Eighteen-year city employee Stephen Barton, asked to resign last Tuesday, was publicly pummeled in a memo by the Berkeley city attorney Wednesday, a six-page document addressed to the mayor and City Council and filled with attacks aimed primarily at Barton, but also at the city manager, deputy city manager and other city staff. 

“The memo raises in a public way what have been long-term cultural problems within the organization,” the former housing director told the Daily Planet in a two-and-a-half-hour interview Friday, in which Barton, 57, detailed the “untruths and distortions” he said he found in the memo. 

Barton says he wants to see the city order a peer review by other attorneys of City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque’s office, as well as an independent examination of the Berkeley Housing Authority.  

“Here we have a personal attack from the highest level [of city government] and a failure to have any impartial inquiry,” he said. “Just as there should be an impartial inquiry and review of what happened in the housing authority, there should also be an inquiry and review of the conduct of the city attorney’s office.”  

The city attorney has declined to discuss the memo, a copy of which can be found by clicking on the “City Attorney Memo” link at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

Despite being asked to resign by the city manager, apparently on the basis of reports from Albuquerque, Barton said he was “honored” to have had the opportunity to serve a municipality whose values are his own. 

Barton said working on housing issues in Berkeley allowed him to promote the “equal dignity of all people, regardless of how much money they have and regardless of their personal background … An important part of that is that people have security in their homes and if they are homeless, that they have homes.” 

“It’s rare you get to do the work you truly believe in and get paid,” Barton said, before launching into the complexities of the housing department and confronting details of the attack against him.  

“Part of my beliefs is the Buddha teaches that wise speech is truthful, helpful, appropriate and kind—I’m going to have a lot of trouble with the kind part,” Barton said at one point in the interview. 

Barton’s tenure 

Barton, who received his doctorate in city and regional planning in 1985 from UC Berkeley, came to the city in 1989 as a housing planner and was named acting director of the Housing Department in 1999, a time at which the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA)—just one division of a four-division department—was in disarray. 

BHA oversees some 1,800 units of federally funded Section 8 housing in which vouchers are allocated to low-income people who pay about one-third of their income for housing. The federal government pays the balance. Rent levels are set at market rate. BHA also is responsible for 75 units of low-income housing that it owns. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds and regulates the housing authority. 

As a result of a host of economic, social and bureaucratic missteps leading to faulty data and other problems, HUD designated the agency as “troubled” in 2002. It has not been able to completely pull out of that status—except partially for a short time— despite efforts such as hiring a former HUD official as BHA manager for two years and working with a variety of consultants and outside auditors, many of them recommended by HUD and some of whom made the situation worse, Barton said. 

When evaluating the housing director’s work performance, Barton said one needs to look at the city’s unrealistic expectations. “I’ve been filling two jobs,” he said. 

The Housing Department includes four divisions: Housing Services that serves nonprofit housing development, including housing for seniors and disabled people and code enforcement. Recently, homeless services have been added to the mix. Until a couple of months ago, Barton headed that division, its manager having been removed as part of the cost-savings program put in place about four years ago. 

Another division oversees federal and city funded community agencies; a fourth division focuses on energy conservation and sustainable development. 

Barton cites among his accomplishments, designing ways to capture some of the housing market’s windfall profits for use of individuals without property, such as having developers pay “in lieu fees”—fees to replace the required 20 percent affordable housing and the condominium conversion program. “These efforts have been slow in getting going,” he said, “but will generate millions of dollars every year for the Housing Trust Fund,” money for low-income housing efforts. 

The Albuquerque memo  

Barton turned the sheets of the six-page memo, pointing to examples of what he called “untruths and distortions.”  

One, he said, is that the Albuquerque memo said Barton was often “at odds” with Ingram. “That is completely untrue,” said Barton, who recruited Ingram. “I supported Tia in efforts every step of the way.”  

While Albuquerque’s memo says Ingram was made assistant to the city manager because Barton was “dismissive” of her, Barton says it was a bureaucratic necessity imposed by HUD rules; Ingram had to be made a permanent employee quickly so that she could gain access to HUD data. Giving her the position of assistant to the city manager made that possible. 

But after a few months of this arrangement, Barton said Kamlarz wanted Ingram to report directly to him, to avoid confusion in reporting responsibilities. 

This, however, renders other Albuquerque’s allegations “a catch-22,” he said, since the memo holds him responsible for things happening at the housing authority during the time he was not supervising Ingram. For example, Albuquerque criticizes Barton’s supervision of a temporary BHA employee during the time he was not supervising the BHA manager. 

“I am being set up here,” he said.  

Barton said Albuquerque got another point entirely backwards. While she says he “repeatedly resisted” her advice to bring in the Alameda County Housing Authority to figure out what operational changes needed to take place, he says, “Actually, I had been in constant contact with Alameda County Housing Authority. I felt that was our backup.” 

Barton says that today, rather than going the very expensive route of hiring an outside consulting agency to run BHA—which is the city manager/city attorney’s plan—the Housing Authority of the County of Alameda should be invited to set up an office in Berkeley and run the agency. That would preserve the housing vouchers in Berkeley. 

Barton said he finds it “very offensive” that the city manager and city attorney made the decision to go the route of hiring the outside agency without consulting him—the BHA staff is being laid off and placed in jobs elsewhere in the city and a private agency is being hired to run BHA along with Ingram.  

“Even though it’s late in the day, I still strongly recommend that approach,” Barton said. 

Barton and HUD directives 

Among Albuquerque’s criticisms of Barton was that “Mr. Barton was … dismissive of HUD’s ability to provide assistance.”  

Barton responds: “If I were to pick out an error of mine, it was following the directions of HUD as long as I did.”  

Barton cites a number of instances in which he said HUD was responsible for creating problems rather than solving them.  

One example of confusion within HUD was around a loan. There were maintenance problems in the 75 public housing units, some dating back to when they were built. BHA needed $1.4 million for repairs and arranged to borrow it from HUD, based on Community Development Block Grant funds the city gets from HUD. (The manager at the time was a former HUD official.) 

“Rather to my amazement, the people in the regional HUD office complained that [the manager] had gotten the loan from the other part of the HUD without their authorization and at various times ordered us to stop work.” 

Another example of a HUD-created problem was that around 2003 HUD started cutting back administrative payments to the Housing Authority and its payments for public housing. BHA was cut from a staff of 19 to 13 people. 

“That was definitely a mistake,” Barton said. “I should have said no, we can’t cut staff.”  

Also, at one point, while the housing authority was dealing with line staff problems and with changing BHA management, “HUD was going through constant reorganizations and they were constantly sending out new people to review the housing authority and telling us to do different things.” 

At one point, HUD sent out a consultant team that decided that what was needed was to do “interim” recertifications of housing clients, which they attempted to do in a couple of weekends, Barton said. The result was “a massive diversion of staff time,” with incomplete results.  

“If HUD had been trying to actively sabotage the Housing Authority, they couldn’t have done better than what their help was,” he said. 

Call for investigation 

Barton reiterated his call for an independent inquiry into the office of the city attorney. 

“The memo is just an example of the “kind of casual attack—an unsubstantiated attack—which is an example of how city staff is treated day in and day out by the city attorney,” he said. “Privately, city staff and department directors talk about how unusual it is to be in a city where the attorney’s office treats staff as the enemy on a routine basis.”  

This has a fundamental impact on the work of city staff, Barton said. 

When the city attorney’s office is regularly “insulting, abrupt and dismissive,” that means staff avoids seeking needed advice, Barton said. “This only serves to enforce the view [of city attorney staff] that staff are incompetent and resistant to their advice, thus creating a vicious circle of noncooperation. 

“This internal situation in Berkeley has festered for years and nothing’s been done about it,” he said.

Twenty-three young men and women were sent out to conquer the real world on Friday. 

As faculty, staff and students gathered at St. John’s Presbyterian Church to celebrate the hopes and dreams of Berkeley Technology Academy’s (B-Tech) graduating class of 2007, students and teachers said there was no denying that the school had come a long way since its inception as a continuation school. 

“It’s been my most enjoyable year as an educator,” B-Tech principal Victor Diaz told the Planet. “Together we have accomplished great things. Our students are preparing for college much earlier and with a greater sense of commitment. Teachers and students are pushing the envelope in the classroom by mastering the standards and connecting them to larger social issues.” 

Diaz is not the only one to praise the school once labeled as a “dumping ground” for kids unable to fit in anywhere else. 

Twenty-three out of the school’s 30 seniors graduated this year, an increase from the past. Two students will have to re-take their California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) in order to graduate, and five will have to boost up their credits over the summer. 

Student attendance is up, and suspensions have plunged, Diaz said. 

More students passed the CAHSEE this year than ever before, a fact that makes Diaz ecstatic. 

“We focused a lot on the math part of the exit exam this time,” he said. “Prof. Christopher Knaus from the African American Studies department at UC Berkeley sent over some of his undergrads to work with us all summer. Our two main goals were CAHSEE prep and getting all our seniors signed up for Peralta Community College. Once we crossed that hurdle, students went on to bigger and better things like the SATs.” 

In November, 15 kids from B-Tech took a Black College Tour of African-American educational institutions in the South. 

The students produced B-Tech’s first yearbook this year. A 60-page color volume filled with poems, profiles and photographs, the book highlights top B-Tech talent and captures some of the school’s best moments. 

“The students worked really hard on this one,” said Joy Lee, who teaches English. An ethnic studies major from Stanford, Lee taught her students Adobe Photoshop and other pagemaking skills necessary to create a yearbook. 

“I tell them that it’s very important to apply themselves to every situation,” she said. “Sometimes they have problems with the reading session in the exit exam and the only way to overcome that is by practice.” 

Lucrecia Irvin, who topped the graduating class, said that she had managed to get all A’s by doing just that. 

“Things started looking up when Victor became principal in 2005,” she said. “Then they brought in more staff and since last year it’s been all good.” 

Irvin, who works part-time at Popeye’s in downtown Oakland, wants to pursue nursing at San Francisco State University. 

Turning her dreams into reality are teachers such as Rachel Bolden-Kramer, B-Tech’s youngest acquisition. 

This year, the B-Tech summer school—also a first—will help students prepare for their exit exam and give them a chance to make up their credits in order to graduate. 

“If the summer program had existed earlier, more students would have been able to graduate,” said Diaz. “We want to teach them deeper concepts and expose them to areas they haven’t come across before. For example statistics and geometry. Next year, more students will prepare for college by the normal deadlines. Instead of letting them play catch, we will make sure that their financial aid applications and SAT scores are turned in by November.” 

As students walked up to receive their diplomas, cheering echoed throughout the church. 

Some thanked their mother, some God, but the majority thanked “Vic.” 

Dwarfed by most of his students, Diaz perhaps bore the biggest smile during the ceremony Friday. It was easy to spot the bond he had created with his students, one that went beyond that of a teacher and a friend. 

As the seniors hugged him to death, school superintendent Michele Lawrence lauded Diaz’s commitment toward B-Tech. 

“He is simply amazing with the kids,” she told the Planet. “His incredible relationship with his students and the incredible hard work that B-Tech staff have put into the school is evident from its success today.”

The Berkeley City Council tonight (Tuesday) will take another look at the mayor’s controversial Public Commons for Everyone Initiative. At the last meeting, an exhausted council did not address the specifics in the measure intended to enhance shopping areas by removing persons whose behavior is unacceptable.  

Another controversial item is likely to be an appeal by Elmwood neighbors and merchants of a plan to transform the Wright’s Garage Building into a four-to-seven unit commercial building that would include a restaurant, exercise or dance studios and five retail spaces. 

Commenting on the 1,300-plus page agenda packet, Councilmember Betty Olds said the City Council is consistent in the way it handles business. “First they discuss it, then they send it to a committee, then they put up a sign about it,” she said. “If all else fails, we’ll talk it to death.”  

The first order of business will be a joint session with the new Berkeley Housing Authority board. Then the council will meet briefly as the Redevelopment Agency.  

The council meeting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. and in addition to the Public Commons Initiative and the Wright’s Garage appeal will include a budget discussion; the creation of a new city position for a Revenue Development Officer, with a salary range of $6,395-$7,730 per month; extending evening hours of operation for businesses where there is no sales or service of alcohol, ensuring equal opportunities for people re-entering the work force after prison, opposition to transit funding reduction in the governor’s budget and city sponsorship of the Solano Stroll. 

Public Commons 

At the May 22 meeting the council had voted to separate out the various component’s of the mayor’s evolving proposal to curb anti-social street behavior. It was about midnight and the worn-out council adjourned without going through the proposal. At this meeting, Councilmember Kriss Worthington has added his own recommendations. 

Bates proposal includes: 

• Generating income to fund the plan with increased parking meter fees and an increased number of meters. 

• Hiring a six-month planner to refine the plan. 

• Writing a no-smoking ordinance for commercial areas that would include designated smoking areas. 

• Improve signage and adding hours of access to public bathrooms. 

• Making public defecation and urination an infraction and referring the concept to the Police Review Commission. 

• Enforcing existing laws. 

• Developing more public seating. 

• Expanding supportive housing opportunities. 

• Soliciting feedback from key commissions. 

Worthington’s proposal includes: 

• Compiling information on quality-of-life citations issued and prosecuted in Berkeley and neighboring cities. 

• Compiling data estimating the cost of district attorney and public defender, court, and police time. 

• Delaying any ordinance considering a ban on sitting on the sidewalk for one year, until the results of the other ordinances are in. 

• Delaying the urination/defecation ordinance until the number of public toilets are increased. 

• Implementing community policing to include walking beats, communicating with businesses, residents and others and implementing a police officer’s use of a dedicated cell phone or pager. 

Other items 

In addition to the appeal of the zoning board’s decision to allow development at the Wright’s Garage location, there is an appeal of the Landmark’s Commission’s designation as a landmark of the Maybeck House at 1300 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way.  

The council will review the 2008/2009 budget, including the council referrals. 

A number of information reports—not likely to be discussed—are available from the city clerk’s office or on the clerk’s web site. Among them are: a status report on instant runoff voting and installation of surveillance cameras. 

Berkeley police found the body of the year’s second murder, 46-year-old Terrence Marlow Broadnax, shortly after noon Friday in a fourth-floor apartment at University Avenue Homes. 

In a written statement, BPD Lt. Matt Morizono said officers found evidence of “significant blunt force trauma.” 

Officers were called to the 1040 University Ave. scene by a building employee who had discovered the body, Morizono said. 

The employee had gone to the apartment to check on Broadnax’s welfare because he hadn’t been seen for some time before his body was discovered. 

Located at the corner of University and San Pablo avenues, the 75-unit single-room-occupancy hotel opened in 1992 for area residents who lost their dwellings in the Loma Prieta earthquake. 

Remodeled with finances from the city and federal governments, the building was owned by the non-profit University Avenue Housing until 1999, when the building was purchased by Resources for Community Development (RCD). 

A non-profit, RCD owns multiple properties in the East Bay reserved solely for low-income tenants and is presently developing the six-story Oxford Plaza apartment complex at the corner of Fulton Street and Kittredge Way adjacent to the site of the planned David Brower Center. 

Broadnax’s killing comes one month and two days after the city’s first murder of 2007, also the result of a severe beating. 

The body of 19-year-old Augustine Silva of Antioch was discovered about 6:30 a.m. May 6 by an employee arriving for work at Second and Cedar streets. The body was on the ground, sprawled across an abandoned railroad spur. 

He had been slain by multiple blunt force blows, said BPD Sgt. Mary Kusmiss at the time. 

Berkeley police have announced a $15,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Silva’s killer. 

Anyone with information on either crime is requested to call BPD’s Homicide Detail at 981-5741, or the department switchboard at 981-5900.

World Can’t Wait called on all Berkeley High School students Monday to sign a letter protesting the U.S. military’s requirement that Berkeley High give student information to military recruiters unless the students request the school not to. 

The Berkeley School Board last week voted to adopt a policy requiring juniors and seniors to sign an “opt-out” form if they don’t want their information released to the U.S. military. Previously, students who wished to be contacted by military recruiters had to sign an “opt-in” form. 

Berkeley High was the last school in the country to adopt the “opt-in” policy under threat of losing $10 million in federal funding, as part of the No Child Left Behind act. 

“Berkeley High was forced by the office of the Undersecretary of Defense in a complete action of extortion to undermine the privacy of BHS students by releasing students’ information to military recruiters,” said Daniel A. Sandoval of World Can’t Wait. “We are collecting signatures from Berkeley High School students to support the fact that majority of the students are against the war.” 

Sandoval told the Planet that close to 250 student signatures had been collected so far from Berkeley High. 

The petition says, in part: “We oppose this unjust war. We support the soldiers who resist fighting this unjust war. We refuse to serve in an unjust war. We want nothing to do with this unjust war. And we will set the example and call on all students across the nation to refuse to serve this unjust war. NO MORE!” 

Sandoval sad that the letter would be sent to the Robert Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defense, on Wednesday. 

“However, the names of the students will not be disclosed,” he said. 

Monday’s demonstration had been planned for inside the Berkeley High campus but was moved to the Martin Luther King Jr. park grounds. 

“They were not allowed to hold it inside the school because they don’t represent the school,” said BUSD public information officer Mark Coplan. “Only the district can hold a press conference inside the school.” 

Rio Bauce, a BHS senior who chairs the city’s Youth Commission and is a member of the Planning Commission, said that the change in policy was not worth protesting about. 

“The kids are just happy that they were able to opt out during assembly a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “The opt-out policy is legal. I think Berkeley High is doing the right thing by complying with the law.” 

Littering, downtown safety issues and plans for the warm water pool dominated the meeting held between representatives of the city and the Berkeley Unified School District Friday. 

Nancy Holland, aide to District 4 Councilmember Dona Spring, informed school and city officials about complaints from constituents regarding excessive trash near Berkeley High School (BHS). 

“You can see broken glass, dead rats, food wrappings and toxic electronic waste, especially toward the rear end of Berkeley High,” she said.  

School Board Vice President John Selawsky told the board that the corner of Milvia and Channing was used as a dumping site. 

“People dump mattresses, desks and other junk there,” he said. “Also, there aren’t adequate trash receptacles around Berkeley High School. I find kids looking for them and then dropping their trash on the streets as there’s nowhere to put them.” 

District Superintendent Michele Lawrence acknowledged that littering around Berkeley High has been an ongoing problem. 

“There was a mess on one side but it’s going to be cleaned up,” she said. 

“The reality is, people are just slobs,” said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. “And it’s not just the kids, it’s everyone. Today, I saw a young person spitting on the sidewalk and I said ‘you can’t do that.’” 

Holland stated that the city had reached its capacity with trash cans. “Why not do a joint effort [between the city and the school district] to teach people to respect our streets?” she asked. “What it needs is a structural change.” 

Warm water pool 

Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna told committee members about the Disability Commission’s recent meeting to gather information from the community about the possible relocation of the warm water pool. 

The school district’s South of Bancroft Master Plan proposes to demolish the gymnasium that houses the warm water pool, which is used by disabled local residents. 

Friends Protecting Berkeley’s Resources sued the district in February for what it said was an inadequate environmental impact report on the demolition of the gymnasium and the pool. 

Possible relocation options for the pool include the Berkeley High tennis courts at Milvia, which is now a parking lot. Caronna added that a small task force of disability coordinators is working on a design for the parking lot, which would include costs. 

“A couple of people have approached me about turning Berkeley Iceland into a possible relocation for the warm water pool,” Bates said. “I am concerned that we would have the same problems there as we would have at Milvia.” 

Selawsky said that a possible relocation of the pool to the West Campus also merits discussion. 

Curvy Derby  

Committee members discussed the use of the school district’s East Campus Field, which is the proposed site for a regulation-size baseball diamond. 

“At what point will it be usable and will the community be able to get inside its gates?” Bates asked. 

Selawsky said the field would be ready for use in September. 

Lawrence remarked that the field was intended to be used by Berkeley High students. 

“We intend to make it available to the public through the use permit process,” she said. “Whether the community can use it for free is up for debate at the board level. There are maintenance and safety issues that need to be discussed. Broken glass and dog stuff is not a problem when you [only] have formal games going on. We need to remember that it is a teaching station, not a recreation station.” 

Selawsky said that the field would also be used by Berkeley Technology Academy (B-Tech) students. 

Downtown safety 

Deborah Badhia, director of the Downtown Berkeley Association, told committee members that an estimated 80 percent of BHS students frequent Shattuck Avenue during lunch break. 

“That’s a significant number of students,” she said, and asked if Berkeley High could send out its security officers to patrol downtown regularly. 

“The students respond a lot better to school administration,” she added. 

“Having the high school staff there makes a huge difference,” Selawsky said. “But we need to have a meeting of all the important associations, such as the Berkeley Police Department, UC Berkeley Police Department, BART Police and the school security staff to coordinate efforts. There have been more incidents going on downtown. More than I would like to see.” 

Lawrence remarked that it was not possible for any one agency to accommodate 3,000 kids at one time. 

“It has to be bigger than putting pressure on Berkeley High staff,” she said. “We try and do as many sweeps as possible. I do see our security people downtown, but I can’t see how frequently they do their job as I am not there all the time.” 

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) will once again hear the appeal of an administrative use permit for a residential addition to 2008 Virginia St. 

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Lorin Hill of Oakland, the project architect and applicant, had requested the permit to construct a 1,434-square-foot addition, raising the house approximately six feet to create habitable space on the ground level and expanding the footprint of the building to create a two-story west wing. 

A group of neighbors had appealed the permit, voicing concerns that the additional height would block air and light. On Jan. 25, ZAB members had asked the applicant to put up story poles at the site of the building so that ZAB and neighbors could get a better visual representation of the project. 

At the May 24 ZAB meeting, Hallie Frazer, appellant and resident of 1711B Milvia St., described the proposed project as being inconsistent with the neighborhood pattern of development. 

“The extension is too big for the neighborhood,” she argued. “Since our lots are of a substandard size, this open area has provided us with a bit of free space. It has invited community activism and helped us meet each other.” 

Rosemary Dady, another appellant who owns a duplex at 2004 and 2006 Virginia St., said that the proposed project would block the view from her upstairs window. 

“When a neighboring house is expanded, why should neighbors have to take all the detriment of the expansion?” she asked. “The applicant is thrusting six feet into the way of sunlight. The project will be looming over my property. In the end, their gain is our loss.” 

Josie Gallup, an appellant, informed board members that in addition to the loss of light, the project was too dense. 

“It’s twice as dense as the average size property in the neighborhood,” she said. “The open space in our backyard gives us a chance to enjoy the lush green garden feeling. We are concerned about the two-story addition intruding upon our privacy and our old fashioned country garden.” 

Bill Berland, the applicant’s lawyer, defended his client’s position and in a letter to ZAB said that the “neighbors were being unreasonable.” 

“The size of the shell of applicant’s building is well within the size and character of the neighborhood,” his letter stated. “I believe that there is a three- to four-story apartment building nearby, a three-story building to the south and some two to three story buildings on two lots behind the applicant’s property ... The neighbors insist on trying to force-feed applicants with an unacceptable and unappealing remodeling plan. It may suit the neighbors’ tastes and desires, but not those of the applicants.” 

Berland added that his clients Jacqueline Poitier and David Bunnell—who live in the house—were proposing the addition to create space to take care of their grandchildren. 

Majority of the board members were concerned about the significant visual and aesthetic impacts on the views and privacy of the neighbors that the addition would cause. 

“It’s out of scale with the neighborhood and the type of development that is allowed in the zoning district,” said board member Jesse Arreguin, who asked the applicant if he was willing to explore a compromise proposition put forward by the appellants. 

The applicant dismissed the compromise proposition to move the addition on the north side of the property instead of the backyard. 

Board member Michael Alvarez Cohen said that the proposed construction of the massive block would “change the character of the entire neighborhood.” 

Staff recommends denying the appeal and upholding the zoning officer's decision to approve the project with minor modifications. 

Other items 

• ZAB will hear a request for a use permit by Sunny Grewal of Studio G+S Architects, to remove an existing, detached garage, construct an attached garage and expand the floor area of an existing four-unit building at 1300 Monterey Ave. 

A group of neighbors have problems with the height, density, compatibility with neighborhood scale and character and parking space in the rear yard.  

Board members have decided to hold a public hearing to hear from the applicant as well as area residents. 

“It makes more sense to have the parties talk over it first,” said board vice president Rick Judd at the meeting. “You should try to work for an agreement you can live with rather than turn it over to us to work out.” 

Staff recommends approval. 

• Appellants Alan and Shelley Altura of Berkeley are scheduled to appeal the administrative use permit to construct a residential addition at 921 Ensenada Ave., by expanding the footprint of the building by 450 square feet, and by constructing a 1,084-square-foot partial second story, setback approximately 15 feet from the front of the house, with an average height of 24 feet. 

Staff recommends denying the appeal. 

• Shawn Smith, architect with Berkeley-based Fargo Farnesi, is scheduled to request a use permit to partially demolish a 1,369-square-foot duplex at 2746 Garber St. and consolidate it into a single unit, and reconstruct a two-story unit at the rear of the building. 

Staff recommends approval. 

• Rena Rickles of Oakland is scheduled to request a use permit to allow a carry-out food service in a new retail food market at 2312 Telegraph Ave. Staff recommends approval. 

The Housing Advisory Commission is asking the Berkeley City Council to have an independent investigation conducted into allegations made by City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque regarding former Housing Director Steve Barton’s alleged refusal to take her advice and similar allegations directed at City Manager Phil Kamlarz, Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna and other staff. 

The city manager asked Barton to resign the day before the memo came out, based on reports written by the city attorney accusing Barton of not following her advice and not completing various tasks. (See Barton’s response in accompanying story.) 

The Thursday evening HAC vote was 4-2-2, with Commissioners Frankie Fraser and Jane Coulter opposing and Commissioners Marie Bowman and new commissioner Beth Wachtel abstaining, according to Commissioner Jesse Arreguin, who had submitted a stronger resolution that failed. Arreguin’s proposal had called for Barton’s reinstatement until an inquiry was performed. 

The HAC resolution also recognized Barton’s contributions to the city, “specifically his work to help construct hundreds of new units of permanently affordable housing in Berkeley, his work in drafting amendments to the Condominium Conversion Ordinance, which protects tenants while providing opportunities for home ownership, his commitment to ensuring that working people can continue to live in our community and his support for Section 8 tenants and their right to affordable and habitable housing.” 

It is not known at this time when the council will consider the HAC resolution. 

The new Berkeley Housing Authority Board will meet in joint session with the City Council at 5 p.m. 

After public comment, the council will be asked to approve a transition plan written by the city manager.  

The new independent board then will be sworn in and asked to adopt the plan. They won’t have much leeway to turn it down, however, given that the city subsidy of $947,000 is conditioned on accepting the manager’s 120-day transition plan that includes: 

• Hiring Tia Ingram, who has managed the agency for nine months, as executive director; 

• Hiring independent legal counsel. 

• Contracting with consultants CGI, Inc. 

• Hiring temporary staff that has union protections, including an accountant, two housing specialists, one management analyst, one administrative assistant and two office assistants. Ingram and a deputy director will be permanent staff. 

• Developing an organizational plan within the 120 days. 

• Participating in a joint “two-by-two” committee with the City Council. 

• Conducting minimally 10 meetings per year. 

The city will continue to provide various services including: personnel, payroll, information technology, finance and public works janitorial services. The city clerk’s office will not service the BHA. 

The new board was appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council, except former City Manager Wise Allen, who will likely be named tonight to replace an appointee who dropped out. In a brief interview last week, Allen said he was recruited by Mayor Tom Bates for the post. He was not among the original group of applicants. 

Bates appointed Carole Selter Norris, vice president of ICF Consulting, to chair the board. Norris’ resume says she has 20 years experience in affordable housing.  

Two tenant members of the current BHA board will continue their service: Dorothy Hunt, a disabled Section 8 renter who holds a doctorate in education and family counseling services, and Adolph Moody, who, on his resume, calls himself “a citizen of this city and this planet.” 

Marjorie Cox, an attorney with the California Department of Justice, will serve on the board. 

Melissa Male, a recent Boalt Law School graduate, is employed as constituent services specialist for Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Mayor Tom Bates’ wife. 

Michael McBride is senior pastor at The Way Christian Center and directs student services at Berkeley Technical Academy, the city’s alternative high school. 

In a scene that invoked historical images of a lanky President Abraham Lincoln walking through the streets of a liberated Richmond shortly before the end of the Civil War, Ron Dellums took a 15-block walking tour of International Boulevard in the Fruitvale District Friday evening surrounded by a phalanx of city officials, local residents, staff, police and private security packed around him so dense that the tall Oakland mayor could only be viewed by his snow-haired head towering above the crowd. 

But while Lincoln listened to expressions of gratitude from throngs of newly freed African captives for a war that was all but over, for Dellums the war has not yet begun. The mayor heard sometimes-angry residents and activists tell of conditions of violent crime, drug use, and prostitution saturating the predominantly Latino neighborhood and business district, asking for help from City Hall. 

The walk began at the corner of 38th Avenue and International and ended with a two-hour community meeting at Bridges Academy at the old Melrose Elementary School on 53rd Avenue.  

Joining Dellums in the walk were City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, City Councilmember Jean Quan, and Oakland School Board Director Noel Gallo, all of whom represent portions of the area walked through. 

Print reporters and television cameras jostled each other to get close enough to see and hear as Dellums listened as residents pointed out hot spots or talked of particularly notorious incidents. The mayor stopped twice, once at a 24-Hour Children’s Center at 47th and International to talk with staff members, and again to go inside the Corazon Del Pueblo restaurant at 48th to talk to customers, staff, and owners. City staff members trailed behind taking notes, noting code violations and, in one instance, a homeless encampment on the narrow sidewalk on 46th Avenue just east of International. 

None of the Fruitvale’s infamous prostitutes were visible as the mayor and his entourage walked, however. A half an hour before the tour began, Oakland police did their own preliminary walk and drive-by, rousting people they thought might be undesirable. 

At points, the mayor’s walk took on the aspects of a grand spectacle, with some 15 television or digital cameras recording the event from all sides, two television news helicopters hovering overhead, a police patrol car driving alongside on International, and some residents coming out to gawk and ask what was going on. 

Midway through the walk, a small contingent from the red-bereted, red-jacketed Guardian Angels organization joined the rear, some of them peering into the windows of storefronts across International as if the mayor of Oakland might be threatened by sniper fire. Members of the group later stood at the rear of the meeting at Bridges Academy, arms folded, as if providing a security detail. 

But while at times the mayor’s walk through the Fruitvale down International took on aspects of either a carnival parade or an election campaign, the activity was all seriousness at the meeting in the Bridges Academy auditorium. With Dellums, De La Fuente, Quan, and Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker sitting behind a table onstage listening, a collection of community, business, and organization representatives gave short speeches and then asked for specific commitments from City Hall to solve several of the Fruitvale area’s problems. 

Some of the requests were simple; asking Dellums to commit to “eating in our restaurants once a month so people will know that the Melrose and the Fruitvale are places to come to eat and buy” or agreeing to meet once a month for six months with local organizations (“That one’s easy,” Dellums answered to the eating question. “I was born in Oakland. That’s not a question. Yes.” The mayor also agreed to the once a month meeting schedule). 

But others were more difficult. To requests for funding for anti-crime programs, particularly to deal with getting the area’s prostitutes off the street, Dellums said that Oakland’s $1.1 billion annual budget is “so restricted” that “after taking out for police and fire and other necessary services from the 45 percent that wasn’t restricted, I was down to $2.4 million to try to solve all of the problems of Oakland. In one way, this is madness.” 

But Dellums said “I make a pledge to you I will try to find money in the budget” to solve the Fruitvale’s prostitution problem, and said he would also look to federal, state, and private sources for financing. 

In answer to another request that the city step up street cleaning efforts, Dellums said he would bring to the Fruitvale a program he has already initiative “a couple of other communities” to work collaboratively with local merchants to hire youth to clean commercial district streets and building facades. 

Calling it “a green brigade,” Dellums said that the purpose of such an effort is three-fold, “it keeps the area clean, it employs young people, and these workers can become our eyes and ears for safety purposes.” 

Dellums also committed to asking the Alameda County Superior Court to establish a second misdemeanor court in the county to step up prosecution of so-called “quality of life” crimes, and also committed to help with job training and the establishment of more jobs for local residents. 

The most poignant moment of the meeting came when a woman talked about girls twelve to fourteen years old being beaten and forced into prostitution in the Fruitvale, acknowledged as Oakland’s center for underage sex workers. The woman recounted an incident of one young girl running, screaming down International Boulevard followed by “her pimp” who was trying to beat her. “We’ve got to stop our babies from being exploited,” the woman said, her voice rising. 

On the stage, De La Fuente sat studying the paper in front of him, never looking up while the woman talked, his face grim, his mouth set. De La Fuente’s son was recently convicted of raping and beating several Fruitvale-area prostitutes, one of them underage.  

Quan later said that since she has been on council, “we have doubled the arrests of prostitutes so we can get these girls off the streets and help them,” adding, the audience applause, that “for the first time, we are putting pimps in jail for 10 to 15 years.” 

A bit of mayor-council rivalry was on display, as well. 

De La Fuente, who ran unsuccessfully against Dellums for the mayor’s office last summer, praised his old rival and said they were working together, but then, after he started to say that Dellums understands Oakland’s challenges, caught himself and then pointedly revived one of his points in last year’s election campaign, saying that “maybe [Dellums] doesn’t understand the incredible challenges we have, but he will.” 

And after De La Fuente told gatherers that “the difference between the mayor and the City Council is that the mayor can act without having to go through anyone else,” Quan said that “the mayor has given you the dream. I’m going to give you the numbers.” Putting a grim face on Oakland’s budget picture, Quan said that “many of the things you’ve asked for tonight, Ignacio has been fighting for in budgets passed, but the money hasn’t been there.” 

Still, she said that she and De La Fuente were “working to fund the ambassador program for our youth to walk the streets,” and said that as chair of the Council Finance Committee, she would work to increase the number of high school and community college interns in Oakland, saying that she wanted to “make sure” a good number of city staff members “are made up of young people from Oakland.”  

The Oakland Police Department official in charge of Oakland’s sideshow enforcement activities may have seriously understated the number of vehicles towed in Oakland in connection with a state sideshow car towing law. 

State Senator Don Perata is seeking to reinstate a four-year-old law that allows police to tow cars and impound them for 30 days, solely on the police officer’s word that the cars were involved in sideshow activities. The sideshow provisions of the so-called “U’Kendra Johnson Memorial Act” expired in January of this year after Oakland officials failed to provide documentation for its renewal. 

SB67, the new legislation that seeks to reinstate the old SB1489, has passed the California State Senate on an urgency basis and is currently being considered in the Assembly Transportation Committee. 

Last March, OPD Captain David Kozicki, who oversaw Oakland’s sideshow crackdown for most of its years, told members of Senate Public Safety Committee during a hearing on that the renewal of the law was necessary as a deterrent. 

“The law hasn’t been used that much in Oakland,” Kozicki said. “Maybe 25 times since it was passed.” 

But documents recently provided to the Berkeley Daily Planet by the Oakland Police Department show that between August 2004 and December 2005 alone, OPD lists at least 22 cars towed and impounded for 30 days by Oakland police under the “reckless driving” offense that triggered the sideshow tow provisions. 

The records were in response to an April 3 request to OPD Chief Wayne Tucker for “Any and all public records in [Tucker’s] possession and/or control which refer to vehicles impounded by Oakland Police Department Officers under the authority of SB1489, the “U’Kendra Johnson Memorial Act, between Sep. 1, 2002 and the present date.”  

OPD officials have provided crime reports and stored/towed vehicle reports on 105 separate towing incidents between August 2004 and the end of 2006, when SB1489 sunsetted.  

Kozicki did not provide any documentation to State Senators last March of his car confiscation estimate. In addition, OPD officials have said the overdue response to the Public Records request—due within 10 days, by state statute—was caused by the department having to compile all of the records. In producing the records, OPD Acting Police Records Manager Deborah Fallehy said that up until now, OPD has not produced a report on cars towed under the SB1489 sideshow car tow ordinance. 

Because no towing reports were provided between September 2002, when SB1489 went into effect, and July 2004, during a period when OPD conducted a widely-reported “crackdown” on Oakland sideshow activity, the number of 30-day confiscations could be considerably higher than Kozicki reported to State Senators. In addition, because the Daily Planet only included in its number of 30-day confiscations only those reports which specifically stated such confiscations, the actual number of 30-day confiscations in the reports may actually be higher as well. 

In addition to the reports of the vehicles towed under SB1489, the Daily Planet asked for the amount of time each vehicle had been impounded under the statute. The Oakland Police Department is still compiling that information, and has estimated completion by the end of this week. 

Berkeley landmarks commissioners failed to reach a consensus on the old Berkeley High School Gymnasium Thursday, with a motion to declare the aging structure a landmark failing on a 4-3-1 vote. 

A minimum of five votes—the bare majority of the nine members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC)—is required for a legally binding decision. 

Four other would-be landmarks—and a proposed historic district that would’ve included three of them—went down to defeat during a meeting that lasted until midnight. 

The meeting also served as the occasion for a passionate statement from Commissioner Gary Parsons and as the inaugural session for the LPC’s newest member, Anne Wagley, arts and calendar editor for the Daily Planet. 

Wagley, appointed by City Councilmember Kriss Worthington after term limits forced the departure of Lesley Emmington, is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the city’s settlement of its lawsuit against UC Berkeley that resulted in the current effort to draft a new downtown plan. 

The landmarks commission and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee, which is helping draft the plan Wagley’s suit challenges, have a joint subcommittee which is working out a position paper on the role of historic buildings in the new downtown plan. 

Though Parsons, an architect, has generally sided with preservationists on the LPC in favor of several recent landmarking decisions, he used the opportunity of the gymnasium vote to air his concerns with his fellow commissioners. 

“[T]onight I am not going to seem like the most landmark-happy fellow,” he said, “but I must say that I am very excited about the larger issues that are raised by the applications that are before us, as I feel that these issues are essential to a process that can be respected by the city at large.” 

After declaring that the gym had lost whatever distinction it may have had originally during a subsequent seismic retrofit, Parsons said commissioners pondering a vote on “a building such as this ... must think long and hard about the integrity of the true landmarks in this city.” 

“In order to make this process and the buildings it honors have any meaning at all we must exercise discretion and elevate only truly worthy buildings to landmark status,” Parsons said. “Otherwise the LPO, the commission, and all of the city’s worthy landmarks stand to be devalued.” 

Parsons said neglect of the building by the Berkeley Unified School District had transformed the gym into “a health hazard and a toxic mess.” 

“There is no way that kids or anyone else should be using this building,” he said. “As an aside, I couldn’t help but notice that all but one of the kids using the building when I toured it were students of color. Whether the building is saved or not I think that the ghetto-ization of this part of the student population in this derelict building is completely unacceptable.” 

Parsons cast one of three votes against the designation, joined by Miriam Ng and Fran Packard. 

Carrie Olson—who with Wagley, Jill Korte and Steven Winkel voted for landmarking—cited some of the famous athletes who had trained at the gym, including fitness guru Jack LaLanne, baseball manager Billy Martin, tennis star Helen Wills-Moody, and former Green Bay Packer and current Berkeley Police Sgt. Steve Odom. 

While Korte agreed that the seismic retrofit had compromised the original design by architect Walter H. Ratcliff might be restored, and said she hoped that nothing in a landmarking decision would prevent restoring the original facade, the loss of which Parsons had called an act of vandalism. 

Olson argued that preservation of such a massive building was clearly a “greener” decision that demolition, and cited the example of the restoration of King Middle School, where preservationists won a battle to preserve and rehabilitate a building the district want to demolish. 

Wagley said neglect wasn’t a reason not to landmark a building, and said that in reaching a decisions, commissioners should consider “the many remarkable people whop got their start in that building.” 

With the deadlock apparent before the vote, Johnson announced he would abstain, meaning that no final decision was likely unless a commissioner underwent a change of heart. 

The school board plans to demolish the building, which currently houses the East bay’s only warm water pool, used by the disabled as a medium for exercises and activities otherwise difficult or impossible for them to perform. 

Berkeley voters passed a $3.25 million bond issue in to “reconstruct renovate, repair and improve the warm water pool facility at Berkeley High School,” but the work was never begun. 

School district officials have said a new pool could be built at the site, but the district won’t provide any funds. The district voted to approve demolition of the gym on Jan. 17, precipitating a lawsuit now working its way through the court system. 

Declaring the gym a landmark wouldn’t halt the district plans, because the school board is a separate governmental agency from the city, not bound by decisions of the commission. 

Summit Road homes 

Despite a plea from architect Jacob Robbins, who designed two of the three homes proposed as landmarks in the 1300 block of Summit Road, the commission voted both to deny the applications for the individual homes and also to deny a petition to include the dwellings in a new historic district. 

Robbins, a practitioner of modernist architecture, designed the two homes at 1365 and 1375 Summit 40 years ago both to compliment each other and to harmonize with the home at 1363, built in 1963 to plans by architect Germano Milano. 

While proponents said the homes deserved the designation as small-scale, ecologically friendly designs, neighbors charged the designations were sought as a ploy to halt the possible demolition of one of the houses, and as a continuation of a struggle to control a public access road through the area. 

The two attorneys most frequently used in Berkeley land use battles appeared on opposite sides, with Rena Rickles arguing in favor and John Gutierrez in against landmarking. 

Irwin Shapiro, who still lives in the house built for him at 1375 Summit, argued in favor, as did R.K. Janmeja Singh, the original owner of 1365. Singh said his former home had served as the hub of the Bay Area’s Sikh community for many years. 

But Helen Degenhardt, the architect for the current owner of 1365, said the home was both aging badly and hugely energy inefficient, lacking any insulation in the ceiling and walls, and had been significantly altered since construction. 

With renovation impractical, she said, a new home was the owner’s best option. 

Winkel and Parsons, the commission’s two architects, said they regretted that Robbins had been brought into the argument, and the decision was especially hard for Johnson, who had been inspired to enter his careers by the venerable designer. 

But in the end, no one voted for the designations. 

2474 San Pablo 

The fourth example of modernist architect on the commission’s agenda was 2474 San Pablo Ave., currently the site of a medical marijuana clinic. 

Developer David Mayeri plans a condominium project at the site, now occupied by a modernist, curved-front glass and concrete structure originally built as a car dealership. 

One of those on hand to praise the building Thursday night was Alan Hess, architect and architecture critic for the San Jose Mercury-News.  

Hess praised the building as a notable and presrvation-worthy example of the Googie style, the futuristic style popular in the 1950’s and geared to the car culture of the age. 

The author of a dozen books, Hess devote a volume to the style in his 1986 volume Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture. “I don’t know of a building that typifies this style and this era better,” he said. “It’s a part of our legitimate heritage, and this is a good example, rare in Berkeley.” 

The debate pitted preservationists like Laurie Bright, Daniela Thompson, Lesley Emmington and Julie Dickinson against the developer, his project manager, and a vocal cast of supporters. 

For the preservationists, it was about preserving a style that embodied an era, while many of the opponents said it was precisely that era’s dangerous celebration of the car that should mark the building out for demolition to make way for Berkeley’s first truly “green” housing project. 

“Welcome to the new Celia’s, poster child for the coming LPO referendum,” said Parsons, referring to the restaurant building that played a significant role in last year’s defeat of an initiative to save and bolster save the city’s current Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. 

In a decision later overturned by the city council, commissioners landmarked one of two buildings at the site of a planned block-square retail and housing development at 700 University Ave. 

That decision was used by opponents of the current landmarks ordinance in their successful effort to defeat Measure J. 

While Olson bridled at her colleagues disparaging of the Celia’s vote, she joined him and four other colleagues in opposing the designation, while Wagley abstained and Ng, a real estate broker and developer, recused herself because of a conflict of interest.

A joint subcommittee hammering out a proposal that would define the role of historic buildings in the center of downtown Berkeley will hold its final meeting Tuesday night. 

Members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee and the Landmarks Preservation Commission will present their work to a joint meeting of their parent bodies on June 20. 

While historic preservation was the theme of the city’s last downtown plan, adopted in 1990, the new plan stresses sustainabilty. 

Discussion of older buildings and their role in shaping the character of the city center have occurred repeatedly during discussion of the new plan DAPAC members must have ready by the end of November. 

The plan was mandated in the settlement of a city lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan 2020. 

Both meetings are being held in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way.  

Berkeley residents will have another chance to weigh on with their visions of the future of downtown Berkeley during a Saturday workshop at the Berkeley Public Library. 

The Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) has scheduled a session to hear the public’s views of planning and design options starting at 10 a.m. and running until 12:30 p.m. 

DAPAC must complete the new city center plan, mandated in the settlement of a city lawsuit challenging the legality of UC Berkeley’s latest Long Range Development Plan, by the end of November, when the Planning Commission will commence its review of the document. 

“We’ll begin with brief presentations from our subcommittees.” said Matt Taecker, the city planner hired to work on the new downtown plan. “We’ll highlight areas where there has been agreement” and explain where there hasn’t been. 

Following the presentations, members of the public can sit at their choice of tables dealing with specific planning issues, including Center Street, economic development, housing and social services, parking, sustainabilty and others. 

Following the discussions, Taecker will discuss land use issues that may figure in the plan, a subject DAPAC members will be addressing in greater detail in their upcoming meetings. 

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) tops the agendas of two city panels this week, the Planning Commission and a DAPAC subcommittee. 

The first meeting begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday when the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee’s BRT Subcommittee gathers in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

With the possibility of new bus-only lanes along Bancroft Way, Oxford Street and downtown sections of University and Shattuck avenues, BRT could literally transform the face of the city center, as well as the travel habits of an untold number of commuters. 

The second BRT-related meeting comes in the same building at the same time the following night, when the Planning Commission grapples with issue. 

Both meetings will devote part of their schedules to discussions and comments aimed at the project’s draft environmental impact Report (DEIR), which was also discussed at a joint meeting of the full DAPAC and the city’s Transportation Commission a week earlier. 

The system would also result in major changes to the flow of traffic on Telegraph Avenue, with the most controversial of the alternatives calling for closure of the street to cars and the creation of a bus-only plaza on the stretch immediately south of the street’s terminus at the UC Berkeley campus. 

Plans also call for possible closure of the one-way north-bound stretch of Shattuck between Center Street and University Avenue, and possible restrictions of other vehicles traffic on Bancroft Way between Telegraph Avenue and the Fulton Street intersection. 

While proponents and some of the opponents to the specifics of the AC Transit proposals praise BRT as a tool for fighting global warming by encouraging commuters to abandon their cars for area commutes, many neighbors have said they worry about the impacts on their streets and homes. 

BRT has won strong support from proponents of the Smart Growth movement, which calls for concentrating development on mass transit corridors, while critics have portrayed it as a tool for developers at the expense of established neighborhoods. 

PDA reconsideration 

In addition to BRT, planning commissioners will also take a second look at the proposed designation of downtown Berkeley as a Priority Development Area. 

The proposal failed to win the absolute majority required for passage during the commission’s May 23 meeting, winning four votes for passage, two opposed and one abstention, with Commissioner Susan Wengraf—who usually votes with the four proponents—absent. 

DAPAC voted 16-1-2 in favor of the measure a week later, with Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman casting the lone vote against, after Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said the designation was entirely consistent with the city’s existing plans and zoning ordinances. 

The designation is a critical step if the city wants to apply for the $2.9 billion in affordable housing bonds approved by California voters last November when they adopted Measure IC. 

The funding programs for local cities and counties is being administered by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). 

While Berkeley struggles with drafting a legally mandated new plan for the city’s downtown, a committee of Richmond residents has been working toward a new plan for their city. 

Members of the Richmond City Council will meet with the Planning Commission tonight (Tuesday) to hash over the new plan’s handling of land use issues. 

As with the new Downtown Area Plan being drafted in Berkeley, the document prepared by the Richmond citizens is a draft, with the shape of the final document up to the appointed commission and ultimately to the elected council. 

More than 400 Richmond residents took part in a series of workshops held in March and April to develop ideas and policies for the document, which will replace the current plan, last revised 13 years ago. 

In an email to constituents Sunday morning, Councilmember Tom Butt urged the public to attend, noting that the session would reveal for the first time the positions of the two deciding bodies—and in a forum where the public can comment. 

The session is scheduled from 7 to 10 p.m. in City Council Chambers, 1401 Marina Way South. 

For more information of the plan and its preparation, the city website at www.cityofrichmondgeneralplan.org. 

For some, Steve Barton’s an idealist who puts his principles into practice, advocating housing policies—rent control, subsidized housing, co-operative housing—aimed at keeping diverse populations in Berkeley. 

Others say Barton, pressured to resign Tuesday as Berkeley’s housing director, is an ideologue, practicing a political agenda rather than performing as a neutral bureaucrat. 

And for City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, perhaps the former housing director’s harshest critic, Barton’s chief failure has been a refusal over the years to adhere to her legal advice.  

In a memo to the mayor and council released Wednesday Albuquerque not only chronicles details of alleged lapses of the former housing director, she criticizes City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna for failing to follow her counsel. 

“Had they taken the legal advice, it might have been possible to avoid the current crisis,” Albuquerque writes. 

Barton supporters, however, say that the tone and content of the attorney’s memo was inappropriate as it made public specific personnel issues and that Barton is taking the fall for accumulated housing authority problems.  

“Barton is a sacrificial lamb for the years of [City Council] neglect of the Housing Authority,” Councilmember Kriss Worthington told the Planet on Wednesday. The council plus two tenants currently serves as the board that oversees the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA). A new board is to be put in place July 1. 

Barton reacted Thursday to the Albuquerque memo. 

“I have a very different perspective on what was done. I welcome an impartial investigation,” he told the Daily Planet in a brief phone interview, adding, “I am disappointed that the city has put out a one-sided attack piece without engaging me in a proper process.” 

Blame spread around 

On Thursday, Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he hesitated to respond to questions about the city attorney’s memo, saying, “Some of what’s in the city attorney’s memo may be illegal, the way it’s said.”  

Worthington was referring to the part of Albuquerque’s memo that criticized Barton for going against her counsel when he hired a particular individual at the housing authority. 

Kamlarz, who is the executive director of the BHA, told the Daily Planet that he faults himself as well as others. 

“I’m accountable, he’s accountable,” Kamlarz said referring to Barton’s alleged failure to complete certain tasks. One of these detailed in the Albuquerque memo was Barton’s lapse in making sure low income housing manager Affordable Housing Associates had installed a telephone line for the deaf in its offices. 

“I have to rely on the department heads to do the work,” Kamlarz said.  

On Thursday Kamlarz declined to comment on Albuquerque’s Wednesday memo. 

Worthington told the Planet he faults the council for spending so little time overseeing the housing authority. 

A quick look back at BHA agendas since 2003 shows the board met between seven and 12 times each year, spending from 30 minutes to an hour per meeting. This was an improvement over earlier years when the board would schedule BHA meetings simultaneously with the council meetings and spend just a few minutes rushing through business. 

“The City Councilmembers as the Housing Authority Board did not pay the attention needed. This is not the way to manage a multi-million dollar agency,” Worthington said, noting that he had tried to get the BHA and council meetings scheduled on separate days, but the council majority refused. 

Worthington also faulted the council for having never evaluated Kamlarz, who is ultimately responsible.  

Worthington said Barton’s departure is a loss for the city. “Barton has been a phenomenal resource in getting funding for affordable housing,” he said. 

City Councilmember Max Anderson told the Planet Wednesday that he was sorry to see Barton leave his post: “He’s a strong advocate for affordable housing. The housing authority has been a continuing frustration for all of us.” 

Anderson added that he thinks it is unfair for the city attorney, in her May 22 memo to the council, to have painted all the workers “with a broad brush.”  

He was referring to a report by Albuquerque that said authority staff inaccurately determined eligibility, allowed ineligible family member to “inherit” Section 8 units, failed to complete income certifications and continued to pay rent on at least 15 units in which the tenants are deceased. As a consequence, all BHA staff except the director are losing their jobs at the BHA; they will be reassigned to vacant positions within the city. 

(Albuquerque has denied the Daily Planet’s Public Records Act request for the names of landlords alleged to rent to “dead” tenants, contending that she cannot turn over the material while an investigation is going on. Attorneys at the Community Law Center have told the Daily Planet that the issue of “dead” tenants is complex, since, in some cases, the deceased tenants’ families continue to live in the Section 8 apartment.) 

Jesse Arreguin, a member of both the Rent Stabilization Board and Housing Advisory Commission told the Daily Planet Wednesday that he was “incensed” that Barton was made to resign. 

“Steve Barton has a fundamental belief in providing housing for all,” he said. “He was an advocate for rent control and did an incredible job in his position. He should not have been forced to resign just to give the appearance that change was happening.” 

Some welcome departure 

Barton’s detractors welcome the departure of the man they say was responsible for the 2002 designation by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) as “troubled.” Barton was named permanent housing director in 2001. 

“The buck has got to stop somewhere,” said Berkeley resident David M. Wilson, telling the Planet that Barton’s advice to the council is generally based on ideology rather than objectivity.  

In a May 25 letter to the Planet Wilson faults Barton as “the author of the Condominium Conversion Ordinance which [Barton] said would bring the city $4 million a year in added [low income housing] funds. Now nearly two years later, not a single dollar has come in. He continues to resist any reevaluation of Berkeley’s rent control program, which costs $3 million per year, but which no longer helps those most in need of help.” 

Commenting on Albuquerque’s Wednesday memo, which he characterized as “intense,” Councilmember Darryl Moore said the city attorney was correct in “pointing the fingers at management.” 

In her first memo, she faulted line staff only. “It seemed very incomplete,” he said, adding, “I believe management dropped the ball. I’m glad she did the second memo. It’s unfortunate for Mr. Barton—he let some things fall through the cracks.” 

Moore added that he thinks the city manager should be evaluated yearly. 

The departure 

Kamlarz asked Barton to resign June 5. 

This came on the heels of Albuqerque’s May 22 report in which she cites a “defensive and combative attitude by Housing Department management toward early warnings about the severity and widespread scope of [BHA] problems.”  

In the Wednesday morning phone interview, Kamlarz took responsibility for Barton’s departure. “It was my decision, a tough decision,” he said.  

“The unions are saying management is not being held accountable,” Kamlarz said, adding that he shared responsibility for the housing authority situation.  

“I should be held accountable,” he said.  

Albuquerque’s six-page June 6 memo was even more pointed, detailing multiple instances in which Barton—and also Kamlarz and Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna—refused her legal advice. 

“In brief, at many successive junctures, city management at every level failed to follow legal advice on how to identify and rectify the full scope of the serious and growing operational problems at the BHA,” the memo says. 

Specifically, Albuquerque alleged Barton failed to comply with an agreement signed with HUD in 2005 with respect to accessibility for the disabled, including failure to survey contractors to see if they complied with the Americans with Disability Act requirements and the lack of installation of a TDD line (telephone communication for the deaf) at Affordable Housing Associates (AHA) offices. AHA manages the city’s 75 public housing units and was criticized by Albuquerque in her May 22 report for not making needed repairs of the units.  

At the time, AHA blamed a convoluted city process for slow repairs. 

Among her complaints against Barton, Albuquerque, who declined comment through her staff, alleged that he failed in 2004, to impose performance standards for maintenance on AHA and/or “failed to hold it to the standards imposed.” 

Kamlarz and Caronna are not spared the attorney’s venom. The memo accuses them of deciding to appoint a particular city employee as BHA acting director against her advice.  

“I immediately and strongly objected to this course of action because of the serious resistance this employee had previously exhibited to implementing legal advice, including a very serious matter involving significant potential city liability,” she wrote. 

Albuquerque goes on write that Kamlarz “appointed the employee in the face of my advice….” 

Albuquerque says Barton continued to ignore her counsel: “Against my advice, the city manager and deputy city manager continued to defer to Mr. Barton’s decisions.” 

One source, who asked for anonymity, praised Barton for being “the only staff person who will go toe to toe with Manuela Albuquerque.”  

Memos from Albequerque and Kalmarz concerning Barton’s resigntion can be found on the Planet’s website, www.berkeleydailyplanet.com 

Walk into the South Berkeley Library and you practically bump into the four computers near the entry way. If you want to browse the history section, you’ve got to move to a narrow hallway to find what you’re looking for.  

Because of its construction, the old building, at Russell Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, cannot grow up or out, Jeri Ewart, who heads the South Berkeley branch told the Daily Planet during an interview Wednesday at the library. 

“And we cannot grow in terms of technology,” Ewart said, pointing to the limited space in which current wiring allows the library to hook up computers.  

On Saturday, the Board of Library Trustees is holding a meeting to explore a move to the new Ed Roberts campus. Trustees say that the meeting is intended to get input from the community into the proposal. It is slated to go from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. 

“We want to get a feel about what people in the community might be feeling” about the proposal, Ewart said. 

The Ed Roberts Campus (ERC) slated to begin construction within a year in the east Ashby BART station parking lot, will house a number of organizations serving the disabled, including the Independent Living Center. Those working on the ERC invited the library to explore housing a new South Berkeley library on the second floor of the building. 

Ewart explained that it would cost less to become part of the ERC project than to build a new library—the space would likely be owned in a way similar to a condominium, Ewart said. And, it would give the library the opportunity to partner with the disabled community. 

“The library could provide special services,” Ewart said. “It could be unique.” 

The move would give the popular tool-lending library an opportunity to expand, using the current library building. The community room could remain a resource for the community.  

Trustee Ying Lee cautioned that the plans “are at a very preliminary stage.” The library board will also use the opportunity of exploring a new building to look at groups of people, such as the Latino population, that take little advantage of the library’s services. 

Tangentially, Lee said, the library directors are looking at the possibility of instituting a bookmobile to serve southwest Berkeley, an area that has no library services. It’s an expensive proposition that might be shared with Oakland or Emeryville, Lee said. 

Councilmember Darryl Moore added that the bookmobile, which would serve his southwest Berkeley district, is a “priority of the trustees.” He said he is excited about the possibility of doubling the library space at the ERC site. 

Councilmember Max Anderson, in whose district the South branch library sits, called the possible move a “net gain” and south Berkeley neighborhood activist Laura Menard said she is “thrilled” with the idea. It will be larger and provide more computer access, especially needed for neighborhood youth who don’t have computers, she said. 

In a recent letter to the Daily Planet, Christopher Adams, vice president of the Berkeley Public Library Foundation, was upbeat about the possible move, but pointed to the possible downside of traffic and parking problems.  

And Jody Bush, a former deputy library director and neighbor of the south Berkeley library, said the major downside would be moving into a building that did not serve southwest Berkeley.  

However, she said she realized that the costs for constructing a new library farther west would be cost prohibitive. And she asked how the new library at the Ed Roberts campus would be funded. 

That’s a question many are asking. 

Photograph by Judith Scherr.  

Jeri Ewart, librarian of the south Berkeley branch, stands in the narrow hallway of the history section.

The People’s Park Community Advisory Board approved a policy Monday to allow a one-year trial for limited commercial activity at the park. 

The park previously had an informal policy that prohibited commercial uses at the park. 

According to Irene Hegarty, director of UC Berkeley Community Relations, the university—which owns the park—has received numerous requests from bands who want to promote their CDs at the park. A farmer’s market will also be allowed. 

“We have turned down these requests repeatedly,” she said. “With the exception of the Berkeley World Music Festival, we don’t pay bands to perform. Allowing them to sell their CDs would provide some incentive to attract better entertainment.” 

Hegarty told the board that although the longstanding philosophy behind the park has always been to prohibit commercial use, the time has come to amend the policy on no sales in the park. 

Ionas Porges-Kiriakou, a UC Berkeley undergraduate and board member, voted against the policy. 

“I just don’t want to see a nightmarish situation where corporations such as BP or Camel start sponsoring events at the park,” he said. 

Community gardener Terri Compost echoed his thoughts. “Open it up,” she said. “What do we have next?” 

“We are just talking incidental use,” said Hegarty. “not corporate sponsorship.”  

According to park policy, not more than two concerts can be held at the park in any one month. About eight to ten concerts are held annually. 

“In applying for a permit to use the park, people would have to check off their desire to sell something,” she told the Planet Wednesday. “Although the board voted on it, I would have to come up with a policy outlining this.” 

A draft policy stipulates that commercial activities would not be allowed at People’s Park except under the following circumstances, reviewed on a case-by-case basis: 

• The commercial activity must be directly relevant to a special event for which a permit has bee approved by the university, e.g., food or beverage sales at a concert, art sales at an arts fair.  

• At least 20 percent of the gross receipts from any commercial sale must be donated to a charitable organization. Proof of tax-exempt status of the charitable organization is required 

• The request to sell goods must be submitted to the university in the special event permit application, and authorization must be set out in the special event permit. 

The possibility of food and beverage sale during concerts was also discussed at the meeting. “Often, many expect to have food available at a concert,” Hegarty said. “We would have to issue a permit to the vendors and make sure they meet state regulations.” 

Board co-chair John Selawsky described food sales at the park as a “logistical and staffing nightmare.” 

“I am concerned about food sales leading to trashing,” he said. “It becomes a totally different kind of an event when people queue up in front of kiosks.” 

Hegarty replied that food sales would only take place four to five times a year. 

“Would it create litter? Yes,” she acknowledged. “Would the university staff be able to clean it up in the next day or two? Yes.” 

Board members were also concerned that food sales would not help the already declining retail sales on Telegraph. 

Board member Sam Davis suggested that neighborhood merchants could be invited to the park to sell their food. 

“I would encourage the university to look into this possibility,” Selawsky remarked. 

The board also discussed the issue of painting on the stage at People’s Park. Under park rules, “construction, installation or modification of buildings, structures, or art is not permitted unless authorized by the university.” 

“When people paint a slogan, is that allowed as free speech or prohibited as vandalism?” Hegarty asked. “There have been times when the university has taken no action and at other times imposed regulations.” 

“The stage was put up by volunteers,” said board member Dana Merryday. “Painting is part of the process to spruce it up. And all of it is not political.” 

The board decided to discuss this issue after San Francisco-based consultants MKThink— who were brought in to conduct a community based planning process for People’s Park—had completed their public workshops. 

The Sierra Club doesn’t object to a new track finish for Albany’s Golden Gate Fields; they just don’t like how it’s being done. 

For Norman La Force, the attorney who chairs the club’s East Bay Public Lands Committee, the central issue isn’t the state-mandated resurfacing of the venerable East Bay horse racing venue; it’s the possible violation of state environmental laws. 

La Force said he doesn’t object to the new Tapeta surface in principle. What he does object to is the track’s failure to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. 

“They’ve known since last May that they have to install the new surface, but they only filed for a permit on April 17, and now they’re threatening a lawsuit if the city doesn’t approve it right now,” La Force said. 

“Basically, they have to show it’s safe for the community,” said Albany Mayor Robert Lieber, who added that his ability to comment was limited by the fact he may have to vote on the issue at an upcoming council meeting. 

“They have a right to do it, and it’s probably good for the horses and the jockeys, and if it’s safe and good for the community, there’s no reason not to do it,” he said. 

The proposal calls for removing and replacing upwards of 12,000 cubic yards of soil, and La Force said he’s heard that the actual figure could be up to 30,000 cubic yards. 

The earth would be temporarily stored on-site on the same parking lot where the failed shopping center had been planned and where track owners Magna Entertainment are reporting to be thinking of siting a hotel. 

The issue for La Force is whether or not the soil has been adequately tested for toxins, a step he said is critical given that much of site was created with infill imported from other sites. 

While preliminary tests were rushed through after the Sierra Club first raised its objections, La Force said more thorough testing may be need to make certain the soil contains nothing to endanger people or wildlife. 

The Tapeta mixture—a patented blend of wax-coated sand, fibers and rubber—represents only the top 4-7 inches of the system, installed above a permeable 2-inch later of asphalt laid over a 6-inch layer of crushed rock, with a system of permeable drainage pipes laced through the layer of soil beneath. 

A similar system by another firm, costing $8 million, was just installed at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, and the process can be viewed online at www.dmtc.com/season/polytrack.php 

What concerns the Sierra Club and the mayor is the nature of the soil that will be removed, and whether or not the earth slated for removal may contain contaminants. 

On Feb. 10. 2006, the California Horse Racing Board ordered all tracks with racing calendars longer than 14 days in the state to switch to a synthetic surface designed to reduce leg injuries to the animals and reduce spills which can injure or kill their riders. 

The move came after members of the board learned that 5,156 horses had been injured on state tracks over the previous decade—with 2,343 of them killed either in or as a result of accidents—and that injuries and deaths drop dramatically after artificial surfaces are installed. 

The exemption for shorter racing dates was designed to allow for continued racing at California county fairs, which generally have short racing seasons and which cannot afford the considerable expense of installing the artificial surface. 

Del Mar, which holds races as part of the San Diego County Fair, is an exception, and had to install the track because races there extend for a longer season. 

Magna Entertainment, founded by Canadian auto parts magnate Frank Stronach, is North America’s leading horse racing track owner, and runs the Albany track. 

Stronach teamed with Los Angeles mega-mall magnate Rick Caruso to propose an upscale shopping mall with housing above on part of the Albany track’s parking lot, which led to a ballot initiative campaign which was rejected by a judge because of a missed filing requirement. 

But when two leading proponents of the initiative won election to the Albany City Council last November, mall opponents had captured a majority on the five-member panel and the project was quietly tabled. 

Malls are a major element in Stronach’s strategy for his racing company, with another Caruso complex at Santa Anita in Southern California. 

Albany city staff have declared the track’s application to install the new surface incomplete, and the whole matter may wind up before the city council, Lieber said. 

Dixon defeat 

Golden Gate Fields officials filed their application for city permits to resurface the Albany track on April 17, same day that citizens in Dixon, to the east, were voting on four initiatives targeting plans by Magna to build a high tech television-friendly track adjacent to the rural Sacramento Valley farm town. 

As planned, Dixon Downs would have been a major racing facility within 23 miles of the state capital, featuring what Magna CEO Michael Neuman described as a “California fair type facility ... together with mixed use retail.” 

Voters faced four ballot measures focused on the $250 million project, backed by a sophisticated $500,000 Manga-funded campaign. 

With the impending closure of Bay Meadows at the end of the upcoming season, the Bay Area’s only other major track and one Magna had leased and operated, Stronach’s firm had been looking for a venue to fill the void for the past five years, settling on Dixon. 

In addition to the track, Magna’s plans called for 1.2 million square feet of additional development on 51 acres of its 260-acre property, featuring a hotel, conference facilities, major retailers, shops and other amenities promising 2,000 new jobs for a community of only 17,000 residents. 

Dixon voters rejected the Magna plan, though company officials say they may try again. 

“We could go back, either alone or with partners and undertake the process” to try again for approval of the original plan, “[o]r a process to get entitled to simply go for mixed use retail,” Magna Entertainment CEO Michael Neuman told investors in a telephone conference May 7. 

Magna retains the property, which Neuman said “is still appreciating as we speak.” 

Plans for the Dixon track were drawn up with the television camera in mind, thanks to the new era of betting where most wagers are placed from betting parlors far from the tracks where they occur. 

Racing aficionados have become habitués of off-track betting (OTB) parlors, located either at other tracks or in purpose-built facilities like those found in New York City or in clubs and taverns as in Illinois. 

States created the venues hoping to capture some of the mountains of cash that had been flowing through illegal bookmakers, or in the plush wagering halls of Las Vegas casinos. 

Television is critical to the enterprise, because bettors like to watch the races on the large screens at OTB parlors. 

The rise of the OTB parlor has proved a serious problem to cities like Albany, because the city collects revenues only on bets made at the track, and receives no revenues on bets made there on races elsewhere. 

Other plans 

Meanwhile, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates is urging another project on the track—installation of solar panels at the clubhouse and on new stables now being planned. 

Cisco DeVries, the mayor’s chief of staff, said Bates wants the track to adopt solar technology, and also hopes that Golden Gate Fields will work with Berkeley on plans to install solar panels at the parking lot and ball fields of the new Gilman fields recreational facility south of the track. 

He said another notion suggested at a recent meeting attended by the mayor—using solar power to generate hydrogen for a fueling station at the fields for vehicles that might use the clean-burning gas—didn’t look feasible. 

DeVries said that yet another rumored plan, building a hotel on the Albany parking lot at the track, wasn’t being urged by the mayor, though it surfaced during casual discussions at a recent event in Albany. 

“He said there’s no plan for a hotel at Golden Gate Fields,” DeVries said.

Well-known Albany environmentalist Ruth Meniketti died Wednesday night after she was struck by a pickup as she crossed Marin Avenue at Talbot Avenue, police report. 

Police arrested the driver, Rebecca Rivera, 43, on charges of gross vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence, said Albany Police Lt. Daniel Adams. 

It was the second fatality in four days on the Albany Berkeley border involving an elderly woman walking a short distance from her home and a driver charged with driving under the influence. 

Bruce Yost of the Alameda County Coroner’s office said Meniketti died of multiple blunt injuries. She was 85. She died within a few yards of her home at 1002 Talbot Ave. 

“Ruth was a lifelong environmentalist who made her contributions in a quiet and consistent way,” said former Mayor Robert Cheasty. “She was a delightful soul and will be sorely missed.” 

Cheasty said Meniketti was the longest serving member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission and served on numerous other organizations, “all in the interest of improving out community and our environment.” 

The Albany Chamber of Commerce named her Citizen of the Year in 2001, and she played an active part in last year’s political campaigns over the planned shopping mall at Golden Gate Fields. 

Mayor Robert Lieber said Meniketti “was one of the icons of our community,” Lieber said, “and she had served on the waterfront commission. She was a really interesting person.” 

“She was a remarkable person, and she was able to change her mind—something you don’t often see,” said Lieber. 

Meniketti campaigned for the last year’s proposed ballot initiative that called for a new planning process for waterfront development, and when an Alameda County Superior Court judge ordered the measure stricken form the ballot, she campaigned for Joan Wile and Marge Atkinson, who won seats on the City Council and swung the majority to the opposition side. 

Plans for the development were quietly tabled soon after the election. 

Wednesday night’s accident came four days after a similar fatality. 

Guillermo Robles, a retired Berkeley police officer, was arrested Sunday night on manslaughter and drunk driving charges after his car struck and killed Betty Kietzman, 82, of 915 Fresno Ave. as she was crossing Solano Avenue. Robles was released the next morning on $30,000 bail. 

Like Meniketti, Kietzman died less than a block away from her home. 

A Berkeley High School senior and her date were arrested Saturday at the senior prom in San Francisco for possession of a loaded gun. 

Kyanna Roberson, 19, a Berkeley High student, and Emmanuel Richardson, 20, an East Bay resident, were charged by the San Francisco Police Department with possession of a loaded gun and concealed firearm and conspiracy. 

Close to 600 students attended the annual high school event which was held at the Julia Morgan Ballroom at the Merchants Exchange Building at California Street in San Francisco, said Berkeley Police Department press officer Lt. Wesley Hester. 

Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan declined to comment on the case but said that incidents such as this were uncommon at proms. 

“Most kids spend a lot of money for this one night and they don’t want anything to go wrong,” he said. 

BHS safety officers were at the site to check students tickets and their bags, Lt. Hester said. 

“When Roberson’s bag was searched, the officers found a loaded .25 caliber handgun in it,” he said. “She was immediately arrested by SFPD. During the situation her date Richardson stepped forward and admitted that he had handed her the gun to avoid detection. He was then taken under arrest. He made a statement during the arrest that he had been carrying the loaded gun for protection from gang rivalry between Berkeley and Oakland.” 

Lt. Hester added that four to five unrelated fights had also broken out at the prom on Saturday night but nobody had been seriously hurt. 

“It’s unusual for so many fights to take place at a prom,” he said. “The gun incident caught the police officers completely off guard. It was an eye opener for them.” 

School Board vice president John Selawsky told the Planet Thursday that the state education code stipulated expulsion for student possession of a weapon. It was unclear what this might mean for Roberson’s ability to graduate. 

“An expulsion panel looks into the offense,” he said. “The panel usually consists of three principals who listen to evidence and statements from eyewitnesses. Then they make a recommendation to the board. The board has the final say.” 

Saturday’s prom had safety officers from Berkeley High as well as three police officers from the Berkeley police. Teachers, administration and parents were also present. Since the event was held in San Francisco, San Francisco police officers were also present. 

“The case is currently under the jurisdiction of SFPD,” Lt. Hester said. “The San Francisco DA’s office will decide the appropriate punishment. It sort of depends on the person’s arrest history and personal record.”

Today, the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) is a division of the housing department that oversees federally-funded low-income housing. A board currently consisting of the mayor and City Council and two tenants oversees the authority. 

BHA is administered by a manager—Tia Ingram has been manager for nine months—who is supervised by the housing department director. The city manager serves as BHA’s executive director. 

The housing department director supervises the BHA, has oversight over other affordable housing projects, supervises grants awarded to community agencies and oversees the city’s energy/sustainable development division. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) designated BHA as a “troubled” institution in 2002. Unable to improve enough to wrest itself from that designation, which could ultimately lead to assigning the housing authority oversight to an outside agency, the city manager, with council consent, decided to restructure BHA to create an independent agency. The transition will be effective July 1. A new board of seven Berkeley residents has been named by the mayor.  

Accused by the city attorney of incompetence and malfeasance, the entire BHA staff will be laid off at the end of the month, something the workers’ and their union are opposing. They will be offered jobs in vacant positions throughout city government. They will go through an evaluation process at that time and can re-apply for their old jobs. 

The workers who have done their jobs well “shouldn’t be punished,” Kamlarz told the Planet. “That’s not our intent.” 

Meanwhile, various investigations are taking place in the housing authority: the city attorney is working with city manager staff on one investigation; an outside attorney will be doing an investigation; the BHA director is working on an internal investigation; HUD investigators will be in the city next week to do their own investigation.  

In two weeks or so Councilmember Wozniak will ask the City Council to put together an outside committee to look into how the city got into the problem it finds itself in. Wozniak wants the mayor to choose the committee; a counter-proposal by Councilmember Kriss Worthington would have the council appoint the committee. The proposal was to be on Tuesday’s City Council agenda, but Kamlarz asked Wozniak to wait and work with him to refine it. 

The BHA next meets on Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the Maudelle Shirek Building, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

UC Berkeley issued notice Thursday that it plans a $3 million to $5 million renovation of Cloyne Court, a venerable shingle-sided landmark that has served both as a hotel and as student housing. 

Designed by John Galen Howard, the architect who created the master plan for UC Berkeley, the unique Arts & Crafts-style structure was named after the Irish village that served as the seat of Bishop George Berkeley, for whom the university was named.  

Opened in 1904 as a hotel for university faculty and visitors, it was owned and operated by the James M. Pierce family until its transfer to University Student’s Cooperative Association in 1946. 

The university issued a request for design professional qualifications this week for an architect to draft the plans for renovations that will restore the structure that currently houses about 150 students. 

The building was declared a city landmark on Nov. 15, 1982, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Dec. 24, 1992. 

Because of the two historic designations, the university is seeking an architect versed in state’s historic building code. 

According to the request for design professional qualifications, the cooperative also hopes to renovate the structure in conformance with the university’s Green Building and Clean Energy Policy, as well as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings. 

Daniella Thompson, a Berkeley preservationist who has written about the building for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association’s website, said the renovation is a good thing, and much needed. 

“”They will do the right thing,” she said, “and anything better than they have right now will be a huge improvement.” 

Thompson the said there have been many changes over the years to the interior and exterior of the venerable structure. 

While the building once had 32 suites, the floor plan has been significantly altered, including the removal of many stairways that once gave relatively private access to the apartments. 

Similarly, many individual entrances to the exterior were removed, all in the course of converting the hotel into student housing. 

Thompson wrote that Cloyne Court was built at the then-substantial price of $80,000 by a group of investors which included Howard, Pierce and Phoebe Apperson Hearst.

Changes, adjustments, or complete disbandment affecting some AC Transit 20 route lines are scheduled to go into effect June 24, but district representatives say that riders will be able to catch buses at almost all of the currently existing bus stops, and will be able to get to and from virtually all of the existing travel points. In several cases, however, riders may have to get where they are going on AC Transit a slightly different way than they have been used to. 

“Our objective in the upcoming changes is not to cut routes, but to improve and streamline service,” AC Transit media affairs manager Clarence Johnson said by telephone. “We hope that riders will get a faster, quicker ride and once they get used to it, they’ll probably like it much better. Of course,” he added, “if riders don’t like it, I know we’ll hear from them.” 

An example of the upcoming realignment involves travel between downtown Berkeley through East Oakland into San Leandro and the Bayfair BART station, with service changes affecting the existing 40, 40L, 43, 82, and 82L lines. 

Currently, someone traveling from downtown Berkeley down Shattuck Avenue to downtown Oakland would catch the 43, which then goes into East Oakland to Eastmont Mall along Foothill Boulevard. 

A rider going to downtown Oakland from downtown Berkeley along Telegraph Avenue would currently catch the 40 or 40L, which also currently goes to the Eastmont Mall via Foothill, and then to the Bay Fair BART station along Bancroft Avenue. 

There is no direct AC Transit service for anyone coming from downtown Berkeley wanting to travel through East Oakland along International Boulevard. At present, a rider has to take either the 40, 40L or the 43 to downtown Oakland, and then transfer to the 82 or 82L, which currently runs down International into San Leandro and Hayward. 

But in advancing a new district strategy to set up rapid bus service along major transportation corridors, part of the new AC Transit realignment creates a non-transfer single rapid bus line combining two of those corridors, Telegraph Avenue and International Boulevard. 

Beginning June 24, a rider wanting to travel from downtown Berkeley along Telegraph Avenue and then south through East Oakland along International Boulevard into San Leandro and Hayward will take the newly-created 1 and 1R (rapid) lines. Those lines will now run between the Bayfair BART station and the Berkeley BART station, in the case of the 1 line, and the UC Berkeley west entrance, in the case of the 1R. 

Beyond that, it gets a little confusing. 

The 43, which used to run from San Pablo and Marin Avenues in El Cerrito, down Shattuck Avenue, through downtown Oakland and out to Eastmont Mall in East Oakland via Foothill, will be discontinued. 

In its place will be a new line, 18, which will take the old 43 route between San Pablo and Marin Avenues through downtown Oakland, partly along Shattuck. But instead of going to Eastmont, as the old 43 now does, the new 18 will go from downtown Oakland up Park Boulevard to MacArthur, ending up at Moraga Avenue and Medau Place in the Oakland hills. 

The 40 will still live after the changeover, but with its Berkeley half cut off. Instead of running from the Berkeley BART along Telegraph to downtown Oakland and then out to Bayfair BART along Foothill and then Bancroft, the 40 will run the Foothill-Bancroft corridor to Bay Fair from 11th and Jefferson in downtown Oakland, only. 

These and other projected route changes are all listed on the AC Transit website (www.actransit.org), but figuring out how to find those changes on the site, and figuring out exactly what the changes are, can be just as challenging to district riders as some of the new route changes themselves. 

The route changes are listed on the district’s homepage directly under the picture of a bus at the top, with a link from a headline that reads “New Date: Upcoming Service Changes, June 24.” 

That link (www.actransit.org/news/articledetail.wu?articleid=d00173cf) leads to an AC Transit news release that talks about the upcoming changes, but detailed descriptions of the line changes themselves are midway down the page under a subheading “See detailed descriptions of the changes” and then two links, one that reads “San Pablo to Hayward” and another that reads “Fremont and Newark.” 

Under the “San Pablo to Hayward” link (www.actransit.org/riderinfo/SChanges_Hayward_07.htm), riders will find a list of all the new lines and all the old lines that are affected. 

That page provides a brief description of the new service for each line, but more detailed information is provided by the links on the individual line numbers themselves, which go to pages for each line that give both a map and complete schedules for both the current schedules for the line as well as the new schedules to go into place June 24. 

Hard-copy maps and schedules for all of the new lines and old line changes are also supposed to be currently available on AC Transit buses, as well as at the AC Transit headquarters at 1600 Franklin Street in downtown Oakland. 

The Berkeley Board of Education accepted the first reading of a policy reversal to release student information to the military for recruitment to be eligible for federal education grants. 

The board voted 5-0 in favor of the new policy, with board member John Selawsky abstaining. 

Berkeley High recently informed its juniors and seniors about a change in policy which requires them to sign an “opt out” form if they don’t want their information released to the U.S. military. Until now, students who wished to be contacted by military recruiters had to sign an “opt-in” form. 

According to the federal No Child Left Behind act, school districts must provide the military with the names and addresses of all juniors and seniors for recruiting purposes unless there is a signed letter from the parents or the student indicating that they are opting out and do not want information released. 

“I want to go back to the ‘opt-in’ policy,” Selawsky said. 

Riddle told the board that the district should work toward getting 100 percent of the juniors and seniors participating in the survey. 

“A hundred percent of the students should be able to make one choice or the other,” she said. 

“I don’t quarrel with that,” said school superintend Michele Lawrence. “But in essence a student is making a choice by not filling out a form. Anticipating getting a 100 percent is very hard to do but we will try our best.” 

Demolition of preschools 

The Berkeley school board approved the demolition of all the buildings at King Child Development Center and Franklin Parent Nursery preschools Wednesday and accepted the schematic designs to rebuild both the sites. 

Franklin, at 1460 Eighth St., has operated out of portable buildings for 30 years, said Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan. The King center, at 1939 Ward St., has wooden structures which also need replacement, he said. 

On March 28, the board approved WLC Architects—a firm specializing in designing schools—to draw up a plan for the King and Franklin pre-school sites. Project costs, which would be paid from bond funds, have been estimated at $6.4 million. 

“One of the concerns of the staff was that the wisteria all along Eighth Street at Franklin be maintained,” Kevin McLeary, of WLC Architects, told the board. “And we are doing just that. Also there is enough space on Franklin to expand if we need to do so in the future.” 

“The current entrance at King is way in from the street,” said school board vice chair John Selawsky. “Very few people know about the administrative office. I am glad to know that the proposed entrance and the administrative office is on Milvia.” 

WLC presented to the board two site plans for King. 

“This is because of the possibility of future changes to Derby Street that may need portions of the property to create a ‘curvy’ Derby,” said Lew Jones, district director of facilities, referring to a proposed plan that keeps Derby Street open, but bends it to accommodate a regulation-sized high school baseball field. 

“How much is it going to cost to rip off [this plan] and put in Curvy Derby?” asked school board member Nancy Riddle. 

Lew Jones replied that it would be minimal. 

The new designs for both school sites includes six pre-K classrooms and one administrative building which would increase the current capacity for both. 

Currently, King houses up to 84 children, which would grow to 144 with the new plan. The Franklin site housed up to 120 children prior to a recent fire and this number would also be boosted to 144. 

Pre-designed buildings with metal roofs and stucco walls will be brought in at both sites. Students attending Franklin will be moved to West Campus and Berkeley Arts Magnet and those attending King CDC will be moved to Malcolm X over the course of summer. They will remain there for a year while construction is completed. Demolition is scheduled to take place in winter. 

Solar project 

The board continued the approval of $750,000 in funds from the Office of Public School Construction and $305,000 in PG&E funds to complete a solar project for Washington Elementary School to June 20. 

PG&E extended the deadline for their grant by 60 days on Tuesday.  

New school board student director 

BHS junior Rio Bauce beat out two of his classmates to win the school board student director elections earlier this week. 

Bauce will take over responsibilities from outgoing student director Mateo Aceves in August. Bauce is also chair of the City of Berkeley Youth Commission and a member of the Berkeley Planning Commission.  

BUSD 2007 Graduation Events 

June 8 (Friday) 

Berkeley Technology Academy  

(B-Tech) 

11 a.m. 

St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave. 

June 9 (Saturday) 

African American Studies Graduation 

1 p.m.  

St. Paul AME Church (Ashby between Adeline and Shattuck) 

June 12 (Tuesday) 

Berkeley Adult School (BAS) 

7:00 pm 

West Campus Auditorium 

June 14 (Thursday) 

Martin Luther King Middle School 

4 p.m., BHS Community Theater 

Willard Middle School 

7 p.m., BHS Community Theater 

June 15 (Friday) 

Longfellow Middle School 

10:30 a.m., Longfellow Theater 

Berkeley High School 

5:30 p.m. 

Greek Theater 

Berkeley High School unveiled its Athletic Hall of Fame last week to recognize former student athletes who have excelled in sports over the last century. 

“The Berkeley High Athletic Hall of Fame is an idea whose time has come,” said Berkeley High athletic director Kristin Glenchur.  

The Berkeley Athletic Fund, a volunteer organization, began the drive for the hall of fame for athletes who have attended Berkeley High. This sports hall of fame is distinct from the already existing Berkeley High Hall of Fame, which recognizes alumni who have excelled in all fields. 

Seventeen of the 46 sports inductees recognized on Saturday are also members of the school hall of fame. The inductees’ names, graduation year, and varsity sports played, will be printed on banners that will be displayed in the Berkeley High Donahue Gym. 

Many of this years inductees—such as Billy Martin (baseball), Glenn Burke (baseball, football and basketball), Steve Odom (football), Hannibal Navies (football and track and field) and John Lambert (basketball)—have gone on to lead distinguished professional careers. 

District superintendent Michele Lawrence lauded the school’s efforts. 

“It’s wonderful that we are recognizing these men and women of fame,” she said. “The history of Berkeley athletics is simply incredible and this is a wonderful way of lettng people know about our prestigious sports program.” 

Achievements such as winning the Basketball Tournament of Champions in the ‘70s and the ‘80s and the phenomenal success of the girls’ basketball team under coaches Spike Hensley and Gene Nakamura have been highlighted time and again by the media. 

“A lot of people hear Berkeley and they associate it with sports,” Glenchur said. “We have always had lots of homegrown talent, but we have never had a hall of fame. The reason we are doing it now is because we are riding the tide of Gene’s incredible year as a coach. When people came out to recognize him, all the puzzle pieces came together and made it possible to capture the energy.” 

The youngest inductee—Anthony Lee Franklin—is a 2001 Berkeley High graduate who played baseball, football and basketball in high school. He went on to lead the baseball team in his senior year and was Scholar Athlete of the Year (baseball) in 2001 with a 4.0 GPA. 

Diagnosed with leukemia at 13, Franklin’s story made headlines when San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds visited him at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland. 

Together, Bonds and Franklin campaigned to raise awareness about bone marrow donation. Franklin died last year. 

Hannibal Nevies, a 1995 Berkeley High graduate, who currently plays for the San Francisco 49ers, told the Planet that he was proud to return to his high school as an inductee. 

“This is where it all started,” he said, sitting at one of the inductee tables with his family. “Berkeley High, with its diverse student population, helped prepare me for college. I have great memories of this place, especially of senior year in which we won a lot of tournaments. My advice to students would be to take it slow and enjoy high school while they can.” 

Former Girls Basketball coach Gene Nakamura said he was delighted with the idea of an athletic hall of fame. 

“All these years, we’ve had so many great athletes and nothing to remember them by,” he said. “I remember being disappointed as I walked into the Donahue Gym and looked at its bare walls. I am glad that’s going to change now.” 

John Lambert, a 1971 BHS alumnus and former professional basketball player for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, described Berkeley High as the place where he had “learned to compete.” 

“We were such a classy team,” reminisced Doug Kagawa, a 1968 graduate who helped the school win the Alameda Contra Costa Athletic League and the Tournament of Champions in the late ‘60s. 

“When we walked into the basketball court, we already had a lead over the other teams,” he said. “There was none of that on-court bickering or bragging. Our game did all the talking for us.” 

Rubert and John Rickson, twins from the class of 1949 who made it to the California Athletics Hall of Fame in 1999, said they were pleased with the improvements in the athletics program at BHS. 

“We used to play in the old tennis courts across the street from Berkeley High which is a parking lot now.” John said smiling. “Back then tennis was considered a sissy sport. But we also played basketball, so I guess it was okay.” 

Members of the Assembly Select Committee On Youth Violence Prevention brought their third and final hearing to Oakland last week, hearing hours of expert testimony before an overflow crowd at the Port of Oakland boardroom on Friday on strategies that have been used to address and attack one of California’s most pressing problems. 

Hearings had previously been held in Los Angeles and Salinas. 

In addition to being charged with production of a “tool kit” of what Committee Chair Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) calls “successful, tested approaches that have been effective in reducing youth violence,” the committee is rushing to make recommendations requested by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez to be included in the fiscal year 2007-08 budget. Caballero said Friday that one of the goals of the select committee “is to align state resources with local resources, and to get targeted resources into the neighborhoods that need them the most.” 

The Oakland hearing was hosted by Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland), one of two local members of the Select Committee. The other local legislator on the committee is Berkeley Assemblymember Loni Hancock. Several national, state, and local lawmakers were in attendance to hear the testimony, including Congressmember Barbara Lee (D-Oakland). 

Lee told the gathering that “the lack of a support system for our youth leads to a life of violence in many cases. The shootings at Virginia Tech got a lot of national attention, but you and I know that shootings go on in our communities every day, and go unnoticed.”  

The congressmember said that the national government is setting a bad example for youth, saying that “unfortunately, when our young people see their own government using violence to solve problems around the world, they believe it’s correct to do the same thing in their neighborhoods. Our young people have to see our government using diplomacy and conflict resolution itself in order to know that there are alternatives to violence.” 

Lee also accused the Bush administration of “being downright hostile to the needs of youth,” citing the fact that the administration has steadily eliminated funds for education programs. With the election of a Democratic majority in Congress, she said that “we are now slowly beginning to undue the damage done over the last 12 years.” 

Swanson said that “we have to show it is unacceptable to spend $10 billion on the state prison system when we can spend less and put that money into prevention strategies.” Swanson called the situation for many youth in the area “terrifying.” 

And Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson called Oakland “unfortunately, the epicenter of youth violence. We are only scratching the surface of this epidemic.” 

The four-hour Oakland hearing had a far different atmosphere from Assembly or State Senate hearings on bills held in Sacramento, where testimony is often rushed through while committees seek to pack in votes on several pieces of legislation in one session.  

At the Port of Oakland session, committee members appeared to be more interesting in gathering information than in finding out the “for or against” positions on specific legislation, and expert testimony was often interrupted as legislators asked for clarification. 

Most of the people testifying either talked of recently growing up in violence-plagued communities themselves or gave long résumés of working in youth violence-prevention programs. 

The most memorable exchange came during the first panel on violence prevention strategies in early childhood education, parent education, and after school programs when Angie Darling, Coordinator of the Alameda County Childcare Planning Counsel, said that neglect and abuse of children at an early age begins a downward spiral that can lead to a life of violence, making the startling revelation that the yearly rate of expulsion of pre-school students in the State of California is three times the K-12 expulsion rate. 

That prompted Assembly Majority Leader Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), a committee member, to Darling with a startled look on her face and ask, “What did you just say?” Other committee members appeared startled as well. 

When Darling repeated her statement at the request of Caballero, the committee chair asked, a little incredulously, “in our state it’s possible to expel a child from pre-school? I’m flabbergasted. That’s a prescription for failure, to tell a 3-year-old ‘you don’t belong with the other children.” 

And Congressmember Lee, to the applause of others in the room, broke in, “Let me just say one thing, there should be a law against that.” 

One solution was advanced by Demetria Hutson, Program Director of the Peacekeeping Team of Youth Uprising, who talked of growing up on Seminary Avenue, calling herself “an authentic Oakland girl.” She said the background of the five-member Peacekeeping Team “who know the streets and are known on the streets; all of us have street handles and know everybody else’s street handle,” is crucial to their success. “Somebody can come up and tell me that Bo-Bo got into a fight with Cee-Cee, and I can say, yeah, I know Cee-Cee’s cousin. I can talk to them.” 

Hutson said that the Youth Uprising five-member Peacemaking Team concentrates on intervening in potentially-dangerous neighborhood or family disputes before they get out of hand. “Homicides in Oakland are not happening because some Hannibal Lector character is jumping out of the bushes with a knife and stabbing people to death. It’s happening largely because of conflicts in ongoing relationships that have not been resolved,” she said. “Sometimes the victims live right across the street from the perpetrators.”  

Hutson said the situation in some of Oakland’s most violent neighborhoods is so volatile that “sometimes these conflicts escalate from zero to 60 in a moment.” 

Other testimony was provided by local organizations and agencies, including the Prevention Institution, Fight Crime: Invest In Kids, Youth Alive, Project Re-Connect, Girls Justice Initiative, the Alameda County Probation Department, the Alameda County Board of Education, the Cypress Mandela Training, Acts Full Gospel Church Men of Valor Academy, Oakland Community Organization, the Ella Baker Center, the Oakland Police Department, and the office of San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. 

A full report and recommendations from the committee is expected later this year. 

Urban shoplifters 

At 5:14 p.m. on Tuesday, three teenagers were arrested for stealing from Urban Outfitters at 2590 Bancroft Way. Store employees recovered the stolen clothing and necklaces. 

Car collision 

On Tuesday at 4:40 p.m., someone called in to report that a car collision had occurred at the freeway entrance at Gilman and West Frontage Street. No emergency services were dispatched for the accident. 

Dog bite 

At 10:59 a.m. on Tuesday, a male victim called into report that a dog had bitten him on the 1200 block of Allston Way. The dog owner was located and identified. 

Indecent exposure 

At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, a man committed an act of indecent exposure to a woman with whom he’d had prior contact, on the 1200 block of Evelyn Street. He was arrested and cited for a violation of city code. 

Series of auto break-ins 

On Tuesday, 11 auto break-ins occurred across the city. City Police Department Spokesman Wes Hester is recommending that people not keep valuable items visible from the outside of their car. 

Hit-And-Run 

At 9:43 p.m. on Monday, a 29-year-old man from Phoenix was arrested for hitting a North Berkeley man in his 20s and fleeing the scene. The incident occurred at the intersection of Shattuck and Carleton streets. 

Another auto burglary 

At 6 p.m. on Monday, an auto burglary occurred on the 1200 block of Euclid Street. 

In the past couple days, four other car burglaries have occurred in the area surrounding the Rose Garden and Cordonices Park. 

“When this war is over, there will be one between colored and white!” These were the words of my parents that I listened to in horror from the back seat of our car outside of the A&P in East Providence, R.I. I had seen war in the newsreels on Saturday afternoon. I had seen people shooting at other people from the protection of hedgerows. I pictured myself shooting at my eight-year-old white friends. My only friends of color were my cousin and Anna, and neither lived in my neighborhood. It was the early ‘40s and my parents were referring to the segregation of our armed forces in the Second World War. I got over that. 

My mother subscribed to two black newspapers, The Boston Chronicle and The Pittsburgh Courier; they presented to me a vague idea of what Jim Crow meant, and a vivid picture of lynchings. I was horrified but somehow felt this didn’t apply directly to me. 

My mother graduated from Commercial High in Providence in 1927, fully prepared to enter the white-collar world, quite a feat for a colored woman at that time. Every so often she would take civil service exams for a clerical job with the government. She was always among the top-scorers and would eventually be assigned. At the last moment she would back out. “I’ll have to spend most of the money I make on clothes.” or “Everyone will be younger than I am.” I can only suspect she was afraid that as a “colored girl” she would be stepping out of bounds, even for Rhode Island in the ‘40s. 

She did work from time to time, however. In white people’s houses doing housework for people like Mrs. Rosenstein who addressed her as “Doris,” while my mother addressed her with the honorific “Mrs.” Mrs. Rosenstein’s husband was a doctor and they lived in Rumford, an affluent white suburb. She told Momma she knew how she felt because “we’re Jewish, you know.” 

And then there was the time I naively decided to try out for our senior play, Junior Miss, and was told by my embarrassed English teacher that the only part available to me would be that of the maid. I bitterly declined. 

In 1953 when I went to work in Washington, D.C., I spent my first two weeks in orientation and saw very few blacks. I blithely decided that this particular government agency was not segregated. Then I was assigned to an all-black office—these were the only blacks employed except for guards and janitorial help. I still didn’t get it. 

When I came to California, I married a man who had been raised a poor black in Oklahoma. He thought my lack of racial consciousness appalling. We would have heated arguments over whether or not the police were racist. I heard stories about blacks being beaten by Oakland cops for traffic violations. I didn’t believe it. 

Before I left Rhode Island, I made application for a clerical job at UC Berkeley. My qualifications and experience were effusively acknowledged by personal letter from the UC Personnel Office. But after arriving at Berkeley and being sent out for interviews, the dawn slowly broke. I would watch the faces of my interviewers as I entered. Mouths would drop open; faces would redden. They would stammer inanely and I wouldn’t get the job.  

“Where did you say you are from?” they would ask, as if my application was not on the desk in front of them, as if my birthplace had any bearing on my qualifications. “New York?” they would venture tentatively. I felt I was being viewed as an aberration since my complexion did not match my “accent” and I was therefore disqualified. Eventually the Math Department hired me for a two-week period to assist the secretary arrange the Symposium on the Axiomatic Method. They decided to keep me. Since a number of blacks were then hired in that department, I assumed Personnel thought it was safe to send us there. 

Then it was 1961; black was soon to be beautiful. I walked up a cement path and three steps to the wooden front door of a modest two-story house just east of Telegraph Avenue, down near 40th St. There was a For Rent sign in the window and the nameplate on the door read Sousa. The neighborhood was definitely downscale but neat and quiet. My husband had continued to tell me (I was not, at that time, clear why) that I could not look for lodging in certain, very specific places; east of Telegraph Avenue was one of them.  

“We don’t rent to coloreds.” The wrinkled white face peered at me through the crack in the barely open door. 

I was enveloped in hot rage beginning to surpass the surprise. I had no recollection of my drive home. 

In 1964 when we bought a house in the Oakland hills, the white people next door couldn’t move fast enough—their FOR SALE sign went up almost immediately. I found out later we were blockbusting. This infuriated and embarrassed me because I was beginning to get it—it felt terrible! 

A tearing was going on inside of me. Why didn’t I feel victorious because we blacks had won one? Why instead did I feel sad and sick? Why all the trickery? Why couldn’t I learn that blacks must use any means possible to get ahead, even when it was dishonest or hurt somebody? 

Whites continue to fool me. I guess it’s taking me longer because it was so well hidden from me in the beginning. Nobody talked about race relations to me directly when I was young. It was just something that was there but seemed to have really nothing to do with me personally. And I don’t know yet if that’s good or bad. If I had been aware early in life, might not that just have been an excuse for me not to be a success? I had enough excuses as it was. Which kind of racial prejudice is the most destructive? 

Overt, in which one has the visual aid of restrictive signs—“Colored Folks to the Rear,” “Whites Only Need Apply”; restricted neighborhoods into which a person of color would never venture seeking housing; segregated public schools so designated? 

Or covert, in which a person is born into a society that, on the surface, doesn’t show prejudice; in which a person attends twelve years of public school and is allowed to feel special because of excellent performance, supposedly with no racial preference, in which there are no “colored” neighborhoods; any part of the bus or train can be occupied. 

Overt, in which everything and everybody tells you your place: that by virtue of the color of your skin you are inferior or, at best, to be treated in an inferior manner? The world holds no surprises for you in terms of fairness. You aim low so as not to be disappointed. You, whether consciously or unconsciously, emulate the superior race by straightening or artificially curling your hair--making it shiny. You have plastic surgery to correct non-caucasian features. You bleach your skin using lighteners advertised in black publications. You marry light: if you are dark-skinned you try to marry lighter so that your children will be lighter. 

Or covert in which you are made to believe that your color makes absolutely no difference; you go to school and play with white children who treat you just like anybody else; you read about the experiences of others of your color in big city ghettoes or in the south and somehow feel that you are spared this curse, though you are never quite sure why. In some very vague way, you are aware that all is not well but you don’t know what this means. As a growing child there is much that confuses; this race thing is only one of them and, at the time, doesn’t seem the most important. 

I continued to attribute these and countless other racist incidents in my life either to innocent oversight or total ignorance on the part of the specific white individual, certainly not to the entire white race. 

All the while, my “black identity” was being questioned by my black friends. I was told I didn’t have enough of it. Again, I wasn’t sure what “it” was. All I knew was that I was Doris and Gene’s daughter and that they were at first colored, then Negro and now black. So how black was I supposed to be? 

Then came the San Quentin shoot-out, which killed George Jackson, other blacks, and a couple of prominent white people, one of whom was a judge. The authorities decided to take off after Angela Davis—they had their scapegoat, black and an avowed Communist to boot. And suddenly I was black. I had finally been slapped hard enough. I was enraged. I decided I had to act and had no idea what I could do. Up until then I excused my inaction by saying that I was fighting my own war to prove to whites that blacks don’t fit the stereotype engendered by whites. 

So I acted. I decided I would no longer be a part of the white power structure. Silly me. Nevertheless, the next day I fully intended to quit my job at UC. No one tried to stop me. I collared my boss when he came in and told him I needed to talk. I spent at least two emotional hours explaining to him why I could no longer work for him. He never interrupted. I went back to my desk; I never quit. 

But from that moment on I have been learning. I no longer resist the fact that I live in a racist world, in a racist society, in a racist city and a racist neighborhood. I spend my money in racist stores and attend racist classes. White doctors, teachers, service people, firemen, policemen and clergy are racist. I don’t care how many of us are here or how much money we are making or how many of us are graduating from how many colleges. When whites are born into this society, they know inherently that they are superior to all third world people, and especially to blacks. No matter what negative condition they find themselves in, they are still superior to blacks. And some blame blacks for their negative condition. Liberal whites decide just how much slack they will cut us, and then assume we should not only be grateful, but also friendly. I have never met and probably will never meet a white who believes himself racist. He will tell me about his racist mother or his racist brother-in-law or his racist neighbor, but not him. Rather than to accept the fact that I might be equal, or maybe even better, white people have told me that I’m “not really black”. 

This situation will never, never improve until whites can admit to themselves that they are by definition and innately racist. They should identify as closely with their racism as they identify with their gender. If you are born white, you are born racist. Blacks like me become racist in defense. Identify that you are racist and, recognizing yourselves as such, you can check yourselves. Blacks do not want your love. Your like isn’t even important. And your understanding is not necessary. We don’t even care whether or not you smile at us. What we do want is that you not stand in our way. What we do want is equal justice by law, no favors. And just for the record, affirmative action is just that, not a favor.  

Thirty years ago, in a fit of panic and pseudo-generosity prompted by fear, the white power structure admitted blacks, almost indiscriminately, to some schools and some jobs. Since this action was indiscriminate, many blacks failed. At which point the whites sat back and said, “See! We gave them a chance and they failed.” And that was the end of it. So now it’s cut welfare, cut the quota system, beat ‘em up and throw ‘em in jail.  

It will take years of exposure for the rest of the United States of America to fully realize what a monstrous thing American racism is. And all during this time one proceeds quite naturally with one’s life dealing with racism on a day-to-day basis, too overwhelmed by the monstrosity of it ever to be able to get up on a soap-box screaming in rage. And as the realization slowly inches its way into the consciousness, the surprise, the hurt and then the rage take over. How many times must one silently, but clearly, be called “nigger” before it finally sinks in? And if one is to be a nigger, then one had better track down the meaning of this negritude. 

My particular racism is my particular experience. I’ve never written about it before for two reasons: I wasn’t sure I was black enough to discuss it with blacks, and it does no good to discuss it with whites. 

There’s plenty of blame to go around in the Berkeley Housing Authority situation. A friend of a friend took a job there briefly a few years ago, after a successful career at similar agencies elsewhere, and left quickly after describing the organization to my friend as “sneaky, underhanded and dysfunctional.” An elderly tenant whose rent is supplemented with a Section 8 certificate says that her landlord successfully claimed that she hadn’t paid her rent when she actually had, and therefore he collected double rent for at least several months. Others complain that even though they had Section 8 certificates they were never able to get into Berkeley apartments because vacancies always went to friends of staff.  

Kriss Worthington has been complaining about injustices on behalf of tenant constituents for the whole 10 years he’s been in office, but could rarely get solutions. And such problems probably go back even farther than that.  

I myself tried to help a disabled friend find a place to live when he was being evicted perhaps six or seven years ago. My quest took me to the office of then City Manager Weldon Rucker, where the door was always open to citizens with grievances. When the Housing Authority came up, Weldon just shook his head. “I’m putting Steve Barton on it,” he said, “but if Steve can’t fix it, we’ll have to do something else.” Well. it turns out Barton is no Hercules—he hasn’t been able to clean up the mess at the Berkeley Housing Authority in the time he’s been there. The agency turns out to be even worse than the Augean Stables which the Greek hero tackled.  

That said, there’s absolutely no excuse for City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque’s bizarre memo last week attacking not only Barton and the agency staff (most of whom he inherited with the job) but also City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna, all for not always following her advice to the letter. It’s obvious that at the end of this process Barton dropped more than one ball as the agency spun out of his control, but any experienced manager will tell you that if your subordinate fails, it’s really partly your own failure for putting someone in a job they couldn’t do. In that sense no one on the city staff should be let completely off the hook, including Kamlarz and Rucker and, even more egregious, their predecessor James Keene. But the real culprits are any and all of the City Council members and all the mayors involved over at least the last 15 years: Tom Bates, Shirley Dean and Loni Hancock.  

And, of course, the city attorney for all that period, Manuela Albuquerque herself, who watched the City Council doing double duty sitting as the Housing Authority for all these years, with perfunctory monthly meetings, some lasting no more than 10 minutes, allowing serious irregularities to be repeatedly swept under the rug. In what is sometimes vulgarly referred to as a CYA memo, she said last week that “at many successive junctures, city management at every level failed to follow legal advice on how to identify and rectify the full scope of the serious and growing operational problems at the BHA. Had they taken the legal advice, it might have been possible to avoid the current crisis.” But the list of lapses she provided to support this accusation, some substantial but many minor, were clearly not disagreements with legal conclusions but demonstrations of what happens when management is in over its head.  

It’s never the lawyer’s job to substitute her own managerial judgment for that of the client. Albuquerque might sincerely feel that she could do a better job than the current managers—after all, she had applied for the job Caronna eventually got. But her own current job is to advise, not to castigate or execute. And it is absolutely never appropriate for anyone, manager or attorney, to go public with scathing accusations about specific employees, not even if they’re true: not about Kamlarz, Caronna or Barton, and most emphatically not about the easily identified people referred to as “interim director” and “temporary help” in Albuquerque’s flaming memo. There are lawsuits galore just waiting to happen over this.  

And almost every person in Berkeley who’s ever passed the California Bar (and there are a lot of us, practicing and non-practicing) can recount other instances where Albuquerque’s legal calls, usually made on behalf of powerful interests, were very shaky. Ask, for example, once-and-current attorney Anna de Leon, now in the process of suing the city of Berkeley because of special favors granted, with Albuquerque’s blessing, to Patrick Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests regarding the Gaia Building. Or the three Landmark Preservation Commissioners (I was one of them) who filed suit because they were bumped from LPC deliberations on Temple Beth El’s building project on specious legal grounds not invoked in any other case before or since. Or the ACLU, which was forced to take the city of Berkeley as represented by Albuquerque to court to prove a simple proposition that anyone who’s taken constitutional law ought to know: government can’t make laws which restrict the content of speech, even if the speaker is just a dirty panhandler. These are only a few instances from a very long list in a very long history of questionable legal advice dispensed during Albuquerque’s tenure, now more than 25 years, possibly longer than that of anyone she now blames for the city’s many problems. 

When Tom Bates was running for mayor, one of his top advisors, an excellent attorney, told me and others he was sure Albuquerque would be gone if Bates was elected. At least one council candidate, now a member of the mayor’s voting bloc, said the same thing. Didn’t happen—why?  

A roguish citizen suggested to me, only half in jest, that the city attorney might be Berkeley’s own J. Edgar Hoover, keeping files of discrediting details about everyone in city government both hired and elected, so that they are afraid to tangle with her. It will be interesting to see whether her current campaign to re-position herself as whistle-blower and manager-wannabe will succeed or fail. 

San Francisco Opera General Manager David Gockley himself summed it up best in an interview with Daniel Wakin in Saturday’s New York Times: “Our business doesn’t work that way,” he said in a telephone interview. “It has been nobly color-blind over recent decades, and I certainly haven’t worked that way, and my record bears that out.”  

For those Planet readers who aren’t opera fans (probably quite a few of you out there), a brief replay of an ongoing drama: Last week the San Francisco Opera fired soprano Hope Briggs, who was under contract to sing the major role of Dona Anna in a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, on the night of the final dress rehearsal, after a performance which many in the audience later reported was very good. She was replaced by a young woman who has been at the SF Opera for a couple of years as an Adler Fellow. 

I’ve known a lot of young musicians in the past 15 years, and Hope is one of the most outstanding among them, so I was outraged, as were many others, by how she was treated. My first reaction was that she must have been a victim of the increasingly appearance-based trend in American opera, which is suddenly contemplating possible riches from simulcasts in cinemaplexes and other fantasies.  

Gockley himself was quoted by Anthony Tommasini in the Times in 2004 noting that casting decisions are now “driven by several factors: voice, musicianship, appearance, etc.” Sometimes even height comes into the picture, he added in a statement issued when he was criticized for casting “a handsome German tenor with a thick mane of light hair” for a role that had been ably sung by another tenor described as “dark” and “hefty”—read stout. “People don’t understand that we are in danger of losing this wonderful thing about opera: the beautiful reality of the singers,” lamented the spurned tenor.  

I wondered in print whether in this case Gockley, with an eye to the camera and the mass market’s tastes, might have picked a cute young woman of European descent over an admittedly handsome woman with a classic African-American face and physique. Others had similar ideas, so a mini-storm ensued in the print press and in the blogs.  

The Planet ran a letter from one of his former co-workers defending Gockley from any perception of racism, although my own comments had carefully distinguished between conventional racism and what might be called “appearancism.” The writer pointed out that Gockley produced both Porgy and Bess and Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha at the Houston Opera, employing a significant number of black artists. I’m happy to give credit where credit is due, and I know from my own experience that unjustified accusations of racism or anti-Semitism can be painful, so I’m willing to accept the writer’s view.  

However. Putting racial considerations aside for the moment, the decision to cashier a singer who by almost all accounts was performing well at the very last minute with no prior warning still looks shabby. The rumor mills have been having a field day with back stories which purport to explain how this could happen. 

Back Story No. 1 (the most charitable, from a singer): 

The role of Dona Anna is notoriously hard to cast, because her solo arias require a showy voice, yet the ensembles call for musical cooperation and restraint. Management decided to go with the big flashy voice of replacement Elza van den Heever, but this had the inevitable consequence of unbalancing the ensembles on opening night. This theory was confirmed for me by an experienced critic who was present at both the Briggs-sung Final Dress and the van den Heever opening performance. She said that both singers had done a good job, neither one better than the other, that it was just a matter of taste. 

Back Story No. 2 ( the dishy one) was cleverly articulated by blogger Ching Chang on The Bay Buzz: 

“….there is mounting evidence from different sources suggesting that Hope Briggs dismissal from SFO’s Don Giovanni was not about race, but rather a carefully orchestrated deal to promote van den Heever, a new client of Matthew Epstein at CAMI [Columbia Artists Management Inc.] 

“A selected portion of an e-mail received from a credible anonymous source: 

‘... So, this supposedly “sudden” event has been planned for a long time, as I’m sure you suspected as well. Rhoslyn Jones was the official cover, and [her colleagues] had been hearing from her “why am I even here, sitting in rehearsals, spending all this time,” because she knew that Elza was in the wings and was being rehearsed, and kept informed of the production—very quietly. The only person who didn’t know was Hope. 

[...] Matthew Epstein works very sneakily. While Gockley is not known to be a fan of Elza’s around the Opera Center, he was supposedly convinced long ago by Epstein to make a big press splash like this, not only for SFO and the summer season, but for his new client Elza, as well as dumping a singer chosen by Pamela. Of course it would’ve looked even worse if they cancelled Hope earlier, to only replace her with an Adler (either Roz or Elza).’ 

“Elza van den Heever is an Adler Fellow, which is essentially a glorified intern undergoing advanced training. So, if SFO had replaced Hope Briggs earlier, they would have felt obliged to find an artist of stature to replace her, thus derailing a calculated plan to offer Matt’s client Elza her big break. This version of events seems at least more plausible than asking us to passively believe that [former SF Opera Managing Director Pamela] Rosenberg’s choice of Briggs could be so unfit as to merit an unceremonious dump at the last minute.…. It appears that Briggs’ name was dragged through the mud through no fault of her own.” 

If I were writing the libretto for this opera-in-the-making, that’s the plot I’d go with—it has the ring of truth. In fact, you could even call it A Star is Born—one of the oldest plots in show biz: plucky intern rises from the ranks on opening night to save the company. Gockley and Epstein, old pros both, might have thought they could fool the press and the public with this tried-and-true scenario, and it almost worked. 

Except that, as Cornell West titled his book, “Race Matters.” Using one of opera’s relatively few African-American singers as the scapegoat in this hoary plot was bound to garner public attention.  

Saying that opera is “nobly colorblind” makes no more sense than boasting about being tone-deaf. There’s nothing noble or even practical about being colorblind, it’s just insensitive, clueless. 

This is not about altruism, it’s selfish. I happen to love hearing the sound of unamplified human voices singing lush harmonies, but I’m painfully aware that European opera, like much of European classical music, is at risk of become an elite preoccupation for wealthy dilettantes. I also love jazz, but as music programs disappear from our elementary schools it’s starting to be reserved for kids whose parents can afford private lessons and jazz camp, and it’s the listeners who lose out. 

If Gockley’s San Francisco Opera really believes its own PR about broadening the audience for opera, blowing off a gala planned for African-American patrons in Hope’s honor was remarkably shortsighted. When two excellent singers were weighed in the balance, the fact that only one of them is an African-American should have mattered more than the ambitions of a powerful corporate agent who had a contract with the other one.  

And being colorblind was also a mistake for Yoshi’s jazz club and the Jazzschool in Berkeley. Both were lambasted last week for overlooking black musicians when they put together an anniversary CD and a festival program. It’s a valid question: I can name eight fine African-American jazz musicians almost within walking distance of the Planet office who could have handled a festival gig with panache—why weren’t they asked? Both organizations are attempting to make amends now, but the controversy still rages. 

I’m not qualified to speak about how this kind of shortsightedness affects African-Americans themselves. One of our readers tackles the broader question of the corrosive effect of the perception of racism in a First Person essay which appears in today’s paper, submitted even before last week’s furor over snubs to black artists. The jazz musicians themselves and their fans are duking it out in our columns and elsewhere. We’ve gotten opposing opinions from two of the very best black saxophone players in the Bay Area or perhaps the world. Hope Briggs herself graciously told the Times that she didn’t think racism was an issue in her case, and she gets the last word on that topic for now. 

HOUSING DIRECTOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was saddened to learn that Berkeley Housing Director Steve Barton has resigned from his job. I am a single mother of wonderful twin daughters and we would not be living in our Berkeley condominium today if not for the efforts of Steve Barton. 

About 15 years ago, the former building owner tried doubling the rent on each of the eleven units in our building. The Rent Board prevented the rents from skyrocketing but the owner then threatened to evict everyone and go out of business. The tenants got together and wanted to end the harassment by buying the building. The problem was that most of the tenants were working but of limited means. With Dr. Barton’s guidance, we were able to structure the financing so the sitting tenants could purchase the eleven units if they desired. 

Rent control kept the tenants in our building from being pushed out of Berkeley and Steve Barton’s efforts and advice allowed us to purchase our units and become homeowners. 

Without the assistance of Steve Barton and the Rent Board, my family probably would not be in Berkeley today. I try showing my gratitude to the city by volunteering in many ways including as a PTA officer, youth soccer coach and a middle school cheerleading coach. The other members of our building association contribute to the City in countless other ways. None of this would have been possible without Steve Barton. 

Thanks Steve. 

Hillary Kitka and the  

Russell Street Homeowners Association 

• 

STEVE BARTON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Barton was an asset to the City of Berkeley, a conscientious and extremely knowledgeable housing director, and I am appalled that he was forced out of his position. 

His detractors make the ridiculous complaint that he promoted affordable housing as a political agenda. These detractors will see anyone who promotes affordable housing as having a political agenda, but they are wrong. 

Affordable housing is a policy of the City of Berkeley, and the region, and it is what the housing director is hired to promote. 

The ultimate responsibility for the demise of the Berkeley Housing Authority lies with the City Council in their role as the board of the Housing Authority. It is they who have the fiduciary obligations to monitor the use of Housing Authority funds, as well as its provision of Section 8 housing. If anyone should be fired in what is looking like a scandal of incompetence, it is the City Council. Passing the buck to a new Housing Authority Board on July 1 will not cure their shirking of responsibility for the past decade or so. 

Instead, one of the city’s most competent employees is forced out. A sad commentary on the state of the city.  

Anne Wagley 

Former chair,  

Housing Advisory Commission 

• 

THROWN UNDER A BUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a former BHA employee I know first hand the meaning of the term “thrown under the bus.” The BHA has been in a constant state of disrepair, dysfunction and the victim of City Council, city manager and, just as importantly, city attorney, disinterest since the 1980s. How else to explain the ten minute attention span given Housing Authority matters right before the much more sexy City Council meetings? Put another way, the Berkeley Housing Authority never mattered; to council or to the city manager or city attorney sitting on high at the fifth floor.  

It is interesting, if not tragic, to note that the recently fired housing director has probably done more to preserve Section 8 units in Berkeley than any predecessor with the decision to allow property owners to raise rents just as state-wide vacancy decontrol was coming down the pike. Probably an additional 600-800 low-income tenants have been able to stay in Berkeley due to the foresight of Mr. Barton. Of course, this is of no concern to the brickthrowers at 2180 Milvia St. seeking scapegoats for a mess that they themselves created or have conveniently ignored for over two decades.  

How ironic that with a “new” Housing Authority in place the city has agreed to subsidize the agency with substantial monies from the General Fund; something never approved of during the tenure of Mr. Barton. Dollars to doughnuts that without this taxpayer subsidy, the BHA would easily continue its downward spiral since the core problem of rotating directors, lack of staff to do even the most essential functions such as filing, and an overburdened caseload for its reps would simply fester and grow.  

My guess is that three years from now, after the money has run out, and staff has been cut again to its sub-competent level, the Housing Authority will be right back where it is now. 

It seems that the “fiduciary responsibility” or “contract oversight” so often harped on by the city attorney in her most recent diatribes extends only as far as she can throw a dedicated Housing Director out the window.  

Former BHA employee 

Named withheld upon request  

• 

HELL HATH NO FURY  

LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One has to wonder what was the purpose of the city attorney giving the council an “I told you so” letter pointing the finger at City Manager Kamlarz and Deputy City Manager Caronna regarding the recent melt down of Berkeley’s Housing Authority. I don’t recall any news article or council member laying the blame for the problems of BHA at the foot of the city attorney. 

The citizens of Berkeley would be hard pressed to find a more competent, more knowledgeable and harder working city manager than Phil Kamlarz. And Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna isn’t too far behind. I say this from almost 30 years of intimately working with various governmental managers in numerous cities, which includes Weldon Rucker, Jim Keene, Hal Cronkite, Mike Brown and Elijah Rogers- who all held the city manager job prior to Phil. 

Every manager, not just in government, receives advice about what “should” be done from a variety of sources and has to make a decision about the correct course of action. No manager gets it right 100 percent of the time. The council itself has already acknowledged that no small part of the BHA problem is a result of their failure. 

So why should the city attorney, a member of the city’s management team, single out Phil Kamlarz and Lisa Caronna? Because they are ultimately responsible for everything that goes wrong with any of the 1,600 people who work for the City of Berkeley? 

Steve Barton, who has worked for the city for almost two decades, was chosen by Weldon Rucker in 1999 to manage the Berkeley Housing Authority. A number of councilpersons and others are saying they are sorry to see him go. So he couldn’t have been so obviously bad that it should have been evident to the city manager that he was incompetent. As a city manager overseeing a $300 million dollar budget, you don’t really have the time to micro manage your department heads. You have to rely on them to generally make the right choice. And after all the Berkeley City Council was responsible for overseeing Steve Barton’s BHA. 

And where was the city’s attorney prior to her “I told you so” letter? Did she meet with council, the people who really are responsible for reviewing the decisions being made at BHA, and indicate to them that she felt the city manager and his staff and/or Steve Barton were not following good legal advice. Isn’t that HER job? And if she did her job, why isn’t she complaining about how the council also ignored her advice? Or more likely when the city manager made, in her opinion, poor choices did she just sit by silently without bringing up her concerns to the council? Is the city attorney unable to have a managerial sit down with the city manager, herself and a few council persons to work through some issues? 

Nobody’s advice, and that includes the Berkeley city attorney, is correct 100 percent of the time. And if not following advice 100 percent of the time is cause for public castigation, it makes the city attorney yet another dysfunctional City of Berkeley employee. 

Doug Fielding 

• 

OUTRAGE AND SHAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does anyone else out there feel outraged and a little ashamed to see our scapegoating the poor and disabled homeless while at the same time they have allowed our Housing Authority to collapse into a cesspool of incompetence and corruption? Is no one outraged when the disabled are cast into the streets and our mayor and City Council make laws to jail them to keep their own mistakes and inaction out of sight? 

Do you feel OK about people referring to our most vulnerable community members as (and I quote John McDougall in the Daily Planet) “human waste”? 

Please join us as we let our mayor and City Council know that while we all want a safe and happy Berkeley, it is not appropriate to criminalize our poorest and most vulnerable. 

At 6:30 p.m. on the steps of City Hall, the Inappropriate Street Behavior Players will be putting on a performance for all who wish to attend. There will be food and music and a good time had by all. If you would like to join our troupe or help with script writing and props I would love to have you. 

Dan McMullan 

Disabled People Outside Project 

P.S. Does anyone else find it odd that while the Housing Authority comes under the microscope, Patrick Kennedy, Berkeley’s biggest builder of low-income housing (and someone who has for years been accused of all kinds of hanky panky over there), decides to sell all those big, shiny buildings he loves so much and hightail it out of town? Stay tuned, for heads are about to roll. 

• 

HOUSING AUTHORITY MORASS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Manuela Albuquerque’s recent memos listing management and staffing failures at the Berkeley Housing Authority proclaim that, she, as city attorney, is mandated by the charter to supervise all contracts involving the BHA. 

On May 22, the city manager stood up and acknowledged his failure by not solving the Housing Authority morass. The mayor, City Council members and housing director properly each did the same that evening. Housing Director Barton later resigned his position. Having served on the Housing Advisory Commission for eight years I know that Barton worked extensively to make housing for those with limited resources possible in Berkeley. 

The Housing Authority has been a dumping ground and troubled agency since the early 1980s. Tenants, owners and even bureaucrats have complained about the service for years. Some, blame staff incompetence or lack of caring. Others claim the root causes are under funding and shifting Federal rules. Whatever the reason, the Berkeley Housing Authority has not functioned optimally for 25 years.  

Ms. Albuquerque has been city attorney since 1985—almost the entire span of this failure. Why is she just now coming forward to fulfill her obligations under the city charter?  

Jumping on the bandwagon and issuing scathing memos after others have already made the decisions to replace the Housing Authority Board and all the employees at the BHA is disingenuous and self-serving. Albuquerque’s unchallenged reports are not solving any problems, only adding salacious and unsubstantiated details.  

I find it troubling that the only person who has remained silent in acknowledging any failure is Ms. Albuquerque. Ironically, she is the one person that has had the unbroken authority to do something since the mid 1980s. Why she would chose to wait to issue her reports and illuminate us about the crisis until after the decisions to rectify the situation were made and the housing director resigned, remains an unanswered but intriguing question. 

It would be refreshing if the city attorney would stop pointing fingers at others for a moment and display the decency to admit that she too is culpable as part of this failed team effort. Given that she has had the authority under the charter to address the situation for 22 years (three times longer than Barton held his post), she may feel compelled to follow Barton’s path. 

Eugene Turitz 

• 

WRIGHT’S GARAGE PROJECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Wright’s garage project in the Elmwood shopping district has created more neighborhood discussion than can be remembered in years and the commentary in the June 8 Daily Planet has caused confusion about the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association.  

CENA (Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association) is not associated with the Elmwood Neighborhood Association. CENA is one of Berkeley’s oldest and largest neighborhood associations, is incorporated in the State of California, and abides by a legally registered set of by-laws. The CENA neighborhood and our board of directors have not taken sides on this issue. 

Dean Metzger 

President, CENA 

• 

JOE MAGRUDER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The June 8 article on AC Transit June 24 “service changes” was somewhat less than accurate. The service changes include discontinuance of the heavily used Line 52 which runs between the UC Campus and Albany Village by way of Cedar Street. While a new line 19 will run on Cedar Street, it will be of no use to those of us who live along Cedar and now use Line 52 to go to and from the UC Campus. 

Joe Magruder 

• 

YASSIR CHADLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you Berkeley Daily Planet. Thank you City of Berkeley powers that be. Thanks to all Yassir’s appreciative fans. The world’s a better place because of our being able to express our voices. 

Joan Trenholm Herbertson 

• 

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ll be joining seniors, California doctors, the California Nurses Association, Michael Moore and many others in Sacramento this next Tuesday because single-payer is on the line—for real. SB840, Sheila Kuhl’s single-payer bill, is going to pass the Legislature again, but at least one other competing bill, with support from Democrats in two cases and Republicans in another, is also going to be sent to the governor’s desk. Even Loni Hancock, one of the co-sponsors of the single-payer bill, has voted for another bill (as well as single-payer) on the grounds that Arnold will veto the Kuhl single-payer bill again and something is better than nothing. Hancock is right on single-payer, but wrong on that other bill. As a doctor, a patient, a senior and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, I know that only kicking out the health • 

THROWN UNDER A BUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a former BHA employee I know first hand the meaning of the term “thrown under the bus.” The BHA has been in a constant state of disrepair, dysfunction and the victim of City Council, city manager and, just as importantly, city attorney, disinterest since the 1980s. How else to explain the 10-minute attention span given Housing Authority matters right before the much more sexy City Council meetings? Put another way, the Berkeley Housing Authority never mattered; to council or to the city manager or city attorney sitting on high on the fifth floor.  

It is interesting, if not tragic, to note that the recently fired housing director has probably done more to preserve Section 8 units in Berkeley than any predecessor with the decision to allow property owners to raise rents just as state-wide vacancy decontrol was coming down the pike. Probably an additional 600-800 low-income tenants have been able to stay in Berkeley due to the foresight of Mr. Barton. Of course, this is of no concern to the brickthrowers at 2180 Milvia St. seeking scapegoats for a mess that they themselves created or have conveniently ignored for over two decades.  

How ironic that with a “new” Housing Authority in place the city has agreed to subsidize the agency with substantial monies from the General Fund; something never approved of during the tenure of Mr. Barton. Dollars to doughnuts that without this taxpayer subsidy, the BHA would easily continue its downward spiral since the core problem of rotating directors, lack of staff to do even the most essential functions such as filing, and an overburdened caseload for its reps would simply fester and grow.  

My guess is that three years from now, after the money has run out, and staff has been cut again to its sub-competent level, the Housing Authority will be right back where it is now. 

It seems that the “fiduciary responsibility” or “contract oversight” so often harped on by the city attorney in her most recent diatribes extends only as far as she can throw a dedicated housing director out the window.  

Former BHA employee 

Named withheld upon request  

• 

HELL HATH NO FURY  

LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One has to wonder what was the purpose of the city attorney giving the council an “I told you so” letter pointing the finger at City Manager Kamlarz and Deputy City Manager Caronna regarding the recent melt down of Berkeley’s Housing Authority. I don’t recall any news article or council member laying the blame for the problems of BHA at the foot of the city attorney. 

The citizens of Berkeley would be hard pressed to find a more competent, more knowledgeable and harder working city manager than Phil Kamlarz. And Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna isn’t too far behind. I say this from almost 30 years of intimately working with various governmental managers in numerous cities, which includes Weldon Rucker, Jim Keene, Hal Cronkite, Mike Brown and Elijah Rogers—who all held the city manager job prior to Phil. 

Every manager, not just in government, receives advice about what “should” be done from a variety of sources and has to make a decision about the correct course of action. No manager gets it right 100 percent of the time. The council itself has already acknowledged that no small part of the BHA problem is a result of their failure. 

So why should the city attorney, a member of the city’s management team, single out Phil Kamlarz and Lisa Caronna? Because they are ultimately responsible for everything that goes wrong with any of the 1,600 people who work for the City of Berkeley? 

Steve Barton, who has worked for the city for almost two decades, was chosen by Weldon Rucker in 1999 to manage the Berkeley Housing Authority. A number of councilpersons and others are saying they are sorry to see him go. So he couldn’t have been so obviously bad that it should have been evident to the city manager that he was incompetent. As a city manager overseeing a $300 million dollar budget, you don’t really have the time to micro manage your department heads. You have to rely on them to generally make the right choice. And after all, the Berkeley City Council was responsible for overseeing Steve Barton’s BHA. 

And where was the city’s attorney prior to her “I told you so” letter? Did she meet with council, the people who really are responsible for reviewing the decisions being made at BHA, and indicate to them that she felt the city manager and his staff and/or Steve Barton were not following good legal advice? Isn’t that her job? And if she did her job, why isn’t she complaining about how the council also ignored her advice? Or more likely when the city manager made, in her opinion, poor choices did she just sit by silently without bringing up her concerns to the council? Is the city attorney unable to have a managerial sit down with the city manager, herself and a few council persons to work through some issues? 

Nobody’s advice, and that includes the Berkeley city attorney, is correct 100 percent of the time. And if not following advice 100 percent of the time is cause for public castigation, it makes the city attorney yet another dysfunctional City of Berkeley employee. 

Doug Fielding 

• 

OUTRAGE AND SHAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does anyone else out there feel outraged and a little ashamed to see our scapegoating the poor and disabled homeless while at the same time they have allowed our Housing Authority to collapse into a cesspool of incompetence and corruption? Is no one outraged when the disabled are cast into the streets and our mayor and City Council make laws to jail them to keep their own mistakes and inaction out of sight? 

Do you feel OK about people referring to our most vulnerable community members as (and I quote John McDougall in the Daily Planet) “human waste”? 

Please join us as we let our mayor and City Council know that while we all want a safe and happy Berkeley, it is not appropriate to criminalize our poorest and most vulnerable. 

At 6:30 p.m. on the steps of City Hall, the Inappropriate Street Behavior Players will be putting on a performance for all who wish to attend. There will be food and music and a good time had by all. If you would like to join our troupe or help with script writing and props, I would love to have you. 

Dan McMullan 

Disabled People Outside Project 

P.S.: Does anyone else find it odd that while the Housing Authority comes under the microscope, Patrick Kennedy, Berkeley’s biggest builder of low-income housing (and someone who has for years been accused of all kinds of hanky panky over there), decides to sell all those big, shiny buildings he loves so much and hightail it out of town? Stay tuned, for heads are about to roll. 

• 

HOUSING AUTHORITY MORASS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Manuela Albuquerque’s recent memos listing management and staffing failures at the Berkeley Housing Authority proclaim that, she, as city attorney, is mandated by the charter to supervise all contracts involving the BHA. 

On May 22, the city manager stood up and acknowledged his failure by not solving the Housing Authority morass. The mayor, City Council members and housing director properly each did the same that evening. Housing Director Barton later resigned his position. Having served on the Housing Advisory Commission for eight years, I know that Barton worked extensively to make housing for those with limited resources possible in Berkeley. 

The Housing Authority has been a dumping ground and troubled agency since the early 1980s. Tenants, owners and even bureaucrats have complained about the service for years. Some blame staff incompetence or lack of caring. Others claim the root causes are under funding and shifting federal rules. Whatever the reason, the Berkeley Housing Authority has not functioned optimally for 25 years.  

Ms. Albuquerque has been city attorney since 1985—almost the entire span of this failure. Why is she just now coming forward to fulfill her obligations under the city charter?  

Jumping on the bandwagon and issuing scathing memos after others have already made the decisions to replace the Housing Authority Board and all the employees at the BHA are disingenuous and self-serving. Albuquerque’s unchallenged reports are not solving any problems, only adding salacious and unsubstantiated details.  

I find it troubling that the only person who has remained silent in acknowledging any failure is Ms. Albuquerque. Ironically, she is the one person that has had the unbroken authority to do something since the mid-1980s. Why she would choose to wait to issue her reports and illuminate us about the crisis until after the decisions to rectify the situation were made and the housing director resigned remain unanswered but intriguing questions. 

It would be refreshing if the city attorney would stop pointing fingers at others for a moment and display the decency to admit that she too is culpable as part of this failed team effort. Given that she has had the authority under the charter to address the situation for 22 years (three times longer than Barton held his post), she may feel compelled to follow Barton’s path. 

Eugene Turitz 

• 

WRIGHT’S GARAGE PROJECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Wright’s garage project in the Elmwood shopping district has created more neighborhood discussion than can be remembered in years, and the commentary in the June 8 Daily Planet has caused confusion about the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association.  

CENA (Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association) is not associated with the Elmwood Neighborhood Association. CENA is one of Berkeley’s oldest and largest neighborhood associations, is incorporated in the State of California, and abides by a legally registered set of by-laws. The CENA neighborhood and our board of directors have not taken sides on this issue. 

Dean Metzger 

President, CENA 

• 

JOE MAGRUDER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The June 8 article on AC Transit’s June 24 “service changes” was somewhat less than accurate. The service changes include discontinuance of the heavily used Line 52, which runs between the UC Campus and Albany Village by way of Cedar Street. While a new line 19 will run on Cedar Street, it will be of no use to those of us who live along Cedar and now use Line 52 to go to and from the UC Campus. 

Joe Magruder 

• 

YASSIR CHADLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you Berkeley Daily Planet. Thank you City of Berkeley powers that be. Thanks to all Yassir’s appreciative fans. The world’s a better place because of our being able to express our voices. 

Joan Trenholm Herbertson 

• 

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ll be joining seniors, California doctors, the California Nurses Association, Michael Moore and many others in Sacramento this next Tuesday because single-payer is on the line—for real. SB840, Sheila Kuhl’s single-payer bill, is going to pass the Legislature again, but at least one other competing bill, with support from Democrats in two cases and Republicans in another, is also going to be sent to the governor’s desk. Even Loni Hancock, one of the co-sponsors of the single-payer bill, has voted for another bill (as well as single-payer) on the grounds that Arnold will veto the Kuhl single-payer bill again and something is better than nothing. Hancock is right on single-payer, but wrong on that other bill. As a doctor, a patient, a senior and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, I know that only kicking out the health insurance companies can solve the out-of-control health care crisis. We need to make it clear that there is huge public support for full, equal, quality comprehensive universal health care for everyone in California now. Please set aside your other important life affairs and join in this push to show they cannot pull the wool over the public’s eyes again. Put Arnold on the hot seat and make sure he knows his veto will be seen as a glaring attack upon the public’s rights and interests. Call California Alliance for Retired Americans to reserve a seat on the bus, leaving Ashby BART at 9:50 a.m.: 663-4086. 

Marc Sapir MD, MPH 

• 

THE NEW EAST BAY EXPRESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for your interest in the new arrangement at the East Bay Express. I am happy to attempt to answer your questions. 

1) I am currently living in Oakland near Lake Merritt with my wife and chocolate Labrador. Our six children are in college and beyond and spread over the country and Europe. 

2) Stephen Buel and I are managing the paper: he oversees the editorial side and I am in charge of business. Although I don’t own either a majority or plurality of the stock I do carry the title of president of the LLC that owns the paper. 

3) Jody Colley, formerly sales and marketing director at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a long-time resident of the East Bay, and a former employee of mine at the Pitch in Kansas City, has been hired as our publisher and given an equity stake in the new corporation. 

4) Other than Bradley Zeve, the founder of the Monterey County Weekly, and Kelly Vance, our film reviewer, the outside investors consist of friends who have no connection to the publishing world and are not now nor have they ever been involved in any way, business or otherwise, with either New Times or Village Voice Media. 

5) When it makes sense for one sales rep to handle a client who wants to advertise in both our paper and the SF Weekly, we have created a mechanism that will allow that. This is a common practice with alt-weeklies in close proximity, particularly in the Bay Area and California. Whenever similar partnerships are proposed, we will be open to discussion. As a new, independently owned paper we set our own rate structure and are not privy to the details regarding the lawsuit involving the previous owners and the Bay Guardian. 

Tim Redmond, the Bay Guardian editor, mentioned in his first report regarding this change of ownership, how rare it is that a chain-owned media outlet has returned to independent control. It’s understandable that corporate media aren’t rushing to report on the benefits that papers like yours, the Bay Guardian, and now again the East Bay Express offer their communities. So feel free to add your thoughts to this list: 

1) Locally owned and operated newspapers are invested, accessible and participate in their communities. 

2) Our shareholders consider the profit motive secondary to offering an alternative voice and are supportive to other perspectives. 

3) Our vision includes a desire to heavily support local arts and non-profit entities, increase our reach within the East Bay core area, offer primarily local content and use the Internet as well as other new media options to ensure we stay available and interactive. 

Finally, it is our intention to not take ourselves too seriously and have some fun. I agree that introducing each of our investors and their backgrounds could only enhance the overwhelmingly positive response the change has received. Please keep your eye on our blog, 92510, at Blogs.EastBayExpress.com, where the full story will be posted. And thanks again. 

Hal Brody 

Independent Owner/Operator 

East Bay Express 

• 

WISH IT WERE TRUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his latest column about my latest column, Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor proffers the following suggestions: That I made up quotes and attributed them to anonymous sources; and that the new owners of the East Bay Express only printed my final story to illustrate the sort of crap they won’t be publishing in the future. 

How I wish it were true. It’s long been my dream to go out as a disgraced liar. Fortunately, I’ve taken a new job at the Village Voice, so I still have plenty of time to fuck up. Where there’s life, there’s hope. 

Chris Thompson 

• 

DELLUMS ADMINISTRATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your columnist, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor, defends Mayor Dellums from media criticism by pleading that we hold off judgment: “So is Mr. Dellums leaning too much toward corporations to help solve Oakland’s problems, or is he not leaning that way enough? Mr. Gammon, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Riles, and the good folks at ORPN are free to draw whatever conclusions they want, of course, but the truth is, perhaps it is simply too soon to tell.” (Berkeley Daily Planet, June 8.) 

When the mayor’s chief of staff, Dan Boggan Jr., simultaneously receives both $200,000 a year as a Clorox director and $97,000 a year for 25 hours a week at City Hall, the conflict of interest is apparent on the face of it. The interests of Clorox shareholders do not coincide with the interests of Oakland residents. Furthermore, anyone who feels he needs to hold two such posts as well as two additional corporate directorships for a total income of more than $500,000 a year certainly appears most interested in his personal fortune. 

To give just one example of what emerges from such conflict of interest, Mayor Dellums announced he will seek an increase next year in the Landscape and Lighting Assessment tax, despite voters’ rejection of the same increase last year. Clorox has an interest in imposing a regressive property tax rather than, for example, a graduated levy based on business revenues. For the year ended June 30, 2006, Clorox made a profit of $444 million on sales of $4.6 billion. 

Seems as though we better rush to judgment because Clorox and its official at the top of the Dellums administration are certainly rushing to the bank. 

Charles Pine 

• 

RUTH MENIKETTI 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How tragic—yet another fatality in my neighborhood, the second in two weeks, this time an acquaintance, Ruth Meniketti. When I moved to Albany in 1973 she was a familiar attendee at City Council meetings, at Ashkenaz doing folk dancing, often at the library, strolling along Solano. She was constantly going to a meetings at the senior center about Albany’s history and always with a smile on her face and a willingness to help Albany in so many ways. Another tragedy for the elderly, albeit active, pedestrian who is simply trying to cross the street. 

My late husband Bert and I met Ruth while we were all volunteering with Dario Menkietti and her on the free Albany Community News. She contributed articles, worked on editing and even delivered the weekly. 

The electronic movable police flashboards, which indicate digitally our speed, are helpful, even with the recent traffic slowing one lane down Marin Avenue. Hopefully the city councils of Albany and Berkeley can come up witDario Menkietti and her on the free Albany Community News. She contributed articles, worked on editing and even delivered the weekly. 

The electronic movable police flashboards, which indicate digitally our speed, are helpful, even with the recent traffic slowing one lane down Marin Avenue. Hopefully the city councils of Albany and Berkeley can come up with creative ideas and solutions not only to deal with folks who continue to drive “under-the-influence” but also seem to be unaware that they too at times are pedestrians who deserve to cross busy streets safely. 

Sylvia Scherzer 

Albany 

• 

REMEMBERING RUTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for your article on Albany resident Ruth Meniketti, who was struck by a car and killed while crossing Marin Avenue. I write in sadness at her sudden death and in deep appreciation for her life and contributions to the community. I have known Ruth only a few years, so I am sure others in the community can speak more eloquently than I about her lifetime of service to the city of Albany, including her tenure as the longest-serving Parks and Recreation Commissioner. I write to honor her consistent commitment to protecting and caring for the environment, her steady presence and participation in community life, and her willingness to show up and work for what she believed was right. Ruth was a lovely woman who generously contributed her time and energy to her community. I will miss her as I know many others in Albany—and beyond—will too. 

Nan Wishner 

Albany 

• 

RECUSAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Elmwood Neighborhood Association requests that Berkeley City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak recuse himself from any and all council deliberations and decision-making on the issue of the Wright’s Garage conversion proposed by Mr. John Gordon. 

The grounds for requesting this recusal are compelling: 

1. Councilmember Wozniak has stated publicly and repeatedly that he favors approval of the Gordon project. For example, on the Kitchen Democracy.org website, he has stated “I strongly support this project for various reasons.” And most recently he has stated on the same website: “For several reasons, I support the conversion of Wright’s Garage from the non-conforming auto repair use to various retail uses and a full-service restaurant.” 

2. Councilmember Wozniak’s Kitchen Democracy article on Wright’s Garage was biased; it didn’t disclose the plans for a bar and lounge, nor did it discuss the three-year traffic task force on Benvenue and its conclusions. Even after a constituent called to inform him about the task force, he withheld the information from the subsequent updates sent to Kitchen Democracy voters. Additionally, voters were never informed about the number of people who might occupy the building.  

3. Councilmember Wozniak is actively mobilizing a selected portion of the community in favor of the city’s approval of the proposal. On June 7 (after the council received the week’s packet with its many letters opposing the Wright’s Garage project), Councilmember Wozniak e-mailed Kitchen Democracy members and asked them to send letters about the project to the City Council in time to make the supplemental packet. Kitchen Democracy members who voted on this issue constitute a population that favors approval. Councilmember Wozniak did not solicit e-mails from his district as a whole, only this select population. It might be considered odd that Councilmember Wozniak solicited letters from a population of people described by Kitchen Democracy as “too busy for City Hall,” unless it is understood in the context of finding people who would write letters with the opinion he wanted. 

Recusal is legally required and in keeping with historical precedent. In the past, the city attorney has required councilmembers and commission members who have expressed opinions about an application—whether pro or con—to recuse themselves when the item comes before the body on which they serve. Ruling on project applications is a quasi-judicial act. Judges are supposed to come to cases with an open mind (and not pre-judge the situation). Regarding the Gordon project for Wright’s Garage, Councilmember Wozniak has stated in no uncertain terms that he has already made up his mind. Therefore, he is obligated to recuse himself when the measure comes before the City Council.  

Recusal entails, we note, that Councilmember Wozniak must leave the council chamber while the item is under consideration. 

Elmwood Neighborhood Association 

• 

BERKELEY AS CALCUTTA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Who made the closed-door decision to suddenly turn Berkeley into a street version of Calcutta? Those who rent or have a business in Berkeley can now expect a holocaust of homelessness that City Manager Phil Kamlarz and his underlings have set up.  

Don’t know about it? Most people don’t. It was largely done in meetings that the public wasn’t informed of. Everyone in Berkeley can be affected by the upwards of 1,000 or more Berkeley citizens who may be ripped from their homes by the $60 a month rent raise for one-bedrooms and $50 a month rent jackup for studios.  

Who are the first group of people to be affected? Don’t bullies usually start with the perceived weakest? The elderly and disabled are being targeted and could lose 750 of their Berkeley homes to start with. These people are being overcharged against the law on Section 8, but what makes us think that any of us are safe? In the rush to give Berkeley property and funds to huge, badly managed developers’ properties, it’s becoming clear that perhaps none of us is exempt. Oh, they couldn’t do that to us; it’s against the law, right? Berkeley’s mostly rubber-stamp City Council (with a few brave exceptions) is suddenly trying to back off from the coming Section 8 evictions by a staff shell game shakeup. Instead of stopping the evictions this second, they’re busy trying to point fingers at each other. 

The coming Housing and Urban Development Inspector General investigation will probably end up stating the obvious: Berkeley (like Oakland and L.A.) is breaking the law by possibly mismanaging HUD and other Berkeley housing funds. It is discriminating by age and disability (including veterans) by not allowing these HUD tenants the same rights as any other Berkeley citizen. If there is a budget shortfall, shouldn’t everyone shoulder it equally ,or none? Why are tenants whose landlords have jacked their rent way above HUD fair market rents be the ones to suffer?  

These are just some of Berkeley’s questionable practices. And the laws Berkeley is currently breaking? 1990 Berkeley Human Rights Ordinance; U.S. Constitution, Article 6, Clause 2; Berkeley Rent Stabilization Ordinance, 13.T6.030—this could be remedied by including Section 8 protections in an amendment; 1977 Housing Element of the Berkeley Master Plan; 1992 U.S.-ratified International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 26; U.N. Charter, Article 55 U.S.-ratified as the supreme law of the land, Americans with Disabilities Act; Civil Rights laws of “disparate impact”; Veterans Housing Acts; Fair housing Act; U.S.-ratified Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Article 161 or 16.1; U.S.-ratified treaty Convention to Eliminate Racial Discrimination, Article 5(e)iii; HUD’s original purpose and rules; 1974 Housing Assistance Payments Program—just to begin with.  

Philip Ardsley Smith 

Berkeley Citizens for Fair Housing 

Endorsed by the Berkeley Gray Panthers 

• 

BLACKS, JAZZ GO WAY BACK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a black woman who is a contributing producer to the jazz program hosted by Doug Edwards at KPFA, I would like to share a little bit from personal history. 

My father, a former Berkeley resident of 50-plus years, originally from Louisiana, exposed me to the music first. I then began humming the jazz standards from the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s made popular by blacks and whites alike to both my children before and after they were born. I continue to expose my daughters to the music and they carry it around with them just as I do.  

My 12-year-old daughter Naima (named for the Coltrane song) can sing a few jazz standards from memory beautifully though she has been to only a couple of concerts.  

My 9-year-old daughter Naomi has been playing blues and jazz on the harmonica and accordion since age 3 (she sometimes plays them simultaneously). She enjoyed Mark Hammel’s (who teaches at the Berkeley Jazz School) annual blues harmonica blowout at Yoshi’s; I made sure we went. We were the only blacks there which made me ponder the absence, but I realize that many black parents are not making this a priority. Yoshi’s gets credit form having matinees so that this can be done. For those black families who do not attend, I think it has more to do with who has the disposable income. Further, these folk instruments are no longer taught in schools and few radio stations even play jazz.  

To make sure they continue their relationship with their musical heritage, we have been listening to Wynton Marsalis’ newest CD because it masterfully merges jazz and rap, a good compromise for me who struggles with time and finances. It is a fresh interpretation of both art forms and my sixth-grade students at Longfellow Middle School also love it! 

Two things that has come out of this continued dialog is the fact that blacks who invented jazz need to pool economic resources and musical talents for future generations and accept the fact that jazz is so loved by the world, we are all in this together.  

Gabrielle Wilson 

• 

REPLY TO A RACIST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If a white person had written an opinion piece titled, “Why I’m a Racist,” as Madeline Smith Moore did (June 8), this newspaper would have had a major riot on its hands. 

Ms. Moore is very good at describing the racism that she and other blacks have experienced, but she somehow never gets around to asking what might prompt some whites, including liberals, to discriminate in the way they do. Could it be that most of the high-crime areas in big cities are predominantly black? Could it be that to this day, a black parent who makes sure his or her child puts homework first, is still a rarity? Could it be that, despite billions of dollars spent trying to motivate and help black students, a black student who studies hard and does his or her homework, runs a real chance of getting beaten up by other black students for “acting white”?  

Ms. Moore also somehow doesn’t get around to mentioning the extraordinary financial rewards that whites, racist and not, are perfectly willing to bestow on blacks who demonstrate extraordinary ability. (So far, this has been primarily in sports and entertainment.) 

A white racist couldn’t hope for anything better than to have blacks continue to think, “If I’m not succeeding, it’s someone else’s fault,” because that will keep blacks on the bottom far more effectively, and with far less effort, than any overt discrimination.  

The outstanding black leaders of the future will begin virtually every speech with, “Racism exists. It’s never going away. Now what?” Will Ms. Moore seriously ask us to believe that if the average black student was as capable as the average Jewish or Asian student, nothing would change for blacks in this country? 

Peter Schorer 

• 

MAKING THE POPULATION CONNECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Population growth affects everyone everywhere. People change the environment, As of now, we have altered more than one third of Earth’s ice-free surface and threatened the existence of many plant and animal species. These changes also pose threats to our well-being (Population Bulletin 2003). From the global warming that shortens skiing season to the water pollution that prohibits surfers from enjoying the ocean, environmental degradation, furthered by increasing population pressure, does and will continue to affect all of our lives. So how do we protect our well-being?  

Many people look towards conservation as the solution to this environmental problem. In the past couple of days, articles sighting positive steps toward sustainability have appeared in the paper; Berkeley is adopting a composting plan and funding a Bio-fuel project! These are commendable movements in the right direction, but I am afraid a critical piece of the puzzle is missing-the population question.  

No matter how much we conserve, increasing population will increase pressure on our environment. We need to highlight the correlation between population pressure and environmental degradation, and increase awareness about the importance of stabilizing population growth.  

Please support this seemingly obvious but much overlooked piece of the sustainability puzzle through increasing awareness. Talk to your family and friends-emphasize that a fundamental way of securing our well-being in the future is through addressing population growth right now.  

Georgia Gann 

Berkeley Field Organizer 

Population Connection 

www.popconnect.org 

The UC infatuation with the BP con game grant goes on despite many comments, letters and op-ed articles in papers and magazines pointing out that fermentation of biofuel crops releases much carbon dioxide needlessly before getting the fuel and leaves much unused biomass in cellulose and lignin. This money would be much better used to find how to get solar energy combined with a catalyst to split water getting hydrogen, the clean fuel. Also the money could be doing much more in maximizing a pyrolysis process to make charcoal from our already harvested biofuel crops, our organic wastes. Their disposal costs many billions a year, while allowing, especially in composting, the recycling of trapped carbon back to the environment as carbon dioxide. Now in Naples, Italy, a major problem of no more disposal space for wastes is making a major ugly mess, which other cities may soon be snarled in, if we do not recognize those wastes can be utilized to get energy and some carbon removal. 

The pyrolysis process such as used by Kingsford can be set up to distill out a fuel mixture for refining as well as charcoal, which comes out very hot to pass through a heat exchanger to generate steam for power as it cools. The charcoal would buried in old mines doing what nature did eons ago with dead biota getting converted to the coal that we now burn, or the charcoal could be spread as a soil amendment. Besides the carbon dioxide problem of burning coal, its mining costs many lives a year and leaves environmental messes of mining wastes covering hundreds of square miles. Some of the charcoal and fuel might be burned to heat the pyrolysis, but research efforts should be put into getting hydrogen or solar furnace heat to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Another way to heat the process could be electricity generated by windmills, such as the new setup reported recently as being put into operation in the Rio Vista area. If a major expansion of windmill power can be achieved, we would be converting to useable power some of the energy overload causing nastier, windier weather created by our fossil fuelishness. With a lot of extra windmill electricity available, it could be used to generate hydrogen by electrolysis of water. 

If we are going to beat global warming, we have to 1) get hydrogen while forgetting bioethanol, we have to 2) get fuel and energy from our out-of-control organic waste mess and we have to 3) get up windmills to collect the free clean energy from the increasing winds caused by our fossil fuelishness. I urge your readers to get these gets going with their elected officials. Tell Gov. Schwarzenegger that the emission programs and other “actions” the state is proposing still keep some of that gas adding to its already poisoning excess to aggravate the symptoms of global warming. To relieve those symptoms and to cut the size of our carbon footprint. We have to actually remove carbon from circulation, which is what the pyrolysis process can do. The BP grant has no concern for such removal. 

Fremont resident James A. Singmaster is a retired environmental toxicologist. 

I am writing to comment on some of the issues raised by the so-called Public Commons for Everyone Initiative on the City Council agenda for Tuesday evening. Without my belaboring the ironic and Orwellian implications of using the term “commons,” what concerns me most is the disproportionate emphasis on coming up with new laws rather than bringing community and city resources to bear directly on the issue of problematic street behavior. Has anyone analyzed how many taxpayer dollars would go to pay for the staff time of members of the city attorney and city manager’s offices to come up with new laws? We could be spending those funds on pragmatic solutions, such as instituting true community policing, funding peer counselors to work on the streets, and increasing services to address the real mental health and substance abuse issues that cause most of the problems.  

I find it unconscionable for the city to spend staff time crafting an ordinance about public urination/defecation without the City Council first making sure that there are adequate and safe locations at all times of the day for people to use a restroom. What about those French self-cleaning toilets that pay for themselves with advertising, which other cities have installed? Providing adequate restroom facilities might well solve the problem without a need for additional legislation.  

I also object to the possible sitting/lying ordinance the council will be discussing as part of the package. As someone who walks with my housemate and our dogs to a variety of nearby business areas, including the Elmwood, Domingo Street, and Telegraph Avenue, I often end up sitting on the sidewalk with the dogs while my housemate goes in to wait in weekend lines to purchase something. But I highly doubt that I’ll be among those targeted if the council were to pass a divisive ordinance, which in the end only ends up criminalizing the homeless. Even if the city attorney’s office can come up with something that passes constitutional muster, is this really what we want Berkeley to be standing for—seeing just how far we can push the Constitution? Sitting and lying in and of themselves are harmless behaviors; since we know from the git-go that such a law will be enforced disproportionately and will not be practical for our local D.A. to follow through on, why don’t we look instead at more creative ways of addressing the underlying issues? Instituting true community policing, first on Telegraph and then extending it to the downtown and other business districts, would be a good first step, but it takes funding and ongoing commitment. A program of peer counselors who spend time on the street getting to know everyone there, directing people toward appropriate resources, and helping model appropriate behavior from and to all would also be deserving of funding.  

Is what we really need new laws? The experience in my neighborhood suggests otherwise. In recent weeks and over the past decade and a half, as a neighborhood leader I have been on the front lines dealing with the issues that confront our neighborhood park (Halcyon Commons) and the surrounding neighborhood, including recent vandalism and an upswing in drug dealing, so I in no way discount the immensity of the problem when we live in an urban area beset by issues the larger society has not dealt with adequately, including poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, and crime. But in all that time I’ve never had a sense that new laws were needed.  

What we need is the will to bring resources to bear that will truly address the underlying problems, ranging from greater enforcement of existing laws to funding services to direct those who engage in problematic behaviors in productive directions, including services for the homeless and those with addictions. Our goal needs to be bringing the community together in a kind of civic barn-raising, rather than pushing for laws that divide us.  

Nancy Carleton is co-founder of Halcyon Commons Park in South Berkeley.

Thank you, Daily Planet, for publishing Madeline Smith Moore’s June 8 testimonial, “Why I’m a Racist.” I appreciate her honesty and accuracy. The article also deserved to be published in a paper that all too often (whether intentionally or subconsciously) reinforces the sensibilities of many of its privileged white liberal readers. Perhaps ironically, as one of those readers, I not only agree with the vast majority of Moore’s sentiments, but also hope to prevent the story’s content from being distorted, diluted, or forgotten. I am, unfortunately, socialized to be white (that makes me a racist). Yet I support the message that racism is real, all-pervasive, and experiences of it need to be heard, respected and acted on. I also apologize for, and in the future should avoid, needing a person of color to start and participate in this antiracist conversation.  

Of course, I don’t pretend to understand racism entirely, to know what it is like to perpetually experience its manifestations or to have the solutions to it; but I know I perform it constantly and I have a responsibility to resist my complicity in this phenomenon that harms every one of us. I fear that Moore’s particular questions (and the entire concept) of racism will likely be addressed in the following ways: requesting racism 101, individualizing, co-opting, denying, quibbling, ignoring, and dismissing. To avoid these unproductive non-starters, I suggest that any folks interested in deflecting away from the heart of Moore’s conversation, please do some homework instead; why not begin with a read of White Like Me and other quality antiracist publications? I consider one of the most insidious aspects of racist behavior to be the (possibly subconscious) attempt to shut down effective antiracist conversation. Why are people of color’s antiracist conversations so often marginalized unless white people become involved?  

I ask to continue, but not co-opt, the conversation and oppose racism on the individual, communal, institutional and national level. Thank goodness Moore was willing to strengthen the conversation in this paper. There are millions of incidents every day; why are most (except for “gang stories” and suchlike that catalyze racism) so rarely publicized in a competent way in the mainstream white news? More importantly, why is the antiracist behavior so rarely advertised? (No, I don’t mean publicity stunts and token feel-good “success stories,” I mean everyday people consistently organizing antiracist acts of resistance.)  

To show what I mean, here’s a discussion of both racism and antiracism to contribute slightly to this newspaper’s analysis of racism. Just a few days ago a fellow white teacher and I were discussing a student. My colleague mentioned that the student’s clothing was inappropriate (implying that the student’s aesthetic, upbringing and identity were too non-white). Instead of confronting my colleague, I went along. Of course, at some level I knew better than to play along with discussion about disciplining the dress, behavior, and identities of young women of color. I was just afraid of losing my membership in the white privilege club. It’s so easy to go along to get along. But I finally spoke; I asked about respect for generational and cultural differences. It wasn’t a superlative antiracist action, but one duo of white people momentarily stopped contemplating a young woman of color as the object of our racist BS. Now I am not, nor do I condone, taking up space with “confessions”; rather I am citing the need to change white hearts and minds. As Moore recommends, “identify that you are racist and…check yourselves.” While I’m at it, feel free to critique how insufficient this example has been; how could I better address institutionalized inequality in education, neighborhood, occupation, wealth, and freedom from oppression? Let’s be certain to continue with an informed and personalized conversation. Let’s consider which folks are most complicit and resistant in the contemporary crises arising from a history of colonization, including the nationwide prison industrial “plantation”; the essentialist, “colorblind,” and relativist incarnations of racism; and reparations.  

There’s much more to be said, but I’m done taking up space reciting some ideas about racism in this newspaper; hopefully the rest of the space is available to people who have been silenced and need space to be heard. And in case you’re considering the possibility, my words are not dismissible as the nonsense of a unique racist hypocrite; they constitute a widely experienced truth about being addicted to (and perpetually in recovery from) the corrupting, racist power I get from my social group’s whiteness. A final note to antiracism veterans: yes, this writing mostly puts out fires; sorry to delay the progress of the conversation.  

David Schroeder is a 25-year resident of West Berkeley. 

HOPE BRIGGS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In reply to Richard Yahiku’s letter in Tuesday’s Planet: 

Were we at the same rehearsal? Your comments on Hope Briggs’ performance during that rehearsal are so inaccurate, and expressed in such vitriolic terms, as to suggest some hidden agenda that has nothing to do with artistic values per se. Indeed, as this whole matter has unfolded, it has attained a definite sub-plot aura all around it. In any case, your claim that Hope Briggs “singlehandedly ruined...an otherwise superb performance,” and that it would have been a disaster both for her and the company to allow her to go ahead and perform the role, is totally outlandish. It is true that she was not singing full out a lot of the time (She was not alone in that; it is to be expected in Final Dress, even without the announcement at the beginning), and even seemed uncharacteristically subdued acting-wise at times, which made me wonder a bit about the direction she might have been given. But “painful (and) excruciating”? Please.  

I have a long-time familiarity with Hope Briggs’ vocal and dramatic abilities; I have even accompanied her several times, in informal situations. I think I have a pretty good idea of what she would have come up to in performance. But she was cruelly and unfairly denied that final step. Come to that, it wasn’t even fair to Ms. Van den Heever to have gotten her “big break” in this fashion.  

As to Becky O’Malley’s bringing up the issue of race in her article, I think she was just casting about for some reason that would at least have some real logic behind it—however ugly the ramifications—to explain David Gockley’s actions. Certainly the reasons that he gave for his decision, and subsequent explanations as to why he waited so long to take action, are flimsy at best. 

Hope Briggs will survive this undeserved blow, by continuing to be the wonderful artist and person she is. The worst damage to her career would only occur if she began to listen to people like you. 

Cara Bradbury 

Oakland 

• 

WHO TO BELIEVE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a person of color, I was hit over the head by a 2x4 when I read your story about Hope Briggs. Particularly the paragraph saying, “[A]s a cynical old-school veteran of the civil rights movement, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a (perhaps subconscious) subtext here. This production is going on TV: it will be simulcast to a number of venues. Hope is a big, handsome dark skinned woman, with strong African features—quite beautiful, but not exactly like most faces you see in romantic roles on TV these days.” After reading that—and personally facing discrimination myself due to my dark skin—my blood began to boil. No, I’m not a fan of opera, but I’m sure it’s dominated by whites. Then I find the New York Times story where Briggs herself is quoted as saying race was “not an issue as far as I was concerned.” So now I’m wondering which paper to believe—the Planet with all of its typos and factual errors or the New York Times, winner of 95 Pulitzers. Gee, which one is right? Gosh, I don’t know. 

Bob Gamboa 

• 

MUSCARELLA DESERVES RESPECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Susan Muscarella has done a fine job of developing the Jazzschool and the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival (DBJF). Susan has made major contributions to the creation of the Downtown Berkeley Arts District. Susan has made three decades of contributions to keeping jazz alive in America. Susan has made sincere good-faith efforts to be racially and culturally inclusive in the school and DBJF. 

Anyone who feels that Susan needs to improve some aspect of the DBJF or the Jazzschool needs to go directly to Susan and in a civil manner discuss the desired improvement. 

Anyone who goes to the press before going to Susan ends up hurting every member of the jazz community, and thus should not pursue that option. We look forward to a great festival in August. 

Mark McCleod 

President, Dowtown Berkeley Association 

• 

JAZZPOETRY FESTIVAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In light of the current controversy about the absence of African-American performers on Yoshi’s 10-year anniversary CD and the small number booked for the Berkeley Downtown Jazz Festival, I would like point out that I recently attended a wonderful jazz festival that was very inclusive of all ethnic groups. It was the First Annual Bay Area JazzPoetry Festival, held at Berkeley’s Hillside Club on April 27. The organizers, Raymond Nat Turner and Zigi Lowenberg, of the group Upsurge, pulled together a remarkable program of jazz performers and poets. Many African-Americans performed, and many of the performing groups encompassed a range of ethnicities. The way this event brought together diverse groups warmed my heart. The program featured groups of musicians and poets performing together, speaking poetry simultaneously with the music. The audience included many African-Americans, whites, and others. The poetry was by turns moving, funny and thought provoking and the music complemented it beautifully. I was impressed by the energy, creativity, polish, and professionalism of this event. I’d like to point out that jazz music can be very inclusive, and that Upsurge is a group worth listening to and following. 

Lea Delson 

NEW SKATEBOARD MECCA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Once again the city has made a mess of things. After many months of labor and tens of thousands of dollars, the new skateboard park at the west end of Civic Center Park is remarkably disappointing. There are no ramps, no smoothly curving turns. Nothing one expects of a world-class skate-park. About the best that could be said is that the timing of its openings coincided with the installation of park-wide lighting, allowing skaters to enjoy themselves after dark. But how can it be expected to draw world-class skaters from around the world? 

Eh? What? What’s that you say? Not intended to be a skate park? Not built with the intention of providing skateboarders a place to hone their craft? Not build with features preventing the cracking of concrete walls, staircases, and seating, or enabling the removal of graffiti? Not designed to minimize the risk of bodily injury? Not, you say, funded or build with the intention of being a skateboard park? 

Then what the hell were the powers-that-be thinking, not putting down those little metal bump-strips that impede skateboarding?! What the hell are they thinking now, since the construction has so obviously converted to a skate park?! Its not like the city is unaware of development, or lacks the manpower to send someone over with a box of those little metal anti-staking deterrents! Even the Democratic People’s Republic of Berkeley has no significant pro-skate-board-caused-destruction coalition, right? Surely few voters will be offended if there is a belated attempt to salvage a project so recently been completed! 

With all that said, I do, however, commend these skaters for claiming this turf and keeping the homeless from creating an encampment in the area. 

Come see the newly completed construction at the west end of Civic Center Park. See the damage that can so quickly be done. Picture the damage after just one year. Ask yourself if there has been a failure to protect the public-works paid for by your tax-dollars. 

People also concerned that one of these helmetless kids is gonna crack their head open and stain the new concrete, or even those concerned about the health risk to kids of cracking their heads open, are likewise invited. (Hey, relax, just a little levity! I know it’s not that hard to get blood off concrete!) 

Michael Cohn 

• 

ONE OF GOD’S FORSAKEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If you’re a regular visitor to downtown Berkeley, you’ve undoubtedly spotted this woman. She’s a familiar sight on Shattuck Avenue, standing on a street corner—most often in front of Ross. She’s not actively panhandling, doesn’t hold a tin cup, but rather just stands, hour upon hour, leaning against the building. 

It’s difficult to determine this woman’s age, but I would judge she’s in her 70s. Mother Nature has not treated her kindly. One side of her face is twisted, possibly the effect of a stroke. Her eyes are bleary; I suspect she is, or has been, an alcoholic, and a cigarette dangles from her lips. She’s quite restless, constantly moving. Also, she avoids eye contact, even when I try speaking to her. And I have tried engaging her in conversation, but to no avail. She accepts the money I give her occasionally, but with no thanks, of course. 

Heaven knows, we’re used to homeless people in Berkeley. But this pathetic creature arouses not only my pity, but my curiosity. Who is she—where does she live—does she have enough to eat? Intent on learning more about her and getting help for her, “Miss Goody Two Shoes” called Berkeley’s Mental Health Department to make a report. I was politely informed that the woman is well known to this department, that she routinely spurns their offers of assistance, but that they keep tabs on her. 

So, I guess there’s nothing I can do for “Miss X” other than greet her and hope that the dollar bill I hand her from time to time doesn’t go for cigarettes or beer! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

A BRIGHT IDEA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I compiled a list of problems that confront the nation and that I believe will be there when the next president takes office. The list contains old, urgent and simmering foreign problems, such as arresting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, quelling violence between Israelis and Palestinians and genocide in Darfur, restoring respect and assuaging hatred and bringing the mess in Iraq to a close. On the domestic front the list contains immigration reform, illegal eaves-dropping, education, medical care, abortion, religion in government, immorality in high places, sky-rocketing cost of political campaigns, and more. 

Now, the last time I looked there were eighteen people in the race to be our 44th president—15 white men, one white woman, one American-African man and one Latino. (Fred Thompson may run but he’s being coy about it.) 

So, my idea is this (Comic strip light bulb!): let’s have 18 (or 19) co-presidents.  

We’d not only spare ourselves the anguish that beset us in each of the last two presidential elections (and the cost) but we’d match the talent to the job. Guliani could handle abortion issues, Clinton push universal medical care, Obama could bring ethics to governance, Richardson reform immigration, Kucinich take on peace policy and foreign policy parceled out to Dodd, Biden, McCain and whomever. 

Some people will dismiss the idea out of hand as being wacky. To them I would simply ask: Is my bright idea any wackier than what’s in store for us during the next year and a half?  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

YASSIR CHADLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Yassir Chadly personifies the essence of goodness and sincerity. The City of Berkeley has shut him out of his desire for the 30-hour position with benefits that he has sought for himself and his family. This is hard to fathom after all he’s done to promote good will as well as good health in our community.  

Yassir has served for 17 years and continues to serve Berkeley and the East Bay Community in a selfless and spiritual way. Where is the justice for goodness and good will? Yassir is a gift to hundreds, and we are denying him something that is so important to him, and me. I ask where is the justice and good decision-making of our Berkeley leadership? Please don’t let this issue pass without deep consideration on the ramifications to many, many people. 

Joan Trenholm Herbertson 

• 

POOL BUREAUCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A very popular water aerobics instructor is demoted because “the recreation department decided to restructure the department to save money. Meanwhile three 75 percent supervisor positions are being created by the department.” When the rationale for a bureaucratic decision doesn’t make any sense, you can’t help speculating what the real reason may be. Bureaucracies always tend to become more top-heavy and disfunctional by downgrading or eliminating positions of people who do the actual work, while creating more positions for managers with less and less to manage. But why demote one of the most outstanding employees in the department? Did his performance and popularity make employees with less energy, dedication and charisma uneasy or insecure? Or could his religion have something to do with the decision? 

Steve Donelan 

• 

MASTER OF THE POOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To those of us who swim daily in Berkeley, the extraordinary outpouring of support for Yassir Chadly comes as no surprise. A city bureaucracy by definition works mostly behind their desks and often in ignorance of how their decisions directly touch the community. In an epoch of savage public cuts and grotesque priorities, the dispiriting decision to dismiss our genius aquarianw may yet have a happy outcome, since Berkeley’s public servants now have a tangible measure for judging some of their current priorities. I’m prepared to bet that letters of support for Yassir’s reinstatement outnumber, by several hundred to zero, expressions of enthusiasm for the new, costly, and redundant roundabouts (installed in addition to stop signs!) encountered on our way to swim under his gracious tutelage.  

Yassir has roots in a culture that honors water more seriously, but he shows no resentment of our cinderblock apologies for the glory of the hammams of North Africa or old Roman baths. Indeed, this gentle Master of the Berkeley Pools conjures some of their magic and beauty for us every day. 

Iain Boal 

• 

SAFETY OF MEMORIAL STADIUM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Planet’s June 1-4 headline proclaims that there is, “No Fault Under New Gym Location.” However, buried toward the end of the article is the statement, “There is no question that the stadium itself sits directly over the Hayward Fault, which federal seismologists say is the most likely site of the Bay Area’s next major disaster, and Alquist-Priolo rules will apply to the university’s plans for a major stadium overhaul and expansion.” The stadium could not be built today because it is bisected by the fault. Many people would be killed if the elevated concrete structure of the west side of the stadium collapsed, not to speak of the panic if the stadium was full. Because of major failures in recent earthquakes the engineering of concrete structures has changed dramatically since the early twenties when the stadium was built. Forty seven people died when the Cypress Freeway collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. Many more freeways collapsed in the 1971 San Fernando and the 1994 Northridge earthquakes. The Berkeley school district relatively recently built a concrete frame classroom building at the Cragmont site, only to tear it down about 15 years later because it was judged unsafe. 

It does not seem responsible or logical for the University to build the Student Athlete High Performance Center first, then retrofit the stadium for seismic safety, hoping the Alquist-Priolo rules can be bent. While it is obviously easier to raise money for a new high tech gymnasium than to worry about the safety of the stadium, the priorities seem reversed. Besides, where would the money come from? 

Henrik Bull 

FAIA Architect 

• 

BICYCLE LANES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bicycle lanes on Berkeley streets are inadequate. I commute by bicycle daily to the UC campus and to shop for groceries, etc., and I’m therefore aware of problems. From my home, near Ashby and College, the designated bicycle route on Hillegass to Bowditch ends on Bancroft Way. Bancroft does not have a bicycle lane, although one is very much needed. Several AC transit bus lines, campus buses and many delivery vehicles in addition to the heavy automobile traffic on Bancroft make cycling perilous. Although I bicycle within three feet of parked cars, vehicles have come within inches of side swiping me. Another example: the bicycle lane on Milvia ends at University Avenue. Every major arterial should have bicycle lanes where possible. This would encourage more people to use a bicycle instead of an automobile. Bicycling with minimum hazards needs to be encouraged if we are to take conservation and minimization of greenhouse gas production seriously. Adding more bicycle lanes would be a relatively inexpensive measure. 

Malcolm D. Zaretsky 

• 

BETTY KIETZMAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was deeply saddened to read about the death of Betty Kietzman of Fresno Avenue. A retired Berkeley police officer was driving, perhaps legally drunk, and struck and killed her. I believe in severe punishment for people who are found DUI or DWI which might look more like the European systems—jail time, revoking license for six months, heftier fines, etc. Let’s get creative about these problems which seem to continue injuring and killing my neighbors. Back in the early 1980s there was a terrible crash involving three cars where our wonderful Albany Fire Department rescued one person using the jaws-of-life to cut the car’s steel frame to get one person out; luckily no one was seriously injured, it took a few hours for the police to close off the intersection and take measurements to determine who was at fault. However my neighbors at the time were shocked that cars were racing up Washinton Street, often at speeds exceeding 40 mph, way too fast for that intersection. “Isn’t it terrible,” said neighbors. I went in and typed up a petition to our City Council. Not long thereafter we got on the Albany City Council Agenda and suggested first a traffic signal which was denied due the cost. We were very willing to settle for a temporary (90-day) stop sign, which upon review became permanent. That sign has slowed down traffic and adversely affected traffic coming from busy Santa Fe and Solano. Now folks stop at that corner, Washington Street and Santa Fe Avenue. 

Not only are there many elderly and/or disabled citizens of Berkeley-Albany in and around Solano Avenue, but also parents with kids on foot or in strollers, albeit everyone needs to be safe while crossing any street, especially Solano Avenue. Visitors from many cities who come here for our wonderful boutique-type shops, fantastic restaurants, outdoor seating at many cafes, flower shops, the Albany Y, post office, two movie theaters—yes they’re often jam-packed, and they deserve safety while going about their errands. 

I often find most other drivers are very courteous in my neighborhood motioning me forward when we come to stop signs at approximately the same time. The last time I got a moving violation was more than 10 years ago and find I’m much happier and take more time to get places. Let’s remember to breathe, be courteous to the other person whether they be on bicycles, foot, trucks, motorcycles, skateboards, busses or cars. Please remember to be aware, mindful, please not on your cell phone, share the road and be kinder to each other.  

Sylvia P. Scherzer 

Albany 

• 

RIVKA MASON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Congratulations to Malcolm X school gardener Rivka Mason for receiving the National Service Award.  

Gardens on Wheels Association, dedicated to preventing and reversing childhood obesity by delivering martial arts classes, etiquette, grooming and self-discipline to the school and parks’ gardens, gave her its first annual “School and Park Gardeners Recognition Award” in 2002. 

She has a genius for seizing the teachable moment—when a child first has an “ah hah!” epiphany in the garden about the taste, purpose, or classification of a fresh fruit or vegetable. Her ability to teach kids about the joy of eating healthier matches perfectly, like a carefully chosen wine for a particular dinner, with providing martial arts to jump-start weight-loss and building self-esteem to resist peer pressure and ubiquitous junk food advertising, so that kids can avoid or withdraw from the obesity epidemic. 

Rivka also goes the distance to complete the circle of educating kids so the message is implemented: She works with the parents as well, often to reinvoke long lost nostalgic memories of grandparents’ vegetable gardens. Repositioning convenience fast food from the notion it is a reward to the reality that it can shorten kids’ lives by contributing to early-onset preventable chronic disease is an essential part of educating our children in the edible gardens. 

Gardens on Wheels Association hopes to revisit Rivka soon and roll out a Berkeley and Albany-wide martial arts in the gardens program, with Northern California’s oldest and largest martial arts school on University Avenue in Berkeley, West-Wind Schools. 

Wendy Schlesinger  

• 

POWER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Having documented and been the brunt of fundamentalist right and anti-abortion attacks and activities for 15 years, this statement makes a whole lot of sense: “The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of anti-abortion forces; what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want a share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities.”—Ursula K. LeGuin 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

• 

SUSAN PARKER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At least two of us really miss reading Susan Parker’s column. She is certainly good for a laugh. I know that she is working full time now. But I know at least one former teacher who would love to keep hearing of her adventures. 

Ardys DeLu 

• 

GILMAN FIELDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gilman Fields, a five-field, $18 million dollar athletic complex, broke ground this week. The project, located west of the 80/Gilman interchange, consists of two lighted artificial soccer/rugby/lacrosse fields, a full-size baseball field and two Little League/softball fields. The artificial fields are due to be ready for the 2007 winter season, starting in December while the grass baseball and softball fields should be ready by next spring. The fields will be used for all adult and youth sports from adult Ultimate Frisbee to youth lacrosse. “It’s been six years of hard work to get this complex off the ground but it’s going to transform Eastshore State Park from a little used strip of bay shore land into a real urban park,” according to Doug Fielding, chairperson of the Association of Sports Field Users, the nonprofit that will be operating the park. “One of our goals is to have the revenues from the use of the fields, pay for all the operational and capital costs for the complex. We have quite a bit of experience with that on other complexes we are running.” 

“We have already sold out almost our entire inventory of practice and game space for the winter season and based on this and past experience the athletic fields will serve between 225,000 and 275,000 people per year. Imagine what that means to have that many people coming down to the park not only for athletic use but walking Fido while Jimmy does his practice, or taking Mary’s little sister down to the San Francisco Bay while Mary’s learning rugby, or just going for a walk or run through the North Basin Strip or Berkeley Meadow. It’s a lot of people.” Most of the money for the park came from the East Bay Regional Parks District, the Coastal Conservancy and California State Parks. 

Doug Fielding 

• 

RACE TO THE BOTTOM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading about Bates’ public common proposal, and now Sharon Hudson’s column on malefactors, I cannot help but feel that we are in a race to the bottom. People who are homeless are totally dependent on the commons for life, and not just aesthetic pleasure or amenities. For over 30 years the federal government and the state have slowly shed responsibility for the poor and disadvantaged. The responsibility has been passed to the counties and cities which have become overloaded. The Street Spirit and other homeless newspapers track the cities that have passed draconian public behavior laws ostensibly to control behavior, but in practice to simply move the homeless and the disadvantaged out of town. The remaining places become havens, and their resources become more stressed, until they too start to look for a way out. Berkeley politicians at least have the grace to talk about public restrooms and the like, but if it is just talk and no funding we will join the race to the bottom. 

Of course the real scary thing about the race to the bottom is that, in a sense, it works. People act out, out of frustration and anger, and get thrown in jail, and hence off the streets, and become someone else’s problem. Or even more permanently, they die. The numbers I have seen is that the average lifespan for the homeless is 20 years less than for everyone else. We don’t actively kill them, they die instead of neglect, exposure, lack of social support and care, substance abuse and mental illness, and inadequate medical care. Out of sight, and out of mind; our society is failing in its responsibility to the poor and disadvantaged. 

We cannot be the state’s sole haven for the disadvantaged, but if we view the disadvantaged as a behavior problem then we join the race to shunt them somewhere else. The disadvantaged need advocates. If we can’t get the legislature to be responsible, then the city should take to the courts to get the state to provide the money needed to handle the public health problems of our homeless. We should keep track of other city’s policies towards the homeless, as their policies impact us. We should perhaps even consider intervening in challenges to other city’s laws, if we feel they are simply trying to move their “problems” elsewhere. A radical idea? Yes, trying to save people’s lives is a radical idea. 

Robert Clear 

• 

NUCLEAR WEAPONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you, thank you Marvin Charchere for your commentary on nuclear weapons (June 5-7). It is so essential that this specter be raised and kept in front of the public as a terrible and possibly imminent reality. 

Naturally, most humans don’t want to think about mass annihilation any more than we want to contemplate our own demise. But the fact is this is a more real possibility than ever since the 1945 Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing. And given the fact that the world is in a downward—and rapid—slide toward an atavistic barbarism on all sides, it is more than ever important to keep the possibility in the foreground of our thinking. 

Not that we can necessarily prevent it. The juggernaut of species self-destruction seems, at this point, all but unstoppable with so many world players recklessly threatening each other with dire retaliation for infringement on their territory, sovereignty, religion or governing structure. And the number of wise heads at the helm—people who can clearly contemplate the consequences of such hot headedness—is not impressive. 

Perhaps we are living through a moment when the opposite forces within homo sapiens sapiens are being highlighted: humans are both extremely clever—capable of toolmaking development and extraordinary physical feats. Consider the two most prestigious accomplishments every country covets: the Olympic games to showcase the very best in human physical prowess, and possession of a nuclear bomb. 

But any kind of wisdom that includes considering our species (and all other living forms) is pretty rare. With all the talk of globalism there is no widespread thinking about how everything and everyone is affected by what happens elsewhere on the planet. We have been supremely lucky that no nuclear bombs have been dropped on cities in 62 years. But with six countries in possession of this lethality—and four more on the way—we are all at risk of this luck running out. 

Joan Levinson 

• 

WEST BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Quoting Richard Rogers, the world-famous architect and recent winner of the Pritzker award which is the most important architecture prize in the world: “The success of a city is whether people want to live there or not.”  

“Zoning creates walled cities, urban structures and their inhabitants literally need room to breath.”  

West Berkeley has literally been choked by its zoning restrictions and from Pacific Steel. I am a third generation native to West Berkeley. I enjoy living in West Berkeley except the bad air quality created by Pacific Steel and the lack of nearby services such as a grocery store, a bank, and shopping which is taboo in our zoning area.  

From Pacific Steel on Frontage to Cal Ink on Fourth and Fifth Street, the old AMC Concrete plant on Sixth, to the old Urban Ore lot on Seventh and Gilman, the Gilman corridor needs a new plan which also reinforces Mayor Tom Bates’ Green vision for our city.  

If you really want to green our city, mayor, start with the air. Start with Pacific Steel and Casting. Redevelopment can lead to a better quality of life, not the pessimistic view Zelda Bronstein’s claims “gentrification.”  

This can only happen with a change and a new visionary outlook to the current zoning uses for West Berkeley. Imagine a multi-use space with parks, recreation, shopping, and people living in “green live work spaces.” Next time you eat at Picantes imagine strolling across the street and watching your kids run around the new Urban Ore Park. 

What does the city have planned for that space? A school bus parking lot. 

Patrick Traynor 

• 

HEALTHY FOOD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How can we get healthy food to poor people and to the elderly? I watched some old people near where I live buying over-ripe fruit from the grocery store. It pained me to think that we have not found ways to provide a basic supply of fruit and vegetables to the people who need it most. 

Are there ways? 

Romila Khanna 

• 

THE WHOLE THING SMELLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am perplexed by the latest developments in the Berkeley Housing Authority story. This week City Manager Phil Kamlarz fired Housing Director Steve Barton, apparently without any notice or opportunity to rebut charges of incompetence. No charges have been released yet; the responsibility for explaining what went wrong has fallen for inexplicable reasons to City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, who herself has been deeply involved with the management of BHA and is the only current city employee who has exercised continuous oversight since the problems began, decades before Barton became involved. 

The whole thing smells like scapegoat and coverup. How can the city manager expect us to believe a list of charges released after the punishment is carried out? How can he possibly explain, after the city’s lengthy and open (and laughable) history of coddling misperforming management, why he’s assessing blame without conducting a thorough and independent investigation? How big is this mess? 

Dave Blake 

As one of the most prolific Black saxophonists in the country, born and raised in Oakland, I’m ashamed of the hostility and triviality that has been directed toward SUSAN MUSCARELLA and the Yoshi’s establishment by Black musicians in the Bay Area.  

Further, though I do not know SUSAN MUSCARELLA and have never played in her festival nor her school, her efforts to perpetuate the BLACK CLASSICAL MUSIC of America must be acknowledged and applauded, regardless of any personal bias against her as an individual. In fact, Blacks in the Bay Area should feel downright EMBARRASSED or ASHAMED that she chose to defend herself in the media; She most certainly did NOT have to do this, whatsoever.  

The same EMBARRASSMENT should be felt by Black musicians in regard to Mrs. Yoshi, her husband, and her establishment. She has a near 20-year track record, of hiring Black musicians and treating them with the utmost respect and generosity. I have performed with Max Roach, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, and many others who have performed at Yoshi’s. None of the aforementioned ever voiced a single complaint of RACISM at anytime, whatsoever. Peter Williams, Yoshi’s current booking agent and manager, is also fair and honest in his dealings with Black musicians as well.  

Consequently, a mere compact disc of live recordings void of Black musicians is triviality beyond comprehension, to say the least. Further, for the past three years, I have performed for the “Ronald McDonald House” organization for children with cancer. Mrs. Yoshi has attended every event and has voluntarily donated her time and personal monetary funds to this organization. Henceforth, a mere compact disc that was unintentionally void of Black musicians, is not a complete and accurate representation of her noble character in any way, shape, or form, whatsoever.  

Henceforth, since Black musicians have been found floating on the surface of the ocean (a CD with no Blacks), let’s probe the ABYSS of it: 

A man builds a house that is brand new from top to bottom (= BLACK creators or pioneers of Jazz from the late 1800s until early 1940’s). The house begins to deteriorate over time, but rather than performing the necessary repairs, the builder of the house decides to move. Another man buys the house (= BLACK Jazz musicians from the 1940s thru the late 1960s) and does SOME of the repairs; Not ALL of the repairs. Consequently, the house deteriorates further and this owner decides to move as did the previous owner (= BLACK jazz musicians from the early 1970’s thru the early 1980s). The house remains ABANDONED, in SHAMBLES, and on the verge of COMPLETE COLLAPSE or DESTRUCTION. So, another man sees the condition of the house, and decides to invest in the total restoration and maintenance (= WHITE FOLKS) of this house; He now lives there, himself.  

Yeah, now WHO is to BLAME for the current condition of Black musicians in this new millennium?  

Is it the BLACK WHO ABANDONED his house, or the WHITE who FIXED and MAINTAINS it, eh?  

Yeah, if Black folks would pool their own monetary resources, and buy their own record labels, clubs, magazines, and so on, then they would not have the time to be concerned about what Yoshi’s and The Jazz School are doing. Actually, if only two of the prominent Blacks in sports (Kobe Bryant and Lebron James) were to combine their salaries and invest in the perpetuation of their own Black art form (Jazz), Blacks would have a budget of over 250 MILLION dollars to buy an entire city of Jazz schools, nightclubs, record labels, magazines, and so on. However, this has not been the case with these disgruntled Black musicians who are willing to attack Yoshi’s over a freakin’ CD, yet won’t pursue their own Black multimillionaires with the same zeal or vigor, whatsoever; HYPOCRISY of colossal proportions, indeed. 

I’m quite tired of Blacks COMPLAINING, MARCHING, CRYING, and BEGGING to be where they are not wanted; This is DISGUSTING and PATHETIC, to say the least. Blacks should feel EMBARRASSED or ASHAMED that OTHER RACES have been forced to perpetuate Black’s OWN art form, due to the majority of Blacks across the country NOT WANTING nor CARING about their OWN art form.  

The “blame everyone but self” mentality is OVER in this new millennium, indeed. Consequently, any affliction that Blacks are experiencing is of their own design or fault; Not the fault of Whites nor any race other than THEIR OWN! 

Robert Stewart is a Bay Area saxophonist.

As I see it, the recent public questioning of the hiring and operating practices of the Jazzschool in Berkeley by prominent jazz artists and their supporters living in the San Francisco Bay Area is long overdue. Here is just one local example of how the actions of self-appointed authorities on this cultural art form are marginalizing the musicians who are the direct connection to and inheritors of the legacy. This is being done by trivializing the dedication and level of artistic achievement of our resident musicians who were and are members of the real jazz community here, which existed long before all of these exclusive so-called jazz festivals and schools.  

Instead of joining the jazz community, these bubbles have been formed which allow many musicians to go straight to the bandstand without paying dues and to operate safely away from the scrutiny of the traditional standards of jazz music. Academic experience is being equated with genuine earned stature and artistic achievement. The problem is that it is being done in the name of jazz by people who have positioned themselves to deny access to performing venues and the media to many world-class musicians and music educators while at the same time professing their respect for the art form and its history. What is at stake is the livelihood and very survival of working-class musicians who are shut out of this new model after spending many years, often twenty or thirty years or more in dedication to honing their craft. 

It may be interesting for some people to learn, and almost impossible for some to fully accept, that jazz music is in fact Black music invented by the African American descendants of slaves in this country. It is a cultural art form with a documented history, a distinct tradition and scores of living breathing musicians who come out of that tradition. It is blues-based music, so much so that musicians I know will tell you that there is no significant difference. I often hear phrases such as “Jazz is the blues” and  

“if you can’t play the blues, you can’t play jazz.  

Where did the blues come from? The blues were born from the field hollers of the slaves and Negro spirituals. Connect the dots —jazz, blues, Negro spirituals, field hollers—and it always leads back to the African-American descendents of African slaves. This is not subject to debate and for anyone to talk about the African-American “contribution” is an attempt to obfuscate the truth of its origins. To me anything less than acceptance of this fact is about as ridiculous and backward as refuting the scientific basis for evolution. 

The cultural tradition of jazz music historically has been a handing down of the art form in the same fashion as oral tradition from one generation to the next. Jazz musicians have great stories about whom they have gigged with. I have always thought about this as a type of jazz pedigree; you are not a good jazz musician because you say you are, but because your artistic achievement has been recognized by an artist who is indisputably qualified to make that judgment. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. Just a few of the musicians I know have gigged with or worked for Big Mama Thornton, Cal Tjader, Esther Phillips, Wynton Marsalis, Donald “Duck “Bailey—who has played on more than one hundred classic jazz albums—Charles Brown, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Lewis, Ed Kelly, Pharoah Sanders, Al Tanner, Buddy Montgomery, Monk Montgomery, Diane Reeves, Carmen McRae. Gigging and playing with such musicians is not to be confused with encountering artists of this stature in a jam session or master class, but actually being paid by them to perform with them.  

These jazz legends were recognized and came up under the greats before them and so on. This has been the tradition. These are just a few of the people I know and the names I have listed are only the ones I can readily remember. It is staggering to consider what a complete list of all of the musicians I know and have met who live in the San Francisco Bay Area would look like. How can it be that someone is good enough to play with many such musicians throughout their career, but magically not of the “quality required” for local jazz festival organizers, often in their very own hometowns, when it comes time to chose the performers who will receive the considerably larger sums that are earned from playing a festival as opposed to nightclub gigs? The director of the Jazzschool in Berkeley, who has been quoted as saying “I hire quality, not ethnicity,” knows these very musicians and many others, and has for at least 20 or 30 years. She also knows the esteemed educators/performing artists in the tradition who have held and hold positions at local colleges. With her extensive knowledge of the local scene, to plan the Berkeley Jazz Festival as has been described in the media, and to engage in the hiring practices she has been called on, looks like she is actually hiring ethnicity and not necessarily the highest quality available in jazz. The ethnic group that is overwhelmingly frozen out are African-American musicians, especially African- American men, the very foundation of the art form.  

Being invited to play with musicians of the caliber I have mentioned is a serious achievement and may seem like a very high standard, but it has always been the standard until now. This should not be some form of pee-wee soccer where everyone gets a trophy for showing up. 

This same director of the Jazzschool has also attempted to confuse the issue by bringing in the idea of gender discrimination. This may have been, and may still be, true, but that is not what the charges against her are, nor the point of the current discussion. After all, she hires plenty of non-African-American women. More important, trying to use the gender card to divide Black musicians and their supporters is to discuss the issue outside of historical context. The fact is that throughout its infancy, playing jazz was a gritty business. That’s just how it was. You must remember that jazz was formed during a period of this country’s history when African-Americans were forcibly segregated into their own communities, and African-American women were involved. I would also add it was not the most enlightened period for women’s rights in general, but that was certainly not because of jazz musicians. What appears to be discriminatory to me now is the exclusion of a whole group of local, resident artists. 

Readers interested in Doug Edwards’ radio show Ear Thyme can find online in the KPFA archives. The relevant shows were on May 19 and May 26. The guests were concerned artists, a jazz club owner, and the director of the Jazzschool in Berkeley. 

Esther Green is a Berkeley jazz fan. 

On Tuesday night, the Berkeley City Council will consider a project that could bring a restaurant with a bar and lounge on the scale of Spenger’s to the Elmwood. But there would be one crucial difference—it wouldn’t have any parking.  

We know little about the prospective tenants for the Wright’s Garage project approved by the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) on March 8th. The restaurant and lounge proposed for the Gordon Commercial property at 2629-2635 Ashby Ave. has been presented as anywhere from upscale and high-end to mid-price. The only things that we know for sure are that the restaurant will be up to 5,000 square feet, seating 200 people or more, and that there will be a full bar and lounge. “It is important to the concept and to the success of the restaurant that it serves alcohol,” wrote attorney Harry Pollack on behalf of John Gordon. Pollack used the term “alcohol” to mean hard liquor in addition to wine and beer. 

We have many fine restaurants in the Elmwood in which wine and beer enhance the dining experience, but people do not come to the Elmwood to drink. The Elmwood Zoning Ordinance says, “service of alcoholic beverages [is] allowed only as incidental to food service in Food Service Establishments.” A lounge primarily serves alcohol. Even if a lounge is inside a restaurant, food service is subordinate to the service of alcoholic beverages. The real profit margin is in serving alcohol, and this restaurant would be permitted to get up to 50 percent of its revenue from alcohol. If the City Council approves this project, it will have to break a law that protects the quiet family-oriented character of the Elmwood. 

Currently, Shen Hua is the only Elmwood restaurant serving distilled spirits, but the food at Shen Hua is the main attraction. Shen Hua’s bar is located within the dining room, and it accommodates customers waiting for tables. There is no lounge. Shen Hua closes at 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 p.m. on weekends, as compared with the Gordon establishment, which would be open until late each night and until midnight on weekends. Location is also significant; Shen Hua is on College Avenue and well-insulated from the neighborhood. Wright’s Garage is on Ashby, right next to a residential area. 

It is odd that a bar and lounge would be proposed for this site—not just because of its proximity to homes and the obvious violation of the Elmwood Zoning Ordinance—but also because this ignores the history of the neighborhood. A three-year task force run by the city determined that the intersection at Ashby and Benvenue was a traffic hot spot, due to the many accidents occurring there. The mitigations the city made will be insufficient to protect pedestrians, drivers, and neighbors when a 200-seat restaurant and lounge with no parking operates nearby. Those mitigations are barely effective now. On May 23, there was yet another accident. This time a car jumped the curb and landed next to a neighbor’s fence. If anyone had been on the sidewalk, it could have been much worse. Yet, in spite of the neighborhood’s traffic problems, a sidewalk café is planned for this restaurant. 

The Zoning Ordinance says a project must not “Generate traffic and parking demand beyond the capacity of the commercial District or significantly increase impacts on adjacent residential neighborhoods.” This restaurant will need enough personnel to wait tables, prepare food, and bus dishes for 200 or more customers. The building will have between four and seven commercial establishments, including an exercise studio of undetermined size. There could be well over 300 people in this building, yet Planning staff recognizes no significant impact on the neighborhood. 

This restaurant and all but one of the retail uses are exceptions to Elmwood quotas. To approve any exception, there must be a finding that the exception “shall result in the positive enhancement of the purposes of the district, as evidenced by neighborhood resident and merchant support.” ZAB concluded that since the Merchants Association seemed not to oppose the project, this constituted a positive finding of merchant support. A poll on KitchenDemocracy.org (KD) was used as “evidence” of neighborhood support. The many and varied heartfelt objections from residents were dismissed by ZAB Secretary Deborah Sanderson, who said, “I can get hundreds of emails that sound very much alike…and they’re amazingly similar when I get 50 of them, but [KD comments] are individual comments not following a template...” And this is how City Staff nullified neighborhood concerns in a single bureaucratic blow. 

A KD poll is not a proper neighborhood survey for a number of reasons. For one thing, it doesn’t survey the neighborhood; it surveys its members. Many Elmwood residents don’t belong to KD. Nor should this be necessary; it is the city’s responsibility to conduct an objective survey with an open public process. Residents wrote to the city, in the manner prescribed by law, without knowing that they had to join KD to be heard. 

As of 2007, KD no longer edits articles for bias, and it doesn’t require arguments to be balanced. Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s piece on this issue was slanted; it didn’t disclose the plans for a bar and lounge, nor did it discuss the traffic task force and its conclusions. Additionally, voters were not informed about the number of people who might occupy the building.  

When KD results are turned in, the city never sees how the questions were asked and the changes made to the article as members are voting. In fact, KD erased Councilmember Wozniak’s original statement of strong support for this project when the Planet noted that he might have to recuse himself from voting in a manner consistent with the city Attorney’s previous rulings on prejudgment. 

With or without Councilmember Wozniak’s vote, the Council will have a chance to correct a terrible injustice done to Elmwood residents and merchants. Let’s hope that Councilmembers have the courage to overturn ZAB’s flawed decision. 

When we consider global warming, most of us know we must change our fuel-guzzling ways, not continue them with the UC-BP (British Petroleum) biofuels project. Here is a protest song about UC-BP recycled from the song “Simple Gifts”:  

If it’s good to live simply, 

And it’s good to be free, 

Then we all must just say “No!” to BP, 

And to the Department of Energy, 

So we won’t be a “Company Town” for UC. 

Question “Carbon Credits,” 

Folks can fudge the statistics, 

Now they’re saying nuclear’s “Green”! 

How ‘bout intercontinental ballistics? 

We know what’s Green, leaves and trees, 

They make the oxygen that we breathe! 

The Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee (DAPAC) is facilitating UC expansion—outside the campus, across Oxford Street, all over downtown, and beyond! Parking for residents is being eliminated, while DAPAC plans 1000 new parking spaces for UC! If you bike or walk downtown, it can be so filthy and scary you may not return. Our mayor does not prioritize resources for keeping the sidewalks clean and safe for all.  

The DAPAC members are mostly well connected to implement the mayor’s number one priority—development! Dorothy Walker, for example, was former manager of Property for UC Berkeley, and chair of “Livable Berkeley,” our local developer advocacy group. Another DAPAC member formerly worked for the Association of Bay Area Governments. ABAG gave Patrick Kennedy $72 million in loans to develop seven high-density projects, which serve essentially as student housing for UC.  

Also on DAPAC is parking elimination strategist and Transportation Commissioner Rob Wrenn. Recently he set his sights on using the Berkeley Way parking lot for housing or a park. Mr. Wrenn also said he would like Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to run on University Avenue. Many merchants believe this would hurt them by eliminating parking—and it would remove many trees. 

The DAPAC includes two associates of Berkeley Oakland Support Services (BOSS). The BOSS affiliates insure that “service-resistant panhandlers” are not required to improve their streetside manners. This strategy plus the mayor’s lack of priority for cleanliness and safety, keeps downtown scary, and filthy. And there is method in this madness! The cumulative effects of this and the parking loss cause businesses to fail. Empty storefronts proliferate—and the downward spiral to blight, which furthers Mayor Bates’ big plans for redevelopment. 

UC is already in the downtown, often renting, possibly awaiting deals. The Oxford parking lot, which the City Council majority sold for $1.00, was an acre of prime property, worth millions. It kept movie theaters and marvelous restaurants in business, and allowed citizens who could not walk there easy access to downtown. The “Brower” building on that site may end up serving the UC/BP biodiesel/ethanol project. Mayor Bates would not deny this possibility! 

While we are losing our city’s wealth, our mayor says he is designing a downtown like Paris. Like a Berkeley version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” the DAPAC spins the “The Mayor’s New City” week after week.  

What has this to do with BP and DOE? UC wants to develop Strawberry Canyon with 15 new labs, six acres of parking, hotels, and deforestation all around, for the BP and DOE projects. UC told DAPAC they might like to move Lawrence Hall of Science downtown. Would this free up more space for the BP and DOE biodiesel project? The DOE grant is competitive—UCB will need to have facilities lined up to receive it. 

The biodiesel ethanol deal has several parts. BP, like the Trojan horse entering the city, brings the early money, to ready wet labs, dry labs, offices, and housing all over Berkeley to compete for the DOE grant to be announced this summer. A consortium has agreed to match the DOE grant for immediate commercialization of the biofuels. 

With the potential for millions of dollars, UC seems unable to consider the needs of people, the canyon’s trees which absorb CO2 and make oxygen, the forests and fields worldwide that would be destroyed to grow biomass for ethanol to run our vehicles. Even the Hayward fault under the canyon gives UC no pause. Is this a manifest destiny dream? Or do they take direction from George or Tom, politicians who understand green capital, not green science, and are unable to consider what is critical for peace and for life on earth?  

Merrilie Mitchell is a Berkeley civic watchdog and former council candidate.

AC Transit’s proposed bus rapid transit (BRT) is just a bad idea. Here is why:  

First, the project provides no real benefits. According to AC Transit’s own environmental impact report (EIR), the project will only cause a small reduction in automobile usage (p. 4-28), provide no reduction in energy consumption (p. 4-152), and it will poach riders from BART (p. 3-31). 

Second, because it turns traffic lanes into bus-only lanes, it will cause more traffic congestion, especially on nearby streets. Just in south Berkeley and north Oakland, AC Transit admits that the project will make traffic worse on Telegraph near Dwight, College near Dwight, Adeline near Alcatraz, and Telegraph near Alcatraz, and at the intersections of Adeline and Ashby, Adeline and Alcatraz, College and Ashby, College and Claremont, and Telegraph and Alcatraz (EIR pp. 3-53, 3-61 and 62). 

The EIR does not even consider the impacts of this additional traffic on the Hillegass Bicycle Boulevard or pedestrians in areas such as Elmwood and Rockridge. 

Third, because of the bus-only lanes and fancy bus “stations,” lots of parking disappears. Just between Dwight Way and Woolsey, the project would result in the removal of approximately 142-146 spaces on Telegraph. This is about 73-75 percent of the parking on Telegraph in this area, and 25 percent of parking in the area when you include Telegraph-accessible cross streets. (p. 3-112). AC Transit proposes to reduce the impact of this by converting 65-70 spaces on cross streets near Telegraph to metered parking. (p. 3-127) In other words, the parking for businesses on Telegraph has been shifted to nearby residential areas. 

Finally, there are better alternatives. It was back in August of 2001 that AC Transit decided to go with bus rapid transit instead of light rail. (But AC Transit did keep light rail as a “long-term objective,” and refers to the buses and stations as “rail-like,” probably because it knows that many people simply like riding trains better than they like riding buses.) The EIR fails to compare the greenhouse gas impacts of adding 46-51 new fossil fuel-burning buses with the impacts of renewable electric-powered light rail. In a carbon capped or taxed world (not considered by AC Transit in 2001), light rail starts looking a lot better. 

Or, if service to the community is the primary goal, AC Transit would do better to reduce fares (the current $1.75 for a basic fare, plus $0.25 for a transfer, is pretty pricey), and hire more drivers to run more (and smaller, more fuel efficient) buses more frequently. This would provide more economic benefit to the community, and help low-income transit users far more than big fancy buses and stations. 

If AC Transit wants to provide environmental benefits and a “rail-like” experience for riders, then it should go with light rail. If AC Transit wants to benefit the community and its most vulnerable customers, it should reduce its fares and provide more frequent service. The bus rapid transit proposal is an expensive compromise that provides neither environmental nor community benefits, and it should be rejected. 

Call or write or e-mail AC Transit, or show up at the meeting at 5:30 p.m. on June 14 at the North Berkeley Senior Center, and tell AC Transit to kill the bus rapid transit project. 

Peter Allen is a Berkeley resident.

I want to weigh in on behalf of the vast majority of Berkeley citizens who voted a resounding yes on Measure G this past election. Voters said we want the city and its businesses and residents to comprehensively and effectively address the issue of climate change and energy policy. That means addressing this extremely important issue in many different ways, from the efficiency of individual buildings, to how we power, heat, and cool our homes, to how we get from place to place within Berkeley and the greater Bay Area. When it comes to transportation, this means viable alternatives to the private automobile, including bikes, walking, and transit.  

Cities across this country and across the world are making major investments in rapid transit systems, bucking the primacy of the car and building rail and bus transit systems that attract new riders, and provide real and efficient options for residents and workers. Berkeley has a chance to embrace and foster such transit by supporting AC Transit’s new East Bay Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line, which would connect Downtown Berkeley to Oakland and San Leandro with fast, efficient, and clean hi-tech buses on dedicated lanes. This system is like rail with rubber tires, and similar systems are up and running in Los Angeles, Eugene (Ore.), across South America and Canada, and more are planned and under construction across the United States. Unlike regular bus systems, BRT buses do not sit in traffic, and BRT stations are spaced further apart and are designed like rail stations so that they move people faster and thus can compete with and even out-compete cars. We need these kinds of systems if we are to take a real bite out of our carbon emissions and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.  

The East Bay BRT line is an essential component in the fight against global warming. Opponents of the system, which are few in number but particularly vocal, point out that the buses will remove valuable auto lanes and impact parking. These are exaggerated claims, but even if the new system does take away a few parking spaces or impact the efficiency of car travel, is that not something that we can accept to take on such an important issue as global climate change and oil dependency?  

Of all places, Berkeley should be a leader in this challenge, not a place where single-issues like parking and driving take primacy over transit, bikes, pedestrians, and the environment. Let’s live up to our progressive reputation and support innovative new travel options for Berkeley and the East Bay. We can’t win the battle against climate change with solar panels and Prius’ alone. We need to invest in and support transit, and advance plans and projects that put more housing and jobs within walking distance of major transit investments like BRT stations and BART. Only then can we say we are really addressing the mandate laid out by the voters when they passed Measure G. 

Joe DiStefano is a Berkeley resident. 

Hillary Clinton remains the favorite to be the Democratic presidential nominee at their August 2008 convention in Denver. However, while most Dems view her positively, she’s unpopular with Independents and Republicans. This is called “the Hillary problem,” but it’s really “the Bill problem.” 

The other night my wife and I went out to dinner and had a conversation with a British couple at the next table. When talk turned to politics, the English woman ranted at length about Hillary Clinton: made it clear that she thought Hillary would make a terrible president. We weren’t surprised; almost every time we have an extended conversation with Brits, we find that they have negative feelings about the junior senator from New York. 

Unfortunately for Sen. Clinton, a lot of Americans don’t care for her either. The latest CBS News/New York Times poll indicates that 42 percent of respondents have a “not favorable” opinion of Ms. Clinton, versus only 38 percent who have a “favorable” rating. Since Hillary announced her candidacy for president, her “unfavorable” percentage has consistently topped her “favorable” rating. This accounts for the perception that Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure. It’s the reason that many Democratic Party insiders are backing other candidates such as Barack Obama and John Edwards. 

Despite her divisive reputation, it’s widely acknowledged that Sen. Clinton is very smart and has been extremely effective in the Senate. So there’s a huge discrepancy between public perception and her actual performance. Judging from our dinner conversation the other night—and similar chats we’ve had with Hillary bashers—the senator’s unfavorable ratings have little to do with her record of accomplishment over the last six years: it’s emotional.  

The strong negative feelings about Sen. Clinton focus on her role as Bill’s wife: they date back to the Clinton relationship during the Monica Lewinsky imbroglio. Those who dislike Hillary don’t approve of the way she responded to Bill’s priapic escapades. As a result, they don’t trust her. Our dinner companion asserted that Hillary should have divorced Bill; her logic was if she couldn’t control her husband, she wouldn’t be able to control the country. 

This faulty reasoning—Hillary was an imperfect wife and therefore would be a bad president—seems a particularly insidious form of sexism. It applies standards to Hillary that haven’t been applied to our previous presidents: we’ve had a number of White House occupants—John Kennedy, for one—who weren’t “perfect” husbands. Nonetheless, there’s a certain cultural logic in this thinking. 

Because Bill and Hillary Clinton are very public figures, there’s been a lot of media speculation about their relationship: rumors that Hillary is a lesbian and that she and Bill have a secret deal to go their separate ways sexually but to support each other politically. But, of course, there’s another, simpler explanation as to why they stay together: Hillary loves Bill and she’s committed to the relationship despite his misadventures. Having met Bill and Hillary, it’s easy to imagine why she sticks with the former President: he’s a charmer. 

While it’s possible to overstate the impact of the Clinton’s relationship on Hillary’s favorability ratings, there seem to be three separate things going on that affect public perception of the senator: first, the Clinton’s have brought this on by deciding that both of them will be politicians. It’s a relatively unique situation: the only comparable, current American political couple is Bob and Elizabeth “Liddy” Dole. Laura Bush’s favorability ratings far outshine those of her husband; but she’s not a politician, rather a high-profile wife in what appears to be a strange traditional marriage. 

However, Bill and Hillary don’t have a traditional marriage. While Hillary has gone out of her way to emphasize her role as Chelsea’s mother and Bill’s wife, she fits the conservative stereotype of the liberated woman and that’s a flashpoint for many Americans. As much as those of us on the left coast support the idea of the “modern” marriage—where both spouses work and share family responsibilities—the reality is that most Americans idealize the traditional marriage, where dad “brings home the bacon” and mom is a homemaker. 

Nonetheless, the basic problem with Hillary Clinton’s popularity is not her modern marriage but her spouse. Bill’s favorability ratings consistently top those of his wife. It’s easy to understand why: both Clintons are smart and gracious, but he has charisma. The former president has that ineffable quality that makes you believe he wants you to be his special friend. He’s a charmer, while Hillary is not. As a result, many folks who adore Bill find Hillary cold by comparison. Behind this lurks the reality that a lot of Americans who are captivated by the former president are deeply troubled by his ethical imperfections. However, they have trouble holding him accountable; so they blame Hillary. Their adoration follows a peculiar sexist logic: they conclude that Bill is much too nice to be fully responsible for his peccadilloes; therefore, Hillary must have driven him to them. That’s the formula that affects Ms. Clinton’s poll ratings: good Bill, bad Hillary. 

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

On Friday I came home from my substitute teaching job at 4 p.m. I was in bed by 5:15. I slept for 14 hours and awoke refreshed and happy. School is out. Yeah!  

Seven weeks ago, when I took over a classroom of 24 kindergarteners, I never dreamed I would be so physically and mentally challenged, so exhausted, befuddled and betwixt. I’ve had many jobs, but none as difficult as this.  

At the age of 15, I ran a hot dog stand on the tenth hole of a private country club. Almost no one stopped by. I spent my days bored and frankfurter-laden. It was lonely out there in the rough. There was nothing to do but eat.  

When I was 16, I worked as a chambermaid at the Jersey shore. I could barely clean my own bedroom but that didn’t stop me from making bad hospital corners, and snooping around the private property of guests at the Polaris Motel. I wasn’t good at dusting, but I possessed the one quality my employers needed: I showed up for work everyday.  

The following summer I bussed tables and learned how to groom poodles. While in college I waitressed and worked at fast-food joints and bookstores. After graduation I taught school in southwestern Virginia. On the first day a father came into my classroom and asked where I was from. When I said New Jersey, he studied my face for a few seconds and then stated, “Once a damn Yankee, always a damn Yankee.” He left before I could point out to him that the Civil War had ended approximately one hundred years earlier. A few minutes later the room erupted in its own form of civil war, and I spent the next four semesters fighting battles I rarely won. But after that I got things under control. For the following eight years I taught reading, writing, and arithmetic with ease, and except for the school janitor shoving me into a utility closet and feeling me up, I had relatively few problems.  

In 1983 I moved to California to work for an adventure travel company. I led bicycle tours to exotic locations around the world. It, too, was challenging, but in a different way. I ushered well-heeled guests to and from hotels and restaurants. I changed flat tires. I delivered luggage and prepared fancy picnic lunches. I drank martinis at dinnertime with people I often did not have much in common with.  

There were other occupations as well: data processor, life guard, swimming instructor, camp counselor, climbing gym desk clerk, gofer at a law firm. None of these jobs was as important as my recent stint shepherding kindergarteners through the ABC’s and the numbers one to 20.  

When I arrived, they were on letter S and number 10. I pushed and prodded, warned and threatened, lost patience and self-control. It was not my finest performance, but there is one thing I did accomplish. Before my arrival, no one had taken the kids to the play structure in months. Many of them could not swing, slide, or climb. By the last day of school, I had all of them hanging from the monkey bars. It was my greatest achievement. Not exactly profound, but it gave me, and them, much pleasure. When one child, who had never been on top of the play structure before, looked out from her high perch at the surrounding chain link fence and announced, “Wow, look at me! I want to stay here forever!” I knew I had taken my students to a place they’d never been. We had accomplished together something concrete, valuable, and joyful.  

When no one was looking, I threw out the nine naked Barbie dolls. It was a great way to end the school year.

It may be a drab little brown bird, but the song sparrow has attracted a lot of scholarly attention. The song sparrows of San Francisco Bay alone support a kind of cottage industry. We have four distinct subspecies here, three confined to tidal marshes, the fourth to neighboring uplands. The marsh sparrows, generally smaller and grayer than the upland birds, have adapted to their environment by evolving a higher tolerance for salt water (although their insect prey appears to meet most of their water needs). 

The foundational song sparrow studies were done by Margaret Morse Nice. After her academic career was derailed by marriage and motherhood, she spent most of the Great Depression tracking the lives and fortunes of a song sparrow population along the Olentangy River in Columbus, Ohio. She also found time to collaborate with Konrad Lorenz. According to another pioneering behaviorist, Niko Tinbergen, this “American housewife was the greatest scholar of them all.” 

Along with every other aspect of sparrow behavior, Nice paid close attention to their songs. It became clear that there was no such thing as a stereotyped song sparrow song. “The songs of each male are entirely distinct,” she wrote; “as a rule they sound pleasant and ‘cheerful’ to human ears, yet a few are disagreeable, while still others are of great beauty.” Each adult male, she found, had his own repertoire of six to nine song types. And song patterns changed as a bird matured, with a period of improvisation before the repertoire crystallized. 

She was curious as to whether songs were inherited or learned, or a mixture of both. After listening to several generations of sparrows, Nice concluded: “I found no case of a male having the song of his father or grandfather on either side.” On the other hand, she heard young territory-holding males imitating their neighbors and sometimes incorporating those songs into their budding repertoires.  

She also experimented with captive-reared birds, exposing them to recordings of species they would never have heard in the wild—nightingales, European song thrushes—and noting the odd-sounding songs they developed. 

So what was going on? As research expanded to other species, it became clear that many of the true songbirds—the oscine passerines, to be technical—learn most if not all of their vocal repertoire. That’s also true of a few other groups, notably hummingbirds (or the few hummingbirds that can be said to sing). 

The process seems to require exposure to a model or “tutor” at the right developmental phase. But were the tutors parents or neighbors? 

The evidence on that score is mixed. Male song sparrows reared by canaries copied their foster fathers in one study but not in another.  

Luis Baptista, the late curator of birds at the California Academy of Sciences, found a couple of song sparrows in the wild that had somehow acquired the songs of white-crowned sparrows. Juvenile males in Washington state appeared to have learned their songs from holders of neighboring territories. But in a sparsely populated British Columbia habitat, young males retained their fathers’ songs. 

Experimental research by John Burt and Adrian O’Loghlen at the University of Washington suggests young birds acquire their songs by eavesdropping on neighbors. From the age of 15 days, fledglings were housed with a rotation of singing adult males. That exposure ended after a month and a half. At eight months, each young bird was paired up with an adult tutor. The youngster was then moved to a separate chamber where he could hear a second tutor interacting with another young bird. 

The young males’ songs were analyzed when they were about a year old. Fifty-one percent of their repertoires came from the tutor next door they had overheard. Another 19 percent came from tutors with which they had shared a cage, and the remaining 30 percent from the adult birds they had heard as infants. 

Getting your songs right is crucial to attracting a mate. One study showed a female preference for the local song dialect. Repertoire size may also influence mate choice, according to a lab study, although field work did not confirm this. (In any case, song sparrows are pikers compared with western marsh wrens, which may have up to 210 distinct song types.) 

As far as I know, no one has studied song acquisition among the Bay’s salt-marsh song sparrows, which occupy small territories year-round in tightly packed habitats. The lucky yearlings that could shoehorn themselves in would be surrounded by potential song models. A likely project for some contemporary Margaret Nice. Bring your waders.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. A song sparrow at home in the marshes of San Pablo Bay.

According to the U.S. mainstream media and the Bush Administration, the fighting in Lebanon between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army is really a proxy battle between the Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Syria over efforts by Damascus to destabilize Lebanon and snuff a UN investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.  

“Fatah al-Islam is a terrorist organization that has been imported into Lebanon,” said Saad al-Hariri, a leader of the Sunni Future Movement, a supporter of the current government, and son of Rafik Hariri. “The side that stands behind it is known, and its aims are known.” 

White House spokesman Tony Snow said, “We will not tolerate attempts by Syria, terrorist groups or any others to delay or derail Lebanon’s efforts to solidify its sovereignty or to see justice in the Hariri case.” 

But writing in the Cairo-based, English language weekly Al Ahram, Beirut journalist Lucy Fielder says that Fatah al-Islam’s anti-Shiite ideology caused it to break from the Syrian-backed Fatah al-Intifada last November.  

The Syrian government is dominated by the Alawites—a variety of Shiism—who make up only about 12 percent of Syria’s Muslim population. The rest are overwhelmingly Sunni. In short, Fatah al-Islam, with its extremist philosophy of Sunni Salafism, is an anathema to the Damascus regime. 

According to Ahmed Moussalli, an expert on Islamic movements at the American University at Beirut, Fatah al-Islam’s rise is a direct outgrowth of the split between Siniora’s Sunni-dominated government and the Shiia organization, Hezbollah. The latter is closely aligned with Syria, which withdrew its troops from Lebanon shortly after Hariri’s assassination. 

On May 29, the UN Security Council voted to set up an international court to try those suspected of involvement in Hariri’s death. 

“In Lebanon in the last few months,” according to Moussalli, “it seems the Hariri group has been channeling funds and allowing weaponry to enter in order to create a Sunni militia … to bargain with Hezbollah.”  

Back in March, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh found exactly the same thing. “American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies has allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in Northern Lebanon…these groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time their ideological ties are with Al-Qaeda.” 

Hersh interviewed Alastair Crooke, a veteran of almost three decades in the British intelligence service, MI6. Crooke told Hersh, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” According to Crooke, when Fatah al-Islam showed up at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli, the scene of the recent fighting, “within twenty four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah.” 

“The key players,” in the drive against Syria and Iran, according to Hersh, “are Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador) Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security advisor.” 

Hersh’s sources include current and former Bush Administration officials, and a “senior member” of the House Appropriations Committee.  

Just prior to the outbreak of fighting in Lebanon, Cheney made an “off the radar” visit—no press—to Saudi Arabia. 

In an interview with Democracy Now host Amy Goodman, Hersh called the U.S. charge of Syrian involvement in the current fighting “beyond belief.”  

After a May 21 visit to Beirut, European Union (EU) Foreign Minster Javier Solana also said that he saw no evidence of Syrian involvement in the recent fighting. 

Fatah al-Islam leader Shakir al-Abssi fled Syria for Lebanon when the Damascus authorities cracked down on militant Islamic groups, and, according to the New York Times, killed his son-in-law. It is no accident that almost a third of Fatah al-Islam’s fighters are Saudis. The Riyadh government has been bankrolling anyone who will join its Sunni alliance against Shiia Iran. 

While the fighting has been situated in a Palestinian refugee camp, the Palestinians have kept at arm’s distance from Fatah al-Islam. “This is a gang, and only 3 or 4 percent of its members are Palestinians,” according to Sultan Abul Ainain, head of the Lebanese Fatah movement. “What they’ve done is an attempt to create a rift between the Palestinians and the Lebanese government.” 

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah accused the U.S. of trying to destabilize the country by importing its war against al-Qaeda to Lebanon, and called for a negotiated settlement rather than a military assault on the Nahr el-Bared camp. “Does it concern us that we start a conflict with al Qaeda in Lebanon and consequently attract members and fighters of al-Qaeda from all over the world to Lebanon to conduct their battle with the Lebanese Army and the rest of the Lebanese?” Nasrallah asked rhetorically in a recent speech. 

According to Robert Fisk of the Independent, Hezbollah has assured the French, Italian and Spanish governments that their soldiers stationed as peacekeepers in the South of Lebanon will be safe from attacks by Fatah al-Islam. The fact that Syria’s closest ally in the region has agreed to protect EU troops from the Sunni extremists in Tripoli suggests that Nasrallah and Damascus are on the same page in the current fighting. It is highly unlikely that Syria would sponsor a group from whom Hezbollah has agreed to shelter EU soldiers.  

The Bush administration is already gearing up to pump $280 million in military aid to the Siniora government. According to an anonymous U.S. official, “Lebanon will get whatever it takes to boost its internal defense capability to control its territory.” 

Well, yes and no. The U.S. vetoed rockets for the Lebanese Army’s Gazelle helicopters and Belgium Leopard tanks because of concerns that the weapons might be used against Israel in the future. 

The flood of military hardware may well mean that when the Lebanese Army finishes off Fatah al-Islam it will turn its weapons on Hezbollah, possibly in conjunction with a new attack by Israel. The latter is openly being talked about in Israeli circles, and Gush Shalom founder Uri Avnery warns that a third Lebanon war is a real possibility.  

According to Fisk, if the Israelis do attack, the results would be a “far fiercer war than the 34-day conflict last June and July.” Hezbollah has apparently been building a network of roads and bunkers north of Lebanon’s Litani River in preparation for just such an attack. 

So, what happened? In their effort to isolate Iran and Syria, did Cheney, Abrams, Khalizad, and Bandar ramp up an anti-Hezbollah militia that went haywire and attacked the Lebanese Army instead? Or was that the plan from the beginning: use the fighting as an excuse to ship arms to the Siniora government, turn those arms on Hezbollah in conjunction with another Israeli invasion, and reignite Lebanon’s civil war?  

“The dangers of a conflagration that could spread across the country are serious,” Professor Charles Harb of American University of Beirut wrote in the Guardian. “The U.S. once nurtured the mujahideen in Afghanistan, only to pay the price much later. In the dangerous game of sectarian conflict, everyone stands to lose.” 

Investigative reporter Robert Gammon of the East Bay Express doesn’t reach Gary Webb status—who among us does, after all?—but he’s one of the best the Bay Area now has when it comes to uncovering essential information to the public that others don’t even think about looking for. 

Mr. Gammon is at his most effective when he provides us with the information and allows his readers to put it together and draw the larger picture ourselves. But he is at his least effective when he tries to present quick conclusions. 

So it is with one of Mr. Gammon’s latest offerings (“Dellums Chamber Ties,” Full Disclosure column, East Bay Express, May 30), which tells us that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums’ chief of staff—Dan Boggan—continues to be a highly paid member of the board of directors of Oakland-based corporate giant Clorox while he is working for the Dellums administration. As far as I can tell, the story first broke two weeks before on the website of the Oakland Residents For Peaceful Neighborhoods (ORPN) (www.orpn.org/Boggan1.htm). 

That’s good as far as it goes, an important piece of information that you can put in your pocket and put together with other pieces—from time to time—to help understand what the Dellums administration may be doing and where it may be going. But Mr. Gammon goes a step further in his May 30 piece, including charges and insinuations by both the ORPN and by my good friend, former Oakland City Councilmember Wilson Riles Jr., that the Boggan-Clorox connection means that Dellums administration decisions are being unduly influenced by what Mr. Gammon calls Mr. Dellums’ “growing connections to East Bay corporate interests and the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.” 

Fair enough. Except that this week, the Express has now published a column by the we-thought-he-was-out-the-door reporter Chris Thompson which draws the exact opposite conclusion, that the problem with the Dellums administration in its early stages is that it has failed to attempt to make corporate connections. 

“It’s an old adage that big-city mayors can do two things: hire and fire people, and sell their city to investment capital,” Mr. Thompson writes in a City Of Warts column called “Anybody Seen Hizzoner?” 

“For all his faults, Jerry Brown knew this, and he pitched Oakland to private capital till he was blue in the face. Dellums has decided to pitch Oakland to public capital, by begging Gov. Schwarzenegger and Congress to help this ailing, troubled city. Some people are impressed with the ex-congressman’s Beltway connections, but there’s a drawback to this strategy. Set aside the fact that Dellums probably won’t get much money. And that, even if he does, it’ll be years before it reaches Oakland. As long as Dellums calls on Sacramento and D.C. to help with Oakland’s terrible problems, he’s calling attention to—you guessed it—Oakland’s terrible problems. He’s telling entrepreneurs and developers that the city is once again desperate and broke, and they should think about starting their businesses somewhere else.” 

So is Mr. Dellums leaning too much toward corporations to help solve Oakland’s problems, or is he not leaning that way enough? Mr. Gammon, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Riles, and the good folks at ORPN are free to draw whatever conclusions they want, of course, but the truth is, perhaps it is simply too soon to tell. 

That, however, is not the case with some of the other conclusions drawn by Mr. Thompson’s somewhat-grumpy “Anybody Seen Hizzoner?” column? 

Rumor has it that Mr. Thompson has not been working for the Express for a couple of weeks. His name no longer appears on the paper’s staff list, and calls asking for him at the Express switchboard get the reply that he has gone to work for “the Village Voice” (the Express, you may know, recently broke its ties of several years with the Village Voice newspaper chain). But perhaps the Express editors had Mr. Thompson’s last offering in their in box, and present it to us as a last reminder of what we will be missing in their paper in the future. 

The “Anybody Seen Hizzoner?” in the column title (“Hizzoner” being a common phonetic rendition of “his honor” and meant to mean Mr. Dellums) is a reference to an earlier conclusion, reached by several local newspapers, that because Mr. Dellums had “disappeared” from public view in the early months of this year following his inauguration, the new mayor was not doing much of anything. As you remember, last April, in a posting on the Express blog, Mr. Thompson himself wrote that “[a]pparently, Ron Dellums can sleep on the job for more than three months, create task forces to conduct secret meetings but do nothing more than draft toothless position papers, and generally piss away his time in office.” 

You will have to read Mr. Thompson’s latest column yourself to get its full flavor and his complete reasoning, which often appears to contradict its own self, but several points stand out. The first is when Mr. Thompson asks the question “But when, exactly, will the new mayor do something significant?” The second is what Mr. Thompson concludes is what he calls a “pattern” that he hasn’t done anything “significant”: “In his first five months,” he writes, “the mayor has offered next to nothing in terms of action or even a specific vision.” Mr. Thompson “backs up” his old assertion that Mr. Dellums is off-the-job by the somewhat convenient use of anonymous sources who are supposedly afraid to speaking against Mr. Dellums in public, writing that Mr. Dellums is "’absentee,’ said one City Hall source. ‘He’s not spending time in City Hall, not talking to councilmembers. ... I don’t see any work being done.’ Another source snorted, ‘Mayor who? I mean, where is he?’” Do these anonymous people actually exist? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Only Mr. Thompson knows. 

However, the theme of the absent Mr. Dellums is echoed by someone calling himself “Tab,” who responds online to Mr. Thompson’s column by writing “With Ron himself rarely on site, there’s a vacuum on nearly every issue.” And Mr. Thompson himself concludes that “Dellums has offered no original thinking, no new programs, no new directions. … If he keeps it up, Oakland is in for a long four years.” 

Some light in the midst of all of this heat. 

Is Mr. Dellums an “absentee” mayor, “rarely on site?” Nowhere have I seen anyone back up this assertion with facts on Mr. Dellums’ actual schedule, nor, for that matter, has anyone made a case for why it should matter if Mr. Dellums were actually spending a lot of his time in the early days of his administration away from his office. Further, with both a chief of staff and a city administrator in place to take care of the actual running of city business, I don’t think what Oakland voters elected Mr. Dellums to do last summer was to sit behind his desk at City Hall. 

But that, in fact, is one of the problems in judging the success or lack of success in the Dellums administration. What exactly was it that Oakland voters elected Mr. Dellums to do? 

The mayor actually made very few specific policy promises during last year’s campaign, instead invoking broad themes that generally spoke of changing the city’s atmosphere and turning the city around. It was good politics, since it drew in a broader coalition of voters who admired Mr. Dellums from his years as Congressional representative, and were looking for a break with and a change from the Jerry Brown years. It also gives Mr. Dellums a freer hand, now, to pick and choose some specific things to do in these first months. 

But if it is true, as Mr. Thompson asserts, that Mr. Dellums has “offered next to nothing in terms of action or even a specific vision” in his first five months in office, should that worry us? I wouldn’t think so. 

I have long felt that it is the second year of a four-year, first-term administration that is the most critical in making accomplishments, whether it be in the office of a president, a governor, or a city mayor. The first year is usually spent in getting a handle on the bureaucracy, massaging the budget, and putting plans in place. The second year is the time for initiating major projects, the effects of which usually only begin to become apparent by the end of the third year and the beginning of the fourth. 

If that is the case, five months into its first year, it would seem to be too soon to judge the success or failure of a Dellums administration that is still working out what its major policy initiatives will be. That will probably only become apparent, one way or the other, by the end of next winter. 

But for those who voted for a change from the Jerry Brown years, the differences in the two administrations have already proven to be stark. I give just one recent example. 

Last week, the Ad Hoc Committee for Return of Local Control to the Oakland Public Schools held a forum on the state school takeover and school closures at the OUSD headquarters. Mr. Dellums was one of the panelists. He sat on the stage through several hours of citizen testimony, listening, apparently patiently, as the long line of citizens came to the microphone to give their complaints about the situation in the public schools. In a similar situation, Jerry Brown would have made an early statement and then quickly ducked out the door, holding a de facto press conference in the lobby while the meeting was still going on, so that if you watched the news that evening, you’d think he was the star of the show even though he was long gone while the show was still going on. But Mr. Dellums stayed until the very end, and when the testimony was finished, gave brief remarks that referenced several speaker comments, showing that he had, indeed, been listening. Afterwards, with tired staff members waiting, Mr. Dellums spent another 20 minutes or so in the hallway, talking individually, one by one, with several citizens who approached him on his way out. They were still talking when I left. 

If any of those citizens felt that their new mayor was “absent,” none of them mentioned it. And to them, I’m sure, this was something significant: that they have a mayor who long after the election is still paying attention to them.

I just love aphorisms. They’re so … so … one-size-fits-all. No bother with versatility or adjustment for circumstances, just “Time and Tides wait for no man” (but they do wait for women as we all know), “Cast not your pearls before swine” (I like the idea of “casting for swine” although it may not be the right season for swine and I think you need a second set of tackle). “Never throw good money after bad” (now which was the bad money? Let me think). Actually, I think I can say something about the last one. 

When I think of throwing good money after bad, I think of bathroom remodels and specifically of those that I’ve seen over the years in which a select group of repairs were made by in accord with the items seem in a pest report. Now, I have a lot of respect for the folks in the pest control business and some of our local pest guys are quite skilled but even they will generally agree with the argument I’m going to make, so let’s not make this about them when, as usually, it’s really about ME. 

Bath remodels are all too often a “reaction” to one or several specific failings in the bath. Usually, water has gotten into framing from any of several joints in the finishes. Let’s run them down. The first is the shower shell. This may involve a tub (most commonly) but can be just a shower. This most often involves ceramic tile, but can involve any of a wide range of alternative finishes such as cast polymer panels, hardboard or plastic. 

For each of these finishes, there are layers which are built up in the installation. There is also quite a spectrum of quality in these installations that will affect their longevity and their vulnerability to moisture intrusion. Tile is the worst, in many ways because of the many joints involved and the many common misconceptions regarding acceptable installation among installers (including highly paid professionals). That said, tile can absolutely be well installed and last for decades without failure if good practices are observed. It’s also my personal favorite so don’t get me wrong when I seem to be picking on tile. 

Tile needs to be installed over a solid backing so there is almost no potential for flexion on the surface. The materials behind need to have some tolerance for moisture themselves since grout does tend to hold and transmit moisture to some extent and everything leaks, at least a little, over time. This is why sheetrock (AKA drywall) is not rated for tile installation. We tried this a couple of decades ago with a special “marine” grade (or green) sheetrock and almost no municipality will now allow it. The paper surface would eventually get wet through the grout or the edge of the tile and the paper would get all icky and fall apart (that’s the technical terminology) taking the tile with it. 

Tile needs to be affixed to a cementitious or other water retardant substrate to stay in place for more than a decade (though I’ve seen bad jobs fail much sooner than that). 

Also, the substrates need to be “papered” or “flashed” so that water that might penetrate these substrates can leak down into the pan of the shower or the tub (most of which have a lip at the edge for just this purpose). This is sometime referred to as a “belt & suspenders” approach. If one thing fails, another acts as backup. When dealing with water, you might want a belt, suspenders and a wetsuit. You just can’t assemble these systems carefully enough. 

I don’t want to get too bogged down with the details here but the point is that putting a bathroom together involves many layers that integrate together in a complex assembly. This is one very good reason never to do a PART of a bathroom remodel. It’s the same with roofs. It’s a bad idea or part of a roof because you violate the principle of layering involved in proper assembly. 

Also, there are both the financial and the design aspects to consider. Economies of scale dictate that one should do a large enough job to take advantage of the benefits that come with adequate scale. The smaller the job, the more expensive it becomes. This is true with many things but, boy, let me tell you. It’s way true with construction. It is nearly always more economical to “gut” a bathroom to the studs than to try to do it by half measures.  

This necessitates that you care, at least a little, about the quality of the bath as a whole, but nearly everyone likes a nice bathroom. When you do the entire bath you can easily expose all the damage that may have occurred over time, such as fungal decay (rot) caused by moisture finding its way under the flooring over behind the shower enclosure. When you’ve exposed everything in this way, it’s quite easy to remove and replace a few sticks of wood or a plywood floor. What seems as though it might be quite daunting is actually quite easy when you can easily reach it all.  

Once you’ve replaced the damaged wood and exposed the rest to the drying air, you can easily install new pipes and wires. Again, everything is open. This is where things get really good. You now have the chance to do a number of things that would almost certainly not get tackled if you simply “cleared” the pest report or fixed the one thing that the plumber or tile person has pointed out. Now you can look at the proximity of fixture. Many older baths lack a nice comfy spaces around the toilet. Try for a 30” space, side to side, with the toilet centered. Also, see if you can get 21” in front of the toilet. With the sink try for a similar standing space. See if you can get a shower to be at least 30” by 30”.  

If you have a sloped wall on one side of the bath, try a “test fit” so you know that you won’t bump your head when you shower or approach the toilet. City inspectors vary in their leniency on these last matters. Most are somewhat forgiving of a slope or bump as long as the primary clearances remain healthy. 

Changing a sink cabinet to a pedestal may give you the room you need but consider where the storage will go. A cabinet over a toilet might be the answer. An open set of shelves can hold rolled towels. 

Think about light and air. Every bath needs ventilation and good airflow can literally mean the difference between replacing tile in 10 years or 30 year (No joke). Allowing things to constantly dry out is key in a bath. Despite the value of windows (and I suggest keeping them out of the shower if you can manage), I heartily endorse the use of vent fans. Cheap fans aren’t worth the money saved (they start around 30 bucks) but a really great fan may move 3 times as much air while actually being quieter. The Panasonic fans (which start around 70) are pretty great but better than these are the in-line fans that hide in the attic or some other hidden recess of the house while a 3” duct connects to the ceiling or wall of the bath using a cute little trim-plate (these start around 160). This makes them even quieter (because the fan is further away) and eliminates a foot-square THING on the wall or ceiling (for we aesthetes). By the way, when you put in your fan, how about a timer so the thing gets turned off after a while. Electronic timers are really cool and don’t cost much. 

Now, let’s talk about heat. It’s nice to get out of the bath and put your feet on a warm floor. When remodeling, it’s easy to add a small electric wall heater and it may also be a simple matter to run a small duct from your existing heating system (talk to your HVAC gal (that’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning)). If you want to go wild, try one of the new radiant heating pads that mount under the tile. The materials cost for a bath are probably under $700 for a bath and your GC should be able to manage the rest. This is one where careful consideration for the manufacturer’s guidelines is a must.  

A ceiling mounted heater makes less sense and I don’t care at all for heating bulbs over my head. Makes me feel like the meatloaf special waiting to be taken to table 12. 

As with fans, a timer on heaters is strongly advised and costs only a little. Actually both of these are designed to save you money. 

When you rehab, you can also ask yourself bigger questions such as “Do I really want a bathtub?” Many folks (once the kids are older) prefer a big shower that they can just step into. This is also better for those of limited mobility, where stepping over the tub gets to be tough. I for one, love a big shower. 

Be sure to replace ALL the piping in the bath when you rehab. There’s nothing more likely to make you bang your head against the wall than to realize that you have to tear out your 1 year old tiled shower because the pipes have begun to leak. If you want to leave the old pipes in the crawlspace for a while, that’s O.K., You can get to them later. 

So the message is, don’t hold back. The savings on a partial bath (fixing the bad floor and shower tile the pest guy found) just isn’t that great and the cost of getting a groovy bathing environment can be a few grand more. This may not lead to Godliness but if you do it right, it’s close enough. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

When we’re in the Fourth Street shopomania neighborhood we’re usually on the way to buying groceries for Shep the snake, though if we get a parking space we might go see if Cody’s still exists, or stop for lunch at Tacubaya. So it’s no surprise I missed Eastern Classics while the store was nearby, and had go read the little A-frame signboard on the corner to see where the enterprise had gone. 

That sign promised garden as well home stuff, so I warped on over to Camellia Street near REI and the Nomadic Traders seasonal shop and, mirabile dictu, found a space right in front of the door. I think of such events as signs from the Goddess Asphalta.  

I parked next to an interesting antiquish device that resembled a cross between wheelbarrow and hobbyhorse and bore the store’s banner. (I still don’t know what it is.) 

The shop itself is small but not cramped and the garden stuff is right up front: mostly carved lanterns—real carved stone, not cement—and small fountains. Most intriguing of these were a couple of art-glazed ceramic jugs maybe two feet tall; there’s a photo of one such on the company website, but it doesn’t do it justice.  

Most of Eastern Classics’ stock is tansu, and most of those are goodlooking, reasonably-priced reproductions. The Yin family has a workshop in China where items are made, their info says, singly by hand and (optionally) to order. If you like tansu, go take a look. 

Lots of noren, too, long ones in interesting fabrics; a few clothing items in that great folk indigo that Japanese craftspeople wear; lamps, lanterns, baskets and bowls for interior use. Pretty stuff.  

What really made my sox roll up and down was the set of burlwood furniture—chair and loveseat—back in a corner. Manager Jay Yin told me these were a traditional craft item from Fujien Province in China.  

They’re carved and polished from massive burls of, Yin said, maple or fir with back and side outlines following the curl of the grain. They look like frozen auburn waves breaking on rocks.  

These are strictly for interior use, though they’d look great in a very simple garden courtyard of the raked-gravel and one-tree variety.  

They also look very comfortable; I was schlepping too much to give one a test drive or I might have sold all I hath and bought it. It’s worth dropping by just to see them.  

I’ve always liked the habit of bringing the outside indoors, as the Japanese and others do. The Roman Latin word “impluvium” might be the best word in any language. It describes a central courtyard pool into which rain (pluvia) falls. In a civilized society, every dwelling would have one—or at least a room that’s also a garden.  

Eastern Classics 

1001 Camellia Street, Berkeley 

(510) 526-1241 

Saturday & Sunday 11 a.m.—5 p.m. 

Weekdays by appointment.  

Jay Yin: “I’m usually here, but people should call first to be sure.” 

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.

TUESDAY, JUNE 12 

CHILDREN 

“The Adventures of Spider and Fly” a puppet show by P & T Puppet Theater for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Free. 524-3043. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Rising Sun: A Bridge to Japan” American art influenced and inspired by Japan and its arts at Alta Bates Medical Center Gallery, 2450 Ashby Ave., through Aug. 23. 204-4444. 

“Poetics of Space” Intaglio prints by Seiko Tachibana opens at the Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St. and runs through July 1. 549-1018. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Shannon Hale reads from “Austenland” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gator Beat at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ.  

Jazz Fourtet at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Octobop at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet, reads from “Unlikely Destinations” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Nomadic Rambles, storytelling at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Jazztet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

BandWorks Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Flux at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

Bill Bell at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, JUNE 14 

THEATER 

“Colorstruck” Donald Lacey’s one-man show Thurs. and Fri. at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20. 663-5683.  

“Pagbabalik” (Return) A multidisciplinary theater production by Aimee Suzara at 7:30 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. 849-2568, ext. 20. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Residency Projects, Part I” Kala Fellowship Artists Talk with Freddy Chandra and Su-Chen Hung at 7 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. Exhibition runs to June 30. 549-2977.  

“Painting to Live: Art from Okinawa’s Nishimui Artist Society: 1948-1950” Opening reception at 4 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 6th flr, 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. 

“A Buddhist Pilgrimage to China” Photographs by Zohra Kalinkowitz. Conversation with the artist at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St., Studio 38. 843-2787. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michael Ondaatje reads from “Divasadero” in a benefit for Poetry Flash at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. donation $10. 559-9500. 

Clifford Chase reads from “Winkie” at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Heidi Swanson describes “Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients into Your Cooking” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

The Very Hot Club at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ.  

Misner and Smith at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Kally Price Combo, Myles Boisen’s Past-Present-Future, Kim Vermillion at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Terence Blanchard at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Unholy, Apiary, Year of Desolation, heavy metal at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is 10-$12. 451-8100.  

Selector: Karmacoda at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, JUNE 15 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Bosoms and Neglect” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., SUn. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through July 22. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.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 

Berkeley Rep “Great Men of Genius” with Mike Daisey in four different monologues at 2025 Addison St. through June 30. Tickets are $30-$75. 647-2949.  

California Shakespeare Theater “Richard III” at the Bruns Ampitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda, through June 24. Tickets are $15-$60. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

“Colorstruck” Donald Lacey’s one-man show at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20. 663-5683. www.colorstruck.net 

Impact Theatre “Impact Briefs 8: Sinfully Delicious” Thurs.-Sat. through July 21 at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “Ring Round the Moon” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through July 14. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

“Pagbabalik” (Return) A multidisciplinary theater production by Aimee Suzara Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. 849-2568, ext. 20. 

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 

TheatreFirst “365 Days/365 Plays” at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts, 48th and Telegraph. Free, reservations requested. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

Virago Theatre Comapny “The Death of Ayn Rand” and “A Bed of My Own” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda to July 7. Tickets are $10-$17. 865-6237. www.ViragoTheatre.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Andrew Keen discusses “The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Ecnomy, Our Culture, and Our Values” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. 559-9500. 

Roger Rapoport reads from “Citizen Moore: The Life and Times of an American Iconoclast” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

”Great Moments in American History” Oakland Opera and Oakland East Bay Symphony at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $24. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

“The Original Family Stone” at 8 p.m. at Historic Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $25-$35. 925-952-4585 www.ambassadorsofamericanculture.com 

Lisa Mezzacappa at Free-Jazz Fridays at 8 p.m. at 1510 8th Street Performance Space, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 

Vidya “Redefining Jazz through Raga and Rhythm” at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

Trio Paradiso at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ.  

Razorblade and Sister I-Live, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

Dani Torres and Omar Makhtari Latin/flamenco at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Freight 39th Anniversary Revue with Phil Marsh and Hank Bradley at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Jared Karol and Eliza Manoff at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

The Porch Flies, Glenn Earl Brown, Crooked Roads at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Aggression, Shattered Faith, Soul Control at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $8. 525-9926. 

The Ghost, CD release party, at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Stanley at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Girlfriend Experience, The Catholic Comb, The Hundred Days at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100.  

Terence Blanchard at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JUNE 16 

CHILDREN  

Celebrate African & African American Heritage with Diane Ferlatte at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, at 699 Bellvue Ave., Oakland. 452-2259. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“A Question of Belief” A group show of paintings, photography and sculpture featuring, Cherie Raciti, Nina Glaser and Marianne Hale. Artist reception at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit # 116 , located in a store front loft of the historic cotton mill studios, Oakland. www.thefloatcenter.com 

“hitmewithaflower” Works by Walter Logue. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at The Gallery Of Urban Art, 1746 13th St. at Wood, Oakland. 910-1833. 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “A Dream Play” Sat. and Sun. at 3 p.m. on the lawn in front of Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Wlnut St. at Berryman, through July 1. 841-5580.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bloomsday at Moe’s Books A day-long reading from 10 a.m. at 2476 Telegraph Ave. If you would like to read call 849-2087. 

Carol Pogash describes “Seduced by Madness: The True Story of the Susan Polk Murder Case” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Celebrate Bloomsday with Thomas Lynch reading from Joyce’s “Ulysses” at 11 a.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Mary Ann Mason describes “Mothers on the Fast Track:” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Company C Contemporary Ballet at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $20-$25. www.companycballet.org 

Cecelia and The Hats, a capella, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Ed Reed with Peck Allmond Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Crooked Roads Band and Pushtunwali at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

FiddleKids Faculty FiddleFest at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Kellye Gray Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Mario Desio & Dave Gans at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Wire Graffiti, Charm School Dropouts, Vincent’s Ear at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Joshi Marshall Project at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Chris Murray, Soul Captives, Golfcart Rebillion at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

DJ Heartbeat Night at 8 p.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. Tickets are $10 at the door. 496-6047. 

Terence Blanchard at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200.  

SUNDAY, JUNE 17 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Women of Lockerbie” by Deborah Brevort, a staged reading at 7 p.m. at 469 9th St. Oakland. www.theatrefirst.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

”Great Moments in American History” Oakland Opera and Oakland East Bay Symphony at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $24. 763-1146.  

Hal Stein Quartet at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $10. 228-3218. 

Rosalie Sorrels at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Pappa Gianni and the North Beach Band at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Jamie Fox Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: The Saddlecats at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 

Dick Conte Quartet at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373.  

Markus James and Wassonrai, African, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. Cost is $5. 525-5054. 

Jacques Ibula at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Soulbop Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200.  

MONDAY, JUNE 18 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Stephen Ratcliff reads at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Julia Serano reads from “Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

“The Clearing” by Helen Edmundson, a staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at 469 9th St. Oakland. www.theatrefirst.com 

Poetry Express with Jesse Beagle at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Hot Frittatas at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

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

Blue Monday Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

West Coast Songwriter’s Showcase at 7 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $5. 548-1761.  

Will Bernard at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. 

TheatreFIRST, Oakland’s only resident theater company—and now bereft of their latest home in Old Oakland, will perform Week 31 of Suzan-Lori Parks’ year-long, nationwide 365 Days/Plays project 8 p.m. this Friday night, June 15, at the Temescal Arts Center at 48th and Telegraph in Oakland. 

This will be followed by two staged readings for plays under consideration for full staging, The Women of Lockerbie by Deborah Brevoort, concerning the response of the town beneath the infamous Pan Am flight disaster, 7 p.m. Sunday, June 17, and The Clearing by Helen Edmundson, about Oliver Cromwell’s harsh rule in Ireland, 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 18—both at 469 Ninth St. (between Broadway and Washington), Oakland. 

“We’re out but not down!” is how artistic director Clive Chafer refers to the status of the game little group after commercial pressures in the neighborhood found them moving out on June 1 from their former home of the Oakland Metro on Ninth Street. 

Chafer, who meets later this week with City of Oakland representatives, is “looking hopefully in all the right places” to house the 13-year-old company in a permanent residence and announce its next annual program from a location “that works for the kind of theater we do, and which theatergoers can identify with us.” 

Their version of the seven 365 Days/Plays from Parks’ project of writing a play a day for a year will be staged “in response to Parks’ challenge of herself, and in like manner,” by having the actors, “mostly Equity actors, most familiar to theatergoers” come in cold at 6 p.m. to rehearse plays they’ve never seen that will go up at 8 p.m. and then invite the audience to suggest new combinations of actors and new ways of doing the plays just seen. 

“We have 65 seats,” said Chafer. “We’ll have up to 65 directors in that second round.” 

Ideas will be elicited from audience members, and the company will quickly rebound them, bringing a different dimension of spontaneity to the short plays which Parks “wrote in response to impulses every day, not to a sequential sense of meaning,” according to Chafer, who went on to say, “I think this gave her the opportunity to write less political plays than those she’s known for [Parks is a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the MacArthur “Genius” Award]. They’re whimsical, slightly skewed, surrealistic visions of the world. Maybe one of our seven is naturalistic. In order to reflect her own consistent yet eclectic vision, we let our production be as scattershot as her approach was—and not just as much as we, TheatreFIRST, can make them, but in as many different ways as possible.” 

365 DAYS / 365 PLAYS 

All performances are free, with donations requested. Info at: 436-5085 or theatrefirst.com.

Composer-pianist William Bolcom and mezzo-soprano Joan Morris will make a rare Bay Area appearance 8 p.m. this Thursday (June 14) to present a “Red, White and Blue” Flag Day celebratory version of their popular recitals of American song of the past two centuries, at Piedmont Piano’s San Francisco store at 660 Third St. For information and reservations: (415) 543-9988 or www.piedmontpiano.com. 

Bolcom, who won the Pulitzer Prize and has set William Blake’s and Garcia Lorca’s poems to music, is also known for his operas, as Morris is famed as (per the title of her forthcoming memoir) “An Actress Who Sings.” But the two are probably best known for the decades of extensive research and performances of the results of their quest to discover how American popular songs have actually been sung—and what the tradition is, and chances are, for a distinctively American art song and cabaret. 

Along the way, in the course of meeting those elder statesmen of the music and theater who introduced new material, or gave old tunes their definitive form, Bolcom and Morris have also participated in new creations, and made interventions, including an involvement in the return of Ragtime composer Eubie Blake, who lived to 100, to the concert stage, where he held forth on a whole century of formative experience in “syncopated musics.” 

Last here in the winter and spring of 2005, in residence at UC Berkeley for their extraordinary recital presentations of the Ernest Bloch Lectures in Music series, Bolcom then recounted for The Planet the philosophy behind their search for “how American songs should be sung with authenticity, not as an example of Italian opera technique.” 

“At the foundation of every culture,” Bolcom inveighed, “is how words and music marry. It’s our patrimony. It’s ours—it’s what makes us.” And about their lifelong search: “I couldn’t talk to a troubadour, but I could talk to Irving Berlin ... about what’s not on the page.” 

Bolcom, who originally hails from Seattle, studied at Mills College with Darius Milhaud and won the Pulitzer in 1988 for his “12 Etudes for Piano.” Morris is originally from Portland, Oregon, and is known for her spirited versions of songs from the whole fabric of American musical theater and cabaret, to obscure historical numbers, as well as Bolcom’s tongue-in-cheek ode to ‘The Women Who Lunch,’ “Lime Jell-o Marshmellow Cottage Cheese Surprise,” best performed in ultra-Easter bonnet headgear.The couple now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  

It may be a drab little brown bird, but the song sparrow has attracted a lot of scholarly attention. The song sparrows of San Francisco Bay alone support a kind of cottage industry. We have four distinct subspecies here, three confined to tidal marshes, the fourth to neighboring uplands. The marsh sparrows, generally smaller and grayer than the upland birds, have adapted to their environment by evolving a higher tolerance for salt water (although their insect prey appears to meet most of their water needs). 

The foundational song sparrow studies were done by Margaret Morse Nice. After her academic career was derailed by marriage and motherhood, she spent most of the Great Depression tracking the lives and fortunes of a song sparrow population along the Olentangy River in Columbus, Ohio. She also found time to collaborate with Konrad Lorenz. According to another pioneering behaviorist, Niko Tinbergen, this “American housewife was the greatest scholar of them all.” 

Along with every other aspect of sparrow behavior, Nice paid close attention to their songs. It became clear that there was no such thing as a stereotyped song sparrow song. “The songs of each male are entirely distinct,” she wrote; “as a rule they sound pleasant and ‘cheerful’ to human ears, yet a few are disagreeable, while still others are of great beauty.” Each adult male, she found, had his own repertoire of six to nine song types. And song patterns changed as a bird matured, with a period of improvisation before the repertoire crystallized. 

She was curious as to whether songs were inherited or learned, or a mixture of both. After listening to several generations of sparrows, Nice concluded: “I found no case of a male having the song of his father or grandfather on either side.” On the other hand, she heard young territory-holding males imitating their neighbors and sometimes incorporating those songs into their budding repertoires.  

She also experimented with captive-reared birds, exposing them to recordings of species they would never have heard in the wild—nightingales, European song thrushes—and noting the odd-sounding songs they developed. 

So what was going on? As research expanded to other species, it became clear that many of the true songbirds—the oscine passerines, to be technical—learn most if not all of their vocal repertoire. That’s also true of a few other groups, notably hummingbirds (or the few hummingbirds that can be said to sing). 

The process seems to require exposure to a model or “tutor” at the right developmental phase. But were the tutors parents or neighbors? 

The evidence on that score is mixed. Male song sparrows reared by canaries copied their foster fathers in one study but not in another.  

Luis Baptista, the late curator of birds at the California Academy of Sciences, found a couple of song sparrows in the wild that had somehow acquired the songs of white-crowned sparrows. Juvenile males in Washington state appeared to have learned their songs from holders of neighboring territories. But in a sparsely populated British Columbia habitat, young males retained their fathers’ songs. 

Experimental research by John Burt and Adrian O’Loghlen at the University of Washington suggests young birds acquire their songs by eavesdropping on neighbors. From the age of 15 days, fledglings were housed with a rotation of singing adult males. That exposure ended after a month and a half. At eight months, each young bird was paired up with an adult tutor. The youngster was then moved to a separate chamber where he could hear a second tutor interacting with another young bird. 

The young males’ songs were analyzed when they were about a year old. Fifty-one percent of their repertoires came from the tutor next door they had overheard. Another 19 percent came from tutors with which they had shared a cage, and the remaining 30 percent from the adult birds they had heard as infants. 

Getting your songs right is crucial to attracting a mate. One study showed a female preference for the local song dialect. Repertoire size may also influence mate choice, according to a lab study, although field work did not confirm this. (In any case, song sparrows are pikers compared with western marsh wrens, which may have up to 210 distinct song types.) 

As far as I know, no one has studied song acquisition among the Bay’s salt-marsh song sparrows, which occupy small territories year-round in tightly packed habitats. The lucky yearlings that could shoehorn themselves in would be surrounded by potential song models. A likely project for some contemporary Margaret Nice. Bring your waders.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. A song sparrow at home in the marshes of San Pablo Bay.

TUESDAY, JUNE 12 

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 Tilden’s Inspiration Point. Call for meeting place. 525-2233. 

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. 

New to DVD Screening and Discussion at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

“The Basics of Buying Your First Home” A free workshop with Jonathan Cole, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Consultant at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 1247 Marin Ave.. 524-9122.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13 

Monitor Native Oysters in the Bay Help monitor oyster populations and set up equipment for our Native Oyster Monitoring Study at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Marina, 201 University Ave. 452-9261, ext. 119. www.savesfbay.org/oysters  

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. 

“The Next Industrial Revolution” a documentary about the transformation to an environmentally sustainable society at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Telegraph and Broadway, Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Underground” A documentary about the Weather Underground at 8 p.m. at Long Haul Infoship, 3124 Shattuck Ave. www.thelonghaul.org 

“Braving Borders, Building Bridges: A Journey for Human Rights” An African American Tour of the U.S.-Mexico Border A forum and report back at 6 p.m. at Laney College Forum, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. 849-9940. 

“Human Factors for Technical Communicators” Monthly meeting of the Berkeley Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication at 7:30 p.m., dinner at 6:30 p.m. at Highlands Country Club, 110 Hiller Dr., Oakland. Cost is $15-$24. for reservations see www.stc-berkeley.org  

Berkeley East Bay Track Club for ages 4-16 starts at 5:30 p.m. at Rosa Parks Elementary School, Ninth St. and Allston Way. Free. 512-9475. 

Free Diabetes Screening Come find out if you might have diabetes with our free screening test and make sure not to eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Latina Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday 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 downtown berkeley BART www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, JUNE 14 

AC Transit Public Hearing on the Bus Rapid Transit Environmental Impact Study/Report at 5:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

“Rehab it Right!” with Jane Powell, restoration consultant at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. E-mail a few photos of an interior and/or kitchen project to nj2oakland@yahoo.com for expert tips. Cost is $8-$10. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Quit Smoking Class from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., with optional accupuncture at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. 981-5330. 

East Bay Macintosh Users Group will discuss Apple TV at 6 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

FRIDAY, JUNE 15 

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 Robert Birgeneau on “Green Energy at UC Berkeley” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

Conscientious Projector Film Series “An Inconvenient Truth” at 7 p.m., followed by discussion, at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824. 

“An Inconvenient Truth” will be screened at 2 p.m. at the YWCA Berkeley. 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. 848-6370. 

Red Cross Mobile Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at West Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Union, Bancroft and Telegraph. to schedule an appointment see http://www.beadonor.com Code: UCB. 

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, JUNE 16 

“Downtown: Progress and Options” A public workshop sponsored by the Downtown Area Plan Committee from 10 a.m. to noon at Berkeley High School Library, Allston and Milvia. For more information call 981-7487. www.cityofberkeley.info/dap 

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.  

“No Child Left Behind? What is the Consevative, Corporate Agenda for Destroying Our Public Schools?” at 7 p.m. at 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Sponsored by the Alameda Public Affairs Forum. www.alamedaforum.org 

“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. 

Basic Organic Vegetable Gardening Learn to start growing foods and culinary herbs for your kitchen. We will cover the basics of starting a garden, including selecting and starting your seeds, building good soil, watering plants, and managing bugs and blights. Class is sponsored by the Alameda County Cleanwater Program. Cost is $10-$15. Preregistration required. Call for details and location. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Vegeterian Cooking Class: Mexican and Southwestern Cuisine from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45, plus $5 materials fee. To register call 531-2665.  

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.  

Natural History Field Sketching with Tara Reinertson at 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

ADD & Autism: Drug- free Treatment Options for your Child with Thauna Abrin, Naturopathic Doctor at 10 a.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave. at Ensenada. 

“Leaning into the Great Mystery” A workshop on Christian-Buddhist meditation from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, 7900 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $30, includes lunch. To register call 635-4949.  

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 at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Hopalong Animal Rescue Come meet your furry new best cat friend from noon to 3 p.m. at 2940 College Ave. 267-1915, ext. 500.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 17 

Working with Wool Watch how the spinning wheel turns wool into yarn, try a drop spindle or a felting project. from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Wheelchair accessible. 526-7377. 

Fathers’ Day Pancake Breakfast from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. aboard the Red Oak Victory Ship moored in Richmond Harbor at 1337 Canal Blvd. Take Hwy 580 and exit at Canal Blvd. Cost is $6. 327-2933. 

Father’s Day Campfire Bring hot dogs, buns, marshmallows and long sticks to the campfire at 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Accomodation for visitors with disabilities upon advanced request. 525-2233. 

“Climate Change: Nuclear Power in Today’s World” with Karen Street at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2151 Vine. 653-2803. 

Bike Tour of Alameda Explore Alameda on a leisurely 5-mile ride. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrance to the Oakland Museum of California. Reservations required. 238-3514. www.museumca.org 

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 

Red Cross Mobile Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at First Covenant Church, Recreation Rm., 3883 Aliso Ave., Oakland. Call to schedule an appointment. 531-5244. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair flats, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Social Action Forum with a program on Delancy Street at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Univresalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

Berkeley East Bay Atheists with a multi-media presentation on Carl Sagan by Marc Levenson at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, Comunity Meeting Room, 2090 Kitttredge St. 222-7580. eastbayatheists.org  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Joleen Vries on “Guarding the Mind” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, JUNE 18 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Drop in Knitting Class at the Albany Library Work on your own project or make pet blankets and children’s hats to be donated to charity organizations. At 3:30 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., June 12, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., June 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., June 13, at 7 p.m. at the South Branch Library. 981-6195.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., June 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., June 13, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., June 14, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., June 14, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.

Healthy Living 

As part of an ongoing effort to print stories by East Bay residents, The Daily Planet invites readers to write about their experiences and perspectives on living healthy. Please email your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues. 

East Bay Guide 

The Daily Planet invites readers to contribute to a guide for newcomers to the area. Please email your essays, no more than 800 words, describing a favorite or little known aspect of East Bay life, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues.

FRIDAY, JUNE 8 

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 

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  

Berkeley Rep “Great Men of Genius” with Mike Daisy in four different monologues at 2025 Addison St. through June 30. Tickets are $30-$75. 647-2949. 

California Shakespeare Theater “Richard III” at the Bruns Ampitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda, through June 24. Tickets are $15-$60. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

“Colorstruck” Donald Lacey’s one-man show at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, through June 15. Tickets are $10-$20. 663-5683.  

Masquers Playhouse “Ring Round the Moon” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through July 14. Tickets are $15. 232-4031.  

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.  

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 the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through June 10. Tickets are $15-$44. 1-800-838-3006. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Lush Life” A group show by 15 artists whose work celebrates the garden. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Exhibit runs through July 8. 843-2527. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jason Roberts reads from “A Sense of the World” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Cameron Stracher describes “Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

Rafaella Del Bourgo, Rose Black, Gayle Eleanor read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. at Hearst. 841-6374. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble, Lab Bands and Combos at 7 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High Campus. Tickets are $3-$10. 

Berkeley Edge Fest “The Music of Frederic Rzewski” with Frederic Rzewski and Ursula Oppens, piano, at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/season/2006/edgefest/ 

Clerestory “In the Midst of Life” Men’s octect performs music by Purcell, Elgar and Tavener at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bancroft Way at Ellsworth. Tickets are $8-$10. www.clerestory.org 

Susie Davis, TapWater at 5:30 p.m. at Park Place at Washington Ave., Point Richmond. Free. www.pointrichmond.com/prmusic/ 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies at 8 p.m. Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Tickets are $15, children $5. 526-9146. 

Hanif & The Sound Voyagers at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Donny Dread, Ancient King, Xcaliba and Nubian Natty, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Darol Anger & the Republic of Strings at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

The Nomadics at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

The Bleu Canadians, The Phenomes, Bob Wiseman at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Ninja Academy, Walken at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Jeff Jernigan at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

5 Days Dirty, Round Three Fight, Traces of Reason at 8:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146.  

Nora Whittaker Band & Macabea at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 644-2204.  

San Pablo Project at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Chrome with Helios Creed, Triclops, progressive rock, at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10-$12. 451-8100.  

SATURDAY, JUNE 9 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña ¡Vamos A Cantar! with Jose Luis Orozco at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568.  

Flute Sweets and Tickletoons “Little Kids Little Songs” at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

ALICE, Arts and Literacy in Children’s Education with Congolese Dance, Ballet Folklorico and trapeze arts at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Donation $25. RSVP to 482-0415.  

Bookpals Storytelling at 11:30 a.m. at Children’s Fairyland, at 699 Bellvue Ave., Oakland. 452-2259. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Self as Superhero” ArtEsteem’s annual exhibition at 3 p.m. at ASA Academy and Community Science Center, 2811 Adeline St., at 28th St., Oakland. 652-5530.  

“Animals, Sea Creatures and Animation” Paintings, sculpture, digital and fiber art and more, in a benefit for Hopalong Animal Rescue. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2053 Ashby Ave. 644-4930.  

“One Thousand Words: New Paintings by Mary Younkin” Artist reception at 6 p.m. at Luka’s Taproom & Lounge, 2221 Broadway at Grand, Oakland. 451-4677.  

East Bay Open Studios Sat. and Sun. at various studios around the East Bay. For maps see www.proartsgallery.org 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “A Dream Play” Sat. and Sun. at 3 p.m. on the lawn in front of Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Wlnut St. at Berryman, through July 1. 841-5580.  

FILM 

“Under a Shipwrecked Moon” by Antero Alli, at 8 p.m. at Kaleva Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. Cost is $5-$10. 464-4640.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Edge Fest Composer Interviews with Sarah Cahill, Frederic Rzewski and Ursula Oppens at 2 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, UC Campus. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/season/2006/edgefest/ 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mozart for Mutts and Meows Midsummer Mozart Festival fundraiser for Berkeley Humane Society at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club. 845-7735, ext. 19. 

Berkeley Edge Fest “The Tyrant” composed by Paul Dresher, John Duykers, tenor, at 8 p.m. at the Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $36. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/season/2006/edgefest/ 

Matthew Owens, cellist and poet, will perform his new works at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., Live Oak Park. Cost is $10. 644-6893.  

Keith Doelling, double bass, at 4 p.m. at Crowden School, 1475 Rose St. 

Slavyanka Men’s Russian Chorus at 7:30 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Tickets are $16-$20. www.slavyanka.org 

Na Leo Nahenahe Summer Concert at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $15.00 at the door, children 12 and under are free. 

Passamezzo Moderno “Venice and Vienna in the Early 17th Century” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

The Sacred Jazz Symposium: Exploring Spirituality in the Music at 2 p.m. at The Black New World and Pleasure Club, 836 Pine St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20, no one turned away. Sankofacc@earthlink.net 

La Peña’s 37th Anniversary and Open House at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $22-$24. 849-2568.  

Brazzissimo! at 8 p.m. at Piedmont High School Auditorium, 800 Magnolia Ave., Piedmont. Tickets are $5-$10. www.brazzissimo.com  

Gateswingers Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Central Perk, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 558-7375. 

The Ravines at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bona. 704-9378. 

Ellen Robinson and her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Pellejo Seco, Luis Valverde, and Ekobios, rhumba cubana, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Katherine Peck and Michael Burles at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Mucho Axe at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Robin Flower & Libby McLaren at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Meshugga Beach Party, The El Dorados, The TomorrowMen at 8:30 at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886.  

Sheila Jordan “Jazz: A Life’s Work” at 8 p.m. at the Jazz 

school. Cost is $20. 845-5373.  

Draggin’ Suzy, Sorrow Town Choir, The Backorders at 9 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakland. 

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

Diego’s Umbrella, Tippy Canoe & the Paddlemen at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Insaints, Fabulous Disaster in a benefit for A Safe Place Shelter, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6-$10. 525-9926. 

Varukers, Scarred for Life at 7 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Photographs of China and Mongolia” by Berkeley photographer Caroline Johnson. Reception at 1 p.m. at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. www.lightroom.com 

Paintings by Michael Adkins Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Jersey Boys cast will discuss the musical based on Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons at 11 a.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Khaled Hosseini introduces his new novel, “A Thousand Splendid Guns” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Ticekts are $12-$40. 559-9500. 

Architecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California at 1 p.m. at the koi pond, first level, Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak at 10th St., Oakland. 238-2200. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Junteenth Freedom Mass with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir at 10 a.m. at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, 7900 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. www.stcuthbertsoakland.org 

Berkeley Edge Fest “The Music of Frederic Rzewski” with Frederic Rzewski and Ursula Oppens, piano, William Winant and Ben Paysen, percussion, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/season/2006/edgefest 

Chamber Music Sundaes with San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends, and featuring Tio Navarro at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$22. 415-753-2792.  

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Pops Concert at 2 p.m. at Greek Orthodox Church of the Ascension, 4700 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 849-9776. 

Soul at the Chimes with Promise, Called Out and the East Bay Church Men’s Chorus at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $20-$25. 464-3086.  

Talking Wood CD Release Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Jacob Wolkenhsuer at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Donner Mountain Bluegrass Band Reunion at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

BandWorks Concert, with kids, teens and adult rock bands, from 1:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. 

Piano Trio Summit with Dick Hindman, Joe Gilman and Mark Levine at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz 

school. Cost is $18. 845-5373.  

Have Heart, Allegiance, Soul Control, Turn it Around at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Damnweevil, Walken at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $6. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Jessica Williams Trio at 7 and 9 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200.  

MONDAY, JUNE 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

“A Buddhist Pilgrimage to China” Photographs by Zohra Kalinkowitz on display at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St., Studio 38, to Aug. 15. 843-2787. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Martin Cruz Smith reads from his new suspense novel, “Stalin’s Ghost” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Katherine Hastings and Ed Coletti at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Bucky Sinister at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Russian Evening of Songs” with Maria Mikheyenko, soprano and Dmitri Anissimov, tenor, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. 

Classical at the Freight New Esterhazy String Quartet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 -$18.50. 548-1761.  

Parlor Tango at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Blue Monday Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. w 

Dayna Stephens at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. 

TUESDAY, JUNE 12 

CHILDREN 

“The Adventures of Spider and Fly” a puppet show by P & T Puppet Theater for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Free. 524-3043. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Rising Sun: A Bridge to Japan” American art influenced and inspired by Japan and its arts at Alta Bates Medical Center Gallery, 2450 Ashby Ave., through Aug. 23. 204-4444. 

“Poetics of Space” Intaglio prints by Seiko Tachibana opens at the Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St. and runs through July 1. 549-1018. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Shannon Hale reads from “Austenland” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gator Beat at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ.  

Jazz Fourtet at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Octobop at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet, reads from “Unlikely Destinations” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Nomadic Rambles, storytelling at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fiveplay at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

BandWorks Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Flux at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

Bill Bell at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, JUNE 14 

THEATER 

“Colorstruck” Donald Lacey’s one-man show Thurs. and Fri. at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20. 663-5683.  

“Pagbabalik” (Return) A multidisciplinary theater production by Aimee Suzara at 7:30 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. 849-2568, ext. 20. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Residency Projects, Part I” Kala Fellowship Artists Talk with Freddy Chandra and Su-Chen Hung at 7 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. Exhibition runs to June 30. 549-2977.  

“Painting to Live: Art from Okinawa’s Nishimui Artist Society: 1948-1950” Opening reception at 4 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 6th flr, 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. 

“A Buddhist Pilgrimage to China” Photographs by Zohra Kalinkowitz. Conversation with the artist at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St., Studio 38. 843-2787. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michael Ondaatje reads from “Divasadero” in a benefit for Poetry Flash at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. donation $10. 559-9500. 

Clifford Chase reads from “Winkie” at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Heidi Swanson describes “Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients into Your Cooking” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

The Very Hot Club at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ.  

Misner and Smith at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Kally Price Combo, Myles Boisen’s Past-Present-Future, Kim Vermillion at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Terence Blanchard at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Unholy, Apiary, Year of Desolation, heavy metal at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is 10-$12. 451-8100.  

Selector: Karmacoda at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

PHOTOS OF MONGOLIA 

AT THE LIGHTROOM 

Photographer Caroline Johnson is showing giclée prints of her trip to Mongolia last year at the Lightroom. The show will be in the gallery through July 13, with an opening reception this Sunday, June 10, from 1-5 p.m. 2263 Fifth St. For more information, call 649-8111 or see www.lightroom.com. 

‘AN AMERICAN IN PARIS’ 

AT CERRITO THEATER 

Gene Kelly is best remembered as the lovestruck man who splashed about in Singin’ in the Rain, widely considered the greatest of movie musicals. But his previous film, An American in Paris, playing this weekend at the Cerrito Theater, earned him the greatest acclaim during his career, including a unique Academy Award for overall achievment for 1951. The movie contains some of the highlights of Kelly’s work as a dancer and choreographer: his light-hearted rendition of “I Got Rhythm,” accompanied by a covey of Parisian schoolchildren; his machine-gun tap dance to “Tra La La,” much of it atop Oscar Levant’s piano; and of course, the show-stopping 16-minute ballet fantasy sequence. Though this segment might seem dated and indulgent to modern audiences unfamiliar with the great musicals of the 1940s and ’50s, it was a groundbreaking innovation. Kelly first experimented with it in On The Town (1949) and would revisit in the following year in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), but the American in Paris ballet is the fullest expression of Kelly’s interest in exploiting the unique qualities of cinema in the presentation of dance, while still managing to resolve plot points, develop character, and move the narrative forward. The film shows at 6 p.m. Saturday and at 5 p.m. Sunday. 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito.  

www.picturepubpizza.com.

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley has taken on an ambitious project—Strindberg’s shape-shifting A Dream Play as a site-specific performance, in and around the Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park, played during afternoons over the next few weekends. And admission is free. 

The production features 11 actors as 32 different characters at 10 locations, inside and out. Director David Stein, who adapted Strindberg’s text, written at the turn of the 20th century, talked about the genesis and progress of this unusual project: “I’ve been chewing on this for the last four years. I did Phaedra with Subterranean Shakespeare, and that introduced me to the Art Center. I was captivated by the architecture, the settings, walking around the creek, with all the evergreens, the cypress making strange bends—all very ethereal.” 

A copy of the play surfaced at a garage sale, at the same time that a production of it in another area was reviewed in a magazine. “I thought it was perfect for a site-specific staging, with its sudden scene changes and its many possible interpretations.” 

Stein spoke of the play’s “great story, about a child of the gods who comes to earth for the first time, and sees humanity for what it is, all the ugliness and hypocrisy, but also love and kindness.” 

He worked over the text, “paring it down to 14 scenes, distilling it to the essence. The original has 50 different characters! We try to refer to them, and to much of what was cut. There were so many stage directions, heavy props ... the daughter of the gods coming down through the clouds from out of the sky! When I first looked at it, with its moving walls and mountains growing, I thought, how do we get from one scene to the next? But I took out the stage directions, and said, ‘We can get there.’” 

The Actors Ensemble version uses only minimal sets and just a few props. “We put our budget into the costumes,” said Stein, “and they’re gorgeous, very bright, in Hindu style. Our designer, Helen Slomowitz, did a great job.” 

On his philosophy of taking the action off one stage and around the building, across a landscape, Stein says, “This is only the second time we’ve done Strindberg, and the second time we’ve done an outdoor show. The first was Euripides’ The Bacchae, which I directed in ’03 at John Hinckle Park. I liked it at Hinckle. I like having the audience in the middle, like overhearing something happening nearby, an argument next to you, and you want to know what’s going on. When it’s outdoors, versus in a theater, you can follow along to the next site—or, if you want to, you can wander off. Everyone gets a map on the back of the program, so they can stroll away and come back to the next scene, or the one after.” 

Asked about the meaning of it all, Stein reflected, “What’s the play about, how to sum it up? The plot’s Expressionistic, almost like a painting. The more we rehearsed, the more we picked up the connections. Like the characters are oftentimes the same. Agnes [the earthly name of the child of the gods] keeps repeating, ‘We are poor souls, all of us!’ But it’s not all gloom and doom. All the moments ring true—and often you just have to chuckle. It applies to everybody, and is really timely—perfect for what the world is going through right now.” 

A DREAM PLAY 

Presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley at 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through July 1 on the lawn in front of the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Free. 841-5600. www.aeofberkeley.org.

By KEN BULLOCK 

Special to the Planet 

“Please, sir ...” It seems that almost everybody knows that Oliver wants some more, as Dickens’ great book of the London slums has been sentimentalized and staged and filmed, just as his Christmas Carol finds its way into countless theatrical venues every holiday season. But there have been few enough adaptations of the novelist’s creations that have served up the sensibilities of Dickensian genius—much less what’s actually there, in the stories themselves—as well as the innovative, theatrically satisfying version of Oliver Twist, as adapted by Neil Bartlett, with Gerard McBurney’s fitting music, produced in association with American Repertory Theatre and Theatre for a New Audience, onstage at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre until June 24. 

Originally commissioned by the Lyric Hammersmith in London, Oliver Twist boasts a fine, very professional ensemble of 13 performers, who take on double duty as they switch seamlessly (or with great humor, as Gregory Drelian, the big, stubbly lug who becomes street thug Bill Sykes doubles in a bonnet as the smarmy mortician’s wife, Mrs. Sowerberry) from one persona to the next, following orphaned Oliver (Michael Wartella) in his indenture to the Sowerberrys and subsequent escape to London, where he’s discovered by the devious Artful Dodger (Carson Elrod, marvelously transforming himself from Narrator to the grotesque attitude of the Dodger in a twinkling), and led through the tortuous streets and alleys of London’s Chinese box puzzle of a plan, with the Dodger reeling out the place names Homerically, into the most degraded inner slums, where Oliver is shoehorned in among the other youngsters of Fagin’s troupe of pediatric pickpockets, the apple of his mentor’s eye, with “the face of an angel,” meaning more loot from their slippery business of street mayhem. 

Fagin is played by Ned Eisenberg in a stand-out performance, a grinning, overly amicable monster who can turn on a farthing into a vengeful demon. A self-parodying Jew, who in moments of terror resorts to Hebrew prayer, Eisenberg’s Fagin dances like a delicate marmoset on his toes when he sees Oliver come to visit him in prison—then, after failing at an escape with the boy in tow, he’s engulfed by the sheer stage darkness of his fate, a frightening, sobering moment straight from the book, as is Fagin’s first, torqued posture in custody, taken right from Cruikshank’s original caricatures of the novel’s personae. 

Bartlett, who expressed the wish to explore the many facets of narrative and dramatic means by which Dickens, himself an amateur player and professional raconteur, mounted his great stories, compounded of a reformer’s zeal and “that savage old English humor” (as T. S. Eliot described the last survival of the dark laughter from Elizabethan dramatists Marlowe and Middleton in this Victorian’s popular serial novels), manages to touch on that strange, volatile mixture with which Dickens could tell, with Shakespearean scope, of one world existing cheek-by-jowl, all-unknowing, with another. 

There’s a sense of almost cosmic finality when Oliver, recovered by the world of “The Quality,” stands oblivious in tableau with his long-lost, unknown relatives, as his former companions of the workhouse and the streets are propelled through narration into their bleak, ghastly fates—a kind of gut-wrenching schism between social castes that seems to rip apart the stage, with its excellent grimy decor, like a paper toy theater. 

There’s a contemporary taste for self-narrating theatricals, and the “word-for-word” kind of adaptation of texts performed verbatim, talked through onstage, could learn a good deal from Bartlett’s skillful use of Dickens’ essentially unmodified text, of speech rhythms transformed, through the physical theater practices of the talented performers, into stage rhythms, of each disparate element finding its appropriate expression in concert with the rest—and what could have been merely a tour-de-force turned into compelling theatrical art. It’s a true tribute to Dickens, whose great stature, influence and infectious humanity can be hinted at by the excitement conveyed by Henry James, so different a writer and artist, in memoirs penned late, of the great occasion of meeting the great Charles Dickens and the impression he made, at the start of a career of genius. 

OLIVER TWIST 

Through June 24 at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org. 

Photograph by Kevin Berne 

Michael Wartella and Carson Elrod star in a dark new take on Oliver Twist.

“Brecht is a very challenging ‘Jeopardy’ question,” quipped a deadpan Mike Daisey at the start of the first in his series of four monologues, Great Men of Genius, at the Berkeley Rep thrust stage through July 1. 

Daisey’s tossed-off line sets the tone of an evening the Village Voice fittingly characterized as “like a coked-up History Channel biography.” 

Daisey presides, seated at a chair behind an old oblong wood table, with his pages of notes before him. There’s no other scenery, and Daisey doesn’t get up, except to exit at the end. A big man by his own admission—and frequent exploitation as material, like the picture he makes of himself doing the “Dead Man Float” in a rooftop swimming pool at a Hollywood hotel and the consternation that stirs it up—Daisy could be called ursine, amplifying the verbal action of his solo pieces with wide eyes that narrow, his large mouth, which even closed seems agape, and sweeping gestures with his hands. 

When he jokes about himself in one of his frequent, seemingly off-subject autobiographical digressions, such as ranting about “Freedom of speech! Freedom of Speech!” (”before I burned out on dialogue!”) in a caffeine-induced, quixotic, one-man freshman crusade (and subsequent damage-control, accusatory “informal talk group” that he’s escorted to from his dorm), it doesn’t take an act of imagination to see it. Daisey’s stories seem to be pretty strictly non-fiction, albeit with trimmings. 

His “lecture” on Brecht, first in a series which encompasses an unlikely gaggle that also includes showman P. T. Barnum, inventor Nicolai Tesla and science fiction writer-turned-Stalinoid of Dianetics, Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard, goes from beginning to end of “B. B.’s” peripatetic existence, fleeing always one step ahead of the Nazi invasion, finally across the beleaguered Soviet Union, and aboard ship to “the most improbable of possible” safe havens, Hollywood, where his career as a screenwriter ends when he’s called before HUAC, to which he talks evasively, a plane ticket to Switzerland in his pocket, as he misses the New York opening of his play Galileo, starring Charles Laughton (and directed by Joseph Losey, replacing an oft-considered Orson Welles). 

The most touching and truest moment about Brecht comes up when Daisey describes the hurried productions of his political plays mounted during exile, that, although poorly attended, attract audiences of future resistance fighters, collaborators and the apolitical, who yet remember the communal sense of sitting together “for one moment ... in the crux of history, for a human conversation about what was happening in their times,” Brecht’s faith in theater (and poetry and song), and his testament to “those who will not live in dark times like these.” 

Otherwise, Daisey’s glib, playing fast and loose with his subject, banking shots off the sloppy myths about “alienation effect” and out-of-context speculations that constitute whatever’s popular knowledge of Brecht—a figure Daisey talks of from the start as hazy to most. Increasingly he rambles through his college days in retrospect, his student drama productions, meeting his wife and collaborator (director Jean-Michele Gregory), and their spat over his “sell-out” 40-minute, upbeat showcase performance of a previously 90-minute, darkly satirical piece for a Hollywood exec crowd, in hopes of getting cast. It’s his stock-in-trade, fusing the quick hits of the post-adolescent wiseguy with the reflective, sentimentally sarcastic nostalgia of the middle-aging college boy. 

His style will probably find more amicable company with less challenging, more boffo figures as Barnum and Hubbard. Nonetheless, judging from previous appearances in previous monologic outings, Daisey’s decision to focus on a figure other than his own, gradually edging out his subject with the backwash of his own subjectivity, dilutes his effectiveness as solo performer, garbling his formula of recounting autobiographical episodes, then digressing in whimsically amusing “asides” when he takes on a broader subject that surfaces from his personal musings. The technique’s flexibly plastic, but limited in range, more from contemporary stand-up or sketch comedy than “performance art,” or the tradition of the dramatic or literary raconteur. 

GREAT MEN OF GENIUS 

Through June 30 at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. $30-$75. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org. 

Photograph by Ursa Waz 

Mike Daisey in Great Men of Genius.

I just love aphorisms. They’re so … so … one-size-fits-all. No bother with versatility or adjustment for circumstances, just “Time and Tides wait for no man” (but they do wait for women as we all know), “Cast not your pearls before swine” (I like the idea of “casting for swine” although it may not be the right season for swine and I think you need a second set of tackle). “Never throw good money after bad” (now which was the bad money? Let me think). Actually, I think I can say something about the last one. 

When I think of throwing good money after bad, I think of bathroom remodels and specifically of those that I’ve seen over the years in which a select group of repairs were made by in accord with the items seem in a pest report. Now, I have a lot of respect for the folks in the pest control business and some of our local pest guys are quite skilled but even they will generally agree with the argument I’m going to make, so let’s not make this about them when, as usually, it’s really about ME. 

Bath remodels are all too often a “reaction” to one or several specific failings in the bath. Usually, water has gotten into framing from any of several joints in the finishes. Let’s run them down. The first is the shower shell. This may involve a tub (most commonly) but can be just a shower. This most often involves ceramic tile, but can involve any of a wide range of alternative finishes such as cast polymer panels, hardboard or plastic. 

For each of these finishes, there are layers which are built up in the installation. There is also quite a spectrum of quality in these installations that will affect their longevity and their vulnerability to moisture intrusion. Tile is the worst, in many ways because of the many joints involved and the many common misconceptions regarding acceptable installation among installers (including highly paid professionals). That said, tile can absolutely be well installed and last for decades without failure if good practices are observed. It’s also my personal favorite so don’t get me wrong when I seem to be picking on tile. 

Tile needs to be installed over a solid backing so there is almost no potential for flexion on the surface. The materials behind need to have some tolerance for moisture themselves since grout does tend to hold and transmit moisture to some extent and everything leaks, at least a little, over time. This is why sheetrock (AKA drywall) is not rated for tile installation. We tried this a couple of decades ago with a special “marine” grade (or green) sheetrock and almost no municipality will now allow it. The paper surface would eventually get wet through the grout or the edge of the tile and the paper would get all icky and fall apart (that’s the technical terminology) taking the tile with it. 

Tile needs to be affixed to a cementitious or other water retardant substrate to stay in place for more than a decade (though I’ve seen bad jobs fail much sooner than that). 

Also, the substrates need to be “papered” or “flashed” so that water that might penetrate these substrates can leak down into the pan of the shower or the tub (most of which have a lip at the edge for just this purpose). This is sometime referred to as a “belt & suspenders” approach. If one thing fails, another acts as backup. When dealing with water, you might want a belt, suspenders and a wetsuit. You just can’t assemble these systems carefully enough. 

I don’t want to get too bogged down with the details here but the point is that putting a bathroom together involves many layers that integrate together in a complex assembly. This is one very good reason never to do a PART of a bathroom remodel. It’s the same with roofs. It’s a bad idea or part of a roof because you violate the principle of layering involved in proper assembly. 

Also, there are both the financial and the design aspects to consider. Economies of scale dictate that one should do a large enough job to take advantage of the benefits that come with adequate scale. The smaller the job, the more expensive it becomes. This is true with many things but, boy, let me tell you. It’s way true with construction. It is nearly always more economical to “gut” a bathroom to the studs than to try to do it by half measures.  

This necessitates that you care, at least a little, about the quality of the bath as a whole, but nearly everyone likes a nice bathroom. When you do the entire bath you can easily expose all the damage that may have occurred over time, such as fungal decay (rot) caused by moisture finding its way under the flooring over behind the shower enclosure. When you’ve exposed everything in this way, it’s quite easy to remove and replace a few sticks of wood or a plywood floor. What seems as though it might be quite daunting is actually quite easy when you can easily reach it all.  

Once you’ve replaced the damaged wood and exposed the rest to the drying air, you can easily install new pipes and wires. Again, everything is open. This is where things get really good. You now have the chance to do a number of things that would almost certainly not get tackled if you simply “cleared” the pest report or fixed the one thing that the plumber or tile person has pointed out. Now you can look at the proximity of fixture. Many older baths lack a nice comfy spaces around the toilet. Try for a 30” space, side to side, with the toilet centered. Also, see if you can get 21” in front of the toilet. With the sink try for a similar standing space. See if you can get a shower to be at least 30” by 30”.  

If you have a sloped wall on one side of the bath, try a “test fit” so you know that you won’t bump your head when you shower or approach the toilet. City inspectors vary in their leniency on these last matters. Most are somewhat forgiving of a slope or bump as long as the primary clearances remain healthy. 

Changing a sink cabinet to a pedestal may give you the room you need but consider where the storage will go. A cabinet over a toilet might be the answer. An open set of shelves can hold rolled towels. 

Think about light and air. Every bath needs ventilation and good airflow can literally mean the difference between replacing tile in 10 years or 30 year (No joke). Allowing things to constantly dry out is key in a bath. Despite the value of windows (and I suggest keeping them out of the shower if you can manage), I heartily endorse the use of vent fans. Cheap fans aren’t worth the money saved (they start around 30 bucks) but a really great fan may move 3 times as much air while actually being quieter. The Panasonic fans (which start around 70) are pretty great but better than these are the in-line fans that hide in the attic or some other hidden recess of the house while a 3” duct connects to the ceiling or wall of the bath using a cute little trim-plate (these start around 160). This makes them even quieter (because the fan is further away) and eliminates a foot-square THING on the wall or ceiling (for we aesthetes). By the way, when you put in your fan, how about a timer so the thing gets turned off after a while. Electronic timers are really cool and don’t cost much. 

Now, let’s talk about heat. It’s nice to get out of the bath and put your feet on a warm floor. When remodeling, it’s easy to add a small electric wall heater and it may also be a simple matter to run a small duct from your existing heating system (talk to your HVAC gal (that’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning)). If you want to go wild, try one of the new radiant heating pads that mount under the tile. The materials cost for a bath are probably under $700 for a bath and your GC should be able to manage the rest. This is one where careful consideration for the manufacturer’s guidelines is a must.  

A ceiling mounted heater makes less sense and I don’t care at all for heating bulbs over my head. Makes me feel like the meatloaf special waiting to be taken to table 12. 

As with fans, a timer on heaters is strongly advised and costs only a little. Actually both of these are designed to save you money. 

When you rehab, you can also ask yourself bigger questions such as “Do I really want a bathtub?” Many folks (once the kids are older) prefer a big shower that they can just step into. This is also better for those of limited mobility, where stepping over the tub gets to be tough. I for one, love a big shower. 

Be sure to replace ALL the piping in the bath when you rehab. There’s nothing more likely to make you bang your head against the wall than to realize that you have to tear out your 1 year old tiled shower because the pipes have begun to leak. If you want to leave the old pipes in the crawlspace for a while, that’s O.K., You can get to them later. 

So the message is, don’t hold back. The savings on a partial bath (fixing the bad floor and shower tile the pest guy found) just isn’t that great and the cost of getting a groovy bathing environment can be a few grand more. This may not lead to Godliness but if you do it right, it’s close enough. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at realestate@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

When we’re in the Fourth Street shopomania neighborhood we’re usually on the way to buying groceries for Shep the snake, though if we get a parking space we might go see if Cody’s still exists, or stop for lunch at Tacubaya. So it’s no surprise I missed Eastern Classics while the store was nearby, and had go read the little A-frame signboard on the corner to see where the enterprise had gone. 

That sign promised garden as well home stuff, so I warped on over to Camellia Street near REI and the Nomadic Traders seasonal shop and, mirabile dictu, found a space right in front of the door. I think of such events as signs from the Goddess Asphalta.  

I parked next to an interesting antiquish device that resembled a cross between wheelbarrow and hobbyhorse and bore the store’s banner. (I still don’t know what it is.) 

The shop itself is small but not cramped and the garden stuff is right up front: mostly carved lanterns—real carved stone, not cement—and small fountains. Most intriguing of these were a couple of art-glazed ceramic jugs maybe two feet tall; there’s a photo of one such on the company website, but it doesn’t do it justice.  

Most of Eastern Classics’ stock is tansu, and most of those are goodlooking, reasonably-priced reproductions. The Yin family has a workshop in China where items are made, their info says, singly by hand and (optionally) to order. If you like tansu, go take a look. 

Lots of noren, too, long ones in interesting fabrics; a few clothing items in that great folk indigo that Japanese craftspeople wear; lamps, lanterns, baskets and bowls for interior use. Pretty stuff.  

What really made my sox roll up and down was the set of burlwood furniture—chair and loveseat—back in a corner. Manager Jay Yin told me these were a traditional craft item from Fujien Province in China.  

They’re carved and polished from massive burls of, Yin said, maple or fir with back and side outlines following the curl of the grain. They look like frozen auburn waves breaking on rocks.  

These are strictly for interior use, though they’d look great in a very simple garden courtyard of the raked-gravel and one-tree variety.  

They also look very comfortable; I was schlepping too much to give one a test drive or I might have sold all I hath and bought it. It’s worth dropping by just to see them.  

I’ve always liked the habit of bringing the outside indoors, as the Japanese and others do. The Roman Latin word “impluvium” might be the best word in any language. It describes a central courtyard pool into which rain (pluvia) falls. In a civilized society, every dwelling would have one—or at least a room that’s also a garden.  

Eastern Classics 

1001 Camellia Street, Berkeley 

(510) 526-1241 

Saturday & Sunday 11 a.m.—5 p.m. 

Weekdays by appointment.  

Jay Yin: “I’m usually here, but people should call first to be sure.” 

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.

FRIDAY, JUNE 8 

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 Philip P. Frickey on “U.S. Law of Federal-Indian Tribal Relations” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“Born into Brothels” Academy Award winning documentary at 7:30 p.m. at The Center of Light, 2944 76th St., Oakland. 635-4286. 

“Walmart: The High Price of Low Cost” will be screened at 2 p.m. at the YWCA Berkeley. 2600 Bancroft Way. Free. 848-6370. 

Free Diabetes Screening Come find out if you might have diabetes with our free screening test and make sure not to eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Latina Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

Womansong Circle Participatory singing for women with Betsy Rose and Kelly Takunda Orphan at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $15-$20. 525-7082.  

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, JUNE 9 

Live Oak Park Fair, juried festival of arts and crafts, Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1301 Shattuck Ave. 898-3282.  

Temescal Street Fair with music, art making, craft and community booths and food from noon to 6 p.m. along Telegraph Ave. between 48th and 51st. 654-6346, ext. 2. www.temescalmerchants.com 

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour “Buddhist Churches: Jodo Shinshu Center” led by Sady Hayashida, architect and Glenn Kameda, at 10 a.m. Cost is $8-$10. For information on meeting place and to register call 848-0181. 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Point Pinole: A Place Apart” An exhibition on the explosive and peaceful past of the Point Pinole Shoreline. Opening reception at 1 p.m. at Contra Costa County Historical Society, 610 Main St., Martinez. Exhibit runs to Aug. 23. 925-229-1042. 

Trails Challenge in the Eastshore State Park from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Bring water, lunch, sunscreen and sturdy walking shoes for the eight-mile excursion. For information and meeting place call 525-2233. 

Shotgun Player’s Silent Auction Fundraiser at 6 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 841-6500, ext. 301. 

Berkeley Garden Club Spring Plant Sale from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 547 Grizzly Peak Blvd., at Euclid. Many native plants, succulents and perennials available. 845-4482. 

NAACP Meeting to discuss the 98th National Convention in Detroit, MI, and some local events at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. All are welcome. 845-7416.  

Learn to Row Day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Jack London Aquatic Center, 115 Embarcadero, Oakland. Participants must know how to swim. Call for more information. 208-6067. 

Great War Society meets to discuss “Sinking of the Lusitania” by S. Compagno at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

California Writers Club celebrates the fifth-grade winners of the story contest at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120. 

Training for Small Business Owners and people interested in starting their own business at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd floor community room, 2090 Kittredge St. Sposored by The Small Business Administration and the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6148. 

“Drought Tolerant Mediterranean Plants” with Gail Yelland, landscape designer, at 10 a.m. at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Hopalong Animal Rescue Come meet your furry new best cat friend from noon to 3 p.m. at 2940 College Ave. 267-1915, ext. 500. www.hopalong.org  

Exotic Birds 101 An introduction at 2 p.m. at RabbitEARS, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

Hall of Health Medical Mystery Festival for children ages 4 to 12 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hall of Health, lower level, 2230 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 705-8527.  

An Evening of Chanting with religious leaders from different Asian styles/traditions at 7 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton St. Donation $10. 809-1460. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

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, JUNE 10 

Live Oak Park Fair, juried festival of arts and crafts, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1301 Shattuck Ave. 898-3282. www.liveoakparkfair.com 

Wild About Watersheds A 2 mile roundtrip hike in Wildcate Creek Regional Trail in Richmond. Meet at 10 a.m. For information and meeting place call 525-2233.  

Creek Care A resource conservation project from 1 to 3 p.m. on the Wildcat Creek Regional Trail in Richmond. Wear layered clothing that can get wet and dirty. For information and for meeting place call 525-2233. 

Green Sunday: The Successful Picket at the Port of Oakland What it means for the longer term struggle against the war and for funding our needs at home at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., at 65th in North Oakland. 

Liquid Gold Fertilizers Learn how to turn weeds, kitchen scraps and natural byproducts into plant fertilizers. A workshop from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St., near North Berkeley BART. Bring 2 liter plastic bottles, old hoses/ bicycle tubes, cardboard or newspaper, large containers or 5 gallon buckets w/ lids. Cost is $15, no one turned away. 548-2220 ext. 242. ecohouse@ecologycenter.org  

Social Action Forum with Antonio Medrano on Amnesty International at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

Children’s Community Center Celebrates 80 Years with cake, music and art projects from 2 to 4 p.m. at Children’s Community Center, 1140 Walnut Street. RSVP to cccboardchair@gmail.com. 

Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. To make an appointment please call 872-0751. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “The Art of Happiness” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, JUNE 11 

“Voices of Iraqi Workers U.S. Solidarity Tour” with Iraqi labor leaders at 7 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School, 1781 Rose St. 527-1222. 

Berkeley School Volunteers training for summer volunteer opportunities in preschool, elementary, and middle schools, from 4 to 5 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Drop in Knitting Class at the Albany Library Work on your own project or make pet blankets and children’s hats to be donated to charity organizations. At 3:30 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

TUESDAY, JUNE 12 

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 Tilden’s Inspiration Point. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

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. 

New to DVD Screening and Discussion at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

“The Basics of Buying Your First Home” A free workshop with Jonathan Cole, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Consultant at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 1247 Marin Ave.. 524-9122.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13 

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. 

“The Next Industrial Revolution” a documentary about the transformation to an environmentally sustainable society at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Telegraph and Broadway, Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Underground” A documentary about the Weather Underground at 8 p.m. at Long Haul Infoship, 3124 Shattuck Ave. www.thelonghaul.org 

“Braving Borders, Building Bridges: A Journey for Human Rights” An African American Tour of the U.S.-Mexico Border A forum and report back at 6 p.m. at Laney College Forum, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Donations accepted. 849-9940. 

“Human Factors for Technical Communicators” Monthly meeting of the Berkeley Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication at 7:30 p.m., dinner at 6:30 p.m. at Highlands Country Club, 110 Hiller Dr., Oakland. Cost is $15-$24. for reservations see www.stc-berkeley.org  

Berkeley East Bay Track Club for ages 4-16 starts at 5:30 p.m. at Rosa Parks Elementary School, Ninth St. and Allston Way. Free. 512-9475. 

Free Diabetes Screening Come find out if you might have diabetes with our free screening test and make sure not to eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Latine Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, JUNE 14 

AC Transit Public Hearing on the Bus Rapid Transit Environmental Impact Study/Report at 5:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

“Rehab it Right!” with Jane Powell, restoration consultant at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. E-mail a few photos of an interior and/or kitchen project to nj2oakland@yahoo.com for expert tips. Cost is $8-$10. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Quit Smoking Class from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., with optional accupuncture at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. For more information call 981-5330. 

East Bay Macintosh Users Group will discuss Apple TV at 6 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

According to city spokesperson Mary Kay Clunies-Ross, the city’s web page incorrectly states that there is a budget workshop preceding the regular council meeting on June 12. 

Instead, the budget will be discussed during the regular June 12 meeting. The public can speak to the council on the budget at that time and again on June 19 during a public hearing on the budget, part of the regular council meeting. A vote on the budget is slated for June 26. 

As part of an ongoing effort to print stories by East Bay residents, The Daily Planet invites readers to write about their experiences and perspectives on living healthy. Please email your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues.