Two years ago, Derby Street resident Martha Jones had a sofa sitting on the sidewalk of her block for an entire week. 

When Jones called Council-member Gordon Wozniak—her district’s representative—to complain, the grimy old sofa magically vanished, she said. 

“It started with the UC students who moved out of their apartments at the end of the semester and had no place to store their stuff,” she said. “At first it was just one sofa on the sidewalk, and then there was a whole family of them. If Gordon hadn’t stepped in to help, we would have turned into a furniture store.” 

As students gear up to take their last final at 3:30 p.m. today (Friday), the streets of Berkeley will likely once again be dotted with old sofas, desks, mattresses and other unwanted objects from cleared-out dorm rooms and student apartments. 

This year however, Jones has the option to call up a hotline (643-5309), which is part of an initiative the university has started with the city to tackle the trash students leave behind before they head home for summer. 

“On Thursday morning debris boxes—12 to 20 feet long—will be put out for students to use in areas near campus.” said Irene Hegarty, director of community relations for UC Berkeley. “Students often don’t have cars, since the university advises them not to bring vehicles to school because of parking problems. So they don’t have a way to get rid of the stuff they won’t be using anymore. As a result, the curbside becomes a dumping ground.” 

Although there have been efforts in the past by both UC Berkeley and the city to clean up the campus after students leave for break, none has been effective. 

With the university donating $20,000 and the city $10,000, Hegarty thinks the funds are enough to cover the expenses for the clean-up this year. 

“Door hangers were also hung up on the north side and the south side which alerted students about ways to recycle their trash,” she said. “This weekend and the next, a drop-off recycling center will be set-up on the Clark Kerr campus. Non-profits such as the Alameda County Food Bank and the American Cancer Society will be there to pick up stuff. Computer parts and anything with a plug will be picked up by computer resource centers.” 

Last June, a trip to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Co., by the Chancellor’s Task Force on Student/Neighbor Relations—which in-cluded Hegarty and Assistant City Manager Jim Hynes—introduced them to the “Great Sofa Round-Up.” 

“Colorado State students take a parking lot and drop sofas and chairs off before they leave their dorms,” she said. “It’s difficult to do that here because there’s no one single weekend when students graduate or take their last finals.” 

While some students are happy with UC Berkeley’s efforts this year, others are not too sure they will make a difference. 

“Sure, it’s a small step in the right direction,” said mechanical engineering/political science student Igor Tregub. “Unfortunately, attempts to publicize this effort have probably begun too late for students to have any knowledge about this opportunity this year.” 

Tregub, who will be in Utah for summer, plans to drop off some furniture before he takes off. As of Thursday, he had no idea where the dumpsters were being put up. 

“I wish we had received some kind of map of where to go,” he said. “I guess I am just going to look for the dumpsters close to my apartment at Parker and Dwight.” 

The university posted a No Dumping poster displaying a beat-up sofa with the message: “A sofa on the sidewalk is not lawn furniture” on the 2400 block of Warring street Thursday morning. Hegarty said that more dumpsters would be put out today (Friday) and Saturday.  

According to Hegarty, the most trashed areas were near the fraternities located east of College Avenue, and the one and a half miles around campus. 

Emma Till, a freshman who lives on the Clark Kerr campus, said that she had not heard about the dumpsters, the door hangers or the recycling. 

“I am completely clueless about it,” she said, walking down Channing Way Thursday. 

Others such as Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers Chris Wenner and Neill Barrett said they were happy to see the dumpsters in front of their frathouse. 

“In the past people have been upset with students for leaving things on the sidewalk,” said UC Berkeley student Jason Overman, who ran against Gordon Wozniak for City Council last year. “We haven’t had accessible dumpsters in the past. Now we do, and I think it’s an important step in helping to show the community that students care about their neighborhoods and are interested in keeping them clean.” 

Alan Lightfeldt, a Spring 2007 graduate, said that the university has a duty to make sure that students are responsible neighbors and to give them the proper resources to achieve that. 

“Since I will be moving away to D.C., most of my furniture will be going to friends and the remaining stuff will be sold on craigslist.com,” he said. “One man’s trash is often another man’s treasure. It pays to post.” 

Move-Out Campaign Dumpster Locations 

Locations for debris bins (asterisk  

indicates priority—put out on Friday  

if possible at or near the following locations): 

1. Corner of Channing/Fulton  

(2400 block of Fulton) 

2. *Dwight Way: 2200 block  

3. Dana/Dwight Way 

4. Dana: 2500 block (between 2522 and 2600) 

5. *Ellsworth/Blake (2500 block of Ellsworth) 

6. *Fulton/Parker (2600 block of Fulton) 

7. Ellsworth: 2600 block 

8. Corner of Parker/Regent (on Regent) 

9. *Derby between College/Benvenue 

10. *Benvenue: 2500 block, mid-block (large debris bin) 

11. *Hillegass: 2500 block (northern end) 

12. Regent: 2500 block (southern end) 

13. Haste Street: 2700 block 

14. *Warring: first block south of Dwight Way, west side of street 

15. *Prospect: 2500 block, mid-block 

16. *Warring: 2400 block, mid-block yellow loading zone (west side of street) 

17. *Durant, between College and Piedmont (red zone) 

18. *Channing: 2700 block (red zone) 

19. *College: 2500 block (at top of  

Parker) 

20. *College: Between Garber and Stuart 

21. *North of campus: Ridge/Euclid, red zone 

22. Ridge/LeRoy

More than 50 complaints lodged with the Police Review Commission against various Berkeley police officers sit awaiting action at the city’s Police Review Commission offices. 

The commission’s complaint hearings were suspended in September, following the California Supreme Court decision Copley Press v. San Diego. 

Hoping to restart the hearings, the City Council voted 7-0-2 Monday in closed session, with Councilmember Gordon Wozniak abstaining and Council-member Darryl Moore absent, to go back to court and appeal a related local case, Berkeley v. Berkeley Police Association (BPA). 

The court ruling in favor of the BPA is similar to the Supreme Court decision: both say a police officer’s record, including complaints against the officer, are personnel matters that cannot be made public.  

The grounds on which City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque intends to appeal the Berkeley v. BPA ruling have not been made public. In arguments with which the court disagreed, Albuquerque contended that since the PRC does not determine whether or how officers are to be disciplined, which is the city manager’s responsibility, personnel confidentiality is not violated under Berkeley’s complaint system and the Copley case does not apply to the city. 

Given the growing number of unheard complaints against the Berkeley police, the Police Review Commission voted to hold their boards of inquiry behind closed doors until such time as they could again hold them in public.  

This is what Oakland is doing, according to PRC Officer Victoria Urbi, who, with the city attorney, wrote draft regulations for closed hearings patterned on Oakland’s closed hearing regulations. (Oakland and all the other California jurisdictions with police complaint processes suspended open hearings around the same time that Berkeley did.) 

Urbi said that Oakland’s police union sat down with that city’s police commission and agreed on rules to hold complaint hearings behind closed doors. 

In Berkeley, however, “the Association has not weighed in on the [proposed] regulations,” City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque told the Daily Planet, saying that the BPA attorneys said they were going to put a proposal in writing, but never did. 

“They never sent us anything,” Albuquerque said. “I consider them to be obstructionist.” 

“They’ve been using stalling tactics to hold off our hearings,” Urbi said. 

Attorney Jim Chanin, a former PRC commissioner who helped found the commission 30 years ago, agreed: “They don’t want closed hearings,” he said. “They don’t want civilian review.” 

However, BPA President Officer Henry Wellington said they have offered to meet: “We have diligently tried at every turn to see how we can move forward,” he told the Planet, arguing that simply posting a draft on the city’s website or putting in a PRC agenda packet with only a few days notice is inadequate. “No one has asked us to sit down,” he said. 

In an April 24 letter BPA attorney Allison Berry-Wilkinson wrote to Albuquerque saying that if new regulations are proposed, they must be submitted to the BPA under a formal “meet and confer” process that is generally part of contract negotiations. 

PRC Commission Chair Sharon Kidd and Commissioner Michael Sherman both told the Planet they surmised, after the closed-door meeting in which the PRC sat with the City Council, that if the city attempted to hold closed door police complaint hearings, the union would take the city to court. 

Berry-Wilkenson’s letter seems to indicate that: “Please be advised that the Berkeley Police Association intends to exercise its right to meet and confer prior to any proposed regulation changes and will enforce that right, if necessary, through further legal proceedings.”

In an effort to bring more transparency to library governance, the Board of Library Trustees held its first public hearing last week on the budget, giving the public a chance to comment on how the institution spends the $13 million it receives through the city’s library tax.  

“It went well,” said Trustee Laura Anderson, reached by phone Thursday. A Power Point presentation by Budget Manager Beverli Marshall made the budget “clear to the public—and questions were entertained on how the money is spent.” Anderson said, adding that she thinks the information provided was adequate for her to make decisions to approve the budget in June. 

Library Director Donna Corbeil, also interviewed Thursday, agreed, but took note of the small number of participants from the public. “It would have been great if more people had been there,” she said. 

But Peter Warfield of the Library Users’ Association said the budget hearing ignored a critical question: what are ongoing costs of the library’s three-year-old Radio Frequency Identification system? Without understanding the costs, Warfield told the Daily Planet, this system of checking out books to the earlier barcode system can not be compared.  

“I think RFID is a money suck,” Warfield said. (The RFID system has also raised questions of personal privacy.) 

With the help of documents and other information provided by Corbeil, the Daily Planet was able to uncover some of the costs, which include loan repayment, materials and a maintenance contract. 

The price for the RFID system, purchased from New Jersey-based Checkpoint Systems, was $643,000, of which the library initially paid $143,000 in 2004 and funded the rest through a loan at about $111,400 per year, according to an October 18 2005 staff report by Budget Manager Beverli Marshall.  

The cost of the loan was noted in the library’s Fiscal Year 2007 adjusted budget at $127,280. According to Corbeil, the exact payment per year varies and the total payment of the loan by 2008 will not exceed $556,957. 

Another ongoing RFID expense is the annual $35,000 maintenance contract with Checkpoint Systems.  

A larger ongoing expense is the RFID tags, inserted in library materials so that the user can check them out. 

“Regular tags cost 77 cents each and media or donut tags [used on CDs and DVDs] cost $2.12 each. We estimate that in FY06/07 we added 31,000 items to the collection,” Corbeil said in an e-mail on Wednesday, responding to Daily Planet questions. 

One can compare these costs to a Sept. 14, 2005 report to the library board from Trarie Kottkamp, technical services manager, in which the regular tags were listed at 60 cents each and the donut tags were at $1.15. It is also of note that at the time the Board of Trustees voted to approve the system it was expected that these prices would fall. 

“There is general agreement that in the near future the costs of the RFID security tags should drop below their current 60 cents apiece,” Kottkamp wrote at the time. 

Warfield commented that the predicted decrease in the price of tags was one of its selling points. “It was a kind of fraud,” he alleged.  

Corbeil said the library does not keep specific records on the amount of time workers spend inserting the tags into the various media.  

Speaking for the library workers union, Andrea Segall, SEIU 535 vice president, said the concern of the workers is that there be enough money in the system so that an adequate number of library workers staff the libraries at all times and that they are able to “provide good service and worker safety.” 

Segall said that staff is working with Corbeil to analyze the effectiveness of the RFID system. “With a limited budget, we don’t want money going to things that are not working well,” she said. 

One of the goals of the group working with Corbeil is to determine whether the RFID system is operating as it is supposed to. 

Corbeil pointed out that if the Checkpoint System were found lacking, there would be new equipment expenses if the library board decided to go back to the old bar code system.

A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) plan to build a 25,000-square-foot, 60-bedroom, four-story guest house at the lab poses no significant negative environmental impacts, lab officials contend. 

Berkeley city Planning Direc-tor Dan Marks says he’s inclined to agree, especially when the relatively small lodging facility is compared with the lab’s plans for major construction projects outlined in their draft Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) covering the years through 2025. 

And the president of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA), which has argued consistently for the university to develop a more symbiotic relationship with downtown businesses—including restaurants and hotels— says the organization has no objections to the plan. 

The lab’s LRDP for the years through 2025 calls for 980,000 square feet of new construction, an additional 1,000 new employees and 375 to 500 new parking spaces, but the plan’s new guest quarters isn’t among them. 

LBNL officials have included the project under the previously approved development levels included in their last LRDP, completed in 1987. 

Details of the guest house project are outlined in a draft Negative Declaration filed on the lab’s website, and the lab is taking comments through the end of the month for consideration in the document’s final draft. 

According to draft, “The Guest House would address a lack of convenient, affordable, and short-term accommodations on the LBNL campus for faculty, postdoctoral associations, students, and other visitors to affiliated UC Berkeley science facilities.” 

The building “would support the research mission of the University of California by providing convenient and affordable aaccommodations in close proximity to scientific, engineering and technological research facilities on the LBNL campus.” 

The declaration estimates that half of the occupants would be spending their time at the lab’s Advanced Light Source, the massive accelerator scientists use to create ultra-fine x-rays and super-bright ultraviolet rays. 

“The thinking is that scientists need to be near the experiments,” Marks said. 

The three-story structure would house 44 “standard” bedrooms, 12 larger rooms and four “studio suites.” 

And while the structure’s overall height is listed as four stories, plans reveal that most of the structure is only three floors, with a small raised section in the middle of the building. 

At peak occupancy, the building would house 73 residents, served by a permanent staff of eight. No dining facilities are indicated in the statement, which notes that the building is located across a roadway from the lab’s cafeteria building. 

Plans for the facility also include an office, a laundry and a fitness center. 

Construction would require the elimination of one existing structure, a trailer that now occupies the site, according to the documents prepared in compliance with state and federal environmental laws. 

“It’s not a bad design,” said Marks, “and the impacts are relatively small. There won’t be much traffic, and there might be even less than there is now, since the scientists won’t need to commute from lodgings that are more distant from the lab.” 

Although the lab is currently preparing a new LRDP, it has incorporated the new facility under its previous LRDP, issued in 1987. 

Marks, who is challenging the lab’s proposed new LRDP, said he doesn’t have any problems with including the guest house under the old document. 

“They are considerably under the amount of square footage and the number of employees that were approved in the existing LRDP,” Marks said. “There is plenty of room in it for this kind of use. We are much more concerned about some of the projects in the new LRDP.” 

Mark McLeod, president of the DBA, which represents downtown businesses, said that while he continues to believe the relationship between town and gown should be symbiotic, “I do not think that this particular project violates that wish for [a] symbiotic relationship. Rather, it sounds like LBNL is providing accommodations which offer very little, if any, competition to city-based hotels,” while providing a needed service for the lab’s research goals. 

Similar guest houses are available at other labs, McLeod said.  

Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois maintains a 157-room guest house, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wa., boasts an 81-room guest house, while Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., not only operates a 13-room guest house, but also maintains 409 other rental housing units, ranging from dormitories to detached cottages. 

Barbara Hillman, president of the Berkeley Convention & Visitors Bureau, said she agreed with McLeod that the guest house “is not intended to displace business at local hotels.” 

Hillman said she was confident visitors to the lab’s lodgings would patronize the city’s restaurants and attractions “when their schedules permit.” 

The one definitive loss to the city would be room tax revenues that would be paid if lab guests were to stay in city hotels. A call on the subject to City Manager Phil Kamlarz had not been returned by deadline Thursday. 

The full set of documents is posted on the lab’s website at www.lbl.gov/  

Community/env-rev-docs.html.

When Augustin Aguayo joined the military the young man thought it would open doors for him, but soon realized that he had been mistaken. 

Recently released from military prison in Germany, Aguayo addressed a gathering Tuesday morning outside City Hall sponsored by the city’s Peace and Justice Commission, Courage to Resist and the Ehren Watata support committee. 

The event was to celebrate the city’s first Conscientious Objectors and War Resisters Day, an event to be observed annually every May 15. 

While his application for conscientious objector status was being processed, Aguayo was deployed to Iraq as a medic. “I realized how wrong war was,” Aguayo said. There he refused to load his weapon, even when he was standing guard duty.  

Aguayo’s conscientious objector application was denied while he was back from Iraq and on base in Germany. Instead of accepting deployment to Iraq a second time Aguayo went AWOL in September of 2006 and consequently spent about six months in prison. 

“Some think it’s a cowardice act,” Aguayo said, adding that he had to do what his conscience dictated.  

Tonight (Friday) Courage to Resist is sponsoring a talk by Camilo Mejia at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Former Staff Sgt. Mejia spent a year in prison for refusing to return to duty in Iraq after his request for conscientious objector status was denied. 

Photograph by Judith Scherr. 

Augustin Aguayo at Tuesday’s Conscientious Objectors and War Resisters Day rally.

With some predictions that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new budget proposals could have severe effects on the East Bay’s public transit system, East Bay transit officials and its powerful trio of state legislators are indicating that a fight is in the works. 

Because of a projected $2.2 billion shortfall in state income, the governor is proposing siphoning off some $200 million more in public transportation funds from the state’s General Fund, on top of some $630 million Schwarzenegger proposed to move from public transportation to the General Fund in his original January budget. The budget update is part of what is commonly known as the “May Revise,” when California governors recalculate their originally-submitted budget after more information on real revenue and expenditures is gathered. 

In an explanation of the new budget figures on the governor’s website, the administration calls it a “fiscally responsible” May Revise, saying that the revisions “maintain (the governor’s) commitment to aggressively pay down debt, restrain spending and build the state’s reserve while fully funding education and maintaining California’s public safety, environmental and health care priorities. The May Revision achieves these goals without raising taxes, and maintains some of the nation’s highest funding to support vulnerable populations.” 

The administration report also noted that “California is investing more in its transportation system than ever before under the Governor’s leadership,” citing, among other things, voter passage last November of a bond measure “to relieve traffic congestion on California's overcrowded roads, expand the state's mass transit and rail systems and improve air quality near California’s ports.” 

But the independent Legislative Analyst’s Office immediately concluded that it did “not believe that the administration’s transportation proposal is workable,” the LAO adding that “it would not provide the assumed $830 million in savings.” 

And in a letter to local transit agencies sent out immediately following the release of the May Revise, the Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC) said that, taken with other cutbacks, “the Governor’s budget would give the Bay Area only 30% of the public transit funds that they are legally entitled to.” TALC estimated that the cuts would cost BART “over $21 million in funds they were relying on,” adding that the governor’s new budget “would result in a $10 million gash in AC Transit’s operating budget.” The TALC letter said that the state fund shortfall could cause AC Transit to either raise fares or cut service, or both. 

Calling the governor’s proposal “bad for BART,” the Bay Area Rapid Transit District said that the $21 million funding loss could halt plans for additional customer service expenditures by the district, including the hiring of more police officers, adding more trains on nights and weekends, and adding more connector buses to BART stations. In addition, BART says that the governor’s new budget could result in delaying $38 million in state money the district had earmarked for earthquake retrofitting of the tube under the bay. 

Referring to the recent truck accident that led to the collapse of a portion of the MacArthur Maze freeway, BART Board President Lynette Sweet said in a prepared statement that "two weeks ago today the Governor saw just how important BART and other public transit is to the Bay Area. We are grateful for his decision to make public transit free to help alleviate traffic congestion [following that collapse]. But it’s stunning that, not two weeks later, his revised budget makes deep cuts to the operating and expansion budgets of the very transit agencies that have come to the rescue of the tens of thousands of drivers who today continue to rely on us as we wait for crews to repair the freeway.” 

And AC Transit Assistant General Manager for Communications and External Affairs said “it is always a battle [in Sacramento] at this time of the year. And, unfortunately, public transit is not in many circles a very ‘sexy’ issue.” 

Meanwhile, the governor’s public transportation cutback proposals brought immediate opposition from local legislators, who will now deliberate and vote on the governor’s proposed budget. 

“I think the proposed cuts would be devastating in their effect on public transportation,” Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) said in a telephone interview. For AC Transit, Hancock said that the cuts “would likely result in fare increases and route cutbacks, which would result in fewer people riding the buses, and a further loss in revenue. It’s a downward spiral. With 80 percent of greenhouse gases coming from auto pollution, and a good proportion of that coming from single-person auto trips, the governor ought to be increasing money to public transportation rather than decreasing it if he is serious about addressing the problem of global warming.” 

Hancock added that “these cuts can’t stand,” and said that “I think you’re going to see a lot of negotiating in the next month.” 

And in a prepared statement, Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland), who sits on the Assembly Budget Committee and will have one of the first cracks at the May Revise, said “Bay Area residents are all too familiar with gridlock and overly congested freeways. This is why they have always taken advantage of our world class public transportation system to help relieve the pressure on our road systems. On top of that, the people in my District take pride in the part they play in reducing the threat of global warming. I believe that the budget should provide for investing in public transportation so that it reflects our growing population and our State’s commitment to creating a greener system for commuting. The proposed transportation cuts are moving in the wrong directions for these priorities. I will be fighting in Sacramento for a budget that reflects my district’s priorities.” 

In remarks reported in the online California Progress Report, Senate President Don Perata (D-Oakland) said that “it looks like, once again, the most vulnerable Californians are in the free-fire zone,” adding that “if you look at this budget, there is no rhyme or reason to anything that is being done. I would defy anybody to sit down and plot this out and say this is the fiscal policy of the state of California. It’s not there.” 

BART and AC Transit plan to count heavily on Hancock, Swanson, and Perata in a lobbying fight to prevent the governor’s proposed public transportation cutbacks. In this fight, AC Transit would appear to have an inside track, at least with Perata. Ward Three Board Director Elsa Ortiz (representing Alameda and portions of Oakland and San Leandro) currently serves as Special Counsel to Perata on issues affecting Indian Nations. And Ortiz is no stranger to the legislature, having previously served as chief of staff to Perata’s predecessor in the senate president’s position, Bill Lockyer. 

The long-running battle of Casino San Pablo is at an end, with both sides claiming victory. 

Under compromise legislation by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), the Lytton Rancheria band of Pomos can continue to operate slot machine bingo games, but they can’t expand their operation nor can they add Las Vegas-style slots and poker machines. 

The settlement leaves the door open for new casinos, putting an end to a proposal by Governor Arnold Schwarz-enegger to grant Casino San Pablo a monopoly in the Bay Area. 

“I’m glad we have it behind us, and that we have precluded the construction of the big, giant casino,” said Assemblymember Loni Hancock, a leading opponent of the planned expansion of the East Bay’s only tribal casino. 

The terms of the legislation have already been endorsed by tribal chair Margie Mejia, who oversaw the transformation of the casino from a cardroom to a palace for wagering machines. 

“It freezes the number of machines at the current level, and it precludes building anything outside the casino’s current envelope,” Hancock said. 

The law would also overturn the backdating of the acquisition of the casino by the Lytton Rancheria band of Pomos, a provision slipped into federal law in 2000 by U.S. Rep. George Miller. 

Miller’s legal temporal legerdemain could have allowed the tribe to follow less stringent requirements for installing the full-scale Las Vegas gambling machines. 

Under his measure, the tribe would have had an easier path to installing regular slots and poker machines, dubbed Class III machines under federal gambling law, rather than its current collection of slot-like bingo machines, which fall under the less restrictive Class II provision that includes the more typical gaming board and marker bingo games. 

In the face of mounting opposition from local governments, the tribe had opted for bingo machines, installing the first allotment of 500 on Aug. 1, 2005. 

The machines, beyond challenge under federal law, proved a bonanza for both the tribe and the city, and revenues soared. Tribal payments to the city of 7.5 percent of the gross machine wager and a smaller PILOT (payments in lieu of taxes) fee accounted for two-thirds of San Pablo’s general fund budget by the following year, or $10.9 million, according to city records. 

Funds to the city from the 1,050 machines now in place total more than $1 million monthly, more than four times the revenues the city received from the casino’s previous card room incarnation. 

Feinstein’s measure would will also drive the final stake through the heart of the deal once proposed by the tribe and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to allow the tribe to build a massive, 5,000-slot gambling palace with a Bay Area casino monopoly in exchange for giving the state 25 percent of the casino’s take. 

While the measure still needs to pass both houses of Congress and a presidential signature, Hancock said she expects passage as a routine matter.

Berkeley’s Transportation and Planning commissions and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) will meet with representatives of AC Transit next Thursday night, May 24, to talk about Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). 

The bus agency hopes to create dedicated bus lanes that will enable commuters to make relatively fast trips along a 17-mile corridor connecting Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro. 

If approved, the project could lead to major changes in the streetscapes of Telegraph and Shattuck avenues and Adeline Street. 

BRT plans are playing a key role in DAPAC’s discussions about the new downtown plan, and the proposal has the strong backing of the Transportation Commission. 

Thursday’s joint meeting, which begins at 7:30 p.m., has been shoehorned into the agenda of the Transportation Commission meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. 

The meeting will be held in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The project’s Draft Environmental Impact Review will be the subject of another meeting June 14, a public hearing that will be held at 7 p.m., also in the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

The environmental documents are available online at the AC Transit website. 

Copies are also available at the Main, South and Claremont branches of the Berkeley Public Library, and at UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Library, 210 Wurster Hall.

School burglary 

At 1:12 p.m. on Sunday, three teenage boys broke into King Middle School, on the 1700 block of Rose, and an alarm went off. The police arrived on the scene and arrested the suspects. 

Nudity at Fat Slice 

On Sunday at 2:20 p.m., there was a case of indecent exposure at Fat Slice on the 2300 block of Telegraph Avenue. The man is not in custody. 

Home invasion 

On May 7, a little after midnight, several individuals wearing dark clothing broke into a home on the 2400 block of Milvia St and stole a laptop. No suspects have been identified. 

Stabbing with fire 

At 4:21 a.m. on May 7, on the 2600 block of Shattuck Avenue, somebody broke into the Fire Station and stabbed two firefighters, who were injured. The Police Department arrested the suspect. 

Forceful trespassing 

On May 7 at 6:56 a.m. an intoxicated man forced himself into a private residence on the 2300 block of Seventh Street. The residents forced him back out of the house. The man was detained and arrested on the scene. 

Auto burglary 

On May 8, somebody broke into a vehicle at night and smashed the window on the 2900 block of Hillegass Avenue. Nothing was taken and no suspects have been identified. 

Another auto burglary 

On May 8, someone smashed the window of a teal Ford Taurus. A GPS system was taken. Somebody driving by the vehicle witnessed the incident. The suspects have yet to be identified by the witness.

At a contentious meeting of the Point Richmond Neighborhood Council (PRNC) on Monday dues-paying members voted 60-7 against supporting a local committee’s proposal to tear down the Richmond library’s Westside branch in Point Richmond and move the branch’s operations to a nearby rental facility. 

The city of Richmond has a unique method of ensuring community participation in local issues: 37 neighborhood groups meet, many of them monthly, under the auspices of the Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council to discuss issues of importance to locals and bring concerns to the nine-member City Council. 

PRNC president James Bottoms said in his opening remarks on Monday that the gathering of about 80 people in the basement of Our Lady of Mercy church was the largest PRNC meeting he had ever attended. Also present were Richmond’s Vice Mayor Nathaniel Bates, Councilmember Harpreet Sandhu, and past Mayor Rosemary Corbin. 

Sallie DeWitt, a business analyst and longtime community volunteer, spoke on behalf of the committee to move the library. She explained that the move is part of a proposal to create a “village green” in the center of Point Richmond, much like town centers in Healdsburg, Windsor, San Rafael and Mill Valley. 

A village green would increase foot traffic in the area and stimulate business, committee members believe. “Business in Point Richmond is hurting,” said DeWitt, whose stepdaughter owns a framing shop and gallery downtown. “It’s not dying but hurting.” 

DeWitt told the audience that the committee seeks “a reopened library and community services center in a safe, secure, modern facility, and a vibrant, thriving, attractive and safe downtown where all can gather as friends” for art and musical events, as well as farmers’ markets. 

Such events already take place in the area around the library, she said in an interview on Tuesday, “but they’re in the street. Personally, I think it could be a more attractive event if we didn’t have to be in the street and work around a generally dilapidated center that’s been that way for years now.” 

The Westside branch library is located at 135 Washington Ave. in the heart of Point Richmond, on a pie-wedge-shaped block that also houses the area’s fire station. Opened in 1961, the library doubles as a community center. It was closed, along with the Bayview branch library near South Carlson Boulevard, in May 2004. 

According to Monique LeConge, director of library and community services, “The city of Richmond found itself in debt close to $35 million” that year. In addition to closing the two branches, Richmond cut library staffing from 80 to 21 people. Richmond’s only remaining library was then open to the public for only 24 hours a week. 

LeConge began working for the city in October 2004. The city library now has about 60 staffers, including librarians, library assistants, library aides and pages to shelve materials. The main library is open 42 hours a week, and the book-mobile runs four days a week. 

With capital improvement funds in hand “to do an extreme makeover” of the two branches, including adding new carpet and new paint and buying new materials and computers, the Westside (Point Richmond) and Bayview branches are scheduled to reopen sometime this summer, said LeConge. 

But on May 1, the Richmond City Council decided to consider whether the committee’s proposal to move the Point Richmond library was viable. No one seemed quite ready for this action. 

DeWitt said that the all-volunteer committee had no previous notice that the City Council intended to reopen the libraries this summer. “It was only a few weeks ago that (we heard) that the city was not only ready to reopen the library but to spend tens of thousands of dollars on it.” 

If the Point Richmond branch reopened, chances were that the village green would never become a reality. 

She said the City Council decision “caused [the committee] to go faster, and I think that’s what caused the problem of people thinking we were going behind their backs, which wasn’t true.” Some locals became suspicious that the committee had gone straight to the city council in order to bypass the city’s Design Review Board, which reviews proposed changes to local buildings. 

According to DeWitt, the committee would have preferred that the library reopen temporarily in its current location while the committee fleshed out its proposal with projected costs and a fuller plan. 

Meanwhile, back at the library, LeConge was eager to fix the Westside branch’s roofing and mold problems, and order carpeting and furniture. “It’s frustrating to be very close to remodeling branches, making them more like libraries in other communities that can really serve their communities, and then to have to wait.” 

Community members at Monday evening’s PRNC meeting were vocal in their opposition to DeWitt’s presentation about moving the library and creating a village green. Some audience members raised questions and comments as she spoke. PRNC president Bottoms asked the audience to hold all comments until after DeWitt had given her talk. 

So many people wanted to speak after DeWitt’s presentation that Bottoms limited them to two minutes of comments each. About 18 people spoke, most making sure to mention how long they had lived in Point Richmond. One community member used his allotted time to chastise people in the room for their rudeness, calling their behavior “reprehensible,” regardless of how they felt about the committee’s proposal. 

Asked the day after the meeting whether the committee would change its proposal to the city council, DeWitt said the committee would withdraw its proposal. 

“There’s no path forward for this proposal as we had envisioned it, none. We really wanted to know if the community wanted to consider a proposal that included at any time in the future relocating the library. And what we got back was a resounding ‘No.’ ... It was a little more intense and hostile than I would have liked, but I don’t expect people to always agree with me.” 

A longtime community activist who has raised funds for educational and nonprofit groups in Richmond and greater Contra Costa County, DeWitt said that the hostility she encountered at the PRNC meeting “has left me confused, quite confused, because I don’t know how to respond to that. So I’m going to have to consider that for quite some time. And when I do move into the future with this community, I will take that into consideration and be much more wary.”

The eclectic assembly of artists who have made The Shipyard a hub of creativity for the past six years was packing up over the weekend, evicted—they say—by the city. 

Not so, says Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth, one of the three city officials who signed a notice to vacate and abate the shipping containers used by the yard’s 30 artists as studios. 

Jim Mason, who recently signed a new 15-year lease on the West Berkeley site, said he intends to organize a coalition of artists to fight for their right to stay in the city. 

Meanwhile, he said, “Many of the artists have major projects for the summer, and my first responsibility is to make sure they have a place to work.” 

As a result, many of the artists have already moved out of their containerized studios at 1010 Murray St. and into temporary new quarters in Oakland, while others were busily packing up Monday. 

Orth said the city acted after he noticed that Mason had recently added another dozen containers to The Shipyard. 

“We had been working with him for five years trying to legalize what he had, and then he decided to expand, adding another dozen shipping containers,” Orth said. 

But the city hasn’t ordered eviction—only that Mason comply with city codes, Orth said. 

The city served Mason and property owners James and Leann Lin with an eight-page letter May 8, but Mason was able to negotiate an extension to give his renters time to move. That continuation ends Friday. 

The letter, signed by Orth, city Building Official Joan MacQuarrie and Zoning Officer Mark Rhoades, cited 15 Building Code violations, 13 city and state fire code violations and 4 city Zoning Ordinance violations. 

“It was impossible to meet,” Mason said. “There’s probably a million pounds of stuff to move, and with the threat of jail and $2,500-a-day fines, there was no choice but to move. 

“They had us surrounded on all fronts,” he said. 

But Orth said the issues involved safety and clearly established code violations, among them encroachment on other property, including the existing railroad right of way the city intends to acquire for a bike trail. 

The site also is located near another piece of property the city plans to use as an emergency equipment warehouse that will serve Orth’s department, he said. 

Vanishing artists  

The closure of The Shipyard marks the fifth closing of a Berkeley artists’ community in the past six years, and the third triggered by city action. 

A 2001 sale forced the eviction of artists who lived A 2001 sale forced the eviction of artists who lived in the live/work spaces in the old warehouse building at 2750 Adeline St. That building had housed an unusual collection of artists, including one-time resident R. Crumb, the noted underground cartoonist. 

The following year saw the closing of The Crucible, a community of studios very similar to The Shipyard, after city officials cracked down on code violations following a raucous party that led to a pair of shootings near the site. 

That facility was located at 1036 Ashby Ave., a block from The Shipyard. 

In 2005, city officials cited the owner of The Drayage at 651 Addison St. for multiple violations , leading to the end of another cherished West Berkeley artists’ community—though, as Orth observes, spaces there were rented as live/work units, unlike The Shipyard. 

West Berkeley lost yet another arts collective last year when the 31-year-old Nexus Collective lost its lease to buildings owned by the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society at 2701-2721 Eighth St. 

Once known as a haven for artists seeking congenial company and low rents, West Berkeley is gradually losing the artists for which it was once widely known. 

Mason vows to fight back. 

“This is a systematic problem in Berkeley, and two officials are primarily involved, the deputy fire chief and the building official, and they have very little oversight,” said Mason. “They’re making the same dubious claims of safety issues. 

“The problem is that claiming a public safety threat is kind of like claiming a terrorism threat: It’s vague, it’s always everywhere but at the same time nowhere, and it always relates with difficulty to anything in actuality on the ground.” 

Mason said he intends to resolve the issue over the coming months, “not just for The Shipyard but for all of the artist communities that are being driven out of the city. This is much bigger than The Shipyard, and there will be a coalition of arts organizations against the structure of officials who have led to the loss of artists from our community,” he said. 

“We’re already getting the e-mails,” said Orth, “and we’re working on a boilerplate response letter. But none of this would have happened if he hadn’t brought in another dozen shipping containers. 

“He’s a nice enough guy and they do some really cool stuff, but you can only go so far.” 

Works in progress 

The Shipyard is a steampunk’s dreamworks, a haven for techno creations ranging from a steam-powered car to Mechabolic, a high-tech “terra preta” trash-to-energy system that will be one of the highlights of this summer’s Burning Man festival in Nevada. 

“It’s a large-scale sculpture that ingests trash like paper, tires and wood scraps and converts it into fuel for its own mobility and for fire and produces organic charcoal fertilizer as a by-product,” said Mason. “It’s a carbon-negative system for producing energy that integrates agriculture into the energy cycle. It’s just the kind of thing you’d think the city would want in Berkeley.” 

Michael Michael, a Shipyard alumnus and one of the organizers of the Burning Man festival, said The Shipyard has produced an amazing collection of artworks and is one of five major hubs for creative work in the Bay area, with the others being Hunters Point and the Box Shop in San Francisco, and the Crucible, NIMBY and Headless Point East in Oakland. 

“Berkeley has been losing a lot of valuable artists’ resources,” Michael said. 

Peter Luka, who has been working at The Shipyard for three years, was gathering up his gear Monday and helping other artists as they worked to clear out their accumulated works and tools. 

An engineering graduate of MIT, Luka said he’s moving the lot into the garage of his home for the time being. 

“I came here because I really wanted to do art work in this community, a place where a lot of weird, smart people are producing a lot of crazy ideas,” he said.  

He dubs his works “structural/mechanical/robotic art.” 

“I was supposed to be at the Maker Faire this weekend; instead, I’m moving out,” said Kimric Smythe, referring to an event dubbed by the techno-blog Engadget.com as “end-all be-all event for DIY (i.e., do-it-yourself) hacks, homebrew gadgets, and other oddities.” 

Smythe is one of the creators of the steam car and proudly showed a reporter a cloud-belching compressor he’d fabricated for the machine. 

“Welcome to the shipwreck,” said Shannon O’Hare, who had also helped with the car and on the unique clock tower Shipyard artists built for the 2005 Burning Man festival. 

O’Hare said he found it particularly ironic that the city had ordered the immediate disconnection of the solar panels that provided some of The Shipyard’s power. 

“You wouldn’t think they’d do that here in Berkeley, would you?”

A few weeks ago members of the southeast Berkeley community found newspapers and hate-filled flyers on their sidewalks and front porches targeting Jews, blacks, Hispanics and immigrants. 

Last week, members of the Peace and Justice Commission received in their e-mail in boxes another sample of what many are calling “hate speech.” The e-mail links to a five-minute video that condemns Islam as a religion of war and its prophet Mohammad as “some rambling ancient desert nomad with a psychological disorder.”  

The e-mail was not sent by a right-wing fanatical group as the newspaper drop apparently was, but by fellow Peace and Justice Commissioner Jonathan Wornick.  

Wornick told the Planet he didn’t agree with everything on the tape, but sent it to fellow commissioners “in an honest attempt to bring dialogue.” 

Among the tape’s assertions are general statements claiming Muslim misogyny. Specifically it says: “Muslim women in Britain who cover their faces are mentally ill. If God had intended for you to cover your face then in His wisdom He would have provided you with a flap of skin for the purpose.” 

Wornick’s link to the video was prefaced only by the comment, “An interesting commentary from Britain.” (The video commentator is Englishman Pat Condell, an actor.)  

The video “tries to expose intolerance in the [Muslim] world,” Wornick told the Daily Planet, underscoring that he is referring to “the intolerance of radical Islamists who say if you insult Allah, you should have your head cut off.” 

Underscoring that he has “no problem with the Muslim faith,” Wornick went on to say that the real issue for him is how “radical Islamists” are against women and gay people, “threatening the real values this country stands for.”  

Wornick said that the point he was trying to make is that the commission spends so much time vilifying the Bush administration that commissioners are “blinding people to the real threat of radical Islam in the real world.” 

Fellow commissioners, however, told the Planet that this video isn’t the way to open the door to dialogue. 

“It was stunning,” commented Commissioner Michael Sherman, noting the “stereotyping and bigotry of the tone and the language” of the tape. “It comes from so far out in right field,” he said. 

When he was told that that Wornick said his point was not to attack Islam in general, but only “radical Islam,” Sherman responded that the term is used in many ways and hard to define. The al Qaeda vision of Islam is shared among very few Muslims, Sherman said.  

Khalil Bendib, Berkeley resident, cartoonist and Middle East commentator for KPFA, further described radical Islam as a “grab bag.” In fundamentalist Islam, there are many schools of thought, he said. Only a few on the fringe justify violence by the religion. 

It would also be a mistake to identify Christianity by its worst representatives, such as the Inquisition or the genocide of native peoples in Latin America, Bendib said, adding that distributing such a video does not promote dialogue. Rather, “it fans the flames of hatred,” he said. 

Sherman said he did not understand why someone who consistently votes against proposals to promote peace is sitting on the commission, and Commissioner Mark MacDonald said he thought Wornick “crossed the line on this one” and should resign.  

Wornick was appointed to the commission by Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who, when reached by the Planet, said he had not seen the video. However, he defended his appointee, saying, “There should be diversity on the commission. Jonathan brings a viewpoint different from the other commissioners.”  

Wozniak added that Wornick’s e-mail message should not turn into an issue about whether he should sit on the commission, and noted that at least one commissioner who had publicly insulted fellow commissioners in the past was allowed to maintain her commission seat. 

Further, he said he had just returned from a trip to Indonesia where he visited a number of mosques and found them very beautiful. He said he had traveled with a Muslim woman who is a friend.  

“I don’t condone people making statements disparaging any religion,” he said, adding that he intends to watch the video. 

MacDonald had responded to Wornick on the commission e-mail list, and along with other commissioners was asked by Peace and Justice Chair Steve Freedkin not to respond, because if a majority of the commissioners took part in the discussion, it would constitute a violation of open meeting laws. 

Commissioner Elliot Cohen, who called the tape “insulting, degenerating and racist,” said that the proper place for such a discussion would be to agenda it at the commission level, where commissioners could question Wornick on his intention in presenting this.  

“People should not be allowed to spew racist propaganda” without others being able to respond, Cohen said. “It’s not about free speech—it’s hate speech.” 

Directing her comments to the content of the video and its claims that Islam is a religion of war, Lily Haskell, program director at San Francisco’s Arab Resource and Organizing Center, said “there is no legitimate claim that Islam is not a religion of peace.” 

Bendib addressed the accusations of sexism in the tape. “He makes it sound like it’s the norm,” he said. “He makes it sound like it’s prescribed in the Holy Book.”  

And Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Planet there are many such tapes available on the web. “Some are even more hate-filled,” he said, adding, “The significance is that someone on the Peace and Justice Commission would distribute it.”  

He added, however, that individuals are within their rights to circulate such material. “I value the First Amendment,” he said.  

Were there a similar attack on Jews or African Americans, Hooper said he thought there would be a greater outcry. “We’ve grown to accept anti-Muslim bigotry in our society,” he said. 

Education and personal contact between Muslims and non-Muslims will help to break down such stereotypes, Hooper added. 

The video can be viewed at www.liveleak.com/view?i=418_1176494781 

or on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq4ObP_rzrs. 

CAIR’s website with educational materials on Islam is at www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=aboutIslam. 

One of the city’s most valuable services is the NewsScan, the free, online daily compilation of media references to Berkeley. You find things there that you wouldn’t know about otherwise. Last Friday, I happened across just such an item, an article pulled down from the website of GlobeSt.com that reported the upcoming auction of two parcels totaling 5.8 acres at Fourth and Gilman, a.k.a. the former site of Flint Ink.  

The property is contaminated, said Todd Good, whose Newport Beach company, Accelerated Marketing Group, will handle the June 1 auction, but it will be “delivered clean” to the highest bidder in 15 to 24 months. “What we are really selling,” Good explained, “is the future deliverability of a piece of property that right now, in its current form, cannot be used.” He added: “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never seen this done.”  

That was interesting. Even more intriguing, though, were the names of two of the people on the selling end of the transaction: Ali Kashani and David Greensfelder. Kashani, the founder and longtime director of Affordable Housing Associates, is well-known in Berkeley. In 2004 he left AHA and not-for-profit development and started his own firm, Memar Associates. The GlobeSt.com article described him as “a Berkeley area property and asset management specialist.” It was an inquiry from Kashani to the city’s fire department that sparked the chain of events leading to the eviction of the artists at the Drayage Building in 2005.  

David Greensfelder, who sits on the AHA board, is the former real estate director for Longs Drugs. In 2006 he became vice president for acquisitions at Rawson, Blum & Leon. Headquartered in San Francisco, RBL specializes in the acquisition, development and management of commercial real estate throughout the western United States. GlobeSt.com indicated that if an out-of-state investor bought the property at Fourth and Gilman, Memar might handle the entitlement process, while RBL could oversee development.  

Greensfelder is already collaborating with Kashani on another development in West Berkeley, a four-story, mixed-use, 100-condo project to be built on a 0.75 acre site at the southwest corner of Ashby and San Pablo. RBL’s website says, however, that the company’s focus is on shopping centers—“urban in-fill centers, suburban neighborhood and community centers, lifestyle centers, power centers and regional malls.” Adorned with photos of Home Depot, Target, Best Buy and other big box chain stores, the website touts a history that makes Patrick Kennedy—to date, Berkeley’s single biggest developer—look like a piker. “Since its inception,” we read, “RBL has acquired and managed over 40 properties with an aggregate value in excess of $500 million.” In urban areas, RBL’s “new development opportunities” are all five acres or larger.  

GlobeSt.com noted that the 5.8 acres at Fourth and Gilman are in the city’s manufacturing district, “which permits numerous uses including warehousing, distribution, light manufacturing, production facilities and arts/crafts” and thereby “makes the land parcels highly desirable.” But not, perhaps, desirable enough. The article went on to report that the city of Berkeley is installing a zoning overlay that would permit auto-related sales on the site. According to auctioneer Good, the sellers are willing to make the sale contingent on that change. 

What brought me up short was another prospective change, hinted at in the article’s final paragraph, in which an unnamed “local industry source” estimated the variable value of the property depending on the zoning. According to the anonymous informant, “[I]f used for light manufacturing, the property might be worth between $40 and $60 per square foot. If the overlay is put in place and entitlements are obtained for a car dealership, the value may be $75 to $100 per square foot. If a special permit is obtained to put pure retail on the site, it might be worth between $100 and $125 per square foot.”  

A special permit for pure retail? Whatever that might mean, it would go way beyond the City Council’s directive to the planning commission, which dealt only with an auto-sales overlay in the manufacturing (M) and mixed-use light industrial (MULI) districts. As it turns out, the city’s planning staff want to go even further. Last Wednesday the planning commission considered a staff proposal to amend the zoning regulations so as to open the way to making major commercial development a regularly permitted use in the M and MULI districts. Staff suggested expanding the purposes of both districts to “support the development of businesses, including retail automobile sales, that contribute to and enhance the economic viability of the area and provide essential sales tax revenues for the city.” The syntax renders auto-related sales into an afterthought. The emphasis is on businesses that generate a lot of sales tax.  

Sales tax generation is code for the out-and-out commercialization of the West Berkeley economy because retail yields much more sales tax than industry and artisanal transactions. Staff didn’t have the audacity to remove the zoning ordinance’s explicit prohibition on retail that’s unaffiliated with industry. Instead, they were testing the waters, seeing how far they could go with a sneak attempt to undermine the businesses that depend on industrial zoning to keep their rents affordable: Berkeley’s manufacturers, artisans and recyclers.  

I say “sneak” because staff buried their actual revisions deep in its 41-page report to the planning commission. The report appeared on the commission’s May 9 agenda under the heading “Discussion of West Berkeley Automobile Sales Zoning Amendments.” Nothing about allowing retail per se. Ditto for the two-page staff cover memo, which focused exclusively on auto-related sales. To discern staff’s underlying motives, you had to comb through the attached text of the zoning ordinance and mark the (de)regulatory language embedded there. 

To date, no city official has publicly tied the West Berkeley zoning changes being considered at the planning commission to the upcoming auction of the Flint Ink site. Land use planning manager Mark Rhoades has told the commission that staff activity has been spurred by a “nibble” at West Berkeley real estate. But he’s said nothing about the Flink Ink site or a mega-shopping center developer’s entry onto the scene. 

Nor, at the council’s budget workshop last Tuesday, did Mayor Bates or councilmembers Wozniak and Capitelli mention the deal in the works at Fourth and Gilman, as they echoed each other’s calls for economic development that yields high revenue. “I don’t want a big box here,” said Wozniak, “but I think there should be a store [in Berkeley] where you can buy a TV set. Same with refrigerators and driers.” In the wake of the GlobeSt.com revelations, that sounds a lot like advance publicity for a big box store.  

Note to prospective bidders on the Flint Ink site: If city officials have told you that putting a shopping center at Fourth and Gilman is going to be a slam dunk, they have only been telling you what they know you’d like to hear. This is Berkeley, not Emeryville. Be prepared for a battle royal. 

Chaos broke loose at the intersection of The Alameda and Monterey Avenue during an otherwise peaceful Berkeley Critical Mass bicycle demonstration late Friday. 

A group of parade participants—who said they were out publicizing bicycling and oil-dependency reduction—accused a Berkeley couple in their 70s of trying to run them over. 

Video footage of the incident, which is available in an edited version on the Bicyclists’ Civil Liberties Union (BCLU) website and YouTube.com, captures the sights and sounds of the angry confrontation that occurred at 8:06 p.m. 

It shows around 50 bicyclists crowding around a minivan and some of them rescuing bicycles which appear to be trapped under the van’s right front tire. 

“People, back it up!” a man is heard shouting as people start pounding on the hood and windows of the car. “Back up the car and stop it!” 

And later, “What the fuck! What’s your fucking problem!” 

“How dare you people be so violent!” a bicyclist tells Marilyn Head, 70, whose husband Harlan Head, also 70, was driving the car. “Are you people drunk?” Marilyn’s reply to this line is inaudible. 

“There’s the attacker!” a voice could be heard as the camera focused on a visibly shaken Head. “Get back. You are on top of three bikes.” 

“I am trying to,” Head says. “My wife has the door open.” The camera zooms into the California license plate at the rear of the car, which shows a disabled sticker, and more angry voices can be heard. 

“We are victims of you. I don’t care how much you love him but your husband did a very stupid thing!” a man tells Marilyn, who is standing in the street by this point. 

Two children who are crying in a carriage are shown being comforted as the crowd started to clear off. No arrests were made by the Berkeley Police Department. 

“Witnesses have said that the van was going west on Monterey while the bicyclists were going south on Alameda,” said Officer Wesley Hester of the BPD. “At one point the vehicles joined together. There were claims that the driver attempted to run over the cyclists and claims that the cyclists were attempting to antagonize the driver. About a dozen police arrived at the scene after being informed by the Fire Department and sorted out the incident.” 

Officer Waite of the Berkeley Police Department is investigating claims made by Head, who alleged that the cycles were strategically place under his van, and those of the cyclists, who allege that Head intended to run them over. 

Jason Meggs of BCLU said in a statement that “three bicycles were destroyed and two demonstrators were injured and bleeding, although they refused medical treatment at the scene.” He added that two bicyclists had reported that Head had brandished a knife at them and that many said he looked drunk. 

“Unfortunately, as all too often happens, police did not protect the rights of the bicyclists despite video evidence showing the attack,” the statement read. “Police fabricated that bicyclists were ‘pushing their bicycles under the car,’ an outrageous claim. Police refused to charge the motorist. They refused to execute a citizen’s arrest. They did not search and impound the motorist’s knife, claiming he ‘had a right to protect his car.’” 

Head, in a interview with the Planet Monday, described the claims of the bicyclists as “pretty wild.” 

“We were driving legally when we were confronted with a large number of Critical Mass bicyclists traveling south through a red light on the Alameda,” he said. “We approached the group and stopped, at which point several of the bicyclists went berserk.” 

He added that several bicyclists began rocking the van shouting, “Let’s turn the van over,” but were unable to do anything. 

“My concern is twofold,” he said. “I am less concerned about the damage to my vehicle. That is repairable.” His windshield was smashed in the melee. “My main interest is in going in front of the City Council and getting a group that is quite ready to trash cars to come to terms with what the city will accept and not accept. I hope the city of Berkeley and this group using our streets could sit down and work out fundamental ground rules satisfactory to all for the use of our streets,” he continued. “Secondarily, I am concerned about the statements of Mr. Meggs which are in direct conflict with those of independent witnesses.” 

On the night of the incident, Head said, he and his wife had been on their way to put their daughter—who has cerebral palsy—to bed. 

Postings on YouTube vociferously condemned the bicyclists. 

“Shame on you,” one message which calls the footage the “Elderly Couple Abuse Video” says. “Pushing around Grandma and Grandpa.” 

“As a cyclist, I do not support your group, or the mob actions that you use to disrupt SF,” says another, comparing Friday’s incident to a similar one in San Francisco. 

On March 30, Susan Ferrando of Redwood City was confronted by bicyclists in Japantown who claimed she had tried to drive through them in her minivan. While the cyclists said that Ferrando had knocked a rider to the ground, she denied the allegations. No arrests were made in this case either. 

The video can be viewed at www.bclu.org/20070511. 

Developing earthquake standards for cities is hard enough, but writing rules to strengthen homes to withstand serious temblors—rules that apply to a large number of homes, including those built on hillsides, and are flexible enough to use a variety of materials and building techniques—is a challenge. 

But that’s what the Berkeley City Council decided to do at its meeting last week, voting unanimously to approve a resolution authored by Councilmember Laurie Capitelli asking staff to review current standards and report back to council with suggested changes within one year. 

At issue is the Disaster Commission’s goal of maximizing the number of Berkeley homes that will withstand a major earthquake.  

Following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the city, in 1991, wrote new laws providing incentives to get people to retrofit their homes. The measure allowed homeowners, at the time a home is sold, to use one-third of their transfer tax burden —equal to 0.5 percent of the selling price—to pay for the costs of retrofitting their homes.  

In 1991, there were no standards written for the retrofit. “It depended on the contractor,” said Jesse Townley, Disaster and Fire Safety Commission chair in a phone interview Friday. 

When experts went under houses to check work that had been done under the 1991 law, they found some homes were insufficiently protected and others had work that was excessive, Townley said.  

“Less than one-third of the retrofits were properly performed,” says a staff report, prepared for the May 8 City Council meeting. 

This problem led to the adoption in February of retrofit standards, known as Plan Set A. But this standard has a limited value, applying only to homes constructed in simple box shapes, one or two stories high, located on relatively flat lots, which have a wood frame, are at least 1,200 square feet and have less than a 4-foot crawlspace under the house. 

For homeowners who want to take advantage of the tax rebate, but whose houses do not fall into the Plan Set A category, they must get an engineer’s report before they can get the work done. This will often cost more than the rebate and may act as a disincentive to do the work, Townley said.  

For those able to take advantage of Plan Set A, many find the standard too rigid, Townley said, specifying, for example, precise materials and techniques that must be used. Were Plan Set A more flexible, various types of bolts could be used—in some cases one might be able to use fewer bolts of greater strength, in the end, producing the same benefit, Townley said. 

There are different equivalencies that should be written into the standards, Townley said. “It may be cheaper to do the same thing differently.” 

Another problem raised is that Plan Set A identifies some materials by their product name. “We do not believe the city of Berkeley should be a sales outlet for a hardware manufacturer,” wrote Disaster Commissioner Kyle McCormick and former Commissioner Howard Cook in an undated letter addressed to Councilmember Kriss Worthington “et al.” 

In addition to addressing the question of drawing up more flexible guidelines for Plan Set A, the council asked staff on May 8 to review new Los Angeles hillside building codes adopted in 2007, for possible implementation in the Berkeley hills. These guidelines were adopted in Los Angeles in response to the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

On May 8, the Department of Energy announced the new management team for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL): the University of California, Bechtel National, BWX Technologies and others. 

On May 9, 42 students and supporters from UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara and one person from UC San Francisco began a hunger strike, according to hunger-striker Chelsea Collonge, who graduated from UC Berkeley last year.  

Chelsea told the Daily Planet on Monday that she hopes the action will “wake the public up” to the role the university is playing, by managing the Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) and Livermore labs that are developing and manufacturing nuclear weapons. 

“As our country continues to respond to threats at home and abroad, our new team will ensure that the employees at Lawrence Livermore are able to continue enhancing our nation’s security,” said George Miller, designated director for the Lawrence Livermore Lab in a May 8 UC press statement. As one of his first acts as director, Miller appointed Dr. Steve Liedle, Bechtel vice president, as deputy director of the Livermore labs. 

The Planet was not able to reach UC’s Washington, D.C., spokesperson for a response to the hunger strike. 

“The mission of LLNL and LANL is changing. LLNL just succeeded in designing a new nuclear weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead,” wrote hunger striker Darwin BondGraham on the group’s blog, at www.nonukeshungerstrike.blogspot.com. “Los Alamos is, as you read this, preparing the manufacturing infrastructure for the production of plutonium bomb pits, the core component of the bomb. In other words, these labs are leading an effort to design and build a whole new generation of nuclear warheads under direction of the National Nuclear Security Administration.” 

The hunger strikers—who are taking finals while consuming only water or fruit juices—will be at the Regents meeting at 8 a.m. on Thursday, UCSF Mission Bay Campus, 1675 Owens St., San Francisco. Collonge said she is asking the community to be present to convince the Regents to give up lab management. 

Canon Christian Jones II came home a week too soon from school in Alabama. The 18-year-old Berkeley High School graduate had planned to spend the summer with his family in Pinole starting May 14. 

He had planned to play with little brother Cameron and volunteer for young kids at his childhood hangout, the Berkeley Boosters. Instead, he was robbed, beaten and shot to death outside his college campus in Tuskegee on the fateful night of April 29. 

“We were walking back from a party at The Marcellete around 10 p.m. when we heard about it,” said Tuskegee University freshman Courtney Boyd during Canon’s funeral at the South Side Church of Christ in Richmond Friday. 

“Someone told us that a light-skinned freshman with braids had got shot at the BP gas station. There were only four people who fit that description, so we started knocking on their doors. When Canon did not answer his cell phone, we started getting scared. One of the boys went down to the BP station to identify the body. He came back in tears and that’s when we knew that Canon had been murdered by these kids driving by in a car.” 

The world stopped for the Jones family when they received news about Canon’s death on an otherwise normal Monday morning. 

“I will never forget what my wife said when she returned the phone call from the Tuskegee police,” said his father, Canon Jones Sr. “‘Listen, Officer Collins, don’t sugarcoat this. Tell me what happened,’ she said, and then broke the news to me that Canon had been shot in the neck. We had worked so hard to make sure that Canon did not just become another statistic. And then this happened.” 

Canon’s death sent ripples of shock through the entire Richmond and Berkeley communities where he had grown up. 

An inter-district transfer to the Berkeley public schools at the age of 10, Canon had attended the Community Arts and Science (CAS) small school at Berkeley High. 

“I am not saying that he was a genius, oh no,” said his father. “He struggled throughout school at every grade but he fought hard to make it through. He grew up fighting for the little guy and all he ever wanted to see was fairness. His job was to help others, to be there for people, to support his friends and family. He went out to do what he had to do.” 

The last the Jones family heard from the D.A.’s office in Tuskegee was that they had a solid case against the two teenagers who had attacked Canon.  

Quentin Motez Davis, 18, of Macon County and Romanita Michelle Cloud, 18, of Tuskegee, Ala., had robbed Canon of his wallet while he was on his way to Calhoum’s grocery store. When Romanita had spoken Quentin’s name by mistake, Quentin shot Canon for fear of being identified. 

“The police granted immunity to the driver of the car because he gave them the names of the other two,” said Jones Sr. “The girl has confessed to the crimes but it’s unlikely that Quentin will confess. I just don’t want to see the two ever get out again.” 

Canon—who was going to school for a degree in business administration—left behind a legacy of social service in Berkeley. His leadership skills became prominent when he was a member of the Youth Director Council and was active with the Y-Scholars who encouraged students to go to college and most importantly with the Police Activity League Berkeley Boosters. 

“He was able to touch many lives,” said Canon’s mother Felicia Jones. “And all he ever wanted was to be accepted.” 

As Felicia struggled to cope with the loss on Friday, 12-year-old Cameron held his mother’s hand every step of the way. 

Hundreds gathered to mourn Canon’s death and celebrate his life that afternoon, the smiles and tears evidence that the bullet that had taken his life had wounded countless others. 

“The greatness of a man’s life is not measured by how long he lives, but by how long he is remembered after he has lived,” said Berkeley High African American studies teacher Robert McKnight, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. 

Phil Halpern, who taught Canon at Berkeley High, described the teenager as a steady positive force in the classroom. 

“Canon was never afraid to speak his mind,” he said. “He was an inspiration and was genuinely concerned about the future of the younger students. I will never forget his warm smile and his firm handshake.” 

As teary-eyed friends and families shared memories with each other on Friday, David W. Manson Jr. of the Berkeley Boosters honored Canon with a proclamation on behalf of state Senator Don Perata. 

Efforts are also being made to establish scholarships in his name.  

“We have around $1,500. But David and I are trying to raise some more money,” said Jones Sr. “The scholarships will be given to anybody who needs money to go to school.”

SB 67 (Sideshow bill) 

After sailing through the state Senate, Senate President Don Perata’s “urgency” sideshow car confiscation measure (SB 67) has stalled in the Assembly, but a spokesperson for Assemblymember Fabian Nuñez said the delay is normal procedure. 

SB 67 is a renewal of previous legislation aimed specifically at Oakland sideshows that allows cars to be towed and confiscated for 30 days solely on the word of a police officer that the car was being used in “sideshow activity.” 

The original legislation that included the sideshow provisions expired in January of this year, and Perata had asked that the new bill be passed on an urgency basis. Such an urgency status means the bill can be speeded through the legislature, but must pass by a two-thirds vote in both houses. 

The bill has been held at the Assembly speaker’s desk since it passed the Senate in mid-April. 

The press secretary for Assembly Speaker Nuñez said that “because of legislative deadlines, all Senate bills are currently being held until we have completed hearing all Assembly bills.” The Nuñez spokesperson said that the deadline for completing Assembly bill work was June 8. 

SB 1019 (Peace officer records; confidentiality. Senator Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles) 

This bill would reopen civilian review board hearings to the public in cities across the state (including Oakland and Berkeley) that were closed following a recent ruling by the California State Supreme Court in Copley Press, Inc. v. The Superior Court of San Diego County.  

The bill would also open up more police disciplinary files than were available prior to the Copley ruling, but some analysts believe that the disciplinary file provision will be taken out in order for the bill to pass the legislature and be signed into law. 

SB 1019 has passed the Senate Public Safety and Appropriations Committee and was scheduled for a third reading in the full Senate on Monday, with the bill then scheduled to move over to the Assembly. 

Oakland City Council is scheduled to vote today (Tuesday) on a resolution in support of SB 1019, with both City Attorney John Russo, City Administrator Deborah Edgerly, and Oakland Citizens’ Police Review Board Executive Director Joyce Hicks all recommending support. 

PUEBLO organization of Oakland, which is also supporting the legislation, has noted in an e-mail circulated in the city that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums has not yet come out in support of SB 1019. “In Los Angeles, Mayor Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bratton have announced their support for the bill,” the PUEBLO e-mail says. “Oakland, like L.A., has a history of serious issues with police misconduct. Join us in calling on the mayor to support police accountability!” 

AB 45 (Oakland Unified School District; Governance. Assemblymember Sandré Swanson, D-Oakland) 

This bill would set definite benchmarks for return to local control of the Oakland Unified School District, which has been under state control since 2003. 

Has passed the Assembly Education Committee. Scheduled for hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, May 16, 9 a.m., Room 4202 of the State Capitol Building in Sacramento. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) approved a use permit to establish a 24-Seven fitness center of approximately 2,000 sq. ft. in an existing commercial building at 1775 Solano Ave., but decided to discuss its parking provisions as an informational item at the next ZAB meeting. 

The proposed plan shows no off-street parking available on the site, indicating that parking would have to be accommodated in nearby street spaces. Board member Jesse Arreguin abstained from approving the request since he was not comfortable with the information available on parking. 

Other action 

• The board approved a use permit to convert the basement of a house at 1459 Kains Ave. to an apartment. 

The proposed plan involves excavating the basement approximately 4.25 feet to create an 8-foot ceiling clearance for the new two-bedroom unit. The building’s current mass or volume would not be subject to any change. The existing rear yard would be used for parking and open space, and the south side yard would be converted to a driveway to accommodate the requirements for two off-street parking spaces and 800 square feet of usable open space. 

• It approved a use permit request by Jinwoo Kim to establish Ryno’s Yogurt—a carry-out frozen yogurt store—on Telegraph Ave., to remain open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. 

• It also approved a request for a use permit by Planning Commissoner Harry Pollack of Berkeley to demolish an approximately 3,625-square-foot two-story abandoned service station building and two dispenser pads to allow for further testing and remediation at 3001 Telegraph Ave.  

• The board approved a request for a use permit to update a plan to modify the building facades and floor plans for 2041-2067 Center St., the building originally called the Seagate, but now The Arpeggio under new owners. 

The first use permit, to demolish the existing buildings in the lot to allow the construction of a 186,151-square-foot, nine-story, mixed-use building, with 149 units, 5,765 square feet of retail, a 12,067-square-foot cultural and 141-160 underground parking spaces, was approved in October 2004. 

The Berkeley Repertory Theater (BRT) will be the primary tenant of the building’s cultural space, and according to the staff report will present at least 48 performances there annually. Additionally, BRT will also make this space available at below market rent to other non-profit community organizations for at least 52 days every year. 

The new plan proposes to decrease the number of residential units—which have been designed in a New York loft style—to 143. Although the total unit count has dropped by 4 percent, no change has been proposed in the number of inclusionary units (23).

MKThink—the San Francisco-based consultants hired by UC Berkeley to develop a community-based needs assessment plan to improve People’s Park—met with the park’s Advisory Committee members and park users for their first public meeting last Monday, May 7. 

MKThink staff shared information from their “Discovery Phase”—which involves exhaustive research into the history of the park, digging up relevant archives and newspaper clippings, interviewing park users and student groups and visiting the park itself—and answered questions from the community. 

Park users stressed that they wanted a community process and not a corporate design for People’s Park. 

“The process is secretive, biased and divisive,” naturalist and community gardener Terri Compost said at the beginning of the meeting.  

“Neither the public nor the advisory board know who MkThink is meeting with and when. Even the so-called stakeholder groups are often private hand-selected meetings. For the meeting with the ‘activists,’ an e-mail only went out to a select dozen or so people. Notes taken from the group are illegible and are not made available to the public.” 

Ionas Porges-Kiriakou, a UC Berkeley student board member, echoed Compost’s words. 

“A lot is missing from what is being said and what is written down,” he said. “I am hoping that a tape-recorded account of the meetings can be kept.” 

MKThink planner Mark Miller assured community members that the firm was acting in the best interest of the park. 

“People want a park,” he said. “A park has great value in this place and we need to re-develop it in a way that will be useful for everyone. Our desire is to make it a welcoming place and to respect its rich history.” 

Miller added that the current phase was looking at three main factors: active park users, not-so-active park users and activities at the park. 

“We want to identify the physical characteristics that positively or negatively affect the park,” he said. “We are currently in the small group phase which has led to a lot of exchange of ideas. We have met with 40 small groups which have included park users, student groups, social service agencies and religious associations. Law enforcement records and attendance logs at the park have also been consulted. All this has helped us to get a general sense of what’s going on.” 

Miller also said that the general response had been that the park was unsafe because of drug use and homeless habitation.  

“The general impression is that it offers spaces where people can hide,” he said. “A lot of people, especially students stay away from it because they don’t feel comfortable there. Our job is to figure out whether the issue of safety is as extreme as it is perceived to be or if it is just an issue of perception. At the moment, we don’t have a handle on data to say how safe or not safe it is.” 

The MKThink employee said that it would be pertinent to see whether the park was the best place for the social and mental health services provided at the park currently. 

“We want to find out how the park can help facilitate the community and whether it should take on a more structured role,” said Miller. “The overall impression is that the park should remain an open green space. There’s a lot of healing that needs to happen in the community and we need to figure out a way to move through the points of tension.” 

Both board members and MKThink personnel agreed that it was important to preserve the relationship between People’s Park and Telegraph Avenue. 

“One of the important uses of the park is that it’s a place for people to gather and have food at,” said Lydia Gans, board member and a volunteer with Food Not Bombs. “The park acts as a sanctuary for people who don’t have anywhere else to go. It should be allowed to flourish in the way it is now and not become a carefully landscaped area.” 

MKThink staffers also said that problems of trash and inadequate restrooms would have to be addressed. The men’s restroom at the park currently has no door. 

Board members volunteered suggestions ranging from a walking path around the park’s circumference to developing a larger children’s play area. 

“There is too much negative perception given out about the park on Cal Day,” said Porges-Kiriakou. “Students end up hearing that the park is a sketchy place they need to stay away from. This has got to change.” 

Board member John Selawsky suggested comfortable seating areas and movie screenings to draw people to the park. 

“I’d like to see a history cafe,” said board member George Beier. “$2 coffee and free Internet would get that place jammed with students.”

Members of the two city bodies looking at the future of the Berkeley’s historic buildings are nearing completion of a key element of the new downtown plan. 

A joint subcommittee formed of members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) has been meeting since August to hammer out policies for the new plan—and members said Wednesday they hope to finish their work soon. 

While historic preservation was declared the cornerstone of the city’s last plan, done in 1990, DAPAC members will meet this week to hammer out the centerpiece of their new plan—sustainability. 

A city lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley’s long range plans for development through the first two decades of the new century resulted in a settlement that requires the city to draft a new downtown plan accommodating the 800,000 square feet of construction the university plans there. 

Historic district? 

One of the questions discussed Wednesday was the possible creation of a downtown historic district, a legal entity that would afford some protection to designated historic buildings and given the LPC a say in the design of all new construction within the district. 

“We are going to have to reconcile historic preservation with a degree of flexibility to allow for some development,” said Jesse Arreguin, a DAPAC member. 

Patti Dacey, a DAPAC representative and former LPC member, said to her former colleagues, “DAPAC is looking to you to define a historic district or look where we really need to preserve the historic character of downtown.” 

Steven Winkel, a landmarks commissioner and architect, said members needed to decide if they were going to focus on a map or on specific policies. 

“I don’t see a historic district happening in the near future,” said LPC Chair Robert Johnson. “But if we don’t come up with a policy, DAPAC is going ahead.” He said preparation of guidelines would be a good interim step.  

One problem facing the panel is the lack of a thorough survey of the downtown’s historic structures, although the subcommittee has made a significant start with its own preliminary survey conducted by Architectural Resources Group, a consulting firm retained for that purpose, along with the results of previous studies and other data compiled into a basic matrix. 

A step suggested by Matt Taecker, the planner hired by the city with university funds to help draft the plan, is creation of precincts, or discrete areas within the downtown containing noteworthy buildings. 

“A district would take a higher level of analysis to establish,” he said. 

Winkel said he liked the idea, which has been used in cities like Pasadena. 

John English, a retired planner and preservationist who has been working with the subcommittee on a volunteer basis, has suggested four distinct areas, and members agreed Wednesday that two in particular could be singled out as possible historic districts. 

The first, dubbed “Main Street Downtown,” encompasses the core of Shattuck Avenue in the city center from University Avenue to Durant Street, while the second, “Dwight Station,” includes historic buildings near the intersection of Shattuck and Dwight Way, once a rail transit station. 

Downtown already has one historic district which is recognized by the city, state and federal governments and includes the historic structures around Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. 

New design guidelines for the downtown intended to preserve the overall historic character and context of existing buildings will also have to include provisions that allow for green building design—structures that consume less energy than typical buildings, Taecker said. 

“Your challenge is how to articulate how to deal with a street facade that is obviously calling out for change,” said LPC member Carrie Olson. 

Jim Novosel, an architect as well as one of the newest DAPAC members, said members faced a real challenge in dealing “with this zoo of architecture that is the downtown.” 

Johnson said the emphasis of any design guidelines should be on the way new buildings relate to the street. “I don’t think we should be encouraging or discouraging any particular style or architect.” 

Several members agreed that the design guidelines included in the existing downtown plan, adopted in 1990, provide a good basis for the new plan. 

Novosel, who agreed to hone the subcommittee’s preservation proposal with Patti Dacey in time for a possibly final meeting on May 23, said “we would be going against the civic grain if we didn’t put historic preservation at the forefront” of the new plan, “but with an opportunity for significant growth.” 

Olson said that if the document’s language about creating historic districts is specific enough, the city should be able to receive state funding for the historic resources survey subcommittee members have sought since the group began meeting. 

“I have been assured by the mayor that this is something he wants,” Olson said. 

Sustainabilty 

DAPAC members received a hefty collection of documents in an email last week, including a 17-page draft of the goals and policies section which includes a section on basic principles for green design and planning. 

The document, part of a 34-page compendium drafted by Taecker, UC Berkeley planners Judy Chess and Jennifer McDougall and Berkeley environmental activist Juliet Lamont, includes critical comments added by DAPAC Chair Will Travis and Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman. 

Travis, whose day job is running the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, wrote that he “found the policies to be directed primarily to environmental sustainabilty at the expense of economic and social sustainabilty.” 

He also found that the proposed language locked in existing technology without encouraging development of new, even more sustainable methods and materials. 

Poschman noted that reliance on transit-oriented development (TOD) ignored the fact that most people who move to such projects continue to rely on single occupant car trips to commute to work. 

He also noted that the TOD section didn’t include a specific call for inclusion of affordable housing and urged inclusion of a provision calling for more units reserved for low- and very low-income families in multi-unit projects than currently called for in the city’s inclusionary housing regulations. 

Other committee members, during earlier discussion of the issues, have called for support for retrofits of existing buildings as a key element of a sustainable development section. 

Patti Dacey and Wendy Alfsen are two DAPAC members who have repeatedly urged retrofits as a means of revitalizing the historic buildings they see as central to the downtown character.

A few years ago the publisher and I were tourists in London, and we stopped to look at a lovely old churchyard in Hampstead or somewhere. The kindly grey-haired old vicar saw us looking at his tombstones, and came over to tell us a few interesting stories about local history. Then, with no apparent segue, he launched into a tirade about what savages the Irish were, how they were making England uninhabitable and worse. Now, to be fair, this was during the time when some IRA members were planting bombs in British cities, so his annoyance was not unjustifiable, but he went way over the top with accusations of superstition and illiteracy against the whole Irish nation. We went on our way quickly at that point, terrified that he would introduce himself and we would have to cop to our shared Irish surname.  

The British (my own ancestors) have always counted a fair number of bigots among their number, so the vicar’s rant was not surprising, though the source was. “Wogs” was the term of endearment applied uniformly to any foreigner in past generations, often with no distinction made among different racial, ethnic or national origins. The appalling anti-Islam video from a British website which Peace and Justice Commissioner Jonathan Wornick circulated to his fellow commissioners was right in step with this historic posture. The speaker was an actor, apparently expressing his own opinions, though one might think he was simply playing the part of “Colonel Blimp,” the traditional voice of British bigotry. 

As a citizen of the United States, Wornick has every right to his own opinion, and every right to endorse and forward the opinions of others. But after he shocked his fellow commissioners by circulating that video, some might question Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s judgment in appointing a fellow like Wornick to the Peace and Justice Commission, where presumably tact and diplomacy are part of the job description.  

Although I’ve never met the gentlemen, I’ve become aware that his ideas about good taste and appropriateness are, shall we say, unusual. I myself received this letter from Wornick at my personal e-mail address (I’ve no idea how he got it):  

Becky, 

Sometimes I go to bed pleased that your crappy insignificant paper is read by so few people. And those who do read it, (there are of course a couple hundred graying leftists) many are like myself, who check it out online only to see what outrageous and entertaining bullshit you (or the couple dozens regular letter writers) will say about an evil real estate developer, or Republicans or Christians or Zionists.  

You’re delusional, really angry and alone and I’m sorry to say, very fat. You should know that people like that die early and sad.  

Enjoy your little playing field where the ball is yours. The rest of us will be playing on planet earth—making a real difference. 

Jonathan 

I forwarded the letter to Wozniak when I got it a couple of months ago, but apparently it didn’t cause him to think twice about Wornick’s suitability for his commission slot, as it should have. 

The traditional White Anglo-Saxons in the United States (my own ancestors among them) have also had trouble telling one non-northern-European from another. People my age with White Anglo-Saxon Protestant names like my birth name grew up hearing disparaging references to all kinds of people, Jews and “Ay-rabs” among them, often lumped together, with African-Americans called by a name too rude to repeat here. I’ve also heard elderly Yiddish speakers speak disparagingly of “schwartzes” (blacks), and I’ve heard ignorant anti-Catholic rants when I was not using my (Episcopalian-raised) husband’s Catholic-sounding name. Moslems and fat people might seem like easy safe targets these days, but bigotry is a slippery slope, and when someone like Wornick thinks he’s shoving a despised group down it he might find that his own group goes tumbling after.  

And speaking of tumbling, some bicycle enthusiasts seem to have taken a fall in the eyes of the public, judging by the letters we, other papers and craigslist have been getting. It’s fine to say that the road should be shared by all regardless of method of transport, but allowing a gang of riders to bully law-abiding motorists is very different. Even the edited version of Critical Mass’ video, which they posted on the Internet, clearly showed that they’d trapped a couple of frightened older people who were driving carefully on their way to care for their disabled daughter. I suspect that if we’d seen the whole thing it would have looked even worse. 

Circulating a video displaying vile pejorative opinions about Moslems is a protected civil liberty in this country, though it does seem to be what some are trying to ban as “hate speech,” a murky category easily abused. But the website where the Critical Mass video was posted was sponsored by something called the “Bicycle Civil Liberties Union.” That’s a misappropriation of a fine old name—pushing others off the roads is not civil liberties, it’s just plain rude, and dangerous to boot. It crosses over the line from free speech, within the territory covered by the First Amendment, to illegal action.  

But the real problem in both cases is attitude: self-righteousness about opinions which are arguably fine carried to inappropriate extremes. Both Jason Meggs, spokesperson for the bicyclists and a former Transportation Commissioner, and Jonathan Wornick, a current Peace and Justice Commissioner, are doing harm to the causes which they claim to espouse. The councilmembers who appoint commissioners need to take some responsibility for their actions as well. Uncivilized behavior, whether or not it’s legal, is not good PR for either Israel or bicyclists. 

The words “academic freedom” have been tossed around a lot lately. They seem to mean different things in different contexts, and as a result they seem to be losing meaning altogether. Chancellor Birgeneau invoked them sanctimoniously in defense of his university’s god-given right to sell off a good bit of Strawberry Canyon, complete with associated faculty members, to British Petroleum, to aid in BP’s search for new and more lucrative ways to allow the rich nations to prolong their excessive energy consumption. A self-selected percentage of UC Berkeley’s faculty senate endorsed his position, which was possibly enhanced by the $500 million payoff, as did the Bates/Hancock apparatus and other local politicos. Now academic freedom seems to be expanding to protect UC’s right to add a 60-room hotel to the environmentally impacted canyon site, presumably so that BP’s visiting scholars won’t have to endure the horrors of the Hilton.  

For a much smaller pot of gold, only $15.8 million statewide, 43 members of the Faculty Assembly, the statewide incarnation of the faculty senates on each UC campus, have recently voted to go on taking bucks from the tobacco industry. Clearly what academic freedom means to some people these days is the right of academics to sell their services to the highest bidder, regardless of where the money comes from. We’ve mentioned before in this space the precedent in Germany during the Nazi era of academics taking research money from Bayer, Krups and other corporations which were engaged in some very nasty projects. History has not vindicated that decision.  

Some people with good educations who should know better have always used their knowledge to research bad things, all the way back well beyond the legendary Dr. Faustus. One of Berkeley’s staple urban legends, undoubtedly true in some incarnation, is of the guy/guys with advanced degrees in biochemistry who supposedly ran great big methamphetamine labs in Emeryville back in the days when it was an industrial wasteland. If UC faculty members were to try this today, academic freedom would probably not be invoked to protect them, even if they claimed that further research into how to make crystal meth is needed. Is tobacco different? 

Again and again, we hear stories about academics who have taken research money from Big Pharma or the tobacco industry and allowed publication of their research results, especially bad news, to be tainted by what the sponsors wanted to promote or suppress. I wrote my first story about this practice in 1979, and new versions still appear on a regular basis. 

In the old days, academic freedom was not based on the golden rule (those who give the gold make the rules). Then it meant the freedom of academics to hold any ideas they pleased and to teach about them as they wished. Of course that concept was honored more often in the breach than in the observance. In 1949, in the era of McCarthyism and anti-communist “spy trials,” the UC board of regents, at the request of UC President Robert Gordon Sproul (for whom Sproul Hall is named), adopted an anti-communist oath for all University of California employees to sign. Thirty-one faculty members and many graduate students were fired for not signing, only coming back when they were vindicated in court. At other universities in the fifties faculty members were fired for not testifying before inquisitional legislative committees like Senator Joe McCarthy’s.  

The battle was always for freedom of thoughts and ideas, never about funding sources. An old German scholars’ song, Die Gedanken Sind Frei (Thoughts Are Free), was popularized by Pete Seeger in defense of those under attack.  

Recently a school teacher in Bloomington, Indiana (another university town) lost her job because she told her students, when they asked about her views on the Iraq war, that “I honk for peace” when passing a demonstration. A federal court in January refused to back her up, saying that teachers in public schools are supposed to convey the official version of information and not their own ideas. It now seems to be a generally accepted opinion that “academic freedom” doesn’t apply from high school on down—based partly on the premise that if the state is paying teachers, teachers ought to say what the state wants them to say.  

But if teachers at state universities are instead paid by Big Oil or Big Tobacco or Big Pharma, should they say what their funders want to hear? Surely not. And what are the rules for the privatized charter schools that are all the vogue these days? Do they have any kind of academic freedom or not? 

It’s been about 50 years since I first started thinking about the concept of academic freedom, when I heard that a friend’s father and brother had been fired from their university jobs for refusing to testify about their political opinions. It seems like it’s changed a lot since then. I hope some academic somewhere is engaged in philosophical speculation or historical research which will explain exactly what’s happened to academic freedom in my lifetime, because the sands have definitely shifted.  

CRITICAL MASS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read with some concern your article on the Critical Mass confrontation. Normally as a long-time bike and motorcycle rider I would assume that, of course, the mini-van driver and their kind would be at fault. But after having had a very similar confrontation with a Critical Mass Berkeley ride I can sympathize with the confusion and mistakes that can be made while trying to negotiate the road with a CM group. 

My confrontation was a similar situation. I was driving and found myself surrounded by the group. I am generally patient and I like the thought, that on some occasions, bikes should get to rule the road. I went along at pace with the group as they went slower and slower and completely surrounded me, obviously on purpose, so as to make stopping or changing lanes or anything else impossible without causing harm to someone. I asked a participant if I could change lanes to get out of their way and was treated by one participant with respect and by others with derision and contempt. I was finally allowed to change lanes to get to my destination but not without hearing an earful from some of the cyclists. I was very aware that there was a power play going on here.  

After my experience I can see how a melee could break out. If these groups mess with the wrong people, they could get very hurt by their arrogance. An older person unaware and confused may be driving a vehicle that they could not control at the very low speeds that Critical Mass uses to punish cars the cars on “their” road. The confusion could lead to accidents with much worse consequences than a few wrecked bikes.  

Don’t get me wrong. I think Critical Mass should have the right to take over the streets, but maybe they should do it with the attitude that everyone gets treated with respect and compassion if they happen upon a ride. Maybe they should offer an alternative to the errant car who is more interested in getting out of their way than playing chicken.  

I once thought that any political action is better than none. Now I’m not so sure.  

Connie Lane 

• 

BERKELEY GREENS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is with great enthusiasm that I am pleased to announce to all Berkeley voters and politically active community members that a new political organization—or “political club”—has recently been established in the city: the Berkeley Greens organization (or, more formally, the Green Party of Alameda County Berkeley Local).  

Like Berkeley’s other established political clubs—the Berkeley Democratic Club, Berkeley Citizens Action, Berkeley Progressive Alliance—the Berkeley Greens represent thousands of registered Green Party members across the city. Green Party members are the second largest block of registered party voters in Berkeley.  

The Berkeley Greens look forward to the local 2008 election cycle when the organization will evaluate in detail—and formally endorse or oppose—local/municipal-level candidates and ballot issues.  

The founding of the Berkeley Greens affiliate comes in the aftermath of the Green Party of California’s important 2006 electoral breakthrough: the election of Gayle McGlaughin as Richmond mayor. 

Richmond becomes the largest California city to ever elect a Green Party mayor. To win, Mayor McGlaughlin unseated a sitting, incumbent Democratic Party mayor—a nearly unprecedented electoral achievement. 

During 2006 election cycle, the Green Party of California elected 61 candidates across the state at the local, municipal and county levels, including a Green Party majority to Sebastopol’s City Council in Sonoma County. 

The Berkeley Greens are honored to acknowledge the current Green Party elected officials serving the City of Berkeley: Councilmember Dona Spring—the longest serving elected Green Party city councilmember in the nation—School Board Director and former Board president John Selawsky, and Rent Stabilization Board Commissioner and former Rent Board president Howard Chong. 

Three more Green Party members also serve as elected officials in Berkeley, and another several dozen Green Party members serve on city commissions and boards. 

The Berkeley Greens welcome new members and encourage politically active citizens to participate. The Berkeley Greens usually meet once a month in the Berkeley Main Library. 

For information, meetings and updates contact the Berkeley Greens at: www.acgreens.org/berkeley.  

Chris Kavanagh  

• 

A TAXING SITUATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many homeowners will have to work into their 70s to set aside enough money to pay property taxes for the rest of their lives. Where is this money going? It turns out that 80 percent of the city’s budget goes right into the pockets of city staff, including guaranteed pensions for life for all city employees, who retire at or after age 55. (“Two-Year Berkeley City Budget Unveiled,” by Judith Scherr, May 11.) 

While I don’t begrudge the pensions for police officers and firefighters after age 50, it’s preposterous for ordinary city employees to become eligible for lifelong pensions at age 55, while the rest of us work have to keep working to support them.  

I don’t pretend to know which officials made this promise on behalf of Berkeley homeowners, present and future, but we should be looking for solutions fast, instead of raising taxes and fees again. Let non-emergency workers wait until age 65 to retire, like the rest of us. And let’s start cutting non-emergency staff positions at the highest levels today. These are some of our most expensive employees, and yet they preside over a system that often treats residents with contempt. Most notable are the Planning Department employees, who in case after case, ignore the concerns of neighborhoods in favor of developers. Many of them could be fired for cause, given how they circumvent the laws designed to protect neighborhoods. We should also terminate the city attorney and deputy city attorney who help them implement these decisions and the city manager who allows all of this to happen on his watch. 

I’m sure that many Planet readers have constructive ideas to balance our budget without taxing residents more. Let’s hear what you have to say about how your money is spent. 

Gus Lee  

• 

WORNICK NOT IGNORANT,  

JUST DECEITFUL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When Commissioner Wornick states that his Peace and Justice Commission “spends so much time vilifying the Bush administration,” that commissioners are “blinding people to the real threat of radical Islam in the real world,” he expressed himself in the clearest way possible—his own words—his irrelevance to any debate and discussion on the Peace and Justice Commission, leaving aside for now the appalling tone and content of his video. 

In case Commissioner Wornick hasn’t noticed, the vilification of the Bush administration that he refers to is a view held by almost the entire world community (see any international poll conducted in the last two or three years), the majority of the American people, their Congress (see polls and remember the election of 2006) as well as more and more members of his own party.  

Furthermore, this public view is also widely held by experts and scholars of international affairs and relations, especially those with expertise in the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in this critical and dangerous part of the world. Countless studies, surveys, , National Intelligence Estimates, Pentagon reports, etc.,, have well documented the fact that the Bush foreign policy, so forcefully planned, advocated and defended by such groups as the neo-cons, American Likkudists, AIPAC, and Christian fundamentalists (one such group, the very powerful and influential Christians United for Israel, formed by the Evangelical pastor, John Hagee, opposes any territorial concessions to Palestinians on Biblical grounds) are in fact creating more terrorists, acting as a recruiting agent for al Qaeda—in fact building popular support throughout the Islamic world for “radical Islam” that commissioner says he wants to warn us about. 

Contrary to the comment of the city councilmember who appointed Mr. Wornick to the PJC, he does not bring diversity or a different viewpoint to the commission. Rather, he just sits there and votes “no” on almost every resolution. (No on a peace concert sponsored by St. Joseph the Worker?—Really!) If Mr. Wornick was really serious about confronting and challenging “radical Islam,” he could begin by putting his energy and time into ending the 40-year occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (a good place to start would be to support the Saudi peace initiative 2002/2007)—an occupation that is the most radicalizing issue for Muslims worldwide. 

It’s not out of ignorance that Mr. Wornick expresses the views and takes the positions that he does. It’s his way of attempting to obscure the truth behind the worst foreign policy disasters in the history of the United States and Israel, who is to blame for the very scary situation the world finds itself in today, and why.  

Michael Sherman  

• 

PUBLIC SMOKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading the Matier & Ross column in the May 16 San Francisco Chronicle about addressing homelessness on Berkeley’s streets by citing homeless smokers (and I assume non-homeless smokers) and funding this effort by increasing parking meter revenue...gee, I just don’t get the equation. 

Yes, smoking is bad for people, and even though I used to smoke it makes me queasy to smell the fumes in public, regardless of whether the smoker looks homeless or not. So, if I am following correctly, we may be enforcing the smoking ban with extra policing, and paying for this with...increased parking fees? 

Is this another way to gouge people who drive cars, as if gas prices were not bad enough? Let’s face it: People with money can afford to pay for gas and can afford to pay $5, $10 or more dollars to park in a lot while going to a movie or running an errand. As for the rest of us, we endure the pain in the neck it is to find parking downtown at a meter to save money. I drive to downtown Berkeley to go to movies, the drugstore, Ross, the post office, and more. I like to patronize local businesses. I take my car because I can’t/don’t want to devote up to an hour and a half to riding the bus round trip. Am I going to continue buying groceries at the Bowl and then schlep them home on the bus because there is even less parking? Downtown Berkeley already has scant to offer a mature adult like me who does not go to the clubs or to the university, and if you make it harder to park people will take their business out of town. Then who will be left on Shattuck? The homeless? 

Put the focus on social policies and practices that actually address the causes of homelessness: untreated mental illness, addiction, disintegrated families, the lack of place in our society for the poor. 

Lisa Mikulchik 

• 

BERKELEY BOWL  

PARKING METERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read in yesterday’s Matier & Ross’s column in the Chronicle that Mayor Bates is proposing to install parking meters around the Berkeley Bowl. 

I am a senior resident of Harriet Tubman Terrace, a residence for seniors and disabled people between Oregon and Russell streets, directly across from the Bowl.  

I own a small car, which I drive only rarely, for instance when I visit my granddaughter and/or help care for her new baby in Vallejo in an area not served by public transit; go to church in Kensington where the bus runs once an hour on Sundays; transport my paintings to galleries; church; or visit doctors that are an hour away by two buses but 15 minutes by car. 

There are no available spaces in the building’s parking lot (there is a 1.5-year waiting list), and the only unrestricted parking in this neighborhood are the six spaces immediately in front of our building, most of which are usually taken up by Bowl shoppers between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. I was denied a resident sticker to park across the street on Milvia, Russell, or Oregon. I was told at the Traffic Department that this was a trade-off for not having alternate-side-of-the-street cleaning hours on Adeline Street in front of our building. 

If there are meters near the Bowl, this would only encourage even more shoppers to try to find free parking in front of or around our building, making a difficult situation even more difficult for us, the residents of Harriet Tubman Terrace.  

Marin Fischer 

• 

MORE ON PUBLIC SMOKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am wondering how health-conscious people can raise awareness that smoking in public places is like littering in public places. Smoke is invisible. It vanishes into the air. But the air it vanishes into now includes pollutants which harm the lungs of children and mothers and older people. Who would want to harm the health of the good people passing by? What can we do to help smokers make that connection? Many of them might stop smoking near BART stations and bus stops if they knew they were causing harm to others. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

• 

LASTING PEACE IN  

NORTHERN IRELAND? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The historic power-sharing agreement between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party that took place earlier this month in Northern Ireland has engendered hope for a lasting peace in that blood-soaked country. Such hopes have been dashed in the past. But this time, with long-time enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness finally sitting down together, a time of peace may truly have arrived. 

Sectarian differences won’t suddenly disappear because of the agreement, so it’s worth noting another event that took place a few months ago in the Republic of Ireland. The occasion was the Six Nations Rugby competition held in Dublin. The match on February 24th was between England and Ireland. Sporting events often become an excuse for head bashing, and extra police were patrolling the streets. Adding to the tension was the fact that the match was being played in Croke Park, where in November 1920, British ‘Black and Tans’ had fired into a crowd attending a Gaelic football match. Fourteen civilians were killed, including a Tipperary footballer, Michael Hogan, for whom the park’s Hogan Stand is named. 

Memories of that November day were revived by protesters who campaigned against the English Rugby team being allowed into Croke Park. But when the players stood at attention to “God Save The Queen,” the stadium crowd was quiet. Nor was there any trouble after the match, in which Ireland trounced England, 43-13. The Independent newspaper quoted one fan as saying, “It is the day when Ireland says goodbye to its past and shakes hands with the future.” 

What can we learn from this? That political leaders sign agreements calling for peace, but peaceful actions come from the people who actually live, work, and play together. February’s events in Croke Park are a reason to be hopeful. 

Karen L. Branson 

• 

TELEGRAPH AVENUE  

SOLUTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

You don’t have to go to the Haight in San Francisco to find solutions for Telegraph Avenue. We have them right here in Berkeley, but we seem to have forgotten history. And if you forget history, you have to repeat it, as the saying goes. 

About 30 years ago while I was still a merchant on Telegraph Avenue we merchants petitioned the city to put a foot patrol officer on Telegraph. He got to know the characters on Telegraph and was able to deal with them. Then the footpatrol officer was eliminated and the Avenue deteriorated. In the early 1990 the city hired the RESPECT Team, a group of 24 civilians. We patrolled the Avenue on weekend nights and the ratpack problem disappeared. Then Sgt. Boga from the BPD was put in charge of cleaning up the Avenue. He and some officers under his command from BPD and UC PD got to know the Avenue inside out—some people were arrested, and more were referred to Social Services. Again, peace returned to the Avenue. 

Because the RESPECT Team had been successful on Telegraph Avenue, the city hired the Berkeley Boosters to organize the Berkeley Guides, a group of civilians. Four uniformed Berkeley Guides patrolled Shattuck Avenue five days each week. They were equipped with police radios and trained in non-violent conflict resolution methods. 

The city provided the following scope of service: “Increase the feeling of safety and friendliness on the street and retail shops and to facilitate the delivery of, and access to, social and police services.” 

During 11 years the Berkeley Guides provided an excellent service to the city, but because of budget problems the service was eliminated. The Berkeley Guides would have been equally successful on Telegraph Avenue as they were on Shattuck. Now that Telegraph Avenue has deteriorated, it will cost much more to get it back into shape. Ongoing maintenance would have been cheaper. 

But the city never learns. 

Ove Wittstock 

Former owner, Laytons Shoes (Telegraph and Durant) 

Dénia, Spain 

• 

WAR ON THE POOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing in response to the opinion piece by David Howard in the May 11 edition of the planet. This latest piece by Howard continues a practice of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. The facts that Howard employs to make a convoluted argument that mixed-density housing hurts low-income families aren’t worth debating, as they are absurd.  

As a board member of HOMES, I can categorically tell you that his assertions are false. HOMES is in favor of improving Measure A by allowing for a diverse mix of housing. This will allow families, couples and individuals at all economic levels and all stations of life to be able to become home owning community members in Alameda. Under Measure A, this is not possible. As passed, the law limits housing to single family homes on large lots, which in this day and age are running in the sub-million to million-dollar level. Because the measure was determined to be discriminatory, limited exemptions were made for some low-income and senior housing, Measure A proponents tout those developments as the success of the law, but they are the exceptions.  

The biggest legacy of Measure A is probably the Harbor Bay and Bayport developments—large, expensive single family housing that forces residents to rely on automobiles to get around. As a result of Measure A, traffic congestion has clearly risen more than it would have if transit oriented housing was allowed. While Measure A supporters have been busy plastering the town with signs saying higher density = higher traffic, it is in fact Measure A that is promoting traffic congestion.  

Howard sums up his screed by asking why HOMES is waging warfare on the lowest income families. Last year Howard launched a letter writing campaign attempting to defund a supportive housing program for the homeless in Alameda. In his campaign Howard manipulated crime data so egregiously that the police felt compelled to state that his analysis was “completely erroneous.” Howard went on from that episode to support a city council candidate who labeled the homeless the “dregs of society” and talked of the need to arm herself and put up barbed wire to protect herself from the homeless. If anyone is waging war on the poor in Alameda, it is David Howard. 

Doug Biggs 

Community Resources Director 

Alameda Point Collaborative 

• 

IMMIGRANT DEBATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Farmers Branch, Texas, is the first community in the nation to pass a measure that prohibits landlords from renting to illegal immigrants. Legal, illegal, seems like a semantics game being played, used by the forces of bigotry and prejudice, to further their anti -immigration vendetta. “English speaking only” didn’t work so now it’s on to the next excuse. 

What about all the Mexican and Latino immigrants who clean the homes, take care of the children, clean the pools, do the yard work for the residents of Farmers Branch and then get discriminated against by the same folks when it comes to housing. Blatant hypocrisy, maybe even rampant racism, is still the driving force in the immigrant debate. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley

Following two months of community pressure, the Berkeley City Council is considering strengthening Berkeley’s 1986 status as a City of Refuge for immigrants. Two competing measures, both of which would direct city staff to expend no funds nor staff time in aiding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will be on the City Council agenda Tuesday, May 22. Last week, the Peace and Justice Commission passed a proposal for a San Francisco-style ordinance that would also require the city manager to notify the public whenever ICE asks for assistance. City Council members Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring will be introducing this ordinance. And Mayor Tom Bates is weighing in with a resolution offering language similar to San Francisco’s ordinance, minus the enforcement provisions and durability, since unlike the other proposal, it would not be adopted as part of the city’s municipal code.  

Community organizations led by parents and teachers are calling for a community rally on the front steps of the City Council Chambers in support of Berkeley’s defense of immigrant rights. Second-grade students from Rosa Parks will offer moving poetry testimonies about their deported classmate, Gerardo Espinoza, a 7-year-old U.S. citizen. The tragic deportation of Gerardo and his older brothers Felipe and José, both attending Berkeley public schools, fostered an outcry of community support. 

Last month, a diverse crowd of teachers, labor activists, parents and city officials packed the Rosa Parks multi-purpose room at a teach-in to inform immigrants of their legal rights. The event, largely organized by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action (BOCA) with the help of the LeConte PTA, Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) and the Rosa Parks Collaborative among others, was entitled, “Know Your Rights to Melt the ICE; dispelling myths and fears.” In a courageous statement, Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) Superintendent Michele Lawrence lamented the tragic deportation of Rosa Parks’ student Gerardo and his brothers and said regarding any ICE’s laws requiring the violation of confidentiality between BUSD and families, “I would resign rather than break those confidences to Imigration.” Pressure from the organizers and public culminated in consideration of the current City of Refuge proposals. 

But critics of immigration reform argue that sanctuary proposals send the wrong message to immigrants who, they argue, are responsible for eroding citizens’ living standards. They say what’s needed is the opposite: stiffer penalties and stronger barriers. A Public Policy Institute of California report (Feb. 27) by University of California, Davis, economist Giovanni Peri shows that actually the opposite is true.  

“During 1990-2004, immigration induced a 4 percent real wage increase for the average native worker. An increase in the number of immigrants evidently increases the demand for tasks performed by native workers and raises their wages.” 

“Between 1990 and 2004, as the percentage of immigrants in California’s labor force rose, immigration helped boost natives’ wages as much as 7 percent, even giving a tiny bump to native high school dropouts,” reports Kristin Bender in the Oakland Tribune, (2/28/07) “A well-organized program that allows some legal way for less-educated workers to work in the United States will benefit the rest of American workers,” Giovanni concludes. 

U.S. workers are not the biggest winners in the “immigrant sweeps-takes” —or at least in one game which is driving immigrants northward: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.) A little known fact is stricter immigration policies, such as Operation Return to Sender, are products of NAFTA—a trade policy which is primarily enriching only a tiny sector. 

Thanks to protectionist measures like NAFTA, over an eight year period, “Resource transfers from the poor to the rich amounted to more than $400 billion,” reported Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky in The Nation (“Notes on NAFTA.”) “The World Bank reports that protectionist measures of the industrialized countries reduce national income in the South by about twice the amount of official aid to the region—aid that is itself largely export promotion,” Chomsky states.  

In Mexico, “Poverty has risen by over 50 percent during the first four years of NAFTA and wages in the manufacturing sector have declined,” reports the Data Center.  

A 2004 report published by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means states that “At least 1.5 million Mexican farmers lost their livelihoods to NAFTA.” The situation is only expected to worsen in 2008 when Mexico is required to comply with a NAFTA deadline to totally eliminate its corn and bean import tariffs. Many policy experts predicted that farmers displaced by NAFTA would migrate to the United States.  

Indeed, a comparison of U.S. censuses of 1990 and 2000 shows “the number of Mexican-born residents in the United States increased by more than 80 percent,” states Jeff Faux in “How NAFTA Failed Mexico,” The American Prospect (July 3, 2003.) “Some half-million Mexicans come to the United States every year; roughly 60 percent of them are undocumented. The massive investments in both border guards and detection equipment have not diminished the migrant flow; they have just made it more dangerous. More than 1,600 Mexican migrants have died on the journey to the north.” 

While NAFTA is responsible for the latest “migration hump,” it is not the sole culprit. Practices by bodies like the World Trade Organization, “along with the programs dictated by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, have helped double the gap between rich and poor countries since 1960,” reports Noam Chomsky in The Nation. The ensuing foreign debt deprives these countries from accumulating capital to develop competitive industries and has lead to mass migration northward. 

After NAFTA was passed by Congress in 1992, “the agreement raised concerns in the United States about immigration from south of the border,” according to “NAFTA, The Patriot Act and the New Immigration Backlash” by the American Anthropological Association. To counter the predicted influx of Latin Americans, President Bill Clinton signed The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. “The 1996 Welfare Reform bill included anti-immigrant and other measures that eliminated many social services for undocumented immigrants,” the report states. The current ICE raids are a result of these long term policies.  

According to the Contra Costa Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, thousands of people have been detained in the Bay Area since the beginning of Operation Return to Sender, a campaign that has resulted in over 18,000 arrests nationwide and the deportation of 800 immigrants in Northern California cities alone. Over 58 sanctuary city initiatives have been promulgated in 21 states across the country. These cities include: Richmond, San Francisco, San Jose and East Palo Alto, and most recently, Oakland. 

Berkeley’s stance condemning these raids, if approved, would be a statement that families like Berkeley’s beloved Espinozas should not be forced to suffer tragic separations or deportations because of our nation’s trade policies. And in fact, a move offering more protection to immigrants residing in Berkeley would comply the Federal government’s request to “Return To Sender,” since the “Sender,” or source of the problem lies on U.S. soil. 

For more information about the rally, contact BOCA at 665-5821.  

Margot Pepper is a journalist and author whose work has been published internationally by Utne Reader, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, City Lights, Monthly Review, Hampton Brown and others. Her memoir, Through the Wall: A Year in Havana, was a top nomination for the 2006 American Book Award. 

Your May 15 front-page story, “Critical Mass Cyclists Confront Driver in Melee,” was an eye-opener. It seems that bicycling bullies-on-wheels, otherwise known as Critical Mass (or Critical Mob), has spread from San Francisco across the bay to Berkeley. This is not progress. There is a propensity of East Bay bicyclists to consider themselves as above the rules of the road and then ride through both stop signs and red lights. Now we have bullies-on-bicycles in group rides openly flaunting the rules of the road (for everyone else) and daring the local police or anyone else to stop them. They have the false courage of a mob. These folks seem to have a very large chip on their shoulder. Actually, bicycling bullies seem to have the same mind-set as the Bush crime family: ordinary rules and laws don’t apply to us: it’s our way on the highway… 

Part of their arrogance comes from the false notion that bicycles and their riders are somehow “non-polluting.” Let’s take a quick look at the raw materials that go into the manufacturing of a modern bicycle: the iron ore and the aluminum ore that has to be mined, smelted and refined into usable metal, which then has to be rolled, extruded, stamped or cast into parts for bicycle frames. Then there is the petroleum which has to be located, drilled and pumped out of the ground, shipped to a refinery where is converted into lubricating oils and greases for bicycles. More petroleum has to be converted into plastics for bicycle seats, cables, handlebar tapes, pumps and other accessories. Don’t forget the fabrics and leathers that are made into special bicycling gloves, hats, shirts, pants, socks and shoes. Then there are also the plantations of rubber trees that have to be planted, tended and the raw latex harvested, refined and extruded into bicycle tubes and tires. All of these products have to be transported by ship and truck, both of which burn diesel fuel. It takes many thousands of kilowatt hours to run bicycle assembly plants. So bicycles are definitely part of our modern industrial system. Admittedly, bicycles use much less energy and material than cars and SUVs, but don’t let anyone claim that bicycles are “pollution-free.” Also, militant bicyclists should bear in mind that not all of us are young, healthy, courageous and single enough to be able to depend on bicycles for local transportation and shopping expeditions. Some of us actually enjoy being able to drive out of town, to the ocean or into the Great Central Valley and up into the Sierras, in our cars… 

In the Critical Mass/Critical Mob incident which occurred at the end of March in San Francisco, many militant bicyclists surrounded a SUV driven by an out-of-town woman and began beating on the sides of the vehicle and finally trashed the rear window with a thrown bicycle (!). This terrorized the woman and her children. Heck of a job terrorizing, huh, Critical Mob… And in Berkeley, the Critical Mass/Critical Mob group recently got into a nasty confrontation with an elderly couple who were riding in their mini-van. It’s too bad that these bullies-on-bicycles can’t pick on folks their own size and age, instead of picking on women, children and old folks. 

The common thread uniting the Bush crime family gangsters and our local Critical Mass/Critical Mob bullies is their feeling that they are above the law, and above the rules and that it is OK to use threats and intimidation to achieve their goals. It would be far better for East Bay bicyclists to simply follow the rules of the road, which apply equally to them and motorized vehicles. They could also follow the lead of Critical Manners, a new bicycling group in San Francisco, who actually stop at stop signs, stop at red lights and yield to pedestrians during their group rides around town. Also, our local police should equally enforce all the traffic laws that apply to bicyclists and motorists. 

James K. Sayre is an Oakland resident.

PUBLIC COMMONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky O’Malley’s May 11 editorial, “Another Foggy Night on the Public Commons,” was depressing, as I realized that the Berkeley bourgeois bullies lead by the Mayor Bates and the “liberals” on the City Council were intent again on making life as miserable as possible for the down-and-out that have the misfortune of currently living in Berkeley. No public restrooms? No public shower facilities? No public storage lockers? No local public campgrounds? Hey, this is liberal-fascist America in the 21st century. It’s amazing to me to notice that there is a great similarity in the attitudes exhibited by the Bush gangsters, currently holed up in the White House, and the liberal fascists that currently hold sway on the Berkeley City Council. Both groups share a hatred and a disdain for anyone poorer than themselves or anyone lower on the power structure pecking order. 

America is the only remaining industrialized country that is unwilling to provide universal health care and universal health insurance for all its citizens. One guesses that we’d rather be spending our money on armaments and troops that are currently stationed in (or occupying) over one hundred countries around the world. Kids, can you say, “empire?” 

Australia, New Zealand, Japan and many European countries have had provided said universal health care and insurance for many years now… What is our problem? We’d rather have the corporate greed system of interlocking HMOs, insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations, thank you very much…  

This same perverse attitude covers the areas of public toilets, public showers and public campgrounds with low-cost trailer accommodations for both travelers and poorer local residents. In New Zealand, every city, town and hamlet has public bathrooms, called comfort blocks, installed in convenient locations. Even the French provide urinals (for men), which are discreetly placed in the shrubbery around public parks in their cities. There are hundreds of public campgrounds in New Zealand, called caravan parks, which provide low-cost accommodations for both travelers and local residents. Small trailers (with large picture windows!) are available for rent. Or you can bring in your own vehicle or house trailer. There are bathroom blocks with showers, kitchen and laundry facilities available for all in a central building. 

Could we do this in America in the 21st century? Hmm. We’d have to give up our snotty bourgeois bullying attitudes, but we may be able to build a humanistic, caring society for all its members at some point. Let’s hope that this transformation will not simply be a social mirage, constantly receding into the future, a la our proposed date for leaving Iraq to the Iraqi people… 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

• 

OBJECTIONABLE  

BEHAVIOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To me, “public commons” is any space that I have to share with other members of the public. 

People aren’t allowed to smoke or eat on AC Transit buses. But they are allowed to talk. During my frequent bus rides, I often encounter someone randomly ranting. These are not just loud cell phone conversations. These people are just talking to themselves. They are not just mumbling; they are loud enough to annoy everyone on the bus. What they say occasionally makes a little sense (racist or political taunts), but mostly it is random rant. 

Would the public commons initiative increase sheriff patrols on the buses? Can I expect random ranters to be cited or ejected? What about the loud people on their cell phones? 

If lying down on the sidewalk or “objectionable behavior” will be illegal, maybe the sheriff will cite the bus riders who slump in an aisle seat, blocking access to a vacant window seat. Surely they’ll cite the riders who prop their dirty feet on the seat opposite. Or should bus riders just put up with these inconveniences and let the police focus on enforcing the laws covering car and drug traffic? 

Steve Geller 

• 

SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

CNN’s May 11 broadcast in Europe showed some children in Baghdad gathered around a big pool of water, created by holes punched in one of the makeshift water lines leading into the Green Zone. They weren’t frolicking in the water as one might expect; they were washing themselves and collecting water in squalid plastic containers. These kids know the discomfort of being dirty and not having water to clean themselves; they live with the fear of thirst. For them, this pipeline carrying water to the powerful of Baghdad was not a temptation for vandalism; it was a necessity.  

This image illustrates the failure of the Bush administration’s great social experiment. Under the guise of “making the Middle-East safe for Democracy,” the neo-con Republicans’ social theory actually intended to provide unfettered privilege to the wealthy, with the afterthought that their improved economy would drip down to the poor people. Drip down economics, indeed. The idea of collective public works for the good of the community is anathema to these Republicans, whose anti-taxation spokesman, George W. Bush, proclaims, “it’s your money, don’t let the government take it away.”  

Seductive sentiment if you have money, money enough to buy your own clean-water system and prevent those who don’t from taking “your” water. But, as we now see on CNN, this is a formula for incredible personal misery where, ultimately, even the wealthy live in danger. “Mission accomplished,” experiment failed.  

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

BRIGHT BILLBOARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wanted to add my voice to those who’ve been protesting against that dangerously bright, energy-sucking electronic billboard along the eastern side of the Bay Bridge. My partner and I drove past this monstrosity late last night and couldn’t decide which was worse: the blinding messages being flashed at us (the white background was particularly bright), or the amount of energy that thing must be consuming every hour as our country comes to grips with global warming. On both counts, it’s an irresponsible and obnoxious example of advertising that has gone over the edge. I’m going to ask my local, state and federal representatives to help bring it down, and I urge other readers to do the same. 

Mark Pasley 

• 

TRUSTWORTHY TEACHERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What does it take for teachers to stop being encouraging to the children in their care? Does the fault lie in the selection process by which new teachers are hired? Does the fault lie in weak development of an inner sense of responsibility towards children? Teachers don’t just teach skills. By their example, they teach the way of virtuous living. By what process of selection, by what process of inspiration can we strengthen the trustworthiness of teachers ? 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

• 

TERRORIST OR  

FREEDOM FIGHTER? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As Steven Jukes of Reuters News Service said, immediately following 9/11: “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter…”  

The reason it’s so difficult to distinguish a terrorist from a militant freedom fighter is that all terrorists are militants but not all militant freedom fighters are terrorists. Three examples highlight the overlaps:  

1. Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Army veteran, perpetrated an act of terrorism that killed 168 innocent adults and children. 

2. John Walker Lindh, neither a militant freedom fighter nor a terrorist, was seized at a military training camp in Afghanistan, tried for supporting terrorists and sent to prison.  

McVeigh and Lindh may invoke a modicum of sympathy as being young, misguided, delusional and fellow Americans. 

3. No sympathy is due to Luis Posada Carilles who dedicated his life to using terror as a tactical instrument in the fight for freedom.  

Posada first distinguished himself by applying the training he got in the use of explosives at the CIA run School of the Americas to “mastermind” the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner killing 73 people, and went on to other acts of violence spanning half a century.  

A few days ago a federal court ordered Mr. Posada released from detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and thus, in effect, officially blurred the distinction between terrorist and freedom fighter.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

ABOUT FACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Aware that I’ve come down pretty hard on the president of late, and feeling a bit contrite, I decided last week I would cool it—lay off. No more snide remarks. Then, having made this momentous decision, like millions of other Americans, I turned my attention to the extensive television coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the colonies. What a grand spectacle it was! I must admit that Mr. Bush did a creditable job of escorting Liz around. He did flub one introduction, but it might have been that he was taken aback by that god-awful hat she wore. (On the subject of hats, they got worse by the day, didn’t they? The one she wore to the Kentucky Derby was a doozy! I was amazed that the horses didn’t stop in their tracks when they passed her box.) Oh, but I digress. 

I think we’ll have to concede that George and Laura did a splendid job on the white-tie dinner. That was one classy affair! I’ve no doubt the queen returned to London, assured that we Americans are more civilized than she thought. Yes, all in all, I started to feel a little better about George Bush, and concluded that he might not be such a bad guy after all. 

Well, my newfound respect for the president quickly dissipated with the announcement that he was sending 35,000 troops to Iraq, over the objections of Congress and members of his own party. Further, in his typical bully fashion, he threatened to veto any congressional bill that would require him to withdraw troops in three months, completing the withdrawal in nine months. Once again, the “Commander Guy” (his self-bestowed title) has shown utter disregard for the wishes of the American public to bring this disastrous war to a close. 

Therefore, I will not lay off George W. Bush—I’ll continue to rave and rant. This arrogant, mule-headed man and his entire sleazy administration must be squelched. I fervently hope that a nation which so far has shown little outrage at this bloody war will finally speak up and demand that our troops return to their families—the fortunate ones who escaped suicide bombers. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

BAGHDAD AND CASABLANCA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This past weekend PBS ran Casablanca, and as I watched I kept flashing to a Middle Eastern Islamic country of today. 

In Casablanca of 1942 big tall egotistical foreigners wearing impressive military gear strutted with authority among fearful turban wearers. Corruption abounded in that big city, as it does in another one now, but in the movie it was hard not to identify with the crooked Sidney Greenstreet, the shifty eyed Peter Lorre and the “cynical” Humphrey Bogart, proprietor of a gambling den with a fishy roulette wheel. I rooted for the flawed but believable rabble to stay afloat in a land where the occupiers didn’t have full control, and often had to defer to police chief Claude Rains. However the stormtroopers could still whisk people away to a dark prison where very bad things happened. 

All told, I was glad to see the colonel take a bullet from Bogey, enabling “movement” leader Paul Henreid and Bogey’s lost love Ingrid Bergman to board that plane to Lisbon, the jump off to an escape to “America.” How the script has flipped over! Where would the plane from Baghdad fly?  

Ted Vincent 

• 

GENOCIDE OLYMPICS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I note that China has named an African envoy to focus on the crisis in Darfur. The threat to boycott the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing and label it the “Genocide Olympics” appears to be working. Over 450,000 have been killed in Darfur and another 2.5 million have been displaced. Why focus on China? Sudan is Africa’s third largest oil producer after only Nigeria and Angola and China has a large economic interest in this Sudanese oil. China dominates Sudan’s oil fields through the China National Petroleum Corporation. China participated in the construction of a 1,500-kilometer pipeline through Sudan to the Red Sea where it has built a tanker terminal, and has built an oil refinery in Khartoum. More than half of Sudan’s oil exports go to China. More than 10,000 Chinese nationals work in Sudan. In return, China furnishes weaponry to Sudan which it uses to commit wide scale killings in Darfur. As a sidenote, it has been reported that a large oil field exists in Darfur. Isn’t it usually about oil? 

Also, China has a seat on the U.N. Security Council and uses a threat of a veto to weaken a series of resolutions aimed at pressuring Sudan to stop support for the Juwadeen militia’s mass killings in Darfur. Why would a boycott work? A threat to boycott the “Genocide Olympics” might shame the Chinese government to pressure Sudan to stop the killings in Darfur. China craves respect and status from others. Thus, it has invested enormous hopes in hosting next year’s Summer Olympics at Beijing. If the Olympic theme of “One World, One Dream” became the “Genocide Olympics,” it would be a serious blow to China’s prestige. The Olympics’ major sponsors such as Coca-Cola, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, and McDonalds, and key collaborators like Mr. Spielberg, who has been hired to help stage the Olympic ceremonies, might think twice about participating in a Genocide Olympics. Let’s keep up the pressure. 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco 

• 

CHENEY’S THREATS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On May 11 Vice President Cheney threatened Iran from the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John C. Stennis. He stated, “With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike…[The United States] will…prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.” The United States has maintained two carrier groups in the region to support military action in Iraq, but also with the potential to launch attacks on Iran. 

Cheney has repeatedly issued threats to Iran on behalf of the Bush regime. In February, he stated, “It would be a serious mistake if a nation like Iran were to become a nuclear power.” He threatened that “All options are still on the table,” to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. 

It is interesting that his latest threat included the words “to prevent Iran…dominating the region.” The Bush regime fears Iran’s influence with various Shiite forces in Iraq. In January, the White House issued a power point presentation to the media. In it were the words, “Our Allies in the region are concerned about Iranian influence in Iraq…Iran has been cultivating influence in Iraq through all means at its disposal. Iran’s threat involves both lethal action and the burrowing of Iranian actors into Iraqi institutions.” 

The Bush regime has repeatedly accused Iran of interfering in Iraq. It has accused Iran of smuggling weapons and sophisticated IEDs into the country as well as of training “terrorists” to conduct operations in Iraq. All these accusations and the rhetoric around Iran’s nuclear program are all designed to give the United States political cover for attacking Iran. 

Many do not believe that the United States will attack Iran while it is bogged down in two wars. But this latest threat by the vice president should alert everyone that the administration is very capable of launching such an attack.  

The Bush regime will continue to make charges against Iran concerning its alleged intent to acquire nukes and also regarding Iranian interference in Iraq. But do not be lulled into believing it is just rhetoric. The regime has already attacked two nations in the region and even the VP says it is a “clear message.” We just need to listen and then mobilize to prevent this new war. To learn how to do so, see worldcantwait.org. 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

• 

FUNDAMENTALISTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Palestine, Hamas have used a Mickey Mouse clone to indoctrinate their children into the ways of hate and intolerance. In America the fundamentalist and anti-abortionists indoctrinate their children from birth into a life of deception, hypocrisy and secrecy. 

Is there a difference between the fundamentalists in the Middle East and America? Only in the degree of violence they use. In Iraq it is physical violence that prevails while in America fundamentalists use psychological violence to harass and intimidate their victims. 

Both groups of fundamentalists are indoctrinating their children into a future of religious extremism. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

I have taught the Community Partnerships Academy (CPA) Class of 2007 every year since they were freshmen. Never in my 18-year career have I taught the same group of students over a four-year period and never before has teaching a group of students make me feel sincerely that they are my family.  

Next year, the seniors will be attending UC Berkeley, Morehouse, Laney College Biotech Co-op, UC Santa Cruz, Beloit, Loyola Marymount, Spelman, UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, Cal Poly, San Francisco State, University of San Francisco, Northeastern University, St. Mary's College, Holy Names University, and many others. Some have earned scholarships. 

The list of college acceptances is impressive, but more impressive to me is the fact that as second semester seniors, they have the largest number of students among all four grades on the CPA honor roll. As second semester seniors, the majority of them have never worked harder in their high school careers. They have internalized the admonition to “keep up their habits” so that they don't just get into college, they succeed once they are there. Their work ethic and enthusiasm for learning is contagious. Many of my students who struggled in past years are now succeeding, largely because of the inspiring hard work of their classmates. 

They are the last class in our small school before the “small school lottery” required an even mix of students from all socioeconomic levels. Thus, as ninth-graders, all of these students lived in neighborhoods of mid- and lower-income socioeconomic levels. Yet 85 percent passed the Exit Exam on their first try as tenth graders. So a commonality of this class is that they are relatively high achieving in spite of the obstacles they have faced. And they have faced obstacles. Most of them are children of single parents. Many will be the first in their family to attend college. Many have had to play the role of parent to their siblings. Some have had to fend for themselves at some point in their lives. Nearly all have, in their short lives, suffered the losses of close friends and family members. Some have experienced brushes with death themselves, due to illness and violence. 

They may not look like a diverse class, but they are. This class is comprised of many East Bay natives, but also first and second-generation immigrants from Germany, Nigeria, Mexico, Peru, Belize, Ethiopia, Japan, India, Yemen, Pakistan, the Philippines, China, Kenya and El Salvador. They are Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist and athiest. In the same class are the son of a Black Panther and the great-granddaughter of famed Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange. These students are BHS student government officers (the president and treasurer of the senior class), cheerleaders, yearbook staff (including the editor), football and lacrosse players and Youth Together officers. They are students in CPA’s first AP English class, but they are also students in AP Calculus, AP Latin, AP Statistics, AP Environmental Science, AP Spanish, AP Chemistry, and AP Biology. Some of them are among the most talented writers I have ever taught. 

These students also give of themselves. They have educated their classmates on immigrant rights and African history; they have traveled to Native American Reservations to teach Aztec Dance; they have fed the homeless at the holidays and raised money to buy poor children Christmas presents; they have privately attempted to raise money for a scholarship fund so that their classmates can attend college; they have taught elementary school children how to read. 

Yes, I am proud of this group of seniors. And yes, I will most likely be a mess at their graduation. But when they walk across that stage, it will be a good day for all of us. This group leaves us at CP Academy a stronger school for their example and though it may sound cliché, I wholeheartedly believe they will create for us a hopeful future. 

Susannah Bell is an English teacher at CP Academy. 

Among other things, the timing was wrong. The Dellums’ taskforce recommendations were turned over to the Oakland Chamber of Commerce before they were finished. They were released before they were merged into a coherent plan and before there was sufficient indication of agreement from the mayor on the individual recommendations or priority order of implementation. The Oakland Chamber took these raw recommendations, used the pro bono services of a consultant with particular biases (McKinsey), and presented the framework they had already been working on as Oakland’s economic future at the mayor’s Economic Summit. Unlike McKinsey’s spokesperson, the taskforce presenters were literally chosen at the last minute. Was this the mayor’s timing or the chamber’s timing? The chamber wants to get out in front of an economic development process that it is not in control of for the first time in the history of Oakland? 

The McKinsey Report laid out very little that was new about Oakland’s economic situation. It conveniently ignored the city’s racist development history that is told so well in the book Baghdad by the Bay; past wrongheaded business decision-making is part of the reason that Oakland is in the economic condition that it is in. The worst aspect of the report is the injection of biotechnology as a primary direction for Oakland to develop. This smells like that same old, purely self-serving misdirection. 

In 2005 in their report, The Dynamics of California Biotech Industry, Zhang and Patel note that “…despite California’s dominance in biotech, the sector is not likely to be a powerful engine of economic growth in the state. First, nationwide, the biotech industry involves fewer than 200,000 employees … Second, this industry has an insatiable appetite for new ideas and for venture capital to support the development of those ideas, … and that only the most highly trained and educated scientists are likely to be involved.” Why should Oakland promote an industry that is going to bring few jobs to residents?  

Well, it turns out that McKinsey’s spokesperson is an executive member of the Bay Area Council, which is busy lobbying for more H1B visas so that the biotech industry will be able to import more foreign scientists. (You do not have to pay foreigners as much and they make few demands.) Since the defeat of affirmative action, very few Oakland residents will be trained at the University of California to take those few available biotech jobs. The industry is also chasing Proposition 71 (stem cell public bond) money since the venture capitalists are moving on to green technology investment. Biotech desperately needs space for research facilities. In 2005 the Bay Area Council got three Oakland City Council members to sign a letter supporting the San Francisco Stem Cell Institute and offering up Oakland land for facilities. They had already squeezed huge concessions out of Mayor Newsom for the Institute. But SF won’t get many jobs for residents either. 

Mayor Newsom has just launched the Business Council on Climate Change, getting a step on Oakland in becoming the center for green technology. Green technology is where the future growth is in producing good jobs that are more accessible to Oakland residents. It is with green technology that there will be more small business and general entrepreneurial opportunities. This is where more black business people ought to be looking; there is going to be a big market here. Green tech was in the back of the McKinsey report and given little attention. The big boys don’t fully control it yet. 

Are not jobs for residents more important than profits for millionaires? Will the follow-up meetings from the summit be dominated by chamber types? Or will they be a part of a process with other knowledgeable folks on an equal basis and dedicated to the betterment of all of Oakland’s residents? It remains to be seen. 

Wilson Riles is a former Oakland City Council member.

At the age of 20, being a mother of a 3- and 5-year-old was not easy. Being a single mom on welfare living in a cockroach-infested apartment was not living. I thought I needed to learn discipline, so I walked into the army recruitment office. I spent my 21st birthday in boot camp on a five-mile road march. Many a mom has gone through boot camp. I was no exception. 

Today I work towards building a network of women, many of them mothers, who have served in the U.S. military. We seek ways to tell the truth and speak for peace. This Mothers’ Day is a time to remember the mothers serving in the military whose stories you’re not likely to hear. 

In 1987 I was activated and left for Honduras. Once you put on the uniform, you’re a soldier and you do what is expected of you. You do your job and try not to think. You learn to shut your emotions off. When I returned I didn’t talk with my sons about these life changes. You just come back, go to work, feed your kids. 

In 1993 I went to drill sergeant school. Another eight weeks away from home. As a woman in the military, I had to eliminate showing any emotion or insecurity. It affected how I raised my sons. They knew what it was like to be in the military at very young ages. You lose emotions; you lose yourself and connections to others. They drove it out of me in boot camp and finished it off by sending me to Iraq. I don’t feel like a very good mom or partner these days. 

My depression can be severe. Some days I can get out of bed, some days I can’t. Other times all I can do is cry. The military teaches you to accept the rules. When you have PTSD, the VA’s evaluation process seems to be the biggest obstacle to get help. Most veterans just give up.  

Women are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and don’t know what is happening to them. They can’t be around their kids; they can’t control their anger or sadness and no one can get close to them. They’re suffering from PTSD but they pretend they’re all right because they don’t want to look weak.  

When I started to speak about my experience, my son, a former Marine, thought I was crazy. He is still afraid for me. He thinks someone is going to kill me if I keep talking. But as a mother and a grandmother of eight, I feel there is an obligation to clear the path for our children. My tour in Iraq taught me this lesson. 

It broke my heart to watch 20-year-olds walk in from patrol with faces dirty from the dust and heat—looking as if they just came in off the playground—with pictures of their loved ones on their armbands and their weapons on their backs, talking about how they just graduated high school.  

Mothers cry for their babies, here and in Iraq. Mothers are the casualties that are not counted. We are the wounded that go untreated. We are also the healers that can change anything. We protect life because we give it. Send a Prayer for the mothers and babies who have lost each other. This Mother’s Day remember them, remember us. We need each other to heal. And for all mothers who feel helpless because they think they can’t do anything to stop the war – if you knew the truth you would try.  

This month, here in Northern California, women veterans are gathering to heal from the trauma of military service and war, to document our stories and to support our transformation from soldiers to peacemakers. 

Eli PaintedCrow is a retrieved vet working for peace with the Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland. 

Figuring out the motives and actions of a wartime President while those actions are taking place is always difficult because, after all, one of the key elements of the successful prosecution of a war is deceiving the enemy, and you cannot very well do that while honestly explaining your true plans and intentions to your own people. Wish it weren’t so, friends, but that seems to be a fact. And for democracies, which bill themselves as being based on an informed public, it is a contradiction that will never be fully resolved. 

Perhaps Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most famous speech was the “day of infamy” address he gave following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, mobilizing the nation to go to war. We did not learn until many years later that this was not as much a surprise to Mr. Roosevelt as he wanted us to believe, with credible historical evidence now emerging that the Roosevelt Administration may have goaded the Japanese into an attack—although the belief almost certainly was that the attack would be on a lesser American military base, and not on Hawaii—on the assumption that the then-isolationist American public would probably not otherwise support U.S. troops going to the defense of Britain and France against the German Axis. 

That being said, we who live in war times do not have the luxury of historians to be able to comb through declassified documents and interview survivors freed of national security restraints. We have to make our decisions in real time, based upon our imperfect assessments and the available evidence, and so we risk that la historia no nos absolverá, to paraphrase Fidel Castro’s famous phrase, but may, in fact, find our assumptions wrong. But that is the chance, and we have no choice but to take it. 

And so, let us try to figure through this morass we face. 

To begin with, I do not think that the Bush Administration threat to enter war with Iran is more than a feint and, if it is, there is little we could do about it, anyway, before it could be carried out, and its effects felt. 

Having never served in the military, I know as little about assessing military strengths and weaknesses as the average person, but it seems a valid question to ask that if the United States were to engage in a prolonged military conflict with Iran beginning while we are still engaged in other military matters, one has to wonder, with what forces? We know that the current United States military has been stretched and strained in trying to man and manage two wars—Iraq and Afghanistan—and that the country has been drained of the conceivably available National Guard troops. We see that it is difficult for both the National Guard and the regular military to maintain enlistment levels under the present circumstances and absent an Iranian nuclear strike on, say, Los Angeles, it is also difficult to imagine circumstances that would cause such enlistments to suddenly increase. Without such a troop increase, how would the nation open up a third front in these wars, considering that the Iranian military would be a significantly superior force to what the country faced against either the Taliban or the Sadaam Hussein regime? 

But we have long ago learned that what seems insensible and irrational to the rest of the country and the world can seem perfectly reasonable within the White House of George W. Bush, and so it is certainly possible that the Bush Administration believes that it could get away with lobbing a few missiles from a carrier group into what it says is an Iranian nuclear weapons-making facility, with few consequences to America beyond the loss of several thousand pounds of ordnance. To do so risks bringing Iranian troops, in uniform, across the border into Iraq to hit the flanks of American forces currently bogged down in the Baghdad “surge,” but the Bush White House might believe this would also bring the generals back into line, as well as a run of flag-waving young American men and women to the recruiting stations. Seems doubtful, but who knows what lurks within the minds of these men of the Bush Administration? 

But to plot progressive strategy to try to end the current conflict, we must try to look into these dark recesses. 

At the beginning of April, when the Democratic-controlled Congress was considering war funding measures that put a timetable on U.S. military involvement in Iraq, I wrote in a column that progressives should look at this as the first skirmish, and not the place where the line in the sand should be drawn. 

“Much as we would like them to move immediately,” I said, “Congress must move cautiously on the war issue. Because the anti-war majority in the country has not yet hardened, this is not the time to test its resolve in a showdown with the President. If Mr. Bush vetoes the military spending bill because of its withdrawal language—as he has promised—Congress should give in, and pass legislation that leaves the withdrawal language out. A point will have been made, and in the next budget showdown—which will inevitably come—the anti-war members of Congress will have the stronger hand.” 

In response, a local progressive activist—whose work and opinion I respect—wrote me privately, “I followed the rationale of your article, but, alas, and probably for the first time, I find myself in disagreement with your conclusion. To my mind, best you had left it at outlining the various alternatives and leave it to each to ponder their personal selection.” He suggested another option—a proposed bill that “would approve the requested funding, but, with the stipulation that the funds can ONLY be used for disengagement and withdrawal,” which he was suggesting to House and Senate leaders. 

But, respectfully, I think my good friend missed the point I was trying to make, most probably because of my inadequacies in attempting to explain it. I’ll try again, now that events have helped to make the situation clearer. 

Democrats hold a majority in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, but it is the slimmest of majorities, certainly not veto-proof. Further, while there is a mandate coming out of the last Congressional elections for the United States military involvement in Iraq to end—a mandate that has spilled over into the consciousness and actions of some Congressional Republicans as well most Democrats—there is no generally agreed upon “plan” by which such an end should take place, or what Americans think should be left when American military forces are gone. By the end of the war in Vietnam, for various reasons, neither of those were national issues in this country, and so the call to “Get out NOW!” resonated in those days. But these are different days. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can certainly put forward a military funding measure with a date-certain withdrawal provision on it. But so could Glendower in Shakespeare’s King Henry IV call spirits from the vasty deep. “Why, so can I, or so can any man,” Hotspur responded. “But will they come when you do call for them?” 

How would Congress respond to such date-certain language? They would probably pass it, again, but there does not seem to be, for the present, a workable, veto-proof majority to uphold it. 

In no small part, this comes from no small fear that the Bush Administration might purposely put American troops in greater danger than necessary in order to advance their political goals if the funding bill is further delayed. And so the seeming impasse, with two things appearing possible which might break it. 

The first would be a virtual revolt among the troops. Though conventional thinking may be that this is something out of the realm of possibility, that is, to some extent, what happened in Vietnam, and what helped lead to an end to that war. But Vietnam was a mostly involuntary war, made up in large percentage by troops who came there not by choice, but by coercion. Other than large sections of the National Guard forces, the American troops in Iraq are for the most part voluntary. They may grumble, but they are almost certainly going to continue to follow orders so long as they are there. 

The other factor that could lead to an earlier end to the U.S. involvement in Iraq would be a virtual revolt within this country itself. That, again, was what helped lead to the early U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. That included massive anti-war demonstrations, as well as widespread civil disobedience campaigns. 

But although sentiment within the United States against the war in Iraq rose and converged to critical mass vastly quicker than it did during the war in Vietnam, that sentiment has not reached a level where large numbers of Americans feel so much in opposition that they will walk down, en masse, to the nearest Army recruiting station and sit down in front and block it until the police come and take them away to jail. 

Unless and until that happens, or some other manifestation of mass sentiment against the war comes to the surface, it would appear that President Bush—and the people who want to continue to prosecute the war in Iraq, regardless of the consequences to the military and the nation—currently hold the current upper hand, no matter how much otherwise we wish it so. 

The present work, therefore, would seem to be not so much to convince Congress, but to first catalyze the crowd.

Not every house in Berkeley can boast of an illustrious resident. Fewer can boast of two. Fewer yet can demonstrate a connection between the two notables. The house at 1335 Shattuck Avenue is one of the latter. 

Built in 1894 by Captain John Slater, the house is one of the first Classic Colonial Revival buildings constructed in the East Bay. At the time it was erected, Queen Anne was the prevailing fashion, and the shingled Arts & Crafts style was just beginning to emerge from the cradle with a few examples such as the Anna Head School at Bowditch and Channing (1892). 

John Slater (1849–1908) was born on one of the Shetland Islands in Scotland. At the age of 15 he left school to join the crew of a fishing sloop. Four years later, he went to sea as a sailor before the mast, working his way up to an officer’s position. In 1871, he came to California as a mate on the ship Seminole of Boston. Impressed with the outlook on the Pacific coast, he decided to stay. After plying the coast trade for several years, he was lured into gold mining on the Stikine River in northwestern British Columbia but did not find it profitable. 

Going back to the sea, Slater became master of several ships belonging to the Sam Blair line. In 1889, he joined the shipping firm of William E. Mighell and Charles C. Boudrow. For seven years Slater was master of the bark Wilner. After this ship was burned at the docks in Tacoma, WA, he took charge of the clipper ship Charmer, which he commanded on the San Francisco-Honolulu route until his retirement in 1907. 

Captain Slater married Louise M. Colby in 1888. The couple lived in San Francisco before they built their house in the Berkeley Villa Association tract. The move to Berkeley may have been inspired in part by Slater’s employers—both Captain Boudrow and Captain Mighell owned mansions nearby, on what is now the 1500 block of Oxford Street. And they weren’t the only ones. North Berkeley was a mini-Mecca for seafarers, who no doubt were attracted by the sweeping marine vistas commanded from its hills. 

The Slaters picked a double lot directly to the south of Captain Jefferson Maury’s house. Sited on a double lot at 1317 Shattuck Avenue, the Maury residence featured a wrap-around porch and an angled corner turret. In 1922, John Hudson Thomas would transform this house into a shingled English country cottage. 

Across the street from the Slaters, at 1322 Shattuck Avenue, lived Captain William B. Seabury and his family. Like Captain Maury, Seabury was a commodore of the Pacific Mail Steam Ship Company. Also like Maury, he built his house in 1885. But while the Maury house survived to become a City of Berkeley Landmark, the Seabury house has been replaced with an apartment building. 

The Slaters engaged prominent San Francisco architect T.J. Welsh to design their residence. The contractor was Charles Murcell of East Oakland, whose Berkeley quarters were located at the lumber office of Barker & Hunter, on the southwestern corner of Shattuck Ave. and Dwight Way. 

In January 1896, the Berkeley Herald described the Slater house in detail, noting that it commanded “a magnificent view of the Golden Gate, the city of San Francisco, San Francisco Bay and the ocean beyond:” 

A notable feature of the exterior is a pleasant porch, running the entire width of the building, at the front entrance. 

The walls are covered from foundation to first story in rustic [wide wood siding] and from first story to cornice with clapboard. It is painted in Colonial yellow, with white trimmings. The roof is of slate. The building is 42x80 feet, which includes the front piazza. It contains eight large rooms, well arranged for light and heat. The front vestibule is trimmed in oak. The spacious exterior hall is trimmed with curly, native redwood, wainscoted with Lincrusta-Walton [an embossed, linoleum-like material] and lighted from transoms over doors of French bevel plate-glass. 

The staircase is separated from the main hall, the posts of which extend to the ceiling. Between the posts are spindle transoms supported on ornamental brackets. The parlors are finished in natural redwood and are provided with open fireplaces of Roman brick; hearth of same, and mantels of curly redwood of unique design. The dining-room is trimmed and finished in antique oak, including paneled wainscoting. The divan is built with arm-rest and lockers underneath. There is a spindle arch across the bay-window, resting on turned columns. The fireplace is built of Roman brick facings and hearth, mantels made of oak of exquisite design, including lockers and bevel plate mirrors. The walls are tinted a deep sea green, ceiling of Nile green. 

The article went on to describe the kitchen, pantry, butler’s pantry and china closet finished in natural redwood and “fitted up in modern style”; bedrooms “fitted up in like manner, with closets and dens attached”; a bathroom of oak, “with tile floor and tile wainscoting five feet high, and containing a porcelain bathtub with shower bath attached, oval wash-basin, all plumbing exposed, with locker and medicine closet attached.” The cost of the building to complete was $5,750, well above the $4,608 figure provided in the contract notice of Aug. 2, 1894. 

The first floor housed the Slaters and their four children, James Herbert, Marguerite, Norman and Colby. The basement is said to have housed the servants, although the 1900 census listed only one domestic living with the family. There were also rooms on the attic floor; these are said to have been reserved for guests (by 1970, the attic and basement floors were subdivided into six apartments each), but it appears that some if not all of the guests were of the paying kind. For several years in the first decade of the 20th century, one such “guest” was Andrew H. Irving (1875–1947), plant superintendent at the Paraffine Paint Company, a manufacturer of roofing materials under the Pabco brand name. 

The vice-president and manager of Paraffine Paint Co. was Andrew Irving’s elder brother, Samuel C. Irving (1858–1930). In 1906, Samuel acquired 1322 Shattuck Ave. from the Seaburys, who had moved to the Southside eight years earlier. We’ll return to the Irvings in part two of this series. 

Captain Slater died at the age of 58 following a bout of cancer. Twenty-one months later, his widow married Edward A. Phillips, a recently arrived magazine writer from Salt Lake City. Phillips, too, was not long for this world, and by the mid-1910s, the twice-widowed Louise and some of her children had moved to 1426 Spruce Street. This house, a modest Queen Anne, still exists, albeit altered, on a row of surviving Victorians. 

This is the first part in a series of articles on north Berkeley houses and the families that inhabited them. 

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

Photograph by Daniella Thompson. Symmetry and Classic elements, such as columns and a pediment on the dormer, distinguish the Slater house at 1335 Shattuck Ave.  

One might be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but there are things to buy at The Gardener that actually have something to do with gardens. 

The tony and tempting Fourth Street shop has been, shall we say, wider in its scope than the average nursery or hardware store since its inception. I do believe that the proportion of garden stuff has shrunk over the years, but that’s entirely subjective. 

Maybe I’m just personally dazzled by the perfectly Zen furniture—imagining each piece playing solo in a room of hand-burnished cypress and off-white rice paper—or the perfectly textured fabrics in table linens and scarves, or the perfectly hilarious renditions of an entire Shakespeare play in relatively fine print on a poster.  

Of course, the stuff displayed on the sidewalk outside is suitable for outdoor use, in the garden or on the deck or by the front door. 

I do like the recycled rainbow-rubber renditions of those familiar school foot-scraper doormats in a couple of sizes, and the weathered-wood Adirondack chairs, though, having some experience with weathered wood, I have to wonder about splinters.  

There’s an interesting strategy going on inside. If you have the same tendency I do to wander through a store in a circle, you’ll find the path leads from garden stuff first through garden stuff last whether you go sunwise or widdershins.  

On your right, you’ll encounter the $200 birdhouses and zinc plant markers (carbon pencils to use on those are sold separately) along with more practical items like the “tip bag” and Bosbag-type gadgets for toting your pruning scraps or leaf litter, and a few models of the indispensable Felco pruning shears. I do think that at those prices the birdhouses should come with at least a pair of orioles.  

What else? 

Well, while you’re on your expedition to pick up a castle for the kids or lunch at Bette’s or a yummy rat for your snake, you can drop by The Gardener for some Italian veggie seeds—or Seeds of Change or Kitazawa seeds—maybe a Designer watering can. A waterproof notebook; I’d thought only birders were crazy enough to need those.  

Maybe you need West County gardening gloves, or a pair of rose gloves with long gauntlet cuffs. Speaking of Zen: natural-fiber cordage for tying up vines or tomatoes.  

Maybe a stylish gardening hat. Hand hoes and other such clever tools. Garden clogs (for the kids, too) or big plastic bucket/baskets like those used in Spain. Polished pebbles to mulch your potted plants.  

And when you’re finished with planting and maintaining, some fragrant soap (maybe Juniper Ridge wildcrafted California scents: bay laurel, juniper, cedar) and a handsome $18 nailbrush to clean up with, scented hand cream afterwards.  

Then off to your South American-style hammock, with a copy of Sunset’s latest edition, or Native Treasures, or some such garden book, or Yoga for Gardeners. Maybe a hand-thrown cup of fancy tea.  

And dream of the garden that The Gardener thinks you should have: perfect in every way.  

The Gardener 

1836 Fourth St. 

548-4545 

www.thegardener.com 

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

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  

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

Nightmare On Elm Street? 

Even though Halloween is months away, let’s consider some things that make for a scary house: 

• It was built before 1989 and you’re not sure about the retrofit 

• You’re not home 24/7, but you don’t have an automatic gas shut-off valve 

• The heavy furniture, wall hangings, and appliances haven’t been secured 

• There isn’t enough food, water, and emergency supplies to last a week 

• You’re not sure about the safest place to be in each room during a serious quake 

Don’t get overwhelmed, folks, just decide to do something about your family’s and your home’s safety—one step at a time. 

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

In Berkeley, it’s difficult to travel more than a few blocks without seeing an “Impeach Bush” bumper sticker. And whenever I write a column about the 43rd president, I receive e-mails suggesting that the simplest solution to America’s problems is his impeachment. Nonetheless, I’d never taken the possibility of impeachment seriously until this week when I realized I’ve had enough: I want Dubya to go down. 

The movement to impeach George W. Bush started around Labor Day, in 2002, when it become clear that he was determined to invade Iraq. In March 2003, it gathered momentum when many Americans joined marches and silent vigils to protest what we considered to be an ill-considered and dangerous action. At that moment, Bush was enormously popular and many “blue” Americans felt we had lost our country: we couldn’t understand why so many of our fellow citizens supported Dubya; or why they voted to reelect him in 2004. In those dark days, the impeachment movement seemed to be the last refuge of die-hard liberals: a defiant stance that had little hope of success. 

Times changed: in 2006, Democrats took control of Congress and Bush’s popularity rating sank to Nixonian depths. Meanwhile, evidence of his malfeasance exploded. Suddenly even conservative Republicans were criticizing the President, calling for him to abandon his customary intractability and engage in real bipartisanship. 

As the impeachment movement grew stronger, I resisted its call for several reasons. While I’ve never doubted that there are strong legal grounds for Bush’s impeachment, I’ve been troubled by pragmatic considerations: if Dubya was removed from office, Dick Cheney would become president; impeachment proceedings would tie up the 110th Congress at a time when congressional energy needs to be focused on undoing Bush administration mistakes—such as ending the war in Iraq; and the impeachment process would further polarize a nation that has become far too adversarial and combative. When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that impeachment was “off the table,” I agreed: it’s one thing to be right and quite another thing to be effective, I thought. 

My thinking changed after I read George Packer’s magnificent commentary in the May 14 New Yorker. In “No Blame, No Shame.” Packer asks the key question: “Why has it become impossible to admit a mistake in Washington and accept the consequences?” I pondered the fact that “under the Bush administration no senior civilian official or military officer has been held responsible for what will probably turn out to be the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history.” Then, I had an epiphany: I understood the “why” Packer asks about. The reason why Bush never admits a mistake or accepts consequences is because he knows he can get away with it. He’s been raised in a system of privilege where there’s a special justice system. 

George Bush’s unwillingness to be held accountable reflects on more than his administration. It’s a symptom of a deeper malaise that infects American politics and, sadly, much of American society. It’s what I think of as the dual justice system. I first ran into this system many years ago when I was an idealistic probation officer in Orange County: courthouse habitués informed me that the defendants whose cases I handled were mostly from the lower and middle class, because there was a different system of justice for the rich and powerful—they didn’t go through the same process the commoners did. Whether their crime was petty theft or murder, the rich received different treatment than they would if they were poor or persons of color. 

There are two systems of justice in the United States: one for the rich and powerful and a far different system for everyone else. Rob a bank and you go to prison; loot a savings and loan as an executive and you’re likely to get a hefty fine, if that. We read every day about corporate executives who mismanaged their firms, caused the layoffs of thousands of poorly paid workers, and then danced away with millions of dollars of severance pay. Look at what happened to the architects of the disaster in Iraq: Bremer, Franks, and Tenet got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Rice and Wolfowitz got promoted, as did the invasion supporters in the Pentagon. There was no accountability; they got away with it. So far. 

That’s why the impeachment of George W. Bush would send an important signal to other elected officials, and the power elite. It would be an indication that the American people are tired of Washington business as usual and serious about holding our leaders accountable for their actions. I’m not suggesting that the focus be exclusively on Bush, because I think his whole crew—Cheney, Gonzales, Rice, and Rumsfeld, among others—should go down, too. However, the logical place to start is with the guy at the top: the decider-in-chief. 

Bob Dylan once sang “even the President of the United States sometimes has to stand naked.” This is the time for the trappings of power to be stripped from Bush. He needs to stand naked before the law and take full responsibility for the failures of his administration. Impeach Dubya. 

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

Two weeks ago I wrote a column in which I described my adventures at Fairyland with a hyperactive kindergartener. I mentioned tagging along with him as he climbed up and over the Pirate Ship. I explained that I pursued him as he rushed from Hey Diddle Diddle to the Crooked House, past the Three Little Pigs and Little Miss Muffet on his way to the Jolly Trolly, Pinocchio’s Castle, and the Owl and the Pussycat. I reluctantly followed him down Alice’s Rabbit Hole. I stated that I popped up safely within the Maze of Cards.  

Full confession: I was exaggerating when I said it was a safe emergence. 

Soon after visiting Fairyland I was assigned a full-time substitute position in a school near my home. I accepted the seven-week gig for several reasons: after eight months of widowhood I wanted more structure in my life; I could ride my bike to and from the workplace; I desperately needed the extra income. 

How hard could it be, I asked myself as I prepared for my first full week in a primary grade classroom after a mere 23-year absence. After all, I am the retired teacher who is still friends with some of her former students. I’ve watched them grow from enthusiastic, well-behaved fourth-graders to mature, responsible adults: lawyers, doctors, performance artists, mothers and fathers. As far as I know only one of my past prodigies has received a long-term jail sentence: 50 years in a Virginia state prison for a truly heinous crime. He’ll be out in 2034.  

What I should have asked myself is why. Why, at the age of 55, do I think I have the energy to enter a small, cramped room and teach anybody anything? Why didn’t I stop to think about the reasons a new teacher might be needed just weeks before the end of the school year? I knew that the person I was replacing was not sick. He didn’t have family obligations, or a pressing emergency. I should have considered the clues before plunging into this mysterious, unknown hole. 

Monday, 8 a.m. I found myself surrounded by several overwhelmed administrators, a cluster of anxious parents, and 24 wise and world-weary 6-year-olds. I could see them sizing me up while the adults fussed and fidgeted. I believe my soon-to-be constant companions were making bets on just how long I would last.  

Gradually the room emptied of all adults except me. There was a moment of absolute silence as the classroom door finally closed, and then the room erupted with an explosion of uncontrolled activity and noise. George Bush should have skipped over Iraq and looked for Weapons of Mass Destruction in the toy box near the Quiet Corner. Dangerous items lurked everywhere: large cardboard blocks lined a low hanging shelf, a bucket full of sharp, chewed-upon miniature dinosaurs waited patiently for someone to throw them, nine naked Barbie Dolls loitered in a wicker basket under a pile of raggedy dress-up clothes.  

Eventually I got the kids settled into their seats. I read a story to them—something about meatballs raining down on a city, orange juice flooding the streets, strawberry jam clogging the freeways. We worked on a language arts project and a few simple mathematical equations. Then it was time for recess.  

While the kids tumbled onto the playground, I staggered to the teachers’ lounge. I locked myself in the tiny bathroom and leaned against the sink. I examined myself in the mirror. I had aged considerably in the past hour. I looked at my watch. Ten more minutes until free time ended. I needed to get back into the classroom before I turned into a pumpkin.  

Oops. Wrong nursery rhyme.  

I took a deep breath, unlatched the bathroom door, and headed down the empty hallway. I needed to be adventurous and brave. I needed to be strong and determined. I needed to transform myself into Alice. Fast.

Cal Day at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) is a reliable venue for stories. Last year it was a conversation with a maybe eight-year-old naturalist about gopher snakes at the Berkeley Marina. This year I wound up talking to a young woman who was presiding over a tabletop display of dead bats. One in particularly caught my eye, a larger-than-average bat with a striking two-tone wing pattern: a hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus). 

(That snickering in the back row will stop immediately. “Hoary” is a respectable Old English word connoting frost. In addition to the hoary bat, the hoary redpoll and the hoary marmot are members in good standing of North America’s fauna. So just cut that right out). 

What the Cal student told me was that hoary bats, unlike many of their kin, roost in trees and shrubs, and that UC’s grounds maintenance crew used to bring them to the MVZ a lot (whether dead or alive was not clear). I was intrigued enough to ask a friend who had recently retired as the university’s lead groundskeeper about bats in trees. He remembered dealing with Mexican free-tailed bats in the crevices of buildings, including the women’s faculty club, but not the larger hoarys. 

Still wondering what kind of shape those bats were in, I followed up with Patricia Winters, Education and Rehabilitation Director of the California Bat Conservation Fund, whose “BATMAM” license plate you may have noticed. I thought I recalled her talking about scrub-jay predation on tree-dwelling bats a few years ago, and she confirmed that it was frequent. Crows do it too.  

“They often come into our rehab centers with various injuries,” Winters said via email. “I presently have three hoary bats in captivity who were too badly injured to ever regain the ability to fly. They are fierce fighters when they first come in, but quickly learn to realize that we are not going to hurt them, and calm down. I have had one hoary female for eight years now. She was a marvelous school bat, going to hundreds of presentations with me, but she is now retired due to her old age. The other two hoarys, both female, are now getting ready to take her place.” 

Winters was kind enough to provide the accompanying photograph of the late Punkinhead, a male hoary bat who was in the rehab program for several years. How can you not love that face? As cuddly as they may appear, it’s not a good idea to pet them, should the opportunity arise. “Do not reach out and attempt to touch them,” Winters warns. “They will never attack people, but they will defend themselves and can give a nasty bite if they are handled.” Hoary bats will typically warn against such familiarities with what one book calls “a most startling rattling hiss accompanied by an impressive show of teeth.” 

Active late in the evening, hoarys have a strong direct flight. Their food habits are not well documented; in addition to the expected insects, one was observed attacking a western pipistrelle, a smaller species of bat. Unlike the high-pitched echolocation calls of most other bats, their in-flight chatter is audible to the human ear. 

These mostly solitary bats have a huge range, from the Canadian tree line into South America. Males and females seem to follow different northbound routes through California in spring, females in the lowlands and coastal valleys, males in the foothills and mountains. The sexes have been found together during fall migration, and may travel in small flocks. Up to 21 have been counted at the same time on South Farallon Island. 

But they haven’t stopped there. Humans aside, the hoary bat is the only land mammal to reach the Hawai’ian islands on its own. Island bats, known as ope’ape’a, have been classified as a separate subspecies and their fur is a bit redder, but otherwise they’re pretty much standard hoary bats. 

Which makes you think about the vagaries of evolution. Millions of years ago, the seed of a California tarweed reached Hawai’i probably clinging to the feathers of a migratory bird; its progeny include the bizarre yuccalike silversword plants of Haleakala Crater. An ancestor got out there some 3.5 million years ago and gave rise to a whole slew of red, yellow, and black songbirds with a dazzling array of bill shapes and functions: seed-crushers, tweezers, picks and probes. Some, like the beak of the extinct Lana’i hookbill, still have scientists scratching their heads. 

As recent work with the Darwin’s finches of the Galapagos Islands suggests, it could be that it’s somehow easier to rewire the developmental pathways that make a beak than for other body parts. Or the Hawai’ian bats may simply not have been there long enough for their own evolutionary radiation; the oldest known fossils are less than 100,000 years old. Time and chance, like the man said. 

Photograph by Patricia Winters, California Bat Conservation Fund: Punkinhead, a rehabilitated hoary bat. 

FRIDAY, MAY 18 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Last Five Years” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through June 10. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.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 20. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. 

Berkeley Rep “Blue Door” at 8 p.m. at 2025 Addison St., through May 20. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org  

Berkeley Rep “Oliver Twist” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. through June 24. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.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.  

Shotgun Players “The Cryptogram” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through June 17. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“The Striders Club” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Arts Center, 1421 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$11. 450-0891. 

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 “Serjeant 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 

fer•ma•ta UCB Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way and runs through June 10. 642-0808. 

Richmond Art Center Spring Reception for all exhibitions at 6 p.m. at 2540 Barret Ave., Richmond. 620-6772. 

“Significant Others” Art from LGBTQ Communities. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 601-4040, ext. 111. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Camilo Mejia reads from his book "Road From AR Ramadi" at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker, 1640 Addison St. 499-0537. 

Representa! Bilingual spoken word and poetry with Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

Comics Out Loud! with cartoonists Julia Wertz, Shannon O’Leary, Justin Hall, Geoff Vasile and many others at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

State of the Arts 2 Conference sponsored by UC Institute for Research in the Arts with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Lectures on the current role and future of the arts in California and beyond, Sat. and Sun. at BAM/PFA. 2626 Bancroft Way. For complete schedule see www.ucira.ucsb.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Ballet Theater Spring Performances, including “Cinderella” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $21. 843-4689. 

Oakland East Bay Symphony “Porgy and Bess” at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $20-$67. 625-8497. 

Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble “Transitions: Spanish Influence in the New World” at 8 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Tickets are $5-$15. www.wavewomen.org 

Volti “the San Francisco Experience” with the Piedmont Children’s Choirs at 8 p.m. at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $8-$20. 415-771-3352. www.voltisf.org 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies “The Passion of St. John” at 7 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. Tickets are $12-$25. 868-0695. www.bayareabach.org 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “Crossroads: Music from the African Diaspora” at 8 p.m., pre-concert talk at 7:30 p.m., at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Free. 415-248-1640. www.sfchamberorchestra.org 

Jazz City Singers Spring Concert at 8:30 p.m. at Rockridge Methodist Church, 303 Hudson St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$7. 658-7136.  

Nanette McGuiness, soprano, and flutist Marha Stoddard, at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 848-1228. 

Jerry Kuderna Piano “From Bach to Babbitt” at 1 p.m. at 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

“Dance Elixir” with Leyya Tawil and Zari Le’on Fri. and Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. Tickets are $20. 435-6413. 

SFJazz All-Star High School Ensemble at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Hurricane Sam & the Hotshots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Gypsy Dances from the Romani Trail, belly dance performance at 8 p.m., Diiin at 10 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Rajeev Taranath on sarod with Abhiman Kaushal on tabla at 8 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $18-$25. 517-8952. nssensalo@gmail.com 

Ron Thompson, blues, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Solo Bass Night with Michael Manring, Jean Baudin, Jeff Schmidt and Dave Grossman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Avatara and The Wicker Men at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Workingman’s Ed with guest Joe Rut at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

California Love, Drain the Sky 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 P-PL at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Ashkon, Bumbalo, Richie Cunning at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Socket, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Resistoleros, New Faith, One Word Solution at 8:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

SATURDAY, MAY 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Art Center 40th Birthday from 1 to 4 p.m. with guest speakers, concert, children’s activities and art exhibition, at 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. 

“Jazz Icons” photography by Carl Lewis at the Jazzschool, 2087 Addison St.  

ACCI Gallery 50th Anniversary Celebration with music by Red Wings and an exhibition honoring ACCI alumni Tim Baskerville, Elizabeth Kavaler, Bob Stocksdale and Catherine Webb, at 6 p.m. at 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527.  

THEATER 

Eastenders Repertory Company “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich” by Bertolt Brecht at 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at the JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $20. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Representa! Bilingual spoken word and poetry with Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas at 2 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

The Great Night of Rumi with spoken word, music and dance at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

“Medieval Seminar: Music, Liturgy, and Architecture in Medieval England” with Professor William Mahr, Dept. of Music, Stanford Univ. from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at MusicSources, 1000 The Alameda. Cost is $15. 848-5591. 

“Stepping Away From the Stereotypes: Two Latina Authors Discuss Fact and Funny Fiction” with Marta Acosta, whose latest book is “Midnight Brunch at Casa Dracula” and Rose Castillo Guilbault, on her memoir “Farmworker’s Daughter” at 2 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 531-4275. 

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area, El Sobrante. Tickets are $33-$75. 869-4969. www.bayareastorytelling.org 

Jazz in Literature, Photography and Fine Art with readings by Al Young and Michael McClure at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Concerto Concert at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. www.ypsomusic.net 

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Songs of Heavenly and Earthly Love” at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 531-8714. www.vocisings.com 

Contra Costa Chorale with the Kensington Symphony Mozart’s “Coronation Mass” at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $12-$15, children free. 527-2026. 

Sacred and Profane “Summer on the Baltic Sea” Music from Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden at 8 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Tickets are $12-$18. 524-3611. 

Chora Nova “Celebrating Peace – music to celebrate the end of war” at 8 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, 2407 Dana. Tickets are $10-$15. contact@choranova.org 

Kairos Youth Choir Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $8-$10. 704-4479. 

Ruth Botchan Dance Company and Shahrzad Dance Company “Bridging Jewish and Persian Cultures” at 7:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. Tickets are $10. 848-3988. 

Winds Across the Bay “Views From the Stage” at 2 p.m. at Hilltop Community Church, 3118 Shane Drive, Richmond, just across from Hilltop Mall. Tickets are $5-$10 at the door. 243-0514. info@WindsAcrossTheBay.org 

Jack L in a benefit for the Darfur Women’s Center at 7:30 p.m. at the Hills Swim and Tennis Club, 2400 Manzanita Dr., Oakland. Tickets are $85. 339-0234.  

Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus and the Freedom Song Network in a performance to Save the Oaks at 2 p.m. at Memorial Oak Grove, east side of UC Campus, off Gayley Rd. 649-1423. halih@yahoo.com  

Las Mujeres del Hip-Hop Cubano with Las Krudas, DJ Leidis, and Magyori La Lave at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Robin Gregory & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Native Elements, Lakay, Caribbean, Haitian, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Stephanie Crawford, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Wayward Monks at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Gil Stancourt & Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Druid Sisters Tea Party at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

R’N’R Adventure Kids 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 20 

CHILDREN 

Orange Sherbert with members of Hot Buttered Rum at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $5-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

“Summer Time at the Little Farm” A puppet show about life on the farm and the mishaps of a farmer, at 10:45 and 11:30 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Monoprints and Collage Works 1991-2005” by Larry Stefl Opening reception at 3 p.m. at Mudrackers Cafe Gallery, 2801 Telegraph Ave. Exhibit runs to June 30. 547-8846. 

Allison Smith “Notion Nanny” an exhibition exploring traditional art and craft-making from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Berkeley Art Museum Galleries, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Representa! Bilingual spoken word and poetry with Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition Artsts’ Talks at 3 p.m. in the Berkeley Art Museum Galleries, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

UC Extension Writing Students read at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Susan Southworth reads from her latest novel “The Last Kosovo Serb Won’t Leave” following the 3 p.m. performance of “Serjeant Musgrave” at Old Oakland Theater, 481 Ninth St., at Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $21. For reservations, call 436-5085. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

11th Annual Jazz on Fourth Street from noon to 5 p.m. featuring the Marcus Shelby Quartet, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Group and the Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble.  

Laurel Ensemble in celebration of Berkeley Art Center’s 40th Anniversary, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $15-$20. 644-6893. 

Songs from Spain and Cuba with Elizabeth Caballero, soprano and Leesa Dahl, piano at 5 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Churhc, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 845-6830. 

Oakland Public Conservatory of Music Student Recital at 7 p.m. at 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649.  

Prometheus Symphony Orchestra at 3 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. www.prometheussymphony.org 

Sacred & Profane “Summer on the Baltic Sea, Sounds of Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden” at 4 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Tickets are $12-$18. 524-3611. www.sacredprofane.org 

Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers at 2 p.m. at Calvary Christian Center, 1516 Grand Ave., Alameda.. 887-4311. www.ggbc.org 

“Jazz at the Chimes” featuring Shanna Carlson and Cathi Walkup at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $10, children under 12 free. 228-3218. 

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Songs of Heavenly and Earthly Love” at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $15-$20. 531-8714.  

Season of Praise Gospel Concert at 6 p.m. at St. Paul AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. Proceeds will help sponsor youth on a trip to a gospel convention in Phildelphia this summer. 848-2050. 

Spring Choirs Concert with Angel Choir and Joyful Noise Choir at 5 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., corner of W. Richmond Ave., Point Richmond. Suggested donation $10. 236-0527. 

Concerto Festival with winners from the Concerto Competition at 4 p.m. at Valley Center Concert Hall, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $5-$10. 436-1225. 

Novello Quartet at 3 p.m. First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. Donation $10-$15. www.novelloquartet.org 

Caren Armstrong at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Jenny Jens & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: The Whiskey Brothers at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Willow Willow at 2 p.m. at Mod Lang Records, 6328 Fairmount Ave., rear, at San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 486-1880. 

Art Lande/Peter Sommer Duo at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373.  

Benefit for the Albany High School Music Fund at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Glen Staller at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Gather, Risen, 7 Generation at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Rwake, Black Cobra at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $8. 451-8100. 

MONDAY, MAY 21 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Art for Food’s Sake!” Restaurant Industry Artists Exhibition, opening reception at 5 p.m. at Downtown Restaurant, 2102 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. Bring a non-perishable food donation. Proceeds benefit the Alameda County Community Food Bank. RSVP to art@downtownrestaurant.com 649-3810. 

FILM 

“Jazz on a Monday Afternoon” Films and discussion on Jazz Innovators at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., 3rd flr. 981-6100. 

“When the Levees Broke” Parts 3 and 4 of Spike Lee’s documentary about Hurricane Katrina’s effect on New Orleans at 6:45 p.m. at the Upstairs Lounge at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, 410 14th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 262-1001. info@wellstoneclub.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Artists in Berkeley: Is There a Future? at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

Judith Goldman and Geoffrey G. O’Brien read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. This will be Judith’s last Bay Area reading before she moves to Chicago. Join her friends in wishing her farewell. 849-2087. 

Jeffrey Kripal describes “Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. 559-9500. 

Susanna Moore introduces her novel “The Big Girls” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with John Moore and Roy Johnston at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ed Neff and Friends, bluegrass, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Blue Monday Jam at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

West Coast Songwriter’s Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

TUESDAY, MAY 22 

CHILDREN 

Comedy & Tricks with Dana Smith & his dog Lacey, for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free. 524-3043. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Peter Irons, author of “God on Trial: Dispatches from America’s Religious Battlefields,” in conversation with Jeffrey Brand, dean of USF Law School, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. lewis@litminds.org 

Rebecca Mead talks about “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Debussy Trio at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamberperform.org 

Courtableu, cajun, zydeco, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Audrey Auld Mezera with Nina Gerber at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “Barrio Cuba” at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$6. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Talbot describes “Brothers: A Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Writing Teachers Write, student teacher readings, at 5 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 

Fred Randolph Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tamsen Donner Blues Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Benny Velarde Super Combo at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Hip Bones, instrumental jazz with funk and rock, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Mikie Lee and Amber at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

THURSDAY, MAY 24 

THEATER 

“The Other Side of the Mirror” written and performed by Lynn Ruth Miller at 8 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline. Cost is $10. 650-355-4296. 

Travelling Jewish Theater “Death of a Salesman” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for teh Arts, 2640 College Ave., through June 10. Tickets are $15-$44. 1-800-838-3006. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Residency Projects, Part I” Reception for Kala Fellowship artists, Freddy Chandra and Su-Chen Hung at 6 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. Exhibition runs to June 30. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

FILM 

POV 2 Bay Area Animation Festival at 9:15 p.m. at El Cerrito Speakeasy Theater, 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $6. 848-1994. www.picturepubpizza.com  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Christopher Hitchens and Chris Hedges on “Is God Great?” at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $20 from www.kpfa.org/events/Hitchens 

Eric Drooker: Musical Slide Lectures, spoken word to projected graphics at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. pegdowntown@sbcglobal.net 

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

Clotilde DuSoulier introduces her cookbook “Chocolate and Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Richard Walker reads from “The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tim O’Brien at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $25.50-$26.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Dick Conte Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Falso Baiano, Brazilian instrumental at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Haale, Samvega, The Hobbyists at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Fishtank Ensemble at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Selector: Cubik & Origami at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

BERKELEY ART CENTER CELEBRATES 40 YEARS 

The Berkeley Art Center will  

celebrate its 40th anniversary from  

1-4 p.m. Saturday with guest speakers, a concert, children’s activities (including a “Recycollage” workshop) and an art exhibition of  

collages, found objects and installations by Bay Area artists Jenny Honnert Abell, Marya Krogstad, and Thomas Morphis. Admission is free. The celebration will continue at 7 p.m. Sunday with a benefit concert by the Laurel Ensemble. Admission is $20, $15 for members. Designed by Robert Ratcliff Architects in 1967, the Berkeley Art Center was built by the Rotary Club of Berkeley as a gift to the city.1275 Walnut St., in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. 

50TH ANNIVERSARY FOR ACCI GALLERY 

The ACCI Gallery will celebrate its 50th anniversary at 6 p.m. Saturday with music by the Red Wings, and an exhibition featuring ACCI alumni  

Tim Baserville, Elizabeth Kavaler, Bob Stocksdale and Catherine Webb.  

1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

CLASSICS AND KIDDIE MATINEES IN EL CERRITO 

The Cerrito Theater will present Rob Reiner’s 1987 fairy tale The Princess Bride as part of its ongoing series of weekend matinees for kids. The film screens at noon and 3 p.m. Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday. The theater will also show the 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot (Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Anthony Curtis) as part its ongoing Cerrito Classics series at 6 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. 10070 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito. 814-2400. www.picturepubpizza.com.

In the prologue to his 1945 novel Cannery Row, John Steinbeck articulated the difficulties inherent in capturing a real time and place in a work of artistic fiction, likening the process to that of a marine biologist attempting to capture the most delicate of specimens. Ultimately, Steinbeck concluded, it is easier to simply open the jar and let the little creatures ooze in of their own accord, and this is the approach he took to his novel—“to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.” 

Charles Burnett’s 1977 Killer of Sheep, opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas, has this quality. It is an episodic film that moves at a languorous, summertime-like pace as it charts the life of Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a slaughterhouse worker struggling with depression amid the ghettoes of South Central Los Angeles. The film captures the dark reality of racism and poverty, of a bleak existence with little hope for the future, and yet it resorts neither to easy cynicism nor simplistic idealism. Images of despair and disillusionment are juxtaposed with the simple, almost transcendent joys of love and family and friendship: the embrace of a loved one; the gaze of a child; a quiet moment of togetherness in the fading light of evening. It is as though Burnett simply opened the lens and allowed the essence of 1970s Watts to flow into the frame, whole and untouched. 

One of the film’s most remarkable achievements may be its authentic portrayal of children at play. With the directness of a documentary, Burnett’s unassuming camera records the exploits of kids left to their own devices, staving off boredom and adulthood with improvised games amid tenement complexes and dusty vacant lots. They haven’t much, but they make do with what they have, from dirt clods to battered dolls, from passing trains to accessible rooftops. And Burnett succeeds beautifully in depicting the seemingly innate inclination of boys everywhere to take any opportunity to throw a rock. Put an unfamiliar object in its path and a dog will sniff it; an infant will put it in his mouth; and an 8-year-old boy will invariably throw a rock at it.  

The dangerous terrain between youth and old age is one of the film’s central themes. “You’re not a child anymore!” a father tells his son in the opening scene. “You soon will be a goddamned man! Start learning what life is about now, son.” The father’s scolding is punctuated by a mother’s slap across the face, a stark wake-up call delivered with a sad, maternal smile.  

Later an iconic shot expands on the theme, showing kids jumping from one roof to another across a two-story drop, symbolizing the perilous gap between childhood and adulthood. The camera then tilts downward to follow Stan as he descends a stairwell into that very chasm, looking up at the children as they hurdle over his head.  

Along the way, the adult world is burnished with echoes of a long-lost past in the form of old Southern words and phrases that suggest where these characters have come from and what they’ve left behind, evoking memories almost archetypal in their ability to comfort as well as afflict with nostalgia for days gone by.  

Rediscovering classic films can be like a series of “a-ha moments,” with missing links in the progression of cinematic style, technique and vision revealing themselves like long-lost Rosetta Stones. Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, while clearly drawing on preceding films and genres, is a seminal film for many reasons, but primarily for its application of the Italian neo-realist techniques of the ’40s and ’50s to black urban life in America; its low-budget indie aesthetic; and its use of popular music in shaping and defining its imagery.  

The film’s obscurity is in large part due to its soundtrack, a wonderful blend of classic jazz, blues, R&B and pop songs for which Burnett was unable to afford the legal rights. Thus Killer of Sheep never enjoyed commercial distribution and was bottled up under threat of litigation for three decades, until Dennis Doros of Milestone Films (with a bit of financial help from director Steven Soderbergh) undertook the daunting and expensive task of securing those rights and presenting a beautifully restored 35-millimeter print, courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive. 

Since the advent of MTV, the use of popular music in films as the all-consuming soundtrack to a scene has proliferated, most often in youth-centered films. At its worst it is a lazy method of direction, using the song rather than the image to carry the essence of the scene. But at its best, as in Killer of Sheep, lyrics and music deepen and amplify the impact of the imagery. One especially effective scene features Stan and his wife (Kaycee Moore) in a heartbreaking slow dance to Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth,” played out in silhouette against the harsh glow of sunlight through a tenement window. Another scene, of a weekend outing derailed by a flat tire, is granted both gravity and humor by the strains of Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues.” 

Only one song remained out of reach. Milestone was unable to secure the rights to Washington’s “Unforgettable,” which originally punctuated the final scene, so Burnett instead opted to repeat “This Bitter Earth,” which proves not just an adequate substitute but perhaps an improvement, providing a fitting reprise for the film’s central themes. 

Killer of Sheep poses no easy questions, seeks nor finds no easy solutions; it merely presents the African-American experience in a particular time and place. And, through a relentless focus on character—on everyday people and their everyday lives—Burnett manages to find the universal in the specific, depicting the timeless struggle of men and women to—as Washington sings—ensure that the dust does not obscure the glow of the rose. 

KILLER OF SHEEP (1977) 

Directed by Charles Burnett. Starring Henry Gayle Sanders and Kaycee Moore.  

Playing at Shattuck Cinemas, Rafael Film Center (San Rafael) and the Castro Theater (San Francisco). 80 minutes. Not rated. 

A Milestone release.  

Photograph: Henry Gayle Sanders and Kaycee Moore share a delicate moment in Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas.

“Alas, alas, that so bright a moon should be hidden by the clouds.” From this first translation of Rumi into a European language, circa 1780, by Sir William Jones in his Grammar of the Persian Language, through Ralph Waldo Emerson’s solitary version of a Rumi poem, to today’s outpouring of interpretations, the great mystic poet of Islam has become the bestselling poet in English today. 

“The Great Night of Rumi,” Dan and Dale Zola’s program of spoken poetry with music and a whirling dervish dance, set for 8 p.m. this Saturday night at Freight and Salvage, intends to return this revered verse to spoken, sung and performed poetry, taking an audience beyond what academic discussion or silent reading from the page can accomplish. 

“We’re not talking about Rumi, or about poetry, at ‘The Great Night of Rumi,’” said Dale, who has produced the events for six years with her husband. “We’re not plugging anything. Our readers all go up to the mic and recite from memory, while the musicians improvise. Aziz, our whirling dervish, does the turn. Hossein, our Kurdish friend, sings a Rumi poem in Farsi. Dan mc’s, announcing the next person. We modelled it after variety shows—after Ed Sullivan!” 

“We’re bringing people to poetry through the back door,” Zola continued, “though I think of the oral tradition as the front door, with the book as the back door. It’s like a communion; people come because they want that experience. To be in a roomful of people, to be transported—yet in the present moment.” 

The Zolas use the Coleman Barks translations of Rumi. Readers from all ethnic groups and walks of life recite, accompaned by Gary Haggerty (from Stella Mar), Arshad Said, Sheldon Brown of the Jazzschool and Claude Palmer playing on a panoply of instruments, both Eastern and Western, with singers Kirsten Falke (from Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra) and Debbie Golata of the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra. 

Readers include Ron Sebring (pastor of the Northbrae Community Church), Andre Andrae (father of Hit It!), Claressa Morrow of Stage Bridge, Shakespearean actress Chetana Karel and Barry and Maya Spector (who do oral tradition events in the South Bay), Alexis Bennett and dancer Guillermo Ortiz, among others.  

The event is co-produced by Cody’s Books, which will provide books for sale, and presented by Roger Housden, editor of 10 Poems to Change Your Mind and 10 Poems to Change Your Heart. Assisting is Victoria Lee, “a Rumi-inspired psychologist” and author of the forthcoming Rumi Secret (Outskirts Press).  

The Zolas have been involved in poetry for 20 years. “Dan was on the staff of the Mendocino Men’s Conferences,” said Dale, “where he worked closely with poet Robert Bly, with Michael Mead and James Hillman. About 15 years ago, we went to an event by Doug Von Koss, one of his one-man poetry shows. That made a big impression. A couple years after that, we began to produce poetry events.” 

They also produce “The Great Night of Soul Poetry,” featuring poems of W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, Mary Oliver and others. 

Dale, who lived in Istanbul and traveled around the Middle East and South Asia, emphasizes the humor in Rumi’s poetry and Barks’ translations. “That’s one reason we’re so into it. If it makes you laugh and cry, it’s a good one. The more it gets you laughing, the more you can get with the sad stuff.” 

Rumi’s contemporary success was preceded by that of another medieval Persian poet. For about a century, Edward Fitzgerald’s version of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was the bestselling single volume of poetry in English. Rumi, born in what’s now Afghanistan, founded the Mevlevi Sufi Order (”Whirling Dervishes”) in Turkey. His poetry, according to Marshall G. S. Hodgson in The Venture of Islam, “became prized even by non-mystics wherever Persian was used ... His work is addressed to a living, complex individual, and is meant to confront him time and time again throughout his complex life, and this process can never really be completed ... Rumi intended to illuminate the Islamic conscience of his time ... If [his] message is to be summed up, it can perhaps be described as a summons to go beyond the routine.” 

Other Rumi translators include R. A. Nicholson, A. J. Arberry, W. S. Merwin and Peter Lamborn Wilson.  

THE GREAT NIGHT OF RUMI 

8 p.m. Saturday at Freight and Salvage, 1111 Addison St. $20.50 - $21.50. 

548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org.

Berkeley’s Himalayan Fair celebrates its 24th year in Live Oak Park this weekend. It might be its last as the city of Berkeley has increased restrictions on the event which may force it to move next year or shut down, according to fair organizers. 

The fair—a constantly moving pageant of onstage South and Central Asian musicians, singers and dancers, and the vibrant fairgoers, straying down alleys of bazaar-like booths featuring the aroma of ethnic foods, many crafts and much artwork and a fabulous assortment of other goods, or gathering under the trees or on the rocks by the creek—was modelled by founder Arlene Blum on the village spring festivals she encountered on her mountaineering treks in Nepal and India. 

The fair is “a victim of its own success,” in the words of Fair Committee member Barbara Framm. She is asking for help from the community to determine how to continue the annual event after an escalation of restrictions by various city departments. 

“This could well be the last year of the Himalayan Fair at Live Oak Park,” said one committee member. “And maybe the last year of the fair.” 

At a meeting of the committee on Wednesday, members discussed options for different sites, and Blum presented a petition to be circulated at the fair to try to convince the City Council to keep the fair at Live Oak Park. 

“The petitions will be at all the food booths and at the information booth,” said Rosa Mendicino, who coordinates the food concessions and runs the popular vegetable curry and ice cream booths.  

Mendicino says that complaints, mostly about traffic and parking problems and some reports of noise in the neighborhood, have provoked the increase of city intervention. “We were told to put wooden floors under the food booths,” she said. “Yet Park and Rec said that would be bad for the grass. So this time the booths are on the basketball courts.”  

There have also been complaints about lack of wheelchair access. “Not all the booths are on walkways,” said Mendicino. “Two years ago we inaugurated a program with volunteers at the ready, to help disabled people, to push wheelchairs or get whatever they wanted from the stands.” 

This year there will also be a shuttle that will run a loop from North Berkeley BART, with stops on Shattuck at Lincoln and Berryman, to try to reduce traffic volume.  

“My children and now grandchildren have grown up at the Himalayan Fair,” Mendicino said. “I don’t want to see that tradition squelched. It can’t be so bad that we won’t be able to stay in Live Oak Park. We’ve looked at other parks, and come to the conclusion that no other place lends itself so well to the character of the fair.”

Not every house in Berkeley can boast of an illustrious resident. Fewer can boast of two. Fewer yet can demonstrate a connection between the two notables. The house at 1335 Shattuck Avenue is one of the latter. 

Built in 1894 by Captain John Slater, the house is one of the first Classic Colonial Revival buildings constructed in the East Bay. At the time it was erected, Queen Anne was the prevailing fashion, and the shingled Arts & Crafts style was just beginning to emerge from the cradle with a few examples such as the Anna Head School at Bowditch and Channing (1892). 

John Slater (1849–1908) was born on one of the Shetland Islands in Scotland. At the age of 15 he left school to join the crew of a fishing sloop. Four years later, he went to sea as a sailor before the mast, working his way up to an officer’s position. In 1871, he came to California as a mate on the ship Seminole of Boston. Impressed with the outlook on the Pacific coast, he decided to stay. After plying the coast trade for several years, he was lured into gold mining on the Stikine River in northwestern British Columbia but did not find it profitable. 

Going back to the sea, Slater became master of several ships belonging to the Sam Blair line. In 1889, he joined the shipping firm of William E. Mighell and Charles C. Boudrow. For seven years Slater was master of the bark Wilner. After this ship was burned at the docks in Tacoma, WA, he took charge of the clipper ship Charmer, which he commanded on the San Francisco-Honolulu route until his retirement in 1907. 

Captain Slater married Louise M. Colby in 1888. The couple lived in San Francisco before they built their house in the Berkeley Villa Association tract. The move to Berkeley may have been inspired in part by Slater’s employers—both Captain Boudrow and Captain Mighell owned mansions nearby, on what is now the 1500 block of Oxford Street. And they weren’t the only ones. North Berkeley was a mini-Mecca for seafarers, who no doubt were attracted by the sweeping marine vistas commanded from its hills. 

The Slaters picked a double lot directly to the south of Captain Jefferson Maury’s house. Sited on a double lot at 1317 Shattuck Avenue, the Maury residence featured a wrap-around porch and an angled corner turret. In 1922, John Hudson Thomas would transform this house into a shingled English country cottage. 

Across the street from the Slaters, at 1322 Shattuck Avenue, lived Captain William B. Seabury and his family. Like Captain Maury, Seabury was a commodore of the Pacific Mail Steam Ship Company. Also like Maury, he built his house in 1885. But while the Maury house survived to become a City of Berkeley Landmark, the Seabury house has been replaced with an apartment building. 

The Slaters engaged prominent San Francisco architect T.J. Welsh to design their residence. The contractor was Charles Murcell of East Oakland, whose Berkeley quarters were located at the lumber office of Barker & Hunter, on the southwestern corner of Shattuck Ave. and Dwight Way. 

In January 1896, the Berkeley Herald described the Slater house in detail, noting that it commanded “a magnificent view of the Golden Gate, the city of San Francisco, San Francisco Bay and the ocean beyond:” 

A notable feature of the exterior is a pleasant porch, running the entire width of the building, at the front entrance. 

The walls are covered from foundation to first story in rustic [wide wood siding] and from first story to cornice with clapboard. It is painted in Colonial yellow, with white trimmings. The roof is of slate. The building is 42x80 feet, which includes the front piazza. It contains eight large rooms, well arranged for light and heat. The front vestibule is trimmed in oak. The spacious exterior hall is trimmed with curly, native redwood, wainscoted with Lincrusta-Walton [an embossed, linoleum-like material] and lighted from transoms over doors of French bevel plate-glass. 

The staircase is separated from the main hall, the posts of which extend to the ceiling. Between the posts are spindle transoms supported on ornamental brackets. The parlors are finished in natural redwood and are provided with open fireplaces of Roman brick; hearth of same, and mantels of curly redwood of unique design. The dining-room is trimmed and finished in antique oak, including paneled wainscoting. The divan is built with arm-rest and lockers underneath. There is a spindle arch across the bay-window, resting on turned columns. The fireplace is built of Roman brick facings and hearth, mantels made of oak of exquisite design, including lockers and bevel plate mirrors. The walls are tinted a deep sea green, ceiling of Nile green. 

The article went on to describe the kitchen, pantry, butler’s pantry and china closet finished in natural redwood and “fitted up in modern style”; bedrooms “fitted up in like manner, with closets and dens attached”; a bathroom of oak, “with tile floor and tile wainscoting five feet high, and containing a porcelain bathtub with shower bath attached, oval wash-basin, all plumbing exposed, with locker and medicine closet attached.” The cost of the building to complete was $5,750, well above the $4,608 figure provided in the contract notice of Aug. 2, 1894. 

The first floor housed the Slaters and their four children, James Herbert, Marguerite, Norman and Colby. The basement is said to have housed the servants, although the 1900 census listed only one domestic living with the family. There were also rooms on the attic floor; these are said to have been reserved for guests (by 1970, the attic and basement floors were subdivided into six apartments each), but it appears that some if not all of the guests were of the paying kind. For several years in the first decade of the 20th century, one such “guest” was Andrew H. Irving (1875–1947), plant superintendent at the Paraffine Paint Company, a manufacturer of roofing materials under the Pabco brand name. 

The vice-president and manager of Paraffine Paint Co. was Andrew Irving’s elder brother, Samuel C. Irving (1858–1930). In 1906, Samuel acquired 1322 Shattuck Ave. from the Seaburys, who had moved to the Southside eight years earlier. We’ll return to the Irvings in part two of this series. 

Captain Slater died at the age of 58 following a bout of cancer. Twenty-one months later, his widow married Edward A. Phillips, a recently arrived magazine writer from Salt Lake City. Phillips, too, was not long for this world, and by the mid-1910s, the twice-widowed Louise and some of her children had moved to 1426 Spruce Street. This house, a modest Queen Anne, still exists, albeit altered, on a row of surviving Victorians. 

This is the first part in a series of articles on north Berkeley houses and the families that inhabited them. 

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

Photograph by Daniella Thompson. Symmetry and Classic elements, such as columns and a pediment on the dormer, distinguish the Slater house at 1335 Shattuck Ave.  

One might be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but there are things to buy at The Gardener that actually have something to do with gardens. 

The tony and tempting Fourth Street shop has been, shall we say, wider in its scope than the average nursery or hardware store since its inception. I do believe that the proportion of garden stuff has shrunk over the years, but that’s entirely subjective. 

Maybe I’m just personally dazzled by the perfectly Zen furniture—imagining each piece playing solo in a room of hand-burnished cypress and off-white rice paper—or the perfectly textured fabrics in table linens and scarves, or the perfectly hilarious renditions of an entire Shakespeare play in relatively fine print on a poster.  

Of course, the stuff displayed on the sidewalk outside is suitable for outdoor use, in the garden or on the deck or by the front door. 

I do like the recycled rainbow-rubber renditions of those familiar school foot-scraper doormats in a couple of sizes, and the weathered-wood Adirondack chairs, though, having some experience with weathered wood, I have to wonder about splinters.  

There’s an interesting strategy going on inside. If you have the same tendency I do to wander through a store in a circle, you’ll find the path leads from garden stuff first through garden stuff last whether you go sunwise or widdershins.  

On your right, you’ll encounter the $200 birdhouses and zinc plant markers (carbon pencils to use on those are sold separately) along with more practical items like the “tip bag” and Bosbag-type gadgets for toting your pruning scraps or leaf litter, and a few models of the indispensable Felco pruning shears. I do think that at those prices the birdhouses should come with at least a pair of orioles.  

What else? 

Well, while you’re on your expedition to pick up a castle for the kids or lunch at Bette’s or a yummy rat for your snake, you can drop by The Gardener for some Italian veggie seeds—or Seeds of Change or Kitazawa seeds—maybe a Designer watering can. A waterproof notebook; I’d thought only birders were crazy enough to need those.  

Maybe you need West County gardening gloves, or a pair of rose gloves with long gauntlet cuffs. Speaking of Zen: natural-fiber cordage for tying up vines or tomatoes.  

Maybe a stylish gardening hat. Hand hoes and other such clever tools. Garden clogs (for the kids, too) or big plastic bucket/baskets like those used in Spain. Polished pebbles to mulch your potted plants.  

And when you’re finished with planting and maintaining, some fragrant soap (maybe Juniper Ridge wildcrafted California scents: bay laurel, juniper, cedar) and a handsome $18 nailbrush to clean up with, scented hand cream afterwards.  

Then off to your South American-style hammock, with a copy of Sunset’s latest edition, or Native Treasures, or some such garden book, or Yoga for Gardeners. Maybe a hand-thrown cup of fancy tea.  

And dream of the garden that The Gardener thinks you should have: perfect in every way.  

The Gardener 

1836 Fourth St. 

548-4545 

www.thegardener.com 

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

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  

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

Nightmare On Elm Street? 

Even though Halloween is months away, let’s consider some things that make for a scary house: 

• It was built before 1989 and you’re not sure about the retrofit 

• You’re not home 24/7, but you don’t have an automatic gas shut-off valve 

• The heavy furniture, wall hangings, and appliances haven’t been secured 

• There isn’t enough food, water, and emergency supplies to last a week 

• You’re not sure about the safest place to be in each room during a serious quake 

Don’t get overwhelmed, folks, just decide to do something about your family’s and your home’s safety—one step at a time. 

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

FRIDAY, MAY 18 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Ilana Crispi on “Art in San Francisco” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

Iraq War Resister Camilo Mejia reads from his book “Road From AR Ramadi” at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker, 1640 Addison St. Sponsored by Courage To Resist and the Fr. Bill O’Donnell Social Justice Committee of St. Joseph the Worker. 499-0537. 

“Homeland” A documentary of Native Americans and the destructive policies of coprporations at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 370 27th St., Oakland. www.HumanistHall.net 

Wavy Gravy’s 71st Birthday and Benefit for Seva Foundation at 8 p.m. at the Grand Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness, corner of Sutter. Tickets are $50-$250. 845-7382, ext. 332. www.seva.org/specialevents 

Free Skin Cancer Screening at Alta Bates Summit. Oakland. Appointments required. 869-8833, ext. 2. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Premanente Conference Room, 1950 Franklin, Oakland. To schedule an appointment call 625-6188. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, MAY 19 

Berkeley Art Center 40th Birthday from 1 to 4 p.m. with guest speakers, concert, children’s activities and art exhibition, at 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Walk on the Santa Fe Right of Way A five-mile walk to discover art, gardens and creeks. Meet at 10 a.m. at the ball court at the south end of Strawberry Creek Park, returning by BART. Bring water and a snack. 540-7223. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area. Tickets are $33-$75. 869-4969. www.bayareastorytelling.org 

Berkeley Climate Action Kick-Off with ideas and resources for reducing your emissions at 10 a.m. at South Berkeley Senior Center.. www.cityofberkeley.info/mayor/GHG/index.htm 

Solidarity with the Tree-Sitters with the Rockin' Solidarity Labor Chorus and the Freedom Song Network at 2 p.m. at the Memorial Oak Grove, east side of UC Campus, just off Gayley Rd. 649-1423. halih@yahoo.com 

ACCI Gallery 50th Anniversary Celebration at 6 p.m. at 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527.  

Himalayan Fair with arts and crafts, music, dance and food, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8-$20, benefits grassroots projects in the Himalayas. 869-3995.  

Faerie Masque Ball “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Tickets are $2-$5. 

“Making Waves to Fight Cancer” A 15.5 mile sea kayak and canoe paddle around Alameda Island to raise money for breast cancer research, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Register and pledge online at www.calkayak.com 

Community Picket of the Port of Oakland to call for a halt to war shipments. Meet at 7 a.m. at the West Oakland BART station. There will be a shuttle to take people to the picketing site. 525-5497. 

A Clean Sweep: Thermometers, Medicine, and E-Waste Disposal from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EmeryBay Market Place, Christie Ave. at 64th St., Emeryville. Bring unwanted or expired medication, mercury thermometers, and electronic waste, such as TVs, computers, monitors, cell phones and fax machines. No appliances. Bring thermometers sealed in two plastic zipper bags, and bring medication in original containers with your name marked out. 452-9261, ext 118. www.ebmud.com/cleanbay 

Tea Party and Old Time Music Jam at 3:30 p.m. in People's Park. Bring a teacup! 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Tela de la Vida/Fabric of Life A bilingual walk for the entire family at 2 p.m. at the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline. For information call 525-2233. 

Multicultural Health Fair for Children with hands-on activities from 1 to 4 p.m. at Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave., lower level. 705-8527. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “A Taste of Thai” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45, plus 435 for food and materials. Registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Room, 2727 College Ave. All welcome.  

“U.S Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis and Paths to Peace” with Jacqueline Cabasso and Andrew Lichterman of the Western States Legal Foundation at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Public Affairs Forum, at the Home of Truth, 1300 Grand Street in Alameda. www.alamedaforum.org  

Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 16.  

“My People Are” A short film on racial identities experienced through the eyes of young people at 7 p.m. at Park Day School, 215 Ridegway, Oakland. For informationcall Tasha at Bananas, 658-7353. 

“The Hidden Life of the Wild Elephant Herds of Africa” with author and researcher Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd., off Hwy 580. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

EcoVillage’s Earth Day and Spring Festival with keynote speaker Carl Anthony, Senior Ford Foundation Fellow, environmentalist, and social justice leader and workshops and lunch, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at EcoVillage Farm Learning Center, 21 Laurel Lane, Richmond. Cost is $15-$25. 329-1314. www.ecovillagefarm.org 

SoloSierrans Waterfront Biking from Emeryville to Berkeley Meet at 1 p.m. in front of the Watergate Clipper Club, 5 Captain Dr., Emeryville. 923-1094. 

Hopalong Animal Rescue Come meet your new best dog friend from noon to 3 p.m. at Pet Food Express Rockridge, 5144 Broadway, Oakland. 267-1915, ext. 500. www.hopalong.org  

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MAY 20 

Celebration of Old Roses Heirloom and hard-to-find roses from specialty nurseries, plus crafts, books, jewelry and clothing inspired by roses, from 11 to 4 p.m. at El Cerrito Community Center, on Moeser at Ashbury, El Cerrito. 

Wild About Watersheds A 3.5 mile hike from the Steam Train parking area to Tilden Nature Area to explore the watershed. Meet at 1 p.m. For information call 525-2233.  

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Wheelchair accessible. 526-7377. 

People’s Park Design Help to design an open, respectful, community based visioning process for People’s Park. Planning meeting 3 p.m. in People's Park NW corner grove. 658-9178. 

Himalayan Fair with arts and crafts, music, dance and food, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8-$20, benefits grassroots projects in the Himalayas. 869-3995.  

Hidden Gems of Berkeley Bike Ride exploring the Elmwood and South Berkeley starting at 10 a.m. at Halcyon Court, Prince St. Bring snack, lunch and water. mayith@yahoo.com 

Bike Tour of Oakland Explore Arrowhead Marsh on a leisurly 5-mile ride. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrance to the Oakland Museum of California. 238-3514. www.museumca.org 

SoloSierrans Hike in Tilden Meet at 4 p.m. at Lone Oak parking area for a one hour hike through the woods. Optional dinner follows. 234-8949.  

“Summer Time at the Little Farm” A puppet show about life on the farm and the mishaps of a farmer, at 10:45 and 11:30 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

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 

CodePINK Newcomer Orientation & Activist Training at 3 p.m. at the CodePINK office, 1248 Solano Ave, Albany. RSVP to 524-2776. 

Bicycle Commuting Tips: Gear and Fixing Flats at 10 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Smart and Green Day at the Kensington Farmers’ Market with free thermometer exchange and free energy-efficient light bulbs, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. 

EcoHouse Greywater Tour Learn about the first permitted residential constructed wetland greywater system in California. We will discuss the principles and process of safely irrigating with household waste water. Return home with ideas and plans of your own. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St. Cost is $15 sliding scale, no one turned away. 548-2220 ext. 242.  

EarthTeam’s Environmental Film Festival and Awards Ceremony Screening of the student-created Our School/Our Planet videos, poetry, photography and silent auction from 2 to 5 p.m. at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. 704-4030. info@earthteam.net 

East Bay Atheists meets to discuss “Mormonism: the Goofiest Sect of All” with Don Havis at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr. meeting room, 2090 Kittredge St.  

“From Creeks to Coastline: Bay Watershed” Learn about our local San Francisco Bay Watershed through hands-on activities and exhibition from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., at 10th St., Oakland. www.museumca.org 

“Democratization of the Media through the Internet” with Andrew Keen, author of “Cult of the Amateur,” and Dan Gilmor, author of “We the Media” at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15. 527-0450.  

“The Dark Side of Gluten in Pet Foods” at 2 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. 525-6155. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with “Jack Petranker on “Precious Jewel of the Dharma” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

Dharma Dialogue with Catherine Ingram, author of “Passionate Presence” at 7:30 p.m. at 1940 Virginia St. Cost is $15. www.eastbayopencircle.org 

Berkeley Chapter of Hadassah Annual Donor Lunch with Gerrey Tenney on the history of Klezmer music in Europe and the United States, at noon at Congregation Beth Israel. 524-5333. 

MONDAY, MAY 21 

Four Mile Monday Join a four mile hike with history, vistas and birdwatching at 11 a.m. at Point Pinole Regional Shoreline. Bring layers, lunch and your binoculars. 525-2233. 

“When the Levees Broke” Parts 3 and 4 Spike Lee’s documentary about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans at 6:45 p.m. at the Upstairs Lounge at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, 410 14th Street, off Broadway, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 262-1001. info@wellstoneclub.org 

Benefit for Vukani Mawethu Choir Silent auction and dinner with seatings at 5:30, 7:30 and 9 p.m. at Unicorn Restaurant, 2533 Telegraph Ave. For reservations call 841-8098. 

CodePINK Dinner with Iran Report Back & Honoring our Foremothers at 6 p.m. at MudRakers Cafe, 2801 Telegraph Ave., at Stuart St. Tickets are $23. RSVP to 524-2776. 

Read Aloud Theater A free Berkeley Adult School class at 9 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, MAY 22 

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 Redwood Regional Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Half Dome: a Primer on Hiking to the Summit at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Solo Sierrans Hike at Lake Chabot Reservoir Meet at 6:30 p.m. at the boat house. Optional dinner follows. For information call Delores 351-6247. 

“Rethinking the Market: How Conservatives Get It Wrong and Progressives Can Get it Right” with Dean Baker at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Suggested donation $10. No one turned away for lack of funds.  

“A Crucial Conversation about the War between Religion and Law in America” with Peter Irons at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $5, no one turned away. lewis@litminds.org 

“Climate Change and US” with Andrew Hoerner, Director of the Sustainable Economics Program at Redefining Progress, at the El Cerrito Democratic Club’s meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Makemie Hall, Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. 375-5647.  

“Movement and Healing: Coping With Cancer And With Trauma Of War” with Ilene Ava Serlin at 7:30 p.m. at Institute for World Religions/ Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, at the corner of McKinley and Bancroft. Free. 527-2935. 

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. 

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.  

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 23 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Two Angry Moms” A documentary about mothers trying to get healthy food for their children at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5-$10. 388-8932.  

“When the Levees Broke” Part 1 of Spike Lee’s documentary on New Orleans, post-Hurricane Katrina at 7 p.m. at CodePINK office, 1248 Solano Ave, Albany. Donation $5. RSVP to 524-2776. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MAY 24 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore pond life, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

“Is God ... Great?” A discussion with Christopher Hitchens and Chris Hedges at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $20-$25. 848-6767, ext. 609.  

Berkeley Retired Teachers Association Awards Luncheon at 11:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Yacht Club, Berkeley Marina. 251-2127. 

Baby and Toddler Storytime at 10:30 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., May 21, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

City Council meets Tues., May 22, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., May 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., May 23, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., May 23,at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. May 23, at 7:30 p.m. at at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., May 24, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.  

TUESDAY, MAY 15 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Opal Palmer Adisa and Karla Brundage at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476.  

Kaya Oakes and Jeff T. Johnson, poets, read at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Rafaela Castro reads from “Provocaciones: Letters from the Prettiest Girl in Arvin” at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512. 

Cheri Huber reads from “Making a Change for Good” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Barbara Kingsolver reads from her first non-fiction narrative “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $15-$20. For reservations call 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

OOGOG plays at the Berkeley Arts Festival at 8 p.m. at the Fidelity Bank Building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $5-$10. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Tri Tip Trio, cajun, zydeco, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Philips Marine Duo at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 16 

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “Al Otro Lado-To The Other Side” at 7 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6555. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Chris Finan describes “From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 528-3254. 

Lama Surya Das describes “Buddha Is As Buddha Does: The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Spoken Word: Park Day School Student Writers at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568.  

Cheri Huber reads from her new books on Zen and dialy life at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Jazzalicious at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

HeadRush’s, The Thow Down, and Shanique Scott’s Prisons, hip hop, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568.  

Groundation, reggae, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15-$18. 525-5054. 

Orquestra America at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Matt Morrish & Trinket Lover at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Chris Webster at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Tie One Ons at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

THURSDAY, MAY 17 

THEATER 

Eastenders Repertory Company “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich” by Bertolt Brecht at 7:30 p.m. at the JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $20. 

FILM 

“Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible” by Dr. Shakti Butler, at 6:30 p.m. followed by discussion at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 116 Montecito Ave., Oakland. 285-9600. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Julie Carr and Jessica Fisher at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. www.poetryflash.org 

Ann Jauregui describes “Epiphanies: Where Science and Miracles Meet” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Tina Barseghian introduces “Get a Hobby! 101 All-Consuming Diversions for Any Lifestyle” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland East Bay Symphony “Porgy and Bess” Preview performance at 7 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $25. 625-8497. 

Aphrodesia, Antioquia at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ellis Paul at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Elaine Lucia & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $17. 841-JAZZ.  

Travis Jones and Chojo Jacques at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Sorrowtown Choir, Matthew Grimm & the Red Smear at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $TBA. 841-2082  

Box O Bananas at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Bunson, Panic Button, Go Kart Mozart at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. 

FRIDAY, MAY 18 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Last Five Years” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through June 10. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.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 20. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. 

Berkeley Rep “Blue Door” at 8 p.m. at 2025 Addison St., through May 20. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org  

Berkeley Rep “Oliver Twist” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. through June 24. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.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.  

Shotgun Players “The Cryptogram” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through June 17. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“The Striders Club” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Arts Center, 1421 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$11. 450-0891. 

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 “Serjeant 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 

fer•ma•ta UCB Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way and runs through June 10. 642-0808. 

Richmond Art Center Spring Reception for all exhibitions at 6 p.m. at 2540 Barret Ave., Richmond. 620-6772. 

“Significant Others” Art from LGBTQ Communities. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 601-4040, ext. 111. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Representa! Bilingual spoken word and poetry with Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

Comics Out Loud! with cartoonists Julia Wertz, Shannon O’Leary, Justin Hall, Geoff Vasile and many others at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

State of the Arts 2 Conference sponsored by UC Institute for Research in the Arts with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Lectures on the current role and future of the arts in California and beyond, Sat. and Sun. at BAM/PFA. 2626 Bancroft Way. For complete schedule see www.ucira.ucsb.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Ballet Theater Spring Performances, including “Cinderella” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $21. 843-4689. 

Oakland East Bay Symphony “Porgy and Bess” at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $20-$67. 625-8497. 

Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble “Transitions: Spanish Influence in the New World” at 8 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Tickets are $5-$15. www.wavewomen.org 

Volti “the San Francisco Experience” with the Piedmont Children’s Choirs at 8 p.m. at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $8-$20. 415-771-3352. www.voltisf.org 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies “The Passion of St. John” at 7 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. Tickets are $12-$25. 868-0695. www.bayareabach.org 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “Crossroads: Music from the African Diaspora” at 8 p.m., pre-concert talk at 7:30 p.m., at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Free. 415-248-1640. www.sfchamberorchestra.org 

Jazz City Singers Spring Concert at 8:30 p.m. at Rockridge Methodist Church, 303 Hudson St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$7. 658-7136.  

Nanette McGuiness, soprano, and flutist Marha Stoddard, at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 848-1228. 

Jerry Kuderna Piano “From Bach to Babbitt” at 1 p.m. at 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

“Dance Elixir” with Leyya Tawil and Zari Le’on Fri. and Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. Tickets are $20. 435-6413. 

SFJazz All-Star High School Ensemble at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Hurricane Sam & the Hotshots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Gypsy Dances from the Romani Trail, belly dance performance at 8 p.m., Diiin at 10 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Rajeev Taranath on sarod with Abhiman Kaushal on tabla at 8 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $18-$25. 517-8952. nssensalo@gmail.com 

Ron Thompson, blues, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Solo Bass Night with Michael Manring, Jean Baudin, Jeff Schmidt and Dave Grossman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Avatara and The Wicker Men at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Workingman’s Ed with guest Joe Rut at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

California Love, Drain the Sky 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 P-PL at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Ashkon, Bumbalo, Richie Cunning at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Socket, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Resistoleros, New Faith, One Word Solution at 8:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

SATURDAY, MAY 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Art Center 40th Birthday from 1 to 4 p.m. with guest speakers, concert, children’s activities and art exhibition, at 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. 

“Jazz Icons” photography by Carl Lewis at the Jazzschool, 2087 Addison St.  

ACCI Gallery 50th Anniversary Celebration with music by Red Wings and an exhibition honoring ACCI alumni Tim Baskerville, Elizabeth Kavaler, Bob Stocksdale and Catherine Webb, at 6 p.m. at 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527.  

THEATER 

Eastenders Repertory Company “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich” by Bertolt Brecht at 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at the JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $20. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Representa! Bilingual spoken word and poetry with Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas at 2 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

The Great Night of Rumi with spoken word, music and dance at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

“Medieval Seminar: Music, Liturgy, and Architecture in Medieval England” with Professor William Mahr, Dept. of Music, Stanford Univ. from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at MusicSources, 1000 The Alameda. Cost is $15. 848-5591. 

“Stepping Away From the Stereotypes: Two Latina Authors Discuss Fact and Funny Fiction” with Marta Acosta, whose latest book is “Midnight Brunch at Casa Dracula” and Rose Castillo Guilbault, on her memoir “Farmworker’s Daughter” at 2 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 531-4275. 

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area, El Sobrante. Tickets are $33-$75. 869-4969. www.bayareastorytelling.org 

Jazz in Literature, Photography and Fine Art with readings by Al Young and Michael McClure at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Concerto Concert at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. www.ypsomusic.net 

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Songs of Heavenly and Earthly Love” at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 531-8714. www.vocisings.com 

Contra Costa Chorale with the Kensington Symphony Mozart’s “Coronation Mass” at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $12-$15, children free. 527-2026. 

Sacred and Profane “Summer on the Baltic Sea” Music from Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden at 8 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Tickets are $12-$18. 524-3611. www.sacredprofane.org 

Kairos Youth Choir Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $8-$10. 704-4479. 

Ruth Botchan Dance Company and Shahrzad Dance Company “Bridging Jewish and Persian Cultures” at 7:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. Tickets are $10. 848-3988. 

Winds Across the Bay “Views From the Stage” at 2 p.m. at Hilltop Community Church, 3118 Shane Drive, Richmond, just across from Hilltop Mall. Tickets are $5-$10 at the door. 243-0514. info@WindsAcrossTheBay.org 

Jack L in a benefit for the Darfur Women’s Center at 7:30 p.m. at the Hills Swim and Tennis Club, 2400 Manzanita Dr., Oakland. Tickets are $85. 339-0234.  

Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus and the Freedom Song Network in a performance to Save the Oaks at 2 p.m. at Memorial Oak Grove, east side of UC Campus, off Gayley Rd. 649-1423. halih@yahoo.com  

Las Mujeres del Hip-Hop Cubano with Las Krudas, DJ Leidis, and Magyori La Lave at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Robin Gregory & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Native Elements, Lakay, Caribbean, Haitian, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Stephanie Crawford, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Wayward Monks at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Gil Stancourt & Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Druid Sisters Tea Party at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

R’N’R Adventure Kids 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 20 

CHILDREN 

Orange Sherbert with members of Hot Buttered Rum at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $5-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

“Summer Time at the Little Farm” A puppet show about life on the farm and the mishaps of a farmer, at 10:45 and 11:30 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Allison Smith “Notion Nanny” an exhibition exploring traditional art and craft-making from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Berkeley Art Museum Galleries, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Representa! Bilingual spoken word and poetry with Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition Artsts’ Talks at 3 p.m. in the Berkeley Art Museum Galleries, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

UC Extension Writing Students read at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

11th Annual Jazz on Fourth Street from noon to 5 p.m. featuring the Marcus Shelby Quartet, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Group and the Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble.  

Laurel Ensemble in celebration of Berkeley Art Center’s 40th Anniversary, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $15-$20. 644-6893. 

Songs from Spain and Cuba with Elizabeth Caballero, soprano and Leesa Dahl, piano at 5 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Churhc, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 845-6830. 

Oakland Public Conservatory of Music Student Recital at 7 p.m. at 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649.  

Prometheus Symphony Orchestra at 3 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. www.prometheussymphony.org 

Sacred & Profane “Summer on the Baltic Sea, Sounds of Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden” at 4 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Tickets are $12-$18. 524-3611. www.sacredprofane.org 

Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers at 2 p.m. at Calvary Christian Center, 1516 Grand Ave., Alameda. Suggested donation. 887-4311. www.ggbc.org 

“Jazz at the Chimes” featuring Shanna Carlson and Cathi Walkup at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $10, children under 12 free. 228-3218. 

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Songs of Heavenly and Earthly Love” at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $15-$20. 531-8714. www.vocisings.com 

Season of Praise Gospel Concert at 6 p.m. at St. Paul AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. Proceeds will help sponsor youth on a trip to a gospel convention in Phildelphia this summer. 848-2050. 

Spring Choirs Concert with Angel Choir and Joyful Noise Choir at 5 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., corner of W. Richmond Ave., Point Richmond. Suggested donation $10. 236-0527. 

Concerto Festival with winners from the Concerto Competition at 4 p.m. at Valley Center Concert Hall, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $5-$10. 436-1225. 

Novello Quartet at 3 p.m. First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. Donation $10-$15. www.novelloquartet.org 

Caren Armstrong at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jenny Jens & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged: The Whiskey Brothers at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Art Lande/Peter Sommer Duo at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Benefit for the Albany High School Music Fund at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Glen Staller at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Gather, Risen, 7 Generation at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Rwake, Black Cobra at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $8. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

MONDAY, MAY 21 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Art for Food’s Sake!” Restaurant Industry Artists Exhibition, opening reception at 5 p.m. at Downtown Restaurant, 2102 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. Bring a non-perishable food donation. Proceeds benefit the Alameda County Community Food Bank. RSVP to art@downtownrestaurant.com 649-3810. 

FILM 

“Jazz on a Monday Afternoon” Films and discussion on Jazz Innovators at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., 3rd flr. 981-6100. 

“When the Levees Broke” Parts 3 and 4 of Spike Lee’s documentary about Hurricane Katrina’s effect on New Orleans at 6:45 p.m. at the Upstairs Lounge at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, 410 14th Street, off Broadway, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 262-1001. info@wellstoneclub.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Artists in Berkeley: Is There a Future? at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

Judith Goldman and Geoffrey G. O’Brien read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. This will be Judith’s last Bay Area reading before she moves to Chicago. Join her friends, fans, and secret admirers in wishing her a fond farewell. 849-2087. 

Jeffrey Kripal describes “Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. 559-9500. 

Susanna Moore introduces her novel “The Big Girls” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with John Moore and Roy Johnston at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ed Neff, bluegrass, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Blue Monday Jam at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

West Coast Songwriter’s Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Photograph: Wayne Wallace will be appearing at the Jazz on Fourth Street Festival this weekend. 

If you yearn for the days when jazz was played on the streets of New Orleans for free and all you had to do to join the second line was to get with it and dance to the beat you will not want to miss hearing the top-rated artists who will be performing al fresco and for free at the 11th annual Jazz on Fourth Street Festival this Sunday. 

The Marcus Shelby Quartet, Sugar Pie Desanto, the Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Group and the Berkeley High Jazz Orchestra and combos will all be on hand to entertain you as well as to give you a taste of what can come from top flight musical pedagogy. 

Public school jazz education began in Berkeley in 1966 when Herb Wong, the principal at Washington Elementary, offered a jazz class to his music students. It was not long before every school in the district had a jazz band. When Phil Hardymon, who had worked with Wong at the grade school level, became band director at Berkeley High in 1975, he parlayed all the work that had gone on in the lower grades into the top-rated high school jazz education program in the country. 

Berkeley High jazz bands and members regularly win state and national competitions and scholarships and have performed at the Monterey, North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals—and why not when their alumni include such stellar players as David Murray, Craig Handy, Josh Redman, Benny Green and Peter Apfelbaum? 

What Herb Wong began has become a multi-generational community of teachers, alumni and students which gives the Berkeley jazz community a depth and resonance often lacking elsewhere. 

Unfortunately, major budget cuts are threatening this innovative and successful program. The proceeds from this eleventh annual festival, presented by KCSM/Jazz 91, Yoshi’s at Jack London Square and Fourth Street Merchants, will benefit Berkeley High School Performing Arts to help ensure that the jazz program is able to continue. 

This summer, Berkeley High hopes to send the ensemble to Japan to perform at several jazz festivals. While on tour there, the ensemble members will stay in the homes of Japanese students. Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble Parent Coordinator Ruth Tabancay indicated that without the proceeds from the Jazz on Fourth Street Festival, “people all over the world would not have the joy of hearing these accomplished musicians.” 

Appropriately, the festival begins at noon with two of the Berkeley High Ensemble’s top-rated combos. Next, award-winning bassist and composer Marcus Shelby leads his eponymously named Quartet in its festival debut with a program of jazz standards and swinging flagwavers. One of the most esteemed and in-demand performers on the local jazz scene, Shelby will lead a quartet of the Bay Area’s top jazz players. 

Long-time Bay Area blues favorite and R&B legend Sugar Pie DeSanto, who follows Shelby, is a mistress of soul, jazz, comedy, dance and the composer and/or lyricist of over one hundred songs. Born Umpeylia Marsema Balinton in San Francisco, she was dubbed “Little Miss Sugar Pie” by bandleader Johnny Otis when she made her recording debut with him for Federal Records in 1955. Since then she’s recorded for Chess Records, appeared at the Howard in Washington, D.C., the Regal in Chicago and the Apollo in New York. After James Brown heard her at the Apollo, she became his opening act for two years. She has recorded two of her originals with Etta James, one of which, “In the Basement,” was featured on the soundtrack of the 1999 movie The Hurricane. 

Bay Area trombonist, educator, arranger and composer Wayne Wallace and his Latin Jazz Group are the last of the three headliners. Wallace, another in-demand sideplayer, is well-known in the Bay Area musical worlds of Latin, funk and jazz. He studied with, among others, the great post-bop trombonist Julian Priester, and his performances reveal a musician grounded in both jazz improvisation and Brazilian and Latin rhythms. He’ll be performing works from his latest CD, The Reckless Pursuit of Beauty. The festival grand finale will be a performance by the full Berkeley High Jazz Orchestra. 

Besides the onstage music, the Fourth Street merchants will get in the spirit of jazz by bringing their food and wares into the street and plaza. The whole afternoon promises to be an expansive, sunny, music-filled entertainment. 

JAZZ ON FOURTH STREET FESTIVAL 

Noon-5 p.m. Sunday, May 20, on Fourth Street in Berkeley between Hearst and Virginia. The festival kicks off at noon with two Berkeley High School Combos and features the Marcus Shelby Quartet (1:15 to 2 p.m.), blues singer Sugar Pie Desanto (2:15 to 3 p.m.), the Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Group (3:10 to 4 p.m.) and closes with the Berkeley High Jazz Orchestra. 526-6294.  

Photograph: Wayne Wallace will be appearing at the Jazz on Fourth Street Festival this weekend. 

Before the opening scene of the Eastenders’ production of Bertolt Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich—which opens Thursday, May 17, at the Jewish Community Center for a four-show run, after four days last week at San Francisco’s Traveling Jewish Theatre—there are projections of National Socialist posters of happy comrades, of mother and child, the cheerful false face of Nazi propaganda for the German public and the world. 

As many as 30 of these scenes and sketches were written during and just after the dark years from the Nazi takeover in 1933 to the Anschluss, annexing Austria in 1938; the Eastenders show features 18. What Brecht tried to do in them was to pry off that mask to reveal the human toll, the social miasma, of private life beneath the fixed, defiant smile. 

The original U.S. production of 17 scenes was entitled The Private Life of the Master Race, and had its first premiere June 7, 1945 at the Little Theater in Wheeler Auditorium on the UC campus, part of the program for the UN conference delegates meeting in San Francisco. It was directed by Henry Schnitzler, son of famed Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler (La Ronde), who was in touch with Brecht. The Eastenders program, with its George Grosz cartoonish cover, contains a facsimile of the Daily Cal preview of the premiere. 

The scenes, episodic (Brecht called his theater “Epic”) and unrelated directly by story but knit together by theme, play like frames in a film running through those years, capturing a panorama of social breakdown, deception, betrayal, disaffection, disaffiliation and flight. In Berlin in 1933, a storm trooper eggs on a worker to make jokes about the regime and shows him the trick of marking a suspect with a chalk cross on the back of his jacket, unawares. The next year in Augsburg, a magistrate in chambers nervously hears pleas, advice and veiled threats from a prosecutor, an investigator and storm troopers, wondering how he can render a verdict.  

In the most famous of these miniature dramas, one that was played with great affect by Vanessa Redgrave a few years ago at a benefit in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, “The Jewish Wife,” a Jewish woman on the verge of fleeing to the Netherlands from Frankfurt in 1935 talks reassuringly to her friends on the phone about her “little spring vacation,” asking them to look after her husband—then rehearses a bitter goodbye to him, which she can’t repeat when he appears. 

It’s absorbing, sometimes very funny, and deeply affecting. And this production is probably the best sustained show the Eastenders have done in years. The cast of 11, including splendid Longfellow Middle School student Alexander Senauke (who plays a Hitler Youth whose parents nervously suspect him of spying on them) has the flavor of this repertory company that calls itself “held together by an ensemble of artists who collectively ... produce and generally build theater from the ground up,” an interactive and personable troupe, as they take on these often nameless faces from the past, or pose in tableau, bookending the scene in progress centerstage with what came before and will follow.  

This Eastenders production, solidly presided over by artistic director Susan Evans and founder Charles Polly, emphasizes the documentary aspects of these brief cameos of the contradictory life led by the German people, supporters and dissenters alike, under Hitler’s regime. It therefore touches on Brecht’s relationship—a somewhat uneasy one—with “The New Objectivity,” a progressive movement which aimed to show the social realities of the times, under the Depression and fascism. Brecht, however, went further: his innovative dramatic practices stylized the actions of the characters portrayed, in a new method of theatrical storytelling that brought out big issues hiding in small gestures. He invited the audience to consider the social intent rather than just identifying emotionally with the personal plight of the characters.  

Performances by Craig Dickerson (a talented comedic actor), Carolyn Doyle (whose “Jewish Wife” deftly plays the full register, yet seems low key) and Christine U’Ren, in particular, capture something of the still controversial “performative” aspects of the synthesis of theatrical style that’s called Brechtian.  

This is one of the few shows in the ad hoc revival of Brecht that’s been going on the past few years that really plays and gets the point across, thanks in great part to the Eastenders’ canniness and commitment in choosing this collection of sketches which are both intimately direct yet suggestive of issues broader and deeper. What doesn’t always come across are the finer points of Brecht’s innovation, like what he called the social gesture, an actor’s exact portrayal of a “pregnant moment” which reveals, in a flash, the social meaning of the character or the scene—like a prosecutor wryly forgetting, over and over, the name of a suspect (”Judicial Process”). Like camp follower Mother Courage in Brecht’s great wartime drama, biting a coin and losing her son to the recruiters while distracted, it demands a kind of concentration and sense of display, of demonstration, different from the training of most American actors. 

Fear and Misery of the Third Reich is the sort of theatrical experience which goes over without going over the top. It has plenty of true dimensionality—and the audience leaves with much to mull over, difficult but fascinating truths that the valiant Eastenders have portrayed. 

FEAR AND MISERY OF THE THIRD REICH 

Presented by the Eastenders Repertory Company at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday and at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. $20. 568-4118.

Cal Day at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) is a reliable venue for stories. Last year it was a conversation with a maybe eight-year-old naturalist about gopher snakes at the Berkeley Marina. This year I wound up talking to a young woman who was presiding over a tabletop display of dead bats. One in particularly caught my eye, a larger-than-average bat with a striking two-tone wing pattern: a hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus). 

(That snickering in the back row will stop immediately. “Hoary” is a respectable Old English word connoting frost. In addition to the hoary bat, the hoary redpoll and the hoary marmot are members in good standing of North America’s fauna. So just cut that right out). 

What the Cal student told me was that hoary bats, unlike many of their kin, roost in trees and shrubs, and that UC’s grounds maintenance crew used to bring them to the MVZ a lot (whether dead or alive was not clear). I was intrigued enough to ask a friend who had recently retired as the university’s lead groundskeeper about bats in trees. He remembered dealing with Mexican free-tailed bats in the crevices of buildings, including the women’s faculty club, but not the larger hoarys. 

Still wondering what kind of shape those bats were in, I followed up with Patricia Winters, Education and Rehabilitation Director of the California Bat Conservation Fund, whose “BATMAM” license plate you may have noticed. I thought I recalled her talking about scrub-jay predation on tree-dwelling bats a few years ago, and she confirmed that it was frequent. Crows do it too.  

“They often come into our rehab centers with various injuries,” Winters said via email. “I presently have three hoary bats in captivity who were too badly injured to ever regain the ability to fly. They are fierce fighters when they first come in, but quickly learn to realize that we are not going to hurt them, and calm down. I have had one hoary female for eight years now. She was a marvelous school bat, going to hundreds of presentations with me, but she is now retired due to her old age. The other two hoarys, both female, are now getting ready to take her place.” 

Winters was kind enough to provide the accompanying photograph of the late Punkinhead, a male hoary bat who was in the rehab program for several years. How can you not love that face? As cuddly as they may appear, it’s not a good idea to pet them, should the opportunity arise. “Do not reach out and attempt to touch them,” Winters warns. “They will never attack people, but they will defend themselves and can give a nasty bite if they are handled.” Hoary bats will typically warn against such familiarities with what one book calls “a most startling rattling hiss accompanied by an impressive show of teeth.” 

Active late in the evening, hoarys have a strong direct flight. Their food habits are not well documented; in addition to the expected insects, one was observed attacking a western pipistrelle, a smaller species of bat. Unlike the high-pitched echolocation calls of most other bats, their in-flight chatter is audible to the human ear. 

These mostly solitary bats have a huge range, from the Canadian tree line into South America. Males and females seem to follow different northbound routes through California in spring, females in the lowlands and coastal valleys, males in the foothills and mountains. The sexes have been found together during fall migration, and may travel in small flocks. Up to 21 have been counted at the same time on South Farallon Island. 

But they haven’t stopped there. Humans aside, the hoary bat is the only land mammal to reach the Hawai’ian islands on its own. Island bats, known as ope’ape’a, have been classified as a separate subspecies and their fur is a bit redder, but otherwise they’re pretty much standard hoary bats. 

Which makes you think about the vagaries of evolution. Millions of years ago, the seed of a California tarweed reached Hawai’i probably clinging to the feathers of a migratory bird; its progeny include the bizarre yuccalike silversword plants of Haleakala Crater. An ancestor got out there some 3.5 million years ago and gave rise to a whole slew of red, yellow, and black songbirds with a dazzling array of bill shapes and functions: seed-crushers, tweezers, picks and probes. Some, like the beak of the extinct Lana’i hookbill, still have scientists scratching their heads. 

As recent work with the Darwin’s finches of the Galapagos Islands suggests, it could be that it’s somehow easier to rewire the developmental pathways that make a beak than for other body parts. Or the Hawai’ian bats may simply not have been there long enough for their own evolutionary radiation; the oldest known fossils are less than 100,000 years old. Time and chance, like the man said. 

Photograph by Patricia Winters, California Bat Conservation Fund: Punkinhead, a rehabilitated hoary bat. 

TUESDAY, MAY 15 

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 Pointe Pinole. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Vigil Supporting the People of Iraq from noon to 1 p.m. at the Oakland Federal Building 1301 Clay St. We create a Living Graveyard, in which people lie on the city sidewalk, five feet apart, covered with white sheets, to represent the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq caused by the war of occupation. Please bring your own sheet. www.epicalc.org  

Improving Berkeley’s Public Pools and Swim Programs A community forum at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst at MLK. 649-9874. Poolsforberkeley.org 

“Climbing Mt. Shasta: Tips for First-time Climbers” with Eric White, climbing ranger with the US Forest Service at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Discussion Salon on “Will Robots Become More Intelligent Than Humans and Take Over the World?” at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut. 848-2995. 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

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. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda.548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 16 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

Chris Finan describes “From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 528-3254. 

Albany Library Evening Book Club meets to discuss “Digging to America” by Anne Tyler at 7 p.m. at The Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

Lead-Safety for Remodeling, Repair and Painting of older homes. A HUD & EPA approved class held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, 2000 Embarcadero, #300, Oakland. 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org  

New to DVD: “The Painted Veil” at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

Trusts and Wills A free seminar at 2 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Please RSVP to 280-2165. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley BART station. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MAY 17 

Bike to Work Day with energizer stations located throughout Berkeley with refreshments and information. www.EBBC.org, www.511.org 

Golden Gate Audubon Society “Coming and Going: Bay Bird Populations” with Harry Fuller at 7 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 843-2222. 

LeConte Neighborhood Assoc. meets at 7:30 p.m. at LeConte School, Ellsworth & Russell, to discuss the proposed five story building at Shattuck and Derby, the expansion of 2516 Ellsworth from 900 sq ft to nearly 4,000 sq ft, the cell phone microwave emitters planned for Shattuck and Ward and the current "Student Move-Out" debris collection system. 843-2602. 

Young People United, Resisting War, Resisting Violence An evening with Camilo Mejía, Iraq War veteran and conscientious objector, spoken word, video and more at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 411 28th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$20. 914-4678. 

Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative Potluck at 6:30 p.m. at LeConte Elementary School Garden, 2241 Russell St. Please bring something to share. 883-9096.  

“Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible” a documentary by Dr. Shakti Butler, at 6:30 p.m. followed by discussion at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 116 Montecito Ave., Oakland. 285-9600. 

Compassionate Communication Lori Hope discusses her new book “Help Me Live: 20 Things People With Cancer Want You To Know” at 6:15 p.m. at Markstein Cancer Education Center, 450 30th St., Suite 2810, Oakland. 869-8833, option 2. 

Simplicity Forum “Tiny Homes, Handmade Homes” at 6:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 549-3509. 

“Curitiba” A film on urban solutions from Curitiba, Brazil at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Suggested donation $5. 663-2594. 

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. 

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. 

“Dogen and the Lotus Sutra: The Mahayana Worldview of Zen” with Dr. Taigen Dan Leighton at 8:30 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. RSVP to 809-1444. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, MAY 18 

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 Ilana Crispi on “Art in San Francisco” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“Homeland” A documentary of Native Americans and the destructive policies of corporations at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 370 27th St., Oakland. www.HumanistHall.net 

Wavy Gravy’s 71st Birthday and Benefit for Seva Foundation at 8 p.m. at the Grand Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness, corner of Sutter, SF. Tickets are $50-$250. 845-7382, ext. 332. www.seva.org/specialevents 

Free Skin Cancer Screening at Alta Bates Summit. Oakland. Appointments required. 869-8833, ext. 2. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Premanente Conference Room, 1950 Franklin, Oakland. To schedule an appointment call 625-6188. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, MAY 19 

Berkeley Art Center 40th Birthday from 1 to 4 p.m. with guest speakers, concert, children’s activities and art exhibition, at 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Walk on the Santa Fe Right of Way A five-mile walk to discover art, gardens and creeks. Meet at 10 a.m. at the ball court at the south end of Strawberry Creek Park, returning by BART. Bring water and a snack. 540-7223. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Bay Area Storytelling Festival Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area. Tickets are $33-$75. 869-4969. www.bayareastorytelling.org 

Berkeley Climate Action Kick-Off with ideas and resources for reducing your emissions at 10 a.m. at Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. www.cityofberkeley.info/mayor/GHG/index.htm 

Solidarity with the Tree-Sitters with the Rockin' Solidarity Labor Chorus and the Freedom Song Network at 2 p.m. at the Memorial Oak Grove, east side of UC Campus, just off Gayley Rd. 649-1423. halih@yahoo.com 

ACCI Gallery 50th Anniversary Celebration at 6 p.m. at 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527.  

Himalayan Fair with arts and crafts, music, dance and food, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8-$20, benefits grassroots projects in the Himalayas. 869-3995.  

“Making Waves to Fight Cancer” A 15.5 mile sea kayak and canoe paddle around Alameda Island to raise money for breast cancer research, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Register and pledge online at www.calkayak.com 

Community Picket of the Port of Oakland to call for a halt to war shipments. Meet at 7 a.m. at the West Oakland BART station. There will be a shuttle to take people to the picketing site. 525-5497. 

A Clean Sweep: Thermometers, Medicine, and E-Waste Disposal from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EmeryBay Market Place, Christie Ave. at 64th St., Emeryville. Bring unwanted or expired medication, mercury thermometers, and electronic waste, such as TVs, computers, monitors, cell phones and fax machines. No appliances. Bring thermometers sealed in two plastic zipper bags, and bring medication in original containers with your name marked out. 452-9261, ext 118. www.ebmud.com/cleanbay 

Tea Party and Old Time Music Jam at 3:30 p.m. in People's Park. Bring a teacup! 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Tela de la Vida/Fabric of Life A bilingual walk for the entire family at 2 p.m. at the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline. For information call 525-2233. 

Multicultural Health Fair for Children with hands-on activities from 1 to 4 p.m. at Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave., lower level. 705-8527. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “A Taste of Thai” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45, plus 435 for food and materials. Registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com  

“U.S Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis and Paths to Peace” with Jacqueline Cabasso and Andrew Lichterman of the Western States Legal Foundation at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Public Affairs Forum, at the Home of Truth, 1300 Grand Street in Alameda. www.alamedaforum.org  

Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 16.  

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Room, 2727 College Ave. All welcome.  

“My People Are” A short film on racial identities experienced through the eyes of young people at 7 p.m. at Park Day School, 215 Ridegway, Oakland. For information call Tasha at Bananas, 658-7353. 

“The Hidden Life of the Wild Elephant Herds of Africa” with author and researcher Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd., off Hwy 580. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

EcoVillage’s Earth Day and Spring Festival with keynote speaker Carl Anthony, Senior Ford Foundation Fellow, environmentalist, and social justice leader and workshops and lunch, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at EcoVillage Farm Learning Center, 21 Laurel Lane, Richmond. Cost is $15-$25. 329-1314. www.ecovillagefarm.org 

SoloSierrans Waterfront Biking from Emeryville to Berkeley Meet at 1 p.m. in front of the Watergate Clipper Club, 5 Captain Dr., Emeryville. 923-1094. 

Hopalong Animal Rescue Come meet your new best dog friend from noon to 3 p.m. at Pet Food Express Rockridge, 5144 Broadway, Oakland. 267-1915, ext. 500. www.hopalong.org  

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MAY 20 

Celebration of Old Roses Heirloom and hard-to-find roses from specialty nurseries, plus crafts, books, jewelry and clothing inspired by roses, from 11 to 4 p.m. at El Cerrito Community Center, on Moeser at Ashbury, El Cerrito. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Wheelchair accessible. 526-7377. 

People’s Park Design Help to design an open, respectful, community based visioning process for People’s Park. Planning meeting 3 p.m. in People's Park NW corner grove. 658-9178. 

Himalayan Fair with arts and crafts, music, dance and food, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Live Oak Park, 1300 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8-$20, benefits grassroots projects in the Himalayas. 869-3995.  

Hidden Gems of Berkeley Bike Ride exploring the Elmwood and South Berkeley starting at 10 a.m. at Halcyon Court, Prince St. Bring snack, lunch and water. mayith@yahoo.com 

Bike Tour of Oakland Explore Arrowhead Marsh on a leisurely 5-mile ride. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrance to the Oakland Museum of California. 238-3514. www.museumca.org 

SoloSierrans Hike in Tilden Meet at 4 p.m. at Lone Oak parking area for a one hour hike through the woods. Optional dinner follows. 234-8949.  

“Summer Time at the Little Farm” A puppet show about life on the farm and the mishaps of a farmer, at 10:45 and 11:30 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

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 

Bicycle Commuting Tips: Gear and Fixing Flats at 10 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Smart and Green Day at the Kensington Farmers’ Market with free thermometer exchange and free energy-efficient light bulbs, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. 

EcoHouse Greywater Tour Learn about the first permitted residential constructed wetland greywater system in California. We will discuss the principles and process of safely irrigating with household waste water. Return home with ideas and plans of your own. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St. Cost is $15 sliding scale, no one turned away. 548-2220 ext. 242. ecohouse@ecologycenter.org 

EarthTeam’s Environmental Film Festival and Awards Ceremony Screening of the student-created Our School/Our Planet videos, poetry, photography and silent auction from 2 to 5 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. 704-4030. info@earthteam.net 

East Bay Atheists meets to discuss “Mormonism: the Goofiest Sect of All” with Don Havis at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr. meeting room, 2090 Kittredge St.  

“From Creeks to Coastline: Bay Watershed” Learn about our local San Francisco Bay Watershed through hands-on activities and exhibitions from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., at 10th St., Oakland. www.museumca.org 

“Democratization of the Media through the Internet” with Andrew Keen, author of “Cult of the Amateur,” and Dan Gilmor, author of “We the Media” at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15. 527-0450. www.hillsideclub.org  

“The Dark Side of Gluten in Pet Foods” at 2 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. 525-6155. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with “Jack Petranker on “Precious Jewel of the Dharma” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MAY 21 

Four Mile Monday Join a four mile hike with history, vistas and birdwatching at 11 a.m. at Point Pinole Regional Shoreline. Bring layers, lunch and your binoculars. 525-2233. 

“When the Levees Broke” Parts 3 and 4 Spike Lee’s documentary about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans at 6:45 p.m. at the Upstairs Lounge at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, 410 14th Street, off Broadway, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 262-1001. info@wellstoneclub.org 

Benefit for Vukani Mawethu Choir Silent auction and dinner with seatings at 5:30, 7:30 and 9 p.m. at Unicorn Restaurant, 2533 Telegraph Ave. For reservations call 841-8098. 

Read Aloud Theater A free Berkeley Adult School class at 9 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 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 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., May 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601. 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., May 16, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344.  

Commission on Labor meets Wed., May 16, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7550.  

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed., May 16, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., May 16, at 7 p.m. at the South Branch Library. 981-6195.  

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., May 17, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.