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Judith Scherr
          Former President Jimmy Carter discusses his book Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid with Orville Schell at UC Berkeley on Wednesday.
Judith Scherr Former President Jimmy Carter discusses his book Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid with Orville Schell at UC Berkeley on Wednesday.
 

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Carter Focuses in on Palestine/Israel at Packed Zellerbach

By Judith Scherr
Friday May 04, 2007
Judith Scherr
              Former President Jimmy Carter discusses his book Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid with Orville Schell at UC Berkeley on Wednesday.
Judith Scherr Former President Jimmy Carter discusses his book Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid with Orville Schell at UC Berkeley on Wednesday.

The 39th president of the United States, former peanut farmer and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, got standing ovations and multiple rounds of applause from a packed Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus Wednesday afternoon, where he had come at the invitation of two students to speak about his controversial book, Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid. 

Near Zellerbach, students snaked by the hundreds in a long line, many reading the book, hoping to get into the room where Carter was signing books before the talk. 

In the wide plaza outside the hall where Carter was to speak, two small gatherings were separated by the breadth of the plaza: one was made up of about a dozen people from Jewish Voice for Peace and Women in Black, who said they supported Carter’s visit as an opening for dialogue.  

The other, a group of about 20 students from the Jewish Student Union and Hillel, said they supported Carter’s right to speak, but faulted the former president for blaming Jews for the unrest in Israel/Palestine. 

Welcomed by Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau, Carter spoke, then answered questions from Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, and written questions from the mostly-student audience. 

The meaning of the provocative title Carter chose for the book was addressed during both the speech and the question period.  

Apartheid in the context of Palestine is at the heart of Carter’s book. Carefully explaining his thesis, the former president said that the book—and thus the term—addresses the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank only.  

Carter pointed out that both former South African President Nelson Mandela and South African Bishop Desmond Tutu use the term “apartheid” with respect to Palestine.  

In the context of Palestine, “apar-theid” does not refer to race. “The enforced segregation and domination of Arabs by Israelis is not based on race, it’s rather based on terrible persecution and oppression in Palestine,” Carter said. 

The domination of the Palestinians “comes from efforts of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and to colonize Palestinian land.” Carter said. “Palestinians have been forcibly removed in their own tiny area [of the West Bank] from the choice hilltops, the vital water resources and the most productive land.”  

They’ve been replaced by heavily subsidized settlers, Carter said, noting there are some 200 settlements and 500 checkpoints in the West Bank. And now, there is a wall “that goes deep inside the West Bank,” he said. 

“All this combined makes the lives of Palestinians almost intolerable,” he added, noting the importance of education and urging UC Berkeley students and professors to go to Palestine and witness the situation for themselves. 

“The plight of the Palestinian people is almost unknown in this country,” he said. 

The suffering is not limited to Palestinians, Carter said. The anger in the Arab world that the situation has provoked has destabilized the region. It has made relationships between Israel and the Arab world “practically impossible,” he said. 

Still, Carter made it clear that he is a supporter of the state of Israel, which he called, “a small nation that exemplified the highest moral ideals based on the Hebrew scriptures that I have taught on Sunday since I was 18 years old, where justice is mentioned 28 times in the Old Testament and righteousness is mentioned 196 times.” 

Carter spoke about the United States’ unwavering support of Israel, and pointed out that the U.S., the United Nations and Israel have refused to recognize the leaders democratically elected to the Palestine National Authority.  

The U.S. must play a role as an “honest broker” if peace is to come to the region, he said. “The U.S. must not be seen as in the pocket of either side … We must always make clear our unswerving commitment to Israel, but we cannot be peacemakers if American government leaders are seen as knee-jerk supporters of every action or policy of whatever Israeli government happens to be in power at the moment.” 

Carter also spoke to the role of the powerful pro-Israeli lobbying group, AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to which, he said, there are “few significant countervailing forces … Any balanced debate is still practically nonexistent in the U.S. Congress or among candidates for the presidency.” 

He said he understands the hopes and fears of both camps. “I am a friend of Israel,” he said. “I understand the fear of many Israelis, that threats still exist against them personally.” Carter said he has always condemned acts of violence against innocent people. 

Still, he said, his efforts in the Middle East are to bring peace and security to Israel and justice and righteousness to the Palestinian people.  

“The bottom line is this: Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighbors’ land and permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights,” he said. 

While most of the audience’s questions focused on Palestine, students wanted to know which presidential candidate Carter supports. By the cheers that rang through the auditorium, they were not disappointed when Carter responded that it is Al Gore. 

“I called him three times about [the] 2008 [election] and he said he wouldn’t run,” said Carter, who had also encouraged Gore to run in 2004. 

 

 

A video of the Carter speech can be viewed at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/ events.php. 


Report Fails To Quell Furor Over Emeryville Discrimination

By J. Douglas
Friday May 04, 2007

An Emeryville City Manager’s report has concluded that the city does not discriminate against its African-American employees, but the City Council agreed Tuesday night with the city manager’s recommendation that an outside consultant should be hired to do a survey of possible morale problems within the city’s black workforce. 

But a podium-pounding President Alex Papillon of the Berkeley NAACP said that was not enough, and warned that if Emeryville City Council did not address and resolve the discrimination issue, “next time you may have 30 to 40 people shutting down the council meeting by sitting down here.” 

And the Concerned Citizens For Change, an Emeryville group that originally brought the discrimination charges to Council last March, accused the city of “tiptoeing” around the issue, and called on the city to institute a temporary moratorium on the termination of African-Americans and an investigation into the practices of the city’s Human Resources Department in addition to the hiring of the outside consultant. 

One of the members of the Concerned Citizens For Change, former Emeryville City Planning Technician Leslie Pollard, recently received a $3.6 million settlement from the city last month in her wrongful termination lawsuit. Pollard had alleged in her lawsuit that the City of Emeryville had engaged in anti-African-American racial discrimination in suspending her after 27 years of employment. 

In his report to the five-member council Tuesday night, which he called the result of “a thorough investigation of the allegations,” Emeryville City Manager Patrick O’Keefe said that it would be improper for him to discuss grievances or work performance issues concerning any individual city employee. 

But O’Keefe said that he was “proud of the diversity” in Emeryville’s workforce, citing statistics which said that while African-Americans comprise only 19.5 percent of Emeryville’s population, the city government’s workforce is 34 percent African-American, and supervisory staff is 27 percent African-American. 

O’Keefe’s report said that Emeryville has invested heavily in training for employees, including $135,000 committed to such programs as tuition reimbursement for employees pursuing AA, Bachelor’s, and Master’s degrees. 

Saying that “we have a strong commitment to training and a strong commitment to helping people compete for advancement,” O’Keefe said that two of the four city employees who have already taken advantage of the reimbursement program are African-American. 

O’Keefe also said that discontent among Emeryville city employees was limited to a small number of persons. He said that of 74 internal employment grievances filed over the past 12 years, 51 percent were filed by three individuals, and that 68 percent of the 28 race-related internal employment grievances were filed by one person. O’Keefe also said that of the five discrimination claims filed by city employees with either state or federal agencies, three of them race-related, none were upheld. 

But Leslie Pollard told Councilmembers following O’Keefe’s presentation that the individual city employee who filed the bulk of the race-related internal grievances had done so in behalf of other employees. 

And another Concerned Citizens For Change representative, Valerie Savage, said that Pollard’s favorable discrimination settlement would indicate that there were other discrimination problems in city employment that should be addressed by the Council. 

“If the FDA finds a piece of contaminated meat in a store, they take all of the meat off the shelf until they find out the cause,” Savage said. “This is a contaminated issue. The city needs to look into it until it is solved.” 

And Service Employees International Union Emeryville Field Director Larry Hendel said that O’Keefe’s report failed to look into the problem of discrimination in employee discipline in Emeryville. 

“From where I sit, that’s where the pain is really felt,” Hendel said. “I urge you to add that to your criteria for study.” 

O’Keefe recommended the outside consultant and morale study after saying that “while I’m proud of the morale among city employees, I’m not going to rest on that.” 

Councilmember Ken Bukowski, who put the discrimination issue on the Council agenda, called the hiring of an outside consultant “excellent.” 

Referring to the Pollard settlement, Bukowski said, “we have spent a lot of money on this, and a lot of us don’t understand why we have spent a lot of money.” 

Councilmember Ruth Atkin said that while she was “encouraged by the results” of the city manager’s report, “self-examination of racial problems is important. I don’t think we should stop here.” 

And Mayor Nora Davis said that while “these figures tell a very, very good story,” she said she “fully supports an independent outside analysis” of Emeryville city employment. 

But even while supporting the hiring of an outside consultant to probe discrimination in Emeryville, City Councilmembers showed how divisive the issue can be. 

When Councilmember Dick Kassis said that he was “somewhat embarassed that while Emeryville has such a large minority population, we have five white faces up here; we need to figure out how to outreach and get more people to come out and serve in elected office,” Bukowski snapped back, “I have a problem with the suggestion that when we have an all-white Council, Black Folks aren’t represented. I try to represent all people on council.” 

No date was set for the hiring of the outside consultant.


Greenery, Density Color Downtown Panel Talk

By Richard Brenneman
Friday May 04, 2007

Do people who rent or buy residences in so-called transit-oriented development really use mass transit?  

Should a stretch of Shattuck Avenue become Berkeley’s newest spot of greenery? 

And what can downtown Berkeley do to attract a more diverse crop of residents, given that new apartments are quickly grabbed up by university students? 

Those questions dominated the discussion at Wednesday night’s meeting of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), precluding a planned discussion of the sustainabilty element that is to be the cornerstone of the new plan the committee is slated to hand the Planning Commission in November. 

Veteran environmental activist Sylvia McLaughlin opened the meeting’s public comment section with a plea to daylight Strawberry Creek along the stretch of Center Street between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue. 

“For me, this is a matter of natural values that can enhance the urban concrete and asphalt surroundings of the built environment,” she said. 

Daylighting of the water course through the one block stretch—and its conversion into a pedestrian-only plaza—was recommended by the Planning Commission’s Hotel Task Force, which met in response to UC Berkeley’s announcement of plans to promote development of a high-rise hotel and conference center at the northeast corner of the intersection of Shattuck and Center. 

McLaughlin, whose late husband was dean of UC Berkeley’s colleges of mining and engineering, also took the opportunity to take a swipe at plans to build a high-tech gym next to Memorial Stadium. 

“A beautiful grove of oak trees can enhance the UC Berkeley campus far more than an energy-consuming underground athletic facility that could be built elsewhere, especially when so many of the campus green spaces are being replaced by buildings,” she said. 

Gus Yates, a hydrologist and member of Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Plaza, joined in McLaughlin’s plea, adding that critics of the project who claimed that daylighting wasn’t a form of restoration were incorrect. 

Planning Commission Chair James Samuels, who has frequently argued that restoration and daylighting are misnomers, challenged Yates. The hydrologist replied that water courses of even the Mississippi and Colorado Rivers had varied extensively over the course of centuries, rendering the definition of a precise historic location irrelevant. What counted, he said, were the features of the waterway, including habitat and life forms. 

“I don’t think you’ve helped us,” Samuels said. “You’re using the words in a very esoteric way.” 

“I look at it as a scientist,” Yates said. 

“What bothers some of us is that you have to dig up Oxford Street” to rechannel the creek from its current underground location to the new course, Samuels said. The creek currently flows in an underground concrete channel from the UCB campus across Oxford to Kittredge Street one block south of Center and then west. 

John Holtzclaw, chair of the Sierra Club’s national transportation committee, triggered a lengthy discussion with a presentation of his research on the relationship between population density and car use—with the lowest miles driven and fewest cars owned by residents of the densest urban neighborhoods and the most driving and the most cars owned in the least dense suburbs and rural locations. 

His research was based on comparisons of four areas—New York, San Francisco Bay, Chicago and Los Angeles—and his presentation included specific figures comparing car use, miles driven and densities from the least dense San Ramon through Rockridge—which met his definition of a transit village—through North Beach as the densest regional example, filled with amenities, and as the most dense, Manhattan, New York. 

With his data showing public transit service the most frequent and most used in the highest densities, Holtzclaw’s research has buttressed the Sierra Club’s call for more dense development in urban area as the most environmentally beneficial form of adding new housing. 

But Gene Poschman, a planning commissioner and recipient of frequent barbed comments from DAPAC chair Will Travis, said that new developments in downtown Berkeley had already reached density levels suggested by Holtzclaw’s research. 

The average density for new developments downtown was 203.7 units per acre, he sai d. Looking at the Holtzclaw’s figures, Poschman said there was “really no impetus to go higher than we have now.” 

He also said the research presented was methodologically inadequate. “This is all contested terrain,” he said. 

“I see it cited all the time,” Holtzclaw said. 

Jesse Arreguin said that many of the amenities Holtzclaw proposed that density would bring didn’t exist in the already dense downtown, such as grocery stores and other retailers serving downtown residents. 

Arreguin blamed the absence partly on high rents charged commercial tenants. 

Mim Hawley said the downtown lacked real diversity in its residents, who are mainly students. Real diversity, she said, would bring the services. But with student, “we get coffee shops and taverns, but we don’t get grocery stores.” 

“We do have high density in Berkeley, but we don’t have all those things smart growth is supposed to bring,” said Juliet Lamont. She said she also wondered whether the low car use in urban centers was because people gave up their cars or because cities attract people who don’t drive. 

Wendy Alfsen said one reason for the city center’s lack of diversity was the result of prior decisions that that drove a lot of senior citizens out of the downtown, followed by the loss of food markets. 

Given the current lack of diversity, Alfsen said she was reluctant to endorse policies designed to bring in high-end residents. “We have to put in things that make sure diversity continues to expand. Families and low-income residents will need incentives.”  

Architect Jim Novosel described the downtown as a monoculture, composed of students who join together to rent small units. “It’s a skewed culture that doesn’t relate to North Beach,” he said. “It doesn’t have the diversity ... it doesn’t have all these wonderful things. What we’re getting is a bunch of dormitories.” 

Billy Keys said committee members should worry less about debates about current problems and focus more on creating a plan designed to make the city better for their children and grandchildren. 

WInston Burton said more green space should be a central concern of the plan, and without it, “we will not have a good quality of life.” 

Matt Taecker, the planner hired to work on the new plan, soon offered a proposal to add more greenery, which simultaneously reducing runoff contamination after the first rains and giving a new look to the downtown’s main thoroughfare. 

“Let’s green the downtown,” he said.  

Noting that 85 percent of runoff contaminants come after the first seasonal rains, he proposed adding green features along selected roadways and building frontages that would serve as natural filters for runoff. 

The need for green space and a means to filter runoff could also be derived from transforming the central portion of a two-block section of Shattuck south of Durant Avenue into a green space, in part by introducing parallel parking in the area. 

The street is 140 feet wide from storefront to storefront, and by reconfiguring the streetscape and replacing diagonal with parallel parking, the resulting area would yield a 62 feet of width that could be converted to public green space. 

While Taecker’s plan showed the greenery in the center, Alfsen suggested dividing it along the sidewalks instead, a notion that struck favor with many others on the committee.


Visions of a Future Downtown: An Appraisal

By John Kenyon
Friday May 04, 2007

Ascend into central Berkeley via the steep escalator of subterranean BART, and you are met with a decidedly uncivic scene. People of every age and condition seem intent solely on crossing Center Street or Shattuck Avenue. You can also squeeze past a smaller, more youthful crowd waiting for the bus along the BART plaza edge or just hanging out. 

Around this never-ending collision between traffic, pedestrians, students and street-people, the greater urban setting is not inspiring. The BART drum you’ve just emerged from looks like a leftover from the German defenses of Normandy, while the so-called “Power Bar Building” immediately behind is 1960’s “curtain wall” at its worst. Looking east across the vehicular wasteland, the built-up frontage of Shattuck Square is a stylistic mish-mash, made worse by the single-story bank at its south end, built as a stopgap during Berkeley’s Late ‘60s “Blacklisted” period, after the Bank of America gave up on its intended 12-story tower. 

The chief virtue of this strangely suburban corner is the way it combines with Center Street itself to allow an almost unblocked view of the great dome of eucalyptus, and the revered, still-splendid Campanile. Meanwhile, in the immediate vicinity of the BART rotunda, only one older building, the handsome Wells Fargo Tower, sets an elegant standard for future development of any consequence. 

Such development now seems in the offing, for after months of deep discussion and disagreement between DAPAC—the Down-town Area Planning Advisory Committee—and the combined planning establishments of Cal and the City of Berkeley, a surprising level of accord appears to have been reached. The remaking of Center Street from Shattuck Square to Oxford Street, patently the most natural connector between Town and Gown, is almost a work-in-progress. 

For readers who have not much followed this promising planning, a brief summary might be useful. Two major new structures will transform the north side of Center Street—a university-sponsored conference hotel facing Shattuck Square, and behind it, off Oxford Street, the relocated University Art Museum, currently still at 2626 Bancroft Way. 

Both buildings will occupy a new traffic-free plaza created from a pedestrianized Center Street and extending north between them. A 19-story condominium tower attached to the hotel’s easterly face will share the parklike terrain. Altogether a grand program! 

The “four-star” hotel, a six-story leisure-related facility with a visible roof garden and at least two public facades, should make a splendid new southerly end to the Shattuck Square frontage, further dramatized by the tall tower behind. In contrast to this assertive corner, novel, yet tied visually to the greater downtown, the new Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will be an altogether freer entity. 

Currently being designed by Toyo Ito, an internationally known Japanese architect, and enhanced by an almost car-free setting, it cannot help but be a popular destination. 

As for the plaza itself, there has been passionate argument over the long-cherished idea of unearthing Strawberry Creek to restore “underlying nature” to the heart of downtown. It is a bold concept, and very “Berkeley,” but here, on what often will be a crowded pedestrian route, there are problems of dimension, danger and maintenance. 

One wonders how many people realize that on the UC campus, starting immediately across Oxford Street, there is approximately a mile of beautifully landscaped natural creek waiting to be strolled along and enjoyed. A far cry from a few yards of railed-off “demonstration nature” in the middle of a busy mall. 

As future users of all this expansive transformation, we might well be concerned about the quality of the end result. Two major buildings are already being designed with the university as principal client and promoter on a site it already owns. Will this dramatic little extension of the campus feel like “ours” or “theirs”? 

Though no lover of the Cal juggernaut and its brutal invasion of the Southside, I must admit to feeling considerable relief that here, the university is calling the shots. 

Imagine for one unnerving moment the task of selecting an architect for the new museum being left to a Berkeley citizen’s committee. 

Would it have been brave enough or united enough to choose a radical Asian modernist that nobody here had ever heard of? 

In the event, the university or its particular in-group was bolder that anybody could have dared to predict in selecting, not a Corbusier-inspired classicist like Richard Meier or a computer-happy Expressionist like Frank Gehry, but a serious inventive designer whose non-flamboyant approach should suit perfectly the hemmed-in restricted site. 

Perhaps the most interesting program suggestion made so far was incorporation of the existing University Press buildings, already listed a City of Berkeley landmark, into a strangely hybrid design on the grounds that the original signatory copies of the United Nations Charter were printed there in 1945. 

Understandably, the university rejected this oddly non-architectural concept, for in their eyes moving the new facility into the real public domain on an already-owned site close to BART, and giving a world-renowned architect carte blanche, will put the new facility—expected visitors 300,000 per year—into the DeYoung class, though let us hope that Berkeley’s new pride and joy will be more welcoming than that derelict aircraft-carrier in Golden Gate Park! 

At this juncture the future appearance of Ito’s creation is largely guesswork, though one might assume from his other designs that an open transparent look is likely, dramatically demonstrated by the architect’s seven-story Mediatheque in Sendai, northern Japan. 

Perhaps a more important question is how the building will look from above, for many windows on the east side of the hotel and in the 19-story tower will look directly down on the—probably—flat top, at least part of which could be a verdant roof garden. 

The future hotel is an altogether different case. Promoted by independent developers with oversight from both the university and the city, the building is currently being designed by the Cambridge Seven, an architectural collaborative in Boston. Judging from the images on the firm’s website, their work is interesting, professional and varied. 

We are not dealing here with an architectural superstar whose building will be recognizably Miesian or Calatravan, but with a group of semi-autonomous designers whose work varies greatly depending on location, program and personality. 

A wildlife museum will look woodsy and barnlike, a railway museum will be reminiscent of a toy train, and a science block appropriately “high tech.” 

Thus they tend to be the answer to a fussy, controlling-client’s prayer, particularly if the client is Berkeley! One can be quite sure that they have already had an earful of demands and requests that the new structure fit in with our “historic” downtown, whatever style that might be. 

We’re in serious danger here of intimidating the project architect, if not the whole “Seven,” into trying too hard to please a distant opinionated community and winding up with a pastiche of Maybeck trellises, Julia Morgan Gothic tracery and red “Spanish” tiles. It would be safer to stick with more basic suggestions—having in mind maximum contrast—such as: “Solid wall should dominate over glass.” 

One can visualize a building on that strategic corner that extends the UC Berkeley campus rather than matching downtown. If the budget doesn’t run to the lovely Sierra Granite of Howard’s early masterworks, they could at least substitute the high quality concrete of Koshland Hall. 

Indeed, Koshland’s elegant yet friendly Teaching Building facing that big lawn gives a few useful clues to possible hotel character. So, oddly enough, does the splendid twin-towered Federal Building in downtown Oakland, with its clever interplay of windows and heavy structure. 

My desire to connect John Galen Howard with the new hotel becomes more intriguing on discovering that, in 1907, he designed for this same site a handsome six-story building for the Berkeley National Bank, with his own office on the top floor. This non-academic Chicago-style structure made a distinguished corner, hardly likely to be improved upon by our imminent replacement. 

The third element, quite equal in importance to the new buildings sitting on it, is the future pedestrian plaza. 

In addition to the pleasing vision of a Center Street parklike and car-free, there’s an opportunity here to extend the non-car terrain northward between the museum and the hotel to Addison, and beyond by a pedestrian path to Walnut north of University Avenue, there to link up with a Walnut extension across the big site formerly occupied by California Health Services. 

The negative side of this heady concept is the unopposed intrusion of automobiles into an otherwise calm scene. 

Inevitably, there will be traffic access to the hotel’s south and east frontages, while access from Shattuck Square into the underground garage will be predictably unromantic! Nevertheless, with clever design, pedestrians and garden can still dominate the terrain. 

Most of the tree planting on the paved areas will be urban in character, perhaps similar to the heavily pruned plane trees of Sproul Plaza, but a more playful atmosphere could prevail in the private yet visually-connected sculpture garden we might expect outside the museum cafe, which could also contain a “waterfall-canal” comparable to the one in Ginko Court on the Clark Kerr Campus. 

The hotel architects must also make sure that their promised roof garden is clearly visible from nearby ground-level. A little “oasis” in the desert of downtown Berkeley will be very welcome, and will also signal the expanding University’s benign intentions toward its worried host community. 

 


Pacific Steel Settles with Air Quality District

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday May 04, 2007

The country’s third largest steel foundry agreed to a settlement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Tuesday, which requires it to install a capture hood to control emissions and pay $150,000 in fines to the air district, though not all critics were satisfied by the agreement. 

The air district had sued West-Berkeley-based Pacific Steel Company (PSC) in August for failing to meet deadlines for reporting air emissions and violating the schedule contained in a settlement agreement designed in December 2005 to resolve an ongoing series of air quality complaints. 

The suit, which was filed in Alameda County Superior Court, sought civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each day that the emissions inventory was not submitted and asked that PSC be ordered to install a carbon absorption filtering system at Plant 3 as originally scheduled. 

Plant 3 was identified by the district as the source of the maximum complaints from neighbors who have repeatedly asked for tighter regulation of the facility. 

“The air district sued PSC in August for allegedly missing a whole series of deadlines, but the company disagreed,” said Elizabeth Jewel of Aroner, Jewel & Ellis Partners, the company’s public relations consultants, to the Planet Wednesday. “Specifically, they alleged that we missed a deadline of October 15, 2006, when in fact the lawsuit was filed in August. It was in the best interest of both the parties to come to an agreement. PSC agreed to install a new hood which will capture fugitive emissions from the electric arc furnace and direct them to an existing ventilation system through a carbon filter.” 

Jewel added that the new hood would be set up as soon as PSC received a permit from the City of Berkeley. 

Other improvements announced by the steel foundry to control emissions in West Berkeley include: 

• Use of a new binder in the sand molds that significantly reduces volatile organic compounds. 

• Upgrading the baghouse in Plant 1 including related capture hood and ductwork 

• A new capture hood over the electric arc furnace in Plant 3 

PSC and non-profit Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) filed a consent decree in Federal Court in February that would bring about specified emissions reductions, create a scrap metal inspection program, and establish a joint consultation committee to recommend and oversee ongoing pollution reduction efforts. 

A reserve fund of $350,000 was also created for selected projects to achieve a reduction in emissions levels at the facility.  

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

Although PSC officials said in a statement that the improvements planned on Tuesday were a major step toward reducing emissions, community members disagreed. 

“The $150,000 is meaningless if you think about the negative impacts PSC’s emissions have had on West Berkeley for ages,” said environmentalist LA Wood, who installed an air monitor to measure PSC emission levels with the help of community members in April. 

“Pacific Steel has not at all been forthcoming about any of their regulatory documents for at least a decade and the [district] has done nothing about it either. I think the Air District should be fined some money also. We know no more about PSC than we did ten years ago. This is indeed very shameful.” 

PSC’s proposed change in its binders has been demanded for a long time by the West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs, as part of a comprehensive Toxic Use Reduction (TUR) approach. 

“TUR requires open communication, honesty and collaboration among all stakeholders,” said Janice Schroeder of the Alliance in an email to the Planet. “As in past years, Pacific Steel is moving in the right direction, but only under pressure from lawsuits, and the industry is not yet fully transparent and collaborative with the whole community.” 

Schroeder added that PSC’s improvements were welcome but long overdue. 

“However, the community's concerns will not be easily allayed,” she said. “If Pacific Steel continues to cool castings outside, away from pollution control equipment, and to operate with its huge doors open, the clean-up effort will not work. According to Pacific Steel’s 2004 report to the California Air Resources Board, it releases 400 pounds of pollution daily into the air. How much will be removed by the industry's proposed ‘significant’ decrease in pollution?”


Demonstrators Call for Immigration Rights

By Judith Scherr
Friday May 04, 2007

Their signs declared unity in the face of government raids and called for amnesty for immigrants without documents, and their chants affirmed “Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!) as May 1 demonstrators marched through Berkeley streets, gathering forces before moving to larger demonstrations in Oakland and San Francisco.  

At 10:30 a.m., a group of about 60 demonstrators led by representatives of the UC Berkeley student government left a larger group that had gathered with signs and leaflets at Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way and headed down Telegraph to meet up with Oakland Technical High School students and march with them to the Oakland Federal Building.  

“The fact that the ASUC [Associated Students of the University of California] voted to lead the demonstration shows the popularity of the immigrants’ rights movement,” said Dimitri Garcia, an ASUC senator who carried the ASUC yellow and blue flag down Telegraph, under the watchful eyes of about a dozen Berkeley and UC police. 

Some 75 demonstrators stayed behind at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue to sing, chant and encourage others to stay out of class and join the festivities. People stopped in groups of twos or threes and the crowd grew. Cheers rang out when the gathering was joined by some 50 members of Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action (BOCA), who had marched up to campus from St. Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley.  

Father Stephan of St. Joseph’s was among them, carrying a sign that read “Just Immigrant Reform Now.” He told the Daily Planet that he’s heard too many stories from friends and parishioners to ignore the fears of immigrants. 

He tells this story: “A friend from Mexico, living on the Peninsula, was studying at two o’clock in the morning when ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and homeland security came into his home and threw him in jail for two weeks.” The man was charged with terrorism, despite his valid documents that included a passport. 

It appears that the problem may have stemmed from the fact that the young man had played volleyball in school and had traveled to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where his passport was stamped with the name of those countries, Fr. Stephan said.  

“The charges were dropped, but he lost his job while he was in jail. They still have his passport, so now he feels like a real illegal,” the priest said. 

On campus, not too far from the demonstrators a group of young men were gathered at the Young Republicans’ table “We’re happy for the smaller participation than last year,” said Ross Lingenfelder, president of the club, speaking as an individual. Lingenfelder said he thought the smaller participation was a reflection of the spread of Republican values.  

Derek Yee, also a Young Republican, chided the demonstrators for asking for in-state tuition and loans for undocumented immigrant students. “We need to secure our borders,” added Yee, also underscoring that he spoke for himself and not the club. 

At around 11 a.m. the group at Bancroft and Telegraph moved to Sproul Plaza, where their numbers grew to more than 300. There the day was blessed with an Aztec Dance that was followed by a rally.  

Demonstrators’ demands included opposition to the Dream Act, which denies undocumented students financial aid, according to Ruben Cabrera, one of the organizers of the rally and a member of Xinaxtli, which Cabrera said means “sea that grows.” 

Around 1:30 p.m., a group of about 150 demonstrators arrived at City Hall, having picked up some Berkeley High students on the way. There, they were greeted by Mayor Tom Bates. “This is not OK what is happening in this country,” Bates said. “It is not OK for children to be taken out of school [by ICE]. It is not OK for people to be taken out of their jobs.”  

Before the protesters headed to BART to join the San Francisco rally, the mayor told them that in 1971 Berkeley was declared a sanctuary city, a safe place for immigrants with and without documentation. That was renewed in 1986 and on May 22, Bates said, the City Council would reaffirm that status.


BHS Students Skip Class for Day of Action

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday May 04, 2007

Berkeley High School (BHS) students skipped class Tuesday to attend the Immigration Day rally in San Francisco as many of them did last year, but this time they had permission from their teachers. 

About 60 ninth-graders from the Communication Arts & Sciences School (CAS) at BHS took BART to the historic Mission District to participate in a field trip for their Freshman Seminar class. 

“It was a nice way to cap off the unit,” said Biko Eisen-Martin, who teaches history at CAS. “We were learning about what’s going on at the borders with respect to immigration and I thought this would give the kids a more historic perspective about what they were studying. As a tenured teacher I am not allowed to take students on political trips, but this was more of an educational and cultural experience.” 

An email about Immigration Day rallies prompted Eisen-Martin take the matter up with CAS’s Spanish teacher Alexander Klose. 

“It’s an important part of their total education,” said BHS principal Jim Slemp, who added that it was entirely up to the students and teachers about whether they wanted to make this an annual event. Slemp told the Planet that there had been fewer student absences this May 1 than last year. 

15-year-old Micah Muhr—one of Eisen-Martin’s students—said that he had missed school last year to go see the May 1 rallies.  

“This is a much nicer way to do it,” he said. “It’s more interesting to go with your teachers because they explain things better. We learned a lot about the historic murals in the Mission instead of wondering what they were all about.” 

After spending some time with the murals and at the Women’s Building in the Mission District, the group went to the rally at Dolores Park. 

“Some of the kids actually ended up taking part in the protest, but they had permission from their parents,” said Eisen-Martin. “We made it very clear that this was not a walk-out. This was a field trip. There has to be a connection with the class they are taking. I told my students that they shouldn’t be going to a march just because everyone else is. Last year, when I asked them to give me a page on why they don’t like the Bush regime, most of them couldn’t. This is why you need to be really connected about what’s going on around you, and this is where experience like this counts.” 

Students were assigned to pick their favorite mural and research it along with the pamphlets and flyers they had acquired. 

“My favorite was definitely the Wall of Women in the Mission,” said Malikah Wilson, who added that the immigration rally had been her first big march. “It represented women of different ethnicities and told stories we don’t often hear about.” 

Danielle Escobar’s half-page report was about a mural about immigration. “It was colorful and stood out,” she wrote. “It also had a very powerful message about an immigrant husband who missed his wife and child and was struggling to get money for his family to survive. It just seemed so real to me.” 

Matt Rose-Stark, who had left school to participate in the Immigration Day marches in Oakland last year, said that he had joined his classmates on Tuesday because he did not want to miss school anymore. 

“I think it’s unjust what our government is doing to immigrants,” he said. “Our country is built of immigrants. So why would we oppose immigration? I think it’s disrespectful to call people aliens. Aliens are little green things from Mars. They are not people. We should give everyone the respect and freedom they deserve.”


Perata Signs On to OUSD Control Bill

By J. douglas Allen-taylor
Friday May 04, 2007

The Oakland legislator who wrote the bill that authorized the state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District in 2003 has signed on as a co-author of new legislation designed to bring about a quicker return to local control of the Oakland schools. 

A spokesperson for State Senate President Don Perata said that the senator had been neutral on Assemblymember Sandré Swanson’s original AB 45 Oakland Local Control bill, but decided to put his name on the proposed legislation once Swanson had amended it. 

Swanson’s original bill would have immediately returned control of the Oakland schools to the OUSD school board in every area but finances. 

The amendments, crafted while AB45 was being considered by the Assembly Education Committee, calls for return to local control of any area of district school operation once the state-supported Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) recommends that return.  

The bill passed the Assembly Education Committee last month on a party-line 7-3 vote (all Democrats voting yes, all Republicans voting no) and has been referred to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.  

Saying that Perata’s support was “key” to passage of the bill in the Senate, a group of Oakland residents and local school control supporters met with Perata staff members in Sacramento following the Education Committee hearing on the bill to lobby the senator.  

A spokesperson for Swanson said the Oakland assemblymember was “extremely pleased” by Perata’s support. 

“The assemblymember wants this to be a collaborative effort,” Swanson public information officer Amber Maltbie said.


Burroughs Hired to Write Greenhouse Gas Bill

BY Judith Scherr
Friday May 04, 2007

Timothy Burroughs will be writing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan, the city’s Public Information Officer Mary Kay Clunies-Ross announced in a press release Thursday. 

Burroughs, formerly of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), Local Governments for Sustainability, was originally hired for the same task by the Community Energy Services Corporation, the fiscal sponsor for Sustainable Berkeley, a grouping of UC Berkeley nonprofits, “green” health professionals and consultants.  

However, the city manager recently determined that the community would be better served and the efforts would be more transparent if the function of writing the plan were placed in the city’s division of Energy and Sustainable Development. 

Burroughs was the sole candidate when selected for the post by Sustainable Berkeley, but was among 18 candidates who applied for the post when it was opened through the city on March 30, according to Human Resources Director Dave Hodgkins. The position was held open for two weeks. Burroughs began work May 1. 

“We’ll achieve our emissions reduction targets in Berkeley with every resident, business, institution and the city government committing to work together to make a difference,” Burroughs said in the release. 

Burroughs holds a Master of Arts degree in Global Environmental Policy from American University in Washington, D.C. 


Police Blotter

By RIO BAUCE
Friday May 04, 2007

Residential Burglary 

Shortly after 1 a.m. on Sunday, April 29th, the owner of Shen Hua Chinese Restaurant in the 2900 block of College Avenue called to report that somebody had broken in through the back window of the restaurant. The owner didn’t notice what might have been stolen. There are no suspects in this case. 

 

Assault 

At 3:44 a.m. on Sunday morning, a Berkeley police officer witnessed an argument between a man and a woman on Adeline Street at Russell Street. The man was assaulting her by pushing her. No arrests have been made. 

 

Thievery at Whole Foods  

At 4:39 p.m. on Sunday, a Whole Foods employee called the police to report that a 58-year-old Berkeley man was caught stealing groceries. Police arrived on the scene and arrested the thief. 

 

Hit-and-Run 

On Sunday evening, a male phoned the police to report that somebody had struck his vehicle, which was parked in the 2300 block of Channing Way, and didn’t leave a note. No suspects are in custody. 

 

Grand Theft 

On Sunday at 5:37 p.m., a female called the police dispatcher to report that somebody cut her bike lock and stole her Giant Cyprus seven-speed bicycle, which is worth about $600. The victim reported that the incident occurred between 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. 

 

Mail Theft 

At 6:40 p.m. on Monday evening, a caller reported that over the weekend somebody stole mail and two mailboxes that were joined together in the 800 block of Channing Way. There are no suspects identified in this case. 

 

Tenant/Landlord Feud 

On Monday, a tenant of an apartment complex on the 2000 block of Hearst Avenue called in to report that his landlord had assaulted him with a punch. No medical treatment was needed. The police contacted the landlord, issued him a citation, and gave him a court date. 

 

Stolen Vehicle 

At 8:44 p.m. on Monday, a man reported that his 1997 Red Ford Ranger was stolen from where he had parked it on Fulton Street, between Dwight and Blake streets, a day prior. The case is still outstanding.


AC Transit ‘Partnership’ with Bus Manufacturer Questioned

By J. Douglas
Friday May 04, 2007

An assertion this week by the general manager of AC Transit that the East Bay bus transportation agency was in a “partnership” with Belgian bus manufacturer Van Hool led transit board of directors members to say that the statement made them “concerned” and might send a signal to other bus manufacturers that the district wasn’t interested in buying their buses.  

The exchange occurred during this week’s AC Transit Board of Directors meeting during a discussion of a proposal to enter into an agreement with Van Hool distributor ABC Bus Companies for a one-year exchange of one of AC Transit’s still-under-construction 40 foot Van Hool buses for a Van Hool cruiser bus owned by ABC. 

AC Transit owns several of the larger cruiser buses built by MCI Corporation for use on its cross-bay line. Under the exchange, ABC would get the new 40-foot-buses demonstration purposes, while AC Transit would get to test out the Van Hool cruiser under normal operation conditions. 

In his report to the board, General Manager Rick Fernandez said that if the exchange was agreed upon he would put the Van Hool cruiser onto regular AC Transit routes where cruisers are used. 

But Ward 4 Board of Directors member Rocky Fernandez (representing San Leandro, Castro Valley, San Lorenzo, Ashland, and portions of Hayward) said he was worried the use of the Van Hool cruiser “gives the wrong impression. I’m a little bit nervous that we’re using the Van Hool to help them with their advertising.” 

In reply, General Manager Fernandez said that “we have a different relationship with this manufacturer. It’s more like a partnership.” 

AC Transit bus purchases are governed by state federal law, and require a competitive and open bidding process. A “partnership” with a single bus manufacturer would appear, on the surface, to violate those policies. 

“I’m troubled to hear you say that,” Ward 5 Director Jeff Davis (representing Fremont, Newark, and portions of Hayward) then said. “That concerns me. I’m concerned about the perception that our interests coincide completely with Van Hool’s. We are the purchaser. They are the supplier. We are going to be going through a competitive process on purchasing new cruisers in the future, and I don’t want this to send a message to other suppliers that they need not apply.” 

And Board Vice President Rebecca Kaplan (At-Large) added, “I wouldn’t be comfortable with any language in the agreement that implies we are shutting out other competitors, or implies a partnership. I want to make it perfectly clear that this is not an endorsement.” 

General Manager Fernandez said, “Maybe it was semantics when I talked about a partnership,” and board members eventually unanimously approved the exchange agreement with the provision that it make plain there would be no commitment or obligation to purchase Van Hool cruisers. 

AC Transit operates 682 buses made by several manufacturers, but in recent years has been buying exclusively from Van Hool. The District recently renewed a five-year contract with Van Hool to purchase 50 new 40-foot buses, with an option to purchase 1,500 more. 

In addition, the district recently entered into agreements with Van Hool American distributor ABC to trade up to 20 of the district’s 40-foot North American Bus Institute (NABI) buses, half of the district’s NABI fleet, for a comparable number of the new 40 foot Van Hools. The district has come under public criticism from a small number of riders and drivers about the Van Hools.


Suit Filed Over ‘Naked Guy’ Jail Death

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday May 04, 2007

Esther Krenn, mother of Andrew Martinez—known as the Naked Guy—sued Santa Clara County Jail Friday in federal court in San Francisco for failing to prevent his suicide in prison. 

“The system is what led to his death,” Krenn told the Planet in a telephone interview Thursday. “I want to expose what happened in the custody of people in charge of my son who did not give him adequate care. I want to bring an end to all the problems so that other mental health patients be treated justly and humanely.” 

Krenn’s lawyer, Geri Green, said that Martinez’s death was a failure on the part of the California justice system to take care of mentally ill people. 

Martinez, 33, a former UC Berkeley student who made national news in the early 1990s for attending classes in the nude, was found dead last May in his cell in the maximum security area in the Santa Clara jail. He was in custody for three felony charges of battery and assault with a deadly weapon during a fight at a halfway house where he was living. Jail officials labeled the incident an apparent suicide.  

Mark Cursi, public information officer for the jail, told the Planet Wednesday that he had not seen the lawsuit and would not be able to comment. 

Andrew had spent 18 months in Santa Clara County jail before, prior to being sent to a state mental institution in Atascadero in June 2005. 

“He came back in January 2006 competent to stand for trial and happy. He was even calling up people at that point,” Krenn said. “But then the torment of the disease and the torment of the solitary confinement was too much for him to bear. When I saw him for the last time in April last year I could see the sadness in his eyes. I called up people at the public defender’s office and the mental health services to alert them about his condition. The next thing I heard was that he had passed away.”


Larry Bensky, Activist-Journalist, Cancels KPFA Show

By Judith Scherr
Friday May 04, 2007

KPFA’s Larry Bensky has spent much of his 70 years honing the craft of activist-journalist. 

“I thought bringing information to people would stir things up. Without that information, nothing would get stirred up,” he said in an interview Tuesday morning with a KPFA news team and the Daily Planet. “Your role [as an activist-journalist] is not to organize people. It is to bring attention to [issues] and the passion.” 

“That doesn’t mean you check your mind at the door” and report whatever activists say without scrupulous research, Bensky said, pointing to I.F. Stone as a role model. 

He refuses to call it retiring: Bensky is giving up his popular talk show, Sunday Salon, but plans to continue to produce special programming at the station, where he’s worked in myriad capacities from station manager to volunteer programmer since 1969. 

While activism and journalism co-exist comfortably at KPFA, Bensky tried to merge the two when writing daily book reviews for the New York Times in the late 1960s. 

“They wouldn’t run a lot of stuff I was writing,” Bensky said. “For example at one point I wrote a book review about Bertrand Russell’s War Crimes in Vietnam. They wouldn’t run it. Even though all I did was summarize his arguments. I didn’t take a soapbox stand. They said I didn’t have sufficient criticism of the anti-war movement from the other side.” 

Bensky realized he’d never be satisfied working at the Times, so when he had an offer to come to California and work for Ramparts Magazine, he took it in the late 1960s. He found the Bay Area a “tremendously inspiring and activist community” with Berkeley’s activist city government that included City Councilmember Ron Dellums, the “colossal” and spirited demonstrations against the Vietnam War in San Francisco, the Black Panther movement and more. 

After a stint at KSAN radio—Bensky was fired after interviewing fired workers of a sponsor on the air—Bensky became production director at KPFA and in 1972, produced and anchored “The Siege of Miami,” Pacifica’s first broadcast linking the radio signal from Miami to Berkeley. The program, which covered the Democratic and Republican conventions and the protests outside of them, was picked up by 18 stations across the country. 

“The Siege of Miami” sound quality was not good, “but there was an urgency about it. We were the only people covering the demonstrations, the only people doing the kind of street reporting we were doing—a tremendously exciting moment,” Bensky said. 

Being an activist-journalist sometimes meant taking physical risks. During the People’s Park clashes between activists and the UC Berkeley administration in the early 1970s, Bensky said he was tear-gassed a number of times.  

“The closest I ever got to combat was on the UC Berkeley campus where the Alameda county sheriffs were shooting birdshot and other projectiles at the demonstrators. It was very, very scary to be out there, but it was also very important to be bringing these events live to people. KPFA was free to do so as no other station was.” 

Two sets of events in 1978 jolted Bensky, causing him to back away from journalism briefly, rethink, then reaffirm his career choice.  

First there was Jonestown, the settlement of Americans in Guyana founded by cult leader Jim Jones. Bensky had applied to go to Jonestown with Congressman Leo Ryan as part of the press corps, but did not find he was accepted until it was too late to go. Ryan and four of the journalists were murdered there just before the mass suicide-murder.  

Two weeks after Jonestown, San Francisco Supervisor Dan White murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Bensky knew both victims. 

The idea that he so narrowly escaped death in Jonestown coupled with the double homicide of people he knew personally—and having to report on both events—weighed heavily on the journalist. 

“There’s something about the voice that is charged with bringing people that kind of news that you know people are dependent upon you and yet your heart is so heavy and your spirit is so stricken by what you’re enduring,” Bensky said. “It broke my heart and also made me reevaluate whether or not I wanted to be in that role.”  

But Bensky said journalism in his blood, and the need to let people know about what was happening in Nicaragua won out and he could not stay away from the field permanently. “I wanted to be part of communicating to people what was going on in Central America,” especially around the Contras, a right-wing Nicaraguan guerrilla organization, he said.  

Bensky worked at various radio stations and in various capacities over the years, including a stint as newscaster at KSAN, where he was re-hired, and another as news and sports director at KBLX.  

In 1987, Bensky was asked to host national hearings on Iran-Contra, which involved members of the Reagan Administration selling illegal weapons to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the Contras. 

During that time he and his producer created what Bensky calls “the talk show in the hearing room,” which included both audience and pundit participation. 

KPFA has seen internal conflict during much of its 58 years. In 1999, the year that the national Pacifica board shut down KPFA, its Berkeley station, Bensky was thrown off the air twice.  

The first time was around the issue of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. “What I said was, as far as I’m concerned the impeachment of Bill Clinton is a disgrace to the constitution, but Bill Clinton is a disgrace to the office.” Bensky contends he was taken off the air because “that is not the Democratic Party liberal line.” 

With pressure from the community, he wasn’t kept off the air for long. When he came back, instead of hosting a daily noontime show, Bensky launched Sunday Salon, but was ousted again when he read a statement condemning management’s firing of popular station manager Nicole Sawaya.  

“They didn’t take into account that they were trying to fire the audience,” Bensky said of the national board’s 1999 struggle with KPFA programmers, volunteers and listeners that resulted in an outpouring of support for the station within the community. “It was the most gratifying thing in my life to see how people came forth.” 

Bensky is of two minds when he talks about the future of the station. He said he is encouraged because of the level of the people trained at the station and developing their talents. 

“Despite the legendary difficulties of what goes on here internally, that part I’m encouraged by,” he said. 

At the same time, he fears for the future of the station. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to KPFA,” he said. “The national board is a mess. Local station board elections as far as I am concerned are a farce. They’re not democratic in a sense that I see as democratic. They contribute nothing.” 

Still, Bensky concludes, “We have a mission to do here. People who are driven to do it are going to get here, I hope, and still find a way to get on the air.” 

 

 

Bensky was interviewed by KPFA News Director Aileen Alfandary, with supplementary questions by producer Aaron Glantz and Planet reporter Judith Scherr.


Kids’ Fitness Picks Up Steam in California

By Donal Brown
Friday May 04, 2007

The battle to improve physical education in California schools is intensifying following the release in late January of two new reports commissioned by The California Endowment, a private health foundation. 

With childhood obesity and diabetes poised to exact a huge financial and human toll in California, the reports reopen the question of how we can pay for improved education and whether full funding is necessary to enjoy quality PE programs. 

Citing rising rates of obesity and diabetes in children, the reports found that public schools, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, are not providing their students with adequate physical education. 

Among the key findings are: 

• Large class sizes meant less activity. 

• On average only four minutes of every half hour is devoted to vigorous activity. 

• Especially in poorer communities, PE teachers and equipment are sub par. 

The 2006 California physical fitness test of grades five, seven and nine in six areas of fitness—aerobic capacity, body composition, abdominal strength and endurance, trunk extensor strength and flexibility, upper body strength, and endurance and flexibility—showed that all demographic subgroups in California’s schools could use improvement. 

The percent of students achieving a passing health and fitness zone was highest for Asians and whites at 41.3 percent and 38.2 percent respectively. Filipinos scored at 35.7 percent, Pacific Islanders 27.6 percent, American Indians 26 percent, African-Americans 23.5 percent, and Latinos 22.9 percent. 

But as usual poor students of all ethnicities and races are getting the worst of it. Dr. Antronette Yancey of UCLA, who helped research and write one of the California Endowment reports, “Failing Fitness,” said the disparity between schools in low-income and high-income communities is disturbing. The best PE programs in low-income schools were comparable to the worst in high-income schools, she said. 

There are many excuses for not delivering PE to students. Yancey acknowledged that teachers in low-resource schools especially feel the pressures of standardized testing. It is common for schools to use PE time for test review and to administer the tests. 

But James Sallis of San Diego State University, who was part of a team that prepared the second study, “Physical Education Matters,” said there is evidence that PE can improve academic study. Sallis co-authored a research report that showed that devoting more school time to PE does not have a detrimental effect on academic achievement. 

Released in 1998, the report “Effects of Health-related Physical Education on Academic Achievement,” was conducted in K-5 schools in an affluent suburb in Southern California. Students were given rigorous fitness activities and taught to maintain physical activity on their own. Control schools delivered their usual PE program to students. 

Although the teachers in the experiment spent fewer hours teaching academic subjects, student performance was not harmed, and the additional PE appears to have positive effects on achievement. 

There are many avenues for improving PE programs, according to Sallis. In researching schools throughout the state, they found many model PE programs in low-resource schools. In some cases, local health departments pay for the programs. 

Although the San Rafael City School District is not a low-resource district, it still struggles to provide counselors and employs no full-time librarians. It is a stretch to hire a teacher with a PE credential. 

In one San Rafael school with 95 percent Latinos, Principal Kathryn Gibney was able to tap the local YMCA for a part-time credentialed PE teacher, Lenda Butcher. This has brought about a cultural shift at the school, virtually eliminating behavioral problems during recesses. 

“The thing that Lenda did that was so phenomenal was set up activities at recess for every student. She taught them the rules of each game and even the history of the game so the recesses became structured. Everyone had something to do,’’ said Gibney. The students got along a lot better with each other, and were able to get more exercise. 

Besides tapping local YMCAs or health departments, Sallis said there are other ways to get money including applying for federal grants. The district, though, must be able to pay for grant writing. In addition, each school has money for in-service training that could be used to train teachers in PE. 

To bring PE and fitness to optimal levels state-wide, Yancey says, there needs to be a steady, reliable source of funding. Some even favor putting a tax on sedentary activities so that the television and movie industries would foot some of the bill. 

With the support of the California Endowment, this work is continuing to improve PE around the state. Sallis says teams are visiting the low-income schools that have good programs to see how those programs can serve as models. 

 

Donal Brown taught for 35 years in California’s public schools.


Correction

Friday May 04, 2007

An incomplete paragraph appeared in Arnie Passman’s April 27 commentary, “The Peace Symbol’s Golden Year is Here.” The complete paragraph is as follows:  

“Still, through Vietnam’s War end, the anti-nuclear and Central America demos of the ’80s, and current ongoing Iraq war protests since 1990, the peace symbol has been on hand, including great multi-body peace symbols on beaches, lawns, and the creation four years ago with the beginning of the Iraq War of International Peace Symbol Day, March 17. Highly visible protests against its display have also taken place.”


Committee Votes to Keep Mayor’s Public Commons Initiative on Agenda

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Despite community pleas to talk with members of the homeless community first, the Berkeley City Council’s Agenda Committee Monday afternoon refused to take the mayor’s Public Commons for Everyone proposal off the May 8 council agenda.  

Mayor Tom Bates’ proposal calls for services for people with inappropriate street behavior and, at the same time, advocates new laws to address behaviors such as prolonged sitting on the street, urinating and defecating in public and smoking within 25 feet of a commercial building. 

After listening to members of the public who underscored that social service providers and both the Homeless and Community Welfare commissions want the measure delayed, the committee—the mayor and Councilmembers Linda Maio and Gordon Wozniak—voted to keep the item on the agenda. 

However, the mayor said he wanted to assure the public that at the council meeting, no new law would be proposed, with the exception of expanding the no-smoking ordinance from 20 to 25 feet in front of a commercial building.  

“It’s not like this is moving quickly,” the mayor said, emphasizing that the initiative is on the agenda mostly for discussion. 

After the meeting, however, Dan McMullan of Disabled People Outside, told the Daily Planet he feared that even something as popular as a no-smoking ordinance could be misused. Storeowners who come outside to smoke won’t get cited, but homeless people will, McMullan said. 

Attorney Osha Neumann, who often represents homeless and impoverished people, said after the meeting that he was somewhat encouraged by the mayor’s statements. “I think they’re backing off the fast track,” he said. “They see the community opposition.”  

Mental Health Commission Chair Michael Diehl added that those supportive of homeless persons and the rights of people with mental health issues would nonetheless be out in force at the May 8 meeting. “We will definitely be there to speak to the issue,” he said. 

Speaking to the committee on behalf of the Berkeley Community Coalition, which mostly represents service providers, boona cheema, executive director of Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, called on the mayor and city manager to meet directly with homeless people to have “open and honest dialogue as to the total purpose of the Public Commons for Everyone initiative and with their input find ways to influence street behavior without creating new laws.” 

“The May 8 report is on how we will proceed,” Bates told the community members. “It’s a way to invite discussion.” The staff report being prepared for the council meeting was not available at press time. 

Bates said implementation would depend on whether there are funds available at budget time for the initiative. Initial funding is to include a part-time employee to write the plan. “We’re not going to do something we don’t have the resources for,” he said. “You don’t have to worry too much.” 

Last week, the Berkeley Community Coalition met to discuss the mayor’s proposal. 

“The religious community says ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ I feel this is the antithesis,” said Sally Hindman, a member of the coalition and director of Young Aspirations, Young Artists (YAYA). 

The mayor has said in previous meetings that this initiative is important to force “service-resistant” people into getting services. But Hindman, who describes herself as a “strong supporter of Mayor Tom Bates said, “It’s not right to talk about service-resistant people when there are not enough services.”  

What needs to happen is that the community should support adequate services for those in need, including building adequate housing, she said. “We have great community organizations.” 

Also interviewd Friday, cheema said it is not fair to blame homeless people for the inappropriate behavior seen around town. “What about the UC students that come out of Pyramid [Brewery and Alehouse]?” she asked rhetorically. 

She said the mayor’s message—along with similar attempts in the past to criminalize street behavior—“is giving our city a horrible name.”  

Cheema underscored that there are already enough laws on the books to address problematic street behavior. “If someone is screaming and shouting, people can call the police or the mental health team,” she said. “Let’s enforce existing laws.” 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, also in attendance at the BCC meeting, said the city needs to provide positive alternatives for those in need of services.  

“People need places to live off the streets,” he told the Daily Planet Friday. Another important service would be a “medical detox” facility in Berkeley, where people could get in-patient medical care to help them get off drugs and alcohol, he said. 


BP Project Impractical, Dangerous, Critics Charge

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Questions of scientific feasibility and environmental responsibility dominated a Thursday night teach-in called by critics of UC Berkeley’s $500 million biofuels pact with a British oil company. 

BP p.l.c. and the university are currently hammering out the details of a contract that will create the Energy Biosciences Institution, which the school and the former British Petroleum plan to market as “the world’s premier energy research institute.” 

But UC Berkeley Professor of Geoengineering Tadeusz Patzek and Professor of Ecosystem Sciences and Energy and Resources John Harte raised questions about the science and claims made for the project—the largest corporate funding package in American university history. 

And James Thorlby, Catholic priest and activist who works with the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil, said that land barons in that nation are seizing state-owned land, evicting small farmers with troops and hire gangs to transform vast tracts into sugar cane fields for ethanol production. 

Patzek charges that the output from biofuels simply can’t match the energy inputs needed to grow the plants and transform the harvested crops in fuels like ethanol, while each American continues to consume enough calories of energy every year to grow “a big, fat sperm whale.” 

Patzek, one of the nation’s leading critics of the rush to biofuels, said conservation, including alternative forms of transit, is one solution, while production of the nation’s total energy needs from biofuels would require the sacrifice of all the nation’s crops and two-thirds of the annual growth of its forests. 

“All of the biological systems are quite inefficient compared to solar cells and wind,” said Patzek. 

Harte said that reliance on a crop like switchgrass as a source of biofuels would require enough land to produce significant climate changes in the United States. 

While biomass effectively captures about 1 percent of solar energy per acre for conversion into fuel, Harte said solar cells—photovoltaics—are now so efficient that only 1/20th of the land area would be needed, and Patzek said technology is now even more efficient. 

Harte called for tax incentives for the solar and wind energy industries. “The encouragement of clean energy through incentives is the best way to do it,” he said. 

“We have a judiciary here in the pocket of the elite of this country,” said Thorlby in a telephone interview recorded for Thursday night’s program. “I call it the scum of the country.” 

“Millions and millions of hectares” have been usurped, he said, to make way for an unsustainable agriculture enforced by armed gangs. “You could call it Neanderthal, but I have more respect for our ancestors,” he said. 

Environmentally devastating, the sugar cane super-plantations “put an end to the culture of the society,” he said. 

Thorlby received the Brazilian government’s Human Rights Award for Elimination of Slave Labor in 2003. 

Alice Friedemann, a science journalist who specializes in energy issues, said her special concern was with destruction of soil and water caused by mass planting of corn, currently the dominant source of ethanol in the United States. 

The writer said she was troubled “by the lack of any kind of input by social scientists” in the BP proposal. “Their voice needs to be heard.” 

Friedemann also cited three decades of lobbying by agricultural industry leader Archer Daniels Midland—a firm that holds patents on many crops—calling for development of ethanol-based based fuels. “Ethanol will bankrupt our soils,” she said. 

Richard Register, a Berkeley advocate for green city design, argued for an end to urban design based on the automobile. 

“As long as we keep building the same things, as long as we keep driving the same things, we’re not going to solve this problem,” he said. 

Thursday’s forum was the first of two scheduled teach-ins sponsored by Register’s Ecocity Builders, the Green Century Institute and StopBP-Berkeley.org, the student activists who have been organizing protests challenging the pact between their university and the British oil firm. 

Another teach-in will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 

That forum will feature three speakers intimately familiar with UC Berkeley’s last controversial corporate research package, the Novartis agreement, a five-year pact between a Swiss-based multinational and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM) at the university’s College of Natural Resources. 

Speakers include: Jennifer Washburn, who examined the Novartis pact in her 2005 book University, Inc.: The Corruption of Higher Education; ESPM Associate Professor Ignacio Chapela, a leading critic of the deal; Berkeley geography Professor Jean Lave, who helped develop a proposal for an external review of the project conducted by Michigan State University; and anthropology professor Cori Hayden, who will address impacts on government, patent regimes and ethics. 

Also slated to appear is Hillary Lehr, a student and slam poet.


Zoning Board Backs Closing of B-Town Store

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday May 01, 2007

The B-Town Dollar Store at 2973 Sacramento St. could be closed if the Berkeley City Council decides to act on a recommendation passed by the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) Thursday. 

ZAB members voted unanimously Thursday to recommend that B-Town should be closed as a public nuisance immediately. This was the first proceeding that was conducted under the new revocation and nuisance abatement procedures that the City Council adopted in March, which mandated that “ZAB is no longer required to determine whether to initiate proceedings, but need only hold a single public hearing and make a recommendation to the City Council.” 

The property, which a ZAB staff report stated has been “associated with continuing illegal drug activity,” is owned by the Chul J. Kim family and is managed by the son, Joo H. Kim, a San Francisco police officer. 

No one from the owner’s side was present at the ZAB hearing. B-Town is leased to Nayef Ayesh, who operates the discount storewith his wife and sons. 

Gregory Daniel, head of the City of Berkeley Code Enforcement Division, told board members that the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) had originally pursued the nuisance designation in 2004 with the incorrect belief that a discretionary permit was required and had not been obtained for the retail use. However, since the Planning Department has concluded that this is not the case, he asked ZAB to recommend that the City Council order abatement by termination of use.  

Daniel, along with five other officers from the BPD, testified about drug activity in and around B-Town from 2003 to February 21 of this year. The officers alleged that drug dealers were hanging out in front of the building and using it as a place to carry out drug transactions.  

They added that after a series of discussions with the owners in 2004, the problem momentarily stopped, but that it began again in 2005 and has been going on ever since. 

“We have had 55 contacts with drug dealers at B-Town,” said Daniel. “Eleven were convicted felons, 16 were involved in drug dealing and one was a known rapist. Ayesh’s own son Sammy was involved in drug dealing and was arrested twice.” 

Ayesh and his wife Fatima told the board that they did their best to keep troublemakers away from the store. 

“Sammy, he speaks to everyone,” said Fatima. “But I tell them to get away from the store. I try to keep the store as clean as possible.” 

Ayesh told board members that his son Sammy had been moved to a different business last month because of the current problems. 

Sergeant Spencer Fomby, a former beat officer and a drug task force officer in the neighborhood, said that drug dealers used B-Town as a “safe haven.” 

“They stash their drugs in there,” he said. “We have received numerous complaints from Sacramento Street merchants and neighbors about drug-related activities, drinking, loitering and dice games. There are 15 to 20 drug dealers hanging out there at the same time. There are problems in the other stores on that street but not as much as B-Town. Most of the problems are generated there. It has become a nexus.” 

Detective Chu of the BPD said that a narcotics search in the past had revealed residue of cocaine in the back room of B-Town. 

Officer Pierantoni of the BPD said that the neighborhood watch groups in the area had refused to come and testify because they feared intimidation from the drug dealers. 

“It is most shocking that none of the merchants or the neighbors from the neighborhood are here to testify because they are scared of oppression,” said ZAB board member Bob Allen. “It’s not a bunch of wallflowers out there but a group of hard-working individuals. When they say they are afraid, they are really afraid.” 

Allen added that the neighborhood had a right to know what business would go in next after B-Town’s use permit was terminated. 

Board member Terry Doran said that although he wanted to be sympathetic to the businesses that came into the neighborhood, B-Town was definitely a nuisance case. 

“Why are there no records of phone calls to the police for help from the store?” asked ZAB chair Chris Tiedemann. “This kind of illegal pervasive behavior should not be allowed to take place.” 

New ZAB appointee Suzanne Wilson said that the store’s failure to install video equipment inside the store to show what’s going on was very discouraging. 

“The operators are saying that they don’t know anything about the drug activity, and yet there’s been no attempt to show the police that this kind of behavior is not taking place,” she said. 

“The most striking thing to me is that the owners are saying there is nothing new they can do about the situation,” said ZAB vice-chair Rick Judd. “But what they have done so far is not enough.” 

Board member Jesse Arreguin called B-Town a plague on the neighborhood and said he was concerned that the same problems might migrate to the other businesses once it was shut down. 

“If it migrates, we migrate with them,” said Daniel. 

 

Other items 

• The board approved a request for modification of a use permit by MG Pacific, Inc., to change the use of an approved restaurant addition from a waiting area to a reception/cocktail lounge at Chester’s Bayview Cafe at 1508 Walnut St. 

• The board approved a request for a use permit by Robert Gaustad of San Rafael to add wine and beer service and live entertainment to Bobby G’s at 2072 University Ave.  

• The board approved a request for a use permit by Affordable Housing Associates to modify the plan approved by an earlier permit to remove four projecting bays on the south elevation, to vary open space dimensions and to replace the paving of the plaza along Ashby Avenue with asphalt at 1001 Ashby Ave.  


Woodfin Hotel Workers Fired; Supporters Cry Foul

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday May 01, 2007

The Woodfin Suites Hotel fired 12 workers Friday, according to an East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy press statement. EBASE has helped Woodfin workers in their attempts to get Emeryville’s living wage ordinance for hotel workers enforced. 

“The firings appear to be in retaliation for blowing the whistle on the hotel’s violation of the city’s living wage law, Measure C,” the statement said. “Woodfin defied an Emeryville ordinance to keep the workers on the job until May 7, so that the city can complete an investigation of the workers’ complaints of retaliation and for back wages.” 

The hotel did not return calls for comment, but in the past told the Planet it was put in the position of being forced to keep immigrant workers in their jobs, despite the workers having Social Security numbers that the Social Security Administration says do not match their names. (EBASE organizers say the Social Security number question became an issue only after workers tried to get Measure C enforced.) 

Woodfin workers and supporters will be at tonight’s (Tuesday) Emeryville City Council meeting to urge the city to deny the hotel an operating permit until it reinstates the fired workers and pays them $200,000 in back wages, owed to them due to Measure C requirements to pay overtime wages when workers clean more than a specified amount of floor space.  

The meeting is at 7:15 p.m. at 1330 Park Ave., Emeryville. 

 


Bay Area Rallies for Immigrant Rights

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps in the Bay Area and across the nation have separated working parents from their children, forced families to flee in haste to countries of origin many scarcely know and caused millions of others to live in fear of harassment and deportation. 

On May 1, immigrants, their supporters, union activists, students and others will join hundreds of marches, rallies and speak-outs across the United States supporting immigrant rights. 

 

Berkeley 

In Berkeley, the UC Berkeley student government will lead marchers to Oakland where they will join the Oakland rally at the Federal Building in downtown Oakland. 

“It’s significant that the ASUC [Associated Students of the University of California] will lead the march,” said Dimitri Garcia, the ASUC student senator who authored the resolution calling for the student government to support the march. “It adds much more weight to the urgency of fighting the [ICE] raids,” Garcia said.  

The ASUC resolution in support of the march condemned the raids ICE dubbed as “Operation Return to Sender,” in which they targeted “immigrant neighborhoods and workplaces, in particular those of Latina/o populations, referring to over 600,000 immigrants as ‘fugitives.’ ” 

At the university, May Day is to start with picket lines forming at 7:30 a.m. at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue to call for the participation of UC students and employees.  

At 10 a.m., one group of marchers, led by ASUC student officials, will begin a march from Sproul Plaza down Telegraph Avenue, ending up at the Oakland Federal Building, where they will join the Oakland march coming down International Boulevard.  

Others will rally on campus between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. And one contingent will march to the downtown Berkeley BART at noon to travel to San Francisco Civic Center to join the rally there. 

Another organizer of the Berkeley event, graduate student Snehal Shingavi, noted the importance of May Day, traditionally focusing on worker rights and evolving into a day focusing on immigrant rights issues.  

“Immigrant rights is very much a worker issue, honoring the legacy of May Day and the contributions immigrants make to the economy,” Shingavi told the Daily Planet. 


Book Commemorates 33 Years of Political Art

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday May 01, 2007

A collection of posters Inkworks Press has produced over its life as a worker-owned collective brings together art, calls to political action and 33 years of history. 

Today (Tuesday) Inkworks will celebrate the release of Visions of Peace and Justice ($30, self-published), a 400-page large-format book that has been a decade in the making. The free event will include music and food and begins at 7 p.m. at La Pena, 3105 Shattuck Ave.  

The posters include early calls for international solidarity with Palestinians of the late 1970s, the struggle against South African apartheid of the 1980s and local issues such as the fight to save the International Hotel and the Livermore Lab blockade. The collection includes present-day anti-war posters.  

“When people have a radical/progressive political movement, they need to be sure the message is on the street,” Tim Simons, a member of the collective who does marketing and helped design the book, told the Daily Planet. 

The collection of posters “creates a record,” putting political actions and movements over the years into perspective, Simons said. “It immortalizes struggles.” 

 

 


Fewer Berkeley Businesses Selling Alcohol to Minors

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday May 01, 2007

The California State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) announced Friday that alcohol violation rates have dropped in Berkeley. 

Present at the press conference were the Berkeley Police Department, the UC Berkeley Police Department, UC Berkeley Associate Chancellor John Cummins, the UC Berkeley Party Safe program and Students for a Safer Southside. 

“What started out in 2003 as increased enforcement and education efforts is helping to reduce alcohol-related incidents in Berkeley and on the UC Berkeley campus,” said John Carr, an ABC spokesperson. 

“We heard from communities that the quality of life has improved. There are fewer loud parties and fewer alcohol sales to minors. When we provided this Grant Assistance Program (GAP)—$40,000 to the UCBPD and $85,000 to the BPD—this was exactly the kind of results we were looking for. The new resources from the grants have led to more ID checks as well as shoulder-tap decoy operations.” 

“Shoulder tap” involves a minor under the direct supervision of a peace officer who stands outside a liquor or convenience store and asks patrons to buy them alcohol. Once an adult agrees to purchase it for them, they are arrested and cited for their action. 

“Students have criticized the GAP in the past,” said Nima Golzy, a junior at Cal who was representing Students for a Safer Southside. “They claim that the student population is being targeted. But people who vocalize against these grants are the ones who want to hold parties where alcohol is served to minors. They don’t want any regulations.” 

Since the dispersal of grant money in 2003, 2,283 arrests were made through the combined efforts during alcohol-related enforcements. 

“When police started running compliance check operations in 2003, over 50 percent of the businesses that were visited sold alcohol to minors,” said Steve Hardy, the newly appointed director of ABC. “Today that figure is approximately 20 percent. We have warned, fined, suspended and revoked alcoholic beverage licenses of businesses that sold alcohol to minors. Alcohol is a problem. It’s a drug. We want to work hard to slow it down.” 

Lt. Doug C. Wing of the UC Berkeley police said that education and outreach were equally important. 

“Our efforts have certainly made students more aware of the problem,” he said. “There are fewer fights in the South Campus area. But the allure of coming to Telegraph Avenue is still there and that is a district we pay a lot of attention to.” 

Ralph Adams, a member of the Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition, said that it was pertinent that a program of “outreach-education-monitoring-enforcement” be conducted by the city. 

“Besides alcohol, there are other issues such as violence and loitering with the intention of drug dealing and prostitution that need to be addressed in the neighborhoods,” he said. 

John Cummins, associate chancellor at UC Berkeley, told the Planet that enforcing alcohol policies was a huge challenge for the university. 

“For many students, this is the first time away from home,” he said. “The drinking pattern is established in the first three months of the freshman year. This is the time when they need to be educated about drinking responsibly. Also, the frats need to manage their parties carefully and we need to patrol Southside as frequently as possible.” 

 


City Officials Ponder Measures To Address Freeway Collapse

Tuesday May 01, 2007

The City of Berkeley announced Monday that as the bridge approaches become heavily congested as a result of the MacArthur Maze collapse, traffic in and around Berkeley is expected to be impacted, even though none of the detours suggested by Caltrans and local officials routes traffic directly through Berkeley. 

On Monday morning, representatives from Berkeley’s Office of Emergency Services, the City Manager’s office, and the Finance, Fire, Police, Public Works, and Traffic departments met to discuss traffic mitigation and identify other potential problems and opportunities. 

Ciry officials said it may take several weeks to understand the real effects of the disaster. 

In the meantime: 

• Police and traffic officials identified the most likely spot of trouble as Ashby/Highway 13 to Tunnel Road. There are tow-away areas on Ashby from 4-6 p.m., and police will be increasing their enforcement at those times.  

• In coordination with Caltrans and Oakland, traffic may be directed away from Ashby and toward the Telegraph and 55th Street onramp to Highway 24 eastbound or the onramp for Highway 580 eastbound at 51st and Martin Luther King Junior. 

• City staff will monitor several likely trouble spots around town, including Ashby and San Pablo, but no changes will be made until there is a clearer picture of what the regular traffic load is likely to be. 

• The city, like other employers in the Berkeley area, will encourage employees who currently drive to work to begin taking public transit. The city already offers public transit incentives, and employees will be encouraged to take advantage of those programs. 

All residents, visitors and employees of local schools and businesses are encouraged to take public transit as much as possible. 

Traffic and commute information is available by calling 511 or going online 

to 511.org.  

 

Photograph: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums examine the collapsed freeway section Sunday.


School District Committee Searches for African-American Teachers

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday May 01, 2007

The Berkeley School Board received information on the Black College tour that took place in February to recruit more teachers of color at historically black colleges in Washington D.C. and Atlanta, Ga. 

This was the first time BUSD sent out a group to search for African-American teachers for the Berkeley public schools, said BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

Joette Al Hakim-Hall, a sixth-grade teacher at Longfellow Middle School, told the board that she had visited Howard University in Washington D.C. and Morgan State University in Baltimore with Longfellow principal Rebecca Cheung. 

“We found out that it’s not just Berkeley who wants African American teachers. Schools all over the nation are vying for these teachers,” said Al Hakim-Hall. “It made us think that what is so special about Berkeley that would make these young graduates leave the East Coast and move to the Bay Area.” 

Robert McKnight, who teaches at Berkeley High, said that his trip to Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, with King Middle School Vice Principal Jimette Anderson had been positive. 

“It gives me a boost to see so many young students of color going to school and getting good grades,” said Anderson and offered herself for future discussions on the issue. 

Board members agreed that planning was required to offer new recruits a comfortable start in their careers in Berkeley. 

“The Bay Area is a very expensive place to live,” said board member Nancy Riddle. “We have to ensure that these young people have proper housing and a support system ready before we bring them in.” 

 

MLK track 

The board approved an advertisement to solicit bids for resurfacing the track at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School over the summer. Gelfand Architects were hired on January 17 to design the project. The design is scheduled to be completed on May 4. 

The track, which is also largely used by the community, will remain closed from June 15 to the end of August. 


Downtown Committee Ponders Green Plan; Landmarks Commission Weighs BHS Gym

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday May 01, 2007

DAPAC members will finally tackle the central element of their proposed new plan Wednesday night when they consider the role of sustainabilty in the future of Downtown Berkeley. 

And a decision on landmarking the old Berkeley High School Gymnasium—home of the East bay’s main warm water therapy pool—could come as early as Thursday evening, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) is scheduled to hold a hearing on a building already slated for demolition by the city’s school board. 

DAPAC—the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee—is charged with handing the Planning Commission a draft of the new plan by November, and members have decided that their primary emphasis will be on creating a green city center. 

The meeting begins with a presentation by environmentalist and “smart growth” advocate John Holtzclaw on land use and greenhouse gases, followed by a discussion of the draft sustainabilty element prepared by downtown planner Matt Taecker, UC Berkeley planners Judy Chess and Jennifer McDougall and Berkeley environmentalist Juliet Lamont. 

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Proponents of the application to landmark the old gym say the building is a distinguished creation worthy of preservation, while the school board said the site is needed for new classrooms and athletic facilities. 

Representatives of the disabled community have also called for preservation. 

The school board voted Jan. 17 for demolition, but a group of preservationists calling itself Friends Protecting Berkeley’s Resources filed suit Feb. 23 charging that the district didn’t follow the California Environmental Quality Act before casting its votes. 

The building at Milvia and Kittredge was the creation of architects William C. Hays and Walter H. Ratcliff Jr., and features additional details by engineer Thomas F. Chace who conducted a rare—for its time—seismic retrofit in 1936. 

Also on the LPC agenda are proposals to remove shingle siding on a Structure of Merit cottage at 2411 Fifth St. and add additional dwelling units at the rear of the property. 

Commissioners will also review plans by UC Berkeley officials to renovate six residential buildings at the Clark Kerr Campus to keep the buildings habitable and increase accessibility. 

Also on the agenda are plans to add a by-right addition to the home at 1340 Arch St., declared a landmark in November after the commission acted in response to the plans; and plans to refurbish the Sigma Phi fraternity house at 2307 Piedmont Ave. 

The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center. 


Proposal Could Affect Boston’s Asians

By Adam Smith, New American Media
Tuesday May 01, 2007

A proposal to allow green card holders in Boston the ability to vote in municipal elections could have far-reaching effects for nearly half of the city’s 45,000 Asian Americans, say local experts and office holders. 

“It would be huge,” said Paul Watanabe of the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. 

Just under half of all Asian Americans in Boston are non-citizens, according to a 2004 report—“Enabling the Asian American Electorate”—that Watanabe co-authored. If non-citizen permanent residents were allowed to vote, Watanabe estimated that it could potentially increase the Asian American electorate in Boston by more than 20,000.  

“I think it would be the most significant expansion of the franchise in the city of Boston since the passage of women’s suffrage. Its impact would be substantial,” he said. Watanabe said he’s been advocating for such a proposal for the past decade. Similar measures have been approved by other local governments including Amherst, Cambridge, and Newton, but all are pending state approval. 

Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon, who was born in Korea, said he feels it would be fair to those who pay city taxes and use city services to be able to vote in municipal elections. 

“This would be a good thing for city government because such a large part of the people that we serve in Boston are legal immigrants,” said Yoon, who co-sponsored Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo’s home rule petition allowing green card holders the ability to vote. “Since representation is the essence of democracy, I think city government would actually do its job better if their voices were represented.” 

In 2004, more than one in four Boston residents were born outside the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Amy Mah Sangiolo, an alderman in Newton, said she believes that if the measure passes, Asian Americans would have a greater voice in issues affecting them locally in Chinatown, such as land use and development. 

“It’s great,” she said of the proposal, which she said would be following the lead of Newton. 

Some, however, strongly reject the idea of allowing permanent residents the ability to vote in any elections. 

“We are opposed to any measure that allows people who are not citizens of the United State to participate in our democracy. That is a right and privilege of citizenship,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that promotes restricting immigration and stopping illegal immigration. 

“It dilutes the value of citizenship. If people who have not made a full-fledged commitment to this country are entitled to the same voice in this democracy, then what really is the value of being a citizen?” said Mehlman. 

But Councilor Arroyo, who co-sponsored the measure, argues that his proposal would encourage immigrants to become citizens because it would give them only a limited ability to vote. He also said that immigrants who pay taxes would acquire representation.  

“We’re talking about a big population that pays the taxes but does not vote. When we look at it from that perspective, it’s the right thing to do,” he said. In addition, he said, immigrants would have to sign statements that they would pursue citizenship if they are allowed to vote in the city elections. 

“But we are not a nation of taxpayers,” said Mehlman. “It is a nation of citizen people who have made a higher level of commitment.” He said that having immigrants sign statements that they would apply for citizenship would be meaningless because they would not likely be binding. 

“If you come here legally and have a green card, it isn’t all that onerous to become a citizen of the United States. There’s a five-year waiting period in which you are required to show that you are somebody of high character, stay out of trouble and do all the things you are supposed to do, and at the end of the five years, you can apply to become a citizen. Then you are free to participate not only in local elections but in any election you want to vote in.” 

He added: “They understood that when they came here that there were certain conditions. Coming to the United States as a legal immigrant— it’s a conditional bargain.” It’s still unclear how the measure will go over in the Boston City Council. Even if approved by the council, the bill would require final approval by the state’s Legislature. 

Yoon called the proposal “a major uphill battle. 

“It would only come into effect if the entire state Legislature agreed with our proposal. So this is the beginning of a long-term effort,” he said. After Arroyo co-filed the measure to allow permanent U.S. residents the ability to vote in city elections, Salvatore LaMattina, another city councilor, proposed that the city should determine whether it is working hard enough to promote citizenship. 

LaMattina opposes Arroyo’s plan and said that “we need to promote citizenship; if you want to empower new immigrants that come to this country, you empower them by letting them become citizens.” Still, Arroyo said last week that he has five of the needed seven councilors in support of the proposal. Councilors Charles Yancey, Chuck Turner, and Michael Ross have so far publicly endorsed the proposal, in addition to Yoon and Arroyo. 

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has not yet decided, said his spokesperson. At-large councilor Michael Flaherty said: “I’m keeping an open mind,” and that he wants to learn more about the matter before taking a position. Arroyo hopes to hold a hearing on the proposal by June. 

 

—M. Thang contributed to this story. 

 

Adam Smith is English editor of the Boston-based Sampan, New England’s only Chinese-English newspaper, published since 1972 by the Asian American Civic Association of Boston.


Mexican Journalist Risks Life to Expose Child Sex Rings

By R.M. Arrieta, New American Media
Tuesday May 01, 2007

The pristine, sandy beaches of Cancun draw more than just visitors looking for a little fun and sun. Those with a penchant for little girls as young as four have found their way to this region. 

Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho is exposing the players in these Cancun-based sex rings, and risking her life for it. 

Her empathy for human rights began at a young age when she played with the children in the slums of Mexico while her late mother, Paulette Ribeiro Monteiro, an early Mexican feminist, gave contraceptive information to their mothers. Cacho discovered that “there are things you can do to help your fellow men and women.” 

Her awareness led her to a life of activism and journalism. She started a high-security shelter for abused women in Cancun where children opened up to her about the dark underworld of child porn rings and prostitution. 

As a result, she says, “I’ve been taken to jail for telling other people’s stories. No one imagines that Cancun has this dark side.” 

The underage sex rings she has exposed include Mexico’s rich and powerful. Mexico is a country that doesn’t take kindly to exposure of corruption and greed. 

Currently the country is in the crosshairs of a violent drug war and some 17 journalists have been killed in the past five years for attempting to expose the corruption. Cacho, herself, is a target. 

Cacho, considered one of Mexico’s most prominent and imperiled journalists, was recently in San Francisco and Los Angeles on a nationwide speaking tour after being awarded Amnesty International’s 2007 Ginetta Sagan Award. 

In her groundbreaking book on child prostitution, “Los demonios del Edén” (The Demons of Eden: The Power that Protects Child Pornography), published in spring of 2005, she documented the ties between child porn rings, Mexican politicians and prominent businessmen. 

She identifies Jean Succar Kuri, a multimillionaire hotel owner, as the head of a group who sexually abused young girls in Cancun. 

“Succar Kuri would get these poor girls from the area and have sex with them, then send photos by email to his wife in Los Angeles, who would then forward them to Las Vegas,” stated Cacho. 

Lebanese-born Succar Kuri has been under arrest in Mexico since July of 2006, after his extradition from the United States. He faces charges of arranging child porn parties in Cancún, money laundering and organized crime. 

Cacho, who published all the names of the politicians and policemen who were involved in protecting Succar Kuri, told El Tecolote, “I did this quite conscious that I could be killed for this, but there was no other way.” She has been under police protection since receiving death threats last year. 

“By the time I started writing the book, we knew there were 200 kids in this ring, most of them poor, without any protection from the Mexican state, because if you are poor, there is no way you can get attention from justice or the police.” 

On December 16, 2005, Cacho was arrested and denied access to her lawyer and medicine. She spent the night in prison and was then released on $9,900 bail. 

“I was arrested with four cars and many armed policemen. They took me from Cancun to Puebla some 20 hours away,” she said. Police jammed guns against her face, threatened and taunted her with death and rape threats. 

She was charged with defamation, a criminal offense in Mexico, for writing that one of Mexico’s powerful businessmen, textile magnate Kamel Nacif, used his power to protect suspected child molestor Succar Kuri. 

Cacho remembers being marched to the edge of the ocean thinking she was going to be killed. At the last minute, recounts Cacho, the cell phone of one of her captors rang. The attitude of her guards then changed and they began treating her very well. 

Fortunately, after hearing of her arrest, Cacho’s supporters quickly mobilized and reached out to human rights organizations around the world. 

“That’s when Amnesty International got involved. For any one of you who wrote one of these urgent action letters, thank you very much, it saved my life. I’m living proof of what Amnesty International can do when you sit in your house and write a letter or when you email it.” 

But she still was considered guilty and spent the year going to jail every week. “I got my freedom back in January 2007. I could demonstrate I did not commit libel.” 

Cacho filed a counter-suit for violation of her human rights. She became the first woman in Mexico to file a federal suit against a governor, district attorney, and judge for corruption and attempted rape in prison. 

“I am the first Mexican woman in Mexican history to take a case to the Supreme Court. The Court is not interested in citizens. They are interested in politics. So they only listen to politicians. I am trying to take the governor of Puebla to trial. He was involved in getting me in jail and allowing them to plan my rape and beating. I don’t know if I’m going to win that, but I’m taking it one day at a time.” 

She has some powerful enemies. “All the experts I interviewed believe it is an international mafia also involving Las Vegas.” Cacho’s life is repeatedly threatened and she has to travel with armed guards. Despite these dangers, she continues to champion the advancement of human rights for all children and women through her writing and advocacy work. “I don’t want revenge,” said Cacho, “I want accountability and transparency.” 

As for the children… “most of the kids are going through psychological therapy, and we don’t know if they will ever really regain their lives. But some are real survivors, they are changing their lives and are taking their souls and reconstructing them every day.” 

 

For more information go to www.lydiacacho.net. 

 


Police Blotter

By Rio Bauce
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Assault 

On Wednesday, April 25, at 3:30 p.m., a Berkeley man was walking along Shattuck at Cedar Street, when another man punched him. The suspect was carrying a skateboard. No emergency services were needed for the victim. 

 

Scooter thieves 

A Berkeley High School sophomore was walking to sports practice at San Pablo Park after school on Wednesday when four to five teenagers assaulted him and took his Razor Micro scooter. No emergency services were needed. 

 

Meth abuse 

At 6:34 p.m. Wednesday, a homeowner phoned the police to report that somebody was shooting up in the basement of their 2500 block of Hillegass apartment complex. Berkeley Police Department Officer O’Donnell arrived at the scene and found somebody there. Emergency services were dispatched for a possible methamphetamine overdose and the trespasser was transported to a local hospital. 

 

Assault with gasoline 

At Ohlone park late Wednesday night, a Berkeley resident called in to report that a 67-year-old man had thrown gasoline on his face. The two had an argument but the contents of that argument remain unknown. 

 

Laptop steal 

Just before the clock struck midnight on Wednesday, an Oakland man called in to report that somebody had broken into his car. It was reported that the incident happened between 7 and 10 p.m. that night. Somebody took a laptop from the car. There are no suspects. 

 

Convertible slash 

On Thursday evening, a victim reported that somebody had slashed the top of his convertible parked on the 2600 block of Piedmont Avenue. The police suspect that the burglar was scared off, since nothing was missing from the car. No suspects have been identified in connection with this case. 


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Paying for the Privilege of Driving Alone

By Becky O’Malley
Friday May 04, 2007

It’s day six of the missing freeway link, and Berkeley is still standing. Friends have called from all over the country to reassure themselves about us—thanks, folks, but we’re just fine. 

If you’re driving from El Cerrito to the Oakland airport, it’s easy to pick up a freeway connection south via 980. Commuters through the tunnel from over the hill have figured out that they can take their usual 24-580 route into the city, as can those of us who live on the south side of Berkeley and in Rockridge or Temescal. Coming back from San Francisco is not quite so simple. Caltrans and common sense recommend a jog via the West Grand exit through Oakland city streets before reconnecting with 580 east, though a sizable number of misguided commuters seem to have instead chosen to add to Ashby Avenue’s permanent eastbound blockade, which starts at about 2:30 every afternoon. This confusion was aided and abetted by eager radio and TV newsies, who pushed the Ashby route all day Sunday. 

As of yesterday, the Chronicle was still interviewing residents on the affected streets. They quoted Oakland Mayor Dellums about the adverse health effects of 5,000 extra cars on Oakland residents. “The potential for tons and tons of air emissions into that area producing high health risks is enormous,” he said. Well, sure.  

That’s a short-term (weeks or, at the most, months) effect on his constituents, but it shouldn’t be minimized. At the same time, has anyone calculated how many home-bound cars drive east on Ashby every afternoon, even when the freeway is at full operating capacity? Or west, every morning? And how many use the Derby-Belrose corridor? Someone probably knows those numbers, though I don’t. (Department of Special Pleading: the O’Malley family has been breathing the emissions on Ashby for 34 years.)  

And here’s the next problem: The University of California at Berkeley is currently floating an assortment of environmental impact reports which collectively propose to build a number of parking spaces in the next few years which could come uncomfortably close to the same 5,000-car figure. When you add up the Gladiator Gym, the Long Range Development Plan, the Downtown Plan, the British Petroleum Building, etc. etc. etc. the number of cars scheduled to drive past our house and the homes of others is huge. And they will be permanent commuters, unlike the displaced freeway traffic in Oakland. 

And then there’s the ABAGgers—the perhaps 2,500 residents which some Berkeley city staff have been trying to claim we’ll have to add downtown to meet some mythical ABAG quota. Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman and other Downtown Area Planning Committee members have done a pretty effective job of demolishing that myth, but there’s no question that a substantial number of new units have been built and will continue to be built in downtown Berkeley. And contrary to another cherished myth, a lot of the new residents will be driving through town. Poschman cites a Caltrans study which showed that 60 percent of the people who live in “transit villages” (developments near transit hubs) drive alone to work.  

Counting all this is hard, of course, because The University is careful to divide up the plans of its several autonomous entities—the main campus, the professional schools, the research labs and the athletic events and other performances—so that it’s hard to keep track of what’s happening. In CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) jargon that’s called “impermissible segmentation”, and it’s done all the time by UC. They usually get away with it.  

It would be nice, though perhaps too much to hope for, if Berkeley’s city officials were as concerned about the effects on our health of all this excessive new traffic as Ron Dellums is about the health of his constituents. There are ways of dealing with it, if they cared. The most interesting one is being floated by the New York City mayor, Republican Michael Bloomberg, taking a leaf from the playbook of an unlikely fellow mayor, Socialist “Red Ken” Livingston of London. It’s congestion pricing: making drivers pay to use busy streets. Automated methods of tabulation, similar to the “Fast Pass” now used for bridge tolls, make this easy to enforce. And it doesn’t have to be as draconian as the London version, which makes every car pay about $8 a day to enter crowded streets. In Berkeley, for example, we could charge a fee just for cars with solo drivers entering the downtown/university area, with exemptions if desired for neighborhood residents, parents who’ve dropped off kids already and similar categories. Incentives for car pools have been a modest success, but penalties for driving alone might work even better, and are now technically possible.  

The city of Berkeley doesn’t have any zoning control over UC expansion, but it does have a variety of ways for regulating the use of city streets, including the right to grant or deny permission for curb cuts into UC parking lots and garages. How about making collection of a parking-alone tax at campus garages a condition for granting UC’s desired curb cuts? That might increase car-pooling, but even if it didn’t the revenues could be allocated for improving public transit. Perhaps the various lawsuits now making their way through the legal system could demand this or some other form of congestion pricing as a mitigation for the adverse environmental impacts of UC’s expansion in Berkeley’s future. Just an idea—but it might make a difference. 

 

 


Editorial: Celebrating the Commons on May Day

By Becky O'Malley
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Today is May Day, the first of May, the occasion in many cultures for festivities of one kind or another. The ancient Celts took their herds from winter quarters to summer pastures at this time of year, with appropriate excitement. Socialists of all stripes, especially in Europe, have traditionally celebrated May Day as a labor holiday, though it has sometimes been used as an excuse for ugly displays of weapons. The excitement which culminated in the Haymarket riots in America started around this time of year. Young folks, especially in Europe, danced around May poles, with fertility probably lurking in the background motivation in some fashion. Girls have often been crowned Queen of the May, and Catholics around the world sometimes crowned statues of Mary as well. In England and the United States, children and lovers delivered flowers to doorsteps anonymously in May baskets. Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and their friends celebrate the ejection of French invaders from Mexico this week, culminating on Cinco de Mayo, and May 1 has become a day for demonstrations on behalf of all immigrants. 

Are all of these celebrations connected? Probably. Today is about halfway between the Vernal Equinox and Midsummer’s Day(the summer solstice) so it can be considered the first day of summer. Birds everywhere are singing up a storm. It’s a day when you can be pretty sure summer is really on its way, though we saw snow in the Midwest more than once in the second week of May. In beautiful Northern California we can expect our May Hot Spell any time now: the week or so of sunny mornings and torrid afternoons which gives us false hope that summer in San Francisco won’t be cold and foggy.  

All of this makes May Day a good day to stop and consider the deep interconnectedness of practically everything. As a May Day preview, last weekend I had the good fortune to find out about a conference appropriate to this topic. Sponsored primarily by the California Studies Association, with the title of “CRISIS of the California Commons,” it mostly took a Chicken Little perspective: things have been good until now, but danger lurks ahead.  

From the program: “The bountiful commons Californians once enjoyed are a gift of nature and the fruit of social decision and collective effort. Today they are under sustained assault—our natural resources degraded, our public services privatized and our public spaces increasingly pre-empted.” Such a dim view is not wrong, but some presentations also devoted a fair amount of time to a positive historical perspective, what previous generations accomplished to promote the common good and how they did it.  

The central theme was that much of the world has always been shared by humans for the benefit of everyone, but it will take a lot of vigilance to make sure this continues. A few highlights from the three sessions I was able to attend: Dick Walker, a UC geographer, talked about themes from his most recent book, “The Country in the City,” an account of how people (mostly women) in the Bay Area preserved a remarkable amount of green space for common use. Gray Brechin discussed his Living New Deal project. He and associates are working on documenting the physical legacy of the Roosevelt administrations on behalf of the public, in California and elsewhere. Iain Boal, an Irish social historian of science and technics, took a particular delight in deconstructing what was a hot topic in the seventies, Garrett Hardin’s theory of the tragedy of the commons: an over-extended metaphor based on the belief that grazing land maintained in common is eventually exhausted by individual herdsman seeking to maximize consumption for their own flocks. Boal said that “commons” is the opposite of “commodity”, and he derided the currently trendy notion that privatization and pricing of shared resources is the best way to preserve them. Ignacio Chapela explored the continuing attempt to sell public universities to industrial interests, as exemplified by UC’s impending contract with British Petroleum. Ruth Rosen spoke about what she calls “the care crisis”—even though women have been well into the workforce for four decades, society has yet to make adequate provision for replacing what they did for family care, for doing what used to be called “women’s work.”  

Most of these sessions were standing room only, in small hot rooms in the airless and windowless basement of the new Berkeley City College. (The building comes nowhere near the elegant WPA standard for public amenities—the central “atrium” struck me as a cross between the Hyatt Regency and Alcatraz’s catwalks.) There were many provocative ideas exchanged which deserve wider circulation, so we’ve asked some of the speakers to contribute them to the knowledge commons by writing short commentaries for the Planet on the topics they raised. We’ll be running their piece in these pages as an ongoing symposium for the next few weeks, and we’re looking forward to getting our readers’ reactions. Ruth Rosen’s piece on the family is in today’s paper. 

Speaking of genuine family values, another highlight of the conference was Saturday night’s performance at Anna’s Jazz Island by Country Joe McDonald, in what was billed as “A Tribute to Woody Guthrie.” It was certainly that, but it was more, especially for a Berkeley audience. Joe is the son of two beloved Berkeley figures, Bud and Florence McDonald. He described them as an Oklahoma cowboy married to a New York Jewish intellectual, and noted that Woody and his wife fit the same description. He wondered out loud how his parents ever managed to stay together (Woody and his wife didn’t), and got his biggest laugh of the evening with the line that “it must have been the chicken”—both of his parental cultures eat a lot of chicken. He confessed that his upbringing by parents active in the Communist Party left him with a residual distrust of both communism and capitalism, but his voice, often unaccompanied, was still strong and true on the leftish songs he must have heard at home. The audience was on their feet cheering as he finished, and they cheered even louder when he sang the “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” as an encore (“next stop is—IRAN’”) complete with Fish cheer. He’ll be doing this show again soon in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, in case you missed it here. Go if you can—it will cheer you up. 


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday May 04, 2007

AN OPPORTUNITY  

FOR BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley community has an opportunity to contribute to a regional, East Bay response to the collapse of the MacArthur Maze this past weekend. The contribution would be to support use of the Ashby Avenue exit as a detour for traffic heading eastbound from the Bay Bridge to I-580. If the Ashby Avenue exit is closed to local traffic and a temporary connector is paved from the northbound ramp to the southbound flyover ramp, then traffic heading east on I-580 from the bridge would continue east on I-80, loop around on the Ashby exit ramps, then return to the open I-580 ramp from westbound I-80. 

From an operational standpoint, moving 30,000-plus vehicles per day through city streets in West Oakland is likely to be a nightmare. Even though traffic would be slowed, with proper lane announcements eastbound I-580 traffic could move more quickly and steadily via the Ashby Avenue exit detour. And since the exit would be closed to local traffic for the duration of the reconstruction project, none of this traffic would enter Berkeley proper. In addition, it would prevent the use of Ashby Avenue as a detour for Highway 24 traffic. In the long term, offering the Ashby Avenue exit for a detour would give Berkeley a powerful argument for funding its alternative transportation projects. 

Perhaps the strongest reason to support this detour option is environmental justice. Sure, I’d like to see every driver who uses the Bay Bridge switch to public transportation because of the collapse of the Maze. But until such occurs, using the Ashby Avenue exit as a detour for I-580 traffic will have two important environmental impacts for the region as a whole. First, traffic detoured via Ashby will not need to use city streets. Traffic detoured via Grand Avenue will add 30,000 cars to local streets and make West Oakland neighborhoods nearly unlivable. Second, the type of stop-and-go city street traffic that will take place on the Grand Avenue detour will use more fuel and contribute to higher overall pollution levels than if traffic used the Ashby Avenue exit. 

Share the impact. Reduce the impact overall. Don’t just shove it off on West Oakland. 

John Egan 

Buffalo, Wyoming 

 

• 

TEABAG, SCHMEABAG 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In her rant of wrong assumptions, Ms. Torrence utterly missed the whole point of the story. For one thing, I think 12-step recovery is awesome. For another, I routinely pay a higher price for my concoction, usually in the San Francisco Financial District Peets branches I frequent. And I’m absolutely stumped as to why she assumes that people who like stronger brews must habitually fail to tip. The outrageousness was that no one, under any circumstances—never mind that the young man was supposedly holding what’s known as a “service” position—[and lest Ms. T go off on another screed, let me assure her, I’ve held many of those myself, and in fact have a strong spiritual practice in which service writ large is considered sacred...] no one should ever speak to another human being in such a derogatory fashion. This fellow was not just inappropriate, but inflammatory—“old, lonely and desperate” is a paradigmatic example of hate speech against older women. 

When I saw him in the vicinity of these meetings, I retrospectively realized it was a safe bet he’d been either “on” something to incite such aggression, or desperately jonesing for it. All the free coffee in the world means nothing when what’s needed and required is an apology, and, to use the language of “recovery,” an amends. In which the insult is acknowledged and atoned for. Not paid off or bribed away. 

Clearly Ms. Torrence, having no use apparently for civility in society, is a fish out of water in such a conscious, aware, savvy city as Berkeley. 

Eileen Sheryl Hammer 

 

• 

TELEGRAPH AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So many smart and interesting people are trying to brainstorm solutions to the various problems Telegraph Avenue has been experiencing. Area residents, merchants, property owners/managers, city officials, advocates for homeless, police—all want basically the same thing in the end- a crowded, fun-filled retail strip with lots to look at and experience. Everybody wants it to be safe, colorful, user-friendly, and with a strong sense of identity. As one of the few busiest retail strips in Berkeley, the city should be keen to keep it healthy and help provide whatever a city as rich in resources as Berkeley is can provide. What was once a destination for tour busses, thousands of tourists, and a huge regional draw, is now little more than a pedestrian corridor for often uninterested/busy students and barely enough locals to keep the place looking vaguely populated. A small handful of mentally ill people have had a huge impact on Telegraph’s destiny. Each day dozens, if not hundreds of shoppers/strollers decide not to come back due to encounters with these sometimes rude and scary folks. For some reason, city staff appear to have no way to enforce politeness/civility among this small population. Everybody on Telegraph knows who these people are, and would love to find a caring way to help them find a better way to be than to play out what is often a power trip by someone who knows no other way to express their personal power! I know one particular guy who’s on Telegraph daily, who’s never hurt anybody that I know of, but has scared the living sh*t out of many, many a shopper, student, and local worker.... and this has been going on for many years. 

Cannot this brilliant community/city find a way to deal with this first-in-a-series of hurdles between here and a beautiful future for Telegraph ? On “community policing”—should not any merchant expect to be able to get to know the beat officers responsible for watching over their district without having to “fight” for that right? Instead, the merchants and residents are being treated like that’s some kind of ridiculous notion. Every business district should expect police that are actually interested in building rapport with the locals, right? What about the simple idea of providing the officers with cell phones for their shifts, why is that so controversial? 

Beyond trying to build a sense of community amongst the various players and the image of a safe place to be, there’s improved street lighting, access to parking/transportation, public restrooms, and most importantly, attracting new businesses that will help define the Telegraph Avenue of the future—all of this requires not only the heartfelt interest of everybody involved, but some serious support from the city government. 

Marc Weinstein 

 

• 

OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have been proud reader of the Planet for years now. I am a disabled person (spinal cord injured for 20 years) and a disability rights activist for much of that time. 

I have been proud specifically of the Planet’s printing all of my letters to the editor when I have addressed disability rights and the paper’s occasional use of language that is offensive to disabled persons. I have been impressed by the position the Planet has taken with respect to accessible transportation. As a Jew, I have been proud of the position you have taken with respect to Israel and its occupation. 

I have been additionally proud that Becky O’Malley, as editor, came out in favor of the warm water pool in Berkeley and that the Planet was the only progressive media source that was not primarily disability rights focused to take a position favoring Terri Schiavo’s parents’ appeal to keep her alive and that you stated you felt the disability rights community were the only ones, in your view, who “got it” about what the true issues were in her case. 

So I was disappointed that in the April 6 edition, in your editorial piece you chose to use the euphemism “turning a blind eye.” This is extremely offensive to all disabled persons (as is “turning a deaf ear” or “crippled by such and such”). I was surprised given my sense of what I read as your support of disability rights over the years. 

This was coupled by a letter to the editor in the same issue by Dmitri Belser, executive director of the Center for Accessible Technology, speaking to the lack of coverage of issues pertinent to the disability community in the Planet (the fact that Berkeley received recognition as the “most accessible city in the United States” and the Planet made no mention of it). 

I’m going to venture a guess that you do not have someone on staff who has a disability beat assigned to him or her and no one who edits pieces for correct (or politically correct) language use whether it be over gender or disability status. Since Becky O’Malley is editor in chief, I’m assuming this responsibility falls on her. 

Please try to be more cognizant of language use by those on your staff and those whose articles you print. I realize that you have no jurisdiction to change language use in a letter to the editor. But in other areas I believe you do. 

Ruthanne Shpiner 

 

• 

CHAOS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One man, out of touch with the country, vetoes troop withdrawal legislation thus thwarting the will of tens of millions of Americans. Is democracy great or what!  

Bush got us into this mess in Iraq and now vetoes any effort to get us out. What’s going on inside the mind of George Bush? 

President Bush: “Iraq timeline could cause chaos.” It already is total chaos in Iraq. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

 

• 

POLITICIANS WITH AMNESIA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Its amazing I have worked for more than 25 years, own a home in east Oakland for more than 18 years pay taxes among other things. I tried to secure employment via the city of Oakland and was denied employment. Not because I was not qualify . Now I hear the new mayor from Washington expressing his concern that felons are not given jobs opportunities after they did time. I am not a felon I am unemployed no meds and have to decide health care or welfare. I hope the next time they need votes or posting their signs in my home they do not ring my bell. I have given up on politicians with amnesia.  

Dennis Foreman 

 

• 

REVIVE THE LIBRARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A letter to our honorable politicians: 

As a library patron since 1977 I implore you to respect the nobility of your collective offices and stop this childish and thoroughly irresponsible Bush inspired mockery of the due process and fair judgment of the pressing needs of our community library system after its wholesale slaughter by the carpetbagging Jackie Griffin. You need to get back to playing by the rules or you all will be carted off to a guillotine somewhere where the enemies of the people meet their just deserts.  

All library patrons want an orderly and democratic process to determine the board of Trustees. Not a flim flam Roberts Rules of Order bamboozle. Look beyond your paychecks and the hustlers who give you campaign donations for the purchase of your souls and think like human beings instead of Republicans.  

We are watching and we know all about you and are quite disgusted with this latest turn of events regarding this Susan Kupfer affair. Reject this odious maneuver and regain our respect. Sensible due process to allow qualified candidates the ability to compete is an American value that apparently most of you have abandoned. Get it back, and don’t waste any time, because we are very tired of having to fight with every stupid decision that you folks are making regarding the Berkeley Public Library. Stop this crap and become caring human beings once more.  

Mike Jordan 

 

• 

A NEW BAD PRECEDENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A fast-tracked new building under construction in the East Richmond Heights has taken several houses’ views and is causing a huge controversy among surrounding neighbors and residents. On a recent Sunday morning, the house was two stories high and by the afternoon it had grew to an appalling three stories. This has become a great issue in the community because none of the neighbors surrounding the gigantic house has ever been notified of its construction. In addition, the new house overlooks neighboring properties and could be considered an invasion of privacy. It is apparent that the builders are trying to outrun any actions of the neighbors as well as the county. The outraged neighbors and residents have been calling county authorities and have visited Contra Costa County Building Inspection. As a result, a neighborhood meeting is being planned to avoid the situation. We encourage local attention and support on this issue. If three-story homes blocking several other residents’ views is allowed here, it could set a precedent for this whole area—a very bad precedent. This is not the issue of the East Richmond Height anymore. It is an issue for all the areas of the Bay area with great views. 

Mimi Matsumoto 

Richmond 

 

• 

VOCABULARY OF EVASIVENESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The best thing on TV these days is the seldom watched C-span channel which has “hearings.” Now that the Democrats are in the majority, they are holding a hot flurry of investigations on six years of Republican naughtiness. And what intrigues me most and irritates me most of all, is the new vocabulary of “evasiveness.” Recent examples, Gonzales responded with phrase, “I cant recollect,” almost 500 times in his soft Texanese. Or the Tillman scandal with testifiers for the military saying essentially, “that someone, somewhere in the chain of command (Lord knows where) might have or haven’t done something inappropriate....bla-bla-bla.” But the phrase which most enrages me to apoplexy is the hypocritical: “I take responsibility for...” Doctor Phillism has entered the world of politics with a vengeance! “Taking responsibility for...” has the panache of nobility, of integrity, of 12-stepism, of pop-psychotherapy. The phrase has become enormously popular for persons on the hot seat. In politics it manages in a tricky, clever and hypocritical way to escape the smell of corruption, of stupidity of immorality and just plain greed. I would much prefer those who “take full responsibility” to say instead truthfully and honestly: “I’ve been corrupt, or, “I’ve ashamed of what I’ve done,” or, at least: “I am a truly greedy bastard.”  

Robert Blau 

 

• 

TAKING ISSUE  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Sweena Aulakh’s May 1 commentary on fighting obesity in Berkeley by creating more high density development in downtown Berkeley: 

Although I take issue with every single point in Ms. Aulakh’s case for creating more high-density development in downtown Berkeley, I would like to focus on changes to the built environment as a way of fighting the overweight and obesity epidemic which continues to skyrocket in California; along with the number of people with chronic conditions associated with overweight and obesity such as heart disease, type II diabetes, certain cancers (e.g. breast, colon), osteoarthritis, and respiratory conditions. 

In Berkeley and its environs, right now we have a chance to fight obesity by re-opening the centrally located Berkeley Iceland. Over the years my family, friends, and myself, as well as countless seniors who have ice skated in childhood or earlier adulthood, have frequented Iceland and enjoyed every aspect of it. We skate for hours and burn calories, and create whole body toned muscles. The social aspect embodies everything Berkeley stands for: diversity, friendliness and helpfulness of the staff and everyone; an inexpensive place to have parties and go for nonviolent socializing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (I can’t bear to use the past tense.) 

During the week and in the summer, the sessions and camps provide a place to build real skills and artistic appreciation—for music, dance, and exercise—using peer-to-peer mentoring, and one-to-one and group instruction. 

If you combine swimming at the YMCA and local school and public pools with ice skating at Iceland, you will combat obesity and gain cardiovascular protection and isometric strength, as well as calorie combustion and a streamlined well-toned and muscled body. Yes, no one can deny that biking and walking are wonderful, but so is iceskating—and it is uniquely social and perfect for rainy days and nights.  

Please write Mayor Bates and UC Berkeley (whose hockey team needs to play at Iceland) to try to find the money to buy and reopen Iceland and maintain it as a safe place for neighbors and other users. Check out www.SaveBerkeleyIceland.org and send them donations. 

Just think of all the car exhaust pollution this will save, if we don’t have to drive to ice rinks in Oakland or elsewhere. 

Please remember that increased density, no matter how you slice it, breeds more cars, more pollution, more overuse of our limited resources, and creates cement jungles. Density’s original argument was to have urban infill and distant greenbelts: Did you ever go to the greenbelt? By the way, Brentwood and other formerly alluded to greenbelt destinations are now giant amorphous exurban enclaves. It is hard enough to get to Tilden Park by public transportation or walking or biking. But Iceland, for the bulk of Berkeley and its surroundings, is just a hop, skip and a jump away. 

Stay trim: Re-open Iceland! 

Wendy Schlesinger, Chairman,  

Gardens on Wheels Association  

 

• 

TAKING ACTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today I watched a hearing on C-Span. I didn’t turn it on at the beginning, so I do not know what agency was holding the hearing.  

The subject was the failure of Iran to stop supporting terrorism in neighboring countries, primarily Israel.  

Testimony was given by the head of the New York Employees Retirement Fund who said he had $90 billion to be invested, with some of it going to Iran. Companies who have investments in Iran include Halliburton and Shell Oil in Holland. 

This caused me to decided to publicize the matter, using the tactic I have used while handing out leaflets since 1950 at San Francisco State College. I made two sandwich board signs saying” Shell Supports Terrorism.” The letters were over three inches high, which is large enough to be read about 150 feet away by persons with 20/20 vision. 

I went to the Shell station at the corner of Marin and San Pablo avenues in Albany. I put on my sandwich boards and went into the office and introduced myself and told the lady what I was going to do. 

I then went out to the northeast corner and stood where persons in passing vehicles could read my signs. I stood there about 40 minutes, turning to be seen the most while the signals changed. I would estimate 150 vehicles passed by during this time. About 10 percent beeped at me and many of them waved their hands. 

I then went back into the office and asked for the name of the station manager. I told her I expect to go to other Shell stations tomorrow. I plan to send this report to the manager and any person within Shell whose name I get from him. I hope this message reaches the top management of Shell. I think they will examine the sales of their gasoline in this area. 

Charles L. Smith 

 

• 

IS ANYONE LISTENING? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Bush administration seems to be drawn to killing and being killed, not themselves but our brave young people in the military. Perhaps the hierarchy should go to the front lines. If they thought they would have to their attitude would change. It’s much easier when it’s someone else they are sending to war. 

Attacking Iran would be another huge faux pas. A diplomatic approach must be taken with Iran. Hasn’t Iraq been bad enough? Do we want to increase regional and global tensions? 

Dialogue and diplomacy, not war, is what the Bush/Cheney crowd needs to learn quickly in order to increase global security. The American people do not want to attack Iran. Is anyone listening? 

Shirley Taylor 

 


Let Sun Shine On Cell Antenna Dilemma

By Laurie Baumgarten
Friday May 04, 2007

The issue of cell phone antennas and how the city of Berkeley deals with them is a perfect illustration of what Becky O’Malley was referring to in her article, “We’ll Have to Make Our Own Sunshine”( Daily Planet, April 27). In it, she advocates transparency in government. I first heard about Patrick Kennedy’s application for a permit to put up potentially dangerous cell-phone antennas in my neighborhood about eight months ago from a neighbor. I received no notification or warning from city staff, which was, and is aware of the many studies that indicate potential harm from the RF radiation that they emit, and I live in the immediate block. If there were a posting on the door of Kennedy’s Storage building, where he wants to put these antennas, it was small and not noticeable to the neighborhood. Essen-tially, we found out about the application for a permit by accident from one of the workers who was installing equipment for the cell-phone antennas before any legal permit for them had been issued. What hubris! 

The neighborhood started educating itself about RF radiation, and decided it was not an acceptable pollutant in our neighborhood. Then, we discovered to our horror that there were already 14 other antenna locations within a half mile. While the planning department sent us a map of where these antennas are located, it still has been unable or unwilling to tell us how many antennas are at each location. Are there three or 33 at each location? Do the numbers at each location keep growing, due to the ill conceived notion that allows for placement of new antennas at a site once there is even one placed on a building? Who is checking emission levels to test whether they are still within FCC limits (already 100 times less protective than Switzer-land’s). Who is monitoring these legally required inspections? To my knowledge, the city has never conducted an independent check on the emission levels to be sure cell companies were being honest. I want to scream, “Where is my tax dollar going if not to protect my health and safety?” 

But, Blessed Be. Last January, the Zoning Adjustments Board did the right thing and voted to reject a use permit on the basis that South Berkeley does not need any more of these antennas. Now Kennedy, Verizon and Nextel are appealing their decision to the City Council. There is so much smoke and mirrors when dealing with the city that it is easy to get discouraged. Kennedy has suggested that he wouldn’t be able to get out of his lease with the telecom companies even if he wanted to. What lease could possibly exist since there never has been a legal permit issued for these 12 antennas? Are these rumors floated to make us feel powerless and get us to give up? We are often advised by people to get ourselves a lawyer. Isn’t the city legal staff our lawyers, paid by our tax dollars to defend us, the people of this city, against unfair encroachment on our lives, even if that encroachment is from big and powerful corporations? 

The appeal will be heard by City Council Members this Tuesday, May 8. We will see whether they have the courage to uphold the decision of its Zoning Board. 

 

Laurie Baumgarten is a Berkeley resident.


KPFA: Peace and Social Justice?

By Kellia Ramares
Friday May 04, 2007

I have been in the KPFA News Department for eight years. I was one of the journalists arrested in the newsroom on July 13, 1999. I don’t do much reporting now; I board op the Evening News several times a week because it pays. But it doesn’t pay much. I am scheduled for 11 hours a week and generally take on requests to fill in during holidays and vacations as the opportunities arise. I have no benefits.  

So it is with great exasperation that I see in the Daily Planet’s April 24 edition Mark Sapir’s commentary about KPFA. Not that I totally disagree with him. KPFA should not resist advocacy journalism; FOX certainly doesn’t. But while various people argue about what should and shouldn’t be on the air, and who says or does what at a local station board meeting, a greater point is being missed: Pacifica does not talk the talk or walk the walk as a social justice institution in the way it operates. Pacifica takes the listeners’ money on a pretext of progressivism but treats the workers as badly as any of the corporations we report on during the Evening News. 

Another fundraiser is nearly upon us. Listeners will be asked to donate to KPFA (or KFCF) to the tune of nearly $1 million. But, in fact, the money will go not to KPFA but straight to the Pacifica Foundation. Despite whatever bits of internal political control certain people within KPFA may have, and despite the fact that some people believe that KPFA is or should be “community-controlled,” the true power, legally and practically, rests with whoever runs the Foundation, which doles out listener contributions back to the stations and for whatever projects it sees fit. You may think you’re donating to KPFA’s well-being. But while you have contributed generously, KPFA says it doesn’t have the money to pay former operations engineer and interim general manager Jim Bennett for the classes he has been giving on Sunday nights to train board ops. Nor can it afford to pay him to upgrade training manuals and videos. Why? Because the Pacifica Foundation holds the purse strings. 

The fact that we have a labor reporter will be a pitch point. He has done several stories about city and county governments passing ordinances against “big box” stores. One of the arguments against these stores is that they pay so poorly the workers must rely on government assistance. I was hospitalized for two days in March, and as a consequence, have over $25,000 in uninsured medical expenses to deal with. That’s an amount over twice last year’s income from all sources. I now have medical insurance for treatment going forward—the Alameda County Medical Services Plan for the medically indigent.  

Our labor reporter also covers stories of the struggles of workers who seek to organize a union. Pacifica kicked the volunteers out of KPFA’s union over 10 years ago, and sought and won a decision from Bush’s National Labor Relations Board that volunteers were not entitled to be in the WBAI union. KPFA relies on a lot of non-unionized labor—volunteers and part-timers like myself and other board ops who don’t get enough hours to be eligible for union membership and benefits. Department heads who would be considered supervisors in most other shops are union members. But most of the rank-and-file workers are not. Strange union. 

He also covers stories about companies who have been accused of making employees work off the clock, or not paying overtime. Just before writing this, I received an email from a department head looking for a volunteer board op to take over a weekly one-hour-long shift from someone who has gotten a paid job at another station. Our hourly pay is only $18.76, but the station is looking for a volunteer. Being a board op is a significant responsibility; we have to see to sound quality, handle technical problems, interact with callers, and see to Federal legal requirements, especially keeping obscenity and indecency off the air. This last responsibility has become even more important now that the FCC has raised its fines to a level that could jeopardize KPFA’s viability if we are fined over just one utterance. But not all the board op shifts are paid. Why not? Why does a 58-year-old institution based in a major metropolitan area still require so much volunteer help for its day-to-day operations? It would be one thing if this were a startup, or a small station in a village somewhere. But KPFA is part of a network worth hundreds of millions of dollars and the station itself raises millions each year. We’ve paid off the debts incurred by the “rogues” and we’ve even paid the mortgage on the building. So where is the money—your money—going? 

The Pacifica National Board has been debating a proposal to create a $5,000 a month consultancy for board member Rob Robinson, a holdover from the rogue board. As my mailbox fills with unpayable medical bills, the thought of this self-dealing raises my already too-high blood pressure. Did I, and perhaps some of you reading this, get arrested in 1999 for this?  

The Pacifica Foundation ought to be ashamed that workers have left this “peace and social justice institution” because they could not afford to work here, that someone in the news department quit after going homeless, and that someone else the news department quit because he was faced with homelessness; that second person called me to ask if I could take care of his computer if indeed he went homeless, that’s how close he came to it. It should be ashamed of the fact that Mary Berg, a programmer of over 20 years standing, needed the generosity of the community to get sight-saving surgery. The Pacifica Foundation should be ashamed that Bonnie Faulkner of Guns and Butter, one of the best fundraisers KPFA has, lives on her life savings, having dipped into her retirement money a decade early to keep the show going. It should be ashamed that I’ve worked here for eight years and am now drowning in medical debt. Is any of this progressive? Is any of this social justice? 

But some of you should be ashamed, also, those of you reading this who believe in the volunteer model of radio, who think somehow it’s purer that way and that what’s wrong with KPFA stems from the fact that there are people there who have full-time jobs. Those of you who want to see us keep covering striking grocery workers and teachers and janitors, but who object to us making a decent living from our work, should be ashamed of yourselves. Why should anyone believe “another world is possible” when progressives fund an institution that is operating in ways similar to those of our adversaries, but the level of concern over workers seems to grow only in proportion to the distance those workers are from the KPFA building? What is so progressive about caring that people half a world away live on less than two dollars a day, if you don’t also care that the people in your home area who bring you that information can’t pay their bills? 

We all have our opinions about who and what should be on the air. But that is not the purview of the local station board. It does have the power—and the legal responsibility—to oversee expenditures. It should follow the money, all the way to the top. 

 

Kellia Ramares co-founded the show Guns and Butter with Bonnie Faulkner. 

 


Ode to the Berkeley Free Clinic

By Amelia Baurmann
Friday May 04, 2007

It is close to 10 years ago now that I sat in the waiting room of the Berkeley Free Clinic waiting for my interview. I had already submitted an essay stating my reasons for wanting to be a part of the medical collective there, and had carefully considered that it would mean training there every weekend, all weekend, for six months. I was ready for something in my life to make sense, and working as a waitress wasn’t quite getting me there. While I waited, I studied the posters on the walls, mostly various artists’ interpretations of the BFC dragon logo with their motto printed beneath it: “Healthcare for people, not profit.” “Sure, I can get behind that,” I thought. 

I had no idea at that time to what extent the BFC would shape my future, and how important the philosophy that drives it would become for me. 

The BFC gets a lot of foot traffic from the local homeless and uninsured community; people moving through seeking peer counseling, anonymous STD testing, referrals, or basic medical and dental care. Most folks from around here have heard of it and know about what a great community resource it is. What may not be as well known is that the clinic attracts a diverse population of volunteers as well, many of them with aspirations of becoming health care professionals someday. 

This explains the necessary interview process to become part of the BFC collective. Several people I knew at the time that I was applying couldn’t understand why anyone who wanted to commit that much time and energy, for FREE, would need to be interviewed. But the reality is that medical school is extremely competitive, and any bauble one can find to adorn her/his resume is invaluable. It really looks good on paper to have been a part of something as well-known and respected as the BFC. But the medical collective is protective of the integrity of the clinic’s philosophy, and anyone who wants to become a part of it has to be ready to turn the paradigm of modern, western medicine inside out. 

What does that mean exactly? First and foremost, it means that clients are treated with respect and not rushed through their appointments. Clients are seen as their own primary caregivers, with the clinic “medics” providing support, education and empowerment to help people help themselves. By design, the medics are laypeople, wearing street clothing and going by their first names. If they don’t know the answer to a client’s question, they say they don’t know, and they help the client find the answer, using the clinic’s library. It bucks the model of the health care professional holding all of the intellectual capital, making patients feel apologetic for taking up their precious time and often leaving their appointments with questions unanswered and issues unaddressed. 

All of this seems so intuitive, so basic. That was the impression that I had when I first began working and training at the clinic. Unfortunately, having worked by now in a variety of settings with professionals on all ends of the spectrum, from doctors to nurses to midwives and homeopaths, from small community clinics and birthing centers to large hospitals, it is clear to me how rare this approach to the provision of care is. The language of communication, equity, respect, education and empowerment certainly receives lip service within the health care community, and there are efforts by many to infiltrate the profession with these ideals. But there is no better time to integrate these fundamental concepts than at the beginning of one’s education, which is what the BFC is for many. 

Though I left the clinic years ago and am now pursuing a career as a nurse midwife, the Berkeley Free Clinic’s philosophy will always be at the heart of my practice. I am sure that I am one of many fledgling health care providers who thank the BFC for indelibly marking our minds and hearts with the true meaning of client-centered care. Writing this is one of many ways I hope to give back to the BFC for all that I learned there, and I encourage anyone reading this to offer your support in any way you can. You never know, it may alter the course of your life. 

 

Amelia Baurmann is a nursing student at UC San Francisco.


Democratic Candidates Offer No Alternatives to War

By Kenneth J. Theisen
Friday May 04, 2007

Last week eight Democratic presidential candidates met in South Carolina for a debate. The candidates were senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, Chris-topher Dodd; former senators John Edwards and Mike Gravel; Gov. Bill Richardson; and Representative Dennis Kucinich. Although most of what was said during this so-called debate was no more than “campaign sound bites,” it is important to look at what was said and also what was unsaid to see the alternatives the Democratic Party is offering to replace the Bush regime in 2009. 

Clinton was the first of the candidates to speak. In discussing the invasion and continued war in Iraq, she stated, “We have given the Iraqi people the chance to have freedom, to have their own country … it is past time for them to demonstrate that they are willing to make the sacrifice, the compromise that is necessary to put together a unified government and provide security and stability without our young men and women in the middle of their sectarian civil war.”  

In what alternative universe does Clinton live? “Freedom?” Four years ago a massive invasion of the country was launched by the Bush regime. Today some 200,000 U.S.-led forces, “allies,” and contract mercenaries occupy “free Iraq.” “Sacrifice?” More than 650,000 Iraqis have been sacrificed on the altar of U.S. imperialism. If that is not enough sacrifice, maybe Clinton can take a look at the pre-war sanctions enforced by the United States which led to more than a million deaths of Iraqis, about half of the deaths being children. But then Clinton voted for the war and her husband was president while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died under the sanctions regime so maybe looking back is not a good idea for the good senator. And the sectarian civil war to which she refers is a direct result of the invasion and occupation. 

But let’s move on to see what other issues were raised in the debate. What concerns did Sen. Obama have? Early in the debate he stated his compassion for the military occupiers of Iraq. “We have seen our Army and our Reserves and our National Guard all being stretched to a breaking point. And that’s one of the reasons why I proposed that we’re going to have to increase the size of our ground forces, so we can stop the sort of rotations that we’ve been placing them on, which have been putting enormous strain not only on the soldiers themselves, but also their families … The men and women in uniform have performed valiantly in terms of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and giving the Iraqi people an opportunity to bring their country together.” In a recent foreign policy speech Obama proposed increasing the size of the Army and Marines by 92,000 and also getting the support of other countries when fighting wars of choice. 

So Obama wants to increase the size of the military so that “our” poor military will not be over-stretched when the U.S. launches wars of choice. He also prefers more allies in his wars. In effect he is proposing a stronger “multilateral imperialism” in place of the Bush regime’s “unilateral imperialism.” And this is a good alternative?  

And where is Obama’s compassion for the suffering of the Iraqi people? He feels sorry for those who have brought on this suffering. I guess the deaths and horrors imposed on Iraqis do not count. He forgot to mention it in the debate if it does. But then he did mention the “opportunity to bring their country together” that the U.S. invasion has given the Iraqi people. This is like Hillary’s freedom to “have their own country” sentiment. But those ungrateful Iraqis are just not showing their appreciation for these opportunities and the freedom the Bush regime has brought them. What ingrates. 

At one point in the debate there was actually real debate. Representative Dennis Kucinich challenged Senator Obama about Obama’s previous statements outside of this debate referring to Iran. Obama has made it clear that he thinks that all options, including the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, are on the table with respect to keeping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. (Other candidates including Clinton and Edwards have expressed similar views.) In response to Kucinich, Obama said, “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to initiate war with Iran. BUT have no doubt, Iran possessing nuclear weapons will be a major threat to us and to the region … I think it is important for us to also recognize that if we have nuclear proliferators around the world that potentially can place a nuclear weapon into the hands of terrorists, that is a profound security threat for America and one that we have to take seriously.” (Does this remind you of Bush’s statements before he launched the attack on Iraq?) 

At that point former Senator Mike Gravel pointed out correctly that the United States is the “greatest violator of the Non-Proliferation Treaty…We signed a pledge that we would begin to disarm, and were not doing it. We’re expanding our nukes. Who the hell are we going to nuke? ... Tell me Barack … who do you want to nuke?” Obama replied, “I’m not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise you.” So we are safe from Obama for “now.” But then he is not the president and right now he does not have the power to nuke anyone. 

One of the topics that did not come up at the debate was the impeachment of Bush. Although all the candidates claimed they were against indefinitely continuing the war waged by Bush, not one of them talked about impeaching the president who initiated the war. But Kucinich has proposed impeaching VP Cheney. But when the moderator asked who would enter into Kucinich’s effort to impeach the VP no one raised their hand. 

Kucinich pointed out the hypocrisy of the candidates that claim to oppose the war, but yet recently voted to give the Bush regime even more money for the war than he asked for in his budget. He said, “I think it’s inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war and, yet, continue to vote to fund the war. Because every time you vote to fund the war, you’re reauthorizing the war all over again … The Democrats have the power to end the war right now, and that’s what we should do.” He also went on to expose candidates like Clinton who say they voted to authorize the war because they were misled by the Bush regime. He stated, “I don’t think that it’s sufficient to say that if we had the information at the beginning that we would have voted differently. That information was available to everyone.” Millions around the world opposed the war before it was launched. They knew the Bush regime was attempting to deceive the world. 

 

Kenneth J. Theisen is an Oakland  

resident.


Let the Iraqis Vote on U.S. Troop Withdrawal

By Laurence Schechtman
Friday May 04, 2007

There is a way out of Iraq. There is one strategy which has not yet been tried, which may survive a Senate filibuster and possibly even a presidential veto. 

Congress can invite the Iraqi people to vote in a referendum about whether they want an American withdrawal. Or more precisely, Congress can vote a pledge that the United States will respect the results of an Iraqi referendum. 

Polls in Iraq show that strong majorities of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds want a timetable for withdrawal, and that a majority say they would feel safer with the United States gone. 

It is likely that a Congressional vote to respect an Iraqi referendum will unite all Democratic factions and even win over an increasing number of Republicans who will never vote for a pullout or a fund cutoff. The idea of a referendum changes the debate from “cut and run” or “deserting the troops” to one of fulfilling the democracy which we say we are in Iraq to create. 

Even the Bush administration would feel pressure not to oppose the embodiment of its own rhetoric. Already between 55 percent of Americans (Rasmussen Poll, Feb. 2) and 66 percent (Harris Interactive, Dec. 22, 2006) say they want a withdrawal. What would happen to those figures if people began to ask, “Do the Iraqis want us there?” and “Do the Republicans want to know, or are their protestations about Iraqi democracy just empty words?” Many Republicans would find it easier to take credit for the growth of democracy in Iraq. 

The prospect of a referendum in Iraq would also be the fastest way to reduce violence there. In December 2005 most Iraqi militias observed a truce for the parliamentary elections. Would they not do the same to facilitate a credible, internationally monitored vote to end the occupation? We have to remember, however, that Iraq is, or should be, a sovereign nation. The United States cannot force Iraq to hold a referendum. But if the United States Congress passes a bill that we will respect the results of an Iraqi referendum, this will unleash a new political dynamic within Iraq, especially now that Iraqis have started peacefully marching for withdrawal. There will be a clamor which will reach across ethnic divisions, as Sunni, Shiite and Kurd demand that their “democracy” apply to the one paramount question: can their nation be free of foreign occupation? And they will be joined in their demand by the people and governments of most of the world. 

A referendum movement will reinvigorate the peace movement, and will be supported by hundreds of millions of people, in the United States and around the world. And the American congress will recognize that an internationally monitored referendum may be the only way that the United States can recover its reputation as a respecter of democracy. 

Next Monday, May 7, the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission will consider a resolution supporting United States respect for an Iraqi referendum. If you want to help support this resolution, you can be there: 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst and MLK, second floor. 

 

Laurence Schechtman is a Berkeley resident and activist.  


Washed in the Blood of the Lamb: Iraq in Retrospect

By Jane Stillwater
Friday May 04, 2007

“So, Jane,” someone just asked me, “what have you learned from your trip to Iraq?” 

What have I learned? That coming back to Berkeley was a let-down? I always thought that Berkeley was the hot-gossip epicenter for the entire universe but now everything here seems to fall flat. Who even cares if the same tired old feuds are still going on and X isn’t speaking to Y and both X and Y are still going out of their way to avoid Z? 

And when I went to my housing co-op’s board meeting the day after I got back and watched the same old group of self- 

interested slobs compete to see who could benefit most from being on the board of directors at the expense of the residents and HUD, I just yawned. 

Did the Fox News interviewer cut me off in mid-sentence when I stated that the assault on Iraq by Bush and Cheney was as criminal an act as that shooter’s assault on Virginia Tech? Yes he did—but did it really matter all that much? In Iraq, I had looked directly into the terrified eyes of a woman all covered with blood. After that, who can worry about the niceties of being polite on the air and pretending that the men who run our country are anything but pond scum? 

Sure I had a good time in Iraq. Cruising the Green Zone in a humvee, flying by helicopter over the countryside, meeting top-quality reporters, being impressed by dashing young officers and enlisted men who knew what they were doing and did it well? And eating dessert at the D-FAC! What’s not to like? 

But the bottom line is this: The same shroud of sadness that hangs over Virginia Tech these days also hangs over Iraq. 

And right now I am feeling like Lady Macbeth. 

There’s got to be a better way to solve human conflict than to blow everybody up. 

Sure, America has to pull its troops out of Iraq. It has to—but not for the deeply moral reasons that I would feel so proud of my country for honoring. Nope, we gotta pull out for a more practical reason. We can’t afford it!  

Currently, America is like some college kid who’s been sent a new credit card in the mail and, holding it in his hot little hands, is now drooling over the possibility of using it to buy a new Mercedes-Benz. Sure, it’s a lovely car. Sure the kid would love to own it and drive it happily for the next umpteen years. But can the kid afford it? Will his new credit card allow him to buy it? No. End of story.  

Why has no one in America yet realized—aside from possibly Harry Reid—that we cannot afford to continue to stay in Iraq? All of us pay our bills and balance our checkbooks every month. We all know the facts of life. If you ain’t got the cash, they cut off your electricity. Can America afford to continue to pay the credit card bill on Iraq month after month after month? Ask the USSR for the answer to that one. We are going to have to get out. But I digress. 

Without American troops, Iraq may or may not sink into chaos. The whole Middle East may or may not sink into chaos. Terrorists, as a result of the U.S. troop withdrawal, may or may not arrive on our shores and start blowing up things here too. Life’s a crap shoot. Dookie happens. But so does good stuff. So does good stuff. 

Are we so absolutely certain that if we don’t go on killing people in Iraq and across the globe that our world will fall apart? 

I’ve been to Iraq. It made me feel unclean. And I want to feel clean again. 

 

Berkeley resident Jane Stillwater recently returned from a trip to Iraq. To read her blog on the subject, go to http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com.


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday May 01, 2007

CREATING GREEN JOBS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Our elected officials are telling us that we need to be creating “green” jobs for East Bay workers. So why is AC Transit getting away with buying buses from Belgium when we could be making them in Hayward? Enabling our own citizens to be paid for building our city and regional public transportation systems is about as “green” as it gets. Why take that money out of our local economy in order to pay people in Belgium to build our buses that then have to be shipped all the way back here, wasting more energy? Let’s stop talking about green jobs and start creating them by putting people to work building the better public transportation infrastructure and transit oriented development that we need here in the East Bay. We should also be putting hundreds of people to work building California’s new high speed rail system in Oakland. Let’s do it! 

Kirstin Miller 

Oakland 

 

• 

GAMING THE COFFEE BAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’d like to respond to Ms. Hammer, author of the First Person piece, “Compassion and Outrage at the Coffee Bar.” 

Do you go into Berkeley Bowl and ask for 50 percent off your grocery bill? I hope not. Previous Peet’s employees were nice enough to give you this discount off your tea. But the day you behaved as if you were entitled to an extra free tea bag, you lost their compassion. 

I’m sorry, maybe I should be more sympathetic. From now on, in solidarity, I will go into Peet’s and ask for three tea bags. In fact, I encourage all of you—all the readers of the Daily Planet—to go to Peet’s and demand three tea bags for the price of two! Because only an unsympathetic, “wild” young man in “recovery” would turn us down. And if we are misfortunate enough to run into such a person, we know that we will be rewarded with a “loaded” Peet’s card. But I’m sure we would all leave nice tips, anyway, to show our gratitude. 

Anne Torrence 

 

• 

GIVE REID A BREAK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We need look no further than Bechtel Corporation for confirmation of Harry Reid’s statement that “this war [in Iraq] is lost.” Last November Bechtel announced it was leaving Iraq after losing 52 workers in three years. When the war profiteers begin to flee, you know the ship is sinking fast. 

David Eifler 

 

• 

TOWN HALL MEETING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A national town hall meeting is scheduled at UC Davis, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday, May 1, on the federal REAL ID Act. 

By selecting the a time conflicting with the nation-wide May Day 2007 National Day of Immigrant Rights, the DMV and the Department of Homeland Security could not have picked a time better suited to minimize the input of “a wide range public and private constituencies from California and other states on issues and perspectives as they relate to the proposed REAL ID regulations.” This is scheduled to be the nation’s only open meeting on REAL ID. 

I hope California has the guts to refuse to cooperate with the so-called REAL ID Act. Reading Vikram Seth’s Two Lives, the perspective granted by his account of the rise of racism and the erosion of civil liberties in Nazi Germany gives me cause to worry about where we are headed. 

Carolyn Scarr 

 

• 

NONVIOLENT PALESTINIANS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Of all the Palestinian apologists regularly published by the Daily Planet, Joanna Graham is by far the crudest. According to her latest missive, Palestinians are dedicated to “creative nonviolent resistance,” while the Israelis are consciously attempting to push them into violence. In her words, Israel is “trying for a suicide bombing.” So the Palestinians are like Martin Luther King and Gandhi rolled into one? Please! Palestinians from all major factions have sent more than a 1,000 suicide bombers towards Israel. Of these, only somewhat more than 100 have actually made it through to their targets, causing over 1,000 civilian deaths. Only the security fence and Israel’s vigilance has prevented much worse. But the Palestinians keep trying, with the latest “successful” suicide bombing occurring just last month. Rockets rain down on Israel from Gaza almost daily. Graham can argue that she supports terrorism, but she cannot possibly argue with a straight face that Palestinians are nonviolent. 

John Gertz 

 

• 

START WITH THE  

MERCURY NEWS MODEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

First of all kudos for your reporter Richard Brenneman for holding the bull by the horns and Becky O’Malley for timely and forceful initiative through her editorial note, “We ‘ll Have to Make Our Own Sunshine” (April 27).  

Taking a lead from the Bay Guardian’s editorial, after sifting through the doings and misdoings of the city manager and mayor of Berkeley, you have rightly concluded to have sunshine of your own by starting with the San Jose Mercury News model and developing an updated version corresponding to the aspirations of the citizens and vocal media to be put to the council as a last chance to adopt it, and if they can’t get it moving, just put it on the ballot as citizens did in San Francisco. 

Incidentally I’m a visitor here and picked your copy while visiting a friend. 

M. Saleem Chaudhry 

San Jose 

 

• 

UNSAFE PLACES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am very sad to know that our schools, colleges and public areas are unsafe places because early screening is not done by health departments or families are hiding certain facts from educational administrators. My suggestion is to have open discussion and then make some change in the school curriculum. We need to encourage people to sense the common good. Each day in Berkeley and Oakland I see graffiti painted in colors which won’t erase easily. We have a right to be helpful and respectful to others but we have no right to hurt or kill others. Is there a way of teaching social studies which awakens fellow-feeling among us? 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

 

• 

WARM WATER POOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for running the opinion piece by Terry Doran in your April 27 edition. I concur with everything he had to say. The Berkeley Unified School District’s charter is to provide excellent education for the youth of Berkeley; in order to continue to do that, the district needs to be free to pursue its carefully thought out long-range plans, including plans for the orderly replacement of buildings which have reached the end of their useful lives. It’s not appropriate to force the BUSD to allocate funds to amenities that primarily benefit non-students—the pool is obviously badly needed, but the funding for it needs to be found elsewhere than in the BUSD budget. I can offer some anecdotal confirmation of Terry’s remarks about the condition of the gym and the pool. I taught at BHS in the 1970s (as did Terry) and I can vividly recall what a sorry state it was in then. It was beaten up and it stank—you could smell sweat that must have been there since the 1930s. I still live nearby and pass it frequently, and there’s nothing happening on the outside to suggest that any sort of improvements have been made since those days. I found Terry’s assertion that the present warm water pool cannot remain serviceable for very much longer to be completely believable. 

Finally, as has been pointed out in these columns before, it’s short-sighted and wrong to try to use a landmark preservation process to control permitting or development. In the case of the old gym, the BUSD doesn’t need to be permanently saddled with this old crumbling eyesore, and the warm water pool users can be accommodated—and as Terry pointed out, in the long term accommodated much better—by phasing in a new therapeutic facility in a new location while proceeding with plans for replacement of the gym on the high school campus. 

David Coolidge 

 

• 

SENATOR LIEBERMAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What would we do without Joe Lieberman? 

The senator himself answered this question in an essay titled “One Choice in Iraq” (The Washington Post, April 26, page A29). 

Without Senator Joe we would not understand “…the nature of the enemy we are fighting …” (paragraph 3). Without him we would not know that we were engaged in a “battle of Baghdad,”å much less that the battle is actually “against al Qaeda” and, still more surprisingly, that al Qaeda’s army is at “war against us” (paragraph 10). 

This most dedicated public servant makes his most important contribution with unique, clear-headed insights. To senator Joe we owe our protection from “specious” arguments (paragraph 13), our intimate knowledge of al Qaeda’s motives (paragraphs 14 and 18) and we can thank him for warning us that responding to al Qaeda’s barbarism by running away leads ultimately to “abandoning…our own future” (penultimate paragraph). 

Sen. Lieberman, twice defeated but still in the ring, has proven himself at least as capable as the person who now holds the office he, Joe, tried so hard to win. 

Marvin Chachere  

San Pablo 


Commentary: What Are the Prospects for Peace in the Middle East?

By Matthew Taylor
Tuesday May 01, 2007

With President Jimmy Carter coming to town Wednesday to speak to UC Berkeley students about his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, it’s an appropriate time for us to reflect on the current prospects for justice and peace in the Middle East. 

As Carter accurately states in his book, a system of enforced apartheid reigns in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. It is systemic Israeli policy and practice to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot millions of olive trees, build roads that only Israeli colonizers are allowed to access, implant Israeli colonies on Palestinian soil in violation of international law, use an illegal wall to steal Palestinian land, and enforce two entirely different sets of legal standards for Israeli colonizers and the indigenous Palestinian population. Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is both apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and is the further enactment of a long-standing desire for territorial expansion that has permeated Zionist politics since before the 1948 war. 

At this past weekend’s Jewish Voice for Peace conference in Oakland, several speakers demonstrated that the situation is getting worse all the time. According to Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (www.icahd.org), Israel has managed to confine Palestinians who live inside the illegally-occupied West Bank to 72 disconnected ghettoes within only 42 percent of the West Bank area, leaving the rest to Israel’s illegal colonization as well as military installations and hundreds of movement barriers—a “matrix of control.” When Israel’s current colonies and land grabs are taken into account, the future contours of the so-called Palestinian “state” does not look like the map of a country, but a piece of Swiss cheese. 

Readers of Carter’s book are largely aware of the above challenges. However, what Carter’s book never reveals is that Apartheid can be said to prevail even inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Professor George Bisharat of the Hastings College of Law reports that over 100,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel live inside villages that are officially ‘unrecognized,’ appear on no maps, and are denied basic services such as electricity and garbage collection (www.assoc40.org). Israel has demolished the homes of tens of thousands of Bedouin Arabs in order to create Jewish-exclusive housing. Israel insists that its Palestinian citizens relate to Israel as a “Jewish state”—in other words, an ethnocracy that privileges one ethnic group over another in both blatant and subtle ways. 

And then, there’s the elephant in the room: the refugees. Millions of would-be citizens of the state of Israel—the Palestinians who were forcefully exiled in 1948, as well as their children—are denied the ability to return to their homes in peace, despite international guarantees and repeated U.N. resolutions affirming their right to do so. (Meanwhile, as an upper-class American Jew in Berkeley I have the unrestricted right not only to move to Israel, but to purchase a home that once belonged to a refugee.) Apartheid, at its core, is about “apartness” or “separation,” as well as the domination of one group by another. What could be a more extreme act of separation and oppression than forceful expulsion coupled with the denial of a people’s right to return to their homes? 

The formula for a resolution to this disaster can take many different directions. Some advocate for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to be reconstituted as a ‘single state’ between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River with equal rights for all its citizens. However, this is a non-starter for most Israelis who insist on a Jewish-majority state. Other proposals include a EU-style regional confederation. 

The international community is in near unanimous agreement that the only proposal with a modicum of justice and equity that is practically possible is a ‘two state solution’ (official U.S. policy), where Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders (possibly with agreed upon, equitable, minor border adjustments) and a viable, demilitarized, sovereign Palestinian state is created in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip—the territories occupied in the 1967 war. In fact, last month the entire Arab world re-affirmed its commitment to establish normal relations with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a just, ‘mutually agreed’ resolution to the Palestinian refugee crisis. Israel rejected the Arab Peace Plan without consideration in 2002, and has shown few signs of taking it more seriously now. It is a tragedy of unspeakable dimensions that the Israeli political elite has for decades preferred colonization to peace. What future are we all doomed to when greed and ambition outweigh coexistence? 

According to Halper, the intensity of Israel’s colonization of the occupied territories has de facto eliminated even the possibility of a “viable Palestinian state”—one with territorial contiguity and control over its water, economy, resources, and borders. If so, then Israel’s colonization project may backfire and create a chorus of voices demanding a ‘single state’ solution in the face of ever-worsening Apartheid. 

Perhaps Halper is right, perhaps not. Either way, if the international community does not want to let go of the two-state plan, it must act quickly and decisively to explain to Israel in no uncertain terms that its colonization of the West Bank must be fully reversed. It is at least theoretically and logistically possible—France withdrew far more than 500,000 colonizers from Algeria. 

So long as U.S. taxpayer dollars fund Israel’s continued colonization and occupation of the West Bank, the United States will continue to exacerbate the conflict rather than resolve it. How can we help? Perhaps it’s time for U.S. taxpayers to demand that the United States cease financial aid to Israel that pays for its occupation and colonization and instead channel funds into activities that would create a viable two-state solution. The United States could fund the resettlement of Israeli settlers back into the pre-1967 borders, and pay to rebuild Palestinian homes demolished by Israel (both in the West Bank and within Israel proper). 

As for Carter, his book may well play a significant role in shifting the U.S. discourse and international consciousness. However, Professor Bisharat’s comments show an important place where Carter’s book is silent. Someday, equal rights for all the peoples of the holy land must prevail, no matter whether they reside in a state known as Israel or Palestine. 

 

Matthew Taylor is a fifth-year peace and conflict studies major at UC Berkeley, co-editor of PeacePower magazine (www.calpeacepower.org), and Jewish. 


Commentary: U.S. Uses Walls to Divide and Conquer in Iraq

By Kenneth Thiesen
Tuesday May 01, 2007

As we all know, the Bush administration is asking for more time from the American people to “win” in Iraq. First there was the “surge” of at least 30,000 more troops as the solution to defeating insurgents in Iraq. Now along with the surge, the U.S. military has come up with another tactic that will help “win” the war. “Building security walls” is the latest strategy. But what is the United States really constructing in Iraq? 

Last week U.S. military officials announced the building of a “security” wall to allegedly separate the Sunni Iraqis in Adhamiya (an area of Baghdad) from the Shiites who are east of the area. In the statement by the military, the Adhamiya wall was “one of the centerpieces of a new strategy.” But almost immediately controversy erupted around the erection of the wall. Protests against the barrier began and leaflets were distributed that said the wall would “turn the city into a big prison.” 

On Sunday, April 22, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki announced he was ordering a halt to construction. In Maliki’s statement he said that the wall reminded people of “other walls,” no doubt a reference to Israel’s infamous apartheid wall in the West Bank. It may have also reminded people of earthern walls erected as a strategy used by Mussolini to defeat the Arab insurgency in Libya in the first half of the 20th century. After the Italians invaded the country, Mussolini’s fascist army built walls throughout Libya to restrict movement. He also erected massive concentration camps throughout the country for the Libyan people. Of course other notorious walls were those erected by the Nazis around Jewish ghettoes and the infamous Berlin Wall. 

As the Iraqi government made its announcement, U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell, quickly issued a statement that the United States does not have a new strategy of creating “gated communities.” He claimed that it is a tactic being used in only a few neighborhoods. Gated communities? How quaint? One can almost imagine a small gated community in a quiet peaceful neighborhood in the East Bay. But make no mistake, walls are part of the U.S. war of aggression in Iraq.  

This was not the first wall erected in order to restrict the movements of Iraqis. In fact, the U.S. military has repeatedly utilized such walls as a military tactic. Remember Haditha where U.S. forces massacred two dozen civilians in 2005? Beginning in December 2006 and continuing in January 2007, U.S. Marines dug a ditch and erected a 12-foot wall, topped by concertina wire and armed sentries, around the town in al-Anbar province. Dirt berms or walls stretching 20 kilometers are outside the city limits. There is only one road in and one road out of town. All travelers must past military checkpoints where they are searched. Anyone who wishes to leave town must get written permission from the Marines. A census was conducted and all residents of the town are now known to the military in order to keep track of their movements. 

All vehicle traffic in Haditha is banned. But believe or not, in a press release the military tried to put a positive spin on this by saying “more people are walking around in the streets” than ever before. As if they have any choice? I am surprised that they did not also claim it was an effort to fight global warming or to encourage exercise. 

Colonel W. Blake Crowe, the U.S. commander for western al-Anbar province does actually refer to these areas as “gated communities” contrary to the statement of General Caldwell. In a press release, he claimed, “We are establishing a gated community, where good people can come in to the city, and bad people can’t.” For the 80,000 residents of the Haditha district, I am sure they are under no illusion of residing in a gated community. The words “concentration camp” more accurately describe the situation. In addition to Haditha, other areas including Haglaniyah, Barwanah, Rutbah, and Anah have been “bermed” in the province. 

Lt. Colonel Jim Donnellan, the battalion commander in charge of the Haditha area, admits that it resembles a police state. He says, “That’s what it is, that’s what it needs to be.” The U.S. military refers to all this as part of a “clear, hold and build” operation called “al Majid.”  

But the al Majid operation in al-Anbar, like the Adhamiya wall, is only a means to control the Iraqi people and the country. After Nazi Germany was defeated, many Germans claimed they did not know that Hitler was exterminating people by the millions in the concentration camps. Hitler claimed he was acting in the interest of the German people as he committed war crimes and other crimes against humanity.  

So too, the Bush regime claims to act in our name. In Iraq tens of thousands have died as a direct result of the U.S. invasion. If left unchecked the Bush regime will turn the entire country of Iraq into one giant concentration camp. We cannot claim not to know. The question is what will you do about it?  

 

Oakland resident Kenneth J. Theisen is an organizer with World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime. For more information see worldcantwait.org.


Commentary: Cell Phone Towers Pose Health Risks for Dense Areas

By Joanne Kowalski
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Like others, I, too, was concerned about the health effects of cell phone towers and went to the Internet to do some research. From it, I learned that while the FDA maintains that the link between RF energy emitted by cell phone antennas and health problems like cancer is “inconclusive” or “has not been demonstrated,” they also say “there is no proof that they are absolutely safe.” Even on industry friendly sites, the “prevailing wisdom among researchers” in the field is that it is “too early to draw any strong conclusions.” The research has not been expansive enough, there have been too few properly controlled studies, exposure times have been too short (sometimes as little as one hour) and the technology is too new to really know about possible long term effects. There does, however, seem to be a definite effect at the cellular level (e.g. DNA changes) which may well pose a risk to developing organisms (e.g. children). 

I also discovered there is at least one agreed upon danger from RF antennas. Exposure to high levels of RF radiation can heat the body (like “microwave ovens cook food”) and cause “thermal effects” like eye damage (e.g. cataracts), skin burns and heat strokes. Because of this there are “safety guidelines” that prevent public access to “areas within 9 meters/25 feet” of the radiating surface as well as guidelines for workers who have to go within that area (e.g. roofers). The greatest danger occurs where multiple base stations are mounted on the same building, where towers are placed lower than nearby buildings and where structures require access by workers for maintenance and repairs. 

There are also guidelines to safeguard against “improperly designed” or “inadequately secured” mobile phone base station sites. The latter, I would think, would be particularly important in areas with high winds or active earthquake faults. There was little information on how these guidelines are monitored or enforced.  

My research has led me to conclude that, in this case at least, discretion would be a better part of valor. Given the potential health and safety risks, why put base stations near schools (e.g. 2721 Shattuck), on top of buildings where people live (e.g. 1040 University) or in densely populated areas (e.g. Downtown) when other locations are possible? We should also make sure safety standards are strictly enforced and show particular caution when mounting multiple base stations on the same building and/or placing towers on roofs lower than those nearby.  

From my reading, I also learned that the total number of towers could be substantially reduced if wireless companies shared antennas rather than each having their own. If we could municipalize shared towers, place them on public property (e.g. courthouses and city hall) and charge cell phone companies a users’ fee, we could not only ensure their safety but also raise municpal funds. 

On the other hand, I saw that a property owner can get $2,000 a month to host just one of these contraptions. If they truly are as benign as some folks claim, I suggest they be totally deregulated in order to create a kind of cottage industry that would give us little people a chance at a slice of the pie. I figure I could get two, maybe three on my roof. I’d even promise to dress them up like trees so property values won’t decline.  

 

 

Joanne Kowalski is a Berkeley resident.


Commentary: A Healthy Perspective on Downtown Development

By Sweena Aulakh
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Largely absent from the on-going debate surrounding high density development in downtown Berkeley is a discussion on its health effects. As estimated by the Association of Bay Area Governments there will be an expected 4,200 additional residents in Berkeley by 2015. In determining possible solutions to the increased housing demand, Berkeley's Planning Department and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) must take into account the growing body of evidence which supports dense development as a means to improve health and well-being. 

The overweight and obesity epidemic continues to skyrocket in California; so do the number of people with chronic conditions associated with overweight and obesity such as heart disease, type II diabetes, certain cancers (e.g. breast, colon), osteoarthritis, and respiratory conditions. An estimated 200,000 annual deaths in the United States can be attributed to physical inactivity. What health professionals are coming to realize is that merely advising people to go to the gym and get the Surgeon General's recommended 30-60 minutes of physical activity per day is just not working. Instead, we now know that we need to change our built environment so that activity becomes a natural part of our daily lives. It truly is simple. More time in a car means a higher probability of obesity; more walking or biking means a lower probability of obesity; and, thus, higher density with more walkable and bikable destinations means a lower probability of obesity. 

Imagine a downtown Berkeley vibrant with activity. Residents are walking to the farmer's market, dashing to the next BART train, cycling to work, or strolling as they window shop. The noticeable difference in this future Berkeley and the one of today is the absence of vehicular traffic. Sound, high density planning can attract businesses and employers without an increase in traffic. By creating housing in proximity to attractive destinations, high density planning creates walkable communities and invites residents to leave their cars behind. In fact, we know from recent surveys done by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission that people who live within half a mile of transit use transit extensively and are more likely to walk and bike than residents living greater than half a mile from transit. 

A walkable community is one where residents can live, work, learn, and play. Such a community allows residents to easily access goods and services within a safe walk, thereby increasing physical activity and reducing their dependence on cars. This type of development and planning will significantly benefit our aging population. Recent studies have found that when elders in high density neighborhoods are able to walk to clusters of destinations such as the post office or grocery store, overweight and social isolation are reduced. High density development in downtown Berkeley will provide such an opportunity for the rapid aging of Berkeley's population. According to the California Commission on Aging, the state's population age 65 or older is expected to double in 25 years and triple in 50 years. By 2050, the median forecast projects nearly 11 million seniors in the state. When planning for the increased number of residents, it would be wise for DAPAC to consider the demographics of our community in the coming years. 

Lastly, no discussion on planning and health can overlook the impact of these decisions on our city's young people. Transportation pollutants are one of the largest contributors to poor air quality. Children are more vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution, with asthma being the most prevalent chronic disease among children in California (American Lung Association). In fact, asthma rates among children under age four more than doubled in the last twenty years and is the number one cause of school absenteeism among school-aged children. Smog and soot have been identified as key factors that trigger asthma attacks with fewer vehicular emissions playing an obvious role. Effective downtown planning can benefit children by reducing air pollution but also offering families pedestrian-friendly destinations that will increase the entire family's access to opportunities for physical activity. 

It is thrilling to see the city faced with an incredible opportunity to benefit the health of its current and future residents. Health professionals cannot do it alone. The city will most certainly be writing a prescription for health by creating a walkable and livable downtown. Let us begin to include health into the downtown planning process. It is time we consider the long-term impacts of our decisions on our city's most vulnerable populations in designing a community where health and well-being are cherished. 

 

Sweena Aulakh is a nursing student at UC San Francisco. 


Commentary: Jewish Peace Activists Must Build Bridges

By Raymond Barglow
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Over the weekend of April 28-29, several hundred activists gathered in Oakland at a national conference sponsored by the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Entitled “Pursuing Justice for Israel/Palestine: Changing Minds, Challenging U.S. Policy,” the conference gave expression to a movement building in the United States that is more critical of Israeli policies than is the conservative “Israel right or wrong” lobby. 

JVP has been growing rapidly over the past year, and this conference exemplified the enthusiasm and commitment of its members. Prominent political analysts and activists gave presentations at the conference, including Phyllis Bennis, Sandy Tolan, Jeff Halper, and Mitchell Plitnick. Sandy Tolan is the author of one of the most compelling recent books on the Israel-Palestine conflict “The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East.” 

The conference balanced plenaries and workshops, giving everyone the opportunity to discuss a challenging but essential project: how to create “a broad-based coalition for a just U.S. Middle East policy,” as one of the workshop descriptions put it. The workshops also covered related topics, including the predicaments of Palestinians living in Israel or the occupied territories, feminist resistance to the occupation, and alternative Middle East peace strategies. 

The perennial “One state or two?” question, regarding the form of a future settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict, preoccupied many conference speakers and attendees. American activists critical of Israel are notoriously at loggerheads on this matter, most of them supporting a two-state solution: Israelis and Palestinians shall each have a country they can call their own, in keeping with the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom’s slogan, “Two peoples, two states.” Most Palestinians also support a two-state solution. Jewish Voice for Peace, however, takes a neutral position on the shape of a future settlement, formulating its position as “Israelis and Palestinians. Two peoples, one future.” 

JVP thereby distinguishes itself from another progressive Jewish activist group, the Tikkun Community, led by the Bay Area’s own Rabbi Michael Lerner. JVP and Tikkun have an on-again off-again affair, with differences recently surfacing over the demonstrations protesting Israeli policy that will take place in Washington D.C. in June 2007. JVP supports these demonstrations, Tikkun does not. Lerner says that Tikkun Community cannot join with sponsors of the DC action because of “the willingness of all these organizations to keep alive as an option the notion that the solution to Israel/Palestine peace lies in the dissolution of a Jewish state, using the language of ‘one state solution’ as the way to signal to many who never thought the Jewish people ever deserved a state at all.” 

It is important that people who find Israeli policies toward Palestinians cruel, immoral, and even self-destructive work together. But here in the Bay Area as elsewhere, including in Israel itself, deep divisions split this progressive movement. Hopefully we can bridge these differences and join together to advance the reconciliation and healing that are so desperately needed. 

 

Raymond Barglow is a Berkeley resident.


Columns

Under Currents: Dellums and the Media: The First 100 Days

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday May 04, 2007

One of the reasons it can be so important—and valuable—to have several media outlets covering the same issue or event is that individual observers tend to have their own take on things, and it is only by reading more than one account—several, if possible—that you can get a clear account of what’s really going on. Of course, that doesn’t happen when our good friends in the media go chasing after each other’s tails, yard-dog fashion, without trying to figure things out for themselves, but that’s another story. 

Anyway, Alex Gronke of Oakland’s online NovoMetro newspaper, seemed to feel that the most important news coming out of Mayor Ron Dellums’ town hall meeting at Frick Middle School in East Oakland last week was the mayor’s relationship with the media, naming his blog entry on the subject “The Mayor versus the Media.” 

“He used the occasion to briefly mock the news media for obsessing on artificial timetables like the ‘First 100 Days,’” Mr. Gronke wrote, adding the lament that “everyone has a place at [Mr. Dellums’] table—everyone except local reporters. They are the one group it’s still OK to ridicule. When Mr. Dellums speaks of reporters, it’s either as a risible bunch of nudniks, who just don’t get it, or as a malicious force working against the interest of good people. The pastor who swore Mr. Dellums into office asked God to protect the new mayor from reporters.” 

Some background. When reporters from the area’s two daily newspapers—the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune—tried to contact Mr. Dellums for stories they were doing on his first 100 days in office, he refused to talk with them. Last week, at Frick, he explained why. 

“A number of people in the media wanted me to talk about my accomplishments in 100 days, as if 100 days is somehow magical,” Mr. Dellums said. “Why not 98 days? Why not 105? It’s just an arbitrary timeline.” The mayor then went on to say, “I never was a media guy. I’ve always been about doing my job, never about ‘skinning and grinning’ in front of the camera.” 

But Mr. Dellums fails to give himself credit. He is, actually, the ultimate “media guy,” using the media as well as any Bay Area politician of our time, and better than most. We saw that on its best display last year in the long, masterful run-up to the announcement that he was going to be a candidate for mayor, holding the media and the public at bay for months, pretty much stopping most of the other campaigns, keeping us all in suspense until the dramatic Laney College rally which he ended by saying, “If Ron Dellums running for mayor gives you hope, then let’s get it on!” The end of that announcement was drowned out by thunderous shouting and applause, a standing, dancing, glad-handing ovation, one of the most electric political moments in modern Oakland history, and every media outlet in the area covered it. Was it political theater? Of course it was. And done by a master of the craft, one who studied with the big boys, in Washington. 

In many ways, Mr. Dellums is reminiscent of another California politician, Ronald Reagan, who also was critical of the press, but used it to his advantage. And last week’s Frick Town Hall meeting was a familiar page out of Mr. Reagan’s old playbook, in which the politician decides that rather than filtering his message through the media, he will “go over the media’s heads” and speak directly to the people. 

And so, at Frick, Mr. Dellums reported to his constituents a long list of actions taken by his administration in its first four months in office: preparing the new two-year budget (presented this week to City Council), filling up long-neglected appointments to boards and commissions including ensuring that some of those appointments are local youth, seeking money for the city from state, federal, and private sources to supplement local funds, announcing that close to a half a million dollars has already been promised by philanthropic sources, some of that to set up a “major” HIV screening and testing program in Oakland, meeting with State Senator Don Perata to try bring some of last year’s infrastructure bond measure projects—and its resultant jobs—to Oakland, setting up a Public Safety Director in the office of the mayor to coordinate disaster preparedness (that one mentioned in Mr. Gronke’s blog entry) so that Oakland in an earthquake doesn’t duplicate New Orleans and Katrina, securing agreement from the Alameda District Attorney to deputize two attorneys from the Oakland city attorney’s office to be able to bring criminal charges in “quality of life” issues such as problem liquor stores, abandoned cars and houses being turned into drug-dealing and drug-use centers, and graffiti, announcing that his office was close to meeting a goal of 1,000 jobs this summer for Oakland youth, including 200 within city government itself, working on the already-announced reorganization of the Oakland Police Department as a first step towards “community policing” and putting a dent in Oakland’s violent crime problem, saying he was trying to set up a personal meeting with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (and who doubts that he will be able to?) to both address the issue of gang violence and to ask that the governor put money into Oakland to make this a “model city” for economic advancement, announcing an economic summit being held this week in Oakland on Oakland’s economic development. 

“This is not about a hundred days,” Mr. Dellums said. “Everyone in this room knows we are not going to solve these things overnight.” 

Whatever one may think of Mr. Dellums or his programs, or whether they think these are attainable goals or simply “pie-in-the-sky” old-school rhetoric, this was not the speech of someone who has spent his first four months in office sleeping his time away, or with his mind on other things. The mayor spoke without notes, ticking off initiatives and accomplishments one behind the other, rarely calling on staff for details or help. 

Later Mr. Dellums listened patiently to a long string of citizens coming up to the microphone to voice concerns or complaints, looking each one in the eye as they did, offering personal replies or assurances when he could. For those used to Council meetings in which some Councilmembers often seem to be drifting during the public comment sessions, it was a welcome change. 

Equally impressive was the fact that much of City Hall’s top brass was also brought along to East Oakland for the meeting. There was no head table, and so department heads from the Police Department to CEDA sat amongst the crowd of East Oakland citizens or stood along the side walls when chair space ran out. And so for residents of the East Oakland neighborhood where Frick is located—who are used to seeing their Councilmember, Desley Brooks, but few other city workers or officials other than the police patrols—the gathering alone was the beginning of the fulfillment of Mr. Dellums’ campaign promise that he was going to run an inclusive administration, leaving no community out. For neighborhoods virtually ignored by former Mayor Jerry Brown while he spent most of his efforts on building a new neighborhood in the downtown area to attract non-Oakland residents, the importance of having a mayor who returns after the votes are counted and the campaign is over, not to ask for anything but simply to report on what he has been doing, cannot be overstated. Politics, theater, whatever, Mr. Dellums’ Frick meeting will long be remembered along Foothill and Bancroft and up and down Seminary and Havenscourt, and the streets in between. And that will buy the mayor a lot of good will—and time—in neighborhoods where the local media is not so favorably looked on. 

And that, actually, is a good deal of the point of what the mayor is doing with the media. 

Like Mr. Reagan before him, Mr. Dellums voices a low opinion of the media, in part, because it is a sentiment shared by many of his constituents, particularly in communities like Deep East Oakland, out past the High Street divide. Just as many citizens in these communities feel like that city has ignored them in the past, so, too, they believe that the media has ignored them as well, except to play up the bad things. 

And so, rather than the quick and easy conclusion that Mr.-Dellums-must-not-be-doing-nothing-because-we-ain’t-seen-nothing-that-he’s-been-doing, the media should pay closer attention to what is actually going on, both in the Dellums administration, and out in Oakland’s neighborhoods. 

Does this constitute an endorsement, on my part, of all of the things Mr. Dellums has been doing, or a call for my friends in the media to lay down and simply let the mayor have his way? If that’s what you think, friends, you’ve missed the point. For Oakland residents, what Mr. Dellums has provided is still mostly promises, and the proof in the pudding, as they say, is always in the eating. So we will see what comes of all of this. But, at least, in the first four months of his administration, Mr. Dellums has already demonstrated that he has significantly raised the level of standards of the mayors’ office over what it was after eight years of Jerry Brown. If we in the media want to keep up and do more than just sit by the side of the road tossing little pebbles at the windows of the passing parade, we need to step up our own game, as well. 

All of us.


John H. Spring: Splendor, Strife and Shenanigans

By Daniella Thompson
Friday May 04, 2007

John Hopkins Spring, the developer of Thousand Oaks, always knew how to attract attention. On December 23, 1915, World War One was raging in Europe, and the newspapers were reporting that British losses at the Battle of Gallipoli had climbed to 112,921. But the war did not make top headline in the Oakland Tribune that day. 

That place was reserved for Spring, who had just announced that he was leaving his wife, Celina, for a younger woman and abandoning his famed Arlington Avenue mansion for the Alcatraz Apartments, a residential-commercial building he owned at 3315 Adeline St. 

Born in San Francisco, Spring (1862–1933) began his career as a street contractor. Shortly before the incorporation of the Key Route transbay ferry system, he allied himself with Frank C. Havens, president of the Peoples’ Water Company, and with Francis Marion “Borax” Smith, acting as land agent in large purchases of suburban property at the time they were launching the Realty Syndicate. 

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire triggered a rapid increase in the price of Berkeley real estate. Spring, who had acquired vast tracts, became very wealthy very quickly, with a reputed net worth of $3 million. His holdings comprised most of the land in Alameda County north of the Berkeley line, extending from the hills to the bay. He founded the Spring Construction Company, owned a quarry, and was a director of the Western National Bank of San Francisco and of the Berkeley National Bank. 

Throughout his life, Spring evinced keen interest in architecture and landscaping. His Oakland home, a stately Italianate Victorian at 2711 Fruitvale Ave., was situated on 13 acres that boasted groves of ancient oak trees, cultivated arbors, meandering walks, lawns and flower beds, a Japanese tea garden comparable to the one in Golden Gate Park, a large swimming pool, four fountains, several tennis courts, a shooting gallery, windmills, and a rivulet spanned by rustic bridges. 

In 1910, after Spring had subdivided Thousand Oaks and was committed to building his home there, the residents of Fruitvale and surrounding neighborhoods petitioned the Oakland city council to include $90,000 in a proposed bond issue in order to purchase the Spring property and turn it into a public park. Like many splendid ideas, this one went nowhere. The property ended up being subdivided into small lots, long since built up. No vestige remains of what was once described as an “earthly Eden.” 

If Spring was troubled by the fate of his old home, he didn’t make it known. Ever active, he was now planning his new Eden on 16 acres in Thousand Oaks. The terraced gardens were laid out by Mark Daniels even before construction began on the enormous concrete villa designed by John Hudson Thomas. 

And Spring didn’t stop with his own estate. As each of his daughters was married, he built the new couple a house in the vicinity. Of daughters the Springs had no shortage. Celina brought two from her first marriage and had four more by Spring. The eldest, Catherine Warfield, married laundry company executive Lester K. Wells but soon divorced him to forge a union with Charles Percy Murdock, who worked for the Realty Syndicate. The two settled next to the Mark Daniels home on Yosemite Road, building a handsome half-timbered house designed by John Hudson Thomas. 

Between the Murdocks and Indian Trail lived the second daughter, Frances Warfield, with her husband, Robert C. Newell. Their residence, an English-style manor house with parapet gables, was designed by William Knowles (who had designed the Alcatraz Apartments for Spring in 1906). Newell sold Thousand Oaks real estate for his father-in-law—first with partner William H. Henricks, then with William C. Murdoch (no relation to Catherine’s husband). 

A third daughter, Gertrude Spring, was an early groupie. At the age of 15 she eloped with George Friend, a comic actor of the Liberty stock company, known as the “Willie Collier of Oakland.” The match met with the severe disapprobation of Gertrude’s father, but eventually Spring forgave the couple, gave them a house at 597 Santa Clara Avenue, and made George a partner. George picked up where Newell had left off as agent for Spring’s properties. 

In March 1914, a newspaper ad selling Thousand Oaks properties began with an interview in which John Spring was asked, “How much property is controlled by your companies?” Spring replied, “It will perhaps give you a better idea of the magnitude of this enterprise when I tell you that we have macadamized 50 miles of streets in properties. In other words, the streets if stretched out in a straight line would reach from Berkeley to San Jose. The sidewalks, which are on both sides of the streets, would reach to Monterey.” 

Gertrude wasn’t the only Spring child to elope. She was followed by the Springs’ only son, Frank, who ran away, if only briefly, with Avis Sterling, niece of Frank C. Havens and sister of the poet George Sterling. Spring built them a house at 749 The Alameda, and Frank joined George Friend’s firm. 

The fifth sibling to marry and settle in Thousand Oaks was Anne Spring. Her bridegroom did not sell real estate; he made it. Noble Newsom was the scion of an architectural dynasty, son of Samuel Newsom, designer of Eureka’s famed Carson Mansion. Anne and Noble were given a lot on Yosemite Road (then Lovers’ Lane), across the street from the Sills’ Villa della Rocca. Noble and his brother Sidney designed the “Honeymoon Cottage,” as the house is known to this day. 

The Newsoms married just a month before John Spring left his wife for Genevieve McGraw Ecker. At the time, Celina Spring was traveling abroad. In her absence, Spring deeded the mansion and close to 1,200 lots in north Berkeley and El Cerrito to his Regents Park Land Company, using the power of attorney he held for her. She returned from Honolulu on Dec. 27, 1915, and the following day filed a lawsuit to annul the transaction. 

In Honolulu, Celina left her daughter Dorothy, who was indicted on December 24 for manslaughter after striking a woman while driving a car and failing to come to her aid. Two and a half years later, John Spring would settle a suit brought against him by the victim’s husband. 

Spring married Genevieve Ecker in 1917, one hour after his divorce was finalized. At the end of the same year, the Spring Mansion was sold to Cora Williams, who turned it into a progressive school. In 1918, Celina married her first husband’s brother, publisher of the Baltimore Daily Record. The World War slowed down the pace of real estate sales, and in 1919 the Berkeley-Thousand Oaks Company, having acquired the tract at a low price, held an auction sale to dispose of the remaining lots. 

Spring and Genevieve had by then moved to a mansion at 2340 Gough Street, San Francisco, where their son Jack was born in 1918. Spring would soon build a new mansion in Los Gatos. In 1922, Genevieve opened a fashion shop at 2340 Gough in partnership with Clara Sckolnik, a Russian designer. Owing to Genevieve’s shenanigans, the business lasted less than a year. Madame Sckolnik sued Genevieve for failing to divide the profits with her and opened an independent shop at another location. 

The Great Depression was not kind to Spring. Relatives reported in 1932 that he was now “broken in both health and fortune” and “trying to recoup financially through road building down the peninsula.” In June of that year, Spring obtained an interlocutory decree of divorce from Genevieve, claiming that for many years “she had treated him as a daughter would a father,” refusing to “give him wifely affection.” At the time, Spring was nearing 70, while his wife was 46. 

The Springs were later reconciled, and he died in 1933, leaving Genevieve his entire estate. Perhaps he was not quite as financially broken as suggested, for his death ignited a legal battle between his former wives over the estate. The matter was adjudicated, but a new drama ensued in 1937. Spring’s sister, Charlotte Montgomery of San Francisco, petitioned the courts to remove Jack from his mother’s custody, charging that Mrs. Spring was unfit to care for him, having “long received treatment as a narcotic addict.” This led Genevieve to slash her wrists with a knife. She died in San Francisco in 1950. 

 

Houses and gardens in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood will be open on BAHA’s Spring House Tour this Sunday, May 6, between 1 pm and 5 pm. 

 

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

 

[Photos] 

 

Photo: Murdock house.jpg 

Caption: This house, designed by John Hudson Thomasw ,as John Spring’s wedding present to his step-daughter for Catherine and her husband Percy Murdock. (Daniella Thompson) 

 

Photo: Indian Trail.jpg 

Caption: The bucolic Indian Trail leads from Yosemite Road to The Alameda.. (Daniella Thompson) 

 

Photo: Newsom house.jpg 

Caption: The embowered “Honeymoon Cottage” was the first home of Anne Spring and Noble Newsom. (Daniella Thompson) 

 

Photo: Tunnel Rock.jpg 

Caption: Tunnel Rock on Yosemite Road forms the backdrop to the Newsom cottage. (Daniella Thompson) 

 


Garden Variety: How Big Is the Impact of That Little Brown Moth?

By Ron Sullivan
Friday May 04, 2007

Word is that the “recommendations” and “suggestions” from the agriculture officials about the recently discovered infestation of the light brown apple moth (Epiphyas postvittana, hereinafter LBAM) has grown into a state-declared quarantine.  

This pest is so inconspicuous that it took a retired entomology professor to notice what had blundered into his blacklight trap. Now that the hunt is on, specimens have turned up as far south as Monterey County. As of last week, about two thirds of captures have been in a small area there; the rest were mostly in Marin, San Francisco, western Contra Costa and Alameda counties, with scattered finds as far east as Danville.  

Aside from flying moths that turned up in some of their 11,000-plus pheromone traps, inspectors had found caterpillars and pupae in one San Francisco retail nursery and two production nurseries in Santa Cruz County. They treated that stock with chlorpyrifos.  

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) said a pending federal order will require inspection and certification of all nursery stock and host commodities – produce, flowers, other plant material—from the quarantine area, which is pretty much what the state DFA has declared already. As of May 1, the federal APHIS Web site had nothing new posted on the matter; not surprising, as the boundaries are in flux. 

What does this mean for East Bay gardeners? The quarantine would “prohibit the movement of all nursery stock and all host fruits and vegetables and plant parts within or from the quarantine region unless it is certified as ‘free-from’ the pest by an agricultural official; is purchased at a retail outlet; or was produced outside the area and is passing through in accordance with accepted safeguards.” The CDFA also says the quarantine “applies to residential and community properties as well as commercial enterprises.” A complete list of host species is available at CDFA’s Web site. 

Steve Lyle of CDFA said, of people holding plant sales: “It’s not a blanket prohibition on the movement or sale of plants. If you’re holding a sale, call your county ag office to get an inspector there beforehand.” 

Retailers, he said, “are used to this stuff; they have inspection protocols already. It will add one step, some time and expense to their operations. Plant inspectors are always busy anyway just before Mother’s Day.” 

Regulators are asking that, for example, produce from school gardens be eaten on the premises—but, as Lyle notes, “a lot of them do that anyway: use it in classrooms or in the school lunch program.”  

Basically, though, the problem is with moving uninspected plant bits from within the (unfortunately ever-changing) quarantine zone to any area outside it. Don’t take that home-grown bouquet to the Mother’s Day gathering in Fresno, please, and do some homework before throwing a benefit plant sale: look up the list of host plants and the quarantine maps on the CDFA site—the public library branches have computers, if you don’t—and call the county folks in to look over your stock. They’ll be busy, so call early.  

 

CDFA’s LBAM Web site, with complete current information: www.cdfa.ca.gov /phpps/pdep/lbam_main.htm 


Ask Matt: On Water Heaters, Bay Windows

By MATT CANTOR
Friday May 04, 2007

Dear Mr. Cantor: I want to thank you for the very informative and interesting article in the Daily Planet about strapping water heaters. Moreover, I want to say that I am a devoted reader and always find your pieces interesting and informative. 

I have a question about fire concerns caused by the break in the gas line to the water heaters. I’m only a homeowner and have no expertise, but I wonder if, when a gas line breaks, it doesn’t automatically interrupt the gas flow to the pilot, thus extinguishing the flame or spark that might ignite the gas flowing from the broken line. Or does the gas rush out so fast that the pilot still ignites it?  

In short, what besides a fire coming from a neighbor, is the mostly likely source of the spark or combustion that ignites the free-flowing gas? Would a broken power line produce sparks? 

Thanks for whatever light you can cast on this for me. 

—Alvin Ludwig 

 

Dear Alvin,  

Great question. 

There are so many sources of ignition possible that it’s almost a fait accompli that when a large volume of gas is released during an earthquake that it will find a means of ignition. 

During an earthquake electrical components are being thrust about and these can spark, metal on metal or metal on concrete can generate sparks and yes, there may still be enough gas at one or more pilots to ignite gas. Keep in mind that most houses have pilots at water heaters, furnaces, stoves and some other kinds of devices. 

If the water heater line breaks before the furnace line. The furnace pilot can ignite the gas lots of ways and most important, this is what actually happens. Broken gas lines in earthquakes result in many fires and many explosions. Just go online and look at pictures of Northridge. 

—Matt 

 

••• 

 

Hello, Mr. Cantor: We would like to install a second-story bay window in the back bedroom on our El Cerrito house. The house is a standard mid-’40s split-level, with bedrooms above garage/utility area. 

When we bought the house nine years ago there was already a bay window installed in the front bedroom. It was a bank foreclosure sale, so we don’t know about the permitting or history of that installation. 

Due to insufficient previous research and a bad decision, we have had an unpleasant window company experience and so the un-installed bay window has been sitting in our garage for a few years. 

My questions: Is it necessary to obtain permits for such installations? 

Does the installer/contractor obtain the permit, or the homeowner? 

Is an added bay window likely to increase earthquake damage to the rest of the structure? 

How would one find an installer who could do this work? 

(Most people say to talk to others about their experiences, but we’ve never found anyone in an equivalent position.) 

Thank you very much for any suggestions you might have. 

—Annie Organ 

 

Dear Ms. Organ, 

I think the first thing to do is to find a general contractor that you feel good about and to have them help you through the rest of the process. That’s what G.C.’s are good at. They can help answer all of those questions as well as take a look at your bay window. 

My tendency in a case such as this is to recommend a G.C. over a window specialist. Most window folk are used to installing a window in an existing opening but not getting involved in a wider range of issues such as seismic strength or vulnerability. 

As a rule, the cites draw their permit line financially and I have no idea what the cost of your job may be but it sounds as though it would have been expensive enough originally to require a permit. I am less concerned about the permit process than I am about the savvy of the contractor. 

City inspectors can be very useful in protecting the client from being poorly served but this type of job will not be heavily inspected so the key is to make sure that the installer will know their stuff. Flashings (the parts that keep water out of the building at the edges of the window) are the most critical part of this job. 

I do not believe that there is a major seismic implication in installing this window unless you are removing a large portion of the wall or unless there is a lot of other window on this wall at the same floor level.  

That said, the contractor should have a look in advance of proceeding. If this is at basement level (doesn’t sound like it) it can become a seismic issue by supplanting vital shear-bearing walls with a weak opening. 

Lastly, in choosing a contractor, don’t let price be your primary factor. Be sure that you feel confident in giving this person the key to your house, your money and your trust. 

A personal referral from a happy past customer is one of the best ways to select a contractor. Choose someone smart, not someone burley (although some are both smart and burley). 

Best of luck, 

—Matt 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

••• 

 

Hi Matt:  

Enjoyed your excellent article on foundation capping. One thing that I sometimes mention to my clients is that the faulty grade problem may sometimes be solved by simply digging away the dirt and debris that has accumulated against the foundation. This of course is the most economical solution when a complete foundation replacement isn’t needed for structural reasons! Do you think this is an okay observation to make?  

—Betsy Thagard  

Real Estate Broker  

 

Absolutely Betsy,  

As I often say to folks who write me with valid point regarding the subject of the article, if I weren’t limited to about 1000 words, I’d probably have said just what you mentioned. 

Caps are often “technically” required by the Structural Pest Control Act but, in fact, silly and largely unnecessary. Soil has often built up on the outside (and sometimes on the inside due to later work such as basement development) and simply needs to be cut away. 

The trick is to first dig a pit next the foundation to see the total depth in one spot prior to digging out along a long stretch. As long as you’re not undermining the foundation and there are at least a few inches left, it’s fine to cut back the soil and create a two-four-inch gap. It’s also a good idea to make sure that client know not to mulch or plant right along this boundary and to keep it clear. 

Six-inches is code but not really required. Some very short footings (10 inches or so) are not good candidates for this technique but replacement of a good solid unrotated footing of solid concrete is usually unnecessary and capping does very little for any of us. All that said, a new inverted T is a nice improvement that adds value in several ways. 

You Harvard grads are so smart! 

—Matt 

••• 


The Care Crisis

By Ruth Rosen, Special to the Planet
Tuesday May 01, 2007

A baby is born. A child develops a high fever. A spouse breaks a leg. A parent suffers a stroke. These are the events that throw a working woman’s delicate balance between work and family into chaos.  

Although we read endless stories and reports about the problems faced by working women, we possess inadequate language for what most people view as a private rather than a political problem. “That’s life,” we tell each other, instead of trying to forge common solutions to these dilemmas.  

That’s exactly what housewives used to say when they felt unhappy and unfulfilled in the 1950s: “That’s life.” Although magazines often referred to housewives’ unexplained depressions, it took Betty Friedan’s 1963 bestseller to turn “the problem that has no name” into a household phrase, “the feminine mystique”—the belief that a woman should find identity and fulfillment exclusively through her family and home.  

The great accomplishment of the modern women’s movement was to name such private experiences—domestic violence, sexual harassment, economic discrimination, date rape—and turn them into public problems that could be debated, changed by new laws and policies or altered by social customs. That is how the personal became political.  

Although we have shelves full of books that address work/family problems, we still have not named the burdens that affect most of America’s working families.  

Call it the care crisis.  

For four decades, American women have entered the paid workforce—on men’s terms, not their own—yet we have done precious little as a society to restructure the workplace or family life. The consequence of this “stalled revolution,” a term coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, is a profound “care deficit.” A broken healthcare system, which has left 47 million Americans without health coverage, means this care crisis is often a matter of life and death. Today the care crisis has replaced the feminine mystique as women’s “problem that has no name.” It is the elephant in the room—at home, at work and in national politics—gigantic but ignored.  

Three decades after Congress passed comprehensive childcare legislation in 1971—Nixon vetoed it—childcare has simply dropped off the national agenda. And in the intervening years, the political atmosphere has only grown more hostile to the idea of using federal funds to subsidize the lives of working families.  

The result? People suffer their private crises alone, without realizing that the care crisis is a problem of national significance. Many young women agonize about how to combine work and family but view the question of how to raise children as a personal dilemma, to which they need to find an individual solution. Most cannot imagine turning it into a political debate. More than a few young women have told me that the lack of affordable childcare has made them reconsider plans to become parents. Annie Tummino, a young feminist active in New York, put it this way: “I feel terrified of the patchwork situation women are forced to rely upon. Many young women are deciding not to have children or waiting until they are well established in their careers.”  

Now that the Democrats are running both houses of Congress, we finally have an opportunity to expose the right’s cynical appropriation of “family values” by creating real solutions to the care crisis and making them central to the Democratic agenda. The obstacles, of course, are formidable, given that government and businesses—as well as many men—have found it profitable and convenient for women to shoulder the burden of housework and caregiving.  

It is as though Americans are trapped in a time warp, still convinced that women should and will care for children, the elderly, homes and communities. But of course they can’t, now that most women have entered the workforce. In 1950 less than a fifth of mothers with children under age 6 worked in the labor force. By 2000 two-thirds of these mothers worked in the paid labor market.  

Men in dual-income couples have increased their participation in household chores and childcare. But women still manage and organize much of family life, returning home after work to a “second shift” of housework and childcare—often compounded by a “third shift,” caring for aging parents.  

Conservatives typically blame the care crisis on the women’s movement for creating the impossible ideal of “having it all.” But it was women’s magazines and popular writers, not feminists, who created the myth of the Superwoman. Feminists of the 1960s and ‘70s knew they couldn’t do it alone. In fact, they insisted that men share the housework and child-rearing and that government and business subsidize childcare.  

A few decades later, America’s working women feel burdened and exhausted, desperate for sleep and leisure, but they have made few collective protests for government-funded childcare or family-friendly workplace policies. As American corporations compete for profits through layoffs and outsourcing, most workers hesitate to make waves for fear of losing their jobs.  

Single mothers naturally suffer the most from the care crisis. But even families with two working parents face what Hochschild has called a “time bind.” Americans’ yearly work hours increased by more than three weeks between 1989 and 1996, leaving no time for a balanced life. Parents become overwhelmed and cranky, gulping antacids and sleeping pills, while children feel neglected and volunteerism in community life declines.  

Meanwhile, the right wins the rhetorical battle by stressing “values” and “faith.” In the name of the family they campaign to ban gay marriage and save unborn children. Yet they refuse to embrace public policies that could actually help working families regain stability and balance.  

For the very wealthy, the care crisis is not so dire. They solve their care deficit by hiring full-time nannies or home-care attendants, often from developing countries, to care for their children or parents. The irony is that even as these immigrant women make it easier for well-off Americans to ease their own care burdens, their long hours of paid caregiving often force them to leave their own children with relatives in other countries. They also suffer from extremely low wages, job insecurity and employer exploitation.  

Middle- and working-class families, with fewer resources, try to patch together care for their children and aging parents with relatives and baby sitters. The very poor sometimes gain access to federal or state programs for childcare or eldercare; but women who work in the low-wage service sector, without adequate sick leave, generally lose their jobs when children or parents require urgent attention. As of 2005, 21 million women lived below the poverty line—many of them mothers working in these vulnerable situations.  

The care crisis starkly exposes how much of the feminist agenda of gender equality remains woefully unfinished. True, some businesses have taken steps to ease the care burden. Every year, Working Mother publishes a list of the 100 most “family friendly” companies. In 2000 the magazine reported that companies that had made “significant improvements in ‘quality of life’ benefits such as telecommuting, onsite childcare, career training, and flextime” were “saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in recruitment in the long run.”  

Some universities, law firms and hospitals have also made career adjustments for working mothers, but women’s career demands still tend to collide with their most intensive child-rearing years. Many women end up feeling they have failed rather than struggled against a setup designed for a male worker with few family responsibilities.  

The fact is, market fundamentalism—the irrational belief that markets solve all problems—has succeeded in dismantling federal regulations and services but has failed to answer the question, Who will care for America’s children and elderly?  

As a result, this country’s family policies lag far behind those of the rest of the world. A just released study by researchers at Harvard and McGill found that of 173 countries studied, 168 guarantee paid maternal leave—with the United States joining Lesotho and Swaziland among the laggards. At least 145 countries mandate paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses—but not the United States. One hundred thirty-four countries legislate a maximum length for the workweek; not us.  

The media constantly reinforce the conventional wisdom that the care crisis is an individual problem. Books, magazines and newspapers offer American women an endless stream of advice about how to maintain their “balancing act,” how to be better organized and more efficient or how to meditate, exercise and pamper themselves to relieve their mounting stress. Missing is the very pragmatic proposal that American society needs new policies that will restructure the workplace and reorganize family life.  

Another slew of stories insist that there simply is no problem: Women have gained equality and passed into a postfeminist era. Such claims are hardly new. Ever since 1970 the mainstream media have been pronouncing the death of feminism and reporting that working women have returned home to care for their children. Now such stories describe, based on scraps of anecdotal data, how elite (predominantly white) women are “choosing” to “opt out,” ditching their career opportunities in favor of home and children or to care for aging parents. In 2000 Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York, wearily responded to reporters, “I still meet people all the time who believe that the trend has turned, that more women are staying home with their kids, that there are going to be fewer dual-income families. But it’s just not true.”  

Such contentious stories conveniently mask the reality that most women have to work, regardless of their preference. They also obscure the fact that an absence of quality, affordable childcare and flexible working hours, among other family-friendly policies, greatly contributes to women’s so-called “choice” to stay at home.  

In the past few years, a series of sensational stories have pitted stay-at-home mothers against “working women” in what the media coyly call the “mommy wars.” When the New York Times ran a story on the controversy, one woman wrote the editor, “The word ‘choice’ has been used ... as a euphemism for unpaid labor, with no job security, no health or vacation benefits and no retirement plans. No wonder men are not clamoring for this ‘choice.’ Many jobs in the workplace also involve drudgery, but do not leave one financially dependent on another person.”  

Most institutions, in fact, have not implemented policies that support family life. As a result, many women do feel compelled to choose between work and family. In Scandinavian countries, where laws provide for generous parental leave and subsidized childcare, women participate in the labor force at far greater rates than here—evidence that “opting out” is, more often than not, the result of a poverty of acceptable options. 

American women who do leave their jobs find that they cannot easily re-enter the labor force. The European Union has established that parents who take a leave from work have a right to return to an equivalent job. Not so in the United States. According to a 2005 study by the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change and the Forte Foundation, those who held advanced degrees in law, medicine or education often faced a frosty reception and found themselves shut out of their careers. In her 2005 book Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich describes how difficult it was for her to find employment as a midlevel manager, despite waving an excellent resume at potential employers. “The prohibition on [resume] gaps is pretty great,” she says. “You have to be getting an education or making money for somebody all along, every minute.”  

Some legislation passed by Congress has exacerbated the care crisis rather than ameliorated it. Consider the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which eliminated guaranteed welfare, replaced it with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and set a five-year lifetime limit on benefits. Administered by the states, TANF aimed to reduce the number of mothers on welfare rolls, not to reduce poverty.  

TANF was supposed to provide self-sufficiency for poor women. But most states forced recipients into unskilled, low-wage jobs, where they joined the working poor. By 2002 one in ten former welfare recipients in seven Midwestern states had become homeless, even though they were now employed.  

TANF also disqualified higher education as a work-related activity, which robbed many poor women of an opportunity for upward mobility. Even as the media celebrate highly educated career women who leave their jobs to become stay-at-home moms, TANF requires single mothers to leave their children somewhere, anywhere, so they can fulfill their workfare requirement and receive benefits. TANF issues vouchers that force women to leave their children with dubious childcare providers or baby sitters they have good reasons not to trust.  

Some readers may recall the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality, when up to 50,000 women exuberantly marched down New York’s Fifth Avenue to issue three core demands for improving their lives: the right to an abortion, equal pay for equal work and universal childcare. The event received so much media attention that it turned the women’s movement into a household word.  

A generation later, women activists know how far we are from achieving those goals. Abortion is under serious legal attack, and one-third of American women no longer have access to a provider in the county in which they live. Women still make only 77 percent of what men do for the same job; and after they have a child, they suffer from an additional “mother’s wage gap,” which shows up in fewer promotions, smaller pensions and lower Social Security benefits. Universal childcare isn’t even on the agenda of the Democrats.  

Goals proposed in 1970, however unrealized, are no longer sufficient for the new century. Even during these bleak Bush years, many writers, activists and organizations have begun planning for a different future. If women really mattered, they ask, how would we change public policy and society? As one writer puts it, “What would the brave new world look like if women could press reboot and rewrite all the rules?”  

Though no widely accepted manifesto exists, many advocacy organizations—such as the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the Children’s Defense Fund, the National Partnership for Women and Families, Take Care Net and MomsRising—have argued that universal healthcare, paid parental leave, high-quality subsidized on-the-job and community childcare, a living wage, job training and education, flexible work hours and greater opportunities for part-time work, investment in affordable housing and mass transit, and the reinstatement of a progressive tax structure would go a long way toward supporting working mothers and their families. 

Democrats don’t need to reinvent the wheel; these groups have already provided the basis for a new progressive domestic agenda. And if Democrats embrace large portions of this program, they might attract enough women to widen the gender gap in voting, which shrank from 14 percent in 1996 to only 7 percent in 2004.  

This is an expensive agenda, but the money is there if we end tax cuts for the wealthy and reduce expenditures for unnecessary wars, space-based weapons and the hundreds of American bases that circle the globe. If we also reinstate a progressive tax structure, this wealthy nation would have enough resources to care for all its citizens. It’s a question of political will.  

Confronting the care crisis and reinvigorating the struggle for gender equality should be central to the broad progressive effort to restore belief in the “common good.” Although Americans famously root for the underdog, they have shown far less compassion for the poor, the vulnerable and the homeless in recent years. Social conservatives, moreover, have persuaded many Americans that they—and not liberals—are the ones who embody morality, that an activist government is the problem rather than the solution and that good people don’t ask for help.  

The problem is that many Democrats, along with prominent liberal men in the media, don’t view women’s lives as part of the common good. Consciously or unconsciously, they have dismissed women as an “interest group” and treated women’s struggle for equality as “identity politics” rather than part of a common national project. Last April Michael Tomasky, then editor of The American Prospect, penned an essay on the “common good” that is typical of such manifestoes. It never once addressed any aspect of the care crisis. Such writers don’t seem to grasp that a campaign to end the care crisis could mobilize massive support for this idea of the common good, because it affects almost all working families.  

Now that Democrats are emerging from the wilderness, there are scattered indications they are willing to use their power to address the mounting care crisis. The Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, one of the largest caucuses, has access to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has supported previous efforts to address the care crisis. The Senate has just created a new Caucus on Children, Work and Family, a sign, says Valerie Young, a lobbyist with the National Association of Mothers’ Centers, that “this is no longer a personal problem--it’s a national problem.” Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd says he will introduce legislation that would provide paid leave for workers who need to care for sick family members, newborns or newly adopted children. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas has just introduced the Small Business Child Care Act, which would help employers provide childcare for their workers. Members in both houses of Congress are reopening the discussion of universal healthcare reform.  

The truth is, we’re living with the legacy of an unfinished gender revolution. Real equality for women, who increasingly work outside the home, requires that liberals place the care crisis at the core of their agenda and take back “family values” from the right. So far, no presidential candidate has made the care crisis a significant part of his or her political agenda. So it’s up to us, the millions of Americans who experience the care crisis every day, to take every opportunity—through electoral campaigns and grassroots activism—to turn “the problem that has no name” into a household word.  

 

Ruth Rosen is professor emerita of history at UC Davis and visiting professor of history at UC Berkeley. 


The Public Eye: Virginia Tech Killings Have Us Down on the Killin’ Floor

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday May 01, 2007

In one his most famous songs, bluesman Howlin’ Wolf sang “I should’a quit you, long time ago... / And I wouldn’t’ve been here, / Down on the killin’ floor.” 

The mass killings at Virginia Tech demonstrated that all Americans are “down on the killin’ floor.” 

It’s easy to dismiss the killings of 33 members of the Virginia Tech community as an aberration, the work of a terribly deranged individual. And it’s equally easy to focus on a few specific actions that might make things better: tougher gun control laws and better psychological support for troubled individuals, among others. It’s much harder to look at the deep sickness that grips America, our collective addiction to violence, and call for radical systemic change. But that’s what’s needed: recognition that we are a country of addicts; three hundred million lost souls desperately searching for our daily fix of blood and gore; a nation where the majority of citizens remain in denial that if we don’t change our reckless behavior then we’ll end up on the killin’ floor. 

In the United States there are 81 gun-related deaths each day. Columnist Mark Shields reports: “[Since 1980] Of the 26 developed nations in the world, 83 percent of all the people who died by firearms die[d] in this country.” We are the largest manufacturer and exporter of weapons in the world. The United States has the largest number of guns in private hands of any country. 

The ingredient that makes this lethal is not gun-ownership, per se, it is our addiction to violence, which is everywhere in our culture: TV, films, rap songs, video games, Internet sites, popular novels, even children’s toys. 

Given the American penchant for violence, it’s not surprising that the Virginia Tech killings dominated the media for a few days; or that they were driven off the front pages by fresh killings at the NASA Center in Houston. What is surprising is that Americans show so little understanding of the root cause of this problem. In the aftermath of tragedy, we restrict our focus to cosmetic fixes—new restrictions limiting the ability of the mentally ill to purchase automatic weapons—rather than address the systemic problem that produced the massacre. 

Why don’t we do something about violence? The simple answer is that we’ve become a nation of self-absorbed individuals: narcissists who focus primarily on ourselves and, perhaps, the members of our immediate families and, therefore, have little interest in what happens in our communities, much yet the nation. I write this advisedly, acknowledging that there are millions of compassionate people in America—such as those who run shelters for the homeless—who care deeply about their fellow citizens, who believe that they are responsible for the well-being of their brothers and sisters. Nonetheless, twenty-seven years of conservative ascendancy in American politics has exacted a terrible toil on the American psyche. One consequence has been the elevation of the personal good over the common good: “What’s in it for me?” “What have you done for me lately?” “Why should I pay taxes for services that benefit other people?” “The best government is no government;” “The market will provide.”  

Conservatives have ferociously assaulted the concepts of government, community service, and civil society. They’ve promoted the notion that individual Americans are on their own: the idea that individuals rise or fall of their own accord and government has no responsibility to care for them. Conservatives have created a system that deliberately penalizes the “losers.” 

That’s not to say that the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, wasn’t responsible for his actions; of course he was. But, as his social background unfolds, it’s clear that Cho had issues and because of these— extreme introversion and speech problems, among others—he was belittled and bullied by his peers. Unfortunately, Cho fit the same pattern as the Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. They were all unpopular kids—young people regarded as “losers”—filled with rage, who had all-too-easy access to weapons. Kids who perceived that they were part of an uncaring community and the way to fix this was to get even, big time. 

There is no easy fix for the problem that produced the deaths of 32 innocent Virginia Tech students and faculty. It won’t be solved by placing further restrictions on the sale of automatic weapons—although that seems like a good idea. It won’t be remedied by further restricting the activities of American with mental illnesses. It will take changes that are systemic and, therefore, more difficult. 

The United States, as a community, has to face the reality that we are a nation of violence junkies. We must go through our own arduous 12-step program: begin with the admission that we are powerless over violence and our lives have become unmanageable. In the process, we have to resurrect the notion of the common good and become a caring community, again. That’s a long, hard road, but it’s the only way we can get off the killin’ floor. 

 

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


Column: Falling Down the Rabbit Hole Again

By Susan Parker
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Last Friday, April 27, I spent the day at Children’s Fairyland with one thousand other hot and tired attendees. It was a record-breaking crowd for Fairyland. The lines for the Magic Web Ferris Wheel and Flecto Carousel were long, as was the wait for a seat outside Johnny Appleseed’s Café. Almost everyone in the park was 5 years old or younger. It would have been a very good day to stay away from Fairyland, but I was subbing for a teacher who had, obviously, already thought of that.  

There were lots of adults yelling and many children crying. There were screams and threats and more than a few instances of inappropriate behavior. There were no tables available at Teddy Bear Picnic Area during lunchtime. All the shady spots along the edge of the grassy fence line were occupied. The Jolly Trolly had to make emergency stops to wait for strollers and toddlers to cross safely over the tracks. There were several broken rides, but yellow caution tape didn’t prevent some bold whippersnappers from climbing over barricades, looking for fun.  

Although I was with a group of nineteen five year olds, I was assigned the important task of monitoring one particular student, a little boy who needed special supervision. I pursued him as he ran from Willie the Whale to Crooked Man’s House to Peter Rabbit Village. Too impatient to linger long in any one spot, we spent time chasing bubbles at Bubble Elf, and pining for pink cotton candy and a blue plastic Fairyland key for sale at the Fairyland Gift Shop.  

We slid down the Dragon Slide a half dozen times. We took several trips up and over Clock Tower. We stood in line for the Wonder-Go-Round but finally gave up. We stood in line for Jolly Trolly but left after a twenty-minute wait. We arrived at the carousel just when everyone else must have been eating lunch or waiting in line for the bathroom. We rode a brown horse once, a black horse twice and ended with a rousing giddy-up session on a white stallion. We checked out Miss Muffet and the Tarzan swing. We looked at ourselves in the Goosey Gander mirror. We had really big heads and short, tiny legs. We laughed at Ms. Parker, who was beet red from too much sun and exercise, and then we took off for Noah’s Ark and Old West Junction.  

We climbed up the cement rocks near Hey Diddle Diddle, hit our head on an overhanging slab, and cried for a few minutes. We hung on the bow of the Pirate Ship, swung dangerously close to the water below, impolitely pushed several small people out of our way, and raced down the curvy path, past Pinocchio’s Castle and the Owl and the Pussycat. While rushing by the Three Little Pigs and over Yankee Doodle Bridge, I remembered that April 27th was the thirteenth anniversary of Ralph’s bicycling accident on Claremont Avenue. I looked at my watch just as I slithered down Alice’s Rabbit Hole. It was 1 p.m., about the time I learned Ralph was in an ambulance, speeding toward Highland Hospital’s Trauma Unit. But I couldn’t dwell on it for long as my charge was far ahead of me, tearing through the tunnels, pausing for only a second at the Mad Hatter before popping up into the Maze of Cards. We wandered around aimlessly, and finally emerged onto the sidewalk. My little friend smiled like the Cheshire Cat and shouted, “Let’s do it again, Ms. Parker!” I wanted to pause at the Chapel of Peace, but there was no time. I plunged down the Rabbit Hole again. Unlike 13 years ago, I knew for certain I would come up safely on the other side. 


Wild Neighbors: Where’s Poppa? The Case of the Fatherless Lizards

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday May 01, 2007

If you visit Mount Diablo this time of year and walk the Fire Interpretive Trail that circles the summit (highly recommended for wildflowers, including the locally rare bitterroot), you’re almost sure to meet one or more of the resident California whiptail lizards. Sometimes they dash across the path from one shelter to another, demonstrating why they’re also called racerunners. But I’ve had some escort me along their personal stretch of trail, keeping a wary eye on me all the while. 

California whiptails are fairly normal lizards, if there is such a thing, although as hot-pursuit predators they tend to operate at a higher temperature than the neighboring skinks, alligator lizards, and fence lizards. Normal would describe their reproduction: male meets female, a brusque courtship ensues, eggs get fertilized, the usual. 

But they have close relatives in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico—about 15 species altogether—that have evolved a much different approach. Male doesn’t meet female. There are, in fact, no males. These are all-female parthenogenetic species (from the Greek parthenos, “virgin,” as in Athene Parthenos, hence the Parthenon). It’s thought they originated as hybrids between two separate two-sexed species, a mode of speciation that’s rare in animals, although not uncommon among plants. This gives them an extra complement of chromosomes, with sets from both parent species. 

These unisexual lizards do pair off and go through the typical whiptail courtship routine. Like Ursula K. LeGuin’s Gethenians, an individual may assume both “male” and “female” roles over her lifetime. Without fertilization, whiptail eggs develop into clones, genetically identical to their sisters and their mothers and, barring the odd mutation, their founding grandmothers. 

This is not how vertebrates typically arrange things, of course. There are no parthenogenetic frogs, salamanders, birds, or mammals. But some fish and a number of reptiles do occur in female-only species.  

The lizards have gone into it in a big way, with, in addition to the whiptails, some 15 species of unisexual geckoes, night lizards, and representatives of other families. And there’s one parthenogenetic snake: the flowerpot blindsnake, which has traveled all over the world in potting soil. 

What’s the advantage of this reproductive mode? Well, if evolution is about maximizing the genes you pass on to the next generation, you can’t get any more maximal than a litter of clones. Parthenogens are great at colonizing disturbed places and remote islands; some of the geckoes that rode Polynesian voyaging canoes all over the South Pacific were all-female species. All it takes to found a new population is one gravid female. If every new addition is a fertile female, you can imagine the shape of the population growth curves. 

But, you might counter, if this is such a great deal, why are males (of any species) still around? It has been suggested that there are disadvantages to being a clone. Clones, by definition, have no genetic variety. In most species, males and females endow their offspring with a recombined mixture of their own genes, a brand new shuffle every time. Genetic variety is what makes some individuals more resistant than others to parasites and pathogens. If everyone in the population is a carbon copy, a novel disease might wipe out the lot of them. 

Beyond that, variation is the powerhouse of evolution. Genetic recombination gives natural selection something to select among—gene mixtures that may enable the organism to be better at obtaining food, eluding predators, surviving sudden catastrophes or more gradual environmental changes. Without variation, evolution stops. Some biologists have speculated that unisexual species may have fairly short life spans, in terms of geologic time. As good as they may be at exploiting new environments, all those parthenogenetic lizards may be just a flash in the pan. 

I wouldn’t want to predict the long-term fate of the whiptails. Note, however, the recent discovery that one group of parthenogenetic animals, the crotoniid soil mites, have gone back to a two-sex reproductive strategy. That’s comparable to a snake re-evolving legs, or a flightless bird re-evolving wings. “Nothing as complex as sex has ever been known to re-evolve,” says mite scholar Roy Norton of the State University of New York, Syracuse. You just never know.  

 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

A California whiptail lizard on his or her doorstep.  


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday May 04, 2007

FRIDAY, MAY 4 

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. 

Berkeley High Theater “Hair” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., also May 11 and 12 at 8 p.m., at Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High Campus. Tickets are $7-$15.  

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” 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  

Impact Theatre “Measure for Measure” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 26.Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Just Theater, “I Have Loved Strangers” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., to May 26. Tickets are $12-$25. 421-1458. www.justtheater.org 

King Middle School “The Odyssey” at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School Auditorium. Suggested dontation $1-$5. 644-6280. 

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  

Subterranean Shakespeare “Macbeth” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Rose in Live Oak Park, to May 26. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871.  

TheatreFIRST “Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Old Oakland Theatre, 481 Ninth St., Oakland. Tickets are $18-$25. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Two Worlds” Photographs by Victoria Staller and sculpture by Laura Van Duren opens at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave. at Broadway. www.mercurytwenty.com 

“Touchable Stories: Richmond” A multi-media, oral history event created by the people of Richmond. Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 6 p.m. through May 13, at 1303 Canal Blvd., Richmond (the former Kaiser Shipyard Cafeteria). Cost is $6-$12. For reservations call 619-3675. www.touchablestories.org 

“People Are Everywhere” group show of artists from Brazil to Canada. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4225 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Gallery hours are Sat. and Sun. noon to 5 p.m.. Show runs to May 27. 295-8881. 

FILM 

“Lives for Sale” A documentary on immigration and human trafficking at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, Marian Hall, 2nd Flr., 2125 Jefferson St. Not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062.  

“Hysteria” by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Cost is $6. 464-4640. www.verticalpool.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alex Cavalli performs “Paul Face to Face” a dramatic presentation of Paul’s epistles as written in the King James Version of the Bible, at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 339-6316.  

Nina Lindsay and Helen Wickes, poetry reading for Sixteen Rivers Press at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 415-273-1303. wwwsixteenrivers.org 

Stephanie Nolan describes “28 Stories of AIDS in Africa” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dan Plonsey’s Daniel Popsicle “Music of El Cerrito: the Color Music” at 8 p.m. at the Fidelity Bank building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. Sponsored by the Berkeley Arts Festival. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

“All That Jazz” Berkeley High School Jazz Band performs in a fundraiser for the Willard Middle School at 6 p.m. at Willard, 2524 Stuart St. 644-6330. 

Berkeley City College Talent Show with music, dance, spoken word and poetry by students, faculty and staff, at 7:20 p.m. at the Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 981-2965. 

Juan Escovedo and Tortilla Soup at noon at Oakland City Center Stage, 12th and Broadway.  

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12.. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Crafty Apples and Henry Kaiser, guitar, at 8 p.m. at 1510 8th Street Performance Space, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15 sliding scale. 

“A Night of New World Flamenco Jazz” with Tomas Michaud and the Gypsy Groove Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at Home of Truth, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Benefit for the Alameda Education Foundation. Tickets are $8-$15. www.WorldMelodies.com 

Rolando Morales Quintet at 5 p.m at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. 238-2200. 

Juanita Ulloa and Mariachi Picante’s Mujeres Music Festival at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Sheldon Brown Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Yolanda Alicia & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Aza and Moh Alileche at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Fairport Convention at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Ravines and Christina Kowalchuk at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Beep!, Smith Dobson Quartet, Kasey Knudson Group at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

La Plebe, Peligro Social, Eskapo 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. 

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

Jennifer Johns at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Becky White and the Secret Mission, mystic folk, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Times 4 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Mister Loveless, The Catholic Comb, The Fedralists at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Hal Stein Quartet at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Hiromi at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MAY 5 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Juanita Ulloa and Ginny Morgan at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Fleeting Moments in Nature and Life” Bronze sculptures by Elizabeth Dante, plein air landscapes by Barbara Ward, watercolors by John Kenyon and paintings by Paul Graf. Reception for the artists at 5 p.m. at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibition runs through June 3. 848-1228. 

“Ceramics: Form and Function” by Phyllis Pacin, Cheryl Wolff and Ann Testa. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at Montclair Gallery, 1986 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Exhibition runs to June 18. 339-4286. 

“Far/Near” Landscape and nature photographs by Bruce Yost Reception at 2 p.m. at The Light Room Gallery, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. 

“The Changing Face of Europe” An exhibition of books, maps, photos and artifacts in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery of UC Berkeley's Doe Library through August.  

“Divine Feminine” Contemporary Tantric Art from the collection of Robert Beer, reception at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Shambala Center, 2177 Bancroft.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Myriam Gurba reads from her debut fiction collection “Dahlia Season: Stories & a Novella” at 6 p.m. at Pegass Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“Measure of Time” Conversation with artists Alan Rath and Meredith Tromble at 1 p.m. in the Berekeley Art Museum Galleries, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

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.  

Chuck Palahniuk introduces his new novel “Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey” at 7:30 in the Pauley Ballroom, UC Campus. Tickets are $8 available from Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Art for Autism Poetry Reading and Art Auction with readings by Loretta Clodfelter, Gabrielle Myers, Dennis Smera and others at 5 p.m. at Gallery for Urban Art, 1746 13th St., West Oakland. Cost is $10. 910-1833.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra features Gabriel Faure’s Requiem at 8 p.m. at Saint Joseph The Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations appreciated. www.bcco.org 

Berkeley Opera “Romeo and Juliet” at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2460 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$40. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12.. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

AVE, Artists‚ Vocal Ensemble Life and Death: A Requiem for the Victims of Darfur at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, Bancroft at Ellsworth. Tickets are $10-$25. www.ave-music.org 

“A Night of New World Flamenco Jazz” with Tomas Michaud and the Gypsy Groove Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at Home of Truth, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Benefit for the Alameda Education Foundation. Tickets are $8-$15. www.WorldMelodies.com 

“Sacred Monsters” with dance icons Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan at 8 p.m. at at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$86. 642-9988.  

The Arab Culture Initiative, hip hop for social change, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Nerio De Gracia Mambo Jazztet A tribute to Carlos Federico, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums with Carmen Getit at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Wildsang and James Riddle at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Space Heater at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Henry Clement & the Gumbo Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Adam Shulman Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Marc Lemaire & Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Minus Vince, Uptones, GDB at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Mark Growden, Freddi, Acoustic Virgin at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jason Webley, Rev Payton’s Big Damn Band, Vermillion Lies 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, MAY 6 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Through Windows” Photography by Michael Wong Reception at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

“Inspiring Blooms” works in colored pencil by Bei Brown. Reception for the artist at 2 p.m. at the Tilden Environmental Education Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

FILM 

“Works from the Eisner Prize Competition” with Sophie Cooper, Wenhua Shi and other artists in person at noon at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joseph Fisher will talk about the recently discovered childrens’ art from the federally funded childcare centers in Richmond during WWII at 3 p.m. at Moe’s Books. 849-2087.  

Alex Cavalli performs “The Gospel According to John” a dramatic rendition of biblical voices direct from the King James Version of the Bible at 2:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 339-6316.  

“The Human Drama of Everyday Lives: Telling Stories with Photos” with Oakland based photojournalist, Lexine Alpert at 2 p.m. in the Community Meeting Room on the third floor of the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6241. 

“The Sermon on the Print” with printmaker David Kelso, founder of California Intaglio Editions at 3:30 p.m at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

Adelina Anthony, Dino Foxx and Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano poetry at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568.  

“Divine Feminine” Contemporary Tantric Art Lecture with Siddhartha V. Shah at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Shambala Center, 2177 Bancroft.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra features Gabriel Faure’s Requiem at 4:30 p.m. at Saint Joseph The Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations appreciated. www.bcco.org 

Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary in a family concert and sing-along at 2 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Tickets are $15-$20 from 559-9500. www.tash.org 

“Sacred Monsters” with dance icons Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan at 7 p.m. at at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$86. 642-9988. 

U.C. Santa Barbara Dance Company at 7 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. 

Twang Cafe features Rancho Deluxe & High Diving Horses at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $10, all ages welcome. www.twangcafe.com 

Jupiter String Quartet at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Vintage poster sale at 4 p.m. Tickets are $25-$30. 644-6893.  

Don Neeley’s Royal Society Five, music from the teens, twenties and thirties from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, 37417 Niles Blvd., Fremont. Cost is $20, benefits the museum. 494-1411. www.nilesfilmmuseum.org 

Irina Rivkin, Moira Smiley with VOCO & Ashley Maher at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ana Carbetti & Recita da Samba at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged: Jeanie & Chuck’s Country Roundup at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

David K. Mathews B-3 Organ Quartet at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Look, The Symptoms, Tea and Tricky Fish at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Benefit for La Familia Music Education. Cost is $10, $8 for 18 and under. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Philips Marine Duo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Elk, Horn of Daggoth, Sands at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

MONDAY, MAY 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

Photo Montages by Fletcher Oakes Reception with the artist at 7 p.m. at the It Club Gallery, 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Exhibition runs through May 30. www.touchablestories.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Aurora Theatre Staged Readings “Learn to be Latina” by Enrique E. Urueta at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. For tickets call 843-4822. 

Will Shortz on his favorite puzzles and how crosswords are created at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$32. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Chiura Obata and the Art of Internment with Kimi Kodani Hill, author, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

Michael J. Sandel, Harvard Professor of Government will discuss his new book, “The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering” at 4:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant. 625-0819. www.genetics-and-society.org 

Actors Reading Writers “From Story to Screen,” works by O. Henry and Annie Proulx at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Gloria Frym and Joseph Lease, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Avotcja at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

TUESDAY, MAY 8 

CHILDREN 

First Stage Children’s Theatre “Pet Care Capers” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $5 at the door.  

 

 

 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Al Young, California Poet Laureate with Reginald Lockett and Floyd Salas at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

Vendela Vida reads from her new book “Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Liza Mundy describes “Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction is Changing Men, Women, and the World” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gator Beat, cajun zydeco at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Robin Huw Bowen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Debbie Poryes & Friends at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Joyce & Dori Caymmi at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jeffrey Feldman and George Lakoff discuss “Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections)” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Café Poetry hosted by Kira Allen at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Nomadic Rambles, Storytelling hosted by Ed Silberman at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Romeo and Juliet” at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2460 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$40. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

Erik Jekabson Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Balkan Folkdance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Orquestra La Verdad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

UC Jazz Showcase: Joyce Kwan Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Refugees: Cindy Bullens, Deborah Holland, Jenny Yeates & Wendy Waldman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

THURSDAY, MAY 10 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Charley Hardy Book party for “Cowboy in Caracas” at 7:30 p.m. in the Fireside Room, 1606 Bonita just south of Cedar, next door to the BFUU Hall. Cost is $5-$10. Not wheelchair accessible.  

Daniel Handler and Christopher Moore discuss Moore’s novel “Adverbs” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Bonnie Tsui introduces “A Leaky Tent is a Piece of Paradise: 20 Young Writers on Finding a Place in the Natural World” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

“Aging Artfully” with author Amy Gorman and “Still Kicking” with Greg Young at 7 p.m. at A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 LaSalle, Montclair, Oakland. 339-8210. 

Maidu Dance Tradition with Frank La Pena at 7:30 p.m. at Heyday Books, 2054 University Ave., 6th floor. RSVP to Lillian Fleer at lillian@heydaybooks.com 549-3564, ext. 316. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tim Fuller on Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar at 12:15 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 5th Floor, 2090 Kittredge St. Free. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Zimrah Trio, North African and Near Eastern music at 6:30 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. tickets are $6-$8. 549-6950.  

Laura Love at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Christy Dana Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Wendy Dewitt Duo at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Make Me, Bill Swanson, The Fits at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Terror, Hoods, Allegiance at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

The Amplifiers, Flexx Bronco, Neon Nights at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Selector: DJ Gnat & Big Will at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

 

 

 

 

 


Moving Pictures: A Minimalist Journey Along the Road to Recovery

By JUSTIN DeFREITAS
Friday May 04, 2007

Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, a Scottish film opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas, draws the viewer in immediately with its quiet intensity. The film begins with Jackie (Kate Dickie) silently watching a bank of monitors at her job at a security company, each screen presenting a different view of urban Glasgow from cameras positioned around the city.  

The glimpses into everyday working-class life in the city are fascinating and Jackie looks upon them with an endearing combination of benevolence, amusement and boredom. It’s her job and nothing more, but she nevertheless seems to go about it with a certain degree of interest if not pleasure.  

Thus right away we see that Jackie is an observer of life, not a participant. She lives alone and is apparently alienated from her parents and sister. Her only human contact consists of soul-deadening sex with a co-worker in a parked car. Her comfort at the surveillance desk console and her shy, nervous demeanor when she steps beyond it suggest that she is more at ease in this darkened room full of high-tech spying equipment, watching strangers come and go, than she is out in the world.  

She almost appears god-like for a moment as Dickie manages to convey Jackie’s compassion for these strangers. She smiles as a night-shift housekeeper dances to unheard music while going about her work; she furrows her brow with pity while watching a man walk his aging and sickly dog. And when she finally steps out of that room and into the streets, it is as if she is not one of them at all, but a privileged observer who occasionally slums by walking anonymously among those she oversees, taking a role as just another character in the drama she monitors daily. 

Yet once Jackie crosses that line and takes part in that drama, her life becomes a drama all its own. A chance sighting of a familiar face on one of the security cameras sends Jackie on a strange journey. It is apparent that this man is a figure from her past, someone who has somehow hurt her, but Arnold withholds all explanations right up to the end. Instead we watch as Jackie monitors the man for weeks and gains entry to his life, stalking him through a degraded, neglected cityscape, one whose battered streets and grafitti-scarred buildings mirror the heroine’s mental state; years of painful remembrance have taken their toll on her psyche. 

The film is part of a larger project called the Advance Party, in which three directors made three different films using the same characters. Arnold has fashioned a compelling tale out of that raw material, and her direction is strong and focused, yet the film is slightly undermined by its evenness of tone. Those early scenes of quiet watchfulness are engaging, but after 90 minutes the minimalist approach causes the pace to flag.  

But the most troubling flaws in Red Road come when Arnold yields to the threadbare devices by which indie dramas so often seek to prove their indieness: actors willing to appear naked under less-than-flattering lighting conditions; gratuitously graphic sex scenes; and somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone must vomit. Thus maketh a film of great import and honesty. 

But these are minor complaints. Kate Dickie’s portrayal of Jackie is subtle and powerful, and Tony Curran as Clyde inspires just the right blend of allure and recoil. And despite the contrivance that draws these disparate lives together, Arnold has managed to create a memorable and harrowing tale of a woman who must come face to face with her fears before she’s ready to start piecing her life back together. 

 

RED ROAD 

Written and directed by Andrea Arnold.  

Starring Kate Dickie, Tony Curran,  

Martin Compston, Natalie Press.  

113 minutes. Not rated. Contains graphic sex. Playing at Shattuck Cinemas.


Arts Around the East Bay

Friday May 04, 2007

FLEETING MOMENTS 

 

An artists’ reception will be held at 5 p.m Saturday at Giorgi Gallery for “Fleeting Moments,” featuring sculptures by Elizabeth Dante, oil paintings by Barbara Ward, watercolors by John Kenyon and bas reliefs by Paul Graf. The exhibit continues though June 3. 2911 Claremont Ave. 848-1228, www.giorgigallery.com. 

 

RICHMOND  

CHILDREN’S ART  

 

Joseph Fischer will discuss children’s art in Richmond from 1943 to 1966 at 3 p.m. Sunday at Moe’s Books at 2476 Telegraph Ave. The talk is in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland, on display through June 3, featuring some of the several thousand pieces of art from the federally funded childcare centers in Richmond during World War II and the post-war period which were recently discovered. The wartime and post-war artwork will be exhibited starting Sept. 29 at the Richmond Museum of History. 

 

MARX MADNESS  

AT CERRITO THEATER 

 

The Cerrito Theater will present the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933), arguably their greatest film, as part of the “Cerrito Classics” series at 6 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. e. 10070 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito. www.picturepubpizza.com. 

 

RANCHO DELUXE PLAYS TWANG CAFE 

 

Los Angeles-based country music band Rancho Deluxe will perform at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Twang Cafe, an American music series held monthly in the intimate confines of Epic Arts. 1923 Ashby Ave. $10. www.twangcafe.com.


The Thearer: Macbeth at Berkeley Art Center

By KEN BULLOCK
Friday May 04, 2007

Whether it’s the Weird Sisters on the heath, a dagger hovering in mid-air, Birnham Wood marching on Dunsinane, or “No man of woman born,” the Bard’s “Scottish Play”—so-called to guard against its very own evil eye—is usually drenched with atmosphere and gore, and served up as a kind of Hallowe’en blowout with cultural credentials. 

But Subterranean Shakespeare’s sharp production of Macbeth at the Berkeley Arts Center in Live Oak Park, with Jeremy Cole’s fast-paced and nimble, intimate staging, brings the drama to the fore, the story into focus, dissolving the hoary encrustations without losing the genuine strangeness of the tale, its eerie reverberations of willfulness and destiny, character and autosuggestive magic. 

“I wanted a non-sticky Macbeth,” joked the director, remembering the cleanup chores of shows past. But the result of his wish isn’t a Teflon slickness. The real power of this seeming potboiler that exposes a brave man’s ambition as murder, a loving marriage as the breeding ground of resentment and the pinnacle of success as weary cynicism, is made more direct with syncopated, overlapping scenes, crowded moments succeeded by solitary soul-baring and the fluid motion of the cast in eye-to-eye proximity to the audience—a power that is palpable, that connects with a spectator’s fleeting thoughts and emotions, rather than a vague sense of menace that provokes nervous laughter. 

A show like this casts light on why Orson Welles referred to his very different film adaptation as an artistic watershed: “Everything I did up to Macbeth was just a dress rehearsal.” 

There’s something very demanding, compact and volatile, yet mature in the close-up, dispassionate handling of such highly charged material that makes this play unique among Shakespeare’s trage-dies, a something this production touches on, over and over, refusing any sensationalism. 

The ensemble has everything to do with this sense of a well-oiled machine of fate grinding on to its predetermined outcome, the twin moods of expectation and surprise constantly intersecting in every incident and exchange. Paul Jennings is solid in the title role, clearly showing and speaking the part of a brave man turned inside-out by his own facility for action, despite the cause, first succeeding to a traitor’s relinquished title in a battlefield commission, immediately rankling at another being made Prince of Cumberland, turning to regicide and finally attaining a strange regalness as world-wise and weary, ostracized usurper, all on his own. 

Stephanie DeMott’s Lady Macbeth proves the unscrupulous, quick-witted wife of a careerist, rather than the villainous femme fatale and manipulator, who incites to action, smoothes things over—and absorbs the true horror of consequence, becoming another victim. 

The three witches, Martha Stookey, Carrie Smith and Molly Holcomb, whirl in and out in their red capes, invisibly witnessing the upshot of their prophecying, or taking on other, subsidiary roles. King Duncan, with a gold fillet of rank on his brow, is magnanimously acted out by Jack Halton, who more than doubles, after his assasination, as the ghastly, comic Porter, falling down drunk, and clutching at the pantleg of this reviewer, calling him “Equivocator”—not a bad monicker for a critic, tho’ Elizabethan for lawyer. Halton later resurfaces as Priest, watchcapped Murderer (in league with leering Nicholas Crandall) and Doctor to Milady’s somnambulist hand-rinsing. 

Others play multiply as well: Lynn-Audrey Tijerina is a stolid factotum as Banquo and an awful apparition as his accusing ghost, before playing an affecting Lady Macduff. Edward O’Neill, Nicholas Crandall, Eden Castro and Ben Grubb are all Apparitions, besides members of the court or retainers, Ben Grubb a masculine, impetuous Macduff who is more than a match to the proud, but increasingly inward tyrant Thane and King. 

Macbeth’s enveloping isolation is complemented by the snowballing resistance of the fugitives like Ross (genteel Mark Jordan) and Macduff who rally to Malcolm (Edward O’Neill). The deft stagecraft that can render both clamoring multitudes and Macbeth’s brooding insularity at the same time on such a small canvas is impressive. The counterpoint of ravening personal ambition to national grief is eloquent: “Alas, poor country! Afraid to know itself; cannot be called mother, but only our grave.” 

Subterranean Shakespeare has also come up with another, more portable treat: “Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits,” a CD of 17 songs of The Bard, performed by over 30 Bay Area musicians, singers and actors (including such eminent Berkeleyans as Michael Rossman), available online at myspace/subshakes.com, CD Baby, Itunes —and this summer in your local bardic emporium. 

 

 

 

 


John H. Spring: Splendor, Strife and Shenanigans

By Daniella Thompson
Friday May 04, 2007

John Hopkins Spring, the developer of Thousand Oaks, always knew how to attract attention. On December 23, 1915, World War One was raging in Europe, and the newspapers were reporting that British losses at the Battle of Gallipoli had climbed to 112,921. But the war did not make top headline in the Oakland Tribune that day. 

That place was reserved for Spring, who had just announced that he was leaving his wife, Celina, for a younger woman and abandoning his famed Arlington Avenue mansion for the Alcatraz Apartments, a residential-commercial building he owned at 3315 Adeline St. 

Born in San Francisco, Spring (1862–1933) began his career as a street contractor. Shortly before the incorporation of the Key Route transbay ferry system, he allied himself with Frank C. Havens, president of the Peoples’ Water Company, and with Francis Marion “Borax” Smith, acting as land agent in large purchases of suburban property at the time they were launching the Realty Syndicate. 

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire triggered a rapid increase in the price of Berkeley real estate. Spring, who had acquired vast tracts, became very wealthy very quickly, with a reputed net worth of $3 million. His holdings comprised most of the land in Alameda County north of the Berkeley line, extending from the hills to the bay. He founded the Spring Construction Company, owned a quarry, and was a director of the Western National Bank of San Francisco and of the Berkeley National Bank. 

Throughout his life, Spring evinced keen interest in architecture and landscaping. His Oakland home, a stately Italianate Victorian at 2711 Fruitvale Ave., was situated on 13 acres that boasted groves of ancient oak trees, cultivated arbors, meandering walks, lawns and flower beds, a Japanese tea garden comparable to the one in Golden Gate Park, a large swimming pool, four fountains, several tennis courts, a shooting gallery, windmills, and a rivulet spanned by rustic bridges. 

In 1910, after Spring had subdivided Thousand Oaks and was committed to building his home there, the residents of Fruitvale and surrounding neighborhoods petitioned the Oakland city council to include $90,000 in a proposed bond issue in order to purchase the Spring property and turn it into a public park. Like many splendid ideas, this one went nowhere. The property ended up being subdivided into small lots, long since built up. No vestige remains of what was once described as an “earthly Eden.” 

If Spring was troubled by the fate of his old home, he didn’t make it known. Ever active, he was now planning his new Eden on 16 acres in Thousand Oaks. The terraced gardens were laid out by Mark Daniels even before construction began on the enormous concrete villa designed by John Hudson Thomas. 

And Spring didn’t stop with his own estate. As each of his daughters was married, he built the new couple a house in the vicinity. Of daughters the Springs had no shortage. Celina brought two from her first marriage and had four more by Spring. The eldest, Catherine Warfield, married laundry company executive Lester K. Wells but soon divorced him to forge a union with Charles Percy Murdock, who worked for the Realty Syndicate. The two settled next to the Mark Daniels home on Yosemite Road, building a handsome half-timbered house designed by John Hudson Thomas. 

Between the Murdocks and Indian Trail lived the second daughter, Frances Warfield, with her husband, Robert C. Newell. Their residence, an English-style manor house with parapet gables, was designed by William Knowles (who had designed the Alcatraz Apartments for Spring in 1906). Newell sold Thousand Oaks real estate for his father-in-law—first with partner William H. Henricks, then with William C. Murdoch (no relation to Catherine’s husband). 

A third daughter, Gertrude Spring, was an early groupie. At the age of 15 she eloped with George Friend, a comic actor of the Liberty stock company, known as the “Willie Collier of Oakland.” The match met with the severe disapprobation of Gertrude’s father, but eventually Spring forgave the couple, gave them a house at 597 Santa Clara Avenue, and made George a partner. George picked up where Newell had left off as agent for Spring’s properties. 

In March 1914, a newspaper ad selling Thousand Oaks properties began with an interview in which John Spring was asked, “How much property is controlled by your companies?” Spring replied, “It will perhaps give you a better idea of the magnitude of this enterprise when I tell you that we have macadamized 50 miles of streets in properties. In other words, the streets if stretched out in a straight line would reach from Berkeley to San Jose. The sidewalks, which are on both sides of the streets, would reach to Monterey.” 

Gertrude wasn’t the only Spring child to elope. She was followed by the Springs’ only son, Frank, who ran away, if only briefly, with Avis Sterling, niece of Frank C. Havens and sister of the poet George Sterling. Spring built them a house at 749 The Alameda, and Frank joined George Friend’s firm. 

The fifth sibling to marry and settle in Thousand Oaks was Anne Spring. Her bridegroom did not sell real estate; he made it. Noble Newsom was the scion of an architectural dynasty, son of Samuel Newsom, designer of Eureka’s famed Carson Mansion. Anne and Noble were given a lot on Yosemite Road (then Lovers’ Lane), across the street from the Sills’ Villa della Rocca. Noble and his brother Sidney designed the “Honeymoon Cottage,” as the house is known to this day. 

The Newsoms married just a month before John Spring left his wife for Genevieve McGraw Ecker. At the time, Celina Spring was traveling abroad. In her absence, Spring deeded the mansion and close to 1,200 lots in north Berkeley and El Cerrito to his Regents Park Land Company, using the power of attorney he held for her. She returned from Honolulu on Dec. 27, 1915, and the following day filed a lawsuit to annul the transaction. 

In Honolulu, Celina left her daughter Dorothy, who was indicted on December 24 for manslaughter after striking a woman while driving a car and failing to come to her aid. Two and a half years later, John Spring would settle a suit brought against him by the victim’s husband. 

Spring married Genevieve Ecker in 1917, one hour after his divorce was finalized. At the end of the same year, the Spring Mansion was sold to Cora Williams, who turned it into a progressive school. In 1918, Celina married her first husband’s brother, publisher of the Baltimore Daily Record. The World War slowed down the pace of real estate sales, and in 1919 the Berkeley-Thousand Oaks Company, having acquired the tract at a low price, held an auction sale to dispose of the remaining lots. 

Spring and Genevieve had by then moved to a mansion at 2340 Gough Street, San Francisco, where their son Jack was born in 1918. Spring would soon build a new mansion in Los Gatos. In 1922, Genevieve opened a fashion shop at 2340 Gough in partnership with Clara Sckolnik, a Russian designer. Owing to Genevieve’s shenanigans, the business lasted less than a year. Madame Sckolnik sued Genevieve for failing to divide the profits with her and opened an independent shop at another location. 

The Great Depression was not kind to Spring. Relatives reported in 1932 that he was now “broken in both health and fortune” and “trying to recoup financially through road building down the peninsula.” In June of that year, Spring obtained an interlocutory decree of divorce from Genevieve, claiming that for many years “she had treated him as a daughter would a father,” refusing to “give him wifely affection.” At the time, Spring was nearing 70, while his wife was 46. 

The Springs were later reconciled, and he died in 1933, leaving Genevieve his entire estate. Perhaps he was not quite as financially broken as suggested, for his death ignited a legal battle between his former wives over the estate. The matter was adjudicated, but a new drama ensued in 1937. Spring’s sister, Charlotte Montgomery of San Francisco, petitioned the courts to remove Jack from his mother’s custody, charging that Mrs. Spring was unfit to care for him, having “long received treatment as a narcotic addict.” This led Genevieve to slash her wrists with a knife. She died in San Francisco in 1950. 

 

Houses and gardens in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood will be open on BAHA’s Spring House Tour this Sunday, May 6, between 1 pm and 5 pm. 

 

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

 

[Photos] 

 

Photo: Murdock house.jpg 

Caption: This house, designed by John Hudson Thomasw ,as John Spring’s wedding present to his step-daughter for Catherine and her husband Percy Murdock. (Daniella Thompson) 

 

Photo: Indian Trail.jpg 

Caption: The bucolic Indian Trail leads from Yosemite Road to The Alameda.. (Daniella Thompson) 

 

Photo: Newsom house.jpg 

Caption: The embowered “Honeymoon Cottage” was the first home of Anne Spring and Noble Newsom. (Daniella Thompson) 

 

Photo: Tunnel Rock.jpg 

Caption: Tunnel Rock on Yosemite Road forms the backdrop to the Newsom cottage. (Daniella Thompson) 

 


Garden Variety: How Big Is the Impact of That Little Brown Moth?

By Ron Sullivan
Friday May 04, 2007

Word is that the “recommendations” and “suggestions” from the agriculture officials about the recently discovered infestation of the light brown apple moth (Epiphyas postvittana, hereinafter LBAM) has grown into a state-declared quarantine.  

This pest is so inconspicuous that it took a retired entomology professor to notice what had blundered into his blacklight trap. Now that the hunt is on, specimens have turned up as far south as Monterey County. As of last week, about two thirds of captures have been in a small area there; the rest were mostly in Marin, San Francisco, western Contra Costa and Alameda counties, with scattered finds as far east as Danville.  

Aside from flying moths that turned up in some of their 11,000-plus pheromone traps, inspectors had found caterpillars and pupae in one San Francisco retail nursery and two production nurseries in Santa Cruz County. They treated that stock with chlorpyrifos.  

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) said a pending federal order will require inspection and certification of all nursery stock and host commodities – produce, flowers, other plant material—from the quarantine area, which is pretty much what the state DFA has declared already. As of May 1, the federal APHIS Web site had nothing new posted on the matter; not surprising, as the boundaries are in flux. 

What does this mean for East Bay gardeners? The quarantine would “prohibit the movement of all nursery stock and all host fruits and vegetables and plant parts within or from the quarantine region unless it is certified as ‘free-from’ the pest by an agricultural official; is purchased at a retail outlet; or was produced outside the area and is passing through in accordance with accepted safeguards.” The CDFA also says the quarantine “applies to residential and community properties as well as commercial enterprises.” A complete list of host species is available at CDFA’s Web site. 

Steve Lyle of CDFA said, of people holding plant sales: “It’s not a blanket prohibition on the movement or sale of plants. If you’re holding a sale, call your county ag office to get an inspector there beforehand.” 

Retailers, he said, “are used to this stuff; they have inspection protocols already. It will add one step, some time and expense to their operations. Plant inspectors are always busy anyway just before Mother’s Day.” 

Regulators are asking that, for example, produce from school gardens be eaten on the premises—but, as Lyle notes, “a lot of them do that anyway: use it in classrooms or in the school lunch program.”  

Basically, though, the problem is with moving uninspected plant bits from within the (unfortunately ever-changing) quarantine zone to any area outside it. Don’t take that home-grown bouquet to the Mother’s Day gathering in Fresno, please, and do some homework before throwing a benefit plant sale: look up the list of host plants and the quarantine maps on the CDFA site—the public library branches have computers, if you don’t—and call the county folks in to look over your stock. They’ll be busy, so call early.  

 

CDFA’s LBAM Web site, with complete current information: www.cdfa.ca.gov /phpps/pdep/lbam_main.htm 


Ask Matt: On Water Heaters, Bay Windows

By MATT CANTOR
Friday May 04, 2007

Dear Mr. Cantor: I want to thank you for the very informative and interesting article in the Daily Planet about strapping water heaters. Moreover, I want to say that I am a devoted reader and always find your pieces interesting and informative. 

I have a question about fire concerns caused by the break in the gas line to the water heaters. I’m only a homeowner and have no expertise, but I wonder if, when a gas line breaks, it doesn’t automatically interrupt the gas flow to the pilot, thus extinguishing the flame or spark that might ignite the gas flowing from the broken line. Or does the gas rush out so fast that the pilot still ignites it?  

In short, what besides a fire coming from a neighbor, is the mostly likely source of the spark or combustion that ignites the free-flowing gas? Would a broken power line produce sparks? 

Thanks for whatever light you can cast on this for me. 

—Alvin Ludwig 

 

Dear Alvin,  

Great question. 

There are so many sources of ignition possible that it’s almost a fait accompli that when a large volume of gas is released during an earthquake that it will find a means of ignition. 

During an earthquake electrical components are being thrust about and these can spark, metal on metal or metal on concrete can generate sparks and yes, there may still be enough gas at one or more pilots to ignite gas. Keep in mind that most houses have pilots at water heaters, furnaces, stoves and some other kinds of devices. 

If the water heater line breaks before the furnace line. The furnace pilot can ignite the gas lots of ways and most important, this is what actually happens. Broken gas lines in earthquakes result in many fires and many explosions. Just go online and look at pictures of Northridge. 

—Matt 

 

••• 

 

Hello, Mr. Cantor: We would like to install a second-story bay window in the back bedroom on our El Cerrito house. The house is a standard mid-’40s split-level, with bedrooms above garage/utility area. 

When we bought the house nine years ago there was already a bay window installed in the front bedroom. It was a bank foreclosure sale, so we don’t know about the permitting or history of that installation. 

Due to insufficient previous research and a bad decision, we have had an unpleasant window company experience and so the un-installed bay window has been sitting in our garage for a few years. 

My questions: Is it necessary to obtain permits for such installations? 

Does the installer/contractor obtain the permit, or the homeowner? 

Is an added bay window likely to increase earthquake damage to the rest of the structure? 

How would one find an installer who could do this work? 

(Most people say to talk to others about their experiences, but we’ve never found anyone in an equivalent position.) 

Thank you very much for any suggestions you might have. 

—Annie Organ 

 

Dear Ms. Organ, 

I think the first thing to do is to find a general contractor that you feel good about and to have them help you through the rest of the process. That’s what G.C.’s are good at. They can help answer all of those questions as well as take a look at your bay window. 

My tendency in a case such as this is to recommend a G.C. over a window specialist. Most window folk are used to installing a window in an existing opening but not getting involved in a wider range of issues such as seismic strength or vulnerability. 

As a rule, the cites draw their permit line financially and I have no idea what the cost of your job may be but it sounds as though it would have been expensive enough originally to require a permit. I am less concerned about the permit process than I am about the savvy of the contractor. 

City inspectors can be very useful in protecting the client from being poorly served but this type of job will not be heavily inspected so the key is to make sure that the installer will know their stuff. Flashings (the parts that keep water out of the building at the edges of the window) are the most critical part of this job. 

I do not believe that there is a major seismic implication in installing this window unless you are removing a large portion of the wall or unless there is a lot of other window on this wall at the same floor level.  

That said, the contractor should have a look in advance of proceeding. If this is at basement level (doesn’t sound like it) it can become a seismic issue by supplanting vital shear-bearing walls with a weak opening. 

Lastly, in choosing a contractor, don’t let price be your primary factor. Be sure that you feel confident in giving this person the key to your house, your money and your trust. 

A personal referral from a happy past customer is one of the best ways to select a contractor. Choose someone smart, not someone burley (although some are both smart and burley). 

Best of luck, 

—Matt 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

••• 

 

Hi Matt:  

Enjoyed your excellent article on foundation capping. One thing that I sometimes mention to my clients is that the faulty grade problem may sometimes be solved by simply digging away the dirt and debris that has accumulated against the foundation. This of course is the most economical solution when a complete foundation replacement isn’t needed for structural reasons! Do you think this is an okay observation to make?  

—Betsy Thagard  

Real Estate Broker  

 

Absolutely Betsy,  

As I often say to folks who write me with valid point regarding the subject of the article, if I weren’t limited to about 1000 words, I’d probably have said just what you mentioned. 

Caps are often “technically” required by the Structural Pest Control Act but, in fact, silly and largely unnecessary. Soil has often built up on the outside (and sometimes on the inside due to later work such as basement development) and simply needs to be cut away. 

The trick is to first dig a pit next the foundation to see the total depth in one spot prior to digging out along a long stretch. As long as you’re not undermining the foundation and there are at least a few inches left, it’s fine to cut back the soil and create a two-four-inch gap. It’s also a good idea to make sure that client know not to mulch or plant right along this boundary and to keep it clear. 

Six-inches is code but not really required. Some very short footings (10 inches or so) are not good candidates for this technique but replacement of a good solid unrotated footing of solid concrete is usually unnecessary and capping does very little for any of us. All that said, a new inverted T is a nice improvement that adds value in several ways. 

You Harvard grads are so smart! 

—Matt 

••• 


Berkeley This Week

Friday May 04, 2007

FRIDAY, MAY 4 

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 Philippe Eberhard on “Quantum Physics and Common Sense” 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.  

Law Literacy Outreach Program for youth aged 13-17 and their parents with workshops on legal responsibility Fri. and Sat. from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at East Bay Law School, 554 Grand Ave. 835-7999. www.eastbaylawschool.org 

“Lives for Sale” A documentary on immigration and human trafficking at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, Marian Hall, 2nd Flr., 2125 Jefferson St. Not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062.  

Five Star Night Benefit for Alameda County Meals on Wheels at 6:30 p.m. at Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension, 4700 Lincoln Ave., OAkland. Tickets are $300, sponsorships available. 577-3581. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Oakland Children’s Hospital, Outpatient Center Basement, 747 52nd St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. 

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 

Planning Meetings for a Dedication to denise brown will be on going every Fri. at 2 p.m. at LeConte, Room 104. Photos, videos and dvd's are welcome to be included in the event. For more information, contact Rita Pettit, PRitaAnn@aol.com, 559-4602. 

SATURDAY, MAY 5 

Bring Back the Natives Tour of “Gardening for Bees and Butterflries” throughout the East Bay. Cost is $30. 236-9558. www.BringingBackTheNatives.net 

Biking with Youth A free workshop for parents and children over 9 years old, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Carter Middle School Basketball courts, 4521 Webster St., Oakland. Bring your bike, helmet and be ready for a relaxed 4-mile ride. RSVP to 740-3150, ext. 332. 

Rollin’ by the Bay Bring your rollerskates/blades, skateboards, wheelchairs or scooters (no bikes) on a 3.5 mile cruise of the Eastshore State Park from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. For information call 525-2233. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk Join a Park Ranger for a walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters. Terrain is steep, wear walking shoes and bring water. Rain cancels. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Cal-Trans Park and Ride lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. 925-228-8860. 

The Crucible Open House for youth interested in learning how to weld, forge steel, melt glass, make jewelry, cast molten metal, and more from 1 to 3 p.m. at 1260 7th St., Oakland. Call to reserve a place at the orientation 444-0919. www.thecrucible.org 

Design Your Own Russian Nesting Dolls at 2 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Annual Junktique Sale with furniture, computers, kitchen and household goods, books, linens, toys and more from 8:30 a.m. t0 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., corner of W. Richmond Ave., Point Richmond. To arrange donations call 964-9901.  

Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters Club meets to discuss ”Elderhostel: Adventures in Lifelong Learning” at 9 a.m. at 1950 Franklin St., Room 2F. RSVP required, ID needed to get into building. 581-8675. 

Cottage in the Woods Preschool Yard Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 3917 Lyman Rd., Oakland.  

Lead-Safe Painting & Remodeling Free class to learn about lead safe renovations for your older home, from 10 a.m. to noon at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline S., Oakland. Presented by Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org  

Petite Pooches Playgroup for small dogs from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., one block north of Solano on Ensenada at Talbot. 524-2459. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MAY 6 

“Among the Rocks” Berkeley Architectural Heritage’s 32nd Annual Spring Tour and Reception of homes and gardens in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood, from 1 to 5 p.m. Cost is $25-$35. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

STAND: Standing Together for Accountable Neighborhood Development Garden Fundraiser with live music by Robert Temple, light buffet and information on how to stop the high-density condo developments that threaten North Oakland’s identity and diversity, at 4 p.m. in the historic Temescal District, 449 49th St., at Clarke, Oakland. Cost is $25, $40 for couples, children free. 655-3841. 

Bringing Back the Natives, free self-guided garden tour of sixty gardens throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For details see www.BringingBackTheNatives.net  

To Bee or Not to Bee Learn about bees through a puppet show, and get to taste some honey at 11 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Cinco de Mayo Fiesta from noon to 3 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

Community Cleanup and Weedout at King Middle School from 9 a.m. at noon Sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Berkeley. Please wear gloves and long pants, and bring clippers and other gardening tools. 527-8652. 

“Climate Change: Our Own Carbon Emissions” the second in a series of Sunday talks on Climate Change by Karen Street at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2151 Vine. 653-2803. 

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 

Prader-Willi Syndrome Walkathon at 10:30 a.m. Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. Registration fee is $20 for individual walkers or $50 for families or teams. Contact Prader-Willi California Foundation at 800-400-9994. www.pwcf.org 

Holistic Pet Evaluation from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. Free, appointments required. 525-6155. 

Parenting Teens Workshop on developing character in teens at 2:30 p.m. at Westminster House, 2700 Bancroft, enter on Bowditch. www.hyde.edu 

Community Singalong with the Cockettes pianist Scrumbly Koldewyn and Leslie Bonett to sing Broadway tunes and golden oldies from 3 to 6 p.m. at Lake Merritt Hotel, 1800 Madison, Oakland, near 19th St. BART. Cost is $5-$15. 534-2750. 

Broncho Billy’s Tea Dance, music from the teens, twenties and thirties from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, 37417 Niles Blvd., Fremont. Cost is $20. 494-1411. www.nilesfilmmuseum.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Meeting in Satsang and Dharma Inquiry with John Sherman, a teacher in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi at 3 p.m. in the Fireside Room, 1940 Virginia St. 495-7511. www.eastbayopencircle.org  

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin Caton on “Healing through Meditation” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, MAY 7 

Read Aloud Theater A free Berkeley Adult School class at 9 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190.  

“Human Rights in Chile: Then and Now” with Judge Juan Guzmán at 7 p.m. at the Women’s Faculty Club Lounge, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. http://clas.berkeley.edu 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at Tilden Room, MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, MAY 8 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Sibley Regional Preserve. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Hunger Action Day Join people from across California in raising your voice against hunger at the State Capitol in Sacramento. The free bus will leave Oakland at 7:30 a.m. and we will return by 5 p.m. Lunch will be provided. If you have any questions or would like to register please call 635-3663 ext. 307.  

Solo Sierrans Hike Hike at Lake Chabot Reservoir Meet at 6:30 p.m. at the boat house. Optional dinner follows. For information call Delores 351-6247. 

Oakland/East Bay Chapter of the National Organization for Women meets at 6 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, corner of Adeline and Alcatraz. 287-8948. 

“Is Wal-Mart Good or Bad for America?” A debate with Ken Jacobs, Chair, UC Berkeley Labor Center and Richard Vedder, co-author “The Wal-Mart Revolution” at 6:30 p.m. at the Independent Institute Conference Center, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Cost is $10-$30. For tickets call 632-1366. 

“Project Rewire: New Media from the Inside Out” a talk on the decline of the news media and the rise of the Internet by former journalist, author, and historian Judy Daubenmier, Ph.D., at 7 p.m. at Shambhala Book Store, 2177 Bancroft. Cost is $5-$15, no one turned away.  

“China's Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times” with Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Prof. of History, UC Irvine, at 4 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor. 643-6321. 

El Cerrito NAACP Recognition of Armed Forces Month with Major General Paul Monroe (Ret) of the California National Guard at 6:30 p.m. at the El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane. 526-2958. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Knocking” A documentary on Jehovah’s Witnesses at 6:30 p.m., followed by a panel discussion, at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

Chosing a Preschool at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7353. www.bananasinc.org 

New to DVD: “Little Children” 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, MAY 10 

Berkeley Adult School Career Fair from 9 a.m. to noon at 1702 San Pablo Ave. 644-8968. 

League of Women Voters Annual Meeting with Dave MacDonald, Alameda County Registrar of Voters speaking on “Alameda County: Voting Successes and Areas of Continuing Concern” at 5 p.m. at Northbrae Church, 914 The Alameda. Dinner is $15. RSVP to 843-8828. 

Great Escapes Benefit for the Berkeley Women’s Daytime Drop-In Center with live jazz, silent auction, hors d’oeuvres and wine at 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Yacht Club, One Sewall Drive. Tickets are $25-$75. 415-317-5675. 

“Cowboy in Caracas” a book party with Charley Hardy on his work in the barrios of Venezuela at 7:30 p.m. at 1606 Bonita, next to BFUU Hall. Not wheelchair accessible. 

Family Storytime for children ages 3-7 at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, North Branch, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins. 981-6107. 

Poetry Workshop with Donna Davis, ongoing on Thurs. from 9 a.m. to noon at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Donation $10 per semester. 848-0237. 

Baby and Toddler Storytime at 10:30 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

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 

Food Drive for Alameda County Food Bank Drop off canned goods, peanut butter, ceareal, powdered milk, beans, rice and pasta at Citibank, 200 Shattuck Ave. from May 1 to 15. Financial donations always welcome. 635-3663, ext. 318. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., May 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/peaceandjustice 

City Council meets Tues., May 8, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., May 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Library Board of Trustees Special Meeting on the Budget followed by the Board’s regular monthly meeting at 7 p.m., Wed. May 9, at the West Berkeley Senior Cetner. 981-6195. 

Planning Commission meets Wed., May 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., May 9, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., May 9, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., May 10, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/health 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., May 10, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/westberkeley  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., May 10,, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning  

 

 


Arts Calendar

Tuesday May 01, 2007

TUESDAY, MAY 1 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Water and Light” Giclee photographs by Maris Arnold at Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave. 843-3236.  

“Inspiring Blooms” works in colored pencil by Bei Brown on display at the Tilden Environmental Education Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Visions of Peace and Justice: Over 30 Years of Political Posters” Book release party for Inkworks Press at 7 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. 

Dale Pendell reads from “Inspired Madness” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Daniel Farber discusses “Retained by the People: the Silent Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don’t Know They Have” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Brass Menagerie and Gamelan X at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Dale Ann Bradley at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

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

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2 

EXHIBITIONS 

Photo Montages by Fletcher Oakes opens at the It Club Gallery, 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito and runs through May 30. www.touchablestories.org 

“Fleeting Moments in Nature and Life” Bronze sculptures by Elizabeth Dante, plein air landscapes by Barbara Ward, watercolors by John Kenyon and paintings by Paul Graf at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave., through June 3. 848-1228. 

FILM 

“Goodbye, Dragon Inn” with a lecture by Marilyn Fabe at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Constructions” Artists’ talk with Jenny Honnert, Marya Krogstad and Thomas Morphis at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Richard Walker describes the greenswards of the Bay Area in “The Country in the City” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Myra Melford UC Jazz Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Leftist Lounge Dance Benefit for grassroots organizations at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Zydeco Flames at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

In Harmony’s Way, a capella, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Orquestra Liberacion at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mikie Lee and Amber at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

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

The Pine Needles, mountain jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, MAY 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“My Ruling Planet” Sculptures, paintings and drawings by Rocky Rische-Baird, and “Traidor!” paintings by four Filipino artists. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411. 

FILM 

“Last Summer Won’t Happen” with fimmaker Peter Gessner in person at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free screening. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems Annual student poetry reading at 12:10 p.m. in the Morrison Library, in the Doe Library, UC Campus. http://lunchpoems.berkeley.edu 

“Berkeley Rocks” An illustrated lecture on one of Berkeley’s unique neighborhoods by Jonathan Chester at 8 p.m. in the Chapel, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $10. Presented by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. BAHA’s House and Garden Tour of this Thousand Oaks neighborhood will take place on May 6. For information on the lecture and tour please call 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Michael Parenti on “Political Perception and Deception: How to Think about Empire,” at 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Cost is $15. Benefit for Middle East Children’s Alliance. 548-0542.  

Dan Bellm, poet at 7 p.m. followed by open mic, at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Patricia Vidgerman reads from “The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

“Not for Mother’s Only: Contemporary Poems on Child-Getting and Child-Rearing” with contibuting poets Laynie Browne, Maxine Chernoff, Norma Cole, Brenda Hillman and Elizabeth Treadwell at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Judith Stone investigates apartheid in South Africa in “When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Dead Guise and Avalon Rising at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$32. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Muriel Anderson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Peter Anastos & Iternity at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Megan Slankard Band, Cyndi Harvell Trio, Adrienne Shamszad at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Nell Robinson & Red Level, bluegrass and country, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Quetzal at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Jazz Mafia Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Sylvia Herold & Euphonia at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Hiromi at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, MAY 4 

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. 

Berkeley High Theater “Hair” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., also May 11 and 12 at 8 p.m., at Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High Campus. Tickets are $7-$15.  

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” 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  

Impact Theatre “Measure for Measure” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 26.Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Just Theater, “I Have Loved Strangers” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., to May 26. Tickets are $12-$25. 421-1458. www.justtheater.org 

King Middle School “The Odyssey” at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School Auditorium. Suggested dontation $1-$5. 644-6280. 

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  

Subterranean Shakespeare “Macbeth” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Rose in Live Oak Park, to May 26. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Two Worlds” Photographs by Victoria Staller and sculpture by Laura Van Duren opens at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave. at Broadway. www.mercurytwenty.com 

“Touchable Stories: Richmond” A multi-media, oral history event created by the people of Richmond. Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 6 p.m. through May 13, at 1303 Canal Blvd., Richmond (the former Kaiser Shipyard Cafeteria). Cost is $6-$12. For reservations call 619-3675. www.touchablestories.org 

“People Are Everywhere” group show of artists from Brazil to Canada. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4225 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Gallery hours are Sat. and Sun. noon to 5 p.m.. Show runs to May 27. 295-8881. 

FILM 

“Lives for Sale” A documentary on immigration and human trafficking at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, Marian Hall, 2nd Flr., 2125 Jefferson St. Not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062.  

“Hysteria” by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Cost is $6. 464-4640. www.verticalpool.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alex Cavalli performs “Paul Face to Face” a dramatic presentation of Paul’s epistles as written in the King James Version of the Bible, at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 339-6316.  

Nina Lindsay and Helen Wickes, poetry reading for Sixteen Rivers Press at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 415-273-1303. wwwsixteenrivers.org 

Stephanie Nolan describes “28 Stories of AIDS in Africa” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dan Plonsey’s Daniel Popsicle “Music of El Cerrito: the Color Music” at 8 p.m. at the Fidelity Bank building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. Sponsored by the Berkeley Arts Festival. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Berkeley City College Talent Show with music, dance, spoken word and poetry by students, faculty and staff, at 7:20 p.m. at the Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 981-2965. 

Juan Escovedo and Tortilla Soup at noon at Oakland City Center Stage, 12th and Broadway.  

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12.. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

“A Night of New World Flamenco Jazz” with Tomas Michaud and the Gypsy Groove Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at Home of Truth, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Benefit for the Alameda Education Foundation. Tickets are $8-$15. www.WorldMelodies.com 

Rolando Morales Quintet at 5 p.m at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. 238-2200. 

Juanita Ulloa and Mariachi Picante’s Mujeres Music Festival at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Sheldon Brown Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Yolanda Alicia & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Aza and Moh Alileche at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Fairport Convention at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Ravines and Christina Kowalchuk at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Beep!, Smith Dobson Quartet, Kasey Knudson Group at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

La Plebe, Peligro Social, Eskapo 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. 

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

Jennifer Johns at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Becky White and the Secret Mission, mystic folk, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

Times 4 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Mister Loveless, The Catholic Comb, The Fedralists at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Hal Stein Quartet at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Hiromi at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MAY 5 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Juanita Ulloa and Ginny Morgan at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Fleeting Moments in Nature and Life” Bronze sculptures by Elizabeth Dante, plein air landscapes by Barbara Ward, watercolors by John Kenyon and paintings by Paul Graf. Reception for the artists at 5 p.m. at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibition runs through June 3. 848-1228. 

“Ceramics: Form and Function” by Phyllis Pacin, Cheryl Wolff and Ann Testa. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at Montclair Gallery, 1986 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Exhibition runs to June 18. 339-4286. 

“Divine Feminine” Contemporary Tantric Art from the collection of Robert Beer, reception at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Shambala Center, 2177 Bancroft.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Myriam Gurba reads from her debut fiction collection “Dahlia Season: Stories & a Novella” at 6 p.m. at Pegass Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“Measure of Time” Conversation with artists Alan Rath and Meredith Tromble at 1 p.m. in the Berekeley Art Museum Galleries, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

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.  

Chuck Palahniuk introduces his new novel “Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey” at 7:30 in the Pauley Ballroom, UC Campus. Tickets are $8 available from Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Art for Autism Poetry Reading and Art Auction with readings by Loretta Clodfelter, Gabrielle Myers, Dennis Smera and others at 5 p.m. at Gallery for Urban Art, 1746 13th St., West Oakland. Cost is $10. 910-1833. www.thegalleryofurbanart.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra features Gabriel Faure’s Requiem at 8 p.m. at Saint Joseph The Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations appreciated. www.bcco.org 

Berkeley Opera “Romeo and Juliet” at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2460 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$40. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12.. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

AVE, Artists‚ Vocal Ensemble Life and Death: A Requiem for the Victims of Darfur at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, Bancroft at Ellsworth. Tickets are $10-$25. www.ave-music.org 

“A Night of New World Flamenco Jazz” with Tomas Michaud and the Gypsy Groove Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at Home of Truth, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Benefit for the Alameda Education Foundation. Tickets are $8-$15. www.WorldMelodies.com 

“Sacred Monsters” with dance icons Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan at 8 p.m. at at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$86. 642-9988.  

The Arab Culture Initiative, hip hop for social change, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Nerio De Gracia Mambo Jazztet A tribute to Carlos Federico, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums with Carmen Getit at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Wildsang and James Riddle at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Space Heater at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Henry Clement & the Gumbo Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Adam Shulman Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Marc Lemaire & Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Minus Vince, Uptones, GDB at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Mark Growden, Freddi, Acoustic Virgin at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jason Webley, Rev Payton’s Big Damn Band, Vermillion Lies 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, MAY 6 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Through Windows” Photography by Michael Wong Reception at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

“Inspiring Blooms” works in colored pencil by Bei Brown. Reception for the artist at 2 p.m. at the Tilden Environmental Education Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

FILM 

“Works from the Eisner Prize Competition” with Sophie Cooper, Wenhua Shi and other artists in person at noon at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joseph Fisher will talk about the recently discovered childrens’ art from the federally funded childcare centers in Richmond during WWII at 3 p.m. at Moe’s Books. 849-2087.  

Alex Cavalli performs “The Gospel According to John” a dramatic rendition of biblical voices direct from the King James Version of the Bible at 2:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 339-6316.  

“The Human Drama of Everyday Lives: Telling Stories with Photos” with Oakland based photojournalist, Lexine Alpert at 2 p.m. in the Community Meeting Room on the third floor of the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6241. 

“The Sermon on the Print” with printmaker David Kelso, founder of California Intaglio Editions at 3:30 p.m at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

Adelina Anthony, Dino Foxx and Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano poetry at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Divine Feminine” Contemporary Tantric Art Lecture with Siddhartha V. Shah at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Shambala Center, 2177 Bancroft.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra features Gabriel Faure’s Requiem at 4:30 p.m. at Saint Joseph The Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations appreciated. www.bcco.org 

Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary in a family concert and sing-along at 2 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Tickets are $15-$20 from 559-9500. www.tash.org 

“Sacred Monsters” with dance icons Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan at 7 p.m. at at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$86. 642-9988. 

U.C. Santa Barbara Dance Company at 7 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. 925-798-1300. 

Twang Cafe features Rancho Deluxe & High Diving Horses at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $10, all ages welcome. www.twangcafe.com 

Jupiter String Quartet at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Vintage poster sale at 4 p.m. Tickets are $25-$30. 644-6893.  

Don Neeley’s Royal Society Five, music from the teens, twenties and thirties from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, 37417 Niles Blvd., Fremont. Cost is $20, benefits the museum. 494-1411. www.nilesfilmmuseum.org 

Irina Rivkin, Moira Smiley with VOCO & Ashley Maher at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ana Carbetti & Recita da Samba at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged: Jeanie & Chuck’s Country Roundup at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

David K. Mathews B-3 Organ Quartet at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Look, The Symptoms, Tea and Tricky Fish at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Benefit for La Familia Music Education. Cost is $10, $8 for 18 and under. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Philips Marine Duo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Elk, Horn of Daggoth, Sands at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

MONDAY, MAY 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

Photo Montages by Fletcher Oakes Reception with the artist at 7 p.m. at the It Club Gallery, 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Exhibition runs through May 30. www.touchablestories.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Aurora Theatre Staged Readings “Learn to be Latina” by Enrique E. Urueta at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. For tickets call 843-4822. 

Will Shortz on his favorite puzzles and how crosswords are created at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$32. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Chiura Obata and the Art of Internment with Kimi Kodani Hill, author, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

Michael J. Sandel, Harvard Professor of Government will discuss his new book, “The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering” at 4:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant. 625-0819. www.genetics-and-society.org 

Actors Reading Writers “From Story to Screen,” works by O. Henry and Annie Proulx at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Gloria Frym and Joseph Lease, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Avotcja at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

 

 

 

 


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Tuesday May 01, 2007

ETHNOPOETICIST READS AT MOE’S 

 

Dale Pendell, a poet, software engineer, and long-time student of ethnobotany, will read from Inspired Madness at 7:30 p.m. today (Tuesday) at Moe’s Books. Best known for his books of epic entheogenic poetry, Pendell was the founding editor of KUKSU: Journal of Backcountry Writing. He has led workshops on ethnobotany and ethnopoetics for the Naropa Institute and the Botanical Preservation Corps. 2476 Telegraph Ave.  

 

COLLAGE ARTISTS 

DISCUSS THEIR WORK 

 

The Berkeley Art Center is hosting an artists’ talk from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday for its new exhibition, “Constructions,” featuring the art of Jenny Honnert Abell, Marya Krogstad and Thomas Morphis, all of whom work—in different and challenging ways—in collage, assemblage and found object media. All three of the exhibiting artists will take part in the discussion. 1275 Walnut St. For details, see www.berkeleyartcenter.org. 

 

BEANBENDERS REUNITE FOR ARTS FESTIVAL GIG 

 

The Berkeley Arts Festival’s May 4 concert of Dan Plonsey’s “Daniel Popsicle” will be a reunion of some of the Beanbenders musicians, including John Schott, Tom Yoder, Lynn Murdock and Randy McKean. The show begins at 8 p.m. at the Fidelity Bank Building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. $10-$20. For details, 665-9496 or www.berkeleyartsfestival.com.


Savall’s Skill Lends Immediacy to Performance

By Ira Steingroot, Special to the Planet
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Before going to hear the work of a particular classical composer, which, for me, usually means Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Mahler, or Satie, I try to listen to recordings of the pieces on the program before hand. Listening ahead not only makes the melodies performed familiar, it also gives the live concert a nostalgic resonance, and suggests a context for the music, both the original moment of its creation in time by the composer, and its creative intervening afterlife.  

This eventually leads to the current moment of performance and my experience as audience.  

On the other hand, I have probably attended 100 times as many live jazz performances as classical and I have never felt the need to study up for a jazz musician. Certainly my familiarity with the context of jazz—its more contemporary nature, its use of popular standards—is part of the reason for that. More important though, jazz has an immediacy that, in a lot of classical music, has become secondary to historical authenticity of performance and accuracy of reproduction of notes. Not only is jazz improvised, making listening ahead irrelevant, but the players understand that improvisation confers upon them the further freedom of playing in the moment, playing from the way they feel while performing.  

Although I am sure that all musicians aim for that existential quality in one way or another, the only living classical player to impress me with that sense of immediacy is the Spanish viola de gambist, Jordi Savall, who returns to Berkeley for two concerts of early music this weekend. No matter how unprepared I am, Savall is always prepared—not just to unlock the doors to what should be an esoteric musical experience, but to blow the doors off their very hinges.  

His Friday evening concert will feature the compositions of Marin Marais (1656-1728) and Antoine Forqueray (1671-1745), dubbed the angel and the devil by Savall, the greatest viola de gambists of their time. The viola de gamba, if you do not know, is the instrument that preceded the cello. In fact, Savall’s viola, a 1697 instrument made in London by Barak Norman, had been converted into a cello. Savall had it restored as a seven-string viola de gamba with traditional moveable gut frets. If you know Gainsborough’s various portraits of Karl Friederich Abel, you may have noticed that the 18th century transitional composer/performer is sometimes painted with his viola de gamba and at other times with the newer cello. Also on the Friday evening program are pieces by François Couperin (1668-1733), Sainte Colombe le fils and Robert Visée.  

The Saturday concert will feature works by the Spanish composers Diego Ortiz, Gaspar Sanz and Antonio Martin y Coll, a harpsichord sonata by the Neapolitan composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), who spent most of his professional life in Spain, and improvisations on the Canario, a dance form from the Canary Islands. Also on the bill will be works by Bach, the revelatory Captain Tobias Hume (c. 1569-1645), Marin Marais, and Sainte-Colombe pere and fils. If you have seen the haunting film, Tous les Matins du Monde, based on the lives of Sainte-Colombe and Marais, with music performed and conducted by Savall, you will already be familiar with some of these vital early music composers.  

But, as I have indicated, it does not matter whether you already know any of this pre-classical music. Savall’s passion, virtuosity and freedom in performing these works makes everything he plays absolutely contemporary.  

 


BHS Revives ‘Hair’ for 40th Anniversary

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday May 01, 2007

Students at Berkeley High will “Let the Sunshine In” by performing a 40th anniversary celebration—and critical examination—of the musical Hair, this weekend and next on campus at the Florence Schwimley Theater. 

Director Maya Gurantz, founder of the East Bay theater troupe Ten Red Hen, which just finished their run of Clown Bible at the Willard School Metalshop Theater, called the production “a full collaboration with the students; they own the piece. They’ve been so creative.”  

“I was interested in a way for the cast to look at the legacy of hippies at Berkeley High and in their lives,” Gurantz said. “Hair itself wasn’t written by hippies, but by a couple of out-of-work New York actors. There’s a famous letter by Hal Prince to them saying there’s nothing experimental at all about the play. The music is ‘50s music, not ‘60s. It’s not genuine to the period, yet its legacy is that people are moved by it. It’s still provocative. It’s full of contradictions and we use it as a way to look at the contradictions of the legacy of the ‘60s.” 

The cast did their own research on the background, interviewing parents, teachers and others about the times the musical claims to exemplify 

“It was an opportunity to ask their parents and themselves what it was all about,” said Gurantz. “There’s something self-selective about doing this here, now ... so many of the parents came to the Bay Area from elsewhere looking for something. That already changes the tenor of who their kids are. One parent’s a wonderful photographer and has put together a display of pictures of parents then [in the ‘60s] until now, which will go up in the lobby with an exhibit of our research notes.” 

The play opens with a stage jammed “with so much stuff that it’s like a storage space. The cast enters as themselves, present-day Berkeley High students. There’s hardly any room for them! But they excavate and clear away all the clutter.”  

One number, “Going Down,” about getting expelled from school, which traditionally features actors as administrators with Hitler mustaches, proves a wry moment.  

“It makes no sense to Berkeley High kids,” said Gurantz. “And the real, present-day administrators watch the scene and say, ‘We’re so proud of our students challenging authority!’” 

Pianist and composer Dave Molloy, a colleague of Gurantz from Ten Red Hen, supervised the music, and according to Gurantz, the tone is definitely post-’60s: “An uptight girl comes out and sings ‘Aquarius,’ as if it’s the Pledge of Allegiance, and all the others react, ‘O God, not that song again!’ ”  

“There have been multiple productions every year for the past 40 years of Hair,” Gurantz said. “It’s usually presented as a nostalgia fest, nostalgia for something that maybe never was. An expression of yearning—I think the title song’s a sad song. Nostalgia for the ‘60s is often expressed as some idea of authenticity before everything became a commodity. But Hair was a commodity before it opened. It’s bizarre to do Hair in Berkeley, more than anywhere else. The strangest thing. But it’s the thing to do.” 

 

HAIR 

8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m., Sunday through May 12. $7-$15. Florence Schwimley Theater, Berkeley High School campus.


TheatreFIRST Struggles to Survive in Oakland Arts District

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday May 01, 2007

TheatreFIRST, Oakland’s only resident theater company, will perform the West Coast premiere of John Arden’s 1959 antiwar masterpiece, Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance, opening this Friday at 8 p.m., and running through May 27 at the Old Oakland Theatre, 481 Ninth St., just north of Broadway. 

Meanwhile, TheatreFIRST has also been waging a war of its own, one of survival, with what is perhaps its most challenging season artistically being matched by the greatest financial and logistical challenges in its 13-year history. 

Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance is “a very colorful, theatrical play,” according to Clive Chafer, director and founder of the company. “It’s about four soldiers on a recruiting mission during a war fought far from their home country, but it’s a recruiting mission with a different purpose: to shock the people of a town that’s in the grip of a miners’ strike into understanding the true nature of war.” 

There will be music and dancing, and the entire cast of 13 appears onstage during one scene in the storefront theater, “not the quiet psychological drama you’d expect in an intimate theater space! The actors directly address the audience, invite them to take sides, become passionately involved. It’s sometimes very funny, always appalling, and it slowly sucks you in—a fully engaged and engaging experience.” 

Chafer continued: “What I love about the play is its language—gritty, loamy, earthy, but never crude. British critic Michael Billingsley called it ‘language that seems hewn out of granite.’ I love to hear it spoken. And it’s the opposite of an academic discussion or a didactic tract. No single voice, not even the pacificists’, prove unflawed. Arden was a fan of Brecht, suspicious of plays with a mouthpiece. His characters are strongly written. It’s a parable, but one of complexity.” 

TheatreFIRST, which recently finished an acclaimed production of Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, historically the first play of intercultural and religious tolerance, with its tale of the web of relationships between Christians, Muslims and Jews, is a company that chooses unusual plays with a social dimension, staging them with proficiency and élan. But a combination of events has challenged their resourcefulness—not artistically, but in terms of finance and their tenure in the declared Arts District in downtown Oakland, from 3rd to 21st streets along the Broadway corridor. 

“We want to stay, to be a part of the neighborhood,” said Chafer. “It’s close to BART, well-lit, with a parking lot and six restaurants of a full range in price and cuisine. We committed seven years ago to being a full-time Oakland company. And we’ve been lucky so far and gratified by the support of both individuals and the city.” 

But an obstacle has arisen, “more a bureaucratic problem than anything else. The City of Oakland won’t be able to fund us for the next year—one program ends, and we don’t qualify for the next for a year. It’s been our biggest source of funding for quite a while. And we’re told they want us to stay, to fund us again. This comes at a time when we’re playing in the only unleased space in Old Oakland. Our landlords have been kind enough to let us occupy a storefront for less than the commercial rate, but the increased retail development in the area has made it hard. We need an influx of funds and a lease before we can announce a full season, with more shows than before. We need increased support, from the NEA down to local business.” 

But Chafer’s upbeat, noting progress: “Nathan the Wise was our best-attended play in 11 years, since we did Anything To Declare, a French farce at the Julia Morgan Center—and that had 400 seats, compared with the 75 we have in Old Oakland. We sold out more than half the performances! And people have stepped forward to help. It’s entirely individuals who have contributed to our next season, starting next fall. We know we’re on the right track, doing what people want to see.”  

 

 

SERGEANT MUSGRAVE’S DANCE 

Presented by TheatreFIRST at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and at 3 p.m. Sundays through May 27. $18-$25. Old Oakland Theatre, 481 Ninth St., just north of Broadway.436-5085 or www.theatrefirst.com.


Wild Neighbors: Where’s Poppa? The Case of the Fatherless Lizards

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday May 01, 2007

If you visit Mount Diablo this time of year and walk the Fire Interpretive Trail that circles the summit (highly recommended for wildflowers, including the locally rare bitterroot), you’re almost sure to meet one or more of the resident California whiptail lizards. Sometimes they dash across the path from one shelter to another, demonstrating why they’re also called racerunners. But I’ve had some escort me along their personal stretch of trail, keeping a wary eye on me all the while. 

California whiptails are fairly normal lizards, if there is such a thing, although as hot-pursuit predators they tend to operate at a higher temperature than the neighboring skinks, alligator lizards, and fence lizards. Normal would describe their reproduction: male meets female, a brusque courtship ensues, eggs get fertilized, the usual. 

But they have close relatives in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico—about 15 species altogether—that have evolved a much different approach. Male doesn’t meet female. There are, in fact, no males. These are all-female parthenogenetic species (from the Greek parthenos, “virgin,” as in Athene Parthenos, hence the Parthenon). It’s thought they originated as hybrids between two separate two-sexed species, a mode of speciation that’s rare in animals, although not uncommon among plants. This gives them an extra complement of chromosomes, with sets from both parent species. 

These unisexual lizards do pair off and go through the typical whiptail courtship routine. Like Ursula K. LeGuin’s Gethenians, an individual may assume both “male” and “female” roles over her lifetime. Without fertilization, whiptail eggs develop into clones, genetically identical to their sisters and their mothers and, barring the odd mutation, their founding grandmothers. 

This is not how vertebrates typically arrange things, of course. There are no parthenogenetic frogs, salamanders, birds, or mammals. But some fish and a number of reptiles do occur in female-only species.  

The lizards have gone into it in a big way, with, in addition to the whiptails, some 15 species of unisexual geckoes, night lizards, and representatives of other families. And there’s one parthenogenetic snake: the flowerpot blindsnake, which has traveled all over the world in potting soil. 

What’s the advantage of this reproductive mode? Well, if evolution is about maximizing the genes you pass on to the next generation, you can’t get any more maximal than a litter of clones. Parthenogens are great at colonizing disturbed places and remote islands; some of the geckoes that rode Polynesian voyaging canoes all over the South Pacific were all-female species. All it takes to found a new population is one gravid female. If every new addition is a fertile female, you can imagine the shape of the population growth curves. 

But, you might counter, if this is such a great deal, why are males (of any species) still around? It has been suggested that there are disadvantages to being a clone. Clones, by definition, have no genetic variety. In most species, males and females endow their offspring with a recombined mixture of their own genes, a brand new shuffle every time. Genetic variety is what makes some individuals more resistant than others to parasites and pathogens. If everyone in the population is a carbon copy, a novel disease might wipe out the lot of them. 

Beyond that, variation is the powerhouse of evolution. Genetic recombination gives natural selection something to select among—gene mixtures that may enable the organism to be better at obtaining food, eluding predators, surviving sudden catastrophes or more gradual environmental changes. Without variation, evolution stops. Some biologists have speculated that unisexual species may have fairly short life spans, in terms of geologic time. As good as they may be at exploiting new environments, all those parthenogenetic lizards may be just a flash in the pan. 

I wouldn’t want to predict the long-term fate of the whiptails. Note, however, the recent discovery that one group of parthenogenetic animals, the crotoniid soil mites, have gone back to a two-sex reproductive strategy. That’s comparable to a snake re-evolving legs, or a flightless bird re-evolving wings. “Nothing as complex as sex has ever been known to re-evolve,” says mite scholar Roy Norton of the State University of New York, Syracuse. You just never know.  

 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

A California whiptail lizard on his or her doorstep.  


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday May 01, 2007

TUESDAY, MAY 1 

“Energy Policy in California: 2006 Study Results and Aftermath” a League of Women Voters Brown Bag Lunch at noon at the Albany Library, Marin and Masonic Aves. 843-8824. 

“Why Save the Oaks?” a public forum on The Oaks & The Gym with Ignacio Chapela, Gray Brechin and others at 7 p.m. at 105 North Gate, UC Campus. www.saveoaks.com 

Free Legal Assistance the first Tues. of the month at 6 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Advance registration required. 526-3720, ext. 5. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Discussion Salon on “Is Society Sick” at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut. 848-2995. 

Teen Babysitting Class An introduction to child development and practical babysitting hints from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7353.  

“Bodhisattva” A lecture by Rev. Carol Himaka at 7 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton St. Registration fee is $10 for three lectures. 809-1460. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at UCB Fiji Fraternity, 2395 Piedmont Ave. To schedule an appointment call 415-531-8554. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

The UCB-BP Deal: Implications for the Public University with Jennifer Washburn, author of “University, Inc.,” Jean Lave, Ignacio Chapela and others at 7 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 

“Our History is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution” A panel discussion at 5 p.m. at the Heller Lounge, MLK Student Union, UC Campus. 

9th Annual Community Job Fair featuring representatives from more than 40 Bay Area employers from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the College of Alameda Central Quad, 555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway, Alameda. 748-2208. 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

New to DVD: “The Queen” at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome. 548-9840. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MAY 3 

“Berkeley Rocks” An illustrated lecture on one of Berkeley’s unique neighborhoods by Jonathan Chester at 8 p.m. in the Chapel, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $10. Presented by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. BAHA’s House and Garden Tour of this Thousand Oaks neighborhood will take place on May 6. For information on the lecture and tour please call 841-2242.www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Michael Parenti speaks on “Political Perception & Deception: How to Think About Empire” at 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Oakland, 501 Harrison St. Benefits Middle East Children’s Alliance. Tickets are $15. 1-800-838-3006. 

Alzheimer’s Services of the East Bay Art Auction and reception to benefit ASEB's Adult Day Health Care Program, at 6:30 p.m. at Piedmont Community Hall, 711 Highland Ave., Piedmont. 644-8292. 

“Sex Workers‚ Rights Approaches to Human Trafficking: Addressing the Need for Public Policy Reform and Challenging Misinformation” a forum from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Center for Labor Research and Education, 2521 Channing Way. 

Living with Ones and Twos Practical advice for new parents with Meg Zweiback, nurse practitioner at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. To register call 658-7353.  

Baby and Toddler Storytime at 10:30 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Poetry Workshop with Donna Davis, ongoing on Thurs. from 9 a.m. to noon at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Donation $10 per semester. 848-0237. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud's Pizza, 3290 Adeline. namaste@avatar.freetoasthost.info  

FRIDAY, MAY 4 

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 Philippe Eberhard on “Quantum Physics and Common Sense” 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.  

Law Literacy Outreach Program for youth aged 13-17 and their parents with workshops on legal responsibility Fri. and Sat. from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at East Bay Law School, 554 Grand Ave. 835-7999. www.eastbaylawschool.org 

“Lives for Sale” A documentary on immigration and human trafficking at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, Marian Hall, 2nd Flr., 2125 Jefferson St. Not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062.  

Five Star Night Benefit for Alameda County Meals on Wheels at 6:30 p.m. at Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension, 4700 Lincoln Ave., OAkland. Tickets are $300, sponsorships available. 577-3581. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Oakland Children’s Hospital, Outpatient Center Basement, 747 52nd St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. 

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 

Planning Meetings for a Dedication to denise brown will be on going every Fri. at 2 p.m. at LeConte, Room 104. Photos, videos and dvd's are welcome to be included in the event. For more information, contact Rita Pettit, PRitaAnn@aol.com, 559-4602. 

SATURDAY, MAY 5 

Bring Back the Natives Tour of “Gardening for Bees and Butterflries” throughout the East Bay. Cost is $30. 236-9558. www.BringingBackTheNatives.net 

Biking with Youth A free workshop for parents and children over 9 years old, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Carter Middle School Basketball courts, 4521 Webster St., Oakland. Bring your bike, helmet and be ready for a relaxed 4-mile ride. RSVP to 740-3150, ext. 332. 

Rollin’ by the Bay Bring your rollerskates/blades, skateboards, wheelchairs or scooters (no bikes) on a 3.5 mile cruise of the Eastshore State Park from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. For information call 525-2233. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk Join a Park Ranger for a walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters. Terrain is steep, wear walking shoes and bring water. Rain cancels. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Cal-Trans Park and Ride lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. 925-228-8860. 

The Crucible Open House for youth interested in learning how to weld, forge steel, melt glass, make jewelry, cast molten metal, and more from 1 to 3 p.m. at 1260 7th St., Oakland. Call to reserve a place at the orientation 444-0919. www.thecrucible.org 

Cinco de Mayo Fiesta from noon to 3 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

Design Your Own Russian Nesting Dolls at 2 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Annual Junktique Sale with furniture, computers, kitchen and household goods, books, linens, toys and more from 8:30 a.m. t0 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., corner of W. Richmond Ave., Point Richmond. To arrange donations call 964-9901.  

Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters Club meets to discuss ”Elderhostel: Adventures in Lifelong Learning” at 9 a.m. at 1950 Franklin St., Room 2F. RSVP required, ID needed to get into building. 581-8675. 

Cottage in the Woods Preschool Yard Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 3917 Lyman Rd., Oakland.  

Lead-Safe Painting & Remodeling Free class to learn about lead safe renovations for your older home, from 10 a.m. to noon at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline S., Oakland. Presented by Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.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 every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MAY 6 

“Among the Rocks” Berkeley Architectural Heritage’s 32nd Annual Spring Tour and Reception of homes and gardens in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood, from 1 to 5 p.m. Cost is $25-$35. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

STAND: Standing Together for Accountable Neighborhood Development Garden Fundraiser with live music by Robert Temple, light buffet and information on how to stop the high-density condo developments that threaten North Oakland’s identity and diversity, at 4 p.m. in the historic Temescal District, 449 49th St., at Clarke, Oakland. Cost is $25, $40 for couples, children free. 655-3841. 

Bringing Back the Natives, free self-guided garden tour of sixty gardens throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For details see www.BringingBackTheNatives.net  

To Bee or Not to Bee Learn about bees through a puppet show, and get to taste some honey at 11 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Community Cleanup and Weedout at King Middle School from 9 a.m. at noon Sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Berkeley. Please wear gloves and long pants, and bring clippers and other gardening tools. 527-8652. 

“Climate Change: Our Own Carbon Emissions” the second in a series of Sunday talks on Climate Change by Karen Street at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2151 Vine. 653-2803. 

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 

Prader-Willi Syndrome Walkathon at 10:30 a.m. Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. Registration fee is $20 for individual walkers or $50 for families or teams. Contact Prader-Willi California Foundation at 800-400-9994. www.pwcf.org 

Holistic Pet Evaluation from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. Free, appointments required. 525-6155. 

Parenting Teens Workshop on developing character in teens at 2:30 p.m. at Westminster House, 2700 Bancroft, enter on Bowditch. www.hyde.edu 

Community Singalong with the Cockettes pianist Scrumbly Koldewyn and Leslie Bonett to sing Broadway tunes and golden oldies from 3 to 6 p.m. at Lake Merritt Hotel, 1800 Madison, Oakland, near 19th St. BART. Cost is $5-$15. 534-2750. 

Broncho Billy’s Tea Dance, music from the teens, twenties and thirties from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, 37417 Niles Blvd., Fremont. Cost is $20. 494-1411. www.nilesfilmmuseum.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Meeting in Satsang and Dharma Inquiry with John Sherman, a teacher in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi at 3 p.m. in the Fireside Room, 1940 Virginia St. 495-7511. www.eastbayopencircle.org  

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin Caton on “Healing through Meditation” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, MAY 7 

Read Aloud Theater A free Berkeley Adult School class at 9 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190.  

“Human Rights in Chile: Then and Now” with Judge Juan Guzmán at 7 p.m. at the Women’s Faculty Club Lounge, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. http://clas.berkeley.edu 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at Tilden Room, MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

ONGOING 

Food Drive for Alameda County Food Bank Drop off canned goods, peanut butter, ceareal, powdered milk, beans, rice and pasta at Citibank, 200 Shattuck Ave. from May 1 to 15. Financial donations always welcome. 635-3663, ext. 318. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Library Board of Trustees Appointment Process will be discussed Tues., May 1, at 6:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Library, 1901 Russell St. 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., May 2, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.  

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed., May 2, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., May 3, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., May 3, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., May 3, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.  

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., May 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510.