go over 25. 

 

Mandarin at Berkeley High 

The board will vote to approve new Mandarin language courses at Berkeley High. Mandarin language class was first introduced at BHS in 2006, said Coplan. 

 

Pre-K projects 

The board will vote to approve a project manager for the remodeling of the two Pre-K schools. The board approved the hiring of WLC Architects—one of the four firms in Berkeley Unified’s architect pool—at a cost of $500,000 for remodeling the King Child Development Center (CDC) and Franklin Parent Nursery (FPN). 

The new manager will work with WLC to manage the project for BUSD. 

 

Peanut policy 

The board will vote to approve the second reading on its policy regarding peanuts and other nut-derived products on school lunch menus. 

The new policy states that “there will be no nuts or nut-derivative products in any of the food items prepared or available in any form at the elementary school level. Nuts or nut-derivatives will not be used in menu items at middle or high school unless they are clearly labeled and students are informed of the ingredients in such dishes. Peanuts may be available in vending machines or sold as packaged, separate items.” 

However, at the last meeting, some board members had questions about the use of nuts in school lunches which will be addressed in the second report. 

 

Access to Digital Resources 

The board will also approve a resolution in support of an Assembly bill which establishes the California School Library Equitable Access to Digital Resources and Online School Database Programs.  

 

 


Down the Garden Path

By Shirley Barker, Special to the Planet
Tuesday April 10, 2007

How I long to grow bananas. If I moved a few blocks away I could, for sheltered by fencing from our reliable afternoon wind grows a magnificent specimen bearing several hands of green fruits. Bananas are usually harvested green, so ripening will not be a problem for this lucky owner. 

Instead, the wind streams across the Pacific, through the Golden Gate and right over my exposed garden, chilling everything in its path. 

I do believe however that in the last year I have after decades solved the problem not only of predation—racoons digging around vegetables for succulent worms—but of the gardener him or her self, by which I mean, arranging the vegetable beds in such a way that the gardener actually has head and elbow room in which to work.  

First I raised the perimeter fence of one-inch chicken wire to a height of six feet, and instead of anchoring the top firmly, I left it flimsy. So far so good, a year has gone by with no apparent intrusion. 

The plot already had a three-foot wide path down the middle, with a gate at each end (also high wired) for access. Now I measured one-foot paths inside three sides of the fence, and stamped on them to discourage weeds and make them firm and level. I rejected thoughts of pebbles or fir bark in favor of simplicity and stability. More attractive though these might look, they tend to track everywhere.  

The fourth, north side was left as a foot-wide bed for peas, sweet peas, beans, cucumbers, and other seasonal climbers, that would get full sun yet not cast their shadows over anything. Now I measured what was left, staking areas for beds four feet across, each bed with one-foot paths between them. 

There is something about measuring things that makes one feel efficient, even if one measures inaccurately. 

When I had finished, I found I had four planting areas that in their forming had naturally become raised above the paths. Raised beds, according to experts like Peter Chan, are the very best for vegetables, giving good drainage and allowing close spacing because the roots in raised beds are in Chan’s words airified, and never trodden on. Furthermore, the sloping sides increase sun exposure, maximizing growth. Chan, noted horticulturist and professor of plant pathology, in the 1970s won Sunset magazine’s Best Garden award, ahead of 1,400 others. When I turned to his book Better Vegetable Gardening the Chinese Way (first published 30 years ago, lavishly photographed and charmingly written, and though not in print, still available), I saw immediately that this is how he had made his raised beds, surrounded by beaten paths. It is never too late for good information to sink in, apparently. Chan had a lot of space, yet his raised beds although much longer were no wider than mine. 

To say that I am thrilled is inaccurate. I positively gloat. Never have I seen orderly rows of vegetables in March filling each bed. Some of them are even edible. Swinging my four-year rotation plan into action, as soon as one row is harvested, I can transplant the next appropriate vegetable, if I have remembered to sow seed ahead of time, after amending the soil with a little compost from the bottom of the worm bin. 

The worms seem delighted with their bin. At first I thought it would be too spacious for them, since it is much larger than the recommended worm “ranches” sold commercially, which have little trays one has to fiddle with. My red wrigglers have multiplied profusely while turning vegetable and other plant trimmings, poultry coop litter and leaves into nutritious tilth. 

I have even started to wonder whether there is anything in the companion planting idea, that some plants, like humans, do better with compatible neighbors, because this year I flanked the fava beans with garlic and, another first, now they are crowded with flowers, sturdy and lush, with no sign of the usual black aphids. I did this for convenience rather than garden lore because they will be harvested at the same time, in May or June, to be replaced by a hot weather vegetable. 

In terms of measurement the overall plot has shrunk from its original size, thanks to the paths, and the raised beds’ growing area because of their sloping sides is narrower than four feet, so I had to plant the favas more closely than usual. Perhaps they are now close enough to benefit from each other’s nitrogen supply, visible as little pearls on their roots. I grow favas in tomato hoops for support. They will need something higher soon, encircled with string tied to rebars or bamboo, to keep them from being blown over by the wind, because they are unusually tall as well as bushy this year. 

The rest of the garden is a wilderness. Although this makes a pleasing contrast to the vegetables, it does give me a quiver of apprehension about their orderliness. Authors Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman state categorically in their book A Perfect Mess that it is more productive to be messy than neat. Still, if one waits long enough in a vegetable garden, something is sure to go wrong. 

Meanwhile, do try bananas sliced into a Thai stir-fry. Try a microwaved banana, its skin pierced with a sharp knife and zapped for two minutes, by which time it will be oozing sweetly perfumed flesh. Saute a sliced plantain, sprinkled with brown sugar and watch it change color, to a glorious orange. Ripen it first beyond a green hand, beyond even yellow. Its skin must be entirely black. A week spent wrapped in a few pages of the Daily Planet should do the trick. 

 

Photograph by Michael O’Malley 

The author at work in her South Berkeley garden.


Panoramic Sells Off 7 Apartment Buildings

By Richard Brenneman
Friday April 06, 2007

Patrick Kennedy and David Teece—Berkeley’s biggest private landlords—are selling their seven signature apartment buildings to a Chicago-based corporation. 

“We hadn’t heard that,” said Calvin Fong, aide to Mayor Tom Bates, when a reporter told him of the sale Wednesday night. “The mayor will be delighted. Imagine the transfer tax! There go our city budget problems for the year!” 

“Wow,” said Dona Spring, the city councilmember whose district includes most of the affected buildings. “This is big news for Berkeley. The question is whether it’s good news or bad news.” 

“We knew (the buildings) were in play,” said city Planning Manager Mark Rhoades. “There have been people in the office for the last couple of months doing due diligence, but we hadn’t heard there was a sale and we  

didn’t know who the buyer was.”  

The buyer is Equity Residen-tial, a corporation that bills itself as the nation’s largest publicly traded owner of apartment buildings. 

According to the firm’s annual report filed with the Security and Exchange Commission on Feb. 28, the Chicago-based company owned 617 properties with a total of 165,716 units in 25 states and the District of Columbia as of Dec. 31.  

Prior to the Panoramic sale, Equity owned 100 properties in California, totaling 26,241 apartments. 

Diana Norbury, who will be managing the seven properties for Equity Residential, confirmed that the deal has been signed, with the final legal transfer expected to occur within two weeks. 

Included in the sale are buildings totaling 368 units, most rented to UC Berkeley students. They are: 

• The Gaia Building (2001), 2117 Allston Way, with 91 apartments, a ground-floor space that has sometimes been used as a theater, and Anna’s Jazz Island cafe. 

• The Fine Arts Building (2004), 2110 Haste St. at Shattuck Avenue, with 100 units and still vacant ground-floor commercial space. 

• The Bachenheimer Building (2004), 2119 University Ave., with 44 units and ground-floor commercial space. 

• The Berkeleyan Apartments (1998), 1910 Oxford St., with 56 units and commercial space. 

• Acton Courtyard (2003), 1370 University Ave., 71 units and ground-floor commercial space. 

• The Touriel Building (2004), 2004 University Ave., 35 units and ground-floor commercial space. 

• ARTech Building (2002), with 21 units and a small commercial space on the ground floor. 

While sale documents won’t be filed with the Alameda County Recorder’s office until the official closing, new limited partnerships were filed with the California Secretary of State on Feb. 28 that include the names of each of the buildings preceded by the initial EQR and listing as the entity’s address Two North Riverside Plaza in Chicago—Equity’s national headquarters.  

Kennedy retains his interest in the old Act I and Act II theater building on Center Street, which he plans to develop into a restaurant with offices above, and Norbury said she believes he intends to continue his involvement in development projects in the city. 

Hiring, lawsuits 

Norbury and a member of her staff were interviewed at a job fair they were holding in the seventh floor commons room of the crown jewel of the properties, the Gaia Building at 2114 Allston Way. 

“We gave offers to all the people who are currently working with Panoramic,” she said, “but we don’t know who’s staying.” 

Until the closing the properties are still technically owned by Panoramic Interests. Another Kennedy company manages the properties, and it is these employees Equity has offered to hire. 

In addition to the current complement of staff and a new assistant property manager, Norbury said Equity will also be hiring three maintenance workers, instead of contracting for the work as had been the practice during Kennedy’s ownership. 

Another one or two office workers may be hired, along with seasonal help, Norbury said. 

A native of Atlanta, Ga., Norbury comes to Berkeley from her most recent job with Equity in Palo Alto. She has also worked for the firm on assignments in Atlanta and Orlando, Fla. 

“I hope they will be a lot better for the tenants,” said Spring, who has been a frequent Kennedy critic. “There are several lawsuits pending.” 

One, by Gaia tenant Anna de Leon, owners of Anna’s Jazz Island, followed a long series of disputes among de Leon and Kennedy and the owners of Glass Onion Catering, which has controlled the remainder of the ground floor and mezzanine commercial space. 

Her suit targets the city and alleges that city officials failed to properly enforce conditions on the use of the lower two floors, which were supposed to have been dedicated to cultural uses, entitling the builders to add two more floors of apartments in compensation under the city’s cultural density bonus—a provision which city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said Wednesday will not be included in the new downtown plan now being developed. 

Norbury said the firm was aware of the litigation. 

Other litigation stemmed from construction flaws that twice forced the owners to strip and replace most of the stucco encasing the building after water leaks intruded into apartments and spread mold within the walls. 

According to documentation filed with the suits, replacement costs exceeded the original price of the building. 

Following the second stripping, the building was resurfaced and coated with a synthetic waterproofing. The lawsuit was filed against the contractor, Kimes Morris, which inspired other litigation against subcontractors. 

 

Money matters 

The sale likely means a huge windfall for Kennedy and his principal partner, UC Berkeley Professor of Economics David Teece, a New Zealand native who has made millions from LECG, a consulting firm he built up, and from a business that sells rugby clothing in his homeland and Australia. One of his homes is a costly house in the Berkeley hills above the Claremont Hotel. 

Teece also serves as director of the Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization at the university’s Haas School of Business. 

All seven buildings in the sale were financed with bonds—largely tax exempt—authorized by the Association of Bay Area Governments, ABAG. 

Over the five years between 1998 and 2003, ABAG’s Finance Authority for Non-Profit Corporations agreed to underwrite $72,130,000 in mostly tax-exempt bonds for the Kennedy/Teece projects: 

• $6,000,000 on April 1, 1998, for The Berkeleyan. A loan agreement shows that Teece lent Kennedy $50,000 to initiate the project two years earlier. 

• $4 million on May 18, 1999, to fund the ARTech building. The corporate address for the limited liability corporation established to own the building was listed as the same Emeryville address that houses several Teece corporations. 

• $15,365,000 on July 25, 2000, for the Gaia building. Recorded documents list Kennedy, Teece and Reid Martin—former owner of the site—as principals. 

• $10,445,000 on April 4, 2002, for the Acton Courtyard Apartments. 

• $8,290,000 on May 1, 2003, to refinance The Berkeleyan, retiring the original issue of five years earlier. 

• $18,000,000 on Dec. 12, 2003, to fund the Fine Arts Building. 

• $6,210,000 on Dec. 12, 2003, to fund the Touriel Building. 

• $9,820,000 on Dec. 12, 2003, to fund the Bachenheimer Building. 

“We are aware that some of the Panoramic properites are for sale, but we are not aware of any changes in ownership status or in the status of ABAG funding,” said Leah Zippert, a communications officer for ABAG. 

After a few more calls, Zippert called back to report that “if the ownership changes, nothing has to happen to the bonds, nor do we expect anything to happen to them.” 

A new owner would be able to assume the bonds and the repayment obligations without affecting their status, presenting no obstruction to the sale.  

Kennedy, Teece and Marty McKenna, Equity Residential’s Chicago-based corporate spokesperson, did not return calls by deadline..


Southeast Berkeley Blanketed With Racist, Anti-Semitic Literature

By Judith Scherr
Friday April 06, 2007

Berkeley is not invulnerable to virulent racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic hate campaigns. 

That was brought home to John Weil who, while walking his dog in his quiet southeast Berkeley hills neighborhood about 5 p.m. on Monday, picked up a rolled-up newspaper from the sidewalk and opened it to find page after page of hate-filled articles peppered with racial epithets demeaning Jews and people of color and advertisements promoting swastika-bearing jewelry.  

“I was appalled when I realized these people were promoting hate,” Weil told the Daily Planet. “One might expect this in the backwoods of Ohio, but not in Berkeley.” 

The newspaper and two accompanying tracts were tossed from a slow-moving automobile and found on sidewalks along Hillcrest and Chabot roads and Claremont Avenue in southeast Berkeley, and a short distance northwest of that neighborhood, on Halcyon Court and nearby portions of Woolsey, Prince and Webster streets. Isolated copies of the newspaper were reported on North Shattuck Avenue and at San Pablo and University avenues, Eighth and Addison streets, and Eighth and Allston Way according to police spokesperson Ed Galvan. 

The paper distributed was a 28-page April 2006 edition of The Insurgent published by the White Aryan Resistance, associated with well-known white supremacist Tom Metzger, who calls himself “the voice of progressive racism.” (While an e-mail from Metzger said he would be available for a phone interview, he has not returned a call from the Daily Planet.) 

The Insurgent tagline says: “The Newspaper for discriminating white people! Tolerance is suicide.” One article in the edition distributed blames Jews for Aryans “losing their culture, their treasure, their homeland and their incomparable gene-pool.” Another article claims that African Americans have low intelligence. Other pieces say immigrants take resources from whites and condemn government as useless. 

Chip Berlet, senior researcher at Boston-based Political Research Associates, who specializes in analyzing right-wing movements, was not surprised that the paper was distributed in Berkeley. “Even in enclaves like Berkeley, people believe that people of color and immigrants steal jobs,” Berlet said in a phone interview, explaining that one motivation for the distribution is recruitment. 

Teenage boys are among the most susceptible to this recruiting tactic, as they might see this kind of organization as an avenue for rebellion, he said. 

Distribution such as this “is a common tactic employed over the last 10 years. It’s a weekly occurrence” taking place in various cities, he said. 

While the distribution may be done in order to publicize the organization, that’s not a reason to ignore it, Berlet said, noting that the best reaction is exposing such organizations. 

Amanda Bornstein, aide to south hills Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who is out of town for four weeks, said she got calls from concerned constituents and reported them to Berkeley police. Councilmember Kriss Worthington, whose district includes the Halcyon Court area, said he got calls as well and also reported them to police and the city manager.  

Nancy Carleton is one of those who called Worthington. Co-chair of the Halcyon Neighborhood Association, Carleton said her well-organized neighborhood “will be tracking the issue to make sure that the hateful speech doesn’t turn into violence against neighbors.”  

Noting the racial, religious and ethnic diversity of the neighborhood, Carleton said, “We have to look out for each other.”  

In a phone interview Thursday morning City Manager Phil Kamlarz said he hadn’t yet seen the newspaper, but had discussed it with police. It sounds like “an ugly piece of information,” but protected by free speech and not something the city could stop from being disseminated, he said. 

Similarly, Alan L. Schlosser, legal director for the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union, said as long as such a newspaper is distributed in conformance with local laws, its circulation becomes an issue of free speech. 

“Even racist and highly offensive speech is protected by the Constitution,” Schlosser said, adding that the local distribution could be turned into a “teaching moment,” with “bad speech responded to by good speech—racist speech answered by anti-racist speech.” 

One southeast hills resident who asked not to be identified was less upbeat: “This is dangerous to all of us,” she said. “It makes me ashamed. We have learned nothing. It might as well be 1933.” 

The following Oakland-based organizations provide resources to fight bigotry: Ella Baker Center: 428-3939, www.ellabakercenter.org, Women of Color Resource Center: 444-2700, www.coloredgirls.org, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights: 465-1984, www.nnirr.org.


BUSD Weighs Options for Surplus Properties

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday April 06, 2007

After declaring Hillside School to be surplus property, the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) is getting ready to give the same designation to the Berkeley High School tennis courts and property at West Campus and on Sixth Street. 

The BUSD Surplus Committee submitted the report to the School Board on Hillside School site earlier this year. The School Board will now decide whether they will sell the property or put it on a long-term lease. 

Six of the Surplus Committee members will continue their work on the committee and the board is looking for five new ones, said BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

“At this point it looks like a property management firm will be brought in to manage the Hillside property and set up a long term lease. The direction is definitely toward a long-term lease rather than selling,” said Coplan. 

The property—which is 2.85 acres—has a split-level three-story wood frame building and a portable. Designed by Walter Ratcliff and built in 1926, the main building of the Hillside property has been designated a city and state landmark. 

Hillside has housed BUSD students in the past. It can no longer do so because a trace of the Hayward Fault is located under the main building. 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to sell school assets because you never know when you might need to use it in the future. However, in the case of the Hillside property, there is nothing that can be done with it. It has always been a problem because it’s an aging building and is located on a fault. Why maintain something if you are never going to use it?,” said School Board Vice President John Selawsky. 

Selawsky said that the first criterion that was considered before surplusing school board assets was to see if there was any current or future use of the property. 

“The second criteria is the ability to maintain the property. Maintenance alone is a huge cost,” he said. 

In the past, Coplan said, BUSD has declared several of its properties to be surplus, including Grizzly Peak School and Tilden Primary School near Tilden Park and a section of Jefferson Elementary School on Rose Street which now houses the Crowden School of Music. 

Selawsky also said that the board was looking for a possible site for shifting the BUSD headquarters from the Old City Hall building. “In a way it will be good to move out from there. The building is not retrofitted. We are ideally looking for something between 20,000-25,000 square feet, a place that will house offices and conference rooms,” he said.  

BUSD exchanged a part of its property on Sixth Street with the City of Berkeley for use of the Old City Hall building as part of a 20-year lease which runs out in 2009. 

“Part of the city’s health department moved into some of the BUSD property on Sixth Street. It is currently occupied by the Long Life Health Center. For Long Life to go on a long term lease, BUSD has to deem the property surplus,” said Selawsky. 

According to the district’s Facilities Construction Plan (2006), West Campus will be used as the district’s headquarters in the future. 

Currently, West Campus is comprised of nine buildings, several of which are connected. The administration, girls’ gymnasium, auditorium and classroom (Bonar Street) buildings are reinforced concrete construction while the library, cafeteria and shop building are wood frame construction. The boys’ gymnasium was constructed in 1930, the library was built in 1941, the auditorium and classroom buildings were built in 1953, and the administration, girls’ gymnasium, cafeteria and shop were constructed in 1967.  

“Another potentially surplus property involves some acreage on West Campus which the city and merchants would like to use for commercial development,” said Coplan. 

Some property on University Avenue which is part of West Campus is currently unused by the BUSD. 

The Berkeley High School Tennis Courts—a possible site for the relocation of the warm water pool—is also on the list of potential surplus sites. 

The current warm water pool, which is used by a large segment of the disabled community, is located in the Old Gym at Berkeley High. A lawsuit has been filed asking for a new environmental impact report on the district’s permit to demolish the building because the original environmental review did not adequately address the building’s historic status.  

The city is looking at the possibility of developing the tennis courts into a warm pool. 

“The city needs a resolution on that soon,” said Coplan. “The district is in a position to give up the property and the South of Bancroft master plan indicates the use of the tennis courts for a warm water pool already. It all depends on what kind of an agreement the city and the school board can come to.” 

Coplan said that another possible location for the warm water pool could be West Campus, and the property now occupied by Iceland has been suggested as another alternative. 

 


Emeryville Hotel Sues City Over Measure C

By Judith Scherr
Friday April 06, 2007

While Woodfin Suite Hotel workers are beefing up union and local support to get the hotel to comply with Measure C, Emeryville’s Living Wage Ordinance for hotel workers, the hotel is flexing its muscle in its own way. Last week the Woodfin filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court—for the second time—claiming the 2005 law passed by the city’s voters is unconstitu-tional. 

Attorneys at Shea Stokes, Alc. say Measure C compels the hotel “to continue employing undocumented workers in violation of express federal law prohibiting such employment.”  

The lawsuit also targets labor organizers: “Measure C is calculated primarily to tilt the economic playing field in favor of organized labor,” the complaint says. 

In a phone interview Thursday, Emeryville City Attorney Michael Biddle said while the city has received a copy of the lawsuit, it has not been formally served with it. He noted that it was filed just before the city is to go into mediation with the Woodfin in mid April over a number of issues related to the enforcement of Measure C. 

The lawsuit filed last week is similar to one the hotel filed in February 2006, which the hotel subsequently opted to dismiss, Biddle said. The judge approved the dismissal in January 2007 and ordered Woodfin to pay attorney’s fees of $10,000. 

“This left the challenge open,” Biddle said, adding that he hopes the two sides can resolve all the related issues through mediation. 

One of the issues is the attempted firing of some 21 workers whom the hotel said did not have proper social security numbers. Supporters of the Woodfin workers say that the firing was in fact retaliation for the workers’ attempt to get Measure C enforced. 

In response to the attempted firing, workers’ representatives and the city of Emeryville went to superior court on Dec. 21 and were granted a restraining order preventing the Woodfin from firing the workers. A few days later, the Emeryville City Council approved an emergency ordinance prohibiting hotels from firing workers who have filed Measure C complaints, or reducing their hours, during a 90-day investigation period. 

And in January Alameda County Superior Court Judge Bonnie Sabraw granted Woodfin workers an injunction through April 20, preventing the hotel from firing them while the city investigates the workers’ complaints that the hotel failed to comply with Measure C.  

The lawsuit “shows Woodfin is being very intransigent and unreasonable,” said Sara Norr, organizer with EBASE, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, which has been supporting the workers. 

Meanwhile on April 4, the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, announced that it had called for a boycott of the Emeryville Woodfin Suite Hotel. 

And on Tuesday, 487 Emeryville residents went on record in support of the workers. Sandra Butler was one of the residents who presented a petition and signatures to the City Council on Tuesday urging elected officials to require the Woodfin to pay $160,000 in back pay owed to its workers and to guarantee the workers’ job security before issuing the Woodfin its annual operating permit. 

“What’s being asked is very straightforward,” Watergate complex resident Butler, a filmmaker, told the council. “We want you to support the workers in their fight for a living wage and make certain they have job security. When I went around to my neighbors to have them sign the petitions, some people expressed shock that we were still doing this type of work like this to get job security for workers. One neighbor asked what decade are we in? If nothing is done, 14 workers will get fired only because they asked for a living wage.” 

On Monday, the workers and their supporters will take to the streets of Emeryville in what EBASE organizers are calling a “march for justice.” It is likely to be the largest march in the history of Emeryville, they say.  

Marchers will gather at Emeryville City Hall, at 1330 Park Ave. at 5:30 p.m. and march to the Woodfin at 5800 Shellmound St. 

 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor contributed to this article.


SWAT Team Trains at Berkeley High Campus

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday April 06, 2007

Berkeley High became the scene of a virtual battleground over spring break when the Berkeley Police Department SWAT team—known as the Barricaded Subject Hostage Negotiation Team (BSHNT)—descended on the campus Thursday.  

BSHNT was carrying out its annual exercise, Ed Galvan, public information officer for the BPD told the Daily Planet. 

Three negotiators from the FBI in San Francisco and a team from the University of California Berkeley Police Department (UCBPD) were also present during the training. 

“Every year we like to do one major exercise and we like to use a facility within the community which we would have to use in the future. This year we chose Berkeley High because we might have to be here in an emergency situation one day.” 

Galvan was role-playing as a Berkeley High chemistry teacher in an “active shooter situation.” “An ‘active shooter situation,’” he explained, “is when an unknown person comes into the building and starts shooting. In this case, the BSHNT team has to identify which building the shooter is in at Berkeley High and then come up with a plan of how to approach the problem. They can either negotiate with the shooter or try to apprehend him. After the end of the exercise we debrief and go over what went well and what needs improvement.” 

The exercise—which started at 1 p.m.—went on till 3 in the afternoon. Most of the action centered around the C Building which is attached to the G Building at Berkeley High. The eerie silence of the empty courtyard was periodically broken by activity inside the mobile stations and sporadic bursts of footsteps coming from different classrooms. 

“Given the rising tide of violence at school, we should always be ready to go,” said Officer Darrin Rafferty, who was acting as part of the training in terms of ensuring safety for the people involved. 

Rafferty—who is part of the Telegraph Avenue patrol team—said he faces different emergency situations during his beat everyday. 

“This kind of training helps us to be ready for any kind of situation. There’s quite a variety of people out there on the streets everyday,” he said.  

The BPD have used their BSHNT team on several occasions in the past, most recently during a shoot-out at a hip-hop party inside a warehouse at San Pablo Avenue. 

“We responded to the shooting but lost the person in the crowd. There was another incident back in 1990 at Henry’s Bar near the UCB campus. A heavily armed young man took 37 hostages and started shooting at them,” said Rafferty.  

Galvan added that the department had met with no trouble during spring break this year. “Everyone is well behaved,” he said smiling. “People usually don’t come to Berkeley. They go away to warmer climates or go home. As a result things have been good so far.” 

The BSHNT team also paid a visit to the Berkeley Community College and the  

City Hall at 2180 Milvia St. earlier in the  

morning. 

“BCC was also a shooter situation,” said Galvan. “Different modulations went on to identify where the shooting came from. It was like a real-life situation because business was open at the time. Negotiations with the suspect and use of force were both used.” 

The City Hall staff gave the team a tour of where all the elevators and stairs were, said Galvan. “It’s important to become familiar with the different levels and offices in case we need to go in there someday,” he said. 

 

Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee 

The Berkeley Police Department SWAT Team descended upon Berkeley High School Thursday for its annual exercises.


Oakland School Board Members Back Local Control Bill

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday April 06, 2007

California Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland) brought his Oakland Unified School District restoration of local control bill to the OUSD Board of Trustees Wednesday night, and, not surprisingly, trustees voted unanimously for a resolution in support. 

The vote was not a rubber stamp, however, and statements by both board members and Swanson showed how seriously both are taking an eventual return of power to the board four years after it was stripped away by the State of California. 

Swanson’s AB45, which he introduced on the first day he took office at the end of last year and calls his “top legislative priority,” would immediately restore full power to the School Board over the areas of community relations and government, facilities and personnel management and pupil achievement while retaining state control over financial management. The bill would also provide for a restoration of compensation to the elected School Board, which has been serving in an advisory capacity without pay since the state takeover.  

Swanson has already secured several assemblymember co-authors for his local control bill, including Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), Assistant Speaker Pro Tempore Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach), Majority Leader Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and Assistant Majority Whip Mary Hayashi (D-San Leandro). Other elected official supporters include Congressmember Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and several members of the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. 

Since 2003, the Oakland Unified School District has been run by a state administrator—first Randolph Ward and now Kimberly Stathan—hired by the state superintendent of education and answerable only to the superintendent. 

The first hearing on Swanson’s local control bill will be held at the state capitol in Sacramento on April 25 in the Assembly Education Committee. Lobbying for the bill has already begun, with a delegation of parents from Maxwell Park Elementary meeting in Sacramento on Wednesday with Assembly Education Committee members and representatives of the State Superintendent to secure their support. 

Swanson said on Wednesday that he has met with the governor’s office, State Superintendent of Education Jack O’Connell, OUSD State Administrator Kim Stathan, State Senator Don Perata (D-Oakland)—who authored the original OUSD state takeover legislation—and Assembly Education Committee Chair Gene Mullin (D-San Mateo) “telling them that it’s imperative that we pass this legislation. We’re going to great lengths to find out every objection and to encourage constructive changes. I don’t this to be just an exercise. I want a bill that’s passed and signed into law.” 

Swanson told board members that many legislators “are wondering whether you are ready to govern,” and has cited the fact that board members have voluntarily taken management training, “even though no one has required you to do so. Some of them have said that this board is probably more qualified than most boards to run a school district, since most School Board members around the state merely take office and start making decisions once they are elected, without any training at all.” Swanson also said that legislators were surprised to learn that with four of its seven members elected following the discovery of the budget shortfall that led to the state takeover, “it’s not the same board” that approved the policies and actions that led to that shortfall. 

And while OUSD board members unanimously supporting Swanson’s local control bill, with only board member Noel Gallo being absent, they gave differing reasons why. 

Board member Greg Hodge, who was board president during the takeover, said that in Oakland and other districts where the state has taken over local schools, “there is no evidence that academics have improved.” He said that he had pulled district reports going back to before the takeover, “and we are on the same academic trajectory now that we were before 2003.” 

Hodge defended the previous board’s actions in approving a teacher pay raise that inadvertently led to the budget shortfall, where an antiquated district computer system did not catch the problem until it was too late. “We overspent our checkbook without understanding what was in our register,” Hodge said. “But the money was well spent.” 

And Hodge said that in order to prevent such problems from happening in the future, he would like to see a restoration of the position of independent auditor “answerable to the board only, and independent of staff. That position was done away with by a previous board.” 

But Boardmember Gary Yee, who was elected in the tumultuous period shortly after the budget shortfall was discovered but before the state took over, said that it was declining enrollment rather than the teacher pay raise which caused OUSD’s budget crisis. 

“The enrollment decline was unforeseen,” Yee said. “I’ve told a lot of my colleagues in the California School Boards Association that they need to be mindful when they approve pay hikes and health packages. Their turn may come, too. Many of these problems cannot be predicted.” 

And Boardmember Kerry Hamill, who was serving on the board in 2003 when the state took over, said that while “obviously I support this legislation,” she did not view the board’s actions prior to 2003 in as favorable a light as Hodge. “I was one of the persons who thought we needed help,” Hamill said. “We almost defaulted on our payroll more than once prior to the budget shortfall. I don’t have a problem asking for help.”  

But Hamill was also sharply critical of the state administration of the Oakland schools since the takeover, saying that “every school takeover should have one focused year of real help, where resources are concentrated on the district, not just substituting one overworked administration for another.” 

Hamill said that with the district down 14,000 in student enrollment in recent years and with a projection of a loss of another 1800 students in the next five years, the district needed to hold onto as many students as possible in order to balance its finances. “We are fighting for our financial lives,” she noted. But instead of following that policy, Hamill said that the office of the OUSD state administrator “is exacerbating the problem with regard to the approval of charter schools. We have approved dozens and dozens of new charter schools in recent years, three in the last three months.” She said that the administrator was approving the charters “to take the pressure off and keep parents from questioning what is going on inside the district,” but that the policy will leave OUSD as “a shadow of itself. We’re in an emergency. I’d like power back so we can do the right things to correct this and get a grip on it.” 

Board member Alice Spearman, elected following the takeover, agreed with Hamill, saying that “Oakland has become a panacea for charter schools. They are coming here from hundreds of miles away to open them, many without regard for the needs of our children. There needs to be a moratorium on charter schools in Oakland.”  

Swanson also announced on Wednesday night that he has been selected by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez to chair a select committee on state school takeovers to investigate the effect such takeovers have had on local school districts throughout California. The ultimate result, Swanson said, would be recommendations on changes to the overall state legislation that governs school takeovers. Swanson said he plans to hold hearings in districts around the state where such school takeovers have taken place, including Oakland, Fresno, Compton, and Richmond, and is currently in the process of choosing committee members. He said that the OUSD local control bill is his priority, however. “I want to get this done first,” he said.


Legendary Lawyer to Represent Running Wolf

By Richard Brenneman
Friday April 06, 2007

The ongoing battle between tree-sitter Zachary Running Wolf and UC Berkeley police took a new turn Friday when legendary Bay Area attorney Tony Serra agreed to represent the protester. 

Running Wolf, who led off the ongoing tree-sit in the grove at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium by climbing into a redwood on Dec. 2, was arrested Feb. 23 and charged with threatening a police officer and resisting arrest. 

He was held in Alameda County Jail until Feb. 28. 

Serra recently finished a federal prison term after his conviction on charges of failure to pay income taxes. He has responded by suing the government for failure to pay prisoners adequately for work they perform for the prison system. 

During a pre-trial hearing today in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, Running Wolf said the district attorney’s office offered to settle for a three-year probation and no additional jail time.  

“We turned down their offer,” he said. “They turned over an audio tape in which one of the officers said they weren’t afraid of me, and we have a videotape from Copwatch that shows me walking peacefully to their car in handcuffs,” he said. 

Running Wolf, who ran for mayor of Berkeley last November, was represented Thursday by Serra associate Omar Figueroa. 

“Tony said he will take the case personally and will be there for the hearing on April 18 when we’ll go for total dismissal,” said Running Wolf. “I will also be suing the university for malicious prosecution.” 

The hearing came one day after yet another raid by campus police at the grove. Officers seized equipment and bicycles belonging to members of the crew of volunteers who have been supporting protesters who are currently occupying six trees at the site. 

The arboreal occupation is being waged in opposition to university plans to level most of the grove to make way for a $125 million high-tech gymnasium at the site, part of a massive rebuilding plan that includes a nearby 911-space underground parking lot, a new building joining the offices of the university’s law and business schools, a major upgrade and retrofit to the stadium itself and work on the nearby streetscape at Gayley Road. 

An Alameda County Superior Court judge is currently weighing lawsuits that challenge the university’s environmental documents on the project.


Cody’s Books Shuts Doors on San Francisco Store

By Judith Scherr
Friday April 06, 2007

Manager Scott Doddington and many of his fellow workers at the San Francisco Cody’s store will be out of their jobs effective April 20. 

“Cody’s didn’t perform as expected,” Doddington told the Daily Planet on Thursday.  

The Stockton Street store was opened 18 months ago with much fanfare by then-owner Andy Ross, who subsequently closed Cody’s on Telegraph Avenue and sold the remaining two stores to Yohan, Inc., a Japanese company.  

Cody’s store on Fourth Street in Berkeley is doing well and will remain open, Doddington said. Since the workforce is unionized, some of the senior San Francisco workers will be offered jobs in the Berkeley store.  

“We believed in our San Francisco store, we loved its space and stock and its employees and customers, but it simply has not attracted enough attention or enough customers. We cannot afford to keep it open. It’s heartbreaking to close a bookstore,” Ross said in a prepared statement. 

“Cody’s will continue to do business in Berkeley, focusing on its core elements: its Fourth Street store, its in-store author events, and its school, library, and corporate services, as well as continuing to do business servicing a wide variety of off-site events all around the Bay Area, including book fairs,” the statement said. 

Cody’s Books was founded about 50 years ago by Pat Cody and her late husband Fred Cody.


DAPAC Rejects Point Tower Proposal

By Richard Brenneman
Friday April 06, 2007

That baker’s dozen plus one of 16-story “point towers” sprouting like mushrooms after a spring rain in downtown Berkeley? Forget about it. 

Confronted with strong resistance from a majority of highly vocal members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said he’d scale down the proposal.  

“Fourteen point towers is a non-starter,” he told DAPAC after breaking for a caucus with Planning Manager Mark Rhoades and city Housing Director Steve Barton. “I’ve always thought it was a non-starter. So forget that.”  

Matt Taecker, the city planner hired to help draft the new downtown plan, had proposed the towers as a means to accommodate a large share of the new housing density that regional government says the city must be willing to take in order to qualify for a crucial range of state and federal funds. 

“I still don’t understand the 14 towers,” said committee member Patti Dacey early in Wednesday’s meeting. 

Marks said the basis was to accommodate up to 3,000 new residents within walking distance of the downtown BART station. 

The presence of three heavy rail stations in the city is the primary reason the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) has required the city to make plans to accommodate more growth than many other East Bay communities. 

ABAG is a coalition of regional governments created as one of several similar agencies around the state to develop joint plans and policies. 

While Marks and other members of city staff have insisted the towers have only been suggested for the purposes of modeling transportation alternatives for the new plan DAPAC must have ready in November, committee members have been skeptical. “I’ve got severe problems with all aspects of this,” said Gene Poschman, a Planning Commission representative to the committee. 

“There’s going to be a lot of people who really don’t like that idea” of the forest of towers, said Juliet Lamont, an environmentalist and one of Mayor Tom Bates’s two appointees to DAPAC. “What about spreading the density throughout downtown?” 

Lamont suggested using a model that assumed five-story buildings throughout the planning area, but Marks said that assumption was behind the so-called “baseline” model that assumed 1,800 new residents rather than the 3,000 of the “high intensity” point tower version. 

“What about six or seven stories?” Lamont responded.  

“If point towers are a non-starter for this group, now is the time to say it,” said Marks. “That would preclude it from any future analysis.” 

The planning director said the only way to reach the 3,000 figure would be by including the towers: “If you said eight, 10 or 12 stories—something less than sixteen—we would have to come back to you with a new analysis.” 

While DAPAC member Victoria Eisen said she didn’t have a problem with the high figures for use in creating a range to bracket an analysis, Linda Jewell said, “I personally can’t support anything that would offer that many point towers downtown ... that would really change the character of the place.” 

“The group could say there could be a maximum of, say, six in the next 20 years,” said Marks. 

Mim Hawley asked if the staff could identify 14 potential sites, and the committee could then say as a matter of policy that no more than three or four would be built. 

Several members asked what would happen if the city simply opted not to lay plans to allow for the growth that ABAG said the polity needed to accommodate. 

The agency’s draft projections call for Berkeley to absorb 2,714 new units by 2014, while the new downtown plan’s scope is longer. City staff have said one reason for concentrating new development downtown is strong neighborhood opposition that such projects have encountered in other parts of the city. 

Dacey said she didn’t think building the proposed point towers would impact development along the city’s major transportation corridors. “If a person has a piece of land along a corridor, they’re going to build as big as they can regardless if there are point towers downtown,” she explained. Poschman agreed. 

Rob Wrenn, an environmentalist and transportation commissioner, said staff had misplaced their emphasis by weighting the model toward towers without considering whether or not tall structures were greener than possible alternatives. 

Lisa Stephens noted that two of the tower sites were located within two blocks of her home “and I would be opposed. Anywhere we put them, somebody will be impacted and they’ll be opposed.” 

While not objecting to increased density in the city center, Stephens said she would prefer a seven-story limit throughout rather than a concentration on towers. 

While staff members said the towers offered a way of creating density in a way that would fit the economic realities of construction, members asked to hear more from building professionals, including a Pacific Gas and Electric efficiency expert who had spoken at an earlier meeting. 

Marks said staff would present a panel of architects at an upcoming meeting to address the questions. 

Jenny Wenk was one of the few speakers who favored the towers, saying that by the time they were built, the infants soon to be born to mothers taking pre-natal classes at the Berkeley Y would be able to vote. Because the full impacts would be so far in the future, she said, why not call the high intensity model “the science fiction plan?” 

“Or The Blade Runner plan,” fired back Dacey, referring to the dystopian science fiction film. 

Wendy Alfsen raised another issue: If BART was ABAG’s primary reason for boosting the city’s quota, why not locate more density around the North Berkeley BART station, and around Ashby BART? 

Winston Burton said he didn’t object to towers if they led to more housing for low-income residents and families, “though 14-, 15-, 16-stories seems like overkill.” 

“The assumption is that the only way to get height is to give something back,” Marks said. Possibilities might be low-cost housing in the buildings or finding finances elsewhere through payments of in-lieu fees to the city’s housing trust fund. Other mitigations might be creating parks, open space and streetscape improvements. 

“Fourteen is too high,” Burton added. 

It was then that Marks broke off the discussion and held his caucus with fellow staff members. He returned minutes later to announce that staff would come back to an upcoming meeting with a scaled-down high-intensity model. 

 

Photograph by Richard Brenneman 

Wendy Alfsen reacts viscerally to the thought of high-rise “point towers” proposed for dowtown Berkeley and city Planning Manager Mark Rhoades listens during discussions at Wednesday night’s meeting of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee.


AC Transit to Trade 10 More Buses For Van Hools

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday April 06, 2007

The AC Transit District continued with its sudden premature replacement of its NABI bus fleet, with directors approving, on Wednesday afternoon, the request of General Manger Rick Fernandez to sell 10 more of the popular 40-foot buses five years before their scheduled retirement date and to replace them with buses from the Van Hool company. 

The sale price and terms were identical to the board’s previous approval of the sale of 10 NABI buses. Coupled with the previous sale, AC Transit has now approved the sale of half of its NABI fleet. 

The sale was opposed by Oakland  

community activist Joyce Roy, as were the previous Van Hool-related decisions. “At every meeting, are we going to be selling off buses that riders and drivers want, to buy buses they don’t want?” Roy asked directors during the public comment  

session. 

The vote at Wednesday’s meeting was 4-1-2, with Board President Greg Harper voting no and Board Vice President Rebecca Kaplan abstaining (as both did for the earlier sale), and board member Elsa Ortiz (Ward III-Alameda and portions of Oakland and San Leandro) also abstaining. Ortiz had been absent during last month’s vote on the previous transaction. Neither Kaplan nor Ortiz gave reasons for their abstentions.  

Harper said that with AC Transit considering moving from a policy of keeping buses for 12 years to keeping them for six years, he was still awaiting a staff report on the implications of that policy change. “I’m very excited about the change to a six-year bus cycle,” Harper said, “but I don’t want to back into that policy. I’m not comfortable with not having information about the six-year proposal, and what effect this sale will have on that. I’d like to see how this fits into our overall finances. That’s why I’m voting against the bus sale.”  

The buses are being purchased for $85,000 apiece by ABC Company, the United States distributor for the Belgian-based Van Hool, for resale for use in New Orleans by an unnamed company with a contract with the national Homeland Security Department. 

The 40-foot Van Hool replacement buses—identical to new model Van Hools that the district earlier ordered and are currently being built—will cost $400,000 per bus. The Metropolitan Transit Commission has agreed to AC Transit’s use of $260,000 per bus from the district’s share of federal funding towards the purchase. Fernandez said that the remaining $140,000 towards the total cost per bus will be funded, in part, by the $85,000 price tag for each NABI, with the remainder coming out of funds AC Transit has already set aside for the purchase of Van Hool buses.  

Fernandez told directors that retiring the seven-year-old NABI’s five years short of their scheduled 12-year use term will save the district money in expected heavier maintenance costs. Fernandez called that decision a “no-brainer.” 

But the general manager’s report to board directors failed to give figures showing what the premature retirement of the NABI buses will cost the district, including the projected maintenance costs of the NABI’s and how that will balance out with the purchase of the replacement Van Hools five years earlier than such a purchase was expected to take place.  

Fernandez’ original request called for the sale of six NABI buses. But Fernandez told directors that the night before the board meeting, he received a call from the owner of ABC Company “asking if we could make it 10. He said his client wants more.”


People’s Park Board Announces New Members

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday April 06, 2007

The People’s Park Advisory Committee will be announcing the names of Gianna Ranuzzi and Christine Dixon as its newest board members during a meeting Monday. 

Ranuzzi—who has served as board member and vice president of the Telegraph Area Association (TAA) through 2003—told the Planet that she was honored by the selection. 

She was also hired by TAA to organize special projects on Telegraph, the most recent being the hugely successful Berkeley World Music Festival. 

“Working with the community over the years has helped me learn a lot,” she said. “I am pleased to be on the board of People’s Park and hope I can be of service to Berkeley.” 

Ranuzzi and Dixon’s appointment to the board comes at an important juncture for the future of People’s Park.  

The board recently appointed San Francisco-based consultant MKThink for a community-based needs assessment plan to improve the park.  

MKThink is currently on its very first phase—“Discovery”—which involves exhaustive research into the history of the park, digging up relevant archives and newspaper clippings, interviewing park users and student groups and visiting the park itself. 

“The most important thing is to get people to frequent the park,” stressed Ranuzzi. “My duty is to get a comprehensive idea about what people want. I want different people to talk to me so that we can come up with the best solution. I want the best for MKThink.” 

Ranuzzi urged people to visit the World Music Festival, which would be held on the first weekend of June at People’s Park. 

“As a sneak preview, I want everyone to know about the excellent lineup we have for the Amoeba Music Presents concert. Brass Menazerie, a nine-piece Balkan brass band will be there, as will the Moroccan music of Yassir Chadley, the Congolese music of Samba Ngo and many, many others,” she said. “Music is something that brings people together, and I want people to come and enjoy this exciting array of music at People’s Park.” 

MKThink will also be presenting board members with an update on community outreach and needs assessment Monday. 

Joe Halperin, People’s Park advisory committee member, told the Planet that the firm was in the process of interviewing a lot of individuals. 

“The advisory board has created of list of stakeholders for the park from whom MKThink will get a broader input about what users or future users of the park want. I personally have no preconceived notions, I am waiting to hear what everybody wants.” 

Halperin said that most people wanted the park to change. “People want to feel comfortable using it,” he said. 

Park frequenters, such as mental health commissioner Michael Diehl and naturalist Terri Compost, had mixed responses toward the outreach process. 

While Diehl said he had been contacted for his opinion, Compost said she had no idea about what was happening with the outreach efforts. 

“MKThink is supposedly in their ‘discovery phase’ about the Park this spring but I haven’t heard a peep about any kind of public meeting or workshops,” she told the Planet in an e-mail. 

“I know there are many people concerned about the Park and rightfully suspicious of $100,000 architects and their distant planning. The firm’s rhetoric of trying to get broad input sounded good, but aside from speaking with a few individuals, I see no evidence of the work that would be required to create a forum that would allow all voices at the table, never mind what I was hoping for, which would be for them to facilitate a community process that would promote understanding and healing between differing opinions,” she wrote. 

Diehl told the Daily Planet that he preferred the park in its present stage. 

“I know a lot of people make it out to be a scary place, but it’s not really that bad right now,” he said over a telephone interview Wednesday.  

“I am sitting at the park right now and people are laughing out loud and having a good time. Last year there was some gang activity, but since people started responding to it, things are fine.” 

Diehl said that he wanted to see help in the form of needle-exchange boxes and healthcare for the homeless at the park. 

“I hope MKThink talks to the people for whom the park is a refuge—the one place where they can rest and get some peace. It’s important they be included in any discussion,” said advisory committee member Lydia Gans, who is also active with Food not Bombs, the group that provides fresh food to the park’s homeless population. 

“This planning process takes place every two years, but nothing really happens. I hope, for the sake of those to whom the park is a lifesaver, something positive happens this time. The university is trying to bring some diversity, which is good.” 

The discovery phase has been scheduled to last through May and MKThink is expected to wrap up its work in fall. 

Ionas Porges-Kiriakou, a UC Berkeley student who also serves as an advisory committee member, said that a mixed student body at UCB meant diverse opinions. 

“As far as I or my peers go, no one has been asked anything yet, but I am waiting to find out more at the next meeting,” he said. “I know that students would definitely like to see more students at the park. It would be nice if the history of the park and its actual state was presented to students. Otherwise, a lot of their feedback will be based on second-hand opinion.”


Radio Frequency ID Controversy Continues

By Judith Scherr
Friday April 06, 2007

The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology at the Berkeley Public library has been a flashpoint since its inception more than two years ago, enraging some patrons, who say the identifiers allow “Big Brother” to track what people read and where they are if they’re carrying library books, and upsetting some library workers who say the system doesn’t work as it is supposed to and is devouring library funds better spent elsewhere. 

At the March Board of Library Trustees’ meeting, Lisa Hesselgesser, Service Employees International Union 535 shop steward, presented a list of 24 concerns library workers have about the technology. 

The system “is not working at all on CDs,” Hesselgesser told the Daily Planet in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s a scandal—the donut tags [used on CD cases] are really expensive.” 

Checking out books with the RFID system is mixed, she said. “Sometimes the tags fail; sometimes the equipment fails.” 

With the RFID system, a patron or a library staff member was supposed to be able to place a stack of books on the equipment and check the books out all at once. This would mean that a library worker would not have to pass one book at a time through the system all day long, thus reducing repetitive stress injuries to workers. Because the system does not consistently function properly, Hesselgesser said repetitive stress injuries are up, something of which Library Director Donna Corbeil says she is unaware. 

Tension between line staff and the previous director, who introduced RFID with little community input, was high, but Hesselgesser said under Corbeil’s leadership a task force has been set up to have “an open discussion on what’s not working” with respect to the RFID system. 

Still, Hesselgesser said she would like the Library Board of Trustees to do a formal study of the system, which, she said, cost the library $108,000 last year for supplies and equipment. 

In a phone interview Thursday, Corbeil told the Daily Planet that rather than undertaking a more formal study, she hopes to get the input she needs directly from the task force.  

“I think the system is generally working well,” she said. “Staff thinks some things need to be done for it to work better.” 

A solution, Hesselgesser said, would be to return to use of barcodes to check out books and use the funds spent on the RFID system on additional staff. 

“We had good technology that was working for us,” she said, noting that stress injuries using barcodes were reduced in 2004. 

A move away from the RFID system is a policy decision, Corbeil said. “Policy decisions are up to the board. I advise them—my job is to do the research,” she said. 

Susan Kupfer, chair of the Library Board of Trustees, did not return a Daily Planet call for comment, but Trustee Ying Lee said that she has observed that some library patrons like the RFID system, while others do not.  

“Some people like the human contact [of the old system] and others like to ‘zip-zip,’” she said, adding that she hopes the library will conduct a study to see whether the union concerns were valid. 

As for getting rid of the system altogether: “There aren’t the votes to cancel,” Lee said. 

In other library news, the Board of Trustee structure will be undergoing some scrutiny.  

Unlike most other boards and commissions in Berkeley, the library board is neither elected nor directly appointed by the City Council. It is composed of five members who traditionally name new members. The City Council, whose role it is to give final approval of new trustees, has traditionally rubberstamped the board’s selection.  

However, because of questions around the lack of community input into the RFID system and other concerns about board transparency, the directors and council have formed a task force to review library governance. Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Betty Olds and Trustees Ying Lee and Susan Kupfer are on the task force. They have not met and have no meeting scheduled.


The Need to Know: A Glimpse Behind the Reference Desk

By Phila Rogers, Special to the Planet
Friday April 06, 2007

In many ways the Reference Department, as the disseminator of information about the world, is the heart of a library. At the downtown Central Library, reference librarians, sitting behind the green-topped counters, field questions both on the phone, on the computer and from the patrons who come into the library. 

And what kinds of questions? “Where’s a good place to meet a rich man?” Or “What does it mean when a bird flies into your house?” says Jane Scantlebury, a reference librarian for 20 years, remembering a few amusing examples of pre-Internet questions. “The questions we get today are apt to be more advanced,” Scantlebury continues. “People come in to see us when they need help with the next level of an Internet search. Sometimes they want to know how to use a periodical database, or which of our collection of reference books would be helpful? We love the challenge!” 

Each of the Berkeley Public Library’s four branches also has a reference librarian and a collection of resources.  

Bob Saunderson, who has been with the library for 30 years and is presently the acting head of the Reference Department, remembers many serious questions asked by patrons who may be looking for information about medical conditions, or how to find one’s birth mother, or how to create a good resume. “There’s no better reward than when a patron says, ‘You made my day,’ or even ‘You saved my life!’” says Saunderson. 

“We are in the business of not just handing out bits of information but empowering people to find the information for themselves,” adds Saunderson. “In our role as educators, we now offer a course in basic computer skills so people can have independent access to everything from genealogy to making travel plans to finding recipes,” he says. 

The physical reach of the Reference Department on the second floor at the Central Library is impressive. Behind the reference desks are the reference materials most often used by the librarians and the often-used clipping files from local newspapers. Across the hall is a large room of general reference books for library use only. If you need information on how to repair a 1970 Ford truck, you’ll find a manual on the back wall. In the next alcove is the business section with volumes on related subjects, as well as current business magazines and periodicals.  

Walk into the great hall known as the Reading Room and behind the stacks to the right are the elegant wood doors carved by Miles Karpilow that open to the Berkeley History Room. The collection was mostly put together by now-retired reference librarian Sayre Van Young, who prevailed upon members of the community to donate material. Members of the Reference Department staff the room during the hours when it’s open. It was in one of the early telephone books that a patron recently confirmed that her grandfather had lived in Berkeley in 1904.  

Librarian Bob Saunderson, using a grant given by the state library to digitize historical material, has put on the library’s website a group of fascinating Berkeley historical photos going back to the 19th century. Check it out. 

Much of the Reference Room collection, a veritable treasure trove of material, is stored in the basement of the library—periodicals going back to the 19th century, along with other material on microfilm. 

The Reference Library also has a long reach out into the community through BIN, the Berkeley Information Network, managed by librarian Jane Scantlebury. BIN offers information about job resources, where to donate items, where to find shelter, food, and showers, even one-on-one counseling on starting a small business. In the spring you’ll find information on kid’s summer camps. BIN was recently honored by the Berkeley City Council for its 25 years of service to the community. 

Though serving the public seems to be part of the job which the reference librarians find “immensely gratifying,” in the heart of a true librarian is “the love for making order out of chaos,” says Saunderson. 

“If one thinks of man’s knowledge as immense, complex, and chaotic—which it is,” continues Saunderson, “the librarian has the important and rewarding job of making that knowledge manageable and useable.” 

No story about the Reference Department—or the Berkeley Public Library—would be complete without Evelyn Gahtan’s story. She has been with the Reference Department for more than a half-century. Her longevity on the job is impressive enough, but she is also revered by her colleagues for her kindness and “her general goodness as a person.” And she is tenacious— “Evelyn always gets her answer!” 


Reference Librarian: My Story

By Evelyn Gahyan, Special to the Planet
Friday April 06, 2007

After graduating from UCLA, I went to Library School at UC Berkeley known then as “Danton’s Inferno,” for J. Perian Danton who was the head of the Library School at that time. 

I’ve worked at the Berkeley Public Library for around 50 years with the exception of two years abroad with the Army Library Service in Germany and France. I missed reference work since the few reference questions dealt mainly with how to avoid court martial. 

The Berkeley Public Library was a much smaller operation when I first started in the Reference Department at Central—the building was smaller and the staff was smaller. Administration was composed only of the library director and her secretary. The reference staff was four librarians. The library hours were 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and we worked alone in the Reference Room from 6 to 9 p.m. It was very hard on the feet and involved carrying piles of books from “the cage,” a locked area holding the expensive books. 

We had the card catalog which listed the library’s holdings instead of an online computer catalog. We used carbon copies for duplication instead of copy machines, and print indexes such as Reader’s Guide to access magazine articles instead of an electronic database. 

And, of course, there was no Internet. The Internet has made reference work much easier in many ways and harder in others. It’s a great help especially for quick lookups of factual information, addresses, people etc, and I don’t know what we would do without it anymore. However, information on the Internet is sometimes suspect and we must determine which sites are reliable and accurate. 

Some reference questions are generally the same over the years—how to write a resume, a grant proposal, how to get a job, what to do if you’re made redundant, how to fix your car, build a bird house, find a recipe for goulash, a support group for bipolar people, how a certain Senator voted on a particular bill. etc.  

Now in addition, there are questions about websites and problems on our public computers which are located adjacent to the reference desk. If we’re busy at the reference desk, it’s difficult to deal with the questions so we’re very grateful to the volunteers who often help out as tech assistants. 

What I like about reference work is that you can really make a difference in people’s lives by showing them how to acquire the knowledge to solve both big and small problems, or accomplish something important to them. 

 

Photograph by Phila Rogers 

Reference librarian Evelyn Gahtan assists BHS student Ashley Duong.


U.S. Born Kids Face Deportation As Well

By Julie Johnson, New America Media
Friday April 06, 2007

With a crowd of TV cameras and adults with microphones towering over them, Adrian, Yadira and Adriana Ramirez—6, 10 and 12 years old—sat on a bench outside of First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto yesterday, and shyly told the news crews that though they wanted to stay at their home in Palo Alto, they would go to Mexico to be with their father, who was deported an hour after his arrest by Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers. 

The Ramirez children are among thousands of U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents who are facing deportation and have to decide whether to bring their children with them—taking them away from the educational opportunities they have a right to in the United States—or let them stay and be forced into foster care. 

But even at 12 Adrian knows that to be deported or stay in foster care isn’t a real choice. He said what he really wants “is to stay like a family and not be separated.” 

Adrian, a seventh-grader at Terman Middle School, speaks Spanish but can’t write in Spanish and can only read a little. He wants to stay at his school in Palo Alto. “If I go,” he said, “I’d leave my friends behind.” 

Yadira, a fifth-grader at Barron Park Elementary School, agreed. “We wanna study here.” 

ICE officers arrested their parents, Pedro Ramirez and Isabel Aguirre, as the couple walked to their car on the morning of Feb. 28. Ramirez, who has lived in the United States since 1985 and worked at Albertson’s supermarket for the past nine years, was deported before he could cash his last paycheck, and family friends report he arrived in Tijuana penniless and without a place to go. 

Aguirre is currently under house arrest with a monitoring bracelet and must leave the country by Friday, April 6. Community members have now raised enough money to help her buy plane tickets so she can bring her children with her—otherwise, the kids would have been placed in foster care. The press conference in Palo Alto was organized by American Muslim Voice in collaboration with a number of interfaith and community groups. 

Palo Alto Online News reports that the immigration attorney representing Ramirez and Aguirre, Miguel Gadda, failed to renew their work permits or submit their green card applications. Gadda has since been disbarred by the California State Bar Court for several counts of misconduct, including a number of cases that resulted in his clients being deported. 

Adrian said his older brother Pedro, named after his father, was too upset to attend the press conference. A sophomore at Henry M. Gunn High School, Pedro has changed from a sociable kid who does his work to a morose student who can’t concentrate in class, according to his math teacher Chris Schultz. 

According to Schultz, his Latino students are especially afraid, and the school has brought them together to discuss what’s happening. At the meeting, most students, regardless of their citizenship status, expressed some fear about going to school and for the safety of their families. 

“All I can do is tell them I support them and that [school] is a safe place,” Schultz said. 

“A family was suffering quietly in our own backyard since Feb. 28,” said Samina Faheem Sundas, the founding executive director of American Muslim Voice, who helped organize the press conference. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has arrested more than 18,000 people so far in nationwide immigration raids as part of its initiative begun last year, Operation Return to Sender. 

The raids are targeting the Latino community and circumventing due process, said Gloria Nieto, policy director for SIREN, and a speaker at the event. Nieto noted that for every person deported, a family and community is disrupted. 

“Imagine in Massachusetts the 600 agents used to pick up 300 people,” she adds. “That’s 300 stories.” 

When asked what advice he’d give other U.S. born children with undocumented parents facing a similar choice, for the first time in a confident voice, Adrian said to “stay strong and care about your family.”


Pressure Leads to Teen’s Release from Texas Prison

By Talise D. Moorer, New America Media
Friday April 06, 2007

In the backyard of President George Bush’s home state of Texas, a racist legacy continues. But Shaquanda Cotton, the 14-year-old black student who was convicted of shoving a hall monitor at a Paris high school in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun, was released by the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) on Saturday, March 31. She was detained at the Brownwood facility, where she was mandated to serve a seven-year prison term. 

Creola Cotton, who is reportedly thrilled to have her daughter home again, was not available for comment. 

State Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) and State Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) played key roles in obtaining Shaquanda’s release. 

Calls to both Dutton and West were unanswered by the AmNews’ press deadline. 

A week earlier, West and Duncan had asked TYC conservator Jay Kimbrough to review Cotton’s case and make a determination. It seems the scandal-ridden juvenile system recently was placed under conservative leadership, and a commission was formed to investigate more than 1,000 cases involving youth whose confinements had been extended by TYC staff. Gov. Rick Perry had appointed Kimbrough to investigate the agency accused of ignoring multiple allegations of sexual and physical abuse of young inmates. 

Allan Hubbard, the spokesperson for the county law office and district attorney, refused to give further comment to the AmNews, pointing only to his earlier comments reported in the Paris News. 

Aside from stating that Cotton reportedly had not made appropriate progress in behavioral and correctional therapy, Hubbard said, “We are glad she is getting out and are happy for her family, but we have concerns about the way it is happening. 

“We sincerely hope Shaquanda has learned her lesson, and we do not see her in the judicial system again,” Hubbard added. 

According to a source close to the family, “Shaquanda cried on the telephone to her mother after she learned she was going to get out.” 

Because of the Cotton case and others, Paris and Lamar County have been exposed to the hot glare of national scrutiny via the Internet and a wide array of media outlets. 

The AmNews previously reported that several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as Black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged. 

Cotton had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor—a 58-year-old teacher’s aide—was not seriously injured. Notwithstanding, Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town’s juvenile court, convicted of “assault on a public servant” and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to seven years, until she turned 21. 

Most disturbing about Cotton’s case, is that three months earlier, the judge who sentenced Cotton had sentenced a white teenager convicted of burning down her family’s home to probation. 

 

This story first appeared in the Amsterdam News. 


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Shaping the Fate of the Public’s Art

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday April 10, 2007

It’s tax time again. The cover of the New Yorker depicts IRS forms folded into the shapes of missiles, warplanes and tanks, in case anyone has any doubts about where most of their taxes are being wasted. On the inside, another cartoon: Robin Hood sitting in the office of his accountant, who says “You have to declare what you rob from the rich, but you can deduct what you give to the poor.” 

One traditional way for members of the private sector to avoid paying taxes for things they don’t like is to give money instead to institutions which provide benefits for the general public, like art museums. The tax laws encourage this, in varying proportions at various times. Right now the Bush-era tax law changes have made it possible for the very rich, both corporations and individuals, to avoid paying any significant amount of taxes, so their incentive to donate for public purposes is much reduced. Institutions like museums which have depended on tax-deductible donations are therefore hurting, and are looking to preserve the programs they value by any means necessary. 

However … since the funds for most museums come either directly from taxes or from donations which have been made with the benefit of tax law exemptions, there’s a strong public interest in what they do with their money. That’s why the people of California should be grateful to new citizen Vladimir Raykin of San Jose, who alerted us with a letter to an imminent sale of a famous Russian painting by the former University Art Museum, now called the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM-PFA for short). It has been hanging on loan in Berkeley’s unique and well-respected Judah Magnes Museum for many years. 

Daily Planet art critic Peter Selz, the founding director of the university museum, placed the work, Solomon’s Wall (1884-85), depicting worshipers at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, by Vasilii Vereshchagin, in artistic context in our last issue. Now a Bloomberg article forwarded to us by Raykin gives more of the back story. It seems that Phoebe Hearst (mother of William Randolph Hearst) donated the painting to the museum in 1920, but current museum director Kevin Plonsey was quoted as saying “We never used it for our own exhibition programs,” at least during his tenure. When the Magnes wanted to renew the loan, BAM-PFA had it appraised for insurance purposes, and, he said, “…we were staggered.” Christie’s New York auction house is hoping it might bring as much as $5 million on their auction block on April 18. 

There’s been no particular public outcry so far about the sale of this painting. Director Plonsey told the Bloomberg reporter that his museum is now focused on modern and contemporary Western art, East Asian art and film and video. “It was a classic case of a great work which had no context within our museum collection,” he said.  

This is standard operating procedure for many museums today, choosing a limited arena in which to try to excel, but it might not be the best strategy for a museum which, despite its change of name, is still primarily a university art museum. One valuable function of a university art museum should be to give art history students, and students in general, the opportunity for first-hand looks at all kinds of great art, not just at what is stylish or appeals to the institution’s management at a given point in time. The small college I attended my freshman year had a couple of genuine Corots in its modest collection which were not particularly stylish then or now, but I spent hours looking at them up close and personal, as one can seldom do with paintings in a crowded metropolitan museum.  

One can’t help wondering what other masterpieces which don’t fit the dominant paradigm might be hiding in collections where the current management doesn’t appreciate them. At least this particular painting was loaned out to another museum where it was both appreciated and displayed, but many works of art are languishing in storage. The Oakland Art Museum’s glorious recent exhibition of the work of Arthur and Lucia Matthews included pieces from the museum’s own collection which hadn’t been shown to the public since their last Matthews show more than 20 years ago. 

BAM-PFA has announced plans for a fancy new building downtown and is now trying to come up with the money to pay for it. There’s no doubt that $5 million, if it comes to that, would be put to good use. Consey did tell Bloomberg that the proceeds of selling the Vereshchagin would be put in an endowment for acquisition of future works of Western and Asian art, but that would also free up funds from other sources which could be used for construction costs if desired. He said that “in a perfect world [the painting] will be purchased by a collector and given to an institution in Russia.”  

Mr. Raykin told us in his letter that he’s concerned that “the great painting, our California treasure, will be purchased by a rich Russian oligarch and will leave California and the U.S.A. soon.” He said that “for me, as a Russian-Jewish immigrant and Jewish community member, the Jerusalem Western Wall is a very important religious symbol,” and that he believes “we should recognize that Vereshchagin’s masterpiece … belongs to the people of California and plays an important role for us Americans…. I think the decision [by] UC Berkeley to auction it off at Christie's on April 18 is very unfortunate for us Bay Area and California residents and all Americans.” 

Since it’s by no means a perfect world, and since in Russia as in the United States the rich are getting richer while the public sector is getting poorer, his point is worth pondering. While it might seem nice to send a Russian painting back to a Russian museum, if it goes into private hands it’s possible that we might never see it exhibited again in either country, and that would be a shame. Is there someone else who should be making a broad-based policy decision regarding the fate of this valued possession of the state of California and all its citizens, instead of leaving the judgment to the narrow focus of the current BAM-PFA managers and the vagaries of the marketplace? It’s possible. 


Editorial: WWJD About Degradation and Depravity?

By Becky O’Malley
Friday April 06, 2007

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. 

—Anatole France 

 

At least one of our eagle-eyed readers has already spotted the similarity of the commentary published on Tuesday, from a writer who said he had the support of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce and the Telegraph Business Improvement District, to this famous epigram. 

But the irony in the quote appears to be lost on the commentary author, whose paen in praise of Mayor Bates’ proposed “Public Commons for Everyone” initiative says that its point is “to address problematic behavior while turning a truly blind eye to residential status.” Evidently the housed as well as the homeless should be forbidden to sleep in their cars or on the street, to yell in the streets, to urinate in the bushes and to frighten the timid. How fair is that!  

More intelligent and enlightened cities, notably San Francisco and New York, are now dealing with the problems of people who live on the street with a Housing First approach. Here’s how it’s explained by the National Coalition to End Homelessness: “What differentiates a Housing First approach from traditional emergency shelter or housing transitional models is the immediate and primary focus on helping homeless people quickly access and then sustain housing—put simply, housing comes first, then services.” 

Turning a blind eye to residential status, as recommended by the mayor and his supporters on the City Council, simply hasn’t worked. Services, no matter well-meaning they might be, aren’t much use to people who are engaged in a daily struggle to find somewhere to sleep at night.  

The commentator claims that Bates et al. have the support of the “silent majority.” Perhaps he is not aware that this term was first used by Richard Nixon in 1969 to make the claim that most Americans supported the ongoing war in Vietnam. Some think Nixon was factually wrong in making that claim, even then, but many more, even many Berkeleyans today, think that even if most Americans did support the Vietnam war at that time, they were morally wrong to do so. The councilmembers who support cracking down on street behavior are all good Democrats, and linking them with Nixon’s famous “silent majority” probably makes them a tad uncomfortable, as it should. Their obligation is to do the right thing, not to carry out the will of some phantom majority. 

Then there’s the question of what the right thing to do might be. The Chamber’s commentator has no doubts on the matter: “The community is effectively saying, ‘We don’t want you to live in this sort of degraded manner, and we don’t want a degraded city. We have pride in our city. We respect you as an individual so much that we won’t tolerate overt self-destruction.’” This doesn’t seem to match the writer’s claim that only behavior, not status, is addressed.  

What exactly is “living in a degraded manner”? Is it being mentally ill? Is it being an alcoholic or a cocaine addict? If the “helpless, addicted, and mentally ill,” as the writer describes them, are lucky enough have homes, are they then not “living in a degraded manner”?  

The writer for some reason doubts that bad behavior on the streets is illegal: “Other critics suggest that adequate laws already exist. Other than in the most obvious extreme cases such as murder, assault, robbery, rape, and so forth, the critics can’t prove such.” Of course they can! This is such obvious nonsense that we’ll just leave it to others more versed in the criminal code to provide the cites, but almost everything the Chamber and its allies complain about is already illegal, except perhaps “yelling,” which is probably protected by the First Amendment in most instances. 

Then there’s the question of God’s Will, appropriate for this week when two of the desert religions celebrate major holy days. Here’s the view from the Chamber: 

“One council critic of this initiative suggested that if it passed, he would mobilize people of conscience and the faith community to overturn it by referendum. How absurd!! Is it not a matter of conscience and an affirmation of the worth of the human being as fashioned by a Higher Power to insist on wholeness and health, and not degradation and depravity? Is it not immoral to insist on maintaining that the most helpless, addicted, and mentally ill must remain in their misery and not be helped?” And there’s more: “Together with the silent majority, we ask the council to act with conscience and common sense, move forward, pass this bill when it is finally written, stand in solidarity with the afflicted and suffering, and move this city toward wholeness and health. Passing this will be a positive act of conscience and honor to the Creator and our fellow man and woman.” 

It’s been quite a few years since I studied the Christian Bible, but I seem to remember that Jesus hung out with prostitutes, thieves and crazy people. I don’t remember that he insisted on wholeness and health, or that he banished even the degraded and depraved from his presence. I do remember that he drove the money-changers out of the temple, and that he was quoted by Matthew as saying that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  

Later generations of Christians bickered about the importance of the appearance of righteousness, but many would not agree with the characterization of a Higher Power who only loves the clean and sober. Some might identify the brand of evangelical Christianity favored by George Bush as the source of these ideas, but I’m not an expert on that theology. I haven’t studied the holy books of other religions much either, but I’ve gotten the general impression that many of them have more respect and compassion for the afflicted than for the comfortable.  

And many in Berkeley don’t form their consciences by appeals to any creator of any kind anyhow. It’s certainly not the responsibility of the elected city council to form its policies on the basis of the narrow judgmental moral view espoused by the commentary writer in the name of his particular religious beliefs.  

He further bolsters his argument with the shop-worn and unproven claim that new restrictions are necessary because they will be good for business: 

“Some critics argue that this is somehow flawed because it is supported by the business community because it applies to commercial areas. Some of these critics go a step further and claim that it is for increased profits. So what?! Increased profits mean principally two things for Berkeley—more jobs and more revenue for the city. Are floundering businesses somehow better for the city than successful ones? Many have noted the obvious—shoppers vote with their dollars, and the dollars are going out of Berkeley. Shoppers, including thousands of Berkeley residents, unquestionably want better shopping districts in Berkeley.”  

So what, indeed. The problems of Berkeley shopping districts, as we’ve discussed in this space many times before, are not primarily caused by the bad behavior of a few people on the street. One more time: there are plenty of beggars on Fourth Street and at the farmer’s markets, and plenty of customers there too. But it’s so much easier to blame beggars than to deal creatively with the merchandising challenges posed by the Internet and by malls with parking in front of the doors of the shops. It’s so much harder to come up with a lively advertising campaign than it is to write a check to a political campaign fund.  

The councilmembers who are the main backers of the PCEI are, not coincidentally, also the main beneficiaries of the Chamber of Commerce’s largesse in the November election, and now the Chamber seems to be calling in its chits. We appreciate the candor of Tuesday’s commentator and his patrons in acknowledging their role in producing this deeply flawed proposal. Now it’s up to the not-so-silent citizens to speak truth to power and tell the council to reject it. 


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Tuesday April 10, 2007

KPFA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In “KPFA’s Tradition of Advocacy is Threatened,” in the April 6 issue of the Planet, Marc Sapir attacks Sasha Lilley, KPFA’s interim program director, for upholding KPFA’s policy of requiring that KPFA programmers refrain from overtly endorsing demonstrations and other public activities. But KPFA has followed this policy since sometime in the seventies. 

My question to Marc Sapir: Why attack Sasha Lilley for upholding this policy, without mentioning that it has been KPFA practice for decades? What is your real agenda? 

I have another question, this one for the editors of the Daily Planet. Why did you decide to publish this article? Marc Sapir attacks Sasha Lilley through insinuations and smears. He charges her with “perpetuating internal chaos at the station” without providing any evidence. In the context of his article, his statement that “we should assume that there are...COINTELPRO types operative in this environment” can only be taken as directed at Lilley. But of course Sapir gives no evidence, because there is none. Sapir even includes unsubstantiated, and irrelevant, rumors about Lilley’s parents. His rhetoric is left but his method is the McCarthyite tactic of discrediting one’s target through insinuations that are left unsubstantiated, but are scandalous enough to start tongues wagging, and thus do damage. It is difficult not to conclude that the Planet is so eager to promote controversy that it disregards the quality of the pieces that it publishes, and the merits of the arguments made in them. This style of debate destroys relations within the left, as well as discrediting the left. No doubt there will always be people who will engage in these sorts of tactics. But editors should exercise judgment about what they print. 

Barbara Epstein 

 

• 

STOP EDITORIALIZING 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Richard Brenneman, seems to have abandoned his usual journalistic impartiality and is now editorializing in his news stories. In his March 30 article covering the Planning Commission meeting of March 28, he referred to the “developer-friendly five-member majority...”, of which I am identified as one. This implies that the other four commissioners are “developer-unfriendly”—that they are allied with those in the city who see themselves as protectors against avaricious developers who would build huge multi-family housing projects and destroy low-density neighborhoods. Brenneman also mischaracterized me as wanting to end all business district quotas.  

To set the record straight: On the quota issue, I don’t pretend to know enough about whether quotas are good or bad for business, and under what circumstances. The Planning Commission was not asked to recommend a change in the Telegraph Avenue quotas for the different categories of business, but to make it possible for a business to exceed the quotas if the Zoning Adjustments Board agrees that it would be good for the district. 

On the “developer-friendly” characterization, many others and I are friendly to the kind of development that enables Berkeley to be a leader in smart, environmentally sensitive and socially responsible growth. To reduce permitted residential densities is inherently anti affordable housing since it reduces the housing production by increasing the cost of development. The reduction of the production of new housing, reduces our ability to bring housing and jobs into balance, and also reduces our ability to produce energy efficient housing. 

I urge Mr. Brenneman to keep to the job of reporting that he does so well and leave editorializing to the editorial page. 

David Stoloff 

 

• 

WEALTHY PANHANDLERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The commentary by Roland Peterson clarified for me the “Public Commons for Everyone” initiative: “...there are many wealthy, well-housed individuals who behave badly, so there are many homeless who are well-behaved.” 

That’s why I hate going downtown: all those aggressive wealthy panhandlers! 

Myrna Sokolinsky 

 

• 

PUBLIC COMMONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Returning from a vacation this week, the pungent odor of urine greeted me at the entrance to the building where I lease office space. Last month on a weekend day afternoon, I observed a man urinating on the wall of the building at the northwest corner of Shattuck Avenue and Durant Street. The public library a block away offers toilet facilities. How many patrons of the soon to close Barnes and Noble across the way noticed this display as well? Arriving at work mornings the sight of feces on the sidewalks near this intersection is common. 

Governments exist, among other reasons, to maintain the streets free of human waste, but this city lacks the willingness to carry out this duty. The mixed reception given the mayor’s public commons proposal shows the absence of consensus that the current state of affairs is intolerable. Something is seriously wrong in the body politic. 

John McDougall 

 

• 

RED ZONES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I live at 1455 Spruce St. I came home from work today to discover that someone—presumably a city employee under orders from Traffic Engineering—had painted 20-foot red stretches from the corner of Spruce and Vine northward and eastward where no red zone had existed previously. This action immediately obliterated two parking spaces in a neighborhood that is not only severely impacted by parking issues, but where neighbors have fought a pitched battle and spent many thousand of dollars—along with the city—working out parking plans to accommodate the recently relocated Beth El congregation’s parking needs. 

What sense does it make, in light of the negotiated number of parking spaces we have all worked so hard to manage and create, for someone to come along and arbitrarily create red zones where perfectly legal parking spaces had existed? 

By what authority—i.e. where in the city charter—does it say the city traffic engineer or his designee can just come out and paint red zones into residential areas without input from residents? 

Michael Minasian 

 

• 

HOUSING MONEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was startled to read that developer Patrick Kennedy and his investor David Teece received over $70 million in tax-exempt bonds from the Association of Bay Area Governments’ Finance Authority for Non-Profit Corporations. Isn’t that money supposed to go to nonprofit affordable housing developers such as Affordable Housing Associates? 

Robert Lauriston 

 

• 

IN DEFENSE OF CELL PHONES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently I read an opinion in your paper regarding hatred for cell phones and claiming users of cell phones are bimbos who prefer not to contemplate the future. 

I was wondering about the “surreal atmosphere in society” mentioned. I don’t experience that. I also wonder who these people are who are “spouting off at the top of their lungs”? Where are they? I ride AC Transit and BART, and I dine in restaurants too, yet I have not seen them, nor have I heard them. 

I enjoy my conversations with friends, family and loved ones on my cell phone as I go about my day (called multi-tasking). Maybe I missed something. I was too busy with the business of my own life to eavesdrop on conversations and to criticize others to the point of thinking they ought to be shot. 

To say that any human being should be lined up at dawn before a firing squad for any reason is utterly ridiculous and extremely rude. It scares me to think anyone would go that far in referring to the use of cell phones. 

Us blonde “bimbos” actually do stroll, meditate, gaze and dream. We are also the same ones who get things done in life, and I found your readers comments to be an extremely offensive attack on me and anyone who has a cell phone. 

Charlotte Lyon 

 

• 

PUBLIC TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the April 3 edition, Steve Geller earnestly proposes methods to improve bus service and attract riders, but even if all available lines ran every 45 seconds the bus would not suffice considering the travel needed to negotiate today’s world of specialization. 

A Berkeley mother takes her kid to child care in Albany, goes to the chiropractor in Alameda, the psychiatrist in Emeryville, and the doctor in Oakland, except if she needs brain surgery and has Kaiser, then she must go to Palo Alto for that service. Her older children may walk to school, but odds are their teachers had to drive to arrive before the bell. The woman’s father has Alzheimer’s meaning travel out to the rest home. 

Shopping can be hard for the mother to do by bus. To save money she gets groceries from the supermarket, and be it Berkeley Bowl or Safeway, hauling a week’s worth of food by bus is a chore. Too bad there are few mom and pop stores where one could grab a few things on the way from the bus. It is also too bad that ever more jobs need a credential or license —meaning courses to travel to, police departments to visit for fingerprinting, and jobs being filled by someone living 20 miles away, because that person has the credential. 

Ted Vincent 

 

• 

HYPOCRISY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Cheney criticizes Pelosi for Syria visit.” Has this man no shame?! He and Rush Limbaugh got together to bad-mouth Nancy for her travel and diplomacy, playing to the lowest common denominator in the GOP. What about the three Republicans who just recently visited Syria? No, this is more hysterical hypocrisy from the harpies of hell. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

 

• 

SOUTHEAST BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve lived here 20 years and I rarely hear anyone call the Berkeley hills called “Southeast Berkeley,” Of course, since your article was about racism in that area, maybe it sounds better to say “southeast.” That way we might think it’s a rough area of town, rather than the upscale area that it really is. 

Kate Harper 

 

• 

GLOBAL WARMING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last week the Supreme Court confirmed what science has continued to prove, that global warming is a reality that needs to be addressed. By deeming carbon dioxide emissions, like those from cars, trucks and power plants, subject to federal regulation, the government is finally taking a step towards combating global warming.  

Although this is a positive step, a very obvious component of global warming is being ignored: people. The more people on the planet, the more emissions are released into the air. Professor Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics indicates that even a 40 percent cut in per capita carbon emissions in the developed world could be completely canceled out by 2050—due to global population growth. 

Simply providing viable information and family planning resources can help curb this population growth. When women and couples are free to make their own informed choices and have access to family planning resources, they choose to have smaller families.  

Globally, at least 350 million couples lack family planning services. Certainly the lack of family planning services in underdeveloped countries is an enormous problem, but we can start by looking in our own back yard. In the United States, one-third of all births are unintended. We have the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world.  

It is obvious that Bush’s “Abstinence Only” sex education is not working. From giving faulty information that “condoms don’t work” to withholding information about birth control, the upcoming bearers of children in one of the world’s most developed nations is being denied the right to make informed decisions. But by pushing for a change to comprehensive sex education, we have a chance to give our teenagers that same right that is now being championed in many less developed countries.  

It’s vital to focus on technical issues such as tax credits, energy alternatives and emissions trading programs. But cutting energy consumption must be coupled with stabilizing population, especially in the United States, where less than 5 percent of the world’s population produces about 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. And the best way to stabilize population is by giving our women the right to make an informed decision about their bodies.  

Georgia Gann 

Berkeley Field Organizer,  

Population Connection 

 

• 

EVIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Wednesday April 4, President Bush addressed U.S. troops at Fort Irwin. He referred to a suicide bombing where terrorists allegedly used two children to get through a checkpoint and then exploded the car as strengthening his resolve to continue the war in Iraq. He said, “It makes me realize the nature of the enemy we face, which hardens my resolve to protect the American people. People who do that are not—it’s not a civil war, it is pure evil. And I believe we have an obligation to protect ourselves from that evil.” 

If this incident occurred, it is indeed morally reprehensible, but to hear Bush describe the killing of children as evil makes me want to gag at the hypocrisy. Over 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of U.S. forces under Bush invading the country. How many of these were children? And did I miss the president condemning the sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War during his father’s presidency and then continued under Clinton and then again under his own regime? By most accounts at least half a million children died as a result of these economic sanctions. Where was Bush’s moral outrage then?  

If killing two children in a car bombing is evil, then how do you describe acts that kill hundreds of thousands, Mr. President? War crimes? Crimes against humanity? Should a man responsible for the deaths of so many children be impeached? How do we “protect ourselves from that evil” Mr. Bush? 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

 

• 

A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A theme that emerges from a surge of new books is that the ship of state constructed over two centuries ago has lost is moorings. For example, in a class characterized by ominous forebodings you’ll find Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy, Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis or in a different class you can find Noam Chomsky’s densely crafted Hegemony or Survival in which nuggets of unflattering facts strip naked our government’s royal clothing, or check out Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater that exposes the contribution a mighty mercenary army is making to the Iraq disaster. All together this library advances a single thesis: As a nation we have failed so often to live up to the promises of our birth that we have come to change those promises willy-nilly to fit the nefarious goals we, as a nation, have come to pursue. 

Alarming instances are reported each day, sometimes explicitly, by the mainstream media. Often appearances hide the truth and just as often a small victory hides a large defeat. Let this one stand for the many. 

Both houses of Congress passed resolutions that urged but did not require that the president prepare to withdraw our troops from Iraq.  

Properly understood, these legislative acts conceded that the nation’s dignity (what’s left of it) is worth the death and dismemberment of tens of thousands more, ours and theirs. Thus, members of Congress voted for a “timetable” that, in effect, will trade blood for dignity. 

It is a sign of the times that the men and women now in the majority are capable of boasting about such a Faustian bargain.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

 

 

A TRUE LANDMARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was shocked when I heard that the Berkeley School Board voted to demolish the Gym at Berkeley High School. As a person born and raised in Berkeley, attending public schools, I have fond memories of the Gym. I first learned to dive off the high diving board there. My favorite gym class was modern dance and my friends and I spent many hours practicing for performances in the studio on the second floor located on the southern end of the Gym. 

I am a former special education teacher and was fortunate to spend my last years teaching in the Berkeley School District. I taught all grade levels as a teacher of the Visually Impaired. While working on the high school campus with students, I visited the Gym and, though the Gym had undergone many years of almost benign neglect, I was delighted to find that the beautiful wood floors are in amazingly good condition. The building has stood up surprisingly well considering the neglect it has suffered over the many decades since I attended Berkeley High. 

I don’t understand why this beautiful old gym, a wonderful example of more graceful times, must be demolished. Why has there been no serious consideration and public discussion about rehabilitating it?  

I would urge the mayor and councilmembers to look at what has been done with other historical school sites in this city: Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, Longfellow Elementary, John Muir Elementary, Berkeley Arts Elementary, to name a few. Surely the same could be done with the Berkeley High gym. It certainly meets the criteria for a city landmark on many different levels. I would hate to think that the mayor and City Council, supposedly so concerned with environmental issues and professing to want to make a difference in the world, would turn their backs on all the resources—including several thousand square feet of beautiful wood in nearly excellent condition—that would be completely wasted if the demolition of the gym complex was to occur. Rehabilitation and re-use seems so much more in keeping with the principles that so many of us in Berkeley believe in. 

Finally, I would like to mention the graceful setback of the gym that is so pleasing to passing pedestrians and drivers alike. If we seriously want to begin to make a dent in the conservation of the world’s resources, why not begin in our own back yard and save and restore this grand old building for our young people and community to enjoy in the decades to come? It would compliment and enhance other historic buildings in the city’s Civic Center: City Hall, the Veterans’s Building, the Main Post Office, to name only a few. I am hoping that the Landmarks Preservation Commission will do the right thing and vote to preserve this grand old structure that the Berkeley School Board so carelessly dismissed. 

Susan Chase 

 

A FEW CORRECTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I write in needed response to the Wendy Walker-Moffat’s March 16 commentary “Independent Study Program at Risk.” 

Although this is an important and well-written commentary, I would like to make some corrections, and add some facts, and opinions from someone who spent the years from 1999 to 2005 working with students at the Independent Study facility. Hans Barnum was never a student at the Alternative High School. He wrote the piece quoted while he and his brother both were City of Berkeley Youth Commissioners (2003-2007). At that time Hans attended the Independent Study Program on the same campus location as the Alternative High School, and was completely familiar with the issues and events there. He wrote that piece because he was becoming extremely dissatisfied with the lack of BUSD’s response to student needs at both the Alternative High and the Independent Study Program. 

Both Hans and his brother, Nils, left the Berkeley Unified School District to attend a distance learning charter school independent study program in 2005. The reason they changed schools was because BUSD had sadly changed direction, (since replacing the very competent 1999-2004 directors of Independent Studies), in ways that both youth commissioners saw were causing harm to the students. This was not only because of the poor quality of new leadership at the Independent Study facility itself in 2005, but was also due to BUSD’s years of unresponsive, top-down management style which has seldom responded to the voices of BUSD students and their families.  

Since 2005, enrolled in a more supportive environment than offered by BUSD, and which is very responsive to the needs of students, both of these former BUSD students have passed the CAHSEE with very high scores (having only completed the ninth grade!), and are now straight A students in their new charter school. BUSD needs to take a look at the results of what has been happening to students in recent years, and when that look makes clear that the academic achievement rate is not what parents want for their children, and that other matters important to the students and their families are regularly being disregarded, then a change in leadership is what is needed for BUSD. 

To act in a costly manner to seriously disrupt the students and faculty, and diminish what little they now have, for unnecessary and poorly thought out change, is not a solution. Students do not need more mismanagement of the money taxpayers intend to be used to educate them. Those tax dollars are not intended to be used as an exercise in bureaucratic experimentation for which there is no reason to believe there will be any improvement in the quality of education of the students at risk because of BUSD’s errors. 

The cost of disrupting student populations could instead be spent on quality textbooks and other important materials that we are not now supplying students, services for teen-age high school students with children of their own, the serious drug problems at Berkeley High School, the lack of sufficient tutoring programs, disabled student services, improved wages and conditions for teachers, and many other educational needs that are now not being sufficiently met by BUSD. It is time to look at a much needed change in the leadership at BUSD. Merely disrupting the education of students, to try some haphazard approach to changing any inefficiencies, which the current leadership is not only unwilling to understand but is in a large part responsible for, is not an answer to improving education in Berkeley. We need to take a close look at the BUSD (mis)management problem that is the root of our children not getting the education from this school district that we are paying for, and stop trying to treat the symptoms instead of the disease.  

Patty Pink


Commentary: Oak-to-Ninth: A New Oakland or Oakland of the Old?

By Akio Tanaka
Tuesday April 10, 2007

There has been much discussion recently on the merits of the proposed development of the Oak-to-Ninth waterfront. 

The Oak-to-Ninth is a world-class site that “merits a seriously big-time international design competition, instead of just another routine Big Ugly Box condo development on steroids” (Becky O’Malley, Daily Planet). 

The current 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” (Wilson Riles). 

These are the reasons that a group of citizens mobilized to exercise their First Amendment rights to petition for a referendum. Twenty-five thousand and sixty eight signatures were collected in three weeks in opposition to the ordinance approving the sale of this public land. 

The signatures were triumphantly turned in Aug. 17. However, 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. 

But the city made mistakes regarding the process used in approving the Oak-to-Ninth project.  

The city is obligated by its charter to provide the citizens and the City Council the proper ordinance before the second reading so that everyone knows what is going to be approved. 

The ordinance that was used by the petitioners was the version that the City Council voted on and available for the public to comment on. But it turns out that it was not the version that the city now claims is the “final” version of the ordinance.  

The city staff continued to modify the documents to come up with the final version and it was not submitted to the city clerk’s office until nine days after the council voted on July 18. 

The “final” version of the ordinance cannot be considered legally approved since the City Council did not vote on this “final” version and the public didn’t have an opportunity to comment on it. 

If John Russo can disqualify the petitions because they did not include the “final” version of the ordinance, he has an equal obligation to disqualify the “final” version of the ordinance itself since it was not the one voted by the council or the once available to the public for review. 

If the current project goes forward it will become a monument to the Old Oakland of backroom deals, when the city was a supplicant to developers’ whims and needs. 

The Oak-to-Ninth should instead be a world class waterfront envisioned by the City Council in the Estuary Policy Plan and by the voters in passing measure DD. It should be an emblem of a new Oakland as a beautiful waterfront city. 

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.


Commentary: KPFA Demonstration Announcements

By Sasha Lilley
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Marc Sapir’s April 6 commentary is an amalgam of factual inaccuracies, crisis-mongering, and unprincipled attacks on my character. That Sapir has launched an ad hominem attack on me is no surprise, given his track record of lashing out at KPFA staff for the past several years. But I was surprised that he chose to both agent-bait and red-bait me (and, bizarrely, my parents), in an attempt to discredit my work as KPFA’s interim program director. 

Here are the facts: 

There is no new rule against advocacy at the station. For the past three decades at least, KPFA has had a policy against “calls to action” that order listeners to attend events, such as stating that “you must come to this” or “be there.” Not only is it long-standing policy at KPFA and Pacifica, but it is standard procedure at community radio stations, owing to issues of liability. 

While staff have been sent reminders of station policy, no one at KPFA has been disciplined for making calls to action and no one is about to be “purged.” (Furthermore, Sapir is wrong in stating that Hard Knock Radio’s Davey D violated the call to action policy when he recently interviewed Fred Hampton Jr.) 

KPFA was founded on a mission of fostering cultural expression, investigating the causes of conflict, and engaging in radio that contributes to a lasting understanding between nations and individuals. We take that mission very seriously. We encourage KPFA programmers to announce demonstrations as often as they want and to give details on locations, times, schedules for when buses leave to demonstrations, etc.—anything short of directly telling listeners to attend events. Guests, however, can come on the air and freely urge listeners to attend rallies and demonstrations. The assumption is that listeners are savvy enough to make up their own minds without being told what to do by the station. 

What concerns me about Sapir’s hit piece is that, however riddled with falsehoods, it may leave the impression that KPFA does not allow announcements about the efforts to end the brutal US occupation of Iraq. Nothing could be further from the truth.  

We are very proud of the coverage that KPFA did this past month for the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, which included numerous announcements of demonstrations surrounding the anniversary. This coverage far outstripped what was done last year for the third anniversary of the occupation (before my appointment to this position). 

This time last year, KPFA broadcast from just one anti-war demonstration and did very little regular programming themed to the Iraq invasion anniversary. In contrast, this year KPFA did two live broadcasts from demonstrations opposing the occupation. We produced live coverage of the large demonstration in San Francisco on March 18, hosted by Davey D and Malihe Razazan and produced by Trinh Le, and covered the rally in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on the 19th, hosted by C.S. Soong and produced by Aaron Glantz. 

KPFA also produced special programming connected to the war throughout the weekend of March 17 and 18, including a four-hour jazz against war special and a two-hour special of the bilingual Rock en Rebelion. Programming marking the Iraq occupation anniversary played throughout the day on March 19, the actual anniversary of the war. KPFA also did extensive announcements of the anti-war demonstrations on its public affairs, music and arts programming. Each night of the week leading up to the anniversary, the Evening News announced demonstrations throughout Northern and Central California. Management asked KPFA’s Web director to create a web page to announce anti-war demonstrations (kpfa.org/demonstrations) and on-air recorded messages announcing our demonstration coverage—including the locations of the demonstrations we were broadcasting from—directed people to that web page.  

I’d like to thank all those many hard-working programmers and staff members at KPFA, including members of our First Voice Apprenticeship Program, who made our war commemoration coverage so successful. Their work highlights the fact that, as KPFA celebrates its 58th birthday this month, our commitment to shining a harsh spotlight on the causes of war is as strong today as it was in 1949 when KPFA came on the air. 

 

Sasha Lilley is interim program director for KPFA Radio. 


Commentary: The Benefits of UC’s Athletic Center Project

By Colin Hawley-Snow
Tuesday April 10, 2007

As a University of California Berkeley student and an avid supporter of the Cal Football team, I support the plan to construct a new training center for our student-athletes and to seismically upgrade Memorial Stadium. I believe that the successful completion of this project will benefit the school and the city. A highly successful athletic program brings in more money to the university, and the subsequent development of the area can help the city by potentially increasing the tax base. 

However, as a student in a planning class, I realize that some of the points that the city presents are valid concerns. The Alquist-Priolo Act that has been referenced in different articles does indeed require specialized testing for the presence of active fault zones. The use of this act in court to try and halt the development, though, seems ineffective; the university has already conducted testing in the area as part of their environmental impact report. The act does not prohibit any development as long as there are no active fault areas inside the zone. If the additional testing that is required proves that there are no fault traces in the development area, the city will only have wasted the taxpayer’s money by spending the time in court and caused an inconvenience to the university. 

The other issues that have been brought to bear against the project are little more than an attempt to confuse the issue by groups that want to get their way. The Panoramic Hill Association is against the project because they feel the additional activity would inconvenience them. However, the project plans for the stadium at this time actually call for fewer seats; there could be as many as 10,000 fewer fans attending each game. Also, the inclusion of a parking garage near the stadium will mean less parking on the street around the stadium. Although traffic may be slower for a few hours, the streets will potentially be less crowded overall. As such, Saturday afternoons would likely be less congested than they currently are if the new plan goes through. 

The other issue that is hotly contested is the proposed redevelopment of the oak grove to the west of Memorial Stadium. The tree-sitting groups claim that the coast live oaks are an essential part of the ecosystem. However, the university has plans to replant more trees than it will remove. In addition, the majority of the trees in the existing grove were planted after the stadium was constructed, and are not ancient and irreplaceable. The city’s attempt to use their coast live oak moratorium to halt the removal of the trees is invalid. While the trees are technically “within” the city’s borders, they are planted on California state property. Since the state is a higher level entity than the city, the states rules should take precedence over any city rules. The university is therefore not subject to this city law, and there is really no issue that prevents the redevelopment of the area. 

In the interest of continued healthy relations between the city and the university, it would be most beneficial for the two groups to meet outside of court and resolve their differences. The construction of the training center is vital to the continued success of the university’s athletics. I believe the remaining tree-sitters should be removed for trespassing on state property, and that the city should allow the training center to move forward. The university, in return, should study other potential sites for the parking garage, in an attempt to ease traffic concerns. There is no need for this to degenerate into a long and bloody battle.  

 

Colin Hawley-Snow is a UC Berkeley student. 


Commentary: Recreation Over Desecration

By Gabriela Urena
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Do we need fewer oaks and more jocks? UC Berkeley seems to believe that we do. There is a plan to tear down a woodland grove of coast live oaks and several redwoods only to build a new sports training facility. Although these oaks are protected under the City of Berkeley’s Live Oak Protection Ordinance, the university claims that because it is a state institution they are “not obliged to obey local environmental laws.” A grassroots citizens’ campaign has sprung made up of various leaders, students, and community members to pressure the university to reconsider, look for other sites to build the facility, and save the oaks!  

However, there are those who believe that since Berkeley has some of the worse facilities in collegiate athletics, this is a necessary project. But I ask myself, what makes them so sure that with this new facility the football program will become more successful? What are the guarantees? And if they are in such a dire need for a new facility, why wait two years—the amount of time it would take to build—for this space when they can build it somewhere else?  

There are already four lawsuits filed in Alameda Superior Court challenging the environmental impact report for the university’s Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. The lawsuits are based on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning Act. The university is ignoring the fact that the location of the stadium is dangerous. It is placed directly above the Hayward Fault, an active earthquake fault in a hazardous fire area. This area has been listed by federal and state officials as a “high-risk target served by a limited and convoluted road networks makes no sense.”  

Thus, the university is not only ignoring the environmental impacts but also transportation. As the officials note, the road networks in that area are limited and extremely congested. The roads follow the periphery of the university buildings thus there is always a lot of traffic, especially during rush hours. In case of an emergency, the area would be difficult to reach. John M. Levy, a renowned city planner, states, “The automobile exacts a variety of hidden costs that are not so covered—air pollution; death and injury from accidents; and a more scattered pattern of land use.” Thus, not only is this going to create more congestion but it can also lead to greater health risks for the citizens and visitors of Berkeley. 

Recently it was made public that Native American remains were discovered in the Memorial Oak Grove in 1923. It is a sacred site for the Native American people. Therefore, not only is the environmental incident report not being reviewed properly for all environmental impacts, but it also did not address the archeological significance of the site. The native people are not remaining silent and hosted a press conference at Memorial Oak Grove. One of the speakers Morning Star addressed the problem. “Why is it that recreation is being chosen over the desecration of our homelands and of our burial sites, our ancestors aren’t able to rest. And so we are here today to say that UC Berkeley and the City Council of Berkeley does not support native peoples in their struggle to practice their culture and to continue on our traditions… and so we’re here today…to say that we are not going to allow this expansion of this parking to here over these burial sites of these…another desecration that has been dug up.” 

The university’s proposed renovation of Memorial Stadium and construction of the $125 million sports training center is creating much controversy among students and citizens. Sadly, UC only cares about the money and supposed success it will bring to the football program and is ignoring the cry of the people to Save the Oaks and save the sacred burial land. It is ridiculous that they are trying to evade the law protecting these live oaks under the conception that they belong to the state government. Back when congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) they recognized that “in cooperation with state and local governments, and other concerned public and private organizations…[they would] promote the general welfare, to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.” This project does not respect this harmony and should not move forward. The people are speaking, Save the Ooaks!  

 

Gabriela Urena is a Berkeley resident.


Commentary: Camping Memories A Mixed Blessing

By Alan R. Meisel
Tuesday April 10, 2007

“You’re Never Too Old to Camp.” Ha! In response to Marta Yamamoto’s article in the March 13 edition, I have to say that I was already too old in my 20s to go camping. No one I grew up with in Atlanta in the 1930s and 1940s had gone camping or intended to go camping ever. In the early 1950s, when I was a college student, I had a brief experience as a counselor at a summer camp for children, and one night I camped on the ground with a group of children. 

By the time I was drafted in 1953, I had almost forgotten my first camping experience when, during my period of involuntary servitude, I had to sleep in a pup tent for a week during basic training in below-freezing weather without a sleeping bag (only blankets). I did not enjoy it. Then, in the early 1960s, as a newly married man, I was invited by my wife to go camping at Yosemite. We pulled into Tuolumne Meadows after dark and were told the campground was filled, but we could piggy-back on another campsite which was already occupied. When we awakened the next morning, we were the only ones within view sleeping directly on the ground in sleeping bags without a tent or camper. That was OK. I’m not modest. That was, I have to admit, a nice experience—a sea of stars in a black sky stand out in memory. 

Later on, after we had children, we took our three boys on a camping trip. We loaded up the car and took off. When we were getting established at the campsite and it was approaching dinnertime, we discovered that I had neglected to bring the box containing the tableware. I was all ready to carve chopsticks out of twigs, but our kids were not quite old enough to handle them, so we drove back home. 

There used to be a saying in the Decorative Art Department at Cal, before it became the Design Department, that the principal role of architecture was to keep the rain off the decorative arts. But another role of architecture, for us non-campers, is to keep you away from the outside. On the other hand, the experienced campers will have an easier time of it after the Big One, when much of the architecture will no longer keep the rain off the decorative arts or us. 

Ms. Yamamoto, in her article, talks of mosquitoes, yellow jackets, and moths with great tolerance. I was under the impression that human beings were at the top of the food chain until I realized that human beings are food for mosquitoes. And moths are not a good memory for me, since I encountered moths with seven-inch wingspans in Japan. 

But there was another camping trip to Mt. St. Helena my wife and I went on organized by Michael Ellis, of Footloose Forays, which was almost pleasant. We slept on the ground in a tent, too far from the bathroom, but the espresso from Michael’s camping-stove-top espresso pot made everything okay. And a hike one day was beautiful until, as we returned to the campsite, we encountered rain, snow, sleet, and hail all in one-half hour. 

And then there was the camping trip with our sons and dog Raku. We slept in a borrowed pup tent with the dog, who was required by the campground rules to be confined to a tent or vehicle when not on leash. In the middle of the night, Raku wanted to investigate something outside the tent, so she clawed her way through the flimsy mosquito netting. We had to buy a new tent for my brother-in-law, from whom we had borrowed the tent. 

So the memories of my very few camping experiences are a mixed blessing after all—some good memories, some bad. Now in my seventies, I don’t want to sleep anywhere it’s cold and not near a bathroom. The insects will have to get their food from somebody else. But when and if the Big One comes, I’ll reconsider. 

 

Alan R. Meisel is a Berkeley resident.


Commentary: Greening Greens

By Beebo Turman
Tuesday April 10, 2007

We hear news every day about the “greening” of our world. Architects are designing with green materials, contractors are installing recycled floors, and appliances are put into kitchen and laundry rooms that use less energy. People buy products (from light bulbs to clothing) that show that we care for our environment. Some days it seems overwhelming! “What can I do about it?” can seem daunting. 

The one thing everyone can do, every day, to help our planet survive in tack for our grandchildren, is to recycle. Included in that category is the recycling of our food wastes: composting! If we compost food scraps and kitchen papers we will go a long way of reaching our goal of “Zero Waste” in the next ten years. 

When organic matter is put in the landfill it produces methane, which is a greenhouse gas and adds to climate change. The trash we threw out in the 1950’s did not decompose or break down: in fact, the newspapers can still be read today that say “Eisenhower elected President!” Recycling your paper, bottles, and cans is important, but so is recycling your greens, i.e. composting! 

There are two ways in which your household can stop organic matter from going to the landfill: 1) You can put your food scraps and kitchen papers in your own backyard compost bin (as 50 percent of Berkeley folks do now), or 2) Pending City Council approval, you will be able to put your compostables into your green cart along with your tree trimmings, cut grasses, and dead leaves. (My own personal goal is to break myself of the habit of using paper towels and the occasional paper napkin.) 

The contents of the green cart is taken to Modesto, where Grover Landscaping Company grinds it, screens it, piles it in long wind-rows, turns it every three days, gives it a sprinkling of water, and lets the sun “cook” it into rich, fine compost in ten weeks! Grover gives the city (for our parks, community and school gardens) a portion of it, and the rest is sold to farmers in the central valley.  

If you want to compost at home, a compost bin can be purchased at a reduced rate through stopwaste.org, or by calling 444-SOIL. I collect my orange peels, onion skins, carrot ends, dead flowers and other green matter in a covered pail under my kitchen sink, and every 5 days I take it to my backyard compost bin. There I layer it with dried leaves, turn it, and sprinkle it with water. It will break down in a matter of weeks. Now that it’s spring, I can put some of this dark, rich compost in my flower and vegetable garden! 

 

Beebo Turman is a Berkeley resident.


Commentary: Green Patches

By Willi Paul
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Where is all of this green stuff taking us? Who is in charge? Is this a Green Revolution? I’m waist deep in this sustainability muck and I haven’t a clue. Many say that time is short. The problems are huge—that there are more problems to fix than Gore’s climate challenge. Some suggest that drastic measures to control the planet’s population are required stop the destruction of our natural resource base. The list of problems is endless. 

So—go organic! Go hybrid! Go recycle. Localize the movement. Are these but “software fixes” for a dying planet? That ‘ol Bill Gates download-and-install mentality in action? 

Is the Green Wave a revolution of things? Hemp shirts, Green hot tubs, bamboo floors; are Green businesses really providing us with Green solutions? What does Green profit really mean to you? 

While I agree that anything we can do to bring about a greener, more sustainable society is wise, I wonder what model we need to apply to change the world system? Is it a “new green dot-com approach” where we slowly transform traditional products to full life cycle ready consumer goods, or do you advocate a “picket the City Hall” pitch a.k.a. the anti-war movement?  

Many simply strive to not be pious, overbearing, fanatical and militant about their green lifestyle. They buy those re-usable bags for family and friends for their groceries and sell us on the positives: convenience, ease to carry the goods, and of course environmental reward. Eat organic, local and sustainable produce. Be Healthy! 

Ponder the example now playing out in the Bolivarian Revolution started by Chavez in Venezuela. It’s a community-based, bottom up approach currently being leveraged all over Latin and South American and by some of the poor souls in New Orleans. Red or Green? 

Others are working in the Fair Trade movement to help shift the imbalance and inequity in the global marketplace and by improving working conditions for growers. Cup of coffee? 

Green is ours for the making! Better get involved. At right are some groups where you can learn about your seeds. 

 

Willi Paul is a Certified Green Business consultant in Alameda County. 

 

Benicia Inconvenient Group (B.I.G.) 

www.cafevoltairebenicia.com/BIG.html 

B.I.G.’s mission is to develop local and global principles and actions to promote sustainable lifestyles and economies. 

 

 

Green Rock — Bermuda 

http://Greenrock.org 

Green Rock wants to encourage and empower individuals and companies to do their part in making Bermuda socially, economically and environmentally sustainable for future generations. 

 

 

Sustainable Living Roadshow (SLR) 

www.sustainablelivingroadshow.org 

SLR is a touring group created to educate, entertain, inspire and empower individuals and communities across the globe with information and tools necessary to live in more direct sustainable harmony with the earth. It represents a new paradigm of businesses, travel, education and entertainment. See them in 2008. 

 

 

Bay Localize 

www.bayarearelocalize.org 

Bay Localize is building a more self-reliant, sustainable, and socially just Bay Area. They develop tools that identify local opportunities, connect grassroots groups and policymakers, and advance projects that enhance regional self-reliance, sustainability, and equity.


Letters to the Editor

Friday April 06, 2007

CITY RECEIVES ACCESS AWARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last week, Berkeley’s disability community celebrated the fact that Berkeley received the “Most Accessible City in the U.S.” award from the National Organization on Disability and UPS at a public reception. 

More than 150 people with disabilities came together to celebrate Berkeley’s receiving this prestigious award which is a major honor for the city. This wonderful event was covered by KQED and many local newspapers, yet the Planet did not mention the event. I cannot understand why the Daily Planet failed to cover so important an honor. 

Berkeley has had a significant impact on the lives of people with disabilities through the activism that started here. Susan O’Hara’s inspiring speech on the history of the Independent Living Movement chronicled the many accomplishments that people with disabilities have won in the Bay Area, and how those achievements have impacted people throughout the world. 

Being the birthplace of the Independent Living Movement is one of Berkeley’s proudest accomplishments and I hope we can count on the Planet’s recognition of our community’s future accomplishments in the days ahead. 

Dmitri Belser, Executive Director 

Center for Accessible Technology 

 

• 

RESTORATION OF MARIN FOUNTAIN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The California Park and Recreation Society’s District III Awards and Installation Banquet was held April 5 at Dublin Senior Center in Dublin. An award for Outstanding Volunteer in Parks and Recreation for the City of Berkeley was being presented to Sara Holmes. 

Sara was involved in fund-raising for the restoration of the fountain in the center of the Marin Circle. Since the dedication of the fountain in 1996, she has devoted much time to the maintenance of the fountain itself, the surrounding circle and Fountain Walk. As the coordinator of an enthusiastic group of volunteers, she oversees the monthly cleanup of weeds, leaves, debris, and graffiti. Always tactful and gracious, Sara has maintained cordial relations with homeowners in the area as well as with Marc Seleznow, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront for the City of Berkeley, who nominated her for this recognition. 

Previous articles detailing Sara’s dedication have been written by Matthew Artz and published in the Berkeley Daily Planet on March 8, 2005, and August 5, 2005. These articles are available in the newspaper’s online archives. 

Working with Sara on the first Saturday of each month, the volunteer group is very appreciative of her ability to keep the group focused on necessary work while providing an opportunity for interaction amongst us all. Her attention to detail keeps the fountain an attractive asset for the neighborhood and for all the people who transit the Marin Circle every day. New volunteers are always welcome: call 526-5347. 

Cynthia Wantland 

Volunteer with Friends of the Fountain and Walk 

 

• 

TREATMENT OF THE POOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Roland Peterson takes half a page to assert/explain the good intentions of the merchants backing this initiative. For many years the Cheese Board, another Berkeley merchant, had a sign, a quote from an Anatole France, that said “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under bridges.” 

Mr. Peterson, Mr. Bates, members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Telegraph Business Improvement District, think about it.  

Teddy Knight 

 

P.S. I haven’t noticed the Telegraph Business Improvement District assessing itself to convert one of the vacant storefronts into a daytime drop-in center, which would get most of the problematic people off the street without the need to further criminalize eccentricity and increase our taxes city-wide to pay for the additional police presence this initiative will require.  

 

• 

MIDDLE SCHOOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In regard to Justin Lee and his assertion that East Coast middle schools are just grades seven and eight: I was in the 1991 pilot sixth grade class with Mrs. Tanner and Mr. Silberg at King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley when it was started as a result of the conditions to the Franklin and Craigmont schools after the 1989 earthquake. The decision to bring in a small group of sixth graders was probably traumatic for all of us young people, but it was one that I imagine was done with a lot of interest in what was done on the east coast. As a resident now of Washington, D.C., I am situated near two middle schools. One, an arts magnet established in 1957 is for grades five through eight; the other, a public charter school founded in 2001, has grades six through eight. Perhaps things were different when many of the Bay Area’s transplanted East Coasters decided to come west, but as their children go east—often at parents’ behest—we learn many of the things “that never happened on the east coast...” are in fact happening every day. And to Mr. Lee’s lament that his daughter is not getting the kind of kindergarten education he received: A quick online search of “Kindergarten Berkeley, CA” revealed 43 public, private, and non-profit kindergarten options in Berkeley. The only question I’ll ask is does your daughter enjoy her class as much as you enjoy complaining about it? 

John E. Parman 

Washington, DC  

 

• 

ALAMEDA’S MEASURE A 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last November, the citizens of Alameda elected a mayor who campaigned to “Protect Measure A.” The mayor told me that she told the Planning Board to stop using their office to overthrow Measure A.  

Last Monday the Planning Board appointed an ad hoc committee to set up forums to discuss overturning Measure A in all of Alameda.  

Last Thursday the Planning staff hired consultants using a grant from MTC to present a “convincing” case for overturning Measure A at Alameda Point. This charge was led by the senior planning staff and the vice president of the Planning Board.  

We were told by the Planning Board VP on Thursday that it was hard telling her daughter why she had to be there that evening. I should think it would be hard to tell your child that you have led the charge to overturn our density ordinance after 35 years of protecting our city from over-development. 

The mayor was quoted in the newspaper as having no objections to the Planning Board discussing Measure A in the “abstract.”  

Catellus has asked for the overthrow of Measure A in their proposal to be the developer at Alameda Point. If we can’t get a developer to make Measure A work then we should try one that can. The Preliminary Development plan is compliant with Measure A. 

The Water Transit Authority talked about service to the UCSF medical complex being built on Catellus land south of the Pac Bell Park. Their website shows that ferry going from Harbor Bay. 

AC Transit says that the percentage Alamedans who ride the bus is as high as any Bay Area community but the planning staff, not AC Transit, says that we need more density at Alameda Point. We have plenty of development on the West End to keep AC Transit happy. 

We are told that Chinatown wants more density at Alameda Point in the hopes of better transit. This is in conflict with that committee’s presentation to our City Council. 

Planning staff leaped at the opportunity posed by a member of the audience who proposed work-live for the existing BEQ and BOQ saying, “I can see a consensus building.”  

It is all outrageous. Planning has no business using MTC money (our taxpayer money) to campaign for the overthrow of Measure A. It was admitted by their own hired consultant that we will have sufficient density to support mass transit. 

Is all of this discussion in the realm of the abstract? 

Jean Sweeney 

 

• 

OAK-TO-NINTH REFERENDUM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is it a coincidence that a slick 12-page mailer from Signature Properties touting the Oak-to-Ninth project arrived in Oakland mailboxes the same week that a condescending commentary from John Russo attacking the Oak-to-Ninth Referendum Committee appeared in the Montclarion? Russo’s insistence that the committee did not use the right copy of the ordinance, and that therefore voters were misled and not given correct information is bogus. The ordinance exact ordinance the Council voted on. In addition, I challenge anyone reading this with this question—have you ever read the full text of an ordinance, a ballot proposition, or a petition you have signed? Unless you are a lawyer, or a staff member who gets paid to do so, I doubt you ever have. People signed the petitions because they wanted to vote on the project. Under Russo’s interpretation, the city clerk has no responsibility to provide a correct copy of the ordinance to the citizens, who apparently are supposed to keep a lawyer on call to make sure that city employees aren’t lying to them. And the city could pretty much make anything “referendum-proof” by simply making sure that there were so many attachments that the printing costs and weight of the petitions alone would make it impossible. If voters need to have all the information in order to make an “informed decision,” then maybe the petitions should have included information about how many dollars each of our council members has accepted in campaign donations from Signature, the text of all private meetings between city staff and the developer, not to mention what promises were made, in private, to the organizations cited in Signature’s slick brochure. 

If Mr. Russo is so concerned about transparency, why doesn’t he mention that he was asked by Signature that he was asked by Signature Properties’ lawyers to throw out the referendum, and that the reasons he states are the ones presented to him by Signature’s lawyers? The Referendum Committee are now being deposed by lawyers from firms that specialize in challenging citizen-initiated campaigns, paid for by the developer. It is ironic that Mr. Russo, the highest-paid official in the entire state, is backing a wealthy developer in an attempt to bankrupt citizens whose taxes pay his salary, then hiding behind buzzwords like “transparency.” It angers me that citizens are forced to spend their own money and give up their own time to fight a city government that WE are paying for, which seems hell-bent on selling every inch of this city to the lowest bidder. But don’t forget—David did beat Goliath. 

Jane Powell 

Oakland 

 

• 

iPODS AND THE BEATLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Unfortunately there were a number of errors in the editorial provided by Becky O’Malley regarding the Apple iPod. First, the major Apple announcement on Monday was not regarding the Beatles. It focused on the major record label EMI Music providing songs through the iTunes Music Store that are free from Digital Rights Management (DRM). The first question reporters asked after the presentation on DRM was “When are the Beatles tracks going on and will they be DRM-free?” Steve Jobs answered “I wanna know that too.” That’s all that was mentioned about the Beatles during the complete press conference. There is no mention of the Beatles in the official press release on the Apple website.  

The “Yellow Submarine iPod” is purely a rumor that was propagated after some speculation from computer industry analysts on a podcast called Macbreak Weekly. This has never been confirmed either as official or unofficial from anyone at Apple.  

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an Apple fan and therefore I pay more attention than the typical consumer. However, I think some basic reporting prowess would have lead Ms. O’Malley to discover the facts that she uses in the introduction to her article criticizing Apple.  

As for the serial number, Apple provides a very readable serial number on the box that the iPod came in. 

Dacoglu Douglas 

Oakland 

 

• 

FOUL JUSTICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Our system of justice is often described as a duel before a referee called the judge and a jury responsible for choosing the winner. It may also be described as a struggle to determine which of several incompatible perceptions of a single event is the most accurate or compelling. Neither metaphor influenced Congress last fall when it legalized a special military tribunal to dispense justice among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  

Last week this shameful piece of legislation bearing the toothless title The Military Commissions Act of 2006 bore fruit. David Hicks, a 31-year-old Australian, was judged a “ war criminal” as a result of proceedings that the military boasted to be “fair, legitimate and transparent.”  

Overlook “legitimate and transparent” for the moment and, before considering “fair,” scan the funny side. There stood a prosecuting Lt. Colonel telling the court it was “… face to face with the enemy,” implying that young Hicks was Public Enemy Number One, whereas, in fact, the man was a high school dropout in search of adventure. We should fear those who, on our behalf, put Hicks in with the “worst of the worst” more than we fear Hicks and his ilk.  

To appreciate how “fair” turned out being “foul,” consider this tribunal in the context of the Declaration of Independence in which Jefferson invites us to have “…a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.”  

To be specific, Mr. Hicks was imprisoned without charge or counsel for 64 months and finally, last week, he was sentenced to nine months—less than 15 percent of time already spent in detention—and obliged to sign a statement that his jailers did not use excessive force and to promise he would not discuss their methods for one year.  

Other Guantanamo detainees will come before this foul tribunal which brings to mind another Jeffersonian quote, this one about an infinitely more abhorrent injustice: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” 

Marvin Chachere  

San Pablo


Commentary: Students Deserve Leaders Who Engage Real Issues

By Eric Marshall
Friday April 06, 2007

Looking upon his alma mater from his place in the heavens, Mario Savio would likely be filled with a mixture of confusion and disappointment. If he was lucky enough to peer onto the UC Berkeley campus on one of the few days each semester that students demonstrate, he would witness a small band of outspoken, ostracized activists struggling to be heard amid throngs of passing iPod enthusiasts, its message drowned out by cell phone conversations. 

Discouraged, perhaps he would turn his attention to his namesake Savio Steps, where 43 years ago he led thousands of Cal students in a sit-in to advocate free speech rights. He may be momentarily comforted by the shouting that often occurs near the steps, only to be ultimately disappointed upon learning it emanates from middle-aged Berkeleites of questionable mental health or LaRouchies of dubious provenience. 

And that is when the sad reality hits home. 

We live in a time when the most vocal student activists are rallying around the right to express their love for the Messiah through bong hits. I am relieved that the most sacred of college rituals has finally been united with the most sacred Son, but is this really the debate that is to challenge our civic institutions and define our generation? For Mario’s sake, I hope not. 

The rights and interests of students are compromised on a daily basis, at the whim of policymakers and with the compliance of those appointed and elected to protect us. The state government works hard to keep taxes low. But why not raise UC student fees and disregard the fundamental premise—and purpose—of public education? Who cares? 

Who cares that students and the university have worked hard to increase diversity through outreach programs only to face state funding cuts of over 50 percent in the coming year? Who cares? 

Students care. Students care, but have for too long been burdened by a student government (the Associated Students of the University of California, or ASUC) that has squandered opportunity after opportunity to stand up for student interests and articulate a strong, united voice to taxpayers and policymakers. Students deserve leaders who will proactively engage real issues like fees, diversity, and community relations, and who recognize that it is necessary to reach beyond the boundaries of campus to affect positive change. We must come to terms with the fact that UC policy has devolved into an elaborate game of tug-o-war, with all stakeholders pulling every which way—except students, whose end of the rope has been unmanned for quite some time. 

Make no mistake: when UC Berkeley students go to the polls April 11-13, we do not need to elect another player in the game, pulling his hardest while we all go nowhere. What we need is new era of student leadership. We need leaders that will reach out and engage all of these stakeholders—the Regents, the Governor, the Legislature, the administration, the business community, taxpayers, and of course, students—to work towards cooperative, sustainable solutions that achieve our common goals. And we need an ASUC that is accessible and transparent to its constituency, because student leaders should be just as accountable for their inactions as for their actions. 

Above all, we need ASUC leaders that are willing to look beyond themselves and their friends to truly represent the common interests of all students, in a professional manner befitting the greatest public university in the nation. 

The task before us may be daunting. But Mario Savio taught us that committed, articulate students can positively influence policy. As Californians and as Golden Bears, we cannot for a moment think that the fate of public university education is beyond our control. 

 

Eric Marshall is candidate for president of the Associated Students of the University of California. He can be contacted through his website, www.ericforpresident.org.


Commentary: Still More on the Berkeley Ferry

by Paul Kamen
Friday April 06, 2007

I share Steve Geller’s vision of prioritized bus rapid transit that moves faster than the cars on our major arterials. But the extent to which this will replace personal vehicles is an open issue, and I believe Steve is applying more wishful thinking than science when he asserts that “people will flock to ride it instead of drive.” 

From a purely utilitarian point of view, transportation subsidy dollars are far more effectively spent on busses than on ferries. However, Steve’s critique of the Berkeley ferry is based on some common misconceptions which need to be corrected. 

1) The Berkeley-San Francisco ferry service will not require a huge parking lot. We are only talking 149-passenger capacity times three or four commute-hour departures. There are 2,200 existing parking spaces at the Marina, mostly empty on weekdays. Nearly 1,000 spaces will be within a short walk of the ferry terminal at either of the two candidate sites. Weekday ferry parking will be efficient shared use of this resource. 

2) Yes, every car trip from the ferry terminal involves a cold start. Compare to the cold start from a parking garage in the City, followed by an hour of stop-and-go across the bridge. The ferry will not have the capacity to make a serious dent in congestion or air quality, but the marginal effect is clearly positive by turning long car trips into short ones. The important point here is that the ferry will not be a viable alternative to busses or BART - it will be an alternative to driving across the bridge in heavy traffic. It will attract riders who would not otherwise take public transit at all. 

3) There will be expanded bus service directly to the ferry terminal. This is an important part of the Water Transit Authority’s proposal. 

If I may confuse the issue with some facts, here are the actual efficiency numbers for various modes of transportation in terms of energy per passenger-mile: 

Single-occupancy car: 

 

7,000 BTU per passenger-mile (assuming 20 MPG) 

3,500 at 40 MPG 

1,167 at 40 MPG in carpool lane with three passengers 

 

AC Transit Bus: 

660 BTU/passenger-mile with 56 passengers 

1,320 at 50 percent passenger load 

 

New low-emissions 149-passenger ferry 

2,400 BTU/pax-mile, full passenger load 

4,800 at 50 percent passenger load 

 

Light Rail 

91 BTU/pax-mile, full passenger load 

182 at 50 percent passenger load. 

 

BART 

68 BTU/pax-mile, full passenger load 

136 at 50 percent passenger load 

 

The inconvenient truth here is that a modern high-mileage car with three passengers is delivering about the same fuel efficiency as a bus. BART is the hands-down winner, with light rail close behind. The small ferry uses about twice as much energy per passenger-mile as a bus, but is still much cleaner than a typical car with only one occupant. 

So why pour subsidy into ferries? Answer: Because people like ferries. The 2005 survey found that Berkeley residents favor establishing a new ferry service by an eight-to-one margin. It’s a quality of life thing, not a practical solution to traffic or air quality when we already have a bridge and a tunnel. We agree that we can’t justify a per-trip subsidy that’s any higher than the subsidy for BART or busses, so the ticket price should reflect actual costs. 

The actual cost to operate the service will probably be around $8.50 per one-way trip. This is what the privately operated Tiburon and Sausalito ferries now charge. If we keep the fare close to that level, the scale of service will remain appropriately small and stay within the capacity of the existing marina infrastructure. 

Elitist? Not compared to driving a single-occupancy vehicle across the bridge during peak congestion hours and parking it downtown for the day. Still, we need to avoid the public-policy trap of over-subsidizing those who can easily afford full fair. And we should also offer deep discounts to those arriving by bike or bus (similar in concept to the free crossing of the Bay Bridge offered to carpools). 

Actually, a passenger-only ferry service is a bus advocate’s dream: It forces people to use the bus for at least one end of their trip, even if they never would have considered taking the bus without the ferry ride as part of the deal. 

 

Paul Kamen is a naval architect who serves on the Berkeley Waterfront Commission 


Commentary: KPFA’s Tradition of Advocacy is Threatened

By Marc Sapir
Friday April 06, 2007

Nancy Keiler writes (Letters, March 27) castigating KPFA for not covering Barbara Lee-Ron Dellums-Sean Penn at Grand Lake Theater on Mar. 24. I sympathize with Kieler. The current lethargy in coverage of events—government hearings and such—by KPFA results from the tenacious battle that has been going on inside KPFA and Pacifica since listeners and staff defeated the self-perpetuating Pacifica National Board attempted coup under the infamous Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry. Berry had every intention of moving the network away from its radical populist roots. Ironically she might still get her way, as the following memo attacking advocacy journalism reveals:  

 

To: Miguel Molina 

Re: Call to Action on Flashpoints 

 

While hosting Flashpoints on Thursday 3/15, you urged people to attend the rally scheduled for Sunday 3/18 at Civic Center Plaza by telling listeners to be there. 

Due to issues of liability, KPFA programmers are not permitted to urge listeners to attend an event. If damage suits stem from injuries suffered at an event, KPFA could be held liable for actively urging participation. Last Year, on March 22, following a remote broadcast from a rally in San Francisco, chief engineer Michael Yoshida sent a memo to you and the other producers of the rally asking you to be aware of and prevent such language in future broadcasts. This is a second notification. KPFA program hosts may not actively urge listeners to attend events. This is the case whether during a regular program or a special remote broadcast. Thank you for your cooperation, 

Sasha Lilley 

Interim Program Director 

 

If KPFA is renowned for anything it is its advocacy journalism—for its support of the rights of oppressed people. From the days of the broadcast of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, KPFA has set its sights on telling truth to power and advocating action by and in defense of the dispossessed and powerless. On a daily basis that advocacy involves urging people to become involved socially and politically in various movements. I listened to the Hard Knock program at 4 p.m. on March 28, and heard Davey D urge his audience to attend an event with Fred Hampton, Jr. the next evening, when Fred would talk about police brutality against the Black community, how the prison system is being used to abridge the rights of that community and other political rallying issues. It was righteous advocacy by Davey D who apparently had not been cautioned by the Interim Program Director.  

With new KPFA “management” targeting both advocacy and a key leftist producer, the internal struggle within KPFA has taken a dangerous turn. Molina was singled out. Equally important, the “rule” used against him, if enforced generally, will spell the end of KPFA. Its audience would dwindle. Yet, once applied to Molina, do the current managers think they can simply not apply it equally to all?  

Sasha Lilley, IPD, a staff Union Representative and activist member of the paid staffgroup has repeatedly ridiculed the elected station Board as nothing but a group of outside provocateurs. Meanwhile, she and her comrades perpetuate internal chaos at the station. In her world she is a staunch feminist, socialist and Marxist. We hear that her father was an English communist and I know her mother is a local activist. But in the sad world we all inhabit today Ms. Lilley is merely the agent of the wrong changes at KPFA: changes moving toward a purge of Flashpoints—one of the programs Molina is attached to—for its open advocacy of Palestinian, Haitian and undocumented rights—and perhaps purges of other radical activists who insist that advocacy is a necessary part of a station founded by people who preferred jail to collaboration with injustice.  

KPFA’s “interim” managers can ignore that Homeland Security is knocking on doors and tapping computers and raiding the homes of Latinos as they blanket attack each elected local station board. But they are playing with fire and with the lives of millions who depend upon KPFA to not back down from its mission to be a voice for the voiceless. The inside core staff controls management. The station board, even when it is united and collaborative, is largely powerless, despite new by-laws. Presently, core staff determines what you hear on the air—what programs get added or subtracted, what hearings, meetings and demonstrations do or don’t get covered.  

Sasha’s memo speaks to the hostile approach, the dominance approach, that could turn KPFA into a weak stepchild of the public broadcasting system. How could KPFA be a useful tool for the GI resisters’ movement, the immigrants’ rights and sanctuary movements, the prison reform and opposition movements, the new sds (already at160 chapters), the Single Payer health care movement, the anti-state torture and death penalty activists, if such edicts are upheld? And even the less provocative but no less important coverage of Congressional hearings, the Barbara Lee event, etc., is collapsing because the station and network are being mangled. Staff’s internal anarchy fronts itself as an internal core-unity protecting the cultural hearth from the ruthless barbarians. They should read J.M. Coetzee to understand themselves better. 

Two managers ago the paid staff obstructed Gus Newport. Faced with that hostility, Gus decided to back off and withdrew his support from a publicly popular minor change in programming that leftist staff and listeners had promoted (moving Amy Goodman’s outstanding “Democracy Now!” to 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. during prime drive time). When staff allies of Gus would not back off the reform at his request, he opted to resign. One manager ago paid staff united to launch a campaign of open defiance to authority six months after they themselves had supported Roy Campanella as the station manager. They blamed the listener majority on the station board for that crisis also. Then this past year the core staff went out and created their own slate of listener candidates for the station board (a clear violation of the intent of the by-laws won by the court case to which many thousands were a party) and succeeded in getting several candidates they endorsed elected. But that doesn’t address the issue of staff non-collaboration with listener communities of interest. Falling listenership will continue unless they begin to collaborate more broadly with radical activism. Nationally, the same kind of turmoil has beset the other Pacifica stations and the Pacifica national office, blocking national programming. It’s a pattern. But why? 

We should assume there are indeed COINTELPRO types operative in this environment. KPFA and Pacifica are the independent media with the biggest public reach in the United States. The more the corporate media is compelled by political crises and class divides to distort reality, the greater the threat independent media’s efforts at “truth telling” becomes. One need only read about the level of NYCPD infiltration of organizations all over the United States before the Republican Convention and the FBI’s thousands of unauthorized cases of spying to realize that there are paid provocateurs operative in every political environment these days.  

The problem we face with KPFA is that when people—both staff and those who are critics of KPFA management and staff behavior—behave provocatively and are unwilling to clarify and negotiate over their differences within the institution, this advances the surreptitious attack on KPFA. When Larry Bensky went live discussing KPFA-Pacifica problems on Sunday, March 25, he proclaimed that listener reps on the board know nothing about radio, or management, and do little or nothing to help support KPFA. Yet LaVarn Williams, a finance expert, was once KPFA’s leader in organizing the 50-year anniversary celebration and fundraising efforts. She sits on both the local board and the National Board and is a dissident. Willie Ratcliff publishes the Bay View Newspaper in Hunters point. Based in his own activism in the Black community and the paper, Radcliff is a highly respected leader. Willie is a moderate man but was often a dissident in the divide over staff intransigence. There are others as well who deserve respect, but who are always lumped together as obstructionists. It’s a travesty especially because one particular staff member representing paid staff on the Board has been the biggest obstacle to amicable collaboration, using destabilizing tactics to prevent open discussions.  

I don’t think our Bay Area community will let KPFA fall. The Bay Area is vibrant and politicized, in part due to KPFA. The listeners aren’t going away. People hostile to social and institutional advances have underestimated this public before and are doing so again. People—of any political persuasion—with an anti-democratic agenda eventually expose themselves as provocateurs and become ineffective. But do we have the time? Important communities and grassroots movements that I mentioned—and our democratic culture—are under attack. New movements from below need access to the public. KPFA is not broadly approaching these growing grassroots resistance movements and inviting them to become elements in regular programming so that advocacy is understood to be the hallmark of the station. Instead there is resistance to advocacy. The antidote is the reversal of Sasha’s warning. Managers who attack advocacy in programming should be replaced by staff—as a confidence-building measure—because KPFA needs to “belong” to its listeners and supporters in collaboration with the staff to weather storms ahead. If staff remains intransigent, they will precipitate a more divisive public response. 

 

Marc Sapir is executive director of  

Retro Poll.


Message From Iraq: Me, the Light Brigade and John McCain

By Jane Stillwater
Friday April 06, 2007

Good grief! Iraq is just brimming with news. I don’t even know where to begin. At 4 am this morning, a huge armored vehicle moved us from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone in a convoy composed of vehicles that looked like they had just came out of a Toys R Us catalog.  

Nobody in Iraq seems to need sleep. Not even me. But they don’t go without food. Did you know that the average American soldier in Iraq gains 26 pounds—while the average insurgent lives on rice and beans? If that doesn’t give our troops an edge here, then what will? If we are now entering the fourth year of this war and it still is bogged down even despite our tremendous Cheesecake advantage, the Bush guys are in big trouble. But I digress. 

I’ve been here in Iraq for three days and this is the first day I have even seen—let alone talked to—an Iraqi. So I started at the top and interviewed an Iraqi general. His basic message seems to be that the Iraqi army now has about 25 new ways to kill people and/or make them go to their rooms. “We have more troops, more joint security stations, more ammunition, more tips from informants, more security....” Then his translator went on and on about how the Iraqi army is eliminating tourists. Tourists? Oh, he meant Terrorists. My bad. 

Then I spoke with an American admiral who stated, “The people of Iraq need to be able to walk to the local coffee shop safely.” By this does he mean that after four whole years of occupation, people still can’t walk safely to the coffee shop—or does he mean that what Iraq needs today is more Starbucks? I’m confused. 

After that, you will never guess what happened next! I got to interview John McCain! Seriously. He was here. Right here in the press room. Which is fifty feet down the corridor and around the corner from the cot where I had dumped off all my stuff this morning and is now my new home. Sen. McCain, Sen. Graham, Rep. Pence and Rep. Renzi had put together what appeared to be the 2007 GOP Hype-the-War Tour. “Do you think that they will give us souvenir T-shirts of the tour,” I asked some guy from CNN. Probably not. 

Anyway, Sen. McCain and his backup singers were here and even though I don’t agree with them, I was glad that they came. It takes courage to come to Iraq.  

"Our new strategy is making progress,” said McCain. 

"We are doing things differently,” said Sen. Graham. “We cannot let suicide bombers set the pace. If we talk about leaving and losing, the car bombers win.” Then Graham talked about how the four of them went down to the Baghdad market today and it was perfectly safe. “We bargained and bought rugs.”  

Pence agreed about the safety of the market. Later, however, he added that they did have to travel there in Humvees and be escorted by soldiers and wear body armor—but other than that... 

Later I talked with an Iraqi reporter who said that the market they went to was the safest in the city and several American reporters added that walking around in Baghdad without troops backing you up was suicidal and anyone who did something like that had a death wish. 

Renzi then stated that, “We will not turn our backs on the Iraqi people,” and the other Dream Boys agreed. And apparently if the bill to end the war makes it through Congress, Bush will veto it. “The president [sic] will veto any bill that will cut the legs out from under the military,” added Graham.  

So far, the group had talked a lot about how to make the “war” policy regarding Iraq succeed, but none of them talked about the elephant in the living room—that the policy itself is fatally flawed. But I did! Shut up, Jane.  

Yes, even with all those Senators and reporters and everything there I still had to have my say. So. Exactly what DID I say to John McCain? Sorry but you’re gonna have to die of suspense a little bit longer. Someone just brought me some food! 

Fried chicken, meatloaf, honeyed carrots, mashed potatoes, green beans and cookies! Giant chocolate chip cookies, macadamia nut cookies, peanut butter cookies, chocolate fudge cookies. Hey! You forgot the cheesecake. 

So. What did I say to Sen. McCain? I gave him my famous “Light Brigade” speech. “I have been so completely impressed,” I began, “by the quality, training, competence and skill of our troops here. They represent yet another generation in a long line of competent and capable Americans.” McCain smiled and nodded his head, thinking I had finished my speech. Not.  

"But,” I continued, just getting warmed up, “our troops are also like the heroes of Lord Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ They are fighting bravely and well in a situation caused by a blunder. So why should we senselessly continue to put our troops in harm’s way for a mistake?” Or in order to appease some greedy, immature Lord Nelson wannabe. It doesn’t make sense to destroy a whole generation of American soldiers just to support Bush and Cheney.  

Then I got down to the heart of my question. Giving McCain that special look that us moms usually reserve for recalcitrant children, I said, “And after this terrible blunder in Iraq, are you then going to go ahead and make that same horrible mistake in Iran?” 

McCain’s answer was brief. “No comment.”  

 

Berkeley resident Jane Stillwater is blogging about her trip to the Middle East. To read all her dispatches, visit her sponsoring newspaper, The Lone Star Iconoclast, at www.lonestaricon.com/2007/Archives/Stillwater/index.htm or visit Stillwater’s own website, http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com.


Columns

Column: Dispatches From the Edge: Africa: The Right’s Stuff

By Conn Hallinan
Tuesday April 10, 2007

The full-page ads in the New York Times are wrenching: children in the last stages of starvation, terrified refugees, and burned out villages. They are the images that come to mind when most Americans think about the Sudan.  

But while the human rights crisis in Darfur is real—somewhere between 100,00 and 200,000 people have died since 2003—a seasoned cadre of neo-conservatives and right-wingers have latched on to the issue, pushing an agenda that favors military over political solutions.  

They include Elliot Abrams and Nina Shea, both of whom played key roles in the Reagan administration’s wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, leading conservative evangelical Christians, and two of the country’s most right-wing legislators, U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado).  

Behind the rhetoric of the “war on terrorism,” the Bush administration has a long-term strategy for Africa that turns butter into guns.  

The White House recently established a separate U.S. military command for Africa—AFRICOM—and this past December directly intervened in Somalia’s civil war. The United States is also spreading a network of military clients throughout North Africa and the Sahara, and is even considering military action against anti-government insurgents in Nigeria. A key person in this new aggressiveness is long-time neo-conservative “prince,” Elliot Abrams. 

When he was appointed chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF) in 1999, Abrams began levering U.S. foreign policy away from a concern for poverty toward a focus on “religious persecution” in the Sudan, Russia and China. 

In 2002 he was appointed senior director of Near East and North African Affairs, just as the Bush administration began basing troops in Djibouti on the strategic Horn of Africa. Some of those forces took part in the recent invasion of Somalia. Abrams also helped launch the Trans-Sahel Counterterrorism Initiative that has drawn a number of countries in North Africa and areas bordering the Sahara into a web of military alliances. 

Abrams is currently the National Security Advisor for Global Democracy and Strategy and the point person on Israel. His philosophy of diplomacy is probably best summed up by a line from a chapter he wrote in the New American Century’s Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy: “Our military strength and willingness to use it will remain a key factor in our ability to promote peace.” 

Negotiations are not his forte. William LeoGrande, Dean of the American University School of Public Affairs, and an expert on Central America, says that that Abrams’ track record demonstrates that he won’t “negotiate with adversaries,” but, instead, insists “on total victory, as if foreign policy were a moral crusade in which compromise was an anathema.”  

Abrams’ one prior involvement with Africa was his opposition to a diplomatic solution to South Africa’s 1975 attack on Angola just after that country had freed itself from Portugal. 

Force has always been central to the neoconservative view of the world. During the 1980s, Abrams helped organize the contra war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, and took part in the cover up of the horrendous El Mazote massacre in El Salvador by a U.S.-trained government battalion.  

Abrams’ vice-chair on the CIRF was Nina Shea of Freedom House, an organization with a long rap sheet on destabilizing countries, including recently attempting to dislodge Hugo Chavez’s in Venezuela. 

Shea founded the Puebla Institute in 1986 to fight the growth of liberation theology in Latin America and, according to former Contra leader, Edward Chamorro, worked with the groups trying to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Like Abrams, Shea focuses on the issue of religion rather than human rights. According to Newsweek Magazine, Shea made “Christian persecution Washington’s hottest topic.” 

A 2003 Human Rights Watch report entitled, “Sudan, Oil and Human Rights,” charges that when Abrams was chair and Shea vice chair of CIRF, they advocated assisting the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) the principle military opponent of the Sudan government. The Bush administration ended up backing the umbrella National Democratic Alliance of Sudan, which was dominated by the SPLM. 

Abrams and Shea pushed hard to get Congress to declare the crisis in Darfur “genocide,” a designation that would permit military intervention. But while on the surface some kind of military intervention in Sudan would seem a no-brainer, Darfur is complex: a brutal conflict between nomads and agriculturalists, a proxy war between Sudanese elites in Khartoum, and an arena of regional competition between Sudan, Chad and Niger. A military “solution” may end up making things worse, not better.  

Two of Congress’s most conservative legislators, Brownback and Tancredo, pushed hard for the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, which urges military intervention in the Sudan.  

Brownback is co-sponsor of legislation that would allow local, state, and federal officials to overrule the courts on religious issues; he calls abortion a “holocaust,” compares stem cell research to Nazi medical experiments, and says global warming is “a hoax.”  

Tancredo is also in deep in right field on a host of issues. He told a Florida radio station that if “fundamentalist Muslims” attacked the U.S. with a nuclear device, the United States should bomb Mecca, and he refers to Miami as a “third world country.” 

Two other key actors for the Bush administration in Sudan are Robert Seiple, the former CEO of World Vision, a Christian aid and advocacy organization active in 22 African countries, and Andrew Natsios, head administrator for the U.S. Aid and Development Agency (USAID) from 2001 to 2006, when he was appointed Special Envoy to the Sudan. 

According to John Eibner, chief executive officer of Christian Solidarity International, “domestic pressure” from Christian groups played a key role into pushing the U.S. to get involved in the Sudan. 

Seiple, a former Marine pilot in Vietnam, was appointed to the CIRF when it was formed in 1998 and lobbied for supporting the armed resistance to the Khartoum government. Natsios is a controversial figure because he opposed distributing drugs to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa when he was the USAID administrator. He told the House International Relations Committee that patients would be unable to take medications on time, because “African don’t know what Western time is. Many people in Africa have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives.” The comment stirred widespread anger among Africans and AIDS activists. 

The people running the Bush administration’s strategy for Africa use the rhetoric of “freedom” and “stability,” but their policies have seen an increasing military presence on the continent, the overthrow of a government which had finally brought peace to Somalia, and the establishment of alliances with authoritarian governments in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Chad. 

A good many people are skeptical about the benefits of the Bush administration’s designs for Africa.  

“Many African affairs analysts remain unconvinced [that the United States’ primary concern is not about oil and resources], perceiving a race with China for the control of the continent with potentially unsavory consequences for Africans,” writes Nigerian-based journalist Dulue Mbachu. 

Nicole Lee of TransAfrica, the leading African-American organization concerned with Africa, is blunter: “This is nothing short of a sovereignty and resource grab.” 

The National Energy Policy Development Group estimates that by 2015, a quarter of U.S. oil imports will come from Africa. Most of these will come from the Gulf of Guinea, but Sudan has the second largest reserves on the continent. 

Many of the Bush administration’s central players in all this have close ties to Vice President Dick Cheney. It was Cheney’s National Policy Energy Development Group that recommended back in 2001 that the U.S. “make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy,” a blueprint the administration has closely adhered to. 

Given the actors and the script, it is hard not to conclude that the Bush administration’s strategy for Africa is less about freedom and God than about oil and earthly power. 


Column: X Plus Y Equals NBA and PG&E

By Susan Parker
Tuesday April 10, 2007

“Sit down,” I said to the sixth-grader standing at his desk to my right. It was another day of substitute teaching. I needed to prove that I was in control. 

“What?” he asked, although I knew he could hear me perfectly well. 

“Sit down,” I said again. “Sit down in your seat.” 

“I can’t,” he said. 

“Why not?” I asked. 

“I’ve got ADD,” he said. 

“ADD?”  

“Yeah,” he said. “You know what that is?” 

“Yes,” I said. 

“Then you know.” 

“Know what?”  

“That I can’t sit down.”  

“But you can,” I said. “And you must.” 

“Why?” 

“Because.”  

It was 8:30 a.m. and I was already losing my ability to reason. Why couldn’t he stand if he wanted to? 

“Because everyone else is sitting down,” I said. Pathetic. And my explanation wasn’t even true. The six-foot tall eleven-year-old next to the Attention Deficit Disorder kid was also standing.  

“Sorry,” said ADD. “But I can’t sit down. My teacher lets me stand up.” 

We stared at one another. 

“I take pills for it,” he added. 

“And?” 

“They haven’t kicked in yet.” 

“When did you take them?”  

“This morning.” 

“How long do they take to work?” 

“You never know. It could be hours.” 

“Sit down,” I said again. 

“Jeez,” he said as he sat down.  

“Pull your chair up so that you can reach your desk,” I said. 

“Jeez,” he repeated as he scooted his chair forward.  

“And you,” I said to the Goliath next to him. “You sit down, too.” 

“Can’t,” he said.  

“Why not?” I asked between my teeth. I could feel my blood pressure rising.  

“Gotta leg cramp.” 

“Get over it,” I said. “And sit down.” 

He sat, but appeared to be in excruciating pain. His left leg extended into the middle of the aisle. It was long and distracting. I did my best to ignore it.  

We went on with our math lesson, something about X equaling Y. Soon the boys were standing up again.  

“How are you guys ever going to get jobs?” I asked, “if you can’t sit down at a desk?”  

“I’m going to be a plumber,” said the short one with ADD. 

“I’m going to play for the NBA,” said the tall one.  

I gave up. They stood at their desks for the rest of the day.  

That afternoon when I arrived home, I found that my house was filled with the smell of gas. I called PG & E. An inspector came over and diagnosed the problem as a leak in a pipe somewhere under the house. “You need a plumber,” he said as he turned off the gas. “You won’t be able to cook or shower tonight. Someone needs to check this out ASAP.” 

I called a plumber. He arrived the next day. “Four hundred and fifty dollars to test the gas lines,” he said. “Four hundred if you pay cash.” 

“What do you need to do?” I asked. 

“I have to crawl under the house.” 

“Yuck!” 

He shrugged. “Somebody’s got to do it.” 

I watched the plumber as he held a flashlight and wiggled through a small dark opening that led to the bowels of my home. A while later he emerged. “It’s nasty in there,” he said, “but I’ve seen worse. I’ll have to replace the hot water heater and the pipes to it. Two thousand dollars. Less if you pay cash.” 

“Do I have a choice?” I asked.  

“Not really,” he said. “You could get someone else. You could crawl under the house yourself.” 

“Did you ever have trouble sitting in your seat when you were in elementary school?” I asked.  

“What?” 

“Nothing,” I said. “I’ll go get my wallet.”  


Green Neighbors: Pollen, Cloning and Why We Need Healthy Trees

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Why did I spend most of last week sneezing? Why do half the people on the street seem to be sneezing along with me? Is it a peculiarly Berkeley sort of performance art? 

No, right now it’s mostly the trees. I’m breathing an unrestrained sigh of relief because the fruitless mulberries on my street have mostly stopped their incontinent pollinating and their flowers are falling off. What looks like a mass die-off of homely gray caterpillars on the sidewalks—that’s them.  

Over the last couple of decades, as Thomas Ogren points out in his intriguing book Safe Sex in the Garden, there has been a shift in the sort of trees being planted, especially by public entities. Lots of “fruitless” trees and shrubs are being used because they’re “cleaner”—they don’t drop fruit or seeds on the sidewalk. As we’re seeing, that doesn’t mean they don’t make a mess. They’re being mass-produced, as big nurseries take on the methods of any other industrial enterprise. And they’re all males.  

All our trees are flowering plants, unless you’re counting tree ferns. Trees like pines and other conifers; oaks, alders, olives, and those mulberries, whose flowers are inconspicuous, are usually pollinated by wind. That’s why they don’t need showy blooms to attract pollinators.  

Male flowers produce pollen, and if there aren’t any handy females, where’s all that pollen to go? Into your lungs and mine, and that might be one reason pollen allergy rates are rising all over North America. When your exposure to some random allergen hits a certain lifetime threshold, you discover you’re allergic because you’re sneezing or wheezing or itching or worse. Here’s the rub: that threshold is unknown before you hit it, and so’s the particular allergen.  

A lot of these “non-messy” trees are cultivars that have been planted as replacements for the street trees killed by Dutch elm disease in the 50s and 60s. People had all sorts of ideas about streamlined living then, same as we do now. 

A cultivar—the name of a plant that you see in single quotes on its tag—is often a clone, reproduced by a scaled-up version of what Aunt Tillie did when she rooted a slip of tradescantia in water. All-male clones are produced either from a male of a dioecious species, which has staminate (male) and pistillate (female) flowers on separate plants, rather the way we mammals do it; or from the staminate parts of a monoecious species, which has both kinds of flowers in different places on each plant.  

Plants have a complicated assortment of sexual arrangements; a Falwell among them would either prosper on an endless indignation supply or confuse himself to death.  

And there’s a funny thing about cloning trees: If you clone a redwood from cuttings that come from the top of the tree, it will usually be taller and skinnier, more upward-tending, than a clone from the bottom branches of the same tree. (Yes, people do. They get cuttings from redwood tops by firing a shotgun up into the tree and gathering the bits of tree that fall. I kid you not.) 

Similarly, if you clone a twig that has only male flowers on it, you’ll get an all-male tree of a species that is normally hermaphroditic, with both sexes usually occurring in one plant. if you’re a big wholesale grower, you’ll do this a few thousand times and sell a few thousand genetically identical trees to your big clients and voila, drifts of pollen are wafting across the city.  

Add to the pollen count any number of other allergens like molds and mildews that got their boost with winter’s first rains, insects and their leavings, and just plain dust (including rubber from tires wearing on roads) and it’s a miracle we’re all breathing.  

Ogren and tree-lovers in general agree on some common-sense considerations for our trees. A less-than-healthy tree will typically carry a greater load of insects and molds (including the molds that flourish on the insects’ droppings), and the insects’ dander and the molds’ spores are powerful allergens. Choosing trees that will prosper where they’re planted and keeping them healthy will reduce that load.  

That will also conveniently and thriftily reduce the need for safety pruning, line-clearance pruning, and pesticide spraying. Healthy trees do all their good work more vigorously, and live longer.  

That good work includes trapping and filtering literally tons of airborne particulates and noxious gases that we’d otherwise be breathing—and, of course, producing oxygen and cooling our cities and mitigating cities’ effects on climate. 

That, plus much-needed bird and beneficial critter habitat, efficiently vertical. In a civilized society, we’d even be getting lots of free fruit from urban trees. Maybe that’s a goal to work toward, someday. 

 

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

 

Photograph: Ron Sullivan 

Good riddance: The flowers are falling off the mulberries, finally.


Column: Undercurrents: ‘Great God, Where Is the Ship?’

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday April 06, 2007

And thus Captain Ahab shouted as he clung to the side of the great white whale in the midst of the sea, stabbing at it over and over with his harpoon: ‘I turn my body from the sun. … Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!’ 

“… Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths. 

“For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then turned. ‘The ship? Great God, where is the ship?’ Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom ... And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.” 

—Herman Melville, from the novel Moby Dick 

 

 

It would appear that America at war in Iraq has a madman like Captain Ahab at the helm of the ship of state and, like the officers of the ill-fated Pequod, the members of the United States Congress now have an enormous dilemma immediately facing them while they struggle to save that ship. 

Is George Bush actually a madman? Who knows what lurks within the hearts of such men? What we do know is that, bunkered down and entrenched in his insistence that we continue the war in Iraq at any cost to an end we cannot fathom, Mr. Bush may not be a madman, but he certainly is looking more and more like he is playing one, convincingly, on TV. And in the coming showdown over the funding of the Iraq war, events may overtake us so rapidly that it may be difficult to tell the difference between the reality and the pretense and the posturing of the man whom we call President, and by the time we figure it out, it may be too late. 

So, some thoughts and advice to our friends in the National Congress. 

It is said by those among us who are experts on the military that retreat under enemy fire—or withdrawal, if that term makes you feel more comfortable about discussing the subject—is probably the most difficult and dangerous maneuver an army can attempt. You do not have to be a military expert to understand why this would be so. Either entrenched or moving forward, an army’s eyes and weapons can be easily pointed to both the front and either side. But try walking backward, or walking forward while looking and pointing something menacing in your hands in the opposite direction, behind you, and you will quickly see that this is not a neat trick, even if no one is lobbing artillery shells and rockets and bullets your way. 

And thus, any withdrawal of American military forces from the front lines of the war in Iraq—either into fortress bases within that nation or to ring Iraq from surrounding Middle Eastern countries—would be a delicate and dangerous business calling, first, for careful, coordinated planning between the Defense and State Departments and the commanders and officers of both the American armed forces and the Iraqi Army which must, by necessity, take their places in the field. 

But while the Bush Administration has shown itself wondrously adept at scheming and political maneuvering, it has proven that long-range government planning is not its strong suit, even when it concerns issues about which it is enthusiastic and in which it believes it should play an active role. And leaving Iraq, we know, is not something it is especially enthusiastic about. 

If it were forced to abandon its commitment to continue the war in Iraq, one could argue that the Bush Administration would not deliberately sabotage the effort and precipitate a chaos in its wake in order to justify its dire predictions. But we can probably be assured that by reluctant foot-dragging coupled with its general incompetence, it could cause a result that would be virtually indistinguishable. 

And that is what leaves members of the United States Congress in a dilemma, particularly those who either feel that the United States never should have invaded Iraq, or, having failed in our mission, should now leave. 

These Congressional forces have coalesced to pass bills—slightly different in the Senate and the House—that grant continued money for the war effort only so long as it is coupled with a timetable for withdrawal. 

Mr. Bush has promised that he will veto the legislation, leaving war opponents with the choice of either introducing a new spending bill that funds the war effort without the withdrawal language—opting to fight that withdrawal battle at another time—or, alternatively, refusing to pass any new funding approval that does not include the withdrawal language, forcing the President to back off and sign, or else forcing a defacto withdrawal by leaving U.S. armed forces without food or bullets to shoot or gasoline to put in their humvees and helicopters. 

Most of my friends on the left—longtime opponents of the war—argue that Congress is obligated on moral grounds to draw a line in the sand, and draw it right now. The war is morally wrong, they say, and the funding should be withheld—not a dollar more for war—and if chaos ensues, so be it, since temporary chaos is preferable to continued killing. If one believes that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is morally wrong, it is difficult to argue with this position. 

But that does not ease the burden of decision for those in the Congress who believe the war should end. 

Anti-war members of Congress have a duty and obligation to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq as quickly as possible, but must do so—as much as possible—in a way that makes this a permanent military withdrawal, and not a prelude to U.S. military re-entry into a wider Middle East war. In this, the recent past is not a guide. There was virtually no chance that once out of Vietnam, the U.S. military would have been immediately re-introduced into another Southeast Asian war. The U.S. had geo-political interests in Southeast Asia as a battleground in the Cold War with Russia and China, but no vital economic interests beyond that. This is not the case with the Middle East, where the preservation of and access to vast oil reserves are currently in America’s national interest—much as the green among us are working to make it less so. 

There is currently a fragile anti-war majority in America, with most Americans feeling that the U.S. army should leave Iraq. This is what led to the overturn of the Republican majority in both houses of Congress in the last election. But that anti-war majority is tenuous, coming of age based more on the Bush Administration’s bungling of the war in Iraq than on widespread American war opposition in theory or in principle. Events following a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq—such as a wider Middle Eastern war resulting in an immediate threat to the area’s oil reserves, for example, leading to gas rationing and $10 a gallon pump prices—could quickly make that majority turn to beating plowshares back into swords. 

So where does that leave us? 

Much as we would like them to move immediately, Congress must move cautiously on the war issue. Because the anti-war majority in the country has not yet hardened, this is not the time to test its resolve in a showdown with the President. If Mr. Bush vetoes the military spending bill because of its withdrawal language—as he has promised—Congress should give in, and pass legislation that leaves the withdrawal language out. A point will have been made, and in the next budget showdown—which will inevitably come—the anti-war members of Congress will have the stronger hand.  

Bush might blink in this first standoff, and sign a military funding bill with withdrawal language, but it is more likely that he will not. Like Captain Ahab, so consumed by his pursuit of Moby Dick that he failed to see the consequences to ship and crew, Mr. Bush may have lost sight of the dangers to the nation and the world in his pursuit of his aims, whatever they are. Congress has to be the more responsible party, with thoughts not only for today and tomorrow, but for the long term as well. 

Does this mean that the anti-war forces outside of Congress should lie down and be quiet in the interim? Absolutely not. National sentiment against the war in Iraq grew, in no small part, because of the protesters and public speakers and agitators who have consistently opposed the war, the people who wrote editorials and letters and commentary and spoke up wherever there was someone to listen, and that opposition should continue, and even escalate. Anti-war elements in the Congress will need that agitation and that push from the outside, perhaps more so, now, than ever. This is not a counsel for retreat. But like the tide coming up on the shore, sometimes things must be pulled back a bit, and gathered, before a final rush take the waves completely over the rocky barriers.


Incorporating Modern Technology Into Arts and Crafts Interiors

By Jane Powell
Friday April 06, 2007

It’s one of those discussions that only Arts and Crafts people would have, because we’re weird. The basic question is, “What would Stickley do with a computer?” (Gustav Stickley, for those who don’t know, was a famous furniture designer and proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement during the first two decades of the 20th century.) There seem to be two points of view on the question: the “Oh, he’d just stick it out on a library table” camp and the “No, he would have designed a special piece of furniture for it” camp. 

In no way am I saying there’s a right answer to the question, but in many ways the struggle to have both technology AND art IS the central question of the original Movement as well as the Arts and Crafts Revival that has been going on for the last 30-odd years. And this being 2007, not 1907, we have to come up with our own answer, because some of the technology we have now is nothing Stickley could have even imagined.  

I myself tend toward the “special piece of furniture” camp, for a couple of reasons. One of them is the difference in attitudes toward utilitarian objects at the beginning of the 20th century compared to today. In the early 20th century, even functional objects like water heaters and furnaces were embellished. Many East Bay homes still retain their original Ruud instantaneous water heaters, complete with Art Nouveau ornamentation. And things back then were generally made of materials like metal and wood, not plastic. 

Another reason is that Arts and Crafts is not just a philosophy, it’s also an aesthetic, and while an iMac may be fine-looking, it doesn’t exactly have an Arts and Crafts aesthetic. But at least an iMac HAS an aesthetic. The design, if you could call it that, of most modern technology, could be summed up completely by the word “gray.” But the second reason is even more compelling—take a look at the tangle of wires on the back of your computer. A home office may still contain bookcases and a desk, but instead of the typewriter of 1907, there will be a computer, and that will entail at least a monitor, a CPU, a keyboard, a mouse, and a printer.  

But more likely it will also entail more than one printer, a notebook computer, a scanner, a copier, a fax machine, a cradle for the PDA and the iPod, a battery backup, a router, a USB hub, a cable modem or DSL connection, a webcam, speakers, surge protectors, a regular phone, a cordless phone, a lamp, a file cabinet, a Rolodex, etc. These things will require wires and power cords, and the dreaded transformers. And that’s why Stickley would have designed a special piece of furniture, because it just wouldn’t be very artful to put all that junk out on a library table. That’s why we of the 21st century have the computer desk and the computer armoire. 

Ah, you say, but I have gone wireless! I have a wireless keyboard and mouse! I have Blue Tooth! I take my laptop to Starbucks! I surf the Internet on my back porch! All well and good, but the wireless router still needs to be plugged in, as does the printer and most of the other stuff. 

There are certain parts of the house where the technology has changed more than it has in others. The dining room, for instance, is not much different now than it was then. Houses of the Arts and Crafts era WERE the first modern houses, as we would think of modern—they had electricity, central heat, and indoor plumbing. They had telephones and vacuum cleaners and sewing machines and other pieces of technology which we still have. 

For instance, bathrooms haven’t changed that much in a hundred years. I think everyone would agree that indoor plumbing is the very basis of modern civilization, and few of us would be willing to give it up. We might like to have two sinks, which is easy enough to do if there’s room. We might prefer to have mixing faucets instead of separate taps, which is easily done. Modern code requires a pressure balance valve, so you don’t get scalded when someone turns on the dishwasher while you’re taking a shower. They actually had these at the turn of the century, and you can still buy new ones that look old, or you can get one that is plumbed into the supply lines before they reach the shower. Reproduction low-flow toilets are now available that look like old ones, where the tank hangs on the wall instead of sitting on the back of the bowl. 

GFCI’s, which stands for ground fault circuit interrupter are now required in the bathroom. This is the plug that keeps you from being electrocuted should you be standing in a puddle of water when the hairdryer short circuits. It’s hard to make these look old. It is possible to install one upstream on the circuit, which then protects all the outlets downstream from it, or you can put a GFCI breaker at the main panel. 

In the early 20th century, the living room was to be the center of home life, with the family gathered around the hearth. They would play board games or parlor games, read, play musical instruments, women would do needlework. They might even listen to 78s on the gramophone, or listen to the radio. They would even, God forbid, talk to each other. We prefer to watch TV. In fact, it’s pretty much replaced the fireplace as the center of home life, whether you think that’s good or bad. But it’s not just the TV. It’s the VCR and the DVD player and the Tivo and the Wii, and the remote controls and joysticks and whatever that go with all of these. Often the stereo and a computer are hooked into it as well. And that, friends, is why the entertainment center was invented.  

The kitchen is far too complicated to go into here—I’ll save that for another article. 

If you look closely, you may be struck by just how ugly many of the elements of contemporary life really are, and how out of place they look in an Arts and Crafts interior. Beauty is not really part of the equation any more for most things. Certainly our lives have become very complex. Maybe we need to try to live a simpler existence in the face of cultural pressures, and to choose only the technology that is actually helpful to us.  

Much of the technology that has come about in the last century is useful- I certainly don’t intend to give up the computer that allowed me to rewrite this paragraph several times with ease. But I often think we have become enamored of bells and whistles for which we have no real use, and altered our houses, our lives, and even the outer environment in unfortunate ways in order to make room for them. It isn’t a new struggle. Oscar Wilde realized this in the 19th century, saying, “Do you think, for instance, that we object to machinery? I tell you we reverence it; we reverence it when it does its proper work, when it relieves man from ignoble and soulless labor, not when it seeks to do that which is valuable only when wrought by the hands and hearts of men. And let us not mistake the means of civilization for the end of civilization; steam-engine, telephone and the like, are all wonderful, but remember that their value depends entirely on the noble uses we make of them, on the noble spirit in which we employ them, not on the things themselves.” 

 

Jane Powell is the author of Bungalow Details: Interior and can be reached at janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

 

 

Photograph: A custom armoire built by The Craftsman Home (3048 Claremont Ave.) allows these homeowners to keep their computer in the living room.


Grab Your Cash and Make a Dash: It’s Spring Plant Sale Time!

By Ron Sullivan
Friday April 06, 2007

Everybody up and at ‘em! Shop till you drop! It’s time for spring plant sales! 

Various chapters of the California Native Plant Society are selling, big surprise, California native plants. Sometimes you can find species at CNPS sales that you haven’t seen for sale anywhere else, and there’s usually a handy plant maven hanging around to give you advice. Another thing I like about these sales is how CNPS propagators are generally persnickety and specific about where the plants came from; one might get a clue from that about where they’re likeliest to thrive, and the information is really useful to restoration gardeners.  

 

Marin Chapter California Native Plant Society 

30th annual Native Plant Sale 

Saturday, April 14  

9:30 a.m. -2 p.m. 

Tiburon Audubon Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, 376 Greenwood Beach Road, Tiburon. www.marin.cc.ca.us/cnps. 

 

Regional Parks Botanic Garden  

Saturday, April 21 

10 a.m. -3 p.m. 

Wildcat Canyon Road, Tilden Regional Park. www.nativeplants.org. 

 

Jepson CNPS Chapter Plant Sale 

May 5, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Benicia Community Garden 

Military East and E. Second Street, Benicia. www.cnpsjepsonchapter.org. 

 

Other sales might mix natives with exotic ornamentals and/or edible plants and fruit trees, or sell any or all in various combinations. And at least one local nursery throws a party every now and then.  

 

Annie’s Annuals  

Spring Party 10 a.m.–5 p.m.  

Friday through Sunday, April 13, 14, and 15  

Mother’s Day party 10 a.m.–5 p.m. 

Saturday and Sunday, May 12 and 13 

740 Market Ave., Richmond. 

I-80 east ; exit San Pablo Dam Rd., turn left at the light. Turn right at third light onto San Pablo Avenue; left at Church Lane, which becomes Market Avenue. Go 1.5 miles past two traffic lights and over two railroad tracks, look left for Annie’s green fence and sign, but no street number. 

www.anniesannuals.com. 

 

COPIA’s Big Spring Plant Sale 

Saturday, April 14, 10 a.m –4 p.m. 

Sunday April 15, 10 a.m.–4 pm 

500 First St., Napa 

Preview hour for members only, Saturday and Sunday 9–10 a.m. 

Padrone peppers, more than 80 varieties of tomatoes, assorted types of basil. Plants, seeds, garden products and tools, music and demonstrations. For your shopping pleasure, The Nurserymen will play Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m.–1 p.m. in the South Garden. Sale open to the public (does not include general admission to COPIA). Food, wine, and plants sold separately. (888) 512-6742. www.copia.org. 

 

Merritt College Landscape Horticulture Department Spring Plant Sale and Fair 

Saturday, April 28 

9 a.m.– 3 p.m. 

Merritt College, 12500 Campus Dr., off Redwood Road, Oakland 

Natives, edibles, weird and nifty plants; live music, food! Also good advice on design, plants, pruning, and life in general. 

www.merrittlandhort.com. 

 

 

It’s always a good idea to bring some sturdy boxes to a plant sale—those blue recycling bins are ideal—to tote your purchases. Do I really have to add that gardenworthy clothing and shoes are de rigeur?


About the House: A Modern House From 1942!

By Matt Cantor
Friday April 06, 2007

The East Bay is a special place for so many reasons including architectural history. Now, I’m a technical guy (for a sensitive male) and the history that turns me on involves silly things like pipe threading and wire soldering. I love museums of mine shafts and light bulbs. I get no kick from champagne but a museum of science and industry makes my pulse race. In other words, I’m a geek. The one that all the girls moved away from at the junior high school dance and now, years later I can proudly come out of the closet, with my phaser held high and admit my affiliation with those who collect glass doorknobs and vacuum tube radios. 

So for me, architectural history is inextricably mingled with technical history and our local housing stock makes a marvelous display case for century-long evolution of the technical advances in building. To make this even more fun, the display case is neatly organized by community. Berkeley and Oakland begin with houses in the 1870s (and a very few that are earlier) and flow along to the north and south upward to the present as the rolling hills and bayside shoreline gothomorphed into its current urbanity. 

So let’s take a short technical trip from Old Oakland to 1960s Richmond and see how some elements of these houses evolved. 

It’s easy to see how foundations evolved from the oldest houses in Oakland and Berkeley to the modern ones we have today if we pick a handful of examples. Starting at an 1875 church in Berkeley we might find no foundation at all but instead a huge redwood mudsill. The mudsill is the bottom board of the house and is usually bolted to a concrete footing today but in our Oakland church and many early houses, it would have been a large wooden beam laid on its side made from old growth redwood. When I’ve seen these, they’re usually still in pretty good shape, owing to redwood’s high tannin content and its resultant pest resistance.  

Now let’s go to South Berkeley 1906. This house probably had a brick foundation and by today, these are mostly dissolving away. They’re also waiting for a 7.3 earthquake to finally turn them into a nice herringbone patio. 

By the time the 1920s houses of Berkeley were built, concrete foundations had become the common form, although these lacked reinforcing metal (rebar) and were quite small and laid in shallow trenches. Combined with poorly mixed concrete, these often fared poorly on the soft clay soils of Berkeley and many today are rocking and rolling like all good Boomers do. 

Albany, largely developed in the 1930s has almost exclusively concrete foundations and, again, most lack rebar. Nonetheless, these later concrete footings tend to be stronger since concrete mixing improved as the century matured. Bay-dredged sands gave way to mined sands from the Black Diamond mines of Mt. Diablo and concrete mixing became more science and less sport. 

By the time World War II arrived and Henry Kaiser’s shipyards in Richmond began producing a fleet, the hills of El Cerrito began to produce the humble and solid housing stock that would house a generation of G.I. and steelyard families (Many lived out their entire adult lives in these houses and a few are still there today). These foundations reflected the technical and engineering advancements that came with a war build-up. Concrete became prescriptive (mixed by formula) and these foundations are still hard as rock. They also began to use rebar and even employed this rebar to do what had, heretofore, not been done at all, connecting the foundation to the mudsill. Builders let short lengths of the rebar project up and out of the foundation. These stuck through the mudsill and were then hammered down to one side, holding the sill in place. Now this isn’t all that useful in a large quake but it shows the early glimmer of insight in these fabulous 1940s builders. By 1950 nearly all houses had some actual bolts doing the same thing. 

Sweeping north to Richmond, houses continue to advance through the ’50s into the ’60s and ’70s with foundations becoming still larger, deeper and wider at the base. During this time the inverted T shape become the standard form. We still do most foundations in the same manner today with just a little more rebar and a slightly stronger concrete. Nonetheless, foundations today are essentially the same as these ones with only a few exotic variations. Some hillside foundations built today are of a pier and gradebeam type that became popular in the 1960s and ’70s. 

Electrical systems advanced along the same stretch of shorefront with many Oakland and Berkeley houses having no electricity until the years following 1900. Many of these houses still have the plumbing for gas lighting running through the attics and walls. It’s still a thrill for me to come upon this in the attics of Victorians and other turn-of-the-century homes. Occasionally, I’ll even find a gas light still in use. Ooooo. Scary! 

As we move along to ’20s Berkeley houses and those ’30s Albany houses (thank you, Mr. MacGregor) the “knob and tube” wiring becomes more elaborate. Fuses move up from the crawlspace at the front of the house and into cabinets on the side where users are less likely to fry themselves while changing a fuse. The open knife switches (think Frankenstein) give way to fused disconnects. These early system have fuses on both “hots” and “neutrals” posing a serious threat to those trying test and repair these systems. By 1928, the “fused neutral” system gives way to hot-only fusing. We also move fuse panels out of wooden boxes (often lined with asbestos) and into metal enclosures. 

By the time we get to El Cerrito, we move from 120-volt to 240-volt systems that can accommodate more power and big users like ranges and A/C. Move along to Richmond and we find houses built with (good God!) breaker panels. 

Heating takes the same trip, as does plumbing and roofing. It’s pretty fun to see how faithfully the technology falls into line.  

As much as I enjoy the beauty of our old Berkeley houses, it’s always a relief to get the call to go inspect a 1942 El Cerrito, knowing that I’ll be getting a chance to inspect a modern house.  

 

Matt Cantor owns Cantor Inspections and lives in Berkeley. His column runs weekly. 

Copyright 2007 Matt Cantor


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday April 06, 2007

Run to a safe place? 

Here’s something we cover in my QuakeConsults: when a big quake hits, expect that the shaking will be so violent that you can’t stand up. Get on your hands and knees right away and crawl to the safest spot in the room you’re in (unless it’s the kitchen or a bathroom). 

Don’t try and get outside: moving around is how you can get hurt (you’ll be knocked down!), plus there are things outside that can fall on you.  

If you have a child in another room, be sure to drop and crawl – you won’t be much help to your child if you’re seriously injured.  

Speaking of being injured: have you secured your furniture yet? 

 

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


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday April 10, 2007

TUESDAY, APRIL 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Dirt Show” Ceramic sculpture from the Dept. of Art Practice opens with a reception at 4 p.m. at Worth Ryder Gallery 116 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus, corner of College and Bancroft.  

FILM 

“BB Optics” Optical printing and preservation work at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “Girl Trouble” at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ann-Maurine Lara reads from her novel about three generations of women in the Caribbean at 7:30 p.m. at Laurel Book Store, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

Self-Preservation Workshop for Film and Video Makers with artist and preservationist Bill Brand at 6 p.m. in the PFA Theater. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

David Wallin describes “Attachment in Psychotherapy” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Music of Dharma Lecture by Reverend Hozan Hardiman at 7 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton. Cost is $10. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

John Hammond at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

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

Larry Vuckovich Jazz/Latin Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

“eyecatchers” A group show by East Bay women artists at Royal Ground Gallery, 2058 Mountain Blvd., Oakland.  

FILM 

“The Purple Rose of Cairo” at 3 p.m. and “Zero for Conduct” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in four Acts” the documentary by Spike Lee about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Ira Nowinski’s San Francisco: Poets, Politics, and Divas” with Ira Nowinski at 10:30 a.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $12.50, students $5. 238-2200. 

Nomadic Rambles Storytelling with Ed Silberman at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe. 595-5344.  

Neil Fiore describes “The Now Habit: Overcoming Procrastination While Enjoying Guilt Free Play” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Left Turn, No Signal at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bernard Anderson & The Old School Band at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz.Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Stars Original at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Buxter Hoot’n at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Ron Carter Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square., through Sun. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  

THURSDAY, APRIL 12 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Private Jokes, Public Places” opens at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. and runs through May 13. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. 

“Clown Bible” acrobatic theater based on man’s relationship with God, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Willard Middle School Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St., through April 14. Tickets are $15-$20. www.brownpapertickets.com 

“My Brother Marvin By Zeola Gaye” which chronicles the life and demise of Marvin Gaye at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland, through April 15. Tickets are $38.50. 625-8497.  

EXHIBITIONS 

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

FILM 

Film and Video Makers at Cal “Time After Time” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “In This World” a documentary on human trafficking at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michael Pollan reads from “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” in celebration of National Library Week at 7 p.m. at the James Moore Theatre, Oakland Museum of California, 10th & Oak Streets. 

A Tribute to the Poetry of the Late Bert Meyers will be held at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

“Bruce Nauman’s Sound and Video Work” A gallery talk with Anne Walsh at noon at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Daniel Mason reads from his new novel, “A Far Country” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Dani Shapiro reads from her new novel about mothers and daughters “Black & White” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra performs Arvo Part, “Tabula Rasa” for string orchestra at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$42. 415-357-1111. www.ncco.org 

Sun Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., $10-15 at door. www.hillsideclub.org  

Breath & Movement Dance at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 981-1710. 

Mills College Graduate Dance Thesis Concert at 8 p.m. at Lisser Hall, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10 at the door. 430-2175. 

David Jacob-Strain at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. 

Ian Carey Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Noteworthy, a cappella, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Everest, The Crazies will Destroy You at 10 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Headnodic & Raashan Ahmad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Mitch Marcus Quartet + 13 at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146.  

Headshire Griddle, True Margrit, Blue Mire at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

FRIDAY, APRIL 13 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Industrial Chic” Fashion from recycled and industrial materials by Bay Area artists and designers at 7 p.m. at The Crucible, 1260 7th St., Oakland. Tickets are $15, reservations suggested. 444-0919.www.thecrucible.org 

“Recovery: Man Over Matter” Group show on interpretations of transformation. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Exhibit runs to May 5. 843-2527. 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Lysistrata” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through May 12. Tickets are $12. 525-1620. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “Private Jokes, Public Places” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 13. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. 

Barestage “Cabaret” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 72 Cesar Chavez Center, UC Campus, through April 28. Tickets are $8-$12. 642-3880. 

Berkeley Rep “Blue Door” at 8 p.m. at 2025 Addison St., through May 20. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “A Streetcar Named Desire” Tennesse Williams’ Pulitzer Prize winning play opens at 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Runs through May 12. Tickets are $8-$11. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Masquers Playhouse “She Loves Me” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through May 12.Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org  

Shotgun Players “Blood Wedding” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through April 29. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Wilde Irish Productions “The Cripple of Inishmaan” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through April 15. Tickets are $20-$25. 644-9940. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash Celebrates National Poetry Reading Month with Mary Mackey, Rochelle Ratner, Corrine Robins, and Eileen R. Tabios at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. www.poetryflash.org 

National Poetry Month Readings with Lisa Fishman and Richard Meier at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

New Perspectives on East Asia Book Series with David Leheny on “Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence, and Anxeity in Contemporary Japan” at noon in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th flr. 642-2809. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

UC Jazz Ensembles Spring Showcase at 8 p.m. at Chevron Auditorium, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Tickets are $5-$10. 642-5062. 

Mills College Graduate Dance Thesis Concert with original choreography by Mary Bell, Janet Collard, Jan Jennings, Katie Michelle Rogers, Rebecca Anne Wilson, and others at 8 p.m. at Lisser Hall, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10 at the door. 430-2175. 

Breath & Movement Dance at 4 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 981-1710. 

Back Porch Pickers, bluegrass at 8 p.m. Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kendington. Tickets are $15, children $5. 526-9146. 

Suni Paz in Concert, music from Argentina at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Christy Dana Quartet plays the Jimmy Van Heusen Songbook at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373.  

Peron/Spangler Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Workingman’s Ed, J.C. Flyer at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

Ray Cepeda, Latin rock, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

DuoTones at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Nomadics, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Matt the Electrician, Jason Kleinberg, AJ Roach at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Babyland, Bloody Snowman, 8 Bit at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

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

Extra Action Marching Band and others at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Gift of Gab at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Brazuca Dub Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The River Runs Black at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Ron Carter Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square., through Sun. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 14 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Argentinian Singer Suni Paz at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Manzi: The Adventures of Young Cesar Chavez” Sat. at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$18. 925-798-1300. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“2 of a Kind” Prints by artists from the California Society of Printmakers and the NIAD Center for Art and Disabilities. Reception at 2 p.m. at 551 23rd St., Richmond. and runs through June 15. 620-0290. 

Industrial Art Show Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The Crucible, 1260 7th St., Oakland. 444-0919. www.thecrucible.org 

THEATER 

“Judgement Day: Where Are Your Gonna Run?” at 7 p.m. at the Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15-$20. 478-3864. 

Peyvand Khorsandi “Generation Skip: Stand-up Comedy” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$25. 925-798-1300. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Art and Poetry by the Lake with Tom Tuthill and Deborah Vinograd from 2 to 5 p.m. at Lakeview Branch Library, 550 El Embarcadero, by Lake Merritt in Oakland. 238-7344.  

Small Press Distribution Poetry Readings with Juliana Spahr, Will Alexander, Dodie Bellamy, and Albert Flynn Desilver at 2 p.m. at 1341 7th St. 524-1668.  

National Poetry Month Readings with Linh Dinh and Graham Foust at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Jonatham Lethem will read from his new novel “You Don't Love Me Yet” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave., with special musical guests The Bye Bye Blackbirds. 849-2087. 

Peggy Orenstein reads from “Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gamelan Sari Raras Javanese music and dance with guest dancer Eko Supriyanto at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988. 

“From Broadway to Opera” music of Mozart, Puccini, Dvorak, Offenbach, Sondheim, Weill, Kern and others with Nanette McGuinness, soprano; Kindra Scharich, mezzo-soprano; Kathryn Cathcart, piano, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Mills College Graduate Dance Thesis Concert with original choreography by Mary Bell, Janet Collard, Jan Jennings, Katie Michelle Rogers, Rebecca Anne Wilson, and others at 8 p.m. at Lisser Hall, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10 at the door. 430-2175. 

Breath & Movement Dance at 4 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 981-1710. 

The Dave Matthews BLUES Band at 9:30 p.m. at Baltic Square Pub,135 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. 237-4782. 

Verbal Abuse, 2nd Class Citizens, Self Inflicted at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $8. 763-1146.  

Tom Rush at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Ravines at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

The Snake Trio, new directions in jazz and Venezuelan music, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mo’Rockin’ at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Diablo’s Dust and Ronnie Cato at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Nancy King and Steve Christofferson at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Larry Stefl Jazz Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Truxton, Voodoo Ecnomics at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

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

The Strange Angels, blues and jam, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Phoenix and Afterbuffalo, Free Peoples at 10 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

CV1 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

No Alternative, Midnight Boambers 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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY, APRIL 15 

CHILDREN 

Women of the World with Jackeline Rago, Michelle Jaques and Kelly Tacunda Orphan at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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. 

Native American Weaver, Grace Smith-Yellow Hammer will be exhibiting her own traditional Navajo rugs from 11 to 5 p.m. at Gathering Tribes, 1573 Solano Ave. 528-9038. www.gatheringtribes.com  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

National Poetry Month Readings with Evie Shockley and Barbara Jane Reyes at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Joel Westheimer and contributing authors discuss “Pledging Allegiance, The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools” at 7 p.m. at the JCC, 1414 Walnut St. Sponsored by Balck Oak Books. 486-0698. 

Brian Doherty describes “Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Kronos Quartet performs Górecki’s Third String Quartet at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Ensemble AROW “The Teutonic Spirit” at 3 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church Parish Hall, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Tickets are $10 at the door. www.arowmusic.org  

Michael McKean “Strictly Speaking” Comedian, actor, songwriter at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$38. 642-9988.  

Remembering the Kid from Red Bank: A Tribute to William “Count” Basie featuring the Count Basie Tribute Orchestra in a fundraiser for the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music. Pre-concert conversation with Orrin Keepnews at 12:30 p.m., concert at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $25-35 sliding scale. 836-4649. 

Pappa Gianni and the North Beach Band at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Elana James with Whit Smith at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Latin All-Star Jam with Ray Obiedo & Mombo Caribe, Jose Chepito Areas, Jose Najera, Tony Mayfield and others in a benefit for the Children of Chaguitillo, Nicaragua, at noon Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Suggested donation $10-$25. 

Falso Biano Brazil at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Quake City Jug Band at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Flamenco Open Stage with Carola Zertuche at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Cecelia Long Quartet at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Battle of the Bands at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 16 

CHILDREN 

Charlotte's Web Read-Aloud In honor of National Library Week, join us in reading Charlotte’s Web at 3:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch Library, 6833 International Boulevard, Oakland. 615-5728. 

FILM 

“A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris” with Annette Herskovits who survived the Holocaust as a young child in France, at 12:30 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room of the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. Brown-bag lunch. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“No End in Sight” Documentary film on the months immediately before and after the toppling of Saddam, followed by a conversation with the director Charles Ferguso at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way. Sponsored by UC Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Art of Politics” with David Goines, artist and author and Eduardo Pineda, artist and Director, Museum of the African Diaspora at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

Aurora Theatre Staged Readings “American Whupass” by Justin Warner at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. For tickets call 843-4822. 

Robert Hass reads from “Then and Now: The Poets Choice Columns, 1997-2000” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

PlayGround with Philip Kan Gotanda and Carey Perloff and the Emerging Playwrights Awards at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $75. 415-704-3177. 

Will Alexander and Andrew Joron read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Bert Glick at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Average Dyke Band in a benefit for CodePINK at 6 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $23. For tickets call 524-2776.  

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Classical at the Freight with Michael Taddai & Friends at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mo’ Rockin Project at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

 

 


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Tuesday April 10, 2007

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MARVIN GAYE 

 

My Brother Marvin, by Zeola Gaye, the Motown singer and composer’s youngest sister, sets out to counter the sensationalism surrounding his death with an intimate representation of family relationships. The show, with a promising cast, played to good reviews on the East Coast. The Oakland dates are the only West Coast performances on the tour. 8 p.m. Thursday, April 12 through Sunday, April 15 at the Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. $38.50. 625-8497. 

 

CLIMATE CHANGE VIDEOS ON CHANNEL 28  

 

A series of videos on climate change will air on Berkeley Community Media Channel 28 over the next week. 7 p.m. today (Tuesday): “Who Owns Nature?”, a 2005 address by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on global warming and related environmental, political, and spiritual challenges facing America (60 minutes). 7 p.m. Thursday: “Boiling Point: The Global Climate Crisis,” an analysis of the science and politics of climate change by Ross Gelbspan, prize-winning journalist and author of two acclaimed books on global warming (60 minutes). 9:30 p.m. Thursday: “The Great Warming,” based on a series originally made for Canadian television, “should be required viewing by all. Future generations’ lives, and maybe even ours, depend on it,” wrote the New York Times in November 2006. Narrated by Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette (90 minutes). 3 p.m. Saturday: “Boiling Point II” combines poetry by Drew Dellinger, an analysis of the science and politics of climate change by author Ross Gelbspan, and an update on global warming's relationship to the increasing intensity of hurricanes (60 minutes). 

 

POETRY OF BERT MEYERS 

 

Black Oak Books will host a celebration of the life and poetry of Bert Meyers and the posthumous publication of his In a Dybbuk’s Raincoat: Collected Poems, with readings by Robert Haas, Brenda Hillman, Morton Marcus, Daniel Meyers, Anat Silvera, David Shaddock, and Susan Griffin, at 7 p.m. Thursday. 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698.


Ian Carey Quintet Makes East Bay Debut

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday April 10, 2007

When Oakland-based jazz trumpeter Ian Carey was about 14 years old, he experienced something of a revelation. While he was growing up in upstate New York, his family attended church regularly, all singing in the choir. But when they moved back to Folsom, Calif., just east of Sacramento, Carey’s father searched the area in vain for a suitable church with a strong choir. Churches were plenty but choirs were not, and when he couldn’t find one he liked the family’s church-going days were over.  

“I had always thought that we were a religious family,” Carey says, “but once we got to California I found out we were really a musical family.” 

Thus one muse was replaced with another and a life-long obsession was born. 

The Ian Carey Quintet, made up of several Bay Area jazz scene stalwarts, will venture to the East Bay for the first time for a performance this Thursday, from 8 to 11 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island in downtown Berkeley. The band consists of Carey on trumpet and flugelhorn, Adam Schulman on piano, Fred Randolph on bass, Jon Arkin on drums, and Joe Cohen sitting in for Evan Francis on saxophone. The group has drawn praise from notable critics, including Bill Kirchner, editor of the Oxford Companion to Jazz and the Miles Davis Reader, who describes Carey as “a gifted young composer who asks deep musical questions and comes up with compelling answers.” 

The artistic pedigree runs through both sides of the family. Carey’s mother was a designer and illustrator, his father a classical vocalist and jazz aficionado who filled the house with the groundbreaking sounds of Miles Davis and other jazz greats from an extensive record collection.  

When it came time for Ian to pick up an instrument and try out for the school band his grandmother suggested the French horn, reasoning that the rarity of the choice would essentially guarantee him a spot in the band. But landing a spot proved easy enough, as Carey soon picked up a trumpet and found that he had a natural ability to hit the difficult high notes.  

The school’s big band experience may have shaped his early development, but Carey’s interests later gravitated back to the music of his father’s old records, to small band music and the beauty and intricacy of improvisation. Sacramento had a small but thriving jazz scene at the time, and the under-aged Carey and his friends spent many hours sipping ginger ales in the city’s night spots, listening to local musicians such as Tom Peron. After high school Carey spent a couple of years studying classical trumpet at the University of Nevada before he enrolled in New York’s New School, where he studied jazz and contemporary music while getting an intoxicating dose of the romance of the lifestyle, hobnobbing in local clubs with luminaries like Dave Douglas and taking part in roof-top jam sessions overlooking Manhattan.  

Upon graduation Carey financed his music by working as a proofreader at a law firm while struggling to make a dent in the city’s jazz scene, a cut-throat environment where up-and-comers aren’t always made to feel welcome. After four years of struggling to make a living while maintaining his passion for jazz, the pleasures were wearing thin.  

So when an offer of a three-month sublet in San Francisco materialized in the summer of 2001, Carey eagerly seized the opportunity for a temporary change of locale and a chance to check out the Bay Area jazz scene. It didn’t take long to decide to make the move permanent.  

“It’s a much more cooperative, more supportive scene in the Bay Area,” Carey says. “It’s more laid back and welcoming.”  

As if to punctuate his growing disenchantment with his life in New York, 9/11 replaced the figurative dark cloud hanging over Carey’s life in the city with a literal one. He returned in October of 2001 to settle his affairs before moving back to California for good.  

In San Francisco he formed his own quintet and soon landed a regular gig at the House of Shields on Montgomery Street. The high ceilings did little for the acoustics and the crowd wasn’t necessarily a jazz crowd, but the twice-a-month sessions gave the nascent group the chance to venture beyond standards and to push ahead with Carey’s own compositions, several of which found their way onto the quintet’s first album, Sink/Swim.  

The album has the feel of the late 1950s recordings of Miles Davis and Art Farmer, blending elements of hard bop and cool jazz while leaning toward gentler, more lyrical tones. Rick Ballard, proprietor of Groove Yard, an Oakland record shop that specializes in jazz and does its part to promote local talent, says the influence of Davis as well as Chet Baker is apparent, but that Carey is “closer to Farmer in that he often plays flugelhorn as well,” coaxing innovative improvisations out of that instrument’s darker tones. “He’s a promising, young, lyrical player,” says Ballard.  

The House of Shields gig eventually came to an end though, as the venue’s owners decided to end their flirtations with jazz and revert to booking rock bands and DJs. “It was a great experience,” says Carey, but the ending was not entirely undesired. “It’s not easy playing to a crowd of drunken bike messengers.” 

Thursday’s performance will likely feature a broad sampling of the quintet’s repertoire. “We’ll be playing music from our album, as well as new originals by members of the group and some jazz rarities,” Carey says. Jazz fans will get another chance to catch Carey in action the following night as well, when he and Schulman and Randolph will perform as a trio from 7-10 p.m. Friday night at the Parc 55 Hotel in downtown San Francisco.  

 

 

THE IAN CAREY QUINTET 

8-11 p.m. Thursday at Anna’s Jazz Island. $8. 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.annasjazzisland.com.  

 

Sink/Swim can be purchased for $13 through iancareyjazz.com or at the Groove Yard, or for $10 at the show.  

 

The Groove Yard: 5555 Claremont Ave., Oakland. 655-87400. To sign up for Rick Ballard's jazz newsletter, e-mail groove2@earthlink.net. 

 

Ian Carey, Adam Shulman and Fred Randolph will also perform as a trio from 7-10 p.m. Friday at the Parc 55 Hotel, 55 Cyril Magnin St., San Francisco. (415) 392-8000. No cover. 

 

 

Photograph by Michael Beller 

Ian Carey and his band will perform Thursday night at Anna’s Jazz Island in Berkeley. 


The Theater: Masquers Keep Chain Unbroken With ‘She Loves Me’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday April 10, 2007

A chain of successes transformed a Hungarian play, Parfumerie, into an Ernst Lubitsch film, 1940’s Shop Around the Corner (with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan), then the 1949 Judy Garland vehicle, In the Good Old Summertime, before becoming a 1963 Harold Prince Broadway hit, She Loves Me, and finally You’ve Got Mail on the screen in 1998. 

And the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond keeps the chain unbroken with a success of its own, its current production of She Loves Me. Originally created by Fiddler on the Roof team Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, with book by Cabaret’s Joe Masteroff, such a slew of successful predecessors have variously enabled the sprightly cast assembled under Marti Baer’s direction to take wing. Making the most of their material, they bring both the enthusiasm of community theater and the skill it takes to pull out the stops to this nostalgic musical comedy, providing the audience with a doubly entertaining evening.  

The story revolves around the employees of a perfume shop in Budapest, entre les deux guerres, their various eccentricities and love lives. Steven Kodaly (D. C. Scarpelli) is a smooth, mustachioed ladykiller, with bubbly ingenue Ilona Ritter (nimble, funny Alison Peltz) seemingly under his thumb—though Ilona’s miffed over Kodaly’s slipperiness and excuses. Maraczek, the owner (Larry Schrupp), harkens back to his own bachelorhood, while swearing fidelity to his only dancing partner, his wife. Georg Nowack, head clerk (Coley Grundman) confides to gentle non-interventionist Ladislov Sipos (Alex Shafer) that he has a secret romance with Dear Friend—a pen pal he’s never met. And Arpad, the enthusiastic delivery boy (Peter Budinger), just seems to be in love with his bicycle.  

Into the busy shop wanders Amalia Balash (Jacqueline Andersen and Robin Steeves alternating), looking for a job, which she scores on a challenge, acing an impossible cold sale that decides a side bet between Maraczek and Georg. 

Amalia becomes the shop’s top seller—and she and Georg start sniping at each other, unaware that they share something very much in common. And Georg finds himself inexplicably on Maraczek’s bad side, so skirmishing on two fronts. 

The split between the smiling, uncomplicated look that the clerks show their many customers and the tangle of their private lives and gossip is the comic back-and-forth that drives the play, bursting out in spirited, burlesqued production numbers on the sales floor, amusingly telegraphed in an escalating Christmas rush. More private moments are upstaged by the buzz of the shop, or in a show-stopping series of hilarious encounters in one of Budapest’s famed cafes (where humorous head waiter Robert Love, the Masquer’s managing director, strives in vain to keep a romantic atmosphere, with gypsy wildness and a chef dancing with shish kabob just two distractions). 

There are over two dozen songs, mostly with clever repartee, from Sipos’ wry “Perspective” to Ilona’s “Trip to the Library,” where she meets a blue-eyed optometrist who reads to this charming illiterate. Back to back are the two more ambitious numbers, Amalia reveling in the “Ice Cream” her opponent Georg has surprised her with, and Georg’s exultant, solo realization of the title song—and the show’s big hit—“She Loves Me (but she doesn’t know it).” 

As the show takes off, the cast performs with increasing gusto, culminating with Jacqueline Andersen, up on her toes, delivering “Ice Cream” in the style of art song, acting out Amalia’s overlapping emotions with winsome charm—and with Coley Grundman’s ecstatic dance, belting out the title tune. 

Pat King presides over a fine quintet from the ivories, and choreographer Chris Bell has paired well with Marti Baer’s stage direction to maintain the often parallel kinetic fields of retail ensemble with soliloquy or pas de deux trading focus, all on the stage at once, liable to burst out in song and dance at the uncorking of a scent flask. The ensemble players—Tom Accettola, Stuart Rosenthal, Mary Kidwell, Nancy Benson, Hattie Mullaly and Mr. Love—are crucial to this effect in their quick changes of character, appearing and disappearing, the crowd of faces in a busy European city. 

Marjorie Moore’s costumes and Renee Echavez’s lighting compliment Dave Wilkerson’s sets, all slightly impressionistic to sparely suggest the ambiance of a Budapest rendered fabulous in its day-to-day affairs, a little of that “Lubitsch Touch” gracing the often head-long rush of an American musical comedy with the master’s deft sophistication. 

 

SHE LOVES ME 

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2:30 p.m. Sundays through May 12 at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org.


Green Neighbors: Pollen, Cloning and Why We Need Healthy Trees

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday April 10, 2007

Why did I spend most of last week sneezing? Why do half the people on the street seem to be sneezing along with me? Is it a peculiarly Berkeley sort of performance art? 

No, right now it’s mostly the trees. I’m breathing an unrestrained sigh of relief because the fruitless mulberries on my street have mostly stopped their incontinent pollinating and their flowers are falling off. What looks like a mass die-off of homely gray caterpillars on the sidewalks—that’s them.  

Over the last couple of decades, as Thomas Ogren points out in his intriguing book Safe Sex in the Garden, there has been a shift in the sort of trees being planted, especially by public entities. Lots of “fruitless” trees and shrubs are being used because they’re “cleaner”—they don’t drop fruit or seeds on the sidewalk. As we’re seeing, that doesn’t mean they don’t make a mess. They’re being mass-produced, as big nurseries take on the methods of any other industrial enterprise. And they’re all males.  

All our trees are flowering plants, unless you’re counting tree ferns. Trees like pines and other conifers; oaks, alders, olives, and those mulberries, whose flowers are inconspicuous, are usually pollinated by wind. That’s why they don’t need showy blooms to attract pollinators.  

Male flowers produce pollen, and if there aren’t any handy females, where’s all that pollen to go? Into your lungs and mine, and that might be one reason pollen allergy rates are rising all over North America. When your exposure to some random allergen hits a certain lifetime threshold, you discover you’re allergic because you’re sneezing or wheezing or itching or worse. Here’s the rub: that threshold is unknown before you hit it, and so’s the particular allergen.  

A lot of these “non-messy” trees are cultivars that have been planted as replacements for the street trees killed by Dutch elm disease in the 50s and 60s. People had all sorts of ideas about streamlined living then, same as we do now. 

A cultivar—the name of a plant that you see in single quotes on its tag—is often a clone, reproduced by a scaled-up version of what Aunt Tillie did when she rooted a slip of tradescantia in water. All-male clones are produced either from a male of a dioecious species, which has staminate (male) and pistillate (female) flowers on separate plants, rather the way we mammals do it; or from the staminate parts of a monoecious species, which has both kinds of flowers in different places on each plant.  

Plants have a complicated assortment of sexual arrangements; a Falwell among them would either prosper on an endless indignation supply or confuse himself to death.  

And there’s a funny thing about cloning trees: If you clone a redwood from cuttings that come from the top of the tree, it will usually be taller and skinnier, more upward-tending, than a clone from the bottom branches of the same tree. (Yes, people do. They get cuttings from redwood tops by firing a shotgun up into the tree and gathering the bits of tree that fall. I kid you not.) 

Similarly, if you clone a twig that has only male flowers on it, you’ll get an all-male tree of a species that is normally hermaphroditic, with both sexes usually occurring in one plant. if you’re a big wholesale grower, you’ll do this a few thousand times and sell a few thousand genetically identical trees to your big clients and voila, drifts of pollen are wafting across the city.  

Add to the pollen count any number of other allergens like molds and mildews that got their boost with winter’s first rains, insects and their leavings, and just plain dust (including rubber from tires wearing on roads) and it’s a miracle we’re all breathing.  

Ogren and tree-lovers in general agree on some common-sense considerations for our trees. A less-than-healthy tree will typically carry a greater load of insects and molds (including the molds that flourish on the insects’ droppings), and the insects’ dander and the molds’ spores are powerful allergens. Choosing trees that will prosper where they’re planted and keeping them healthy will reduce that load.  

That will also conveniently and thriftily reduce the need for safety pruning, line-clearance pruning, and pesticide spraying. Healthy trees do all their good work more vigorously, and live longer.  

That good work includes trapping and filtering literally tons of airborne particulates and noxious gases that we’d otherwise be breathing—and, of course, producing oxygen and cooling our cities and mitigating cities’ effects on climate. 

That, plus much-needed bird and beneficial critter habitat, efficiently vertical. In a civilized society, we’d even be getting lots of free fruit from urban trees. Maybe that’s a goal to work toward, someday. 

 

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

 

Photograph: Ron Sullivan 

Good riddance: The flowers are falling off the mulberries, finally.


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday April 10, 2007

TUESDAY, APRIL 10 

“Impact of the 1906 Earthquake on Berkeley” with Richard Schwartz and Stephen Tobriner on “Bracing for Disaster” at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater Lobby to discuss the proposal for denise brown mural, proposed change in Bylaws, and budget decisions. 644-4803. 

March Across Emeryville for Justice for Woodfin Workers Rally at 5 p.m. at the Emeryville City Hall, Park St. at Hollis, and march at 6 p.m. at the Woodfin Suites. www.workingeastbay.org 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:15 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “Girl Trouble” at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

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 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class at 6:30 p.m. at Keller Williams, 4341 Piedmont Ave., 2nd Flr., Oakland. To register call Lori at 531-2665. 

“Poles for Hiking, Trekking and Walking” at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

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.  

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, APRIL 11 

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  

Teach-In and Vigil Against American Torture every Wed. at noon at Boalt Hall, Bancroft Way at College Ave.  

“Building Alliances: Latinos, Immigration & The Environment” with Maria Elena Durazo, head of the LA County Federation of Labor; Margot Pepper, Teacher at Rosa Parks School; Hilary Abell, Exec. Director of WAGES at 4 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium. www.ecologycenter.org/chavez  

“China and India: How Japan Approaches Asia’s Two Giants” A lecture with Ambassador Sakutaro Tanino, former Japanese Ambassador to China and India at 4 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th flr. 642-2809. 

“Ira Nowinski”s San Francisco” a slide presentation at 10:30 a.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Cost is $12.50. 238-2200. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:15 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

“Kayaking 101” with paddling specialist Scott Goodman at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in four Acts” the documentary by Spike Lee about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

ReelVenezuela, Venezuelan films at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$9. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

New to DVD: “Half Nelson” 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, APRIL 12 

“Seeds and the Privatization of Life” with Ignacio Chapela. Learn about the importance of saving seed diversity and about the local projects that are putting control back into the hands of local gardeners. At 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

William Sloane Coffin Awards will be presented to Robert N. Bellah and Nancy Scheper-Hughes at 5:15 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Reception follows. 559-9500. 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “In This World” a documentary on human trafficking at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

“Jewish Superheroes” with comic book expert Rabbi Harry Manhoff at 7:30 p.m. at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 839-2900, ext. 347. 

Peace Action West: 50 Years of Waging Peace Celebration with dinner and reminiscences at 6 p.m. at Madison’s, Lake Merritt Hotel, Oakland. Tickets are $125. RSVP to 839-3100. 

ReelVenezuela, Venezuelan films at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$9. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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 

FRIDAY, APRIL 13 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Amy Meyer on “Guardians for the Golden Gate” 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.  

Film Festival for Diversity “Crash” at 6:30 p.m. in the Longfellow Middle School Auditorium, 1500 Derby at Sacramento. Free, including dinner and child care. Presented by the Berkeley PTA Council. 644-6320. 

“Growing Democracy” A documentary on what people living outside the U.S. think about us, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., midtown Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Womensong Circle Participatory Singing led by Betsy Rose at 7:15 p.m. First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $15-$20. 525-7082. 

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, APRIL 14 

Rosa Parks Elementary School Rummage and Bake Sale Sat. from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Multi Purpose Room, 920 Allston Way at 8th St. 848-9141. 

Marsh Creek Wildflower Walk Join Berkeley Path Wanderers on a 6-mile Morgan Territory wildflower loop led by naturalist Jim Hale. Call 549-2908 for carpool infromation and directions. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $3-$5. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Toddler Nature Walk, especially for 2-3 year olds, to learn about animal habitats. At 2 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Older Women’s League (OWL) on Current Nursing Home Issues with Prescott Cole, attorney for California Adocates for Nursing Home Reform, at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Co-Housing Community Room, 2220 Sacramento St. 528-3739. 

“The Temperature is Rising” A town Hall meeting on Global Warming with Assemblywoman Loni Hancock at 9:30 a.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. Kisasi.Brooks@asm.ca.gov 

Step It Up - Submerged Shopping Center Day of Action Join First Congregational Church of Berkeley’s rally calling on Congress to reduce carbon emissions 80% by 2050, from noon at 3 p.m. at Christie Ave and Powell St, Emeryville. Free. www.fccb.org 

 

EarthDance Environmental Film Festival with documentaries, comedies, animation and family-friendly offerings from 10 am. to 11 p.m., and noon to 10 p.m. on Sun. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$40. 238-2063. www.earthdancefilms.com 

9th Annual LGBT Family Night at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA from 6 to 9 p.m. at 2001 Allston Way. Dinner followed by swimming, kindergym, sports, crafts, resource tables, and much more. Cost is $3, $10 per family. 665-3238. 

Small Press Distribution Open House and Book Sale from noon to 4 p.m., with poetry readings at 2 p.m. at 1341 7th St. 524-1668.  

Iris Show and Sale The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society Iris Show and Sale Sat. from 1 to 5 p.m. atn Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 277-4200. 

Basic Composting Workshop from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Simple, Healthful Japanese Cuisine” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45, plus 435 for food and materials. Registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com  

Mt. Wanda Bird Walk Join a Park Ranger for a walk in the hills. Terrain is steep, wear walking shoes and bring water and binoculars. Rain cancels. Meet at 8:30 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 Great War Society meets to discuss “Allied Invasion in Russia After WWI” by Marvin Weisberger at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

“The Crisis in Africa: Oil, Islam and Darfur” with Professors Martha Saavedra, David Skinner and Barry Schutz at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Public Affairs Forum, Home of Truth, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. www.alamedaforum.org 

NAACP Meeting at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. All welcome. 845-7416.  

Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters Club meets to discuss talking on television at 9 a.m. at 1950 Franklin St., Room 2F. RSVP required, ID needed to get into building. 581-8675. 

Hopalong Animal Rescue Come meet your furry new best cat friend from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Citibank, 4101 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 267-1915, ext. 500. www.hopalong.org  

“Critical Elements to Recovery from Trauma: a Case Study of Dissociation” Lecture by Priscilla Fleischer of teh Sanville Insitute at 10 a.m. at a Berkeley home. Call for reservations and location. 848-8420. 

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 at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

Petite Pooches Playgroup for small dogs from 10:30 11:30 a.m., one block north of Solano on Ensenada at Talbot. 524-2459. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 15 

Hike the History of the East Bay Regional Parks A 4-mile hike throug Tilden’s canyons. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Behind the Streams Meet the insects that call our streams home at 1 p.m. at Lone Oak Stagin Area, Tilden Park. 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 

Holocaust Remembrance Day Event Co-sponsored by Jewish Family & Children’s Services of the East Bay and the City of Berkeley, and honoring survivors Eva Blustein and Rita Kuhn from 1 to 2 p.m. at the Berkeley City Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Speakers include Diane L. Wolf and music by Judy Frankel and Delphine Sherman. 558-7800, ext. 257. 

Iris Show and Sale The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society Iris Show and Sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 277-4200. 

Red Oak Victory Ship Pancake Breakfast from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on board the ship in Richmond Harbor, 1337 Canal Blvd. Cost is $6, children under 5 free. 237-2933. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. info@eastbaylabyrinthproject.org 

Voices for Impeachment with Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, Editors, Impeach the President; Debra Sweet, National Director, The World Can't Wait Drive Out the Bush Regime!; Elizabeth de la Vega, United States v. George W. Bush; Sophie deVries, National Impeachment Coordinator, Democrats.com, from 2 to 4:30 p.m. at King Middle School. Donation $5-$25 sliding scale. 415-864-5153. http://sfbaycantwait.org 

“We Don’t Play Golf Here and other Globalization Stories” Saul Landau’s video on the impact of globalization in Mexico, at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Congressman Pete McCloskey, Jr. on “War or World Peace Through the Law?” at 12:30 p.m. at International House, Ida & Robert Sproul Rooms, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Sponsored by the Democratic World Federalists. Cost is $10. 415-227-4880. 

Teen Wild Guide Training at the Oakland Zoo Teen volunteers are needed to assist in the new Valley hildren’s Zoo. Training from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo. For information call 632-9525.  

Earth Day at the Oakland Zoo Learn how to live more lightly on the planet with activities for children and a visit to the newly restored Arroyo Viejo Creek, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 632-9525.  

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair flats from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Erika Rosenberg on “Seeing through Self-Images” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 16 

Tax Day Event Public granting of over $10,000 in resisted war taxes to community groups at 6:30 p.m. at 2220 Sacramento St. Potluck, bring something to go with soup. Free and wheelchair accessible. Everyone welcome. 843-9877. 

Earth Week A week long festival dedicated to celebrating the Earth and raising the community's awareness of environmental issues April 16-20 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sproul Plaza, UC Campus. earthweek.berkeley.edu 

“A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris” A screening of the documentary with Annette Herskovits who survived the Holocaust as a young child in France, at 12:30 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room of teh Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. Brown-bag lunch. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“No End in Sight” Documentary film on the months immediately before and after the toppling of Saddam, followed by a conversation with the director Charles Ferguson, at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way. Sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088. 

“Religion and Power” The 2007 McCoy Memorial Lecture, with Robert Bellah at 4:30 p.m. at the Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. Free, but RSVP requested. 849-8241. 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class at 6:30 p.m. at Keller Williams, 4341 Piedmont Ave., 2nd Flr., Oakland. To register call Lori at 531-2665. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at East Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To Schedule and Appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE or 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. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., April 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., April 11, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., April 11, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti, 981-6740. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., April 12 , at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., April 12, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.  


CORRECTION

Tuesday April 10, 2007

The Daily Planet misidentified the date of a march through Emeryville in support of the Woodfin Hotel Suite workers. The march will take place today (Tuesday), gathering at 5:30 p.m. at Emeryville City Hall, 1330 Park St. and marching to the hotel at 5800 Shellmound St.


Arts Calendar

Friday April 06, 2007

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 

THEATER 

“Clown Bible” acrobatic theater based on man’s relationship with God, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Willard Middle School Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St., through April 14. Tickets are $15-$20. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Masquers Playhouse “She Loves Me” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $12. 232-4031. www.masquers.org  

Shotgun Players “Blood Wedding” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through April 29. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Marga Gomez “Laugh Baby Laugh” at 8 p.m. at La Lesbian @ La Peña, Tickets are $20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Wilde Irish Productions “The Cripple of Inishmaan” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through April 15. Tickets are $20-$25. 644-9940. 

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. Reception at 6 p.m. at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-9425. 

“New Works by Judith Hoersting and Judi Miller” Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave. at Broadway. Exibition runs to April 28. mercurytwenty@gmail.com 

“Collaboration of Poetry and Painting” Works by Louis Delsarte and Ntozake Shange opens with a reception at 6 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs through April 30. 465-8928. www.joycegordongallery.com 

“Jarring Realities” Paintings and sculptures by Scott Hove, Donna Mendes and Marty McCorkle opens at the Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., and runs through April 30. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

David Gentry: Conserved Constructs featuring mixed-media sculptures. Reception at 6 p.m. at Pro Arts, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-9425. 

“Chino Latino Meets the Angel Baby” Photographs by Robert Jew opens with a reception at 7 p.m. at the Front Gallery, 35 Grand Ave., Oakland. 444-2900. 

FILM 

“Tropical Malady: Shot-by-Shot” with Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sadiya Hartman introduces “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Across the Atlantic Slave Route” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

New Perspectives on East Asia Book Series Natsuo Kirino reads from “Grotesque” at noon in the Heyns Room, Faculty Club, UC Campus. 642-2809. 

John Moir describes “Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from Extinction” at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. 238-2200. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Free Jazz Fridays with Woman's Worth, Sword & Sandals, Vholtz at 8 p.m. at 1510 Eighth St. Performance Space, Oakland. Cost is $5-$15 sliding scale. 415-846-9432. 

Resmiranda Vocal Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 the Alameda. Tickets are $20-$25 at the door. 

Michael Zilber Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Caribbean Allstars, Kalbass at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

Jack Gates Ensemble, Latin jazz, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Marley’s Ghost at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Ravines and Tamra Engle at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Pat Johnson & The New Sheiks, Penelope Houston, Julia Dawn at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Cabrillo Beach Boys, Dirty Looks, Neverending Party at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Dave Stein Hub-Bub at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Les Nubians at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $25. 548-1159.  

The Sonando Project “Musica de su Mente” The Latin Side of Stevie Wonder at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Tommy Gun and the Bullets, Lincolns at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100. m 

Gonzalo Rubalcaba Group at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $10-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 7 

CHILDREN  

“The Story of Norooz” A children’s theatre production in celebration of the Persian New Year at 2 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marina Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with The Crosspulse Rhythm Duo at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568.  

FILM 

“Blissfuly Yours” with Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading, from 3 to 5 p.m., at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

Dave Bunnell, founder of the Long Life Club reads from his new book “Count Down Your Age” at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Central Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6142.  

Tucker Malarkey discusses “Resurrection” the discovery of 2,000-year-old Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, shortly after the end of World War II, at 2 p.m. at at Borders Books,, 5800 Shellmound St. 415-250--4706. 

Rafaela Castro reads from “Provocaciones: Letters from the Prettiest Girl in Arvin” stories about growing up Latina in California, at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, César Chávez Branch, 3301 East 12th St., Oakland. 535-5620. 

Ana-Maurine Lara, AfroDominican American lesbian writer and organizer reads from her new novel “Erzulie’s Skirt” at 2 p.m. at Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. RSVP to margo@wcrc.org 601-4040. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sarah Chang, violin, Ashley Wass, piano, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988. 

Mark Growden, Knees and Elbows at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Gary Wade, blues guitar and vocals at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Yancie Taylor Jazztet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tito y su Son de Cuba at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cuban dance lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Sotaque Baino, Brazilian music at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

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

Lost Weekend at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jarrett Cherner Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

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

The Ravines at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Woven Hand, Pelusa, Scott Simon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Terrence Brewer Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dekapitator, Menacer, Hatchet, Fog of War at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 8 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Just April” concert with April Wright at 6 p.m. at St. Paul AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. 697-8302. 

Jeremy Taylor at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Robert Stewart Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Taurus Reggae Bash at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. 525-5054.  

Second Opinion, S.B.V., Punch at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Asunder, Laudanum, Malefica at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $6. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

“2 of a Kind” Prints by artists from the California Society of Printmakers and the NIAD Center for Art and Disabilities opens at 551 23rd St., Richmond, and runs through June 15. 620-0290. 

FILM 

“Jazz on a Monday Afternoon” Films and discussion on The Swing Era at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., 3rd flr. 981-6100. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Art in the “Athens of the West” with Gray Brechin at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150.  

A.C.T.’s “After the War” Panel Discussion with Philip Kan Gotanda, playwright at 5 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. 643-9670. 

“Actors Reading Writers “Teachers & Students” at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Anastasia Goodstein describes “Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Page to Stage Delroy Lindo interviewed by Belva Davis at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. 647-2949. 

Ellen Spertus and other contributors discuss “She’s Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology, & Other Nerdy Stuff" at 7 p.m. in the Bender Room, Mills College, 5000 Mac Arthur Blvd., Oakland. 430-2226. 

Poetry Express with Selene Steese and Michael C. Ford at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tangria Jazz Group at 12:15 p.m. in the Elkus Room, 125 Morrison Hall, UC Campus. 

Fishtank Ensemble & Luminescent Orchestrii at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $5. 548-1761.  

Parlor Tango at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

I.C.P. Orchestra 40th Anniversary Tour at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Dirt Show” Ceramic sculpture from the Dept. of Art Practice opens with a reception at 4 p.m. at Worth Ryder Gallery 116 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus, corner of College and Bancroft.  

FILM 

“BB Optics” Optical printing and preservation work at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “Girl Trouble” at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ann-Maurine Lara reads from her novel about three generations of women in the Caribbean at 7:30 p.m. at Laurel Book Store, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

Self-Preservation Workshop for Film and Video Makers with artist and preservationist Bill Brand at 6 p.m. in the PFA Theater. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

David Wallin describes “Attachment in Psychotherapy” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

John Hammond at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

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

Larry Vuckovich Jazz/Latin Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

‘eyecatchers” A group show by East Bay women artists at Royal Ground Gallery, 2058 Mountain Blvd., Oakland.  

FILM 

“The Purple Rose of Cairo” at 3 p.m. and “Zero for Conduct” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in four Acts” the documentary by Spike Lee about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Ira Nowinski’s San Francisco: Poets, Politics, and Divas” with Ira Nowinski at 10:30 a.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $12.50, students $5. 238-2200. 

Nomadic Rambles Storytelling with Ed Silberman at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe. 595-5344.  

Neil Fiore describes “The Now Habit: Overcoming Procrastination While Enjoying Guilt Free Play” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Left Turn, No Signal at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Bernard Anderson & The Old School Band at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz.Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Stars Original at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Buxter Hoot’n at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Ron Carter Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square., through Sun. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, APRIL 12 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Private Jokes, Public Places” opens at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. and runs through May 13. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. 

“Clown Bible” acrobatic theater based on man’s relationship with God, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Willard Middle School Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St., through April 14. Tickets are $15-$20. www.brownpapertickets.com 

“My Brother Marvin By Zeola Gaye” which chronicles the life and demise of Marvin Gaye at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland, through April 15. Tickets are $38.50. 625-8497.  

EXHIBITIONS 

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

FILM 

Film and Video Makers at Cal “Time After Time” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “In This World” a documentary on human trafficking at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michael Pollan reads from “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” in celebration of National Library Week at 7 p.m. at the James Moore Theatre, Oakland Museum of California, 10th & Oak Streets. 

A Tribute to the Poetry of the Late Bert Meyers will be held at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

“Bruce Nauman’s Sound and Video Work” A gallery talk with Anne Walsh at noon at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Daniel Mason reads from his new novel, “A Far Country” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Dani Shapiro reads from her new novel about mothers and daughters “Black & White” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra performs Arvo Part, “Tabula Rasa” for string orchestra at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$42. 415-357-1111. www.ncco.org 

Sun Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., $10-15 at door. www.hillsideclub.org  

Breath & Movement Dance at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 981-1710. 

Mills College Graduate Dance Thesis Concert at 8 p.m. at Lisser Hall, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10 at the door. 430-2175. 

David Jacob-Strain at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. 

Ian Carey Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Noteworthy, a cappella, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Everest, The Crazies will Destroy You at 10 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Headnodic & Raashan Ahmad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Mitch Marcus Quartet + 13 at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146.  

Headshire Griddle, True Margrit, Blue Mire at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

 


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Friday April 06, 2007

FAIRY TALE PROJECT AT ALBANY LIBRARY 

 

Golden Thread, which has staged some of the most interesting shows in the past few years of Bay Area theater, all around the theme of Middle Eastern cultures and identity, is bringing its Fairy Tale Project, a charming series of family shows, to the Albany Library at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 7. The performance will feature The Story of Norooz, the Persian New Year, which is being celebrated right now, wherever you find people originally from the Caucasus through Central Asia. 1247 Marina Ave. 526-3720 ext. 17, or goldenthread.org. 

 

‘STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: ART AND PUBLIC POLICY’ 

 

A series of seven lectures with guest speakers, sponsored by Berkeley City College Professor Chuck Wollenberg, begins April 9 with Gray Brechin, author and reserach geographer at UC Berkeley, speaking on art in the “Athens of the West” at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. On April 16 artists David Goines and Eduardo Pineda will speak on the art of politics. For information on the series, call 981-6150.  

 

FREE JAZZ FRIDAYS  

IN OAKLAND 

 

The Jazz House returns with Free Jazz Fridays, featuring Woman’s Worth, Sword and Sandals and Vholtz performing tonight 8 p.m. tonight (Friday) at the Performance Space at 1510 Eighth St. $5-$15 sliding scale. (415) 846-9432.


Historic Painting Goes on the Auction Block

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Friday April 06, 2007

A very important painting belonging to the university’s Berkeley Art Museum is about to be auctioned off at Christie’s April 18 sale. The large oil is by the renowned 19th-century painter Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904), whose paintings are honored in their display at Moscow’s Tretiakov Museum of Art. The picture, entitled Solomon’s Wall, depicts the West Wall of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It is part of the artist’s Palestine series and was shown in the 1880s throughout Europe and also in New York. 

Beautifully rendered, it is a superb example of 19th-century history painting. 

It was given to the university by Phoebe Hearst and has been on long-term loan to the Judah L. Magnes Museum where it was appreciated by countless viewers and established a long partnership between the two museums. 

The loss of this painting to the Berkeley community is comparable to the fate of Asher B. Durand’s Kindred Spirits (depicting Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant standing on a precipice), which was sold by the New York Public Library, its long-time owner, to the Wal-Mart Museum in Arkansas. The New York public, deprived of this painting, is very angry at its loss. The Berkeley community would be similarly impoverished if this sale should be consummated. 

The mission of the Berkeley Art Museum from the beginning was to be as encyclopedic as feasible. At its late start it could not compete with Yale or Harvard, but fine European and American paintings were acquired. This seems to have come to a virtual standstill.  

A museum is judged primarily by the strength of its collection, so this seems a bad time for the Berkeley Art Museum to auction off one of its prime possessions. The de Young Museum’s recent fund drive for its new buildings was largely successful due to its record of acquisitions by gift and purchase of important art. Acquisitions by the Berkeley Art Museum have been meager in recent years. The museum can hardly expect to raise funds when important gifts such as Solomon’s Wall are sold at auction. 

 

Peter Selz is the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum.  

 

 

Image: Vasily Vereshchagin’s Solomon’s Wall (1884-1885), oil on canvas. The painting was gifted to the Berkeley Art Museum by Phoebe Hearst.


Remembering Dorothy Vance

By Roger Moss
Friday April 06, 2007

Dorothy Vance (called Dotty by her childhood friends in Colorado and Dart by her Berkeley friends), radical, anti-nuclear protester and jailbird, rebel girl and woman for peace, vegetarian, feminist, champion of the poor and foe of the powerful, resident of Berkeley for 50 years, and of the Elmwood for 35, friend extraordinaire, mother of three and grandmother of four, the best sister in the world, sociologist and college teacher, librarian, early receptionist for KPFA back in the days when it was upstairs over Edy’s on Shattuck, former drunk and smoker to the end, assertive yet modest and self-effacing, breadmaker, playwright and short story writer, graphic artist, potter and tile maker, creator of award-winning appliqué quilts of great good humor, some on historical, political or cultural themes, others simply whimsical, fundamentally dubious about labels and categories such as those above, died in her home on Russell Street in late February. She was 76. 

Upon being told that she wanted no memorial service or obituary, her friends and family all said, “That sounds just like her.” 

 

—Roger Moss, Dorothy’s brother 

 

Image: Detail from a nine-panel quilt of original limericks titled There Was An Old Man, made by Dorothy Vance in 1995.


The Theater: Wilde Irish Presents ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday April 06, 2007

By KEN BULLOCK 

Special to the Planet 

 

“A total waste of time that is, looking at cows.” With judgments like this, passed by one “pretend auntie” of Cripple Billy on the title character’s chief pastime in The Cripple of Inishmaan, by Martin McDonagh (author of Berkeley Rep’s recent hit, The Pillowman), the audience is ushered into—and soon surrounded by—the bleak, back-biting and hysterically deadpan, insular world of one of the Aran Islands in the 1930s. There the news, according to ubiquitous, snooping Johnny Pateen, who gathers and recites it, consists of a feud (and a feud is to be relished) between two old friends, after the goose belonging to one bites the tail of the other’s cat, and no apology seems forthcoming. Wilde Irish is now staging the play at the Berkeley City Club, 

But caviling at cow-watching, speaking to rocks, pegging eggs at priests and other parochial preoccupations with each other’s eccentricities and mischief are upstaged by a truly momentous piece of news: an American film (or “fil-um”) crew has landed at nearby Inishmore, under the direction of Robert Flaherty, “one of the richest and most famous Yanks there is,” according to Johnny Pateen. What’s more, the local talent “will be taken back to Hollywood, anyone chosen to be in it, and given a life free of work.” 

That verbal banner headline raises enough of a stir to dampen the incessant complaining about Yanks a bit, bringing up a new golden phrase to be endlessly mutated and recycled: “Sure, and if they came all the way from Hollywood, Ireland can’t be such a bad place after all.” Or wondrous words to that effect. 

But when Cripple Billy learns that local terror, trash-talking tomboy Slippy Helen (“And why shouldn’t a lassie be swearin’?”) has twisted Babbybobby’s arm with a promise of kisses to row her to Inishmore to surely be cast as the romantic lead (“If I’m pretty enough to get clergymen gropin’ my arse ...” reasons Helen, but Bartley McCormack shoots back: “Sure, havin’ your arse groped don’t demand no skill!”), the suddenly enterprising Billy cons the boatman into taking him along, too, on the force of a doctor’s letter that must contain a dire prognosis—one that the lurking Johnny Pateen wants to convert to verbal copy for his raconteurish wire service ... . 

So the plot advances by devolving into a hundred seemingly insignificant subplots and asides that always come ‘round again, snowballing with absurd significance. And just like Zeno’s race between swift Achilles and the plodding tortoise, in which the quicker party must cover so much subdivided ground that the snail-like progress of his opponent easily overtakes him, so reverting to type (and endlessly talking about it) provokes the most unexpected series of reversals, and double-reverses. It’s not for nothing that a brand of Irish doubletalk is referred to as Doin’ the 180. 

Soon enough, the shag is worn off the dog, and the audience is still helplessly laughing at the saddest of predicaments as they inevitably worsen. But this cast of characters, quaint unto death, is bitterly determined. Even after the deepest, darkest truths have been plumbed, the Yank movie screened to the infighting islanders and revealed to be no more than a documentary, complete with shark hunts (“It was a shark ate Daddy,” intones Johnny Pateen’s besotted, disapproving Mammy, “But Jesus says you should forgive and forget!”) the wheel keeps turning, the worst turn out to be best, and a kind of love descends upon the loveless, although all is subject to change at the careless drop of a brutal word. 

Wilde Irish’s valiant cast—Andrew Sa, Arthur Scappaticci, Breda Courtney, Bryn Elizen Harris, Eddie Fitzgerald, Esther Mulligan, Howard Dillon, Shelley Lynn Johnson and Martin Waldron—brave the word-hoard of the darkly humorous McDonagh, making a very funny evening of a treacherous piece of work, one that must trick everyone in order to enlighten. For those who saw The Pillowman, the show at the City Club gives the opportunity to witness McDonagh’s fantastic humor (and dire speculations on what it means to walk the earth and talk about it) now grounded in the Ould Sod. The London-reared playwright had antecedents in Connemara, on Ireland’s West Coast, where the Arans are just off shore. 

The Cripple slips neatly into an ongoing literature of black comedy set in the western islands, with John Synge’s still-controversial masterpiece The Playboy of the Western World taking place in the Arans, and Myles na Gopaleen’s (better known by his other pen name, Flann O’Brien) misanthropic Gaelic novella, translated as The Poor Mouth, in the Blasketts. Each looks at the romancing of primitive Gaeltacht culture with a jaundiced eye, making it clear, too, why Orson Welles’ stage mentor, Michael MacLiammor of the Gate Theatre, on a challenge from his protege to come up with a one word description of the Irish, said “Malice!” And the false naivete of the characters, turned inside-out, recalls the loaded words of the 18th-century tinker Conor Cruise O’Brien liked to quote: “I never was a sadist, but always tried to look on the bright side of things.” 

Stephanie Courtney-Fox, daughter of company co-founder and “phony auntie” Breda Courtney, bellwether to this wayward flock, has shown real prowess in staging as she takes up the reins of Wilde Irish as the new artistic director.  

Wilde Irish has not only succeeded in putting across a dense, ingrown tale that threatens to devour itself—and maybe its listeners—at every turn, they’ve rendered its vertiginous, arch yet mocking tone well, too, through all its cruel vicissitudes. As one of the twisted souls of Inishmaan exclaims, on the verge of some mayhem, “It wouldn’t be a very Christian thing to do, but it would be awful funny!” 

 

THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN 

Presented by Wilde Irish Productions at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays through April 15 at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. $20-$25. 644-9940.


Moving Pictures: Brother Against Brother in ‘Wind That Shakes the Barley’

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday April 06, 2007

Ken Loach’s new film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley, is the story of the nascent Irish Republican Army and its struggle against British occupation in the early 1920s. 

“If they bring their savagery over here, we will meet it with savagery of our own!” the group’s leader calls to his guerilla troops after a successful ambush of British forces on a remote country lane. He angrily declares that their actions will send a message “that will echo and reverberate throughout the world.” 

Thus develops a seemingly endless cycle of escalating violence that does in fact reverberate throughout Ireland, Britain and eventually the world, and indeed finds echoes of late in America’s exploits in the Middle East. Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty do an excellent job of capturing the essence of the conflict from multiple vantage points: from that of the die-hards, who believe in the nobility of the cause; from the contingent of pragmatists that eventually accepts a compromise with the British; and from the long view, in which the eye-for-an-eye violence and retribution becomes a weary demonstration of futility and human frailty. In this film nothing is black or white or good or evil; politics and motivations are all as gray as the fog-shrouded landscape.  

The Wind That Shakes the Barley won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, as well as a number of other European awards, and it is not difficult to understand why. Almost everything about the film is well done; it is beautifully photographed, features strong performances by compelling actors, and it is directed and edited with competence and grace. Quiet scenes are handled with restraint, while the more dramatic and violent episodes are forceful without ever being excessively graphic or gratuitous.  

However, the film has one significant flaw which threatens to undermine its artistry and impact. Loach and Laverty have unfortunately fallen prey to one of the more tedious and ham-fisted of devices: In order to amplify the already clear theme of brother pitted against brother, they have found it necessary to dramatize the conflict all too literally, with two familial brothers finding themselves divided over the issue of the compromise treaty.  

It’s a bit insulting. Do we need the story reduced to melodrama in order to comprehend the enormity of it all? Did the filmmakers not trust the audience to grasp the tragedy of the conflict? Or was it merely a clumsy attempt to elevate the tale to Biblical proportions, with Cain rising up to slay Abel in service to the twin causes of acquiescence and moderation? 

It’s a structural flaw, and thus it infects the entire production. But if you can get past that and accept the contrivance, Loach and Laverty and a talented cast manage to bring the story to life in spite of it. 

 

Photograph: Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney star as brothers battling British occupation of Ireland in the 1920s.


Moving Pictures: Five Documentaries That Could Have Been Contenders

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday April 06, 2007

The documentary category is consistently one of the few categories in the Academy Awards in which every nominee genuinely seems to be worthy of the attention. This year’s nominees were all high-caliber films whose selection can hardly be questioned. The winner, however, was An Inconvenient Truth, its high visibility and great cultural impact perhaps earning greater recognition for the film than its inherent quality would merit. Jesus Camp, for example, was more compelling, and Iraq in Fragments was a unique artistic triumph. 

And there were many films of great style and substance that didn’t even make the cut. Thus, here are five documentaries released last year, all now available on DVD, that were easily worthy of nomination. Complete reviews for all of these films can be found in the Daily Planet’s archives at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

Probably the best of the lot is The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a fascinating and poignant examination of the life and career of a musician and artist tormented by manic depression. The film uses Johnston’s own art, films and audio diaries to document his journey from suburban Boy Scout to cult legend, a journey that has all the trappings of folk music mythology: devils and demons, divine revelations, wayward road trips, traveling carnivals, mental breakdowns, plane crashes, a “lost year,” falls from grace followed by triumphant resurrections.  

Johnston’s story is one of salvation through art. He believes he has lost his soul to the devil in pursuit of fame; he believes that he is damned, yet is actively and forever seeking redemption. The film is both inspiring and heartbreaking, a stylish yet simple and effective portrait of an extraordinary artist. The DVD comes with plenty of extra features, including footage from the film’s premiere at Sundance, Daniel’s famous solo radio drama and a reunion with Lori, the unrequited love of Johnston’s life.  

Shakespeare Behind Bars goes behind the scenes at Kentucky’s maximum security Luther Luckett Correctional Complex to document the rehearsal and staging by inmates of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Volunteer director Curt Tofteland selected the play because of its themes of forgiveness and redemption, knowing these concepts would resonate with his cast.  

The picture this film presents is disarming; the prisoners are articulate, intelligent, charismatic and educated, making for a film that is not just moving and entertaining, but genuinely funny. Prison would seem an unlikely setting for a movie of such warmth and compassion, humanity and joy. 

Cowboy Del Amor is a quirky film that spotlights an obscure man in an obscure trade: Arizona resident Ivan Thompson makes his living by driving lonely American men across the border in search of Mexican brides. The inherent misogyny of the operation is unsettling. The men, it seems, are looking for docile Mexican dolls to sit by their sides, to come live in their homes and to generally behave themselves, while the women are looking for respect, love, security, equality and, perhaps most importantly, a shot at the American Dream.  

Despite the charisma, kindness and humor of Ivan Thompson, the film is permeated with a certain sadness—the sadness that comes with the acknowledgment that life is not a story with a fairly-tale ending, but a series of compromises, of people making do with what they have. And the sadness is compounded by the realization that for these women, their only path to independence is through dependence on a man; and that these men, being American, believe that they can simply buy the happiness they’ve thus far been unable to find.  

The Road to Guantanamo presents the harrowing tale of the “Tipton Trio,” three Englishmen of Pakistani origin who set out for their native country so that one of them could get married there. On the way they were picked up in a raid in Afghanistan along with a group of alleged Taliban soldiers, arrested by the Northern Alliance, turned over to the American military, and eventually shipped off to Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were systematically humiliated, beaten, abused and degraded. 

Though the story is told primarily through dramatic re-creations, the action is interspersed with news footage and interviews with the Tipton Trio themselves, creating an interesting documentary-narrative hybrid. 

Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos tells the story of soccer’s arrival in the United States in the late 1970s, when a media mogul set out to make the “the beautiful game” a national phenomenon. 

In the mid 1970s, Steve Ross and a few partners created the North American Soccer League and recruited Brazillian legend Pelé to draw attention to the fledgling league. Thus began a circus of soccer, media relations and mayhem that consumed the city of New York and took the world of American sports by storm for several years. The documentary features interviews with the major players in this drama (with the notable exception of Pelé himself), but what makes this film so entertaining is the fact it is not a calm, dignified documentary of talking heads, but rather a back-and-forth battle of words, with each man stepping before the camera with an axe to grind in an effort to put his own particular stamp on the story of the Cosmos. 

 


Incorporating Modern Technology Into Arts and Crafts Interiors

By Jane Powell
Friday April 06, 2007

It’s one of those discussions that only Arts and Crafts people would have, because we’re weird. The basic question is, “What would Stickley do with a computer?” (Gustav Stickley, for those who don’t know, was a famous furniture designer and proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement during the first two decades of the 20th century.) There seem to be two points of view on the question: the “Oh, he’d just stick it out on a library table” camp and the “No, he would have designed a special piece of furniture for it” camp. 

In no way am I saying there’s a right answer to the question, but in many ways the struggle to have both technology AND art IS the central question of the original Movement as well as the Arts and Crafts Revival that has been going on for the last 30-odd years. And this being 2007, not 1907, we have to come up with our own answer, because some of the technology we have now is nothing Stickley could have even imagined.  

I myself tend toward the “special piece of furniture” camp, for a couple of reasons. One of them is the difference in attitudes toward utilitarian objects at the beginning of the 20th century compared to today. In the early 20th century, even functional objects like water heaters and furnaces were embellished. Many East Bay homes still retain their original Ruud instantaneous water heaters, complete with Art Nouveau ornamentation. And things back then were generally made of materials like metal and wood, not plastic. 

Another reason is that Arts and Crafts is not just a philosophy, it’s also an aesthetic, and while an iMac may be fine-looking, it doesn’t exactly have an Arts and Crafts aesthetic. But at least an iMac HAS an aesthetic. The design, if you could call it that, of most modern technology, could be summed up completely by the word “gray.” But the second reason is even more compelling—take a look at the tangle of wires on the back of your computer. A home office may still contain bookcases and a desk, but instead of the typewriter of 1907, there will be a computer, and that will entail at least a monitor, a CPU, a keyboard, a mouse, and a printer.  

But more likely it will also entail more than one printer, a notebook computer, a scanner, a copier, a fax machine, a cradle for the PDA and the iPod, a battery backup, a router, a USB hub, a cable modem or DSL connection, a webcam, speakers, surge protectors, a regular phone, a cordless phone, a lamp, a file cabinet, a Rolodex, etc. These things will require wires and power cords, and the dreaded transformers. And that’s why Stickley would have designed a special piece of furniture, because it just wouldn’t be very artful to put all that junk out on a library table. That’s why we of the 21st century have the computer desk and the computer armoire. 

Ah, you say, but I have gone wireless! I have a wireless keyboard and mouse! I have Blue Tooth! I take my laptop to Starbucks! I surf the Internet on my back porch! All well and good, but the wireless router still needs to be plugged in, as does the printer and most of the other stuff. 

There are certain parts of the house where the technology has changed more than it has in others. The dining room, for instance, is not much different now than it was then. Houses of the Arts and Crafts era WERE the first modern houses, as we would think of modern—they had electricity, central heat, and indoor plumbing. They had telephones and vacuum cleaners and sewing machines and other pieces of technology which we still have. 

For instance, bathrooms haven’t changed that much in a hundred years. I think everyone would agree that indoor plumbing is the very basis of modern civilization, and few of us would be willing to give it up. We might like to have two sinks, which is easy enough to do if there’s room. We might prefer to have mixing faucets instead of separate taps, which is easily done. Modern code requires a pressure balance valve, so you don’t get scalded when someone turns on the dishwasher while you’re taking a shower. They actually had these at the turn of the century, and you can still buy new ones that look old, or you can get one that is plumbed into the supply lines before they reach the shower. Reproduction low-flow toilets are now available that look like old ones, where the tank hangs on the wall instead of sitting on the back of the bowl. 

GFCI’s, which stands for ground fault circuit interrupter are now required in the bathroom. This is the plug that keeps you from being electrocuted should you be standing in a puddle of water when the hairdryer short circuits. It’s hard to make these look old. It is possible to install one upstream on the circuit, which then protects all the outlets downstream from it, or you can put a GFCI breaker at the main panel. 

In the early 20th century, the living room was to be the center of home life, with the family gathered around the hearth. They would play board games or parlor games, read, play musical instruments, women would do needlework. They might even listen to 78s on the gramophone, or listen to the radio. They would even, God forbid, talk to each other. We prefer to watch TV. In fact, it’s pretty much replaced the fireplace as the center of home life, whether you think that’s good or bad. But it’s not just the TV. It’s the VCR and the DVD player and the Tivo and the Wii, and the remote controls and joysticks and whatever that go with all of these. Often the stereo and a computer are hooked into it as well. And that, friends, is why the entertainment center was invented.  

The kitchen is far too complicated to go into here—I’ll save that for another article. 

If you look closely, you may be struck by just how ugly many of the elements of contemporary life really are, and how out of place they look in an Arts and Crafts interior. Beauty is not really part of the equation any more for most things. Certainly our lives have become very complex. Maybe we need to try to live a simpler existence in the face of cultural pressures, and to choose only the technology that is actually helpful to us.  

Much of the technology that has come about in the last century is useful- I certainly don’t intend to give up the computer that allowed me to rewrite this paragraph several times with ease. But I often think we have become enamored of bells and whistles for which we have no real use, and altered our houses, our lives, and even the outer environment in unfortunate ways in order to make room for them. It isn’t a new struggle. Oscar Wilde realized this in the 19th century, saying, “Do you think, for instance, that we object to machinery? I tell you we reverence it; we reverence it when it does its proper work, when it relieves man from ignoble and soulless labor, not when it seeks to do that which is valuable only when wrought by the hands and hearts of men. And let us not mistake the means of civilization for the end of civilization; steam-engine, telephone and the like, are all wonderful, but remember that their value depends entirely on the noble uses we make of them, on the noble spirit in which we employ them, not on the things themselves.” 

 

Jane Powell is the author of Bungalow Details: Interior and can be reached at janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

 

 

Photograph: A custom armoire built by The Craftsman Home (3048 Claremont Ave.) allows these homeowners to keep their computer in the living room.


Grab Your Cash and Make a Dash: It’s Spring Plant Sale Time!

By Ron Sullivan
Friday April 06, 2007

Everybody up and at ‘em! Shop till you drop! It’s time for spring plant sales! 

Various chapters of the California Native Plant Society are selling, big surprise, California native plants. Sometimes you can find species at CNPS sales that you haven’t seen for sale anywhere else, and there’s usually a handy plant maven hanging around to give you advice. Another thing I like about these sales is how CNPS propagators are generally persnickety and specific about where the plants came from; one might get a clue from that about where they’re likeliest to thrive, and the information is really useful to restoration gardeners.  

 

Marin Chapter California Native Plant Society 

30th annual Native Plant Sale 

Saturday, April 14  

9:30 a.m. -2 p.m. 

Tiburon Audubon Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, 376 Greenwood Beach Road, Tiburon. www.marin.cc.ca.us/cnps. 

 

Regional Parks Botanic Garden  

Saturday, April 21 

10 a.m. -3 p.m. 

Wildcat Canyon Road, Tilden Regional Park. www.nativeplants.org. 

 

Jepson CNPS Chapter Plant Sale 

May 5, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Benicia Community Garden 

Military East and E. Second Street, Benicia. www.cnpsjepsonchapter.org. 

 

Other sales might mix natives with exotic ornamentals and/or edible plants and fruit trees, or sell any or all in various combinations. And at least one local nursery throws a party every now and then.  

 

Annie’s Annuals  

Spring Party 10 a.m.–5 p.m.  

Friday through Sunday, April 13, 14, and 15  

Mother’s Day party 10 a.m.–5 p.m. 

Saturday and Sunday, May 12 and 13 

740 Market Ave., Richmond. 

I-80 east ; exit San Pablo Dam Rd., turn left at the light. Turn right at third light onto San Pablo Avenue; left at Church Lane, which becomes Market Avenue. Go 1.5 miles past two traffic lights and over two railroad tracks, look left for Annie’s green fence and sign, but no street number. 

www.anniesannuals.com. 

 

COPIA’s Big Spring Plant Sale 

Saturday, April 14, 10 a.m –4 p.m. 

Sunday April 15, 10 a.m.–4 pm 

500 First St., Napa 

Preview hour for members only, Saturday and Sunday 9–10 a.m. 

Padrone peppers, more than 80 varieties of tomatoes, assorted types of basil. Plants, seeds, garden products and tools, music and demonstrations. For your shopping pleasure, The Nurserymen will play Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m.–1 p.m. in the South Garden. Sale open to the public (does not include general admission to COPIA). Food, wine, and plants sold separately. (888) 512-6742. www.copia.org. 

 

Merritt College Landscape Horticulture Department Spring Plant Sale and Fair 

Saturday, April 28 

9 a.m.– 3 p.m. 

Merritt College, 12500 Campus Dr., off Redwood Road, Oakland 

Natives, edibles, weird and nifty plants; live music, food! Also good advice on design, plants, pruning, and life in general. 

www.merrittlandhort.com. 

 

 

It’s always a good idea to bring some sturdy boxes to a plant sale—those blue recycling bins are ideal—to tote your purchases. Do I really have to add that gardenworthy clothing and shoes are de rigeur?


About the House: A Modern House From 1942!

By Matt Cantor
Friday April 06, 2007

The East Bay is a special place for so many reasons including architectural history. Now, I’m a technical guy (for a sensitive male) and the history that turns me on involves silly things like pipe threading and wire soldering. I love museums of mine shafts and light bulbs. I get no kick from champagne but a museum of science and industry makes my pulse race. In other words, I’m a geek. The one that all the girls moved away from at the junior high school dance and now, years later I can proudly come out of the closet, with my phaser held high and admit my affiliation with those who collect glass doorknobs and vacuum tube radios. 

So for me, architectural history is inextricably mingled with technical history and our local housing stock makes a marvelous display case for century-long evolution of the technical advances in building. To make this even more fun, the display case is neatly organized by community. Berkeley and Oakland begin with houses in the 1870s (and a very few that are earlier) and flow along to the north and south upward to the present as the rolling hills and bayside shoreline gothomorphed into its current urbanity. 

So let’s take a short technical trip from Old Oakland to 1960s Richmond and see how some elements of these houses evolved. 

It’s easy to see how foundations evolved from the oldest houses in Oakland and Berkeley to the modern ones we have today if we pick a handful of examples. Starting at an 1875 church in Berkeley we might find no foundation at all but instead a huge redwood mudsill. The mudsill is the bottom board of the house and is usually bolted to a concrete footing today but in our Oakland church and many early houses, it would have been a large wooden beam laid on its side made from old growth redwood. When I’ve seen these, they’re usually still in pretty good shape, owing to redwood’s high tannin content and its resultant pest resistance.  

Now let’s go to South Berkeley 1906. This house probably had a brick foundation and by today, these are mostly dissolving away. They’re also waiting for a 7.3 earthquake to finally turn them into a nice herringbone patio. 

By the time the 1920s houses of Berkeley were built, concrete foundations had become the common form, although these lacked reinforcing metal (rebar) and were quite small and laid in shallow trenches. Combined with poorly mixed concrete, these often fared poorly on the soft clay soils of Berkeley and many today are rocking and rolling like all good Boomers do. 

Albany, largely developed in the 1930s has almost exclusively concrete foundations and, again, most lack rebar. Nonetheless, these later concrete footings tend to be stronger since concrete mixing improved as the century matured. Bay-dredged sands gave way to mined sands from the Black Diamond mines of Mt. Diablo and concrete mixing became more science and less sport. 

By the time World War II arrived and Henry Kaiser’s shipyards in Richmond began producing a fleet, the hills of El Cerrito began to produce the humble and solid housing stock that would house a generation of G.I. and steelyard families (Many lived out their entire adult lives in these houses and a few are still there today). These foundations reflected the technical and engineering advancements that came with a war build-up. Concrete became prescriptive (mixed by formula) and these foundations are still hard as rock. They also began to use rebar and even employed this rebar to do what had, heretofore, not been done at all, connecting the foundation to the mudsill. Builders let short lengths of the rebar project up and out of the foundation. These stuck through the mudsill and were then hammered down to one side, holding the sill in place. Now this isn’t all that useful in a large quake but it shows the early glimmer of insight in these fabulous 1940s builders. By 1950 nearly all houses had some actual bolts doing the same thing. 

Sweeping north to Richmond, houses continue to advance through the ’50s into the ’60s and ’70s with foundations becoming still larger, deeper and wider at the base. During this time the inverted T shape become the standard form. We still do most foundations in the same manner today with just a little more rebar and a slightly stronger concrete. Nonetheless, foundations today are essentially the same as these ones with only a few exotic variations. Some hillside foundations built today are of a pier and gradebeam type that became popular in the 1960s and ’70s. 

Electrical systems advanced along the same stretch of shorefront with many Oakland and Berkeley houses having no electricity until the years following 1900. Many of these houses still have the plumbing for gas lighting running through the attics and walls. It’s still a thrill for me to come upon this in the attics of Victorians and other turn-of-the-century homes. Occasionally, I’ll even find a gas light still in use. Ooooo. Scary! 

As we move along to ’20s Berkeley houses and those ’30s Albany houses (thank you, Mr. MacGregor) the “knob and tube” wiring becomes more elaborate. Fuses move up from the crawlspace at the front of the house and into cabinets on the side where users are less likely to fry themselves while changing a fuse. The open knife switches (think Frankenstein) give way to fused disconnects. These early system have fuses on both “hots” and “neutrals” posing a serious threat to those trying test and repair these systems. By 1928, the “fused neutral” system gives way to hot-only fusing. We also move fuse panels out of wooden boxes (often lined with asbestos) and into metal enclosures. 

By the time we get to El Cerrito, we move from 120-volt to 240-volt systems that can accommodate more power and big users like ranges and A/C. Move along to Richmond and we find houses built with (good God!) breaker panels. 

Heating takes the same trip, as does plumbing and roofing. It’s pretty fun to see how faithfully the technology falls into line.  

As much as I enjoy the beauty of our old Berkeley houses, it’s always a relief to get the call to go inspect a 1942 El Cerrito, knowing that I’ll be getting a chance to inspect a modern house.  

 

Matt Cantor owns Cantor Inspections and lives in Berkeley. His column runs weekly. 

Copyright 2007 Matt Cantor


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday April 06, 2007

Run to a safe place? 

Here’s something we cover in my QuakeConsults: when a big quake hits, expect that the shaking will be so violent that you can’t stand up. Get on your hands and knees right away and crawl to the safest spot in the room you’re in (unless it’s the kitchen or a bathroom). 

Don’t try and get outside: moving around is how you can get hurt (you’ll be knocked down!), plus there are things outside that can fall on you.  

If you have a child in another room, be sure to drop and crawl – you won’t be much help to your child if you’re seriously injured.  

Speaking of being injured: have you secured your furniture yet? 

 

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


Berkeley This Week

Friday April 06, 2007

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

“Dismantling Empire: Creating a Culture of Peace” St. Joseph the Worker Good Friday Service with Rev. Michael Yoshii at 7 a.m. at Livermore Labs, intersection of Vasco and Patterson Pass Rd. 482-1062. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Claudine Torfs on “The Epidemiology of Birth Defects” 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.  

Berkeley Public Library 5th Birthday Party for its new Renovated Central Library from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. with music and a cake. 981-6107. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org  

“Return of the Condor: The Race to Sve Our Largest Bird from Extinction” with John Moir at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. 238-2200. 

“Mardi Gras: Made in China” a documentary on the women workers making beads at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., midtown Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Movies That Matter “The Motorcycle Diaries” at 6:30 p.m. at the Neumayer Residence, 565 Bellevue St. at Perkins, Oakland. 451-3009. 

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, APRIL 7 

City Of Berkeley City-Wide Easter Egg Hunt from 9:15 to 11:30 a.m. at Willard Park, 2730 Hillegass Ave. Activities include carnival games, face painting, picture with bunnies, goodie bags, egg hunt and treasure hunts. Check in at 9:15 a.m. to register for the hunt. Cost is $5. 981-6678. 

Eggster Egghunt and Learning Festival with educational activities for children and their families from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in front of the Valey Life Sciences Bldg., UC Campus. 204-4613. www.eggster.org 

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour “UC Memorial Stadium, Sports Hall of Fame and Live Oak Trees” led by Bruce Goodell at 10 a.m. Cost is $8-$10. For information on meeting place and to register call 848-0181. 

38th Annual UC Open Taekwondo Championship, beginning at 8:30 a.m. and running though out the day, at the Haas Pavilion 2301 Bancroft Way. Cost is $3-$8. 642-3268. www.ucmap.org 

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. 

“Count Down Your Age” Tips on reversing the aging process with Dave Brunell of the Longlife Club, at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Sponsored by Friends of the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6107. 

Extra Dimensions and String Theory: Physics of the Future or Pure Mathematics? with Professor Lawrence M. Krauss and Professor John Terning from 1 to 4 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science www.multiversaljourneys.org 

“Lead-Safe Painting and Remodeling” Learn how to detect and remedy lead hazards and conduct lead-safe renovations for your older home. Sponsored by the Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. From 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Cesar E. Chavez Branch Library, 3301 E. 12th Street, Suite 271, Oakland. Free. 567-8280. www.aclppp.org 

Help Tutor Teens Training session for new volunteers in the Homework Assistance Program from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 238-7233. 

Common Agenda Regional Network General Meeting to discuss Iraq War responses, Pelosi Lobby project, and other progressive concerns at 2 p.m. at the Peace Action office, 2800 Adeline.  

Hopalong Animal Rescue Come meet your new best dog friend from noon to 3 p.m. at Pet Food Express Rockridge, 5144 Broadway, Oakland. 267-1915, ext. 500. www.hopalong.org  

Hopalong Animal Rescue Come meet your furry new best cat friend from noon to 3 p.m. at 2940 College Ave. 267-1915, ext. 500. www.hopalong.org  

Petite Pooches Playgroup for small dogs from 10:30 11:30 a.m., one block north of Solano on Ensenada at Talbot. 524-2459. 

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

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 8 

Architecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., designed by Kevin Roche. Meet at 1 p.m. at the koi pond, first level. Free. 238-2200. 

Easter Egg Hunt from 1 to 2 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Meet the Bunnies: Adopt, Don’t Breed from 2 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. 525-6155. 

Easter at the Kensington Farmer’s Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. 525-7232. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

Salon in the Grove to decorate the trees and discuss the ongoing protest at 2 p.m. at the Memorial Oak Grove in front of the UC Stadium. lkaybrown@hotmail.com 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Bob Russo in “Peace through Understanding: Meditation in Action” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 9 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class at 6:30 p.m. at Keller Williams, 4341 Piedmont Ave., 2nd Flr., Oakland. To register call Lori at 531-2665. 

“Different Approaches to Healing Stress” with Dr. Jay Sordean, LAc, OMD, ND, at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Teen Wild Guide Training at the Oakland Zoo Teen volunteers are needed to assist in the new Valley Children’s Zoo. Training from 7 to 8 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo. For information call 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at East Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Union. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE or 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, APRIL 10 

“Impact of the 1906 Earthquake on Berkeley” with Richard Schwartz and Stepehn Tobriner on “Bracing for Disaster” at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater Lobby to discuss the proposal for denise brown mural, proposed change in Bylaws, and budget decisions. 644-4803. 

March Across Emeryville for Justice for Woodfin Workers Rally at 5 p.m. at the Emeryville City Hall, Park St. at Hollis, and march at 6 p.m. at the Woodfin Suites. www.workingeastbay.org 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:15 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “Girl Trouble” at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

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 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class at 6:30 p.m. at Keller Williams, 4341 Piedmont Ave., 2nd Flr., Oakland. To register call Lori at 531-2665. 

“Poles for Hiking, Trekking and Walking” at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

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, APRIL 11 

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  

Teach-In and Vigil Against American Torture every Wed. at noon at Boalt Hall, Bancroft Way at College Ave.  

“Building Alliances: Latinos, Immigration & The Environment” with Maria Elena Durazo, head of the LA County Federation of Labor; Margot Pepper, Teacher at Rosa Parks School; Hilary Abell, Exec. Director of WAGES at 4 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium. www.ecologycenter.org/chavez  

“China and India: How Japan Approaches Asia’s Two Giants” A lecture with Ambassador Sakutaro Tanino, former Japanese Ambassador to China and India at 4 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th flr. 642-2809. 

“Ira Nowinski”s San Francisco” a slide presentation at 10:30 a.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Cost is $12.50. 238-2200. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:15 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

“Kayaking 101” with paddling specialist Scott Goodman at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in four Acts” the documentary by Spike Lee about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

ReelVenezuela, Venezuelan films at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$9. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

New to DVD: “Half Nelson” 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, APRIL 12 

“Seeds and the Privatization of Life” with Ignacio Chapela. Learn about the importance of saving seed diversity and about the local projects that are putting control back into the hands of local gardeners. At 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

William Sloane Coffin Awards will be presented to Robert N. Bellah and Nancy Scheper-Hughes at 5:15 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Reception follows. 559-9500. 

A Week Without Racism Film Festival “In This World” a documentary on human trafficking at 5:30 p.m. at the YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. www.ywca-berkeley.org 

“Jewish Superheroes” with comic book expert Rabbi Harry Manhoff at 7:30 p.m. at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 839-2900, ext. 347. 

Peace Action West: 50 Years of Waging Peace Celebration with dinner and reminiscences at 6 p.m. at Madison’s, Lake Merritt Hotel, Oakland. Tickets are $125. RSVP to 839-3100. 

ReelVenezuela, Venezuelan films at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$9. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Youth Commission meets Mon., April 9, at 6:30 p.m., at City Council Chambers, Old City Hall. 981-6670.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., April 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., April 11, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., April 11, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti, 981-6740. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., April 12 , at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., April 12, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.